If you're Jewish, odds are that you've received at least one if not several e-mails by now from concerned friends and family members containing what appear to be legitimate pieces of commentary suggesting that Barack Obama is anti-semitic and/or anti-Israel. Often, the person sending the mail received it from a trusted friend who, in turn, received it from a trusted friend. Invariably, these arrive with a simple note of concern such as, "do you think this is true?"
Some of the e-mails are clearly ridiculous, littered with innuendo (did you know Barack's middle name is "Hussein"!) and easily debunked assertions (you mean he's not really a Muslim??!!). Others, some of which are taken from the editorial pages of major newspapers, give an appearance of credibility. Closer examination shows a subtler but equally insidious form of innuendo.
Recent such editorials, for example, warned us not to trust Obama because he is allied with George Soros, a highly respected Jewish philanthropist who has spent millions of dollars promoting freedom and democracy, or because the controversial Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter's National Security Advisor, was claimed by the author to be part of Obama's team--a lie (my emphasis):
"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 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, where actually, traditionally, if you will recall he was considered a hawk. The liberal wing of the Democratic Party was very suspicious of Brzezinski precisely because he was so tough on many of these issues. I do not share his views with respect to Israel. I have said so clearly and unequivocally."
This short video sheds additional light on the malicious smear campaign and its impact on voters:
Being the curious type, I decided to investigate the source of the latest e-mailed commentary in order to try and assess its author's motivation. The article was titled, "Obama and the Jews," by Marc Zell, and it had been published in the Jerusalem Post. The first sign that Zell's motivation was less than pure was the last line of the editorial, which was curiously left out of the e-mailed version, describing the author as, "Co-Chairman Republicans Abroad in Israel". Further research revealed that Zell is law partners with Douglas Feith a prominent Jewish American neoconservative (neocon) who is most noted for operating the "Office of Special Plans," a secretive branch of George Bush's Pentagon that played a key role in disseminating the false intelligence that drove us to war in Iraq.
As extremists and ideologues go, Feith is at the far end of the scale. Zell's connection to Feith, as well as his connection to the Republican Party, suggest that his motivations were heavily partisan in nature.
Spreading misinformation and smearing the opposition has been standard operating procedure for the Republican party for over 40 years--thanks to the infamous Lee Atwater (whose death bed apology did nothing to stem the tsunami of hate he had created). Sadly, right wing Republican forces in the Jewish community have followed a very similar game plan to stomp out opposition to their hawkish policies and lay sole claim to the definition of "pro-Israel." And they have been successful in this effort despite overwhelming support among Jews for Democratic policies--"The American Religious Landscape and the 2004 Presidential Vote: Increased Polarization," a poll conducted by the University of Akron in conjunction with the Pew Institute, found that Jewish turnout in the 2004 Presidential election was 87%, of which 73% voted for Kerry; only 23% supported Bush.
Using both money and influence to achieve their goals, this right wing Jewish minority, which holds sway both in Washington and in much of the corporate media, does not hesitate tosmear anyone whose views conflict with their own. The sharpest weapon in their arsenal has been the accusation of "anti-semitism." There are few things more provocative in this country today than the label of anti-Semite, which tends to stick to the accusee like tar paper regardless of whether it is true or false.
Those of us who worked on the Ned Lamont campaign witnessed this underhanded tactic firsthand as rumors circulated throughout the Jewish community in Connecticut that Lamont was anti-semitic. With Joe Lieberman, a right wing Jew as Lamont's opponent, and the tremendous support that Lieberman drew from the neocon/AIPAC crowd, these unfounded rumors were enough to cast doubt amongst Connecticut's largely liberal Jewish population to persuade some voters to favor the one person they knew couldn't possibly be an anti-semite.
Now that Barack Obama -- who is not part of the neocon/AIPAC crowd and whose stance on Israel is relatively unknown by many in the public -- has become the frontrunner, doubts about his support for Israel and Jews have been fueled not only by the Republican right, but also by the Clinton campaign. According to the Chicago Sun-Times:
The new issue of Newsweek features a story using a familiar expression for a headline, "Good for the Jews? Hillary Clinton's surrogates are questioning Obama's commitment to U.S.-Israeli relations."
Hillary Clinton enjoys strong support from the Jewish community, and deservedly so. What is unfortunate is to see her campaign casting doubt on Obama's support of Israel purely as a tactic for partisan gain. And while Clinton is raising doubts publicly, patently false smears and whispers are circulating through e-mail and across the right wing media (including Fox News and CNN) insinuating that Obama is anti-Semitic, that he doesn't support Israel, that he is a Muslim, and that he is a one-man terrorist sleeper cell. While patently false, these accusations are more than enough to cause angst among Jewish voters:
"The Jewish community, rightfully so, is a sensitive and anxious community and has many historical reasons for that," said Representative Robert Wexler of Florida, a top adviser to Mr. Obama on Israel. Campaign officials said they were surprised, however, by the penetration of the viral e-mail messages, which were background static in the campaign until they began flooding the inboxes of Jewish voters right before nominating contests.
...
Some Jewish leaders said the anxiety over Mr. Obama might reveal more about Jews than about the candidate. By their analysis, those who heed the e-mail are generally older and have closer ties to Israel. The break is between "those who are motivated by traditional Jewish liberalism and those motivated by traditional Jewish anxiety over Israel," said J. J. Goldberg, editorial director for The Forward, a Jewish newspaper.
If the anxiety over Obama's commitment to Israel exhibited by some members of this author's family are at all representative of the Jewish community at large, the smear campaign has been very effective. Barack Obama chose to address those anxieties head-on this past weekend:
In an effort to shore up his support among Jewish voters, Barack Obama met privately on Sunday with 100 Jewish leaders in Ohio to tamp down concerns about his Middle East views and controversial positions from a few of his supporters.
The Clinton campaign has been actively wooing Jewish voters, in part by questioning Obama's commitment to the defense of Israel, and the meeting was arranged to enable Obama to address the concerns of the Jewish community.
A transcript of Obama's answers, which was provided by the JTA (Jewish Telegraphic Agency), shows that Obama spoke very candidly and provided a great amount of detail. I believe that his views are pragmatic-- and solidly in line with those held by the majority of Jews in this country.
Here are some excerpts from his answers that really stood out (my emphasis):
YOU CAN BE PRO-ISRAEL WITHOUT BEING PRO-LIKUD: "The others that you refer to are former members of the Clinton administration. Somebody like a Tony Lake, the former National Security Adviser, or Susan Rice these are not antiIsrael individuals. 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. Share my view that Israel has to remain a Jewish state, that the US has a special relationship with the Jewish state. There's no inkling that there has been anything in anything that they've written that would suggest they're not stalwart friends of Israel. This is where I get to be honest and I hope I'm not out of school here. I think there is a strain within the pro-Israel community that says unless you adopt a 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 a honest dialogue about how do we achieve these goals, then we're not going to make progress. And frankly some of the commentary that I've seen which suggests guilt by association or the notion that unless we are never ever going to ask any difficult questions about how we move peace forward or secure Israel that is non military or non belligerent or doesn't talk about just crushing the opposition that that somehow is being soft or anti-Israel, I think we're going to have problems moving forward."
IN SEARCH OF AN UNROMANTIC PEACE PLAN: "Well here's my starting orientation is 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, its going to have to work its 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 a 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."
These answers should leave little doubt as to Obama's commitment to Israel, its right to exist as a Jewish state, and his desire to achieve peace in the region. Obama's version of pro-Israel is certainly at odds with the radical definition enforced as orthodoxy by the powerful AIPAC/neocon/Likud minority. But his views, as evidenced by the 2004 polling data cited above, clearly are in line with the majority of American Jews. They also are in line with the views of many Israelis:
But a new poll of actual Israelis -- the people who have to live with the consequences of their choices as opposed to those who can beat their neoconservative, protected chests from a safe distance -- reveals:
Sixty-four percent of Israelis say the government must hold direct talks with the Hamas government in Gaza toward a cease-fire and the release of captive soldier Gilad Shalit. Less than one-third (28 percent) still opposes such talks.
The figures were obtained in a Haaretz-Dialog poll conducted Tuesday under the supervision of Professor Camil Fuchs of Tel Aviv University.
According to the findings, Israelis are fed up with seven years of Qassam rockets falling on Sderot and the communities near Gaza, as well as the fact that Shalit has been held captive for more than a year and a half. An increasing number of public figures, including senior officers in the Israel Defense Forces' reserves, have expressed similar positions on talks with Hamas.
It now appears that this opinion is gaining traction in the wider public, which until recently vehemently rejected such negotiations.
The survey also showed that Likud voters are much more moderate than their Knesset representatives. About half (48 percent) support talks with Hamas.
In Kadima, 55 percent are for talks, while among Labor voters, the number jumps to 72 percent.
As these public opinion trends reflect, the mindless, simplistic belligerence that right-wing Jewish groups in the U.S. have been imposing as orthodoxies -- "it's appeasement to negotiate with the Terrorists" -- is anything but "pro-Israel," to say nothing of whether such militarism is "pro-U.S." While Israelis increasingly reject this sort of Manichean, war-seeking approach as counter-productive to their interests,
neoconservative dogma remains the only choice in the U.S. for those who want to remain in the mainstream and avoid charges of being anti-Israel, as reflected by this sort of "thinking" from Condoleezza Rice:
Hamas is a little more than an enemy of the United States. Hamas, of course, is a terrorist organization -- listed by Europeans as a terrorist organization. And we saw what Hamas did in Gaza, when they threw people off of buildings and then knelt to pray. The violence in the Palestinian territories, and Gaza in particular, is directly related to Hamas activities. So to somehow engage Hamas and to reward that activity would make no sense. . . .
With Hamas, we certainly would not [negotiate]. They're a terrorist organization, and they're devoted to the destruction of Israel. There's not much to talk about.
How can that view be equated with being "pro-Israel" or "strongly supportive of Israel" if most Israelis think it's destructive to their interests? That's similar to the "reasoning" which has long claimed that we must continue to occupy Iraq for the good of the Iraqi people even though the vast majority of actual Iraqis have long favored a quick end to our occupation of their country. How can withdrawal from Iraq be deemed a betrayal of Iraqis when Iraqis themselves favor that? And how can views which many Israelis hold possibly be deemed "anti-Israel"?
The point here isn't that Israel should negotiate with Hamas but the perverse tools used to manipulate our political debate. With regard to virtually every issue, the right-wing American Jewish factions which act as arbiters for what views are "pro-Israel" and what views signify "anti-Israeli" animus or even anti-Semitism actually represent a minority -- often a small minority -- of Jews generally, and their views are sometimes even rejected by a majority of Israelis.
There are many Jews, both in Israel and in America, who vigorously disagree with the Likud policies. They care deeply for their fellow Jews in Israel and desire a peaceful solution to the endemic problems between Israel and the Palestinians, but they do not don't think that the current policies of Israel and the US will ever achieve this goal. Regardless of where one stands on the issues, fair-minded people ought to be able to disagree about how to approach these challenges without risking accusations of anti-Semitism.
Jewish voters must ask themselves exactly what Obama has asked them: Is it possible to be pro-Israel without being pro-Likud? If this sounds like heresy, consider what your answer would be to this question: Is it possible to be pro-American without being pro-Bush?
Unfortunately, Jewish voters can expect a continuing torrent of e-mails and whispers from well-meaning friends and relatives -- warning them that Israel and the Jews will be at increased risk if Obama is elected president. It is important to recognize that many of these e-mails and the commentary contained within them are part of a vicious propaganda campaign being waged against Barack Obama by right wing Jewish groups and individuals who are closely allied with the Republican party and who perceive Obama as a threat to their Likud connected, hawkish agenda.
For those who consider support for Israel as critical to their vote, the decision to support Obama should be based on a thoughtful review of his actual statements and policies, along with an assessment of our existing Middle East policies, which have been driven by perilous neocon fantasies of hegemony for the last 7 years.
The author is a pro-Israel Jewish American who strongly believes that the radical neocon/Likud policies are both bad for America and bad for Israel. He believes that the extremists who promote such policies have, for too long, held an undeserved exclusive claim to the label, "pro-Israel." He profusely thanks Ann Galloway and Robin Winnick for their assistance with editing and refining this commentary. This is his first ever diary on DailyKos.
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