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….
This is the very first time I’ve seen a different line from J Street. Good for them.
My grandfather had three shops. One catered to [what we now refer to as] the $1 market, the second was aimed at the ‘middle class’ and the third at those who believed they’d reached the highest echelons of society. The shops catered every way, but at the end of the day all the money went only one way.
OK. J street is just another version of AIPAC. Which it more or less is. It serves to attempt to legitimize the efforts of the Jewish establishment to wage war against Iran, by offering a less facist face. But ultimately the goals are the same – the successful portrayal of Israel as a rational state actor that is merely trying to protect itself from a bloodthirty enemy. It really isnt’ necessary to explain why this isnt’ true – unless you really are that poorly informed…
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
Since Keith Ellison was sympathetic to the Gazans I’m surprised he supports the sanctions. But maybe not too surprised–he is a politician.
The mainstream American debate seems to be between those who argue that the Iranians can’t be bombed soon enough, and those who think that bombing them might pose a danger to people who matter (Americans and Israelis) and so we should starve the Iranians for now, since we can always bomb them later. That’s how debates are generally conducted with the “serious” people.
And all snark aside, it’s a way of framing things that means that people who enter the mainstream discussion and argue in those terms are accepting the mainstream consensus and end up supporting the premise that Iran has to be stopped through any means necessary. Keith Ellison probably means well and is trying to oppose war by supporting what he perceives as the least bad politically viable option. But he ends up supporting sanctions.
your right donald – and then when his party gets voted out of office, and those sanctions turn into war, Ellison like all good liberals grabs a mega-phone and denounces the war. Full. Of. Shit.
you da man, Alex Kane, the man with the microphone. Thanks for posting these inside views of people who influence our future.
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!
see Dan’s comment above, Bill in Maryland. You are advocating that two representatives of the Jewish community get to present their arguments to Obama about how Iran should be destroyed — by starvation (J Street) or nuclear attack (Jewish Presidents etc)
So let’s take a poll: How do you think Iranians should be killed:
a. Starve ‘em to death. It’s cheaper
b. Bombing attack possibly involving nuclear weapons. Costly but USA will pay. They always have
nb. no need to clutter the “Starve ‘em” option of the poll with too many details like how US starved Iraqis before we bombed them and destroyed their cultures, and no need to clutter the “bomb ‘em” option with the niggling details that Marsha Cohen reported. Too confusing.
Here’s a third option: How about Mr. Obama invite Chas Freeman to join the party, backed up by John Entelis, John Mueller, Giandomenico Picco, John Tierman, Joseph Esposito, Leon Panetta, and maybe Obama’s praetorian guard. Why should the president of the United States be forced to kowtow to the leaders of a tiny minority of Americans?
Teta: And how about he invite a Gazan to talk about how it feels to live under a sanctions regime and an Iranian (because it is their country after all) and a Cuban (more testimony on sanctions).
Now CHAS FREEMAN, there is a wonderful idea!
PS Add Andrew Bacevich to the colloquy.
Thanks teta mother me.
Of course I would be delighted to have Chas Freeman & Trita Parsi in on the White House discussion, but I have sadly come to the conclusion that Obama is a fairly cowardly politician and would never take such a step. Maybe he might risk a baby step such as inviting Ben-Ami, however??
As to your question: “Why should the president of the United States be forced to kowtow to the leaders of a tiny minority of Americans?”, we had better ask Walt and Mearsheimer.
@teta mother me,
Why no women [just being curious]?
Daniel Rich — “Why no women” —
because I’m busy that weekendI just pounded out a few names from a mental list of people that I have been “collecting” who, in my view, have a well informed alternative view of how US-Iran relations can be better. Add to the list Dr. Fatemeh Keshavarz, author of “Jasmine and Stars: Reading MORE than Lolita in Tehran” and chair of ME Studies at Washington University in ST. Louis; Nesta Ramazani, wife of Ruhi Ramazani, legendary dean of Middle Eastern studies at University of Virginia, is a scholar in her own right and an informed and powerful voice for Iran.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.
Next time he reads Torah he should stop moaning about the Pharoah. Major Jewish Organisations are the empire now
Awesome. I’m still trying to figure out who exactly that Pharaoh was anyways. The Hyksos have turned out to be mostly (if not exclusively) fictitious. Ramesses II and co turned out to be Caucasoid and likely related to the Tocharian mummies of Tibet. Bedouins (called Shasu) worshipped a burning bush called Yaweh. It gets pretty weird when you try to put it al together. But none of it has to do with what the elite desire the masses to support as Israel. Strange world. Stranger than fiction.
Bravo to J Street for “waking up” to how serious this is and taking whatever action that it’s still not too late to take.
Those people have intellectual acumen of lemmings.
It takes a considerable effort to separate “Jewish influence” from pretty disastrous war in Iraq. An attack on Iran may lead to a war with Iran, and the results can be ugly. What will “Jewish community” do then? Normal “tool of the trade” is “historical revisionism”. And that may be tad difficult if “the community speaks with one voice”.
Of course, if the war with Iran takes a bad turn, Israel will suffer much more than USA. One has to remember that Napoleon had a very good track record until he attacked Russia. Israel should concentrate on easier enemies, like villages and TV stations and eschew continental wars.
So, J Street is against war–that’s good–but is all for sanctions. Though the analogy to Iran is far from perfect, it’s worth noting that the sanctions against Iraq in the 90s most likely killed far more people than our 2003 invasion with ensuing carnage.
I look at both together- deaths from sanctions and death from invasion. The policies were from the same groups. They were likely planned for one to be followed by the other. I would put the most accurate assessments somewhere between 2.5 to 4.5 million dead Iraqis…
BTW we should really be talking about genocide when we’re talking about U.S policies against Iraq. The outcome of those sanctions – at least .5 million dead Iraqis – was easily predicated from the outset. And as we all know, “the price….was worth it”.
The same when we talk about Vietnam. There the numbers were similar – 2-4 million mostly civilians dead in Indochina. Genocide when you consider that that was always the likely outcome when you carpet bomb villages and cities and food, medical and shelter resources.
stevieb, Phil very fine overview of speakers at the Occupy AIPAC conference highlighted Saman Anderlini, of the International Civil Society Action Network.
Ms. Anderlini said that cancer patients in Iran do not have the medication they need, and that children do not have vitamins.
On the Race for Iran forum a great deal of time is devoted to discussion of why Iran wants to enrich uranium to 20% . The quick answer is that Iran has legacy equipment that it uses to produce medical isotopes to treat cancer patients, and the equipment requires 20% enriched uranium. Muhammad Javad Larijani explained this to Charlie Rose in a Nov 2011 appearance.
Frequently it is noted that some 50,000 Iranians are cancer patients who rely on treatment from medical isotopes (Iran has developed some of the most advanced medical technologies in the world, including sophisticated techniques to remit pancreatic cancers using novel oxygenation techniques, in addition to its award-winning human genome research).
But a question that arises is Why so much cancer in Iran?
Several reasons come to mind:
1. Hundreds of thousands of Iranians — mostly civilians — were targeted and harmed by Saddam’s gas attacks. Germany supplied the gas, US supplied the helicopter & aerial reconnaissance support. In a flight from Frankfort to Tehran I sat next to a young Iranian woman who was returning from a visit with her brother, who is in a hospital in Hamburg. He will probably never leave the hospital; she showed me X-rays of his lungs — such a sight should be required for every member of Obama’s cabinet.
2. When I hear politicians bloviate about getting shed of “foreign oil,” I ask myself in whose backyard they propose building refineries, storage depots, drilling fields, etc. Middle Eastern countries — and people — have sacrificed their own health, their environment, and their natural resources — not oil, but air, water, land — for our benefit for all our lives. Prudent American leadership would pay Iran and the other ME oil states a debt of gratitude for putting thier populations at risk of disease, thus sparing ours, rather than simultaneously making it impossible for them to earn revenue from their efforts and making it impossible to alleviate the cancers that their populations endure as an aftereffect.
I think Huntington might have had it right after all; there is a “clash of civilizations” taking place — or perhaps a clash between deadly chemical and depleted uranium etc.-wielding barbaric nations and a civilized nation that seeks to take care of its own citizens who have been harmed by the weapons of the barbarians.
Thanks for that Tetra – that explains the claim of a professor here in Canada who claimed that Iran was enriching urnanium at 20%, all the while implying only a military component – at least in the show I was watching….
Hoenlein: “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”.
QUESTION, PROFESSOR HOENLEIN: Were Jews really divided about the Holocaust? And did it occur because Jews were divided? I’d always imagined, hem hem, that the Holocaust was a Nazi production and the Jews were just unwilling extras, not directors or authors of the action.
Here J Street is making ethical noises (saying, a bit vaguely, “What about the people of Iran”?) and Bibi et al. are saying (as usual) “But what about the Jews?” as if anything at all bad were happening or about to happen to the (or to any) Jews.
has the professor looked into who and what divided jewish people. probably not, because if he had, he’d know that the split was between jews who were for participating in the struggle for a better world and those who said, to hell with resistance and resisters, let’s ditch this place and get ourselves to palestine asap. except most of europe’s jewry never made it there.
Yeah, that really got me. Blankfort gets so much crap for talking about what Zionists did during the time of Nazi rule, and Nazi attitudes towards them, and then Hoenlein goes and throws a stinker like this one?
So that was Jeff Blankforts sin, trying to reveal the unspeakable about ww-deus.
gotcha…wont go near that rail…it’s all there though for all to see though.
RE: Hoenlein said, “when you criticize the government of Israel, you have to consider the consequences.”
MY RETORT: And when you act as an enabler to the psychopathic government of Israel, you also have to consider the consequences, Mr. Hoenlein!
not only mr hoenlein, but the rest of the israel firsters
iran’s having a bomb would endanger not only israel but the west and pro-american sunni muslim states?
nonsense, israel with its nukes and its masada complex is what threatens the world
delegitimize the zionist entity and peace on earth and goodwill to all living beings is sure to follow
& how’s that for a gift to our descendents?
If the US government truly had the guts and brainpower, they would have been using all this time to find a way at neutralizing the perceived (and possibly fictitious) ‘second-strike’ Mediterranean secret submarine threat (Samson Option) along with containing Dimona. Use the military to force a regime-change to dispose of the revisionist Zionist terrorists like Likud. Ignore the religious right for the time being for it has nothing to do with the reality of the situation (mostly). Build kill-switches into the stuff we sell those guys. Get the UN and other international entities involved and use propaganda (because as much as it sucks, it works) to change perceptions rather than carry about a potential suicide agenda. My two cents.
Germany saw your two cents and raised three nuclear capable submarines, Charon –http://mondoweiss.net/2012/03/this-could-be-world-war-3-and-were-talking-less-than-the-parties-to-a-friendly-divorce.html#comment-430223