A couple of days ago, James Kirchick and I both wrote about the dissenting position taken by the dovish Jewish lobby on the Gaza operation. Here’s Kirchick:
[A]t a time when the vast majority of Israelis and American Jews support what Israel is doing, J Street steps out of the shadows as the voice of communal dissent, joined by the likes of the United Nations and the Guardian editorial board (even the Arab League tacitly supports what Israel is doing, seeing that Hamas is an Iranian front). J Street has the right to its extreme leftist, capitulationist opinions, but it does not have the right to claim, as Ben-Ami once did, that it represents the “broad, sensible mainstream of pro-Israel American Jews.”
An article in the Jewish Forward, written by rabbi Eric Yoffie, President of the Union for Reform Judaism — a liberal Jewish organization, no doubt — proves that Kirchick was right: J Street can’t claim to represent the American Jewish majority. It can’t even claim to represent the view of a liberal Jewish majority. Yoffie, a liberal himself, as even J Street acknowledges, writes this:
It is not easy for me to write these words. I welcomed the founding of J Street and know many of those involved in its leadership. Furthermore, I am a dove myself. I support a two-state solution, believe that military action by Israel should be a last resort and welcome an active American role in promoting peace between Israel and her neighbors. But I know a mistake when I see one, and this time J Street got it very wrong.
The handlers of J Street didn’t like Yoffie’s article, to put it mildly:
It is hard for us to understand how the leading reform rabbi in North America could call our effort to articulate a nuanced view on these difficult issues “morally deficient.” If our views are “naïve” and “morally deficient”, then so are the views of scores of Israeli journalists, security analysts, distinguished authors, and retired IDF officers who have posed the same questions about the Gaza attack as we have.
Yet they provide little evidence or sources regarding these “analysts” and “authors.” Do they even exist? In fact, when the operation started, most dovish Israelis, among them authors Amos Oz and A.B Yehushua — the Left’s unofficial deans — supported it. Truth be told, a growing camp within the Israeli Left now supports a cease-fire — but very few opposed the operation in its initial stages the way J Street did. As I’ve shown here, even the left-wing Meretz Party supported the operation when it started.
And even assuming that Meretz’s position is more in sync with the one espoused by J Street today, it is still not the position of Israel’s Left — not even by a stretch — unless by the Left what we really mean is the radical Left. The centrist Kadima and the center-left Labor are part of the coalition managing the war. Meretz — according to most polls — represents barely 5% of Israel’s population. If J Street argues that a similar percentage — or even double that percentage — or even five times that percentage of American Jews agree with them — it is still far from the “broad mainstream” they claim to represent.
Let me beat the trolls:
You neocons & card-carrying members of The Israel Lobby are now trying to destroy Pincus for telling the truth about you neocons & the Israel Lobby!
Should we care any more about predictably bad journalism? Time to concentrate on putting out the good alternative.
Noah, great little piece of sleuthing.
Who bothers to read the Lebanese Daily Star?
Why, you do, of course!
Nice job!
LOL. I’m just surprised the arab papers don’t just rehash stories from the National Enquirer.
“Zionist Crusaders turned my son into olive and drowned him in cocktail!”
Phillip Weiss writing for the American Conservative? More proof that the political spectrum is a complete circle.
(FWIW, six years a front page article by Robert Kaiser at the WaPo decried that the Bush administration was filled with Likudniks. Pat Buchanan, of the American Conservative, quoted the article rather favorably.)
I think I’d carry soccer dad’s analogy into a third dimension. Philip Weiss writing for the So-Called American Conservative (Snort) — the publication’s actual name — is proof that the political continuum is a sphere, which has been inflating like a balloon, and is about to pop.
“un-American, un-conservative magazine called The American Conservative”
what would you know about either of those things, kid?
lester & inwood keep forgetting that Freeman is a lobbyist, not for one foreign govt but for two, Saudi Arabia and China. You should stop pretending to be patriots and just admit that you prefer one brand of lobbyist over another. Now, since when is Saudi Arabia a great friend of the United States and its people?? In fact, the Saudi royal family and assorted hangers on have been the greatest beneficiaries of US foreign aid since WW2. This is because much or most of the money that ARAMCO paid the Saudi royals as royalties for oil was considered an “oil income tax” by the Saudi govt and thus was treated as a foreign tax by the IRS which allowed ARAMCO to deduct this fake “foreign tax” as a foreign tax credit dollar for dollar from corporate income tax. This “foreign tax credit” was disguised foreign aid.
Now do lester and inwood think that that was good for the American tax payer?
why would you bother working up that point AFTER he has voluntarily left the post?
Elliott — From Inwood was parodying the trolls like lester. The post at #1 is not a statement of his actual views.
But obviously it was an effective parody…
Elliott
Now you’ve made sure that I’ll never get my secret neocon decoder ring.
I was circumcised for nothing all those years ago!
Inwood, buddy, so much writing nowadays is self-parody, totally unaware of what it really is, like Freeman’s outrage over the influence on policy of a foreign lobby, that one never knows when parody is intended and when it is unconscious.
Elliott
At least you’re talking to me.
A friend of ours sent my wife an urban legend warning her about some guy in a van around Forest Park (a good all purpose park name) in a van jumping out in front of women with an either-impregnated cloth &, well you can guess the rest.
I wrote back to her that if she believed that, she probably would believe in the Either Bunny.
She’s still mad.
Now I put smiley faces on any such response.
Regards
Inwood
Are these the same Muslim newspapers that publish the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and anti-Semitic caricatures on an almost daily basis? Then obviously they deserve a hearing.
Seems to me that calling any form of free expression is “un-American.” Frankly, AmCon is a pretty good magazine. Its quality ebbs and flows, to be sure, but this is certainly not exclusive to them. Pieces by Larison, Bacevich and a few others are consistently first rate journalism – especially Bacevich on the Iraq War.
True conservatism entails intellectual prowess, and a willingness to challenge ideological orthodoxy – AmCon performs this task. I found it a refuge against the FoxNews, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, gay-bashing, immigrant-hating Republicanism that absolutely polluted the party that I thought I identified with.
I don’t blame pollack for being jealous of amCon and Phil Weiss, who don’t get a fraction of the corporate handouts pollack gets but are ten times more popular. you’ll never have a buzz worthy blog noah. you are an establishmentarian beltway toady who has no idea what is going on!!
I’m with you Ty. What a stagnant, cloistered world mainstream conservatism has become. The Freeman take down was just an embarrassment. All arguments concerning the Middle East and China are set in stone of the Right and no deviance is allowed. Truly pathetic. And truly un-American.
Noah,
You are so right. American Conservative is neither. I’m even beginning to have doubts about National Review. Some of the postings in The Corner have been very left wing. Even some of your colleagues here at Commentary are beginning to sound like borderline Commies. Don’t be afraid to call them out. We have to take this to the wall.
No prisoners!
I am so sick of this debate. Why is Israel an ally again? What have they ever done for us, other than costing us a boatload of money?
I am so enjoying watching you neocons/republicans/John Birch Society/conservative/whatever title you want to bestow upon yourselves eat your own. I thought the Democrats were dysfunctional but the only difference is they hang the dirty laundry out for all to see, you hide it under your Izods and penny loafers.
Ouroboros anyone?
From Daniel Pipes’s blog: http://www.danielpipes.org/comments/124938
Submitted by DrRJP (United States), Apr 7, 2008 at 13:32
Thank you. I’ve been waiting for someone to ask this question.
Before I begin, maybe you can tell me why folks like yourself never question our government’s $1.8 billion annual aid to Egypt — an enemy of Israel and Jews worldwide — and $10 $billion annual aid to Saudi Arabia — also, an enemy of Israel and Jews worldwide, but, more importantly, the greatest purveyor of worldwide Islamofascism?
Why does this Administration want to give $20 billion in advanced jet fighters and other sophisticated weaponry to Egypt — home of the Muslim Brotherhood , and to Saudi Arabia — home for fifteen of the nineteen 9/11 hijackers, and two countries with the worst human rights records?
While you’re pondering that, let me tell you what we get back for our buck to Israel.
U.S. government aid to Israel is one of the most cost-effective investments that Americans make in support of their international interests. Why, you ask?
Because virtually the entire annual $1.2 billion economic aid is returned back to the United States in the form of debt repayment. Not only that, $1.325 of the $1.8 billion annual military aid must, by law, be spent in the United States, creating tens of thousands of American jobs.
As they say on TV, “WAIT, there’s more!”
By comparison, U.S. expenditures in support of European allies in NATO are still many times the size of the aid to Israel. While the U.S. defense budget is divided functionally, not regionally, roughly 40 to 50 percent–or $80 to $112 billion–can be estimated to directly or indirectly support American defense commitments to Europe.
For instance, the $3 billion dollars recently guaranteed to Israel should be measured against the major threat to Israel’s security from Iran, Syria, the Palestinian organizations and militant Islam. This aid dwarfs in comparison to the aid provided to European countries in World War II and again during the Cold War.
The cost of deploying 40,000 American troops at the DMZ on the Korean Peninsula far exceeds annual aid to Israel. Mobilizing U.S. forces in Europe twice in the past century — once against Nazism and then against communism — was unprecedented in the history of foreign aid.
Americans understood that the fall of Europe would bring about the same fate in the United States. This analogy explains the rationale for American support of Israel against extreme Islamists. The difference is that Israel has never asked for foreign troops to defend it — another reason aid is supported by the American public.
Israel as the only democratic country in the Middle East, and the most effective ally in the entire world to halt the expansion of radical Islam.
Israel is America’s only, reliable ally in the Middle East, and is the only nation there that publicly declares is support for America.
Do you remember a few months back when we were able to intercept a falling satellite and blow it out of the sky — proving the validity of a missle defense system?
Guess who developed the technology to do that: Israel. Israel had worked jointly with the US in developing the Arrow anti-missle system as well as the Boost Phase Intercept program and the Tactical High Energy Laser program, in which a high-energy laser beam mounted on an airplane can be used to knock out incoming missles.
Oh, and do you know about our “Secure Border Initiative?” This is the latest attempt by our government to use technology to secure its borders, stop smuggling, and prevent illegal immigration. The project was thrown open to bidders around the world. What was unique about this grant proposal was that Homeland Security gave the bidders total freedom to create new ideas of how to apply both new and old technology to secure the US borders.
Guess who won the rights to build it? Who knows more about protecting its borders against terrorist attacks?
Kollsman Inc., an American subsidiary of Elbit, an Israeli company. Elbit was selected because of its ability to bring together global resources with decades of technological experience and capabilities securing borders in extreme cold, mountainous regions, as well as hot, desert terrains
There are hundreds of other technological modifications and improvements in weapons systems that Israel has supplied to American armed forces, including those operating in Iraq.
What do our other, alleged allies in the Middle East offer us?
Let’s take one of the other Middle Eastern countries that the US bankrolls: Pakistan. Pakistan’s quality of life index is somewhere south of Haiti’s, and is in worse shape than either North Korea or Burma. Yet the US has rewarded Musharraf’s government with a 45,000 percent increase in US aid since 2001, upping assistance levels to more than $10 billion — which is five times more than received by any other country (including Israel).
Has Pakistan helped us to find Bin Laden and made us safer from terrorist attacks, especially nuclear ones?
Is Hitler a humanitarian?
Not that long ago, Bush cancelled a $1 billion debt that Pakistan owes to America and instituted a new $3 billion military and economic assistance package to Pakistan, where its leader stands on very, shaky ground.
If anyone has bothered to pick up a book to read (instead of a blog) on nuclear proliferation, they would have learned that America not only turned a blind eye to Pakistan’s nuclear bomb project for decades but had covered it up for imperative geopolitical reasons, even when Islamabad began trading its secret technology.
Right now, at least 17 of the worst Sunni terror groups banned by the US and the UN have been allowed to operate openly in Pakistan and launch recruitment drives, using flimsy cover-names, most of them operating within sight of the Pakistan military.
Pakistan’s unsecured nuclear arsenal becomes increasingly more vulnerable as terrorists continue gain ground in Islamabad.
Did you know that the Pentagon considers Pakistan to be a greater nuclear threat to the world than is Iran?
I’d say, I want a President in the White House who will continue to fully support real allies like Israel rather than flaky ones like Egypt & Saudi Arabia.
And, my friend, that ain’t Obama.
“Because virtually the entire annual $1.2 billion economic aid is returned back to the United States in the form of debt repayment. Not only that, $1.325 of the $1.8 billion annual military aid must, by law, be spent in the United States, creating tens of thousands of American jobs.” -Grantman
Let’s see if I understand your logic: the US gives Israel money, which Israel uses to pay the US what it already owed us, and also to buy stuff from us (using our money).
This is a good investment? Do you work for AIG?
What Murray Rubin said.
I don’t support giving money to Pakistan (except in the context of helping to shore up security on their nuclear arsenal, like with do with Russia), Egypt, or Saudi Arabia either. In fact I don’t support giving money to any of these little p*ss-ant countries that are continuously mired in war and social unrest, a category that certainly includes Israel.
It is true they buy our weapons systems, but they would do that with or without our aid. They would buy them because they need them, and we make the best. We don’t have to bribe countries to do business with us. It is an absolute waste of money to do so.
“They would buy them because they need them, and we make the best. We don’t have to bribe countries to do business with us. It is an absolute waste of money to do so.”
That’s why the Israelis provided over 600 improvements to the F16, for starters.
Why not tell how much corporate America has gained from Israeli R&D and how much it helped America’s economy – IBM, Intel, HP, Motorola to name just a few.
Of course we won’t go into the health and agricultural technology that has benefited Americans as well.
And all that Cold War political support; worth nothing?
So what have America’s Nato allies given in return for financing their defense all these years?
All for $3 billion a year investment; better than AIG.
Wow!
“Cynic Says: And all that Cold War political support; worth nothing?”
Yes, that’s true. We all recognize Israel’s international influence and what a help is was in winning the Cold War (?!); hence the expression, “As Israel goes, so goes Boca Raton!” And now with Avi Lieberman as their world spokesnut, I’m sure their influence will grow at an explosive rate.
As for all that beneficial R&D on our F16′s, I’d have paid the money to our guys in the US to perform it, rather than to subsidize Israel’s research and hope they might share a little of it with us, when they’re not too busy spying on us that is.
“As for all that beneficial R&D on our F16’s, I’d have paid the money to our guys in the US to perform it,”
So why didn’t you guys do it instead of waiting for the Israelis?
So why has corporate America installed an R&D centre at each major Israeli University? Shouldn’t they wait for Americans to get the job done?
I read your posts for a long time and should tell that your posts are always valuable to readers.