No copyright, great analysis of what is really going on:
Today I was driving to my parents’ place on Cape Cod and realized what an idiot I’ve been about what’s happening right now. It’s a really important moment, right down to Barack Obama putting a note into the Western Wall. It’s the true ideological drama of this election campaign, the great events of this campaign. It doesn’t get better than this, and it’s all about the Armageddon of the Neoconservatives and the Two State Solution.
Consider that the Washington Post is reporting that McCain is looking seriously at Virginia Congressman Eric Cantor to be his veep. Cantor is tied in with Christian Zionists (David Bloom tells me)(can’t do the link now). The Cantor nod would be McCain’s obeisance to Sheldon Adelson and the neoconservative warchest. Because this is their last gasp. If they can’t stop Obama, they can’t might not be able to stop the two-state solution.
All this is happening behind the scenes, but look at it this way. The last time Dennis Ross and the two-state solution came close to coming to pass was 2000, the last gasp of the Clinton Administration. The neocons and Adelson formed an organization called One Jerusalem out of a panic that Jerusalem might be divided. And the day after GW Bush won the election, at last, in December 2000, Adelson gave the Republican Party $100,000 and soon the neocons were in big jobs all over the Administration. And they put off the 2-state solution forever, and invaded Baghdad
This is all Obama is thinking about, and all that J Street and Dennis Ross and MJ Rosenberg and IPF and Ehud Olmert are thinking about too. This is our last shot. This is when we try and save Israel from becoming full-on apartheid, and maybe even elevating the cycle of violence to the next level, by getting the two-state solution to go thru. Israeli negotiator Tal Becker is thinking about this night and day, as I reported from AIPAC last month, because Israel is in an existential struggle. Its about to lose its identity.
And Obama knows all this. He’s no fool. He’s a political genius. Look what he did to the Clintons. He sees all the faultlines, and this is what he’s doing. He is working with the conservative-middle-left of the Israel lobby. That wide span that goes from Mel Levine, the hawkish former congressman from California, on the right, and maybe even Haim Saban too, to MJ Rosenberg and J Street on the left. He’s got them all together in the room on this. And he’s saying, I will put my heart and soul into this. It is why he talked to Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic this spring and Goldberg came out against the Israel lobby and the settlements. It is why Joe Klein came out against neocons with divided loyalties. It is why Connie Bruck attacked Sheldon Adelson in the New Yorker. I’m not saying these journalists are working in concert with Obama, I’m saying they are all in touch with this moment in history. This is our chance, and our horse is Obama. It’s now or never, and he can do it. So let him kiss the ring, let him do the dance, let him go to AIPAC and declare he’s for an undivided Jerusalem, but in fact we’re all in agreement here, now’s the time. Because even at AIPAC, they were cutting off the comments of the nuts in the audience who started saying the bible gave us Judea and Samaria.
And the neocons know it too. That’s why they’re nutso on Iran and nutso on Obama, inventing lies about him to try and head him off now.
I’m on the left, so I’m not wild about these powerful characters, even the liberals, I’m not wild about their statements about the Middle East. J Street has lame rhetoric. The Jews for Obama emails I get are sickening. Obama was nauseating when he went to AIPAC. I was sitting there shaking my head over his warlike rhetoric. But my friend Jack Ross says that his Iran hawk stuff is his silver bullet so he can go for a two-state solution. He knows that’s the Holy Grail. That’s the Nobel Prize, and more than that, it’s the key to American security and America moving forward, undoing this ugly narrative that is wrapped around our throats. He believes that just as much as I do. As much as Sarkozy and King Abdullah. This man doesn’t want to be Clinton or even Reagan, he wants to be Lincoln, he feels that in his soul. But he has his own way. And that’s to get in bed with these conservatives and lukewarm liberals now, to go for it, to get Jewish money, to get the presidency, and then get America forward. It’s our time, as he keeps saying, this moment is bigger than any of us.
So I have to hand it to J Street. It’s already done it, it’s split the Jewish world definitively, into neocons and non-neocons. It’s successfully lobbied the lobby. The lobby is now divided in two and each guy gets a piece. McCain is going for the dark half, Obama is going for the light half, and betting, correctly I think, that the light half is stronger. I may not like the deal they come up with for Palestine. The Palestinians may not like it either. But god knows, after he smashes the neocons in November, Obama may get the world behind a deal. That’s his game.
Posted at 12:15 AM in Obama | Permalink | Comments (16) | TrackBack (0)
