[Peace-discuss] [Peace] On the Importance of Being _Important_

Wed Oct 30 16:24:47 UTC 2019

If Not Now is the only Jewish peace organization that seems to be creating
any friction in the political system right now, as far as I am seeing, by
going after Dem POTUS candidates.

https://mondoweiss.net/2019/10/pro-israel-org-says-warren-campaign-assured-them-that-anti-occupation-staffer-wouldnt-be-working-on-middle-east-policy/

Justice Democrats is trying to unseat Eliot Engel. That would be a big
deal, since Eliot Engel is chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, a
key Nancy Pelosi pro-war lieutenant. Eliot Engel voted for the Iraq war,
voted against the Iran nuclear deal, voted to keep sending cluster bombs to
Saudi Arabia, is hyper-AIPAC. If Engel goes down, it would be like Crowley
going down. The Justice Democrats candidate is Jamaal Bowman, a public
school principal who has attacked Engel on foreign policy, including his
vote for the Iraq war.

https://www.bowmanforcongress.com

On Wed, Oct 30, 2019 at 12:06 PM David Green <davidgreen50 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Many good points, and lots to unpack. Nevertheless, I've been disappointed
> with both JVP and SJP in the Trump era, as they both seem to have been
> folded into the Identity Politics approach of the "progressive" wing of the
> DP. And even after all of this progress in expanding the limits of
> allowable debate within the Jewish community, there still isn't a decent
> place that I know of for critical Jewish students to go on this campus,
> unless it's SJP. Since I'm out of the loop, I don't know how this has been
> playing out. But my sense is that any focused activism is lacking,
> regardless of the kerfuffle with Robert Jones.
>
> In any event, it still remains to be proven whether the ruling class of
> this country can be persuaded by "the Jews" when Israel remains so central
> to their geopolitical calculations, and they have the support of the
> Christian Right in this regard. But a good discussion to have.
>
> On Wed, Oct 30, 2019 at 7:46 AM Robert Naiman via Peace <
> peace at lists.chambana.net> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> https://www.facebook.com/robert.naiman/posts/10158778178582656
>>
>>
>> On the Importance of Being _*Important*_
>>
>>
>>
>> I once met with Dick Durbin at a fundraising party in Champaign at a time
>> when President Obama was facing harsh pushback from pro-Netanyahu American
>> Jews for his attempts to negotiate the Iran nuclear deal. Like, “Obama is
>> leading Jews to the gas chambers,” this kind of thing was appearing
>> regularly in the Jewish press. The question I asked Durbin was: “How come
>> Democrats in Congress are being so quiet when Obama is getting pummeled for
>> doing the thing that Democratic voters asked him to do?” Pursuing diplomacy
>> with Iran was a major issue in the 2008 Democratic primary and general
>> election. For a lot of Democratic voters the thing that distinguished Obama
>> was not just his early opposition to the Iraq war, running against Hillary
>> Clinton and John McCain who had supported it, but his promise to pursue
>> diplomacy with Iran to avoid another war like the Iraq war. It is why I
>> supported Obama: why I voted for him, why I gave his campaign money, why I
>> knocked on doors for him in Indiana, why I organized MoveOn calling parties
>> for him in Champaign-Urbana.
>>
>>
>>
>> Durbin answered at first with something mealy-mouthed, like “I can see
>> why a lot of my colleagues are concerned…” I challenged him: “Dianne
>> Feinstein is speaking up for diplomacy. How come you’re not speaking up for
>> diplomacy?” At the time it seemed that Dianne Feinstein was the only
>> Democrat in Congress saying anything against the anti-diplomacy onslaught.
>>
>>
>>
>> Durbin leaned in and lowered his voice. “Dianne Feinstein is a very _
>> *important*_ voice,” Durbin said.
>>
>>
>>
>> At the time I interpreted this to mean: “This anti-diplomacy onslaught is
>> coming from pro-Netanyahu Jews. Dianne Feinstein is Jewish. So we’ve all
>> agreed that Dianne Feinstein is going to take the incoming fire on this and
>> the rest of us are going to hide behind Dianne Feinstein.”
>>
>>
>>
>> Sometime after that, I was at a party in Champaign where I met a woman
>> who worked for the Champaign-Urbana Jewish Federation. In the course of
>> describing my relationship to Jewish things, I said: “I’m a member of J
>> Street and Jewish Voice for Peace and I read the *Forward*.” She said:
>> “J Street and the *Forward* are _*important_ *institutions.” She said
>> the word _*important*_ exactly the same way Durbin had said it. This
>> showed that the word _*important*_ wasn’t just a Jewish code word for
>> “Jewish.” It referred to Jewish people and institutions seen as existing
>> inside a perceived perimeter of Jewish respectability.
>>
>>
>>
>> The perceived perimeter of Jewish respectability in the United States is
>> a major determinant of how much peace we’re allowed to have in U.S. foreign
>> policy in the Middle East. The perceived perimeter of Jewish respectability
>> in the United States is not determined by a democratic vote of Jews, any
>> more than the perceived position of gun owners on gun regulation is
>> determined by a democratic vote of gun owners. Moneyed interests and the
>> institutions they fund play a huge role. U.S. policy in the Middle East
>> would never survive a referendum of American Jews, any more than U.S.
>> policy on gun regulation would survive a referendum of gun owners. There’s
>> nothing natural about this hegemony. This hegemony has been constructed by
>> moneyed interests and their surrogates to try to bring about certain
>> outcomes.
>>
>>
>>
>> Although the perimeter of Jewish respectability is not determined
>> democratically, democratic organizing can move it, because who gets elected
>> to the presidency and Congress dramatically shapes what the perceived
>> perimeter is.
>>
>>
>>
>> In 2000, Joe Lieberman was Al Gore’s running mate. In 2006, Joe Lieberman
>> was defeated in a Democratic Senate primary in Connecticut over Joe
>> Lieberman’s support for the Iraq war. Jews who opposed the Iraq war had a
>> lot to do with Joe Lieberman’s defeat. I know this because I knocked on
>> doors for Ned Lamont. And I saw a bunch of Jews there doing the same thing
>> I was. “We need to get rid of this guy who is claiming that he is
>> representing Jews when he advocates for war in the public square.”
>>
>>
>>
>> At the beginning of the Obama Administration, AIPAC was perceived as
>> all-powerful and J Street was perceived as a 90 pound weakling. This
>> dynamic changed significantly during the Obama Administration, in part
>> because of the relationship between J Street and Obama. Today AIPAC is
>> still perceived as more powerful than J Street. But the margin isn’t nearly
>> as great as it was in 2008. This year, MoveOn called for Dem POTUS 2020
>> candidates to boycott the AIPAC policy conference. Nancy Pelosi went to
>> AIPAC, where she was a keynote speaker, but no major Dem candidates for
>> President went. [Biden dodged this choice by announcing later.] In
>> contrast, a bunch of presidential candidates went to the J Street
>> conference this week. Biden and Warren didn’t go. But Bernie went. Julian
>> Castro went. PeteB went. Even Amy Klobuchar went.
>>
>>
>>
>> That’s a big change. When he was running for President, Obama went to the
>> AIPAC policy conference. Obama told the AIPAC conferees that Jerusalem must
>> be the united capital of Israel – exactly the policy that Trump later
>> implemented, just like Trump has said. Obama talked about doing it, Trump
>> did it. Obama wasn’t interested in peace in general. Obama was interested
>> in pivoting the U.S. relationship with Iran, like Nixon pivoted the U.S.
>> relationship with China. Every other peace concern in the Middle East,
>> Obama was willing to throw under the bus to appease the Saudi and Israeli
>> governments. Obama destroyed Libya, Obama destroyed Syria, Obama destroyed
>> Yemen. That was all collateral damage, claimed to be necessary to appease
>> the Saudi and Israeli governments.
>>
>>
>>
>> J Street was good on nuclear diplomacy with Iran primarily because Obama
>> was good on it. Nuclear diplomacy with Iran was Obama’s priority in the
>> Middle East. Nuclear diplomacy with Iran was the fight that Obama was
>> willing to have with AIPAC and Netanyahu and Saudi Arabia. Obama wasn’t
>> willing to have any other fights with AIPAC and Netanyahu and Saudi Arabia.
>> J Street helped very little on ending the catastrophic Saudi war in Yemen
>> started by Obama. J Street helped even less in preventing the U.S. from
>> visiting the catastrophe on Syria started by Obama. And during the Obama
>> Administration, J Street didn’t move the ball in DC on peace and justice in
>> Israel-Palestine, mainly because Obama wasn’t really interested in that,
>> even though supposedly that was a key reason that J Street was created, to
>> move the ball in DC on peace and justice in Israel-Palestine.
>>
>>
>>
>> The half-full of this is: the better the next Democratic President is,
>> the better J Street will be. If we could elect a Democratic President who
>> was seriously interested in peace in the Middle East, J Street would
>> improve dramatically, because they’d be blocking for a much better
>> Democratic President on peace than Obama. To get a better Democratic
>> President than Obama on peace in the Middle East, we have to beat Haim
>> Saban and his surrogates in the primary. That’s the most important thing we
>> have to do.
>>
>>
>>
>> The second most important thing we need to do is go after AIPAC’s most
>> extreme assets in Congress, like the Crown Prince of the Warmongers. We
>> could have a big impact just by picking off a few of them. The defeat of
>> Joe Lieberman in Connecticut in the Democratic primary in 2006 had a big
>> impact on how Democrats nationally thought about the Iraq war. If we picked
>> off a few of AIPAC’s most extreme assets in Congress, J Street would
>> improve.
>>
>>
>>
>> I once went to a movie about Iran. I invited some Iranian-American
>> friends. The movie was made by a friend of the comedian Jon Stewart. So Jon
>> Stewart introduced the movie. When Jon Stewart’s face came on the screen,
>> one of my friends said, I’m tired of Jon Stewart, Jon Stewart is not that
>> progressive. I said: look, here’s why I love Jon Stewart. He’s the most
>> famous and popular Jew in America who doesn’t want to bomb Iran. They
>> laughed.
>>
>>
>>
>> The sentence I said to my Iranian-American friends is no longer true. Jon
>> Stewart is no longer the most famous and popular Jew in America who doesn’t
>> want to bomb Iran.
>>
>>
>>
>> If there’s another plausible path to defeating Haim Saban in 2020, I have
>> no idea what it is.
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>> Peace at lists.chambana.net
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>>
>
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