ReDiscover 9/11

Stephen M. Walt
Foreign Policy
15 June 2010

It couldn’t be more predictable. Back when Israel and Turkey were strategic allies with extensive military-to-military ties, prominent neoconservatives were vocal defenders of the Turkish government and groups like the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and AIPAC encouraged Congress not to pass resolutions that would have labeled what happened to the Armenians at the hands of the Turks during World War I a "genocide." (The "Armenian lobby" is no slouch, but it’s no match for AIPAC and its allies in the Israel lobby). The fact that the ADL was in effect protecting another country against the charge of genocide is more than a little ironic, but who ever said that political organizations had to be ethically consistent? Once relations between Israel and Turkey began to fray, however — fueled primarily by Turkish anger over Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians — the ADL and AIPAC withdrew their protection and Congressional defenders of Israel began switching sides, too.

Several weeks ago the redoubtable Charles Schumer of New York announced the Yahweh himself had anointed him Israel’s defender in the US Senate. In a radio interview Schumer explained “You know, my name …. comes from the word shomer, guardian, watcher. My ancestors were guardians of the ghetto wall in Chortkov. And I believe Hashem (God) actually gave me that name. One of my roles, very important in the United States senate, is to be a shomer — to be the shomer Yisrael. And I will continue to be that with every bone in my body …”

Schumer’s very interesting comments, suggesting that he has a rather narrow view of his responsibility to represent all the people of New York State, were not reported anywhere in the mainstream media. It was apparently not considered newsworthy that a Senator from the Empire State had pledged love and loyalty to a foreign country. Schumer’s affections are particularly noteworthy as he is being spoken of as the next Senate Majority leader if Harry Reid takes a well deserved fall in the midterm elections. Schumer is, of course, not alone in his sentiments. His colleague from New Jersey Frank Lautenberg, who has traveled to Israel more than 80 times, has also been called Israel’s Senator, though perhaps it should be one of Israel’s Senators as there are clearly multiple candidates. Who could exclude Joe Lieberman of Connecticut? If one includes only Schumer, Lieberman, and Lautenberg Israel still has more senators representing its interests than any state in the union.

Peter Beinart
The New York Review of Books
12 May 2010

In 2003, several prominent Jewish philanthropists hired Republican pollster Frank Luntz to explain why American Jewish college students were not more vigorously rebutting campus criticism of Israel. In response, he unwittingly produced the most damning indictment of the organized American Jewish community that I have ever seen.

The philanthropists wanted to know what Jewish students thought about Israel. Luntz found that they mostly didn’t. “Six times we have brought Jewish youth together as a group to talk about their Jewishness and connection to Israel,” he reported. “Six times the topic of Israel did not come up until it was prompted. Six times these Jewish youth used the word ‘they‘ rather than ‘us‘ to describe the situation.”

That Luntz encountered indifference was not surprising. In recent years, several studies have revealed, in the words of Steven Cohen of Hebrew Union College and Ari Kelman of the University of California at Davis, that “non-Orthodox younger Jews, on the whole, feel much less attached to Israel than their elders,” with many professing “a near-total absence of positive feelings.” In 2008, the student senate at Brandeis, the only nonsectarian Jewish-sponsored university in America, rejected a resolution commemorating the sixtieth anniversary of the Jewish state.

Luntz’s task was to figure out what had gone wrong. When he probed the students’ views of Israel, he hit up against some firm beliefs. First, “they reserve the right to question the Israeli position.” These young Jews, Luntz explained, “resist anything they see as ‘group think.’” They want an “open and frank” discussion of Israel and its flaws. Second, “young Jews desperately want peace.” When Luntz showed them a series of ads, one of the most popular was entitled “Proof that Israel Wants Peace,” and listed offers by various Israeli governments to withdraw from conquered land. Third, “some empathize with the plight of the Palestinians.” When Luntz displayed ads depicting Palestinians as violent and hateful, several focus group participants criticized them as stereotypical and unfair, citing their own Muslim friends.