Israel Matzav

'Republicans' for Obama

Debbie Schlussel reports on 'Republicans' for Obama, a group headed by Rita Hauser, a Bush family friend whose law firm represented the 'Palestine Liberation Organization' in the US for many years (I don't know whether they still do), former Congressman Jim Leach and former Senator Lincoln Chaffee.

I didn't follow all of Debbie's links, but one thing I did not see mentioned in her post was Hauser being one of five American Jews (and the leader of the group as I recall) that met with PLO leader Yasser Arafat in Stockholm in December 1988, and got him to mouth an acceptance of Israel's 'existence' so that the Reagan administration could lift the ban against talking to him a month after the elections and allow the current President Bush's father's administration to deal with him.

Yasir Arafat said today that the Palestine Liberation Organization accepted the existence of the state of Israel. His statement, which he presented as a milestone, was immediately dismissed in Israel and greeted coldly by the United States.

After a two-day meeting with five prominent American Jews here, a P.L.O. delegation led by Mr. Arafat said in a joint statement that the Palestinian parliament in exile last month had ''accepted the existence of Israel as a state in the region'' and ''declared its rejection and condemnation of terrorism in all its forms.'' [ Text of statement, page A10. ]

At a news conference, Mr. Arafat said, ''We accept two states, the Palestine state and the Jewish state of Israel.''

The Palestinian leader portrayed the statement as an important clarification of the declaration last month in Algiers by the Palestine National Council, the P.L.O. legislative body. After the Algiers meeting, debated had raged over whether the Palestinians had implicitly recognized Israel and truly renounced terrorism.

In Jerusalem, Israeli leaders discounted the Stockholm declaration and Mr. Arafat's comments. Foreign Minister Shimon Peres characterized them as a ''cunning exercise in public relations.'' What was needed, he said, was ''a commitment in reality'' to an end to violence. Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir was similarly dismissive.

The United States has long said it would not deal with the P.L.O. until it stated unambiguously that it recognized Israel's right to exist and United Nations Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, which lay out the basis for a negotiated settlement and peace in the Middle East. The United States has also asked for an unequivocal statement that the P.L.O. renounces all forms of terrorism.

The statement today fell short of meeting these longstanding American requests in that it continued to attach conditions like discussing United Nations resolutions on the Palestinian question at an international conference.

...

Foreign Minister Sten Andersson of Sweden, who arranged the meeting between the P.L.O. delegation and the five American Jews, said the statement represents ''a breakthrough in the peace process'' because ''the P.L.O. explicitly accepts Israel as a state.''

The American Jews who met in Sweden with the P.L.O. urged the United States Government to begin talking with the P.L.O.

''We hope deeply that the U.S. Government will now open a dialogue with the P.L.O.,'' said Rita E. Hauser, who heads the American arm of the International Center for Peace in the Middle East, a Tel Aviv-based research group. ''The P.L.O. has stated what the U.S. has demanded since 1975.''

For the P.L.O. to be invited to any meaningful peace talks, it must convince the United States Government that it has truly embarked on a course of moderation, favoring negotiation over acts of violence.

The members of the American Jewish delegation emerged from their talks with the Palestinian chairman convinced that a real shift in policy and tactics had occurred. In particular, they cited the P.L.O.'s acceptance of a ''two-state solution'' to the conflict in the Middle East, meaning that both Israel and a Palestinian state can exist side by side.

''A historic change has taken place in the attitude and the analysis by the P.L.O. of the situation in Middle East,'' said Abraham L. Udovitch, professor of Middle Eastern history at Princeton University, who was one of the five Americans at the Stockholm meeting.

In the private sessions, Jewish participants said, Mr. Arafat repeatedly asserted that the Algiers document ''abrogated and nullified'' the P.L.O. charter, a declaration dating to the 1960's that called for the destruction of the state of Israel. Don't Speak for Everyone

The Americans meeting with Mr. Arafat have been criticized by some Jewish organizations and the Israeli Government as unrepresentative of all Jews and for being exploited by Mr. Arafat in his effort to fashion a moderate image for the P.L.O.

In response, the American participants stressed that they did not pretend to represent Jews as a community, but came because they felt their participation could be constructive.

''Any time you get involved in something political, you are being used to some extent,'' said Stanley Sheinbaum, the economist and publisher, who is a regent of the University of California at Los Angeles. ''But I don't mind being used if it furthers the process of peace in the Middle East.''

In addition to Mrs. Hauser, Professor Udovitch and Mr. Sheinbaum, the American Jewish participants were Drora Kass, executive director for the American branch of the International Center for Peace in the Middle East, and Menachem Rosensaft, a founder of the International Network of Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors.

Twenty years later, it's still clear what a lie that was.

One personal story. Okay two. Debbie mentions the name of Hauser's law firm. Around the time I graduated law school (1984), Hauser was still a powerful partner at that firm, and I had several friends at that firm who were Orthodox Jews (I worked at a different firm). In those days, we didn't wear our yarmulka's (skullcaps) to work. But often we would put them on behind closed office doors when - for example - eating dinner after hours. A partner walked into a friend's office one night when he had a skullcap on because he was eating dinner and gave him a hard time. So the friend got an even more senior partner to walk into her office with a skullcap a couple of nights later and tell her that he heard that she has a problem with men wearing skullcaps in the office, and he'd like to know what that problem is....

While I never worked for that firm, I did have a couple of rounds of interviews there, and I remember meeting a woman partner around that same time in an interview and getting a lecture about how we could never wear skullcaps in the office, because the firm wants to be known as a 'good law firm' and not as a 'good Jewish law firm.' Maybe the most uncomfortable interview I've ever had. When the offer came through, I never considered it because of that interview.

Finally, if Hauser has become a turncoat against the Bush's and the Republican party, she's apparently not the only one. A certain Yiddish-speaking former Secretary of State from the Bronx is apparently about to endorse Obama and speak at the Democratic convention. I never did trust that guy.

Anyway, Debbie has much more about the 'Republicans' who are backing Obama. One thing they all seem to have in common is that they hate Israel.

The Obama campaign's conference call yesterday on Republicans who back the presidential bid of the Democrat from Illinois showcased quite a crew. There was Rita Hauser, the PLO apologist whose law firm, Stroock & Stroock & Lavan, racked up millions of dollars in legal fees over the years as a registered foreign agent of Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority. Ms. Hauser met with Mr. Arafat as early as 1988, when America still considered him a terrorist and refused even to allow him access to the United Nations headquarters in New York. Though the meeting may have had the tacit approval of the State Department, Israel publicly objected at the time, though it too chose eventually to treat with Arafat.

Ms. Hauser helped fund the Edward Said chair at Columbia for Mr. Obama's pal Rashid Khalidi. "I made a contribution," Ms. Hauser told us back in 2003, describing the chair's namesake, Professor Edward Said, as "a friend of mine. I admire him." Ms. Hauser said she was happy with Mr. Khalidi's selection as a teacher there. "I like him very much. He's a splendid guy, a Palestinian intellectual, a first-class choice, and I think everybody's pleased," she said of the professor whose errors The Sun exposed in its August 5, 2004, editorial, What the UAE Bought."

Mr. Obama also is boasting of Lincoln Chafee, who, as a senator representing Rhode Island, was responsible for blocking Secretary Bolton from being confirmed as the American ambassador at the United Nations on the grounds that the Bush administration had been too pro-Israel. He was one of two Republicans to vote against repeal of the estate tax, even though he gained his Senate seat in 1999 by being appointed to fill the remainder of his father's term. He voted against confirming Justice Alito. He was one of only three Republicans in 2006 who voted against an extension of the Bush tax cuts on dividends and capital gains.

Back in 2006, a New York Sun article quoted a longtime pro-Israel activist in Washington, Morris Amitay, as saying Mr. Chafee "has one of the worst records of anyone in the Senate, definitely in the bottom 10% of class as far as pro-Israel initiatives are concerned." The Sun article noted that in 2003, Mr. Chafee was one of only four senators to vote against the Syria Accountability Act, a sanctions measure. In 2002, Mr. Chafee was the only Republican senator to vote against giving President Bush the authority to take military action in Iraq. According to at least one press report, Mr. Chafee left the Republican party in 2007 after losing his 2006 campaign for re-election.

The third "Republican for Obama" after Ms. Hauser and Mr. Chafee — and the only other one who participated in the call — was a former congressman from Iowa, James Leach. Mr. Leach took to the House floor in 2004 to deliver a speech titled "The Case for Restraint in Iran," warning against American or Israeli attacks on the mullahs's nuclear facilities. "It is hard to believe that outside military intervention would lead to anything except greater ensconcement of authoritarian mullah rule," Mr. Leach said, calling instead for America to agree to a comprehensive nuclear test ban. In 2006, when the House voted 397 to 21 to pass the Iran Freedom Support Act that toughened sanctions on Tehran, Mr. Leach was one of the 21 congressmen who opposed it.

Read it all.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 1:55 AM