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

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.

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 access both to Israeli and American Jewish politics. Which makes his analysis all the more striking. Levey notes that AIPAC’s power is beginning to wane. He suggests that if the new lobbying effort gets off the ground, AIPAC’s hegemony would be further weakened:

…Most American Jews, and many other American supporters of Israel, do not see eye-to-eye on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with the most hawkish, knee-jerk Israel supporters in the U.S. government — even if their presumed leadership, represented by AIPAC, often appears to do so. Moreover, AIPAC’s influence in Washington may soon begin to decline, as a powerful new alliance of left-leaning friends of Israel has begun to emerge, with the express aim of reshaping U.S. strategy on the region’s most intractable problem.

Levey continues by noting AIPAC’s recent defeat in Congress on the Palestinian Anti-Terror Bill which it moved heaven and earth to pass:

AIPAC suffered a relatively small but symbolic defeat this past year — one that may prove to have been a turning point. Earlier in the year, AIPAC put all its muscle behind a congressional bill called the Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act, which even some pro-Israel observers called “draconian.” Going beyond even the Bush administration’s own hard-line stance on the Hamas-led Palestinian government, it would have essentially cut off all American contact with any element of the Palestinian leadership, and hampered the U.S. government’s ability to strengthen Palestinian moderates.

A group of small, left-leaning Jewish lobby groups, including the Israel Policy Forum, the Jewish Alliance for Justice and Peace [Levey refers to Brit Tzedek] and the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, banded together to battle AIPAC on the issue, and in the end were successful. A watered-down version of the bill was passed, with what they saw as the problematic language stripped away. An AIPAC official recently told me that AIPAC was satisfied with the softer bill’s passage — but it is quite clear that the incident represented a defeat for the organization.

It was, in fact, an impressive demonstration of what political cooperation and grass-roots advocacy can do. However, for these groups to replicate that success on a larger scale and with more of a substantive effect on U.S. foreign policy, there is a key missing element: real money.

Levey gets into the meat of his story by describing not only Soros’ involvement, but progress made to date in raising funds for the potential new group:

That is where billionaire financier George Soros may come in, along with a group of other left-leaning philanthropists, many of them Jewish. In the relatively close-knit Middle East lobbying community, it is something of an open secret that this past September, Morton Halperin, who served in both the Nixon and Clinton administrations and is now director of U.S. advocacy for Soros’ Open Society Institute, met with a group of lobbyists, political strategists and former politicians who are seeking to create a new well-funded, well-organized, left-leaning Israel lobby, as an alternative to AIPAC.

Several key figures in this group had been active in the effort to quash the Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act, and include Jeremy Ben-Ami, a former advisor to President Clinton, and Daniel Levy, a former special advisor to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and now a senior fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington.

…In late October, Soros himself attended a follow-up meeting, along with liquor magnates Edgar and Charles Bronfman, former Democratic Rep. Mel Levine and others. The idea — by this point labeled the “Soros Initiative” — now began to gain traction and substance, with large sums of money being pledged by several parties. Several people involved have told me that there is now almost enough money firmly on the table to launch the new organization — an eight-figure dollar amount, they say, and that’s just for starters. Several people have told me that there is already work in progress to establish the organization’s core structure and operations.

Having been involved in countless Jewish peace groups over the past 40 years or so, I maintained a guarded optimism about this project grounded in a certain degree of skepticism that it could ever get off the ground. But when I hear that $10-million or more has been pledged to this effort, I know it is serious and not just a flash in the pan.

You knew there would have to be some snarky comments from AIPAC about this new development and sure enough Levey provides them:

An AIPAC insider repeatedly stressed to me that one reason this new group will never be able to compete with AIPAC is because AIPAC is bipartisan, while what he called the “Soros connection” shows that the new group will not be.

I have to laugh when AIPAC supporters try to pass that one off on the rest of us. AIPAC is bipartisan. Really. I guess it’s bipartisan if you concede that pro-war Democrats like Joe Lieberman are AIPAC darlings. Let’s take one issue as an example. AIPAC wants a good little war with Iran. They may not have come out and said it in any policy statement. But you’d have to be deaf and blind not to realize that they’re one of the pressure groups leading the charge in favor of bombing Iran. Democrats are none too happy with this notion. So how is AIPAC bipartisan if the only support it gets for dropping the big one on Iran is from neocons and their Republican friends with a few pro-war Dems thrown in to spice it up a bit?

The snark continues:

The AIPAC insider said that he believes the “Soros Initiative” is little more than a fundraising drive to raise money for some impoverished organizations that “have to define themselves in opposition to something.”

“Impoverished.” Isn’t that an interesting comment coming from an activist for an organization with a $70 million operating budget. I guess the $2-million annual budget of Israel Policy Forum does pale in comparison. But guess what? A $2-million organization gave a $70 million organization one helluva bloody nose during the legislative battle I described above.

Besides, if the pro-peace lobbying group gets off the ground it will likely either subsume the other smaller peace groups helping to found it; or it will leave them aside as it grows into an independent entity. The goal of the initiative is not merely to make IPF an $3 million organization. The goal is to grow the Israeli-Palestinian peace lobby exponentially. It is not meant to make a few “impoverished” groups less impoverished. It is meant to challenge AIPAC’s false claim to represent all of American Jewry when it comes to Israel. That’s a big and worthy ambition.

There is, of course, disagreement among the founders about the approach they should take to AIPAC:

…A contentious issue…is exactly how much the new organization would allow itself to be seen as being in direct opposition to AIPAC. At least four of the players involved have told me that they intend to be an “alternative,” but not an “opposition.” Still, one of those present at the early meetings said that he sees his organization as “the anti-AIPAC.” Levy, meanwhile, said simply that if “there are differences in policy, those will be expressed in one group advocating one thing and another advocating another thing.” This would at least be an improvement, he said, over the past, when Israeli leaders who honestly sought to make peace “pulled their hair out because of the lack of support from the Jewish community in the United States.”

David Saperstein of the Religious Action Center, and a power player in the national Jewish leadership and one of those involved in planning the new group, is petrified of crossing swords with AIPAC. Every time anyone says anything along these lines Saperstein is heard to say: “Shah, shtill!” Nevertheless, it would be entirely unrealistic and unfortunate for anyone associated with this effort to believe that AIPAC and the new lobby will coexist peacefully and harmoniously. If they do, it will mean that there is something very wrong.