At 1 PM today Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will address American Jews about the Iran deal. Here’s the link to his webcast. I can’t wait. Netanyahu is being hosted by American Jewish organizations that oppose the American president on his landmark achievement, including the Jewish Federations and the Conference of Presidents. A truly historic moment in Jewish life, this appeal to loyalty to Israel.
Well many good Jews are pushing back! The speech will also be historic in showing the diversity of Jewish opinion. Author David Harris-Gershon writes on twitter:
Dear America, Netanyahu does NOT represent US Jews. Not on the Iran deal―not on anything. He’s just a politician. Signed, One of millions
Harris-Gershon links to Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s statement last March, when Netanyahu put himself forward as a spokesman for Jews:
“He doesn’t speak for me on this,” Feinstein said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “I think it’s a rather arrogant statement. I think the Jewish community is like any other community. There are different points of view. I think that arrogance does not befit Israel, candidly.”
Feinstein has of course supported the White House on the Iran Deal, which Chuck Schumer can’t say for himself. (He’s in a state, evidently.)
The Jewish establishment is split. J Street Portland has been particularly active in pushing the Iran deal. But the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington has come out against the Iran deal. Laura Rozen smacks them down appropriately:
@JCRCgw disappointing and, at the very least, not respectful of the diversity of views in the community, arguably at odds with a plurality
The JCRC statement says that the deal doesn’t guarantee that Iran won’t ever get a nuclear weapon. Then this:
We recently marked Tisha B’Av, mourning the fall of Jerusalem due to baseless hatred. It is pivotal that we keep this lesson from Jewish history in the forefront of our minds as we
proceed through this debate
The first temple was destroyed in 587 BCE by the Babylonians after long siege. The second temple was destroyed in 70 AD by the Romans after a Jewish intifada, or rebellion. If the alleged motivation for these ancient destructions is a basis for sound foreign policy today, then I am Jericho the lion.
Rozen also asks:
Our synagogue is a @JCRCgw constituent org, recently hosted Obama. Do our dues go to @JCRCgw lobbying against him? Who decided that for all?
Yes and why is Peace Now still on the board of the Conference of Presidents when the Conference is hosting Netanyahu? Why doesn’t Peace Now, which has supported the Iran deal, just quit this rightwing org? Because of Jewish solidarity. Well Jewish solidarity is over in the era of the golden occupation.
David Bromwich points out that the New York Times has underplayed the important news that dozens of former security officials in Israel have called on PM Netanyahu to accept the Iran deal as the new terrain. He writes:
Astonishing, the casual treatment of this by the Times, considering what it shows. The Republicans can’t even be said to be “supporting Israel against Obama.” They are supporting the demagogic prime minister of Israel and his American casino billionaire backer against the American president and our European allies and the Gulf states and the public judgment of the most qualified Israeli authorities concerning Israel’s security interests.
From that Times story, paragraph 9:
In Israel, dozens of former security officials — including major generals in the Army, chiefs of the Shin Bet and Mossad intelligence agencies and a former director of the state’s atomic energy commission — signed a letter calling on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to accept the Iran agreement as “an established fact,” according to an article in the newspaper Yediot Aharonot on Monday.
The group said Israel should “adopt a policy that will restore the trust and strengthen the security-diplomatic cooperation with the U.S. administration in order to prepare for the many challenges derived from the agreement,” the article said. The challenges were listed as monitoring the deal’s implementation, detecting violations and “formulating special defense aid for Israel to ensure its qualitative edge.”
Other news. Latest polling shows that Americans are for the deal by 35-33, with a lot puzzled. Greg Sargent at the Washington Post says the deal is going through: “Getting two-thirds of both chambers to override Obama’s veto would probably require a tremendous public backlash, since at bottom, most Congressional Dems are likely to be reluctant to sink Obama’s signature foreign policy achievement. And feelings may not be running all that strongly on this issue among much of the American mainstream.” I.e., among non-Likudnik-Jews.
Kathleen Rice is the latest of four Democratic US Reps to come out against the deal. She’s from New York. So is Grace Meng, who has opposed. Albio Sires is from NJ, and Juan Vargas is from California. But wait; Peter Feld:
NY Dem primary voters are liberal. We need to make these Israel-firsters pay with their careers next year.
Former Manhattan district attorney Robert Morgenthau has come out against the deal, because of Iran’s funding of “Hezbollah and other extremist hoodlums.” Nuclear weapons, not the issue; it’s pressure on Israel’s occupation.
President Obama is actively lobbying for the deal. Are we seeing a new political animal? Jerry Nadler still hasn’t said how he’s voting, but:
Following his meeting with Obama, Nadler said on Iran the President has been “certainly more hands on.”
“We recently marked Tisha B’Av, mourning the fall of Jerusalem due to baseless hatred.”
So I guess when the Romans smacked down Carthage for challenging their power that was “baseless hatred” too? Sweet baby Jesus, the temple got destroyed during a revolt! Something that the Romans took a very dim view of.
Idiots.
The polls seem to be all over the place, this from Antiwar.com “the latest poll showing only 28% of Americans still comfortable backing the exact same deal, while 57% are opposed to the idea. 58% say they believe it makes the world less safe, which is of course what they’ve been hearing on TV.
The anti-pact ad campaign appears to be rapidly becoming a case study in how to buy American opinion on an issue, and has been all the easier because many of the presidential primary candidates are parroting the ads, hoping to secure the funding from the lobbying groups and their deep pockets”.http://news.antiwar.com/2015/08/03/poll-shows-americans-now-oppose-iran-deal/ Unless the Administration support this deal and do so with all guns blazing, there is a slim possibility Obama will be beaten. If he is the US would be left isolated in the world and with egg all over its face.
Does the Israeli Prime Minister oppose the nuclear deal because of security concerns or out of fear that with the nuclear threat (assuming there ever was one) removed, and with Iran no longer isolated, that the latter will dominate the Middle East? Israel, meanwhile, brought down in importance to a size befitting its population of six million.
For purposes of countering the Israel-firsters, how about ads in favor of the nuclear deal? A crowdsourcing campaign, say, that could start right here on Mondoweiss?
I am trying to follow the course of the debate and MW has been providing important material for doing that. Thank you. I didn’t know about the Netanyahu speech until just this moment, but I’m forward to watching (the replay of) that with the same enthusiasm I’m looking forward to the Rep. debates this week. I refused to watch them four years ago until the very end when my wife finally convinced me that it was a total hoot and the best show around. Netanyahu may not be as funny and thus harder to watch.
So, I think the JCPOA is such an unqualifiedly good thing, the US public will come to see that and therefore this political moment should be used to identify and vilify congresspeople who oppose it as working for Israel first and the US second. Not sure if that rises to the level of being a traitor or an impeachable offense, but they should be made to suffer, especially Schumer, who apparently is suffering which is nice to know. He’s suffering because Netanyahu’s antics have made the conflict of interest so clear, transparent and inescapable for him that he can’t escape. I’m loving it just like I’m loving (instead of hating) Trump, like when he said McCain wasn’t a hero. Hilarious and maybe he has a point although I don’t really know the story. He probably wouldn’t have been if he had been flying for the Japanese in WWII.
And every day more Palestinians die and are evicted by settlers and the reign of repression just digs in further and gets worse.
If there’s a crowd funding site to support the JCPOA, I’m in for $100
cheers,
John