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Conference of Presidents Creates Anti-Iran Front Group

Tuesday, September 8th, 2009

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.

Tags: ahmadinejad speech september 24th, anti iran un rally, conference-of-presidents-of-major-jewish-organizations, malcolm-hoenlein, mujahadeen terrorist, regime change
Posted in Mideast Peace, Politics & Society | 15 Comments »

Rabbis and President’s Conference Say High Holidays Time to Hurt Iran

Monday, September 7th, 2009

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.

Tags: conference of presidents, iran-regime-change, israel wants to go to war against iran, malcolm-hoenlein, NATIONAL RABBINIC AND SYNAGOGAL ORGANIZATIONS JOIN IN COMMON CALL TO PREVENT A NUCLEAR IRAN, rabbis call for iran divestment, stand for freedom in iran
Posted in Jews & Judaism, Mideast Peace, Politics & Society | 13 Comments »

Hoenlein: Everything We Know About Israel We Owe to Dore Gold

Saturday, December 13th, 2008

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.

Tags: american jewish leadership supports likud, conference of presidents, daily alert omits reference to hebron riots, dore-gold, jerusalem center for public affairs, malcolm-hoenlein
Posted in Jews & Judaism, Mideast Peace, Politics & Society | 1 Comment »

Malcolm Hoenlein to Iranians: ‘We Come in Peace, Earthlings’

Friday, June 27th, 2008

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.

Tags: conference of presidents, iran-nuclear-weapon, malcolm-hoenlein
Posted in Jews & Judaism, Mideast Peace, Politics & Society | 8 Comments »

Pro-Israel Jewish Groups to the Ramparts Against Palestinian Prisoner’s Document

Monday, June 26th, 2006

Ori Nir reports in The Forward that pro-Israel neocon, Malcolm Hoenlein and his Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations “umbrella” group have entered the fray against the Palestinian Prisoner’s Document which seeks Hamas’ acceptance of a two-state solution and an end to terror attacks outside of the Green Line (among other things). Many Palestinians, Israelis and Mideast analysts have welcomed this initiative as a possible breakthrough that might eventually lead to Israeli-Palestinian final status peace negotiations. In this blog, I have attempted to address the Prisoner’s Document cautiously but optimistically as have a number of stories in the Israeli press. I don’t think any of us is oblivious to the difficult road ahead if the Document is to be turned into a long-range plan leading to peace negotiations. There is oh so much that can go wrong. Just look at the events of the last two days as a perfect example of an attempt to derail the Document.

But Hoenlein, apparently fearing that the Document might take on a life of its own in world opinion has taken to the ramparts to do battle against it:

American Jewish organizations are strongly criticizing the document guiding national unity talks between Hamas and Fatah officials…

For Palestinians, observers said, the purpose of hammering out a unified platform is not to trigger talks with Israel. Instead, the negotiations surrounding the document appear aimed at preventing an internal civil war and breaking the financial siege that the international community has imposed on the Palestinian Authority…

“This is not a platform for negotiations with Israel, but for negotiations between Palestinians,” Haim Malka said. Malka is a Middle East expert with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank…

Several Jewish groups — including the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, the 52-member umbrella group widely seen as the Jewish community’s main united voice on Middle Eastern affairs — are complaining that the Palestinian document driving the Hamas-Fatah talks has wrongly been described in the media as a “peace plan.”

“Not only is this not a peace plan, but it expresses positions that are much more hard line than the ones believed to be Fatah’s position on issues such as the right of return [of Palestinian refugees] and what they call the right of resistance” to Israel, said Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Presidents Conference.

The document, Hoenlein told the Forward, could only hinder future negotiations with Palestinian moderates, because it would blur distinctions between them and militants tied to Hamas and to other terrorist groups. “What this would say is that Hamas and Fatah of Abbas have now become the same thing,” Hoenlein said.

Any reasonable observer will note the inanity of much of this poppycock which passes for “analysis.” First, the Prisoner’s Document is clearly meant to lead eventually to “triggering talks with Israel.” Merely stating that the Document is not intended to lead to negotiation is what passes for well-reasoned political argument in the pro-Israel community. Those who suggest there is no intent to lead to negotiation are little more than propagandists and utter fools to boot.

This doesn’t mean that the Document isn’t also meant to break the PA’s international isolation as the above passage indicates. Those two objectives are by no means in conflict nor does one preclude the other. Second, the Document clearly IS a peace plan. Yes, it does contain different provisions than ones previously endorsed by Fatah. But the problem with the Hoenlein view is that it neglects to take into account that Fatah is no longer in power. Hamas for now holds the reins and until now Hamas has not endorsed any of the provisions in the Document.

Further, Hoenlein conveniently neglects to mention a key provision of the Document calling on Hamas to accept previously negotiated agreements (like Oslo) adopted by the PLO. If Hamas signs on to this provision then it will in effect be endorsing precisely those positions which Fatah has endorsed (recognition of Israel, renunciation of violence, etc.). There goes Hoenlein’s argument out the window!

In other words, the Prisoner’s Document is a complex one which must not be reduced to a few propaganda sound bytes. Those who do, like Hoenlein, will convince no one but their own acolytes of the rightness of their analysis.

One small piece of carping about Nir’s coverage. Certainly, Malcolm Hoenlein and CPMJO’s views on the Prisoner’s Document are important and worth covering. But could he not find any other commentator to provide an alternate view? By not doing so, Nir in effect cedes the field to the mainstream pro-Israel groups allowing readers to believe that the Jewish community speaks with one voice on this issue. Nothing could be farther from the truth. In fact, I’m willing to bet that if you polled American Jews providing them with the basic provisions of the Prisoner’s Document and asked whether it was a worthwhile proposal which deserved consideration by Israel–that a majority of us Jews would agree with the proposition. The fact that a majority of the American Jewish fatcat pro-Israel leadership does not, merely indicates how much they exist in their own isolation chamber, a place that is divorced not only from the majority of American Jewry but from Israeli interests as well.

There are Israeli commentators and this blog as well which espouse an alternate view of the Document. Could one of us have not been cited by Nir so as to provide some balance to the article? I’ve written to Nir about this–we’ll see what, if anything, is his response.

Tags: conference-of-presidents-of-major-jewish-organizations, fatah, hamas, malcolm-hoenlein, opposition-to-palestinian-prisoners-document, ori-nir, the-forward
Posted in Mideast Peace | 2 Comments »