heavenlyboy34
06-05-2009, 11:19 AM
How will the Jooz retaliate?! :eek:
Obama's Rhetoric Chills Some Supporters of Israel (http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0307/3177.html)
Barack Obama’s presidential campaign is moving to tamp down concerns among Democratic supporters of Israel with an e-mail from a Florida congressman to Jewish leaders singing the senator’s praises.
“What has always struck me about Senator Obama - and this is one of the reasons that I have endorsed his candidacy for president - is that a love for Israel and a desire to keep the Jewish people secure is evident not just in his work, but also in his heart,” wrote Rep. Robert Wexler (D) in the e-mail, which was sent to a list of Jewish community leaders.
The endorsement, which laid it on thick even by the standards of political communications, reflects a frustration that, despite Obama’s staunch support of the Israeli government in his words and votes, he has been dogged by questions from some of the most vocal and focused representatives of the pro-Israel community.
The root of the matter, as some observers of American Jewish politics see it, may be that Obama’s rhetoric and themes of reconciliation and common ground – the heart of his national popularity – sound off-key and even naïve in the context of a grim, confrontational moment in the Middle East.
Obama’s substantively hard line on Israel has cost him friends among Chicago’s Palestinian activists. But his rhetoric has given the pro-Israel side pause. As Israel’s most vocal American allies see it, the divisions there aren’t about partisan name-calling: they’re about murder and the survival of a Jewish state. Faced with apparently implacable enemies like the Palestinian group Hamas and the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, backers of Israel see little room for reconciliation, and little reason for hope.
Obama “fails to understand the totalitarian politics and sensibilities of the folks over there, who are not well meaning,” said E.J. Kessler, a New York Post editor who’s a longtime observer of American-Jewish politics. “His approach will appeal to a lot of lefty Jews, but it won’t appeal to the serious players,” she said, referring to the better-organized and better funded groups like the American Israel Public Affairs Council, AIPAC, at whose conference Obama put in an appearance earlier this month.
One of the attendees at that conference, in fact, said he was taken aback by elements of Obama’s rhetoric in an unscripted address to an evening reception.
“It was mystifying to me when [Obama] said that one of the reasons there isn’t peace in the Middle East is because of ‘cynicism.’ Cynicism? That’s the reason?” asked Morton Klein, the president of the Zionist Organization of America, a hard-liner who often gives voice to sentiments other Jewish leaders are more comfortable whispering “It makes me think that Barack Obama doesn’t understand the continuing Arab war against Israel.”
In those remarks, Obama worked his domestic assault on cynicism and hopelessness into an address on the Middle East. His attack on cynicism, and another line about the “cycle of violence” struck hard-line supporters of Israel as suggesting that the Israeli and Palestinian sides are equally to blame – something Obama himself has rejected in other, prepared remarks.
Klein said he found the notion of an Obama presidency “frightening.”
Obama is regularly rated the “worst for Israel” of leading American presidential candidates by a panel assembled by the liberal Israeli newspaper Haaretz. But Klein’s remarks, an open letter to Obama from an Iowa Jewish leader concerned that Obama had spoken of Palestinian suffering, and a host of more quietly expressed concerns, produce a certain weary frustration in Obama’s Jewish backers, who include prominent supporters of Israel. Obama has explicitly rejected any moral equivalence between the two side of the conflict. He has made his support for Israel’s government abundantly clear, and even voted for a resolution in support of the recent Israeli invasion of Lebanon.
He has “a strong record of support” for Israel, said Lee Rosenberg, a member of AIPAC’s board of directors.
“I attribute those doubts [in the Jewish community] to the fact that he is a relative newcomer and that his views are not widely known,” said Alan Solow, an Obama supporter who is prominent in Chicago’s Jewish community. “I also attribute it to the fact that he is an opponent of the war in Iraq and there are some members of the Jewish community who feel that aggressive support of the war in Iraq is somehow related to being pro-Israel.”
“The views that Senator Obama has expressed and the votes he’s made are totally consistent with every position that he’s ever expressed with me and they date back to the very, very early days when he was thinking about running for the U.S. Senate,” said Solow.
Solow said Obama’s views are all the sharper for having been formed by conversations with supporters of both the Israeli and Palestinian sides. Indeed, Obama has taken heat from some Palestinian activists who considered him an ally, and now consider him a sell-out.
According to interviews with Jewish leaders and activists, concern about Obama has a number of roots, ranging from recent engagement with the issue – he first visited Israel in 2006; to his opposition to the Iraq war, which many supporters of Israel backed; to his ties to Chicago’s black political scene, where leading figures like Jesse Jackson and Louis Farrakhan have been at odds with the Jewish community, though Obama has shown no sign of taking the lead of either.
Some among Obama’s supporters suggest he simply isn’t totally familiar with the code-like vocabulary that has grown up around the Israel-Palestine debate. Phrases like “cycle of violence” and – worse still – pledges to be “even-handed” are freighted with meaning in that context, and a second-hand report in January from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in January that Obama had once pledged to be “even-handed” suggested to some Jewish critics that he was taking the Palestinian side.
The Iraq war also hovers on the fringes of the debate over candidates’ positions on Israel. One group of pro-Israel group, Norpac, recently circulated an email soliciting donations to any of six candidates from either party, excluding Obama. The group’s president, Ben Chouake, said this wasn’t intended as criticism of Obama, but just reflected a lack of interest. But he added that Obama’s pledge to withdraw troops from Iraq – as he understood it – raised concern that the U.S. would be less able to confront Iran. (Obama argues that the Iraq invasion made Israel’s plight worse.)
“If you’re serious of confronting the regime of Iran and Ahmadinejad and his plans for mass murder then you have to look at the map and say how do we do this – what is the only way that we do this, what is the most practical way to do this,” Chouake said. “That is something [Obama] needs to rethink.”
Obama's Rhetoric Chills Some Supporters of Israel (http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0307/3177.html)
Barack Obama’s presidential campaign is moving to tamp down concerns among Democratic supporters of Israel with an e-mail from a Florida congressman to Jewish leaders singing the senator’s praises.
“What has always struck me about Senator Obama - and this is one of the reasons that I have endorsed his candidacy for president - is that a love for Israel and a desire to keep the Jewish people secure is evident not just in his work, but also in his heart,” wrote Rep. Robert Wexler (D) in the e-mail, which was sent to a list of Jewish community leaders.
The endorsement, which laid it on thick even by the standards of political communications, reflects a frustration that, despite Obama’s staunch support of the Israeli government in his words and votes, he has been dogged by questions from some of the most vocal and focused representatives of the pro-Israel community.
The root of the matter, as some observers of American Jewish politics see it, may be that Obama’s rhetoric and themes of reconciliation and common ground – the heart of his national popularity – sound off-key and even naïve in the context of a grim, confrontational moment in the Middle East.
Obama’s substantively hard line on Israel has cost him friends among Chicago’s Palestinian activists. But his rhetoric has given the pro-Israel side pause. As Israel’s most vocal American allies see it, the divisions there aren’t about partisan name-calling: they’re about murder and the survival of a Jewish state. Faced with apparently implacable enemies like the Palestinian group Hamas and the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, backers of Israel see little room for reconciliation, and little reason for hope.
Obama “fails to understand the totalitarian politics and sensibilities of the folks over there, who are not well meaning,” said E.J. Kessler, a New York Post editor who’s a longtime observer of American-Jewish politics. “His approach will appeal to a lot of lefty Jews, but it won’t appeal to the serious players,” she said, referring to the better-organized and better funded groups like the American Israel Public Affairs Council, AIPAC, at whose conference Obama put in an appearance earlier this month.
One of the attendees at that conference, in fact, said he was taken aback by elements of Obama’s rhetoric in an unscripted address to an evening reception.
“It was mystifying to me when [Obama] said that one of the reasons there isn’t peace in the Middle East is because of ‘cynicism.’ Cynicism? That’s the reason?” asked Morton Klein, the president of the Zionist Organization of America, a hard-liner who often gives voice to sentiments other Jewish leaders are more comfortable whispering “It makes me think that Barack Obama doesn’t understand the continuing Arab war against Israel.”
In those remarks, Obama worked his domestic assault on cynicism and hopelessness into an address on the Middle East. His attack on cynicism, and another line about the “cycle of violence” struck hard-line supporters of Israel as suggesting that the Israeli and Palestinian sides are equally to blame – something Obama himself has rejected in other, prepared remarks.
Klein said he found the notion of an Obama presidency “frightening.”
Obama is regularly rated the “worst for Israel” of leading American presidential candidates by a panel assembled by the liberal Israeli newspaper Haaretz. But Klein’s remarks, an open letter to Obama from an Iowa Jewish leader concerned that Obama had spoken of Palestinian suffering, and a host of more quietly expressed concerns, produce a certain weary frustration in Obama’s Jewish backers, who include prominent supporters of Israel. Obama has explicitly rejected any moral equivalence between the two side of the conflict. He has made his support for Israel’s government abundantly clear, and even voted for a resolution in support of the recent Israeli invasion of Lebanon.
He has “a strong record of support” for Israel, said Lee Rosenberg, a member of AIPAC’s board of directors.
“I attribute those doubts [in the Jewish community] to the fact that he is a relative newcomer and that his views are not widely known,” said Alan Solow, an Obama supporter who is prominent in Chicago’s Jewish community. “I also attribute it to the fact that he is an opponent of the war in Iraq and there are some members of the Jewish community who feel that aggressive support of the war in Iraq is somehow related to being pro-Israel.”
“The views that Senator Obama has expressed and the votes he’s made are totally consistent with every position that he’s ever expressed with me and they date back to the very, very early days when he was thinking about running for the U.S. Senate,” said Solow.
Solow said Obama’s views are all the sharper for having been formed by conversations with supporters of both the Israeli and Palestinian sides. Indeed, Obama has taken heat from some Palestinian activists who considered him an ally, and now consider him a sell-out.
According to interviews with Jewish leaders and activists, concern about Obama has a number of roots, ranging from recent engagement with the issue – he first visited Israel in 2006; to his opposition to the Iraq war, which many supporters of Israel backed; to his ties to Chicago’s black political scene, where leading figures like Jesse Jackson and Louis Farrakhan have been at odds with the Jewish community, though Obama has shown no sign of taking the lead of either.
Some among Obama’s supporters suggest he simply isn’t totally familiar with the code-like vocabulary that has grown up around the Israel-Palestine debate. Phrases like “cycle of violence” and – worse still – pledges to be “even-handed” are freighted with meaning in that context, and a second-hand report in January from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in January that Obama had once pledged to be “even-handed” suggested to some Jewish critics that he was taking the Palestinian side.
The Iraq war also hovers on the fringes of the debate over candidates’ positions on Israel. One group of pro-Israel group, Norpac, recently circulated an email soliciting donations to any of six candidates from either party, excluding Obama. The group’s president, Ben Chouake, said this wasn’t intended as criticism of Obama, but just reflected a lack of interest. But he added that Obama’s pledge to withdraw troops from Iraq – as he understood it – raised concern that the U.S. would be less able to confront Iran. (Obama argues that the Iraq invasion made Israel’s plight worse.)
“If you’re serious of confronting the regime of Iran and Ahmadinejad and his plans for mass murder then you have to look at the map and say how do we do this – what is the only way that we do this, what is the most practical way to do this,” Chouake said. “That is something [Obama] needs to rethink.”