Love of the Land: Does Obama Really Think He Can Micromanage American Jews?

Does Obama Really Think He Can Micromanage American Jews?

Marty Peretz
The New Republic
22 April '10

There are signs that he thinks he can. Barak Ravid reports in yesterday’s Ha’aretz that a high-level but unnamed U.S. official has complained about American Jews speaking up about how they feel and what they think about U.S. policy towards Jerusalem. I don’t particularly agree with what I’ve discerned as Ravid’s political views. But he is certainly a reliable journalist. He did not make this up.

It’s one thing, however unbecoming, for the Obami to lecture Israel about its capital. Still, truth be told, the U.S. not only is apoplectic about the 180-odd thousands of Jews who live (and have lived) in areas of the city beyond the temporary armistice lines of 1949, it has never recognized anything specifically Israeli in even western Jerusalem. If an American baby is born, for example, in Kiryat Yovel, an old Jewish neighborhood in the “new city” (or the “western sector,” as it used to be called), of Jerusalem, his or her place of birth will be registered by the American consulate not as “Jerusalem, Israel” but just as plain “Jerusalem.” How is that for the U.S. sticking its head in the sand? And, even though the Congress has legislated transferring the ambassadorial mission from shabby Hayarkon Street in Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, several presidents have simply refused.

Look up “U.S. Consulate, Jerusalem.” It is eerie how unresponsive and indifferent to historical realities the site is. It’s almost as if Israel does not exist there at all.

In any case, the churlish American factotum cited above was upset that prominent American Jews had made their views known about Obama’s obvious hostility to Jewish Jerusalem in general. In fact, the president has never, NEVER acknowledged the special role of Jerusalem in Jewish history, in Jewish religion, in the Jewish present. Believe me: this is not an oversight. I wrote about this twice during Passover.

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Love of the Land: Does Obama Really Think He Can Micromanage American Jews?

Love of the Land: Is the Obama Administration Trying to Silence Critics of its Middle East Policy?

Is the Obama Administration Trying to Silence Critics of its Middle East Policy?

Ron Radosh
pajamasmedia.com
21 April '10

As readers of The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal know, last week Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel and World Jewish Congress head Ronald S. Lauder purchased full page ads challenging President Obama’s policies on the Middle East and Israel.

Lauder’s ad appeared on April 15th. “We are concerned,” Lauder began, “about the nuclear ambitions of an Iranian regime that brags about its genocidal intentions against Israel. We are concerned that the Jewish state is being isolated and delegitimized.” He continued:

Our concern grows to alarm as we consider some disturbing questions. Why does the thrust of this Administration’s Middle East rhetoric seem to blame Israel for the lack of movement on peace talks? After all, it is the Palestinians, not Israel, who refuse to negotiate.

Israel has made unprecedented concessions. It has enacted the most far reaching West Bank settlement moratorium in Israeli history.

Israel has publicly declared support for a two-state solution. Conversely, many Palestinians continue their refusal to even acknowledge Israel’s right to exist.

The conflict’s root cause has always been the Palestinian refusal to accept Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people. Every American President who has tried to broker a peace agreement has collided with that Palestinian intransigence, sooner or later. Recall President Clinton’s anguish when his peace proposals were bluntly rejected by the Palestinians in 2000. Settlements were not the key issue then.

They are not the key issue now.

“Appeasement,” Lauder wrote the President, “does not work.” The real threat was not Israeli settlements, but “a nuclear armed Iran.”

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Love of the Land: Is the Obama Administration Trying to Silence Critics of its Middle East Policy?

Love of the Land: The Jewish rebellion against Barack Obama

The Jewish rebellion against Barack Obama

Fresnozionism.org
21 April '10

Shmuel Rosner asks,

What’s with all those new “Jewish ads” against Obama?

I understand the frustration with Obama, but can’t quite see the logic behind the ads. It only raises the stakes and makes Obama less prone let Netanyahu off the hook. An American President can’t lose an internal battle to a foreign leader – and the ads (Lauder, Wiesel) makes this an internal battle.

In addition to the Lauder and Wiesel advertisements, we should include this article by Ed Koch, former New York Mayor. Koch is important because he is a Democrat who strongly supported Obama in 2008; Lauder is a Republican who has been reported to be a possible challenger to NY Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer, while Wiesel’s public persona is apolitical.

So why have high-profile Jews of various political stripes found it necessary to take Obama to task over Mideast policy?

It’s Obama who started the latter day Jewish Wars when he empowered his own personal Jewish Lobby, J Street. Invited to the White House while “right-wing” groups like the Zionist Organization of America were dis-invited, J (Judenrat) Street pumps out propaganda in the form of misleading polls and press releases whose purpose is to give the impression that most American Jews are behind Obama and his policies — especially including his anti-Zionist stance.

The intent is to bolster support for his position among non-Jews — who, after all, are 98% of the population — who reason that if even Jews support Obama’s efforts to forcibly create a Palestinian state, reestablish 1949 borders and divide Jerusalem, then it must be the best thing for the region as a whole, including Israel.

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Love of the Land: The Jewish rebellion against Barack Obama