This article totally undermine’s Michael Oren’s views expressed in a recent interview in which he said Obama is Israel’s friend.
The MSM participates in this misrepresentation. Ted Belman
From coast to coast, authentic, courageous American Jewish groups are forming and organizing. Their members understand that there are things that are more important than multi-million dollar budgets and invitations to White House parties
Last month, we learned that in addition to targeting groups that oppose abortion and that support limited government and lower taxes, the Obama administration’s Internal Revenue Service has also apparently been singling out non-leftist pro-Israel groups. According to numerous media investigations, beginning as early as March 2009, a consortium of powerful forces including the Palestinian Authority, the New York Times, columnists in the Washington Post, administration-allied anti-Israel groups including J Street and the Arab American anti-Discrimination Committee, and the State Department lobbied the IRS to discriminate against these pro-Israel groups.
They alleged that since these groups opposed the administration’s policy of coercing Israel to vacate Judea, Samaria and northern, southern and eastern Jerusalem, they had no right to receive tax-breaks as non-profit groups.
There is no legal basis for the claim that US groups which lawfully oppose government policy should be barred from receiving non-profit status. Since Israel’s presence and the presence of Jewish civilians in Judea and Samaria is completely legal, there is also no justification for vilifying those in the US or in Israel who support and work to expand that presence.
True, the centerpiece of the Obama administration’s Middle East strategy is to delegitimize the Jewish presence in these areas as a prelude to eliminating it. If nothing else, the contrast between Secretary of State John Kerry’s peripatetic efforts to restart peace talks between the Palestinians and Israel on the one hand, and his demonstrated indifference to the convulsions now engorging Egypt, not to mention the Obama administration’s generally lackadaisical attitude towards the Syrian civil war on the other hand, make that point.
Like President Barack Obama, Kerry has adopted the PLO’s position that talks between the Palestinians and Israel must be based on presumptive Palestinian sovereignty of all territories illegally captured by Egypt and Jordan in Israel’s war of independence up to the 1949 armistice lines (falsely, and misleadingly referred to as the 1967 borders). Implicitly, the administration supports the PLO’s demand that for a Palestinian state to be formed, those areas — as well as much of Jerusalem — must first be ethnically cleansed of Jews.
The administration’s obsession with coercing Israel to make massive concessions to the PLO is based on its belief that the Palestinian conflict with Israel is the greatest source of all instability and anti-Americanism in the Arab world.
Every day, the utter folly and madness of this position is revealed. For the past two and a half years, it has been exposed in the chaos that has taken hold in state after state throughout the Arab world, and the fanatical forces released by this chaos. True, Jew hatred is endemic throughout the Arab world. But as the demonstrations from Cairo to the killing fields in Aleppo have shown, this hatred has little impact on the actions of the hundreds of millions of people in the Arab world. When supporters of Egypt’s ousted Muslim Brotherhood President Muhammad Morsi yell “[Interim President] Adly Mansour is a Jew” they are not suggesting they will put aside their differences with Egypt’s military government if Israel reaches a peace deal with the PLO.
Thirteen years ago this month, the Palestinians rejected peace and statehood at the Camp David summit. Since then, not a day has passed when they haven’t taken some action that made clear they have no intention whatsoever of ever making peace with Israel. Their identity is based on the negation of Jewish peoplehood and Jewish rights.
Just last week, this state of affairs was grotesquely reinforced when the PA’s television station presented two little girls reciting a poem in which they castigated Jews as “filth,” the “most evil among creations, barbaric monkeys, wretched pigs,” whom Jerusalem will “vomit” out, and who are condemned to “humiliation and hardship.”
But the folly of the US’s Middle East policy has made no difference to the foreign policy establishment, which has connived, according to media reports, to deny pro-Israel groups that reject this position their legal right to non-profit status by siccing the IRS on them.
One of the most notable aspects of the story of alleged IRS discrimination against non-leftist pro-Israel organizations has been the silence of the mainstream American Jewish groups in the face of this apparent persecution.
What does the silence of major American Jewish groups on this issue tell us about the nature of these organizations that claim to speak for the American Jewish community? Obviously the alleged ideological discrimination of predominantly Jewish pro-Israel organizations by the federal government is a matter that the overwhelming majority of American Jews find objectionable not to mention frightening. And yet, the largest American Jewish groups have said nothing. They have not demanded any explanations from the IRS or the State Department. They have not demanded apologies from the New York Times, J Street, the ADC or anyone else for maligning lawful organizations that operate well within the boundaries of law.
It’s possible that they are silent because they are afraid. Groups like the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee have multi-million dollar budgets and they prize their access to the White House and the State Department.
Their leadership may fear that by objecting to anti-Israel discrimination, they will stop getting invited to White House Hanuka parties or that they themselves will become the targets of unjustified Federal investigations.
Perhaps it is fear. But perhaps they are silent because they share the goal of silencing voices that refuse to accept the Obama administration’s assertion that it is pro-Israel to support the establishment of a Palestinian terror state in Israel’s capital and in its historic and strategic heartland.
Perhaps they wish to muzzle Jews who refuse to accept that it is pro-Israel to be anti-Israel.
Last month two rising Israeli political stars, Economics Minister Naftali Bennett and Deputy Defense Minister Danny Danon expressed their opposition to a Palestinian state. In addition to stating his own opposition to such an entity, Danon also noted that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s support for the establishment of a Palestinian state is shared neither by the majority of the members of the Likud’s Knesset faction, nor by the majority of the ministers in his coalition government, and that the government would oppose the establishment of such a state were the issue brought to a vote.
These statements were not unprecedented. Far from it.
In January Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon noted that a Palestinian state would be an enemy of the Jewish state saying, “There are those who are trying to market [PA Chairman Mahmoud] Abbas as relatively moderate, but his goals are the same as those of Hamas. He does not believe in an agreement based on pre-1967 lines and he is refusing to come to the negotiating table.”
Rather than contend with the substance of these elected leaders’ remarks, or simply give them the respect due to duly elected representatives of the Israeli public, both the AJC and the ADL condemned them for speaking their minds. Even worse, they pretended their condemnations reflected the position of the Israeli government. As the Zionist Organization of America noted, the AJC falsely claimed that Ya’alon asked Netanyahu to reprimand Danon — his deputy — for speaking the truth.
The AJC and the ADL condemned Danon and Bennett because they claimed that by speaking the truth they harmed the chances of the “two state solution.”
But of course, that is absurd. The reason the so-called “two state solution” has no chance of success is because the Palestinians reject the Jewish state, not because Jews reject another Arab state. Pointing this out is not harmful. It is essential. And hiding this fact is not constructive to Arab-Israeli peace or to Middle Eastern stability.
The only party that benefits from American Jewish groups attacking duly elected Israeli leaders for stating the truth is the Obama administration. It is Washington, not Jerusalem that insistently clings to the ridiculous “two-state solution.” It is Washington, not Jerusalem that insists a policy of reducing Israel to an indefensible, riven and weak Jewish statelet without its capital city or heartland is the magic bullet for solving everything from the global jihad to Arab illiteracy and misogyny.
By defending the administration’s unhealthy obsession with Israel, these American Jewish groups, with multi-million dollar budgets and automatic access to the media are promoting an agenda that necessarily rejects the legitimacy of Israeli elections, and the views of the majority of Israelis. And Israelis are not the only people these groups betray by siding with the White House against facts. These positions also pit them against the majority of American Jews.
As the ZOA noted, polls of American Jews carried out by the AJC itself over the past two years show that not only do the majority of Israelis oppose the establishment of a Palestinian state, the majority of American Jews oppose it as well. A Gallup poll taken over the past year showed that the majority of Americans in general also oppose the establishment of a Palestinian state.
The silver lining in this story is that not all American Jews are taking their organizational leadership’s abuse of their values and views lying down.
In addition to helping the ZOA to expand its reach, in community after community, activists, generally with no financial assistance, are forming new groups to advance the interests and values of America’s Jews that are being trounced by the major Jewish organizations. Over the past ten years independent activists have banded together under an assortment of names — Christians and Jews United for Israel, Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors, JCCWatch, and countless others to do the work that the American Jewish organizational leadership refuses to do.
In New York, JCCWatch has organized protests against the Jewish Federation funded 92nd Street Y for repeatedly providing forums for outspoken Jew haters including Alice Walker and Roger Waters to air their poisonous views.
In San Francisco, a nurse named Masha Merkulova founded the Rimon Club in 2011. The Rimon Club organizes events to educate the Jewish community about Israel. The Rimon Club recently formed Club Z, a youth group for San Francisco area Jewish youth that provides them an informal, fun setting to connect in a meaningful and non-apologetic way with Israel and their Jewish identity.
According to senior Israeli officials, and leaked PA documents, after Obama came into office, his senior advisors told their Israeli interlocutors that they controlled the American Jewish community. Under Obama, these Israeli leaders were told, there would be no more American Jewish voices opposing the two-state solution or opposing pressure on Israel. With J Street they said, AIPAC would no longer defend Israel.
Maybe they were right. But what is certainly true, is that despite its audits, its alleged denials of non-profit status, and its American Jewish mouthpieces, the Obama administration has not silenced the American Jews.
From coast to coast, authentic, courageous American Jewish groups are forming and organizing. Their members understand that there are things that are more important than multi-million dollar budgets and invitations to White House parties.
yamit82 Said:
Having more the two children per couple is not considered “green” in the USA and “green” is more important then Judaism.
yamit82 Said:
But keep the sweat out of the bread by wearing a head band,makes the bread to salty.
Ted, spam filter disappeared my comment to Eric R.
Eric R. Said:
“At the dawn of the twentieth century, Jews and the Arabs numbered about 20 million each. The balance and the associated power drastically changed. Arabs thrived on Western medicine, agricultural technologies, and the oil racket. Jews dwindled from the Holocaust, assimilation, and their lifestyle which now calls for more entertainment, less children. American Jews reproduction rate today in America is 1.6 and that includes the Orthodox who bring the rate up a point or two when included.
The Arabs at 300 million are twenty times the number of Jews. Such disparities are not realistically recoverable. Moreover, globalization, mobility, and open societies threaten Jewish survival. In earlier times, assimilation was slow: some Jews baptized, and some gentiles married into the Jewish people. The trends were slow, giving the Jews enough time to adapt and react, to re-group and restructure our Jewishness. Today we cannot keep pace with assimilation: the entirety of American Jewry will have perished in only two generations; the intermarriage rate among the young atheists has hit between 70- 90 percent.
The assimilation of American Jews is irreversible, and there is no point in expending great resources to counter it. Even if the intermarriage rate were to be brought down miraculously to 30% from the current figure of 70-95% among atheists, in three generations the number of Jews would decrease by two-thirds.”
The writing is on the wall:
Ted, spam filter disappeared my comment to Bernard Ross.
bernard ross Said:
Don’t confuse Jewish orthodoxy with cults like Satmar. They make up a very small component of Orthodoxy. I predict they will die out from under their own numerical weight and impoverishment. That said I understand they have some very wealthy members and supporters. Being schnorers is part of their community and historic ethos. Judaism says Jews should not be whenever possible a burden to their community.
“by the sweat of your brow shall you eat bread”
Ted, spam filter disappeared my cmment to eric, i sent you in an email, please post
@ Ted Belman:
spam filter disappeared my comment to eric
Eric R. Said:
You might be mistaken. It is my understanding that a high percentage of orthodox Jews go on welfare, especially those like satmar. The satmar village of Kiryat Joel, NY has the fame of being the poorest town in the US with high welfare. My suspicion is that they vote for obama to keep the benefits having nothing to do with socialism or ideology.
@ honeybee:
honeybee Said:
😛
@ dionissis mitropoulos:
CB is not fond of cats!!!!!!!!!!!! However they the coyotes favorite snack!!!!!!!!!!!!
@ honeybee:
I have no kingdom to dispose of, so how about half of my cats?
dionissis mitropoulos Said:
Just for you,Darin
http://youtu.be/JjI8G6gA65w
@ honeybee:
Yamit and i are buddies, we are not going to destroy our friendship despite your attempts to pit Yamit against me. My name is not John, and i am not a Baptist, so stop coveting my head.
Shame on you, Salome Bee.
@ dionissis mitropoulos:
You mean Greece is closer to the Negev? Not the fierceness of Yamit 82’s possesiveness?
@ honeybee:
To be honest, my defiance towards your Texan guardian was based on the distance that separates Texas from Greece, not on my braveness 😛
@ dionissis mitropoulos:
My ever brave Achilles.
honeybee Said:
I was only concerned with Yamit’s reaction. As for the Texan cowboys you invoke, i fear them not!!!
dionissis mitropoulos Said:
Please do so,you wouldn’t want a crazed Texan on your door stoop, with 6 shooters blazing.
honeybee Said:
Enchante to see you again, Texan Bee.
I shall lower my magnetic field’s attraction power. I wouldn’t want the other commenters to feel jealous of my having a monopoly over Israpundit’s Queen. 😛
Andy Lewis Said:
In the Southwest USA, English speakers are the the grunts!!!!!!!! Carido The first Europeans were most probabably Sephardic Jews.
dionissis mitropoulos Said:
Ahhhhhhhh the Golden Greek is back and has attracted me ike a magnet!!!!!!!!!!!!!
http://www.imra.org.il/story.php3?id=36715
That’s one good argument against the implausibility of the two state solution: any territorial concession is seen as a weakness, it will be in effect rewarding the aggressive Palestinian mentality.
@ bernard ross:
I found a new version of Putinov, a Swedish Greek, only this one was even more anti-Semitic. Norman F participated in the discussion too in the blog of Elder of Ziyon. As if the anti-Semites were not enough, a Diaspora Jewish anti-Zionist showed up in Dr Landes’ blog and debated the Al Dura hoax.
I attract sick people, i admit 😛
Glick claims:
This statement seems at odds with continued reports that a majority of Israelis support peace with the Palestinians and in effect at TSS, but that same majority do not see much hope for a TSS to emerge because of Palestinian intransigence. Reference to a recent Gallup poll finding that a majority of American Jews do not support a TSS also seems at odds with reports of American Jewish attitudes and American views generally regarding Israel and the TSS. It seems a majority support both Israel and the notion of a TSS.
Providing links to these survey and poll results would be helpful.
Assuming however, Glick’s above quoted statement is correct, then we are left with the questions:
1. Why is major U.S. Jewish leadership unresponsive to the majority of U.S. grass roots Jews? Glick’s suggestion that these major Jewish organizations fear that to publically oppose Obama, would result in their access and influence on Obama and his administration would be lessened, sounds reasonable.
If those fears are not just rational, but warranted, those fears existed before Obama and his administration. That is indeed a problem. It begs the question, has Jewish leadership actually taken steps to change the WH and U.S. State Department political calculus and failed or have they not even tried because they do have the inside track on the WH and know for certain that they will lose access and influence if they tried to stand against the WH’s pro TSS stance and all the faux arguments and rationales for that stance?
2. Though there have been many small Jewish groups that have risen to take a pro-Israel stance that a TSS is an impossible dream, not because Jews/Israelis are against it, but because Palestinians are and that opposition simply will not change, these groups have failed to galvanize majority Jewish support for their own organizations and to stand with them against major Jewish organizations like AJC, ADL, J Street, North American Jewish Federations and the like that support the WH’s position.
That fact begs the question, what then will it take for the majority of grass roots Jews to successfully prevail upon the aforesaid major Jewish organizations to modify their positions to better reflect the views of the majority of grass roots U.S. Jews?
Whaddya, some kinda immigrunt?
@ yamit82:
Exactly right. I know these organizations well, one from the inside. Nobody elected them. They are self-elected “leaders”. Wealthy Jews electing one another, funding offices and staff, and proclaiming themselves the leaders of American Jewry. At the same time, they stand by while ZStreet is led to the IRS slaughter. The court hearing is this month. ZStreet drew a Black, recent-Obama-appointed judge. I’m fearful, so keep your fingers crossed. Maybe she’ll be fair.
Even after the IRS scandal broke, the IRS doubled down on ZStreet and filed yet another motion on a more ridiculous theory to get ZStreet’s case against the IRS dismissed.
The Obama administration has stopped at nothing to kill Jewish opposition to its Middle East policies.
The ADL and AJC are becoming desperate because demographics is dooming their wing of American Jewry. In 2011, more than 60% of Jewish children born in NYC were Hasidic or Orthodox. Those groups will be the majority of American Jews by 2030. As a not very observant Jew, I would have some problems with American Judaism dominated by the Orthodox, but at least they would not be backers of the Socialist (Democratic) Party.
yamit82 Said:
Israel has even more reason to be happier in 2013. Its Arab enemies have disintegrated. The only real threat on the immediate horizon is the nuclear threat from Iran and I’m assuming it will be solved one way or another. Israel’s future looks very bright. What G-d gives us its own reward, indeed.
the phoenix Said:
did they explain in what way it complicated negotiations?
the phoenix Said:
my wager is the simple age old technique of “kick backs”. By giving it to private agencies the israeli govt officials probably have a way to get their personal “cuts”.
@ yamit82:
I like this passage,thank you for sending it.
@ yamit82:
Southern Belles get away with everry thing, I would have said s**t,but then I would be censored.
Bert Said:
Exodus – Chapter 32 (Parshah Ki Tisa)
“And the L-rd said to Moses: “I have seen this people and behold! they are a stiff necked people”
G-d told Moses, “Go down. Your people which you brought out of Egypt have corrupted themselves.” (Shemot 32:7) All that went wrong for the Jewish people in the desert was instigated by the Mixed Multitude (Erev Rav), just as G-d had forewarned by Moses back in Egypt, on the way out.
Erev Rav, whom Pharaoh sent along with the Jewish people to cause precisely the kind of trouble they caused with the Golden calf, The Hellenists, Those who sided with Rome those who converted out of Judaism and cause trouble for the Jewish people in and out of Israel today.
We are infected ( A virus) with the Erev Rav and it’s becoming not only viral but of pandemic proportions.
Why Israel is the world’s happiest country
By Spengler
honeybee Said:
Piss is used here too but Once I used it with piss and Ted censored me.
In reading Jewish history, from biblical times to the present, we can cite an endless list of occasions when the Jewish people were betrayed by our leaders. How is it possible that such a gifted and individualistic people continue to allow such betrayals that have cost us so much blood and suffering? And how come this critical question, in its full dimension, remains largely ignored?
When Muslims are provoked, even by minor issues, they are overly quick to demonstrate and even to riot. When Jews are kicked around they snivel and whimper, sometimes even siding with their our. I do not have all the answers but feel that this issue deserves widespread, honest, discussion not seen since the early days of Zionism when Golda Meir debated on the streets of Milwaukee.
@ CuriousAmerican:Thanks.
yamit82 Said:
In Texas its “piss for rain”,but then I’am not as delicate as you.
CuriousAmerican Said:
Uds tiene sabios, Mr Smarty Pants.
Ted correct that title. The word is Jewry, NOT Jewery!
@ yamit82:
From chamish bye bye gaza p 168-169
“AIPAC, ADL and AJC misrepresent American Jewery”
I would call it: MISTAKING SPIT FOR RAIN
My personal impression is that if true, it’s too little and too late.
Those grass roots activists are probably part of the pro Israel choir in any event. From my experience unless they can bring considerable funding along with organizational and media savvy to their efforts they will find it difficult if not impossible to impact in competition with the establishment Jews and their organizations.
No Major Jewish organization that I am aware of are either democratic or allow internal elections in choosing their leadership. Money, fundraising ability and close proximity to the American government generally determine who gets to be called Jewish leaders in America.
From my own personal experience Jewish organizations are largely self serving and only marginally connected to the Jews in various Jewish communities. I doubt you can find many Jews who actually know who these so called leaders are or what their individual organizations do.
Most of the funding for their organizations come from a very few multimillionaires and billionaires and from general allocations from American community funding given to all such groups regardless of religious affiliation. Jewish leaders are expected to lobby government to ensure the flow of government funding to be able to get their share. They are: PRIMARILY BIG TIME PROFESSIONAL FUNDRAISERS AND LOBBYISTS.