The Israel issue is beginning to bedevil the Democratic base. Worried about the left’s effect on Democrats, the rightwing Israel Project is hosting a conference call this Wednesday that features an up-and-coming Democrat, Jonathan Miller, the former Kentucky state treasurer (said to be the first Jew to hold statewide office in Kentucky), who lately wrote a book promoting Israel.
The Israel Project promotes Newt Gingrich and Michele Bachmann and the Israeli settlements and a militant response to Iran. It’s liberal like Alan Dershowitz is liberal. But if your only issue is Israel, then you need to jump back and forth between parties to keep them both on board. Bill Kristol supports legalizing immigrants. Sheldon Adelson is pro-choice. These things don’t matter next to the crucial business of keeping both major political parties rightwing on Israel. Bill Clinton supported settlements. Carl Levin pushes the country toward war on Iran.
Note the awareness in the Israel Project’s p.r. material that the left is lost to support for Israel. Also note the hysteria about Israel’s total destruction. TIP:
Author, lawyer and longtime public servant Jonathan Miller spent nearly two decades in politics before joining the private sector last year. A former two-term elected Kentucky State Treasurer, he is the author of the recently released book “The Liberal Case for Israel: Debunking Eight Crazy Lies about the Jewish State,” in which he highlights deep factual misunderstandings, media disinformation, and the perpetuation of “Eight Crazy Lies” by those who seek the Jewish State’s total destruction.
Here’s a description of the book:
The type of progressive, enlightened government to which most American liberals desperately aspire can actually already be found in the reality of modern Israel. Indeed, there’s been no civilization or government in world history that has struggled more diligently to reflect the values that American progressives cherish: from gender equality, to gay and lesbian rights, to freedoms of speech and press, to a more compassionate capitalism. And yet, over the past several decades, some of the loudest voices on the American Left have directed much of their rhetorical foreign policy outrage against the Jewish State.
In “The Liberal Case for Israel,” Jonathan Miller — the former Kentucky State Treasurer and author of “The Compassionate Community: Ten Values to Unite America” — blames this disconnect on deep factual misunderstandings, media disinformation, and the perpetuation of “Eight Crazy Lies” by those who seek the Jewish State’s total destruction.
Miller exposes each of these “Crazy Lies” — which range from “apartheid” to “pinkwashing” to “vulgar capitalism” — and explains with concrete, incontrovertible evidence how in each case, a kind of perverse reversal of reality has taken hold, where Israel is blamed for violating the values that it has often been at the forefront of upholding….
Free Palestine. That’s the test. If the isrealis won’t do that — if they continue to hold half of the people under its control powerless, without recourse to the vote or the political or legal proceses while israel ships massive numbers of its people to steal the land out from under the Palestinians’ feet — then they deserve absolutely no support from liberals. Because no matter how progressive they are on other issues, it does not matter if they fail this one.
I just had a curious thought.
Since the pro-amnesty Kristol and the pro-abortion Adelson aren’t really conservative in the most classical sense(rather they are liberals in the classical sense, but that is obscured by the fact that most of those in America who call themselves liberals are actually social democrats, but I digress).
But what unites them and those on the more purebred version on the left is Israel. Israel is what makes their day go around. It’s almost literally what makes their life worth living, it seems.
So what would happen if the state as a Jewish state would give way to a genuine democracy, i.e., one citizen, one vote. Regardless of race, creed, religion or gender.
Would we see Adelson try to personally intervene and invade, with somekind of mercenary army, the territories and whip up civil war? Would Kristol and the boys coax the Republican donors within the Jewish community(Mel Sembler, Julian Singer et al) to pressure Congress to help the effort? Even attach U.S. armed forces?
And what if these efforts failed? What would be left of Adelson’s and Kristol’s meaning of their lives? It’s sort of hard seeing Adelson not becomming a completely broken man.
RE: “The Israel Project promotes Newt Gingrich and Michele Bachmann and the Israeli settlements and a militant response to Iran.” ~ Weiss
SEE: “Focus Grouping War with Iran”, by Laura Rozen, Mother Jones, 11/20/09
ENTIRE ARTICLE – http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2007/11/focus-grouping-war-iran