J Street blasts back at Gingrich
Newt Gingrich attacked President Obama's Middle East policies Sunday night, and J Street didn't waste much time returning fire.
The left-wing pro-Israel group e-mailed a message to supporters early Monday afternoon asking its supporters to "fight back now" by signing a petition opposing Gingrich's "failed Bush-Cheney views on the Middle East."
"Political pundits and journalists might think that Gingrich and those who applauded his remarks speak for the majority of American friends of Israel, when they certainly don't speak for you and me. Congress may consider supporting Gingrich's recycled Bush-Cheney views, which would be a disaster for Israel and the United States."
Gingrich, as the J Street e-mail states, did blast Obama in an interview with Hilary Leila Krieger of The Jerusalem Post before his speech, saying Obama was "systematically setting up the most decisive confrontation that we've ever seen" with Israel and saying that "there's almost an eagerness to take on the Israeli government to make a point with the Arab world." He added that Obama's policy of engagement with Iran was a "fantasy" and called his Middle East policies "dangerous to Israel."
But in his speech to AIPAC, Gingrich actually attacked the Bush-Cheney admnistration's policies in the Middle East, saying that the "tragedy" of the last administration was that it combined "two enormous weaknesses." The first was inarticulateness, a problem the former Speaker of the House noted that the Obama adminstration won't have. The second, he said, is that "the threats we are faced with are far more catastrophic than any of our leaders are willing to talk about, and the challenges of unlocking those catastrophes are much harder than any of our leaders have been prepared to talk about. The challenge of the Bush administration wasn't that it tried too much; it was that it underestimated dramatically how hard this is going to be."
Gingrich's criticism of Obama in his speech was much less explicit than the Post interview. He did not mention Obama by name in the address, but did take a shot at the president's willingness to engage with Iran.
"Talking in good faith with Adolf Hitler and seeking reconciliation with Adolf Hitler would've been a complete dead loser, because he was in fact the personification of evil, and as long as he was in charge, all humanity was at risk," said Gingrich. "Ahmadinejad, if he gets the weapons, will be every bit as evil as Hitler. He tells us this all the time, and only our unwillingness to admit that two plus two equals four blocks us from seeing what he is doing."
While Gingrich did receive applause for that line in the hall, it actually contradicts AIPAC's policy on Iran. President David Victor said in his speech Monday morning that "we supoport the administration's effort to explore direct diplomacy as a means of preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapons capability."
The former speaker also said that because "the leading funder of Sunni extremism on the planet is Saudi Arabia," that "rather than bow to the king, we need a national energy policy to liberate the United States." Gingrich was referring to an incident a few weeks ago in which the president bowed when he met Saudi King Abdullah at the G-20 summit, but former President Bush was hardly known for getting tough with the Saudis or developing a national energy policy, and actually held the king's hand in 2005 when Abdullah visited his Crawford, Texas ranch.
(At last week's CAMERA dinner in New York, Rep. Anthony Wiener (D-N.Y.) said U.S. leaders shouldn't hold the hand or bow to King Abdullah, but the crowd only booed the second reference. He responded, "Don't boo one and not the other, my brother.")
After the jump is J Street's complete action alert:
To thunderous applause last night, Newt Gingrich attacked President Barack Obama's policies in the Middle East, promoted military action against Iran, and assailed diplomatic engagement as weakness at AIPAC's conference. [1]
Just before he went on stage, Gingrich told The Jerusalem Post that the President's policy with Israel and Iran was a "fantasy" and that Obama was "endangering Israel" by trying to work toward a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. [2]
Is this some kind of bad horror movie? Just when we thought the 2008 election had finally discredited the disastrous foreign policy of George Bush and Dick Cheney, Gingrich spouts the same old failed ideas in primetime and thinks it's good politics.
We need to fight back right now -- political pundits and journalists might think that Gingrich and those who applauded his remarks speak for the majority of American friends of Israel, when they certainly don't speak for you and me. Congress may consider supporting Gingrich's recycled Bush-Cheney views, which would be a disaster for Israel and the United States.
We've got to make it crystal clear that the majority of our community stands with President Obama on Israel and Iran - so Congress and the media see how politically toxic and substantively wrong Gingrich's views really are.
Click here to defend President Obama from Newt Gingrich's attacks.
We'll use the tens of thousands of signatures we collect to talk to the media about how out of the mainstream Gingrich and his views are - so make sure you add your signature.
On the politics, Newt's got it wrong.
78% of American Jews voted for Barack Obama and over 70% of American Jews support President Obama's policies toward Israel and the Middle East. [3] Gingrich's views represent a small, though politically outspoken, minority of the Jewish community.
On substance, Newt's also dead wrong.
Pursuing a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the single most pro-Israel thing President Obama could do right now. It's the only way to secure Israel as a Jewish, democratic homeland, as well as a building block of regional peace efforts that would normalize relations between all Arab countries and Israel.
On Iran, the President is promoting tough, direct diplomacy to address concerns over their nuclear program, support for Hamas and Hezbollah, and threats against Israel. The President has made clear that the diplomatic road ahead will be tough and that we will not be bound by any illusions. This is the right approach for the time being - and a welcome change after the last President's Axis-of-Evil approach that got us nowhere.
The politics of this moment are incredibly important - imagine if we can collect tens of thousands of signatures from our community rejecting Newt Gingrich's attacks on Obama. Next time someone wants to attack President Obama on Israel and the Middle East, they'll think twice.
Click here to stand up for President Obama's Middle East agenda.
After you've taken action, be sure to spread the word to your friends and family. We'll need to expand our reach if we're going to send a loud enough message that Newt doesn't speak for us.
Thanks so much.
- Isaac
Isaac Luria
Campaigns Director
J Street
May 4, 2009
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The comments from Matt are absolutely disgusting. First, Mr. Gingrich’s statements regarding Israel have been consistently supportive. Secondly, to state that his speech is “cheap, shallow flattery” is a sad commentary on Mr. Gingrich, because he’s been totally supportive of that still struggling nation. Then, to describe Mr. Gingrich as “some goyishe American blowhard” is a comment that belongs in the gutter! I’m surprised that no one else has commented on these disgraceful remarks. I hope that Congressman Cantor can explain to Mr. Gingrich that only narrow minded nitwits speak like Matt, and his remarks are his own, and not a reflection of the Jewish people.
Gingrich doesn’t deserve your good-natured compliments. This is a man who’s so staggeringly narcissistic and un-self-aware that he went after a president for adultery while himself engaged in an extramarital affair of his own. This is a man who jumps up and down about liberals riding roughshod over the Constitution while he himself defends a president who used the Constitution like it was toilet paper, from Article I Section 9 to amendments 4 through 6, just to name a few examples. This is a man who attacks gays for undermining the sanctity of marriage just for wanting the right to marry those they love while Gingrich has been married---wait, how many times was that?
Let’s put it this way--I’m happy to assume that Gingrich is being just as sincere when he talks about Israel’s security as he is when he talks about the sanctity of marriage and the rule of law. How about that?
When a man exploits principle after principle, exhibiting rank opportunism and populism at every step, why do you suddenly assume that he’s being serious this time when he talks about Israel, perhaps the most politically useful football in conservative politics today?
Perhaps the audience ought to have remembered King Lear. They seem to be suffering from the same deficit as Lear himself, who preferred the comforting and flattering speech of the daughters who found him useful over the daughter who truly loved him and was willing to be honest when necessary.
It seems that Matt and J-street simply are not very well informed about the Middle East and Israel. They are using Israel to fight domestic US issues such as gay rights etc. Also they simply have an irrational hatred of George Bush..Irrespective of George Bush’s domestic policies and policies in Iraq, his policy of enabling Israel to find its own way without heavy handend misguided US arm twisting was the correct one and is the one to pursue today.
The fact is that Gingrich is completely correct on the middle east. If Israel were to be forced to give up the West Bank now then it would bring terrorists, rockets, Hamas etc onto the doorstep not only of Jerusalem but tel Aviv as well. This would inevitably force Israel into a much wider ground offesnive against the Palestiians and cause more War. There is no Palestinian leader today who is a viable Partner for Peace that is in a position to deliver a genuine Peace Treaty with Israel. Hamas in Gaza is fundamentally opposed to this in their very charter. Let me state that again so it can be easily understood.. Hamas sees its own purpose as pertual war with ISrael until Isael is destroyed and a fundamentalist Islamic state can be set up in its place. Hamas is not interested in Western concepts of Welfare for its own people. Similarly, Fatah wants to replace ISrael with a “secular” Arab Nartionalist government. It is also not interested in wellfare of its own people or compromise with Israel. These fundamental conflict base agendas of the Palestinians is why the Peace Process has been a war process todate and why it will continue to be so. Pretending that Peace can be had by applying pressure to Israel will certainly not bring Peace in our times. Rather the real enemies of the West ie of Israel and the Us will be emboldened. Ultimately leading to more spectactular terrorism against the Us itself. Obama’s current policy is akin to feeding your friends to the crocodile in the hope that the crocodile will be sated enough not too eat you. However, ultimately, the crocodile will return much more agressively to bite Obama.
The problem with the Iranians is not that they are “misunderstood” and need to be given a sympathetic ear. They are very well understood. Their agenda as with their proxies of Hamas and Hezbolla is simply to wipe Israel off the map. The Fatah lead Palestinian Authority is less relgiously fundamentalist but their basic position is almost as rejectionist as that of Hamas.The Palestinian Authoriy also wants to destroy Israel but in stages. It wants to set up a Palestinian trojan horse in the West Bank and then destroy Israel proper through demographics and terrorism. They say that explicitly in Arabic..check out the memri.org website. No amount of delusional Obama feel good lets just sit down and have a pleasant conversation ideology is going to change that. Neville Chamberlain in World War II thought he could talk to Hitler and it lead to the Holocaust.
For two decades now, successive left wing oriented Israeli governments have been possessed by the same delusional thinking that now seems to infect the US. The more you have talks about final status, the more terrorism, wars and bloodshed will ensue because such talk only transmits “weakness” to Israel’s Islamist enemies. Perceptions of weakness inthe Middle East are as fatal as a lone cub in the jungle. The new age feel good foolery of liberal Jewish community is completely divorced not only from Reality but from Torah.
The Palestinian Arabs already have a state. Its called Jordan and was created on 70% of the original Palestinian Mandate. Setting up a second Palestinian state in the West Bank is simply not viable. IT will lead to a calmity not only for the Jews but the Palestinians themselves. This is already the case in Gaza. Israel’s left wing orchestrated pullout of Gaza and handing over territories to the Palestinians has not improved their conditions. The complete opposite has occured. When Israelis controlled Gaza, Gaza produced agricultural products and provided jobs agriculture and hi tech jobs to Gazan Arabs. Today under Hamas rule, Gaza has been turned into one massive Iranian supported terrorist base in which Sharia law is imposed, political prisoners are tortured in a way that makes Abu Graib look like disneyland and Gays are outlawed period.
It is often alleged that the Palestinians are “reprressed” by the illegal “Occupation” and that this forces them into terrorism. This is also merely a figment of simplistic “Western’ guilt complex thinking. Israel truly Occupied the West Bank in the 1970s and 1980s after its acquisition of these territoriest post the surprise victory in 1967 War. during this period of exclusive Israeli control free of Fatah which had been driven out, the West Bank flourished. The Palestinians health, GDP, literacy all went up substantially. Only after the left wing brought back Arafat and his armed thugs did the condition of the Palestinians start to deteriate. You people really need to learn some accurate History (which has not been distorted by the so called New historian) check out the work of Professor Efraim Karsh in his seminal piece “What Occupation”.
Ah, the history lesson and the string of slogans. Why do you guys find that all so darn comforting? Are you so insecure that you need to comfort yourselves constantly just to get through the day? Don’t you think we know all this already? Does it even matter whether any of it has any bearing on reality?
How do I know you’re full of it? Because you don’t know me at all. I’m not a J-street type. I know my Middle East history backwards and forwards. And I’m not an irrational “Bush hater” either. I used to stand up for the man in public. So can it, buddy. You don’t know what you’re talking about.
The reason why the Christians needed to invent Satan was so that they didn’t have to deal with their opponents’ arguments on their merits. As soon as they could convince themselves that their opponents were allied with the devil, there was no need to worry anymore. So rather than deal with any of my actual statements, you box me in as a “panty-waist J-street-type liberal” and can breath a sigh of relief.
Well, too bad. I’m a tough Zionist. And there are lots more where I come from. Like Michael Oren, that strong conservative Zionist who made aliyah thirty years ago, who serves in the army, who knows more Middle East history than you will ever, ever know, who literally wrote the books on Israel’s wars, put it, “The only thing that can save Israel as a Jewish state is by unilaterally withdrawing our settlements from the West Bank.”
No, I didn’t say Israel had anything to do with gay rights. Tell me, do you know what a straw man is, or do I have to explain that to you?
I said that Gingrich exploits many issues---nearly every issue I can find---for crass political gain, and often in the most hypocritical way imaginable. He’s a con-man. And that’s why his political career tanked the moment he got into power.
And let’s be straight here: Gingrich can afford to sound all macho. He doesn’t have his finger on the big red button, so it’s very easy for him to make tough-guy pronouncements and look like a real strong fella. But Bush and Cheney couldn’t pull the trigger when they were in power, and they talked pretty tough, too. They sat by and watched while Iran went from zero centrifuges to many thousands.
It’s all very different when you’re the one in charge, with that tremendous responsibility on your shoulders. It’s so much easier to be a sidewalk supervisor like Gingrich. Talk is cheap. Let me know when he actually does something that doesn’t just serve his own career.
And you can jump up and down about Jordan being the “true” Palestinian state. You think we haven’t heard that one before? Honestly?
We all know. Transjordan was carved out of the Palestine Mandate by Britain in the early 1920s and given to the Arabs.
But it doesn’t make a darn bit of difference. You may be totally convinced that it does, but it doesn’t. None of this history does. I mean, people get mad about it, but it doesn’t change anything.
The fact is that there are millions of people sitting in the West Bank right now who don’t want to be unrepresented subjects to foreign rule anymore. You can pat them on their little heads and tell them about how you’ve civilized them, sort of like China does to the Tibetans. (Not that I’d compare, considering how many orders of magnitude worse China has been than Israel ever was.) But they’re never going to thank you. Go back and read Rudyard Kipling’s “White Man’s Burden” if you want to, but the rest of us are living in the 21st century now. (And before you start, I’m not saying Israel is a “white” country. I’m hoping you know Kipling’s thesis.) Or curl up with Karsh. I know it’s very comforting having your opinions steadily reinforced. Very comforting indeed.
But reality doesn’t permit us to do what’s comforting all the time. You can either beat these millions of people into submission, or kick them all out by the millions, or grant them the vote, or give them a state. Those are the long-term options. Pick one. No slogans or history lessons. This is the present we’re living in. Deal with it. And it’s not enough just to say we have to be tough with them. Be specific. Imagine you’re in charge, and millions of lives are on your shoulders.
Oh yeah, and before you go after Michael Oren too, just remember that Avigdor Lieberman just picked Oren to be Israel’s new ambassador to the United States.
Matt, no offense, mate but I don’t purport to know you and your motives just as you seriously have little understanding of who I am.
Whereas you like to dismiss History as irrelevant becasuse it doesn’t suit your position, the Truth is the passt is always important if you want to sucessfully navigate the future
The most important thing to understand is that despite all the touchy feely stuf PEACE NOW is simply not ATTAINABLE.
You state “The fact is that there are millions of people sitting in the West Bank right now who don’t want to be unrepresented subjects to foreign rule anymore.”
Well firstly, Palestinian population has been massivley overstated for political purposes. Israel does not now face an impending Population Bomb. Jewish population is holding its own against the Palestinians. The Palestinians are emmigrating at every given opportunity and the Arab womb is not defeating the Jewish one by any stretch. So firstly there is no urgency to find a quick fix; there is no rapidly closing window of opportunity. TIME IS ON ISRAEL’S SIDE!!!!!
You say glibly that “the Palestinians don’t want to be unrepresented subjects to foreign rule”.
Have you actually applied any critical thinking to that statement.
The Palestinians are currently denied political freedoms by their own regimes not by Israel. Palestinians are oppressed by the Hamas “meshugenas” in Gaza and by corrupt Fatah thugs in the West Bank. To some degree the Palestinians voted these regimes in themselves. However, essentially their lack of freedom is a problem of Islams attempts to reckon with Modernity.. The same situation of disenfranchised Islamic/Arab populations occurs to varying degress in every Arab Islamic country..except of course for Israeli Arabs who are the most free Arabs in the World. Certainly it is most true of Israel’s most strident enemies Iran, Syria.. As for foreign domination well Gaza is currently dominated by Iran. In any case understand this well: under no scenario is there likely to arise a free democratic Palestinian state free of foreign domination.
If the Palestinian regimes manage to achieve their real goal, G-d forbid, to destroy Israel then the Palestinian people will be thrown into a bloddy, never ending civil war between the Islamists and the secularists.
Whatever way you cut it a viable Palestinian State is simply not going to eventuate
So what you are really advocating for is the foreceable ethnic cleansing of some 200,000 Jewish “settlers” from their rightful legally acquired homes in their ancestral homeland of the Westbank in order to setup a pol pot like Palestinian regime which will not only terrorise their own people but immediatley start to fire rockets at Israel eventually forcing Israel to reinvade within a couple of years at most.
The best solution for all parties is simply the curent plan as advocated by Netanyahu: namely assiting the Plaestinians economically and to help them to setup their own autonomous governiing institutions whilst at the same time preventing them from harming Israeli civilians.
The last time a “democratic” US government got grandiose ideas that it was capable of delivering a final status solution ie that lead by Clinton had the exact opposite effect and it casued 9 years of intifada, lebanon conflict & Gaza mayhem.
The truth is that Obama should correct Bush’s oversight and start to reign in Iran. why doesn’t Obama seriously threaten the Iranian clerical regime?? It’s not as if the Iranians could not be cowevered.. In stead Obams’ advisers seem to be duping him into appeasement postures which will only damage the US standing.
I want you to go to Wikipedia right now and look up the term “straw man,” because you clearly don’t know its definition. Here, I’ll make it easy for you:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/straw_man
(While you’re there, stop by:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin’s_law
for good measure.)
In addition to avoiding addressing my earlier straw-man claim, you added another for good measure. No, I didn’t argue that history lessons were bad merely because I don’t like what they have to say. I argued that they were simply irrelevant, as are irrelevant any Biblical claims or claims going back thousands of years about ownership of land. Unless you think that Hashem is going to solve the problem and not humans, none of these cosmic arguments mean a darn thing.
Now you take up a new tack that’s becoming increasingly popular these days. When confronted with distressing data right here in the present, you simply change the data so that they’re more comforting to you. I mean, what a coincidence! When everybody is pointing to disturbing demographic trends data, you just happen to “find” data that perfectly fits what you already believe---it’s a miracle!
Arik Sharon, like Oren and even Lieberman, among many others, finally saw reality when he came to grips with the demographic data. You can make up new data if you like, but then there’s really no point in discussing things, is there? I’ll just make up some data of my own, and we’ll be even....
Nor am I implying that most of the settlers would have to leave, since most live on land that would already be covered by land swaps---oh, what’s the point. I know you’re going to believe whatever you wish about what I’m actually saying, regardless of what I actually say. It’s really a waste of time arguing with you.
Matt, Your terminology in your first commentary truly insults everyone who’s not Jewish, by the use of your euphemism, even though you may have only have attempted to destroy Mr. Gingrich’s reputation. And, your other series of replies insults everyone who’s been married more than once. Regardless of the reason for multiple matrimony. Next, no one even mentioned Michael Oren, other than you, so why you mention him is truly a mystery? And, finally, when you mention Iran, remember, it was under the Jimmy Carter regime, where we lost any and all ability to reason with that outlaw regime.
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Matt
05/04/09 07:00 PM
What the heck does Gingrich know about Israel? He doesn’t know Israel from his elbow! All the Jews in positions of leadership are in the Democratic party now---the Republican Jews are all gone. And for the remaining Republicans like Gingrich, Israel is just a useful political tool to divide the American vote and get back into power.
If we Jews have learned anything from our history and the founding of Israel, it’s that we can’t allow ourselves to be used as pawns in the other peoples’ games anymore, especially when they turn to cheap, shallow “flattery” of the kind Gingrich spews. We have to rise to positions of prominence and leadership, in Israel and elsewhere, and take charge of our own destiny. And when some goyishe American blowhard like Gingrich---who has no concept of what it’s like to be one of us---tries to toss Israel around like a football to boost his own approval ratings and divide the electorate, we have to tell him to go shove it and find some other people to exploit.
Be strong. Gingrich has plenty of other people to exploit, after all…