Tikun Olam-תקון עולם: Make the World a Better Place

Today, Barack Obama made his required political stop at the Yad Vashem Museum to memorialize the six million victims of the Shoah.  While there he recommitted himself to ensuring the survival of the State of Israel invoking the phrase “Never Again.”

It’s unfortunate that a slogan first popularized by Meir Kahane has been absorbed into the American political discourse and embraced by both McCain and Obama, but that’s a different story than the one I want to tell today.

John McCain’s campaign made the unpardonable gaffe of impugning Obama’s commitment to prevent genocide.  But not genocide against Jews.  Rather genocide against…Iraqis.  That’s right.  Here’s the McCain attack:

“Today he says ‘never again.’ A year ago stopping genocide wasn’t a good enough reason to keep U.S. forces in Iraq. Doesn’t that strike you as inconsistent?”

Does anyone believe that a comparison of the six million killed in the Shoah compares to preventing Iraqi Shia, Sunni and Kurds from slitting each other’s throats?  The respective causes of hostility and the magnitude of the suffering pale in the comparison.  Besides, McCain is comparing a genocide that actually occurred with one that has not yet occurred, and which we’re not even sure would occur.  This is a base, shallow and treif attack that abuses one of the central historical events of Jewish history to smear a presidential candidate.

The ADL makes a point of attacking (largely) liberals who abuse the Holocaust for political gain.  But you won’t hear any geshrei’s from Abe Foxman this time since he and McCain are likely on most excellent terms.

Jeremy Ben Ami of J Street had no such divided loyalty and accused McCain of:

shamelessly exploit[ing] the sacred memory of six million victims of the worst crime in human history to score political points in the heat of a partisan election campaign.

I just received a fundraising appeal from JTA, the leading national Jewish news agency.  In it, Mark Joffe, the publisher, boasts of the most important reporting achievement he can muster to inspire donors to open their pocketbooks.  This tells you a lot about where JTA sees its core audience:

When federal agents raided the country’s largest kosher meat plant, arresting hundreds of workers and bringing the operation to a halt, JTA was quick to notify the Jewish world of both the alleged mistreatment of workers and the threat to the kosher meat supply.

JTA was the only Jewish news organization to fly a reporter to Iowa to cover the unfolding story on the ground.

That type of special coverage costs money. As an independent non-profit, JTA relies on donations from readers like you to make it possible. Our mission is to foster an ongoing conversation in the Jewish community and bring the Jewish world a little bit closer together.

I don’t want to demean meat-eating kosher Jews for whom such news is undoubtedly important.  But this is the best that JTA can offer its readers in terms of its achievements?  This is where it sinks its staff time and travel budget?

And note, highlighting a story that impacts at best a small minority of the Jewish community is designed to “foster an ongoing conversation in the Jewish community and bring the Jewish world a little bit closer together.”  I’d say rather it’s an attempt to curry favor with the Orthodox community for whom kosher slaughterhouses may be big news.

JTA’s coverage of Israel does not foster a conversation or bring the Jewish world closer together.  It merely reinforces the corporate Jewish message that we are supposedly one, one with Israel, one with each other.  It’s Israel coverage challenges nothing, questions nothing, and informs hardly at all.

I truly wish JTA was the kind of journalistic organization I COULD support with a gift.  I’d be delighted to do so.  But until their reporting better reflects the diversity of Israeli and American Jewish opinion on the Israeli-Arab conflict, it’s too hard for me to justify such giving.  I’d rather support organizations that are promoting peace in the Middle East.

I’ll trade you 300 Hamas activists and a Barghouti for a Shalit.  The bartering now going on preceding a potential prisoner exchange between Israel and Hamas reminds one of teenagers trading baseball cards.

Ynetnews and Haaretz both report negotiations in earnest to free Gilad Shalit.  The word is that the lead Palestinian prisoner released will be Marwan Barghouti, a senior Fatah leader:

Israel has agreed in principle to release Marwan Barguti and a number of prominent Hamas leaders from prison – diplomatic sources were quoted as saying in Monday’s ‘Al-Bayan’ newspaper, based in the United Arab Emirates.

According to the report, Israel will free Barguti, Fatah’s former secretary-general in the West Bank, and the Hamas officials as part of the burgeoning exchange deal with the Islamist Hamas group in return for captive IDF soldier Gilad Shalit…

Israel has given its consent, in principle, to the release of 300 Palestinian prisoners, including Hamas leaders Hassan Salame, Abdullah Barguti and Ibrahim Hamed.

The report said Israel was still on the fence on whether it is willing to release the secretary general of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Ahmad Saadat – who was convicted and sentenced for his involvement in the murder of the late Minister Rehavam Ze’evi.

Which would be very interesting since it would mean that Hamas, which is leading negotiations for the Palestinian side, is attempting to liberate an Israeli prisoner who could possibly become its political nemesis during the next round of presidential elections.

Should Israel free Saadat it should be terribly embarrassing for the Olmert government and IDF, since a year or so ago they orchestrated a Jericho prison “break-in” that “liberated” (or “kidnapped” depending on your perspective) Saadat from a Palestinian prison in order to spirit him to an Israeli prison so as to ensure he would not be freed. If they free him I’ll be only too happy to republish the photos of Israel demolishing the Palestinian prison to ensure the dangerous criminal never saw the light of day.

I’m also delighted to report that Jimmy Carter has been playing an interesting intermediary role in persuading Israeli politicians to include Hamas prisoners in the exchange. This will no doubt drive some anti-Carter Jewish activists to distraction since they view the former president as an arch-enemy of the State of Israel.

UPDATE: An earlier version of this story was in error. After congratulating him on his new appointment, Ori Nir informed me that he is not the new Haaretz correspondent in Washington. That honor goes to Natasha Mozgovaya, a “talented young reporter,” according to Nir. I apologize for my part in spreading this inaccurate report into the English-language blog world.

Two months ago, Dov Alfon did approach Nir about taking the job since they’d both worked earlier at Haaretz. But Nir was quite happy at Americans for Peace Now and did not want to leave.

Natasha Mozgovaya, Haaretz's new Washington correspondent

Big news out of Israel. I recently reported that Shmuel Rosner will be leaving Haaretz soon as its Washington correspondent. Shraga Elam has just provided me a link to this Hebrew language story at Ice News confirming that Rosner is leaving. Rosner’s replacement is Natasha Mozgovaya, which is not noted in the ICE report.

Ori pointed me to a fascinating profile in the Hebrew edition of Haaretz detailing Mozgovaya’s problems in gaining acceptance as a Russian-Israeli television news anchor. Apparently, she faced tremendous resistance from listeners who found her Russian-inflected Hebrew accent distressing. All this went to the even broader issue of Israeli prejudice toward Russian immigrants. She maintains a Russian and Hebrew language Livejournal site.

The transition from Rosner to Mozgovaya is a major shift for Haaretz and welcome news for the Jewish peace community.

This shift will also match the political times with Democrats ascendant in Congress and possibly the White House. One can assume that Haaretz’s U.S. coverage will become more diverse and balanced as the U.S. and Israel face difficult policy decisions in the coming years. If Obama wins the White House then we can expect vigorous efforts to advance Israel-Arab peace and an energetic Haaretz correspondent would be a boon.

Haaretz’s new editor, Dov Alfon, has made an auspicious editorial choice and I applaud him for it.

One anonymous correspondent of mine says Rosner was fired. Though the ICE report indicates that the costs of schooling his children in Washington on a Haaretz salary was no longer feasible. Sounds like he’s likely sending them to a very expensive Jewish day school or private college.

For the past several years, Benny Morris’ views of the Israeli-Arab conflict have grown increasingly bellicose and extremist.  But in his recent NY Times op-ed, he’s taken them to their apotheosis, advocating an Israeli nuclear strike against Iran.  Upon the likely failure of a conventional attack against Iran, he urges Israel:

to escalate and use the only means available that will actually destroy the Iranian nuclear project: Israel’s own nuclear arsenal.

I’m not even sure someone as nuts as Michael Ledeen has done so.  John Hagee came within a hair’s breath of doing so.  These two are certifiable right-wing lunatics.  What’s Morris’ excuse?

If you read Morris’ best work, it is deeply-infused with references to archival sources used to document his overarching arguments.  Not so here.  Everything is opinion and not based on any sources:

ISRAEL will almost surely attack Iran’s nuclear sites in the next four to seven month…

“Almost surely?” Says who? A general? A prime minister? A defense minister? Sy Hersh? Benny, if you want to make outrageous statements at least give us some reason to believe you’re not pulling this out of your a…denoids.

And listen to the presumption of this statement:

Israel’s leaders, from Prime Minister Ehud Olmert down, have all explicitly stated that an Iranian bomb means Israel’s destruction…

I have read the Israeli press regularly on this subject for the last year or more and while I have heard all manner of bellicosity toward Iran, I have never quite heard Olmert or any centrist Israeli politician say what Morris claims they’ve ALL said.

Benny Morris KNOWS to the core of his being that Iran only wants a bomb so it can use it against Israel.  What is the basis for such knowledge?  Has Iran ever said it would do so?  Has Iran ever implied it would do so?  No one denies that the Iranian regime hates Israel, just as no one denies that Israel hates Iran.  But there is a big difference between hating a nation’s government and being willing to use a nuclear weapon to eradicate it.  It seems to me Morris has made an awfully big jump without a parachute on this one.

In the following passage, Morris seems to have morphed into Gen. Curtis LeMay, a man who was willing to sacrifice millions of American lives to destroy the Soviet menace:

The Iranians will also likely retaliate by attacking Israel’s cities with ballistic missiles (possibly topped with chemical or biological warheads); by prodding its local clients, Hezbollah and Hamas, to unleash their own armories against Israel; and by activating international Muslim terrorist networks against Israeli and Jewish — and possibly American — targets worldwide…

To me, it borders on insanity for someone like Morris to be willing to accept the deaths of tens or hundreds of thousands of Israelis for the sake of destroying Iran’s nuclear weapons capability.  Especially when there is neither a guarantee that Iran will succeed in its effort, nor any certainty that Iran would ever use such a weapon against Israel if it did succeed.  In effect, Morris countenances the death of millions of Iranians and Israelis on the off chance that Iran might someday use its bomb against Israel.

Note below the typically racist and unsupported view that Muslim extremists do not value life and are willing to sacrifice their own citizens on the altar of Jew-hatred:

Given the fundamentalist, self-sacrificial mindset of the mullahs who run Iran…

And the equally racist and unsupported notion that we westerners are the only ones who truly value life and can be dealt with “rationally:”

Israel knows that deterrence may not work as well as it did with the comparatively rational men who ran the Kremlin and White House during the cold war.

To me, the idea Morris proposes here–that Iran is NOT a nation with a set of rational national interests–is the height of folly and betrays Morris’ utter ignorance of anything to do with Iran.  In fact, what particular expertise does he have in the field?  None that I can see.

Slim and Benny ready to ride the big one down

Gershom Gorenberg has also written a terrific critique of Morris’s essay and notes a few of the security threats that concern Iran and might lead it to want a nuclear weapon:

To its east, Iran has a Sunni-led country, Pakistan, that has nuclear arms. On its north is Russia; on its west is Israel. Besides nuclear powers, there is the old conventional threat of Turkey and the possibility that Iraq may someday be reconstituted as a functioning country and a military power. Any Iranian nationalist, whether Shi’ite, Pahlavian, or Marxist, would consider seeking the bomb - unless offered other reassurances about his country’s security, in the form of regional and international agreements.

We do a tremendous disservice to our own cause and to our enemy when we presume their motives to be base and presume ourselves and our motives to be pure as the driven snow. I am sorry to say that Benny Morris has become a warmonger. Just because he, like Slim Pickens in Dr. Strangelove, is willing to ride the big one to its target in Teheran, doesn’t mean the rest of Israel has to join him in his folly. I can only hope that cooler, more rational, and more cautious heads prevail in Tel Aviv and Washington.

The Israeli military once had a storied reputation for bravery, integrity and willingness to make the ultimate sacrifice. Think of three Israeli tanks singlehandedly stopping the advance of the entire Syrian army into northern Israel during the 1973 war.  Think of the heroic efforts of the Palmach to break the siege of Jerusalem in 1948.

Watch this video distributed by B’Tselem and originally shot by a Palestinian teenager from the window of her home, and see to what extent those hopelessly old-fashioned values have shriveled and died. The operative ones for the current Israeli military are cruelty, banality, and depravity. If you watch the video carefully, you will see the Lt. Colonel on the right move the prisoner slightly to his left to give the shooter a clear line of fire. This is disgusting beyond measure.

I repeat something learned during the Lebanon War: an army which is forced to resort to shooting unarmed, blindfolded Palestinians merely for waving a Palestinian flag, as Ashraf Abu Rahma does at the beginning of this video, is an army that has forfeited any claim to decency. What is worse–this army does a deep disservice to the nation it is supposed to defend.

I suppose one could argue that the military is doing precisely what the Israeli people want it to do. Thus the blame falls not only on the the army itself, but on all of Israel.

If you wonder why it failed its mission during the Lebanon war, you can certainly point to hopelessly inadequate leadership at the top. But you should also point to the corruption of its mission caused by playing the role of army of Occupation. It is one thing to face a resourceful, resilient foe as it did in Hezbollah in 2006; and it is something else entirely to torment unarmed civilians. I personally don’t see how the army can perform both missions without screwing up one or the other or both.

Abu Rahma was shot in the toe in this incident by a rubber-coated steel bullet. He was treated by an Israeli medic and released. B’Tselem has demanded that the Lt. Col. and shooter in this incident be brought up on charges for violating regulations and international law. Will they?

To be fair, this incident was perpetrated by the Border Police, an agency known for its extreme cruelty and depravity.  The IDF usually does have higher standards than the Border Police though both have been known for acts of extreme violence against civilians.

McCain and Romney: soulmates?

…If you happen to be rich, white, male, Republican and Christian (evangelical or Mormon).  For all the rest of us, we’ll have to look elsewhere.

The NY Times published The Buzz About a McCain-Romney Ticket yesterday and I’ve got to say it’s passing strange to me. If this is the Republican Party’s idea of a dream ticket then they’re likely to be trailing far behind on Election Day.

If McCain’s goal is to shore up the right wing of the Party then perhaps Romney brings something to the table.  But I’d think that to win the general election McCain has to worry about a lot more than his right wing.  Doesn’t he have to win some moderates, independents, and even a few Democrats?  I don’t see how McCain can do that on his own.  He’s lost the maverick, independent street cred he’d built up in 2000 when he ran the Straight Talk Express.  And Romney’s sure not going to help on that score.

First he was Muslim, then an Islamic terrorist, and now he’s a socialist according to John McCain:

…[In] an interview, published Friday in The Kansas City Star…Mr. McCain suggested that Mr. Obama might be a socialist. At a campaign event in Kansas City on Thursday, Mr. McCain accused Mr. Obama of having the “most extreme” voting record in the Senate. When The Star asked about the comment, he said Mr. Obama had taken positions “more to the left than the announced socialist in the U.S. Senate, Bernie Sanders of Vermont.” The reporter then asked Mr. McCain if he thought Mr. Obama himself was a socialist. “I don’t know,” Mr. McCain answered.

First, Bernie Saunders has never “announced” he was a socialist.  This is the first I’ve heard that calling yourself an independent means you are a socialist.  Under those terms, Joe Lieberman ought to be very careful he doesn’t get the same label.  Returning to Sanders, interesting to note that this same “socialist” shares McCain’s anti-gun control position.  Maybe some of that “socialism” is washing off on McCain himself?  Or maybe Bernie Sanders isn’t a socialist after all.

Second, by what criteria is Obama’s voting record the “most extreme” in the senate?  Did he just pull this out of a hat?

Third, you’ve got to wonder what kind of campaign staff this guy has.  Can you imagine they sat around in a room and actually came up with this as what they considered would be an effective line of attack against Obama?  If this is going to be the tenor of the McCain campaign, Obama may win this thing in a cakewalk.

It’s the end of an era of sorts.  And it couldn’t have happened a moment too soon.

Sol Salbe, always bearer of interesing news and useful information informs me today that Shmuel Rosner, Haaretz’s Washington correspondent will be leaving.  Unfortunately, I don’t yet know the why or wherefore of this move.  Haaretz has a new editor, Dov Alfon, who may be beginning to put his own stamp on the paper.  The Washington post is a key one for the newspaper and it seems reasonable that Alfon would want his person in there.

While I don’t relish the idea of anyone losing their job (and perhaps Rosner is leaving with another position lined up), Rosner was one of my betes noire.  His coverage was uniformly narrow and partisan and below the usual Haaretz standards.  His was turgid and lacking in any grace.  His reporting was so bad I usually could safely ignore it as having little or no relevance to anything.  The few times when I did pay attention to him I practically felt like tearing my hair out he was so bad.  All this was especially sad when you consider the illustrious figures who filled this role in prior years: Amos Elon and Akiva Eldar among others.

Typical for Rosner is his reporting on the new J Street survey.  The main critique he offers is that the questions in the survey are so long that they are “laughable.”  Yes, there is a little more substance offered in some of his other nitpicks with the poll, but not much.

Take this passage:

More people [surveyed] agree that “established” and “traditional” Jewish organizations represent their views [on Israel] than the number of people who say such organizations do not represent them. Even when AIPAC - supposedly the great Satan - is mentioned by name, more people (34 percent) believe it accurately represents their views than those (23 percent) who don’t. The 40 percent who do not have an opinion also represent a group that can hardly be considered “fundamentally misread.”

If you go back to the actual poll you’ll find that only 49% of those surveyed found that traditional Jewish groups (i.e. the Israel lobby) represented them.  Think what this means in the context of the “we are one” mantra chanted by the lobby to justify their hegemonic grasp of the Jewish voice on Israel.  Further, only 34% feel that AIPAC represents their views on the subject–a 15% drop from the number for the generic Israel lobby.  Compare the AIPAC number to the 66% who feel comfortable with their local Jewish federation.  The former’s numbers are absolutely in the tank.  Where is this in Rosner’s coverage?  Nowhere to be found.  These aren’t questions he chooses to ponder since he is a creature of the lobby and AIPAC.

I suppose if I were a newspaper editor facing a right-wing Bush Administration in power in Washington, I might decide that a Rosner type could be helpful in gaining access to the new political forces.  That’s the only way I can see justify putting him in such a trusted position whenever he was originally appointed.

Following that thinking, if you judge there is a likely change coming on Election Day with a Democrat possibly entering the White House, it also makes sense that Rosner should leave now.  Someone like him will not find much favor in an Obama White House.

All this is speculation of course.  All I know is that a new Washington correspondent for Haaretz is a very welcome change almost regardless of who the person is.  I should add that I have no problem with a liberal newspaper hiring a conservative columnist.  In fact, this is a good thing as long as the columnist embraces the notion of free-ranging debate and does not retreat behind slogans and narrow-thinking as Rosner did.

With any luck, Rosner will be either joining the staff of the Washington Times or Sheldon Adelson’s shmate Yisral Hayom.  I’d think he’d be among kindred spirits at one of them.

J Street has commissioned its first opinion survey seeking to determine the level of support among American Jews for territorial compromise and a negotiated solution to the Israeli-Arab conflict (summary).  There will be those of my right-wing readers who may doubt the results given J Street’s clear political commitments.  But the poll actually dovetails nicely with the AJC annual survey results on similar questions.

One of the more interesting survey results was a mixed finding: when asked whether Israel played a “big role” in their election vote, 58% answered “yes.”  But when listed among a group of other issues, Israel came out in the bottom tier of issues and only 8% noted Israel was one of their two top issues in determining their vote for president or Congress.  This interesting outcome indicates that theoretically Jews believe Israel is an important political issue.  But when push comes to shove there are other bread and butter issues like the economy and Iraq war which are far more important.  To me, this indicates that support for the Israel lobby is quite shallow among the Jewish community outside that 8% who are driven by the issue.

It’s no surprise that Jews disapprove of Bush’ job performance though the 16% rating is even lower than I thought it might be.  Obama beats McCain in the poll by 62% to 32%.  This is a respectable showing by McCain compared to past Republican presidential races, but still quite low.

Respondents disapproved of Bush’s Middle East policy and believe he should be much more engaged in lobbying for peace.  61% believe Israel is “less secure” than it was before his presidency.  Only 26% believe it is more secure.

When asked whether the solution to the Israeli-Arab conflict involved negotiating peace agreements or relying on military force alone to achieve security, the survey endorsed the former over the latter by 50% to 34%.

Fully 75% of those polled believe that the U.S. should play an aggressive role in promoting a negotiated peace even if it meant disagreeing publicly with the positions of the parties to the conflict.  70% were even willing for the U.S. to exert “pressure” on those parties it saw as impeding progress toward a settlement.  This has to be bad news for the Republican Jewish Coalition which lamely attempts to claim every election cycle that Democrats are soft on Israel because they are more likely to support U.S. policy saying that Israeli settlements are an obstacle to peace.  This poll shows that American Jews would not have a problem with any Administration that took an assertive role in defending this position.

Joe Lieberman isn’t going to like the following results.  Only 7% of poll respondents view evangelical Zionist leader John Hagee favorably.  Only 19% have a favorable impression of Christians United for Israel.  Only 1 in 4 said Jewish groups should form alliances with CUFI (are you listening Joe, or do you care?).  Finally, Holy Joe himself only earns a 37% favorable rating (48% unfavorable).

Regarding Iran: 69% said they were more likely to support a candidate who called for negotiations with Iran and resorting to sanctions if they failed.

Several results I found alarming: 48% were more likely to vote for a candidate who called for supporting Israel if it launched a pre-emptive attack on Iran.  That indicates not enough American Jews understand that our national interests may diverge from Israel’s.

65% were more likely to support a candidate who said (falsely by the way) that Arabs have repeatedly rejected Israeli peace offers.  Only 44% support the idea of declaring East Jerusalem the capital of a Palestinian state.

58% support Israeli withdrawal from the Golan in return for peace with Syria.  59% support withdrawal from “most” of the West Bank.  52% believe the U.S. should tell Israel to “end settlement expansion.”  76% believe Israel should negotiate with Hamas on behalf of peace.  54% believe that IDF killings of Palestinian civilians lead to more terror.  61% are opposed to collective punishment (Israel’s current policy toward Gaza).  81% will support “any peace deal” agreed to by Israel with its Arab neighbors.  One should keep this fact in mind when listening to the geshrei from the Orthodox community, which calls any territorial compromise on Jerusalem a betrayal of the Jewish people.  Only a very small minority of American Jews agree.

Quite frankly, I was shocked that AIPAC itself earned only a 38% favorable rating (21% unfavorable).  60% say it does not bother them when American Jews disagree with Israeli government policy.  When asked whether traditional Jewish groups in general do a good job of representing the community’s views on Israel 49% agreed.  When asked specifically whether AIPAC did a good job that number fell to 34%.  All this again showing the weakness of the AIPAC when it is viewed in the context of the overall Jewish community.

JTA once again produced bizarrely skewed reporting on the survey which focussed largely on Obama’s alleged lack of support among Jews:

American Jews are less supportive of Barack Obama than previous Democratic nominees, a new poll found.

The lack of support comes despite overwhelming unhappiness with the Bush administration.

I find it interesting that 62% constitutes a “lack of support.”  Would you say JTA is telegraphing its own prejudices or just guilty of sloppy journalism (or both)?

I’ll give anyone who discovers the weakness of the following claim honorary membership in the Tikun Olam fan club:

Al Gore and Bill Clinton both drew approximately 80 percent of the Jewish vote in their respective runs for the presidency, while John Kerry garnered about 76 percent in 2004.

The correct way to make this comparison would be using the percentage of support for each candidate AT THIS STAGE in the campaign, and not to compare Obama’s ranking now with Gore, Clinton’s or Kerry’s on Election Day.  I’ll bet JTA that Obama’s ranking by Election Day will be significantly higher than it is now and come close to, match or exceed Kerry’s.

Finally, not a word in the JTA story about the survey’s findings regarding the I-P conflict.  Strange that a poll, 95% of whose questions dealt with that subject and 5% of whose questions dealt with presidential candidates focussed laser-like on the latter and ignored the former.  But it’s what we’ve come to expect of JTA.

I enthusiastically endorse this statement which concluded the poll summary:

J Street has enormous opportunities to give voice to a Jewish public that holds beliefs and values which are very different from the positions regularly conveyed by many Jewish leaders and organizations.

The J Street poll is yet another indication that the hawkish policy pronouncements of the Israel lobby and specifically AIPAC represent no one but themselves and their members when it comes to the Israeli-Arab conflict.  The majority of American Jews don’t go along.