Saban’s financial leverage is in a long tradition of ‘practical politics’ in the Israel lobby

People seem to be leaving out the plainest part of the Jane Harman scandal, which is actually the worst part of it: the importance of big money to the Israel lobby.

Leave aside the legal issues–whether or not Harman cut a corrupt deal, whether or not Nancy Pelosi played ball, whether or not Alberto Gonzales cut Harman a break because she was so useful to the neocon White House–the lever of influence in the matter was said to be Haim Saban, who gives tons to the Democratic Party and is an ardent Zionist. Per Jeff Stein's reporting in CQ, Saban was to politically blackmail Pelosi. withholding contributions, unless she came through on Harman's Intelligence committee status.

The alleged deal speaks to an important issue of our political culture, the long reliance of the Israel lobby on "power politics," as anti-Zionist Rabbi Elmer Berger put it long ago. A few pieces of string:

–In 2006, a year after the Harman-Saban business, Pelosi "vigorously" dismissed Jimmy Carter's book on apartheid in Palestine as a fantasy. Was she motivated by financial concerns? Similarly, when Jimmy Carter was barred from a speaking role at Obama's convention last summer in Denver–again, money concerns? How large is Jewish giving in the political process? A legendary Washington Post report put Jewish contributions at 60 percent of Democratic Party giving, and Clintonite Steve Rabinowitz told me a year or so back that if he got into the proportion of Jewish giving it would only fuel conspiracy thinking.

–When Walt and Mearsheimer's paper came out, a Harvard rabbi warned about the financial consequences to Harvard of Walt's association with the school– "seismic," he said. Meanwhile Marty Peretz said that by losing its president Larry Summers three years back, Harvard had sacrificed several $100 million gifts.

–Go back 60 years. "President Truman was constantly reminded by Jewish spokesmen and Democratic party leaders that he needed Jewish votes and financial contributions in the approaching 1948 elections," Thomas Kolsky writes in Jews Against Zionism. And Kolsky notes that in his memoirs, Truman complained about pressure and wrote, "I found it necessary to give instruction that I did not want to be approached by any more spokesmen for the extreme Zionist cause." Of course that extreme group won. Anti-Zionists complained bitterly in 1948 that the Zionists were "busy as bees all the way from the White House to Congress."

–Rabbi Elmer Berger, whose cause was defeated by the lobby–and world history, too– in the 1940s, wrote in The Jewish Dilemma that power politics was part of the DNA of Zionism. Theodor Herzl spoke openly of the deployment of "Jewish wealth," Berger wrote. "With Herzl, that group of Jews which committed itself to Zionism and acknowledged him as its leader entered a peripatetic kind of diplomacy which took it into many chancelleries and parliaments, exploring the labyrinthine and devious ways of international politics in a part of the world where political intrigue and secret deals were a byword. Jews began to play the game of 'practical politics.'"  

The larger issue here is about the political culture of the Israel lobby: it is comfortable working behind the scenes, it doesn't want the issue publicly discussed. After all, a core faith of the lobby is the persistence of anti-Semitism. So why would it want a big public discussion?

As I say here often, the lobby saved my ancestors. German-Jewish rich men with access to the White House helped to apply U.S. pressure on Russia at the turn of the last century. Jewish immigration was one result. I love that lobby!

Since then a lot has happened. From Iraq to the West Bank, today's lobby has gained too much backroom power over American foreign policy. The Harman-Pelosi-Saban conversation epitomizes the issue.

Related posts:

1. The lobby resorts to financial blackmail again
2. Times implicates Saban in the Harman scandal, but not as the ‘Israeli agent’
3. Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I’m Yours: Jane Harman and the Israel Lobby
4. Is Haim Saban the ’suspected Israeli agent’ scheming with Jane Harman?
5. Two delicious angles of the Harman story– do I hear the hounds baying?