The Middle East Media Sampler 3/23/2012: Do Jews Wag The Dog?

From DG:

1) Do the Jews wag the dog?

Aaron David Miller has a long article up at Foreign Policy, Six Big Lies About How Jerusalem Runs Washington. It does not start out promisingly:

Several years after leaving government, I wrote a piece in the Washington Post titled "Israel's Lawyer." The article was an honest effort to explain how several senior officials in U.S. President Bill Clinton's administration (myself included) had a strong inclination to see the Arab-Israeli negotiations through a pro-Israel lens. That filter played a role -- though hardly the primary one -- in the failure of endgame diplomacy, particularly at the ill-fated Camp David summit in July 2000. 

Unsurprisingly, the piece was hijacked in the service of any number of agendas, especially by critics of Israel only too eager to use my narrow point about the Clinton years to make their broader one: America had long compromised its own values and interests in the Middle East by its blind and sordid obeisance to the Jewish state and its pro-Israeli supporters in the United States.

Tom Friedman Says Congress Does The Bidding Of The Israel Lobby...Again

Thomas Friedman is going after the infamous "Israel Lobby" and its influence on Congress once again.

Remember the last time, in September, when Tom Friedman warned that the US was in thrall to the Israel Lobby?

This has also left the U.S. government fed up with Israel’s leadership but a hostage to its ineptitude, because the powerful pro-Israel lobby in an election season can force the administration to defend Israel at the U.N., even when it knows Israel is pursuing policies not in its own interest or America’s.

And who is the mastermind behind this sinister lobby?

Congressman Rothman: Friedman Owes Us an Apology for “Israel Lobby” Charge

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
December 14, 2011

CONTACT: Aaron Keyak
office: (202) 225-5061
cell: (202) 905-6361
email: aaron.keyak@mail.house.gov

Congressman Rothman: Friedman Owes Us an Apology
for “Israel Lobby” Charge

Washington, DC – Congressman Steve Rothman (D-NJ) released the following statement on Thomas Friedman’s column where he wrote that the “standing ovation [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu] got in Congress this year was not for his politics. That ovation was bought and paid for by the Israel lobby” in the New York Times this morning:

CONFIRMATION THAT ISRAEL ADVISED AGAINST INVADING IRAQ. The confirmation comes from an unlikely source:

A senior official at the US State Department has said that political, diplomatic and military officials in Israel warned the United States against invading Iraq even before the American forces entered the country, the Inter Press Service news agency reported over the weekend.

According to the official, Israel tried to convince the Bush administration that the main problem in the region was Iran, not Iraq.

The man, Lawrence Wilkerson, was a member of the US State Department's policy planning staff and later chief of staff for Secretary of State Colin Powell.

In an interview with the news agency, he said that "the Israelis were telling us Iraq is not the enemy - Iran is the enemy."

According to Wilkerson, different sources in Israel explained to senior US officials that "if you are going to destabilize the balance of power, do it against the main enemy."

Wilkerson noted that the main point of their communications was not that the US should immediately attack Iran, but that "it should not be distracted by Iraq and Saddam Hussein" from a focus on the threat from Iran.

Why is Wilkerson an unlikely source? He appears in a German documentary about the Israel Lobby (mostly in English) where while he tries to straddle the fence, he does agree with Mearsheimer and Walt that America's interests are negated by the inability of the US to abandon Israel because of the "Jewish Lobby" which influences US policy through Dick Cheney. He fits in well with Tony Judt and Kenneth Roth.

If Wilkerson knew that Israel saw Iran as the bigger threat, why did he wait till now to say anything? Why did he not mention it in the documentary? Considering the animus he has against the Bush administration, his obvious bias suggests he could just be looking for another way to make Bush look bad.

Technorati Tag: Israel and Lawrence Wilkerson and Israel Lobby.

THOSE BRAVE CRITICS OF ISRAEL: American Thinker debunks 5 claims made by critics of Israel, including of course: "The so-called Israel lobby is in complete control of the debate, and stifles criticism of Israel"
[Hat tip: Larwyn]

Technorati Tag: Israel and Israel Lobby.

3 Trends in the Use of the "Israel Lobby" Diatribe

Playing the "Israel Lobby" card isn't just for 'academics' anymore

Following the most recent airing of the accusation of the excessive power of the "Israel Lobby" by Mearsheimer and Walt, the same them has been struck in 3 very different circumstances recently. This may signal the seepage of the idea into mainstream discourse. At the very least, it signals that claims about the exaggerated influence of the "Israel Lobby" has become a weapon that people are less and less bashful about using--whether an ex-president in the LA Times, a defense attorney defending a terrorist, or a Jewish liberal.

Jimmy Carter of course, claiming that he was merely Speaking frankly about Israel and Palestine when he claimed:

For the last 30 years, I have witnessed and experienced the severe restraints on any free and balanced discussion of the facts. This reluctance to criticize any policies of the Israeli government is because of the extraordinary lobbying efforts of the American-Israel Political Action Committee and the absence of any significant contrary voices.

Obviously, Carter has never heard of Noam Chomsky or read Alexander Cockburn and The Nation. He has not read They Dare To Speak Out-People and Institution Confront Israel's Lobby by Paul Findley, published in 1985. Perhaps he is not aware of Senator William Fulbright's open criticism of Israel back in 1963 or Hedrick Smith's criticism of AIPAC in his 1990 book The Power Game: How Washington Works.

You can argue about the amount of influence that the "Israel Lobby" in general and AIPAC in particular has, but to claim that there is an "absence of any significant contrary voices" just doesn't fly. Carter's accusation of the power of the "Israel Lobby" is as a private citizen writing an editorial in a newspaper, as opposed to writing a 'scholarly' piece or politician and introduces the idea into the general public.

A very different use of the claim of the power of the "Israel Lobby" is in a court case in Illinois where Mohammed Salah is accused of having served as a high-ranking operative of Hamas, which the US considers a terrorist organization. The defense has claimed that Hamas is a political party and not a terrorist group by virtue of having won democratic elections. However, the defense has gone further, pointing to Israel's influence in the case in order to

prove that the criminal case is the product of "the joint venture, cooperation, and partnership" between the American and Israeli governments.

...A defense lawyer, Michael Deutsch, described a "longstanding and profound political military and law enforcement relationship" between Israel and America. One authority he cited is an academic paper published in March, "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy." The hotly disputed treatise by a political science professor at the University of Chicago, John Mearsheimer, and the academic dean at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, Stephen Walt, argues that pro-Israel elements have effective control over American strategy in the Middle East.

Mr. Deutsch also asked to present evidence about the role of the Anti-Defamation League as a "conduit and facilitator" between Israeli and American authorities.

If Deborah Libstadt had not won her court case in David Irving's libel suit in 2000, the result would have been an important boost to Holocaust deniers around the world. Likewise, if Salah's lawyers were to be successful in court in using the claim of "Israel Lobby" influence, it would give the claim an aura of validity that would make it possible to undercut the US-Israel relationship.

The third example of the exploitation of the "Israel Lobby" claim is by Rabbi Michael Lerner of Tikkun. In a recent article, Lerner defends Jimmy Carter's latest book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, going so far as to claim that "Jimmy Carter was the best friend the Jews ever had as president of the United States." Lerner goes on to decry those who oppose his view of the way to peace between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs:

Unfortunately, this peace is impeded by the powerful voices of AIPAC and the mainstream of the organized Jewish community, who manage to terrify even the most liberal elected officials into blind support of whatever policy the current government of Israel advocates. Ironically, this blind support has had the consequence of pushing many morally sensitive Christians and Jews to distance themselves from the Jewish world, which makes blind support for Israeli policies the litmus test of anti-Semitism. Younger Jews cannot safely express criticisms of Israeli policy without being told that they are disloyal or “self-hating,” and elected officials tell me privately that they agree with Tikkun’s more balanced “progressive Middle Path” which is both pro-Israel and pro-Palestine.

Lerner takes advantage of the rhetoric of those who accuse the "Israel Lobby" of having too much control in the US and gives it added life, claiming that the same situation occurs within the Jewish community itself. By using the claim himself, he gives the claim added weight.

The "Israel Lobby" claim is being voiced once again--and as more than just a criticism of Israel and its influence in the US. It is also being used as a tool: by Carter to deflect charges of plagiarism, by a lawyers to defend terrorists, and by a Jewish liberal to support his version of a peace plan for Israel.

We will be hearing the phrase "Israel Lobby" a lot more.

Technorati Tag: Israel and Israel Lobby and Jimmy Carter and Michael Lerner and Mohammed Salah .

The Ongoing AIPAC Prosecution: A National Disgrace

At a time that CAIR with its terrorist ties gets off the hook, the criminal prosecution of 2 employees of AIPAC is still continuing for over a year--a prosecution which Rachel Neuwirth calls A National Disgrace:

The criminal prosecution of Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, former executives of AIPAC (the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, which has been in progress now for over a year (although the trial date has constantly been delayed), is a national disgrace. It is a mortal threat to the American Jewish community, since it strongly reinforces the idea-propounded recently by Professors Stephen Walt, Dean of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, his co-author John Mearshimer of The University of Chicago, Patrick Buchanan, and numerous other prominent soi-disant American patriots, that American Jews' loyalty is to Israel and not to the United States. It threatens Israel by in effect criminalizing efforts to lobby on its behalf by American citizens. In addition, it threatens freedom of the press and freedom of speech for all Americans.

Neither Keith Weissman nor Steven Weissman was ever an Israeli spy. Neither was recruited by Israeli agents. Neither received a cent from Israel . Neither gave classified documents to Israel . They never even saw such documents; rather they are accused of having passed on information that they had heard by word of mouth that their informants allegedly learned from such documents. In effect, they are charged with gossiping and trading in rumors!

In fact, they are not even technically accused of espionage, but only of giving "national security information" (a vague phrase that can refer to unclassified as well as classified information, not necessarily in writing) to "persons not entitled to receive it." These individuals, according to the indictment, included not only Israeli diplomats, but also unnamed American journalists and other American citizens not connected with Israel . The indictment thus criminalizes the widespread practice in Washington of leaking classified information to the press...

Read the entire post.

Technorati Tag: AIPAC and Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman.

Without Rumsfeld and Bolton, Who Will Keep Rice From Overcooking?

According to UPI: no one.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice now enjoys far greater clout in foreign policy-making following the fall of her arch-nemesis, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. And Rice has repeatedly made clear she wants to see a revived Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

The secretary of state defied powerful neo-conservative pressure at a time when the neo-cons still dominated the White House, the National Security Council and the Department of Defense to choose David Welch, a highly respected veteran Middle East hand, as her assistant secretary of state for Near East affairs.

Also, the departure of John Bolton from his key diplomatic position as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations removes a passionate opponent of any revival of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

It's not clear who is going to replace Bolton, what we do know that Robert Gates is going to replace Rumsfeld. Gates, is described as a 'traditional moderate Republican internationalist'--whatever. He is also supposed to have close ties to James Baker and was a member of the ISG until he was picked to replace Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense.

According to UPI, things will be very different for Israel in particular--and the article gives the nowadays obligatory hint at the "Israel Lobby" claim:

Under Rumsfeld, Israeli military officials had the run of the Pentagon and enjoyed unprecedented access to Rumsfeld and his top officials. They could count on the enormous clout of the DoD, the Office of the Secretary of Defense and Rumsfeld himself to block any diplomatic initiatives by the Bush administration that the Israeli government did not like. But once Gates is running OSD, he appears far more likely to make common cause with Rice to pressure the Israelis to make new concessions on reviving the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

Whether this is actually true or not of course remains to be seen. Powerline, for example notes that remarks made by Gates at his confirmation do not reveal the opponent of Iraq that Bush's opponents claim Gates is:

I agreed with President Bush’s decision to go into Iraq. Our men and women in uniform and our coalition partners have served admirably there, and, if confirmed, I look forward to working with them on a daily basis to help make the future better for the Iraqi people.

...I believe that leaving Iraq in chaos would have dangerous consequences both in the region and globally for many years to come.

But on Iran, Gates does not take Iran's nuclear threat seriously, nor does he see in Iran a serious threat to Israel either. Powerline quotes Claremont's Seth Leibsohn about one exchange in the hearing:

This exchange between Lindsay Graham & Bob Gates today is disturbing, to say the least. Asked by Senator Graham if Iran would use nuclear weapons against Israel, Gates responded, "I don't know that they would do that, Senator." Somewhat astounded, Graham pushed back:

Graham: The president of Iran has publicly disavowed the existence of the Holocaust, has publicly stated that he would like to wipe Israel off the map. Do you think he's kidding?

Gates: No, I don't think he's kidding, but I think there are, in fact, higher powers in Iran than he, than the president. And I think that, while they are certainly pressing, in my opinion, for nuclear capability, I think that they would see it in the first instance as a deterrent.

As Powerline puts it, according to Gates--other religious fundamentalists higher up than Ahmadinejad are going to keep him in check and act as a moderating influence.

In any case, with Israel's greatest mortal threat reduced to the rantings of an underling, the Israel-Palestinian conflict is free to become a central theme for Rice to continue to hammer away at.

Can 2008 come soon enough?
And will it make any difference?

Technorati Tag: Israel and Condoleezza Rice and Robert Gates and Iran and Ahmadinejad.

Carter Accused Of Plagiarism--Whines

Having been accused of lifting maps from a book by Dennis Ross--maps made by Ross himself for the book--Carter's response is the expected rant:

The many controversial issues concerning Palestine and the path to peace for Israel are intensely debated among Israelis and throughout other nations — but not in the United States. For the last 30 years, I have witnessed and experienced the severe restraints on any free and balanced discussion of the facts. This reluctance to criticize any policies of the Israeli government is because of the extraordinary lobbying efforts of the American-Israel Political Action Committee and the absence of any significant contrary voices.

It would be almost politically suicidal for members of Congress to espouse a balanced position between Israel and Palestine, to suggest that Israel comply with international law or to speak in defense of justice or human rights for Palestinians. Very few would ever deign to visit the Palestinian cities of Ramallah, Nablus, Hebron, Gaza City or even Bethlehem and talk to the beleaguered residents. What is even more difficult to comprehend is why the editorial pages of the major newspapers and magazines in the United States exercise similar self-restraint, quite contrary to private assessments expressed quite forcefully by their correspondents in the Holy Land.

With some degree of reluctance and some uncertainty about the reception my book would receive, I used maps, text and documents to describe the situation accurately and to analyze the only possible path to peace: Israelis and Palestinians living side by side within their own internationally recognized boundaries. These options are consistent with key U.N. resolutions supported by the U.S. and Israel, official American policy since 1967, agreements consummated by Israeli leaders and their governments in 1978 and 1993 (for which they earned Nobel Peace Prizes), the Arab League's offer to recognize Israel in 2002 and the International Quartet's "Roadmap for Peace," which has been accepted by the PLO and largely rejected by Israel.

The book is devoted to circumstances and events in Palestine and not in Israel, where democracy prevails and citizens live together and are legally guaranteed equal status.

Although I have spent only a week or so on a book tour so far, it is already possible to judge public and media reaction. Sales are brisk, and I have had interesting interviews on TV, including "Larry King Live," "Hardball," "Meet the Press," "The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer," the "Charlie Rose" show, C-SPAN and others. But I have seen few news stories in major newspapers about what I have written.

Carter, who is intensely critical of the complete absence of criticism, apparently has never visited the United Nations. Nor apparently does he read the New York Times or the Washington Post. Apparently Carter is content to resorting to the tried and true formula of whining how no one in the US ever complains or criticizes Israel.

One would think that if you put together all the people who attack Israel while simultaneously complaining that they are the only ones who do because of the nefarious pro-Israel Lobby--you'd get quite a sizable number.

Carter claims

With some degree of reluctance and some uncertainty about the reception my book would receive, I used maps, text and documents to describe the situation accurately and to analyze the only possible path to peace...

Does he mean he reluctantly used outside sources for his book? Is he claiming that he had no choice but to use Ross' maps without permission? Is it clear what he claims to be uncertain about?

Carter describes

the International Quartet's "Roadmap for Peace," which has been accepted by the PLO and largely rejected by Israel.

Can he name what part of the Roadmap actually has been accepted by the PLO? Have they actually fulfilled any part of it? Have they stopped the terrorist attacks. Come on--they cannot even fulfill a ceasefire for more than a few hours. Has Israel actually "largely rejected" the Roadmap? What in the world is Jimmy Carter talking about?

Carter also claims:

The book is devoted to circumstances and events in Palestine and not in Israel, where democracy prevails and citizens live together and are legally guaranteed equal status.

If he is describing events in Palestine and not in Israel, then we must assume he is talking about Gaza and the West Bank--but the Palestinian areas there are under the control of the PA. If democracy does not prevail in those areas, as is clear from the corruption and the shootings by Palestinians, the ones responsible are the Palestinians.

One other point: if Carter is so concerned about the imbalance of the criticism:

o Why is it that the "Pro-Israel" media does not call the Palestinians "terrorists" but instead has been extremely supportive of the 2-state idea and tends to repeat every anti-Israel claim the Palestinians produce.

o Where is Carter's criticism of the Palestinians? After all, shouldn't he be the model for 'balanced' criticism? Or is he claiming that because everyone is pro-Israel, he must balance out the media by being purely critical?

See also the scathing review of Carter's book in the Washington Post.

Powerline also has an analysis of the contradictions and just plain nonsense we have come to expect from Jimmy Carter.

Technorati Tag: Israel and Jimmy Carter.

Rosenblum: Contemplating Israel's Demise

Contemplating Israel's Demise

by Jonathan Rosenblum
Mishpacha
November 8, 2006

I've been thinking a lot about my father, hareini kaparat mishkavo, lately. He used to say, "If the world is prepared to stand by and watch Jews be slaughtered again, then the world does not deserve to exist."

That moment, I fear, has come. The very existence of Israel (which whatever its virtues or failings is home to nearly half of all Jews living today) has become in the eyes of much of the world a big bother. And we are not speaking here about the Moslem or Arab world, but about much of the West.

References to the creation of Israel as a "mistake" not worth the price are commonplace in European discourse. Even Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen describes Israel in this fashion – as based on a delusional fantasy that a colony of Jews could ever gain acceptance in the Arab Middle East.

Tony Judt (a Jewish professor) finds an ethnic-religious state like Israel to be an "anachronism" in a post-nationalist world. Interestingly, he sees no similar infirmity in all those Moslem states in which Sharia is the law of the land, and which non-Moslems are barred from citizenship.

What lies behind all this talk of "mistakes" and "anachronisms?" The belief that if Israel somehow disappeared the world would be a far happier place. Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, professors at two of America's leading universities, in their infamous paper "The Israel Lobby," identify not one threat to world peace that is not directly attributable to Israel. Not Iran. Not North Korea.

The perfidy and trickiness of those sly Jews is almost beyond belief in Walt and Mearsheimer's telling. Israel, they charge, withdrew from Gaza with the deliberate intent to bring into power a Hamas-led government and thereby bring an end to the "peace process." More recently, speaking before the Council on American-Islamic Relations, they charged that Israel had long planned an invasion of Lebanon and that Hizbullah's kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers was merely a pretext for doing so.

What prime minister, after all, would not want to see one million of his country's citizens spend a month cowering in bomb shelters, the economy brought to a standstill, and his own poll numbers hit absolute bottom? And wasn't it clever of those Jews to trick Nasrallah into attacking Israel? I wonder how they did that.

The claim that support for Israel underlies virtually every act of Islamic terrorism in the world gains greater currency with each terrorist attack. In England, and much of Western Europe, it is already gospel. After British authorities uncovered a plot by native-born British Moslems to blow up ten or more transatlantic carriers, Moslem peers and MPs in England audaciously wrote that England can only expect many more such plots as long as it does not alter its Middle East policy.

Rather than reacting with rage to the implicit threat from its own honored representatives, the British public lapped it up and cast Tony Blair from office for daring to label this view of matters as more than a bit insane.

Yet even in the Middle East itself, the greatest losses of life have not had the slightest connection to Israel: the million lives lost in the Iraqi-Iranian war, the hundreds of thousands of Moslems slaughtered by their fellow Moslem's in Sudan's Darfur Province, civil wars in Algeria and Yemen, the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, Syria's murder of more than 25,000 of its own citizens in Hama.

MUCH OF THE WEST DOES not just lament the error of Israel's creation, but is prepared to assist, either actively or passively, in reversing that historical mistake. Iranian president Ahmadinejad threatens to wipe Israel or the map, and his predecessor publicly offered his calculus for a nuclear exchange with Israel: one nuclear bomb could wipe out Israel's five million Jews, whereas the loss of an equal number of Iranians would still leave another 15 million alive.

Despite the blatant threats against Israel's existence, Ahmadinejad is still treated to submissive visits from U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and a host of European dignitaries, and a fawning interview by America's "toughest" TV journalist focusing on his sweet family and sartorial tastes. Meanwhile, after more than 3 years of diplomatic talk-talk, we are no closer to the most minimal collective action to halt Iran's nuclear ambitions.

Even more telling is the West's refusal to grant Israel the right to defend itself from attack. It is the West that has made the terrorists' tactic of embedding themselves among civilians a win-win proposition: If their missiles kill Israelis, that is a win; and if Israel strikes back at those firing those missiles and kills civilians as well, the ensuing media condemnations of Israel are an even greater win.

Those who routinely condemn every Israeli attempt to strike back at those operating from among civilians populations as "disproportionate" or "war crimes," without every specifying how Israel should protect its citizens (other than announcing its own dissolution), effectively deny Israel the right to defend itself. In our rough neighborhood a state that cannot defend itself will not long survive.

The irony, however, is that by denying Israel the right to defend itself, the Europeans only make more likely the most disastrous possible outcomes. Shin Bet head Yuval Diskin has testified that missiles are pouring into Gaza, just as they poured into southern Lebanon between 2000 and 2006. And efforts are underway to bring them into the West Bank as well.

Given Israel's vulnerability to missile attack, and the world's condemnation of any response, the Palestinians will be tempted to use those missiles to keep Israel in a permanent state of mobilization and to make life generally intolerable. At that point, it will literally be them or us.

And especially if the Palestinians were to unleash their missiles in the midst of a conventional war with Syria or Egypt or both, Israel would have no time to go searching for Palestinian missiles house to house. It would have no choice but to level Palestinian areas and send the population packing.

Where things would go from there no one wants to contemplate. But the West should not count on Israel to go quietly into the night.

By refusing to take Iran's nuclear threats seriously or permit Israel to defend itself in the same fashion as any other nation, the West could well be sowing its own worst case scenario.

Dad would have appreciated the irony.

You can read more of Jonathan Rosenblum's articles here.

Technorati Tag: Israel.

A Kinder, Gentler Alternative To AIPAC?

A kinder, gentler alternative to AIPAC may be in the works.

On board with this is George Soros, the billionaire philanthropist and major contributor to MoveOn.org, who sent a top staffer to a meeting in September to explore the possibilities, according to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency:

The September meeting — and other related meetings — focused on how best to press the U.S. Congress and the Bush administration to back greater U.S. engagement toward resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and how to better represent American Jews who don’t buy into AIPAC’s often hawkish policies.

This is the same Soros who was criticized in 2003 at a conference on funding for Israel, when he said Israel was partially responsible for the increased anti-Semitism in Europe because of its strong response to Palestinian terrorism during the intifada.

Among those who attended the September meeting were:

David Elcott, the executive director of the Israel Policy Forum, Debra DeLee, president and CEO of Americans for Peace Now; Mara Rudman, a Clinton-era member of the National Security Council and now a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a Washington think tank; Daniel Levy, a former adviser to dovish Israeli politician Yossi Beilin who now works at the New America Foundation, another Washington think tank; M.J. Rosenberg, director of IPF’s Washington office; Jeremy Rabinovitz, chief of staff to U.S. Rep. Lois Capps (D-Calif.), a congresswoman who often backs positions taken by the dovish pro-Israel groups; Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Reform movement’s Religious Action Center, and his deputy, Mark Pelavin; and representatives of Brit Tzedek v’Shalom, another dovish, pro-Israel advocacy group.

Apparently, part of the impetus for the project is the result of the success of three of the above groups--IPF, APN and Brit Tzedek--in killing the Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act, which would have cut off US aid to the Palestinian Authority until it renounced terrorism and recognizes Israel.

...the three dovish groups surprised many members of Congress with the vehemence of their response; Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives said that calls opposing the legislation outpaced those in support by a 3-1 margin.

Additionally, working behind the scenes, the dovish lobbyists helped moderate the Senate version of the act considerably, working in exceptions for assistance to Mahmoud Abbas, the relatively moderate P.A. president, allowing President Bush greater power to waive the sanctions and removing language that would have severely restricted aid to nongovernmental organizations working with the Palestinians.

The differences between the Senate and House versions ultimately were irreconcilable, and the bill never landed on Bush’s desk for signing.

By all appearances, an new advocacy group with such a philosophy behind it has the potential for creating all kinds of sparks as it would go head-to-head against AIPAC, although one of the organizers behind the idea denies it:

One of the organizers of the initiative insisted that the effort was not meant to replace or confront AIPAC.

“It’s kind of like GM and Ford,” said the organizer, who asked not to be identified because the effort was still in the planning stages.

“We put out a model of a product and go into the marketplace of ideas and compete. We are a group of people who are looking for the best way to ensure Israel’s survival and future,” said the organizer, describing the initiative’s aims as favoring a two-state solution and greater U.S. engagement.

“We’re going into existence because this product is not being offered right now. We want to make sure that this point of view has a clear and loud voice.”

If it is being suggested that the idea of a two-state solution "is not being offered right now," that is somewhat naive. If the purpose of the group will be to "make sure that this point of view has a clear and loud voice," the question arises if the problem really is that the point of view needs a clear and loud voice here in the US--or in Gaza and the West Bank.

Besides, GM and Ford can compete without confronting each other because they can sell different cars.
But there is only one Israel.

Based on the actions of groups and individuals associated with this initiative, Caroline Glick sees as their goal the formation of a decidedly anti-Israel lobby and suggests:

Now is the time for the Olmert government to forthrightly announce that the new lobby is not pro-Israel, but rather anti-Israel.

Even if the government does no such thing, Israel’s citizens have a responsibility to explain to the organized American Jewish community and to its umbrella organization, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, that we, the citizens of the largest Jewish community in the world, view these groups as anti-Zionist. Israeli citizens should request an explanation for the inclusion of some of these groups in pro-Israel umbrella organizations like the Conference of Presidents when their goal is to weaken Israel, to weaken Israel’s alliance with the US and to strengthen Israel’s enemies.

In any case, the halls of Washington are going to be getting a little bit more crowded--and not only because of the possible appearance of a 2nd pro-Israel advocacy group. Let's not forget about the Arab lobby:

The Arab lobby in Washington was a major factor behind American pressure on Israel to change its policy of keeping American Arabs out of Judea and Samaria, the London Telegraph reported. American Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice objected to the policy, claiming it could drive 35,000 Arabs with American citizenship from their homes.

"A vigorous advocacy campaign by Palestinian-Americans in the United States, echoing the kind usually associated with Washington's pro-Israel groups, is credited with getting the U.S. to pressure Israel," the newspaper stated.

Maybe George Soros and his friends could promote the creation of a dovish pro-Arab advocacy group?

Technorati Tag: Israel and George Soros and AIPAC.

Jimmy Carter's New Book: Israel Is Apartheid

Jimmy Carter, the gift that keeps on giving to the GOP, is coming out with a new book: Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.

Here he goes again.

According to The Forward:

Israel’s current policy in the territories, Carter writes in the book’s summary, is “a system of apartheid, with two peoples occupying the same land but completely separated from each other, with Israelis totally dominant and suppressing violence by depriving Palestinians of their basic human rights.” In a separate passage in the advance draft, the former president stated that “Israel’s continued control and colonization of Palestinian land have been the primary obstacles to a comprehensive peace agreement in the Holy Land.”

In addition, Carter takes what is being interpreted by some critics as a swipe at the pro-Israel lobby. “Because of powerful political, economic, and religious forces in the United States, Israeli government decisions are rarely questioned or condemned,” the former president writes.

Left unexplained is how land that was never under the control of a "Palestinian People" can be characterized as 'Palestinian land'. Then again, fine historical points and facts have not been known to stand in the way of Jimmy Carter.

More interesting is the actual history of the 1979 Camp David Accords--Carter's sole claim to any success or expertise in the Middle East, especially considering his disastrous mishandling of the Iran Crisis. Yet the actual extent of that role is debatable:

According to Jay Nordlinger in the National Review in an article in 2002:

Whatever the weather, Carter has enjoyed a reputation as a Middle East sage, owing to his role in the 1979 Camp David accords. Yet that reputation rests on shaky ground. The painful truth is, Sadat and Begin had their deal worked out before ever approaching Washington. Prof. Bernard Lewis, dean of Middle East scholars, put it this way to PBS's Charlie Rose recently: "The popular mythology is that Sadat made this enormously courageous and imaginative gesture of offering peace. . . . [Sadat and Begin] then went to the United States to discuss it further, and thanks to the wise statesmanship of Jimmy Carter and his staff, they were able to bring [their work] to a successful conclusion, to a peace treaty." Why, in fact, did the two principals ring the White House? "Well, obviously," explained Lewis, "they needed someone to pay the bill, and who but the United States could fulfill that function?"

Apparently there is good reason to question Carter's alleged role as an honest broker, based on funding he has received for his Carter Center from various Arab donors:

NewsMax has reviewed annual reports that indicate millions of charitable dollars have flowed into the center from His Majesty Sultan Qaboss bin Said Al Said of Oman, Jordan, from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and from the Government of the United Arab Emirates.

Furthermore, hundreds of thousands of dollars have been donated to the center by the Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development. H.R.H. Prince Moulay Hicham Ben Abdallah of Morocco has also contributed tens of thousands of dollars.

There are no corresponding contributions apparent from Israeli sources, however.

So it is not surprising to read in another article by Nordinger about Jimmy Carter:

No one quite realizes just how passionately anti-Israel Carter is. William Safire has reported that Cyrus Vance acknowledged that, if he had had a second term, Carter would have sold Israel down the river.

Nor is it surprising that Carter has the Democrats in a bit of a quandry in the remaining weeks leading up to the elections:

With less than three weeks left before Election Day, Jewish Democrats have been quick both to disavow Carter’s views and to assert that Carter is a marginal figure within the party on the issue, despite being a former president and a Nobel Peace Prize winner. At the same time, however, the Democratic National Committee included him in a list of past pro-Israel presidents in an advertisement this week that was aimed at shoring up support among Jewish voters. The ad features a 1977 quote from Carter describing the “special relationship” between the United States and Israel, and saying that “it’s absolutely crucial that no one in our country or around the world ever doubt that our number one commitment in the Middle East is to protect the right of Israel to exist, to exist permanently, and to exist in peace.”

Carter's book is not going to be providing as much election-fodder as it could since the publication date has been moved from November 1 to November 14. According to the publisher's spokesperson, this was done to allow Carter time to add material from the Hezbollah war.

I don't understand why Carter would need the extra time.
Anything he is going to say about Israel, he has already said.
And will keep on saying.

See also Alan Dershowitz's critique on Carter's book

Crossposted on Israpundit

Technorati Tag: Israel and Jimmy Carter and Camp David.

Martin Kramer's Rebuttal of Mearsheimer and Walt: Is It A Worse Approach?

Martin Kramer points out 2 basic arguments for saying that Israel is an asset to the US:

1. The Holocaust and Jewish persecution creates a moral obligation that the civilized world owes Israel.
2. Israel is an outpost of democracy in the Middle East.

But there are downsides provided by those very same arguments:
1. An obligation can be a liability as well as an asset.
2. A non-democratic state, such as Saudi Arabia, can be an asset--assuring the flow of oil. By the same token, the PA and Iran are more democratic than Saudi Arabia, yet have not been assets to the US.

Those 2 arguments are nevertheless sufficient for most people.

But everywhere in the West, there is a sliver of elite opinion that is not satisfied with these rationales. It includes policymakers and analysts, journalists, and academics. By habit and by preference, they have a tendency to view any consensus with skepticism. In their opinion, the American people cannot possibly be wiser than them -- after all, look whom they elect -- and so they deliberately take a contrary position on issues around which there is broad agreement. In this spirit, many of them view U.S. support for Israel as a prime focal point for skepticism.

Take for instance John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, and their paper “The Israel Lobby: Israel in U.S. Foreign Policy.” As proponents of the Realist approach, they find issues of historical oblication and an ally's respect for human rights to be irrelevant. Instead, US support for Israel is a liability, the interests of 5 million American Jews alienating the US from a billion Moslems--and AIPAC, the epitome of the Israel Lobby, blinding the US to the problem.

As a result of the Israel Lobby, the US has unwisely gotten involved in an invasion of Iraq and an unnecessarily antagonistic opposition to Iran's pursuit of nuclear power.

So what is Kramer's alternative to the classic moral obligation/democratic ally argument:

My answer, to anticipate my conclusion, is this: United States support for Israel is not primarily the result of Holocaust guilt or shared democratic values; nor is it produced by the machinations of the “Israel Lobby.” American support for Israel -- indeed, the illusion of its unconditionality – underpins the pax Americana in the eastern Mediterranean. It has compelled Israel’s key Arab neighbors to reach peace with Israel and to enter the American orbit. The fact that there has not been a general Arab-Israeli war since 1973 is proof that this pax Americana, based on the United States-Israel alliance, has been a success. From a realist point of view, supporting Israel has been a low-cost way of keeping order in part of the Middle East, managed by the United States from offshore and without the commitment of any force. It is, simply, the ideal realist alliance.

In contrast, the problems the United States faces in the Persian Gulf stem from the fact that it does not have an Israel equivalent there, and so it must massively deploy its own force at tremendous cost. Since no one in the Gulf is sure that the United States has the staying power to maintain such a presence over time, the Gulf keeps producing defiers of America, from Khomeini to Saddam to Bin Laden to Ahmadinejad. The United States has to counter them, not in the interests of Israel, but to keep the world’s great reserves of oil out of the grip of the West’s sworn enemies.

But there is a problem with the approach that the US has benefitted from Israel as a lever by which to acquire concessions from the Arab World--concessions which it would not have been able to otherwise. Kramer's approach implies a level of manipulation that cannot always be assumed to be in Israel's interest:

In a paradoxical way, the United States has been a major beneficiary of the Israeli occupation of Arab territories: Arab leaders who wish to regain lost territory must pass an American test. When they do, the United States rewards them, and the result has been a network of American-endorsed agreements based on American-mediated Israeli concessions.

Very nice, but by rewarding the Arab leaders each time, the US has taught those leaders that they need not suffer the consequences of their actions and may thereby even encourage their attacks, knowing that land lost is easily regained. If the peace treaty with Egypt is an example of one of those "American-endorsed agreements based on American-mediated Israeli concessions," one could easily make the argument that given the minimal requirements made upon Egypt and the continued vilification of both Israel and the US in the Egyptian press, combined with the enormous amount of American aid with no clear gain in return--makes the suggested American benefit suspect.

When Kramer's refers to Israel as an ally, it is not in the sense of a country with whom the US associates or cooperates with such as Great Britain or Australia, but more as a "an interest" which is manipulated to serves the goals of the US. Middle East allies are apparently different.

Reduced in her stature as an ally in this way, Kramer criticizes the Disengagement as an attempt for Israel to do something that only the US should be doing--giving Israeli land to her enemies:

That Israel looms so large as a valuable ally and asset, in a Middle East of failed and failing states, is an achievement in which Israel can rightly take pride. But it must never be taken for granted. Israel has come perilously close to doing so in recent years, by unilaterally evacuating occupied territory -- first in Lebanon, but more importantly in Gaza. Whatever the merits of “disengagement” in its various forms, it effectively cuts out the United States as a broker, and has created the impression that Arabs can regain territory by force, outside the framework of the pax Americana.

The problem, according to Kramer, is not that by personally giving back land to her enemies Israel encourages them and absolves them of the consequences of aggression; it is that Israel thereby deprives the US of the political benefit of such actions.

And then Kramer finally says plainly what he has meant all along:

If Israel is to preserve its value as a client, its territorial concessions must appear to be made in Washington.

Israel is a client, a country under the patronage of, and dependent on, the US--not an ally.

The manipulation becomes more obvious:

In Israel, by contrast, the United States is allied to a militarily adept, economically vibrant state that keeps its part of the Middle East in balance. The United States has to help maintain that balance with military aid, peace plans, and diplomatic initiatives.

To keep that "balance," Israel by definition will never be allowed by the US to be too strong or the Arab enemies threatening her allowed to become too weak. Seen in this way, a Palestinian state is the natural result of the search for balance, a check on Israel. The utilitarian pragmatic Realist approach is a success because of American lives and resources saved:

...according to the realist model, a policy that upholds American interests without the dispatch of American troops is a success by definition. American support of Israel has achieved precisely that.

To tell you the truth, I'm not sure that I'm all that much happier with Martin Kramer's interpretation of Israel's relationship with the US over Mearsheimer's and Walt's.

Crossposted at Israpundit

Technorati Tag: Israel and Martin Kramer and John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt and Israel Lobby.

Mearsheimer and Walt Sign On With Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Vital Perspective notes that the Forward reports that Mearsheimer and Walt have been busy. They wrote a paper on the influence of the Israel Lobby. They then gave a talk sponsored by CAIR, a group about which Daniel Pipes noted last year: "five persons associated with CAIR have been convicted, listed as an unindicted co-conspirator, or deported on terrorism-related charges."

Now the Forward reports that Farrar, Straus and Giroux is going to publish a book length version of their findings.

According to Wikipedia:

FSG is considered one of the last of the old-fashioned literary publishers and is widely celebrated for its renowned lines of literary fiction, narrative nonfiction, poetry, and children's literature.

Which category do Mearsheimer and Walt fit?
It isn't obvious, is it?

Technorati Tag: Israel and Mearsheimer and Walt.

Actual Study Disputes CAIR-Bears Mearsheimer and Walt

At The Corner, Michael Rubin asks How Important is the Israel Lobby?

And the answer falls short of what CAIR Bears Mearsheimer and Walt claim:

In the academy today, politics of research are more important than the supporting evidence. John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt became academic pop stars when they used the internet to research and produce, under Harvard’s banner, a polemic blaming the Israel Lobby for skewing American policy away from Washington’s natural interests.

Now David Verbeeten has done research, not on internet blog, but rather in libraries and archives (imagine that!), and looked at U.S. policy going back to the Eisenhower administration. He shows how the White House and State Department played realpolitik and sought to align U.S. policy with the more numerous and oil-rich Arab states but, over time, successive administrations learned the hard way that Israel was a truer ally.

What’s really sad is that people will take a second mortgage to send their kids to Harvard or Chicago and, so long as their politics are correct for the academy, professors needn’t bother to do their homework.

Technorati Tag: Israel and Israel Lobby and Mearsheimer and Walt.

The Next Time CAIR Screams Discrimination...

Power Line links to a

ludicrous news story comes from Agence France-Presse: an article titled "US Muslims plagued by discrimination after 9/11 attacks."

The AFP piece alleges that:

Discrimination and harassment by law enforcement have come to plague American Muslims in the years since the terrorist attacks of September 11.

There have been suspicious looks, slurs, physical attacks, extra screening at airports and arrests on groundless charges.

And it seems to be getting worse.

"Suspicious" does seem to be the operative word when it comes to these claims.

The FBI tracks such attacks under the label of 'hate crime'. What exactly is a 'hate crime'? :

A hate crime, also known as a bias crime, is a criminal offense committed against a person, property, or society that is motivated, in whole or in part, by the offender’s bias against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, or ethnicity/national origin.

The FBI breakdown of the hate crime attacks in 2004 based on anti-religious bias, shows that the Jews are far and away the majority victim of religion-based hate attacks.

Bias motivation	Incidents	Offenses	Victims	Known offenders
Anti-Jewish	954	1,003	1,076	330
Anti-Catholic	57	57	68	37
Anti-Protestant	38	43	48	28
Anti-Islamic	156	193	201	124
Anti-Other Religion	128	140	147	68
Anti-Multiple Religions, Group	35	37	39	14
Anti-Atheism/Agnosticism/etc.	6	7	7	3
Total religion:	1,374	1,480	1,586	604

As Daniel Pipes notes, Jews constitute 69% of the victims of such attacks, while Moslems constitute 11%.

Clearly, the fact that the threat to Jews is greater is not helped by CAIR itself (some of whose board members have been convicted of having connections to terrorist groups) when in August it hosted a forum for Mearsheimer and Walt on the influence of the 'Israel Lobby'.

But Daniel Pipes goes a step further. He examines an annual report put out by CAIR entitled Unequal Protection: The Status of Muslim Civil Rights in the United States 2005 which the media used as the basis at the time to come out with headlines about the dramatic rise in anti-Moslem hate crime.

Only one problem, according to Pipes:

We examined in detail some "examples of anti-Muslim hate crime reports received by CAIR in 2004," on p. 43, plus some "samples" on p. 53 and discovered a pattern of sloppiness, exaggeration, and distortion:

1. CAIR cites the July 9, 2004 case of apparent arson at a Muslim-owned grocery store in Everett, Washington. But investigators quickly determined that Mirza Akram, the store's operator, staged the arson to avoid meeting his scheduled payments and to collect on an insurance policy. Although Akram's antics were long ago exposed as a fraud, CAIR continues to list this case as an anti-Muslim hate crime.

2. CAIR also states that "a Muslim-owned market was burned down in Texas" on August 6, 2004. But already a month later, the owner was arrested for having set fire to his own business. Why does CAIR include this incident in its report?

3. CAIR lists the March 2005 lawsuit filed by the Salmi family for the firebombing of their family van as one example of a hate crime report it received in 2004. However, the crime named in the lawsuit occurred in March 2003, was already reported by CAIR in 2003, and should not have been tabulated again in the 2004 report.

4. CAIR reports that "a home-made bomb exploded outside of the Champions Mosque in the Houston suburb of Spring, Texas," staking its claim on eyewitness reports that on July 4, 2004, "two white males" were seen placing the bomb. We inquired about the incident and found that Spring's sheriff department could not locate any police files about an explosion. Further inquiries to the mosque and an e-mail to CAIR both went unanswered. There is scant evidence that any crime even occurred.

5. CAIR notes that "investigators in Massachusetts are still investigating a potential hate-motivated arson against the Al-Baqi Islamic Center in Springfield." However the case was long ago ruled a simple robbery, news that even CAIR's own website has posted. The Associated Press reported on January 21, 2005, that prosecutors determined the fire was set by teen-age boys "who broke into the Al-Baqi mosque to steal money and candy, then set the fire to cover their tracks." The boys, they clarified, "weren't motivated by hatred toward Muslims."

6. CAIR describes what happened to a Muslim family in Tucson, Arizona: "bullet shots pierced their home as they ate dinner in October 2004" and two months later their truck was smashed and vandalized. But the only evidence that either incident was motivated by hate of Muslims is the Dehdashti family itself, not the police. Detective Frank Rovi of Pima County Sheriff's Department, who handled the shooting investigation, said that according to the neighbors, the desert area by the Dehdashti house was often used for target practice. Neither incident was classified as a hate crime and both cases were closed by February 2005, long before the CAIR report went to press. [emphasis added]
   

Of twenty "anti-Muslim hate crimes" in 2004 that CAIR describes, at least six are invalid – and further research could likely find problems with the other fourteen instances.

Pipes goes on to give further examples.

In a follow-up post, Pipes notes that NPR did a segment on the problems with the methodology used by different groups in general to track and report bias attacks. The audio of the report is available from the NPR site. The reporter, Mike Pesca, notes that

any bias incident, from a Muslim being yelled at from a passing car, to a Muslim being profiled on a plane, can wind up in CAIR's report.

Pipes also has a post that refers to 2 posts by Michelle Malkin back in 2003--Myth of the Muslim hate crime epidemic and More Muslim hate crime myths about false accounts of hate crimes against Moslems.

The plague that the AFP report refers to is actually a plague of falsely attributed hate crimes that CAIR does not admit--let alone denounce--even after the deceit is revealed. According to The American Thinker last month:

To date, so far as I can tell, not only has CAIR not apologized for falsely accusing non-Muslims of hatred and bias in the respective communities where these hate crime hoaxes occurred, but the press releases on CAIR’s website go uncorrected even after the truth is revealed. For instance, a press release related to a staged hate crime in McAllen, Texas still appears today without any correction or update whatsoever, even though multiple media outlets, including even the New York Times, had debunked the incident as a hate crime hoax perpetrated by the “victim” almost two years ago.

The staging of hate crimes continues in July 2006--as the same article from The American Thinker describes in detail.

Besides the issue of hate crimes being staged, CAIR itself has dabbled in the kind of fake photography that would make Reuters proud. As reported in Jihad Watch on September 15 of last year, hijabs were photoshopped onto 2 women--and a man--at an interfaith vigel.

Photoshopped Photo	Actual Photo

CAIR does know how to keep itself busy.

Technorati Tag: CAIR and Islamophobia and ReutersGate.

Mearsheimer and Walt Was Just the Beginning

I suppose this was inevitable:

In a case in Illinois of a man on trial for channeling millions of dollars to Hamas, the defense lawyers are asking a federal judge to hold a hearing to examine connections between the persecution and Israel

In a motion filed yesterday, attorneys for Muhammad Salah asked to call witnesses and present other evidence to prove that the criminal case is the product of "the joint venture, cooperation, and partnership" between the American and Israeli governments. The defense lawyers said Israel should be compelled to turn over evidence favorable to Mr. Salah because the Israeli and American governments have acted in lockstep in the case.

...A defense lawyer, Michael Deutsch, described a "longstanding and profound political military and law enforcement relationship" between Israel and America. One authority he cited is an academic paper published in March, "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy." The hotly disputed treatise by a political science professor at the University of Chicago, John Mearsheimer, and the academic dean at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, Stephen Walt, argues that pro-Israel elements have effective control over American strategy in the Middle East.

Mr. Deutsch also asked to present evidence about the role of the Anti-Defamation League as a "conduit and facilitator" between Israeli and American authorities.

Personally, I think there should be a panel similar to the one CAIR hosted for Mearsheimer and Walt--to look at the influence of the Islamic lobby in general, and CAIR in particular.

And I would love to have a judge look at the role of CAIR as a "conduit and facilitator" for terrorists.

Actually, there have been judges looking at the connection between CAIR and terrorists--and indicting CAIR officials and Board members.

According to Anti-CAIR:

CAIR Employees And Officials Support Terror

Senior CAIR employee Randall Todd Royer, a/k/a "Ismail" Royer, pled guilty and was sentenced to twenty years in prison 0for participating in a network of militant jihadists centered in Northern Virginia. He admitted to aiding and abetting three persons who sought training in a terrorist camp in Pakistan for the purpose of waging jihad against American troops in Afghanistan. Royer's illegal actions occurred while he was employed with CAIR.

CAIR's Director of Community Relations, Bassem Khafagi , was arrested by the United States due to his ties with a terror-financing front group. Khafagi pled guilty to charges of visa and bank fraud, and agreed to be deported to Egypt. Khafagi's illegal actions occurred while he was employed by CAIR.

On December 18, 2002, Ghassan Elashi , founding board member of CAIR-Texas, a founder of the Holy Land Foundation, and a brother-in-law of Musa Abu Marzook , was arrested by the United States and charged with, among other things, making false statements on export declarations, dealing in the property of a designated terrorist organization, conspiracy and money laundering. Ghassan Elashi committed his crimes while working at CAIR, and was found Guilty.

CAIR Board Member Imam Siraj Wahaj, an un-indicted co-conspirator in the first World Trade Center bombing, has called for replacing the American government with an Islamic caliphate, and warned that America will crumble unless it accepts Islam.

Rabih Haddad served as a CAIR Fundraiser. Haddad was co-founder of the Global Relief Foundation ("GRF"). GRF was designated by the US Treasury Department for financing the Al Qaida and other terrorist organizations and its assets were frozen by the US Government on December 14, 2001.

Also, Daniel Pipes notes that:

A class action lawsuit in the name of John P. O'Neill, Sr., stemming from the 9/11 atrocity, has named the Council on American-Islamic Relations [CAIR] as a defendant.

Funny how those who express concern about undue influence on America studiously ignore the obvious.

Technorati Tag: Israel and Mearsheimer and CAIR and Hamas.

Mearsheimer and Walt Meet CAIR

Here we have two guys who have written about the Israel Lobby and how it has inordinate control over the US, which sacrifices its own interests for those of Israel--and who do these two great scholars go speak in front of?

CAIR-DC: 'Israel Lobby' Press Club Panel 'Sold Out'

Mearsheimer, Walt to discuss lobby's impact on U.S. response to Lebanon war

DC: 'ISRAEL LOBBY' PRESS CLUB PANEL 'SOLD OUT'

(WASHINGTON, D.C., 8/22/06) - The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) announced today that all the available spaces for a panel discussion on "The Israel Lobby and the U.S. Response to the War in Lebanon" at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., have been reserved.

The panel will feature Professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, authors of a recent Harvard University paper titled "The Israel Lobby."

If Mearsheimer and Walt need a proper introduction to CAIR, they couldn't do any better than take a look at the Anti-CAIR site: the one that CAIR sued--and then dropped their suit.

After hearing the claims that Mearsheimer and Walt made, and then to see them go and address CAIR--who epitomize everything that the two of them have claimed to be opposed to--is as good an indication as any of the emptiness of their claims.

While looking around, I noticed that Judeosphere has already dealt with the implications of this meeting of the minds in a post on his blog.

I'll just add my own too cents on the absurdity of Mearsheimer's and Walt's paper in light of who they like to associate with.

According to Anti-CAIR:

Sept. 2003 Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Homeland Security U.S. Senator Richard Durbin said, "[CAIR is] unusual in its extreme rhetoric and its associations with groups that are suspect" whule U.S. Senator Charles Schumer has stated that "we know [CAIR] has ties to terrorism" and "intimate links with Hamas"

On its home page, Anti-CAIR also notes:

Since its founding in 1994, the Council on American-Islamic Relations and its employees have combined, conspired, and agreed with third parties, including, but not limited to, the Islamic Association for Palestine ("IAP"), the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development ("HLF"), the Global Relief Foundation ("GRF "), and foreign nationals hostile to the interests of the United States, to provide material support to known terrorist organizations, to advance the Hamas agenda, and to propagate radical Islam. The Council on American-Islamic Relations, and certain of its officers, directors, and employees, have acted in support of, and in furtherance of, this conspiracy.

On that last point, Anti-CAIR give the specifics on five employees and officers of CAIR--not just members--who have supported terror.

Meanwhile, Daniel Pipes has information on a class action lawsuit in the name of John P. O'Neill, Sr., stemming from 9/11 which has named the Council on American-Islamic Relations as a defendant.

Hey, if Mearsheimer and Walt want to give credibility to CAIR, no one is going to stop them. But by showing what they are really made of, Mearsheimer and Walt have lost whatever credibility they may have still had.

Technorati Tag: Israel and Mearsheimer and CAIR.

The Da Vinci Code: Bad For The Jews?

The upcoming movie The DaVinci Code is based on a book that has elements that are oddly familiar.

According to David Klinghoffer's The Da Vinci Protocols: Jews should worry about Dan Brown's success, the book describes a secret organization, the Priory of Sion, which is locked in perpetual combat with a sinister Catholic group called Opus Dei that wants to keep a certain Church secret from becoming public. To preserve this coverup, Opus Dei will resort to anything--even murder.

Now comes the familiar part:

Brown himself states at the outset of the novel that his tale is grounded in "fact": "The Priory of Sion—a European secret society founded in 1099—is a real organization," and so on.

Scholars have done a solid job of pointing out the fictions that interweave Brown's "facts." Notably, the "Priory of Sion" is "real" only in the sense that it really is the modern invention of Pierre Plantard, a peculiar Frenchman with royalist and anti-Semitic views. It dates to the year 1956, not 1099. Plantard's hoax merely took the name of a medieval monastic order that had ceased to exist by the 14th century...

Remind you of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion?

• Phoney cabals
• Falsified history
• Accusations of secret plots

While he makes clear that Brown does not consciously do so, Klinghoffer believes the book and movie are a boon to anti-Semites, but popularizing the use of conspiracy theories and accusations of deception in attacking religion instead of dealing with traditional religious beliefs at face value.

This of course is a popular technique that we have seen in action very recently, as Jonathan Rosenblum points out:

However weak as an analytical tool, the "Israel Lobby" is a potent rhetorical device. Walt and Mearsheimer accuse supporters of Israel of attempting to squelch debate on American policy towards Israel, but it is they who seek to suppress debate. They prefer to dismiss such renowned scholars as Bernard Lewis and Fouad Ajami as members of the Lobby than to engage their arguments; to portray President Bush, Vice-President Cheney, and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld (not to mention former President Clinton) as helpless dupes of the Lobby than to discuss their policy choices.

And so it goes.

Personally, I'm looking forward to a showing of Albert Brooks' movie, Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World--maybe they'll have a preview of Ron Howard's next project: the movie version of The Satanic Verses! (just kidding).

Technorati Tag: The Da Vinci Code and Dan Brown and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Pierre Plantard and Anti-Semitism .

Is The Democratic Party Part of The Israel Lobby?

You might think so, to hear Howard Dean in a speech to the American Jewish Committee claim:

"I was recently asked about the difference between the Democratic and Republican parties," Dean said. "When it comes right down to it, the essential difference is that the Democrats fundamentally believe it is important to make sure that American Jews feel comfortable being American Jews."

Actually, Dean's statement reveals nothing so much as his poor memory. It was just last year that Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) and other Democrats staged a mock impeachment inquiry over the Iraq war:

The session took an awkward turn when witness Ray McGovern, a former intelligence analyst, declared that the United States went to war in Iraq for oil, Israel and military bases craved by administration "neocons" so "the United States and Israel could dominate that part of the world." He said that Israel should not be considered an ally and that Bush was doing the bidding of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

"Israel is not allowed to be brought up in polite conversation," McGovern said. "The last time I did this, the previous director of Central Intelligence called me anti-Semitic."

Rep. James P. Moran Jr. (D-Va.), who prompted the question by wondering whether the true war motive was Iraq's threat to Israel, thanked McGovern for his "candid answer."

At Democratic headquarters, where an overflow crowd watched the hearing on television, activists handed out documents repeating two accusations -- that an Israeli company had warning of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and that there was an "insider trading scam" on 9/11 -- that previously has been used to suggest Israel was behind the attacks.

Contrary to Dean's speech, you could just as easily argue that the Democratic Party is fertile ground for the musings of Mearsheimer and Walt (though it is refreshing to see the word 'activist' used in its traditional sense and not as a euphemism for 'terrorist'), though a number of Democrats did condemn what was said--including Conyers--afterwards.

Richard Baehr at The American Thinker has written a number of articles on the question of Republican vs. Democrat support for Israel. In The Growing Threat to Israel, he notes the solid support of Republicans for Israel as opposed to Democrats--all the more remarkable for the fact the majority of American Jews live in Democratic "blue states," while some of Israel's strongest supporters in Congress are Republicans in states with few Jews--such as Representatives Mike Pence of Indiana and Roy Blunt of Missouri and Senators Sam Brownback of Kansas and Richard Shelby of Alabama.

In another article, Why Does the Left Hate Israel, Baehr proposes 7 reasons, which he then goes on to explain in detail:

1. It is an easy way to express one’s hatred for America.


2. Israel is viewed as an outpost of colonialism , and an active practitioner of it.


3. Israel is a western nation, and hence can be judged by the left. Israel is not protected by cultural relativism, as the Arabs are.


4. Leftist Christian churches can escape any lingering guilt about the Holocaust, by turning Israel into a villain. Some leftist churches hate Israel because they think this will help protect their members in the holy land- in other words they feel threatened.


5. Ferocious Muslim hatred of Israel and the Jews reinforces the natural cowardice of many on the left who go along with the Muslims to stay out of their line of fire.


6. Jewish leftists are prominent in the anti-Israel movement. This opens the floodgates for everybody else.


7. Israel is attacked because the secular left is appalled by the influence of religious settlers and their biblical connections to the land of Israel, and by the support for Israel by evangelical Christians, and Christian Zionists.

With the Democrats' increasingly catering to the left wing--with its opposition and even outright hatred for President Bush and his policies--it is not difficult to see how the Democratic Party as a whole would be less favorable to Israel that the Republicans.

Of course, there are opponents to Israel on the Right as well, such as Patrick Buchanan, and you no longer hear people trumpeting the claim that Bush is the best friend Israel ever had, but as a group, the anti-Israel rhetoric is currently more concentrated on the Left.

Soccer Dad directed me to a post in Daniel Pipes' weblog back in March, Republicans and Democrats Look at the Arab-Israeli Conflict, which provides numbers on support for Israel between Republicans and Democrats:

Gallup Poll: Sympathies With The Israelis or The Palestinians Results By Party Affiliation and Ideology 2002-2006 Aggregate
	Israelis	Palestinians	Both/Neither/Don't Know
Conservative Republicans	78%	7%	14%
Moderate/Liberal Republicans	62%	16%	21%
Liberal Democrats	43%	23%	33%
Moderate Democrats	50%	17%	32%
Conservative Democrats	46%	23%	30%

By the same token, it is not enough just to have solid support from Republicans. As Baehr points out, it is not in Israel's best interests to have solid support on only one side of the Congressional aisle--thereby leaving support for Israel dependent on which party is in power.

If American Jews want their interests in Israel supported by both Republicans and Democrats, by the Left as well as the Right, we had better figure out just what our priorities are and how we define support for Israel. Platitudes such as Dean's ambiguously expressed desire to "make sure that American Jews feel comfortable being American Jews"--which, depending on how you understand it, can actual sound scary--are not enough. It is not enough accept to John Kerry's claim during the last election about his 100% voting record over a 20 year period, when, as reported by Rich Richman in John Kerry On Israel: Second To Several:

The JVL [Jewish Virtual Library] list notes that, in connection with the FY 2000 Foreign Aid Conference Report, Kerry opposed the pro-Israel position. In 2000, he failed to join 60 co-sponsors of the "Middle East Peace Process Support Act" — a bill calling on the president not to recognize a unilaterally declared Palestinian state. He also failed to co-sponsor the pro-Israel "Peace Through Negotiations Act," which attracted 60 co-sponsors.

In 1993, Kerry failed to join 55 senators signing the Grassley/Lautenberg letter to the State Department, which demanded that it include Hamas in its annual report on terrorism.

It is not enough to judge by the numbers. While Kerry voted for pro-Israel measures, he did not propose them himself; he just followed along. True allies and friends of Israel need to be judged by the quality of their support--and their support needs to be judged outside of Congress as well. One example is Republican Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who is working to slash US funding for the PA and the UN and ensure that America moves to isolate the new regime and whose Middle East Subcommittee of the House International Relations Committee, heard the findings about the exaggerated claims for Palestinian Arab population.

Bottom line, despite the FBI investigation of AIPAC and the Mearsheimer and Walt paper, Jews need to unite behind Israel's best interests and find and create friends in Congress and elsewhere who truly feel the same way.

Crossposted at Israpundit

Technorati Tag: Israel and Democrats and Republicans and Howard Dean and Ray McGovern and James Moran.