| Author | Message | | Alpha | | Posted: Sun Feb 18, 2007 7:30 am Post subject: Obama another Israeli shill |
| Rosner's Blog
Shmuel Rosner Chief U.S. Correspondent www.haaretz.com/rosner Biography | Email me
Obama will soon make the case that he'll be as strong on Israel as anyone
My weekend column for the Hebrew print edition is a lengthy piece on U.S. Sen. Barack Obama (D-Illinois). Most Israelis don't know him, and my editors thought he was enough of a political phenomenon to make him worth writing about, even at this early stage of the campaign. Most of the piece was not translated into English, as much of the material in it will not be of any value to American readers who have gotten more than their fair share of Obamania in the last couple of months. The only part of it that's worth presenting here is the section on Obama and Israel. (You can read a news story on Obama's comments about Israel here.)
I've written about Obama and Israel before, in the context of The Israel Factor project. My goal at the time was to try to explain why this bright, charismatic, viable candidate was not getting high marks from our Israel Factor panelists: What is it about Obama that makes them uncomfortable about his possible future attitude toward Israel?
If you don't know someone, then you don't trust him. And "if you don't trust someone, you try to be careful with him," one panelist told me. It's "the unknown factor," another one explained. "What kind of constituency does he bring with him, and how will they influence his positions?"
"We need more time to trust him," a panelist told me. "Voting for Israel a couple of times doesn't constitute enough of a track record on which to make a more favorable judgment." Nathan Diament of the Orthodox Union, who knows Obama from their days at Harvard, made a similar argument this week in his blog: The short political life of Obama hasn't "provide[d] many opportunities for a new politician to establish the kind of record that longer-serving officeholders have built up over time."
Obama has not been deaf to such suspicions. And now that he is not just a "possible candidate" but an officially declared one, he will try to fix these perceptions. "Israelis want more than anything to live in peace with their neighbors, but Israel also has real - and very dangerous - enemies," were Obama's words to Haaretz. "My view is that the United States' special relationship with Israel obligates us to be helpful to them in the search for credible partners with whom they can make peace, while also supporting Israel in defending itself against enemies sworn to its destruction."
In my 60-minute interview with him last week, Obama was not shy about explaining why a viable peace has not yet been achieved. Like all the other major Democratic candidates, he will be a strong advocate for American involvement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Nonetheless, he said he is yet to see - "particularly in the Palestinian community - "leaders who have both the will and the capacity to renounce violence as a strategy to resolve the problems and to actually enforce any agreement that might be reached with the Israelis." Talking about the current prospects for an agreement, Obama said that under the existing conditions, "I think we're not going to see much progress."
But this is just the short version of the policy Obama will be officially presenting soon. This week I was told that while the venue has yet to be selected, the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs conference in Washington at the end of February is one possibility. There's also a chance that he will make his comments on Israel at a Washington rally calling for the release of the abducted Israeli soldiers or while speaking to a group of Chicago Jews. One thing is quite clear: It will happen in the next two to three weeks.
I asked about the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) convention in March and was told that he will speak there too, but wants to have another speech sooner. Obama doesn't want to wait such a long time - not when he is running a campaign in which he will need the support of many people who care deeply about Israel. (Oh, let's just say it: Jewish voters are major donors to the Democratic Party and its nominees.) He also wants to make sure that people will hear him, and him alone. After all, Obama will not be the only candidate speaking and getting attention at the AIPAC conference.
On Capitol Hill on Wednesday, Dan Shapiro, a senior adviser to Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Florida), was saying goodbye to the job he has held for six years. He is as knowledgeable as anyone on Israel and the Middle East, and apart from the "real" job he got himself now, he has joined Obama's campaign as an adviser on issues related to Mideast policy.
I spoke to Shapiro about Obama and his views earlier this week, and I asked him to highlight for me the differences between Obama and the current Bush policy regarding Israel. The first difference, he said, will be a greater emphasis on the need for constant engagement by the U.S. Obama will tell you that Bush wasted some long years without investing in diplomacy. You can either agree with him on that or not, but this has become the Democratic party line. All candidates condemn Bush for the hands-off approach.
A second possible difference will involve the question of whether to talk to Syria. Obama believes that America should talk to the Assad regime, so it's hard envisioning him objecting to an Israeli-Syrian dialogue. And then there's the question of Iran - the most important of them all.
A Washingtonian familiar with the Obama campaign reminded me that Obama is the anti-war candidate, and thus will have some maneuvering to do on Iran. He will probably warn of a possible deterioration in relations that could lead to an unintentional war, but by the same token he can also be expected to agree that Iran should not be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons and that no U.S. president should take any of the options off the table.
This will be a position similar to those of other Democratic candidates. Some might say that it's a problematic position when it comes to the real world - what if talks with Tehran do not provide an agreement that can actually prevent a nuclear Iran - but nevertheless, it's a good one politically. It sounds anti-war enough for the Democratic Party at large, and anti-Iran enough for those who really understand the significance of the issue at hand.
All these policy points will not even wait for the promised speech. A position paper outlining Obama's views is in the making, and will be distributed to as many Jewish voters as possible.
Will he be able to win over these voters?
After talking to people about him all week, I can tell you this: They very much want to be persuaded that Obama should win their backing, as they all understand the excitement and enthusiasm surrounding his candidacy and the importance of Obama's adding his voice to the camp of Israel supporters.
With such an attitude, it is relatively easy to be convinced.
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Obama is a fraud with his 'anti-war' status as he supports the coming attack on Iran for AIPAC (Israel):
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Oct04/Smith1012.htm
Obama is all for the coming attack on Iran as well:
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=67&ItemID=11963
Additional at following URL:
AIPAC hacks Clinton/Edwards call Iran threat to U.S., Israel
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2007/02/02/aipac-hacks-clinton-edwards-call-iran-threat-to-u-s-israel.php | |  | | Alpha | | Posted: Sun Feb 18, 2007 8:22 pm Post subject: |
| http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3366000,00.html
Obama 'strong Israel supporter'
US Democratic candidate set to reach out to millions of Jewish voters
Yaakov Lappin
Published: 02.16.07, 17:15 / Israel Culture
Democratic presidential candidate Barak Obama is about to reach out to millions of American Jewish voters, the Jewish Week newspaper reported on Friday.
The new drive to reach Jewish voters will include "an expected major speech on Israel and the Middle East," aimed at setting "the baseline and establish Senator Obama as a reliable, strong supporter of Israel," the Jewish Week quoted a Democratic Party source as saying.
At the same time, the report continued, Obama made clear that he would be very willing to directly speak to Iran and Syria.
Responding to a question on whether he would hold dialogue with Tehran and Damascus on CBS's 60 Minutes program, Obama replied, "Yes. I think that the notion that this administration has — that not talking to our enemies is effective punishment — is wrong," the Jewish Week added.
Israeli scholar dropped by Australian Jewish group
A visiting Israeli expert on Islam has lost the support of the Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC) after encouraging Australia to "cap its intake of Muslim immigrants," the Australian Jewish News (AJN) reported.
Professor Raphael Israeli, who is visiting Australia for six weeks, said "life will become untenable" in Australia "unless the Muslim population is kept in check," the AJN reported.
The comment caused AIJAC executive director Dr Colin Rubenstein to release a statement on Friday "distancing the organization" from the Hebrew University academic.
"Islamist extremism is a genuine and serious global problem, but it is completely wrong to single out all Muslims for suspicion or negatively stereotype the Muslim community as a whole in this way," the AJN quoted Rubenstein as saying.
During an interview with the AJN on tackling Islamic extremism, Israeli said, "You have to infiltrate all those circles where the Muslim radicals operate, to arrest them, and to limit immigration into western countries ... to limit immigration, even students who apply to come from Islamic countries to the West."
Canada is 'true friend of Israel' says Dichter
The Canadian government "is proving itself to be a steadfast supporter of the Jewish state," Minister of Interior Security Avi Dichter told a meeting of the Canadian Council for Israel and Jewish Advocacy in Ottawa last week, the Canadian Jewish News (CJN) reported.
The CJN report quoted Dichter as saying, "I am pleased to say that after my brief encounters with your administration, Israel has a true friend and ally in Canada. Here I have found leaders who I believe share our values and know the meaning of courage."
During his tour of Canada, Dichter met with the Canadian prime minister, Stephen Harper, as well as other top officials.
The CJN added that Dichter denied Egyptian claims "that a dual Egyptian-Canadian citizen arrested recently in Egypt had been operating in Canada as an Israeli agent."
"I talked with people in Israel who probably may know about this issue. I would summarize it in one word – nonsense," Dichter said, according to the CJN. He added that the allegations were "a fabrication." | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Thu Mar 08, 2007 9:59 am Post subject: |
| From: "Jeffrey Blankfort"
Date: Thu, 08 Mar 2007 01:29:39 -0800
Subject: [IntelligentMinds] NY Jewish Week: Obama Pivots Away From Dovish Past
Larry Cohler is probably the best reporter working for the American Jewish press. In this article he makes reference to Ali Abunimah's criticism of Obama and Obama's past acquaintance with Rashid Khalidi. The former AIPAC honcho, David Rosen, who is under indictment, had him fired from the Washington Jewish Week at the time of the first Gulf War for his coverage of the lobby's support of that war.-JB
http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/newscontent.php3?artid=13766&print=yes
(03/09/2007)
Obama Pivots Away From Dovish Past
In AIPAC debut, candidate talks tough, walking fine pro-Israel line, but did he drop some hints?
Larry Cohler-Esses - Editor At Large
Chicago — Presidential candidate Barack Obama’s maiden speech to the pro-Israel lobby last week saw a man described by early supporters as an ardent dove on Israel take flight as a bird of considerably more hawkish mien.
Obama, Illinois’ Democratic junior senator, told the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) last Friday that he was committed, above all else, to “peace through security” for the Jewish state.
It was a phrase that appeared with variations repeatedly throughout the 30-minute speech, delivered according to many in attendance in a stilted monotone curiously devoid of passion. The more venerable formulation “land for peace” was nowhere to be found. Absent, too, were any references to “settlements,” “occupation” or “territorial compromise” in a talk before a hometown Chicago audience of some 800 sponsored by the pro-Israel lobby’s Midwest region.
While not surprising for a talk before the pro-Israel lobby — where such terms are usually few and far between — some found it surprising for a candidate known not too long ago to some as an unabashed dove.
“He was on the line of Peace Now,” said Rabbi Arnold Jacob Wolf, of KAM Isaiah Israel, who lives across the street from Obama in the University of Chicago neighborhood of Hyde Park, one of the country’s most liberal electoral districts. “He was a moderate peacenik.”
Rabbi Wolf, himself a longtime dove, said that today Obama is “very, very cautious — with AIPAC, excessively cautious.”
Some with dovish views took comfort that at the end of a speech emphasizing the multiple threats facing Israel, Obama spoke of the importance of more active U.S. diplomacy to help Israelis and Palestinians “fulfill their national goals: two states living side by side in peace and security.” He spoke also of former Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin’s “vision to reach out to longtime enemies” and former leader Ariel Sharon’s “determination to lead Israel out of Gaza.” Israelis were prepared to make “further sacrifices” for peace, he said, without going into further detail.
But Obama, who has rocketed from an obscure state senator to a presidential candidate in little over two years, was until recently known to those involved in Middle East issues in his Hyde Park base on Chicago’s South Side as a man of considerably bolder views.
Despite his strict avoidance of details on what it will take to make progress toward peace, said Rabbi Wolf, “He has a lot to say about that. He’s thought about it.”
Ali Abunimah, a Hyde Park Palestinian-American activist, said that until a few years ago, Obama was “quite frank that the U.S. needed to be more evenhanded, that it leaned too much toward Israel.” It was vivid in his memory, said Abunimah, because “these were the kind of statements I’d never heard from a U.S. politician who seemed like he was going somewhere rather than at the end of his career.”
In 2000, Abunimah recalled, Professor Rashid Khalidi, a leading Palestinian American advocate for a two-state solution and harsh critic of Israel, held a fundraiser in his home for Obama, embarked then on an ultimately unsuccessful bid for the House of Representatives. “He came with his wife,” Abunimah said. “That’s where I had a chance to really talk to him. It was an intimate setting. He convinced me he was very aware of the issues [and] critical of U.S. bias toward Israel and lack of sensitivity to Arabs. ... He was very supportive of U.S. pressure on Israel.”
Khalidi, now the Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University, and head of that school’s Middle East Institute, declined to comment on Abunimah’s recollections. But in an interview in Tuesday’s Daily News, he said he hosted the fundraiser because he and Obama were friends while the two lived in Chicago. “He never came to us and said he would do anything in terms of Palestinians,” Khalidi told the paper.
Nevertheless, one Hyde Park source close to Obama, speaking only on condition of anonymity, recalled, “He often expressed general sympathy for the Palestinians — though I don’t recall him ever saying anything publicly.”
Asked to comment on these recollections of his views, a spokesperson for Obama’s campaign did not challenge them, saying only: “The speech is a clear articulation of his positions related to Israel.”
At the AIPAC event, Obama talked in detail about his first trip to Israel, in January of last year. Traveling with several prominent Chicago Jewish activists, Obama saw a house in Kiryat Shmona, near the Lebanese border, that had been hit by a Katyusha rocket fired by Hezbollah, the radical Shiite group based in South Lebanon.
“The family who lived [there] was lucky to be alive,” he said. “It is an experience I keep close to my heart ... Too many others have seen the same kind of destruction, have lost their loved ones to suicide bombers and live in fear when the next attack might hit.”
Six months after his visit, Obama noted, “Hezbollah launched 4,000 rocket attacks just like the one that destroyed the home in Kiryat Shmona and kidnapped Israeli service members.” The rockets killed 39 Israeli civilians. An additional 120 Israelis died in combat during the war Israel launched in response to the kidnappings.
As he did last summer, Obama defended Israel’s bombing of targets throughout Lebanon during last summer’s war, bombing widely criticized elsewhere for hitting many civilians and demolishing civilian infrastructure sites. AP estimates 1,035 to 1,191 Lebanese died during the war, of which 250 were Hezbollah fighters.
“When Israel is attacked, we must stand up for Israel’s legitimate right to defend itself,” said Obama. ... “Hezbollah attacked Israel. By using Lebanon as an outpost for terrorism, and innocent people as shields, Hezbollah has also engulfed that entire nation in violence and conflict, and threatened the fledgling movement for democracy there.”
Obama also warned of the danger Israel faces from Iran’s drive to develop a technical capability that would enable it to develop nuclear arms. Noting Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s questioning of the reality of the Holocaust and declared wish for Israel’s elimination, Obama said, “His words contain a chilling echo of some of the world’s most despicable and tragic history.”
At the same time, he de-emphasized a military solution to the problem. “While we should take no option, including military action, off the table, sustained and aggressive diplomacy combined with tough sanctions should be our primary means,” he said. Obama advocated direct talks and “tough-minded diplomacy” with both Iran and Syria — an approach the Bush administration has rejected. It has recently, however, agreed to attend a meeting about the crisis in Iraq that those two countries will also attend.
Obama said the administration had actually empowered Iran by its invasion of Iraq, noting, “I opposed this war from the beginning.” He advocated a “phased redeployment” of U.S. troops out of Iraq, to be completed by March 2008. A “limited number” of troops should remain to prevent Iraq from becoming a terrorist haven, he added.
Obama supported Israel’s refusal to conduct peace talks with the Palestinian Authority government controlled by Hamas, a group responsible for terrorist attacks that denies Israel’s right to exist. A recent unity agreement between Hamas and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas — “a Palestinian leader I believe is committed to peace” — still failed to satisfy the international community’s conditions for ending the Hamas government’s international isolation, he said.
“We should never seek to dictate what is best for the Israelis,” he said.
But in a seemingly oblique criticism of the administration’s reported opposition to any Israeli response to entreaties by Syria to restart peace negotiations, Obama said, “No Israeli prime minister should ever feel dragged to or blocked from the negotiating table by the United States.”
Audience members offered varying views of whether Obama had met the bar for their support.
“I found it a little uninspired,” said Amy Rashkow, an AIPAC member who works for American Friends of Magen David Adom. “He said the right things [but] delivered it without the panache for which he’s known.”
Rashkow and others said they found Obama’s delivery stilted and lacking emotion, even when they agreed with the words he was reading. He sometimes seemed to trip over his text, as if reading it for the first time.
“Look at the comparison for him the next day in Selma,” she said, referring to a speech Obama gave there to mark the 40th anniversary of a famed civil rights protest there. “That was typical Obama.”
But Alan Mesh, another AIPAC member, said that even though “he was not able to articulate passion . . . I was very glad to hear him speak his support for Israel. He talked about his first-hand experience being there. You could tell he understood the problem.”
Campaign spokesperson Jen Saki stressed that Obama was “passionate” about Israel. “Any hint of fatigue was the result of a recent cross-country campaign tour, not a lack of enthhusiasm for the issues important to this community,” she said.
For at least some, the jury appeared to still be out. But Obama has already started to garner pro-Israel financial support. A review of donations to his campaigns for federal office since 2000 by the Center for Responsive Politics showed Obama had received more than $110,000 from pro-Israel sources through last June. Prominent among his backers are the Chicago-based Pritzker family, which owns the Hyatt chain of hotels. Lee Rosenberg, AIPAC’s treasurer, is also a backer, and a member of Obama’s finance committee. | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Fri Mar 09, 2007 9:13 am Post subject: |
| Senator Obama Praises U.S.-Israel Relationship, Calls Iran a Threat:
http://www.aipac.org/1680.htm | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
