De Pro Israel Lobby 142

Ronny Naftaniel, in de VS kiest men eieren voor zijn geld. In de politiek heeft men geen vrienden, maar belangen.


At White House, U.S. Jews offer little resistance to Obama policy on
settlements

By Ron Kampeas . July 13, 2009

Presidents Conference chairman Alan Solow said President Obama told
Jewish leaders at the White House on July 13, 2009 that he "had
to work harder to correct" a perception that the United States
was exerting more pressure on Israel. (JCC Association)
1 out of 1

WASHINGTON (JTA) -- Top Jewish organizational leaders expressed
support for President Obama's Middle East peace strategies at a White
House meeting but said the president must do a better job of showing
he expects hard work from all sides, not just Israel.

Obama's meeting Monday afternoon with 16 Jewish leaders from 14 groups
comes after weeks of tense exchanges between the Obama administration
and Israel's government over freezing Jewish settlement construction
in the West Bank, prompting expressions of "concern" from some U.S.
Jewish organizational leaders.

"The view was expressed among the organizations at a minimum there was
concern about an imbalance in pressures placed on Israel as opposed to
on the Palestinians and Arab states," Alan Solow, the chairman of the
Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, told
JTA. "The president indicated he had a sensitivity to the perception
of that imbalance and had to work harder to correct that perception."

One participant quoted the president as saying that "there's not a lot
of courage among the Arab states; not a lot of leadership among the
Palestinians."

The consensus was that on substance, Obama had the support of the room
when it came to his peacemaking strategies -- or, at least, he did not
face opposition.

The meeting comes as Obama faces sharp criticism from Jewish
conservatives in the media who claim the president is bent on scaling
back U.S. support for Israel. In particular, critics have cited the
Obama administration's repeated calls for an Israeli settlement freeze
in the West Bank.

At least two of the leaders of centrist organizations who attended the
White House meeting -- Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League
and Malcolm Hoenlein of the Conference of Presidents of Major American
Jewish Organizations -- have said they are increasingly hearing from
people who are worried about Obama's intentions, including some who
voted for him.

Liberal groups are rejecting such claims, saying that the president
and his approach to advancing Israeli-Palestinian talks enjoy the
support of most American Jews.

The two representatives of the American Israel Public Affairs
Committee, president David Victor and president-elect Lee Rosenberg,
asked non-confrontational questions about Saudi Arabia and Iran,
respectively, and did not press the settlements issue.

Rosenberg and Solow, who are both from the Chicago area, were major
fund-raisers for Obama's presidential run.

Some of Obama's most ardent critics -- including the Zionist
Organization of America and the National Council of Young Israel --
were among the notable absences from the list of those invited to the
White House.

Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism,
delivered a ringing endorsement of Obama's demands for a settlement
freeze, saying that settlement expansion was not in Israel's interest.

Such pronouncements are likely to reinforce the growing perception in
the Israeli government that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is
unlikely to garner significant support among U.S. Jews should the
disagreement with Obama over a settlement freeze escalate into a
full-scale confrontation.

Top officials close to Netanyahu are debating how to treat the
reluctance among U.S. Jews to back what they now call "normal living"
conditions in the settlements -- a euphemism for natural growth. Some
Netanyahu advisers suggest writing off much of the U.S. Jewish
community in the short term, maintaining relations only with those
groups sympathetic to Netanyahu. Others suggest intensive outreach to
left-leaning Jews.

Concerns about a potential confrontation may be moot. The United
States and Israel reportedly are close to agreeing to a formula that
would allow Israel to finish about 2,500 "almost complete" units now
under construction in the West Bank. That would allow Israel to claim
settlement growth was continuing while the Obama administration would
describe it as an effective freeze.

The only signs of contention -- from Foxman, the ADL's national
director, and Hoenlein, the executive vice chairman of the Presidents
Conference -- had to do with how Obama was handling his demand for a
settlements freeze, not with its substance.

Hoenlein said that peace progress was likelier when there was "no
daylight" between Israel and the United States. Obama agreed that it
must always be clear that Israel has unalloyed U.S. support but added
that for the past eight years, referring to the Bush administration,
there was "no daylight and no progress."

"There was a lot of appreciation by the broad spectrum of the Jewish
community of the president's clarity on Israel and the absolute
alliance between Israel and the United States," said Nancy Ratzan, the
president of the National Council of Jewish Women.

It was Foxman who raised the concern of a perception that Obama was
leaning harder on Israel than on the Palestinians and Arab states.

Obama conceded the point -- to a degree -- saying it was the result of
"man-bites-dog" coverage of a relatively unusual circumstance: a U.S.
president pressuring Israel. He said he would make it clear that he
expected the Palestinians to contain violence and end incitement, and
that Arab nations should make gestures toward Israel commensurate with
Israel's concessions.

"If you really read everything he's written and said, it is clear
there are multiple parties that have obligations and steps," said
Jeremy Ben Ami, director of J Street, a left-wing pro-Israel group.

"He's going to call out the Palestinians and the Israelis and the Arab
nations."

On the issue of Iran, Obama said his strategy of outreach as a means
of persuading the Islamic Republic to end its nuclear weapons program
was still in place, although he recognized that the Iranian government
was entrenching itself in the wake of riots triggered by June 12
elections denounced by many Iranians and westerners as rigged.

Obama said progress had been made in persuading other nations,
especially Russia, to sign on to his carrots-and-sticks strategy on
Iran -- offering incentives and threatening a harder line.

The emphasis was on foreign policy, but Obama fielded questions on
domestic issues, including his efforts to introduce universal health
care and end hunger among American children.

Also present at the meeting were representatives of Americans for
Peace Now, the Orthodox Union, the United Jewish Communities,
Hadassah, the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, the Jewish
Council for Public Affairs and the American Jewish Committee.

A day after the meeting, the OU expressed concern at Obama's repeated
pledges to be "even-handed" in dealing with Israel and its Arab
interlocutors.

"The Orthodox Union asks our President to recognize that there are no
moral equivalencies between Israel, which has acted time and again to
defend itself while actively seeking peace, and those who reject
Israel's legitimacy and make war against her," OU President Stephen
Savitsky said in a statement.

Participants said the meeting, at a round table in the White House's
Roosevelt Room, was relaxed and friendly.

"The comfort level was magnificent; there were no notes," said Ira
Forman, CEO of the National Jewish Democratic Council.

Obama teased Rahm Emanuel, his chief of staff, and David Axelrod, his
top political adviser, both of whom attended the meeting and are
Jewish.

"If Axelrod or Rahm ignore you, don't blame me," he said.

Ha'aretz published a story last week in which it claimed that Israeli
Prime Minister Benjamin Netayahu had privately referred to both Obama
aides as self-hating Jews. A Netanyahu spokesman, Mark Regev, was
later quoted by The Plum Line blog as denying the claim, saying "I've
never heard the prime minister use such language."

Meanwhile, one of Obama's most prominent Jewish backers, Alan
Dershowitz, has received harsh criticism from some Jewish
conservatives for writing an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal
defending the president.

The critics are accusing Dershowitz, a Harvard Law School professor
with a long track record of fighting anti-Israel efforts on campus, of
essentially abandoning Israel out of loyalty to the Democratic Party.

In response, Dershowitz wrote a piece in FrontPageMagazine.com saying
he believes that "a young, extremely popular African American
President who supports Israel, even if he disagrees with its policies
regarding settlement expansion, would be far more influential with
mainstream Americans and with people throughout the world than an old
conservative Republican, who also supported Israel."

"That is why," Dershowitz wrote, "I gave, and continued to give,
President Barack Obama the benefit of the doubt in his dealings with
Israel."
http://jta.org/news/article/2009/07/13/1006510/obama-gets-jewish-support-on-peace-push-questions-about-style