Promoting organizations whose goals are inimical to the security of Israel is also the Newspeak definition of “pro-Israel.” That is why Rep. Jan Schakowsky said, “I see J Street (a lobbying group trying to displace AIPAC) as a pro-Israel organization." J Street “Pro-Israel” bonifides include: refusing to support House Resolution 867, which condemned the agregiously biased Goldstone Commission Report; opposing further sanctions on Iran; advocating for a freeze on all Jewish construction beyond the 1949 armistice lines, including Jerusalem; blaming Israel for the absence of peace; calling for increased U.S. pressure on Israel. The petition on the J Street Homepage reads: Click here to ask Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to redouble efforts to change Israel's behavior in Jerusalem.
Last October, when J Street rolled out its Washington conference line up, which included Israel bashers such as Salam al-Marayati, a proponent of the theory that Israel was the likely source of the attacks on the World Trade Center, the host list began to dwindle. Sen. John Kerry-D-MA), Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Sen. Thad Cochran (R-MS), Rep. Mike Castle (R-DE), Rep. Mike Ross (D-AR), Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX), Rep. Leonard Boswell (D-IA), Rep. John Salazar (D-CO), and Rep. Ed Towns (D-NY) and Jane Harman (D-CA) decided that they had better things to do that day. Rep. Howard Coble (R-NC) said he was confused about the group's positions when he had accepted the invitation. "I have a consistently favorable pro-Israel voting record and if someone touts themselves as pro-Israel, I am very likely to join forces with them and that was my thinking with this group," he said. "Then I hear from my rabbi back home and others, and they assure me that this group is by no means on the same page with the mainstream Jewish community back in my district. And I didn't feel comfortable lending my name to that outfit."
Jan Schakowsky not only felt comfortable lending her “pro-Israel” name to “that outfit [J Street],” she also had no problem hosting the J Street gala or being its biggest backer in Congress. She appeared undisturbed by the rapturous applause and cries for, “Palestinian state! Now!” even though the Palestinians have refused for 61 years to acknowledge the existence of the Jewish State. She offered no objections to speaker after speaker, including General James Jones, the US national security adviser, who placed the responsibility for almost all of the world’s problems on Israel’s doorsteps. The audience erupted into applause when Jones called the Israel-Palestine conflict “the epicenter” of “many, many other problems around the world.” Nor did she question why a “Pro-Israel” conference made scarce mention of a neighboring regime which denies the Holocaust while it is aquiring the means of creating a second and final destruction of Jewry.
Unlike Jan Schakowsky, some commentators on the left were uneasy with J Street’s self description as “Pro-Peace and Pro-Israel.” Matthew Yglesias, Noam Pollak’s man of the year for moral equivalence, expressed doubt during the J Street Conference. “My J Street button said “Pro-Israel, Pro-Peace.” … “But when we moved to the Q&A time it became clear that a number of people in the audience really were quite uncomfortable self-defining as “pro-Israel” in any sense and that others are uncomfortable with the basic Zionist concept of a Jewish national state. Jonathan Chait, Senior Editor of the liberal New Republic (known during the Clinton years as the “in flight magazine for Air Force One), also had problems with the new meaning of “pro-Israel.” “…J Street had loosened the definition of "pro-Israel" to the point where it had virtually no meaning. As a result, the group has attracted the support of a lot of people who do not think of themselves as pro-Israel at all, some of whom oppose Israel's continued existence as a Jewish state. To accommodate students who may have animus towards Israel and not understand the new meaning of “pro,” J Street's university arm dropped the "pro-Israel" part of its slogan. Embracing the radically changed definition of “pro-Israel”, Jan Schakowsky addressed J Street, “I am always proud to join my many friends here today…I feel I share the goals of this organization…”
Apparently no one sent the Newspeak dictionary to Michael Oren, Israel’s Ambassador to the U.S. Thus Oren characterized J Street as “a unique problem in that it not only opposes one policy of one Israeli government, it opposes all policies of allIsraeli governments. It’s significantly out of the mainstream….This is not a matter of settlements here [or] there. We understand there are differences of opinion,” Oren said. “But when it comes to the survival of the Jewish state, there should be no differences of opinion. You are fooling around with the lives of 7 million people.” This is no joke.”
Oren does not understand what my congressional representative Jan Schakowsky knows: In the new progressive political world order, opposing all policies of all Israeli governments, sitting on one heals when Israel is in trouble, defending Israel’s enemies, providing forums for those who vilify Israel is the new meaning of “pro-Israel.” This new definition should give us all heart, for now the UN, the EU, and all the Arab states are pro-Israel.
No comments:
Post a Comment