John Podesta, Center for American Progress

The Washington Post has just published an article reporting that the Center for American Progress, the left-wing think tank whose policies and personnel have close ties to the Obama White House, has been “accused of anti-Semitic language.”

The Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank closely aligned with the White House, is embroiled in a dispute with several major Jewish organizations over statements on Israel and charges that some center staffers have used anti-Semitic language to attack pro-Israel Americans.

The controversy reflects growing divisions among important allies of President Obama over Middle East policy that could complicate the president’s reelection outreach to some Jewish voters, just as he is seeking to assure them of his commitment to Israel’s security amid fears of an Iran nuclear threat.

Among the points of contention are several Twitter posts by one CAP writer referring to “Israel-firsters.” Some experts say the phrase has its roots in the anti-Semitic charge that American Jews are more loyal to a foreign country. In another case, a second staffer described a U.S. senator [Mark Kirk of Illinois] as showing more fealty to Israel and the prime U.S. pro-Israel lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, than to his own constituents, replacing a standard identifier of party affiliation and state with “R-AIPAC” on Twitter….

(more…)

The spin-doctors at the White House are, no doubt, busily patting themselves on the back about how well the President has finessed his “67 border precondition” (yes, he has made it a defacto pre-condition) which he recklessly inserted into the Israeli/Palestinian conundrum during his middle east speech on May 19.

It was, however, a serious and deliberate slap…not a misstep or a fumble, but a serious and intentional slap…and a wake up call.  “Here’s how it’s going to be” he, essentially, told the world a day before his scheduled meeting with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who had next to no advance notice of the President’s intentions.  Mr. Obama is, if nothing else, a very bright man.  He knew he was sandbagging the Prime Minister by making the 67 borders a starting point.  Even with agreed adjustments, he has robbed the Israelis of their trump card …the amount of territory they were prepared to concede.  As the Washington Post editorialized in a May 20 editorial:

“Now, of all times, the Israeli and U.S. governments ought to be working closely together; they should be trying to defuse the U.N. threat, induce Mr. Abbas to change course, and above all prevent a resumption of violence between Israelis and Palestinians.  Instead, Friday found Mr. Obama and Mr. Netanyahu once again publicly and poisonously at odds with each other, thanks to a handful of lines added by Mr. Obama to his Middle East speech on Thursday.  The President’s decision to publicly endorse terms for a peace settlement seemingly calculated to appeal to Mr. Abbas, over the strong objections of Mr. Netanyahu, has had the effect of distracting attention from the new U.S. agenda for the region.”

True, the president did mention two states, one Israeli and one Palestinian living side by side.  When he spoke at the American-Israeli Political Action Committee (“AIPAC”) conference  he said he had chosen the hard road to peace. So why did he later state that there was really nothing new in his proposal?

Essentially, the president has called for a withdrawal to the 1967 lines with some formulaic border adjustments as a new precondition for talks, which of course, will become incorporated by Mahmoud Abbas into his demands before he comes to the table.  Israel will be expected to agree to the boundaries before the issues of Jerusalem and the so-called right of return have ever been discussed.  And while Mr. Obama referred to Israel as a Jewish state why not say that the adjacent state of Palestine will be the homeland for the Palestinians, many of who have been held by the Arabs in refugee camps for 63 years.

(more…)

Much is being made of the applause that Obama received at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). I think this needs to be explained, or at least put into some context.

AIPAC is generally an orgy of applause and cheering for anyone and everyone who addresses the appreciative audience. It is the one place where Jews can congregate and hear wonderful, exultant praise of Israel (outside of the constant campaign of anti-Israel propaganda). And the AIPAC rank and file love the respite from the lies and the smears. They will cheer anything. Seriously. Mention that grilled chicken will be served in the cafe downstairs and you’ll get a huge round of applause. 25,000 carrots had to be brought to garnish the salads to feed 10,000 attendees. That, too, gets a hand. This is a happy group.

Case in point: Monday morning, the functionary Howard Kohr, AIPAC’s Executive Director, received a standing ovation. Need I say more? When the janitor comes in to clear away the tables, he’ll get a hand, too.

A number of AIPAC notables were warmly received despite the idiocy of what they said. Steny Hoyer was the first politician to speak Sunday, and while strongly supportive of Israel, his idiotic insistence on a two-state solution was only met by more idiocy: a round of rousing applause. What delusional mental acrobatics must be engaged in to imagine a Philistine state living in peace and harmony with Israel. Hoyer talked out of both sides of his mouth. No support or tolerance for extremists or terrorists, but let’s give the savages a state.

Nevertheless, the response to Obama’s appearance was tempered. (My take on his speech is here.) Obama was not cheered. Yes, they applauded and they stood when he backpedaled on his borders comment (he said it, but “I didn’t mean that”). But I will tell you that it was nothing like the response that George W. Bush got, or that John Bolton and Dick Cheney received in previous years. The people never sat down during those rousing speeches. They raised the roof. When Eric Cantor spoke the hall shook. Literally, the applause was thunderous, clearly reflecting what AIPAC’s members are really thinking.

(more…)

Media Matters Senior Foreign Policy Fellow MJ Rosenberg unleashed a stream of anti-Israel vitriol today, calling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a “terrorist” and accusing pro-Israel activists of being un-American.

As Netanyahu gave a stern but statesmanlike response to President Barack Obama’s speech yesterday, Rosenberg could not restrain his hatred. It was the latest, and the worst, anti-Israel attack by Media Matters’s foreign affairs head.

He also attacked the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the large pro-Israel lobby organization whose annual Policy Conference begins this weekend, accusing it of disloyalty to the United States:  ”Saying AIPAC is guilty of dual loyalty is giving it credit for one more loyalty than it holds.”

Everyone knows that Media Matters is President Obama’s PR department, so Rosenberg’s anti-Israel bigotry is particularly telling, and troubling.

(more…)

Will the 400 leftist rabbis refute this?

This was some sick stuff. Anti-Semitism is alive and well at Media Matters.

Media Matters blamed the Egyptian crisis today on the US Jewish lobby and media-owning Jews.
Yid With Lid reported this from Media Matters.

If one needs additional proof that the “pro-Israel” lobby and the policies it dictates to US policymakers are bad for both the U.S. and Israel, look no further than what is happening in Egypt.

The regime that the Israeli government and its U.S. lobby have depended upon to enforce the status quo is going down. It is not clear when, but it’s going to be soon, much sooner than anyone ever anticipated. And you can be sure that any democratic government that takes Mubarak’s place is not going to play the role of America’s (let alone Israel’s) enforcer in the Middle East.

Hopefully, the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty will survive — thousands of lives on both sides have been saved by President Carter’s Camp David Treaty — but there are no guarantees. Far from it.

Of course, no one would even be worried about the peace treaty if the Israelis had agreed to implement the critical second part of the Camp David Accords.
That was the part that would have ended the occupation. But the Israelis chose to ignore it and the lobby and the ever-faithful Congress blocked Carter’s efforts to push it through.

Write Media Matters here and demand that they retract this awful anti-Semitic attack against American Jews.

(more…)

I was invited to speak on 21st century missile threats and defenses at the recent 7th annual Jerusalem Conference, 2010, held at the Regency Hotel on Mt. Scopus, in the city of David, but I was pleased as well to hear a wide variety of experts (speeches are delivered in English and Hebrew with convenient wireless earphone translation headsets).

This gathering is rooted in historic Zionism, the meaning of the land of Israel, and the spiritual meaning of Jerusalem. Many Israeli statesman and American political leaders come to address current security crises, as well as existential questions ever-present for the Jewish state still facing war.

The Palestinian Front

On the Palestinian front, many now believe that the idea of a small PLO state within the 1967 borders, to include Gaza, major parts of the West Bank and east Jerusalem, has lost its appeal within Araby.

Radical Islamism, unrealistic expectations, and daily incitement against Israel in mosques, the media, and madrassas, have all added up to another era of Palestinian intransigence and irredentism.

Unfortunately, the drive for Palestinian independence has not been equated with responsible state building leading to the kind of sovereignty that would help the Palestinian people themselves.

Palestinians universally wish to cast Israel off their shoulders, but this does not mean they support a fair division of land, or a desire to live in peaceful coexistence with a Jewish state in the middle east.

Israeli journalist and commentator Ehud Ya’ari stated that the Palestinians have now fully collapsed into the unwilling arms of the Israelis, and that Israel must urgently solve the seemingly unsolvable.

Israel is today faced with a reverse annexation: It is the Palestinians who have decided to annex Israel, because Israel did not annex them first.

(more…)