Page
11, AMERICAN
FREE PRESS * July
12, 2010
* Issue 28 AMERICAN FREE PRESS
BEHIND THE SCENES WITH
MICHAEL COLLINS PIPER
Anti-Obama
Coalition Has
Influential High-Level Support
By Michael Collins
Piper
 |
. Americans
who don’t care for Barack Obama can claim
some particularly influential allies. Some of
the most highly regarded names in the American
Jewish community — a formidable host of
influential leaders of what is referred to as
“the Jewish lobby” — have gone
public to denounce the president and his Middle
East policy. Among other things, they want America
to attack Iran.
 In
a bare-knuckled symposiumin the June 2010 issue
of Commentary magazine, long the voice
of the American Jewish Committee, 31 people, described
by Commentary as “prominent American
Jews” almost unanimously came down hard
on the American president. The symposium, entitled
“Obama, Israel and American Jews: The Challenge,”
was based on the thinking of hard-liners in the
United States whose motto is “Israel right
or wrong.” Note the following statement
from the event:
The
open conflict between the Obama administration
and the government of Benjamin Netanyahu has
created tensions between the United States and
Israel of a kind not seen since the days of
the administration of the first President Bush.
And those tensions are placing unique pressure
on American Jews, who voted for Barack Obama
by a margin of nearly four to one in 2008 after
being assured by Obama himself and by his supporters
in the Jewish community that he was a friend
and an ally of the state of Israel despite his
long association with, among others, the unabashedly
anti-Israel and anti- Semitic Rev. JeremiahWright.
We
argue that American Jews are facing an unprecedented
political challenge, and at a crucial moment,
with the need to address the existential threat
to Israel — and by extension to the future
of the Jewish people as a whole — from
a potentially nuclear Iran. How will American
Jews handle this challenge? Can Obama’s
Jewish supporters act in a way that will change
the unmistakable direction of current American
policy emanating from the White House? Will
American Jews accept Barack Obama’s view
that the state of Israel bears some responsibility
for the loss of American “blood and treasure”
in the Middle East?Will they continue to extend
their support to the Obama administration and
to Barack Obama’s political party?
While
there were some obviously partisan opponents of
Obama, such as Matthew Brooks of the Republican
Jewish Coalition, who responded to the poll and
slapped the president relentlessly, there were
also a handful of predictably reliable supporters
of Obama and his policies — for example,
Ira Forman, chief executive officer of the Democratic
Party-oriented National Jewish Democratic Council.
Forman expressed the belief that Commentary’s
symposium was biased from the start. The overwhelming
number of the respondents enthusiastically joined
in Commentary’s harsh rebuke of
the administration, while adding gratuitous comments
that they “hoped” Obama would ultimately
see the light. Here’s an abbreviated sampling
of some of the harsher comments:
ELLIOTT
ABRAMS, senior fellow for Middle Eastern
Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations: “Poll
data and impressionistic evidence suggest that
American Jews are increasingly dubious about Barack
Obama’s Middle East policy. Most major Jewish
organizations, except those that exist solely
to support the Democratic Party, have weighed
in with anxious complaints, and Democratic politicians
also have backed away from public support for
the Obama approach.”
MORRIS
AMITAY, former executive director of
the American Israel Public Affairs Committee:
“The unjustified criticism of Israel by
U.S. government officials, including the president,
makes it absolutely necessary for Jewish supporters
of Israel to speak out in opposition to this dangerous
trend in U.S. Middle East policy. Given Obama’s
questionable past associations, this should have
been expected.”
PETER
BERKOWITZ, senior fellow at the Hoover
Institution at Stanford University: “. .
. Through deliberate, public, and one-sided imposition
of pressure on Israel to make concessions in advance
of negotiations, the Obama administration has
. . . demoralized Israelis, pulled the rug out
from under Palestinian moderates, lent legitimacy
to the demonizers of Israel around the world,
and given Iran a windfall of precious time to
promote terror and develop nuclear weapons.”
KENNETH
J. BIALKIN, chairman of the America-
Israel Friendship League, former chairman of the
Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish
Organizations [and former national chairman of
the Anti- Defamation League — Ed.]: “[The]
struggle for Jerusalem has begun. . . . It has
obliged Jews and others to reflect on who has
deeper claims in the Holy Land — Jews with
an almost unbroken history in the region or the
relatively recently arrived peoples now collectively
called Palestinians. President Obama’s speech
in Cairo in June 2009 wrongly attributes Israel’s
claims solely to the horror of the Holocaust.”
ALAN
M. DERSHOWITZ, professor of law at Harvard
University [who endorsed Obama in 2008 —
Ed.]: “I began to get worried about the
Obama administration when White House Chief of
Staff Rahm Emanuel appeared to link American support
for Israel’s security with Israeli actions
regarding the settlements. I became even more
concerned when Vice President Biden and General
David Petraeus were quoted as suggesting that
Israel’s actions could affect American casualties
in Iraq and Afghanistan. . . .The Obama administration
is moving toward a policy of “containment,”
[toward Iran] which is no policy at all but rather
an implicit admission of failure.”
ABRAHAM
FOXMAN, national director of the Anti-Defamation
League: “Can the community mobilize the
Democratic majority in both houses to take issue
with the president of their party? This will be
a major challenge that will require persistence,
initiative and creativity. In the final analysis,
I’m still hopeful that things never reach
that point, that the relationship, despite ups
and downs, will remain intact. If not, I’m
confident we will rise to the occasion . . .”
JONATHAN
GURWITZ, columnist for The San Antonio
Express-News: “There were plenty of
clues that, despite a substantial number of Jewish
supporters and advisers, candidate Obama did not
have a decent appreciation of the Jewish psyche:
his membership in a church that honored Louis
Farrakhan; his former spiritual adviser who had
a deep animus for Israel and trafficked in conspiracy
theories; his foreign-policy team, which was populated
with people who were demonstrably insensitive
to Jewish concerns . . .”
JEFF
JACOBY, columnist for The Boston
Globe: “Time and again, Obama has made
clear both his lack of sympathy for the Jewish
state and his keen desire to Ingratiate himself
with Arab and Muslim autocrats.”
* * * * * * *
. . ..Michael Collins Piper can
be heard every week day night live on
the Internet at republicbroadcasting.org.
He is the author of Final
Judgment, the controversial
“underground bestseller”
documenting the collaboration of Israeli
intelligence in the assassination of
John F. Kennedy. He is also the author
of The
High Priests of War,
The
New Jerusalem: Zionist Power in America
, The
Judas Goats: The Enemy Within,
Dirty
Secrets: Crime, Conspiracy & Cover-Up
in the 20th Century,
The
GOLEM: Israel's Hell Bomb,
and Target:
Traficant. These
works can be found at America
First Books and FIRST
AMENDMENT
BOOKS: 1-888-699-NEWS.
He has lectured on suppressed
topics in places as diverse as Malaysia,
Japan, Canada, Russia and Abu Dhabi. |
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(Issue #28, July 12, 2010, AMERICAN
FREE PRESS)
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