Brzezinski
The discourse is opening up on the central political question involving Middle East policy-making: what is the influence of the Israel lobby? Tom Friedman’s “bought and paid for” column in the Times was huge. David Bromwich has a great piece about the Republicans up at the New York Review of Books that, echoing Friedman, speaks frankly about the role of conservative Jewish money in the Republican race.
Then there’s this from Jordan Michael Smith at Salon, interviewing Zbig Brzezinski:
He thinks the Obama administration “should have stuck to its guns in promoting a fair settlement” in the Middle East. A longtime foe of Israel’s partisans in the United States, he says the Obama team “fumbled by getting outmaneuvered by the Israelis.” Then he gets blunter: “Domestic politics interceded: The Israelis have a lot of influence with Congress, and in some cases they are able to buy influence.”Brzezinski is still a believer in the two-state solution for Israelis and Palestinians, and is hopeful that Obama will again take up the cause if he gets a second term. “He would have time and the historical immunity to do so, because he wouldn’t be facing an election.” He also thinks space has opened up in the United States to be more critical of Israel. “The American public is becoming more discriminating, and the Jewish public in America is becoming more discriminating,” he says.
The fascinating thing about this statement is that Brzezinski has always believed this stuff but he is now taking off his muzzle entirely. (I interviewed him a couple years back and sensed the self-censorship) Nothing can stop this conversation. The only question is how long the resistance to it will last. Brzezinski is right to focus on the Jewish community splitting. Walt and Mearsheimer’s analysis could not make headway till it was embraced by Jews (because we are a powerful community, because we license or delicense speech on grounds of anti-semitism). It has been embraced by Jews.
This is another good interview with him
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/4d03c5f6-3ac1-11e1-a756-00144feabdc0.html#ixzz1k0UOc44W
“Brzezinski admits he has voted Republican a couple of times in his life – notably in 1988 when he endorsed George HW Bush over Michael Dukakis. But in 2012 he would not dream of doing so. “A good election is one that would shape out in an intelligent victory by Obama,” he says. “There is no sign of that from the other side.” Which means Obama will win, I prompt? Not at all, says Brzezinski. “My fear is that two or three weeks before the election something will happen – an October surprise,” he continues. “If Iran was struck by Israelis during October, the negative effects would not be felt until late November and December. The first effect would be, ‘Ah, how wonderful. Let’s get behind the Israelis.’ Then all bets would be off.””
The New York Review piece is superb
“Republicans try to outbid each other in submissive postures of unconditional loyalty to Israel; the immediate pretext was Gingrich’s having said on December 9 to an interviewer for the Jewish Channel (a cable station) that the Palestinians are an “invented” people. Zakaria and his guests then passed on to the broader subject of avowals of love for Israel and unquestioning support for Likud policies:
Zakaria: Michele Bachmann trumps them all by saying, “I went to a kibbutz when I was 18 years old.”
David Remnick: A socialist experiment, I might remind her. A socialist experiment. You know, as a Jewish American I find it disgusting. And I know what he’s going after. He’s going after—he’s going after a small slice of Jewish Americans who donate to political funds—to campaigns and also to Christian Evangelicals. It’s—the signaling is obvious. What they’re doing is obvious. But what they’re describing in terms of the, say, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict has no bearing on reality whatsoever. It’s ignorance combined with cynical politics and irrelevance. It’s really awful. It’s really awful.
Zakaria: Do you agree?
Peggy Noonan: Yes, I do.
Zakaria: Gillian?
Gillian Tett [of the Financial Times]: I do. And I think that actually given the current moves in Iran at the moment and what’s happening elsewhere in the region, that kind of rhetoric is likely to become more and more relevant going forward.
Zakaria: And then the other place where I noticed that there is some traction is Iran. There’s this feeling, again, I think somewhat unrealistically that we’re going to be tougher on Iran. We’re going to be, so that Gingrich says he wouldn’t bomb Iran, but he would effect regime change. Good luck, you know?
This was a breakthrough. Remnick’s comment is especially notable because it gives up the euphemism “Jewish voters” and refers frankly to Jewish donors. It is millions of dollars and not just a few thousand votes that the pandering Republicans are trawling for.”
The right-wing coalition government of Israel is trying to secure support, with the help of an American party in an election year, for an act of war that it could not hope to accomplish unassisted; while an American opposition party complies with the demand of support by a foreign power, in an election year, to gain financial backing and popular leverage that it could not acquire unassisted.
On behalf of the other 97% of the US population: Thanks. I guess.
Apropos Walt & Mearsheimer’s analysis apparently, Phil Weiss wrote:
“It has been embraced by Jews.”
Well, maybe nodded to a bit here and there, but I think there’s a devilish limit on just how much they might nod to it or embrace it, and how long.
That limit is essentially where Israel starts to really feel the hurt from its policies.
It’s fine, that is, to nod at or even, as Tom Friedman does, endorse W&M’s hypothesis when things are just simmering, as they have been.
Not yet tested however is when the rubber starts meeting the actual road. When, say, Israel or the U.S. attacks Iran and some missiles start coming over Israel’s borders. Or when the next intifada starts. Or when BDS really starts to bite. Or when the Palestinians finally give up their two-state fantasy and start talking one-state with equal rights.
Yes, there’s a chance that the jewish community world-wide and esp. in the U.S. will say “Well Walt & Mearsheimer told you so,” or “you should have thought of this before pushing the U.S. into supporting your policies that got Israel into this.”
But who believes that’s gonna happen?
It’ll be like J-Street: Make a few mewing noises, but, say, start to talk anything like real turkey like … cutting the U.S. subsidy to Israel and forget it. Or even cutting it in proportion to the amount of new settlement expansion that’s going on. Or even just voting against Israel in the U.N.
Nor, I predict, will it even stop there if it gets real bad for Israel. Aside from the hoards of nodders and embracers who will somehow forget their nodding or embracing of W&M and positively blaming the U.S. for Israel’s fix, the other few will still be righteously standing up at that point and saying that regardless, the U.S. *still* has some inexplicable moral obligation to save its bacon. (E.g., “because otherwise you’ll be repeating the immense sin that we have some right of declaring of you not stopping the Holocaust!”)
If there ever was truly intelligent foreign/world affairs statesmen in the past few decades, they have to be Pres. Carter, Pres. Nixon, and Dr. Brzezinski.
It’s always a learning moment when I hear or read what Dr. Brzezinski has to say. His position on the Palestine issues has been a lightning rod. But since it is seen by AIPAC and the zionist christians as “anti-israel” (which it is NOT at all), he always get muzzled (or self-muzzled) in one way or another.
True, one can see the tide turning with what Dr. Brzezinski says, with the posting of Robert Fisk, with the work of Walt & Mearsheimer, with the advocacy of Norm Finkelstein. But I can see the tide really turning when I read Jesse Lieberfeld’s essay.
Now that’s change coming!