{"id":85272,"date":"2016-01-14T07:59:19","date_gmt":"2016-01-14T15:59:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=85272"},"modified":"2016-01-14T07:59:19","modified_gmt":"2016-01-14T15:59:19","slug":"neocon-flap-highlights-jewish-divide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=85272","title":{"rendered":"Neocon flap highlights Jewish divide"},"content":{"rendered":"

Good stuff from 2008<\/a>:<\/p>\n

WASHINGTON (IPS) – A mushrooming media controversy pitting neoconservatives against a prominent Jewish-American political commentator could mark a new stage in the growing battle over who speaks for the US Jewish community on foreign policy issues, particularly regarding the Middle East.<\/p>\n

TIME columnist Joe Klein\u2019s accusations that Jewish neoconservatives, who played a particularly visible role in the drive to war in Iraq and have since pushed for military confrontation in Iran, sacrificed \u201cUS lives and money \u2026 to make the world safe for Israel\u201d have spurred angry charges of anti-Semitism and personal attacks from critics at such neoconservative strongholds as The Weekly Standard, National Review, and Commentary.<\/p>\n

But the fierceness of the controversy surrounding Klein, generally considered a political centrist, highlights the growing antagonism between neoconservative hardliners and prominent US Jews whose more moderate views are aligned more closely with those of the foreign policy establishment.<\/p>\n

The controversy began 24 June, when Klein argued in a TIME blog post that the \u201cfact that a great many Jewish neoconservatives \u2014 people like [independent Democrat Sen.] Joe Lieberman and the crowd at Commentary \u2014 plumped for this war [in Iraq], and now for an even more foolish assault on Iran, raised the question of divided loyalties.\u201d<\/p>\n

Within a day, Abraham Foxman, head of the Anti-Defamation League, accused Klein of espousing \u201cage-old anti-Semitic canards about a Jewish conspiracy to control and manipulate government.\u201d<\/p>\n

The reaction from the right-wing press was even harsher. Commentary editor John Podhoretz reiterated the accusation of \u201canti-Semitic canards\u201d and called Klein \u201cmanifestly intellectually unstable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Writing in National Review, former George W. Bush speechwriter Peter Wehner called Klein \u201ca man who cannot control his anger and even hatred.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Klein has refused to back down, accusing his attackers of using charges of anti-Semitism to silence criticism of neoconservative policies.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen [Commentary writer] Jennifer Rubin or Abe Foxman calls me anti-Semitic, they\u2019re wrong,\u201d he said in an interview. \u201cI am anti-neoconservative.\u201d<\/p>\n

In its broad contours, the controversy is a familiar one, as critics accuse neoconservatives of exercising pernicious influence on US Middle East policy and neoconservatives reply with charges of anti-Semitism and conspiracy-mongering.<\/p>\n

What distinguishes the recent furor over Klein, however, is that it involves someone who is widely regarded as an exemplar of the centrist political establishment.<\/p>\n

Klein is best known for his 1996 novel Primary Colors, a thinly-veiled and largely unflattering portrait of Bill Clinton\u2019s 1992 presidential campaign that was originally published anonymously and subsequently made into a Hollywood movie. A frequent critic of Clinton, Klein has at times expressed admiration for George W. Bush.<\/p>\n

He also endorsed the invasion of Iraq in 2003 (although he has since expressed regret for his support) and describes himself as \u201ca strong supporter of Israel.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Klein dust-up is the latest in a series of events over the last several years that have placed neoconservatives both in the spotlight and on the defensive.<\/p>\n

Neoconservatism, a predominantly \u2014 but by no means exclusively \u2014 Jewish movement, got its start in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when a small but influential group of Democrats began distancing themselves from the party which, in their view, had become too dovish toward the Soviet Union and too sympathetic toward Arab demands against Israel.<\/p>\n

By 1980, most had become strong supporters of Ronald Reagan. A number of prominent neoconservatives joined his administration, including many who would later play key roles in the run-up to the 2003 Iraq war.<\/p>\n

Consigned to the political wilderness under President George H.W. Bush, the neoconservatives became increasingly identified in the 1990s with Israel\u2019s right-wing Likud Party. It was also during the same period that they began agitating for \u201cregime change\u201d in Iraq, arguing that such a move would transform the balance of power in the Middle East decisively in favor of both Israel and the US.<\/p>\n

They experienced a rebirth with the election of Bush\u2019s son in 2000, and particularly after the 11 September 2001 attacks, when they played a major role, both inside the administration and in the media, in rallying the public and Congress behind war in Iraq.<\/p>\n

But with the deterioration of the situation in Iraq, the influence of neoconservatives inside and outside the administration began to wane, and critics began charging that they had led the US astray.<\/p>\n

A series of incidents also focused critical scrutiny on the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the powerful lobbying group whose hawkish right-wing leadership has often defied both the views of the broader US Jewish community and the policies of Israeli governments.<\/p>\n

In 2004, the Justice Department charged Pentagon staffer Lawrence Franklin with passing classified US government documents to two AIPAC lobbyists, who had then given the documents to an Israeli Embassy official. In January 2006, Franklin was sentenced to more than 12 years in prison, while the AIPAC staffers are still awaiting trial.<\/p>\n

In March 2006, the well-respected and staunchly realist international relations scholars John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt published the article \u201cThe Israel Lobby\u201d in the London Review of Books. That article, which charged that the lobby had for decades skewed US policy towards Israel in a direction detrimental to US interests, became the basis for their 2007 book The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy.<\/p>\n

Mearsheimer and Walt\u2019s thesis was instantly controversial. Like Klein, they were accused by critics, including the Anti-Defamation League and Commentary, of anti-Semitism and of perpetrating stereotypes about shadowy Jewish conspiracies.<\/p>\n

But as a result of their stature, the two authors\u2019 work clearly created political space for those, both within the foreign policy establishment and within the US Jewish community, who had been long privately critical of the neoconservatives but had been worried about the consequences of going public with their misgivings.<\/p>\n

More recently, AIPAC has come under fire for its close alliance with right-wing Christian Zionists, particularly controversial pastor John Hagee and his organization Christians United for Israel (CUFI).<\/p>\n

Hagee views an undivided Israel as a precondition for precipitating the Armageddon, and his group has accordingly pushed for hawkish US policies in the Middle East that have been consistent with the neoconservatives\u2019 own preferences.<\/p>\n

Matters came to a head earlier this year, when Republican presidential candidate John McCain was compelled to repudiate Hagee\u2019s endorsement after comments came to light in which the pastor suggested that the Holocaust was biblically ordained in order to force Jews to resettle in Israel.<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, Hagee and CUFI have maintained close ties with the neoconservatives, and a collection of prominent Israel hawks, including Senator Lieberman, spoke at CUFI\u2019s summit in Washington earlier this month.<\/p>\n

The belief that AIPAC has failed to accurately represent the views of the US Jewish community led to the foundation earlier this year of J Street, a Jewish lobbying group that aims to push for a more moderate stance on Middle East issues.<\/p>\n

In the wake of these developments, many observers have taken Klein\u2019s comments \u2014 and particularly his refusal to back down in the face of withering criticism from neoconservatives \u2014 as a sign that new political space is being created for the public airing of more moderate views on Middle East policy.<\/p>\n

M.J. Rosenberg, a former AIPAC staffer now associated with the moderate Israel Policy Forum, expressed the hope that commentators would stop equating neoconservatism with Judaism and start treating it as a political movement subject to political criticism.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlthough most [neocons] are Jews, few Jews are [neocons],\u201d he wrote Wednesday. By equating the two groups, \u201c[the neocons] want Americans not to follow the trail of war-mongering that leads not to Jews but to them.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Good stuff from 2008: WASHINGTON (IPS) – A mushrooming media controversy pitting neoconservatives against a prominent Jewish-American political commentator could mark a new stage in the growing battle over who speaks for the US Jewish community on foreign policy issues, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29611],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-85272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-neoconservatives"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=85272"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85272\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":85273,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85272\/revisions\/85273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=85272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=85272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=85272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}