Category Archives: Israel lobby

EDITORIAL: Intelligence, information, truth and power

Intelligence, information, truth and power
By Paul Woodward, War in Context, April 3, 2009

When the Israel lobby launched its frantic campaign to obstruct the appointment of Chas Freeman as chairman of the National Intelligence Council (NIC), it was as though a notorious anti-Zionist was just about to torpedo US-Israeli relations. The idea that Ambassador Freeman could have played an important role in improving America’s national security and its position in the world apparently didn’t enter the minds of those who saw him as a threat.

Now that the furor has died down, Freeman has given an interview with Jim Lobe from the Inter Press Service and he outlines the approach that he had hoped to bring to the handling of intelligence and its role in government. What Freeman touches upon actually reaches far beyond the issue of intelligence and points to fundamental questions about how information is viewed and how its use shapes our lives.

This is how the issues were laid out in the interview:

Jim Lobe: Because much of the talk around Washington after your appointment – before, during and after your withdrawal – has so narrowly focused on a few issues, there was never much public debate about what you hoped to accomplish in the job of NIC chairman.

Chas Freeman: I was, frankly, approaching this with a fairly well thought out but still hypothetical focus on process with some additional questions of substance that I wanted to explore. I say hypothetical, because you never know until you encounter bureaucratic or other realities whether your notion of what needs to be done is in fact realistic or feasible.

But my sense was there have been several problems with the intelligence community and its output in recent years. Obviously, there’s been a problem of quality, illustrated along with the other problem – credibility – very nicely in the run-up to the Iraq War and the credulity with which the intelligence community responded to assertions by exile and special interest groups and others, and its willingness to slice and dice its conclusions to suit the political taste of its principal consumers.

Jim Lobe: What sorts of procedural changes were you thinking about implementing?

Chas Freeman: In general, I would’ve tried very hard to encourage members of the intelligence community to use classified information as a form of corroboration for information that is not classified, or is not terribly sensitive even if it is classified. In other words, I would urge analysts to write down rather than write up terms of levels of classification.

The theory here is that, whereas many people in the (NIC) have tended to see the value of intelligence as directly proportional to its level of classification, this, in fact, misunderstands the nature of intelligence. Intelligence is simply information that is relevant to statecraft or decision-making. If it’s on the front page of the Financial Times or Inter Press or has been stolen out of the Kremlin safe, the key question is what is its reliability and how much can you rely upon it in understanding the situation you confront and in forming policies to deal with that situation.

I must say much of the criticism of my appointment focused on the apparently horrifying possibility that I might actually produce intelligence that might not conform to political convenience or correctness but reached some other conclusion – intelligence that wouldn’t fit the preconceptions or policy preferences of its consumers. And that would be unacceptable.

The tendency to tie the value of intelligence to its level of classification is the product of a philosophical view of information that has profound implications.

The crucial issue is whether information is viewed as a repository of truth or power.

Is information valued because it illuminates understanding or because it can serve as a means to an end?

Information as a repository of power needs to be guarded and channeled in the most effective way. Its value becomes diluted through loss of ownership.

Information as a repository of truth acquires value if it can be tied to other information through a process of exchange. Its value is enhanced through the relinquishment of ownership.

Democracy rises or falls on its ability to sustain the free flow of information. As a practical necessity that flow needs to be managed yet if this is treated as an exercise in the control of power, democratic governance itself will be undermined.

Those who saw Freeman as a threat were looking through the prism of information-as-power. They thought he would be a gatekeeper who held back information that would serve their agenda while promoting the flow of information whose dissemination would act against their interests. What they failed to see was that Freeman never shared their presuppositions about the nature of information.

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GUEST CONTRIBUTOR – John Robertson: Obama’s outreach and the hierarchy of ‘enlightened nations’

Obama’s outreach and the hierarchy of ‘enlightened nations’
By John Robertson, War in Context, March 22, 2009

John Mearsheimer (of the University of Chicago, and co-author with Stephen Walt of the much-touted/much-reviled The Israel Lobby) has an important essay in the latest London Review of Books, in which he argues (as has Walt) that the Charles Freeman affair has exposed the Israel Lobby and created some new space for public debate about its excessive and harmful impact on the making of US foreign policy. Continue reading →

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EDITORIAL: The Israel lobby gets pumped up with blood lust

The Israel lobby gets pumped up with blood lust
By Paul Woodward, War in Context, March 12, 2009

The first line of defense has come crashing down.

Denying the existence of the Israel lobby is like saying there’s no such thing as global warming.

But just as global warming deniers later decided to reposition themselves by acknowledging its reality while suggesting it was harmless, those who now reluctantly concede that the lobby exists want to insist that it is benign and not particularly powerful. They charge that far more dangerous than the lobby are its critics: a fanatic bunch of slanderers who stand at the vanguard of a global wave of anti-Semiticism.

Even so, the lobby that preferred to hide in the shadows has now broken cover and while intoxicated with victory wants to bring down another quarry.

In a victory message (revealed by Mondoweiss), Daniel Pipes, director of the Middle East Forum, heralded Steven Rosen’s “achievement” after having got “the word out” — mobilized the lobby. Pipes applauded Rosen because, “Only someone with Steve’s stature and credibility could have made this happen.” There was a campaign and in three weeks it accomplished its goal: Chas Freeman bowed out.

But even now, the editors of the Washington Post want to try and sustain the charade that there is no lobby and denounce those of us who think otherwise:

Mr. Freeman issued a two-page screed on Tuesday in which he described himself as the victim of a shadowy and sinister “Lobby” whose “tactics plumb the depths of dishonor and indecency” and which is “intent on enforcing adherence to the policies of a foreign government.” Yes, Mr. Freeman was referring to Americans who support Israel — and his statement was a grotesque libel.

For the record, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee says that it took no formal position on Mr. Freeman’s appointment and undertook no lobbying against him. If there was a campaign, its leaders didn’t bother to contact the Post editorial board.

If the Post’s editorial board was truly outside the loop here it probably says less about the vigor of the campaign and more about the diminishing influence of their editorial page. It’s role is now that of being granted the final word — one that can then be applauded by its bloodthirsty allies like Marty Peretz: “With cool and stiletto words, the Post has put this man in the bin.”

(That’s an interesting choice of imagery and reinforces what I suggested yesterday: that it would in many ways be more fitting if we talked about the Israel mob instead of the lobby. Be that as it may, the language has now solidified in popular usage and Israel lobby it is. All that remains to be contested is whether it should be lobby or Lobby. I’m sticking with the small “l” since I think this is an entity held together with much stronger ideological than organizational glue.)

As for the Post’s assertion that AIPAC played no part, that might be its official position though Dan Fleshler says the organization didn’t just sit back and watch:

Very reliable sources inform me that Josh Block, an AIPAC spokesperson, contacted bloggers and journalists expressing concern about Freeman. That is probably what Freeman referred to when he mentioned “easily traceable e-mails” in the announcement that he was giving up the fight. Trust me on this one. I had to think twice about writing it because I want Block, who is generally very nice to critical journalists at the AIPAC Policy Conferences, to be nice to me. There is no way I would have written it unless it were manifestly true, and important.

Even it were not true, it is simply inconceivable that Mark Kirk, Charles Schumer and other Congressfolk who publicly objected to Freeman would have done so without the encouragement – or winks and nods – of AIPAC. The Hill is where it lives and breathes, and nothing this important could have been orchestrated without its blessing.

Walter Pincus adds:

Only a few Jewish organizations came out publicly against Freeman’s appointment, but a handful of pro-Israeli bloggers and employees of other organizations worked behind the scenes to raise concerns with members of Congress, their staffs and the media.

For example, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), often described as the most influential pro-Israel lobbying group in Washington, “took no position on this matter and did not lobby the Hill on it,” spokesman Josh Block said.

But Block responded to reporters’ questions and provided critical material about Freeman, albeit always on background, meaning his comments could not be attributed to him, according to three journalists who spoke to him. Asked about this yesterday, Block replied: “As is the case with many, many issues every day, when there is general media interest in a subject, I often provide publicly available information to journalists on background.”

Yesterday, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, which tried to derail Freeman’s appointment, applauded his withdrawal. But it added: “We think Israel and any presumed ‘lobby’ had far less effect on the outcome than the common-sensical belief that the person who is the gatekeeper of intelligence information for the President of the United States should be unencumbered by payments from foreign governments.”

The suggestion that neither Freeman’s views on Israel nor the efforts of the Israel lobby were central is however quite easy to refute by engaging in a simple line of conjecture.

Consider the blog post through which Steven Rosen “got the word out”:

Readers of this blog know that I have been generally quite positive about the appointments the new Adminsitration is making for Middle East policy positions. Today’s news is quite different. According to Laura Rozen at the Foreign Policy blog, Chas W. Freeman, Jr., the former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, will become chairman of the National Intelligence Council, and may at times participate in daily intelligence briefings to President Obama. This is a profoundly disturbing appointment, if the report is correct. Freeman is a strident critic of Israel, and a textbook case of the old-line Arabism that afflicted American diplomacy at the time the state of Israel was born. His views of the region are what you would expect in the Saudi foreign ministry, with which he maintains an extremely close relationship, not the top CIA position for analytic products going to the President of the United States.

Here is a sample of his views on Israel, from his Remarks to the National Council on US-Arab Relations on September 12, 2005: “As long as the United States continues unconditionally to provide the subsidies and political protection that make the Israeli occupation and the high-handed and self-defeating policies it engenders possible, there is little, if any, reason to hope that anything resembling the former peace process can be resurrected. Israeli occupation and settlement of Arab lands is inherently violent. …And as long as such Israeli violence against Palestinians continues, it is utterly unrealistic to expect that Palestinians will stand down from violent resistance and retaliation against Israelis. Mr. Sharon is far from a stupid man; he understands this. So, when he sets the complete absence of Palestinian violence as a precondition for implementing the road map or any other negotiating process, he is deliberately setting a precondition he knows can never be met.”

Here is another example from 2008: “We have reflexively supported the efforts of a series of right-wing Israeli governments to undo the Oslo accords and to pacify the Palestinians rather than make peace with them. … The so-called “two-state solution” – is widely seen in the region as too late and too little. Too late, because so much land has been colonized by Israel that there is not enough left for a viable Palestinian state alongside Israel; too little, because what is on offer looks to Palestinians more like an Indian reservation than a country.”

According to Foreign policy blog, Freeman has told associates that in the job, he will occasionally accompany Director of National Intelligence Adm. Dennis Blair to give the president his daily intelligence briefing. His predecessor, Thomas Fingar, wore a second hat as deputy director of national intelligence for analysis.

Now subtract the parts relating to Israel. You’re left with this:

Readers of this blog know that I have been generally quite positive about the appointments the new Adminsitration is making for Middle East policy positions. Today’s news is quite different. According to Laura Rozen at the Foreign Policy blog, Chas W. Freeman, Jr., the former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, will become chairman of the National Intelligence Council, and may at times participate in daily intelligence briefings to President Obama. This is a profoundly disturbing appointment, if the report is correct. His views of the region are what you would expect in the Saudi foreign ministry, with which he maintains an extremely close relationship, not the top CIA position for analytic products going to the President of the United States.

According to Foreign policy blog, Freeman has told associates that in the job, he will occasionally accompany Director of National Intelligence Adm. Dennis Blair to give the president his daily intelligence briefing. His predecessor, Thomas Fingar, wore a second hat as deputy director of national intelligence for analysis.

Is this the basis of a campaign? I don’t think so.

What now follows?

Fred Kaplan makes an interesting argument:

Chas Freeman is a high-profile figure. He became one by his own design, through public speeches, some of them deliberately provocative. Making him NIC chairman would—unjustly but unavoidably—hurl all intelligence, and all policy based on intelligence, into the fray of fractious politics.

However, this is where Freeman’s foes misplayed their hand. Had they let Freeman step into the job, they could have used him as the whipping boy for all foreign-policy measures they don’t like—especially those involving the Middle East and China—and it might have been easier for them to rally opposition. But now it will be indisputably clear that the president is the one making policy. They’re left with Barack Obama as their target—and one thing that’s clear, so far, is that those who sling mud at Obama wind up hitting themselves.

This might turn out to be true but there are already indications that having successfully thrust a stiletto into Freeman, those who still have blood on their hands now have DNI Blair in their sights.

“It wasn’t until Mr. Freeman withdrew from consideration for the job, however, that it became clear just how bad a selection Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair had made… The real question is why an administration that says it aims to depoliticize U.S. intelligence estimates would have chosen such a man to oversee them,” says the Washington Post.

“Blair revealed his true colors by hiring Freeman. From here on out, every intel product will be treated as suspect. The Obama administration’s attempt to politicize the intelligence process has badly muddied the waters,” wrote Michael Goldfarb in The Weekly Standard.

Did Freeman’s foes misplay their hand, as Fred Kaplan suggests, or are they now one step closer to achieving a much more significant goal: to be able cast doubt on any statement the DNI makes.

Freeman needed to be finished off and put “in the bin.” Blair just needs to be crippled.

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EDITORIAL: The Israel lobby tightens its stranglehold on American politics

The Israel lobby tightens its stranglehold on American politics
By Paul Woodward, War in Context, March 11, 2009

Nothing disturbs Washington’s political culture more than uninvited honesty.

Chas Freeman’s eloquent yet blunt explanation of why he has decided not to take up the post of chairman of the National Intelligence Council was described as “intemperate” by the ever-temperate James Fallows and as “a bit too hot, for my taste” by Joe Klein. (Both Klein and Fallows, I should note, were not among Freeman’s critics.)

To those who regard Freeman’s statement as somehow an affront to the decorum that Washington expects I would ask this: Is it better to apply make-up over a festering boil, or is it better to lance it?

Joe Klein, even now unwilling to acknowledge the existence of an “Israel lobby,” insists that Freeman was the victim of an attack by a mob — a largely Jewish neoconservative mob — but not a lobby. That strikes me as merely a semantic quibble. If Israel “lobby” sounds too dignified, I have no problem with calling it the “Israel mob” — it is indeed a kind of political mafia.

But however anyone wants to characterize or label the Israel lobby, no one can dispute that it is tenacious. Freeman’s assessment that were he to take up the intelligence position he would remain “under constant attack” is most likely accurate. His choice to remain in private life is understandable. If anything constructive is to come out of this episode — and I think it can — it is that the workings of the Israel lobby are now more transparent than ever.

The campaign against Freeman was led by the indicted former director of AIPAC, Steven Rosen. While the victory champagne was no doubt still flowing, the editors of the Washington Post saw fit — with amazing timing — to add their own toast by calling on the Attorney General to drop the case against Rosen in which he has been charged under the Espionage Act. The Post argues:

The government has the right to demand strict confidentiality from government officials and others who swear to protect its secrets. The Justice Department errs egregiously and risks profound damage to the First Amendment, however, when it insists that private citizens — academics, journalists, think tank analysts, lobbyists and the like — also are legally bound to keep the nation’s secrets. The prosecution in effect criminalizes the exchange of information.

I’m no legal expert, but it would seem that the case hinges not on whether individuals outside government can legally be the recipients of classified information. Rather, the case would seem to rest on a determination of AIPAC’s actual nature.

Even if it is not registered as an agent of a foreign government, if AIPAC can be demonstrated to have been functioning as such, then as an AIPAC official, Rosen could presumably be shown to have been acting on behalf of the Israeli government.

As Douglas M. Bloomfield, a former legislative director and chief lobbyist for AIPAC, writes: “The American Israel Public Affairs Committee and its leaders could be the biggest losers in a case that threatens to expose the group’s inner secrets.”

He continues:

Although AIPAC claims it has nothing to do with the convoluted case, it is also on trial, in a way. The organization fired the pair [Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman] and said they were rogues acting beneath the group’s standards. That will be shot full of holes from all directions in court, whether in the criminal case or in a likely civil suit by the defendants claiming damage to their reputations and careers.

The mere threat of a multimillion-dollar civil suit could prompt a very generous settlement offer from AIPAC in exchange for a vow of silence from the former staffers. But don’t worry; AIPAC can easily afford it.

Soon after the FBI raided AIPAC offices, the organization launched a fund-raising campaign to defend against any charges, and the appeals for money didn’t stop when it fired the pair. Since the scandal broke in 2004, AIPAC’s fund-raising juggernaut has hauled in so much dough that one senior staffer told me that “it’s coming in faster than we know what to do with it.”

JTA quoted tax records showing AIPAC raised $86 million in 2007, doubling 2003’s $43 million. Not all of that money was a result of the espionage case, but many millions were.

In cutting loose the pair, AIPAC insisted it had no idea what they were doing. Not so, say insiders, former colleagues, sources close to the defense, and others familiar with the organization.

One of the topics AIPAC won’t want discussed, say these sources, is how closely it coordinated with Benjamin Netanyahu in the 1990s, when he led the Israeli Likud opposition and later when he was prime minister, to impede the Oslo peace process being pressed by President Bill Clinton and Israeli Prime Ministers Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres.

That could not only validate AIPAC’s critics, who accuse it of being a branch of the Likud, but also lead to an investigation of violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

Clearly, nothing worries AIPAC and its supporters more than the possibility that the organization — and by extension the Israel lobby as a political force — might face wider public scrutiny.

The campaign against Chas Freeman was not driven by an exaggerated estimation of his importance; it was a strategic battle in defense of the lobby’s deeply entrenched political authority. The importance of the fight was evident by the fact that it was fought in the open. But having come right out into the open, it is now that much more difficult for the lobby to retreat into the shadows.

And as Steven Rosen once wrote in an AIPAC internal memo: “A lobby is like a night flower. It thrives in the dark and dies in the sun.”

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A statement by Chas Freeman

The tactics of the Israel Lobby plumb the depths of dishonor and indecency
By Chas Freeman, Middle East Policy Council, March 10, 2009

To all who supported me or gave me words of encouragement during the controversy of the past two weeks, you have my gratitude and respect.

You will by now have seen the statement by Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair reporting that I have withdrawn my previous acceptance of his invitation to chair the National Intelligence Council.

I have concluded that the barrage of libelous distortions of my record would not cease upon my entry into office. The effort to smear me and to destroy my credibility would instead continue. I do not believe the National Intelligence Council could function effectively while its chair was under constant attack by unscrupulous people with a passionate attachment to the views of a political faction in a foreign country. I agreed to chair the NIC to strengthen it and protect it against politicization, not to introduce it to efforts by a special interest group to assert control over it through a protracted political campaign.

As those who know me are well aware, I have greatly enjoyed life since retiring from government. Nothing was further from my mind than a return to public service. When Admiral Blair asked me to chair the NIC I responded that I understood he was “asking me to give my freedom of speech, my leisure, the greater part of my income, subject myself to the mental colonoscopy of a polygraph, and resume a daily commute to a job with long working hours and a daily ration of political abuse.” I added that I wondered “whether there wasn’t some sort of downside to this offer.” I was mindful that no one is indispensable; I am not an exception. It took weeks of reflection for me to conclude that, given the unprecedentedly challenging circumstances in which our country now finds itself abroad and at home, I had no choice but accept the call to return to public service. I thereupon resigned from all positions that I had held and all activities in which I was engaged. I now look forward to returning to private life, freed of all previous obligations.

I am not so immodest as to believe that this controversy was about me rather than issues of public policy. These issues had little to do with the NIC and were not at the heart of what I hoped to contribute to the quality of analysis available to President Obama and his administration. Still, I am saddened by what the controversy and the manner in which the public vitriol of those who devoted themselves to sustaining it have revealed about the state of our civil society. It is apparent that we Americans cannot any longer conduct a serious public discussion or exercise independent judgment about matters of great importance to our country as well as to our allies and friends.

The libels on me and their easily traceable email trails show conclusively that there is a powerful lobby determined to prevent any view other than its own from being aired, still less to factor in American understanding of trends and events in the Middle East. The tactics of the Israel Lobby plumb the depths of dishonor and indecency and include character assassination, selective misquotation, the willful distortion of the record, the fabrication of falsehoods, and an utter disregard for the truth. The aim of this Lobby is control of the policy process through the exercise of a veto over the appointment of people who dispute the wisdom of its views, the substitution of political correctness for analysis, and the exclusion of any and all options for decision by Americans and our government other than those that it favors.

There is a special irony in having been accused of improper regard for the opinions of foreign governments and societies by a group so clearly intent on enforcing adherence to the policies of a foreign government – in this case, the government of Israel. I believe that the inability of the American public to discuss, or the government to consider, any option for US policies in the Middle East opposed by the ruling faction in Israeli politics has allowed that faction to adopt and sustain policies that ultimately threaten the existence of the state of Israel. It is not permitted for anyone in the United States to say so. This is not just a tragedy for Israelis and their neighbors in the Middle East; it is doing widening damage to the national security of the United States.

The outrageous agitation that followed the leak of my pending appointment will be seen by many to raise serious questions about whether the Obama administration will be able to make its own decisions about the Middle East and related issues. I regret that my willingness to serve the new administration has ended by casting doubt on its ability to consider, let alone decide what policies might best serve the interests of the United States rather than those of a Lobby intent on enforcing the will and interests of a foreign government.

In the court of public opinion, unlike a court of law, one is guilty until proven innocent. The speeches from which quotations have been lifted from their context are available for anyone interested in the truth to read. The injustice of the accusations made against me has been obvious to those with open minds. Those who have sought to impugn my character are uninterested in any rebuttal that I or anyone else might make.

Still, for the record: I have never sought to be paid or accepted payment from any foreign government, including Saudi Arabia or China, for any service, nor have I ever spoken on behalf of a foreign government, its interests, or its policies. I have never lobbied any branch of our government for any cause, foreign or domestic. I am my own man, no one else’s, and with my return to private life, I will once again – to my pleasure – serve no master other than myself. I will continue to speak out as I choose on issues of concern to me and other Americans.

I retain my respect and confidence in President Obama and DNI Blair. Our country now faces terrible challenges abroad as well as at home. Like all patriotic Americans, I continue to pray that our president can successfully lead us in surmounting them.

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On Chas Freeman’s decision to step aside

No time to comment on this at greater length until tomorrow, but Ambassador Freeman’s decision to step aside is sad but not surprising. He had accepted an intelligence position; not an invitation to get crucified by the Israel lobby. Indeed, as a realist his decision to bow out seems to reflect an understanding of the lobby’s actual power and that his appointment would be unlikely to be a decisive factor in reigning in a force that clearly retains a stranglehold on Washington.

The last two weeks have really served to showcase the lobby in action. Those who have long claimed that the lobby’s power gets overstated, now have very little ground to stand on.

Israel-first neo-McCarthyism still rules the US government, Congress and the US media. While the power holders may take comfort that they succeeded in winning this battle, they should also know that now more than ever they are viewed with disgust by Americans whose numbers are swelling even if their voices struggle to be heard.
Paul Woodward

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IT’S THE ISRAEL LOBBY, STUPID!

Who’s behind the war on Obama’s intelligence pick
By Max Blumenthal, Daily Beast, March 10, 2009

The effort to dislodge Freeman still has the potential to impact the Obama administration’s policies towards Israel, however discredited its architect [indicted former AIPAC director, Steven Rosen] may be. This is, of course, the underlying objective of many of Freeman’s critics. “Freeman is stuck in the latest instance of the deadly power game long played here on what level of support for controversial Israeli government policies is a ‘requirement’ for US public office…” foreign policy analyst Chris Nelson wrote in his Nelson Report, an influential private daily newsletter read by Washington policy makers. “If Obama surrenders to the critics and orders [Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair] to rescind the Freeman appointment to chair the NIC, it is difficult to see how he can properly exercise leverage, when needed, in his conduct of policy in the Middle East. That, literally, is how the experts see the stakes of the fight now underway.” Continue reading →

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EDITORIAL: Will Obama capitulate to the Israel lobby?

Will Obama capitulate to the Israel lobby?
By Paul Woodward, War in Context, March 5, 2009

After Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair announced the appointment of Chas Freeman as chairman of the National Intelligence Council on February 26, one might have thought that the Israel lobby would be ready to concede defeat. They put up a fight and they lost. They surely have many more battles up ahead. But maybe not. Maybe this is actually the battle royal that will determine whether the lobby can retain its vice grip on Washington’s approach to the Middle East. Freeman may have been appointed, but the fight to unlodge him is far from over.

On Tuesday, Jake Tapper provided a roundup of the ongoing efforts to have Freeman’s appointment reversed:

Today a group of Congressmen, including Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., and House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, wrote to President Obama expressing concern about Freeman. (Read the letter here [PDF].)

“Given his close ties to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia we request a comprehensive review of Amb. Freeman’s past and current commercial, financial and contractual ties to the Kingdom to ensure no conflict of interest exists in his new position,” the members of Congress wrote. “As you may know, Amb. Freeman most recently served as president of the Middle East Policy Council, a think-tank funded by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The board of directors includes Dr. Fuad Rihani, a consultant to the Saudi Binladin Group — a multinational construction conglomerate and holding company for the assets owned by the bind Laden family.”

Other critics say Freeman is anti-Israel. Rep. Steve Israel, D-NY, recently asked the Inspector General for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to look into Freeman’s ties to the Saudis, noting that Freeman in 2006 said:

“For the past half decade, Israel has enjoyed carte blanche from the United States to experiment with any policy it favored to stabilize its relations with the Palestinians and its other Arab neighbors, including most recently its efforts to bomb Lebanon into peaceful coexistence with it and to smother Palestinian democracy in its cradle. The suspension of the independent exercise of American judgment about what best serves our interests as well as those of Israelis and Arabs has caused the Arabs to lose confidence in the United States as a peace partner. … left to its own devices, the Israeli establishment will make decisions that harm Israelis, threaten all associated with them, and enrage those who are not … Tragically, despite all the advantages and opportunities Israel has had over the fifty-nine years of its existence, it has failed to achieve concord and reconciliation with anyone in its region, still less to gain their admiration or affection.”

House Minority Whip Eric Cantor, R-Va., has said that “Freeman’s past associations and positions on foreign policy are deeply alarming. His statements about the U.S.-Israel relationship raise serious concerns about his ability to support the Administration’s attempts to bring security, stability and peace to the Middle East. As director of the NIC, Freeman would be in charge of drafting the National Intelligence Estimate and evaluating the strategic outlook of our nation. This selection threatens to politicize the intelligence community. I urge President Obama to reconsider this decision.”…

Perhaps most controversially, under Freeman’s direction, the Middle East Policy Council was the first outlet in the U.S. to publish the working paper of the controversial paper “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy” by University of Chicago Professor John Mearsheimer and Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University Professor Stephen Walt. Many critics suggested the paper was shoddy academically and anti-Semitic, but Freeman was proud MEPC published it.

“No one else in the United States has dared to publish this article, given the political penalties that the Lobby imposes on those who criticize it,” he said.

Every lobby in Washington is engaged in an effort to exert influence — that’s what lobbying means. But the Israel lobby goes much further. It has become used to enjoying the power of an indomitable force and as such it may well regard defeat on the Freeman appointment as being of such symbolic importance that it cannot be accepted. This is now a loyalty test.

The Washington Times now reports:

An independent inspector general will look into the foreign financial ties of Chas W. Freeman Jr., the Obama administration’s pick to serve as chairman of the group that prepares the U.S. intelligence community’s most sensitive assessments, according to three congressional aides.

The director of national intelligence, Dennis C. Blair, last Thursday named Mr. Freeman, a veteran former diplomat, to the chairmanship of the National Intelligence Council, known inside the government as the NIC. In that job, Mr. Freeman will have access to some of America’s most closely guarded secrets and be charged with overseeing the drafting of the consensus view of all 16 intelligence agencies.

His selection was praised by some who noted his articulateness and experience as U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia and a senior envoy to China and other nations. But it sparked concerns among some members of Congress from both parties, who asked the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s inspector general, Edward McGuire, to investigate Mr. Freeman’s potential conflicts of interest.

Mr. Freeman has not submitted the financial disclosure forms required of all candidates for senior public positions, according to the general counsel’s office of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Nor did Mr. Blair seek the White House’s approval before he announced the appointment of Mr. Freeman, said Mr. Blair’s spokeswoman, Wendy Morigi.

“The director did not seek the White House’s approval,” Ms. Morigi said. “In addition to his formal background security investigation, we expect that the White House will undertake the typical vetting associated with senior administration assignments.”

Among the areas likely to be scrutinized in the vetting process are Mr. Freeman’s position on the international advisory board of the China National Offshore Oil Corp. (CNOOC). The Chinese government and other state-owned companies own a majority stake in the concern, which has invested in Sudan and other countries sometimes at odds with the United States, including Iran.

Mr. Freeman is also president of the nonprofit educational organization Middle East Policy Council (MEPC), which paid him $87,000 in 2006, and received at least $1 million from a Saudi prince. He also has chaired Projects International, a consulting firm that has worked with foreign companies and governments.

Lindsay Hamilton, a spokeswoman for Rep. Steve Israel, a Democrat from New York who sits on the House Appropriations Committee’s select intelligence oversight panel that funds the classified budgets for the intelligence community, said her boss had been in touch with Mr. McGuire, who was appointed by the first director of national intelligence, John D. Negroponte.

“Congressman Israel spoke with DNI inspector McGuire. The inspector said he would look into the matter. And the congressman is pleased with his response.” Two other congressional aides also said the inspector general would start his inquiries soon.

Ms. Morigi said only that Mr. McGuire was “reviewing the letter.”

Clearly there is at least one test that Chas Freeman should be expected to be able to pass: is he at the very least no more susceptible to the appearance of conflicts of interest as, let’s say, Hillary Clinton or Dennis Ross. Am I setting the bar too low?

Daniel Luban and Jim Lobe note:

Freeman’s defenders, most of them veterans of the national-security bureaucracy, have strongly rejected charges that he would be beholden to Saudi Arabia or to the Chinese Communist Party and counter that his attackers are practicing a form of McCarthyism against anyone who might question the wisdom of unconditional support for Israel.

“They seek to eliminate from public life all those whom they think are not completely in the control of ‘the lobby,’ write Pat Lang, the former senior Mideast analyst at the Defense Intelligence agency, on his blog. “Charles Freeman is a man awesomely educated, of striking intellect, of vast experience and demonstrated integrity… Who could possibly be better for this job?”

Similarly, David Rothkopf, a former managing director of Kissinger Associates who has written an authoritative work on the history of the National Security Council, charged in his blog on the “Foreign Policy” website that “there is something ugly to these attacks on Freeman… The notion… that there is no room in the U.S. government for people who are skeptical of Israeli policies or for people who are not in lockstep with one view of, say, Saudi Arabia, is both absurd and dangerous.”

His defenders have also noted that his critics have not raised similar objections to other officials whose organizations have accepted Saudi donations.

In December, for example, shortly before Hillary Clinton was confirmed as secretary of state, her husband Bill Clinton disclosed that his foundation had received between 10 and 25 million dollars from the Saudi kingdom, among other foreign donations. Although some isolated critics in the media raised concerns about potential conflicts of interest, she was overwhelmingly confirmed by the Senate.

As Stephen Walt correctly points out, the fight against Freeman is designed to send a message to the whole foreign policy community in Washington:

…attacking Freeman is intended to deter other people in the foreign policy community from speaking out on these matters. Freeman might be too smart, too senior, and too well-qualified to stop, but there are plenty of younger people eager to rise in the foreign policy establishment and they need to be reminded that their careers could be jeopardized be if they followed in Freeman’s footsteps and said what they thought. Raising a stink about Freeman reminds others that it pays to back Israel to the hilt, or at least remain silent, even when it is pursuing policies — like building settlements on the West Bank — that are not in America’s national interest.

If the issue didn’t have such harmful consequences for the United States, the ironies of this situation would be funny. A group of amateur strategists who loudly supported the invasion of Iraq are now questioning the strategic judgment of a man who knew that war would be a catastrophic blunder. A long-time lobbyist for Israel who is now under indictment for espionage is trying to convince us that Freeman — a true patriot — is a bad appointment for an intelligence position. A journalist (Jeffrey Goldberg) whose idea of “public service” was to enlist in the Israeli army is challenging the credentials of a man who devoted decades of his life to service in the U.S. government. Now that’s chutzpah.

Evidence that the lobby’s message is resonating in the desired way can be seen in the fact that there are only a handful of bloggers who are giving this serious coverage and even worse they include some who are already willing to raise the white flag.

Matthew Yglesias writes: “I’m not thrilled to see things take this turn, but at the same time I don’t think this is the hill I want to die on.”

That’s exactly what the lobby wants to hear.

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EDITORIAL: Will Clinton allow Israel to violate US sovereignty?

Will Clinton allow Israel to violate US sovereignty?
By Paul Woodward, War in Context, March 3, 2009

A few weeks ago Ehud Olmert was bragging about his ability to dictate to President Bush how the US should vote in the UN Security Council. Now Israel is laying down “red lines” on how the US should negotiate with Iran.

What is surprising is not the degree of influence that Israel assumes it has over US foreign policy but that the Israelis choose to parade their power so publicly. Israel’s leaders are embarrassing the Israel lobby!

“I have no problem with what Olmert did,” Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, told The Forward in January. “I think the mistake was to talk about it in public.

“This is what friendships are about. He was not interfering in political issues. You have a relationship, and if you don’t like what is being done, then you go to the boss and tell him.”

And this is exactly how the lobby wants to frame US-Israeli relations: that they are based on a level of intimacy that allows Israel to discreetly petition its powerful friend.

Start telling “the boss” what to do and you risk becoming a cause of embarrassment. Keep doing it repeatedly and more and more Americans will understand why President Clinton once said in reference to then-Prime Minister Netanyahu: “Who the fuck does he think he is? Who’s the fucking superpower here?”

If anyone should be laying down red lines at this particular time — a time when it’s not clear whether the two-state solution is being rushed to the emergency room or the morgue — it is the US that should unequivocally be telling the Israelis: no more settlements.

Instead, it’s being reported that Israel has plans to double the number of Jewish settlers in the occupied territories.

When Hillary Clinton should be threatening to withdraw the diplomatic cover that the US provides Israel by perpetuating a phony peace process, instead, the Israelis are attempting to set ground rules on how the US should approach Iran.

Ironically, there is so far little indication that Israel need harbor much fear of rapprochement between the US and Iran. Clinton has already made it known that she sees little chance of talks being productive and the Obama administration in spite of having successfully used diplomatic engagement as an effective campaign gambit, has yet to demonstrate that it has a radically different perspective from the Bush administration. How so?

Whereas Bush treated talks with Iran as a reward that must be withheld, Obama is treating them as a reward that can be offered. The presupposition that in and of itself an opportunity to talk directly to Washington has inherent value, has not been questioned.

If talks are used as a bait, when Iran refuses to swallow the bait, the US and its allies will turn around and declare that Iran is unwilling to negotiate. While that might serve Israel and the US in persisting to cast Iran as a rogue state, it will merely confirm to the Iranians that there has never been a genuine interest in diplomatic engagement.

Real engagement hinges on the US credibly offering Iran positive rewards — not merely the offer that it can avoid being punished.

Effective diplomacy is driven by the belief that talking has the power to yield positive results; not the idea that failed talks can provide useful leverage.

In Israel’s efforts to circumscribe the reach of US diplomacy, items three and four of its “red lines” are particularly interesting:

    3. A time limit must be set for the talks, to prevent Iran from merely buying time to complete its nuclear development. The talks should also be defined as a “one-time opportunity” for Tehran.
    4. Timing is critical, and the U.S. should consider whether it makes sense to begin the talks before Iran’s presidential election in June.

Israel is terrified that the clock is running out — but it’s not the clock leading to a nuclear Iran; it’s the horrific prospect that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad could lose his position as a president who is easy to demonize and be replaced by Mohammad Khatami — the face of moderation.

If Khatami returns to the presidency, Benjamin Netanyahu is going to find it incredibly difficult to persuade anyone that the world faces a greater threat from Iran than it does from Great Depression II. Time is indeed running out.

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NEWS, OPINION & EDITOR’S COMMENTS: Time for the pragmatists to stand up and be counted

Israel to agree unofficially to Egypt cease-fire deal; skeptical Barak to discuss plan with Mubarak Monday
By Amos Harel and Barak Ravid, Haaretz, May 19, 2008

Israel plans to accept the Egyptian-mediated cease-fire proposal with Hamas in the Gaza Strip, but does not intend to officially declare a commitment to it. Instead, Israel will treat the deal struck indirectly with Hamas as a series of steps beginning with a lull in hostilities, followed by gradual relaxation of the financial blockade of Gaza.

Ehud Barak, who will discuss the cease-fire with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Sharm el-Sheikh Monday, is skeptical about the chances of achieving long-term quiet with Hamas, and his feelings are shared by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni.

However, Barak, who will be attending the World Economic Forum, is set to tell Mubarak and Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman that Israel is prepared to stop its military activities in Gaza if Hamas stops firing rockets at Israel. Israel will also try to get Egypt to step up efforts to stop weapons from being smuggled into Gaza. Barak is also expected to say that Israel will lift the blockade and open border crossings only if progress is made on talks aimed at releasing captive soldier Gilad Shalit.

Once quiet reigns, Israel hopes to gradually raise the number of trucks allowed to bring goods into the Strip (only about 60 trucks a day, on average, are now allowed in). If a deal is reached on returning Shalit, in exchange for Israel’s release of 450 prisoners, Israel would also agree to reopen the Rafah crossing, essentially lifting the blockade almost completely. [complete article]

Is Israel breaking its own taboo on talks with Hamas?
By Amos Harel, Haaretz, May 18, 2008

Participants at a recent inner cabinet meeting were listening to details of the Egyptian mediation initiative between Israel and Hamas on a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip recently, when a senior minister reportedly reminded those present that Israel does not negotiate, directly or indirectly, with Hamas. Shin Bet security service head Yuval Diskin interrupted, saying there was no other way to describe the talks.

A letter to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, the details of which were revealed Friday, called for the indirect and secret talks with Hamas to be recognized. As for Israel’s greatest concerns – that Hamas will use a lull in hostilities to rearm and that Egypt’s promises to fight weapons smuggling bear no weight – the writers of the letter offered no solution.

Among the signatories’ names, that of MK Yossi Beilin (Meretz) is to be expected. More surprising are the names of the former Shin Bet chief Ephraim Halevi, who has actually been calling for talks with Hamas in recent months, along with former chief of staff Amnon Lipkin-Shahak and Brigadier General (res.) Shmuel Zakai, a former Gaza Division commander. This is an attempt to provide a military stamp of approval to a step Israel has officially sworn it would not take. What was taboo two years ago is no longer. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — There’s one thing that George Bush, John McCain, and Barak Obama all currently claim: talking to Hamas is a bad idea. So what do they each have to say about the fact that Israel has abandoned this principle?

The Israelis are doing lots of posturing – claiming that talks have not been negotiations, saying that they won’t express their official commitment to a ceasefire with Hamas – but the reality is clear: the policy of attempting to defeat Hamas through a war of attrition has failed.

The presidential campaigns and the American press will of course all press along as though nothing has changed.

Israel’s ‘American problem’
By Jeffrey Goldberg, New York Times, May 18, 2008

When the prime minister of Israel, Ehud Olmert, arrived at a Jerusalem ballroom in February to address the grandees of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations (a redundancy, since there are no minor American Jewish organizations), he was pugnacious, as is customary, but he was also surprisingly defensive, and not because of his relentlessly compounding legal worries. He knew that scattered about the audience were Jewish leaders who considered him hopelessly spongy — and very nearly traitorous — on an issue they believed to be of cosmological importance: the sanctity of a “united” Jerusalem, under the sole sovereignty of Israel.

These Jewish leaders, who live in Chicago and New York and behind the gates of Boca Raton country clubs, loathe the idea that Mr. Olmert, or a prime minister yet elected, might one day cede the Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem to the latent state of Palestine. These are neighborhoods — places like Sur Baher, Beit Hanina and Abu Dis — that the Conference of Presidents could not find with a forked stick and Ari Ben Canaan as a guide. And yet many Jewish leaders believe that an Israeli compromise on the boundaries of greater Jerusalem — or on nearly any other point of disagreement — is an axiomatic invitation to catastrophe.

One leader, Joshua Katzen, of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, told me, “I think that Israelis don’t have the big view of global jihad that American Jews do, because Israelis are caught up in their daily emergencies.” When I asked him how his Israeli friends responded to this, he answered: “They say, ‘When your son has to fight, you can have an opinion.’ But I tell them that it is precisely because your son has to fight that you have a harder time seeing the larger picture.”

When I spoke to Mr. Olmert a few days after his meeting with the Conference of Presidents, he made only brief mention of his Diaspora antagonists; he said that certain American Jews he would not name have been “investing a lot of money trying to overthrow the government of Israel.” But he was expansive, and persuasive, on the Zionist need for a Palestinian state. Without a Palestine — a viable, territorially contiguous Palestine — Arabs under Israeli control will, in the not-distant future, outnumber the country’s Jews. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — We hear a lot about the existential threats that Israel faces, but an American plot to overthrow the government of Israel? And the accusation comes from the Israeli prime minister? Shouldn’t that be headline news?

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CAMPAIGN 08: Obama’s appeal and his Jewish problem

Why I’m backing Obama
By Susan Eisenhower, Washington Post, February 2, 2008

Forty-seven years ago, my grandfather Dwight D. Eisenhower bid farewell to a nation he had served for more than five decades. In his televised address, Ike famously coined the term “military-industrial complex,” and he offered advice that is still relevant today. “As we peer into society’s future,” he said, we “must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.”

Today we are engaged in a debate about these very issues. Deep in America’s heart, I believe, is the nagging fear that our best years as a nation may be over. We are disliked overseas and feel insecure at home. We watch as our federal budget hemorrhages red ink and our civil liberties are eroded. Crises in energy, health care and education threaten our way of life and our ability to compete internationally. There are also the issues of a costly, unpopular war; a long-neglected infrastructure; and an aging and increasingly needy population.

I am not alone in worrying that my generation will fail to do what my grandfather’s did so well: Leave America a better, stronger place than the one it found. [complete article]

Why Republicans like Obama
By Peter Wehner, Washington Post, February 3, 2008

Barack Obama is not only popular among Democrats, he’s also an appealing figure to many Republicans. Former GOP House member Joe Scarborough, now a host on MSNBC, reports that after every important Obama speech, he is inundated with e-mails praising the speech — with most of them coming from Republicans. William Bennett, an influential conservative intellectual, has said favorable things about Obama. So have Rich Lowry of National Review and Peggy Noonan. And so have I.

A number of prominent Republicans I know, who would wage a pitched battle against Hillary Clinton, like Obama and would find it hard to generate much enthusiasm in opposing him.

What is at the core of Obama’s appeal?

Part of it is the eloquence and uplift of his speeches, combined with his personal grace and dignity. He seems to be a well-grounded, decent, thoughtful man. He comes across, in his person and manner, as nonpartisan. He has an unsurpassed ability to (seemingly) transcend politics. Even when he disagrees with people, he doesn’t seem disagreeable. “You know what charm is,” Albert Camus wrote in “The Fall,” “a way of getting the answer yes without having asked any clear question.” Obama has such charm, and its appeal is not restricted to Democrats. [complete article]

Obama’s Jewish problem
By Michael Lerner, Tikkun (email commentary), February 2, 2008

In the days leading up to the Super Tuesday presidential primary sweepstakes, the Obama campaign has been making a special effort to reach out to Jewish voters. Representatives of the campaign have been visiting Jewish retirement homes, synagogues, and wherever else they can find a willing audience. Faced with Clinton campaigners making charges that he is not sufficiently pro-Israel, Obama himself wrote a letter to U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Khalizad last week urging that the U.S. reject any resolution critiquing Israel’s cut off of fuel and food to a million residents of Gaza “that does not fully condemn the rocket assaults Hamas has been conducting on civilians in southern Israel.”

It’s a problem that won’t go away. Jewish voters are only 2% of the U.S. population, but they are mostly concentrated in the states with the highest number of delegate and electoral votes (New York, California, Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Illinois), they contribute financially to politicians disproportionately to their percentage of the voters, and they are often in key roles as opinion shapers in the communities in which they work or live.

Democratic Party appeals to the Jewish vote are not much different than the appeals that happens to other constituencies like the labor movement, the women’s movement, Latino voters, African Americans, farmers, seniors or children, or Republican pandering to the anti-immigrants, Southern whites, or Catholic and Evangelical anti-abortion voters. They are as American as apple pie, even at the times when “appealing” slides into “pandering.”

What puts Obama into difficulty is that his actual beliefs make this attempt to appeal to Jews difficult when it comes to Israel.

Obama is a spiritual progressive. He believes that human beings are equally valuable whether they are white or black, American or Asian or African or European. Apply that to the Middle East and you get policy inclinations very different from those which have been insisted upon by the Israel Lobby, supported by most of the establishment Jewish institutions, and through the power of their organized pressure, have become the dominant policy supported by both parties in rare unanimity.

So while spiritual progressives like us at Tikkun and the Network of Spiritual Progressives have been insisting that the best path to Israeli security is a peace treaty with the Palestinian people and an approach that seeks mutual open-hearted repentance for the way each side has treated each other, the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza that is both politically and economically viable, reparations for Palestinians refugees, and a South-Africa model of “truth and reconciliation” in both Israel and Palestine, the Democratic Party and Republican Party have traditionally vied during the election period for which could appear more militant in its support for Israeli power and less sympathetic to the Palestinian people. While spiritual progressives support a Middle Path that is both pro-Israel and pro-Palestine, the extreme partisans on both sides see us as abandoning their interests and covertly siding with the other.

Underlying this is a deeper ideological conflict. After the Vietnam war, there was a terrible fear among conservatives and the military-industrial complex that the peace movement might use the moral outrage at that war to mobilize for disarmament. Jewish neo-cons,fearful that a disarmed U.S. would be unable to play a central role in protecting Israel, took the leadership in warning against a “Vietnam syndrome.” Security for the U.S. and Israel , they argued, comes from military strength, and those who seek peace, disarmament, and reconciliation with antagonists are naïve, utopian, dangerous and de facto anti-American or anti-Israel.

We spiritual progressives, on the other hand, believe that the strategy of dominating the other does not lead to homeland security either for the U.S. or for Israel, whose interests would better be served by a strategy of generosity, caring for the well-being of the other, and reaching out with open-heartedness to acknowledge the unintentional pain that we have caused others and seeking forgiveness for that. We have seen that the path of “toughness” doesn’t work, doesn’t yield security, but only intensifies the losses on both sides. Concretely, the Network of Spiritual Progressives is beginning a campaign for a Global Marshall Plan that would allocate 1-2% of the GDP of the U.S. every year for the next twenty to once and for all end domestic and global hunger, poverty, homelessness, inadequate education, inadequate health care, and repair the global environment. This is far more likely to dry up the cesspools of hatred against the U.S. from which terrorists are able to recruit their suicide bombers. The fact is that the strategy of domination has been tried for thousands of years, and it has never brought anyone security, so it’s time to try the strategy of generosity.

In recent days, we at Tikkun magazine have had hundreds of emails from young Jews distraught at the television images of tens of thousands of Palestinians breaking out of the prison camp that Gaza has become, desperate for food, fuel and other goods that have been denied entry into Gaza by the Israeli army. A new generation of young Jews no longer blindly adopts the strategy of domination or salutes to the policies of the current government of Israel. It is these Jews who are the future, but they do not yet control the institutions of Jewish life. They understand that Israel will be far more secure if it adopts a strategy of generosity, and stops trying to show how “tough” it really is, but they also despair about Israel ever “getting it” in time to save itself from policies that further inflame hatred against it by human-rights respecting people around the world. No matter how much these young Jews may agree that Palestinian acts of terror or Hamas shelling of Sderot are also ugly and morally inexcusable acts, they understand that the overwhelming power of the Israeli military gives Israel the obligation to take the first definitive steps toward peace by embracing the kind of Progressive Middle Path that we articulate at Tikkun.

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.

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CAMPAIGN 08: An inability to recognize ourselves in one another

Islamofascism’s ill political wind
By James Carroll, Boston Globe, January 21, 2008

In contrast to the way militant zealotries of other religions have been perceived, there is a broad conviction, especially among many conservative American Christians, that the inner logic of Islam and fascism go together. Political candidates appeal to those Christians by defining the ambition of Islamofascists in language that makes prior threats from, say, Hitler or Stalin seem benign. The point is that there is a deep religious prejudice at work, and when politicians adopt its code, they make it worse.

The Democrats gain little by shaping their rhetoric to appeal to the Republicans’ conservative religious base, but a readiness to denigrate Islam shows up on their side, too. In last week’s debate, moderator Brian Williams put to Barack Obama a question about Internet rumors that claim he is a Muslim. The tone of the question suggested that Obama was being accused of something heinous. He replied with a simple affirmation that he is a Christian. He did not then ask, “And what would be wrong if I were a Muslim?” Had he done so, it seems clear, he would have cost himself votes in the present climate. [complete article]

Obama reaches the mountaintop
By John Nichols, The Nation, January 21, 2008

… in his Sunday speech at the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr’s Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Barack Obama went to a higher ground — to that mountaintop that King occupied until his death on April 4, 1968, and that Bobby Kennedy stood for a brief and remarkable political moment that played out between April and June of that fateful year.

“Unity is the great need of the hour – the great need of this hour. Not because it sounds pleasant or because it makes us feel good, but because it’s the only way we can overcome the essential deficit that exists in this country,” Obama told a audience that hung on the every word of the most emotionally-effective orator to seek the presidency since Kennedy.

“I’m not talking about a budget deficit. I’m not talking about a trade deficit. I’m not talking about a deficit of good ideas or new plans,” explained Obama. “I’m talking about a moral deficit. I’m talking about an empathy deficit. I’m taking about an inability to recognize ourselves in one another; to understand that we are our brother’s keeper; we are our sister’s keeper; that, in the words of Dr. King, we are all tied together in a single garment of destiny.” [complete article]

What does it mean to be the pro-Israel candidate?
By Gershom Gorenberg, The American Prospect, January 18, 2008

The main reason that Democratic candidates are less frightening to a progressive Israeli worrying about his country’s future, as my progressive friends in Washington remind me, is that the Democrats may be jiving. That is, because they are sensible folks otherwise, we can assume they don’t really mean this stuff. They even hide small hints of moderation in their rhetoric. The Republicans’ sincerity is truly scary.

I suggest that it’s time to talk about what “pro-Israel” should mean. Not because the discussion will change campaign rhetoric: The candidates will stick to cliches. But after the election, one will have to govern. Members of Congress will need to decide how to vote on the usual strident resolutions backed by AIPAC. Debate now on what it means to support Israel might mean that a year from now, elected leaders will be able to refer to publicly recognized ideas to justify acting more sensibly. [complete article]

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NEWS, ANALYSIS & OPINION: Bush heads to Middle East

Remember him? Bush begins Middle East tour
By Leonard Doyle and Andrew Buncombe, The Independent, January 7, 2008

Voters in the United States may have switched their attention to the contest to find his successor, but George Bush will embark on an ambitious nine-day tour of the Middle East tomorrow in a last desperate effort to salvage a legacy from two terms in office overshadowed by a catastrophic foreign policy that has earned him the distinction of being one of the worst presidents in the country’s history.

The Bush legacy will not be peace in the Middle East nor an end to conflict in Iraq, but it could be a political earthquake among voters so dismayed by the mess he has made of America’s foreign policy and fearful of economic recession that they are deserting his party in droves.

As he prepares to board a plane for Israel and wrap himself in the tattered flag of victory in Iraq, Mr Bush’s real legacy to the American people is evident in the disillusionment on display in New Hampshire. [complete article]

See also, Army of 8,000 to protect George Bush visit (Telegraph).

Israel’s false friends
By John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt, Los Angeles Times, January 6, 2008

Once again, as the presidential campaign season gets underway, the leading candidates are going to enormous lengths to demonstrate their devotion to the state of Israel and their steadfast commitment to its “special relationship” with the United States.

Each of the main contenders emphatically favors giving Israel extraordinary material and diplomatic support — continuing the more than $3 billion in foreign aid each year to a country whose per capita income is now 29th in the world. They also believe that this aid should be given unconditionally. None of them criticizes Israel’s conduct, even when its actions threaten U.S. interests, are at odds with American values or even when they are harmful to Israel itself. In short, the candidates believe that the U.S. should support Israel no matter what it does. [complete article]

A hostile president
By Gideon Levy, Haaretz, January 6, 2008

George Bush is coming to Israel this week. He will take pleasure in his visit. One can assume that there are few prime ministers with a giant photo of themselves with the U.S. president hanging on the wall in their home, as our Ehud Olmert boasted last week that he does, to his exalted guest, the comic Eli Yatzpan. There are also few other countries where the lame duck from Washington would not be greeted with mass demonstrations; instead, Israel is making great efforts to welcome him graciously. The man who has wreaked such ruin upon the world, upon his country, and upon us is such a welcome guest only in Israel. [complete article]

Israel warns of Iranian missile peril for Europe
By Carolynne Wheeler, The Telegraph, January 7, 2008

Iran is developing nuclear missiles capable of reaching beyond its enemies in the Middle East to Europe, President George Bush will be warned when he visits Israel and the Palestinian territories for the first time since entering the White House. [complete article]

Israel to brief George Bush on options for Iran strike
By Uzi Mahnaimi, The Sunday Times, January 6, 2008

Israeli intelligence is understood to agree that the [nuclear weapon] project was halted around the time of America’s invasion of Iraq, but has “rock solid” information that it has since started up again.

While security officials are reluctant to reveal all their intelligence, fearing that leaks could jeopardise the element of surprise in any future attack, they are expected to present the president with fresh details of Iran’s enrichment of uranium – which could be used for civil or military purposes – and the development of missiles that could carry nuclear warheads. [complete article]

Israel not honoring pledge, Olmert says
By Richard Boudreaux, Los Angeles Times, January 5, 2008

Israel has failed to keep its pledge to stop enlarging Jewish settlements in the West Bank, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert acknowledged in an interview published Friday, addressing a criticism he expects to hear next week from President Bush.

“Every year all the settlements in all the territories [of the West Bank] continue to grow,” Olmert told the Jerusalem Post. “There is a certain contradiction in this between what we’re actually seeing and what we ourselves promised. . . . We have obligations related to settlements and we will honor them.” [complete article]

Nudged by Bush, Israel talks of removing illegal outposts
By Steven Erlanger, New York Times, January 5, 2008

Pressed by President Bush to keep promises to destroy illegal settler outposts, Israeli leaders said Friday that they hoped to take action after his visit to the region next week.

The awkward exchange through the news media exemplified the importance of Israel’s relationship to the United States and the way in which Washington can sometimes push it to take controversial steps that benefit the Palestinians, who have little diplomatic weight of their own. [complete article]

Hamas confirms: Swiss probed possibility of talks with Israel
By Ali Waked, Ynet, January 1, 2008

The “Swiss Document”, as it was dubbed Tuesday by Former Palestinian Foreign Minister and top Hamas official, Mahmoud al-Zahar, in fact exists. This refers to a deceleration of intent, drafted by Swiss officials, paving the way for negotiations between Israel and Hamas.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) confirmed the existence of the “Swiss Document” Monday, and stated that the Swiss had mediated direct negotiations between Israel and Hamas. In his comments Tuesday, however, al-Zahar noted that there were no direct talks between Israel and Hamas. [complete article]

Just going to work, Palestinians and Israelis travel different roads
By Dion Nissenbaum | McClatchy, January 6, 2008

Before they set out for work each morning, neighbors Naim Darwish, a Palestinian Muslim, and Jacob Steinmetz, an Israeli Jew, begin their days in quiet meditation.

In the pre-dawn chill, Darwish sets his Muslim prayer rug on the floor facing Mecca. In the soft morning light, Steinmetz throws on his prayer shawl and turns toward Jerusalem. Then the lives of these West Bank neighbors diverge.

It takes Steinmetz about half an hour to drive and hitchhike the 20 miles to the West Bank office where he works as an Israeli government attorney. If he’s lucky, it takes Darwish two-and-a-half hours to travel the 30 miles to his computer engineering job at a Palestinian high-tech company in Ramallah. [complete article]

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NEWS: Syria waiting for Bush to go; Egypt critical of Israel Lobby; Israel not planning to reprimand itself for use of cluster bombs

Israel’s Foreign Ministry: Syria feels peace must wait for next U.S. president
By Barak Ravid, Haaretz, December 25, 2007

She Syrian administration is waiting out the Bush presidency, and only intends to enter a serious diplomatic process with Israel when the next United States administration takes over in 2009, according to the Foreign Ministry’s intelligence assessment.

“Damascus is interested in an agreement with Israel, but only according to Syria’s conditions and with American involvement,” Nimrod Barkan, who heads the ministry’s political research department, told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on Monday.

“The Syrian surface-to-surface missile threat has increased in the past year,” he added. “Israel’s deterrence against Syria and Hezbollah still exists and even increased during 2007, but we must watch closely for the possibility that the deterrence could weaken.”

Barkan added that the U.S. twice tried to “open a door for Syria” in 2007, but Damascus failed to meet the administration’s demands regarding its continued involvement in Lebanon. [complete article]

Egypt FM: Pro-Israeli lobby is harming our relations with U.S.
AP, December 26, 2007

Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit on Wednesday accused the Israeli lobby in Washington of straining its relations with the United States by using the issue of smuggling across the Gaza border as an excuse to cut U.S. military aid to Cairo.

The remarks came hours before a scheduled meeting between Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Defense Minister Ehud Barak at the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheik where they were expected to discuss the cross-border weapons smuggling to Gaza militants.

“The latest months have seen the Israeli lobby’s efforts to harm Egypt’s interests with the (U.S.)Congress,” Aboul Gheit told reporters. “The Israeli lobby inside the Congress was behind some positions adopted by Congress and the Israeli media campaign in the last few months falls within this trend.”

Another senior Egyptian official echoed Aboul Gheit’s comments, accusing Israel of trying to influence U.S. aid to Egypt. He referred to video footage that Israel passed to the United States in which Egyptian soldiers are seen taking part in the weapons smuggling. The official said that this is a “blatant attempt to interfere in internal Egyptian matters,” adding that “in the videos there is nothing” and that “the construction of settlements is very damaging the peace process”. [complete article]

Israel won’t prosecute for use of cluster bombs in Lebanon
By Isabel Kershner, New York Times, December 25, 2007

Israeli military prosecutors announced Monday that they would not press charges over the army’s use of cluster bombs during the war against Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon, actions that had been widely criticized by human rights organizations.

The announcement came as Israeli and Palestinian negotiating teams met here Monday evening for the second time since the American-sponsored peace conference in Annapolis, Md.

Cluster bombs are not prohibited in warfare, but their use is criticized because they contain “bomblets” that explode over a wide area and may strike unintended targets. In addition, bomblets that fail to explode become, in effect, land mines that can be detonated by civilians long after fighting has stopped. More than 30 Lebanese are said to have been killed by munitions left behind after the monthlong war in 2006. [complete article]

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NEWS: Testifying on AIPAC’s cozy relationship with the U.S. government

Defense may seek Rice and Hadley’s testimony in AIPAC case
By Philip Shenon, New York Times, November 3, 2007

A federal judge on Friday ordered Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Stephen J. Hadley, the national security adviser, to be ready to testify as defense witnesses at the trial of two former pro-Israel lobbyists accused of receiving secret national security information.

The judge, T. S. Ellis III of Federal District Court in Alexandria, Va., agreed with defense lawyers that Ms. Rice, Mr. Hadley and several other government officials could be subpoenaed because they might help the defendants demonstrate that they were engaged in traditional “back channel” lobbying — not in espionage — in their contacts with the government over Middle East policy.

Justice Department officials who are overseeing the prosecution had no immediate comment on the judge’s ruling or on whether they might appeal the decision. The State Department also declined to comment. The trial in the case is scheduled to begin in January, although a delay is considered likely. [complete article]

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OPINION & EDITOR’S COMMENT: The unwritten contract requiring the American media to bow before the Israel lobby

The Israel lobby targets Haaretz
By Philip Weiss, Mondoweiss, October 23, 2007

When Haaretz was just published in Israel, CAMERA didn’t care about its statements about the occupation and the destruction of Palestinian hopes and dreams and olive trees. “This all happened in Hebrew… causing little outward impact..”

Outward impact. She means: now Haaretz is affecting U.S. opinion and foreign policy. The most important statement Levin made was that she gets the brushoff from Amos Schocken, the Haaretz publisher, but with the American media, “there is an unwritten contract between them and us.” (Verbatim transcript to come later, when I have a little time…) An unwritten contract: to be fair to Israel, to print CAMERA members’ letters, to pick up the phone.

Isn’t that amazing and scandalous? Levin is explaining why there is a free debate in Israel and not here. Because of the lobby and its “unwritten contract.” [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — There’s another name for this “unwritten contract” between the U.S. media and the Israel lobby: cowardice and self-interest. Journalists and editors would rather be gelded than jeopardize their professional advancement. In the contest between the dollar and the truth, the dollar always wins.

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OPINION & EDITOR’S COMMENT: The phoenix of preventive war arises from Syrian ashes

Preemption, Israeli style
By Joshua Muravchik, Los Angeles Times, October 14, 2007

Last month, one of the more mysterious episodes in the history of the Arab-Israel conflict began to leak slowly into the news. Although the facts are still unconfirmed, what seems to have happened has major implications not only for the region but even more for the laws of war and preemption that President Bush has been trying to redefine ever since his 2002 national security strategy paper.

First, Syrian spokesmen complained that Israeli planes had violated their country’s airspace on Sept. 6 — and had been driven off, or so they said. Within a few days came stories — mostly from anonymous sources — that the planes had fired into Syria; these were followed by still other stories that a target had in fact been hit. But what was it?

After further journalistic digging, the most plausible accounts said that the Syrian targets were related to nuclear weapons activity and may even have been manned by North Koreans. Later reports suggest some dispute within the U.S. government about how far Syria had progressed in achieving its nuclear ambitions, but these same reports confirm that this is what Israel was targeting.

The obscurity of this episode results in part from uncharacteristically tight lips in Jerusalem and Damascus. But that is not the whole of the reason. There has also been a deafening silence from the international community and especially from the other states of the region. This highly unusual reaction is one of the oddest parts of the whole episode and, in some ways, the most meaningful. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — The neoconservatives and their Iraqi allies famously predicted that American soldiers would be greeted in Baghdad with sweets and flowers. As if to outdo themselves in making wild predictions, with Iran now the target, the suggestion being floated by Joshua Muravchik and other neocons is that alarming predictions about the consequences of a US/Israeli attack on Iran are being vastly overstated. The lesson from Syria, so we are supposed to believe, is that a strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities will be greeted by deafening silence.

Eager to boost her stock in the Israel lobby and implying to neocons that there is such a thing as life-after-Cheney, Hillary Clinton was unequivocal in expressing her support for the Israeli attack:

“We don’t have as much information as we wish we did. But what we think we know is that with North Korean help, both financial and technical and material, the Syrians apparently were putting together, and perhaps over some period of years, a nuclear facility, and the Israelis took it out. I strongly support that.”

Clinton’s Iran vote: the fallout
By Helene Cooper, New York Times, October 14, 2007

Senators Joe Biden and Chris Dodd voted against it. Senator Barack Obama said he would have voted against it if he had voted. Former Senator John Edwards implied he would have voted against it if he could vote.

And Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton? She voted in favor of the measure in question, which asked the Bush administration to declare Iran’s 125,000-member Revolutionary Guard Corps a foreign terrorist organization. Such a move — more hawkish than even most of the Bush administration has been willing to venture so far — would intensify America’s continuing confrontation with Iran, many foreign policy experts say.
[…]
Think of it as Iran declaring that the United States military is a terrorist organization because it carries out President Bush’s orders. Such a move, say some Iran experts — including some advisers to the Clinton campaign who declined to publicly criticize their possible boss — runs the risk of further alienating the Iranian population, because many Iranians are tied to the Revolutionary Guard or its many offshoots and enterprises in some way.

“What Senator Clinton and the other legislators who voted for this bill don’t seem to realize is that the Revolutionary Guards are not Al Qaeda,” said Karim Sadjapour, an Iran expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “They’re not a group of voluntary jihadists signing up to fight the United States. Many are conscripts taken from the regular army.” [complete article]

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