Here's a pro-Obama piece in Moment, a Jewish publication, by Letty Cottin Pogrebin, a leading feminist, co-founder of Ms. I think of Pogrebin as a big liberal. And what's interesting here is that she basically says that McCain and Obama are indistinguishable on Israel. Both good, why the New York Sun has even testified to Obama's bona fides, she says. And therefore the Jewish issue in the race is… abortion. Almost all the piece is about abortion rights, the Supreme Court.
Now I share Pogrebin's views on choice, though they don't have the same primacy for me as for her. But what's interesting here is that she makes no effort to speak of Obama's position on the Clinton parameters, say, or the settlements, versus McCain's. Not that there's a dime's worth of difference. But there is a dime's. J Street has been eloquent on this score. Good for them. But Pogrebin can't even say, McCain is allied with neocons who have opposed the peace process and it is therefore vital to support Obama. No, she actually invokes the neocon rag, the New York Sun.
I am not saying that Pogrebin is a neocon. I doubt she is. But I believe that the liberal Jewish pro-Israel crowd is so close to the neocon vision of the Middle East–they're our brothers, our neighbors, in the Jewish world–that she is loath to sell them out. Loath to take them on. As Obama is loath to take on the neocons, because he knows they have encampments in the liberal Jewish community. The Mel Levine's, the Howard Berman's. These guys are for Obama, but I doubt they have shriven themselves for their support for the Iraq war. So if Pogrebin and Obama come out against the neocons, they fear that the Jewish vote for Obama will drop to 70 percent, 60 percent (let alone Jewish spondulics). And so they fudge on a central issue of American policy in the Middle East, which is a red flag of injustice across the Arab world.
