‘NYT’ leaves out Dennis Ross’s charge to US Jews: ‘We need to be advocates for Israel’

Once again The New York Times defers to supporters of Israel. It gives the pro-Israel peace processor Dennis Ross a platform on the op-ed page to talk about anti-Semitism in the State Department back in the 80s and 90s.

“Memories of an Anti-Semitic State Department” is a clever dodge on Ross’s part. It is supposedly a response to the controversy over Phil Giraldi’s piece at Unz Review on American Jews running the “war engine” in U.S. foreign policy — a piece that former CIA agent/hero Valerie Plame retweeted and was shamed for doing so, and over which Giraldi lost his job at the American Conservative.

Ross argues that Jews shouldn’t be questioned about dual loyalty:

Rather than be worried about being mistrusted and accused of dual loyalties, Jewish American should feel proud. In uncertain times, identity can provide a source of security and comfort….

Indeed, to live a Jewish life one must be committed to the Jewish community, but also to others. Jews have an obligation to promote justice, mercy, compassion, tolerance and peace.

This is a dodge because Dennis Ross never mentions Zionism, just Jews. But Ross is a committed Zionist who told a synagogue audience last spring–supposedly off the record– about their Zionist marching orders: Jews should not advocate for Palestinians because we don’t live in Israel, and we won’t suffer the consequences of our criticism.

Because we don’t live there, we don’t bear the consequences of the decision… Plenty of others are advocates for the Palestinians. We don’t need to be advocates for Palestinians. We need to be advocates for Israel.

So much for justice and compassion.

I disapprove of Giraldi’s broadbrush prejudicial attack, but the Times is still evading the criticism that Walt and Mearsheimer issued 11 years ago, thanks to the internet, and that continues to haunt the organized Jewish community: To what extent was the Iraq war pushed by neoconservative Jews who were concerned about Israel’s security. Joe Klein raised the Jewish neoconservative issue years ago and was pilloried for doing so:

The fact that a great many Jewish neoconservatives–people like Joe Lieberman and the crowd over at Commentary–plumped for this war, and now for an even more foolish
assault on Iran, raised the question of pided loyalties: using U.S. military power, U.S. lives and money, to make the world safe for Israel.

And yes: American Jews were overwhelmingly against that war. But: a, the community deferred to the neocons as it traditionally has done, because they are the self-appointed guardians of Israel’s security; so even the Reform Jews signed off on the Iraq war (and my brother informed me that his Jewish newspaper said this war could be “good for Israel”); b, Thanks to Sheldon Adelson and others, neoconservative Jews who were opposed to the peace process got policy-making positions in the Bush administration, including Douglas Feith at the infamous Office of Special Plans at the Pentagon, which distilled a lot of the lies needed to justify the invasion of Iraq. Colin Powell later blamed the war on the “JINSA crowd” — the neoconservative Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs. Philip Zelikow, a Bush aide who chaired the 9/11 Commission, said in 2002 that the war was being planned because of “the threat that dare not speak its name”– Iraq’s “threat to Israel.”

Ross is chair of a Zionist organization, the Jewish People Policy Institute, and was part of the White House negotiating team that Aaron David Miller admitted later, “acted as Israel’s lawyer.” Ross needs to be challenged: How many open non-Zionists or anti-Zionists have ever had high ranking positions involved with policy on the Palestinians?

On a related note, Democratic senators lately questioned a Catholic nominee to the federal court about her religious beliefs as they bear on abortion law:

“The dogma lives loudly within you,” [Senator Dianne] Feinstein said. “And that’s of concern when you come to big issues that large numbers of people have fought for for years in this country.”

Two law professors writing in the Times justified the line of inquiry as an effort to “explore” a complex legal and moral question. By the same standard, Zionists who are appointed to Mideast policy positions ought to be questioned about the depth of their commitment to a Jewish state. As Irving Kristol, a neocon patriarch, laid out the understanding many years ago,

[I]t is now an interest of the Jews to have a large and powerful military establishment in the United States… American Jews who care about the survival of the state of Israel have to say, no, we don’t want to cut the military budget, it is important to keep that military budget big, so that we can defend Israel.

Thanks to Donald Johnson and Scott Roth. 

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@Phil

I don’t think you are part Unz Reviews paranoia. So let’s deal with the reality of the situation. There are Republican Jews. They hold views in line with many Republicans but not shockingly tend to focus on Israel. The position of both parties by the late 1990s was that the USA should pursue regime change in Iraq. An opportunity arose to achieve regime change in Iraq. They along with lots of Christians fully supported the war in Iraq. Their behavior is not unusual. Many of the same people are rather aggressive on North Korea, Russia, China and Cuba though of course they may differ on these issues as well. This was all out in the open, Netanyahu did testify before an open session of Congress.

What was unusual was the USA peace camp was divided on the invasion of Iraq being only weakly opposed. Saddam Hussein funded suicide bombings against Israel. That caused peace advocates who normally would be opposed to any intervention to not be strongly opposed. The second issue was ANSWER which tied the Iraq war protests firmly to anti-Zionism. Those two factors pulled leftwing Jews out of the anti-Iraq war movement and made them ambivalent. With a weak peace movement, an American population strongly in favor of the war, and Republicans united on the war the Democrats ended up weakly supporting the war. And of course with Democrats only voicing some caution support continued to rise. The main voice of concern was the foreign policy establishment not backed by either party strongly. That’s how a consensus emerged to make regime change a reality.

The consensus started to fall apart once the Ba’ath were removed from power. The support started eroding though it is worth noting that it was only late in the 2004 campaign that Kerry turned against the war even semi-definitively and never got specific. There was no dark conspiracy. A few interests groups shifted and what had not been possible in the 1990s became possible in the early 2000s.

You have 0 influence over Republican Jews. You have 0 influence over pan-Arabist group support or not support for terrorism. What is worth reflecting on though is the role ANSWER played, because the groups you do have influence on could easily play the same role in the next war. In the buildup to Iraq, Jews with any Zionist leanings were kicked out of the main hard left cause. Was that a good thing that needed to happen to start divorcing the Democratic party from Zionism, a bad thing since it led to a destructive war whose effects may kill millions or …? That’s really the question.

The goal of your organization is to do for the entire Democratic party what happened to the peace movement. I don’t think you’ll be successful this generation, but I could be wrong. I think the anti-war Iraq movement and the ultimate policy impact gives you a nice preview of what could happen on hundreds of issues without Jews on the American left. You wrestle with the issues of Jewish politics all the time. You don’t wrestle with what America looks like in a world where Jews have become swing voters on their way to becoming Republicans. What does the world look like if instead of 13% of USA Jews being neoconservatives 60% are?

The position of both parties…USA should pursue regime change in Iraq.
__________________________
Not true.
Among neocons, of course it was true.
The problem with the post 9/11 choices were that this regime change crowd gained momentum,based on Bush’s personal hatred for Hussein and family.
If Bush had maintained focus and concentrated on killing those who assisted the terrorists and were planning additional crimes against America, the US would be far better off. Iraq was never a threat to the US nor a source of terrorists attacking our cities.
Thanks to the Neocons our post 9/11 goals became conflated with those of Netanyahu.

White people in Pennsylvania Florida and Wisconsin elected Donald trump, not jews. Trump is president cuz of them, not us. Don’t blame trump on us. He makes the decision, not kristol or ross or feith or lieberman, but Donald j trump. You want to blame 8 years of no progress under obama on the jews, you’re welcome to it. But don’t blame trump on us.

The only identifier the NYT gives for Ross:

Dennis Ross is the counselor at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and the author, most recently, of “Doomed to Succeed: The U.S.-Israeli Relationship from Truman to Obama.”

Some people do exist who are not aware that WINEP is a cutout of AIPAC (especially when it is branded as “The Washington Institute”); even more are unaware that Ross was one of its co-founders, with Indyk, nor that “His first WINEP paper called for appointment of a “non-Arabist Special Middle East envoy” who would “not feel guilty about our relationship with Israel.” ” Nowhere in Giraldi’s article nor in Ross’s rebuttal is the term, “Zionist” used. So Giraldi can blame Jewish neocons and Ross can claim that some influential neocons are not Jewish and that he’s not a neocon and entirely avoid the bipartisan support among Jewish Zionist pundits (neocons and neolibs) for Middle East wars (against Iraq, Libya, Syria, Iran …) that benefit Israel’s foreign policy objectives rather than America’s.

Ross talks about dual loyalty not being something that should be raised. He completely ignores the evidence of actual traitorous activities by Zionists.

David Niles, the post war White House advisor, attacked State Department personnel and had them removed for pointing out the truth that Israel would be detrimental to US interests. Edwin Wright’s testimony is revealing: https://www.trumanlibrary.org/oralhist/wright.htm.

WE have multiple people involved in illegally supplying weapons to Zionists after WW2: http://www.israellobby.org/JA_Smuggling/default.asp

Then we have Zalman Shapiro at NUMEC, stealing weapons grade uranium for a foreign state and being protected by Zionists in the DoJ.

Milchan and the krytron nuclear triggers.

http://www.israellobby.org/krytons/default.asp

History is full of examples of Zionist traitors who were protected by fellow Zionists in the investigative and judicial branches of government.

Ross is just another hypocrite and a traitor to the US. He and the JINSA crowd advocate for Israel and have steered the USA to an expensive and disastrous Middle East policy.