Tikun Olam-תקון עולם: Make the World a Better Place

The following is the Comment is Free article published last Tuesday when J Street launched. Before you read it, if you haven’t already visited the J Street site to join its mailing list, please consider doing so. And even more important, consider making a generous donation so J Street can begin to make a difference in Congress by promoting candidates who will engage with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and pressure our next president to make every effort to promote peace, not war. Now is the time for all good people to come to the aid of their country if we are ever to see peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

Recently, I attended a private Seattle dinner featuring J Street co-founders Daniel Levy and Jeremy Ben Ami. On April 15th, J Street will launch. It will be the first American Jewish PAC dedicated to promoting Israeli-Palestinian peace:

For too long, the primary and often only voices policy makers and politicians have heard regarding American policy toward Israel and the Middle East have been those of a vocal minority at the far-right of American society.

…Neoconservative, right-wing Jewish leaders and radical Christian Zionists have turned their definition of “pro-Israel” into a driving force in the American political process…

These voices do not…represent the mainstream of American Jews or the broader community that cares about Israel or American interests in the Middle East. Their efforts have skewed American policy, undermined Israeli and American interests, and constrained the domestic political and public debate about American foreign policy.

It is time for the mainstream of Americans–Jews and others–to establish a bold, political voice that advocates for the best interests of the U.S. and Israel, including a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict based on the 1967 borders with agreed reciprocal land swaps, and for American policy that will lead to real security for Israelis, Americans and the entire Middle East.

J Street proposes an overarching U.S. approach to the Middle East that eschews military conflict and embraces diplomatic negotiation; that advocates multilateralism over unilateralism; and dialogue over confrontation. It proposes negotiation with Syria and Iran rather than diplomatic isolation and threats. And it will advance these goals both in the legislative and electoral process as well as the media.

Daniel Levy is a British Jew and son of the leading fundraiser for Tony Blair’s Labor Party, Lord Levy. The younger Levy made aliyah to Israel in 1991, where he worked on the peace process with Labor governments. He moved to DC two years ago to become a senior fellow with the Center for American Progress, where he writes the well-respected blog, Prospects for Peace. Levy is the passionate, thoughtful, philosophical member of the duo. He is the deep thinker who ponders the big questions. Ben Ami, a former deputy domestic policy advisor in the Clinton administration is the operations chief. He knows the campaigns and the politicians. He is inside the political process. They make a good team.

J Street plans to do two things. First, it will be a traditional PAC raising funds to support a limited number of candidates for Senate and Congressional races. Second, it will lobby for and against Israel-related bills and legislation. Regarding the PAC portion of its mandate: in its first year (the current election cycle), it hopes to raise around $300,000 to funnel into three to five races in which it can make a significant impact in swing districts. According to the co-founders, it sees no benefit in going after long-serving Democrats who take doctrinaire pro-AIPAC positions because they are too entrenched. Rather, J Street sees its best efforts devoted to choosing races in which there is a weak incumbent with an anti-peace agenda running against a candidate who is open to J Street’s political agenda. Norm Coleman is someone high on the group’s list since he is such a weak incumbent and is opposed by Al Franken, who is already sympathetic to a pro-peace agenda regarding the I-P conflict.

In the following (2010) election cycle, J Street hopes to raise several million dollars and target a slightly larger number of races. Ben Ami noted that he and Levy had studied two critical AIPAC campaigns against Cynthia McKinney and Earl Hilliard. By cross-checking the donor lists they discovered that AIPAC wields an enormous amount of clout with a rather limited amount of donations (in the low millions).

However, it should be noted that AIPAC has a reach that extends far beyond merely punishing those it deems hostile to Israel. After all, it has a $60 million annual budget along with a deep volunteer base. Its power flows in many directions. In this sense, J Street really has its work cut out for itself.

The new group is studying AIPAC’s example and plans to use its tactics while turning them inside out on behalf of peace. Both co-founders reinforced that this effort is not meant to oppose, criticize or attack AIPAC. The idea is that there is room for AIPAC in this political debate while there is also room for a variety of other voices, including J Street.

Ben Ami, who was deputy domestic policy advisor in the Clinton administration, said they’d sounded out scores of politicians and their staffs about how J Street would be received. He is convinced that its message is welcomed with open arms almost universally. Of course, there will be some dyed in the wool Old School holdouts. But he believes that J Street is something the DC pols have been waiting for for a long time. They’ve been eager to break away from heterodoxy but needed the political cover to do so. J Street would help provide it for them.

In talking about what J Street planned to do differently from the mainstream Israel lobby organizations, I was heartened that it planned to pay lots of attention to voices of young people especially those represented by bloggers like Ezra Klein and Matt Ygleisias and others. Ben Ami sees the younger generation as the hope for the future as they haven’t yet bought “their father’s Oldsmobile” in terms of embracing the stereotypes and accepted wisdom of the established groups. The Israel lobby groups are heavily populated and led by the older generation and Jewish opinion surveys show that the younger generation is both more liberal on Israeli politics and more turned off by the Israel-centric issues dear to the heart of the Old School.

The J Street leaders also addressed their relationship with the three existing Jewish peace groups: Israel Policy Forum, Americans for Peace Now and Brit Tzedek. They said that J Street would not duplicate their efforts nor was it meant to replace them. Rather, J Street is the next logical step in the development of a pro-peace political agenda in which candidates would be encouraged to take an independent look at the I-P conflict and throw out old orthodoxies.

Levy, in his talk to the dinner group, emphasized that while Israelis realized that they were primarily responsible for resolving the conflict, that they also needed a good swift kick in the rear end from an energized American Jewish community and U.S. president. An Israeli prime minister like Olmert might welcome pressure coming from America to adopt a more forthcoming approach to the idea of compromise. He could then turn around to the Liebermans (Avigdor, not Joe) on his right and say: “If you want to buck our American friends, be my guest. But where will you turn once you do and they’ve abandoned you?” Levy believes that this narrative will resonate in Israeli political circles.

In fact, the group has recruited a group of distinguished Israeli academics, political analysts and former senior military officers to sign a letter of support for J Street. Among others, it includes former IDF chief of staff Amnon Lipkin Shahak, former foreign minister Shlomo Ben Ami, and former directors general of the foreign ministry David Kimche, Alon Liel, and Uri Savir.

It’s always important with efforts like this to examine the board member names. There are of course leaders of the main American Jewish peace groups. There are rabbis and academics. But most important there are heavy hitter political donors (Alan Solomont), policy wonks (Rob Malley), U.S. ambassadors to Israel (Samuel Lewis), high level political operatives (Eli Pariser of Moveon), Hollywood liberals (Robert Greenwald), business leaders, George Soros’ top aide (Morton Halperin), and even a former Republican senator (Lincoln Chafee) and former Congressman (Tom Downey). The major political donors and business leaders are critical to provide the funding necessary to have an impact on political campaigns.

The group founders believe that Barack Obama and his staff “get” J Street’s perspective while they believe a Clinton candidacy might not advance J Street’s mission as aggressively. In particular, Ben Ami mentioned Tony Lake, Obama’s chief foreign policy advisor as someone who was probably responsible for the candidate’s bracing Cleveland speech in which he admonished American Jews not to believe that a pro-Israel presidential candidacy need also be pro-Likud.

I came away from the dinner heartened by the J Street effort. Trying to be a realist after feeling burned by previous similar efforts, I’m not yet firmly convinced it will succeed. But it is bold, ambitious, well thought out, and doable. Many other dovish political efforts in the past had one or even two of those qualities going for them, but few have had all of them. That is in J Street’s favor.

One big question will be how AIPAC responds to the new initiative. As the big kid on the block it has the most to lose from J Street becoming a major success. So it’s got to feel threatened in some way. My only question is whether it feels defensive and threatened enough that it would take on J Street in its infancy. Already, AIPAC’s former director Morris Amitay has denounced J Street in the pages of the Jewish Forward. Amitay seems to be a surrogate for the group, which doesn’t want to lay down a marker in public yet on the matter. It remains to be seen how the big guns of the right-wing Israel lobby like Malcolm Hoenlein and Abe Foxman will react. If they do, they will only be endorsing the idea that J Street is a force to be reckoned with.

tags aipac, daniel levy, israel, israel-lobby, j street, jeremy-ben-ami, Mideast Peace, norm coleman, palestine, political-lobbying, tony lake

Word is beginning to leak out about the imminent launch of J Street, the new liberal Israel lobby being founded by Jeremy Ben Ami and Daniel Levy. I reported on Gershom Gorenberg’s essay in Prospect Magazine yesterday. Today brings James Besser’s story in Jewish Week which provides a few more details:

…The new project kicks off with a hush-hush fundraiser next Monday hosted by former Clinton administration official Jeremy Ben Ami and Daniel Levy, director of the Prospects for Peace Initiative of the Century Foundation. The group will be publicly launched around the middle of April; organizers said they will not speak publicly about the group until then.

“For too long, the loudest American voices in political and policy debates have been those on the far right — often Republican neoconservatives or extreme Christian Zionists,” according to the invitation. “J Street aims to change that. We are the first and only lobby and PAC (political action committee) dedicated to ensuring Israel’s security, changing the direction of American policy in the Middle East and opening up American political debate about Israel and the Middle East.”

While sources say the structure and initial goals of the new group are still in flux, it is expected to raise money for congressional candidates who advocate a stronger U.S. leadership role in ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and multilateral solutions to the region’s problems.

The group will be headed by Ben-Ami, who served as deputy domestic policy adviser in the Clinton administration and later as a media consultant. Ben-Ami has worked with several Jewish peace groups, including the Center for Middle East Peace and the Geneva Initiative-North America.

Unlike similar attempts in the past the board of directors of J Street seems to have the Jewish “gravitas” and fundraising clout to make it a success. It includes leaders of the three main liberal Jewish peace groups (APN, Brit Tzedek and IPF), major Democratic fundraisers, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel, and perhaps most importantly, Mort Halperin, George Soros’ major domo. I’m hoping that Halperin’s participation implies at least Soros’ tacit support for the group.

Keep your eyes peeled for attacks from the Jewish right which will come as sure as the spring rains in the Pacific Northwest.

tags aipac, daniel levy, george-soros, gershom-gorenberg, j street, james besser, jeremy-ben-ami, jewish-week, liberal israel lobby, morton-halperin

Let me start this post by saying that I support Barack Obama. But when Marty Peretz starts saying nice things about your candidate you know something’s up. Marty Peretz is the worst type of pro-Israel propagandist. He’s so far out in right field when it comes to Israel that there’s only a shade of difference between his views and those of Avigdor Lieberman or Bibi Netanyahu. In fact, if I was a bit more conspiratorial I’d say that an embrace from Marty is sort of like the Don’s giving you that fatal final hug before his henchmen mow you down in a hail of bullets. Maybe Marty knows how people like me would react and has deliberately made nice with Barack to make us hold our noses when we think of voting for him.

But seriously, a Marty Peretz endorsement is very troubling. With friends like him you don’t need enemies.

In the Jerusalem Post column Peretz actually argues with a straight face no support whatsoever that Obama would be more “pro-Israel” (read, pliant) than Clinton. His bile against the latter is astounding. This type of statement makes you wonder what Peretz is smoking:

…Even the most moderate Palestinians now assume that future discussions will start where Clinton left off. It is good to know that Obama understands why that won’t work.

I’m not one to give praise to the New Republic(an) in this blog. But I have to give them credit for publishing Gregory Levey’s story about Obama’s testy relationship with the pro-Israel Jewish community. He begins with the e mail smear campaign recently sweeping the inboxes of Jews throughout the country. Interestingly, an Obama staffer conjectures on the source of both the e mail and the mailing list used to circulate it. This passage begins with an especially telling quotation from Mort Klein which I couldn’t pass up:

A little while ago, I told Mort Klein, president of the influential Zionist Organization of America, that I was writing an article about Barack Obama.

“You mean Barack Mohammed Hussein Obama?” he asked, laughing.

Klein quickly stressed that he was joking, and that he didn’t put any stock in the anonymous e-mail circulating that claims Obama is not only a closet Muslim–and that his middle name is Mohammed–but also that the senator from Illinois is part of an Islamic conspiracy to destroy the U.S. by winning its highest office. He had, however, certainly received the defamatory e-mail, as well as another that alleges that Obama’s church is a racist and anti-Semitic institution that is more committed to Africa than to the United States.

Klein is far from alone. The Internet libel seems to have been directed in part at the Jewish community, and in recent weeks, these two emails have landed in the inboxes of thousands of Jews across the country. In fact, an adviser to the Obama campaign told me that he suspects the emails were originally sent using the mailing list of a Jewish nonprofit in Washington. He added that they may have originated with Middle East hawks skeptical about Obama’s approach to the region, but because the e-mail campaign has ramped up in both intensity and scope following Obama’s victory at the Iowa caucus, he believes that the candidate’s political foes may be pushing it.

“One can draw inferences on who might have interest in this spread,” he said.

Indeed one can. Can we surmise which “Jewish nonprofit in Washington” might’ve been the source of the e mail list? Would its acronym consist of five letters beginning with “A?” I think so. Then the question becomes: how did the spreaders of the smear get AIPAC’s list? Were they given it by staffers or key volunteers? We may never know the answer. But this sure smells of the type of chicanery for which AIPAC is famed/notorious.

Unlike Peretz’s tripe in the Jerusalem Post, Levey’s piece is well-worth reading and thoughtfully articulated. He deftly characterizes AIPAC’s schizoid attitude toward Obama:

Several other people connected to Middle East lobbying in Washington have told me…that they believe there is a rift between the official positions of AIPAC on Obama and the feelings of a good deal of its membership, possibly including some of its major donors. Because AIPAC doesn’t endorse candidates directly, but often encourages its very active membership to get involved in campaigns and fund-raising on their own, how the AIPAC rank-and-file acts is not a matter of diktat; it’s an accurate barometer of how it feels. And according to The Jerusalem Post, “When it comes to the Jewish establishment of campaign donors, fundraisers, and political players, support for Clinton is estimated to be twice that for Obama (except in his home state of Illinois, where he has deep connections with the Jewish community).” With regards to the AIPAC bigwigs, one former AIPAC official recently said to me that he believes that Obama’s stated willingness to diplomatically engage with some of Israel’s most avowed enemies makes much of the organization’s leadership “uncomfortable”–though they would never say so publicly because of a reluctance to sour their relationship with a potential future president.

There you have it: Obama’s willingness to entertain dialogue and negotiation is what scares the pants off the AIPAC crowd. They’d much rather a George Bush who does nothing for six years and then scurries around in his final two like a chicken with his head cut off trying to appear to be doing something. That type of lassitude regarding the U.S. relationship with Israel is far preferable in AIPAC’s eyes to a president who actually wants to engage in the issues and resolve the conflict. For AIPAC knows that to resolve the conflict Israel’s interests will have to be compromised (as will the Palestinian’s). Any compromise of Israel’s interests whatsover is treif.

Michael Lerner has also dealt with this “war for Obama’s soul” over I-P policy in a recent e mail which he sent to his Tikkun supporters:

Obams’s problem is that his spiritual progressive worldview is in conflict with the demands of the older generation of Jews who control the Jewish institutions and define what it is to be pro-Jewish, while his base consists of many young Jews who support him precisely because he is willing to publicly stand for the values that they hold. We can expect that this tension will be central should Obama win the nomination. But once in office, whether Obama actually pursues policies that are in accord with his highest beliefs as a spiritual progressive, or whether he finds it “too unrealistic” to try to buck the spineless Democrats who will bow to the Israel Lobby automatically, depends on whether we can build a powerful enough movement of ordinary citizens to push for a peace that provides security for Israel and justice for the Palestinian people. Obama has made it clear he would want to do that.

Justin Elliot at Mother Jones writes a column that treads similar ground to Levey’s but with a decidedly more downbeat take on the prospects for Obama actually standing up to the Lobby should he ever become president.

tags aipac, gregory-levey, martin-peretz, Matter-of-Trust, muslim-smear, new-republic, Obamas-Israel-Shuffle, Trust-Obama-on-Israel

Do you think Obama is thinking of all those elderly Jewish voters he has to face in Florida in a few weeks? And of his need to fend off a potential Clinton attack from his political right?

Dear Ambassador Khalilzad,

I understand that today the UN Security Council met regarding the situation in Gaza, and that a resolution or statement could be forthcoming from the Council in short order.

I urge you to ensure that the Security Council issue no statement and pass no resolution on this matter that does not fully condemn the rocket assault Hamas has been conducting on civilians in southern Israel…

All of us are concerned about the impact of closed border crossings on Palestinian families. However, we have to understand why Israel is forced to do this… Israel has the right to respond while seeking to minimize any impact on civilians.

The Security Council should clearly and unequivocally condemn the rocket attacks… If it cannot bring itself to make these common sense points, I urge you to ensure that it does not speak at all.

Sincerely,

Barack Obama
United States Senator

This letter is a perfect example of how election campaigns prostitute legitimate policy objectives. Of course, Israel was NOT forced to put Gaza under siege. To say otherwise is first of all to pander to the right-wing portion of the Jewish electorate and second to distort reality. Israel certainly has the right to respond to the Qassams but the method it has chosen has MAXIMAL impact on civilians. Unfortunately, Obama neglected to consider that fact.

Also disappointing is that Obama didn’t call for the UN ambassador to add a denunciation of the siege with his condemnation of the Qassam attacks. How many Arab-American voters do you think there are in Florida? Not many–just as I thought.

It’s no accident that this letter was first published by AIPAC’s favorite columnist, Shmuel Rosner. In fact, except for a few details in it, like the expression of concern for Gaza civilians, the letter could’ve been written by an AIPAC staffer. In fact, that’s a very strong possibility in this instance. Thanks to Racheli Gai who discovered this via the Tikkun daily newsletter.

There was talk earlier today that the Obama campaign denied he’d written the letter. But the U.S. UN Mission press office confirms that the Ambassador did receive a letter from Obama. And Rosner swears to it as well.

tags aipac, haaretz, obama-says-Gaza-siege-forced-on-Israel, shmuel-rosner

Mearsheimer and Walt have written an L.A. Times op-ed rightly taking the leading presidential candidates to task for their failure of leadership and nerve on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict:

…The presidential candidates are no friends of Israel. They are like most U.S. politicians, who reflexively mouth pro-Israel platitudes while continuing to endorse and subsidize policies that are in fact harmful to the Jewish state. A genuine friend would tell Israel that it was acting foolishly, and would do whatever he or she could to get Israel to change its misguided behavior. And that will require challenging the special interest groups whose hard-line views have been obstacles to peace for many years.

As former Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami argued in 2006, the American presidents who have made the greatest contribution to peace — Carter and George H.W. Bush — succeeded because they were “ready to confront Israel head-on and overlook the sensibilities of her friends in America.” If the Democratic and Republican contenders were true friends of Israel, they would be warning it about the danger of becoming an apartheid state, just as Carter did.

Moreover, they would be calling for an end to the occupation and the creation of a viable Palestinian state. And they would be calling for the United States to act as an honest broker between Israel and the Palestinians so that Washington could pressure both sides to accept a solution based on the Clinton parameters. Implementing a final-status agreement will be difficult and take a number of years, but it is imperative that the two sides formally agree on the solution and then implement it in ways that protect each side.

But Israel’s false friends cannot say any of these things, or even discuss the issue honestly. Why? Because they fear that speaking the truth would incur the wrath of the hard-liners who dominate the main organizations in the Israel lobby. So Israel will end up controlling Gaza and the West Bank for the foreseeable future, turning itself into an apartheid state in the process. And all of this will be done with the backing of its so-called friends, including the current presidential candidates. With friends like them, who needs enemies?

There’s nothing new in this, of course. No presidential candidate helped himself win an election by taking on the Israel lobby during a campaign. So the candidates aren’t stupid and they won’t take it on. They remember Howard Dean’s milquetoast comment asking why U.S. Mideast policy couldn’t be more even-handed. For that Joe Lieberman, slave of AIPAC that he is, accused him of “selling Israel down the river.” Dean was soundly thwacked.

So on the one hand, the authors are shouting down a well in writing this column. They’re only likely to hear their own voice echo back to them. But on the other hand, they provoke some important questions to consider: what do we need to do to create a safe zone around candidates that talk more forthrightly and reasonably around these issues during a campaign? How do we encourage pols to gird their loins and speak truth, if not to power, then at least to the American people? In this, we need to call upon the American Jewish peace camp to help. I’ve heard that Brit Tzedek plans to do a candidate forum but when I asked to publicize it here in my blogroll as a political education tool I was told the campaign would happen closer to the election.

Israel Policy Forum’s site doesn’t seem to offer much more on that front. Nor does Peace Now’s. Nor does Jewish Voice for Peace’s. If anyone from any of these groups knows more than I please enlighten us about what you’re doing. We can’t leave the political campaign to the AIPACs of the world, letting them frame the debate uncontested. I know that non-profit groups are limited in terms of what they can do on this front, but it seems to me that political education of the sort that the League of Women Voters and other non-profits do shouldn’t prevent a Jewish group from doing something similar.

Here’s what we shouldn’t be doing. Shmuel Rosner’s The Factor has created a faux computer ranking of the presidential candidates according to the determination of “how good they are for Israel.” Leave aside the utter vapidity of this criterion. How does Rudy Giuliani get a top ranking out of such a tilted system (and Obama ranked 12th–and lowest!)? Most everyone knows Rosner is little more than a shill for AIPAC. So despite having a panel of so-called experts reviewing candidates, the rankings are such that they would virtually match one created by AIPAC’s Howard Kohr.

Despite this criticism, I have to say that Rosner is providing a service that others should emulate. Why aren’t The Forward or JTA probing the candidates beneath their surface pro-Israel platitudes for their views on the I-P conflict?

tags aipac, israels-false-friends, presidential-candidates-unquestioning-support-for-israe, shmuel-rosner-the-factor, walt-mearsheimer

Rudy gives Pat a pat (on the back)--talk about strange bedfellows (Stephen Crowley/NYT) Yes, it's not a typo and it's not an acid flashback. Pat Robertson today endorsed Rudy Giuliani for the Republican nomination. The anti-abortion, pro-family Protestant Southern heartland evangelist endorsed the pro-abortion, thrice-married adulterer, Catholic, non-church-going, Northeastern urbanite. Perhaps the stars are aligning for some apocalyptic event we're not yet aware of. All I can say is that AIPAC will be delighted with this. The hardest-right pro-Israel candidate has been endorsed by the doyen of the Christian Zionist movement. If Rudy becomes president Israel can annex the West Bank, invade Syria and Lebanon, ...

While few presidential candidates embrace a progressive position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Rudy Giuliani has taken things to a new low. He's the only candidate to turn his back on 30 years of U.S. Mideast policy and claim that the world is not ready for a Palestinian state. No doubt, Giuliani would also be opposed to a settlement freeze and the return of any of the West Bank to the PA--all positions long held by previous Administrations, both Democrat and Republican. Not to be outdone in rejecting previously sacrosanct U.S. Mideast policies, Giuliani has opened his arms to some of the most wingnutty of Jewish right-wingers. Recently, he announced that Norman Podhoretz had signed on as a ...

Thanks to reader Ann for pointing out a penetrating Salon article, The Other Israel Lobby, which describes progress made in forming a counter-AIPAC D.C. lobbying group of Jewish peace groups. The project has variously been called the "Soros Initiative" though the old man himself wisely wishes to avoid having himself and the organization conflated in the minds of the public. It would only give the fledging group more difficulty gaining traction by allowing the detractors to focus their fire on Soros himself rather than the substance of the group's ideas. The author, Gregory Levey, is a former speechwriter for Ehud Olmert and the Israeli UN Mission. He sat in a privileged position of power allowing him ...

Jimmy Carter is a bete noir for a certain type of American Jew who supports Israel to the hilt and sees Aipac as THE address for Israel activism in this country. Why? Carter's views about the Mideast are probably not far from Bill Clinton's. So why is Carter despised in some quarters and Clinton revered as a true friend of Israel? Certainly, there's an element of Clinton's charm and guile which prevents his enemies from laying a glove on him much in the way Reagan did. Jimmy Carter is what you'd have to call a relatively guileless politician. ...

Using Hannah Arendt's term, the "banality of evil" to describe Congressional Israel politics is a bit of a stretch, but not much. You can always trust the Jewish Telegraphic Agency to provide typically knee-jerk pro-Israel coverage of the Mideast conflict. But a recent article reflects more poorly in that regard on the U.S. Congress than it does on JTA itself. When it comes to Israel, each party falls all over itself to be more cartoonishly pro-Israel than the next. You could be forgiven for mistaking our elected representatives for Likud-like buffoons. None of them have apparently heard the news that Israel lost the Lebanon war at least in part because it tried to rely solely on a hand-me-down ...