Abandoning reason to demonise Obama

[Violet_Crumble]

It may seem a ridiculous notion to Palestinians, but some American Jews feel Obama is plotting the destruction of Israel


Antony Lerman
guardian.co.uk
Wednesday 12 August 2009 13.17 BST

Does Barack Obama represent the best hope for a just and final settlement of the Israel-Palestine conflict or will his Middle East policy lead directly to the destruction of Israel?

I would guess that most Palestinians faced with this question would regard it as ridiculous. Notwithstanding the president's Cairo speech and his insistence on a total freeze on the expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, they would be deeply sceptical about the US president's ability to make any fundamental changes in US Middle East policy. Even were he to make such an adjustment, they would have grave doubts about whether it would seriously take on board Palestinian concerns. And they would be incredulous that anyone could argue that he is doing anything that could be interpreted as against Israel's interests. Once again, they would say, the Palestinians are being written out of the script.

But to many American Jews, as well as to many Israeli Jews and to some Jews in the UK, the question would seem to reflect a very real and stark choice. While some who are taking sides on the issue are presenting their arguments in a reasonable manner, for others the issue is positively Manichean in its consequences, giving licence to quite staggering levels of rhetorical bitterness, vilification and hyperbole in an area where debate is already dangerously polarised.

The reasons given for seeing Obama's presidency as an unprecedented opportunity seem plausible. London-based Middle East analyst Tony Klug recently argued that despite "reason enough for deep despondency", "for one reason alone, there is a perceptible if cautious optimism in the air: the election of an inspirational United States president, Barack Obama, who (amid many other policy challenges) is committed to making a serious effort to resolve the conflict." Daniel Levy, director of the Middle East task force at the New America Foundation in Washington, wrote in an online Economist debate: "It would be curmudgeonly not to acknowledge the important points of departure in Mr Obama's approach and the promise his presidency holds out for a Middle East policy sufficiently evenhanded to deliver real breakthroughs."

But David Frum, President George Bush's former speech writer, responded to Daniel Levy with an argument aimed at seeking out the jugular: "I can remember not so long ago when even-handedness was diplomatic code for anti-Israel animus. Those now look like the good old days. The Obama administration has tilted so far against Israel that even-handedness looks like up from down here." No matter that Levy was an adviser to former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak and lead Israeli drafter of the 2003 Geneva Initiative, Frum makes Levy's praise of Obama's "evenhandedness" look like a form of conniving in the destruction of Israel.

All this is relatively sedate, as you might expect in an Economist-moderated debate. In the world of major American Jewish organisations and pro-Israel lobby groups, according to Ha'aretz, "feuding … is taking place behind closed doors and could be reaching its worst point in recent memory." This surfaced a few days ago when the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) placed a full-page ad in the New York Times which said: "The problem isn't settlements, it's Arab rejection." The head of ADL, Abe Foxman, told Ha'aretz: "first of all to stop the overkill. Every opportunity that they have to bash Israel they do." But Jeremy Ben-Ami, executive director of the liberal, "pro-peace, pro-Israel" advocacy group J Street, issued an open letter to Foxman accusing him of "pointing fingers" and arguing that "the best route forward is not for each side to call on the other to move first, but to get all sides to the table with strong Jewish leadership to figure out how we move together".

These differences ride on a sub-stratum of persistent, yet completely unfounded, "accusations" that Barack Obama is antisemitic, a terrorist and a Muslim (a "crime", it would seem, in some people's eyes). Websites and blogs like this one continue to spread these lies. They link to articles damning Obama by "respectable" columnists like Charles Krauthammer and Caroline Glick and self-styled academics like Bat Yeor, thereby seeking to confer legitimacy on the wildest anti-Obama conspiracy theories.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/aug/12/barack-obama-middle-east

[Captain Hilts]

1. And Mary Robinson. nt

[Violet_Crumble]

2. She was a fleeting moment. Their anger at Obama is longer-term...

I just reread the article and had a chuckle at the Melanie Phillips vs Dershowitz 'debate'...

'And in a bizarre exchange between Daily Mail columnist Melanie Phillips and the prolific Israel-defender and Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz on FrontPage Magazine, Phillips emerges as a principal cheerleader for those who see Obama as the devil incarnate as far as Israel and "truth" are concerned. These two very high-profile, arch-propagandists for Israel virtually tear the skin from each other's bones over Obama. While Dershowitz does not object to the pressure the president is putting on Israel, and he and Phillips agree that the main barrier to peace is the Palestinians' refusal to recognise Israel as a Jewish state, Phillips believes Dershowitz spectacularly fails "to acknowledge the evidence of the hostility Obama is displaying towards Israel".

Phillips says that in his Cairo speech Obama effectively denied "that the Jewish people are in Israel as of right" and makes the scurrilous claim that he "subtly suggested an equivalence between the Nazi extermination camps and the Palestinian 'refugee' camps". Phillips tells Dershowitz that she is "upholding truth against lies, freedom against tyranny and justice against the moral inversion which regards third-world aggressors as victims and their victims as aggressors – precisely the thinking demonstrated by Obama", someone "who would turn Israelis in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem into sitting ducks for Palestinian rockets and bombs sited just down the road." To make this possible, "Obama has skilfully constructed an administration composed of Israel-bashers, appeasement–minded 'new realists' and peace-process zealots – several of them Jews – all converging on precisely the same agenda to destroy Israel's security." It's but a short step from this to accusations that Obama is antisemitic.'

[bemildred]

5. Dang, who knew Dersh was an appeaser?

:rofl:

"These two very high-profile, arch-propagandists for Israel virtually tear the skin from each other's bones over Obama."

[LeftishBrit]

7. Melanie Phillips is a truly vile right-winger

She hates anyone left of centre, so obviously she hates Obama.

She also hates Palestinians, Muslims in general, immigrants, gays, feminists, anyone who doesn't conform to 1950s middle-class Little England 'morality', progressive educators, those who oppose the influence of religion in public life, and have I missed anyone out; probably lots of people. Oh, and evidently 'peace process zealots', so I'd be on her list on that score as well as several of the other categories.

As regards the rag she writes for, 'Daily (Hate)-Mail', they are practically our equivalent of Rush Limbaugh's talk-show. And by the way, they were seriously antisemitic and indeed pro-Nazi in the 1930s, and even serialized the Protocols. Although obviously their staff has changed in 70-odd years(!), the basic principle of hating any group that contributes a significant number of would-be refugees and asylum-seekers to Britain has not.

[bemildred]

8. I have read her screeds on a number of occasions, she is indeed a good hater.

She makes Dersh look good, and that is no easy job. Makes one think of Mr Hazlitt's essay "On The Pleasure of Hating".

http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Essays/Hazlitt/Hating.htm

[LeftishBrit]

9. Thanks for that article!

A little *too* cynical for me with regard to the individual, but pretty accurate with regard to the group at its lowest common denominator; the 'mob spirit'.


'The pleasure of hating, like a poisonous mineral, eats into the heart of religion, and turns it to rankling spleen and bigotry; it makes patriotism an excuse for carrying fire, pestilence, and famine into other lands: it leaves to virtue nothing but the spirit of censoriousness, and a narrow, jealous, inquisitorial watchfulness over the actions and motives of others. What have the different sects, creeds, doctrines in religion been but so many pretexts set up for men to wrangle, to quarrel, to tear one another in pieces about , like a target as a mark to shoot at? Does any one suppose that the love of country in an Englishman (or anyone! - LB) implies any friendly feeling or disposition to serve another bearing the same name? No, it means only hatred to the French or the inhabitants of any other country that we happen to be at war with for the time'


Some things never seem to change very much.

[bemildred]

10. My pleasure.

Mr Hazlitt was not a Mary Poppins sort of guy, that's true.

[aranthus]

3. No. More like crazy like a fox. They think this stuff plays.

It's pretty obvious that pushing Israel to halt settlement construction is nowhere near the same as plotting Israel's destruction. Prior American President's, some of them conservatives, have pressured Israel just as much without being attacked in this fashion. So what gives? Certainly, the David Frums care about supporting the settlements, but I think that most of what is driving this train is is Israeli and American domestic politics more than any serious concern that the US is going to throw Israel completely under the bus. Netanyahu is looking to bolster himself with a core constituency (the settlers), and Republicans see an opening to leverage Jews away from Obama. The unanswered question is whether they've overplayed their hand. It's tough to say because there's so much else going on, especially with the health care debate and the economy. If I had to bet, I'd say that in the long run they have.

[Violet_Crumble]

12. I think some of them really do believe that stuff, though...

As lacking in reason and logic as it is to everyone else, I think some are so paranoid and totally out of touch with the reality that this stuff really does make sense to them. Add that to an already existing distrust and dislike of Obama by those of a RW bent, and it'd be pretty easy for them to run with it as once things drop to that level of rhetoric, there's no need to really try to think clearly on anything....

[aranthus]

13. No doubt. n/t

[azurnoir]

4. Quite frankly let them rage on

the more off the rails they get the more obvious they become and eventually they will sink their own ship

[bemildred]

6. Agreed.

One of the more pleasant aspects of President Obama is that he never rants, he is always reasonable and coherent, yet he does not let attacks on him go unanswered. That will serve him well over time. I do think he needs to be more aggressive in asserting his point of view, he still seems to be sorting that out, and he still seems a bit tentative in dealing with his minions too. I have a feeling that if he keeps it together and gets a 2nd term, he will kick some ass. Anyway, I enjoy my fantasies.

[azurnoir]

11. I hope that Obama's 2nd term arse kicking is not a fantasy n/t