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Obama's Blind Spot on Israel
June, 20 2008 Why is Barack
Obama courting right-wing groups like AIPAC and steering clear of the American
Jewish left and center? Senator
Barack Obama has positioned himself
as an independent thinker unafraid to break the Washington mold. He says that,
as President, he would pursue "direct diplomacy" and talk to Iran and
to Cuba. There was no such challenge to Washington norms in Obama's recent
speeches to the pro-Israel lobby in Washington and to a synagogue in Boca Raton, Florida. In both, he reduced the
status of the Palestinians from that of a people with rights to servants of
Israel's security. Obama's campaign is
out of step with changing realities in the country. It is ignoring fast-growing
American Jewish communities that are redefining what it means to support Israel in the United States. The day before Obama spoke
in Florida, I spoke at a well-attended forum organized by Brooklyn for Peace. The main organizers and my two
co-panelists were American Jews, and it soon became clear that many in the
audience were too. There were no
dissenting voices as our panel spoke of the desperate conditions of
Palestinians living under Israeli occupation, the Palestinian right of return,
and equal rights for all citizens of Israel. Indeed, many of the questions were
from Jews who wanted to know how to talk about the issues to other Jews--and,
especially, to their mothers. This may sound like a
fringe event, but it was not. One co-panelist was a New York University
department chair, and the other an active member of Jewish
Voice for Peace, a group that has grown from a small California base to
a nationwide organization. It has 20,000 people on its e-mail list. Its blog, Muzzlewatch, tracks those who seek to stifle criticism of
Israel's occupation, and is one of the most-frequented blogs in the country. If we put the
pro-Israel lobby AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) at the right
of the political spectrum, then these American Jews are certainly on the left.
Interestingly, because it is likely to be more threatening to AIPAC, there's
change in the center, too. Here a large cluster of American Jewish groups is
making the case that peace with the Palestinians is essential to Israel's very
survival. The center includes Americans for Peace Now, Israel Policy Forum,
Brit Tzedek v'Shalom, and the freshly minted J-Street, which is squaring up to be the "other"
Israel lobby. I would not define
the contours of a just peace in the same way as the American Jewish center
does. We differ, for example, on the Palestinian right of return and the notion
that Israel can be Jewish and be democratic. However, what is far
more significant in American political terms is that the American Jewish center
defines peace very differently from the way AIPAC does. AIPAC and its allied
American Jewish and Christian Zionist groups are currently the stronger force,
but the center's numbers are not negligible. J-Street, for example, teamed up
with MoveOn.org
to get tens of thousands of signatures on a petition asking presidential
candidate John McCain to renounce pastor John Hagee after the latter said,
"God sent Hitler to cause the Holocaust so that Jews would move to
Israel." J-Street claimed victory when McCain renounced Hagee. Yet Obama steers
clear of the American Jewish left and center. There are frequent media reports
about his campaign distancing itself from advisors that might be seen as
anything less than 100 percent pro-Israel. The media also
continues to give significant coverage to Obama's abrupt break with Palestinian
Americans that were former friends and fellow human rights advocates. He has
moved from acknowledging Palestinian "suffering" in times past to a
single-minded focus on Israel's security without even a nod to the besieged
Gazans, most of whom now live--as former President Jimmy
Carter recently noted--on one meal a day because of Israel's siege. Obama is out of step
with his country here, too. This year, as never before, Palestinian stories of
loss and dispossession have been widely featured alongside coverage of the 60th
year of Israel's creation. There has never been a better time for a politician
to buck Washington trends and listen to the Palestinian voice. But the Obama
campaign, having placed Palestinian Americans beyond the pale, appears to be
too apprehensive even to reach out to American Jews that challenge AIPAC-style
politics. Is the Senator who has brought hope to so many by preaching
"change we can believe in" positioning himself behind the curve of
change? Nadia Hijab is a
senior fellow at the Washington, DC, office of the Institute for
Palestine Studies. Comments
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