An editorial in the New York Times says: No American is dedicating as much of his money to defeat President Obama as Sheldon Adelson, the casino magnate who also happens to have made more money in the last three years than any other American. He is the perfect illustration of the squalid state of political money, spending sums greater than any political donation in history to advance his personal, ideological and financial agenda, which is wildly at odds with the nation’s needs.
Mr. Adelson spent $20 million to prop up Newt Gingrich’s failed candidacy for the Republican nomination. Now, he has given $10 million to a Mitt Romney super PAC, and has pledged at least $10 million to Crossroads GPS, the advocacy group founded by Karl Rove that is running attack ads against Mr. Obama and other Democrats. Another $10 million will probably go to a similar group founded by the Koch brothers, and $10 million more to Republican Congressional super PACs.
That’s $60 million we know of (other huge donations may be secret), and it may be only a down payment. Mr. Adelson has made it clear he will fully exploit the anything-goes world created by the federal courts to donate a “limitless” portion of his $25 billion fortune to defeat the president and as many Democrats as he can take down.
One man cannot spend enough to ensure the election of an unpopular candidate, as Mr. Gingrich’s collapse showed, but he can buy enough ads to help push a candidate over the top in a close race like this year’s. Given that Mr. Romney was not his first choice, why is Mr. Adelson writing these huge checks?
The first answer is clearly his disgust for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, supported by President Obama and most Israelis. He considers a Palestinian state “a steppingstone for the destruction of Israel and the Jewish people,” and has called the Palestinian prime minister a terrorist. He is even further to the right than the main pro-Israeli lobbying group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which he broke with in 2007 when it supported economic aid to the Palestinians. [Continue reading…]
At Alternet, Joshua Holland interviews M.J. Rosenberg and first explores the Israel Lobby.
Joshua Holland: You are a former AIPAC staffer, right?
MJ Rosenberg: Right. To defend myself that was way back in the ’80s. In fact I was a pretty happy AIPAC staffer. I even left there on good terms. I have to say in those days it’s not so much my politics were different, AIPAC was different then. The policies weren’t nearly as reactionary then as they are now.
JH: From your inside perspective on that organization, what did you see as far as their tendency to call out criticism that they think is illegitimate or beyond the pale?
MR: They consider all criticism of Israel illegitimate. It’s all beyond the pale. I suppose their definition would be if by some miracle someone like Joseph Lieberman made a statement critical of Israel it would be legitimate. When I worked there in the ’80s, back before everyone had computers, they had a big war room where all they did was assemble every bit of data on members of Congress, on candidates, but also on writers, celebrities – anyone in the public eye.
In those days they would just put them in these folders. They always had at hand all this negative information — what they considered negative information — to tar people as being anti-Israel or even anti-Semitic. That stuff would be given to reporters if something came up. They were either initiated on their own to give to reporters or some reporter called them because they had a treasure trove of information.
They still operate that way. In those days they did it directly; now they have former staffers and people who are close to the organization in the blogging world and political world who do it for them. They do it so much. When you read that someone is anti-Israel they’re the ones putting it out there. They’ve got the data. [Continue reading…]
Sheldon Adelson on the Olmert government: 'This is an illegitimate government. It must be thrown out.'
CNN reports: In the explosive second part of his exclusive interview on Friday’s Amanpour, Ehud Olmert, former Israeli Prime Minister, said certain elements in the Jewish community in the United States had deliberately derailed the peace process.
Olmert was speaking of the peace plan he proposed in 2008, when he was Prime Minister. Knowing the political risks, Olmert sought a “full comprehensive peace between us and the Palestinians” – a two-state solution based on the 1967 borders.
“It broke my heart, the most difficult decision of my life,” said Olmert, once the Mayor of Jerusalem. “Because for me to propose a division of Jerusalem was really terrible. I did it because I reached a conclusion that without which, there will not be peace.”
“It was a killer for me,” he said. “It was a killer for me not only because of the opposition in Israel. I think that, by the way, in Israel the majority of the Israelis would have supported my plan, had it come for elections.”
Then, he leveled his astonishing charge: “But I had to fight against superior powers, including millions and millions of dollars that were transferred from this country (the U.S.) by figures which were from the extreme right wing, that were aimed to topple me as Prime Minister of Israel. There is no question about it.”
When asked to name names, Olmert answered: “Next time.”
If and when Olmert names names, there’s little doubt who will be at the top of his list: the American casino boss and billionaire, Sheldon Adelson.
In May 2008, this is how Nahum Barnea, a columnist for Israel’s Hebrew daily Yediot Ahronot, described Adelson’s plans to topple Olmert. “This is an illegitimate government. It must be thrown out,” Barnea quotes Adelson as saying.
Adelson is convinced that Netanyahu, not Olmert, must be prime minister of Israel. In order to advance this idea, Adelson established an anti-Olmert newspaper devoted to praising Netanyahu. Allegedly, this investment is the largest election gift ever given to Israel.
Daniel Levy translated the bulk of Barnea’s column which appeared just after Adelson appeared as the keynote speaker at a presidential conference celebrating Israel’s 60th anniversary.
When Sheldon Adelson gave his speech on the podium of the International Convention Center two days ago, I looked at Shimon Peres. I was happy for him. The impressive, sparkling conference that he convened will warm his heart…Many important, highly-respected people. An excellent organization. Well done.
As a citizen of the country, I was less happy. I saw a gambling tycoon from Las Vegas who bought my country’s birthday with three million dollars. I thought with sorrow: Is the country worth so very little? Were the champagne, wine and sushi that were given out for free in the lobby—breaking convention for such events—worth the humiliation?
Adelson is a Jew who loves Israel. Like some other Jews who live at a safe distance from here, his love is great, passionate, smothering. It is important to him that he influences the policies, decisions and compositions of Israeli governments. He is not alone in this, either: even back in the days of Baron Rothschild, wealthy Jews from the Diaspora felt that this country lay in their pocket, alongside their wallet. Regrettably, in the latest generation, we are being led by politicians who look at these millionaires with calf’s eyes.
Such deference to the wallets of other people—that is the common denominator of Rabin and Peres, Netanyahu, Barak and Olmert…
Adelson is like the others, and yet different. He has the gift of authority and the bluntness of someone who made a lot of money quickly. He does not ask; he commands.
“He talks to me as though I were his property,” the director of an important Jewish-American organization, one of the guests at the conference, told me. I heard similar complaints from others—both Israelis and Americans— about Adelson. Not long ago, the mayor of a large city received word that he had to meet Adelson immediately. He acceded, of course—the man is a big donor. When they met, Adelson ordered him to tell the municipal inspectors to leave the employees of his business (who were violating municipal law) alone.
There is a story about an anti-Arab propaganda film that Adelson had heard of. When he telephoned the director-general of a Jewish organization, asking him to buy and distribute the film, the man told him that the film was distorted, and that no one would believe it. Adelson responded—“so edit it”. When the man countered that film could not be edited, Adelson replied that he would buy the film at his expense, but that the other man would then distribute it. “He would like all the Arabs to disappear,” another activist for a Jewish organization told me. “It seems that he thinks that the Arabs are chips to be gambled with.”
Several months ago, Adelson contacted another Jewish-American millionaire and asked him to donate a large sum of money for a campaign that he was organizing against the current Israeli government. The man politely refused. “You know what”, Adelson told him, “do not donate, just sign”. When the man refused again, Adelson accused him of funding anti-Israel research. “I do not know what you mean”, the man answered. “When my man in charge of these things is in Las Vegas, he will come to you and he’ll look into the matter.”
The ensuing meeting at Adelson’s office, in the Venetian hotel-casino, was a stormy one. Adelson took out a written list of accusations, many of them childish. “You hosted (PA prime minister) Salam Fayyad,” he said. “He is a terrorist with blood on his hands. He is one of the founders of Fatah.” “Salam Fayyad was never involved in terrorism,” said the interlocutor. “He is not a member of Fatah. Where did you get these accusations from?”
Adelson responded that he had gotten them from Steve Emerson (an American Jew who often analyzes terrorism). “You work with Olmert’s government,” he added. “This is an illegitimate government. It must be thrown out.” “I thought”, said the man, “that Olmert is your friend.”
And, indeed, they were friends. Such good friends that Olmert wrote him [Adelson] a letter, asking him to buy mini-bars for his hotels from a company that Talansky represented.
Adelson is convinced that Netanyahu, not Olmert, must be prime minister of Israel. In order to advance this idea, Adelson established an anti-Olmert newspaper devoted to praising Netanyahu. Allegedly, this investment is the largest election gift ever given to Israel. I do not claim this. Firstly, it is a legitimate legal gift. Secondly, when Netanyahu is elected prime minister, he will have to act within the constraints of the State of Israel, not take dictates of a patron from Las Vegas.
Adelson, surrounded by guards, was king of the conference. He sat in the first row, with Shimon Peres between him and Olmert. He put his hand out to Olmert. Olmert shook it with a sour face. They did not exchange a single word.
Yesterday, Paul Krugman wrote a brief post on his New York Times blog, The Conscience of a Liberal:
Something I’ve been meaning to do — and still don’t have the time to do properly — is say something about Peter Beinart’s brave book The Crisis of Zionism.
The truth is that like many liberal American Jews — and most American Jews are still liberal — I basically avoid thinking about where Israel is going. It seems obvious from here that the narrow-minded policies of the current government are basically a gradual, long-run form of national suicide — and that’s bad for Jews everywhere, not to mention the world. But I have other battles to fight, and to say anything to that effect is to bring yourself under intense attack from organized groups that try to make any criticism of Israeli policies tantamount to anti-Semitism.
But it’s only right to say something on behalf of Beinart, who has predictably run into that buzzsaw. As I said, a brave man, and he deserves better.
So if Krugman felt the need to say something about Beinart’s book, I guess this was it — he’s said something.
To borrow one of President Obama’s favorite words when it comes to Israel, Beinart has made a stalwart defense of the two-state solution. He did so at a time that there is a widening consensus that the expansion of Israeli settlements across the West Bank has made the creation of a Palestinian state virtually impossible.
While Beinart has been widely praised for his courage, it’s less obvious to me whether he is being bold or simply astute. He’s young enough to not want to find himself on the wrong side of a generational divide and to that extent he seems to be following rather than leading opinion among younger American Jews. Indeed, he still has plenty of catching up to do.
As for Krugman, his own focus is domestic and economic, so I understand that he has other battles to fight. But when he says, “I basically avoid thinking about where Israel is going,” he might as well have said he chooses to keep his head in the sand. He will only refer to the Israel lobby by the euphemism “organized groups” and knowing that he risks attack, raises his head above the parapet simply to declare that he is unarmed.
No doubt the lobby and its attack dogs like Alan Dershowitz can be viscous and unrelenting, but there are at least two ways of responding to intimidation: to be intimidated or to be defiant.
When the lobby attacks, too many people respond by bemoaning its might and its ruthlessness; too few offer the right wing Zionists the scorn they deserve.
Maybe if Israel’s most rabid defenders were more frequently mocked, their power would turn out not to be as great as it is feared.
From his secure positions as a tenured professor at Princeton and New York Times columnist even if Krugman wasn’t to make it a regular habit, he could stand up and take an occasional shot at the lobby without putting his life in danger.
To witness the spectacle of an AIPAC conference, one might imagine that nothing warms the heart of the average Israeli more than such an outpouring of affection for the Jewish state. But as Boaz Gaon and no doubt many other Israelis are aware, AIPAC brings together those Americans who don’t belong to Israel but are convinced Israel belongs to them.
I, Boaz Gaon, being of sound mind and body, hereby offer myself for sale to AIPAC. Should the committee decline, I offer the opportunity to Sheldon Adelson. In any event, I offer my internal organs for free, as a confidence-building gesture, to leading right-wingers in America – to all those who view Israel as a kind of political football made out of seven million residents, a football that can be kicked at the wall over and over. After all, we Israelis don’t feel any pain, and we know that our destiny is to be tossed around like a ball in some exclusive gym by Republican lobbyists, before they head off to the sauna and then cocktails.
I’m offering myself for sale even though I was warned by my lawyer that this is an irreversible step, and that in all likelihood I’ll find myself at Israel Hayom newspaper’s next conference, and/or at the next reunion of White House veterans who worked for George W. Bush – persons who are partners of the Israeli right (Daniel Pipes, Elliot Abrams ) – naked and trussed up, with an apple stuffed in my mouth and served on a silver platter that has a likeness of Irving Moskowitz inscribed on it.
I’m doing this because I can read the writing on the wall. I am aware that a high percentage of Israel’s media have already been bought off by right-wing Americans (Ron Lauder, Adelson ), and that a fair share of the right-wingers on the Yesha Council of settlements come from the United States (as in the case of the Central Fund of Israel, directed by the Marcus family, which serves as the funding pipeline for the extremist groups Im Tirtzu and Women in Green ). And I know that Jerusalem is littered with “research institutes” financed by right-wing Americans, and that the goal of these institutes is to provide employment for prominent Israeli right-wingers (Natan Sharansky, Moshe Ya’alon, Moshe Arens ).
More than anything, I am aware that these “lovers of Israel,” those who like to stand next to gigantic blue and white flags, have no interest in improving education in Israel, or bettering the country’s housing or health-care systems, or improving its culture and scientific research. They have no interest in honing the country’s legal system, particularly on matters of religion and state, nor do they care about narrowing gaps between rich and poor, men and women, or Jews and Arabs. In short, they care little about the prosaic realities of daily Israeli life. These realities can’t be seen from the lobby of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, and they are obscured by the cherry blossoms in the Washington area. These are the realities of my Israel. That’s not the same thing as the Israel that is supported by the Yesha Council, which is, in turn, funded by the evangelical Christian right.
I’m taking this step because I’ve come to understand that my own existence, and that of my children, merely shatters the sweet illusion of Israelis as matchsticks used to build a spectacular model of Noah’s Ark. Our lives belie the illusion that Jerusalem is a composite of Judaica items, each costing $30,000 in Zurich Airport’s duty free store. This is the illusion that allows people to call for the bombing of Iran while they sit in a mansion in Dallas. Or for the eradication of Israel’s democracy while lounging in a winter retreat in Miami. Or the annexation of Judea and Samaria while having a drink at the blackjack table in Las Vegas.
Ah, yes, there’s another reason – the American-Jewish left isn’t going to toss me a nickel. Neither Steven Spielberg, nor Rob Reiner, nor Barbra Streisand, nor any liberal Jewish billionaire. They are busy working for the Democratic Party, and ignoring Israeli issues. As far as they’re concerned, Israel isn’t worth a goddamned penny, as they say.
It’s a familiar story in American politics. Elizabeth Warren has earned high praise from progressives for standing up to Wall Street, but as Max Blumenthal notes, when it comes to Israel she is marching in lockstep with those on the right who are willing to start another war and cripple the global economy.
While progressives celebrate Warren for her fight against the big banks and the financial industry’s lobbying arm, they have kept silent over the fact that she has enlisted with another powerful lobby that is willing to sabotage America’s economic recovery in order to advance its narrow interests. It is AIPAC, the key arm of the Israel lobby; a group that is openly pushing for a US war on Iran that would likely trigger a global recession, as the renowned economist Nouriel Roubini recently warned. The national security/foreign policy position page on Warren’s campaign website reads as though it was cobbled together from AIPAC memos and the website of the Israeli Foreign Ministry by the Democratic Party hacks who are advising her. It is pure boilerplate that suggests she knows about as much about the Middle East as Herman “Uzbeki-beki-stan-stan” Cain, and that she doesn’t care.
Warren’s statement on Israel consumes far more space than any other foreign policy issue on the page (she makes no mention of China, Latin America, or Africa). To justify what she calls the “unbreakable bond” between the US and Israel, Warren repeats the thoughtless cant about “a natural partnership resting on our mutual commitment to democracy and freedom and on our shared values.” She then declares that the United States must reject any Palestinian plans to pursue statehood outside of negotiations with Israel. While the US can preach to the Palestinians about how and when to demand the end of their 45-year-long military occupation, Warren says the US “cannot dictate the terms” to Israel.
Warren goes on to describe Iran as “a significant threat to the United States,” echoing a key talking point of fear-mongering pro-war forces. She calls for “strong sanctions” and declares that the “United States must take the necessary steps to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon” — a veiled endorsement of a military strike if Iran crosses the constantly shifting American “red lines.” Perhaps the only option Warren does not endorse or implicitly support is diplomacy. Her foreign policy views are hardly distinguishable from those of her Republican rival, who also marches in lockstep with AIPAC.
Joshua Holland writes: The latest round in the long and nasty debate over Israel, Palestine and our own government’s Mideast policy began with a coordinated campaign — initiated by a former AIPAC staffer and eagerly picked up by the conservative media — to marginalize a handful of progressive bloggers at the Center for American Progress and Media Matters who wrote critically of Israel’s hard-right government and called its enablers in the United States “Israel Firsters.” (I wrote about the dust-up in December.)
The back and forth has continued since then, and it’s now become clear that we need to offer a simple challenge to those who say that such terms are beyond the pale because they bear some vague resemblance to some old “anti-Semitic trope” or another. What, exactly, is an acceptable way of mixing it up with these people? How can we marginalize their malign policy preferences without being smeared as anti-Semites or self-loathing Jews?
America’s political discourse is not a garden party. We’re factionalized, and we throw sharp elbows, especially online, where conservatives call liberals “moonbats,” and accuse them of hating America, and liberals lob back terms like “wingnut,” and accuse their counterparts of being morons.
In the debate over Israel and Palestine – and U.S. policy in the Middle East – one side has been disarmed, their derogatory labels rejected as singularly unacceptable, while their opponents remain free to use the coarsest insults against them with impunity.
The problem stems from the objective fact that there are a group of Americans – disproportionately represented among right-wing Christian evangelicals and older generations of Jewish-Americans – who ally themselves with the Israeli government. They do so regardless of its ideological bent at the moment and deny that the Palestinians have legitimate grievances (sometimes going so far as to deny their existence). They wish away the cruelty of the occupation, pretend that there are only rejectionists on the Palestinian side and Israel only wants peace, claim Israel has never violated international law or trampled on human rights, insist that Israeli Arabs don’t face hostility and discrimination and go around calling everyone who disagrees anti-Semites and terror supporters.
And despite the fact that their views are totally out of sync with most liberal Israelis, and many of the policies they favor, like a military attack on Iran, would likely result in an utter disaster for Israel as well as its neighbors, they insist on calling themselves “pro-Israel.”
People who do not accept these arguments have attempted to characterize the views of this group and to come up with a variety of typically rough-and-tumble labels to apply t it. But all of them have been condemned as entirely out of bounds because, if held up to the light in just the right way, they kind of, sort of resemble some old anti-Semitic stereotype.
Neocon Zionist casino boss, Sheldon Adelson and his wife, Miriam, are the money behind Newt Gingrich — and a prime force in the colonization of Greater Israel.
Muckety has created a useful graphic to show the many strands of the Adelson empire.
Josh Ruebner writes: “No Aid to Israel?” wonders a recent Facebook ad sponsored by US President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign. “Mitt Romney, Rick Perry, and Newt Gingrich say they would start foreign aid to Israel at zero. Reject their extreme plan now!” the ad implores, directing people to sign a petition to that effect on my.barackobama.com (“Stand against “zeroing out aid to Israel””).
After signing the petition, the caption underneath a beaming photo of the president declares that “Any plan to cut foreign aid to zero across the board is dangerous and ignorant. It’s up to us to get the word out about it. Donate now to help us spread the facts about the Romney-Perry-Gingrich plan to wipe out foreign aid to allies like Israel.”
As Salon writer Justin Elliott correctly notes, “the Obama ads are incredibly dishonest. First of all, the Republican candidates were talking about setting foreign aid at zero each year as a starting point in discussions about how much to give, not setting it at zero as a matter of policy” (“Obama’s dishonest Israel ads, Salon, 12 December 2011).
However, the Obama campaign is far from unique in employing a breathtakingly simplistic strategy of artifice and vituperation (both against opposing candidates and against Palestinians) to bolster their pro-Israel street cred in a transparent ploy to attract campaign donations and votes. US support for Israel, once a carefully nurtured bipartisan consensus, is fast degenerating in the context of the 2012 presidential election into a mud-slinging partisan contest as to which party, in the words of Mitt Romney, who leveled the accusation against Obama, is more guilty of having “thrown Israel under the bus” (“Mitt Romney accuses Obama of “throwing Israel under the bus”,” CBS News, 19 May 2011).
The Atlantic Wire provides a well-rounded briefing on Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire casino magnate whose support for Newt Gingrich might not help him win the GOP nomination but “could be enough to burn down the Republican front runner in the process.”
Atlantic Wire: Adelson grew up in the working class neighborhoods outside Boston and got started in business selling toiletries to hotels. He later dropped out of college, became a mortgage broker and ran a tour business. According to this profile from The New Yorker in 2008 (which is an excellent primer on Adeleson's rise to power), he made and lost more than one fortune, but then in 1979, he started a computer trade show in Las Vegas. (Comdex, an ancient ancestor of this week's CES.) Within a decade, his success with the show led him to purchase the old Las Vegas Sands Hotel. That was when he started his climb from "merely rich" to becoming a billionaire. He built a massive convention center next door, turning the city into a huge business gathering destination, then tore down the aging casino itself and built The Venetian, a massive hotel complex with high-end shopping, restaurants, spacious rooms, indoor canals, and of course, a glittery casino that exemplified the "new" opulent Las Vegas.
It was around the time that he bought the Sands that Adelson, who grew up as a Massachusetts Democrat, had a conversion to Republicanism, after befriending William Bush, the brother of George H. W. Bush. A relative newcomer to the world of the super rich, Adelson had the same proverbial epiphany that most newly wealthy people make when they see their 1040, arguing: “Why is it fair that I should be paying a higher percentage of taxes than anyone else?” The rest is obvious history.
As Adelson gained influence in Vegas, he began to spread his reach around the globe. In 2004, he made a deal with the Chinese government to open the first American-owned casino in Macao, a move that multiplied his wealth fourteen times in the last decade. (As a demonstration of his closeness China, he allegedly helped kill a Congressional bill denouncing Beijing's 2008 Olympic bid.) He has also been a major player in Israel-American politics, donating millions to AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, until abandoning the group after they supported an increase in aid to the Palestinians, who he considers an "invented people." He met with President George W. Bush in the White House to lobby against peace negotiations and worked to oust former Israeli Prime Minister (and former friend) Ehud Olmert after he declared a willingness to negotiate a two-state solution. In 2007, he opened in his own free daily newspaper in Israel that has been called a mouthpiece for current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
In America, the 78-year-old billionaire has aligned himself with Gingrich who shares similar views on Israel. He was the biggest supporter of American Solutions for Winning the Future, a different PAC that Gingrich personally ran before he was a candidate, and was replaced with the "independent" Winning Our Future. Legally, Winning Our Future and the Gingrich campaign must remain separate, but this latest move only underscores how flimsy those rules are and how massive an influence super PACs are having on the primary. When essentially one person can keep an entire ad campaign alive, even after the candidate it means to support ceases to be viable, that's a discouraging fact of American politics. It's also one that won't quell any fears about the power of the 1%.
Think Progress reports:The funding behind Newt Gingrich’s American Solutions for Winning the Future, an independent political committee, offers an intriguing clue into the financial deep pockets backing Gingrich’s candidacy. This week, McClatchy revealed that American Solutions footed the $8 million bill for private jet charters while Gingrich weighed whether to enter the 2008 and 2012 presidential races. Casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson was the biggest funder of American Solutions, contributing $7.65 million and rumored to have committed $20 million to a pro-Gingrich super PAC, a report denied by an Adelson spokesperson. Whether the report is true or not, the facts increasingly show that the billionaire casino magnate is a central figure in Newt Gingrich’s political career.
Sands Corporation CEO Sheldon Adelson is based in Las Vegas but has business and political interests in Macau, China and Israel. In Israel, Adelson’s importance stems from his close friendship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his ownership of Israel HaYom, a free daily newspaper which supports Netanyahu’s Likud party. Back in the U.S., Adelson sits on the board of the Republican Jewish Coalition and is outspoken about his views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
During the George W. Bush presidency, Adelson opposed efforts to jump start peace talks between the Israelis and Palestinians and even took sides against the influential American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) when the organization supported peace talks. “I don’t continue to support organizations that help friends committing suicide just because they say they want to jump,” Adelson told the Jewish Telegraph Agency.
Max Blumenthal writes: Last week began with former AIPAC flack Josh Block accusing writers at two progressive think tanks in Washington of advancing the “new” anti-Semitism, conflating their criticisms of Israeli policies with straightforward Jew-hatred. “Either they can allow people to say borderline anti-Semitic stuff,” Block told Politico, “and to say things that are antithetical to the fundamental values of the Democratic party, or they can fire them and stop it.” By the end of the week, Block was feverishly denying ever accusing anyone of anti-Semitism and was reportedly hanging on by a thread to his own jobs at two Beltway policy institutes.
This week began with Thomas Friedman sending the self-appointed defenders of Israel into a petulant frenzy. “I sure hope that Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, understands that the standing ovation he got in Congress this year was not for his politics. That ovation was bought and paid for by the Israel lobby,” Friedman wrote. Like clockwork, Friedman came under heavy fire from Jennifer “Round Up His Captors” Rubin,Rep. Steve Rothman (D-NJ),Elliot Abrams, and Jonathan Tobin.
While Tobin explicitly accused Friedman of trafficking in the “New Anti-Semitism,” Abrams did so implicitly, falsely claiming that Friedman had “refer[red] so nastily to the ‘Jewish Lobby.'” (In fact, as Jim Lobe noted, Friedman never used the phrase “Jewish lobby.”) Thus Friedman, that fierce anti-Zionist crusader who once warned of “a trend, both deliberate and inadvertent, to delegitimize Israel,” was branded by two of America’s most prominent neoconservatives as a dangerous Jew hater.
The two pathetic episodes crystallized an encouraging trend: the “New Anti-Semitism” smear is finally getting old.
Having stirred outrage by calling Palestinians an “invented people,” in last night’s GOP presidential debate New Gingrich went even further by saying, “these people are terrorists.”
I guess if he becomes president, at least the United States will have to abandon the pretense that it has any role as a mediator between Israelis and Palestinians.
In a conference call organized by the National Council of Young Israel and broadcast on The Yeshiva World News on Friday, Gingrich took a question from Mort Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America.
Klein is more forthright than some of Gingrich’s other Zionist friends might be — he unequivocally opposes a two-state solution.
Last year he said: “As much as we all want Israel to have peace with the Arabs, Israel can and will survive and thrive without it — as they have since 1948.”
Israel doesn’t need peace — this is the conviction that explains the Israeli intransigence that long ago turned the so-called peace process into a charade.
What those who don’t believe in peace do believe in, is the need for the United States to ensure that Israel maintains its “qualitative military edge” — a commitment that the Obama administration has supported even more strongly than its predecessors.
A nuclear-armed Iran would undermine Israel’s military hegemony in the Middle East and so many of Israel’s supporters are willing to back another war — usually on the pretext that it would prevent a second holocaust — rather than tolerate a significant shift in the regional balance of power.
In spite of the hysterical campaign propaganda that some American politicians are now using, “[f]ew in Netanyahu’s inner circle believe that Iran has any short-term plans to drop a nuclear weapon on Tel Aviv, should it find a means to deliver it,” according to Netanyahu confidant, Jeffery Goldberg.
Klein’s question for Gingrich was on the expansion of settlements, but the strategic perspective they share is that Israel can continue to exist and prosper in a permanent state of war. From that perspective, the two most important features of the relationship between Israel and the United States are that the U.S. continues to maintain a steady flow of military aid and it remains willing to engage in wars that Israel cannot fight alone. It comes down to blood and money.
Note too that a necessary condition that helps ensure that Americans will acquiesce in fulfilling this need is that we must also share the Zionist faith in the sustainability of permanent war.
The unshakable bond that unites Israel and the United States — a bond that in American politics has become an object of cultish devotion — is an absolute faith in war. Perhaps the only thing that will be able to shake that faith will be economic ruin.
Klein: What is your position about the right of Jews to live in Judea and Samaria [the West Bank] and the right of Jews to live in communities there at this present time?
Gingrich: Well, it depends on where exactly you define the boundaries. I do not oppose any development in the [Israeli occupied] areas, because I think that’s part of the negotiating process. To the degree that the Palestinians want to stop the developments they need to reach a deal in which they recognize the right of Israel to exist… As long as they are waging war on Israel, they are in no position to complain about developments. I think the whole peace process has been absurd and has created a psychologically almost impossible position for the average person because once you say there’s a peace process you wonder why the Israelis aren’t being more forthcoming. But if you say, look, we’re still in the middle of a war. They’re still trying to destroy the country — they’re still firing rockets, they still have terrorists coming in — then you all of a sudden understand what the real situation on the ground is, and in that setting, why would the Israelis slow down in maximizing their net bargaining advantage?
In other words, settlement expansion is a bargaining tool and thus the more Israelis there are living in the West Bank, the better Israel’s negotiating position.
As a Palestinian negotiator once said, this is like trying to divide a pizza with someone who is intent on eating the whole pie before it gets divided.
The Washington Post reports on responses to Gingrich’s claim that the Palestinians are an “invented people”:
Michigan Sen. Carl Levin sharply criticized Gingrich’s comments as cynical attempts to curry support with Jewish voters and unhelpful to the peace process.
“The vast majority of American Jews (including this one) and the Israeli Government itself are committed to a two-state solution in which Israelis and Palestinians live side-by-side as neighbors and in peace,” Levin said in a statement. “Gingrich offered no solutions — just a can of gasoline and a match.”
[Hanan] Ashrawi, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organisation Executive Committee, said Gingrich’s remarks harked back to days when the Palestinians’ existence as a people was denied by Israelis such as Golda Meir, prime minister from 1969 to 1974.
“It is certainly regressive,” she said. “This is certainly an invitation to further conflict rather than any contribution to peace.”
“This proves that in the hysterical atmosphere of American elections, people lose all touch with reality and make not just irresponsible and dangerous statements, but also very racist comments that betray not just their own ignorance but an unforgivable bias,” she said.
Fawzi Barhoum, a Hamas spokesman in Gaza, said the Gingrich remarks “were grave comments that represented an incitement for ethnic cleansing against the Palestinians.”
