The lobby is splitting. J Street is taking the Obama Jews (most of 'em, I bet; but younger and poorer), and AIPAC and the Conference of Presidents are holding the Netanyahu Jews. Older, moneyed, more conservative. Malcolm Hoenlein of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, interviewed by Newsmax, attacked Obama's Cairo speech, then embraced a Netanyahu-like religious agenda for the Holy Land.
Hoenlein notes the [Cairo] speech included a number of troubling references and
comparisons. He cites the fact that Obama claimed America has seven million
Muslims. That is a figure "Arab propagandists have put out," he says.
"In fact, they say only six million, when in fact there’s no study
that shows even half of that."
In 2007, the Pew Research Center estimated the Muslim American population at
2.35 million.
Hoenlein is disturbed that Obama did not mention the Jewish people’s
ancient connection with the land of Israel.
"There was no reference to the 3,000 years of Jewish connection to this
land," Hoenlein says. "And that is again one of the propaganda lines
that the Arabs have used: that the Jews are interlopers, that the two temples
never existed, that there was never any Jewish history in the land of Israel.
Even Yasser Arafat and others have used that argument because they’re
trying to deny the legitimacy of the Jewish state. I don’t believe that
was the president’s intent, but not making those references I think is
troubling."
Jews have claimed a connection to the land of their forefathers since 1400
B.C. Even after the Roman destruction of the Second Temple in 70 A.D. and the
dispersal of many Jews throughout the Roman Empire, many Jews continued to
reside in Jerusalem through the centuries, surviving various invasions. An
Ottoman census of Jerusalem conducted in 1845 showed Jews outnumbered Muslim
Arabs by almost to 2 to 1 and were the dominant ethnic group in the region.
Yes, darling, and Theodor Herzl promised the Sultan of Turkey in 1902 that he wasn't going to try and take over Jerusalem, even while he was intriguing to get the Sinai. (Herzl was seeking a refuge for European Jews from anti-Semitism. Now when anti-Semitism means little in young Jews' lives, we should make it clear that we're happy where we are.)
Myself, I don't like it when religious fundamentalists bring the bible into politics. It seems like Hoenlein got the speech he wanted from Netanyahu, who mentioned the "Jewish people" and their right to the Holy Land a dozen times in his speech, and portrayed the Palestinians as interlopers. Hoenlein's interviewer is author Ron Kessler. I wonder whether he's got a religious agenda too.
