Here's
a disgrace. A rabbi/blogger named
Kurt Stone is seeking to dispel reports that Obama is being advised on
Middle East policy by anyone who is remotely critical of Israel, say Zbig Brzezinski or Rob Malley. Stone finds that in fact
Obama's advisers make up a Jewish "minyan"–a religious congregation–and reels off several
Jewish names and also that of Denis McDonough:
Denis is a stalwart supporter of Israel, and despite the fact that
he is not "MOT" ["A Member of the Tribe"] he is without
question a member-in-good-standing of the Obama Minyan.
Horrifying. These might be the views of just another ethnocentric rabbi who wants Jews to control policymaking in this part of the world, except that his
analysis is being passed around by Barry Jacobs, a leading official of the
American Jewish Committee. So reports Mike Desch, who picked the Obama Minyan
piece off a listserv titled Salon@committeefortherepublic.org, to which a member had posted it after receiving it from the AJC. One of the
great lessons of Aaron David Miller's book and also the book by Dan Kurtzer,
who is one of Rabbi Stone's elect, is that there were too many Jews on Clinton's advisory team for it to be effective. Sad that an AJC official is endorsing this kind of dangerous
chauvinism. We need Arab-Americans involved in this process, gentiles, if we are to escape the cycle of violence this conflict has generated.
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{ 13 comments }
IOZ describes Obama's pandering to the Lobby as the barking of a "neutered toy poodle." How could you be so naive about who makes US Mideast policy? Mearsheimer & Walt say Israel is of no strategic interest to the US, and that but for the Lobby we'd not be in Iraq or threatening Iran. And if there is an attack on Iran it will surely be, as xymphora puts it, Another War for the Jews.
One of the problems with HRC's last two months is that she weakened Obama vis-a-vis the Israeli lobby.
I think that Obama has been consistent for the last six months on his positions, re:Israel, and his recent statements do NOT represent a pandering or capitulation.
The views expressed represent his views.
He is NOT anti-Israel and he is not anti-Palestinian.
Even on the issue of "undivided Jerusalem", people have to remember that there are multiple meanings to that term being floated.
One is the expansionist view to regard all of Jerusalem's suburbs as "undivided Jersusalem". Another is to regard the areas of Jewish majority as "undivided Jerusalem".
And, there are proposals to retain Jerusalem undivided under joint jurisdiction.
All are contreversial, and he probably should have remained vague on the subject, rather than be forced to step into a mutually exclusive position, that yeilds doubt anyway.
Its not up to us anyway.
Kurt Stone unwittingly makes the case better than many antisemitic conspiracy theorists could, that "the Jews control Obama's campaign."
I'm agnostic on the subject. But let's reason by analogy. What if a (say) Korean-American blogger wrote that ten influential, wealthy Korean-Americans (including a couple of Anglo-American "friends of Korea") were in the catbird seat of Obama's campaign? We'd all be saying, "WTF are those Koreans up to? Is this Tongsun Park and Koreagate all over again, on a larger scale?" And it wouldn't be anti-Korean to ask — it would be a reasonable question under the circumstances.
How could such an evidently articulate and well-informed person as Rabbi Stone be so incredibly insular in his thinking? Maybe he should get out a little more often from his hermetic tribal enclave in Floriduhhhh.
Speaking of minyans, a visiting Canadian singer-songwriter (Fred Eaglesmith) was taunting us the other night for Americans' anachronistic attachment to the English system of measure. "If Jesus had wanted us to adopt the metric system, he would have had TEN apostles, eh?"
The fact remains that Obama is tight with Khalidi, Abumineh, and a host of other anti-Israel people. Not to mention his esteemed pastor. You guys shouldn't be worried, the only thing that Obama is missing his his honorary kaffiyeh. Not to mention that given the price of oil it's only a matter of time before Arab sovreign wealth funds start buying up this country.
I don't agree with Sword about Obama about his old friendships. He seems perfectly capable of throwing anyone the least bit inconvenient under the bus– he is a politician after all.
But I agree with everything else Sword has to say there– liberal journos like Phil and Richard Silverstein and liberal Israelis like Seth What's-his-name that writes for the Guardian make the mistake of assuming that Israel is utterly secure, with its 150 or however many Nukes. In reality, though, within the economy that we are entering now, having enormous petroleum-based military power counts for very little if you are having trouble fueling it. 150 nukes might allow you to destroy the world's remaining oil reserves, but whatever humans are left afterwards are not going to take kindly to such an action.
The fact is that the energy situation is going to be perilous for Israel– when Mofaz yesterday threatened Iran, the price of oil shot up 11 dollars.
What you saw with that price hike was not simply Wall Street voting no about such a strike, but rather the weakening of Wall Street. Prinarily, it was the rest of the world's investors giving Mofaz's plan a big veto. Simultaneously you got a 3 or 4 pt drop in the dollar. Again, international investors attempting to moderate US and Israeli extremism.
If oil goes up to $200 a barrel for one year, Saudi Arabia will easily be able to buy the BAnk of America, or if the US refused to allow them to do so, they could start their own bank, which would be even worse for the US financial industry in the long run.
Now lets imagine that Israel did attack Iran– oil would shoot up to 200$ a barrel or perhaps even 300$ a barrel in the space of a week while hostilities persisted. Who would get the blame for that?
In the years to come, all of us Americans are going to be living much more difficult existences– life is going to get tough like it has been for most of human existence, but one positive is that Israel will be forced to make deep, deep concessions to its enemies if it hopes to preserve anything remotely like what it has today.
One thing that has occurred to me is that Israel might be an unwitting pawn in a Western strategy to preserve access to middle east oil: We will give you back Palestine, relocate its interlopers to Brooklyn, and in return, you will give us first dibs on oil contracts so that we can continue to power our huge fleet of automobiles.
"Its not up to us anyway."
What is not up to "us" (Americans, I guess).
The "One Jerusalem" issue?
Has he moved closer to the network Jim Jobe monitors carefully?
http://www.onejerusalem.org/blog/index.asp
What do you think about the statement below?
http://southjerusalem.com/2008/06/05/obama-at-aipac-in-the-capital-of-nixonland/
Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided.
… As a voter I support Obama. As a journalist, I’m obligated to point out how foolish those words were. They harm his ability to conduct negotiations as president. To achieve an agreement, he will have to introduce proposals he now says he opposes – thereby feeding the cynicism about politics he hopes to overcome.
There are no doubt must be strong ideological forces out there to lead a clever man like Obama to reductio ad absurdum. And please don't tell me he is not aware of it, in a secret corner of his mind.
Maybe we should all give up hope and wait for the little nukes falling on Esfahan.
"We will give you back Palestine, relocate its interlopers to Brooklyn, and in return, you will give us first dibs on oil contracts so that we can continue to power our huge fleet of automobiles"
I'd rather pay a fortune for oil, and solve our treason problem at home, than import the rest of the horde to our shores. Whatever claim we still have to being a nation with a common heritage would surely be lost after such a stupid move.
Also, if oil is a dwindling resource that becomes more costly as it is used up, does it make sense antagonize the suppliers, and fight wars with military machines that use massive amounts of the resource?
"There are no doubt must be strong ideological forces out there to lead a clever man like Obama to reductio ad absurdum."
It is possible that Obama is more pampered than clever.
Nobody has pointed out the seeming anomaly of Stone's involvement in matters intensely secular.
Aren't rabbis supposed to be of the scholarly and spiritual realms?
Isn't judaism under this man's watch (and others of his ilk, not to mention the British Chief Rabbi, 'Sir' Jonathan Sacks) a somewhat tarnished affair?
And another thing.
If Sword of Gideon is going to demean Palestinian spokespeople, he should at least get their names right. Abunimeh is spelled Abunimah, OK?
Abunimah happens to be a model of humility, principles and capacity. And he is naturally anti-Israel because a product of the Nakba.
He happens to look like Obama but there the resemblance ends.
Talents like Abunimah (and Khalidi, Makdisi, Karmi, etc.) are here to stay anda their voices will be more regularly heard.
The virulent yet tawdry racism of the lobby, this ongoing debasement of Jewry's heritage, will be looked upon by future historians as a prime example of a social pathology gone horribly wrong.
I think ( Obama's middle east) Advisors like Dan kurtzer are the worst kind. They get nothing done (like he has in the middle east) and then they blame their bosses like he did in his self serving book. He is hired because of his resume but i hope Obama wises up. I could not bear to complete the book which was insulting to anyone's intelligence of reality. Dan Kurtzer is not any solutionn for Obama. Seeing him relied upon makes me realize that Obama is indeed hooked up to wires.
The Jewish Lobby and the isr-Pal situtation is really simple to solve..all it takes is another American president like Eisenhower.
http://www.eisenhowermemorial.org/presidential-papers/first-term/documents/2063.cfm
"Of course, nothing in the region would be so difficult to solve except for the underlying cause of the unrest and dissension that exists there–that is, the Arab-Israel quarrel. This quarrel seems to have no limit in either intensity or in scope. Everybody in the Moslem and Jewish worlds is affected by it. It is so intense that the second any action is taken against one Arab state, by an outsider, all the other Arab and Moslem states seem to regard it as a Jewish plot and react violently. All this complicates the situation enormously.
As we began to uncover evidence that something was building up in Israel, we demanded pledges from Ben-Gurion that he would keep the peace.10
We realized that he might think he could take advantage of this country because of the approaching election and because of the importance that so many politicians in the past have attached to our Jewish vote.
I gave strict orders to the State Department that they should inform Israel that we would handle our affairs exactly as though we didn't have a Jew in America.
The welfare and best interests of our own country were to be the sole criteria on which we operated.11 "
The Israelization of America, among other corruption, is going to be the demise of both the US and Israel. A country not promoting the best interest of itself and it's own citizens always falls.
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