‘This miracle, this gift, this jewel’ — Obama’s ambassador to Israel declares he’s a Zionist

Two weeks ago in Washington, Hanan Ashrawi told a crammed hall at the National Press Club something I did not know before, that Obama’s ambassador to Israel, Daniel Shapiro, was now an expert at a quasi-official Israeli security thinktank. Speaking with bitter disdain, the longtime Palestinian negotiator described Shapiro as part of the “revolving door” of Israel lobbyists inside and outside government, who have made sure the US participation in the peace process was biased toward Israel:

They don’t need to lobby; they are decision makers… You’d be surprised that…ex-ambassador Daniel Shapiro, for example, decided to stay in Israel, has joined the Institute for National Security Studies. Which is something that also Dennis joined at one point or another– Dennis Ross. So it’s interchangeable. Either they are influencing policy or they are making policy.

And that’s why American policy was so distorted, because they played a significant role in framing and defining the discourse and perceptions but went beyond that to manipulating the verbal public space, anything related to the peace process. And they generated a narrative based on myths and provided alternative facts. It’s not Kelly Anne who invented alternative facts. We’ve been victims of alternative facts all our lives, they’ve certainly willfully misled public opinion.

As luck would have it, a few days after Ashrawi spoke, Shapiro appeared at the Park Avenue Synagogue in New York on a panel on the “Future of Zionism,” and I paid $25 for the privilege of hearing him. He repeatedly described himself as a Zionist that night:

I, as will emerge in the course of our discussion, am somebody who spent my whole formative years and much of my professional life committed out of Zionist impulses and out of an understanding of what US foreign policy interests are to insure Israel’s security, to help Israel pursue peace with its neighbors. I could never have worked for an administration that was not committed to the same goals…

Nobody has a monopoly on what it means to be a Zionist, nobody has a monopoly on how to express that support for the state of Israel…. It is not just possible, it is definitionally appropriate, to have liberal values and Zionist values intersect very closely with one another. Of course the establishment of the State of Israel was a fulfillment of that centuries-old dream, and that actualization of the self-determination of the Jewish people, that unites Zionists whatever their politics are…

He issued the traditional warning about American Jews needing to defer to Israel on security issues.

[T]there are major risks and threats, and we Zionists in the Diaspora don’t experience them the same way that Israelis do.

Because both conservative and liberal Zionists share a protective feeling toward “this miracle, this gift, this jewel”–

the same impulse of insuring that this miracle, this gift, this jewel that we in our day and age after centuries of exile, get to experience, which is a sovereign state of the Jewish people in the historic homeland of the Jewish people.

And P.S., Ms Ashrawi, Ambassador Shapiro said Palestinians are “not a reliable partner” for Israel.

Shapiro’s frank expression of Zionism made me wonder whether any of us knew this before he went into office.

Shapiro noted his Jewish roots, and his affinity for Israel, in his confirmation hearings. His testimony in May 2011 to Senate Foreign Relations Committee makes it clear that he’s very drawn to Israel, but that attraction has an academic/professional tenor here; he never said anything about his redemptive feelings about the Jewish state, or even that he was Jewish.

Mr. Chairman, my own interaction with Israel has taken many forms over the years, each of which has helped me gain a greater appreciation of the unique experience and perspective of the Israeli people. I first went to Israel at the age of four. My parents, who were academics, took our family there for a six-month sabbatical. It was 1973, and I was there during the Yom Kippur War… I remember, at the same time, our family enjoying many examples of the warmth and generosity of the Israeli people…

I returned to Israel after high school and again during college. In 1988, as the country was reeling from the violence of the first intifada, rocks rained down on the bus I took to Hebrew University and my Israeli classmates intensely debated the meaning of these events for their country’s future.

As a Congressional staffer, I traveled to Israel as the hopes born of the Oslo Accords made peace seem within reach, celebrated the signing of the peace treaty with Jordan, mourned the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin days after he had returned to Israel from Washington, and worked to address the threats posed to our nations by Hamas and Hizballah. As my professional involvement with Israel has deepened, so too has my understanding of Israel’s security needs and its people’s justifiable concerns about Iran’s nuclear weapons program, suicide bombers, missile attacks from Hamas and Hizballah, and the ongoing efforts of some to delegitimize the Jewish state.

But I have also grown more keenly aware of Israel’s deep-rooted strengths and its people’s dreams – manifested in the building of a modern state, the flowering of Jewish culture and democracy, the Start-up Nation, and the unrelenting search for peace.

Notice how he keeps saying the Israeli people’s dreams, as if they’re not his own. Whereas at Park Avenue synagogue he spoke repeatedly about the “Jewish people,” of which he was one. Notice that he says Hamas and Hizballah pose a threat to “our nations.” Really it’s just one nation they threaten: Israel.

I read a number of Shapiro’s speeches as ambassador and while I found many testimonies to Israel’s greatness, I did not find any of the personal Jewish/Zionist declarations that he made in the Park Avenue Synagogue.

This seems to me an issue of transparency. I’m aware that Shapiro backed up President Obama repeatedly in his criticisms of the settlement program (and also in the giant aid package Obama delivered). I’m not saying a Jew can’t be an ambassador to Israel. “[A generation ago] the U.S. State Department had a policy of not sending Jewish diplomats to the top post in Israel,” Ron Kampeas said in 2011 when Shapiro was appointed. “The notion of an ambassador to Israel having a pre-existing affinity with the country, never mind fluency in its native tongue, was unimaginable.

Still I feel a bit snookered. I wish Zionists in public life would emulate Roger Cohen of the Times, and cop to it openly. So the ideology can be contested.

Oh and since Ashrawi commented on the revolving door of the Israel lobby, Shapiro fulfilled that very role, writing an article for Bloomberg saying that “the next war in Gaza is coming.” The article repeatedly characterized Israeli assaults on Gaza in favorable terms– “Israel responds with carefully placed airstrikes” — without a word about the massive civilian killings Israel has committed in the Strip.

That’s something else Ashrawi described in her speech: the whole families destroyed in Israel’s attacks on Gaza. It’s no mystery why Shapiro doesn’t mention that.

Thanks to Allison Deger. 

 

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“But I have also grown more keenly aware of Israel’s deep-rooted strengths and its people’s dreams – manifested in the building of a modern state, the flowering of Jewish culture and democracy, the Start-up Nation, and the unrelenting search for peace. “SHAPIRO

Does, shapiro know that not all Israelis are Jews .Reading his comments it is hard to believe he does .

Zionists have had 120 years of putting their people, money and influence in positions favourable to the colonization of Palestine. US presidencies are only 8 yrs max. Their people are already being prepared for the next president, Republican or Democrat the Zionist organizations are watching grooming well in advance of anything the American public will be aware of. Covering more angles than any other lobby group would find necessary and gathering the dirt on all possible candidates

The only peaceful way of defeating Zionists and their vile cause is to educate Jewish folk to the fact that they have been used, abused and duped by a tiny minority who lie, cheat, murder and steal. Who loan money specifically to poor Jews at interest, on condition that they now buy land in non-Israeli territories and put themselves and their families at risk on the front lines. The Zionist Movement’s state, then charges them land taxes, rates etc as if they are in Israel, when they’re quite simply not

Jewish folk need to be educated to the fact that the Zionsist Movement/Federation has led them and Israel down the garden path to the point where Israel cannot afford to now adhere to the law under which states are required to withdraw from all Occupied Territories, take all their citizens with them, allow RoR and pay compensations far far beyond the capabilities of the Jewish State

@Phil

It may not be transparency, it could be conversion. I get that you don’t experience these emotions when you are in Israel. But for most Jews experiencing a Jewish state is amazing.

I can remember the first time I walked into a crappy restaurant and there was a Jewish sink (two handed cups and towels for netilat yadayim). Or having the time of the 3rd star at bus stops. Or people who have no idea its Christmas while every year my life has to revolve around this holiday I don’t celebrate (do they know its Christmas time at all — nope). And of course the immense pride in seeing a Jewish army.

I can easily see after how years of being in Israel Ambassador Shapiro went from supporting Israel to identifying personally with it. Ambassadors from time immemorial “go native”, start identifying with the country they are posted to. And for Jews in Israel with the incredibly strong pull, I’d say it is much more likely.

Question: when has Hanan Ashwari EVER spoken without disgust and disdain? This is her trademark. She has no interest in a peace treaty with Israel and does not believe be Israel has any right to exist as a Jewish sovereign state. She may believe that Jews can live as some type of protected minority in a sovereign Palestinian state but she’ll be long dead and buried before that becomes even a remote particle of a possibility. She will die choking on bitter tears of she refuses to change anything as she never has I the past. Best of luck to her and her paper thin veneer of civility when it comes to Jews in Israel having sovereignty.

A)
. No PW, Hezbollah (or its precursor group Amal , both funded and guided by Iran) made plans specifically to attack, bomb and kill American marines (over 220 you have so glibly forgotten,) stationed in Lebanon to keep the fragile peace between waring factions.

B) In general, Americans DO need to defer to Israeli expertise” the kind of combat, warfare and Intel gathering. Of course experience counts for much and were have some American partners who are as crucial to some plans as the regular IDF.
Do they have to defer” everything, every international incident, obviously not. But quite a few seemingly innocuous plans have direct impact on Israel a will be discussed as needed

C) in general, the Palestinian people have not been good partners for a treaty. While I can not speak for the everday working stiff Palestinian family who may likely earn most of not all their income working inside Israel I can easily interpolate that the members of Fatah, all those on the payroll of the corrupt PA as well as Hamas. Also, twice now th he PLO had turned down two very good but limiting offers of land, With generous land swaps but their leaders said, ” No” to at least two legitimate offers

D) so poor pw feels “snookered” because he didn’t get to open Shapiro s brain and examine it for latent signs of dedicated Zionism.

Put into MS. Ashwari ‘s words the entire exercise of hiring not only Shapiro but ambassadors from the past and possibly future as one big conspiracy of Zionist elders making sure the conspiracy continues unabated with, as she said, either making policy or carrying it out.
The Palestinians never got a say. The narrative was controlled, the history was distorted and the entire world was lied to in order for us administrations to keep money pouring in and Israel to have political cover to avoid ever having to deal with the growing Palis. Movements as if they don’t even exist. It’s all one HUGE conspiracy zionists stated with prewar mandate and culminated in their unbelievably cynical yet brilliant use of their status as displaced persons nearly murdered and I camps all over Europe..

Just a conspiracy. All she, along with pw and a few sympathetic professors with their legions of sycophants needed was some time, some disaffected far left liberal elitists, and hoards of confused, guilt ridden, hand ringing kids ready to rebel against mom and pop. Of course it was SO simple it was in front of our noses the whole time. Those crafty Zionist(not Jews mind you as the conspiracy spouting Zionist haters have told us that zionists have absolutely nothing in common with Jews) just sat down after ww2 along with or in front of the 1000s of other writers at the time trying to make sense of the whole epic catastrophes or just specific ones that stood out as so egregious as to seem beyond explanation. But they nailed it!. The Zionist jews simple made up their own narrative which poor poor hanan had been praying years to finally be able to tell us with certainty that the whole Zionist project was one massive lie (or false narrative? Alternate set of facts?) And if can finally be replaced with the oh so relieving stress of the honest to goodness truth.