The
president doesn’t like Mort Klein. I don’t know whether they’ve
ever met. But the Obama folk did convene a meeting for the president
with the “Jewish leadership,” which included, as it happens,
American Jewish organizations (new on the block and who are financed
mostly by Jewish billionaires who care not a fig for the survival of a
people they do not think of as their home) believing that Israel is
basically responsible for the intensity and duration of the conflict
with the Arabs, in general, and the Palestinians, in particular. Anyway,
Klein is president of the Zionist Organization of America which makes
him, if you’ve read Jeff Rosen’s dazzling
TNR essay
on Supreme Court justice Louis Dembitz Brandeis, a literal successor to
Brandeis who himself had difficult views on a settlement with the Arabs.
A literal successor, nonetheless, in the same way that Elena Kagan will
be.
Now,
Klein takes a harder line than Brandeis did. But then the Arabs had not
waged five wars against Israel, and the Palestinian cause had not yet
been invented. There were cases of random terror as much against Jewish
agricultural workers as against Arab effendi. In any case, the
map of the Levant was being divided, and a tiny portion had been
allocated to the Zionists—as larger divisions were cut out for new
states like Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, etc. Not democratic states or
even states cut to demography. Each of these states, by the way, is
still a mess, which is a massive understatement. Except the Zionist
encampment of Israel, a modern state with a free press, an independent
judiciary, a real university system and an open culture. OK, smartass,
give your ardor to Palestine. It will be like having given your ardor to
Khmer Rouge Cambodia.
Barack
Obama came to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue a year-and-a-half ago with clear
rhetoric and fuzzy ideas about the Middle East. Many Jews and Jewish
organizations went along, hoping against hope that the man would learn.
Some say he has; some say he at least has doubts about what were once
his certainties. Others say he is just playing for time. I can’t say
that I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. But I did spend a week
campaigning for him in Jewish Florida, and frankly I resent the
certainties I uttered then. And my readers should also resent them. In
any case, pessimism is a Jewish trait. So I’m a pessimist.
And
so is Mort Klein who has learned much from history. Those mainstream
Jewish leaders who attended Obama’s exclusive White House meeting are
no longer so high on his neat plans and on his fantasy expectations.
Klein, who was explicitly and deliberately excluded, has the
satisfaction of other invitees’ deep new doubts. And J Street? Well, J
Street is J Street.
Klein
is a bit of a nudnik. He does release a statement just about
every day. Mostly I just let them pass. But today’s hit me in the
solar plexus. It came a few days after the president said that he
was optimistic about the proximity talks. Maybe he is. I, on the other
hand, can’t see any reason to be. The New York Times’ seasoned
reporter Isabel Kershner writes in
an article today
what is virtually a dirge.
Why
did Klein’s epistle shake me so? Because it is about Palestinian
opinion measured by a reasonable—that is, honest—Palestinian survey.
Here it is ZOA’s press
release in its entirety.
What it tells us is that the Palestinians have given in on or even
modified the most fanatic of their demands. Progress? Tell it to J
Street.