Here is a piece of forcible innocence by leftwinger Stephen Zunes. He is staggered that the Republican Jewish Coalition ads attacking Obama have had an effect, that Obama has stepped away from his statement that Palestinians suffer the most and has adopted "rightwing" positions on Israel/Palestine. Quoth Zunes:
necessary for getting him to the White House, Obama's right-wing
positions regarding Israel and its neighbors are actually hurting him.
They have become a major target of Green Party nominee Cynthia McKinney
and independent candidate Ralph Nader, who correctly observe that their
more evenhanded positions are supported by a majority of the American
people, and have weakened his support within the peace and human rights
community.
Oh that scary formidable Green Party! This argument is idiotic. Obama is a brilliant politician. By now no one can quarrel with that statement. He has not made one misstep (you will say, "cling to their guns and religion" but this is so penny-ante it just proves my point). Political genius Bob Shrum says he is the best politician of his generation; and Obama has adopted these positions for goldplated political reasons: because he doesn't care about alienating the progressive fringe (of which I am a proud thread), but absolutely does care about not alienating Jews in the power structure (money, media, establishment opinion, Mel Levine and Connie Bruck) by seeming to be at all pro-Palestinian. This is a simple truth of the new sociology of America that Obama has in his fingertips but Zunes must resist. His forcible innocence on the idea that mainstream Jews have any influence in the U.S. recalls his earlier arguments against the Israel lobby. Zunes did not think it really exists, or that it has any real power. (I'm sure I could dig up a statement where he says it is just like the teachers' union.) The standard leftwing critique: that it is absurd to say that an ethnic group exercises religious power in the face of the business/military interests that actually run foreign policy. (And meanwhile, of course, the Christian right is crazy and is tilting social policy on Supreme Court nominations and stem cells.)
It must be stated that there is something Jewish about this innocence (and Zunes is a member of the Tikkun community): a familial refusal to accept that our Lieberman-Democrat neighbor, or father, who was so against the Vietnam war and now fulminates about Hezbollah, bears any real responsibility for the Iraq war– the idea of "influence" being a canard from the anti-semites. And mixed in with it, that traditional Jewish vanity: We are outsiders. Blindness, and old orthodoxy.
Thanks to Rupa Shah for the tip. And for a related sermon on this theme, see "The American Left (DailyKos) Is Also Claimed by the Israel Lobby". And now: Breakfast!
