An Insider's Report on Barack Obama's Meeting with Cleveland Jewish Leaders

Dear friends and family,

I've received so many questions over the last month about Barack Obama, his positions on Israel, and his relationship with the Jewish community. I've been deeply troubled by smears directed at Obama - claiming that he is a Muslim, suggesting that he is anti-Semitic, or implying that he is anti-Israel. On Sunday, I had the opportunity to attend a meeting with Obama and a small group of Jews in Cleveland, during which Obama answered questions about these smears and discussed a wide range of issues that are critically important to the Jewish community.

Because I think it's important to know where Obama stands on all of this, I wrote up this report.

Please feel free to forward it widely.
Best,
Josh

Obama walked in the room at Landerhaven banquet hall shortly after 9 a.m. and was greeted with a warm ovation. There were about 100 Jewish leaders in the room, some supporting Obama, some not. Ron Ratner, who organized the event, was the first to speak. He said he had been supporting Obama for eight months, and had literally "given him his first-born son," Matt, who worked on the campaign.

Next to speak was Congressman Robert Wexler, who represents a district including Boca Raton, Florida, with 300,000 Jews. He spoke enthusiastically about Obama, saying he was a "unique person" who would deliver on a "moderate progressive agenda," mentioning health care, the environment, and the economy as key issues. He said Obama was a "stalwart supporter of the state of Israel," with a conviction that Israel needs to maintain its "military advantage." Obama, he said, unequivocally understands "America's heartfelt and long-term friendship with Israel." He cited a letter sent by Obama in January to the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, urging the U.N. to fully condemn Hamas (In that letter, Obama wrote: "The Security Council should clearly and unequivocally condemn the rocket attacks against Israel, and should make clear that Israel has the right to defend itself against such actions. If it cannot bring itself to make these common sense points, I urge you to ensure that it does not speak at all." (Here's a New Jersey Jewish Standard article about the letter: http://www.jstandard.com/articles/3790/1/Obama-supporters-speak-out%3B-he-writes-to-U.N.-on-Israel)

Wexler also noted that Obama was one of the first U.S. Senators to express U.S. support for Israel during the war against Hezbollah in Lebanon. After Obama spoke at a recent AIPAC conference, Wexler said, he sought out Bibi Netanyahu, and the two discussed ways to isolate Iran, economically. (AIPAC has stressed that it is satisfied with Obama's positions on the Middle East; a spokeswoman recently told the New Republic: "Like all the leading presidential candidates, the senator has a strong record on issues of importance to the pro-Israel community.") Wexler noted that Obama is the lead sponsor of legislation, currently pending in the Senate, promoting divestment from Iran. (The legislation would "provide needed information about which companies are supporting Iran's energy industry, clarify that state and local governments have the authority to divest of such companies, and provide legal protection for those governments that wish to do so.") He mentioned an article by New Republic editor Martin Peretz, a staunch and long-time supporter of Israel, arguing that Obama has it absolutely right on Israel. ("Can Friends of Israel -- and Jews -- trust Obama? In a Word, Yes." Read the article here: http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=6bd11ed5-bf80-44a0-b683-a0563e11ab89&k=6923)

Wexler said Obama would promote a two-state solution in the Middle East, and understands that we can not "unilaterally ask Israel to make concessions."
He concluded with a flourish: "Obama had the wisdom of judgment to oppose the Iraq war, and to oppose the nomination of Alberto Gonzales. He fully appreciates that what is needed to be done is to change the ideology of Washington that permitted the war in the first place."

Obama took the podium, and, again, was greeted with a warm ovation. He started by thanking Ratner, and then ackowledged Mark Dann, "your terrific attorney general," and his wife, Alyssa, who were in the audience. He said he was thankful for the "support of so many friends in the Jewish community, dating back to my first days in public life in Chicago." He mentioned the late Chicago businessman and philanthropist Irving Harris as an early supporter, and noted that the "strong support of the Jewish community" in Chicago has been vital to his political success.

Obama next spoke generally about issues of importance to him, including health care, the need for an energy policy that "not only creates jobs and secures our planet but also stops sending billions of dollars to dictators and effectively leads us to fund both sides of the war on terror," and a change in foreign policy, beginning with ending the war in Iraq.
"These changes are founded in a view of the world that I believe is deeply imbedded in the Jewish tradition," Obama said, "That all of us have a responsibility to do our part to repair the world. That we can take care of one another and build strong communities grounded in faith and family. That repairing the world is a task that each of us is called upon to take up every single day."

He then said that he will carry with him to the White House "an unshakable commitment to the security of Israel and the friendship between the United States and Israel. The US-Israel relationship is rooted in shared interests, shared values, shared history and in deep friendship among our people ...I will work tirelessly as president to uphold and enhance the friendship between the two countries."

Obama next described a trip he took to Israel 2 years ago, and his travels around the country, saying it "left a lasting impression on me."
"Seeing the terrain," Obama said, "experiencing the powerful contrast between the beautiful holy land that faces the constant threat of deadly violence. The people of Israel showed their courage and commitment to democracy everyday that they board a bus or kiss their children goodbye or argue about politics in a local café.
"And I know how much Israelis crave peace. I know that Prime Minister Olmert was elected with a mandate to pursue it. I pledge to make every effort to help Israel achieve that peace. I will strengthen Israel's security and strengthen Palestinian partners who support that vision and personally work for two states that can live side-by-side in peace and security, with Israel's status as a Jewish state ensured, so that Israelis and Palestinians can pursue their dreams."

He continued: "I also expect to work on behalf of peace with the full knowledge that Israel still has bitter enemies who are intent on its destruction. We see their intentions every time a suicide bomber strikes, we saw their intentions with the Katusha rockets that Hezbollah rained down on Israel from Lebanon in 2006, and we see it today in the Kasams that Hamas fires into Israel every single day from as close as Gaza or as far as Tehran. The defense cooperation between the United States and Israel has been a model of success and I believe it can be deepened and strengthened."

He went on to say that "the gravest threat ... to Israel today I believe is from Iran," noting that the "radical regime" is continuing to pursue nuclear weapons.
"President Ahmadinejad continues his offensive denials of the Holocaust and disturbing denunciations of Israel," Obama said. "He recently referred to Israel as a deadly microbe and a savage animal. Threats of Israel's destruction cannot be dismissed as rhetoric. The threat from Iran is real and my goal as president would be to eliminate that threat.
"Ending the war in Iraq, I believe, will be an important first step in achieving that goal because it will increase our flexibility and credibility when we deal with Iran. Make no mistake: I believe that Iran has been the biggest strategic beneficiary of this war and I intend to change that.

"My approach to Iran," he continued, "will be aggressive diplomacy. I will not take any military options off the table. But I also believe that under this administration we have seen the threat grow worse and I intend to change that course. The time I believe has come to talk directly to the Iranians and to lay out our clear terms: their end of pursuit of nuclear weapons, an end of their support of terrorism, and an end of their threat to Israel and other countries in the region.

"To prepare this goal I believe that we need to present incentives, carrots, like the prospect of better relations and integration into the national community, as well as disincentives like the prospect of increased sanctions. I would seek these sanctions through the United Nations and encourage our friends in Europe and the Gulf to use their economic leverage against Iran outside of the UN, and I believe we will be in a stronger position to achieve these tough international sanctions if the United States has shown itself to be willing to come to the table."

He added: "We have not pursued the kind of aggressive and direct diplomacy that could yield results to both Israel and the United States. The current policy of not talking is not working."

All told, he spoke for about eight minutes. Then, he opened the floor to questions.
The first questioner asked about Obama's affiliation with his church in Chicago, and his Reverend, Jeremiah Wright. The questioner asked if Obama was still a member, noting that Rev. Wright has preached anti-Israel sermons, and that the pastor has a close relationship with Louis Farrakhan, of the Nation of Islam.

Obama started by describing his church, the Trinity United Church of Christ, to which he has belonged for 20 years. It's a "very conventional" African-American church, he said. If you go on a given Sunday, you hear gospel music and "people preaching about Jesus."
He then said: "It is true that my Pastor, Jeremiah Wright, who will be retiring this month, is somebody who on occasion can say controversial things. Most of them by the way are controversial directed at the African American Community and calling on them start reading books and turn off the TV set and engage in self help. And he is very active in prison ministries and so forth.

"It's also true that he comes out of the 60s, he is an older man. That is where he cut his teeth. That he has historically been interested in the African roots of the African-American experience. He was very active in the South Africa divestment movement and you will recall that there was a tension that arose between the African American and the Jewish communities during that period when we were dealing with apartheid in South Africa, because Israel and South Africa had a relationship at that time."
Obama said that relationship was "a source of tension" for his pastor.
"So there have been a couple of occasions where he made comments with relation, rooted in that," Obama said. "Not necessarily ones that I share. But that is the context within which he has made those comments."

Obama went on to say that Wright does not have close relationship with Farrakhan.
"I have been a consistent, before I go any further, denunciator of Louis Farrakhan, nobody challenges that." (Abe Foxman, head of the Anti-Defamation League, confirms this. Here is a link to an Anti-Defamation League statement, praising Obama's condemnations of Farrakhan: http://www.adl.org/PresRele/NatIsl_81/5208_81.htm.)

Noting that Farrakhan was given an award, in 2007, by the Church's magazine (for his work on behalf of ex-offenders), Obama said: "I believe that was a mistake and showed a lack of sensitivity to the Jewish community and I said so. But I have never heard an anti-Semitic [comment] made inside of our church. I have never heard anything that would suggest anti-Semitism on part of the Pastor. He is like an old uncle who sometimes will say things that I don't agree with."

Obama went on to talk more broadly about the relationship between blacks and Jews, saying: "the point I make is this: that I understand the concerns and the sensitivities and one of my goals constantly in my public career has been to try to bridge what was a historically powerful bond between the African American and Jewish communities that has been frayed in recent years. For a whole variety of reasons. I think that I have served as an effective bridge and that's the reason I have overwhelming support among the Jewish community that knows me best, which is the Jewish community in Chicago."

Then, returning to the question of his pastor, and repeating that his pastor is retiring this month, Obama said: "this is always a sensitive point, what you don't want to do is distance yourself or kick somebody away because you are now running for president and you are worried about perceptions, particularly when someone is basically winding down their life and their career."
(The Anti-Defamation League confirms that there is no evidence of anti-Semitism from Wright. For a recent JTA article examining Obama's positions on all of this, see "ADL leader says Obama has Settled Farrakhan Issue": http://www.jta.org/cgi-bin/iowa/news/article/2008022720080227obamafarrakhandebate.html)

The second questioner asked Obama about emails that have circulated, suggesting he's a Muslim. Obama called the emails "virulent"; they started early in the campaign, he said, and have come out in waves, "magically appear[ing]" in states before primaries and caucuses. They contend that Obama is a Muslim, that he went to a madrass, that he used a Koran to swear himself into the Senate, and/or that he doesn't pledge allegiance to the flag.
"If anyone is still puzzled about the facts, in fact I have never been a Muslim," he said. "We had to send CNN to look at the school that I attended in Indonesia where kids were wearing short pants and listening to ipods to indicate that this was not a madrassa but was a secular school in Indonesia."

The next questioner asked about the reports that Obama's advisors included Zbigniew Brzezinski (Jimmy Carter's national security advisor) and several others perceived as anti-Israel.
"There is a spectrum of views in terms of how the U.S. and Israel should be interacting," Obama said. "It has evolved over time." Obama said that when Brzezinksi was national security advisor, he would not have been considered outside the mainstream of that spectrum. Noting that Brzezinski "is now considered by many in the Jewish community anathema," Obama said: "I know Brzezinski. He's not one of my key advisors. I've had lunch with him once, I've exchanged emails with him maybe 3 times. He came to Iowa to introduce me for a speech on Iraq. He and I agree that Iraq was an enormous strategic blunder and that input from him has been useful in assessing Iraq, as well as Pakistan ... I do not share his views with respect to Israel. I have said so clearly and unequivocally."
He went on to say that the other advisors who he's been criticized for having on his staff are former members of the Clinton administration. He mentioned Tony Lake, the former national security adviser, and Susan Rice, the former assistant secretary of state for African Affairs.

"These are people who strongly believe in Israel's right to exist. Strongly believe in a two-state solution. Strongly believe that the Palestinians have been irresponsible and have been strongly critical of them. [They] share my view that Israel has to remain a Jewish state, that the US has a special relationship with the Jewish state."

He then departed, a bit, from the topic of his advisors, and spoke more generally. "This is where I get to be honest and I hope I'm not out of school here," he said. "I think there is a strain within the pro-Israel community that says unless you adopt an unwavering pro-Likud approach to Israel that you're anti-Israel, and that can't be the measure of our friendship with Israel. If we cannot have an honest dialogue about how do we achieve these goals, then we're not going to make progress."
He took issue with commentators who suggest that talk of anything less than "crushing the opposition" is "being soft or anti-Israel."
"[If] we are never ever going to ask any difficult questions about how we move peace forward or secure Israel" in ways that are "non-military," he said, then "I think we're going to have problems moving forward. And that I think is something we have to have an honest dialogue about."

He pointed out that none of the emails about his advisors mention people on the other side such as Lester Crown, a member of Obama's national finance committee, "considered about as hawkish and tough when it comes to Israel as anybody in the country."
"So, there's got to be some balance here," he said. "I've got a range of perspectives and a range of advisors who approach this issue. They would all be considered well within the mainstream of that bipartisan consensus ... in terms of being pro-Israel. There's never been any of my advisors who questioned the need for us to provide Israel with security, with military aid, with economic aid. That there has to be a two state solution, that Israel has to remain a Jewish state. None of my advisors would suggest that, so I think it's important to keep some of these things in perspective. I understand people's concern with Brzezinski given how much offense the Israel lobby has raised, but he's not one of my central advisers."

He then noted that there has been a "fairly systemic effort" by Hillary Clinton's campaign to "feed these suspicions" about his advisors, citing a new Newsweek article documenting the effort. (Read the article here: http://www.newsweek.com/id/114723?from=rss )

The next question was sort of a follow-up. Given your range of advisors, the questioner asked, how would you approach foreign policy decision-making on Israel and the Middle East?
"Well here's my starting orientation," Obama said: "A - Israel's security is sacrosanct, is non-negotiable. That's point number one. Point number two is that the status quo I believe is unsustainable over time. So we're going to have to make a shift from the current deadlock that we're in. Number three, that Israel has to remain a Jewish state and what I believe that means is that any negotiated peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians is going to have to involve the Palestinians relinquishing the right of return as it has been understood in the past. And that doesn't mean that there may not be conversations about compensation issues. It also means the Israelis will have to figure out how do we work with a legitimate Palestinian government to create a Palestinian state that is sustainable. It's going to have to be contiguous, it's going to have to work - it's going to have to function in some way.

"That's in Israel's interest by the way. If you have a balkanized unsustainable state, it will break down and we will be back in the same boat. So those are the starting points of my orientation. My goal then would be to solicit as many practical opinions as possible in terms of how we're going to move forward on an improvement of relations and a sustainable peace. The question that I will be asking any advisor is how does it achieve the goal of Israel's security and how does it achieve the goal of sustainability over the long term and I want practical, hardheaded, unromantic advice about how we're going to achieve that."

He added that when he was in Ramallah, he told the Palestinians "you can't fault Israel for being concerned about any peace agreement if the Palestinian state or Palestinian Authority or Palestinian leadership does not seem to be able to follow through on its commitments." With respect to negotiations, he said, "you sit down and talk, but you have to suspend trust until you can see that the Palestinian side can follow through and that's a position that I have consistently taken and the one I will take with me to the White House."

"One of the things that struck me when I went to Israel," Obama continued, "was how much more open the debate was around these issues in Israel than they are sometimes here in the United States. It's very ironic. I sat down with the head of Israeli security forces and his view of the Palestinians was incredibly nuanced because he's dealing with these people every day. There's good and there's bad, and he was willing to say sometimes we make mistakes and we made this miscalculation and if we are just pressing down on these folks constantly without giving them some prospects for hope, that's not good for our security situation. There was a very honest, thoughtful debate taking place inside Israel. All of you, I'm sure, have experienced this when you travel there. Understandably, because of the pressure that Israel is under, I think the U.S. pro-Israel community is sometimes a little more protective or concerned about opening up that conversation. But all I'm saying though is that, ultimately, [that] should be our goal -- to have that same clear-eyed view about how we approach these issues."

The next questioner asked what Obama would say to the Jewish community about George Bush and his support for Israel. Obama noted straight off that the Jewish community is "diverse" and "has interests beyond Israel." He said the Jewish community in America has a tradition as a "progressive force" concerned with children, civil rights, and civil liberties.
"Those are values ... much more evident in our Democratic Party and that can't be forgotten."

He said that to the extent some Jews have gone over to the G.O.P, it's been because of Israel. "And what I would simply suggest is look at the consequences of George Bush's policies. The proof is in the point. I do not understand how anybody who is concerned about Israel's security and the threat of Iran could be supportive of George Bush's foreign policy. It has completely backfired. It is indisputable that Iran is the biggest strategic beneficiary of the war in Iraq. We have spent what will soon be close to a trillion dollars strengthening Iran, expanding their influence. How is that helpful to Israel? ... You can't make that argument.
"And so the problem that we've seen in U.S. foreign policy generally has been this notion that being full of bluster and rattling sabers and being quick on the draw somehow makes you more secure.

"And keep in mind that I don't know anybody in the Democratic Party, and I will say this for Hillary Clinton and I will say this for myself, who has indicated in any way that we would tolerate and allow to fester terrorist threats, that we wouldn't hunt down, capture, or kill terrorists, that haven't been supportive of Israel capturing or killing terrorists. So it's not like we're a bunch of folks asking to hold hands and sing Kumbiya.

"When Israel launched its counterattack against Hezbollah in Lebanon during the summer of 2006, I was in South Africa at the time, a place that was not particularly friendly to Israel at the time and I was asked by the press, what did you think? And I said, if somebody invades my country or is firing rockets into my country or kidnapping my soldiers, I will not tolerate that. And there's no nation in the world that would."
At this point, one of Obama's aides told him he had time for one more question. A questioner asked him about press reports that he would consider Sen. Dick Lugar for his administration, given, again, his lack of friendliness toward Israel.

Obama said he was good friends with Lugar, and that Lugar "represents old school bipartisan foreign policy." He said that, among Republicans, Lugar was less ideologically driven, more driven by facts on the ground. After praising Lugar, he said he would "not be so presumptuous" to start talking about his cabinet, given that he is not yet the Democratic nominee.

Obama then decided, since his answer was relatively short, that he would take more questions. I raised my hand, and Obama called on me. I told him that I thought his approach to foreign policy -- negotiating with your enemies - could be powerful, strategically. I said that a few days earlier, I had met with my rabbi in Akron, and mentioned to him that I was going to be here this morning.
"The rabbi asked me to ask you whether you would meet with Hamas," I said.
"The answer is no," Obama said.
"What's the distinction, then," I asked, "between Hamas and Iran?"
"The distinction would be that ... they're not the head of state," he said. "They are not a recognized government ... There is a distinction to be drawn there and a legitimate distinction to be drawn."

"Now, again," he continued, "going back to my experiences in Israel and the discussions I've had with security officials there, I think that there are communications between the Israeli government and Hamas that may be two or three degrees removed, but people know what Hamas is thinking and what's going on and the point is that with respect to Hamas, you can't have a conversation with somebody who doesn't think you should be on the other side of the table. At the point where they recognize Israel and its right to exist, at the point where they recognize that they are not going to be able to shove their world view down the throats of others but are going to have to sit down and negotiate without resort to violence, then I think that will be a different circumstance. That's not the circumstance that we're in right now."

He then turned to the audience to take one more question, about Indonesia (where Obama lived as a child) and the United States' approach to the Muslim world.
Obama said Indonesia represented a good case study. He said Indonesia actually had a very mild, tolerant brand of Islam when he was living there. This existed up through 1997. That year, the Asian financial crisis hit very hard, and Indonesia's GDP contracted by 30 percent. Essentially, a poor country had been hit with a Great Depression. "There was a direct correlation between the collapse of that economy and the rise of fundamentalist Islam inside of Indonesia," he said.

Obama said there is a hard-core group of jihadist fundamentalists in the Islamic world who "we can't negotiate with." He said Richard Clarke, the former chief counter-terrorism advisor in the Bush administration, estimates that there are between 30,000 and 50,000 jihadists worldwide -- "the hard core jihadists [who] would gladly blow up this room." He added, though, that it's a "finite number."
"We have to hunt them down and knock them out. Incapacitate them. That's the military aspects of dealing with this phenomenon ... and that is where military action and intelligence has to be directed."

"The question then is what do we do with the 1.3 billion Muslims who are along a spectrum of belief? Some extraordinarily moderate, some very pious but not violent. How do we reach out to them? And it is my strong belief that that is the battlefield that we have to worry about, and that is where we have been losing badly over the last 7 years. That is where Iraq has been a disaster. That is where the lack of effective public diplomacy has been a disaster. That is where our failure to challenge seriously human rights violations by countries like Saudi Arabia that are our allies has been a disaster. And so what we have to do is to speak to that broader Muslim world in a way that says we will consistently support human rights, women's rights. We will consistently invest in the kinds of educational opportunities for children in these communities, so that madrasas are not their only source of learning. We will consistently operate in ways that lead by example, so that we have no tolerance for a Guantanamo or renditions or torture. Those all contribute to people at least being open to our values and our ideas and a recognition that we are not the enemy and that the Clash of Civilizations is not inevitable."

Obama closed with this: "Now, as I said, we enter into those conversations with the Muslim world being mindful that we also have to defend ourselves against those who will not accept the West, no matter how appropriately we engage. And that is the realism that has to leaven our hopefulness. But, we abandon the possibility of conversation with that broader Muslim world at our own peril."

(After the event, the Obama campaign released a partial transcript to the press. You can find it here: http://elections.jta.org/2008/02/25/obama-reaches-out-to-jewish-leaders/ )

Again, Obama received an extended standing ovation. He had spoken for about 45 minutes. And he was mobbed by well-wishers at the podium. One woman asked him why he was not nearly as specific in the debates. "We have 30 seconds!" Obama said. Another woman said: "It is so refreshing to hear someone think."

When it was my turn, I shook his hand, introduced myself, and told him I had been working hard to defuse the smear campaigns directed at him. "It means a lot," he said. "Thank you."
I asked him if he could give me an autograph for my sons, Meyer and Heshel, and handed him a piece of paper and pen. As he began to write, I started spelling the names. "M-E-Y-E-R," I said, "and Heshel, H-"
But Obama cut me off: "Like Abraham?" he asked.
I was surprised that Obama knew Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. Maybe I shouldn't have been. After all, Heschel had marched with Martin Luther King and had been an outspoken critic of the Vietnam War; Heschel was a pious, pluralistic Jew committed to social action. But so few Jews today are even aware of Heschel and his legacy.
I nodded -- Heschel had inspired the naming of our son -- though we spelled it without the "c," something that I forgot, in that moment, to add.
"To Meyer and Heschel," he wrote. "Dream Big Dreams. Barack Obama."

I felt a keen sense, leaving the meeting room Sunday, that the media "storyline" I'd been hearing and reading of late -- that Obama is all eloquence, no substance; that he is a rock star generating a mindless cult of personality -- is itself over-simplistic and false. Obama showed a gut-level understanding of Israel's security needs and the U.S.-Israel friendship. He exhibited a deep sensitivity to the Jewish community's concerns and addressed them, one-by-one. He spoke eloquently and precisely, without notes, demonstrating a nuanced understanding of the complexities of Middle East politics, and a clear-eyed vision of how he would proceed as commander-in-chief.

And he was all the more credible because he did not pander. He knew his audience. He knew not everyone in the room would be satisfied when he said he met with Brzezinski because of his views on Iraq. Not all would agree when he said that we have to allow for a debate in this country beyond the hawkish Likud party position, or when he said a future Palestinian state would have to be contiguous. He said those things anyway - just as he told Palestinians in Ramallah that they would have to give up the right of return. He said them because he believes them. And he believes, ultimately, they would help Israel remain a vibrant and secure homeland for the Jewish people.

Obama clearly understood that he needed to reach out to the Jewish community. That's why he convened such a remarkable meeting, nine days before the Ohio primary. He also understood Jewish leaders needed to feel free to ask the toughest questions in an intimate setting. That's why the event was not on his official schedule; that's why the media was not invited.
But he also knew, or course, that only speaking to those 90 or so people would not be enough. As things
were coming to a close, after he finished taking questions, he turned back to the room one more time. "And go out and write emails, guys," he said.
That's what I'm doing.
I hope you'll join me in doing the same.
-Josh

Web Clip: Obama: I Will Rebuild Black-Jewish Alliance

In this web video, Barack Obama speaks of rebuilding the bonds between the African-American and Jewish communities.

Barack Obama Speaks Out Against Anti-Semitism

Last week, Senator Barack Obama addressed and reiterated his consistent and long standing denouncements of anti-Semitism.

“I have always denounced the abhorrent anti-Semitic views of Louis Farrakhan. I have done so since I was a community organizer on the South side of Chicago 20 years ago. And so, I don’t think that’s in question. My church has never issued anti-Semitic statements, nor have I heard my pastor ever utter anything anti-Semitic. And if I had, then I would have quit the church.

“What is true, is that I think they made a mistake in judgment, the magazine that was affiliated with the church in praising Farrakhan’s…primarily for the work that he’s done on ex-offenders and they are a presence in Chicago, they have done work in the community, that often draws attention that is separate from some of these previous remarks.

“I think that it doesn’t excuse in any way the fact that Mr. Farrakhan said in the past is unacceptable. And I was very clear both with my pastor and with the public, that you cannot excuse such statements. So I think that I have been absolutely clear in terms of my position on this issue. As I said before, I think that this is a situation in which because Farrakhan is based in Chicago and has done work that is separate apart from his reprehensible statements, that there are times when people don’t understand the pain that those statements originally have caused, and I will continue to strongly speak out anti-Semitism in all its forms.

"That’s part of the reason why I’ve always had such strong support in the Jewish community that is familiar with my track record because they know that I don’t tolerate that stuff, and I’m willing to say it right away in front of other audiences. I was just at Ebenezer church for Dr. King’s anniversary and specifically stated to that audience, the unacceptability of anti-Semitism in the African-American community or any community.”

Remba Responds to Tilly's Criticisms in "The One State Solution"

Gidon D. Remba Responds to Jennifer Tilly’s The One-State Solution Criticisms of His Essay in the Nation on Israel and the New Anti-Semitism

In "Anti-Semitism—New or Old? An Exchange," (The Nation, April 12, 2004), I responded to Oxford scholar Brian Klug’s “The Myth of the New Anti-Semitism.” While I agreed that advocacy of anti-Zionism and binationalism is not inherently anti-Semitic, and describe conditions under which binationalism is consistent with the basic rights of Israeli Jews, I take Klug to task for his failure to recognize the pervasiveness of anti-Jewish racism that today underlies much of the anti-Zionism and anti-Israel invective in the Arab world and on the European left. I maintained that much binational advocacy among Palestinians, Arabs and the Western left represents a species of political rhetoric which would, if realized in a unitary “democratic” state, result in an arrangement whereby Palestinians will form the majority and Israeli Jews at best a tolerated, subjugated minority, recapitulating the tragic fates of failed multi-ethnic polities like Lebanon, Bosnia and Yugoslavia (and now Iraq). As a form of anti-Jewish discrimination, it thus satisfies standard definitions of anti-Semitism, directed against Israeli Jews. I believe that a binational Palestinian-Israeli polity will have a reasonable likelihood of respecting the human rights of Palestinians and Israeli Jews only if it arises by mutual consent to confederate two working liberal democratic Israeli and Palestinian states. Any other approach to binationalism is at best naïve and unpracticable, at worst apt to sweep Palestinians and Israelis down to the next rung of the raging Middle Eastern inferno.

Klug’s rejoinder, while acknowledging some of my points, side-stepped the central questions: What are the criteria for appropriate use of the term “anti-Semitism”? And does contemporary Muslim and Arab violence against European Jews, and leftist and Arab rhetoric advocating the elimination of the Jewish state and its replacement with an Arab-majority state, share enough features with classical anti-Semitism to be reasonably considered a form of racism against Jews—even if it lacks some features of the classical phenomenon? Klug also mistakenly attributed to me a willingness to define anti-Semitism solely through reliance on dictionaries, a charge belied by my text. Finally, while he questioned whether I had fairly described the binational Palestinian-Israeli state likely to arise if the wishes of many anti-Zionist critics were realized, he offered no real counter-arguments to show that Israeli Jews’ human, political and civil rights would be fully respected in an Arab-majority binational state (particularly one created against the wishes of the overwhelming majority of Israeli Jews).

My essay prompted a three-page attack in a new book by political scientist Virginia Tilly, The One-State Solution: A Breakthrough for Peace in the Israeli-Palestinian Deadlock (University of Michigan Press, 2005). Tilly, who regards Israel an apartheid state which still relies on ethnic cleansing “for its preservation,” and who unashamedly places all blame for the Palestinian-Israeli conflict on Zionism and Israel, egregiously misreads my arguments, charging me with the view that “‘binational advocacy’ is indeed ‘inherently anti-Jewish racism.’” When I reject the overweening optimism of the European left that a binational “secular democratic” state—particularly one coercively imposed on Israeli Jews by means of economic sanctions and boycotts against Israel—will vouchsafe their basic human and political rights, and am skeptical that Arab majority oppression and domination of an Israeli Jewish minority is avoidable under such circumstances, she charges me with “transparent racial stereotyping” and “demonizing” of the Arabs. Instead, my skepticism is born of the inescapable fact that nowhere in the Arab world does a state yet exist in which the human and civil rights of minorities are respected, or in which citizens are truly equal or free, not even remotely to the degree that they are in Western societies. Realism about the prospects for liberal democracy and human rights in Arab society hardly amounts to demonization or racial stereotyping of Arabs. Moreover, Tilly completely ignores the crucial distinction I introduced between coercive and consensual binationalism.

Finally, Tilly (who studiously ignores my position in Peace Now and my public criticism of many Israeli policies) trots out the ritual claim that the rejection of one-state arguments as anti-Semitic “equates the Jewish state with Jewish people and regards any criticism of the state (or its Jewishness) as anti-Semitic per se.” Setting aside the absurdity of Tilly’s contention that I or others who reject certain species of one-state proposals as leading to anti-Jewish discrimination equate all criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism, the issue at stake is not “mere criticism” of the Jewishness of the state. The issue is rather wholesale proposals to coercively deprive Israeli Jews of national sovereignty and the likely fate of the Israeli Jewish community were such proposals realized (and the fact that such proposals effectively empower Palestinian nationalism without acknowledging this fact). This is a far cry from “criticism of the Jewishness of the state,” which I myself share in some respects, as evidenced in my essay "What is Zionism? A Peace Now Vision: Israel as a Jewish and Democratic State.” (Read the essay at www.chicagopeacenow.org/frame_wiz-complete.html )

In “What is Zionism?,” I explore the meaning of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, articulating principles for a progressive Zionism. The essay defends the view that it is both possible, morally and practically, for Israel to be a Jewish state and a state of equal citizens where the civil, political and economic rights of the non-Jewish Arab minority are accorded fully equal respect. It articulates this position through an examination of the Zionism of Herzl, Ahad Ha’am, and Israel’s (former) Supreme Court President Aharon Barak, among others. In defending a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, I suggest that it is incumbent on progressive Zionists and Palestinian nationalists alike to work towards the creation of two states which should seek to evolve a common civic egalitarian public culture to complement the particularistic aspects of their national cultures. Both should draw from their own cultures in the articulation of the common public culture to be shared by Jews and Arabs in Palestine-Israel.

For a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict to succeed, I hold that both Israelis and Palestinians must begin to overcome the zero-sum game thinking inherent in nineteenth-century mythologies of nationalism and the absolutely sovereign nation-state. The kind of future Palestinians and Israelis should begin to construct is neither a single "bi-national" state, nor a conventional two-state arrangement, but an alternative in between, a third way, evolving over time, and by mutual consent. It must begin as two nation-states, which is the unmistakable will of both peoples, and evolve towards nation-states in a regional confederation. Both peoples would maintain continued allegiance to their own nation-states, largely self-governing, but start to move toward devolving some elements of national sovereignty into a cooperative supra-national regional political structure, with some similarities to the European Union.

Republican Jewish Attack Ads Push Spinning into Sinning, by Gidon D. Remba

Republican Jewish Attack Ads Push Spinning into Sinning

By

Gidon D. Remba

Published by Jews for Kerry, October 22, 2004

An anti-Democratic attack ad run in the Jewish press by the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) attempts to smear Democratic presidential candidate Senator John Kerry and the Democratic Party with distortions about their views on Israel. The RJC, which describes itself as the “sole voice of Jewish Republicans to Republican decision makers and the Jewish community,” and boasts such board members as President George W. Bush’s former spokesperson, Ari Fleischer, seeks to portray Kerry and the Democratic Party as failing to stand up for Israel’s right to self-defense against terrorism, as anti-Israel and even anti-Semitic.

The ad, which culls statements attributed to various Democrats from the last ten years, often relies on misleading quotes taken out of context, twisted to convey the opposite of their speakers’ plain meaning. And it attempts to demonize the Democrats by tarring Kerry and his party through association with extreme statements made by a handful of politicians whose views have been roundly repudiated by the Democratic mainstream and by Senator Kerry himself, a crucial fact that the Republican Jewish Coalition conceals from its audience. A former top Republican strategist has said of President George W. Bush’s 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.” (Wall Street Journal, Oct. 21, 2004) The Republican Jewish Coalition has followed the lead of its non-Jewish Republican mentors.

For dishonesty, this ad indeed surpasses Rove himself: the insinuation that leading Democrats, including John Kerry, are anti-Semitic rises to the level of libel. The RJC brandishes quotes from two Democrats, including Congressman Jim Moran (D-VA), which suggest that Jews pushed the US into war with Iraq against America’s own national interests for Israel’s sake. But, in the first place, Democratic congressional leaders—including Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)—excoriated Moran, as did the National Jewish Democratic Council. Democratic as well as Republican Jewish members of Congress called on Moran to resign. Moran then apologized repeatedly and withdrew his statement.

And in the second place, grouping Democratic leaders like Kerry together with Jim Moran is a highly dishonest way of insinuating that all Democrats share Moran’s bigotry. Were Democrats willing to use such reprehensible methods, the RJC’s own tactics could easily have been aimed against Republicans to even more devastating effect. Democrats can easily cite blatantly anti-Semitic and anti-Israel statements by various prominent Republicans, while pretending that such remarks had not been rejected by the party’s mainstream. It was, after all, President George H. Walker Bush’s Secretary of State James Baker (still an important advisor to George W. Bush) who famously said: “F*** the Jews. They don’t vote for us anyway.” Republican President Richard Nixon’s anti-Semitism is legendary. Patrick Buchanan, who worked for three Republican presidents and ran in the Republican presidential primaries three times, has praised Hitler, denied that thousands of Jews were gassed at Treblinka, and defended Nazi war criminals. He has also referred to Capitol Hill as “Israeli-occupied territory” (St. Louis Post Dispatch, Oct. 20, 1990), and was outspoken last year in charging that Jewish officials in the Bush Administration are “colluding with Israel” to “ensnare our country in a series of wars that are not in our national interests.”

But such offensive anti-Semitic and anti-Israel remarks—whether from Buchanan or from Moran —are irrelevant to the Bush-Kerry contest. Neither Buchanan nor Moran are representative of their parties. Both are, rather, embarrassments to their parties — as is a Republican Jewish ad which seeks to discredit the Democrats by associating their leadership with an anti-Semitic and anti-Israel fringe. Such dishonesty serves only to distract American Jews from the real issues we face as we go to the polls. It serves as a smokescreen designed to deflect us from thinking seriously about the differences between Kerry and Bush, and about which of them is really better for Israel and America.

On one issue after another—Democratic and Republican positions on Israel’s security barrier, targeted killing of terrorists, negotiating with Arafat and other Palestinian leaders, US aid to Israel, anti-Semitism and blaming Jews for the war in Iraq—the Republican Jewish Coalition ad campaign bears only the most tenuous relationship to the truth.

Kerry and Bush on Israel’s Security Barrier

The Republican Jewish Coalition claims that “Senator John Kerry incredibly questioned Israel’s right to defend itself from terrorism by condemning Israel’s construction of a security fence and calling it a ‘barrier to peace.’” In fact, Kerry has consistently and strongly supported Israel’s right to build a security fence. He has described Israel’s barrier as “a fence necessary to the security of Israel until they have a partner to be able to negotiate” (New York Times transcript, February 29, 2004) and has affirmed his support for the security fence repeatedly in public forums. Following a suicide bombing in Jerusalem in February, Senator Kerry issued the following statement: “It is ironic that this act of terror takes place on the eve of consideration by the International Court of Justice of Israel's security fence. The Court does not have and should not accept jurisdiction over this case. Israel's security fence is a legitimate act of self defense. No nation can stand by while its children are blown up at pizza parlors and on buses. … The fence only exists in response to the wave of terror attacks against Israel.” (February 23, 2004)

President Bush himself, moreover, has voiced concerns about the fence. In a White House press conference Bush said: "I think the wall is a problem and I discussed this with Ariel Sharon. It is very difficult to develop confidence between the Palestinians and Israel with a wall snaking through the West Bank. And I will continue to discuss this issue very clearly with the prime minister [Ariel Sharon]." (July 27, 2003, Jerusalem Post)

Kerry, Dean and Bush: Moral Equivalency Between Israel and Terrorists?

The Republican Jewish Coalition charges that former governor Howard Dean called Hamas terrorists “soldiers,” to which the RJC retorts: “No Gov. Dean, they aren’t soldiers; they are terrorists.”

But in the interview quoted by the RJC, Dean was in fact defending Israel’s right to engage in targeted killings of Hamas terrorists. The full quote (CNN Transcript, Sept. 10, 2003) shows that he regards Hamas as aggressors who are waging war on Israel. In describing Hamas terrorists as soldiers, Dean was taking a strongly pro-Israel stance as against the anti-Israel “human rights” organizations who claim that when Israel kills a suspected terrorist, it is engaging in an “illegal extra-judicial execution” of a civilian. Some human rights groups claim that suspected Palestinian terrorists are civilians who should be arrested and proven guilty of terrorism in a court of law before they can be deprived of their right to life. Dean, rightly, will have none of this. Hamas terrorists are soldiers, combatants in a war against Israel, insisted Dean, and therefore Israel can legitimately target them for killing.

John Kerry holds the same view. When asked whether he supported Israel’s assassination of Hamas leader Rantisi, he declared: “I believe Israel has every right in the world to respond to any act of terror against it. Hamas is a terrorist, brutal organization.” (“Meet the Press,” NBC, April 18, 2004)

By contrast, many members of the Bush Administration have been critical of Israel’s targeted killings of Hamas leaders. For example, the Bush Administration's ambassador to the United Nations at the time, John D. Negroponte, told the UN Security Council that "the United States was 'deeply troubled' by the killing of Sheik Yassin and believed Israel's action had escalated tensions in the region" (New York Times, March 26, 2004). And when asked about Israel’s killing of Hamas leader Sheikh Yassin, White House spokesman Scott McClellan remarked, “We are deeply troubled by this morning's actions in Gaza.” (Reuters, March 23, 2004) The conservative National Review opined: “The Bush administration's initial reaction to Israel's act of self-defense has been mealy-mouthed, pathetic, and morally offensive. ... Why … won't the Bush White House proudly stand side-by-side with Israel as a strategic ally against a radical Islamic jihad?” (March 22, 2004)

Bush and Kerry on Arafat: Terrorist or Statesman?

The Republican Jewish Coalition charges that Kerry called Arafat a “statesman” in 1997 “despite Arafat’s past and continued support for terrorists who have killed both Americans and Israelis.” But in 1997 many leading politicians on all sides, both in America and in Israel, paid compliments to Arafat, at least in public. As recently as April 2002 President Bush himself “said he would not label Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat a terrorist … despite a week of devastating suicide bombings within Israeli cities. The president said that Arafat's involvement in negotiating a peace settlement prevented him from designating him a terrorist” (UPI/United Press International, April 1, 2002). Since the failure of all efforts to end the intifada that year, both Bush and Kerry have changed their stance on Arafat. The RJC ignores Kerry’s many negative statements on Arafat since then. Kerry, like Bush, has ruled out Arafat as a legitimate negotiating partner for Israel. In March, 2004 he said, "As far as I'm concerned he's an outlaw to the peace process...and he's proved himself to be irrelevant" (Associated Press, March 10, 2004).

Carter and Negotiating with Palestinian Terrorists

Under the heading “Moral Equivalency Between Israel and Terrorists,” the RJC upbraids former President Jimmy Carter for criticizing President George W. Bush, in Carter’s words, for making “no effort to have a balanced negotiating position between Israel and Palestinians.” The Jewish Republicans responded: “President Carter, you should know that there is no negotiating with terrorists.” But President Carter didn’t advocate negotiating with terrorists; he advocated negotiating with Palestinians. Unless you assume that all Palestinians are terrorists, the charge is baseless.

The RJC overlooks a host of inconvenient facts:

*A number of Palestinian leaders have been sharply critical of both terrorism and the intifada, including Mohammed Dahlan, the former Gaza security chief to whom thousands of Palestinian security forces in Gaza remain loyal.

*Polls consistently show that 69% of Israeli Jews favor negotiating with the Palestinian Authority (see the most recent opinion survey by Tel Aviv University, as reported in Ha’aretz, Oct. 20, 2004).

*Three major Israeli political parties—Labor, Meretz-Yahad and the centrist Shinui which is part of Sharon’s coalition government and the third largest party in the Knesset—support negotiations with Palestinians now in order to reach a cease-fire.

*Even the Bush Administration has reportedly encouraged Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to negotiate with any Palestinian leader who is able and willing to take security responsibility from areas that Israel plans to evacuate under the Israeli government’s disengagement plan. (Ha’aretz, May 31, 2004) And the Bush Administration continues to stand behind its own peace plan, the Road Map, which involves a return to negotiations by Israel with a reformed Palestinian leadership.

So Carter’s advocacy of negotiations with Palestinians is widely held among Israeli Jews, and by the Bush Administration itself. It is decidedly not the same as “negotiating with terrorists,” as the RJC maintains.

Has Bush’s War in Iraq Helped or Hurt the War on Terror?

Jewish Republicans have run a smear campaign against John Kerry and the Democrats to distract American Jews from thinking about the really serious question at stake in this election: Has President George W. Bush’s war in Iraq helped or hurt American and Israeli national security? Prominent Israeli security analysts, including Major General (ret.) Shlomo Brom at the highly respected Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, believe Bush’s war in Iraq, and diplomatic incompetence, have harmed the security of both countries, sabotaging the war on international terror (Associated Press, October 11, 2004).

Ambassador Dennis Ross, who served as chief US Middle East envoy under both Republican and Democratic administrations, charges in his memoir, The Missing Peace: The Inside Story of the Fight for Middle East Peace, that “The [Bush] administration…ultimately failed to act in a way that made it possible for” Palestinian moderates opposed to terror to remain in power, strengthening Arafat and contributing to the failure of its own Road Map peace plan. John Kerry has proposed a smarter, more comprehensive approach to the war on terror, combining an ideological campaign and major public diplomacy push in the Muslim world against extremist Islam and in support of moderate Muslims and Arabs, along with an expansion of US Special Forces. This will enable the US to confront “jihadists in nations where large or conspicuous U.S. incursions are politically impossible—i.e., most of the approximately 60 countries where Al Qaeda operates.” Kerry will prosecute a more effective “classic counterinsurgency campaign where political and military measures reinforce one another against a shadowy and dispersed enemy.” (“Kerry Would Fight Terrorism Better,” The New Republic, Oct. 25, 2004) He will pursue a more engaged approach to diplomacy in the region, and many believe he can do a better job than Bush in moving towards an end to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Perhaps that is what scares the Republican Jewish Coalition: enough to promote their candidate with an outrageously duplicitous ad.

Gidon D. Remba, a political analyst specializing in the Arab-Israel conflict, is currently co-editing an anthology titled From Gaza to Jerusalem: A New Road to Middle East Peace? He served as Senior Foreign Press Editor in the Israel Prime Minister's Office from 1977-1978 during the Egyptian-Israeli Camp David peace process.

His essays have appeared in the Chicago Tribune, the New York Times, the Nation, the Jerusalem Report, Tikkun: A Bi-Monthly Critique of Jewish Politics, Culture and Society, Chicago Jewish News, The Jewish Journal of Los Angeles, JUF News and other periodicals. He has appeared as a featured guest on various radio interview programs devoted to the Middle East, including National Public Radio’s Worldview.

The Nation: "Israel and the New Anti-Semitism: An Exchange"

“Israel and the New Anti-Semitism: An Exchange,” The Nation, April 12, 2004

Gidon D. Remba

Overview

In this 1,200-word essay published in the Nation, I respond to Oxford scholar Brian Klug’s “The Myth of the New Anti-Semitism.” While I agree that advocacy of anti-Zionism and binationalism is not inherently anti-Semitic, and describe conditions under which binationalism could be consistent with the basic political and human rights of Israeli Jews, I take Klug to task for his failure to recognize the pervasiveness of anti-Jewish racism that today underlies much of the anti-Zionism and anti-Israel invective in the Arab world and on the European left.

I maintain that much binational advocacy among Palestinians, Arabs and the Western left represents a species of political rhetoric which would, if coercively realized in a unitary “democratic” state, result in an arrangement whereby Palestinians will form the majority and Israeli Jews at best a tolerated, subjugated minority, recapitulating the tragic fates of failed multi-ethnic polities like Lebanon, Bosnia and Yugoslavia. As a form of anti-Jewish discrimination, it thus satisfies standard definitions of anti-Semitism, directed against Israeli Jews. I believe that a binational Palestinian-Israeli polity will have a reasonable likelihood of respecting the human rights of Palestinians and Israeli Jews only if it arises by mutual consent to confederate two working liberal democratic Israeli and Palestinian states. Any other approach to binationalism is at best naïve and impracticable, at worst apt to sweep Palestinians and Israelis down to the next rung of the raging Middle Eastern inferno.

This essay has been reprinted in various places and was translated into German and published in Europe. It prompted a three-page attack in a new book by political scientist Virginia Tilly, The One-State Solution: A Breakthrough for Peace in the Israeli-Palestinian Deadlock (University of Michigan Press, 2005). Tilly, who regards Israel an “apartheid state” which “still relies on ethnic cleansing for its preservation,” and who unashamedly places all blame for the Palestinian-Israeli conflict on Zionism and Israel, egregiously misreads my arguments.


Israel and the New Anti-Semitism: A Reply to Brian Klug

By
Gidon D. Remba

As Published in The Nation, April 12, 2004

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040412&s=exchange

Recent writings on anti-Semitism by a number of prominent authors have suggested that Jews are confronting a new brand of anti-Jewish vitriol and violence that is distinct from classical anti-Semitism because it cloaks itself in the increasingly acceptable politics of anti-Zionism. Evidence that much anti-Zionism, and rhetoric which demonizes Israel, is anti-Semitism in disguise, and the sense of panic that pervades much of the writing on this subject, seem to have so irked Brian Klug (“The Myth of the New Anti-Semitism,” Feb. 2) that he rejects out of hand the idea that Jews are confronting a new wave of anti-Semitism.

Klug is right to take issue with one claim made by many commentators on the “new anti-Semitism.” Advocacy of anti-Zionism and binationalism vis-à-vis the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is not inherently anti-Semitic. Both can, and have been, advanced in ways that acknowledge the intense need that many Jews, both in Israel and around the world, feel for a strong, secure Israel—for example, in proposals for a binational confederal regime which might evolve by mutual consent from two working democratic states at peace, Israel and Palestine, modeled in some respects on the European Union. But in his zealous effort to reject the logic of the “new anti-Semitism” writers, Klug refuses to admit the pervasiveness of anti-Jewish racism that today underlies much of the anti-Zionism and anti-Israel invective in the Arab world and on the European left.

In Klug’s eyes, neither the anti-Zionist rhetoric nor the attacks of recent years on Jewish synagogues and individuals in Europe and the Middle East stem from “racist stereotyping” of Jews. Rather, they are directed, albeit misguidedly, at Jews as representatives of the State of Israel. Klug points out that Israeli leaders, inspired by the Zionist premise that all Jews are members of the Jewish people, have made every effort to portray Israel as an expression of Jews worldwide. So it should come as no surprise, the argument goes, that some in the Arab and Muslim communities who take offense at Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza would take Jews personally to task, even targeting them for violent retribution. Klug informs us that when anti-Jewish, anti-Israel attitudes are motivated by a predominantly anti-Western, anti-colonial and anti-imperialist political perspective—even invoking “general principles of justice and human rights”—such animus towards Israel and Jews does not reflect “anti-Semitic prejudice.”

There are several problems with this picture. First, there is a centuries-old legacy of anti-Semitism motivated not mainly by religious, ultra-nationalist or fascist prejudices and myths, but very largely by political, social and economic competition, by a lofty adherence to universalism and equal rights, to anti-clericalism and anti-capitalism, among some portions of the nineteenth and early twentieth-century left—an anti-Semitism of the left, “the socialism of fools.” This strain of modern anti-Semitism owes its provenance as much to some of the Enlightenment’s founders as it does to animosities unleashed by the emancipation of European Jewry, the integration of Jews into the economic and political life of the European states.

Second, racism is commonly defined as prejudice or wrongful discrimination against a racial or ethnic group, fed by false stereotypes; anti-Semitism as unwarranted “hostility toward or discrimination against Jews as a religious, ethnic, or racial group” (Merriam- Webster Dictionary). It follows that anti-Semitism is a form of racism towards Jews, whereby unwarranted hostility or wrongful discrimination, based on false, vilifying beliefs, is aimed at Jews as a group, or towards individual Jews as members of that group. That the primary source of these beliefs and practices lies in their adherents’ economic and political interests or cultures in no way vitiates their anti-Semitic character.

The reductio ad absurdum of Klug’s characterization of anti-Semitism becomes apparent in his idiosyncratic insistence that acts widely regarded as anti-Semitic hate crimes are not anti-Semitic simply because they are prompted in part by anger over Israel’s policies towards the Palestinians. Klug maintains that “the evidence suggests that the perpetrators of the anti-Jewish attacks in France were animated by political outrage, not bigotry. According to the Israeli Foreign Ministry itself, most of the incidents were a protest against inequities in the occupied territories.” European Commission President Romano Prodi is only the latest of many EU leaders, including five European Interior Ministers, who have publicly affirmed that they view such acts as anti-Semitic. Klug seems to want to have his cake and eat it too. He admits that anti-Semitism “without a doubt … would not be spreading within Muslim communities in Europe were it not for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” but then denies that anti-Jewish attacks by Muslims in Europe are anti-Semitic.

If Klug is right, EU leaders are mistaken in outlawing politically motivated violent acts against innocent Jews and Muslims as instances of anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim racism. They should presumably treat such acts as nothing more than breaches of the criminal laws of assault, battery, arson, which happen to be animated by political passions. Klug’s constricted view would instantly redefine as merely “reprehensible, but not anti-Semitic” the hatred many nineteenth-century Europeans harbored towards Jews on the basis of the generalization that Jews were rich bankers and exploitive money-lenders. This hatred inspired anti-Jewish pogroms, quotas and restrictions in employment and education, and political support for anti-Semitic political parties in various European states. Yet Klug’s linguistic legerdemain would define it away at the stroke of a pen. And wasn’t the stereotyping of Jews in Europe—which “exceeded the evidence,” but did not rise to an “a priori prejudice,” in Klug’s idiom—rooted in the actual prevalence of Jews in trade and finance, much as the faulty inference that all Jews are responsible for Israel’s actions towards the Palestinians is rooted in the fact that Israel defines itself as the Jewish state, and in the solidarity that most Diaspora Jews—even those who dissent from the policies of Ariel Sharon—feel towards that state and its people?

Klug tries to show that some element he identifies as essential to classical anti-Semitism (“a priori prejudice”) is missing from those species of anti-Zionism and anti-Israel invective that are held up by many Jews as paradigm cases of the new anti-Semitism. Yet this ignores the real question: whether the “new anti-Semitism” shares enough features with its classical progenitor to be characterized as “anti-Semitism.”

Klug’s willingness to sanction all forms of anti-Zionism and binational advocacy—to deny that any species of this rhetoric is inherently anti-Jewish racism—sweeps under the rug two overriding, and deeply troubling, facts. First, Arab and Palestinian anti-Zionist binationalists, and their fellow travelers on the Western left, often propose, with overweening optimism, a unitary “democratic” state as an alternative to a two-state formula. In this arrangement, Palestinians will inevitably form the majority and Israeli Jews at best a tolerated, subjugated minority, most likely recapitulating the tragic fates of multi-ethnic polities like Lebanon, Bosnia and Yugoslavia. Much binational advocacy, among Palestinians, Arabs and the Western left, is thus malign and coercive, a fig leaf for depriving Israeli Jews of their basic civil and human rights in a new Arab state. In this regard, it is anti-Jewish discrimination, satisfying standard definitions of anti-Semitism as a form of racism against Israeli Jews.

Second, in those cases where Western leftists advocate a vague, naïve anti-Zionist binationalism—where their intent is not to subordinate Israeli Jews in an Arab state but to express an idealistic commitment to egalitarianism and post-nationalism as a practical program for Jews and Palestinians here and now—the real-world effect of their beguiling fantasy is to lend aid and comfort to coercive binationalism. Their blandishments stoke the frenzy of resistance to genuine two-state peace efforts, accelerating the transformation of Israel into a pariah state, fueling the campaign to realize a malign binationalist nightmare. Such misbegotten noble intentions will help pave the road to perdition, bolstering the Israeli right, feeding Jewish fear and paranoia, and Arab chauvinist triumphalism. If successful, they will sweep Israelis and Palestinians down to the next rung of the raging Middle Eastern inferno, engulfing them in the great and intimate flames of civil war.


The writer, President of Chicago Peace Now, the Illinois-Indiana Chapter of Americans for Peace Now, is a political analyst on the Arab-Israel conflict.