The Times reports that there is still strain between Hillary and Obama’s camps. Hillary’s fundraisers and Obama’s are trying to make nice, but Obama people may be resistant to giving money to help relieve Hillary’s debt, including the megawatts due Mark Penn. The names of the rich men include Jonathan Mantz, Alan Patricof, Steven Rattner, Alan Solomont. I am of course focusing on Jewish names. What does that matter? First, it underlines the fact that Jews are now principals in the American establishment–something I celebrate. America really is the land of opportunity. These men’s grandparents were shopowners. Now we are the war-chest for the Democratic Party (and for much of the Republican Party too–c.f. Sheldon Adelson).
The more important reason I mention Jewish names is that Jews tend to care about Israel. Solomont for instance is a backer of the Israel Policy Forum, a progressive Zionist group, probably the leading progressive Zionist group. Mark Penn worked for rightwingers in Israel, like Menachem Begin. The American public’s understanding of foreign policy will continue to be clouded so long as journalists fail to talk about Jewish devotion to Israel, i.e., the Israel lobby. This morning I was reading Benny Morris’s book 1948, when I came to the part where Golda Meir (then Myerson) went to the U.S. in 1947and 1948 to raise money from the Diaspora Jews to fight the Arabs. She got $50 million a pop. $100 million was a huge amount of money then. The Holocaust obviously played an important role here, Jews felt tremendously insecure, even in America. I wonder if I wouldn’t have been volunteering myself then, so angry would I have been!
But it must be understood that that $100 million of American Jewish money, raised by Meir, a former Milwaukee schoolteacher, went to buy arms that played an instrumental role in ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, in ’48.
I am just saying: Journalists should be asking these backers How important Israel is to them, and how they feel about Obama’s position re Israel/Palestine.
Howard Wolfson, Hillary’s former spokesman, has now gone to work for Fox, where he joins Lanny Davis. Davis has grown hawkish over Israel. Wolfson is hawkish too. He has said that Obama wants to meet a Holocaust denier (Ahmadinejad). Is this the Lieberman wing of the Democratic Party heading across the aisle? How long before some of these pro-Israel types declare for McCain? What is happening to the Jewish presence in public life? And how is it affecting the definition of American interests? Watch this space.
(Thanks to Jack Ross for explaining the Wolfson thing to me)
