Jeff Blankfort points out that my pickup on "Obama's Iran braintrust" last night was wrong. Oh my. Shouldn't blog late at night when I should be having connubial bliss. Then he joins in the conversation with Jack Ross on whether Zionism and Judaism can be disentangled.
A closer reading of the NY Times story does not indicate that Obama has
any relation to this group that met on Iran and that it is an ad hoc
group that hopes to influence him. The sad truth is that if he decided,
at least publicly, to follow their advice,it is quite likely that
Israel would launch an attack on Iran before the inauguration. Israel
is afraid that whoever succeeds Ahmadinejad, who has become
increasingly unpopular, will present a more palatable image to the
West, and as Trina Parsi has written, Israel is very concerned about
anything resembling an American reprochement with Tehran.
any relation to this group that met on Iran and that it is an ad hoc
group that hopes to influence him. The sad truth is that if he decided,
at least publicly, to follow their advice,it is quite likely that
Israel would launch an attack on Iran before the inauguration. Israel
is afraid that whoever succeeds Ahmadinejad, who has become
increasingly unpopular, will present a more palatable image to the
West, and as Trina Parsi has written, Israel is very concerned about
anything resembling an American reprochement with Tehran.
Re
Jack Ross, I tend to agree with you. It is very difficult to draw a
line between Judaism and Zionism as a reading of Deuteronomy and
Numbers should make evident. But there is this Jewish cultural
existence which tends to be secular and can reject both Judaism as a
religion and Zionism as an ideology while remaining Jewish. The notion
of being "chosen" exists more subtly in the non-religious Jewish
secular world as much as it does the religious.
