Exile and the Prophetic: A word from the (Jewish) Secretary of Pandering

This post is part of Marc H. Ellis’s “Exile and the Prophetic” feature for Mondoweiss. To read the entire series visit the archive page.

Has our Secretary of State officially become Secretary of Pandering?  I didn’t know that John Kerry is (sort of) Jewish, did you? 

Is the next revelation President Obama’s newly appointed National Security Advisor, Susan Rice, claim to be Jewish?  Joshua Hersh has already referred to Rice as Obama’s Israel’s Courter-in-Chief.

I’m waiting for Rice’s other (Jewish) shoe to drop.

I began writing about Kerry last week.  What set me on off was Kerry’s 4 billion dollar jumpstart of the West Bank economy he proposed in Jordan.  Now the plan has returned in the devastating analysis of Max Blumenthal.

To be honest, I thought my Kerry watching was done.  Others had taken it on.  Enough is enough. 

Then this.

If you haven’t heard John Kerry at his lowest level of being, listen to his remarks to the American Jewish Committee a few days ago. If his pandering doesn’t make you physically ill, I doubt you’re conscious.

There’s no reason to plumb the depths of Kerry’s words, since there isn’t much to plumb.  He begins by apologizing that he has to leave early to help another (Jewish) Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, celebrate his 90th birthday.  Kerry then brags on his brother, a convert to Judaism, before he trots out his own Jewish background credentials, which he recently learned about, and predictably claims Holocaust victims in his family tree.  Then we’re on to Israel and the pathos of Kerry laying a wreath at Yad VaShem.

That’s just the beginning. Kerry recites his and seemingly every politician’s proverbial visit to Israel where our gifted windsurfer – and failed Presidential candidate –boasts of being handed the controls of an Israeli fighter plane as they race across the Negev and almost, God forbid, venture into Egyptian and Jordanian airspace.  This, of course, reminds Kerry of the narrow borders of Israel where every decision represents a thin margin between life and death.

At this point, Kerry’s pandering reminds me of the short window of time when Israel’s celebrated military victory after the 1967 war combined a triumph of the West with the supreme innocence of beating back the barbarians at “our” gates.  But pinching myself to make sure I am awake and not being transported back in time, I check the calendar and find I’m living along with Kerry and his audience almost half a century later, where everything is different except the (Jewish) Secretary of Pandering and his willingly pandered audience. In the meantime, Kerry is on to Masada and we are there hearing his chants of “Israel lives” echo across the landscape – as if we’re not sitting in the safe confines of Washington D.C.

Speaking of the (Jewish) Secretary of Pandering, I ask for a moratorium on everyone and their brother in power claiming to be Jewish or descending from Jews or hobnobbing with my-good-Jewish-friend-who-has-done-so-much-for-Israel-and-the-United-States-of-America. With every one and their brother in power claiming to be Jewish, being Jewish is losing its edge. Or even its currency as coffee table conversation at gatherings where no one wants to be.

Yes, there was some iron in Kerry’s soft Jewish glove. Kerry invoked his tiring mantra of time running out at keeping the Jewish state of Israel Jewish since, of course, that bad neighborhood Israel lives in might do more than knock at Israel’s door. 

Kerry’s fear, shared by his AJC audience, is that Palestinians might take a page out of the American Civil Rights movement and demand equal rights in one state.  Or Palestinians might simply destabilize the region into a permanent conflict where no one knows who might emerge as the victor.  Which would be worse, the Secretary seems to ask. Then the (Jewish) Secretary of Pandering assures the frightened audience that America will always have Israel’s back.

Kerry’s not so subtle strategy is to panic the Jewish audience into demanding a two-state solution because the alternative is much, much worse – like becoming Arabized or colored or, God forbid, a combination of the two that Kerry and his audience define as being Third World. 

Kerry doesn’t need to get explicit.  His Jewish audience gets the point more or less the way a white Southern audience understands coded language about the perils of integration. And this from the (Jewish) former Senator of the great liberal state of Massachusetts!

By the way, after everything Jewish and America having Israel’s back, it’s time for a positive word about Palestinians.  Here’s the (Jewish) Secretary of Pandering wandering out on “our” Jewish limb:

Now, I ask you to also understand that at the same time as I stand here a friend of Israel, at the same time as I have a 29-year, 100 percent voting record, I can also stand here and tell you that we must recognize the Palestinians’ fundamental aspirations – to live in peace in their own state with its own clear borders – that has to be our mission as well. (Applause.) And I assure you, I assure you that a stable Palestinian state with assured borders and a flourishing economy will only strengthen Israel’s security and Israel’s future.

The Palestinian children that I’ve seen – I went into Gaza a number of years ago, five years ago, and the kids I saw playing in the rubble there, they should be able to grow up with playgrounds that aren’t made of the debris of bombed-out buildings. Their parents deserve to be able to live their daily lives the way people everywhere else in the world do and the way parents aspire to hopes for their children do. And these families’ lives should not be determined by terrorists in their midst.

The Secretary is grandstanding now. Can the audience, Israel and America spare a dime? Since the Palestinians are human, too, we need to save them from their own. It’s the right thing to do and good strategy as well. 

Sure, Palestinians don’t have a destiny or a history like “we” Jews but, nonetheless, we can affirm their essential humanity.  Besides, it is crucial for Israel. Otherwise Palestinian children will play in the rubble of their leader’s making and inexplicably continue to rail against those who made the desert bloom.

On and on it goes.  The question that remains is who is more demeaned, the (Jewish) Secretary of Pandering or the American Jewish Committee he pandered to?