Great piece of reporting by Josh Nathan-Kazis at the Forward, on how the Israel lobby beat back divestment at Berkeley last week.
In the two weeks prior [to April 14 vote], Berkeley Hillel coordinated a comprehensive national lobbying campaign consisting of a teach-in, face-to-face meetings with student senators and an intervention by a Nobel laureate, all aimed at robbing the divestment supporters of three senate votes.
Adam Naftalin-Kelman, the Hillel’s newly installed executive director, said that the strategy for countering divestment efforts was devised at a roundtable meeting convened by Hillel and attended by representatives of local branches of the Anti-Defamation League, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the Jewish Community Relations Council, J Street, Israel’s consul general in San Francisco and local rabbis.
Outmaneuvering the pro-divestment supporters, this organizing coup appears to have worked: After a marathon debate that lasted well into the next morning, two senators changed their minds and one abstained, and the veto was upheld.
“Three votes changed,” Akiva Tor, the consul general, told the Forward. “So something happened.”…
The Hillel-organized teach-in, open exclusively to members of the student senate, featured talks by the consul general, an Israeli visiting professor, a professor of international law and others. Seven senators attended. One, a co-sponsor of the bill who did not change her vote, said that the presenters were respectful but she felt uncomfortable.
“There were undertones of intimidation to me,” Emily Carlton said. “For one thing, they were all a lot older, they were all a lot more distinguished.”
I read this with some sadness, reflected in my headline. Must all of these important decisions be subject to such back-room influence? Truman said he’d never been pressured so much as he was on his decision to recognize Israel, overruling his own State Department and U.N. representative. Obama is getting pressured now. Really, is this the best way to make policy? Don’t people resent it?
