Early in the war, Nixon had authorized an airlift to resupply Israeli forces, but there was a delay in getting the flights organized because charters were difficult to find. On October 12-13, around midnight, [Israel’s Ambassador to the U.S. Simcha] Dinitz comes to Kissinger to tell him that Israel cannot conduct an offensive because of a lack of weapons: he needs to start the airlift. Kissinger picks up the phone while Dinitz contines:
So help me, there will be a mutiny here if there are no planes. The Jewish community, and many friends, and the labor movement and the press. I’ve been making no comment. I can’t do it. I have no right, not historical right; we are dealing with the destiny of the people. (461)
Kissinger waves Dinitz silent because he is talking to Schlesinger, the Secretary of Defense and he wants to keep Dinitz presence secret from Schlesinger. After chewing out Schlesiner, even claiming at one point he was intentionally slowing the resupply operation, Kissinger hangs up the phone telling Dinitz:
Kissinger: [hangs up, turns to Dinitz]: They’ll give you ten C–130’s immediately, and will load them with ammunition. And probably fly them with American pilots.
I am not aware, at least in the context of the Nixon administration, of another case where an ambassador listens as one cabinet member chews out another in the presence of a foreign ambassador, especially after a direct political threat.
Interestingly, Kissinger did not believe the resupply was important. Talking to Schlesinger the next day, Kissinger says:
JS: Okay,. Well they simply cannot be that short of ammo, Henry. It is impossible that they didn’t know what their supply was—and suddenly they’ve run out of it.
K: Look, they have obviously screwed up every offensive they’ve conducted. And they are not about to take responsibility themselves. I have no doubt whatever that they are blaming us for their own failures.
M.J. Rosenberg writes: The month of March 2002 was a terrible time in both Israel and the West Bank. Some 100 Israelis were killed by Palestinian suicide bombers. In response, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon launched a military operation in the West Bank allegedly killing some 500 Palestinians. Children made up a significant number of the victims on both sides. The prospects for an end to violence, let alone peace, appeared lower than at any time previously.
It was against that background that Harvard professor, Samantha Power, now President Obama’s nominee to serve as U.N. ambassador, spoke of the need for U.S. intervention.
She told an interviewer that she did not believe that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon or Palestinian President Yasir Arafat would ever stop the killing on their own and that “external intervention is required.” She specifically called on the United States to “put something on the line,” by which she meant the “imposition of a solution on unwilling parties.” Admitting that the idea of imposing a settlement was “fundamentally undemocratic,” she said it was preferable to “deference” to leaders who seem “politically destined to destroy the lives of their own people.”
This was not surprising coming from Power. She is the leading advocate of what is known as “liberal interventionism.” She has said that as a child she was shaken by the world’s indifference to the Holocaust. Her feelings were deepened by her experiences as a journalist in Bosnia. Ever since, most notably in the case of Libya, Power has recommended “going in” to stop the killing of innocents. Right or wrong, it’s who she is.
Unfortunately for Power, the reality of U.S. politics dictates that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict be exempted from rules or theories one applies elsewhere. That is why some of the most aggressively anti-war, pro-human rights progressives in Congress, the media and the blogosphere simply go silent, at best, on the subject of the Israeli occupation or, at worst, openly support military actions like Israel’s wars in Gaza. They know that the Israel lobby will make life very difficult for those who insist on applying the same moral yardstick to Israel as to other nations.
Power alluded to that fact of life in the same interview in which she called for intervention. Right after calling on the United States to impose a peace settlement, she added that “might mean alienating a domestic constituency of tremendous political and financial import.”
It did. Six years later when Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama listed Power as one of his foreign policy advisors, members of the lobby crowd went ballistic. [Continue reading…]
Even if Samantha Power’s nomination as U.S. ambassador to the UN is not blocked by the Senate, I don’t expect we’ll hear her reassert her view that a resolution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict will require an imposed solution, including the use of a “mammoth protection force,” or that the U.S. should stop spending billions supporting Israel’s military forces but should instead be investing the same amounts in a Palestinian state. But, what seems certain is that the following clip from a 2002 interview will be reappearing on lots of Zionist websites and that the Israel lobby will kick into high gear to oppose her nomination. Unless, that is, their failure to block Chuck Hagel’s nomination as Defense Secretary has led organizations such as the Emergency Committee for Israel to adopt some tactical changes.
Maybe the White House figures that its opponents will reserve all their venom for Susan Rice, and thus allow Powers to take up office without strong opposition.
Jeffrey Goldberg writes: Just a few months ago, Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and now President Barack Obama’s choice to be the next national security adviser, saw her main chance to become secretary of state dissipate before her eyes, as Senate Republicans (with John McCain and Lindsey Graham in the lead) excoriated her for, as they saw it, misleading the public about the attacks on the American diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, last year. (My thoughts about the attacks on Rice can be found here.)
Rice was forced to withdraw her name, and Senator John Kerry was awarded the job. Now Rice will be, in effect, Kerry’s supervisor. McCain and Graham, by turning Rice into the scapegoat of the Benghazi debacle, have inadvertently allowed the president to bring her into the innermost ring of power, in a role that requires no Senate confirmation.
NBC News: Boosted by newly discovered natural resources, Israel is surging ahead economically – a success that is pushing the issue of the country’s $3 billion in annual aid from the United States onto the agenda.
The country made its first intervention in the foreign currency market in almost two years Tuesday, buying $100 million to peg back the growing strength of its shekel.
Last week, Israel passed another milestone, a potential gamechanger for its economy. Gas began to flow from gas fields off the coast. By 2015 Israel is expected to be fully energy independent, and may be a net exporter.
And there’s more good news: In this water-challenged region, Israel is well on the way to water independence. Its water desalination industry supplies up to 40 percent of the country’s demand for water, and another 40 percent comes from recycled water from domestic and commercial consumption. Israel reuses its water two to three times.
U.S. campaign groups such as Stop The Blank Check and the Council for the National Interest have long campaigned for the aid program to end, but Republican Sen. Rand Paul recently joined the debate by saying the U.S. could no longer afford to keep borrowing money and then handing it out to others. [Continue reading…]
Mike Coogan writes: Public differences between members of Congress and AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) have largely been papered over in recent weeks, but there remains a palpable sense of frustration with AIPAC’s legislative policy agenda on Capitol Hill.
The unprecedented dearth of support for parts of AIPAC’s legislative agenda this year may be a sign the façade of invincibility surrounding the Israel lobby is beginning to erode. In the case of ‘The United States-Israel Strategic Partnership Act of 2013’ (S. 462, H.R. 938), members of Congress appear to have defected en masse; weeks after introduction, the Senate version has only 15 cosponsors.
Numerous public reports and off-the-record accounts from legislators and staff signaled that the brazenness and late release of the Israel lobby’s legislative demands blindsided both individual members and various committees. Provisions appeared tone deaf and legally problematic, even among Israel’s strongest supporters.
One such proposal, buried within AIPAC’s long list of legislative demands, was language proposing that Israel be included in the U.S. Visa Waiver Program. The seemingly innocuous provision is easy to miss among a litany of other alarming proposals, including a tripwire provision to drag the U.S. into an Israeli initiated war with Iran, an exemption of Israel’s annual military aid from sequestration cuts, and a vague but certainly problematic ‘strategic ally’ designation.
Shortly before its annual policy conference, AIPAC made known that it wanted Israel to be included in the Visa Waiver Program, and officials requested that adjustments be made to the program’s requirement that Israel ‘extend reciprocal privileges to citizens and nationals of the United States.’
According to off the record accounts, AIPAC officials told members of Congress that there would need to be flexibility on this legal requirement to accommodate Israel’s ongoing discrimination against Arab- and Muslim-Americans who attempt to travel to Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
Behind closed doors, members of Congress and legal counsel alike balked at the idea that Israel be allowed in the program but remain exempt from the reciprocity requirement. Attorneys for both individual members and committees privately advised that complying with the request would be a flagrant violation of certain U.S. laws barring discrimination, and would undermine the U.S. government’s call for the equal protection of all its citizens traveling abroad. [Continue reading…]
JTA reports: A legislative effort led by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee to enable Israelis to enter the United States without visas may be stymied by the government – Israel’s government.
The hitch is Israel’s inability or unwillingness to fully reciprocate, something required for visa-free travel to the United States. Israel, citing security concerns, insists on the right to refuse entry to some U.S. citizens.
AIPAC is pushing for an exemption for Israel from this rule. But congressional staffers say Israel is unlikely to get such an exemption, which U.S. lawmakers view as an attempt to bar Arab Americans from freely entering Israel.
“It’s stunning that you would give a green light to another country to violate the civil liberties of Americans traveling abroad,” said a staffer for one leading pro-Israel lawmaker in the U.S. House of Representatives.
The exemption AIPAC is pushing for appears in the Senate version of the U.S.-Israel Strategic Partnership Act, one of the key issues for which AIPAC urged supporters to lobby after its policy conference last month.
The language in that bill, proposed by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), requires that the Homeland Security secretary grant Israel visa waiver status after certifying with the secretary of state that Israel “has made every reasonable effort, without jeopardizing the security of the State of Israel, to ensure that reciprocal travel privileges are extended to all United States citizens.”
House staffers say that lawmakers, pro-Israel leaders among them, have raised objections to the clause, “without jeopardizing the security of the State of Israel,” because it appears to validate what they see as Israel’s tendency to turn away Arab Americans without giving a reason.
None of the other 37 countries currently in the visa-free program has such a caveat written into law. [Continue reading…]
Haaretz columnist, Chemi Shalev, writes: A Pew Research poll released this week found that for the first time, a majority of Americans favor the legalization of marijuana, by a 52%-45% margin. Support is lowest among older, conservative Republicans and highest among younger, liberal Democrats.
The same trend holds true, in varying degrees, in all the recent polling on the issues that top the current American domestic agenda, such as gun control, gay marriage and immigration reform. The younger and more liberal you are, the more you are likely to support such measures; the older and more conservative you are, the more you are likely to oppose them.
Support for Israel, on the other hand, runs in the opposite direction: older, conservative and Republican Americans tend to prefer Israel over the Palestinians by overwhelming numbers, while younger, liberal and Democratic Americans are more ambivalent. In a January Pew poll, the gap between “conservative Republicans” and “liberal Democrats” on this matter was no less than a staggering 75%-33%.
Thus, while Israel continues to enjoy substantial overall support in the American public, its weakest links are to be found among the groups that are now on the ascendant on most domestic and social issues of the day. Generational gaps and demographic trends have combined to produce a significant shift in American public opinion, as the National Journal wrote this week: “The culture wars now favor the Democrats. The wind is in their backs.”
The question, therefore, is whether this wind might not eventually erode traditional support for Israel in American public opinion as well. Is the so-called “partisan gap” on Israel a permanent feature of the American political landscape that should worry Israelis or is it a reversible trend that will change with the times?
It is tempting, for example, to comfort oneself with the assumption that support for Israel comes with age, that young liberals who are now equivocating about the Jewish state will evolve over the years and become strong Israel-supporters, just like their elders. But that intuitive theory is rebuffed in a paper published earlier this year by Israel’s Institute of National Strategic Studies (INSS) in which researchers Owen Alterman and Cameron Brown cite polls showing that in the late 1970s, the generational divide was the other way round: Americans aged 18-29 were more supportive of Israel than those 65+ and over.
“Generations seem to develop views toward Israel that guide their opinions throughout their lifetime,” the authors note. If that is true, then the so-called Millenials born after 1980, will maintain their tepid support for Israel throughout the coming decades as the Israel-backing Silent Generation and Baby Boomers slowly leave the stage.
Alterman and Cameron also dissect the correlation between religiosity and support for Israel, and come to the far less surprising conclusion that the most supportive are the most religious, both Christian and Jewish, and that the coolest toward Israel are those who cite “none” as their main religion. The entire “partisan gap” on support for Israel created in the past two decades, after all, isn’t so much a decrease in left-wing backing for Israel as a dramatic increase in right-wing support that stems from the growing prominence of Israel among Evangelical Christians and their increasing dominance of Republican politics.
Right-wing Jewish ideologues like to gloat over the growing political divide as proof of liberal perfidy in general and the left’s animus toward Israel in particular. They tend to gloss over their own role in turning Israel into a “wedge issue” which they unsuccessfully tried to exploit in order to pry Jewish voters away from U.S. President Barack Obama in the recent elections. By portraying support for Israel as a uniquely Republican and conservative cause, Republican Jewish propagandists are steadily ensuring that many young liberals will be instinctively repelled from embracing Israel too ardently. [Continue reading…]
Rabbi Jill Jacobs writes that a group of North American rabbis, cantors, rabbinical and cantorial students from all denominations of Judaism, who in January were petitioning Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to cease plans for construction of a new settlement, did not get the hearing they deserved. She writes:
There are some who say that Diaspora Jews have no say in what goes on in Israel, since we don’t put our lives on the line to live there. I don’t buy this argument for a second. We have a stake in Israel because it is the Jewish homeland. We have a stake in Israel because we invest millions of dollars there, and lobby for the U.S. government to invest billions more of our tax dollars. We worry about family and friends in the Israeli army, who risk and sometimes lose their lives defending the misguided settlement project. And we are the ones who must explain to members of other communities, members of our own communities, and even our children why a state built on Jewish values perpetuates a military occupation of another people.
Since long before the creation of the state, the relationship between Israel and Diaspora Jews has been an unequal one. For too long, we have accepted the assumption that Diaspora Jews will send money and keep our mouths shut. We have perpetuated a myth that real Judaism lives in Israel, while our own Diaspora lives offer only a pale shadow of Jewish life. So we send our children to Israel for their Jewish inspiration and engagement, we fund hospitals and schools in Israel, and we devote our own political capital to defending Israel from criticism.
Jacobs writes: “We have a stake in Israel because we invest millions of dollars there, and lobby for the U.S. government to invest billions more of our tax dollars.” I have a problem with that. “We” refers to Diaspora Zionists but the tax dollars referred to as “our tax dollars” come from a much wider source, including vast numbers of Americans who do not have the slightest interest or desire to bankroll Israel’s defense forces — 20% of Israel’s defense budget is paid for by American taxpayers. So when Jacobs talks about lobbying the U.S. government to invest billions of tax dollars in Israel, she should be clear about who provides those tax dollars.
The headline in Haaretz says: “The man who could be U.K.’s first Jewish PM says he is a Zionist.” But that’s not exactly how the report under the headline reads.
At an event in central London on Thursday, organized by the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the London Jewish News, Labour Party leader Ed Miliband used the opportunity to establish his pro-Israel credentials.
The moment that made it for the audience was when he emphatically answered the question of whether he is a Zionist by saying: “Yes, I consider myself a supporter of Israel.” Nevertheless, some in the audience lamented that he was careful not to voice the sound bite – I am a Zionist.
The United States has a non-Jewish vice president who calls himself a Zionist, but Miliband calls himself a supporter of Israel.
That sounds to me like a man who’s going through the motions, saying what he thinks he needs to say. He could have said “I am a Zionist.” He declined to utter those words.
Stephen Colbert: Our worst fears about Obama were confirmed when he appointed as Secretary of Defense, former senator and man who just learned his dog died, Chuck Hagel.
Hagel has a history of troubling statements. He once said:
The Jewish Lobby intimidates a lot of people…
And:
I’m not an Israeli senator. I’m a United States senator.
Clearly, this man does not understand that when it comes to Israel there are certain things you can’t say, for instance, implying that there are certain things that you can’t say. Which there aren’t. You can say anything you want about Israel which I would, if there was anything to say, but there isn’t so there’s nothing to be said.
M.J. Rosenberg writes: It’s hard to watch the AIPAC conference for more than a few minutes at a time. For me, the worst part is the pandering (and lying) by Democratic politicians eager to raise money for their next campaign.
So far, Joe Biden has been the worst. He is heavily funded by the Adler family of Miami Beach (he even brought President Obama to their home for a fundraiser), one of the big AIPAC families. Here is Biden talking about how the head of the Adler klan and another AIPAC mogul gave him his “formal education” on the Middle East. (Not to mention all that money.)
And, of course, Biden (like John Kerry) knows better than his AIPAC speeches indicate. I have talked to him about Israel and Palestine. He can name the top Palestinian leaders in Fatah and Hamas and tell you the differences between their respective positions. He believes Israel needs to end the occupation and talk to Hamas. He would not dare say it publicly, although he has said it so often privately that it is amazing the media never reports it.
But Biden does what he thinks he has to because, for politicians like him (that is, pretty much all politicians), nothing is more important than keeping donors happy. Call him a hypocrite but he cries all the way to the bank.
The Republicans are different. Supporting the occupation and threatening war with Iran come naturally to them. They don’t need lobby money for their campaigns and they don’t get Jewish votes anyway. (This is not to say that they don’t like Sheldon Adelson’s money, just that as the pro-business party, they don’t need it). They support Netanyahu because they believe that the west needs to crush the Muslim world. They do not feign Islamophobia. It’s them. [Continue reading…]
M.J. Rosenberg writes: Douglas Bloomfield, who served as AIPAC’s chief lobbyist for more than a decade, reports this week that the lobby intends to insist that the United States not include Israel’s $3 billion grants package in the sequester that goes into effect today. Writing in the New York Jewish Week, Bloomfield says:
At a time when sequestration is about to take a big bite out of the Pentagon budget, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) will be sending thousands of its citizen lobbyists to Capitol Hill next week to make sure Israel is exempted from any spending cuts. This could prove a very risky strategy at a time when millions of Americans will be feeling the bite of the sequestration debacle, from the defense budget to the school lunch program. But not aid to Israel, which will be untouched if AIPAC gets its way.
At one time I wouldn’t have believed AIPAC would dare try something this bold. That is because traditionally AIPAC has been very cautious about not seeming to take actions that suggested putting Israel’s interests over America’s. Demanding that Israel be exempt from cuts that virtually every American will feel seems so counterproductive as to almost be suicidal for the lobbying powerhouse. [Continue reading…]
Even before Chuck Hagel had been confirmed as the new United States Secretary of Defense, opponents to his appointment had declared victory because in their minds victory consisted of much more than preventing him take office.
A few days ago at the neoconservative Commentary, Jonathan Tobin wrote:
The pressure put upon Hagel during the lead-up to his confirmation hearing as well as the difficulty he found himself in when questioned by the Senate Armed Services Committee wasn’t merely the usual grind nominees are subjected to. The process reaffirmed a basic truth about the strength of the pro-Israel consensus that was placed in doubt by the president’s choice: support for the alliance with the Jewish state isn’t merely mainstream politics, it is the baseline against which all nominees for high office are measured. [My emphasis.]
That’s an extraordinary statement and all the evidence suggests that it’s true.
For anyone to be considered for high political office in the United States of America, they must first demonstrate their alliance with Israel.
And this isn’t coming from some wild-eyed conspiracy theorist warning about the unfettered power of the Israel lobby. This is coming from the Israel lobby itself, or the “pro-Israel community” as they prefer to be known.
Alliance with Israel isn’t merely mainstream American politics — and the key word here is “mainstream”, which the dictionary defines as “a prevailing current or direction of activity or influence.”
The strength of the Christian Zionist movement notwithstanding, to identify alliance with Israel as mainstream in American politics says much less about the concerns of most Americans than it says about the way Washington works. In other words, the degree to which alliance with Israel is mainstream says far more about the influence of the Israel lobby than anything else.
And to say that alliance with Israel is “the baseline against which all nominees for high office are measured” is to say that Washington has gatekeepers and their overriding concern is not what is good for America but what is good for Israel.
The Hagel opponents who even now are declaring victory see success in the fact that they made their nemesis demean himself and that they have made him weaker.
What they fail to appreciate is that the more transparent they make their agenda, the more resentment they will breed.
Power which was once more effectively exercised in the shadows is now out on open display. And more than anything, this is the power of loudmouths — it is power that can and will be punctured.
Like most Iranians, I didn’t watch the Oscars and I haven’t seen the winner of Best Picture, Argo. And like the attendees of a recent conference in Tehran on “Hollywoodism”, I share the view that the American film industry exerts political influence — it is not just part of the entertainment business.
A New York Times report on the conference quoted Nader Talebzadeh, an Iranian-American filmmaker:
To Mr. Talebzadeh, it was clear that “Argo” was part of a larger plan by the American entertainment industry to remind a younger generation of the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis. “It’s the only example of aggression they have against Iran,” he said. “ ‘Argo’ just tears open the wounds in order to prepare the minds. This movie is no coincidence. Timing matters.”
Ben Affleck probably didn’t set out to demonize Iran and I don’t think Hollywood is quite as ideologically organized as Talebzadeh suggests. Even so, Argo’s producers could hardly have been oblivious to the fact that at a time when Iran is being demonized, it would not be hard to find support for a thriller in which Iranian revolutionaries threaten American lives. And it would not be unreasonable to expect that such support would come from, among others, Zionists. And yet there remain strong taboos around raising the topic of Jews and Hollywood as this year’s Academy Awards ceremony host, Seth MacFarlane, found out.
Seth MacFarlane found himself at the centre of more scandal on Monday in the wake of his controversial hosting of the Oscars.
The Family Guy comedian caused outrage among viewers when his Ted alter-ego took to the stage at Sunday night’s ceremony with Mark Wahlberg, and told his co-star that if he ‘wants to work in this town’ he’s got to be Jewish.
MacFarlane’s Ted then added to Wahlberg: ‘I was born Theodore Shapiro and I would like to donate to Israel and continue to work in Hollywood forever.’
But the gags, which came as the pair presented the award for Best Sound Mixing and Best Sound Editing, weren’t received well by many Jewish rights groups, with the comedian labelled ‘offensive, unfunny and inappropriate’.
Abraham Foxman, National Director of the Anti-Defamation League, said in a statement: ‘While we have come to expect inappropriate “Jews control Hollywood” jokes from Seth MacFarlane, what he did at the Oscars was offensive and not remotely funny.
‘It only reinforces stereotypes which legitimize anti-Semitism. It is sad and disheartening that the Oscars awards show sought to use anti-Jewish stereotypes for laughs.’
The League’s Founder and Dean, Rabbi Marvin Hier, added: ‘The Oscars are transmitted to every corner of the globe, even to such places where such hateful myths are believed as fact.
‘Every comedian is entitled to wide latitude, but no one should get a free pass for helping to promote anti-Semitism.’
The old anti-Semitic canards about Jews controlling Hollywood, cavorting in secret cabals and beset by dual loyalties are so shopworn as to no longer be funny. And the jokes are all the more risky coming from someone who isn’t himself part of the given community…
[O]bjecting to the myth that Jews control Hollywood raises serious questions of definition. If anybody can genuinely be said to control Tinseltown, it’s probably the 25 people who run the 12 main film studios — that is, the chairman (in one case, two co-chairmen) and president of each. Of those 25, 21 are Jewish, or 84%. That’s simple math. You could define “control” differently — throw in the top agents and producers, leading directors, most bankable stars and so on — and the proportion of Jews would drop, but it probably wouldn’t get down anywhere near the 50% mark.
The issue in my mind is whether we’re all grownup enough to talk about these things without having pogroms, and I think we are. I’ve written here before that Jewish kinship networks are important professionally; most of my work in journalism has come from Jews with whom I share culture and language (very much the way Jodi Kantor got her job at the New York Times). People have a right to discuss these matters in a critical manner: in the ’60s sociologist E. Digby Baltzell, himself a WASP, helped break down Protestant discrimination against Jews in board rooms and back rooms with a book bewailing discrimination called The Protestant Establishment: Aristocracy and Caste in America. Nick Lemann also ascribed a religious character to that former establishment when he called it “the Episcopacy” in his book on the meritocracy. So — what’s good for the goose… Lately Ron Unz, a Jewish meritocrat himself, published a study, The Myth of the American Meritocracy, saying that the Ivy Leagues, which he calls “the funnel” for the ruling elite, have student bodies that are 25 percent Jewish in some large part because Jews in the college admissions are looking for people like themselves. When he spoke at Yale in January, and a Southern Baptist in the audience questioned him, Unz established that there were two Southern Baptists in the audience, and said they ought to be better represented in the Ivy’s. He believes Jews are empowered and secure enough in a diverse liberal society to have this conversation. So do I.
Did MacFarlane stoke controversy just for alluding to the fact that Jews control Hollywood, or was the line he crossed one that is laid down specifically for gentiles? If as Weiss says, Jews are ready to have this conversation, is this supposed to be a conversation among Jews or can anyone join in?
Ironically, if people like Abe Foxman had a little more humor and sophistication and a lot less appetite to gag their critics, they would have seized on the fact that MacFarlane was free to make his joke — proof, arguably, that Jews don’t control Hollywood.
The Washington Post reports: Chuck Hagel’s bid to become the next defense secretary cleared a major hurdle Tuesday, beating back a Republican effort to block his nomination almost two weeks after GOP senators launched a filibuster.
On a 71 to 27 vote, easily clearing the 60-vote threshold, the former Republican senator is poised for confirmation later Tuesday afternoon, overcoming Republican objections to his views on Middle East security.
Eighteen Republicans supported moving to a final vote, joining 53 Democrats. Some of the Republicans who supported ending the Hagel filibuster — including his chief opponents, Sens. John S. McCain (R-Ariz.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) — are expected to oppose him on the final vote, which will only require a simple majority for his confirmation.
The vote marked a foreign policy victory for President Obama, who pushed the nomination of his old friend from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee despite warnings of a rough confirmation process. Hagel, an Army infantryman who was awarded two Purple Hearts during the Vietnam War, will become the first enlisted man to ever go on to lead the Pentagon.
M.J. Rosenberg writes: Sunday’s New York Times features an important piece that will serve to alert progressives and Democrats to the latest brand of right-wing provocateur: young zealots who are not “movement” conservatives but who move from pro-Israel activism to the right at large.
Although they ally themselves with more traditional right-wingers, their central concern is Israel, and not so much Israel per se as supporting Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and the Israeli right. Although they stridently adopt traditional right-wing stands on the usual litmus issues, those are just window dressing. Their driving issue is Israel.
The Times piece was occasioned by Goldfarb’s central role in promoting the line that Chuck Hagel is hostile to Israel. [Continue reading…]
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