by Isi Leibler
Aside from Dershowitz, a number of other prominent Jews who could by no stretch of the imagination be described as “right-wing” or extremist, have displayed their exasperation with Obama. For example, Michael Steinhardt, the mega-philanthropist and co-founder of Taglit-Birthright Israel, who had actually chaired the Democratic Leadership Council that propelled Bill Clinton to the presidency, hosted Cruz at his investment firm’s office.
It has been reported that American Jews still voted
overwhelmingly for the Democratic Party in the recent midterm
congressional elections. At the same time, there is mounting evidence
that increasing numbers of American Jews at the grassroots level have
become disillusioned and in many cases outraged by the shabby manner in
which the Obama administration has treated Israel over the past six
months. This, despite the fact that the American Jewish leadership
establishment, including the American Israel Public Affairs Committee,
had failed to criticize the biased and frequently hostile remarks
against Israel personally expressed repeatedly by President Barack
Obama.
Yet in contrast to the establishment, the Zionist Organization of
America has emerged over the last year as the front-runner of American
Jewish organizations, which consistently condemned the administration
with respect to its Israel policies.
This has resulted in many rank-and-file American Jews,
disappointed by the embarrassing silence of their leaders, no longer
considering the ZOA to be a marginal or extremist group.
The credit for much of this lies with the organization’s
indefatigable leader, Mort Klein, who succeeded in transforming what had
become an almost bankrupt organization into a dynamic political
machine. Klein was always nonplussed at being dismissed as an extremist
and radical right-winger.
Today, his followers are comparing him to Hillel Kook and the
Bergson Group, who in the 1940s orchestrated a public campaign to
pressure the U.S. government to adopt action to save Jews being murdered
during the Holocaust. Initially, he too was condemned by the Jewish
establishment as an extremist. In what is now regarded as a permanent
blemish on the reputation of the American Jewish leadership, Rabbi
Stephen Wise, then head of the Jewish community, warned against
antagonizing the Roosevelt administration and introduced the most
extreme measures to try to muzzle Kook -- even seeking to deport him.
The recent ZOA dinner, attended by over 1,100 people, reflects
the growing influence of the organization. The keynote speakers included
potential Republican presidential candidate Senator Ted Cruz, who had
recently made an enormous impact on the Jewish community. In a widely
reported address to a Christian group, despite prior knowledge that the
audience contained hundreds of Hezbollah supporters, Cruz insisted that
Israel was the only state in the Middle East that safeguarded its
Christian population. When the audience heckled him, the senator
responded, “If you will not stand with Israel, I will not stand with
you,” and demonstrably stormed out of the meeting.
In his ZOA address, Cruz praised Klein, who suffers from Tourette
syndrome, describing him as a man with “the heart of the lion and the
voice of Moses.” He bitterly condemned the Obama administration’s policy
toward Israel and pledged “not only to reimpose sanctions on Iran, but
strengthen them” and insisted that unless Iran dismantled all 19,000
centrifuges and ceased being a promoter of terrorism, “we do not have a
deal.”
An additional keynote address was provided by Pastor John Hagee,
founder of Christians United for Israel, the most consistent
enthusiastic evangelical supporter of Israel. Hagee ridiculed Obama for
continually describing U.S.-Israel relations as unbreakable. ”He knows
it is unbreakable because he’s been trying to break it the last five
years,” Hagee said. He also described Obama as “the most anti-Semitic
president ever.” Hagee’s controversial statements were strongly
condemned by other Jewish groups, with Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation
League describing his remarks as “offensive and misplaced.”
As in previous years, the dinner was attended by major Jewish
philanthropists Sheldon and Miriam Adelson, Home Depot founder Bernard
Marcus, Las Vegas Sands President Michael Leven and many others.
What provided significant political overtones to this dinner was
the inclusion of Professor Alan Dershowitz as a keynote speaker.
Dershowitz indisputably represents one of Israel’s staunchest and most
articulate public supporters. Yet, he is a fully committed Democrat and
until recently, supported the president, insisting that he was a
committed supporter of Israel.
In recent months Dershowitz appears to have become increasingly
exasperated with Obama’s Israel policies. It would have been difficult a
year or so ago to visualize him sharing a platform with Pastor Hagee or
even the right-wing Republican Senator Cruz. Yet, in his remarks,
Dershowitz referred to Cruz as his former student at Harvard Law School
and a friend. He stated: “Israel must always remain a bipartisan issue. …
And we must explicitly express appreciation and admiration for those
who stand up for the state of the Jewish people, even if we disagree
with their other political, theological or social views.”
Dershowitz then stressed that “to be anti-Israeli is to be
anti-American” and bitterly condemned “the moral equivalence which the
president and Obama administration officials made between innocent
Israeli victims of Hamas and Hamas terrorists killed in Israeli military
strikes.”
Aside from Dershowitz, a number of other prominent Jews who could
by no stretch of the imagination be described as “right-wing” or
extremist, have displayed their exasperation with Obama. For example,
Michael Steinhardt, the mega-philanthropist and co-founder of
Taglit-Birthright Israel, who had actually chaired the Democratic
Leadership Council that propelled Bill Clinton to the presidency, hosted
Cruz at his investment firm’s office.
Ken Bialkin and Richard Stone, both former heads of the
Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations,
participated in the ZOA dinner. James Tisch, another former chairman of
the Presidents Conference, hosted Cruz at a lunch preceding the ZOA
dinner at which Mort Zuckerman, the owner of the New York Daily News and
a strong Democratic backer, was also present.
Taken together, these elements suggest that there are major
rumblings against the Obama administration within the Jewish community.
In this context, the ZOA can no longer be dismissed as a fringe
or extremist group and is emerging as a genuine and vigorous component
of the Jewish political mainstream. Indeed, due to the apparent
paralysis and unwillingness of the Jewish establishment to speak up, the
ZOA today represents the principal organization speaking out on behalf
of committed Jews and pro-Israeli forces.
Klein says, “We are frequently called right-wing” but “the ZOA is not right-wing. We are simply right.”
The reality is that he reflects the right-wing nationalist
sentiment of Israeli policy. His views tend to parallel the hard-line
right-wing elements of Likud and of Naftali Bennett’s Habayit Hayehudi.
But this is somewhat irrelevant because the primary contribution
of the ZOA is to project to Americans the case for Israel and condemn
and expose the inappropriate policies adopted by the Obama
administration, which seeks to whitewash the PA and condemn Israel.
The remarkable growth in liberal support for the ZOA over the
past 12 months, combined with the public identification of some of the
most prominent Jewish philanthropic and intellectual adherents to the
Democratic Party, unquestionably suggests that many American Jews
traditionally supporting the Democratic Party, at this late stage, are
reacting against the Obama administration’s shabby treatment of Israel
and concerned with the lack of response of the official leadership.
Isi Leibler’s website can be viewed at www.wordfromjerusalem.com. He may be contacted at ileibler@leibler.com.
Source: http://wordfromjerusalem.com/?p=5426
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
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