Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice president of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, with Benjamin Netanyahu (Photo: Tim Boxer)
The recent Jerusalem gathering that brought members of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations together made clear that the Jewish establishment has rallied around Benjamin Netanyahu’s war footing on Iran. But J Street, the liberal Zionist lobby group, has bucked the establishment’s line on Iran–so much so that the conference’s executive vice president, Malcolm Hoenlein, is on the warpath against the group, seeking to make its Iran position beyond the pale.
Israeli journalist Larry Derfner’s eye-opening report in +972 Magazine exposed the rotten core of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, an umbrella group encompassing organized Judaism’s most prominent organizations–52 in total, including Americans for Peace Now. Derfner reports on a panel discussion on Iran that took place during the gathering:
The best question came from from Rabbi Basil Herring, executive vice president of the (Orthodox) Rabbinical Council of America. Noting the difficulty in destroying Iran’s underground nuclear installations, Herring asked if Israel would consider “the use of tactical nuclear weapons in areas that aren’t so populated, or in the open desert? To show the Iranians that their lives are on the line, that Israel won’t go quietly?”
[…]
One of the very few liberals in the group told me he knew of three organizational leaders who sounded like they wanted to use tactical nuclear weapons on Iran “right now.” A number of them think Netanyahu is being too soft on the Iranians. As a whole, he said, the visitors were a little shocked at all the relatively dovish talk they were hearing from some of the Israelis on these panels.
J Street’s position is far removed from this hysterical and damaging war posture. While the group has advocated for punitive sanctions on Iran, which has had deleterious consequences for Iranian civilians, they are now pushing back hard against a potential Iran war.
J Street is currently promoting a Congressional letter authored by Reps. Keith Ellison, a progressive Democrat from Minnesota, and Walter Jones, a Republican from North Carolina. J Street states:
As the drumbeat for war with Iran grows louder veteran diplomats are straining to be heard, urging as Ambassadors Thomas Pickering and William Luers did in the New York Times, a robust, new diplomatic initiative.
Thankfully, some elected officials are listening, anxious to avoid yet another Middle East war. Representatives Keith Ellison (D-MN) and Walter Jones (R-NC) are seeking their colleagues’ signatures on a thoughtful letter to the President that supports both sanctions and pressure on Iran as well as a robust diplomatic initiative.
Although they praise sanctions on Iran, the Ellison-Jones letter (pdf) also strongly urges “diplomatic efforts” in order to head off a war.
J Street’s promotion of the letter can be considered a clarion call for sanity in a mainstream debate operating under the assumption that Israel faces an “existential threat” from Iran. But it also opens up a crack in the Jewish community–a crack that Hoenlein is afraid of.
We recently reported on comments that Hoenlein made to an Israeli magazine about J Street. Hoenlein said, “when you criticize the government of Israel, you have to consider the consequences.” He also ominously warned that “sadly, when we are divided, history records we have paid a heavy price”–clearly a reference to the Holocaust and a shot across the bow at J Street. Hoenlein similarly blasted J Street’s efforts in a video interview with the settler news website Arutz Sheva, calling the organization “irresponsible” and “out of step.”
So it’s clear that Hoenlein wants to rally the troops for a potential war with Iran. But J Street remains in the way, and Hoenlein wants to marginalize that way of thinking.
If somehow war with Iran is averted, J Street will deserve some of the credit. But now lets hear from those who claim that J Street is just another version of AIPAC….
You really think J Street, Keith Ellison and Walter Jones “remain in the way”?
Their “objections” are really only a matter of degree – they are for killing iranians, they just want to starve them. not exactly a rallying cry
Thanks Alex- here is a great opportunity for President Obama– embrace J Street and Jeremy Ben-Ami- invite Ben-Ami to the White House along with Netanyahu next week- drive open the schism- facilitate the Great Divide in the American Jewish diaspora. Use Ben-Ami to protect you against phony “anti-Semitism” charges. Go Mr. President- carpe diem!
This is one of my favorite articles that exposes americas jewish israel firsters going way back to feb of 07 ( i know it is rather long but well worth it for the prescience shown by this man, here Malcolm Hoenlein shows how prescient he can be while also decrying the fact that his community should have taken the offensive very early in this episode of the “nation within a nation”.
this is my take away line at this juncture of this episode…the part about the christian zionist being the last group to possibly support israel is the part i can not wait to see, by then the jewish community will have fragmented, over support for Israel no less, thank God.
“Hoenlein argued that the Jewish community made a major mistake by not forcefully criticizing the arrests.”
they may have missed that opportunity but now they are at the redline and will not back down, i say good bring it on, i am sure americas intelligence community is sick and tired and fully expect some disclosure to come from them to embarass israel with another american jew spying for israel.
Written by Forward Editorial
Friday, 02 February 2007
While Jewish communal leaders focus most of their current lobbying efforts on pressing the United States to take a tough line against Iran and its nuclear program, some are privately voicing fears that they will be accused of driving America into a war with the regime in Tehran.
In early advocacy efforts on the issue, Jewish organizations stressed the threat that a nuclear Iran would pose to Israel in light of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad‚s calls to „wipe Israel off the map.” Now, with concerns mounting that Israel and its supporters might be blamed for any military confrontation, Jewish groups are seeking to widen their argument, asserting that an Iranian nuclear bomb would threaten the West and endanger pro-American Sunni Muslim states in the region.
Jess Hordes, Washington director of the Anti-Defamation League, said that the strategy of broadening the case against Iran was not an attempt to divert attention from the threats to Israel. „It is a fact that Iran is a danger to the whole world,” Hordes said. „We are not just saying it to hide our concerns about Israel.”
Yet many advocacy efforts, even when not linked to Israel, carry indelibly Jewish fingerprints. Last week, Jewish groups claimed victory when the United Nations approved a resolution denouncing Holocaust denial, with Iran‚s regime as the obvious target. Additionally, numerous Jewish activists are pressing in advertisements and Internet appeals for Ahmadinejad to be indicted in The Hague for incitement to genocide.
In warning of possible scapegoating, insiders point to the experience of the Iraq War. Since the initial invasion in 2003, antiwar groups have charged, with growing vehemence, that the war was promoted by Jewish groups acting in Israel‚s interest ˜ even though the invasion enjoyed bipartisan backing and popular support, and was not at the top of most Jewish organizations‚ agendas. The Iraq backlash prompted former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon to order in 2005 that his ministers keep a low profile on Iran.
Now, however, Jewish groups are indeed playing a lead role in pressing for a hard line on Iran. The campaign comes at a time when President Bush‚s popularity has reached record lows and members of both parties are cautioning against a rush toward war.
Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, addressed the fears head-on last week in an address to Israel’s prestigious Herzliya Conference. Lamenting what he called „the poisoning of America,” Hoenlein painted a dire picture of American public discourse turning increasingly anti-Jewish and anti-Israel in the year ahead.
Hoenlein dated the trend to the 2005 arrest of two former employees of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, on charges of passing classified national security information. Hoenlein argued that the Jewish community made a major mistake by not forcefully criticizing the arrests.
Speaking via video, Hoenlein listed several events that had occurred since then: the release of the essay criticizing the Israel Lobby by two distinguished professors, Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer; the publication of former president Jimmy Carter‚s best-selling book, „Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid”; the suggestion by former NATO supreme commander and Democratic presidential candidate Wesley Clark that „New York money people” were pushing America into war, and claims by former U.S. weapons inspector Scott Ritter that Israel is pushing the United States to attack Iran.
„In the beginning of the Iraq war they talked about the neocons‚ as a code word,” Hoenlein said. „Now we see that code words are no longer necessary.” He warned that the United States is nearing a situation similar to that of Britain, where delegitimization of Israel is widespread.
„This is a cancer that starts from the top and works its way down,” he said. „It poisons the opinions among elites which trickle down into society.”
According to Hoenlein, such critics tend not only to delegitimize Israel but also to „intimidate American Jews not to speak out.” He called on American Jews to take action against this phenomenon, saying that Christian Zionists seemed at times more willing than Jews to fight back.
Another instance of casting blame, less widely reported, was attributed to former secretary of state Colin Powell. In a new biography, by Washington Post writer Karen De Young, Powell is said to have put at least some of the blame for the Iraq war on Jewish groups. The book, „Soldier: The Life of Colin Powell,” claims that Powell used to refer to the pro-war advisers surrounding former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld as the „Jinsa crowd.” Jinsa is the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, a hawkish think tank that supported the Iraq war.
Thomas Neumann, Jinsa’s executive director, said he was not offended by Powell’s reference, although he was surprised that the former secretary of state would single out a Jewish group when naming those who supported the war. „I am not accusing Powell of anything, but these are words that the antisemites will use in the future,” Neumann said.
Whatever worries exist about a negative backlash over Israel, they have not deterred Jewish and pro-Israel activists from publicly pressing for tough U.S. action against Tehran or invoking concern for Israel.
A particularly forceful argument for a hard line against Iran appeared this week in The New Republic, a Washington insider journal widely viewed as a bellwether of pro-Israel opinion. The lengthy article, written by two respected Israeli writers, Michael Oren and Yossi Klein Halevi, both fellows at the Shalem Center, a hawkish Jerusalem think tank, names Iran as the main threat to Israeli survival, regional stability and to the entire world order. This theme has been echoed in publications and press releases put out by most major Jewish groups, including Aipac and the Conference of Presidents.
„The international community now has an opportunity to uphold that order,” Oren and Klein Halevi wrote. „If it fails, then Israel will have no choice but to uphold its role as refuge of the Jewish people. A Jewish state that allows itself to be threatened with nuclear weapons ˜ by a country that denies the genocide against Europe’s six million Jews while threatening Israel‚s six million Jews ˜ will forfeit its right to speak in the name of Jewish history”.
“The best question came from from Rabbi Basil Herring, executive vice president of the (Orthodox) Rabbinical Council of America. Noting the difficulty in destroying Iran’s underground nuclear installations, Herring asked if Israel would consider “the use of tactical nuclear weapons in areas that aren’t so populated, or in the open desert? To show the Iranians that their lives are on the line, that Israel won’t go quietly?””
And this is all kosher lemehadrin is it?
What an appalling mess Israel has become. Religious leaders openly calling for the use of nuclear weapons. Rav Basil Fawlty should take a good look at himself in the mirror. Next time he reads Torah he should stop moaning about the Pharoah. Major Jewish Organisations are the empire now.