If two leaders meet and no one’s there to hear it….
So Bibi and Obama finally met -- but behind closed doors, and not in the happy Charlie Rich sense either. (My age! It's showing!)
And another sign: Netanyahu canceled the traditional post-meeting briefing with the Israeli press. Here's the brief:
WASHINGTON (JTA) -- President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister had a closed meeting.
The meeting Monday evening at the White House was closed to press, even omitting the standard photo opportunity and hand-shake.
The White House statement following the meeting was unusually terse: "The President and Prime Minister Netanyahu discussed a number of issues in the U.S.-Israel bilateral relationship. The President reaffirmed our strong commitment to Israel's security, and discussed security cooperation on a range of issues. The President and Prime Minister also discussed Iran and how to move forward on Middle East peace."
White House officials have expressed frustration with the impasse in Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
Earlier Monday, Netanyahu had called for an immediate resumption of talks, in a speech to the Jewish Federations of North America's General Assembly.
Obama met with some of the Jewish leaders at a White House reception. He praised the federations umbrella for its charitable work and called for support for massive health care reform currently under consideration in Congress.
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Federations leaders meet with Obama, top advisers (UPDATED)
About 50 leaders of The Jewish Federations of North America and Jewish federations across the country, met with President Obama and other top administration officials Monday afternoon at the White House.
The hourlong reception, scheduled after Obama had to cancel his scheduled Tuesday speech to the group's General Assembly because he'll be attending a memorial service for the soliders killed at Ft. Hood last week, featured short remarks from Obama. Mostly, though, it was an opportunity to talk and schmooze one-on-one with the president and aides such as chief of staff Rahm Emanuel (who will speak at the GA on Tuesday), top advisers David Axelrod and Valerie Jarrett, Office of Management and Budget director Peter Orszag, Special Assistant to the President Dan Shapiro, Office of White House Public Engagement director Tina Tchen, White House Jewish outreach officials Susan Sher (also chief of staff to Michelle Obama) and Danielle Borrin.
Obama, who dropped by for about 30 minutes, said that the Jewish Federations of North America "perform every day of every week selfless acts of tzedakah," according to a person present at the meeting, and spoke about his experience with Chcago's Jewish federation. He also made a pitch on health-care reform, talking about the importance of passing it and stating that he could "see the light at the end of the tunnel." He also said he looked forward to meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu later Monday evening.
William Daroff, vice president of public policy and director of The Jewish Fedrations of North America's Washington office, said that the group discussed "issues of concern to the Jewish community, including social services, foreign policy and the recession" with the president and his senior staff.
"To have the opportunity to speak one-on-one with the president and socialize with White Hosue staff is a once in a lifetime opportunity for which we are grateful," Daroff said. "It helped to move the ball forward on our public policy goals."
UPDATED: Here's the press release The Jewish Federations of North America put out on the meetingRead More >>>
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White House dodges questions about low-key Bibi meeting
White House reporters want to know: Why no pool for the meeting tonight between President Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu? No camera, no reporters, no nothing.
Such meetings -- with any world leader -- usually include a photo-op with a friendly exchange ("I welcome my good friend etc.") before the meeting starts, and then, after the meeting, the two and two format: Two questions from the U.S. media and two from the media of the visiting leader.
Here's the back and forth with spokesman Robert Gibbs, who effectively dodges a credible explanation and who also reiterates the "nothing has changed" line on settlements policy:
Q What does the White House -- well, one thing first, on the meeting with the Israeli Prime Minister tonight. Why is that closed, no press avail, the statements? What is the thinking there?
MR. GIBBS: Well, the President obviously is -- will meet later today with Prime Minister Netanyahu to discuss a full range of issues --
Q -- want to meet with him? This meeting was --
MR. GIBBS: Well, again, as you know, our schedule since late last week has been up in the air. The President was supposed to speak on Tuesday to the same group that Prime Minister Netanyahu is speaking to. He obviously looks forward to sitting down with the Prime Minister tonight -- and continue to work together to address issues like Middle East peace and the threat that's posed by Iran.
(snip)
Q And on the meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu, I just wanted to follow up. I understand the schedule has been in flux, but why no television cameras? Is it because you don't want to highlight the fact that there's not a lot of progress in these talks so far?
MR. GIBBS: No, the President wanted to have a meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu. That's what we're doing. I'm sure, Ed, that the contents of the meeting generally seem to be well read out and I trust that this time will be no different.
Q But typically the President will go on camera if he wants to highlight what is a key initiative for him, and if Mideast peace is that important you would think that he would want to do that.
MR. GIBBS: Well, like the date didn't change from Saturday night to Sunday, I think it's pretty safe to assume that the President thinks no less of the importance of the Middle East peace process on simply by subtracting one television camera.
Q And the last thing, on settlements. Last week, Secretary Clinton was in Israel, and suggested -- she wanted to praise the Israelis for some progress on settlements. And the Palestinians were upset because the U.S. policy has been a complete freeze on settlements.
MR. GIBBS: Policy dating back several decades, yes.
Q Right, but specifically it was emphasized in the early days of this administration. And the Palestinians felt like maybe there were some back-peddling. Can you just clear up -- there was a sense that she seemed to be shifting last week.
MR. GIBBS: No, no, again, I judge from your question -- the policy of the United States government for many decades has been no more settlements. That's not something that is new to this administration. It's something that I think has gotten disproportionate media coverage, but it's not a policy difference in this administration and previous administrations.
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Reporting Fort Hood
Marcy and I talked yesterday about what, if anything, we should cover about last week's massacre at Ft. Hood; the alleged killer, Maj. Nidal Malik Hassan, was born here to Palestinian parents. A radical take on Islam, at least in part, drove him, apparently, to commit murder.
I told Marcy that we should apply the same standard we do for Jews. In recent months, for instance, we haven't covered every financial miscreant who may or may not be Jewish; the ones who are deeply involved in the community, who spend their money on Jewish causes -- the Madoffs, the Abramoffs -- definitely make the cut. Others do not.Others, it's a tough call.
For instance, on my Washington turf: Dan Snyder is by no means a financial miscreant, but his controversial ownership of the Washington Redskins, the Six Flags amusement park chain and his ventures into other entertainment arenas, have engendered reams of copy. We don't cover it because -- although we know he was born Jewish -- it doesn't touch on the community. He doesn't claim Judaism drives his decisions.
At times, this gets dicey. I had to make a difficult call in October of 2005 to cover the indictment of Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the aide to Vice President Dick Cheney who was embroiled in the retaliatory White House leak that exposed Valerie Plame as a CIA operative.
Libby's Jewish involvement was minimal: He belonged to a temple; He had attended a couple of Republican Jewish Colaition events (but so, for that matter, do a lot of Republican officials who are not Jewish).
But Libby's faith had already greased a lot of speculation -- however unfounded -- about his motive in helping to gin up support for the Iraq War, and it would inevitably reverberate. Was I fueling this misconceived speculation by reporting his Jewish ties? It was a hugely tough call, as I said. I was sort of vindicated, I think, when many of the luminaries who later pleaded for sentence leniency were Jews who were, indeed, deeply involved in the community.
So, back to Hasan; we know about the radical Islam; we know about his anger at the Afghan and Iraq wars; we know nothing so far about whether he threw Israel-Palestine into this mix. (And nothing, when you're reporting, is a "given.") Until that emerged, I thought, we should leave it alone.
I think Marcy's call, though, was ultimately correct: Hasan had discussed his faith and his perceived persecution with Palestinian relatives; this merited a brief. (We topped it off with Joe Lieberman's declaration that it might be a terrorist act.)
This is a thorny matter, if only because we're talking about an alleged lone gunman and it has yet to be determined how influenced he was by Islamist thinking and, more specifically, homegrown Islamist thinking.
I think Richard Silverstein gets it right in this thoughtful take on his Tikun Olam website:
The motives for the crime are a jumble of the personal, psychological, professional, religious and sectarian. As is rarely the case in these circumstances, much is grey, and little is black and white except the huge burden of suffering Maj. Nidal Hassan inflicted on the victims and their families.
Though Maj. Hassan’s family emigrated to the U.S. from Ramallah in the 1960s it does not appear, at least at first glance, that the Arab-Israeli conflict was one of his primary grievances. He had other things troubling him more. First, sharing the searing pain of his patients who were veterans of the Afghan and Iraq wars. Second, his own imminent deployment to the war zone and all the existential fears this must have invoked. Third, his escalating opposition to those two wars on the soil of Muslim nations. Fourth, his conviction that his religion was disrespected in the military ranks.
I also think -- and not contra-instinctively -- that Jeffrey Goldberg gets it right here:
It seems, though, that when an American military officer who is a practicing Muslim allegedly shoots forty of his fellow soldiers who are about to deploy to the two wars the United States is currently fighting in Muslim countries, some broader meaning might, over time, be discerned, especially if the officer did, in fact, yell "Allahu Akbar" while murdering his fellow soldiers, as some soldiers say he did. This is the second time this year American soldiers on American soil have been gunned down by a Muslim who was reportedly unhappy with America's wars in the Middle East (the first took place in Arkansas, to modest levels of notice). And, of course, this would not be the first instance of an American Muslim soldier killing fellow soldiers over his disagreements with American foreign policy; in 2003, Army Sgt. Hasan Akbar killed two officers and wounded fourteen others when he rolled a grenade into a tent in a homicidal protest against American policy.
(Goldberg, I think, gets it wrong, though, when he ellides from how his colleagues at the Atlantic have played down Hasan's faith to his belied that entire "media elites" are doing the same. I've been following this in the New York Times, the AP and the Washington Post, and these publications, at least, have not shied away from taking into account Hasan's Islamist beliefs.)
Like I said, Hasan is, allegedly, a lone gunman; that would mean Islamism is a factor only to the degree that it influenced him. It requires comparing the ideas to which he was exposed to the ideas he expressed; it requires teasing out -- to the degree we can -- how much those ideas motored his actions, discrete from his personal demons.
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B’nai B’rith lauds health-care reform bill
Like the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, B'nai B'rith International is lauding the House of Representatives' passage of a health-care reform bill this weekend.
"The House measure creates insurance competition in markets where none currently exists and helps ensure costs are affordable and insurance rules are fair," said the group in a statement. The full release is after the jump:Read More >>>
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Is AIPAC-bashing review behind Washington Times turmoil?
Talking Points Memo is all over the apparent departure of executive editor John Solomon from The Washington Times, along with other executives.
In less than two years, Solomon, even liberals will grudgingly acknowledge, has turned around the conservative flagship's coverage, making a small paper competitive in breaking news with the much bigger Washington Post. (Full disclosure: Solomon was once my boss at AP.) His secret (it's not such a secret) is a non-partisan approach to breaking news; some of the paper's coverage last year wounded the McCain campaign.
TPM now suggests that this book review by conspiracy theorist extraordinaire Michael Scheuer had a role to play in the shakeup. Scheuer has likened AIPAC and the pro-Israel lobby to a fifth column in langauge that would make even the usual suspects blush -- and he found much to admire along those lines in a novel co-authored by the newspaper's vice-president, Jon Slevin, entitled "Clash of the Gods:"
Senior U.S. leaders in "Clash of the Gods" are left holding the bag for their predecessors' feckless policies; one which, for example, finds Washington backing to the hilt Arabs and Israelis in a religious war-to-the-death where no U.S. interests are at stake. These men and women are cornered by America's dependence on the foreign oil controlled by Arab tyrants and Russian oligarchs; they fight internal policymaking battles pitting those working for U.S. security against those willing to see America hurt as long as the imagined dictates of Bible and Torah are met; they are trumped at every turn by Israel's successful purchase - via its U.S.-citizen surrogates in AIPAC - of Congress and its suborning of the Defense Department; and they watch helplessly as Israel trades U.S. technology and intelligence data to China and Russia for its own benefit. Quite appropriately, the book's blindly pro-Israel and evangelical U.S. president and his Jewish defense secretary find at day's end that Israel has played them for fools.
Now it emerges that Slevin selected Scheuer to write the review (which is kind of like Tony Orlando solciiting "true rocker" props from Pat Boone, but okay).
And it was after the revelation was published in Sunday's Washington Times that Solomon and others decided to consider their options. Slevin was promoted to acting president and publisher.
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UJC General Assembly Draws a Couple Crazies
Local DC blogger Prince of Petworth shared some interesting photos of the "protest" outside the UJC General Assembly at the Washington Marriott Wardman Park.
There were only three people holding signs as of 11:00 am, and two of them were minors. The pained expression on the security guard's face in the first photo pretty much incapsulates this blogger's feelings on the matter.
Not pictured is a sign which read 'Rabbis Rape Kids.' Uh huh.
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Bibl’s GA speech
For live twittering of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's speech, you can go here.
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Cantor criticizes Hitler analogies
House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) is among the Republican leaders who appeared at the "Tea Party" rally Thursday afternoon on Capitol Hill in front of a crowd holding --at least a couple --signs comparing Obama's health-care plan to the Holocaust. He didn't talk about that issue Sunday during his appearance at The Jewish Federations of North America, but did sort of address it over the weekend in an interview with Al Hunt on Bloomberg Television.
Hunt asked about comments Rush Limbaugh made back in August comparing Hitler and Obama and saying that Obama's health-care logo resembled a swastika. Politico reports:
“Do I condone the mention of Hitler in any discussion about politics?” Cantor said. “No, I don’t, because obviously that is something that conjures up images that frankly are not, I think, very helpful.”
A Cantor spokesman also said that signs at Thursday's Hill Tea Party showing murdered Jews at Dachau were "inappropriate."
Meanwhile, Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.) has released a video asking Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-Minn.), the sponsor of the rally, for an apology for the signs that appeared in the crowd. "I can't believe that Congressman Bachmann would stand where she stood and see those images and not have the common deccendy to say 'I disagree with those images. I think she owes the memory of those who perished in the Holocaust an apology. I'm waiting, we're all waiting."
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