If you haven’t noticed a new level of saber-rattling at Iran, you haven’t been paying attention. Just look at today’s Jerusalem Post. It’s in this context that columnist Joe Klein, who is Jewish, made a controversial remark:
The fact that a great many Jewish neoconservatives–people like Joe Lieberman and the crowd over at Commentary–plumped for this war, and now for an even more foolish assault on Iran, raised the question of divided loyalties: using U.S. military power, U.S. lives and money, to make the world safe for Israel.
In response, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) accused Joe Klein of anti-Semitism.
…The notion that Jews with “divided loyalties” were behind the decision to go to war is reminiscent of age-old anti-Semitic canards about a Jewish conspiracy to control and manipulate government….We are disappointed that a respected and thoughtful writer of your caliber you would resort to such stereotyping.
I was impressed with Joe Klein’s response:
…there is now, in my opinion, an even more dangerous tendency among Jewish neoconservatives to encourage a pre-emptive attack on Iran’s nuclear program. Their gleeful, intellectual warmongering—given the vast dangers and complexities of an attack on Iran–is nauseating….
I am disappointed, but not surprised, by your claim of antisemitism. But that’s what you do for a living, isn’t it? I find your “outrage” particularly galling because the people you defend are constantly spewing canards against those who favor talking to the Palestinians, or who don’t favor witless bellicosity when it comes to Iran. Their campaign of defamation has cost people jobs, damaged reputations and careers. I am very tired of having reasonable people accused of being “soft on terrorism” or “unpatriotic” or favoring “surrender”–Joe Lieberman’s favorite—by Jewish neoconservatives who seem to have a neurotic need to prove their toughness….
Imagine me defending Joe Klein!! But he really couldn’t have said it any better. There is always a risk of falling into casual yet harmful stereotypes when discussing Israel or Israel’s influence over American foreign policy. But there isn’t any question that Americans that are very concerned for Israel’s safety are more willing to sacrifice American lives and money to attack Iran than people who are very concerned with the safety of, say, the Ukraine. And the same was true with the authorization to use military force in Iraq. Christian Israelphiles and Jewish neo-conservatives were the driving force behind the Iraq War and they are the driving force behind the push to bomb Iran. That much shouldn’t even be controversial, but pointing it out results in accusations of anti-semitism. Is it anti-Semitic to point out that, say, Caroline Glick has some divided loyalties?
…Jerusalem Post deputy managing editor Caroline Glick [is] an American-Israeli with strong Zionist convictions…
…in nearly every dispatch, Glick conveys either a subtle or even strong sense of frustration with her Israeli and Jewish-American audiences that refuse to wake up to the dangers that loom in the Middle East. Her first book, a well-structured compendium of her columns, may sadly serve as a map for the road not taken in the fight against radical Islam.
The seemingly endless Palestinian war against Israel is perhaps the greatest source of frustration for Glick. Several of her most compelling pieces hammer home the fact that the “Palestinian goal today is genocide,” and their “central organizing principle is the physical elimination of the Jewish people.” This should be obvious to most readers of Middle Eastern affairs. Yet a majority of American Jews and even Israelis continue to hold out hope for peace.
The author soundly rejects the notion that even the sweetest US or Israeli incentives can prod the Palestinians toward peace. She observes that the Palestinian people receive “more aid per capita than any people on earth” but prefer “poverty, violence and war to prosperity.” This applies to all Palestinians; while Hamas is typically vilified for its gruesome acts of terror, we cannot forget that Fatah maintains “goals that are incompatible with the continued existence of the State of Israel.” In other words, it has become impossible to separate the “general Palestinian population from those involved in terrorism.”
She arrives at the sound conclusion that “Palestinian society itself must be transformed before there is to be peaceful coexistence.”
Glick sums up Israel’s security predicament succinctly: Israel must find the “courage to recognize that security, not peace,” is the ultimate goal. Yet, she observes that her country is suffering from a “lack of outrage,” and Israelis have “gotten used to being killed.” She therefore yearns for Israel to win its security through a show of force on the battlefield.
Glick is an American-Israeli, but it is hard to see any difference between her goals and obsessions and those of William Kristol or Joe Lieberman. They see the world in fundamentally the same way. The merit of that worldview doesn’t depend on the ethnicity or religious beliefs of the person holding it. That’s not the point. It’s not a defense to point out that some gentile in the Bush administration holds the same worldview. If attacking Iran is a dangerous, uncertain, and unjustified act, and you nevertheless go about advocating such an attack in a cavalier manner, then you’re a dangerous person. And if you happen to be a Jewish-American who is making that argument, you know for certain that, as Joe Klein said, you will “raise the question of divided loyalties: using U.S. military power, U.S. lives and money, to make the world safe for Israel.”
It’s impossible to read people’s minds. No one knows why Dick Cheney and Joe Lieberman agree so much on our policy towards Iran. No one would suggest that Dick Cheney divides his loyalties between Israel and America. For the same reason, it would be unfair to assume that the only explanation for Lieberman’s ‘witless bellicosity’ is his Jewishness. It may not be the only explanation. But it would be foolish to think that Lieberman isn’t thinking of Israel’s interests when he advocates a hard-line with Iran. Lieberman’s foreign policy ‘raises the question’, as Joe Klein said. You’d think that the ADL would understand this, particularly since their protest is based on the exact same kind of argumentative construct.
They worry about comments like Joe Klein’s because they are “reminiscent of age-old anti-Semitic canards about a Jewish conspiracy to control and manipulate government.” In other words, Klein’s comments created an appearance problem. How is that any different from what Klein said about Lieberman and other Jewish-American proponents of attacking Iran?
I grow weary of every foreign policy problem getting blamed by the left on the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), but do you think we didn’t notice when Barack Obama made his first post-nomination appearance before AIPAC and said:
There is no greater threat to Israel – or to the peace and stability of the region – than Iran. Now this audience is made up of both Republicans and Democrats, and the enemies of Israel should have no doubt that, regardless of party, Americans stand shoulder-to- shoulder in our commitment to Israel’s security. So while I don’t want to strike too partisan a note here today, I do want to address some willful mischaracterizations of my positions.
The Iranian regime supports violent extremists and challenges us across the region. It pursues a nuclear capability that could spark a dangerous arms race, and raise the prospect of a transfer of nuclear know-how to terrorists. Its President denies the Holocaust and threatens to wipe Israel off the map. The danger from Iran is grave, it is real, and my goal will be to eliminate this threat.
Needless to say, the left in this country has more than one quibble with Obama’s characterization of the threat posed by Iran and his expressed foreign policy. For starters, the biggest threat to Israel is probably demographic and internal. The second biggest threat is their own policy, which seeks to avoid peace and rely in perpetuity on America’s good will and largesse. Their third biggest threat probably emanates from Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program. Iran does indeed hector Israel through its support of Palestinian resistance groups and through their occasionally bellicose rhetoric. And, if they were to actually produce a nuclear weapon sometime in the future, they would present the same kind of vague threat that Pakistan presents today. Obama exaggerates the threat posed by Iran as a way to reassure the AIPAC audience that he is serious about protecting Israel’s security. And that’s the problem. Pandering of this sort, when it distorts the facts and exaggerates the threats, winds up making American foreign policy fundamentally irrational. It creates the illusion that there is a bipartisan consensus that it makes sense to carry out a pre-emptive attack on Iran.
The worst error in all of this is the idea that attacking Iran will actually serve Israel’s interests. Did attacking Lebanon serve their interests? Did attacking Iraq serve their interests? The answer is no. What’s at issue here is more than appearances. There is a lobby for hijacking American foreign policy in the interests of Israel’s foreign policy, and that lobby is incredibly effective. And the problem is worse than a divergence between America’s and Israel’s interests. This policy doesn’t serve either country’s interests. Most American Jews will tell you that.
