Israel Matzav

Obama's Jews

My colleague Marc Zell has an opinion piece in Wednesday's JPost (there are no newspapers in Israel on Thursday, Independence Day) in which he discusses Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Hussein Obama's Jewish support. A lot of Obama's Jewish supporters are a lot more committed to Obama than they are to anything Jewish.

Of course, several of the spokespeople and backers of the Obama campaign are themselves Jewish. But who are these people and why are they supporting a candidate whose views/or those of his advisors do not appear to vary significantly from those hostile-to-Israel views of former President Jimmy Carter?

First, there are several who are only nominally Jewish, but are viscerally anti-Israel. One example is George Soros, the multi-billionaire, who said that America must undergo a "certain de-Nazification process" because of its policy on Iraq, and accused AIPAC of directing American policy in the Middle East.

For Soros, who, although the world's 28th richest man, has never been involved in any specifically Jewish project or charity, supporting Israel results from "tribal sectarianism" which is "unappealingly chauvinistic."

Obama and Clinton both attempted to distance themselves from Soros's anti-AIPAC remarks but did not hesitate to accept his multi-million dollar contributions to further "progressive American values" and "political change in America."

Another example is Princeton emeritus Professor Richard Falk who endorses Obama for President. Falk recently stood by his statements that it would not be "an irresponsible overstatement to associate the treatment of Palestinians with the criminalized Nazi record of collective atrocity". Falk, who was appointed by the unabashedly anti-Israel United Nations Human Rights Council as its special investigator on Israeli actions in Judea and Samaria, was actually denied entry to Israel by the Olmert Government on the grounds that his views were so grossly biased and unfair.

Falk has also declared that the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center was the result of the fact that "the mass of humanity… finds itself under the heels of US economic, military, cultural and economic power."

And take, Obama's official blogger, Sam Graham-Felsen, a former writer for left-wing, Nation, and Socialist Viewpoint, he credits his political awakening to another infamous Jew, linguist and pop-philosopher, and extremist critic of America and Israel, Noam Chomsky. Interestingly, Chomsky has also been "credited" as a major influence on none other than Obama's lightning rod pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Here is what official Obama blogger Graham-Felsen says about Chomsky:

"For me, hearing Chomsky speak for the first time was a life-changing experience. His ability to take preconceptions and destroy them-to completely remodel one's understanding of reality with cold, hard facts-blew me away. When I left what was then the ARCO Forum last fall, I felt as though I had been through the Matrix and back. Chomsky really has this effect because he bombards you with evidence and logic, not empty rhetoric. It is nearly impossible to hear him or read him-once you've actually checked his facts yourself (he even cites page numbers in public addresses)-and deny what he's saying." (That must have been some well-grounded world view that could be completely remodeled by 30 minutes of Chomsky.)

The Jews supporting Obama are not all of this ilk. There are many for whom the Jewish/Israeli concerns may or may not be important but in any event are secondary to Obama's major appeal: change.

Read it all.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 12:05 PM