Isn’t it interesting that only in the last days of the campaign is the radioactive question of U.S. policy in the Middle East finally getting into the ring. The Times followed up on McCain’s radio interview where he likened Rashid Khalidi to a neo-Nazi. The Wall Street Journal is also building the Khalidi fire. And here is a screed by Larry Greenfield, who heads the Republican Jewish Coalition in California, attacking Mel Levine, a former AIPAC-loving congressman, as an anti-Zionist Jew because Obama is supported by the progressive left:
Israel, stirring up the anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism, and
anti-Americanism that we have seen for years from the left (the Bush Bashing, the attacks on neo-cons (Jews), the hate speech against Palin, the lies and smears against all things GOP).
The
Jewish left is therefore playing with fire by stirring up some
anti-Israel voices in left-wing churches and academe and blogs through
lies, smears and innuendo. They have targeted the RJC and let loose hostility against Jews and Israel.
I hope the media finally get to this issue, and that McCain gets a big Jewish vote. Because Greenfield’s
militancy actually represents a sizeable constituency in the Jewish
community: the pro-Iraq-war, one-Jerusalem crowd. But if this issue
never gets play, and Obama gets more than 75 percent of the Jewish
vote, that religious ideology will remain uninterrogated, and Greenfield’s statement about consensus will remain true, and ardent Zionism will thereby maintain its political cover in the “liberal Democratic” Jewish
community; the debate over America’s involvement in Palestinian human rights violations won’t happen, because the lobby in both parties doesn’t want it to happen. President Obama will have been successfully colonized by
Dershowitz and pro-AIPAC, pro-Iraq Mel Levine, and therefore will find
it difficult/impossible to come out against the occupation. This is my former crush Debbie Wasserman-Shultz’s game, and
Dershowitz’s too: Go with the winner, and claim Obama for Israel!
By contrast, let’s say the Khalidi story hits the fan, and the LA Times release more info on that evening in Chicago 5 years ago, and Rashid Khalidi goes on national television to talk about Palestinian dispossession, and Sue Dravis is interviewed about Obama telling her that Palestinians suffer the most– and as a result Obama gets a low
Jewish vote, say 60-70 percent. He will then owe less to the lobby, and the
election will help dispatch the idea of “the Jewish vote” (i.e., Israel). Not that pro-Israel Jewish money and media support won’t remain important factors in Obama’s political calculus–but at least he will have more wiggle room. So I’m hoping that the issue
gets into play, and Jews and Americans are asked to take a stand on a unified
Jerusalem, and an apartheid West Bank– and Obama is forced to do so too. I’m with
Greenfield on that.
