Here’s the reworked “column” version of my blog post on right-wingers who slam Condi but can’t bring themselves to say a negative word about Bush.

Well, here’s a great example: Aaron Klein, author of “Schmoozing With Terrorists,” writes about U.S. aid in the territories being used to attack Israelis, and blames it all on Rice — as if she doesn’t work for the president.

Even if one disagrees with today’s editorial in The New York Sun raising questions about the Annapolis conference, the neoconservative newspaper deserves credit on at least one point: It avoids the intellectually dishonest argument advanced by many pro-Bush pundits that Condoleezza Rice, and not the president, is the proper address for criticism of the current U.S. diplomatic push (in fact, the piece doesn’t even mention the secretary of state).

Compare that, for example, to Bret Stephens or Frank Gaffney, who manage to vilify Rice without ever acknowledging that the buck stops with her boss.

Sure Rice is driving the current policy, but Bush knowingly handed her the keys to the car. If Elisabeth Bumiller of The New York Times is to be believed, Bush is well aware of Rice’s increasing anti-Cheney tendencies — the president has even joked about them:

More often in those years, Ms. Rice used her relationship with Mr. Bush to try to gain control over the national security process as well as two powerful men who drove much of the agenda in the first term, Vice President Dick Cheney and Donald H. Rumsfeld, then the defense secretary….

In recent months, Ms. Rice has gone so often to Mr. Bush to push him on diplomacy with Iran and North Korea that he has started to needle her that she expects him to talk to people like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the radical Islamist who is president of Iran, or Kim Jong-il, the North Korean leader whom Mr. Bush has said he loathes.

“You want me to sit down with Ahmadinejad?” a White House official recalled that Mr. Bush had archly asked Ms. Rice. “Kim Jong-il? Is he next?” The White House official said that Mr. Bush had also taken to calling Ms. Rice “Madame Rice,” as in “Madame Rice, you’re not coming in to tell me that we ought to change our position?”

Bush’s willingness to follow Rice’s advice is no accident. The president is said to reward loyalty and value a sense of intimacy when it comes to advisers — and, on both counts, Rice reportedly fits the bill as much as anyone.

Of course, the same also is true of Bush’s approach to the world — he reportedly tends to personalize foreign policy. Is it so hard to believe that a president who looked into Putin’s soul and saw only happy colors, would decide that Mahmoud Abbas — as opposed to Yasser Arafat — was a man he could trust? Is it so hard to believe that a president who bet his entire presidency on building a stable democracy in Iraq, would decide that it’s within the power of the United States to play midwife to a democratic Palestinian state?

Now throw in the fact that Abbas’ reformist prime minister, Salam Fayyad, is a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin — he and Bush were once reportedly seen exchanging the Longhorns’ famous index-finger-and-pinkie salute — and it’s quite easy to imagine that Rice and her boss are on the same page when it comes to the overall goal of pushing for a two-state solution by the end of 2008.

D.C. Bureau Chief Ron Kampeas and I discuss his first day covering the Annapolis Summit.

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What does Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert say about American Jewish groups that say he has no right to negotiate a deal that would divide Jerusalem?

Here’s what he told JTA’s Ron Kampeas at a press briefing on Monday:

“Does any Jewish organization have a right to confer upon Israel what it negotiates or not? This questions was decided a long time ago. The government of Israel has a sovereign right to negotiate anything on behalf of Israel.”

The Orthodox Union, one of the groups taking the lead in fighting against a Jerusalem deal, was quick to respond to Olmert’s comments. Here’s a statement issued by the O.U.’s president, Steve Savitsky, and its public policy director, Nathan Diament:

“In vigorously advocating for the unity of Jerusalem in the weeks leading up to the Annapolis conference, the Orthodox Union has not sought to ‘confer upon’ or dictate to the Israeli government what it has the legal right to negotiate about with Palestinian or other Arab leaders. We have, however, sought to express our heartfelt and strong view that all Jews around the globe have a stake in the holy city of Jerusalem, and that to cede portions of the city which has been the spiritual and political capital of the Jewish people for millennia is a step the government of Israel ought not take.

“In this advocacy, we are engaging in the very sort of action which Prime Minister Olmert himself welcomed when he addressed the Orthodox Union’s biennial convention in Jerusalem one year ago, when he stated: ‘I always believed, all my life in listening to the Jews who live outside the State of Israel…that it is totally inconceivable to me that when we will need you, you will stand firmly behind us 100 percent; but then when it comes to issues which may define…also the quality of your life in your communities, [we] would say, this is our issues, you are not part of it. This is impossible. We have to be able to share with you, to dialogue with you, to talk to with you, to listen to you. We don’t have to agree with you about everything, as you don’t have to agree with us about everything. But we have to be able to open ourselves to you and to talk with you.’”

Is Annapolis going to be a case of form over substance? Will the conference propel Israel’s ties with Syrians or Saudis forward? Will the Palestinians and Israelis get down to the nitty gritty? JTA’s Leslie Susser talks with Associate Editor Uriel Heilman.

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I spent several hours on Sunday night at the Zionist Organization of America’s annual dinner, which was held at the Marriott Marquis Times Square. Under the leadership of its president, Mort Klein, the ZOA has been the most consistent and, often, the most effective American opponent of Israeli territorial concessions and U.S. support for the Palestinian Authority.

The ZOA’s base is a mixture of secular and Orthodox right-wing Zionists, who can come together on at least one point: their belief that Arabs are murderous Jew-haters who will be motivated, not mollified, by Israeli and American appeasement. There were loud cheers when Klein insisted that peace could only be achieved after the Arab side was dealt a decisive military defeat and when he said that Jerusalem was more important than peace — that no deal would be acceptable, even if it were to bring peace.

(more…)

The plot thickens in the fight over whether the American Jewish groups will aid or obstruct the Bush-Olmert-Abbas diplomatic push (the third option is to say nothing). Check out this letter — recently obtained by JTA — from eight communal leaders who want the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations to reassert its support for keeping Jerusalem as Israel’s united capital (analysis to come later). (more…)

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