(Jewish) Groups Fear Public Backlash Over Iran
http://www.forward.com/articles/groups-fear-public-backlash-over-iran/ Forward Staff | Fri. Feb 02, 2007
While Jewish communal leaders focus most of their current lobbying efforts on pressing the United States to take a tough line against Iran and its nuclear program, some are privately voicing fears that they will be accused of driving America into a war with the regime in Tehran.
In early advocacy efforts on the issue, Jewish organizations stressed the threat that a nuclear Iran would pose to Israel in light of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s calls to “wipe Israel off the map.”
Now, with concerns mounting that Israel and its supporters might be blamed for any military confrontation, Jewish groups are seeking to widen their argument, asserting that an Iranian nuclear bomb would threaten the West and endanger pro-American Sunni Muslim states in the region.
Jess Hordes, Washington director of the Anti-Defamation League, said that the strategy of broadening the case against Iran was not an attempt to divert attention from the threats to Israel. “It is a fact that Iran is a danger to the whole world,” Hordes said. “We are not just saying it to hide our concerns about Israel.”
Yet many advocacy efforts, even when not linked to Israel, carry indelibly Jewish fingerprints. Last week, Jewish groups claimed victory when the United Nations approved a resolution denouncing Holocaust denial, with Iran’s regime as the obvious target. Additionally, numerous Jewish activists are pressing in advertisements and Internet appeals for Ahmadinejad to be indicted in The Hague for incitement to genocide.
In warning of possible scapegoating, insiders point to the experience of the Iraq War. Since the initial invasion in 2003, antiwar groups have charged, with growing vehemence, that the war was promoted by Jewish groups acting in Israel’s interest — even though the invasion enjoyed bipartisan backing and popular support, and was not at the top of most Jewish organizations’ agendas. The Iraq backlash prompted former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon to order in 2005 that his ministers keep a low profile on Iran.
Now, however, Jewish groups are indeed playing a lead role in pressing for a hard line on Iran. The campaign comes at a time when President Bush’s popularity has reached record lows and members of both parties are cautioning against a rush toward war.
Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, addressed the fears head-on last week in an address to Israel’s prestigious Herzliya Conference. Lamenting what he called “the poisoning of America,” Hoenlein painted a dire picture of American public discourse turning increasingly anti-Jewish and anti-Israel in the year ahead.
Hoenlein dated the trend to the 2005 arrest of two former employees of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, on charges of passing classified national security information. Hoenlein argued that the Jewish community made a major mistake by not forcefully criticizing the arrests. Speaking via video, Hoenlein listed several events that had occurred since then: the release of the essay criticizing the “Israel Lobby” by two distinguished professors, Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer; the publication of former president Jimmy Carter’s best-selling book, “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid”; the suggestion by former NATO supreme commander and Democratic presidential candidate Wesley Clark that “New York money people” were pushing America into war, and claims by former U.S. weapons inspector Scott Ritter that Israel is pushing the United States to attack Iran.
“In the beginning of the Iraq war they talked about the ‘neocons’ as a code word,” Hoenlein said. “Now we see that code words are no longer necessary.” He warned that the United States is nearing a situation similar to that of Britain, where delegitimization of Israel is widespread.
“This is a cancer that starts from the top and works its way down,” he said. “It poisons the opinions among elites which trickle down into society.”
According to Hoenlein, such critics tend not only to delegitimize Israel but also to “intimidate American Jews not to speak out.” He called on American Jews to take action against this phenomenon, saying that Christian Zionists seemed at times more willing than Jews to fight back.
Another instance of casting blame, less widely reported, was attributed to former secretary of state Colin Powell. In a new biography, by Washington Post writer Karen De Young, Powell is said to have put at least some of the blame for the Iraq war on Jewish groups. The book, “Soldier: The Life of Colin Powell,” claims that Powell used to refer to the pro-war advisers surrounding former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld as the “Jinsa crowd.” Jinsa is the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, a hawkish think tank that supported the Iraq war.
Thomas Neumann, Jinsa’s executive director, said he was not offended by Powell’s reference, although he was surprised that the former secretary of state would single out a Jewish group when naming those who supported the war. “I am not accusing Powell of anything, but these are words that the antisemites will use in the future,” Neumann said.
Whatever worries exist about a negative backlash over Israel, they have not deterred Jewish and pro-Israel activists from publicly pressing for tough U.S. action against Tehran or invoking concern for Israel.
A particularly forceful argument for a hard line against Iran appeared this week in The New Republic, a Washington insider journal widely viewed as a bellwether of pro-Israel opinion. The lengthy article, written by two respected Israeli writers, Michael Oren and Yossi Klein Halevi, both fellows at the Shalem Center, a hawkish Jerusalem think tank, names Iran as the main threat to Israeli survival, regional stability and to the entire world order. This theme has been echoed in publications and press releases put out by most major Jewish groups, including Aipac and the Conference of Presidents.
“The international community now has an opportunity to uphold that order,” Oren and Klein Halevi wrote. “If it fails, then Israel will have no choice but to uphold its role as refuge of the Jewish people. A Jewish state that allows itself to be threatened with nuclear weapons — by a country that denies the genocide against Europe’s six million Jews while threatening Israel’s six million Jews — will forfeit its right to speak in the name of Jewish history.”
Debate in Washington intensified last month when the U.S. military began to move against Iranian agents in Iraq. The spotlight has now turned to the Democratic-led Congress, with both hardliners and doves anxiously seeking to gauge lawmakers’ reactions to the crisis. Democratic Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia, an outspoken critic of Bush’s foreign policy, last week introduced a non-binding resolution requiring congressional approval for any American military action against Iran. “To forestall a looming disaster, Congress must act to save the checks and balances established by the Constitution,” Byrd said in a statement when presenting his proposed resolution. In the House, Republican Rep. Ron Paul of Texas introduced a resolution calling on the administration to adopt the Iraq Study Group recommendations and to engage with Iran. Also in the House, the 70-member Progressive Caucus held a public forum last week on alternatives to preemptive war against Iran.
Many Democrats, however, are treading lightly. Though many favor talks with Iran — including Rep. Tom Lantos of California, chair of the House International Relations Committee — there is still no significant move in Congress toward barring the president from taking military action against Iran.
Congressional sources speculated this week that Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, might take the lead on such a measure. On January 11, Biden sent a letter to Bush stating that Congress has not authorized any military incursion into Iran or Syria. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, also stressed the need for congressional approval prior to any military action.
A Democratic staffer described this week the sense of frustration Democrats are feeling over the president’s stance toward Iran. “The administration has now the worst of all worlds,” the staffer said. “It blocked any diplomatic channel with Iran and at the same time cannot generate the needed sympathy for the issue among the Russians and Chinese in order to apply pressure on Iran.”
Jewish organizational officials and pro-Israel lobbyists on Capitol Hill downplayed the possibility that Congress might play a significant role in limiting the administration’s response to Iranian nuclear ambitions. “It is very premature,” one lobbyist said. “The administration has no war plan and Congress has no plan to block such a war.”
If military action is ultimately needed to deal with the issue, it will be difficult to secure public support, because the administration “lied” about intelligence before the Iraq war, said Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat.
“The fact that the administration lied about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq means that if we get into a real problem with Iran and if it’s coming to a crunch there, God forbid, about nuclear weapons, it will be very, very hard for the administration to convince anybody just because they have a record of such dishonesty,” Nadler said. “The administration lied about Iraq, and one of the consequences of lying is that people don’t believe you even when you’re telling the truth.”
Nathan Guttman in Washington, with reporting by Daniel Treiman from New York.
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Pro-Israel lobby (AIPAC, JINSA, etc.) pushing for attack on Iran:
http://www.itszone.co.uk/zone0/viewtopic.php?t=49800 A War for Israel? Colin Powell seems to think so:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/zone0/viewtopic.php?t=61128 AIPAC and the Neocon (War for Israel) agenda:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Rf16XjbOUs Israel's influence of US policy & the Israeli lobby:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O125hGt9qt4&NR "AIPAC is pushing us to war with Iran. AIPAC is the reason that no Democrats are coming out strongly against war with Iran. AIPAC's funding is extremely wealthy American Jews and AIPAC is pushing for war with Iran. So, when people go to Democratic politicians and they say "listen, I don't want you gettin' out in front and opposing war with Iran, particularly since you have national aspirations," they don't say it in the New York Times." - Eric Alterman
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nch43wy8Zb8 Bush all set to attack Iran (for Israel): Report:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/zone0/viewtopic.php?t=68382 http://nomorewarforisrael.blogspot.com ---------------------------------------------------------------
http://amconmag.com/2007/2007_02_26/buchanan.html February 26, 2007 Issue
Copyright © 2006 The American Conservative
Who Will Stop The Next War?
by Patrick J. Buchanan
If Americans sickened by the carnage of Iraq wish to stop an even more disastrous war on Iran, they had best get cracking.
For the “On-to-Baghdad!” boys are back, warning us that the only way to prevent an atom bomb from being detonated in an American city is to attack and destroy Iran’s nuclear sites. And the forces needed to execute an attack are moving into place. Army Gen. John Abizaid has been replaced as CENTCOM commander by Adm. “Fox” Fallon, commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific, who knows little about counterinsurgency but a lot about co-ordinating air strikes.
The carrier group Stennis is headed for the Gulf to join the Eisenhower. Minesweepers are headed for the Strait of Hormuz. American fighter-bombers have returned to Incirlik. Iranian officials have been seized in Iraq. Patriot missiles are being moved into Kuwait and Qatar. Why all this firepower—to secure Anbar province and Sadr City?
Bush’s anti-Iran rhetoric has been ratcheted up. Announcing his surge, Bush interjected that Tehran “is providing material support for attacks on American troops. … [W]e will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq.” This threat was followed by shoot-to-kill orders to U.S. troops encountering Iranians aiding the insurgency.
And Democrats are not going to let Bush get to their right. At the Herzliya Conference, John Edwards said that keeping Iran from nuclear weapons “is the greatest challenge of our generation.” “To ensure that Iran never gets nuclear weapons, we need to keep all options on the table. Let me reiterate—all options.”
At AIPAC, Hillary echoed Edwards: “In dealing with this threat … no option can be taken off the table. … We need to use every tool about our disposal including … the threat and use of military force.”
To Mitt Romney, this was wimpish. For Hillary had said she favors “engagement” with Iran. Roared Romney to Hill Republicans, “[W]e don’t need a listening tour about Iran. … Someone who wants to engage Iran displays a troubling timidity toward a terrible threat of a nuclear Iran.”
Anybody think that Giuliani and McCain will let Edwards, Hillary, or Mitt be more menacing toward Tehran than they?
Consider the correlation of forces behind a new war.
If Bush goes home with Iran’s nuclear program not shut down, his legacy will be Iraq and a failed presidency. The Bush Doctrine—no nukes in rogue states—will have been defied by Pyongyang and Tehran.
Israel wants Iran attacked yesterday. The neocons need a new war to make America forget the disaster that they wrought in Iraq. Democratic candidates must be seen as hawkish as Giuliani and McCain. And the deadline for Iran to comply with UN Security Council directives to halt its enrichment of uranium is Feb. 23. What then is holding us back from war?
It is the realization, even on the part of the noisiest hawks, that war on Iran could precipitate a disaster worse than defeat in Iraq. A Shia uprising against U.S. troops could turn the Green Zone into Dien Bien Phu. Attacks on tankers and pipelines could send oil to $200 a barrel. America would have no international support and would receive virtually universal condemnation.
And like the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, bombing Iran could unite Iranians behind their rulers. Shia insurgencies could be ignited against Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states. Hezbollah could bring down the Lebanese government and attack Americans in the Middle East and perhaps here in the United States.
And what would an attack accomplish besides setting back an Iranian nuclear-enrichment program that by most reports is a bust?
What is the threat? Iran has no missiles that can reach us, no atom bombs. Though the Mullahs have been in power 27 years, they have yet to launch their first war. The war they fought was in self-defense. They can no more want a Sunni-Shia regional war than we, for they would be in the isolated minority. They want the Taliban kept out of Kabul and Iraq to remain united under a Shia majority, as do we.
It is said that we cannot negotiate with men responsible for the Khobar Towers. But Bush negotiated with Muammar al-Gaddafi, who was responsible for Pan Am 103, and Gaddafi agreed to forego nuclear weapons. Sanctions were lifted and relations restored.
If FDR can talk to Stalin, and Nixon to Mao, and Bush to the North Vietnamese (who tortured John McCain), why can’t we talk to Mullahs who held 52 Americans hostage for a year?
Rep. Walter Jones (R-N.C.) has introduced a resolution declaring that in the absence of an imminent threat or an attack upon us from Iran, President Bush has no authority to attack Iran.
Next step: get Chuck Hagel and Jim Webb to sign on.
February 26, 2007 Issue