Earlier this year Jeff Halper explained the hold of the Israel lobby when he said that Barney Frank has told him that he is against the settlement project but that he can't go public against it unless "you bring me the names of 5000 Jews in my district that support you... If you can’t do that…. I’m not going to commit political suicide for the sake of the Palestinians… “
Let's be clear about the significance of this statement. Barney Frank is in one of the most liberal districts in the country. It went for Obama 63-35, Barney won by even a larger margin. There are lots of Jews in that district, and if you came out against abortion or gay rights, that would be political suicide. But coming out against the settlements would also be political suicide, because liberal claims notwithstanding, the American Jewish community is generally to the right of Atilla the Hun on settlements and Jerusalem and it demands solidarity with Israel's actions. So when you ask whether AIPAC is representative of American Jewry, the answer is sadly, Yes! (No wonder Frank has equivocated on criticism of some settlers' actions.)
More evidence of the lobby's power inside the Jewish community (thanks to Khelil for bringing this to my attention) is the rise of Sean Bielat, a Tea Party candidate, who is giving Barney Frank the toughest race he's had in years. Politico reports that Frank has taken a $200,000 campaign loan. Barney Frank is surely going to be reelected, but the man who won by 68-25 last time round leads by only 49 percent to 37 percent this time, with many on the fence.
And though Frank has supported Israel's blockade of Gaza, the right clearly sees Israel issues as the wedge. The Weekly Standard has been promoting Bielat; and tonight the ubiquitous Bill Kristol is holding a fundraiser for Bielat in Newton, the heart of the Jewish community outside Boston.
Click on the sub-heading "Israel" at Bielat's website and you find an old school neo-con and militant promoter of the "clash of civilizations" theory. He has only 7 headings under "Views" and Israel is one of the 7 and his site has a lot to say:
The 100 year-old war of the Arabs against Jewish sovereignty in the Middle East is not the cause of the 1,400 year-old war of Islam against Western Civilization. Some believe the Arab-authored narrative that Israel is the “cause” of Middle East unrest as opposed to being a nation affected by it. Some also choose to ignore the fact that, like Israel, the United States, as the current leader of Western civilization, is under attack by Muslim jihadists. Israel and the United States are fighting the same war and are on the same side. Israel is on the frontier, and the United States is farther back, but we’re in this battle for freedom and security together.
...We may soon have to accept the unpleasant realization that the Palestinian leadership does not really want to co-exist peacefully with Israel and that no amount of Israeli concessions will change this. Recent history has shown that Israeli concessions have led not to reciprocal gestures but to increased Palestinian demands and more violence. Perhaps the root cause of the conflict between the Arabs and the Jews is, in fact, not that the Palestinians don’t have a state but that the Jews do.
And on and on. Why does a person like this gain any traction in a liberal district? Because of the conservatism of the Jewish community on an issue of religious nationalism.
Screw the hypocrite Barney Frank and screw his Jewish consituents. I won’t shed a tear at his electoral defeat.
Where are the righteous 5000?
Abraham arguing with God to save Sodom and Gomorroh was last week’s Torah portion. Anybody derive any meaning from that?
Was Abraham too lazy to find the righteous 50, or did they really not exist?
You can’t tell from Phil’s post.
Further, Barney has repeatedly BEGGED his progressive constituents for a leg to stand on electorally on many issues.
When he says, “I can’t vote for this without some statement of affirmation from my constituents”, that is a statement of integrity, that he is a representative of his district, and not an elected demagogue.
Take that statement as encouragement, empowerment, NOT as dismissal.
>> Abraham arguing with God to save Sodom and Gomorroh was last week’s Torah portion. Anybody derive any meaning from that?
1. The Bible is mytho-religious propaganda written to support a tribe’s political agenda, so it is not surprising that God (not Abraham) failed to find 10 righteous people in Sodom. Had the tale been written by the citizens of Sodom, I suspect the town would have been full of righteous people.
2. God is fickle and evil. He wiped out an entire village, but failed to destroy:
- Lot, who un-righteously offered up his daughters to a crowd to be raped; and
- Lot’s daughters, who later un-righteously got their father drunk, had sex with him and impregnated themselves.
But, hey, he did punish Lot’s wife, whose only crime was to look over her shoulder.
The moral of the story: Facts don’t matter if the course of action is predetermined.
(Saddam has nookyoolar weapons, dontcha know.)
Religion is two things:
1. An invitation to explore the mystery of the relation of self (subject – I) to world to Thou (great I).
2. A social code to establish law that everyone within the society can depend on.
>> Religion is two things:
>> 2. A social code to establish law that everyone within the society can depend on.
Yup, we can sure count on competing religions to establish laws that we can all depend on! What a joker!
You don’t know what “the society” means, referring to those that agree to be bound by halacha or sharia or ecumenical law, or whatever?
You think I am suggesting that everyone in the whole world be governed by religious law?
Witty,
There is no such thing as “Sharia Law.” That is some BS made up by Steve Emerson, and the rest of the other anti-Muslim moneymakers. Perhaps you haven’t heard of the expose this past weekend of how Steve Emerson has been funneling non-profit anti-Muslim dollars to his one-person for-profit firm. Read MJ Rosenberg at TPMCafe. He has a link to the article, which I am sure you’re never going to read. But here is the saliennt part:
A religion is where someone gives you half the truth and people — man — manufacture or create the rest.
>> You don’t know what “the society” means, referring to those that agree to be bound by halacha or sharia or ecumenical law, or whatever?
>> You think I am suggesting that everyone in the whole world be governed by religious law?
If all a religion can provide is “a social code to establish law that everyone within the society can depend on” for a society narrowly defined by that religion, then it’s useless. Better a true humanist ideology (not your fraudulent “humanism”), which applies equally to all people.
And that’s all I’ll say because, unfortunately, I forgot not to feed the troll and you’ve already taken this thread too far off course.
DON’T FEED THE TROLL!! (And my apologies for having fed him.)
A few, a very few, brave souls have resigned their jobs (say at State) in order to distance themselves from USA policy. Too few. And not many Congressmen, either.
Jimmy Carter waited until recently to say what he’s said, and he’s not said much, he could have said so very much more, but it’s been welcome. Bill Clinton has said a word or two, but, again, not much.
The power of THE LOBBY and THE ESTABLISHMENT (and how much do they overlap?) to suppress ethical speech is a marvel, a dreadful marvel. One can understand it with sitting elective officials, but with retired presidents, one wonders, why cannot they, at least, and at long last, speak out? Of course, Bill Clinton’s is paralyzed by Hillary R. Clinton. He’s captured by her lust for office, and as an office-holder, she is paralyzed by THE LOBBY and THE ESTABLISHMENT.
(I guess I won’t wait for the shrub to step forward with a stunted ethical statement.)
Mooser is right, Witty, you just make shit up, put quotes around it, and then go off at a tangent inventing some filigree to surround it.
Frank was quoting saying this “you bring me the names of 5000 Jews in my district that support you… If you can’t do that…. I’m not going to commit political suicide for the sake of the Palestinians… “
Not this, as you claim with quotes: “I can’t vote for this without some statement of affirmation from my constituents”
Big difference. His district has a population over 634,000. He doesn’t care about Catholics or Buddhists being against the settlements, he only cares about Jews, and in his district. He said so.
He only cares about campaign contributions.
What he says is, “I don’t care what’s right or wrong, and even if I know what’s right I won’t vote for it if it means losing the election.”
MRW,
You see my paraphrasing and your selected quotes as different meaning?
How?
You’re kidding, right? You can’t see the difference? You attribute a quote to Frank that he did not say. The exact quote as Jeff Halper reported it was available to you, and you turned it into something else that did not confer the meaning. If you can’t see the difference between the two, I can’t help you.
————-
BTW, you never put ‘paraphrasing’ in double quotes without a pre-warning — and there better be a good reason for it — because you are putting your words in someone else’s mouth, and that can be potentially libelous. It’s why there are fact-checkers.