Yesterday one of my many moles inside the Council on Foreign Relations sent me the 2008 annual report. Beautiful cover. Rocks my world.
You flip the book open and you see Jewish names. You see Larry Summers and Robert Rubin, who were just on stage with Obama, in a picture together, see Leslie Gelb's name, see Richard Haass, CFR President, who is Jewish. The pages dedicated to endowed chairs and events are filled with Jews. The David M. Rubenstein Chair. The Maurice R. [Hank] Greenberg Chair, two of them. The Roger Hertog Senior Fellowship. Giant neocon. The Stephen Friedheim symposium, Darryl Behrman lecture, Bernard Schwartz Lecture, the Schwartz senior fellowship– Schwartz who went to City College with my dad and gives tons to Israel.
As for donors, I don't want to become tedious here, but: Kravis, Janklow, Robert Rubin again, Hertog, Sidney Harman, husband to Congresswoman Jane Harman who represents AIPAC, Penny Pritzker, Obama's backer, Lester Crown, of the other Chicago billionaire family to the Pritzkers, Iran hawk. Ken Bialkin formerly of ADL, and wild. Robert Belfer of WINEP, who endows Steve Walt's chair at Harvard, bless his heart. Douglas Schoen, pollster to Menachem Begin. James Tisch, a leading Israel lobbyist.
Jewish money is a necessary engine of the economy, and we're all over the Establishment. Are there non-Jewish names? Of course, many. Nothing like their proportion at CFR in days past. And they defer to Jews on Israel policy. Like rubicund Walter Russell Mead, who is the Kissinger fellow at CFR and attacks Walt and Mearsheimer. We're just there, there's no arguing with this fact. We're a dynamic rising force, with esprit de corps, at least till the mutt grandchildren come of age. It's the water Obama's swimming in in a way that Bill Clinton wasn't, and that even George W. Bush held himself back from, somewhat. On the stage with Obama, I think there were 4 or 5 Jews right now, his economic-policy braintrust. Pritzker, Emanuel, Summers, Rubin…And two of them are on the President's page of the Council on Foreign Relations, which has nothing to do with the economy.
The point is, Jews compose a huge segment of the power structure, and for some confounded reason these people have decided they are joined at the hip with Israel, which is why I have a Jewish identity clinic on this blog, to show them they don't have to stand up for apartheid. But when everyone is expecting Obama to tell Summers and Emanuel to get lost, he can't. He needed the Jewish establishment, it got behind him early or late, because they thought he was a winner, and they funded him, and they're all over him, the moreso because they worry about his associations with Palestinians. And so it is simply impossible to speak about Middle East policy without speaking about Jewish power.
Avraham Burg, in his new book: "Jews hold stunningly powerful positions and clout in the United States.
The combination of the American state's power and the Jewish power in
the areas of legislation, administration, media, law, business,
culture, and entertainment have made the Jews a defining factor of
contemporary America. Because Israel is inseparable from the identity of American Jews, Israel is inseparable from the American experience."
And now what? Change.
