Barack Obama, or as he is know in Mayor Daley's precincts Barack O'Bama, is taking a minor dust up over the Palestine-Israel question:
Obama, speaking Sunday to a small group of Democratic activists in Muscatine, was quoted in the Des Moines Register as saying 'nobody is suffering more than the Palestinian people.'
David Adelman on Tuesday wrote a letter to Obama calling the comment 'deeply troubling' and asking Obama to clarify his comments. Adelman is a member of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which lobbies in support of a strong relationship between the United States and Israel...
By "strong relationship" we mean "nuke Iraq." It's been a sad spectacle this week, watching the presidentials and congressional leadership travel cap in hand to AIPAC's conference, watching opposition to the next war scuttle into oblivion. Now, even a mild statement of sympathy toward the Palestinian people is treated as if it were Kristallknacht.
This almost feels like a zinger with its source in another campaign...
Adelman, a Des Moines attorney, is a politically active Democrat and works as a lobbyist, but he said he has not yet made a choice on whom he will support in 2008.
The FEC reports he gave Vilsack $250 on November 21, which doesn't do much good now.
Even the Iowa blogosphere's most blatant Israel apologist James Eaves-Johnson saw no problems with Obama's AIPAC remarks last week. The only Democrat who'll challenge AIPAC's premises is the safely retired for 25 years Jimmy Carter. I hate to have to quote from the right, but here's a relatively long but key bit from a must-read at The American Conservative:
Pressed by Huffington to explain why he was sure Bush would attack Iran, Clark answered, “You just have to read what’s in the Israeli press. The Jewish community is divided but there is so much pressure being channeled from the New York money people to the office seekers.”
This was an awkward way to put it; the euphemism surely sounded more contentious than anything Clark might have said straightforwardly. And of course some people chose to ignore Clark’s correct assertion that the Jewish community was very divided on the Iran issue. Within days, the general was in caught in a familiar crossfire, smeared as an instigator of anti-Semitism by some Republican Jewish organizations, his remarks headlined as “Protocols of the New York Money People” by a Wall Street Journal columnist.
In early February, Glenn Greenwald, a New York attorney who recently published a book on the Patriot Act, wrote a blog entry that focused on the New York AIPAC gathering attended by both John Edwards and Hillary Clinton. Greenwald quoted an article from the New York Sun—there is no more unimpeachably right-wing Zionist source—that featured Democratic political consultant Hank Sheinkopf’s claim that “New York is the ATM for American politicians. Large amounts of money come from the Jewish community. If … you want dollars from that group, you need to show that you’re interested in the issue that matters most to them.” The issue that matters most, the article went on to say, is Israel, and what this group most wants to hear with regard to Israel is commitment to bellicosity toward Iran.
Greenwald went on to point out that these articles made exactly the same point that Clark made, adding, “It is simply true that there are large and extremely influential Jewish donor groups which are agitating for a U.S. war against Iran, and that is the case because those groups are devoted to promoting Israel’s interests and they perceive it to be in Israel’s interests for the U.S. to militarily confront Iran.”
Matthew Yglesias, a young writer with a blog and similar political orientation, also addressed the Clark issue, noting that while Jewish opinion was divided on Iran, “Everything Clark said, in short, is true. What’s more, everyone knows it’s true.” Yglesias pointed out that it is seemingly permissible to refer to the financial clout Jews wield in the Democratic Party if one is being supportive of America’s self-proclaimed “pro-Israel” forces, but if you’re critical of this influence, you’re denounced as an anti-Semite.
Back to Obama, his camp is doing its explaining:
"Sen. Obama has always said that the security of Israel should be America's starting point in the Middle East," Vietor said. "As he stated in his speech (at AIPAC) and again in Iowa, he also believes that in the end, the Palestinian people are suffering from the Hamas-led government's refusal to renounce terrorism and join as a real partner in the peace process."
Sigh...
Now, I don't expect any presidential candidate to support my preferred solution to Palestine-slash-Israel: the same one person one vote one state solution we asked and got in that other apartheid state, South Africa. And even my second choice solution: two states with the UN's 1947 (not 1967) borders is considered beyond the pale. But if we can't even acknowledge the pain of the Palestinian people without slapping their faces for their choice of leadership, we will continue to have zero credibility in that part of the world, and that can't be good for America's security.
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