Is this really the “discourse the nation deserves”? The NPR moderator of this completely-unbalanced January 30 event at the Wilson Center has yet to be announced, but the forum offers itself as “The National Conversation, Discourse the Nation Deserves.” The five panelists and introducer include no Palestinians; I believe all are Zionists (and at least four out of five are Jewish). “Concern for Israel’s well-being had become part of me, like some sort of ethnic DNA,” writes Aaron David Miller. Samuel W. Lewis, who has advised Israel Policy Forum and J Street and worked at the Hebrew University, might also be characterized as liberal Zionist (though maybe he has at last fallen off the turnip truck). Horovitz and Harman are famously well to the right on Israel. Sachs is also on the right (see below).
Here’s the unbalanced event:
Allies at Odds: Obama, Netanyahu, and The State of US – Israeli Relations
Four years in, the relationship between President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu remains a troubled one. What’s behind the tension, can it be alleviated and how will regional challenges such as Iran’s nuclear program or the impasse in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict affect US-Israeli relations?
Wednesday, January 30, 2013 12:30 – 2:00 pm Woodrow Wilson Center, 6th Floor, Joseph H. and Claire Flom Auditorium
Intro: The Honorable Jane Harman Director, President and CEO, Wilson Center
Panelists:
David Horovitz Founding Editor of The Times of Israel, a current affairs website based in Jerusalem and former Editor-in-Chief of The Jerusalem Post
Ambassador Samuel Lewis Career diplomat, former Ambassador to Israel and former President and CEO, US Institute of Peace
Aaron David Miller Vice President for New Initiatives and Distinguished Scholar, Woodrow Wilson Center and former US Middle East negotiator Natan Sachs Fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy, Brookings Institution
Moderator: NPR Host TBD
The National Conversation, a joint production of The Wilson Center and NPR, provides a nonpartisan forum for deep dialogue and informed discussion of the most significant problems facing the nation and the world.
Israel-centric: Here is panelist Natan Sachs telling Obama to love Israel to make it change (and show sympathy to Palestinians). And here he is saying that Hamas was trying to “open the gates of hell on Israel” last November, and justifying Cast Lead as a successful war of deterrence against Hamas, and explaining the Israeli public’s view of Gaza rocket attacks without a word about the Palestinian experience of occupation.
And yes this has something to do with funding, in my view, from an older Jewish generation for whom Israel was sacrosanct. Per this obit of the woman for whom the Wilson Center hall is named: “In 2006, according to federal records, the Joseph and Claire Flom Foundation gave $150,000 to the Jewish Communal Fund and $100,000 to the Hebrew Free Loan Society in New York. Other Jewish causes to which Flom donated included the American Jewish Committtee and Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies in Chicago.” Spertus censored Palestinian art, and the American Jewish Committee is a proud member of the Israel lobby.
It’s funny, looking at the national conversation on Israel. I no longer believe that the American supporters of Israel will drive into a wall. Some will, like Sheldon Adelson, say, but most won’t. Most will lament and urge their fellow liberals “to save Israel from itself”. The method to do this is to sanitize the Israeli politicians.
You’ve already seen some minor attempts done on Lieberman. The Economist’s man in Jerusalem, Landau(former editor of Haaretz), had a piece up in his former hunting grounds based on that exact premise.
Abe Foxman – who else, but that infamous Occupation-denier – has gone on record multiple times attesting to Lieberman’s supposed ‘moderation’.
You will see the same thing with Bennett. Bloomberg did a piece on the elections a few days ago. It was astounding. He was described as just any normal right-winger and Israeli Jews, who by a majority want to deny Palestinians the right to vote, even those inside the green line, were described in bland terms like ‘pessimistic’. This is shocking, coming from a group of people who keep voting the more extreme right-winger after another, cementing since long ago a brutally senseless occupation of some 4 million people. Yet, the article in Bloomberg was empathetic with them! Oh, poor them, so many troubles. We understand that they are ‘pessimistic’. People like Bennett are only natural extensions of such a mood. And of course the reasons for the ‘pessimism’ is all those scary Arabs around them.
I think because the lobby understands that if the media turns on Israel the same way it turned on Apartheid South Africa(even if many former heroes from the anti-Apartheid struggle now believe that Israel is in fact worse, as Desmond Tutu and others have stated), then Israel is truly finished. And America counts in the UN over any other nation, and will continue to do so in the coming decades.
There’s also a realization inside Israel that Bibi went too far for Romney.
This is the liberal Zionist wing speaking. You know, talk liberally, try not to upset the U.S.(which can’t do anything anyway because of AIPAC) too much but still keep building. Not as fast, sometimes you gotta make some noises about compromise etc. The classic ‘liberal’ Zionist way.
If Israel calms down a little next term, and it might, it will add to this trend, and it will help ‘liberal’ Zionists in America point to this development to other non-Zionist liberals and say, “see? I told you so. Israelis need our help and support so the liberals can win!”.
Therefore, I expect there to be a total status quo for years ahead. Simply because Israel cannot afford anything else. It won’t receive monolithic support for Bibi, but it’ll be the media version of ‘shoot-and-cry’. Most non-Jewish liberals are so spineless that it might just work for longer than most think.
I’m reminded by the debate between Walzer and that Gentile counter-debater that you referenced recently. Walzer, a supposed ‘anti-racist’ went to bat for Jewish supremacism and racism, out of his own bigoted ethnocentrism. He then even accused the other liberal – I should say the real liberal – of being an anti-Semite, surprise surprise.
The Gentile basically folded like a cheap suit and just played defence. I think part of the reason why I am pessimistic is that the liberal establishment is incredibly white in the media. Just incredibly white. So the only counter-balance to Zionists tend to be either Jewish non-Zionists, but they are shunned(see Max Blumenthal) or learn to pipe down and go back into the fold(like Tony Kushner). The other option is WASP liberals. You see some openings, say, Bob Wright at the Atlantic but even he has a tone that is marred by fear. The only real good example I can think of is Andrew Sullivan, who has the intellect and tenacity to take the fight to the Zionists & neocons.
The problem is that he’s kinda alone in that. Most others just grumble and when challenged, by folks like Goldberg, just pipe down. We keep talking about the changing conversation, and sure, it has changed, but as Yousef Munayyer recently wrote, it is being moderated on the terms of the Zionists.
That’s why you have 5 Zionists at that panel. Ask yourself: would a guy like Munayyer get a platform if it wasn’t for someone like Beinart? Most likely not.
The problem here is that WASPs are not a minority, and cannot fight the race card the same way an Asian or a black American can. Also, they tend to be rather milquetoast. There’s a reason why their grip on the media & academia fell like a house of cards in the 1960s when challenged. Most of them are good people, but oh so weak and fearful. So scared of being called racist that they let the real racists run havok.
It seems that the non-Zionist Jews must draw most of the weight going forward, and our numbers are not exactly inspiring, even if it is slowly, slowly changing.
a national conversation on u.s.-israel future that includes 5 zionists but no palestinians?
same as, back in the days of yesteryear, a national conversation on the settler-indian future (if such were ever held) might have included how many indians?
zionists would say why talk about a people who don’t or never did exist?
no palestinian narrative until they too are almost extinct?
except now the palestinian view actually is getting out?
justice for palestine?
around the corner?
in about a half-an-hour?
This is known as giving the Big Bird to American taxpayers looking for informed consent on US foreign policy.
No Palestines and no Non Jewish Americans or non Pro Israel Americans…and this is a national conversation on US-Israel policy?…….typical.
Someone has been paying for NPR’s managers to do this for a heap of years. Who?