Schneier: Speech is ‘needed boost’
Foundation for Ethnic Understanding president and founder Rabbi Marc Schneier says yesterday's speech by the president was a "needed boost to ease the strain between the West and the Muslim world.
Schneier, who has been working on Muslim outreach, said the speech is "only the beginning of extensive grassroots outreach and inter-religious dialogue that is needed between the United States and the Muslim world to create real change."
The full press release is after the jumpRead More >>>
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Some more congressional thoughts on settlements
Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) says he believes Israel needs to make concessions on settlements, but thinks they must be made in concert with some kind of concessions from the Palestinians at the same time.
Speaking at a program co-sponored by EMET: The Endowment for Middle East Truth and the Heritage Foundation , Engel also said, though, that "he would look with tremendous askance if any adminstration" failed to honor the Bush-Sharon 2004 understanding which permitted Israel to continue to build in large settlement blocs which it would be likely to keep in any peace deal. The Obama administration has signaled that it would not adhere to that informal agreement, but Engel said he would probably make his feelings on that issue privately to the administration.
"I don't want Israel pressured into making unilateral concessions up front in return for nothing," said Engel, referring to settlements. "Palestinians need to do things simultaneously. I don't mind if Israel makes concessions at the same time the Palestinians are making tangible concessions." Asked afterward what those might be on the Palestinian side, Engel suggested that reducing incitement against Jews and Israel could one area for the Palestinians to work on.
Elsewhere on the settlements issue, Rep. Gary Ackerman put out a statement Thursday expanding on what I reported earlier this week: While he believes settlers should be allowed to have babies, he essentially is backing President Obama up by supporting a freeze on all construction in settlements:
I do not believe in, and I do not support a settlement freeze that calls on Israeli families not to grow, get married, or forces them to throw away their grandparents. Telling people not to have children is unthinkable and inhumane. Real life is messy and the exigencies of any vibrant population need to be acknowledged and accommodated.
The real question is expanding, construction and building. I think it’s fair to say that the big blocks of settlements will probably wind up in Israel. But this question, like the other questions related to a final peace agreement, has to be resolved in negotiations between the parties. A freeze on settlement construction—not family life—will set the stage for those negotiations to begin in earnest.”
Meanwhile, House Minority Whip Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.) blasted Obama's "pressure" on Israel in regard to settlements, although he doesn't specfically mention the word settlements in his statement:
As Palestinian terror shows no sign of abating, President Obama’s insistence that it is in America’s best interest to pressure Israel sends the wrong message to the region. Where is the outrage at the Palestinians’ continued refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state? Where is the concern for their failure to root out the terrorists in their midst?
The full Ackerman and Cantor statements are after the jumpRead More >>>
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Honoring HIllel’s 85th
More than three dozen members of the House of Representatives are co-sponsoring a resolution recognizing Hillel's 85th anniversary on June 14. Sponsored by Reps. Ron Klein (D-Fla.) and Tim Johnson (R-Ill.), the resolution "supports Hillel’s mission of service to Jewish college students and partnership with the campus community; and "congratulates the students, lay leaders, and professionals of the Hillel movement on reaching its milestone 85th birthday."
“Hillel has helped transform the Jewish college experience nationwide,” Klein said. “As someone who was involved in Jewish campus life, and as the father of two children who are active in their Jewish communities, I am keenly aware of the benefits that Hillel can provide to young people. I felt it was appropriate that on this anniversary, Congress recognize Hillel’s achievements in giving back to this country and the world.”
“I am thrilled to join with Rep. Klein in this celebration of the Hillel Foundation started many years ago in my hometown of Urbana, Illinois. Hillel has become a center for student life in the Jewish community, a cultural, social and religious home for generations of students. It is truly one of our most valued community institutions,” said Congressman Johnson.
The full resolution is after the jump:Read More >>>
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ZOA: Speech was ‘biased’ and “inaccurate’
The Zionist Organization of America is the first Jewish group to outright pan President Obama's speech yesterday in Cairo. In a press release today, ZOA national president Morton Klein says it was a "strongly biased speech, inimical to Israel, supportive of false Palestinian and Arab claims against Israel, blatantly factually inaccurate – inaccuracies that always benefited the anti-Israel Palestinian, Arab and Muslim cause.
For example, Obama falsely claimed the Palestinian Arabs were ‘displaced’ by Israel in 1948; falsely claimed the Palestinian Arabs have been suffering trying to establish their state for 60 years (they could have had a state in 1937, 1948 or in 2000, but turned down each opportunity). Obama also bizarrely claimed that he longs for the day Jerusalem is secure for Jews, Muslims and Christians even though this has been precisely the case since Israel reunited the city under its control in 1967.
“Just as egregious, Obama claimed there are 7 million Muslims in America when major studies show there are between 1.3 and 2.7 million Muslims."
While the ZOA's lengthy statement is almost entirely critical of the speech, Klein did note at the top that "President Obama made some positive comments about Israel, stating that the U.S.-Israel bond is ‘unbreakable’ and criticized those who threaten Israel’s destruction and repeat vile stereotypes about Jews – without, however, naming those who do so like Iran, Syria, and Abbas’ Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority (PA) (through the Fatah Constitution, PA-controlled publications, curricula, media, mosques, schools and youth camps)."
ZOA's full statement is after the jumpRead More >>>
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Worshiping Lisa, and a little sympathy for “natural growth”
Eight years ago, when my older son started worshiping Lisa, we decided it was time for a sacrifice.
I live in Arlington, Va.; at the time, there were no Jewish pre-schools in the county - the closest was five miles away in the wrong direction (away from D.C.). My wife was re-entering the work force. My (saintly) mother-in-law was happy to care for both my 2.5-year-old son and his year-old brother, but we thought it was a bit much for us to take for granted.
We tried the (very) limited number of pre-schools unaffiliated with churches, and hit a brick wall. These were either booked years in advance or unappealing.
So we swallowed hard and believed the claim of a pre-school associated with a Baptist church that they were "ecumenical" and Jewish sensibilities would remain intact.
We bought that until the evening he insisted on blessing the meal "in Lisa's name." Who was this Lisa? What hold did she have on my family?
It took a minute or so to realize he was referring to a kind-of-homonymic savior.
We swallowed hard again and made the complicated arrangements to drive the boys five miles the other way. I'm happy to report that my older son scored high marks in Hebrew school this year for explaining Maimonides' principles of charitable giving. Lisa, at least I think, is long forgotten.
I bring Lisa up because, while I love telling this story now, at the time (as I think a lot of parents can sympathize) it was a problem of the nailbiting kind. Both of us needed to work to get by in the D.C.-area economy. We needed to leave our children in the charge of folks we could trust. Not earth-shattering stuff, but enough to keep us yabbering away into the night about what to do.
Occasionally, we thought about moving to a cheaper corner of the planet -- but we came here for family reasons and it wasn't an option.
This is my way of getting around to a piece by Gershom Gorenberg at the American Prospect that's gone kind of viral: It's about "natural growth" in the settlements.
Let me say at the outset that Gorenberg is right to say that the lack of a settlement freeze has become a major hurdle to advancing talks. First -- and I have this on the best authority -- because the Americans simply do not trust Israel on settlements any longer. The feeling in the Obama administration is that Israel has turned "natural growth" into a "loophole you could drive an elephant through," someone involved in the talks told me. Not only that, the mistrust is institutional -- it has accumulated over the years and throughout the Bush administration. Without adding anything further, I can say my informant in this case would be in a position to know this at the highest levels.
More importantly, the settlements and their expansion are at the crux of mistrust of Israel among even those Palestinians ommitted to two states and co-existence. The settlements have squeezed Palestinians off of their farm land, out of their livelihoods and have made getting around the West Bank a chore at best, a nightmare at worst. Nothing would signal goodwill more emphatically than an earthmover or two left to rust.
What is counterproductive and gratuitous is Gorenberg's sarcastic tone. He calls the settlers liars. So does Josh Marshall in this post.
There is lying and there is self-delusion. There is a coordinated effort to deceive and there is the all-too-human tendency to focus on instances in a conflict where you are genuinely aggrieved as opposed to those where you know you really want to get away with something.
It is a twist and a stretch to say that a settlement freeze would inhibit women from having babies. But it is also true that Israeli authorities are turning down applications to expand pre-schools in settlements that have naturally grown -- where, instead of the usual 10 kids starting in gan (kindergarten), 14 or 15 are expected to start this year. It's also true that some settlers wishing to add rooms to their homes for expanding families are being turned down. Others are getting the permits.
Who knows why this is -- the Israeli bureaucracy has never been known for its transparency. Maybe it's political, as the settlers I've spoken to believe it is. Maybe it's personal vendettas. Maybe it's the affair the sweaty guy on the third floor of the ministry is having with the receptionist on the second floor, and the requests are piling up on his desk, while on her desk... you get the picture. And meantime the diligent, energetic guy down the hall is approving all the expansions in the settlements in his bailiwick...
Which is to say, no, it's not just about some God-given right to have your grandkids a walk away to enjoy, as Gorenberg posits.
But about those grandkids and that walk -- it's not made up. Israelis, culturally, tend to live within short-drive distance of extended family. I've seen this in my own extended family and among others. It's more acute in the West Bank where transportation is more fraught. The folks pooh-poohing this as some made-up custom defend (and with justification) those Arab families who, without permission, add rooms to their house so grown married kids can move in.
Now, the genuineness of these plaints in no way mitigates the fact that some expansions are simply land-grabs -- witness the outposts, for the most egregious examples, but others are more subtle, and Peace Now has documented how much of the settlement enterprise was built on illegally appropriated private land.
And the genuine plaints are still not going to keep the freeze from happening, as genuine as they are. The damage expansion is doing to the peace process -- and the suffering it causes Palestinians -- substantially outweighs the inconvenience to settlers.
But here's the thing: In real time, as you're trying to make your kids a little less crazy by building the oldest one a bedroom, as you're trying to figure out what you're going to do next year when your boss won't be as sympathetic to your pleas to make it home on time to relieve the babysitter, it doesn't feel like an inconvenience. It feels a little like a nightmare.
And tone really, really matters. There are close to 300,000 settlers. About 70,000 of them, at least, will be asked to move, if this process works out. And I just don't believe that when they are preoccupied with what to do about their kids, Naomi Shemer's "Al Kol Eleh" is drumming insistently inside their heads.
There will be dead-enders who will make it ugly, if and when it happens, just as there were in 2005 in Gaza. Getting the rest to cooperate will mean speaking to them civilly.
Calling them liars isn't the place to start.
(And what is that weird violent porn thing going on in the right margin on the Prospect's Web site?)
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AJC praises Buchenwald visit
The American Jewish Committee is lauding President Obama for visiting the former Buchenwald concentration camp today, saying it "underscores America's commitment to preserving the memory of the Holocaust."
The group's statement says, "At one point during his visit, in the presence of Holocaust survivors, including Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel, President Obama declared that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Holocaust-denying President of Iran, should come to Buchenwald. 'I have no patience for people who would deny history. The history of the Holocaust is not something speculative,' Obama said.
The AJC's full statement is after the jumpRead More >>>
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Obama: ‘It’s going to take time’
President Obama sat down with Middle East reporters yesterday after his speech, and three times he was asked a similar question: What happens if Israel doesn't change its policy on settlements? Three times he had the same answer: It's only been a few weeks -- this is hard and it's not going to happen immediately.
"We've been waiting 60 years," he said. "So we maybe might just want to try a few more months before everybody starts looking at doomsday scenarios."
Here's one exchange from the interview:
Q Second, I would like to ask you a question about American policy. I go often to the United States in my work, and I meet a lot of people. And my last trip -- and it was after your inauguration, a few weeks -- you met with the key members of your party in the Congress at that time. And we read in the papers that what you did is you convinced them of your approach to the peace in the Middle East. And everybody was -- then the expectation rose in the Arab world and in the Muslim world.
When they saw Mr. Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel, "refusing" a two-state solution, "refusing" the freeze of the settlements, and the not talking about this issue, and then when we saw this letter of 300 members of the Congress, some of the Arabs thought that maybe it was AIPAC again, which is trying to influence the Congress. So my question is, do you feel that, as an administration, can you pressure Mr. Netanyahu, if need be, domestically and can you -- do you think that also Mr. Netanyahu can endanger the historic alliance and relation between his country and the United States?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, first of all, I tried to make very clear in the speech, the bond between the United States and Israel is unbreakable. It transcends party; it will be there if there's a Democratic President or a Republican President, if there is a Democratic Congress or a Republican Congress. The ties are just very deep. They're cultural, they're historic, they're familial. I mean, I think Nahum would be the first one to acknowledge, I don't know what number of American-born Jews are now Israeli citizens, but it's a pretty high number. There's constant -- I mean, there's constant flow back and forth. So there's just -- they're very close ties.
So expecting a break between the United States and Israel is I think not something that people should anticipate.
I think that -- the second thing I want to emphasize is, it's only been four months -- five months. Netanyahu has only been in office, what is it, a month and a half? I mean, since the government formed. I mean, he was elected April 1st. So, two months. We've been waiting 60 years. So we maybe might just want to try a few more months before everybody starts looking at doomsday scenarios.
This is difficult, and it's going to take some time. Now, it's going to take time for Palestinian leadership. We just discussed the issue of how Palestinians unify around some core principles that could facilitate talks from going forward. That's not an easy task. There are some very deep-seated arguments between Hamas and Abbas and Fatah. And I think we would be naive to think that somehow overnight those problems are going to be solved.
If Hamas wants to participate, it's going to have its own political problems internal to Hamas, because there are some who will never agree to recognizing Israel, in part because they would prefer being in the role that they're in now, which is in opposition and obtaining financing and support and living in Damascus and doing what they do to governing. And I think that's going to have to be tested. They're going to have to make some decisions. That's going to be difficult.
For Israel, these are also difficult decisions. I believe that, as I said in the speech, these settlements are an impediment to peace. But that's not to deny the fact that there are people who are already living in some of these settlements; that there is a momentum to some of these settlements. Turning back those settlements involves very tough choices.
So all these things are going to take time. But this is why I say America can't -- we cannot do this for the parties. I mean, I do think that sometimes there is a schizophrenic view in the Middle East of America. On the one hand, everybody wants America to stop meddling, don't interfere, don't be imperialist. And then, on the other hand, when is America going to solve the Palestinian crisis? Why haven't they done this? Why haven't they created democracy and human rights in -- throughout the Muslim world? Well, you can't have it both ways, right? We can't, on the one hand, be the respectful partner who's listening to other countries, and on the other hand you expect us to solve every problem, and nobody else makes an effort. And part of what I've tried to do today is to instead say, we will be a partner, we will work with you, but everybody is going to have to carry their own weight on this thing.
Asked about whether there was any kind of timeline, he said this:
THE PRESIDENT: I don't want to impose an artificial timeline, but I think that all of us probably had a sense in our gut of, "Are things moving forward?" or "Have they stalled?" There's historically been a rhythm to negotiations in the region. And when things stall, everybody knows it. People may say a lot of words, but everybody knows that nothing is happening. Right now things have been stalled for quite some time. When things are moving, people also know that.
And so what I want to -- I want to have a sense of movement and progress. And I think that can be achieved.
And here he expands on the remarks in his Cairo speech about Hamas and uses the "Nixon to China" anaology in reference to Bibi Netanyahu:
First of all, I tried to make clear in my speech that when it comes to Hamas, there is no doubt that Hamas has some support among Palestinians -- that was shown in the last election; that cannot be denied. What I also said is that Hamas has responsibilities to those people it represents to have a responsible approach to actually delivering a Palestinian state.
If Hamas's approach is based on the idea that Israel will cease to exist, that's an illusion. And what that means is that they are more interested in talk than in results. If they are serious about delivering a Palestinian state, then they should renounce violence, accept the framework provided by the previous agreements, recognize Israel's right to exist. That still leaves enormous room for them to negotiate on a whole host of issues.
But at minimum they can't provide the results for the people they claim to represent if they're not acknowledging reality. So, you know, this is really a decision for Hamas to make.
Now, with respect to the Israeli government, I've had three meetings with Prime Minister Netanyahu. The first two was while I was a United States senator, and one in the White House just recently. In each case I found him to be a very intelligent, very engaging person, a excellent communicator. And I think because this is the second time that he's serving as Prime Minister, I think he feels a very real historic sense about the task before him.
Obviously it was a very close election in Israel. It took some time to put that coalition together. That means that politics are complicated. And I think that just as so many Palestinians have lost confidence and faith that the process can move forward, I think there are a lot of Israelis who have lost confidence and faith that they will ever be recognized by Arab states, or that there will be security that is meaningful -- where rockets aren't fired into Israel.
And so I believe that Prime Minister Netanyahu will recognize the strategic need to deal with this issue. And that in some ways he may have an opportunity that a labor or more left leader might not have. There's the famous example of Richard Nixon going to China. A Democrat couldn't have gone to China. A liberal couldn't have gone to China. But a big, anti-communist like Richard Nixon could open that door.
Now, it's conceivable that Prime Minister Netanyahu can play that same role. But it's going to be difficult -- and I don't want to diminish the difficulties for any of the parties involved in making these decisions because, as I said, there are a lot of passions in the people. But part of leadership is being able to push beyond immediate politics to get to where, ultimately, the people need to go.
And in terms of partners more broadly, my attitude at this point is I want to work with everybody I can to get things done.
The entire interview is after the jumpRead More >>>
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Obama takes Bibi there
I mean to China. As in what Nixon was to China, Netanyahu can be to the Arab world.
Here's the president in a roundtable with six Middle Eastern journalists on Thursday after his speech in Cairo addressing the Muslim world:
And so I believe that Prime Minister Netanyahu will recognize the strategic need to deal with this issue. And that in some ways he may have an opportunity that a Labor or more left leader might not have.
There's the famous example of Richard Nixon going to China. A Democrat couldn't have gone to China. A liberal couldn't have gone to China. But a big, anti-communist like Richard Nixon could open that door.
Now, it's conceivable that Prime Minister Netanyahu can play that same role. But it's going to be difficult -- and I don't want to diminish the difficulties for any of the parties involved in making these decisions because, as I said, there are a lot of passions in the people. But part of leadership is being able to push beyond immediate politics to get to where, ultimately, the people need to go.
Now, the "Nixon is China" cliche is, well, so cliche that it is almost meaningless -- except when it is pronounced by one of Nixon's successors.
Obama's invocation of the cliche arises, I think, from his expectations of Netanyahu, and in both senses of "expectation:" He wants Netanyahu to go the distance, yes, but he also believes he is capable of going the distance -- in fact, he would prefer striking the final status accord with Netanyahu.
This concurs with what very senior Israeli officials have been telling reporters in recent days: The notion that Obama wants to squeeze Netanyahu out of office is nonsense. The conversations among officials, at the most senior levels, have been about advancing a process that very much takes into account that Bibi is prime minitser.
Incidentally, one other thing: The White House included Nahum Barnea of Yedioth Achronoth -- perhaps Israel's most thoughtful columnist -- on the panel. The panel of "regional reporters." This is a nice and welcome touch; the Bush administration, in its dealing with reporters, tended to segregate Israel out of the Middle East.
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Obama at Buchenwald
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President Obama visited the Buchenwald concentration camp this morning and again spoke out strongly about Holocaust denial. "To this day, there are those who insist that the Holocaust never happened -- a denial of fact and truth that is baseless and ignorant and hateful," he said "This place is the ultimate rebuke to such thoughts; a reminder of our duty to confront those who would tell lies about our history."
Obama's full remarks, as well as those of Elie Wiesel, who accompanied the president and German chancellor Angela Merkel, are after the jumpRead More >>>
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Best take so far on Blumen-journalism
Max Blumenthal has made a name for himself as a guerrilla videographer for the left, plunging into the centers of rightist activity and extracting embarrassing revelations of what he evidently believes is the rotten conservative core.
This works, at times. Confronting Anne Coulter at a conference of conservatives about how she could claim any status in critiquing the personal lives of public figures was brave and funny.
Other times, it's just mean and, frankly, stupid. He's made a career of getting religious conservatives to chat up their end-times beliefs, and then pretending that those beliefs are ambitions. This is dangerous, and would be (rightly) decried on the left if it were used against Muslims. In recent dispatches, I've noticed, the evangelicals are on to him and steer away from his leading questions about Armaggedon, instead insisting that their affection for Israel lies first and foremost in its status as a democracy.
He's been touring Israel and the Gaza Strip lately, posting his entries at Philip Weiss' blog. Here's his latest, featuring drunk American bochers in downtown Jerusalem waxing racist after President Obama's speech.
And here's how Blumenthal's collaborator, Joseph Dana, sums it up:
The question is why more journalists are not covering this story. All you have to do is walk the streets of Jerusalem and you will find dozens of people that harbor the same beliefs. As a resident of Jerusalem, I can say that the people represented in this video are not members of a fringe group or simply drunk college kids. These people reflect the sentiments shared by many people in this country and this city. These people and their families are the core of the opposition to meaningful peace between Israel and her neighbors. This is what Obama is up against.
Jerusalem is a city of 750,000 people, two thirds Jewish. These guys -- they're ubiquitous on the midrehov in the summer months, it's true -- are not even its permanent residents.*
The city is layered, complex, fraught - and so much more than this tripe. Please: Would Weiss post video extracting the worst of thug culture and claim it as representative of the African American experience? How grotesque.
Best take is from the Atlantic's Ta-Nehisi Coates:
For what it's worth, on a very visceral level, what I see is a bunch of drunk racist white kids, doing what I'd expect a bunch of drunk racist white kids to do. I don't really have "higher expectations" because of the particulars of the Jewish experience, anymore than I have "higher expectations" for Irish-Americans due to the oppresive immigrant experience of their ancestors. Nor, when it comes to, say, homophobia or nativism, do I have "higher expectations" for blacks because of segregation and Jim Crow. (Though I do have higher hopes, mostly because I'm black and I want us to represent.)
Oppression corrupts, just as often as it ennobles. Perhaps more often.(snip)
Man listen, hand me a fifth of Henny, a video camera, and an hour, and I'll show you Negroes claiming that God's messenger lives in a space-ship orbiting the earth.
Read the whole thing.
Max has some real talent. It's time for him to grow up and put it to good use.
*Best ever scene, witnessed about 15 years ago on a similar summer night: One skinny bocher lurching near another and screaming "Look at her again and I'll f*** your face up. I will. I'll f*** it up." Such pilpul!
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