Last night I attended the annual gala of the Israel Policy Forum in New York. My strongest impression of it, forever, will be the moment I was leaving and the great Mitchell Plitnick of B'tselem grabbed my arm and said, "You've got to see this new video we have. From Hebron. That disputed house. A settler shoots a Palestinian. On video. I didn't get a chance to see it myself."
Just as my strongest memory of AIPAC last June will be Leon Wieseltier moaning that the next generation of Jews isn't as sold on Israel as they used to be. I wonder why.
The strong message of IPF last night was utter Despair about getting the Arab Peace Initiative, the two-state solution, now and at almost any cost. "This is so urgent that it is unbelievable," said Naomi Chazan of Meretz in Israel. "The prospect of achieving a two state solution is slipping through our fingers as we are talking. The future of Israel as a democratic state with a Jewish majority is at stake."
No matter how you feel about a Jewish majority (and I will get to that later), everyone at IPF is for it, and they are in a realistic frame of mind. They know the Iron Wall is over, and it's failed. They know the Iraq War with its fantasy of discovering peace in Palestine in Baghdad has failed. A number of people who supported that war were in the house last night. Mel Levine, the former California congressman and Obama supporter, said that Obama understands the urgency of the two-state solution. Chuck Hagel, the Nebraska senator who bravely opposed the war, said that Israel/Palestine will be central to the new administration–this man who is sure to join it within a year as Defense Secretary–and that IPF will be important. "This organization has a very important role to play, this organization is a voice of moderation… and reality…"
I heard one person all night smoking that good old neocon reefer. Another war supporter, Gary Ackerman, the Long Island congressman. The three most important things in the Middle East, he said, are "Iran, Iran, Iran." Well then Naomi Chazan spoke about the urgency of making a regional deal to solve the Palestinian dispute, and Mitchell Plitnick stood to ask a tough question about the treatment of the Palestinians, and by the end of the session Ackerman seemed chastened, he said that old line about, "Friends don't let friends drive drunk." The Tony Judt and Steve Walt and John Mearsheimer line of nearly 3 years ago, and now the conventional wisdom: the U.S. gave Israel too much freedom, to gobble the West Bank. Ackerman laid it on George Bush, but the truth is, Ackerman gave them that freedom.
I'm just trying to convey the mood. The mood was, Israel is in a desperate spot of its own making–i.e. apartheid and the beginnings of civil war–and we need the Arab Peace Initiative, and by the way, we are losing political clout as we speak. The monstrous political capital that allowed the Israel lobby/Dennis Ross to dictate settlements to George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton during the election campaign 16 years ago, that moment is over, over, over, thanks to any number of factors. And the realistic route for Obama is to talk tough with Iran, but talk to them, and use that leverage to try to solve Israel/Palestine (what Jack Ross has been saying on this site for a while).
IPF is the new AIPAC. It is the reconstructed Israel lobby. I saw Jeremy Ben-Ami of J Street in the room at the side of some rich lady, I heard the guy who owns Lender's bagels tout negotiations with Syria and Lebanon. Heard Chuck Hagel say that Everywhere he goes on his travels, people say we have to deal with Israel/Palestine. A friend came up to me in glee to say that Dennis Ross has not yet gotten a job in the Obama administration. It's happening. Change is coming, and as my father always says about Jewish power in American society: without fireworks.
