Members of congress want to welcome Netanyahu to speak at a joint session of congress. Jewish self-proclaimed leaders want Netanyahu to crown Kerry as the great last hope for peace.
By Lori Lowenthal Marcus, JEWISH PRESS
Secretary of State John Kerry (L) and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu at Davos Conference, Jan. 24, 2014. Photo Credit: Kobi Gideon/GPO/Flash90
Within four days last week, pro-Israel congressional leaders Cong. Brad Sherman (D-CA-30) and Cong. Doug Lamborn (R-CO-05), gathered signatures from nearly 100 of their colleagues for a letter urging that a congressional invitation be extended to Israel’s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.
The bi-partisan congressional letter called upon the leadership of the House of Representatives to invite Netanyahu to speak before a joint session of congress when he visits Washington this spring. The letter cites the importance of inviting the leader of “our closest ally in the Middle East” to speak to congress, particularly given the widespread instability and turmoil in the region. “Given the importance of our relationship with Israel we ask you to invite Prime Minister Netanyahu to address a Joint Session of Congress. Doing so would send a clear message of support for Israel,” the letter states. “The strong support we have received for this initiative shows our close relationship with the State of Israel which is based on deeply shared values, as well as moral, historical and security ties,” said Congressman Doug Lamborn (CO-05) in a release issued on Thursday, Feb. 13.
At virtually the same time as members of congress were joining together in an effort to demonstrate support for America’s closest ally in the Middle East, another group of Americans were drafting a letter with a very different message to Netanyahu, Israel’s democratically elected leader.
JEWS LAUD KERRY’S EFFORTS; WANT NETANYAHU TO FOLLOW SUIT
This second letter was primarily drafted and signed by members of the Israel Policy Forum, a group once considered iconoclastic because it chose to follow a path that differed from the centrist American Israel Public Affairs Council. The IPF, formed in the early 1990s, is largely indistinguishable from the newer J Street, other than that the leadership and membership of J Street is much younger. The IPF membership is not only significantly older than J Street, most are extraordinarily wealthy.
Moshe Dann wrote an informative article on the IPF membership in 2012. They have billionaires and heiresses and a felon, oh my! The central plank of the IPF, like that of J Street, is that a “Two State Solution” to the Middle East conflict is imperative and American diplomatic strength must be deployed to push Israel to accept that policy immediately.
In keeping with that position, the IPF letter to Netanyahu on Wednesday, Feb. 12, lavishes praise on the U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry for his “extraordinary resolve” in advancing the “efforts to pursue a negotiated resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict based on two states for two peoples.”
The IPF letter explained to Israel’s elected leader that they believe what Kerry is doing presents the best opportunity for Israel’s future. We believe Secretary Kerry’s determined diplomatic effort offers an unprecedented opportunity to ensure Israel’s security, to enhance its prosperity, and to avoid the existential threat to the Jewish posed by bi-nationalism.
Those signing the letter express “hope” that the acting leader of the Palestinian Arabs, Mahmoud Abbas, will help to advance the talks. Describing this as being a “pivotal moment of decision making” and a “critical juncture for the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations,” the IPF signers implore Netanyahu “to move forward to pursue a lasting peace agreement.”
The letter is signed by 150 American Jews. Although they refer to themselves as a “cross section of American Jews,” most of them have been involved with the IPF for more than 20 years. Apparently they believe the inclusion of Professor Alan Dershowitz, a harsh critic of the boisterous J Street young bucks, gives them diversity creds.
Most recently (prior to last week’s letter) virtually the same passel of peaceniks wrote to Netanyahu in April, 2013. That time they sent him a finger-wagging letter, imploring him to, in the wake of U.S. President Barack Obama’s visit to the Middle East, “respond to President Obama’s call for peace.” Really. American Jews felt the need to tell Netanyahu that Obama was for peace, and Netanyahu should be also.
Prior to the April, 2013 letter, the IPFolks sent a scorching letter to the Israeli prime minister in the summer of 2010. This one was about the Levy Report (although few could have read it, as it was not available in English).
The Levy Report, headed by a former Israeli Supreme Court justice Edmund Levy, concluded that Israel’s presence in the area widely referred to as the West Bank does not constitute occupation, and that Israeli towns and villages in that area are not illegal.
The IPF folks did not care for that Report one little bit and they felt the need to inveigh against its conclusions. Of the many signers of the IPF letter, only one has held public office. Mel Levine was a member of the California Assembly for five years, and then was a U.S. congressman. He left office in 1993.
A few of the IPF letter signers have been active in diplomatic efforts towards achieving peace in the Middle East. For example, Tom Dine, for years worked on what was called the “Syria track.” Speaking at the 2011 J Street Conference, Dine insisted there was no way to achieve a bilateral peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs. Instead, he urged, the only way to make peace between the parties was through a “regional peace plan” which “had to pass through Syria.”
So much for that theory. And like Dine’s supremely wrong-headed diplomatic focus, the divided leadership of the Palestinian Arabs just this week revealed how far off the IPF folks are in their “hope” that Abbas will follow Netanyahu if he’d only get on that peace train.
No matter what Netanyahu – or even Kerry – does, there is simply not a chance that Abbas can agree to anything other than Israel accepting everyone of their conditions, and agreeing to forfeit all of Israel’s conditions.
Even the IPF supporters must acknowledge that Abbas is in the tenth year of his four year term. That means that even if he were inclined to agree to anything less than a total victory, while Israel will be forced to uphold its end of the deal, Hamas and other Palestinian Arab groups will deny the legitimacy of any Arab concessions.
Kerry’s such a strange guy.
That’s exactly what they are–“self proclaimed leaders.” Nobody elected them. except maybe the very narrow boards of the organizations they head. In no way do they speak for anyone other than their own respective organizations. Abe Foxman does not represent me, nor most Jewish people I know. They don’t belong to ADL. Same with American Jewish Committee, and every other Jewish organization, whether it’s ZOA, B’nai B’rith, Labor Zionists, Hadassah, and whatever became of B’nai B’rith Women…there are no community-wide Jewish leaders. Maybe Hoenlein comes closest because he heads up an umbrella, but most of these organizations’ leaders just represent their organizations, each a tiny sliver of the American Jewish population. Lori is absolutely right–they are essentially self-appointed.
In the case of Foxman, I think this position must have been arranged for him when Ben Epstein retired. They slipped Abe Foxman behind Nate Perlmutter (kept Perlmitter’s penchant for the racetrack a secret) and moved Justin Finger gently out of the line of succession. Gus Finger was Arnold Forster’s boy, and he spent his later years doing pro bono work in the Brooklyn Courthouse, instead of enjoying the fruits of his many years of good work to the ADL Civil Rights Division. The ADL Civil Rights Division was the real defense force of the ADL, not the education and religious arms that put books into the schools or broke bread with priests and ministers.
I guess maybe Abe got burned by the fracas with the S.F. D.A. a couple of decades back, and the scandal that ensued when Cal’s cover was blown. Or maybe it was the sloppy work in Denver that led to a successful defamation suit against the ADL. I dunno…but the moribund organization has confined itself to a few surveys and press releases here and there, attacking Pamela Geller for fun and profit, and running a concert in D.C. every December.
It will only go from bad to worse when Abe retires, when a fairly strong staff control will, for the first time, probably pass power to the lay leadership, and this crew of liberals and progressives will finally sink he organization to its final resting place.
American Jewry is a communal mess.
It is hard to be optimistic when we are caught between the far left Jews and a timid and feeble middle ground. There is NO real Jewish voice to be heard. There is only the secular, confused,timid voice that begs and grovels and sucks up to Obama and Kerry. Jewish history, from the beginning, shows that this same kind of corrupt leadership has led Jews into catastrophe and after catastrophe. Note that the Muslims are driven by fanatic belief in their Koran while Jews proudly ignore the Torah and even demean those who would follow our own religion.