The education of Barack Hussein Obama came from extreme Leftist Jews
In 2007, I reached the conclusion that Barack Hussein Obama was bad news for Israel based on who his friends are. Ali Abunimah, Edward Said, Rashid Khalidi, Jeremiah Wright - they all pointed in one direction, and it wasn't a good direction for Israel.Bret Stephens reports that Obama supporter Peter Beinart says that we have it all wrong. Obama's views on Israel came from a group of far Left Chicago Jews, who “bred in Obama a specific, and subversive, vision of American Jewish identity and of the Jewish state” (Hat Tip: Herb G). (For those who - like me - do not have online access to the Wall Street Journal, you can find the full article here).
At the center of this coterie, Mr. Beinart explains, was a Chicago rabbi named Arnold Jacob Wolf. In 1969, Wolf staged a synagogue protest in favor of Black Panther Bobby Seale. In the early 1970s, he founded an organization that met with Yasser Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization—this being some 20 years before Arafat officially renounced terrorism. In the early 1990s, Wolf denounced the construction of the Holocaust Museum in Washington.Read the whole thing.
And, in 1996, the rabbi “was one of [Mr. Obama's] earliest and most prominent supporters” when he ran for the Illinois state Senate. Wolf later described Mr. Obama’s views on Israel as “on the line of Peace Now”—an organization with a long history of blaming Israel for the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Mr. Obama had other Jewish mentors, too, according to Mr. Beinart. One was Bettylu Saltzman, whose father, developer Philip Klutznick, had joined Wolf in “his break with the Israeli government in the 1970s.” Ms. Saltzman, writes Mr. Beinart, “still seethes with hostility toward the mainstream Jewish groups” and later became active in left-wing Jewish political groups like J Street. Among other things, it was she who “organized the rally against the Iraq War where Obama proclaimed his opposition to an American invasion.”
Ms. Saltzman also introduced Mr. Obama to David Axelrod, himself a longtime donor to a group called the New Israel Fund. For a flavor of the NIF’s world view, a WikiLeaks cable from 2010 noted that an NIF associate director told U.S. embassy officials in Tel Aviv that “the disappearance of a Jewish state would not be the tragedy that Israelis fear since it would become more democratic.”
Ruth of Ruthfully Yours puts rabbi Wolf into a context that I recognize.
Breira is the organization to which Stephens refers when he says Wolf started an organization in the early 70s. Arnold Jacob Wolf, whom Beinart singles out as the center of the far left coterie who shaped Obama’s attitudes toward Israel, was chairman of Breira, the first of the Jewish organizations (J Street is its current descendant) which sought to destroy Israel in the name of saving her soul. In 1977 AFSI published an expose of Breira by Rael Jean Isaac that the organization itself credited with leading to its demise. Readers interested in learning more about Breira and the ideas and role of Arnold Jacob Wolf can find the Breira pamphlet on the AFSI website. I will reproduce in a subsequent Ruthfully “The Rabbis of Breira” which has more material on the writings of Arnold Jacob Wolf. Thy destroyers and they that make thee waste shall go forth of thee. Isaiah 49:17I have discussed Breira several times on this blog, most notably here and here. And rabbi Wolf sent out a letter seeking support for Obama during the 2008 campaign that I discussed here.
Labels: Barack Hussein Obama
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 8:16 PM
3 Comments:
Hello Carl,
The saying "A man is known by the company he keeps" is not absolutely true. I, for instance, have leftist friends who always side with the Palestinians and have rightist friends who not always support Israel and yet I am a strong supporter of Medinat Yisrael and I always put its interests first. I learn from the left wing; in fact, I insist upon it. It's sheer strategy
Now, President Obama may have these Jewish Leftist friends who may have shared with him a lot of things; however I do not think that his rational fashion of doing politics was highly influenced by them. Nevertheless, I will not deny that the presence of such sort of advisers in the Obama Administration is the main problem behind the past thick air that the US and Israel were breathing until recently.
President Obama's political actions towards Israel (let's not forget his speech at the UN in September 2011; one that no other US President had dared to give) speak louder than any diplomatic words towards the Palestinians/Arabs in general.
Cheers
I'm thinking the Jewish lefties have had less influence than President Obama's early life did. Max, I see the "political actions" of upsetting the apple cart in favor of Iran, the Muslim Bros, al Shabab, the Taliban, all around Israel, as proof of hostility. All those groups want Jews (not just in Israel) dead. So, sharia forces in Egypt, Iraq, even Afghanistan, have benefitted from having President Obama's hand on the steering wheel.
BTW, all this talk of the Jewish Left (et tu, Israel?) is exactly why I keep mentioning at the marcuse marxist New Left martial redistributionist approach to things is NOT what is called for in the Torah. Not, not, not. But apparently no one on any side cares about that.
מְהָרְסַיִךְ וּמַחֲרִיבַיִךְ, מִמֵּךְ יֵצֵאוּ", - ישעיהו מט, יז"
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