Obama’s at the Western Wall, But Our Journalists Can’t Talk About the Jerusalem Issue and the Lobby

Drudge is reporting that Obama’s sunrise visit to the Western Wall set off a mob scene and cries of Jerusalem is not for sale. You’d think this would be an opportunity for journalism and open discussion of American policy. Wrong.

Today on Andrea Mitchell’s politics show on MSNBC, she mentioned Obama’s Jerusalem
pander at AIPAC and then asked asked Richard Holbrooke, a possible Secretary of State to Obama, about how Obama’s doing on the issue. Holbrooke basically ended the
discussion. He said, Look we all know that this is a politically loaded
question for any politician. I.e., there’s orthodoxy here, a politician is going to toe the
line. And Mitchell accepted the answer.

The dumb show suggests the extent to which our journalism is captured by the Israel lobby. The journalist and her subject agree not to talk about something, to draw the curtain. Mitchell, a shrewd and gritty performer if anyone is, does not ask the absolutely essential questions that will
help us to get out of this mess: What do Palestinians want re Jerusalem? What does the Arab world require on Jerusalem? What did the U.N. say about Jerusalem in ’47? What are the Clinton parameters re Jerusalem?
What is Obama’s position? What is Sheldon Adelson’s position re Jerusalem—the giant donor of the
Republican party and backer of One Jerusalem, the extremist organization in which Douglas
Feith also participated before going to Defense in ’01, en route Baghdad?

More important, where is the Jewish Democratic money on this issue? Where is Rahm Emanuel. Where is Haim Saban? What is the significance of the fact that polls show that 58 percent of American Jews are against dividing Jerusalem?

Alas that last statistic underlies Holbrooke’s dumb show: Neoconservative views on Jerusalem pervade Jewish life; and so Jerusalem is where the money is. Obama has
absolutely no political cover in saying, Jerusalem is an international city and must be shared by all faiths, including Muslims who want to pray at the Dome
of the Rock and are not allowed into the Holy City–as the U.N.’s Bernadotte did, till the Stern gang assassinated him. The Israel lobby has Obama in its clutches. And he cannot begin to escape it because Andrea Mitchell,
who is herself Jewish and Richard Holbrooke, who I believe is also Jewish,
have no sense of public accountability here, cannot say what they actually know about this question, let alone let us know
where the party powers stand.

This is about religion in politics. Like abortion, or gay marriage, it’s something some people feel keenly about. Other Americans have a right to weigh in on this. They can’t until they’re informed.