Hannah Rosenthal suffers the slings and arrows of outrageous Israel lobby

I find myself deeply disturbed by the Obama administration’s abandoning its support of its State Department anti-Semitism official, Hannah Rosenthal, for her mild rebuke of the Israeli ambassador for his refusal to attend the J Street national conference.  Rosenthal has become the bete noire of the Israel lobby and attacked for her former role as a member of the J Street board.  Supposedly holding such a position identifies her as being insufficiently supportive of this Israeli government.

The Israeli response to Rosenthal’s remarks has been the equivalent of a firestorm and characteristically disingenuous:

Senior government officials told Haaretz on Friday that “We were surprised at Ms. Rosenthal’s remarks, as reported in Haaretz.” The officials stressed that he comments “don’t reflect the nature of the relations between Israel and the U.S., nor do they reflect the great respect and appreciation of the ambassador and his staff felt both in Jerusalem and in Washington.”

Does Israel really believe that the Obama administration is pleased that Oren stiffed J Street, when the former sent its national security advisor as the conference keynote speaker??  As for holding Oren in “great respect” such respect is in the eye of the beholder, in this case, Israel.  I can’t speak for the Administration, but Oren is held in disrepute by most peace-loving American Jews.  He’s a weasel and little more than an elegant fob for the rightist Israeli government.

I’d like to bring further proof of my claim.  The Forward reports that Oren gave a deeply disingenuous report to a Conservative Jewish gathering in DC in which he claimed that a Conservative Jewish supporter of Women of the Wall was NOT arrested by Israeli police at a demonstration a few weeks ago.  This despite the fact that Haaretz reported that she WAS forcibly arrested, questioned at a police station for 2 1/2 hours and forced to sign a statement that she would refrain from coming to the Kotel for 15 days.

Based on a highly reliable source, I believe that Oren knew he was lying when he made this statement.  The Forward has reported that Oren has withdrawn with his tail between his legs and now blames the Israeli officials who briefed him on the matter for misspeaking.  He didn’t misspeak.  He thought he could get away with lying.  Only when he was called on it did he attempt to backtrack, rather feebly.

He promised a further “inquiry” to clarify the matter.  Don’t hold your breath.

Further, this meeting with Conservative Jews was the same one at which Oren blasted J Street claiming fraudulently that it never supported the policies of any Israeli government.  They say that a diplomat is a man who happily lies in service to his country.  That couldn’t be truer in Oren’s case.

Returning to Rosenthal, the Israelis have exhibited further chutzpah in this statement:

Senior Israeli officials told their American colleagues that it was unacceptable for an administration official to publicly criticize Israel’s ambassador over his relationship with Jewish organizations…

Why?  What’s sacred about the ambassador’s non-existent relationship with J Street such that it cannot be faulted by an American Jew who happens to serve in the Administration?

What disappoints me most about the Rosenthal affair is the Administration rolling over in the face of Israeli displeasure:

U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs, Jeffrey Feltman, issued a statement distancing himself from Rosenthal’s remarks. Statements were also delivered to the Israeli embassy in Washington stating that Rosenthal’s sentiments do not reflect the position of the U.S. administration.

Cowards.  Wimps.  Rosenthal was right.  She said nothing radical or uncivil or embarrassing to the U.S.  They should’ve released a statement saying merely that Rosenthal was speaking in a personal capacity and that her views don’t necessarily reflect those of the Administration.  To renounce what she said is chicken-shit.

Of course, one has to understand that the reporters who wrote this story are two of Israel’s great stenographers on behalf of the government and power elite.  Neither Barak Ravid nor Natasha Mozgovaya ever deviate from the party line in government ministries in Israel.  So whether they’re reporting accurately the U.S. government response, or merely reporting the response as their government minders would like them to isn’t clear.

The Conference of Presidents, run by that neocon Israel-firster, Malcolm Hoenlein, has denounced Rosenthal and asked for her head:

Alan Solow, chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations…issued a condemnation of Rosenthal’s remarks, casting doubt over her ability to fulfill her responsibilities as an opponent of anti-Semitism.

“As an official of the United States government, it is inappropriate for the anti-Semitism envoy to be expressing her personal views on the positions Ambassador Oren has taken as well as on the subject of who needs to be heard from in the Jewish community. Such statements have nothing to do with her responsibilities and, based upon comments I am already receiving, could threaten to limit her effectiveness in the area for which she is actually responsible,” said the statement.

What Solow (I’ll bet this statement was written for him by Hoenlein or his PR flack) really means to say is that Rosenthal has no right to criticize any Israeli official even when his actions are detrimental to U.S. policy, as Oren’s were.  That notion of the Israeli ambassador as sacred cow is preposterous.  J Street represents an entirely legitimate Jewish organization that supports U.S. policy and advances the prospects for Israeli-Palestinian peace.  Oren’s refusal to engage with them is a slap at J Street and indirectly a slap at Obama administration Middle East policy.

While I have no doubt that Rosenthal’s views were deeply personally held.  That doesn’t make them personal views alone in this context.  They were legitimate views about policy and as such she had a right to make them and her government should’ve supported her more fully.

I hope someone in the Administration will slap down the Conference and Hoenlein before they get too big for their britches.  If they don’t, the next thing you know they’ll be on the warpath for Hannah Rosenthal’s scalp.  We owe her support in that eventuality.

This coming Thursday, the Conference of Presidents, under the guise of a mom and apple pie-named coalition, Stand for Freedom in Iran, will rally against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad outside the United Nations.**  Strangely though, Ahmadinejad is speaking to the General Assembly on Wednesday.  Since he is the Israel lobby’s arch enemy you’d think they protest against him on that day.  I can’t imagine what they were thinking.  The only thing I can figure that deterred them is that most of the Iranian groups protesting will do so on Wednesday.  Perhaps the Israel lobby didn’t want to be lumped together with them.

The Conference’s leadership of the coalition is hidden and its name doesn’t appear on the Stand for Freedom website except through a front group created by it, the National Interagency Task Force on Iran.

Hassan Daioleslam, Mujahadeen al Khalq leader, supporter of violent overthrow of Iran and Stand for Freedom in Iran

The only Iranian group sponsoring Stand for Freedom is the Progressive American Iranian Committee (PAIC), which isn’t at all what its name implies.  It is actually a front group for Iranians who seek the violent overthrow of the current Iranian regime by any means necessary.  It has made common cause with the People’s Mujahadeen, a radical Iranian cult which attempted to overthrow the Khomeini regime in 1981 and has been on the U.S. terrorism list for many years.  The connection between the two is via a Mujahadeen executive committee member named Hassan Daioleslam.

Daioleslam is a shadowy character.  His bio conveniently omits his membership in the Mujahadeen.  Also absent (and absent from the PAIC website) is his status as a founding member of PAIC.  He interviewed the “co-founder” of PAIC for this right-wing website and co-wrote this article with him.  The vehemence of Daioleslam’s hatred for the Iranian regime has led him into the arms of some strange bedfellows.  He’s a regular contributor to Frontpagemagazine, American Thinker and other far-right neocon publications.  Of course, the bond is one of convenience and entirely cynical in its motive.  The neocons want to overthrow the Islamic regime using military means.  So do the Mujahadeen.  The neocons claim to support “democracy” for Iran, though not the kind of democracy represented by Mohammad Mosaddeq, has v’chalila.  Rather, they mean a pro-western government with the trappings of democracy.  The Mujahadeen want a dictatorship led by them though I doubt they would put it that way.

Daioleslam has made a cottage industry out of smearing independent Iranian-American groups which oppose Teheran, but do not favor war due to the disastrous consequences it would have for many innocents.  Chief among his targets is Trita Parsi and the National Iranian American Council, which he calls a U.S. front group and lobby for Teheran.  NIAC sued the Mujahadeen leader in 2008 for defamation.  The suit is currently in discovery and has survived legal rulings by Daioleslam to have it dismissed.

What it all comes down to is that on Thursday, the New York Jewish federation along with Malcolm Hoenlein’s Conference of Presidents will be lying down with an anti-Iranian regime dog named Hassan Daioleslam.  If they’re not careful, by the time they get up to leave the rally they’ll have a bad case of fleas.  Though he won’t say it in quite so many words, Hoenlein’s agenda (along with the Israeli government’s) is also to overthrow the Iranian regime.  And he wants the world to believe that American Jews endorse his neocon approach.  But they don’t.  And I hope they’ll open their windows like Peter Finch in Network and shout that they’re mad as hell that people like Malcolm Hoenlein pretend to speak for them.

** Standforfreedominiran.org is registered to the Jewish Community Relations Council, the political lobbying arm of the Jewish community.  So it is possible that the JCRC is the guiding light behind Stand for Freedom.  But the Conference and JCRC are undoubtedly working hand in glove on this project.

The Conference of Presidents organized a Common Call by American spiritual leaders from all nine main denominations, which urges rabbis to deliver anti-Iran sermons this High Holiday season.  One of the interesting elements of the Call is the announcement of a UN rally on September 24th to coincide with Mahmoud Ahmedinehad’s speech to the General Assembly.  The protest is being organized by a new coalition called Stand for Freedom in Iran.  The group has a website which announces these political demands:

• Freedom of assembly, freedom of expression and freedom of the press
• Immediate cessation of human rights abuses, the release of demonstrators from prisons and protection for minority communities
• Prosecution of those responsible for the murder of Neda Agha-Soltan and the many other victims engaged in the recent protests
• Full compliance and cooperation by Iran with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and Security Council resolutions including an end to all uranium enrichment in Iran
• End to incitement to genocide and support for terrorism

These sound like entirely reasonable demands and at first glance it appears that Stand for Freedom is nothing more than a pro-reformist group advocating Iranian democracy.  The list does not refer to regime change or the danger of Islamist extremism.  It does not warn that Iran seeks a nuclear holocaust against Israel as do many pro-Israel groups (including the Conference itself).  But this is most assuredly a group which does NOT support a reformed Iranian regime.  Rather, it supports, to the extent it has any clearly defined agenda, far more radical goals.

As with all things related to Iran or Israel, you have to delve a little deeper to discover who the sponsoring organizations are:

Progressive American Iranian Committee
Jewish Community Relations Council of New York
NAACP – New York Conference
Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union
American Federation of Teachers
UJA-Federation of New York
National Interagency Taskforce on Iran

What’s interesting about this list is the fairly mainstream (but solidly pro-Israel) groups like the UJA Federation and JCRC alongside labor unions and civil rights/minority organizations.  The Iranian group, according to the leader of a national Iranian-American organization I consulted, is a hawkish neo-con group that favors regime change and a secular Iran.  One of the other Iranian groups is a front for the People’s Mujahadeen, an anti-regime radical sect that is listed by the U.S. Treasury as a terrorist organization.  All of this is a deliberate strategy of the Conference and the Israeli foreign ministry to transform the Iran-Israel conflict in the minds of Americans from a messy distant bilateral confrontation between two extreme Middle Eastern countries into a multilateral campaign by gay rights, feminists, labor activists and minorities opposed to Iran’s extreme Islamist regime.  It’s a fairly clever strategy though quite transparent on deeper inspection.

Finally, a word about the last group on the list.  The Conference of Presidents, perhaps knowing of its ideologically partisan pro-Israel reputation has disguised its involvement behind the newly minted National Interagency Taskforce on Iran.  It is essentially a front for the Conference, though it may actually be composed of some agencies and organizations affiliated with it, for all I know.

Those with a memory of last year’s anti-Iran demonstration at the UN will recall that the Conference and its director, Malcolm Hoenlein invited Sarah Palin, in the midst of a presidential election campaign, to keynote that event.  Democrats and liberal Jews raised such a stink that Hoenlein attempted to salvage the event by inviting Hillary Clinton.  But she wisely demurred and Hoenlein then withdrew Palin’s invitation as well.  This year, the Conference is wisely attempting a different, but no less suspect, organizing strategy.

Among the partnering organizations are the usual hardline pro-Israel advocacy groups including StandWithUs, the ADL, American Jewish Committee, Republican Jewish Coalition, Young Israel, National Jewish Democratic Council, the David Project, and ZOA.

Therefore, Stand With Freedom, both the group and the event, are a bought and paid for creation of the Conference of Presidents which, in turn, is doing the bidding of the Israeli government in ratcheting up pressure on the Iranian regime.  The ultimate goal, as I’ve written consistently here, is to lay the groundwork for a potential Israeli attack on Iran.

So my main warning about this event and its sponsoring group is that it is a front in Israel’s effort to demonize Iran and turn it into a potential target for military action.  To any supporting group that is now involved in the scheduled rally or considers becoming involved, know what you’re getting yourself into.  Caveat emptor.

The Conference of Presidents, one of our most right-wing pro-Israel groups, has managed to organize five Jewish religious denominations including the putatively-liberal Reform and Reconstructionists for a High Holiday rabbinic statement that lays the groundwork for the Israeli government’s march toward war with Iran.  I always thought the High Holidays were a time of chesbon nefesh, when you contemplated in tranquility your weaknesses of the past year and resolved to do better in the coming one.

Which angel will save Iran's children from sanctions?

The joint statement does away with that concept–unless you believe that the past year in which the Obama administration attempted to engage Iran diplomatically was an error and the way to go in the coming year was to punish all Iranians with the type of universal sanctions invoked by the world against Saddam’s Iraq.  These sanctions, by the way, contributed to the death of 350,000 Iraqi children from 1990-2000  as documented by scientific surveys.  Now that seems like fine use of the High Holidays: urge rabbis and Jewish educators to tell their flocks that Iran is a danger to the world and must be stopped either by sanctions or any means necessary.  And we’re willing to punish Iranian children to do it.  Have we forgotten the concept of rachmanut especially during these Days of Awe when we repeatedly invoke God’s mercy??  Not to mention the fact that the Rosh Hashana Torah reading invokes the Akedah, Abraham’s near-sacrifice of his son, Isaac.  Shall we put Iranian children up on that altar too?  Who will save them?

Ori Nir of Peace Now told JTA that Iran sanctions targeting the average citizen and not specifically the country’s leaders and government were:

“…Not only morally wrong but…also strategically perilous.”

If you belong to a synagogue, PLEASE write to your rabbi and tell him or her that you disagree with this statement and urge that if any message is delivered from your shul’s bimah, it be carefully modulated and nuanced, rather than bellicose and jingoistic.  If you are a rabbi, please express your concern and displeasure at this one-dimensional anti-Iranian statement issued in your name.

Here is the political agenda suggested by the Common Call which urges Jews to engage in:

…Mobilizing their communities; contacting their elected officials about the importance of divestment from Iran and tightening sanctions against banks and industries that do business with Iran; writing letters to the editor and op-ed pieces supporting diplomatic and financial pressure on Iran; and displaying signage on institutional and synagogue property urging that we prevent a nuclear Iran.

It is quite interesting that Israel advocacy groups like the Conference of Presidents, under the tutelage of the Israeli foreign ministry, are emphasizing the issue of divestment from Iran.  It’s as if that crafty political bouncer, foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman decided that if Israel-Palestine peace activists were going to support a divestment strategy against the Occupation, then he’d turn around and use the very same strategy against Iran.  The only problem with this is that the Occupation, like South African apartheid, has simmered for decades.  Unlike the Occupation, the world does not yet share any consensus about how to deal with Iranian nuclear development, and divestment does not, and will not resonate until it does.  The fact that Malcolm Hoenlein, Avigdor Lieberman, Bibi Netanyahu and a bunch of naive American rabbis are telling the world to divest from Iran means very little in the greater scheme of things.

What is disingenuous about the statement is that it purports to agree with Obama administration policy:

The organizations declare that they support President Obama’s diplomatic initiatives, but…

In other words, those who signed this ill-conceived statement don’t support the actual current policy.  But they support what they would LIKE the policy to be: draconian sanctions, increasing isolation, and if all else fails–a military attack.  I should be clear that nowhere in this statement are those two words used.  There is no mention of what happens if sanctions don’t work (they won’t).  But for Israel’s purposes there doesn’t need to be such a reference.  When George Bush began the march to war against Iraq he too was careful to couch his regime of sanctions and UN resolutions in modulated diplomatic terms.  But many of us knew where he was going then just as many of know where Israel would like to go now.

The question is how many American Jews will be duped by these tactics into believing Israel does NOT want to or intend to attack Iran.  In 2002, there were millions of Americans who drank the Bush Kool Aid on Iraq.  They believed in the mushroom clouds and WMD that Bush’s team sold us.  But I say now in 2009 we must not drink this forbidden drink unless we’re prepared to go down the same road to war Bush trod in 2003.

One passage of the Call to Prevent a Nuclear Iran, quoting the rabbi who organized the statement, grieves me and should cause other rabbis to take offense:

The religious leadership of our Jewish community, with one voice, is urging our people to continue all efforts to confront the danger posed by a nuclear Iran.”

If you are a rabbi, is this “one voice” expressing what you believe?  If it isn’t, it is incumbent on you to raise your voice in your High Holiday pulpit for a sane articulation of the issues.

There is more blather in the statement:

“This statement reflects a broad consensus within the Jewish community in addressing the danger of a nuclear Iran.

No, what this statement reflects is the agenda of the pro-Israel advocacy organizations which have been shrying about Iran for the past few years.  Now, it seems that every Jewish denomination has fallen in with Chicken Little to cry that the sky is falling and unless we knock out Iran’s nuclear capability the world will be embroiled in a nuclear Armageddon.  Well, pardon me if a few of us look up and see the sky seems to be doing just fine though a tad stormy.

The Conference of Presidents, in the statement, urges rabbis and their congregants to participate in the nationwide September 24th Stand for Freedom in Iran program.  Though this program appears to be a motherhood and apple pie call for Iran to end its human rights abuses, we should review a bit of the Conference’s past anti-Iran activism to give of the real views of the Conference toward Iran.

Malcolm Hoenlein produced a video last year addressed to Iranians calling on them to free themselves from the clerical yoke.  In other words, the Conference’s director supports Iran regime change.  Now if you’re considering how to address this issue in your pulpit this High Holiday, ask yourself how regime change would happen?  Do you believe Hoenlein is calling for peaceful change within Iran?  Of course not, he’s calling for overthrow of the mullahs by whatever means necessary.

Malcolm Hoenlein believes that Iran is evil, that Iran wants to carry out a nuclear Holocaust against Israel, that Israel is justified in using whatever means necessary to protect itself.  Do you?  I say to any rabbi considering using this Call this High Holiday: know who your friends are.  They may not be your friends or real friends of Israel either.

I am not arguing here that Iran does not present a danger or that Iran has not engaged in egregious human rights abuses.  I am arguing that there is only one way to deal with Iran and whatever outstanding issues we have with them: negotiation.  Sanctions, blockades, divestment, war–these are all tactics that will fail.  Some will fail with a dull thud.  And some, if tried, will fail spectacularly leading to the spilling of much blood: Iranian, Israeli, perhaps American.

One of the consistent themes of this blog is the very narrow slice of political discourse and information that the American Jewish leadership relies on in formulating its positions regarding the Israeli-Arab conflict.  Many prominent analysts have noted that discourse is far more freewheeling in Israel than here; and that you can virtually be strung up as an anti-Semite for saying things heard and read almost daily in many of Israel’s major newspapers.

The deafening silence of the Conference of Presidents regarding the Hebron settler riots, which I noted in a post last week, provides an instructive example of this principle in operation.  Marc Perelman wrote this week about the fact that the Conference’s Daily Alert, a compendium of news sources about the conflict, maintained full silence about the incident all of last week.  Turns out, this was no accident because the Alert is prepared for the Conference by none other than Dore Gold’s Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs:

The contents of the Daily Alert are put together by…Dore Gold, a former foreign policy adviser to Likud leaders Ariel Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu, who is running for prime minister in the February 10 elections. Left-leaning groups have for years complained that the digest consists mostly of right-leaning articles or opinion pieces, reflecting the conference’s political leanings.

Gold, who was appointed by Netanyahu as Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations in 1997 and attended a meeting in July between the Likud leader and Barack Obama in Israel, told the Forward that he did not have any formal tie to the Netanyahu campaign. “If I am called in for a meeting I will go but I am not on staff and I’m not paid,” he said on the phone from Jerusalem, adding that his center hosted meetings for political leaders from all stripes. “Obviously everybody comes from somewhere but I am first and foremost a scholar.”

Anyone who has read anything written by Dore Gold knows that he is first and foremost a partisan ideologue. He’s a scholar in the same sense that Daniel Pipes is a scholar, which is not at all.

Here’s Gold’s hollow explanation for omission of Hebron from the Alert:

….Gold…stressed that the Daily Alert was meant to cover issues pertaining to the relationship between Israel and the world and avoid Israeli domestic issues. “We don’t want to get drawn into Israeli internal disputes and the Hebron incidents were very controversial here,” he said.

[Actually,]…Daily Alert articles do…sometimes touch upon internal Israeli topics and often feature stories about Palestinian violence against Israelis. On December 5, two days after the Hebron incidents, the Daily Alert included a small news item from Ynet…about an Israeli woman and her two-month-old daughter being lightly injured by rock-throwing Palestinians near the West Bank town of Nablus…

Gold admitted that given the international repercussions of the Hebron incidents, “in hindsight, we probably should have included a factual story about it.”

The Conference is a consortium of the major national Jewish organizations (though it does not include a number of significant left-leaning ones) and as such, claims it has no particular ideological perspective.  As Gold is one of Bibi Netanyahu’s most senior political operatives and Bibi is in the thick of a political campaign, all this raises the question of the propriety of a major, supposedly non-partisan American Jewish group, receiving news briefings every day from Dore Gold.

What does the Conference think Gold’s going to give its members?  An unbiased political helping of Israeli political news?  If that were the case, the Alert would’ve at least made mention of Hebron.  The fact that it didn’t until after the Forward and Jerusalem Post articles both slammed its omission speaks volumes. The Conference, like Aipac, is the heartland of Likudist thinking in the American Jewish community.

I can understand why dovish groups like Peace Now and the Reform movement continue to be involved with both groups. But doesn’t there come a time when the affiliation becomes so noxious that drastic measures are required to either reform the beast from within or withdraw from it and start something new that is more democratic, more representative, while at the same time including an umbrella of mainstream Jewish groups.

Doug Bloomfield also wrote much earlier about this general problem of the Daily Alert’s omission of information that goes against the grain of a rightist Israeli nationalist political perspective. He quotes a telling comment by Ori Nir:

“American Jews simply don’t know about [the growing problem of Jewish terrorism]; they don’t read about it in their Jewish media, not in the Daily Alert…and they don’t hear about it from the leading Jewish organizations,” said Ori Nir, spokesman for Americans for Peace Now.

The Forward notes in an article today that the largest U.S. Jewish umbrella group, the Conference of Presidents, refused to support the government’s eviction of extremist settlers from Hebron’s House of Contention.  The Conference also tellingly refused to condemn the subsequent settler riots against Palestinians and Israeli police:

The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, an umbrella body of 51 Jewish groups, has not issued a statement about the evacuation of settlers and their supporters from a disputed house in the West Bank town December 4 followed by settler violence against Hebron’s Palestinian residents.

Moreover, Daily Alert, the Presidents Conference’s Internet newsletters of Middle East-related published articles, did not refer to the incidents at all during the week after they occurred. Daily Alert is sent via e-mail to tens of thousands of free subscribers and is displayed on Web site of the Presidents Conference.

…Calls seeking comment from the Presidents Conference’s executive vice president, Malcolm Hoenlein, and its chair, Harold Tanner, were not returned.

The Forward does not note that Aipac too has refused to issue any statement, though JTA earlier reported on Aipac’s silence by claiming the group generally doesn’t make public statements about internal Israeli policy (isn’t that a laugh, considering how aggressively interventionist their approach is regarding promoting Israeli interests within a U.S. political context).  To my mind, even if this is true, it does not excuse its silence on such an important issue regarding Israeli democracy.

Through the Forward’s goading, the flagship Orthodox organization  and ZOA both made “on the one hand-on the other hand” statements which basically cancelled out anything positive that might be gleaned from them:

On the right, the Zionist Organization of America, which had opened a symbolic office in the Hebron building to show support for the settlers, remained silent for a week before issuing a long statement December 10. The ZOA expressed regret that the Israeli authorities, especially Defense Minister and Labor Party leader Ehud Barak, decided to forcibly expel the militants. The group, however, stressed that it did not condone the ensuing violence.

Though the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America did not issue a statement, it aired similar views. In an e-mail to the Forward, the union’s public policy director, Nathan Diament, stated that despite its feeling that the evacuation was unwarranted, and its objection to Olmert’s use of the word “pogrom,” the O.U. leadership “does not believe this justifies Israelis attacking IDF soldiers, and it certainly does not justify acts of harassment or violence against Palestinians.”

The article quotes a non-plussed Eric Yoffie wondering why the Conference doesn’t get up off its tush and say something since so many of its constituent groups have denounced the violence.  To this I respond, why don’t the Reform movement and other liberal groups quit the group?  If you wait for the Conference to reform itself so it truly represents American Jewry you’ll be waiting for the Messiah.  And even then, Malcolm Hoenlein would find some reason to delay.

As I read The Forward’s overall coverage of the Hebron affair (with multiple stories covering seemingly every aspect of the incident) I was filled with admiration.  Larry Cohler-Esses recently became the assistant managing editor and while it’s very possible the coverage might’ve been similar without him there–I believe his presence really “took it up a notch.”  It went from very good previously to superb now.

One especially good story detailed the ideological leaders of the extremist settlers, focussing on Daniella Weiss.  This statement from her was chilling:

“They [the settler rioters] are not afraid of prison, they are not afraid of trials, they just express loyalty to the land,” she told the Forward.

This perfectly reflects the political pathology of the extremist settlers.  The state is something to be reviled.  Laws are meaningless.  All that matters is the mystical concept of “the land.”  This is the irredeemable contradiction between such mystical theocratic mumbo-jumbo and the State of Israel as we know it.  There can never be any commonality between the two.  All that is possible is war.

The article goes on to quote another of the movement’s leading “thinkers,” Rabbi Dov Wolpe:

As far as Wolpe is concerned, the government comprises those who “sit here and represent the terrorists.” President Shimon Peres “is representing the position of the terrorists,” he said.

The third settler leader profiled, Baruch Marzel, explains the new “price tag” policy thus:

A government official who orders a settler evacuation, he said, “commits a crime against your people [and] they have to pay a price, and [with] a heavy price they will think twice about committing the crime.”

How is it possible to govern a country with such an attitude?  Any action by said government that violates Marzel’s “conscience” becomes not just politically objectionable, but a crime.

Interestingly, Marzel twists the aspiration of liberal western democracy for tolerance and against racism into a concept that is useful to him:

Marzel argues it is the government that is racist for hampering Jewish settlement. The Hebron evacuation, he told the Forward, was “pure racism. It is…part of the move by the liberal leftist people of Israel against those loyal to the land.”

Much like the KKK, Marzel deliberately seeks to create racist provocation within Israel.  Here he comments on why he will march with his followers in an Israeli Arab village:

“We have a cancer in our body capable of destroying the State of Israel: people who support terrorism, Hamas, the PLO [Palestine Liberation Organization], and these people are in the heart of Israel, a force capable of destroying Israel from the inside. I am going [in order] to tell these people — the Land of Israel is ours.”

If Olmert, Barak or Livni think these people can be dealt with or finessed or ignored, they are sadly mistaken.  There will, at some point, have to be a showdown.  The State must supersede them and impose itself on them or there will be disaster.

And let them call it by whatever names they wish.  Those who reject Israeli democracy must never be allowed to realize the Jewish ayatollah-riddled state with which they would replace it.

Conference of Presidents Shreis Gevalt!

“Her attendance was news to us, and this was never billed to us as a partisan political event,” a spokesman for Mrs. Clinton, Philippe Reines, said on Wednesday. “Senator Clinton will therefore not be attending.”

Clinton’s “replacement” opposes almost every domestic priority of the American Jewish community. Hoenlein went from a rally that had no partisan political tension, to one that showcased Hoenlein’s allegiance to the Republican Party.

[Irony Alert] I do understand there may be one small glitch in Palin’s acceptance of the invitation to speak.  She’s requested that she be introduced by David Brickner, the director of Jews for Jesus, who spoke before her at her Alaska church less than a month ago.  I don’t think this will cause Abe Foxman any trouble though, since he claims he has no problem with Palin lapping up a Jews for Jesus exhortation to convert us.

And since Hoenlein came to the U.S. as a young Soviet Jewish émigré (which explains a good deal of his political hawkishness), he should be able to give Sarah a quick tutorial on Russia to fill in any weak spots in her knowledge.

This rally debacle also illustrates how politically out of touch the Israel lobby’s leadership is with the views of mainstream Jews. At best, 30% of them will vote for McCain-Palin in November. 70% will vote for the other guy. But Hoenlein is content to showcase his fealty to the 30% at an event that should showcase a united Jewish community.

Let there be no doubt, the Jewish leadership has hitched itself to the Bush-McCain bandwagon.  It is in lockstep with the most bellicose approach to the Iranian nuclear impasse.  Sarah Palin says there would be nothing wrong with Israel attacking Iran.  That’s what Malcolm Hoenlein wants to hear.  He wants to say: “Jump” and hear a candidate say: “How high.”  The Republicans are willing to give Israel a blank check.  The Israel lobby knows that Barack Obama, while a friend to Israel and the Jewish people, is no fool and will not give Israel a blank check.

Keep in mind that yesterday, five past secretaries of state INCLUDING Henry Kissinger and James Baker called for unconditional negotiations between Iran and the U.S. “at the highest level.”  That’s the two deans of the Republican foreign policy establishment rejecting the McCain-Palin approach to Iran out of hand.  Yet, Malcolm Hoenlein knows something Kissinger doesn’t about those mad mullahs.

The Conference of President’s anti-Iran event has become a pep rally for “Jews for McCain-Palin.”  It’s a shande.  If you want to voice your displeasure, join J Street’s protest by demanding that Hoenlein and the Conference disinvite Palin.

One thing does reassure me though.  After the rally, Sarah will get some quality time with all those foreign leaders gathering at the UN, who she’s never met before in her life.  She’ll even get an autographed map of the Bering Straits from Ban Ki Moon showing the border between Russia and Alaska.  If she’s very good, Secretary General Ban might shake her hand and tell her he comes from South Korea and show her it on a world map.

Then Sarah can tell him that the only map that matters for her is the map of heaven.  All the rest is sin and deviltry.

Malcolm Hoenlein delivered a strange video address to the people of Iran recently which you’ll find on YouTube.  It reminds me a little of those old science fiction movies in which the president makes a television address to invading Martians telling them that we are a peaceful people and wish them no harm.  This is one bizarre performance.

After thinking about this a little more, it occurs to me that this is precisely the type of address that George Bush would deliver on the eve of bombing Tehran.  Imagine the sheer megalomania of Hoenlein arrogating to himself the role of explicating U.S. policy and American Jewish attitudes toward that country.  He has the sheer chutzpah to make comments like the following:

We know that the people of Iran do not support Ahmadinejad…

Whether or not the majority of Iranians support Ahmadinejad (and how would Hoenlein know that they don’t?), they certainly do not support whatever Hoenlein is trying to sell them.

And further:

We want to help you, we want to work with you, we want to support you in your effort to have a better life; to have a government that reflects your positions, your interests, and can help contribute to a different kind of region in the Middle East; to a different kind of world at large.

…This effort to achieve a nuclear capacity at any cost…[stems from] a misguided desire on their part to achieve hegemony and to foster their own extremist religious and ideological goals.

We hope the people of Iran understand that we reach out to you, we care about you.  We want to do nothing that harms you or hurts you.  We understand that this [Ahmadinejad] is not the voice of the people of Iran.

Does Hoenlein seriously believe that this will persuade Iranians that their leaders are making a grievous error in pursuing a nuclear weapon (if they indeed are doing so?).

This feeble performance begs many questions: why does Malcolm Hoenlein think any Iranian gives a flying fig what he has to say?  Has the Conference of Presidents ever done anything to earn the trust or respect of Iranians?  How does Hoenlein expect that his message will be heard by Iranians?  Does he expect they’ll broadcast it on their nightly news?  Will he set up his own Persian version of Radio Marti (Radio Tehran?) and beam it directly to his Iranian audience?

So let’s dispense immediately with the likelihood that Hoenlein has even an ounce of credibility with any Iranian.  Has he pulled this stunt in order to impress his own constituency (i.e. hard-line American Jewish leaders who are gunning for war against Iran)?  If so, what is he trying to prove to them?  That he’s put American Jewry’s best foot forward in attempting to persuade Iranians that we mean them no harm but that it’s those dreadful ayatollahs we aim to exterminate?

Trying to plumb Hoenlein’s thinking is a little like spelunking through the mind of Marty Peretz: it’s deep and dark in there and hard to figure out which way is up or down. But this is the quality of American Jewish “leadership” these days. The troglodytes lumber through halls of power roaring for Iranian and Palestinian blood disguising their true agenda with fake deferential speeches like this one. Woe unto a people with leaders such as these. Who appointed them to represent us? All I can say is: not in my name. Not in my name does this man speak.