Israel Matzav

What's wrong with America's Jewish leadership?

This is classic, simply classic. The President of the United States gives a speech that sets out a program that, if adopted, would make the continued survival of the State of Israel nothing short of even more miraculous than it has been to this point. And America's Jewish 'leadership,' thinking it's still in the shtetl dealing with a poritz, rushes to spin the speech as not anti-Israel. Take Abe Foxman, for instance. Please, take him.

I just got off the phone with Abraham Foxman, the Holocaust survivor who heads the Anti-Defamation League. He does not agree with the claim by some Republican 2012 presidential candidates and conservative commentators that Obama threw Israel under the bus in his Arab Spring speech yesterday.

The claim by conservatives is based on Obama’s assertion yesterday that an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal must be based on pre-1967 lines with land swaps, which has been widely distorted by the right to mean Obama wants Israel to retreat to pre-1967 borders. Foxman disagrees with that characterization.

“I don’t see this as the president throwing Israel under the bus,” he told me. “He’s saying with `swaps.’ It’s not 1967 borders in the abstract. It’s not an edict. It’s a recommendation of a structure for negotiations.”

Foxman said that the broader characterization of the speech as anti-Israel by some on the right is also off base, citing its insistence on Israel’s right to self-defense, its opposition to the Palestinian statehood at the United Nations, and other matters.

“The speech indicated to me that this administration has come a long way in better understanding and appreciating the difficulties facing both parties, but especially Israel in trying to make peace with the Palestinians,” Foxman said.

Read the whole thing.

This is why Foxman is wrong. And even Obama knows it.

Labels: Abe Foxman, American Jewish leadership, Barack Hussein Obama, poritz syndrome

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 7:48 AM