The Republican Jewish Coalition is distributing a flyer in Pennsylvania quoting peace-processor Aaron David Miller saying that Obama does not love Israel, under a headline that reads, “All Jewish. Supported Barack Obama. But Not this Time.”
I found the flyer on my parents’ door this afternoon. It tells Jewish voters they should not “feel guilty” about voting for Romney and features three photographs of seemingly-average Jewish voters saying that Obama is putting Israel in danger and that he’s not a friend of Israel.
Under the “All Jewish” headline is a column titled “What are the experts saying?” It quotes Abe Foxman, Ari Shavit of Haaretz, and Aaron David Miller, who worked for George W. Bush and Bill Clinton but is generally associated with Democrats. He is affiliated with the Woodrow Wilson Center these days. Miller says, “Obama really is different. Unlike Clinton and George W. Bush, Obama isn’t in love with the idea of Israel.”
The quote comes from this piece by Miller in Foreign Policy, saying that Obama will take on Netanyahu if he gets a second term.
I’ve watched a few presidents come and go on this issue, and Obama really is different. Unlike Clinton and George W. Bush, Obama isn’t in love with the idea of Israel. As a result, he has a harder time making allowances for Israeli behavior he doesn’t like.
I can’t imagine Miller has endorsed Romney, nor approved his use in the piece. I sent him a note yesterday but haven’t heard from him.
talk about a revealing remark:
“he has a harder time making allowances for Israeli behavior he doesn’t like”
Why should any president have to “make allowances for Israeli behavior” ?
It implies that such behavior is antithetical to US interests
No, Phil, I can imagine you can’t, considering your exuberant praise of Miller, or was it Miller’s book. You will forgive me, but this reminds me of two things.
One: Norman Finkelstein’s experience and harsh critique of Miller on Z-net.
Two: your article of a meeting with Norman in his flat, if I remember correctly. By that point I had come to appreciate your portraits of encounters with people, or your interviews quite a bit, but that one left me with a bad taste, I have never managed to get rid of. Search your soul, what was it, that made you portrait Norman that way?
Miller is a known AIPAC flack. He’s working the Democratic party to ensure that they never get to moments of genuine democracy like at the DNC.
Why you want to pretend he’s a great peacenik is beyond me.
Miller, by the way, was the same guy who recently wrote an Op-Ed in the NYT where he complained that there were ‘too many Arabs’ in Israel.
First you praise Remnick wildly for basically opposing Bibi and the Iraninan war based on Israeli arguments – rather than American ones – and now you praise a man who laments too many non-Jewish minorites(would you praise him if he lamented too many blacks in America?).
Phil, you’re veering off from bad to worse in recent days.
Get a grip. You shouldn’t defend a racist.
Yet here you are.
Aaron David Miller is a bit of a weasel in the cited piece.
First he explains at length that Netanyahu is basically an Israeli version of Mitt Romney: a putative right winger with no true convictions, and thus despised on the left, right and center of Israeli political spectrum.
Would Obama instinctively love Israel, that would not be a problem, alas, he does not.
But Miller does explain if it is good or bad, just that one should expect “turbulence”. So the question becomes: should USA allow a relationship with an ally to cool a bit merely because the leader of that ally is a piece of garbage that is widely despised by his own people?
Similarly, Miller does not explain if he recommends to view Israel as a “tiny state living on the knife’s edge with the dark past”. I suspect that he was ironic, but also sufficiently elliptic to avoid being heckled by the members of his own congregation. Actually, this is a great example of weaselly prose: do Israel and “the dark past” live together on the knife’s edge, or it is the edge that has a dark past, or is it Israel? I suspect that this sentence contains strategic ambiguity.
When the subject of Israel comes up, I sometimes hear myself say, “I’m not a fan of Israel.” I think I’ll switch to “I’m not in love with the idea of Israel,” it has a nice ring to it.