Barack Obama and the true faith
18.02. 2008
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Zionism & Israel Center http://zionism-
Barack Obama is in the politician business, and he is very good at what he does. That is an understatement. People faint at Obama rallies. He is more than a superstar. He is a megastar. He has even entranced relatively staid Israeli commentators like Shmuel Rosner and Yossi Sarid. It would not be surprising, indeed, if there were not soon rumors that he cures lepers by laying on of hands. We may hear that at a support dinner, he fed a multitude from a single tuna sandwich when the caterers failed to show up.
Who can withstand this overpowering presence? Who is so tone deaf to human emotion, who is such a pedantic nerd, that they would quibble with one who is inspired, who is, in Biblical language, possessed of the Holy Ghost? If only we believe, then "Yes We Can!"
To deny the wonders of Obama is to risk hellfire and damnation on earth. Among Jews, this has been reinforced by the spate of attacks on Barack Obama by the wrong sort of Jews. A man is known by his enemies. People who are pure of heart do not doubt Obama. Barack Obama's enemies, some of whom I described previously, include a flock of neoconservative and paleoconservative bloggers who put up a picture of Obama with his hand on the shoulder of demagogue Al Sharpton, and implied falsely that Obama was involved in the Tawana Brawley riots.
But when I last wrote about Obama, there were serious charges to be considered, and they had not been answered. Ed Lasky and others had charged that Obama has two advisers: Zbigniew Brzezinski and Robert Malley, both of whom are inimical to Israel. Their records are fairly clear. Malley may not be everything that Lasky charges, but he is certainly not a friend of Israel, and he and his father have been consistent friends of the PLO. The first answer to these charges was given by Martin Peretz in the New Republic:
There are all kinds of spooky rumors that a man named Robert Malley is one of Obama's advisers, specifically his Middle East adviser. His name comes up mysteriously and intrusively on the web, like the ads for Viagra. Malley, who has written several deceitful articles in The New York Review of Books, is a rabid hater of Israel. No question about it. But Malley is not and has never been a Middle East adviser to Barack Obama.
Zbigniew Brzezinski endorsed Mearsheimer and Walt's Israel Lobby book and is featured favorably on anti-"Zionist" Web sites of the same level as Stormfront. Brzezinski, we are told, like Obama, is not an adviser on Middle East policy.
Shmuel Rosner, in Ha'aretz, spins a bit more, and spins the whole show into trouble. Ha'aretz or Rosner headlined the story, The row over Obama's stance on Israel is a dispute between Jews. And Rosner writes, "This specific showdon [sic] over Obama's candidacy is a dispute between Jews."
It is not a dispute between Jews. The religion or ethnic origin of the disputants is not relevant. It is a dispute about facts. Is Malley an adviser of Obama, is Brzezinski? Yes or No. It is a matter of truth. Did Malley write malicious fiction about Israel and the peace negotiations in the New York Review of Books? Did Malley write a book glorifying "national liberation movements"? Yes or No. (Lasky, for some reason, cited a relatively harmless article by Malley in the New York Times, rather than the New York Review of Books articles).
Rosner spins and spins and spins until we are all dizzy, and have forgotten what it is all about hopefully. Yes, Malley is an Obama adviser about Israel, he tells us, but Obama isn't listening to Malley. OK, but he IS an adviser. One fact in the dispute between Jews is decided apparently. Why take on an adviser, whose only field of expertise is the Middle East, if you aren't going to listen to him??
Not surprisingly, Obama is not listening to Malley in the campaign. He does want the Jewish vote. But he will obviously be listening to him if elected, otherwise, why is he an adviser? Rosner notes that ex-Clinton aides say Lasky was "unfair" to Malley. Why unfair? Malley's views are a matter of record. Does he stand by those views? There is no indication that he has changed them. He didn't worry about being "fair' when he wrote articles falsifying history and justifying the murder of Israelis and of the peace process, so who really cares if Lasky aimed his shots a bit broadly? As for Brzezinski, Rosner spins away merrily on both sides, revealing in the process that it is not just a dispute between Jews.
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