Editor: MJ Rosenberg posted this news today on his site.
Eli Lake, as faithful a transcriber for AIPAC as any in the media (he has plenty of competition) reports that Dennis Ross is staying neutral in the presidential election.
This is pretty significant because nothing Dennis Ross does (including every action he took at the Obama White House) happens without AIPAC signing off.
Remember who he is. Both prior to his White House “service” and subsequent to it, he led AIPAC’s think-tank, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. (Here is my piece on the Washington Institute’s creation by AIPAC. I was there). He runs it now.
Ross says he cannot support the president for whom he (tragically for America) served as main Middle East policy guy because that would conflict with his duties at WINEP:
I am the Counselor at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy,” Ross said in an email on Friday. “The Washington Institute is a non-profit organization and I cannot do political work from here. When I acted for the campaign in 2008, I had to take a leave of absence to do so. Having only recently returned to the Institute, I cannot now again take a leave of absence.
That is bull. If AIPAC told him to stick with Obama he would. WINEP IS AIPAC.
Josh Block, AIPAC’s long-time press spokesman, who is widely believed to still receive a stipend from AIPAC (AIPAC uses him as “informal” spokesman) is clearly speaking for the lobby when he says this:
Ambassador Ross was obviously the No. 1 pro-Israel surrogate for the Obama campaign in 2008,” said Josh Block, a former press aide for the Clinton administration and former top spokesman for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. “The fact that after three years of working on Mideast policy side-by-side with the president, Ambassador Ross has decided to sit out this campaign, unlike other former top officials now at nonpartisan think tanks, will certainly be understood as a message of its own, intentionally or unintentionally.
It certainly does. AIPAC is going to privately pull out all the stops for Romney while publicly maintaining neutrality. It wants the U.S. to fight Israel’s war with Iran. It wants the neocons back in power. It wants to fight “Islamists” everywhere. And Romney’s top Middle East guy, Dan Senor, is related to AIPAC; his sister runs its whole operation in Israel!
Ross’s move is, as Josh Block says, a clear signal. The lobby wants Romney because the lobby wants war. (This is not about Jewish voters who the latest polls show are overwhelmingly for Obama and don’t consider Israel when they vote.) This is about the money and the few dozen billionaires and multimillionaires who take their cues from AIPAC).
Also note the quote from Aaron Miller, Ross’s long-time sidekick, equally close to AIPAC, also dissing Obama.
Dennis is about doing things,” said Aaron Miller, who was Ross’s deputy on the peace process during the Clinton years and is now a scholar at the Wilson Center, a public-policy think tank in Washington, D.C. “The peace process is stuck and is likely to remain stuck. The fact is no amount of hand-holding is going to assuage the concerns and suspicions of a pro-Israel community which has now seen some of its fears realized. It may well be that this is the other piece of this. I wouldn’t want to try to sell Obama to the Jewish community in this environment.
This is the line. The lobby is with Romney.
Sort of funny that David Aaron Miller is still described by some in the left as a ‘dove’ (because he wrote a few lines about he and Dennis Ross were, in his words, overtly favoring Israel in the 2000 Clinton negotiations).
But everything he has done points that aside from a few convenient laments about the lack of peace, he’s in fact quite comfortable with such a development. In some ways he even contributed actively to that.
In a recent Foreign Policy piece he compared Obama to Jimmy Carter(!) which is the ultimate bogeyman to the lobby, and he said that Bush the elder(the too WASPish/Arabist one for the tastes of the lobby) was on the same level.
This is a clear signal from the ‘liberal’ quartes of AIPAC: abandon Obama.
I’m sure Mr. Miller will be saddened, stunned and shocked by the fact that the neocons at Commentary quoted him at length and with delightful glee as they thrust the knife into Obama.
The Israeli press reported in early April that AIPAC has essentially told Netanyahu that Obama was going to win the election and that he had to plan accordingly.
Now, when the economy is close to stall-speed and Romney has solidified support (and polls show that his likeability is going up while Obama’s going slightly down), the calculus has changed.
Barak Ravid wrote in the Hebrew version of Haaretz that Netanyahu has been throwing it all in with Romney. The Hebrew version of YNet reported the same too.
Still, Bibi is trying to balance the whole ‘bipartisan’ act but it is really obvious to everyone.
So now that Bibi is not even pretending to be neutral(if he ever did), ‘liberals’ like David Aaron Miller is comparing Obama to Jimmy Carter and Alan Dershowitz(another ‘liberal’) compared Obama to Neville Chamberlain, Obama will be met with a thousand cuts.
And as MJ points out, this isn’t about the average Jew. All of this flies over the head of the average Jew, who will still back Obama overwhemingly come this fall.
But this is a signal to the very few, elite at the top. Penny Pritzker is being slowly wooed in.
But all these signals are directed to Democratic bundlers like her. How long until Haim Saban begins to have other thoughts?
This will scare the Democratic elite. Expect more moves by the DNCC to essentially out-Likud the Likudniks.
As I wrote previously… we’re fast approaching a point where the most leftist position you are allowed to take is somewhere between the middle and the right inside the Likud party.
Preferably you should be a fan of Avigdor Lieberman.
@MJ
The lobby wants Romney because the lobby wants war. (This is not about Jewish voters who the latest polls show are overwhelmingly for Obama and don’t consider Israel when they vote.)
You’re whistling dixie if you think average Americans (Gentiles) sit around and make–or even have the time or intelligence to make–a distinction between who’s plain Jewish and who is in the Lobby.
If Romney wins and we go to war, oil hits the chandelier, and food prices/transportation costs cause scarcity and hunger in this economy, and people can’t feed their families or go to work, all Jews will be blamed because the one thing that’s now known across the land (courtesy of Fox, and WashPo/HuffPo/NYT) is that Israel and American Jews want war.
Think of the number of Christian Zios. You think they make that distinction? The Lobby is playing with fire, MJ. I cannot believe the stupidity. Do these millionaire/billionaire Jews pushing war not understand the economic condition a lot of people are in across the land? People are living in their cars in the church parking lot, and in tent cities.
What a bloody sock puppet.
Wondered when Ross would come out and undermine Obama in the sunshine. NPR did a story on Friday evening about how the I lobby is basically all going over to Romney. To think that all Obama had to say was the settlements are a problem and they think that is so radical. Hell he and his team have basically rolled over and barked on the settlement issue. What is the lobby having such a hissy fit over? From being inside the Obama administration Ross must know what Obama is really thinking for his second term about the I/P conflict. When Ross goes “neutral” on Obama (a plug for Romney) that makes me like and support Obama even more. Ross must fear what Obama wants to do in his second term in regard to this issue. Hmmm
Was so dissapointed when Obama appointed Ross. Not much of a sign for “hope and change”. But who knows clearly sounds like Ross fears and Obama second term. And the I lobbies best bet for an attack on Iran or to support Israel attacking Iran is clearly Romney. Max Boot, Kagan etc have hitched their go get Iran band wagon to Romney’s election
Isn’t Obama the most pro Israeli president ever? Bush stood up much more for the Palestinians than Obama has had the courage to so far.
I think Bush had a good heart. Hence when Mahmoud Abbas actually showed Bush a 3 dimensional model of the Wall and Bush finally understood what it was, Bush changed his position. He called it a “Wall” and said it was a problem. Bush got all animated looking at Abu Mazen’s 3 dimension model, looking at it sideways and stuff. Bush demanded that in the future he needs a lot more 3 dimensional models. The people around Bush were horrified at what had happened, and after the summit they distracted Bush’s mind with other matters so that he couldn’t follow through.
http://electronicintifada.net/content/it-fence-it-wall-no-its-separation-barrier/4715
Bush was also the first US president to call for a fully independent sovereign Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders with property swaps of equal quality. Bush demanded that Israel stop the settlements in a way Obama still hasn’t.
Bush wanted to give the Palestinians aid and a lot of other things, but was stopped by the confiscation of Khamenei’s arms shipments to Arafat. Arafat had directly lied to Bush, and Bush never forgave him for it. Bush didn’t get another chance to deal with this issue until 2005. But the people around Bush kept him distracted by other things so he didn’t get around to Palestine. [And to be fair there were a lot of things occupying Bush’s mind. Illegal immigration reform, improving US/Mexican relations, improving US/Brazil relations, getting US/India on track, improving relations with China, stopping the outsourcing crowd, social security reform, Iraq, Afghanistan, Takfiri terrorism, Hezbollah Israeli tension, stopping Israel from hitting Iran, stopping Chenney from bombing Iran, North Korea, South Korea, Japan, prescription drugs, education reform etc.] Too bad. Had Bush not been distracted he might have used America’s power (limited though it is) to help the Palestinians on the margins.
By contrast Obama has always taken a much less pro Palestinian position than Bush.
I think Obama will do right. I think he prays to God and has good character and is a compassionate man. But Obama Messiah hasn’t done it yet. Maybe because he hasn’t yet had time to think much about Palestine. Have high hopes about his second term.
Does anyone have a clue what Romney would really do? He keeps his real views hidden. I have no idea what he really thinks about Palestine.
Does anyone have any perspectives on how devout a Mormon Romney is? Mormanism is a good and compassionate religion.