Israel Matzav

Barack Obama must be wondering what hit him

President Hussein Obama must be wondering what hit him. Former Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren continues to hammer away at the President, publishing two more op-ed pieces in the US media on Friday, one of which really gets into Obama's kishkes.

In Foreign Policy, Oren took Obama to task for not joining the solidarity march in France after the attack on Charlie Hebdo or the kosher supermarket earlier this year, nor for sending two senior officials who were in Paris at the time to the march. He also took the president to task for not admitting that the attack on the kosher market was directed a Jews, but rather an act perpetrated by “vicious zealots who... randomly shoot a bunch of folks in a deli.”

“Obama’s boycotting of the memorial in Paris, like his refusal to acknowledge the identity of the perpetrators, the victims, or even the location of the market massacre, provides a broad window into his thinking on Islam and the Middle East. Simply put: The president could not participate in a protest against Muslim radicals whose motivations he sees as a distortion, rather than a radical interpretation, of Islam,” he wrote. “And if there are no terrorists spurred by Islam, there can be no purposely selected Jewish shop or intended Jewish victims, only a deli and randomly present folks."

During his first year in office, Obama, Oren argued, offered in essence “a new deal in which the United States would respect popularly chosen Muslim leaders who were authentically rooted in their traditions and willing to engage with the West.”

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Oren attributed this orientation to the intellectual milieu in which Obama grew up, as well as his personal history. “I could imagine how a child raised by a Christian mother might see himself as a natural bridge between her two Muslim husbands. I could also speculate how that child’s abandonment by those men could lead him, many years later, to seek acceptance by their co-religionists.”

The tragedy, he said, was that Obama’s outreach to the Muslim world was rejected.

“Historians will likely look back at Obama’s policy toward Islam with a combination of curiosity and incredulousness,” he wrote. “While some may credit the president for his good intentions, others might fault him for being naïve and detached from a complex and increasingly lethal reality.”

In the LA Times piece, headlined “Why Obama is wrong about Iran being 'rational' on nukes,” Oren quoted Obama’s comment in a recent interview that being anti-Semitic, or racist, doesn't preclude one from from being interested in survival, and that just because Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei is anti-Semitic “doesn't mean that this overrides all of his other considerations.”

Oren wrote that the dispute whether Iran was a rational or irrational actor was “ever-present” in the discussions between the US and Israel when he was ambassador. While the American view the Iranians as logical actors, Israel could not rule out the idea that “the Iranians would be willing to sacrifice half of their people as martyrs in a war intended to ‘wipe Israel off the map.’”

“Obama would never say that anti-black racists are rational,” Oren argued. “And he would certainly not trust them with the means – however monitored – to reach their racist goals. That was the message Israeli officials and I conveyed in our discreet talks with the administration. The response was not, to our mind, reasonable."

Oren, while he served in Washington, was considered very cautious and diplomatic, and rarely caught flack for comments deemed “undiplomatic.”

Oren has been blasted by opposition MK's Tzipi Livni (goes without saying), Avigdor Liberman and Yair Lapid (the latter also goes without saying). But Lee Smith wrote some similar things in Tablet Magazine last week, but from a slightly different angle.

Whether Obama is an honorary Jew or not, the evidence suggests that he keenly understands certain peculiarities of the Jewish communal psyche—survival strategies that distinguish the Jews from other American minority groups. The president’s use of Jewish aides and organizations to advance his policies with the Jewish community shows that Obama is correct in believing that Jewish politics are often motivated by fear, which can range from the existential fear of mass extermination to the more prosaic fear of looking shabby in front of the goyim. And Obama isn’t using his energy and inspiring leadership skills to help these people rise above their fear; he is instead capitalizing on it—masterfully, ruthlessly—by manipulating American Jews in ways that other minority groups would find unbelievably insulting.

Consider recent statements from Jewish aides to the president. Netanyahu is the kind of politician, said David Axelrod, “who run[s] for public office because they want to be somebody.” Israel doesn’t know what’s best for it, Obama’s former envoy to the Palestinian-Israeli peace process Martin Indyk told Israeli media last week. “You are an emotional nation, not a rational nation,” he sniffed. “You work from your gut and not your mind.”

It’s very hard to imagine Catholic policymakers helping a U.S. president undermine and insult the Vatican and then defending the president when he says that he understands what the church stands for better than the pope does. During the darkest moments of the AIDS crisis, there were no gay organizations that encouraged U.S. policymakers to cut funding for a cure. There are no transgender activists who argue that the real threat to the community comes not from people who fear and hate transgendered people, but from within the transgender community itself. Eric Holder doesn’t scold people of color that they’re an emotional, not a rational, people, or imply that black officeholders get into politics because they “want to be somebody.”

The issue in America today is clearly not that pro-Obama people or organizations are leading the American Jewish community to destruction. Yet at the same time, it is also clear that two millennia of diasporic dependence and insecurity have left a deep and probably permanent imprint on the Jewish communal psyche. Even in America, a free country in which Jews have never been subject to European-style mass oppression or persecutions, the role performed by “court Jews’ still makes structural and emotional sense to people who like to think of themselves as independent thinkers. Otherwise, it would be hard to explain why Obama still has the support of the majority of the Jewish community for policies that from any rational perspective—the perspective of any other minority group—cannot be seen as anything other than detrimental to the Jewish state.

In other words, Oren is right about Obama's bad treatment of Jews as compared with any other ethnic group. Obama isn't playing any other ethnic group - only Jews. And according to Smith, Obama is playing the Jews like a master.

But what about the Jews who speak for the administration? None of several former high-ranking Jewish officials was willing to speak on the record on this subject, but every single one of them agreed that this moment was an extraordinary one. “No administration will always do what the Jewish community wants or what Jews think best for Israel, just as none will ever always do what Catholics want or Greek Americans or farmers,” said a former Jewish American policymaker who served in high-level positions in several administrations. “When you are in an administration you know this is coming. If the variance is in the particular area you cover, it can be painful. If it gets repeated, you need to change jobs or leave the government. That’s normal.”

But: “The Obama situation is not normal,” he continued, “due to the length and depth of the confrontation with Israel and the harm that’s being done. It should give rise to soul searching by Jewish appointees. In my view they’ve become enablers, in the worst sense of that word. That not one single Jew has left in protest is remarkable considering that relations have not been worse in a long, long time.”

By not resigning in protest, Obama’s Jewish aides have arguably not only harmed their community; they weakened their own position—which was, in a sense, ultimately far more detrimental. In a town where the appearance of power is power, Obama’s Jewish defenders had no idea which way the president was actually going. They got played, and now everyone knows it. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew wasn’t in the room when Obama was making Iran policy with Ben Rhodes and Valerie Jarrett. Martin Indyk didn’t know that a central part of Obama’s Middle East policy—without which the Iran deal would be impossible—was to weaken AIPAC, the cornerstone of the pro-Israel community. AIPAC, in turn, didn’t see itself as a target of the Obama Administration. Instead, it kept telling itself that bipartisan support for Israel was the very premise of its power. Had these actors actually participated in helping the president pull a fast one on the Jewish community, at least they’d have showed they had connections to power. The biggest problem with the Jews around Obama is not that they spoke up on behalf of policies that may very well turn out to be harmful to the Jewish state; it’s that they were so clearly out of the loop—a status quo they will now bequeath to future administrations.

In this regard, even AIPAC’s ostensible rival J Street got played. As one senior official in the pro-Israel community told me, he believes that “their standing has diminished a lot. The administration used J Street and included them, and went to their conferences, because they believed they would be a useful tool.” But J Street is weakened not, as the pro-Israel official believes, because it plowed its own field recklessly. If you describe yourself as a pro-Israel organization then your power is directly proportional to how important a role Israel plays in American foreign policy. If your actions, like J Street’s, contribute to making Israel about as important to American foreign policy as Malaysia is, then you aren’t very important either.

Read the whole thing.

What Smith is describing is what I have called the Poritz Syndrome.

Oren is an historian and he has an historian's perspective. I'm sure he sees everything that Smith sees and has many more facts and data points to prove what Smith is saying. Unfortunately, Oren is getting no support here in Israel, other than Netanyahu's refusal to disown him.... Yet Oren disowned Netanyahu by running for the Knesset with Kahlon's party. Perhaps there's a lesson there for the historian too.

In the meantime, my copy of Oren's book is on order. Can't wait to read this one.

Labels: Avigdor Lieberman, Barack Hussein Obama, Binyamin Netanyahu, court Jew, Jack Lew, Martin Indyk, Michael Oren, Moshe Kahlon, poritz syndrome, Tzipi Livni, Yair Lapid

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 6:24 PM 2 comments

America's modern Orthodox Jewish leadership afflicted with the poritz syndrome?

Is America's modern Orthodox Jewish leadership infected by the poritz syndrome?

Please recall what the poritz syndrome is:

Poritz (in Yiddish )was the ruler back in old eastern Europe who could make or break the lives of the Jews living in his shmate kingdom.

The Jews developed a behavior that was all about pleasing the Poritz.

They did not know it but they were dhimmis just like their brothers in the Arab countries.

Sadly , this behavior was not fool proof and when the need for money or property or blood came up - the Jews got their pogrom.

The CZAR USED TO SEND THE KASAKS to burn houses and rape Jewish women so that their terrible poverty and anger over it will not make them do this to him.

Some Jews seem to suffer from the Poritz syndrome even though they really should not.

There have been some voices in Israel this week - like the Dry Bones cartoon above - that hint at ulterior  motives of US Secretary of State John FN Kerry in pursuing a 'two-state solution' between Israel and the 'Palestinians.'

Even Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League - about as mainstream as you can get among the American secular Jewish leadership, but someone who sees anti-Semitism in every corner - blasted Kerry earlier this week. 

Describing the potential for expanded boycotts of Israel makes it more, not less, likely that the talks will not succeed; makes it more, not less, likely that Israel will be blamed if the talks fail; and more, not less, likely that boycotts will ensue. Your comments, irrespective of your intentions, will inevitably be seen by Palestinians and anti-Israel activists as an incentive not to reach an agreement; as an indicator that if things fall apart, Israel will be blamed; and as legitimizing boycott activity.

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But the core of the conflict was and remains Palestinian unwillingness to accept Israel's legitimacy and permanence as a Jewish state. That is why the Palestinians rejected the 1947 partition, that is why they rejected recognizing Israel after the 1967 war, and that is why Israeli offers at Camp David in 2000 and Annapolis in 2008 were rejected or allowed to go unanswered.  It is Palestinians who must hear the message that not only has their rejectionism been the major obstacle to peace, but it has also been the main source of their suffering and misery over the years. It is time for them to make the qualitative leap toward peace and acceptance of the legitimacy of the Jewish state.

On Thursday, a group of Israeli rabbis calling themselves the Committee to Save the Land and People of Israel, published a letter that accused Kerry of declaring war against God. 

“Your incessant efforts to expropriate integral parts of our Holy Land and hand them over to Abbas’s terrorist gang, amount to a declaration of war against the Creator and Ruler of the universe! For G-d awarded the entire Land of Israel to our ancestors, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, in order that they bequeath it, as an everlasting inheritance, to their descendants, the Jewish people, until the end of all time,” the Rabbis wrote.

“If you continue on this destructive path, you will ensure your everlasting disgrace in Jewish history for bringing calamity upon the Jewish people,” the letter continued, invoking the specter “heavenly punishment for everyone involved.”

On Thursday afternoon, the Rabbinical Council of America and the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations, the two most prominent voices of modern Orthodox Jewry in the United States, blasted the aforementioned committee.

In a joint release, the Orthodox Union and the Rabbinical Council of America, which together represent a large plurality of modern orthodox Jews in the United States, repudiated the nationalist Rabbis’ words, which they defined as “extreme and offensive rhetoric.”

The Committee to Save the Land and People of Israel seemed to “arrogate to themselves unusual insight into the desires of the Almighty,” the American Jewish groups noted mockingly.

While world Jewry and especially those living in Israel have “ serious concerns” regarding Kerry’s proposals, “such concerns must only be expressed with civility and on the substance of the issues, not degenerating into personal venom and threats,” the organizations asserted.

While OU and RCA have aired their own objections with the Obama administration, they stated, “we have found no reason to question their intentions in pursuing this effort.”

"The letter of the Committee to Save the Land and People of Israel may represent the views of its signators; it does not represent ours."

I'm not a big fan of people deciding for themselves that they know God's desires. Still, I have to wonder: Why did the OU and the RCA get involved? Are they afraid of what the Obama administration might do to the American (Orthodox) Jewish community if they remain silent? Is this another manifestation of the poritz syndrome? 

Labels: Abe Foxman, ADL, American Jewish leadership, John Kerry, Middle East peace process, Modern Orthodox, Orthodox Jews, poritz syndrome

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 1:21 AM 0 comments

The 'Peres Center for Peace' and the poritz syndrome

Like a good galuth (exile) Jew who fears what the poritz will think, Shimon Peres and his 'Peres Center for Peace' are ashamed to tell the world that Israel is the national home of the Jews (Hat Tip: Shy Guy).
Shimon Peres is a disgrace to the State of Israel. I have no other words.

Labels: Peres Center for Peace, poritz syndrome, Shimon Peres

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 10:33 AM 0 comments

Why American Jewish organizations are defending Obama

Caroline Glick looks at the strange phenomenon that we've seen over the past week, in which the ADL and StandWithUs(!) both issued statements supporting President Barack Hussein Obama. You really have to read the whole thing - I didn't even know that StandWithUs had issued a statement supporting him. That's a huge disappointment. Here are Caroline's explanations for why the Jewish organizations are behaving this way:

It would seem that there are three possible explanations.

The first explanation is fear. Several American Jewish philanthropists have mentioned over the past two years that they fear Obama. If he is reelected, they worry that since he will no longer need Jewish political contributions, he might strike out at Jewish-owned businesses the way he struck out at Republican-owned General Motors car dealerships when he nationalized GM. If they attack Obama for his positions on Israel, they worry that they will give him further justification for going after them.

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The second, perhaps more plausible, explanation is that Jewish leaders are concerned that their fellow American Jews are more attached to their identity as Democrats than they are to their identity as Jews. True, the overwhelming majority of American Jews express firm support for Israel. A poll carried out last week for the Committee for Accuracy in Middle Eastern Reporting in America (CAMERA) found that support for Israel is nearly unanimous among American Jews.

Yet neither the CAMERA poll nor previous surveys by the American Jewish Committee or Brandeis which had similar findings asked respondents to weigh their support for Israel against support for the Democratic Party. So it is possible that leaders are worried that if they oppose Obama's anti-Israel positions too strongly, they will lose some support.

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The third reason why U.S. Jewish leaders may be defending Obama's positions on Israel is because the Israeli left defends his position on Israel. In the face of Obama's latest baiting of Netanyahu, opposition leader Tzipi Livni attacked Netanyahu and accused him of destroying Israel's relations with the U.S. She and her followers also defended Obama's policies. Many American Jewish leaders must certainly believe that they cannot be more pro-Israel than the Israeli left.

I would say that all three explanations - or a combination of them - are plausible. Or maybe it's just the poritz syndrome. But read the whole thing.

Labels: ADL, Barack Hussein Obama, poritz syndrome, StandWithUs

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 7:42 AM 8 comments

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 3 comments