Israel and the Polarization of American Jews, by Gidon D. Remba, Jerusalem Report

In “Israel and the Polarization of American Jews,” (The Jerusalem Report, June 20, 2011), I suggest that the controversy over Tony Kushner’s views on Israel highlight the ways in which the gap between liberal and conservative Jews regarding Israel is becoming an unbridgeable chasm. At the same time, I question the value of defining who is “inside the Jewish communal tent” and who is “outside,” as leaders in the organized Jewish community have suggested, on the basis of whether a person or organization “recognizes Israel as a democratic Jewish state.”

Today, many human rights activists and groups which are not avowedly Zionist work closely with pro-Israel groups like ours that are fighting for justice and equality in Israel. Our Campaign for Bedouin-Jewish Justice (a project of Rabbis for Human Rights-North America and the Jewish Alliance for Change), for example, has brought together American Jewish and Israeli Arab groups across the ideological spectrum, including some in Israel and the U.S. who would be defined as “outside the tent” by the conventional definition. Acting in concert has enabled us all to be more effective in our efforts to stop the demolition of homes in unrecognized Negev Bedouin villages and the violent expulsion of Bedouin Israeli men, women and children by the Israeli government.

By working together to advance equal citizenship for both Arab and Jewish Israelis, aren’t non-Zionist human rights activists doing more to secure Israel’s future as a democratic Jewish state than some Zionists who pass the conventional test of “kashrut” for membership in the “communal tent”? The misbegotten controversy in Israel’s Knesset and at the Boston Jewish Community Relations Council over whether J Street is “pro-Israel” enough to be included in Jewish communal institutions is another case in point.

Perhaps the time has come to do away with the impulse to excommunicate Jewish groups engaged in activism for peace, human rights and justice in Israel if they take unorthodox political stands or do not speak in ways that representatives of the mainstream community deem politically correct.

Click here to read “Israel and the Polarization of American Jews.”

On J Street, Loving and Criticizing Israel: Four Comments, by Doni Remba

As a vocal critic of many Israeli policies towards Palestinians, the Arab states and Israel's own Palestinian, Bedouin and Jewish citizens, I often hear from other Jews who engage in vicious ad hominem attacks against me, questioning my loyalty to Israel and to my Jewishness.   As someone who has devoted a lifetime to Israel, the Jewish people, Jewish learning and Jewish values, I have always found such attacks curious and unserious - though I know that those who engage in them believe vehemently in what they say. 

I believe, just as strongly, that dissent is sometimes the highest form of patriotism, and that Jews, especially pro-Israel Jews - Jews, who like me, love Israel with all their hearts and souls, who agonize over its future and its well-being - have not only a right, but an obligation to criticize the follies of Israeli leaders and governments who are endangering the Zionist enterprise.  What follows are four brief responses to the Israel right-or-wrong crowd:  the first, a comment on the New York Times report on the McCarthyite Knesset hearing on J Street, and the second, my commentary on Dan Fleshler's superb "Thank You for Putting J Street on Trial."

I.  Criticism and Love: J Street and Israel

At a Knesset hearing on whether J Street is “really pro-Israel,” Knesset Member Otniel Schneller is quoted by the New York Times as saying that the group’s criticism of Israel’s policies on settlements and Mideast peace means it does not love Israel unconditionally, but only “with strings attached.” J Street, he claimed, says to Israel, “We love you only if you behave the way we like.”

But no parent loves his child less when he rebukes her bad behavior. It is out of deep love and concern that we criticize the self-destructive conduct of our family and friends. What could be more toxic for Israel, and for the United States, than the Israeli government’s chronic denial of freedom and human rights to millions of Palestinians under its rule?

Those in Israel and the U.S. who insist that dissent from these suicidal Israeli policies is an anti-Israel or anti-Semitic act of “self-loathing” Jews have forgotten the ancient Jewish wisdom of the Midrash, the compendium of homiletic interpretations of the Bible. The rabbis taught that “Love unaccompanied by criticism is not love . . . Peace unaccompanied by reproof is not peace.” (Genesis Rabbah 54:3)
 
II.  A Commentary on Thank You for Putting J Street On Trial, Dan Fleshler, Realistic Dove, March 29, 2011
 
My friend Dan Fleshler best captured some of the absurdities of the view that American Jews and American Jewish organizations like J Street can't be pro-Israel if they publicly disagree with the policies of the Government of Israel.   He raised four problems with this outlook, problems about which I have been writing and speaking for some three decades; but he did it succinctly and with just a dollop of irony.   
 
1. "Have no principles, no values of your own," he wrote, alluding to the fact that those who define pro-Israel in this way expect American Jews to turn off their brains, becoming automatons, Zionist Stepford wives, repeating uncritically whatever propaganda the right-wing government in Jerusalem puts out to justify its unjustifiable follies.   
 
Yet this notion is fundamentally at odds with the spirit of Judaism which has thrived, since the days of the Talmud, on argument, criticism, debate and an openness to multiple opinions.   The Jewish tradition is best captured by the rabbinic aphorism, said of the opposing opinions of the rabbinic followers of Hillel and those who followed Shammai:   "gam eilu v'eilu divrei elohim hayim - both are the words of the living God."    It is precisely this profoundly Jewish spirit of the ancient rabbis - a spirit which is large enough to hold competing opinions as authentic and even inspired by love of God - which best defines the Jewish tradition that I know, which is woefully missing from what passes for American Jewish "discourse" on Israel. 
 
2.  "Lobby against the U.S. government’s positions whenever Israel disagrees with them, even if we believe our government is acting in the best interests of our own country as well as Israel."
 
In other words, I add, the Israel right-or-wrong crowd hold that you must always oppose your own government's position if the Israeli government disagrees, even if you think that the Israeli government's position is bad for America and bad for Israel.  You are not allowed to disagree publicly with the views of the "elected government" of Israel (as they like to remind us) but you must therefore disagree publicly with the "elected government" of the United States, of which you are - just in case these folks have forgotten - a citizen!  
 
"Go serve in the IDF if you want to criticize Israel," they say; "go make aliyah, if you want to criticize Israel." (And what if, in fact, some of us have done one or both?  Well, then, of course, we're still not entitled to speak out if we differ with the Israeli government.)   In short, you can't be an American, but only a Jew.  But just what kind of Jew is that?  You have no identity as an American, and no rights or responsibilities as an American citizen (or as a thinking person, or a moral person, or a Jewish person who takes Jewish ethics, or the differing views of many prominent Israelis, seriously). 

In fact, for the Israel-right-or-wrong bunch, you cannot either be an American or a Jew.  The entire meaning of what it is to be a Jew has been emptied of all values other than conformism as tribal loyalty (as if it is disloyal to speak out to save one's tribe, one's people, one's nation, from what you and great many other well-informed, thoughtful Jews believe is harming both your own country and the Jewish people and State of Israel that you love.) 

And if the views you advocate are held by many high-ranking current and former security, intelligence and military officials in Israel (the hard-headed security realists), or by Israeli human rights and peace activists (who are often the same people as the former group - see, for example, Shalom Achshav/Peace Now, and the Council for Peace and Security, or the new Israeli Peace Initiative of a large group of former Israeli security officials, including former Shin Bet chiefs Yaakov Peri and  Admiral Ami Ayalon, former Mossad Chief Major-General (Res.) Danny Yatom, former IDF Chief Lt-Gen. (Res.) Amnon Lipkin-Shahak, Major-General (Res.) Amram Mitzna, and Yuval Rabin, son of slain Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin), you are disloyal for agreeing with them and not siding with the elected government of Israel, whoever they may be.

Now try this argument out against an American, whether living in the US or abroad, who was critical of the policies of the Bush-Cheney administration.   Is that American too disloyal, anti-American, and unpatriotic, a traitor to his country and his people, for publicly opposing much of what these irresponsible neocon fools subjected the US and the world to?   An American who opposed Bush-Cheney publicly, if he did so abroad, was in fact helping to restore the badly tarnished good name of the United States among the people of the world.  By the same token, a pro-Israel American Jew, or Jewish organization, that publicly criticizes Netanyahu and Leiberman, is helping to restore the badly muddied good name, and just cause, of Zionism and Israel with the American public, and in the American Jewish community. 
 
3.  "Ignore the steady drift of young people from the American Jewish community."  I add: Anyone who still doesn't get that American and American Jewish support for Israel is suffering from the policies of the Netanyahu (and previous Israeli) governments, that American Jews are increasingly distancing themselves both from Israel and Jewishness because contemporary Israel seems as if it cannot be reconciled with the liberal, universal values they have learned as Americans (and as Jews), has his head in the sand.  The policies of Netanyahu and Leiberman are not only awful for Israel's and America's most vital near- and long-term interests, but for Diaspora Judaism and the American Jewish community as well.   To those who don't grasp all this, one could do no better than to read Peter Beinart's path-breaking essay, "The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment." 
 
4.  "Accept the proposition that as American citizens we have the right to publicly object to the policies and behavior of countries throughout the world, but the one country we are forbidden to criticize is Israel, the homeland of the Jewish people, whose actions are taken in our name."
 
Nuff said.  Read Dan Fleshler's riff on these 4 absurd demands of the Israel-right-or-wrong crowd.  Kol hakavod, Dan.

III.  Criticism of Israel, March 30, 2011, Letters, N.Y. Times, by Seymour Reich

To the Editor:

The goings-on in Israel’s Parliament described in “U.S. Group Stirs Debate on What It Means to Be ‘Pro-Israel’ ” (news article, March 25) should be deplored by all supporters of Israel. But our ranks are thinning, thanks in no small measure to these kinds of activities and what they reflect about Israel’s government today.

They include a hearing into whether a left-leaning American group that calls itself pro-Israel and pro-peace is a “Zionist organization” and a law that removes money from municipalities or Israeli Arab groups that commemorate Independence Day by noting the destruction of Arab villages and the exile of Palestinians.

These activities are anti-democratic, anti-free-speech and anti-equal-rights for all Israel’s citizens. They posit that criticism of government policies by groups outside of Israel renders them anti-Zionist.

We must be able to criticize aspects of Israel without having our love for it annulled. Suggesting otherwise narrows Israel’s base of support. Israel cannot afford to reject or alienate those who declare their support.

SEYMOUR D. REICH
New York, March 25, 2011

The writer is a former chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.

IV.  Are We the New Jews of Silence?, Gidon D. Remba, Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle

I published the following article in the American Jewish press a few years ago; to my great regret, it is even more relevant today than it was when I wrote it:

“We were the Jews of Silence, the Jews enjoying security, the Jews of the Western world . . .What torments me most is . . . the silence of the Jews I live among today,” wrote Elie Wiesel a generation ago in a “Letter to a Young Jew in the U.S.S.R.” Today, there is another silence among the Jews of America: the silence that the few would impose on the many. It brooks no criticism of Israel, always the righteous victim of Arab enmity. Enforcing quiet—supporting Israel right or wrong—is essential to preserving Israel’s status quo, a condition which, as we all know, is truly the best of all possible worlds.

And what if the status quo is, in fact, toxic to Israel? What if it is a poison eating away at the foundations of the state, fouling its Jewish and democratic values and corrupting the young who are its future, some of whom must venture into the West Bank to suppress and control the Palestinian population?
 
Read the rest of the article here.

Why Jordan’s Foreign Minister is Optimistic about Middle East Peace: A Personal Report, by Gidon D. Remba

(And why President Kennedy’s principal advisor, the legendary Ted Sorenson, challenged him)

I had the opportunity to be part of a group of several dozen NGO leaders and diplomats who met for a discussion with Jordan’s Foreign Minister, Nasser Judeh, at the Century Foundation in New York on Sept. 27. The exchange, moderated by Professor Alon Ben-Meir, director of NYU’s Center for Strategic Development and hosted by Century Foundation fellow Michael Wahid Hanna, took place as Israel chose not to renew its partial settlement freeze, and as settlers celebrated a new spurt of building in the West Bank. These blows added fuel to the fire of widespread skepticism about the prospects for the new round of direct Israeli-Palestinian peace talks mediated by the Obama Administration. So many peace initiatives have come and gone, some leading to partial and important breakthroughs, and many others falling by the wayside. Mah mishtana? Why is this new peace effort different?

Mr. Judeh set the stage by recalling Jordanian King Abdullah’s remark that the Arab-Israeli conflict is not only a local conflict, but one with global ramifications. Peace in the Middle East means peace of mind for the rest of the world. Jordan’s aspiration is for a comprehensive permanent peace settlement between Israel and the entire Arab and Muslim worlds. The path to that goal is illuminated, he believes, by the Arab Peace Initiative (API), which calls for a two-state solution, an independent, viable, sovereign and territorially contiguous Palestinian state living in harmony next to a secure Israel, and a mutually agreeable just resolution to the refugee problem. A comprehensive peace will bring Syria and Lebanon into the circle of peace first drawn by Egypt and then Jordan, extending to the entire region. Not only have all 22 countries in the Arab League endorsed the Arab Peace Initiative, but so have all 57 Muslim countries in the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC).

Mr. Judeh acknowledges that the gap is vast between the two sides – yet he believes there is reason for optimism this time. All issues are on the table, reflecting the seriousness of Israeli and Palestinian leaders; and the goal is to reach an agreement within one year. He acknowledges that the pessimists have every reason for their views. Some say that the definition of a pessimist is a well-informed optimist. But Foreign Minister Judeh believes we cannot allow ourselves to think this way, bringing to mind a classic line from the great Enlightenment philosopher, Immanuel Kant, who wrote in a prescient essay called “Perpetual Peace:”

“Even if the realization of this goal of abolishing war were always to remain just a pious wish, we still would not be deceiving ourselves by adopting the maxim of working for it with unrelenting perseverance.” In other words, even if we can’t fully realize the goal, if we work towards its realization, undaunted by the many obstacles and setbacks along the way, we will all be better off. Judeh is perhaps the first Arab Kantian, in theory and in practice.

Why, then, is this new effort different, offering real hope?

First, the Obama Administration has engaged on the issue of Middle East peace from day one. President Obama called Middle East leaders on his first day in the Oval Office – even in the first hour of his presidency, signaling his commitment to engaging aggressively with the issue during his presidency. On the second day in office, when people might have expected him to be more preocuppied with domestic issues, he visited the State Department and appointed George Mitchell as his Special Envoy for Middle East Peace, deploying Mitchell to the region soon thereafter.

However, Mr. Judeh did not stress enough the difference in the way the Obama administration is shepherding the talks from beginning to end versus the laissez-faire approach that the Bush Administration took to negotiations during the Annapolis phase under Olmert and Abbas. This reinforces his point about the difference in the kind of commitment and engagement that the Obama administration is displaying, and it is unquestionably a reason for optimism.

Second, Foreign Minister Judeh believes that the current Palestinian and Israeli leadership have realized that this time they must see the process through to the end. When Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu met with President Abbas in the White House a few weeks ago, he affirmed that “we seek a peace that will last for generations” and said “President Abbas, you are my partner in peace.” Abbas, for his part, promised that there will be no provocative Palestinian actions that will undermine the negotiations – there will be no violence.

How, contrary to the skeptics and the naysayers, Obama, Netanyahu and Abbas resolved the settlement freeze:  And although the partial settlement freeze expired yesterday, Mr. Judeh is encouraged by the fact that Netanyahu asked the settlers to exercise the same restraint as when the moratorium was in place. Even if there will be no official freeze in place, Netanyahu will limit construction starts in practice so that there is no practical difference between the period during and after the official freeze.   This might be Netanyahu’s way of squaring the circle. (Ynet confirms, in a report filed yesterday, that this apears to be the formula for threading the needle:  "PA says 'quiet' construction freeze to go on:  Israel will only be allowed to build in settlement blocs, talks to continue, senior PA source says."  "Other Palestinian sources believe that the compromise in respect to West Bank construction will take the form of a 'quiet freeze,' with Israel's Defense Ministry holding up construction permits.") 

In any case, Dror Etkes, Peace Now's former Settlement Watch director, reveals that the data from Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics show that the “settlement freeze” was largely a hoax, a PR stunt, “Israbluff.” ("Settlement Freeze? It was barely a slowdown," Ha'aretz, Sept. 28, 2010).  The reduction in the number of houses being actively built at the end of 2009 versus the end of March 2010 - from 2,955 to 2,517 - was little more than 400, or 16%.   In fact, notes Etkes, during the "freeze," “a relatively large part of the houses were built on settlements that lie east of the separation fence,” which are not in the settlement blocs. So if Netanyahu is agreeing now not to build in settlements beyond the settlement blocs when there is no official freeze, he may, without a “freeze,” actually be improving upon what he did during the official “freeze,” when he allowed housing to be built in far-flung settlements that will certainly not become part of Israel in any peace agreement.

The Palestinians, explains Etkes, “agreed to turn a blind eye to the construction so long as the official freeze policy of the Israeli government continued.” So, all the lamentations and wailing about Israel’s allowing the settlement freeze to thaw simply buys into the settlers' and Netanyahu’s fiction that there was any kind of serious settlement freeze in the first place.

Mr. Judeh says that there should be zero tolerance for any unilateral actions, by either side, which could undermine trust and confidence.   While there is, he believes, a need for an extension of the settlement freeze (in practice if not in name), Israeli and Palestinian leaders should stop negotiating across the airwaves, forcing each to posture for certain audiences. Coalition politics pose understandable difficulties, but leaders must have long-term vision of their peoples’ and countries’ needs. Actions and words must be in synch; one can’t profess peace and then act contrary to its requirements (at least if one’s claim to be a peace-seeker is to be credible).

The settlements are illegal and illegitimate; this is the US position, not only the international consensus. Once the borders are established by agreement, both sides will know where Israel ends and Palestine begins, and where it is legitimate for Israel to build settlements. Changing the demography on the ground will completely derail the current momentum and erode the chances for a contiguous Palestinian state. When Israel confiscates Palestinian land and property; when it evicts Palestinians from their homes and takes other unilateral measures in Arab neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, including excavations in areas of religious sensitivity, these steps undermine confidence and the negotiations themselves.

(Some American Jews, I would add, still don’t grasp why settlement construction undermines confidence during peace talks, and as public support for diplomacy wanes and support for violence rises, can sabotage them.  They imagine that the settlements are not part of the problem, that the only problem is Arab recognition and acceptance of Israel, as right-wing propagandists often say. But this turns reality on its head and ignores the obvious. Palestinians seek a territorially contiguous state in the West Bank and Gaza, while Israelis seek acceptance and security. For Israelis, the thing that most undermines their trust in Palestinian intentions is the resurgence of violence and terrorism, particularly when the Palestinian leadership (e.g., under Arafat) not only failed to do enough to stop it, but sometimes encouraged it. But that is a thing of the past; the consistent and effective efforts of the Palestinian Authority’s US- and Jordanian-trained security forces in countering terror under Abbas have been frequently hailed as unprecedented by Israeli security officials. And President Abbas has now re-affirmed his commitment to continued cooperation with Israel in preventing the extremists from launching attacks against Israelis.

But since the Palestinians seek a contiguous state in the West Bank, when Israel builds new homes in West Bank settlements – not only the settlement blocs near the 1967 border, but in the far-flung settlements near major Palestinian West Bank population centers like Ramallah, Nablus and Arab neighborhoods in East Jerusalem – it sends a message to the Palestinians that it has no intention whatsoever of relinquishing the territory in a peace agreement; that there will be no contiguous Palestinian state or viable two-state solution. When faith in diplomacy and dialogue fade, support for violence rises – and so, in the end, does violence. That’s how you destroy the chance for peace. Moreover, by unilaterally deciding where it will continue to build in settlements, Israel sends a message to the Palestinians that it intends to unilaterally determine the final borders, rather than negotiating them. It wields its greater power over the Palestinians to force the outcome. It suggests that Israel is prejudicing the contours of those borders before an agreement has been reached, in effect compelling the other side to accept a fait accompli – something the parties previously committed not to do.

Breaking that promise clearly undermines Palestinian confidence in Israeli good intentions, and has contributed to the eruption of both the first and the second intifadas, and a loss of hope among Palestinians; just as the resurgence in Palestinian violence helped undermine Israelis’ trust in Palestinian good intentions, leading to a loss of hope in the chance for peace among many Israelis, even if they long for it and still favor a two-state solution. So contrary to rightist claims, while terrorism and settlement expansion can’t be equated morally, they are functionally equivalent in the role they play in sapping confidence in peace for the other side, and thus in undermining peace talks.)

The third reason this peace effort is different, giving reason for optimism, is this: there is international unanimity that we’ve had enough of the Arab-Israel conflict, and that it must at long last be brought to an end.

Fourth, the US under Obama recognizes the importance of pursuing peace as a regional goal, not simply piecemeal between Israel and the Palestinians or between Israel and Syria. The Arab Peace Initiative, and the Obama administration’s recognition of the role it can play in promoting a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace for the entire region, is another reason why the new peace effort may be different.  Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was in Jordan two weeks ago and emphasized the importance of the Arab Peace Initiative. The US is seeking to bring Syria and Lebanon into the mix, testifying to its understanding of the need for a regional approach.

Jordan has played a lead role in advising the Saudis on the Arab Peace Initiative, a win-win proposition. Israel gains peace and real security and will be genuinely integrated into the region. Once a Palestinian state is created, a just solution is agreed with regard to the refugees, and Syria and Lebanon recover their occupied territory, the Arab states will consider the Arab-Israel conflict to have ended, and all Arab states will establish normal relations with Israel. Moreover, the API affirms the security of all states in the region, including Israel. Israel’s quest for security is legitimate. Treaties and agreements will make Israel’s security a collective responsibility. The opportunities for cooperation between Israel and the Arab states are many: on water, energy, transportation and in other arenas. In fact, every Middle East leader at the UN this week spoke about the desire for regional cooperation in these areas. We need to create a political environment that will make such cooperation with Israel possible.

The Arab Peace Initiative Committee will be meeting in Cairo on Oct. 4th. Foreign Minister Judeh recognizes that more needs to be done to promote the API and its benefits to Israelis. He has been planning a conference of civil society leaders on the Arab Peace Initiative – NGO leaders, academics and others, Israeli, Arab and international – as a way to strengthen awareness of its value among peoples and governments. Originally planned for this past spring, it was postponed when the Gaza flotilla incident unfolded, and has yet to occur.

But Mr. Judeh’s message is simple and direct: If we fail now, the radicals will say, “we told you so; our way is better.” We cannot allow the forces of rejection to prevail.

For the Q&A with Jordan's Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh, and why Ted Sorenson, President Kennedy's legendary principal advisor, challened him, please click here.

A Reply to Disco Stu's Jewcy comment on my Open Letter to Abe Foxman

Dear Disco Stu,

In your comment on my Open Letter to Abe Foxman on Jewcy, you wrongly suggest that I (and Obama, whose Mideast policies I support) want to “force Israel to cease all settlement building without expecting anything in return.” You appear to have read a different article than the one I wrote—in fact, I argued nothing of the kind. Throughout my letter I say things like: “don't object when the President holds both sides' feet to the fire about fulfilling their Road Map obligations, as Bush promised to do,” and talk about how Obama, the Arab League and the international community must pressure the Palestinians to give up on their claims of a right of refugee return to Israel as part of a final treaty in which Israel will evacuate those West Bank settlements which won’t become part of Israel’s final borders.

From what you say about settlements, it seems to me you’ve not learned about how the world really works, as you claim; nor have you drawn the right conclusions from the failure of Oslo which a realistic understanding of what actually happened would require. Israeli Security Expert and Former Mossad Official Yossi Alpher has pointed out that “Settlement expansion was a key catalyst of the first Intifada, the popular rebellion of Palestinian youth [against Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and the settlement enterprise there] that broke out in late 1987 and continued until the early 90’s, as well as of the al-Aqsa Intifada, in fall 2000. More than any other factor, the spread of settlements on what they considered to be their lands was seen by Palestinian youth as a reason for urgent, even reckless action: to continue to struggle passively, as their elders advocated, was to cede Palestine to the settlers. This dramatic expansion of settlement building to a state of critical mass, set against a backdrop of agonizingly slow progress in the Oslo process over a seven-year period, constituted a major catalyst for the al-Aqsa Intifada.”

And: “One of the major flaws of Oslo was that it did not explicitly prohibit continued expansion of settlements. This settlement growth established ‘facts on the ground’ that were used to preempt negotiations on territory and seriously eroded Palestinian trust in the peace process itself.” In fact, the number of West Bank settlers nearly doubled from 100,000 to almost 200,000 from the beginning of the Oslo peace process until its failure in 2000.

How then do we help Israelis and Palestinians create the mutual confidence needed to revive peace negotiations in a way that will be likely to succeed, taking into account how the great gap between what happened on the ground and what was said at the negotiating table was among the major causes for Oslo’s failure? To that end, the Road Map required of Israel to immediately implement a settlement freeze, including all natural growth, and dismantle the dozens of settlement outposts which had been built in recent years, further expanding the geographic footprint of the settlers in the West Bank. The Palestinians were to “undertake visible efforts on the ground to arrest, disrupt, and restrain individuals and groups conduction and planning violent attacks on Israelis anywhere."

In my letter I quote Larry Derfner’s Jerusalem Post column, which points out that "The Palestinian Authority has been cracking down on Hamas for a long while, it kept the West Bank miraculously quiet during Operation Cast Lead, it's enforcing the law in city after city... If the PA wasn't giving us peace and we were giving it land - we'd be right to demand that Obama put all the pressure on the Palestinians and none on us. But the fact is that Abbas and the PA are giving us about as much peace as they're capable of, while we aren't planning on giving them an inch; instead, we're thinking only about how much more conquered land Obama will let us build on."

In short, the reality is that so far the Palestinians have actually done a great deal to comply with what they need to do to rebuild Israeli trust and confidence in their commitment to fighting anti-Israel terror; but Israel has done very little on the ground to inspire confidence among Palestinians that it is sincere about ultimately granting them the right to a state free of hundreds of thousands of Israeli settlers in the West Bank. Netanyahu now claims to support a two-state solution, but while professing fealty to peace he continues to do the very opposite of what’s required to convince any fair-minded observer, let alone the Palestinians, that he intends to negotiate the creation of a Palestinian state.

So this has nothing to do with what Europeans, academics and the “Arab side” say, or with how often some “meme” is repeated, and everything to do with what has been, and is, objectively undermining the chance for a two-state solution to the conflict, and what is objectively necessary to build confidence among both Israelis and Palestinians in order to restart a peace effort on new and more sound footing. And it has everything to do with what both sides committed to do and what they have and haven’t done. But Obama is not stopping with insuring that the Palestinians are fulfilling their security obligations to Israel. He is also pressing the Arab countries to begin normalizing relations with Israel in several areas. So the notion that I or Obama are advocating forcing Israel to do anything without Palestinian and Arab reciprocation is pure invention on your part.

You also seem not to grasp that a settlement freeze is simply a first step towards a two-state solution in a multi-step process in which both sides have obligations to the other. A settlement moratorium is a very minimal step which ensures that Israel finally lives up to its promise—as codified in the Wye Accord and other agreements it signed—to stop taking actions which clearly prejudice the outcome of the negotiations by putting more Jewish housing on more land that the Palestinians claim for their state—whether in Arab neighborhoods in East Jerusalem or in the West Bank.

As part of a deal in which Arabs and Israelis agree on the final borders of Israel and Palestine, both the Palestinians and the Arab states will be expected to make major concessions to accommodate Israel’s needs on a wide range of issues once we reach the point where Israel begins to actually remove tens of thousands of settlers from the area which it will have agreed will become a Palestinian state. They will, and should, be pressured by Obama and the international community to accept demilitarization of their state—no heavy weapons or air force—unlike almost every other state in the world; they will be pressured to accept a host of security arrangements to accommodate Israel’s requirements, and to give up on their claim of a right of refugee return to Israel, among other concessions.

The other point you raise is whether “If building new settlement houses suddenly ceases” the Palestinians will “suddenly acquire the requisite abilities to both build and govern a functioning state and accept Israel living like a (relatively) rich, glamourous, successful prince right next door?” There are really two different issues here: whether the Palestinians accept Israel’s right to exist in peace and security, and whether they have the ability to build and govern a state.

But the fact that you could write such a sentence suggests that you are not the pragmatist or realist you claim to be. No pragmatist would impute such powers to a mere settlement freeze; only someone out to build a straw man and then tear it down would say such a thing. To gain the capacities to build and govern a functioning state that Palestinians will need, and deserve, significant international help—something like an international trusteeship (even if we don’t call it that) which will, over a period of years after Israel’s occupation of the Palestinians has ended, help them develop the requisite political capacities and institutions to govern their state. This will need to be coupled with a “Marshall Plan” for the economic development of the new state; Obama should press the Saudis and other wealthy Gulf states to make major contributions to this economic package.

You say that “for those of us who feel the Pals. were the ones who dropped the ball or were never on it during Oslo, any move that is unilaterally demanded of Israel that doesn't also address the true weak link in the two-state solution (Palestinian inability to come to terms with a legitimized Israel living free and prospering while they worry about building their own state) is merely sweeping the dust under the rug.”

A true pragmatist would recognize that in fact a majority of Palestinians have for many years supported a two-state peace deal with Israel. The latest poll of Israeli and Palestinian public opinion, conducted jointly by the Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in Ramallah, between May 21-June 3, 2009, showed that “59% of the Israelis support and 36% oppose a two-state solution. Among Palestinians, 61% support the two-state solution while 23% support a one-state solution and 9% support other solutions.” What’s more, you seem to me to have an unrealistic, messianic definition of what constitutes acceptance of Israel by Palestinians, rather than the kind of pragmatic, realistic view of what it takes for there to be peace between two countries—whether Israel and Palestine, or Israel and Egypt or Syria.

Despite your insistence of being a pragmatist and a centrist, on the question of Palestinian acceptance of Israel it seems to me you’ve bought into the right-wing hasbara mythology of what went wrong during Oslo. My letter wasn’t intended as an antidote to that particular hallucinogen. Gaining a realistic understanding of what’s actually happened over the last 10 – 20 years, and why, will require you to actually read—not skim—some serious articles. I’ve tried to sum up some of this material in two places: “Why Camp David and Oslo Failed: Myth and Reality” and "Barak's Chief Negotiator Explodes the Myth of Camp David."

But I would suggest you start with David Grossman’s “Fictions Embraced by An Israel at War”.
There he wrote this bracing passage: ”The story that now reigns nearly unchallenged in the media and political discourse obliterates more than 33 years of roadblocks, thousands of prisoners, deportations, and killings of innocent people. It's as if there were never long months of closures in cities and villages, as if there had been no humiliations, no incessant harassment, no searches of houses, no bulldozing of hundreds of homes, no uprooting of vineyards and olive groves, no filling up of wells and, especially, no construction of tens of thousands of housing units in settlements and large-scale confiscation of land, in violation of international law.

“The new narrative leaps back through the manipulative fog created by the prime minister and his cabinet, his supporters and his various spokesmen straight to the Six-Day War, our pinnacle of justice. And looking forward from that point in 1967 there is a kind of desert devoid of history, devoid of responsibility, devoid of blame, until we suddenly emerge from the miasma right at the Oslo accords, the proposals that Ehud Barak made to Yasir Arafat at Camp David and, after Camp David, like thunder on a bright and sunny day, the second intifada.

"According to this story, the Palestinians suddenly exploded in September 2000 in an uncaused natural eruption, spewing out lava and ash and igniting the entire region. They had no logical reason for exploding and there was no prior Israeli provocation. Ehud Barak made them a generous offer, and they betrayed him with an outburst of violence because they, by their nature, are motivated solely by destructive, irrational forces that make impossible any future compromise with them.

“This theory is also the basis of another right-wing claim that now seems to be accepted by the majority of Israelis. It is that the Oslo accords, and their supporters, were what in fact caused the second intifada. In other words, it wasn't the intolerable conditions in which the Palestinians lived for more than three decades. It wasn't the tacit support that most Israelis lent to the ongoing occupation, all the while persuading themselves that it was such an enlightened occupation that it was barely an occupation at all. It wasn't the refusal of every Israeli government before the second administration of Yitzhak Rabin to try to reach a true, if painful, accommodation with the Palestinians. It wasn't the doubling of the number of Israeli settlers in the territories in the years after Oslo. Nor was it the way in which Ehud Barak conducted the Camp David talks, presenting to Yasir Arafat as ultimatums proposals that, while they were generous compared with Israeli positions in the past, were entirely insufficient in Palestinian eyes.

“None of these factors are now viewed as sufficient reason for a popular uprising by a subjugated and despairing people. No, it's the Oslo accords that are to blame, as if in the absence of Oslo the Palestinians would have come to terms with the Israeli occupation, accepting it tranquilly, even lovingly, to this very day; as if the Oslo agreements were a match, not a fire extinguisher.”

So Disco Stu, I would give your comment a D- for cogency, an F for conscientiousness (to pass, you have to actually read what the person you are criticizing has written), and an A for ad hominem irrelevancies.

Rabbi Arnold Jacob Wolf, z"l--"Obama's Rabbi"--A Remembrance, by Doni Remba, Chicago Jewish News

Rabbi Arnold Jacob Wolf, z”l—“Obama’s Rabbi”—A Remembrance
by Doni Remba, President and Executive Director, the Jewish Alliance for Change

Abridged version published in the Chicago Jewish News

Rabbi Arnold Jacob Wolf, one of the great religious leaders of our time and a champion of peace and social justice, has left us. I had the privilege of working with Arnie during the 1980’s as a teacher of children and adults for the first six years of his tenure at KAM Isaiah Israel Congregation in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood. He remained a friend and ally ever since. This is a time to remember him, and the enormous contribution he has made to Jewish and American life.

By the time I had met him in 1980, Arnie had already served as a Navy chaplain during the Korean war, marched with King in Selma during the sixties, founded and led an innovative synagogue, and had been one the primary moving forces behind the creation in 1973 of the first national Jewish organization advocating for Palestinian-Israeli peace based on a two-state solution, at a time when calling for mutual Israeli and Palestinian recognition and rights was seen as high treason within the Jewish community.

In his essay, “A Theology of Activism,” Arnie writes: “I believe that Judaism mandates a quite specific political ethic which is binding upon all Jews. I include among our political obligations the amelioration of inequality, offering sanctuary to those fleeing oppression and tyranny, and a perpetual struggle for peace, even at some risk to our own security and safety…[T]he positive commandment of Judaism is to begin to act again and again, in the face of all doubt and with due consideration of all that negative experience can teach…God will complete our imperfections. She will not forgive our self-defensive cowardice or our fear of failure.”

He thought a rabbi ought to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable”—as one rabbi and close friend put it at his funeral, as his friend Martha Nussbaum, the renowned political philosopher at the University of Chicago Law School, reports in what is perhaps the most evocative remembrance of him. Throughout his life and work, Arnie exemplified “a passion for challenge and argument, a love of the search for truth whatever its inconveniences, a profound respect for dissenting opinions,” in Martha’s apt words.

Contrary to what some hawkish Orthodox critics say, the commitment to the pursuit of peace and social justice of many Jews like Arnie did not flow from some attachment to universalism that was somehow opposed to their Jewishness and their Judaism. For Arnie, it was integral to his understanding of what Jewish tradition demanded of us. Though he was an iconoclast and progressive in his politics, he was among the leaders of the return to tradition in Reform Judaism.

Arnie saw Judaism as defined by the belief that “it is better to do something under command than by choice….Mitzvah [commandment] is in a privileged position….To all of us North Americans,” he noted, “autonomy and choice—freedom and the ability to decide for ourselves—are crucial. But to Judaism, as I understand it, the opposite is the case…All Judaism is mitzvah. There is nothing else.” He maintained, as one of his provocatively titled articles put it, that “There is No Judaism but Orthodoxy—But All Jews are Really Reform.”

He taught that

"Jews are required, so far as they are able, to help other Jews. We have an obligation to support Israel, which by no means is identical to support for any given government policy there or, for that matter, a policy of the United States. We are not allowed to be bland universalists, just as we are not allowed to consider our own family the moral equivalent of all other families. Our ethical tasks begin close to home and then move in ever-widening circles until, in principle, if never in reality, we embrace the whole world. To be a Jew means to love ‘the near one’ (neighbor) as ourselves, hoping to bring near as many as we can."

To a young man who in 1980, having recently lost his 47-year old father, wondered how a just God could have created a universe in which life could be so torn asunder, Arnie responded in the traditional Jewish idiom as God had to Job that we cannot understand the ways of the Creator—a response that left me distinctly unsatisfied. My grappling with God, good and evil inevitably spilled over into my classroom at KAM. After a free-wheeling exchange in which my young students and I alternately challenged and defended the conventional explanations of God and radical evil, I asked them to put their thoughts to paper. Arnie loved the product, even with its dissenting and sometimes slightly heretical notions. In 1981 and again in 1984, he published their ruminations for the whole congregation, presenting their “profound and poignant theological reflections with pride and deep respect.” “When do we lose these youthful insights,” he wondered aloud. “How do we get them back again?”

The Loving Critic: Israel and the American Jewish Community

Arnie was, in so many ways, an exemplar of the rabbinic teaching that “Love unaccompanied by criticism is not love . . . Peace unaccompanied by reproof is not peace.” (Genesis Rabbah 54:3) He lived a life guided by the prophetic ideal of criticism from love. As founding chair of Breira—which means “alternative”—he helped spearhead a Jewish organization which proposed “an alternative to the intransigence of both the PLO and the several governments of Israel,” speaking out for the then-heterodox idea of a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Though Breira had the participation of over a hundred Reform and Conservative rabbis and noted American Jewish writers and intellectuals, the group was subjected to a vicious McCarthyite campaign of calumny in the organized Jewish community. Rabbi Alexander Schindler, then president of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, was perhaps the only major leader of a Jewish organization to defend Breira, calling the attacks on the group, and firing by major Jewish organizations of some of its rabbinic supporters, a “witch hunt,” all of which led to Breira’s dissolution by 1977.

While Arnie continued to be a passionate advocate for Israeli-Palestinian peace, I believe he was deeply heartened to see that from the 1980’s on there were so many other American Jews—and mainstream pro-Israel Jewish organizations—who had followed in his footsteps in calling, and working, for a serious and sustained American initiative to help bring about Palestinian-Israeli rapprochement and a comprehensive Arab-Israeli settlement. But Arnie was no uncritical peacenik. He wrote of the obligations of Palestinians to end violence against Israel, and of Israel to work with Palestinians to end the occupation and bring about a secure two-state solution:

"The Palestinians are right to demand their liberation; the Jewish people need look no further than their own history to understand the wrong of the occupation. But it must not be forgotten that Israel is also right to demand the end of violence coming from some segments of the Palestinian community. Liberation is not enough -- we have also the obligation to live ethical lives.

"Both sides, then, must recognize the humanity of the other, and work together toward their mutual freedom, their mutual obligations. We learn in Exodus 12 that the Israelites went up from Egypt with a mixed multitude -- they were not alone as they shook off their oppression, and, we can presume, they were not alone at Sinai.

"God does not speak only to the Jews. The Creator speaks to all Creation, calls on each of us, individually and in our communities, to live in freedom and responsibility. Israel and the Palestinians must talk with each other, in honesty and mutual respect, and achieve a durable peace agreement, if either people is to know real liberation."

When, as president of Chicago Peace Now, the progressive Zionist group I had co-founded in 2001 after the failure of the Oslo peace process, I returned to KAM in 2004 to host a public dialogue with the Senior Legal Advisor to the Palestinian Negotiating Team from the Camp David and Taba talks, and a prominent American Jewish peace advocate, it was at the invitation of KAM’s Cantor Debra Bard. Arnie was there, but I was remiss in not having publicly recognized that we were in the presence of one of the rabbinic giants who had courageously pioneered American Jewish support for Palestinian-Israeli reconciliation.

It had been a few years since I had been back at KAM, though I had continued to visit with Arnie in other places. His eyes twinkled as he asked: “So, does it look the same?” I went up to my old classroom, whose windows gaze out on Barack Obama’s home, and confessed: “It’s as if time has frozen. Nothing has changed!” But so much had, and we both knew it.

Though now the synagogue’s emeritus rabbi, Arnie continued to teach classes, educate Bar and Bat Mitzvah students, deliver the occasional sermon, and engage, as always, in political activism. Last year, Arnie delivered a blistering Yom Kippur sermon titled “Our Sin.” KAM had all at once lost its serving rabbi, its cantor, and its director of education, all extraordinarily talented people each in their own fields. Arnie went on to reprove the congregation, and himself, for their and his own very real failings, which he believed had caused the departure of so many of the synagogue’s senior staff.

“Obama’s Rabbi”

Arnie had been one of Obama’s earliest supporters when Obama first ran for the Illinois State Senate in a district that encompassed Hyde Park and other parts of Chicago. When, over a decade later, late in the presidential race, McCain and Palin sought to discredit Obama through guilt by association with one Professor Bill Ayers, a Hyde Park neighbor, Arnie let it be known that for a host of reasons it was a bum rap. Attempting to tar Obama as “paling around with terrorists,” McCain and Palin claimed that Ayers had “launched Obama’s political career in his living room.” But Arnie pointed out that many people in Hyde Park had hosted coffees for Obama—“there were several every week”—to introduce the candidate to the community and help him build political support. He noted that his wife Grace insisted that their own coffee for Obama had actually been the first—so if anything, Obama’s political career had actually been “launched” in Arnie and Grace’s living room.

In March of this year, Arnie sprang to Obama’s defense when he was under attack for the remarks of his minister, Rev. Jeremiah Wright. He made clear that he supported Obama’s candidacy not out of “neighborly instinct,” but “because he stands for what I believe, what our tradition demands.” And as a rabbi who had long prized his freedom to take controversial political and religious stands before his congregation, he reminded the American Jewish community that “We sometimes forget, but an integral part of that tradition is dialogue and a willingness to disagree. Certainly many who call me their rabbi have taken political positions far from mine - just as Barack Obama's opinions have differed from those of his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.”

Then he reminded us of what was really at stake in this election for Jews and for all Americans, adding his and his family’s testimony to vouch for his friend Barack:

"Obama's strong positions on poverty and the climate, his early and consistent opposition to the Iraq War, his commitment to ending the Darfur genocide - all these speak directly to Jewish concerns. If we're sidetracked by Wright's words, we'll be working against these interests. After all, a preacher speaks to a congregation, not for the congregation.

"I've worked with Obama for more than a decade, as has my son, a lawyer who represents children and people with disabilities. He has admired Obama's dedication and skill as he worked on issues affecting our most vulnerable citizens….Barack Obama is brilliant and open-hearted; he is wiser and more thoughtful than his former minister. He offers what America, Israel, and the Jewish community need: a US President willing to ask hard questions, and grapple with difficult answers. I am very proud to be his neighbor. I hope someday to visit him in the White House."

Soon thereafter, Arnie joined our Board of Advisors, with the encouragement of his (other) political activist and Orthodox son, Jonathan. Arnie was proud to join a Jewish organization which was then sponsoring Jews for Obama, and which, as the Jewish Alliance for Change, continued to advocate for Obama in the Jewish community through Election Day, while espousing a progressive domestic and foreign policy agenda.

President-elect Obama issued the following statement upon learning of Arnie’s passing, which was read at his funeral at KAM:

"I am deeply saddened to learn of the passing of Rabbi Arnold Jacob Wolf, who was not just our neighbor, but a dear friend to Michelle and me. We are joined in this time of grief by the entire Hyde Park community, the American Jewish Community, and all those who shared Rabbi Wolf’s passion for learning and profound commitment to serving others.

"Throughout Chicago and in Jewish homes and classrooms across our country, Rabbi Wolf’s name is synonymous with service, social action, and the possibility of change. He will be remembered as a loving husband and father, an engaging teacher, a kindhearted shepherd for the KAM Isaiah community, and a tireless advocate of peace for the United States, Israel and the world."

But Arnie’s long-time vociferous support for Obama did not prevent him from criticizing his friend when he believed he had erred. A few weeks ago, at a public talk at KAM delivered by Abner Mikva, the former federal judge and White House Counsel to President Clinton who is one of Obama’s mentors and advisors, Arnie chastised Obama over some of his cabinet appointments and for his reversal this summer on a civil rights issue: Obama’s decision to support legislation granting legal immunity to telecommunications companies that had cooperated with the Bush administration’s program of wiretapping without warrants. This “pragmatic move to the center” was a reversal of Obama’s prior opposition to President Bush’s effort to expand the government’s domestic spying powers.

Even as he defended Obama in March, Arnie wrote that “I've sometimes found Obama too cautious on Israel. He, like all our politicians, knows he mustn't stray too far from the conventional line, and that can be disappointing. But unlike anyone else on the stump, Obama has also made it clear that he'll broaden the dialogue. He knows what peace entails.”

Had Arnie lived to see the great suffering of Israelis and Palestinians in the current crisis, he would have been among those reminding us that it stems above all else from the woeful absence of real diplomatic leadership on the part of the United States and its allies. He would have been privately urging his friend, the President-elect, to upon taking office launch an unprecedented drive to negotiate a more durable cease-fire, coupled with a bold regional approach to comprehensive Israeli-Arab peace, one which “breaks fundamentally with past efforts.”

Baruch Dayan Emet

Arnie was, as he himself had said of his great teacher Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, “a prophet who knew that prophecy was now impossible. But, as he taught us, the prophets and sages are dead. It is only the living who now constitute Israel and will together make its future.” What a hole in the universe has been left, cried Rabbi Arthur Waskow. Arnie will be sorely missed by so many; and we need him now more than ever.

Barack Obama, a True Friend of Israel, Gidon D. Remba -- The Jerusalem Report, Viewpoint, 6/4/08

What should we say of an American president who tells the Knesset that negotiating with “terrorists and radicals” is like appeasing Nazis, but who bargains with states like Libya and North Korea over nuclear disarmament and with Iran over stabilizing Iraq? And suppose a Republican presidential candidate endorses the implied appeasement charge against his opponent, suggesting that while the Democrat is surely Hamas’ best friend, he himself will never truck with terrorists. Next imagine that just before the election spotlight shines upon him, this same Republican announces that sooner or later we’re going to have to talk to Hamas.

George Orwell, author of the dystopian novel 1984, called all this Newspeak. In Newspeak, explained Orwell, one displays “a loyal willingness to say that black is white when Party discipline demands this…The enemy of the moment always represented absolute evil, and it followed that any past or future agreement with him was impossible.” In Oldspeak, diplomacy meant bargaining, directly or indirectly when needed, with one’s foes, as well as with friends. In Newspeak, we never talk of such things, even when our leaders do them because they must. In Oldspeak, we do as we say and say as we do. In Newspeak, we say what we want the people to think, and then do as we wish.

Barack Obama represents a revival of Oldspeak to a people grown weary of the gaping chasm between rhetoric and results, happy-talk and truth, from an administration that promised Americans security and global triumph, and its Jewish citizens undying friendship to Israel. While a stubborn minority clings to fantasies of “moral clarity” on absolute good and evil and vanquishing Israel’s enemies, many now see that the swashbuckling moralists have boosted the “evil-doers” while whispering sweet hosannas to Israel in Jewish ears.

These dragon-slayers have broken the Arab state which was Iran’s chief rival, installing Shiite-led Iran-friendly rule in Iraq. In the name of “freedom” and “democracy,” they foisted new elections on the Palestinians, against both Israel’s and Fatah’s better judgment, letting Hamas win power. Then they armed Fatah against Hamas in Gaza hoping to depose the Hamas-led authority, until Hamas preempted, wresting control of Gaza from Fatah.

They fiddled with toothless sanctions while Persian centrifuges spun. They neglected the most potent U.S. economic and political inducements, while Iran leapt forward towards nuclear weapons' breakthrough. They refused to lure Syria away from Iran in a pax Americana, as we once did Egypt from the Soviet orbit, allowing the Syrians to keep funneling more lethal arms to Hezbollah and Hamas, magnifying the threats to Israel.

Obama has blasted the Bush crew for pressuring Israel to duck peace parley with Syria, despite the conviction of both its prime minister and defense minister, and much of its security establishment, that engaging Damascus would be to Israel’s advantage. Only two governments on earth are in shock over the newly revealed Israeli-Syrian dialogue: the Iranian regime of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and the Bush administration, which reportedly called Israel’s overture towards Syria “a slap in the face.” Such language is not unlike that doubtlessly heard in government halls in Tehran and Hezbollah’s Beirut these days about their Syrian ally.

But don’t expect Syria’s President Bashar Asad to publicly surrender his chief asset and strongest bargaining chip—his marriage of convenience with Iran—in the opening act. Engineering this break will take a bountiful dowry from the wealthy American and Western families of the Israeli would-be bride. The prospects for success will depend, in part, on whether a new U.S. president seizes the opening, persuading Syria of the benefits we will offer in exchange for spurning Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah.

Barack Obama and John McCain bring to this pregnant Mideast moment two sharply divergent conceptions of America’s place in the world. Reflecting his grasp of the supporting role the United States must play as a true friend of Israel, Obama responded that he has “consistently said that the United States must stand ready to help Israel achieve peace with its neighbors, and should not block Israel from the negotiating table, nor force it to negotiate.” McCain’s spokesperson offered the laissez-faire bromide “that the sovereign government of Israel should be free to make its own decisions on how best to defend Israel and whether to engage in negotiations.” (Read: Knock yourself out, Israel. But don’t come to us for help.)

Facing down Iran, Obama will marshal all elements of American power on behalf of security and peace in the region, wielding both carrots and sticks. McCain’s long-time cheerleading for the hawkish "talk and walk" of the Bush league leaves little doubt that a McCain administration will be hostage to the same martial doublethink: an over-reliance on arms and isolation as magic potions for all that ails America and Israel, Orwell’s perpetual war clothed in earnest devotion to Newspeak “diplomacy.”

“It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words,” remarked Orwell’s character Syme, reveling in the way the cleansing of language constricts thought, stamping out the very idea of imagining alternative courses of action. But then he was fictional, of course.


Gidon D. Remba, a veteran American Jewish Israel activist, is President of KAHAL America (http://www.kahalamerica.com/), a new Jewish nonprofit issues advocacy organization and sponsor of "Jews for Obama" (http://www.jewsforobama.com/).

Let's Have Straight Talk on Jewish Issues, Senator McCain, by Gidon D. Remba

If you thought that the world’s most ignoble occupation was prostitution, think again: it’s politics. That’s right. Only a politician could solemnly pledge integrity, honesty and decency as nothing more than a ploy to get our votes, then twist the truth beyond recognition all the way to the polling booth.

Sure, all politicians lie. But not all politicians lie all of the time. Watching the 2008 election season closely, I’ve discovered a trusty rule of thumb: the more a politician’s positions suffer from moral and intellectual bankruptcy, the more they lie. How else did you think we got stuck with George W. Bush? Because he waged and won a superior battle of ideas?

A former top Republican strategist has said of Bush’s former senior campaign advisor Karl Rove that his “goal is never just to win, it is to destroy your opponent, [use] character assassination, whatever it takes. There is almost nothing Karl would not do. For example, religion was not part of Karl’s life but he viewed it as a political tool to be manipulated.” Only now the term “Rovian politics” has, for many, become redundant.

Though I have not supported McCain for President, I, like many others, admired the man for his willingness to stick to principle and sometimes buck the neoconservative mania of his party. Arianna Huffington notes that “his nobility and his true reformer years have given way to pandering in the service of ambition.” She has compiled a frighteningly long roster of recent McCain lies and deceptions, most of which the media have ignored. But when McCain hired as a campaign advisor Karl Rove, what did we expect? An honest, thoughtful issue-oriented contest? A Talmudic debate?

But McCain’s fall from grace began well before the campaign. Huffington sums up just a few of the most egregious charges in the case against him: He now wants to make permanent Bush’s good-for-the rich tax cuts that “he twice voted against, saying he could not ‘in good conscience support’ them; the campaign finance reformer [has been] replaced with a candidate whose campaign is run by lobbyists and fueled by loophole rides on his wife's jet; the hard-line stance against torture replaced by a vote allowing water boarding…and the embracing of the disastrous policies of a man he so abhorred he would not vote for him.” But we’re just getting warmed up. McCain has repeatedly misled the public with false charges that the Democrats favor “nationalized government-run healthcare,” evoking the specter of socialized medicine. Respected media outlets like CNN not only fail to correct such gross distortions; they even parrot them.

On issues vital to Israel’s security which will determine the future stability—or instability—of the Middle East like the war in Iraq and threatening war with Iran, McCain promises to out-cowboy George W. Bush. The New Yorker’s Hendrik Hertzberg notes that “McCain wants to stay in Iraq until no more Americans are getting killed, no matter how long it takes and how many Americans get killed achieving that goal—that is, the goal of not getting any more Americans killed. And once that goal is achieved, we'll stay.”

McCain promised the American people to pursue a presidential campaign that is more like a respectful argument among friends than a bitter clash of enemies. He suggested that his conduct during this contest will demonstrate why he is the candidate best able to build a bipartisan consensus to address our nation’s challenges: “I intend to wage this campaign and to govern this country in a way that [Americans] would be proud of me.” And “I’m going to raise the level of political dialog in America, and I’m going to treat my opponents with respect and demand that they treat me with respect.” He promised straight talk.

Despite these vows, he has joined those attempting to tar and feather Senator Obama with the outrageous remarks of Rev. Wright, which Obama has roundly rejected as “divisive,” “destructive,” and “appalling.” Even after being falsely attacked himself for miscegenation by Karl Rove in 2000, McCain has done little to stop a race-baiting TV commercial being run against Obama by the Republican party in North Carolina replete with Wright video clips. Why call for a frank discussion on the merits of his own and Obama’s plans for the war in Iraq or our ailing economy, when it’s so much more fun and effective to encourage us to dwell on the revolting Reverend or AWOL lapel pins?

Now his campaign has tried to paint Obama as the favorite candidate of the Israel-hating terrorists of Hamas. Yet McCain knows full well that Obama’s clearly stated position is the same as his, that the US and Israel must refuse to talk with Hamas until it recognizes Israel, renounces violence and accepts past agreements. What’s more, the Hamas official who referred to Obama did so while praising President Carter for negotiating peace between Egypt and Israel, and expressing hope that the former president could broker peace between Israel and Hamas. But these little facts would get in the way of destroying his opponent and winning at any price. But enough about Hillary Clinton…

McCain’s willingness to pander for votes without regard for moral scruples led him to seek out, and to continue to welcome the endorsement of Rev. John Hagee, a bigot whose views are no less offensive than those of Rev. Wright. Hagee writes in his recent book “Jerusalem Countdown” that the Jews are responsible for their own persecution: “It was the disobedience and rebellion of the Jews, God’s chosen people, to their covenantal responsibility to serve only the one true God, Jehovah, that gave rise to the opposition and persecution that they experienced beginning in Canaan and continuing to this very day….How utterly repulsive, insulting, and heartbreaking to God for His chosen people to credit idols with bringing blessings He had showered upon the chosen people. Their own rebellion had birthed the seed of anti-Semitism that would arise and bring destruction to them for centuries to come…” Of course, the rebellion of the Jews, and the anti-Semitism it breeds, will end only when the Jews accept Jesus as their savior.

Adding insult to injury, the McCain campaign has now appointed as national finance co-chair none other than Fred Malek, whose dubious background includes counting and demoting Jews at the Bureau of Labor Statistics during the Nixon Administration. And did I mention that McCain has declared America to be a Christian nation? How many fundamentalist evangelical voters did you say there were Karl?

If like me, you mourn the corruption of American politics, and long to see a presidential contest that is respectful, civil, and truthful, free of lies and smears, a campaign revolving around a forthright debate on policies and ideas and how they affect us and our children, then I invite you to join me and many others in endorsing an open letter to Senator McCain at http://www.mccainmustdenouncehagee.com/. Demand that the Senator renounce the endorsement of extremists like Pastor Hagee, repudiate his hateful anti-Jewish remarks, and dismiss anti-Semites like Fred Malek from his campaign. Take a stand for straight talk on Jewish issues—and on all that is at stake in this fateful election.
_____________________________________________________________________________________

Gidon D. Remba, a veteran Israel activist and commentator, is editor and publisher of the http://www.jewsforobama.com/ e-newsletter. He blogs at http://tough-dove-israel.blogspot.com/

LA Times Revives Obama Smear, Ari Berman, The Nation

Does being friends with Palestinians make one anti-Israel? Peter Wallsten of the LA Times apparently thinks so. His latest piece about Barack Obama's past ties to pro-Palestinian activists in Chicago is certainly meant to give the reader that impression. [See my recent Nation article, "Smearing Obama," for background on this topic. One of Wallsten's sources happens to be a key purveyor of the "Obama is a Muslim" lie. Update below.]

The evidence Wallsten presents is scant and hardly alarming: Obama said nice things about Rashid Khalidi at a going away party for the respected Palestinian scholar, who moved from the University of Chicago to the Columbia University; he attended a speech by the late Palestinian expert Edward Said in 1998; he occasionally made statements supportive of Palestinians to Palestinian activists he knew in Chicago. [Also on The Nation's website, my colleague Jon Wiener puts the views of Khalidi and Said in context.]

Yet the implicit tone of Wallsten's article suggests that Obama is not to be trusted on matters relating to Israel. Left aside is the fact that one can be pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel (at least in Chicago). Or the fact that the majority of Israelis support a two-state solution to the conflict, the same position held by Obama. MJ Rosenberg brilliantly parodied the gist of the Times' article in a blog post at Talking Points Memo today: "LA Times Today: Obama Not To Be Trusted, Doesn't Hate Arabs!!"

Says MJ:

I used to work for Sen. Carl Levin, a Jew and a strong supporter of Israel, who is a close friend of the Arab community (in part, because he represents more Arab Americans than any other senator). I've seen Carl at Palestinian dinners (last year I saw him at one with Condi Rice). In fact, Joe Lieberman, not exactly an enemy of the State of Israel, has always gone out of his way to keep an open door to Arab-Americans, Palestinians and others.

In other words, this article is utterly bogus. Yes, Obama has empathy for Palestinians, just as he has empathy for Israelis. The man is naturally empathetic which will help repair some of the damage inflicted to our country's image by the current xenophobic administration.
If Arab-Americans and Palestinians trust Obama and think he plays fair, he will have considerably more leverage with them than either of the other two candidates who are not perceived that way. As Congressmen Bob Wexler and Steve Rothman, both Obama supporters, like to say, an American President who can speak to and be heard by Arabs can do a much better job in helping Israel and the Palestinians achieve peace and security than a President who is considered utterly unsympathetic to their concerns.

The accusation that Obama is "anti-Israel" isn't really about Obama or Israel. It's about racism, Islamophobia, and an attempt by Obama's political opponents to score a few cheap political points.

UPDATE: Debbie Schlussel, an inflammatory right-wing blogger and originator of the "Obama is a Muslim" lie, has identified herself as one of Wallsten's sources.

Here's some background on Schlussel, from my recent article:

"Barack Hussein Obama: Once a Muslim, Always a Muslim," blogger Debbie Schlussel wrote on December 18, 2006. Schlussel had a history of inflammatory rhetoric and baseless accusations. She said journalist Jill Carroll, who was kidnapped by Iraqi insurgents in 2006, "hates America" and "hates Israel"; labeled George Soros a "fake Holocaust survivor"; and speculated that Pakistani terrorists were somehow to blame for last year's shootings at Virginia Tech.

Great to see the LA Times relying on such reputable sources.
Posted by Ari Berman at 04/10/2008 @ 3:37pm

Originally published at
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/campaignmatters?bid=45&pid=308475

How to Talk to a (Jewish) Hawk (Abridged for Publication), Gidon D. Remba, JTA

Abridged for publication in the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) and Jewish Chronicle (Pittsburgh)

By Gidon D. Remba
April 16, 2008

A friend who spent the last year living in Israel recently wrote to explain why he won’t vote for Senator Barack Obama for President. He believes that “most American Jews just don’t get what is happening. We are in a fight for our lives, period. Ahmadinejad means to do us in if he can. He is a Hitler, pure and simple. I am supporting McCain,” he confesses, “because I feel he is the one president most likely to militarily go after Iran's nuclear facilities. I do not believe anything short of that or regime change will stop Iran from getting and using a nuclear bomb against our people.”

I am convinced that my friend woefully misunderstands the Middle East—and much else. Because Israel is in a fight for its life and American security remains in a parlous state both at home and abroad, it’s absolutely vital that we get it right, that we grasp what will and won’t help Israelis and Americans best protect ourselves from the threats we face.

“Who is the first American president to condemn the indefensible omission of conscience of not bombing the train tracks to Auschwitz?,” challenges my friend. “None other than cowboy Bush when he recently visited Yad Vashem; the Bush at whom American Jews look down their semitic noses for being so stupid and folksy and corrupt. They dismiss what he said as politicking. Not so. He meant it, for he is morally non-nuanced enough to understand that there is good and evil in the world and that not everything is relative. And this is why I voted for Bush in 2004 and why I support McCain now.”

By my friend’s logic, the leader who knows what is truly evil will crush our enemies and thwart their demonic plans. He would have bombed the train tracks at Auschwitz. He will now fight on in Iraq until we win, staying as long as it takes, as McCain has promised (not for 100 years, but until we achieve our goals, as he has indeed vowed). If push comes to shove, he will blow Iran’s nuclear plants to kingdom come, as McCain has pledged.

There is just one small problem: to many of the best American military minds these martial “solutions” will conjure up a fool’s paradise.

President Bush plays on historic Jewish vulnerabilities by lashing out at the Allied failure to “take out” the tracks to the death camps during the Shoah. Jews who vote with their kishkes instead of their kopfs (their guts instead of their heads) will hail such stalwart men and women as the battle-hardened defenders that Israel and America need to be safe. But those who favored striking out against the greatest evils were dead wrong during the Holocaust; they are even more recklessly wrong now.

Jewish historian William D. Rubinstein devoted an entire chapter to “The Myth of Bombing Auschwitz” in his book The Myth of Rescue: Why the Democracies Could Not Have Saved More Jews From the Nazis. He notes that “Recent military historians have looked at…claims about the possibility of bombing Auschwitz with critical eyes, and concluded that the options put forward were highly impractical and most unlikely to have succeeded.” He concludes: “Because of the inaccuracy of bombing raids in 1944, if a raid had somehow been launched against Auschwitz in 1944 it is probable—even likely—that such a mission would have been seen, then and now, as a complete fiasco, an ill-considered and dubious exercise, carried out for political rather than for military reasons, in which many hundreds of Jews and other captives were killed but which utterly failed to halt the Nazi death machine.”

Most Pentagon generals view an assault on Iranian nuclear facilities—promised by McCain if Iran does not halt its march towards nuclear weapons—as not only ineffective but likely to entangle us in another protracted war that we cannot win and may well lose. Senior American military officials believe that an attack on Iran “could set off Iranian retaliation without halting Tehran's nuclear program for long,” reported the Los Angeles Times. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and much of the Pentagon brass “have concluded that a strike against suspected Iranian nuclear sites could be counterproductive,” according to senior U.S. Defense Department officials. “War with Iran would result in Iranians rallying around the flag...The government would be strengthened instead of toppled. The Iranian nuclear program would most likely accelerate than be destroyed,” warns Iran expert Trita Parsi.

Reporting from the Persian Gulf, David Ignatius intimated in the Washington Post that “the United States doesn't have good military choices now -- and the Iranians know it. That's one reason they are being so provocative; they believe that a U.S. military strike would hurt America more than Iran.” Iran could “lure the United States onto a battlefield where its immense firepower wouldn't do much good. The Iranians could withdraw into the maze of their homeland and keep firing off their missiles -- exacting damage on the West's economy and, most important, its will to fight.” A war with Iran, many top US military officials have concluded, would be a trap. And that is the trap our bomb-happy friends, and their favored presidential candidates, tout as the miracle drug for what ails us.

Senator McCain pays lip service to the need to use “all elements of our national power” in the war on terror, including diplomacy and economic development. But when confronting the chief purveyor of Middle East terrorism he would have the United States face Iran with very few arrows in our quiver.

The Jewish dogma we most need to throw overboard is our blind faith in Bar Kochba-like politicians as our saviors. The less a candidate has sound mooring for his policies the more apt is he to manipulate us by invoking our cherished symbols and comforting slogans. Those who promise that they will keep “Jerusalem as the eternal united capital of Israel,” or pulverize “Ahmadinejad’s nuclear sites” may be telling us what we want to hear, but not what we can sustain in the world in which we must live.

Those Jews who would cast their vote for the most battle-tested politician or bellicose plan would have brought upon America, the Allies and world Jewry a military embarrassment in the struggle against Nazism. What we needed then as now is sober strategy and a cool hand. All signs point to the wisdom of Senator Obama’s carrot-and-stick approach to Iran, Iraq and Syria, and to the folly of the even more ambitious Mideast wars urged on us by Senator McCain. Former Reagan Administration defense official Larry Korb warns that McCain “would employ military force to the exclusion of other options.” America and Israel will be ill served by Bush on steroids for the next four years.

Gidon D. Remba, a veteran Israel activist and commentator, is Editor-in-Chief & Publisher of the new Jews for Obama e-Newsletter. He blogs at http://tough-dove-israel.blogspot.com/ and can be reached at dremba@comcast.net

JTA published an edited version of this piece here--with an opposing viewpoint by smear-monger Ed Lasky.

How to Talk to a Hawk—Or, Abandon These Myths Before You Vote, Gidon D. Remba

To Read the New Abridged Version to Appear Soon in a National Publication Click Here

Unabridged Version

A friend who recently spent the last year living in Israel recently wrote to explain why he won’t vote for Senator Barack Obama for President. He believes with all his heart and soul that “most American Jews just don’t get what is happening. We are in a fight for our lives, period. Ahmadinejad means to do us in if he can. He is a Hitler, pure and simple. I am supporting McCain because I feel he is the one president most likely to militarily go after Iran's nuclear facilities. I do not believe anything short of that or regime change will stop Iran from getting and using a nuclear bomb against our people.”

In fact, I am convinced that it is my friend who grossly, and dangerously, misunderstands the Middle East—and a whole lot else. And because Israel is in a fight for its life and American security remains in a parlous state both at home and abroad, I believe it’s absolutely vital that we get it right, that we grasp what will and won’t help Israelis and Americans best protect ourselves from the threats we face.

What Not to Learn from the Holocaust

“Who is the first American president to condemn the indefensible omission of conscience of not bombing the train tracks?” asks my friend. He answers: “None other than cowboy Bush when he recently visited Yad Vashem, at whom American Jews look down their semitic noses for being so stupid and folksy and corrupt and all that. They dismiss what he said as politicking. Not so, he meant it, for he is morally non-nuanced enough to understand that there is good and evil in the world and that not everything is relative. And this is why I voted for Bush in 2004 and why I support McCain now.”

By my friend’s logic, the leader who knows who and what is truly evil is he (or she) who will use the most force to defeat our enemies and to thwart their demonic plans: the right leader would have bombed the train tracks at Auschwitz. By the same token, the best president will now fight on in Iraq until we win, staying as long as it takes, as McCain has promised (not for 100 years, but until we achieve our goals, as he has indeed vowed). And that strong leader will “take out” Iran’s nuclear facilities with air strikes and commando raids, or whatever kinds of military attacks are needed, as McCain has promised, before it can commit a new holocaust against the Jewish people.

There is just one small problem with my friend’s logic: most of the best American military minds find these bellicose “solutions” to be foolhardy, utterly ineffective and strategically disastrous.

Take the case of bombing the train tracks—or the crematoria—at Auschwitz. President Bush shamelessly panders and manipulates Jewish emotions by condemning the US failure to “take the tracks out” to the death camps during the Shoah. Jews who think and vote with their kishkes instead of with their kopfs (their guts instead of their brains) hail W, and McCain, or even Hillary Clinton, as the kind of tough seasoned pro-Israel patriots that Israel and America need to be safe. In fact, those who favored the most use of force against what from a Jewish viewpoint seems the greatest embodiment of evil were dead wrong during the Holocaust, and demonstrably so; they are even more recklessly wrong now.

Jewish historian William D. Rubinstein devoted an entire chapter to “The Myth of Bombing Auschwitz” in his book The Myth of Rescue: Why the Democracies Could Not Have Saved More Jews From the Nazis. He notes that “Recent military historians have looked at … claims about the possibility of bombing Auschwitz with critical eyes, and concluded that the options put forward were highly impractical and most unlikely to have succeeded.” He concludes: “Because of the inaccuracy of bombing raids in 1944, if a raid had somehow been launched against Auschwitz in 1944 it is probable—even likely—that such a mission would have been seen, then and now, as a complete fiasco, an ill-considered and dubious exercise, carried out for political rather than for military reasons, in which many hundreds of Jews and other captives were killed but which utterly failed to halt the Nazi death machine.”

Shoot or Talk with Iran? Obama vs. McCain

John McCain pays lip service to the need to use “all elements of our national power” in the war on terror, including diplomacy and economic development. But when it comes to the chief purveyor of Middle East terrorism he would have the United States confront Iran with very few arrows in our quiver. Moreover, economic sanctions and threats of force have completely failed to halt Iran’s nuclear enrichment activities, which continue to advance.

The vast majority of generals in the Pentagon view a military strike on Iranian nuclear facilities—promised by McCain if Iran does not halt its march towards nuclear weapons—as both highly ineffective and extremely likely to involve us in another protracted war like Iraq that we cannot win and may well lose. Most senior American military officials believe that an attack on Iran “could set off Iranian retaliation without halting Tehran's nuclear program for long,” reported the Los Angeles Times. Many in the Pentagon’s leadership, “including Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, have concluded that a strike against suspected Iranian nuclear sites could be counterproductive,” according to senior U.S. Defense Department officials. That of course is diplo-speak for yet another clusterf***. “War with Iran would result in Iranians rallying around the flag...The government would be strengthened instead of toppled. The Iranian nuclear program would most likely accelerate than be destroyed,” warns Iran expert Trita Parsi.

Writing from Abu Dhabi, David Ignatius intimated in the Washington Post recently that “the United States doesn't have good military choices now -- and the Iranians know it. That's one reason they are being so provocative; they believe that a U.S. military strike would hurt America more than Iran.” Iran could “lure the United States onto a battlefield where its immense firepower wouldn't do much good. The Iranians could withdraw into the maze of their homeland and keep firing off their missiles -- exacting damage on the West's economy and, most important, its will to fight.” A war with Iran, many top US military officials have come to recognize, would be a trap. And that is the trap our bellicose Jewish friends, and their favored presidential candidates, tout as the panacea to the security ills that ail us and our closest Mideastern ally Israel.

Even the conservative Chicago Sun-Times has, in a moment of extraordinary clarity, implored Americans thus: “We should take a lesson from our failures in Iraq and try to handle our conflict in Iran with more level-headed diplomacy. The Iraq war already has cost the United States its global credibility. Even Ahmadinejad has played up our tarnished image, denouncing the sanctions as ‘bullying powers.’ If the United States takes on Iran by itself, it will only inspire more terrorists and create more enemies, both of whom will be working toward our demise.”

With these lessons in mind, I urge you take Remba’s Rule Number 1 with you into the voting booth: The candidate who talks toughest, or who has the most military experience, may be the worst for both America's and Israel’s security.

The faith in Bar Kochba-like politicians as our saviors is the mother of all fallacies in politics, and the one we Jews are most in need of throwing overboard. Politicians shamelessly pander to our emotional biases and play on our heartstrings. The wisest words I have heard yet from a Jewish source on the issue of Iran come to us from an editorial in New York’s Jewish Week, cautioning that “the Iran threat is too important and too complex for the chest thumping, sloganeering and jockeying for partisan gain that define the Iran debate on the 2008 presidential campaign trail … Negotiating with terror-supporting regimes clearly raises difficult questions, but it is irresponsible to suggest that negotiations are, by definition, the equivalent of appeasement, just as it is irresponsible to take the military option off the table entirely… But stopping [Iran's] nuclear program will take creative thinking, sober policymaking and a willingness to make tough choices in a universe of imperfect options.”

The less a politician has a cogent rationale for his or her policies the more he or she is apt to manipulate us by cozying up to our cherished symbols and mouthing comforting slogans about “the eternal unity of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel,” or bombing "Ahmadinejad's nuclear sites" to save the Jewish state from a future holocaust. If your bubbe didn’t teach you this lesson, she should have, and it behooves us all to learn it now: these are the most dangerous politicians for the Jewish people and for the United States.

Those Jews who would cast their vote for the most battle-tested politician or bellicose policy would have brought upon America, the Allies and world Jewry the embarrassment of grotesque failure against the Nazis when sober strategy was what we needed most. Then as now, we need helmsmanship with a sure compass steering our ship of state. All signs point to the wisdom of Barack Obama’s smart carrot-and-stick diplomacy on Iran and Iraq and to the folly of the new wars urged on us by John McCain. McCain's refusal to deploy the power of tough talk or hard bargaining with Iran or to use the leverage of real incentives bear all the hallmarks of Bush on steroids. So muscle-bound is his plan of attack that it cannot dodge and weave through the Mideast's serpentine alleyways, which demand agility and political ju-jitsu, not throw-weight.

Obama has said “he would ‘engage in aggressive personal diplomacy’ with Iran if elected president, and would offer economic inducements and a possible promise not to seek ‘regime change’ if Iran stopped meddling in Iraq and cooperated on terrorism and nuclear issues.” He has made clear that “forging a new relationship with Iran would be a major element of what he pledged would be a broad effort to stabilize Iraq…‘Changes in behavior' by Iran could possibly be rewarded with membership in the World Trade Organization, other economic benefits and security guarantees.” As Obama has stressed, “we will be in a stronger position to achieve … [tougher] international sanctions if the United States has shown itself to be willing to come to the table” with aggressive diplomacy incorporating both the offer of more potent incentives directly from the United States and the likelihood of more painful sanctions if talks fail or are dragged out in bad faith by Iran.

A New Diplomatic Solution to the Iranian Nuclear Impasse?

A new report by a group of former American diplomats and regional experts who have been meeting behind the scenes with a group of Iranian academics and policy advisers suggests that the Iranian leadership is open to direct US-Iran talks over a novel solution to the nuclear impasse: Western governments would jointly manage, operate and closely supervise all of Iran’s nuclear activities on Iranian soil. Under this proposal, “Iran would be prohibited from producing either highly enriched uranium or reprocessed plutonium,” thereby preventing it from producing the essential ingredients for constructing a nuclear weapon. Under such tight international supervision, even a secret attempt on Iran’s part to manufacture weapons-grade nuclear materials “would carry the risk of discovery by the international management team and the staff at the facility; the high probability of getting caught will likely deter Iran from trying to do so in the first place.” Iran would be permitted to produce “only uranium enriched to low levels that could be used in nuclear power plants.” And it would have to agree to fully implement the Additional Protocol of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, “which requires member nations to make their nuclear facilities subject to snap inspections, environmental sampling, and more comprehensive reporting requirements,” as Iran has already offered to do.

While this option is not ideal—only a complete cessation of nuclear enrichment by Iran would be—it is the best of the realistic options which may be available to us and the one most likely to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Moreover, it is far better than the worst option, which is the one we are most likely to end up with if we continue down the paths advocated by Bush and McCain, and Hillary Clinton as well: “a purely national [nuclear enrichment] program on Iranian soil, one aimed at producing nuclear weapons” either without international safeguards or with insufficient monitoring. As the U.S. diplomats warn, “Outsourcing US diplomacy to others has not worked and is even less likely to work in the future … The US is the only nation that can take on [the task of direct engagement with Iran on the nuclear issue] and achieve the breakthroughs that will be necessary… The reward may be a more stable and peaceful Middle East.”

The Folly of War with Iran Revisited

Returning to the utter folly of the “bomb Iran” option, consider Exhibit B: Jerusalem Post Deputy Managing Editor Caroline Glick has written—with a straight face, I kid you not—that “even if an attack against Iran's nuclear installations inside of Iran were completely successful, there is a possibility that Iran's nuclear capabilities will not be significantly downgraded. Iran's program may be dispersed in Syria, North Korea, and in Pakistan which transferred nuclear technologies to Iran and North Korea, (as well as Libya and Egypt). In other words, there is now a distinct possibility that Iran is not the only country that will have to be attacked to prevent Iran and its allied rogue states from acquiring nuclear weapons.”

This, of course, is just what the neocons have always had in mind. War without end against all the “evil forces” threatening us and Israel; the ubiquitous devils which only moral absolutists like George W. Bush and John McCain can clearly see. Former Supreme Allied Commander General Wesley Clark reported recently that “on the eve of the war [in Iraq] he was shown a Pentagon document that portrayed Iraq as the first in a series of operations to change regimes in Iran, Syria, Sudan, Lybia, Somalia and Lebanon.” We know how well that plan went in Iraq, and how far it got. Recent revelations indicate that while we were distracted by the monstrous mess in Iraq, the Bush Administration was gearing up to foment a military coup in Gaza last year. The administration co-opted Israel and Egypt into playing along with its scheme to arm Fatah in Gaza in preparation for an armed showdown which would have deposed Hamas from power after having won democratic Palestinian elections (balloting held at Bush’s behest, contrary to the urgings of Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni). But last summer Hamas preempted the impending coup, routing Fatah and completely taking over the Gaza Strip. Israeli analysts fear that the West Bank may well be next. The deterioration in Israel’s security, the strengthening of Hamas and the rise in missile attacks on Sderot, Ashkelon and the kibbutzim in southern Israel were brought to you by none other than the “spare no use of force” trigger-happy gunslingers in the Bush administration.

And how did Hezbollah manage to rearm with even more long-range missiles, now targeting all of Israel, and with greater accuracy, than it had before the Lebanon war of 2006? Despite ongoing Israeli efforts to test the waters with Syria in behind-the-scenes diplomatic contacts over the last two years, the Bush Administration has refused to offer Syria the kind of powerful economic, political and security incentives which could lure it away from its rewarding alliance with Iran and Hezbollah. Only the U.S., leading its allies, has the power to counter the attractions of Iran for Syria, much as it did when moderate Republican and Democratic administrations pried Sadat’s Egypt away from the Soviet Union, helping to lay the foundations for peace with Israel. The failure of Bush to pursue robust diplomacy with Syria and Iran has permitted the military threats to Israel from both Syria, Hezbollah and Iran, to escalate year after year.

As for McCain, who with many of his senior advisors, including Senator Joe Lieberman, have long been among the most vocal champions for regime change in Iraq, Bloomberg News reports that many analysts believe, based on his own stated positions, that he is even more hawkish than Bush on Iraq, North Korea, Russia and China. Just what the doctor ordered. Dr. Kevorkian, that is.

Conservative columnist Pat Buchanan has said that McCain “will make Cheney look like Gandhi.” “He’s the true neocon,” notes Brookings Institution scholar Ivo Daalder: “He does believe, in a way that George W. Bush never really did, in the use of power, military power above all, to change the world in America’s image. If you thought Bush was bad when it comes to the use of military force, wait till you see John McCain. He believes this. His advisors believe this.” “He would employ military force to the exclusion of other options,” adds Larry Korb, a former Reagan Administration defense official. He is among those who are convinced that the Vietnam War could have been won if the US military had been given free rein.

This sounds eerily like the Israeli super-hawks who demand of the government to just "let the IDF win" in Gaza or Lebanon, much to the chagrin of the IDF general staff which knows that a full-scale Gaza invasion would bring Israel yet another pyrrhic victory, mushrooming into an even more destructive and futile—for Israel—conflagration with Hezbollah and possibly Syria. And now John McCain feels that if we follow Obama—or Clinton—we will make the same “mistake” all over again in Iraq and in the broader “transcendent” struggle against Islamic extremism. "There's going to be other wars," promises McCain. "I'm sorry to tell you, there's going to be other wars. We will never surrender, but there will be other wars." May God save us from the havoc this aging warhorse will wreak.