What My Seven-Year-Old Grandson Can Teach President Obama About Israel

Reprinted from The Jewish Week, New York

Hebron -- Uriya and 80 other first grade boys received their certificates last month on completing their study of the entire book of Genesis. That's an important achievement in many Jewish day schools in the United States, usually accomplished only in the third grade. What was truly unique about Uriya's reception was its location: The Shrine of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs in Hebron in the West Bank.

Meorat HaMachpeila, the traditional site of the graves of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, and Jacob and Leah, is the second holiest site in Judaism after the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. The burial cave was purchased by Abraham from Ephron the Hittite for 400 shekels of silver, according to the Bible [Genesis 23:17]. The cave was enclosed by a massive Herodian structure some 2000 years ago upon which Muslims added minarets and Christian crusaders added their churches.

Hebron had served as King David's capital until he moved to Jerusalem, and Jews lived in Hebron for centuries until an Arab massacre of Jews in 1929 forced the survivors to flee. For centuries the Muslims forbad Jews from entering the tomb, which they called the Haram al-Ibrahimi. Only after the 1967 war, when Israel pushed the Jordanian Legion from the West Bank, were Jews able to return to Hebron and enter the shrine.

The children's program in Hebron was full of songs, re-enactments of Bible stories, and quizzes about Bible figures and verses. Most of the program was conducted on the broad expanse of grass outside the holy site, and then the boys went inside to pray in the chambers above the graves. Only the large Isaac chamber was off-limits since it is reserved for Muslim worshippers for most of the year. [It was the site of the massacre of 29 Muslims by Baruch Goldstein on Purim, 1994.]

My wife and I grew up in Washington D.C., and we often supplemented our American history lessons with class trips to the U.S. Capitol building, Mt. Vernon or the Supreme Court.

But for Uriya and his friends the field trip was the opportunity to learn about their forefathers and the Cave of Machpeila, a 25-minute ride from his Efrat school in the Etzion Bloc south of Jerusalem. The one biblical matriarch missing from Hebron, Rachel, is buried in a shrine a few miles to the north between Bethlehem and Jerusalem.

Uriya knows a little about the history of the Etzion Bloc and its valiant history in defending the approaches to Jerusalem in May 1948 when 250 Jewish fighters were massacred by Arab armies.

The Jewish communities, built there decades before, were wiped off the map. When he's older, Uriya and his class will visit the site of the massacre and the kibbutz rebuilt after 1967 by the children of the defenders.

Other than playing "King of the Hill, the boys do not understand the intricacies of strategic topography, but they know that across the valley from their school is the community of Elazar, built after 1967. They can relate the area to the ancient Chanukah story. The settlement, another part of the Etzion Bloc, was named for the Maccabean general who died nearby beneath the military tank of the time - an elephant - deployed by the invading Greek army.

The area is steeped in Jewish history -- and Jewish blood.

Uriya's moving ceremony was attended by his parents and two sets of proud grandparents who also live in Efrat. It may be difficult for Americans with their atomized families and cross-continent mobility to understand the pride and efforts of the large Jewish families in the settlements to live in close proximity. They spend Shabbat and holidays together. Siblings and parents are available to babysit and help out when a daughter gives birth. Our home reverberates when a near-minyan of grandchildren come for a birthday party or cookie baking or cherry picking.

Our Arab neighbors understand the idea. When a son marries he builds his home near or above his parents' home. I seriously doubt that any American policy-maker would ever consider denying Palestinians the right to "natural growth" in their places of residence.

A recent Washington Post article described the role played by President Obama's Jewish friends and advisors in setting his draconian anti-settlement policies. It's a shame that the advisors have little or none of the deep emotional Jewish ties to the birthplace and birthright of Judaism - the Biblical sites in east Jerusalem, Hebron or Shiloh. They view with distain the religious devotion of the modern Orthodox Jews and the more than 100,000 ultra-Orthodox Jews who live in Judea and Samaria (not unlike the embarrassment that their parents felt toward their Yiddish-speaking Orthodox grandparents who arrived in America in the early 20th century). Unlike their American Jewish cousins, there will be little if any intermarriage or assimilation among the observant Israeli Jews.

The American friends and advisors to Obama may be friends or relatives of Israelis who are, more often than not, secular Israelis from the Tel Aviv region. The ignorance about the religious "other" is not the sole property of the American Jewish advisors.

Former Prime Ministers Barak and Olmert were quick to relinquish the Jewish patrimony. During the Oslo Accords withdrawal one Israeli military negotiator had no inkling about the sanctity of Rachel's Tomb and "gave it away" until ultra-Orthodox rabbinic leaders persuaded Prime Minister Rabin to correct the spiritual crime.

The relationship between Obama's Jews on one hand and the ardent American Zionists and patriotic Israelis on the other is reminiscent of a conversation held more than a century ago between Chaim Weizmann and Lord Arthur Balfour, the eventual author of the Balfour Declaration that launched the policy to establish a Jewish homeland. Balfour could not fathom why persecuted Russian Jews refused an offer of safe asylum in Uganda. Weizmann argued that Zionist Jews could not accept a home anywhere but Jerusalem.

"Suppose I were to offer you Paris instead of London," Weizmann said.
"But, Dr. Weizmann," Balfour responded, "we have London."
"That is true," Weizmann said, "but we had Jerusalem when London was a marsh."
Balfour asked, "Are there many Jews who think like you?"
"I believe I speak the minds of millions of Jews," replied Weizmann.
"It is curious," said Balfour, "the Jews I meet are quite different."
"Mr. Balfour," Weizmann retorted, "you meet the wrong kind of Jews."

We all pray that Uriya and his classmates will be spared the army service that his father, uncles and grandfather have all experienced.

But if one day he will have to don a uniform, he will know about his centuries-old ties to the land.

Sphere: Related Content

Rapture over a Rupture in Relations

Israel's critics put pennies on the railroad track and then predicted an Obama-Netanyahu train wreck

When Ehud Olmert spoke before the Israel Policy Forum in 2005 he dared to speak for all Israelis when he declared, "We are tired of fighting; we are tired of being courageous; we are tired of winning..." Clearly, he was not talking for most Israelis. Subsequently, the Israeli people fought two wars, proved that their mettle was beyond Olmert's comprehension, and then dispatched Olmert's Kadima Party from government.

Prior to the meeting of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and President Barack Obama, two "progressive" American Jewish organizations, the Israel Policy Forum and J Street, attempted to present themselves as the true voice of American Jewry. They called on President Obama to enact "very, very strong involvement" [their euphemism for pressuring or "leaning" on Israel] in the peace process. They echoed the calls of columnists Roger Cohen and Nicholas Kristof for a policy of "tough love" toward Israel - another euphemism, perhaps best defined as "the rape of Israel," a repugnant term actually used by an Israeli editor in a presentation to Secretary of State Condi Rice.
Will American Jewry permit this misrepresentation?

Dismissing the surge of pro-Israel sentiment and activism displayed at the massive AIPAC Policy Conference in early May, the IPF's Director of Policy Analysis, M. J. Rosenberg, even refused to call AIPAC "pro-Israel." Claiming sole possession of the "pro-Israel" mantle and proclaiming a markedly pro-Palestinian agenda, Rosenberg declared, "We need to drown out the clamor produced by a minority within the pro-Israel community that tells our government not to press Israel to freeze settlements, ease the suffering in Gaza, or push hard to end the occupation that is destroying Israel's future and the Palestinians' present."

Thus, in recent months the Israel Policy Forum "welcomed the shift [it perceived] in American policy toward Hamas," opposed "provocative" congressional bills directed at Iran, rushed to the defense of Chas Freeman when his very inappropriate appointment to the National Intelligence Council was challenged, lobbied against a "one-sided" congressional resolution supporting Israeli actions against the rocket-shooting Hamas terrorists in Gaza, and expressed opposition to a "loathsome" bi-partisan Congressional letter to the President encouraging support for direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.

This is pro-Israel?

The J Street organization conveyed similar messages on Capitol Hill, charging that the Israeli operation against Hamas in Gaza was "disproportionate and escalatory." A recent J Street poll actually served to advocate sanctions against Israel by suggesting that reductions of diplomatic, economic and military aid were options to "convince" Israel to accept an imposed solution.

BUT NOW Rosenberg and the IPF have gone too far on several issues. Earlier this month the Forum's policy director rewrote Middle East history in chilling Orwellian terms. Israel should return to the 1967 borders after securing peace treaties, he wrote, because "pre-1967 Israel was not terrible at all. In fact it was pretty wonderful." [Emphasis added.] "Wonderful" is barely the way to describe the murderous fedayeen raids of the 1950s, the total ban on Jewish visits to the Western Wall or Cave of the Patriarchs, the abrupt withdrawal of UN troops from Sinai in 1967, the genocidal intentions of Arab neighbors and expeditionary forces, the failure of the United States to uphold its commitments to Israel, and the preparation of mass graves in Israeli parks.

"It is clear from our contacts with this administration," the IPF official continued, that "President Obama wants us to create consensus among all Americans, and particularly within the pro-Israel community, in support of White House efforts to encourage both sides to compromise in order to achieve peace." He longs for a "president [who] is free to lean (emphasis added) on both sides - without fear of being thwarted by the status quo lobby [AIPAC] or its friends in Congress and the media."

ROSENBERG SINGS paeans to the God-less culture and politics of Tel Aviv, the "real Israel."

"Tel Aviv, in all its rich color, is what Zionism is all about.... With its beaches, bars, art galleries, theaters, and high-fashion scene, T-A is often criticized as a 'bubble' because it provides the illusion that it is possible to escape the Israeli-Palestinian conflict while in the heart of Israel. It is an illusion, but a good one - and the very opposite of the ugly and hopeless reality offered by extremists on both sides."

Writing an obituary for Israel's capital last week, Rosenberg pronounced "the death of Jerusalem," a city "divided by walls of hate."

"The secular areas [of Jerusalem] are charming but much of the rest is Jewish Taliban country... No humor, no aesthetics, just lunatics in black. Can't all these black-clad crazies - of all faith and delusions - just recognize their common inhumanity and move to one corner of Asia." Rosenberg called on liberal Jerusalemites "who can't stand Talibanization" to move to the liberal, "hedonistic" Tel Aviv. (Emphasis added.)

In the 1990s a popular American Jewish leader was forced to resign as head of a major organization after remarking that ultra-Orthodox Jews' "image is smelly... Hassids and New York diamond dealers." Some Jewish leaders, he explained, did not like to fly on El Al because "those people" were on board. "TWA flies direct [to Israel], but it's low class, like the Orthodox."

Obviously, Rosenberg's revulsion toward the Orthodox "Taliban, black-clad crazies" is at least as biased, but he spews his hatred on Jerusalem, as well.

It may not be politically correct to label anyone an "anti-Semite" today. But what do you call someone who rejects the centrality of Jerusalem to the Jewish people or labels Orthodox Jews "fanatics, crazies, Taliban and lunatics?"

WHITE HOUSE SPOKESMEN and sources close to Israel's prime minister prefaced the Obama-Netanyahu meeting by predicting that the two men were expected to have a productive and friendly meeting - "a continuation of a very close relationship between the U.S. and Israel," said one US official.

This article goes to press before the meeting, but I expect no fireworks, no train wreck, no blood on the rug. Yes, there are differences in the two leaders' approaches, but to the disappointment of the Israel Policy Forum, J Street, and various pundits, President Obama did not "lean" on Prime Minister Netanyahu. He has more Middle East leaders to meet and more Palestinian steps to be taken before the Obama administration can even consider pressing Israel. The Americans also know that for now and for the next few years, Binyamin Netanyahu will be their primary interlocutor.

The Jewish Left has adopted the two-state solution as their mantra. But American analysts are now questioning whether the two-state solution is really the panacea prescribed by J Street, IPF, Jimmy Carter and friends. "Unlike Zionism, for whom statehood was the central objective," one pro-Arab advisor to the administration recently wrote, "the Palestinian fight was primarily about other matters. The absence of a state was not the cause of all their misfortune. Its creation would not be the full solution either."

President Obama has shown that he "does Jewish" very well - hosting a seder in the White House, planning a visit to a concentration camp in Europe, and declaring May as "American Jewish Heritage Month."

How well does Obama "do Israel?" How well does he understand Israel's fears of an Iranian bomb, its concerns over Hamas terrorism, its hopes for real peace, and its commitment to protecting the Jewish people's past and future? We'll know better after his speech in Cairo next month, but from the messages coming out of the Obama-Netanyahu meeting, it appears that he understands these issues well. At least for the near future, therefore, Obama will not be taking up residence at 1600 J Street, a make-believe street that doesn't really exist.

This article appears in the May 19 edition of The Jerusalem Post.

Sphere: Related Content

Washington’s Elders of Anti-Zion and Their Never-Ending Low-Intensity War on Israel

AIPAC’s annual conference opened this week to the auspicious news that the U.S. Justice Department will drop its case against two former AIPAC employees on espionage-related charges based on a 90-year-old U.S. statute. But the original charges brought against Steve Rosen and Keith Weisman left some friends of Israel uneasy over the calumny of American Jews’ “dual loyalty.” In recent weeks, the case escalated with accusations that Congresswoman Jane Harman, a strong congressional friend of Israel, attempted to influence the case.

In March the queasiness was widespread in the pro-Israel community after Charles “Chas” Freeman claimed that the Israel Lobby torpedoed his appointment to head the U.S. National Intelligence Council. “The aim of this Lobby,” Freeman told reporters, “is control of the policy process through the exercise of a veto over the appointment of people who dispute the wisdom of its views." One result, he continued, is "the inability of the American public to discuss, or the government to consider, any option for U.S. policies in the Middle East opposed by the ruling faction in Israeli politics."

Freeman’s complaints echo the widely-criticized 2007 book, The Israel Lobby by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt where the authors claim that the Israel Lobby’s core consists of "American Jews who make a significant effort in their daily lives to bend U.S. foreign policy so that it advances Israel's interests."

And all this came after former president Jimmy Carter published his anti-Israel screed, Palestine Peace Not Apartheid in 2006.

The Elders of Anti-Zion

By no means should anyone ignore or minimize the Washington leaks and attacks against AIPAC, the American Jewish community or Israel. But it should be understood that these actions are part of a historic, decades-long, beneath-the-surface low-intensity war in Washington to weaken U.S.-Israel relations. Not much has changed since an Arab propagandist in the U.S., Mohammed Mehdi, proclaimed some 40 years ago, “The road to the liberation of Palestine leads through Washington.”

In more than 35 years of my involvement in U.S.-Israeli relations, I have seen the ebbs and surges of various anti-Israel campaigns. Once the anti-Israel crusade was led or conducted by Senator J. William Fulbright and Congressman Paul Findley, assisted by Jewish anti-Zionists like Elmer Berger and the apostate Alfred Lilienthal, and supported by Arab propagandists and oil interests. In the 1960s and 70s the legislators charged that American policy in the Middle East was too pro-Israel and that Congress was corrupted.

In 1962 Fulbright launched an investigation of foreign lobbyists in Washington, attempting to force AIPAC to register as an agent of Israel rather than a domestic American lobby. His chief investigator was a journalist named Walter Pincus. [Today, Pincus, the Washington Post’s veteran national security reporter, helps cover the Jane Harman story and the Rosen-Weisman trial.]

"Israel controls the United States Senate,” Senator Fulbright told Face the Nation in 1973. “Around 80 percent are completely in support of Israel; anything Israel wants it gets. Jewish influence in the House of Representatives is even greater.” [Years later, after retiring from the Senate, Fulbright registered as a foreign agent for Saudi Arabia.]

Freeman, Walt, and Mearsheimer are but parrots of Fulbright and Under Secretary of State George Ball who wrote a 1977 Foreign Affairs article, “How to Save Israel in Spite of Itself.” Ball declared more than 30 years ago, “How far should we go in continuing to subsidize a policy shaped to accommodate understandable Israeli compulsions which do not accord with the best interests — as we see it — either of Israel or the United States, but are a threat to world peace? … Because many articulate Americans are passionately committed to Israel, the slightest challenge to any aspect of current Israeli policy is likely to provoke a shrill ad hominem response. To suggest that America should take a stronger and more assertive line in the search for Middle East peace is to risk being attacked as a servant either of Arab interests or of the oil companies, or being denounced as anti-Israel, or, by a careless confusion of language, even condemned as anti-Semitic.”

In the mid-1970s, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, frustrated by Israel’s tough negotiating position and encouraged by Ball, pushed President Gerald Ford to conduct a “Reassessment” of American relations with Israel. After AIPAC rallied strong congressional opposition to the Administration’s proposed policy change, AIPAC was investigated by the Justice Department to see if it should register as a foreign agent of Israel. The investigators concluded, “There is not one shred of evidence that AIPAC should be registered as a foreign agent.”

As Ronald Reagan’s vice president, George H. Bush reportedly led the efforts to embargo F-16 aircraft shipments to Israel after the bombing of the Iraqi reactor in 1981. In 1991 as president, Bush went toe-to-toe with the American Jewish community when he sought to tie loan guarantees, which Israel needed to provide housing for the massive aliya of Soviet Jews, to restrictions on the building of settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. When Jewish organizations went up to Capitol Hill to lobby for the aid, Bush went on national TV, pounded his fists and declared that he was "up against some powerful political forces…. I heard today,” he said, “there were something like a thousand lobbyists on the Hill working the other side of the question. We've got one lonely little guy [the President] down here doing it."

Bush went on to chip away at public support for Israel by claiming that American soldiers had “risked their lives to defend Israelis” in the Gulf War and that “despite our own economic problems the United States provided Israel with more than $4 billion in economic and military aid, nearly $1,000 for every Israeli man, woman and child."

Bush’s speech unleashed a flurry of anti-Semitic comments in the U.S. to an extent that the White House felt it had to react. "I am concerned that some of my comments at the Thursday press conference caused apprehension within the Jewish community," Bush wrote to American Jewish leaders. "My references to lobbyists and powerful political forces were never meant to be pejorative in any sense."

The animosity toward Israel and the American Jewish community expressed by the President was probably shaped in part by his National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft and shared by other senior staff. Scowcroft continues today to play an “Elders” role in Washington, encouraging a change in policy toward Israel.

In 1991, Bush’s Chief of Staff, John Sununu, was under fire for using military and corporate aircraft for personal trips. According to press reports at the time, Sununu, a Lebanese-American, believed that the attacks against him were generated by pro-Israel groups motivated by his ethnic background and because his positions were "not fully supportive of Israel's demands on the United States." Sununu later sought out Jewish leaders to mollify them and deny that he made the charge.

Bush’s Secretary of State James Baker was infamous for his enmity toward Israel. His purported remark, “F*** the Jews! They don’t vote for us anyway,” probably marks a low point in contemporary American Jewish history.

Attempts to Sink AIPAC?

Administrations’ policy differences with Israel and legislative challenges on Capitol Hill championed by AIPAC were often met in Washington by anti-Israel leaks to the press or by actions by counter-intelligence officials. During the period 1977 – 1982 AIPAC led challenges on Capitol Hill against major U.S. aircraft sales to Jordan, Egypt and particularly Saudi Arabia. On three occasions in those years I was approached at AIPAC by individuals offering classified information they claimed was important for Israel’s security. Once, a man offered to provide blueprints of an airbase being built in an Arab state. On another occasion, two men, claiming that their pastor encouraged them to help Israel, wanted to provide information on American military supplies to the Middle East. In the third case, information on U.S. – Saudi ties was going to be provided. In all cases, I assumed that the men were part of counter-intelligence “sting” operations, and I sent the suspected agents provocateurs packing. The third individual, by the way, was named Jonathan Pollard. I was wrong about his intentions, but AIPAC was spared.

Ultimately, such a sting operation – without the transfer of any documents – was used to entrap the two AIPAC employees in 2005.

Counter-intelligence agencies in the U.S. – and there are several – have long suspected that Jonathan Pollard had an accomplice, Agent X, and that American Jews may be guilty of dual loyalties. In 1997, phone taps of Israeli Embassy lines purportedly picked up a conversation about obtaining a document from an American mole codenamed “Mega.” No such spy existed, Israel insisted. One over-zealous official who worked at both the CIA and FBI, David Szady, was involved in the AIPAC arrests as well as the hounding of an entry-level Jewish attorney at the CIA who had visited Israel as a teenager. Another case of clear anti-Semitic persecution involved a Jewish engineer at a tank facility in Michigan. In all cases, the investigations were finally dropped.

Press leaks about Israeli spying, illegal weapons sales, and the theft of military technology spout almost like clockwork during periods of tension between the two countries. The charges include claims that the Israeli Python air-to-air missile was based on Sidewinder technology, that the Lavie jet and Harpy drone technologies were transferred to China, and that Patriot anti-aircraft missile technology was compromised. No one should have been surprised, therefore by the most recent leak about Congresswoman Harman on the eve of the AIPAC Policy Conference and as the case against Rosen and Weisman crumbled. [Will there ever be an investigation launched to see who leaked details of a secret U.S. government operation in which Harman was taped? Probably not.]

Today’s anti-Israel cabal of Walt, Mearsheimer, Freeman, and columnists Roger Cohen and Nicholas Kristof have the luxury of several Jewish commentators and organizations that support them. Incredibly, the Jewish spokesmen claim to be pro-Israel, but their actions betray their claim. The spokesmen have recently defended Chas Freeman, praised the Walt-Mearsheimer book, lobbied Congress against supporting Israel’s actions against Hamas in Gaza, and called for the recognition of Hamas.

Some of the spokesmen for this appeasement lobby appear to be the disciples and descendants of Rabbi Elmer Berger of the now defunct American Council for Judaism who raised funds at a Beirut dinner after the 1967 war where he likened Israel’s nationalism to South Africa’s apartheid. [Note that the apartheid falsehood heard so often at the Durban Conferences goes back more than 40 years.]

The appeasement lobby’s hero, Stephen Walt, by the way, just published an eight-point “user’s guide” on how the United States can “put pressure on Israel.”

Praise for AIPAC Activists

As the 6,500 AIPAC conference attendees leave Capitol Hill and head back to their homes this week, they should be proud of their efforts, resolute to continue, and encouraged by the words of two great American statesmen and leaders who approved of their efforts.

Two years ago, in a little-noticed commentary, former Secretary of State George P. Shultz responded to the Walt-Mearsheimer rant: “The United States supports Israel not because of favoritism based on political pressure or influence but because the American people, and their leaders, say that supporting Israel is politically sound and morally just. ... So, on every level, those who blame Israel and its Jewish supporters for U.S. policies they do not support are wrong. They are wrong because, to begin with, support for Israel is in our best interests. They are also wrong because Israel and its supporters have the right to try to influence U.S. policy. And they are wrong because the U.S. government is responsible for the policies it adopts, not any other state or any of the myriad lobbies and groups that battle daily—sometimes with lies—to win America's support."

And I still recall the words of former vice president and senator Hubert Humphrey responding to the detractors of the pro-Israel lobby at the time of the Ford “Reassessment” in 1976, telling some 450 AIPAC conference attendees, "Columnists, editorial writers have warned us about ethnic lobbies. We've heard careless, and I think, reckless things being said about the powerful Jewish lobby. As if somehow or another, it was against the law in this country to speak up for what you believe in.”

"It is good for the basic democratic process,” Humphrey continued, “that people who have convictions about what American public policy should be take time to get their fellow Americans and their public officials to understand what they believe and to urge their support. That's what we mean by free speech in this country. I say it will be a sad day for this country when its citizens stop using the precious guarantees in the first amendment to petition their government.”

"So I say,” Humphrey concluded, “there is nothing new about lobbying on behalf of causes in foreign places. It's as American as a hot dog or apple pie, spaghetti, gefilte fish, or Polish sausage.”

That sounds like a delicious menu.

A version of this article appears in the Jerusalem Post, May 6, 2009.

Sphere: Related Content

NYT's Roger Cohen Betrays Iranian Jews and the Truth

Mike Wallace's Disciple?

The New York Times columnist Roger Cohen’s continues to defend a series of columns he wrote over the last month on Iranian Jewry and how well the Iranian government treated him and the Jews he met. ["I'm a Jew and have seldom been treated with such consistent warmth as in Iran."] Even after meeting in Los Angeles last week with Iranian Jews who fled persecution in Iran and whose relatives were executed, Cohen argues, "Just how repressive life is for Iran's Jews is impossible to know."

His whitewash of Iranian intolerance of Jews and hatred for Israel actually has unfortunate precedence in the annals of American journalism. After visiting the Jews of Syria in 1975, CBS’ Mike Wallace reported on 60 Minutes that Jews were subject to special surveillance and restrictions, but “having said that all,” he continued, “it must be added that today life for Syria’s Jews is better than it was in years past.” Wallace also met with local Syrian Jews who claimed that assertions of mistreatment were mere “Zionist propaganda.”

In the case of Syrian Jews, almost the entire community of 4,500 subsequently fled the country.

Wallace also reported on Soviet Jews in 1987 and concluded, “One and a half million Soviets identified as Jews apparently live more or less satisfying lives.” Of course, more than a million Jews disagreed and emigrated the first chance they had. Wallace’s apparent motives were to swim against the currents of anti-Soviet and anti-Syrian attitudes in the U.S. in those times.

What is Cohen’s purpose in trying to kasher Iranian intolerance today? He explains that he seeks to mollify the concerns the West has over Iran's nuclear program and its leadership's call for Israel's destruction. "The hawks' case against Iran," Cohen claims, "depends on a vision of an apocalyptic regime — with no sense of its limitations — so frenziedly anti-Semitic that it would accept inevitable nuclear annihilation if it can destroy Israel first."

So Cohen is out to portray the Iranians as philo-Semitic.

Perhaps he should have read the State Department’s 2008 Report on International Religious Freedom which states:

“While the [Iranian] Government recognizes Judaism as an official religious minority, the country's Jewish community experienced official discrimination…. There was a rise in officially sanctioned anti-Semitic propaganda involving official statements, media outlets, publications, and books. The Government's anti-Semitic rhetoric, along with a perception among radical Muslims that all Jewish citizens of the country support Zionism and the state of Israel, continued to create a hostile atmosphere for Jews. The rhetorical attacks also further blurred the line between Zionism, Judaism, and Israel and contributed to increased concerns about the future security of the Jewish community…. Anti-American and anti-Israeli demonstrations included the denunciation of Jews, as opposed to the past practice of denouncing only ‘Israel’ and ‘Zionism,’ adding to the threatening atmosphere for the community. Jewish community members continued to emigrate, partially due to continued anti-Semitism by the Government and within society."

From the 2008 State Department Human Rights Report: "The Iranian-American Jewish Federation reported that 11 Jewish men who disappeared in 1994 and 1997 remained missing. In 2007 witnesses claimed they saw some of the men in Evin Prison."

International protests against Soviet and Syrian treatment of Jews helped relax draconian restrictions and eventually secured their freedom. If there is no similar public call to save Iranian Jews today it is because of a fear that the Iranian government will use them as pawns. Cohen’s naïve portrait of life for the Jews of Iran plays into the Ayatollahs' hands and may actually endanger their lives and worsen their plight.

Recommended reading: Roger L. Simon's account of the Cohen meeting with Iranian Jews in Los Angeles.

Sphere: Related Content

Syria Is Key to Returning Israel's POWs and MIAs How Syria Can Get a Discount Ticket to International Legitimacy

Even as State Department and National Security Council officials were paving a new path to Damascus last week for “preliminary conversations” with the Syrian government, the American ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Gregory Schulte, was warning of “growing evidence of clandestine nuclear activities in Syria."

Recently, some analysts and policymakers expressed the belief that engaging Syria’s President Bashir Assad could almost magically delink Syria from Iran, halt Syria’s assistance to Hamas and Hizbullah, and help bring the dawn of a regional peace in the Middle East. At the same time, however, there was a reminder of why Syria landed on the axis of evil membership list when an international tribunal convened in The Hague on March 1 to deliberate the evidence surrounding the 2005 assassination of Lebanon’s former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Top Syrian officials, including some close to President Assad, are believed to be involved in the plot.

Despite all the pollyannish rhetoric and analysis, it is correct and responsible to be skeptical of Syria’s leadership and their activities. And Israeli leaders and voters are very skeptical. After all, Hamas headquarters are located in Damascus, Hizbullah’s thousands of rockets and missiles are manufactured in Syria or transported through Syria from Iran, and Syria maintains an arsenal of long-range Scud missiles, many believed to be armed with poison gas warheads. International experts no longer doubt that a clandestine nuclear facility was under final stages of construction when it was destroyed by Israeli bombers.

But there is one way for President Bashir Assad to dissipate Israel’s mistrust, and it does not require the monumental Sadatian step of journeying to Jerusalem to declare an end of war. Syria can clarify the status of Israeli soldiers who are missing in action and believed by some to be sitting in Syrian prison cells.

Tzvi Feldman, Zachary Baumel and Yehudah Katz (from left to right) were soldiers missing in action after the June 1982 Sultan Yaqub battle with Syrian tanks in Lebanon. Various reports, including some quoting Syrian officials, suggest that they may still be alive 27 years later. Baumel was also an American citizen.

Guy Hever (right)was stationed at an Israeli base on the Golan Heights, near the Syrian frontier. In 1997 he disappeared, and no trace has been found. Did Syrian commandos grab him? Did he wander into Syrian territory?

Israeli Air Force navigator Ron Arad (pictured left) was shot down over Lebanon in 1986. He was captured by one of the Lebanese militias and reportedly “sold” to the Iranians. In those days, grass didn’t grow in Lebanon without Syrian approval. At some point, Ron Arad passed through Syrian hands and territory.

Gilad Shalit (right) has been held by Gazan militia forces for almost three years. Ostensibly, Hamas – not Syria – is responsible for his fate. But with Hamas headquarters located in Damascus, Syrian security forces have the ability to “encourage” Hamas to release the Israeli soldier.

Is there any chance that Israeli soldiers are still alive 10 or 25 years after their capture? Yes. Dictatorships are notorious for their decades-long imprisonment of POWs. In 1996 the Pentagon was still analyzing reports of American POWs held in North Korea since the Korean War. In 1998 Iran released some 5,600 Iraqis, many held for more than 15 years after their capture in the 1980-1988 Iraq-Iran war. Iraq released some 380 POWs in exchange, including an Iranian pilot shot down at the start of the war.

If the Israeli MIAs are dead, then Syria could provide details to their families and begin the process of repatriating their bodies for burial. The Israeli nation would immediately take note of these steps. All of the American and French diplomats making pilgrimages to Assad should move the issue of MIAs/POWs higher on their priority list. There is probably no greater confidence-building step that Syria can take at this time.

Sphere: Related Content