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Capital J

Anti-Semitism, stupidity, inevitability

By Ron Kampeas · October 30, 2008

Joe Klein is usually a smart guy who at times says really, really dumb things.

Look, I agree with him overall on why describing Rashid Khalidi as an “anti-Semite” is scurrilous, but why - why why why why why - did he have to revive the really, really dumb dictum about how Arabs can’t be anti-Semites, because, goshdarnit, they are Semites?

(More on the Khalidi wars here.)

You know the argument, it cropped up in college after one too many beers/bong hits/body slams, and then the slightly addled girl in the corner who starts every sentence with “Point being” says, “Point being, if Arabs are Semites how can they be anti-Semites?” and you have to explain, all the while thinking to yourself, “this party has gone on way too long, and a statement this stupid was inevitable, and I should have ducked out when Steve said he was going home and offered me a lift….”

Except this election is inescapable, and so now we have to deal with this inevitability.

So:

1) I’m not sure what the linguistic term is (help me out people), but prefixes and suffixes can subtly reshape the meaning of a word’s core. One does not call a sane person “hinged,” but “unhinged” would commonly mean “nuts” and is not usually applied to broken doors. So, maybe (see 3 below) “Semites” can accurately describe Jews and Arabs, but anti-Semite applies strictly to Jew-haters.

2) Even if it didn’t, one can hate one’s own. (Do blacks suffer through this stupidity? I mean, do African Americans have to deal with black writers who say “Uncle Tom is no Uncle Tom, because Uncle Tom is, well, Uncle Tom!”?)

3) “Semitic” legitimately describes language, not DNA. Klein’s argument implies a legitimacy to the most malodorous definition of “Semite.” It’s unwitting, I’m sure, and I’m not saying Klein thinks in terms of race - I’m sure he does not. But you’d think he’d think this kind of thing through.

“He can’t be an anti-Semite, he’s a Semite” is too often an escape clause, a means of allowing haters to get away with hating. Does Klein believe Egyptians who publish “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” should get a pass? Syrians who perpetuate the blood libel?

Maybe it was easy blog shorthand, but it didn’t do Khalidi any favors. So let me freelance a suggestion.

Instead of

I’ve never met Rashid Khalidi, but he is (a) Palestinian and therefore (b) a semite, so the charge of anti-semitism is fatuous.

What if Klein tried:

I’ve never met Rashid Khalidi, but I’ve reviewed his writings, and nothing suggests an embrace of racist Jewish stereotypes or a rejection of the tenets of Judaism or of Jewish existence. In fact, although he identifies with a people engaged in a national struggle with the Jewish state, and while he has erred toward Palestinian nationalist dogma, what is notable is that he has done so in terms that are sympathetic to Jewish exigencies.

Wordy? You betcha! But don’t we all emerge just a little smarter?

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Ross: RJC ads remind him of Arafat

By Eric Fingerhut · October 30, 2008

Dennis Ross is a senior foreign policy adviser to Barack Obama. Rashid Khalidi is not. And armed with that information, Ross said voters can "make your own judgments" about what Barack Obama's views on Israel and the Middle East.

Speaking at a Georgetown University forum entitled "The 2008 Campaign and the Jewish Vote," the former Clinton administration envoy also pointed out that he too knows Khalidi, the Columbia University professor of Arab studies whom Obama was friendly with in Chicago.

"Because you know somebody," he asked, "this is supposed to be a reflection" on your beliefs?

Ross noted that he first got to know the Illinois senator three years ago, when Obama contacted him about speaking to a group in Chicago. "He was reading my book, 'The Missing Peace,'" said Ross, "which makes clear who was responsible" for the failure in peace talks --Yasser Arafat.

A few minutes later, he used a story about Yasser Arafat to describe what he said was the mindset behind the Republican Jewish Coalition advertisements attacking Obama's advisers.

Noting that Zbigniew Brzezinski is not a member of the 17-member Obama national security team and Robert Malley was only briefly on an advisory group for Obama, Ross recalled a briefing he once gave to President Bill Clinton. He told him, "You have to understand something about Arafat. He makes up facts, then he repeats the made-up facts, then he believes what he made up."

"The only one making up facts is Dennis Ross," said RJC executive director Matt Brooks, who stood by the accuracy of everything in every ad. While conceding that Brzezinski may not be an adviser to Obama on Israel, Brooks pointed to this Los Angeles Jewish Journal <a href="http://www.jewishjournal.com/elections/article/obama_campaign_halts_debates_with_rjc_20081015/">article</a>, which states Brzezinski is an adviser -- although in this Jerusalem Post <a href="http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1205261316933&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull">piece</a> from March, Obama adviser Mel Levine says Brzezinski had only spoken to Obama a couple times -- and Obama's statement last year that he had learned <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASlETEx0T-I">"an immense amount"</a> from the former Carter foreign policy adviser.

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McCain’s latest Iran ad

By Ron Kampeas · October 30, 2008

This ad is getting a lot of critical attention, but aside from the dumb music, it’s not really off the mark.

 

 

Of course we know the answer to its final question (Barack Obama is not about to sell out Israel to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad) but his failure to explain why he said “I would” when asked if he would unconditionally meet the Iranian leader is what allows McCain to posit the question. Why can’t he explain that debate answer? Or just say he was wrong?

Also, it’s not out of place to raise Ahmadinejad’s conditions for engagement with the United States. (And yes, he’s not the “real” leader; and yet, the “real leaders” don’t seem to have much of a problem with his excesses.)

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A video roundup

By Eric Fingerhut · October 30, 2008

As the first YouTube election enters its final days, the videos continue to come -- some serious, some more light-hearted.

First, the National Jewish Democratic Council aims for laughs with "A Yiddisha Take on 2008," featuring people using various derogatory Yiddish terms -- like <em>meshuganah</em> -- to describe John McCain and Sarah Palin, and a more positive Yiddish term -- <em>mensch</em> -- when they talk about Barack Obama.

The Republican Jewish Coalition offers its "closing arguments" with two videos. The first is titled "McCain: Maverick, Hero, Friend":



The second, a video version of their newspaper advertisements, is called "Obama: Lacking the Experience and Judgement to Lead":



And finally, a new video from the Obama-Biden campaign. "Jewish-Americans for Obama" stars Alan Dershowitz, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Howard Berman and a bunch of other less famous Jews.

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Political tidbits: Coleman takes lead over Franken, D.C.day schoolers back Obama

By Eric Fingerhut · October 30, 2008

  • Norm Coleman has taken a four-point lead over Al Franken in the Minnesota Senate race, according to a new poll. That’s Coleman’s biggest lead since April. But Bill Clinton will be appearing with Franken tonight.
  • How “Joe the Senator,” aka Joe Lieberman, is helping John McCain in Ohio, according to the Washington Post.
  • Washington Jewish Week finds that Jewish day school students in the Washington, D.C. area overwhelmingly back Obama — to the tune of 65 percent — but the Orthodox day school students give 59 percent of their votes to McCain.
  • Stephen Spector has “Five Questions for Sarah Palin,” including “Why does she support Israel?” and “Does she believe in witchcraft?” in the Jerusalem Post.
  • The Jewish Week investigates Aish HaTorah’s connections to the film “Obsession” and talks to Jewish leaders about the film.
  • Washington Jewish Week endorses Barack Obama, calling him the candidate with “the best chance of gaining renewed trust and respect for our nation.”
  • Two Holocaust survivors endorse Obama in the Palm Beach Post, saying he’ll protect Obama and support “Holocaust survivors’ rights to dignity and justice.”
  • Dennis Ross defends Obama’s relationship with Rashid Khalidi at a appearance on behalf of Obama in Virginia Beach Tuesday night, responding “He’s someone that he has known. I know him too. Because I know him does that somehow reflect on me?”
  • Joe Biden defends his running mate’s Israel bona fides in Florida, reports Reuters.
  • Stewart Ain in The Jewish Week talks to Florida Jews who have switched from McCain to Obama — mostly because of Sarah Palin.
  • Obama may be doing better among Jewish voters because of his “revitalized, re-legitimized and repackaged liberalism,” writes Jim Besser in The Jewish Week.
  • Hilary Leila Krieger profiles the rabbi in Michelle Obama’s family, in the Jerusalem Post.

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Wasserman Schultz smacks down Palin

By Ron Kampeas · October 30, 2008

Sarah Palin questioned Barack Obama’s support for Israel yesterday, and Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) didn’t like it one bit.

“Gov. Sarah Palin — who prior to her nomination for Vice President had never spoken publicly about Israel in any major forum – has no standing to question Barack Obama’s unshakeable commitment to Israel and its security,” said the South Florida congresswoman, one of Obama’s most visible Jewish surrogates, in a statement. “He has demonstrated this commitment over many years through word, deed, legislation, and votes. Frankly, her attempts to question Barack Obama on Israel are unfounded and pathetic.”

Wasserman Schultz was responding to a speech Palin made in Bowling Green, Ohio, in which she noted that Obama had attended a farewell party for Palestinian-American professor and activist Rashid Khalidi.

“And the twist here is that there’s a videotape of a party for this person, back in 2003, a celebration of him, and Barack was there, and we know some very derogatory things were said there about Israel and America’s support for that great nation,” Palin said. “And among other things, Israel was described there as the perpetrator of terrorism instead of the victim.”

She continued, “What we don’t know is how Barack Obama responded to these slurs on a country that he now professes to support.”

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Khalidi and the PLO

By Ron Kampeas · October 30, 2008

Starting in 1988, intermittently at first and then routinely from the launch of the Oslo talks in 1993, U.S. presidents have waived bans on contacts with the Palestine Liberation Organization.

President Bush continued to do so even as he isolated its leader Yasser Arafat; he expressly sought to marginalize Arafat so he could cultivate moderates in the organization and the movement.

This extends to the group's mission in Washington D.C. The idea is that U.S. officials need to communicate with the group in order to sustain credible U.S. involvement in the region.

Now, however, in the dying, damning days of an election campaign, we've somehow been DeLoreaned back to the 1980s and contact with the group has become radioactive, even though the Israeli government, with full Bush administration blessing, is scrambling to come to a peace agreement with Mahmoud Abbas, who is still the PLO's leader.

And so, Rashid Khalidi's status as a former PLO spokesman has been repeatedly used against his friend Barack Obama. (I know there's more to it than this: The McCain campaign wants the Los Angeles Times to release the tape of the 2003 Khalidi dinner to see whether the honoree said anything incendiary about Israel. A quick pan back to Barack and Michelle, nodding vigorously and fist-jabbing, would be icing on that cake.)

The problem with the "spokesman" claim is that you can actually prove it's not true. In saner times, "prove it's not true" would be a phrase frowned on in an innocent until proven guilty culture. Khalidi's denial would be enough in the face of a lack of evidence as to same. Those promoting the claim cite a single 1982 article by Tom Friedman; Khalidi says Friedman got it wrong, and that the term "PLO spokesman" was used promiscuously in 1982 Beirut.

But like I said, things ain't so sane.

So here's the thing: What everyone acknowledges is that Khalidi was an adviser to the Palestinian delegation to the 1991 Madrid talks. That delegation - to a person - could not have had any formal affiliation with the PLO. Israel regarded the group as terrorist and its laws banned contact with its members; then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir made NOT being affiliated with the PLO it a condition of Israel's agreement to participate. The names of the Palestinian team would have been vetted by Israeli intelligence.

This was something of a nudge and a wink, of course: Faisal Husseini, who headed the team, was in constant contact with PLO headquarters in Tunis.

Still, it should put to rest the notion that Khalidi was ever a "spokesman" for the group.

"Seventeen years ago," once upon a time, didn't mean ancient history; one would expect older members of the McCain team to remember what was, at the time, a critical step in getting the sides to Madrid. The younger folks I can forgive and educate (Michael Goldfarb, consider yourself educated.)

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