Reishit Chochma - The Beginning of Wisdom for the Obama Administration?

From remarks given at the Jerusalem Conference, Feb, 17, and excerpted in The Jerusalem Post, Feb 23.

In January 2010, President Barack Obama granted an interview to Time Magazine to mark his first year in office. In discussing the Middle East peace process Obama admitted, “…the Middle East peace process has not moved forward. And I think it's fair to say for all of our efforts at early engagement, it is not where I want it to be. I'll be honest with you. This is just really hard.”

Here in Israel there were people who responded, “Boker Tov, Eliyahu [Good morning Elijah!].” In the United States, the similar response is more direct and not as articulate, and it goes, “Well duh.”

Yes, making peace in the Middle East is really hard, but President Obama’s frustration may actually reflect a historical and almost predictable truism about American Middle East policy in the first year of a president’s term.

The following is an excerpt from Si Kenen’s book Israel’s Defense Line, Her Friends and Foes in Washington. Kenen, my mentor, was the founder of AIPAC. He wrote almost 30 years ago in 1981:

“During the first year of a new presidential term, the petro-diplomatic complex invariably pressures the incoming administration to downgrade Israel and to court Arab friendship. That has been true in every first year except 1965, when Lyndon Johnson was beyond Arab reach. After the election, dust settles on the [parties’ pro-Israel political] platforms and Israel’s foes use inoffensive euphemisms to urge Washington to be ‘more impartial, more evenhanded.’”

Historians can verify Kenen’s formula. Look at Eisenhower’s pressure on Israel to withdraw from the Sinai in 1957, when he threatened to block contributions from American Jewish organizations to Israel. The Administration tried to divide the Jews of America with Secretary of State Dulles inviting a group of major Jewish philanthropists, including leading non-Zionists, to use their influence to persuade Israel to accept the U.S. position.

Jimmy Carter’s term is another classic proof, with him pushing in his first year for a “comprehensive settlement” with all the parties to the conflict, including the Soviet Union. None other than Egypt’s Anwar Sadat saw the folly of such a policy, and he and Israel’s Menachem Begin succeeded in securing the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty, despite Jimmy Carter and his initial objections. Carter went on to accuse Menachem Begin of lying on the issue of freezing settlement construction, claiming that it was to be an indefinite freeze. Sadat himself, as well as notes from the meetings at Camp David, and members of Carter’s own diplomatic team all backed Begin’s claim that the freeze was to be for a duration of no more than three months.

Carter was supported by a small group of radical Jews who pushed for recognition of Yasir Arafat’s PLO. The organization was called Breira, and it never amounted to anything very serious, but it served as a precursor of another fringe organization formed 30 years later – called J Street, a group that describes itself as Obama’s “blocking back.” Like Breira it supports Administration pressure on Israel, condemned Israel defending itself, and calls for negotiations with Israel’s most implacable foes. The only difference is J Street’s sophisticated PR and its large budget.

Eisenhower admitted years later that he was mistaken for pressuring Israel. In 1965 he told his friend and Jewish leader Max Fisher, “... looking back at Suez, I regret what I did. I never should have pressed Israel to evacuate the Sinai.”

What was the reason for Ike’s regret? First, maybe because he recognized that with the United States making the maximalist demands on Israel, the Arab states had no reason to make any concessions in the peace process. Why should they? It was a repeat of the British policies of taking the Arab side in the 1920s when disputes erupted between the local Arab and Jewish communities: Murderous Arab mobs attacked Jews in Hebron, Jaffa and Jerusalem, yelling “Addowlah ma’anah! The government is with us! Itback el yehud! Slaughter the Jews!”

Today, why would Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas be willing to demand anything less on the settlement issue than what President Obama demanded just months ago – a full freeze in the West Bank and Jerusalem?

I believe Eisenhower also realized that the withdrawal would lead to war, something we in Israel learned the hard way after the withdrawal from Gaza in 2005. Neither withdrawal was secured by negotiations with iron-clad guarantees or a change in the uncompromising hatred of Israel – in the 1950s and 60s it was Gamal Abdul Nasser’s hatred that led to the 1967 war; in the last few years it was the hate of Hamas, the local branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, that led to Operation Molten Lead.

Indeed, President Obama’s recent recognition that there is no quick fix for the Middle East conflict may be what we call in Jewish tradition, “Reishit Chochma” the beginning of wisdom. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton repeated it February 14 at the U.S.-Islamic World Forum in Doha. “This is hard work,” she said. “I know people are disappointed that we have not yet achieved a breakthrough. The President, Senator Mitchell, and I are also disappointed. But we must remember that neither the United States nor any country can force a solution.”

The Administration as it starts Year Two has apparently finally learned that the linkage of Iran to the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations was a recipe for disaster. Half a year ago, a senior White House official reportedly declared, “Any treatment of the Iranian nuclear problem will be contingent upon progress in the negotiations and an Israeli withdrawal from West Bank territory."

What a victory for Ahmadinejad was inherent in that alleged statement.

Since then we’ve come some way toward that “Reishit Chachma,” the knowledge that there is no quick fix, and Israel’s neighbors should pay attention to the messages now coming out of Washington. Sen. John Kerry, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a close ally of the Obama Administration, also spoke at the U.S.-Islamic World Forum last week where he banished the utopian Pollyannish vision of the Administration’s first year:

“Peace alone will not solve all the region’s problems,” Kerry said. “Ask yourselves: If peace were delivered tomorrow, would it meet the job needs of the entire region? How many more children would it send to school? Who really believes that Iran would suddenly abandon its nuclear ambitions? So we know that Israel/Palestine is central, but we must develop a much more practical partnership that extends well beyond regional conflicts.”

With this more realistic attitude toward the region, there is reason for some optimism as the U.S. and Israeli leadership begin their second year in office.

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Israel, Dirty Harry and Bob Dylan

Internet surfers of the Op-Ed postings this morning (January 8) hit anti-Israel shoals in the New York Times and Washington Post. Three Op-Ed writers – Jimmy Carter, Roger Cohen and Nicholas Kristof – paid perfunctory lip service to Israel’s right to defend its citizens, but then they trivialized Israel’s casualties and complained that the rockets didn’t warrant Israel’s tough response.

Carter: “Although [Israeli] casualties were rare (three deaths in seven years) Sderot was traumatized by the unpredictable explosions… We knew that the 1.5 million inhabitants of Gaza were being starved.”

Cohen: “But what of the intolerable Hamas rockets on Sderot, the 20 Israelis killed by those rockets since 2005 (four of them in the current violence)? … Yes, there has to be a response to Hamas, but this is the wrong one…. I have never previously felt so despondent about Israel, so shamed by its actions.”

Kristof: “Israel’s right to do something doesn’t mean it has the right to do anything. Since the shelling from Gaza started in 2001, 20 Israeli civilians have been killed by rockets or mortars, according to a tabulation by Israeli human rights groups. That doesn’t justify an all-out ground invasion that has killed more than 660 people.”

Kristof has the chutzpah to tell Israel what it should have done instead. Bomb the tunnels, he suggests, or even better “would have been to ease the siege in Gaza, perhaps creating an environment in which Hamas would have extended the cease-fire.”

In other words, the war was Israel’s fault. Kristof’s call to “create an environment” for Hamas is usually called appeasement.

Herschel Cohen and Robert Zimmerman

My mind whirled: where did I hear such a spineless argument before? Where had I witnessed such a bunch of unprincipled namby-pambies? Then I remembered a frustrated Californian cop I met 25 years ago. I’m sure he was an Israeli named Herschel Cohen who had changed his name to Harry Callahan. He hated departmental paperwork and procedure. On the force he was nicknamed “Dirty Harry” because, as his partner explained, “They call him ‘Dirty’ Harry [because] he gets the shit end of the stick every time.” Isn’t that enough proof that Harry was an Israeli?

When Herschel/Harry beat to a pulp a serial rapist-murderer who was released on a technicality, he was admonished by the District Attorney:

Where the hell does it say you've got a right to kick down doors, torture suspects, deny medical attention and legal counsel. Where have you been? Does Escobedo ring a bell? Miranda? I mean, you must have heard of the Fourth Amendment. What I'm saying is, that man had rights.
Callahan: Well, I'm all "broken up" about that man's rights.
District Attorney: You should be. I've got news for you, Callahan. As soon as he's well enough to leave the hospital, he walks. ...
Callahan: And who says that?
District Attorney: It's the law.
Callahan: Well then, the law is crazy!

Today, Herschel’s bosses would probably demand that he use a Taser to subdue a perp on angel dust, and if he had to shoot he had to use a small caliber gun and shoot to wound.

But Harry would never follow those orders. He would use his .44 Magnum, “the most powerful handgun in the world, [that could] blow your head clean off.”

Dirty Harry was certainly not loved, but he was respected in his neighborhood. Yes, he got shot and beaten up, but he survived.

Respect for the Bully

Harry Callahan probably had one atypical eight-track cassette in his car– a Bob Dylan album, Infidel. And Harry would listen to only one song on that cassette: Neighborhood Bully. It was – and is – a strong, defiant defense of Israel. Here are two stanzas:

Well, the neighborhood bully, he's just one man,
His enemies say he's on their land.
They got him outnumbered about a million to one,
He got no place to escape to, no place to run.
He's the neighborhood bully.

The neighborhood bully just lives to survive,
He's criticized and condemned for being alive.
He's not supposed to fight back,
he's supposed to have thick skin,
He's supposed to lay down and die when his door is kicked in.
He's the neighborhood bully.

Click to hear Neighborhood Bully. Click here to read the lyrics.

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Lyndon Johnson’s Historical Connection to Israel – Truly a Righteous Gentile

The Associated Press published a few details on May 28 about LBJ’s “personal and often emotional connection to Israel.” Based on newly released tapes of the president’s conversations, the news agency pointed out that during the Johnson presidency (1963-1969) “the United States became Israel's chief diplomatic ally and primary arms supplier.” LBJ is quoted in one conversation, “"I sure as hell want to be careful and not run out on little Israel."

The news report does little to reveal the full extent of Johnson’s actions on behalf of the Jewish people and the State of Israel. Indeed, the title of “Righteous Gentile” is certainly appropriate in the case of the Texan. Most students of the Arab-Israeli conflict can identify Johnson as the president during the 1967 war. But few know about LBJ’s actions to rescue hundreds of endangered Jews 30 years earlier, actions that could have thrown him out of Congress and into jail.

The Texas congressman’s district had only 400 Jews, but clearly the Johnson family’s Christian teachings had given him a strong affinity for Jews and their return to the Holy Land.

Five days after taking office in 1937, LBJ broke with the “Dixiecrats” and supported an immigration bill that would naturalize illegal aliens, mostly Jews from Lithuania and Poland. In 1938, Johnson was told of a young Austrian Jewish musician who was about to be deported from the United States. With an element of subterfuge, LBJ sent him to the U.S. Consulate in Havana to obtain a residency permit. Erich Leinsdorf, the world famous musician and conductor, credited LBJ for saving his live.

Johnson Saved Hundreds of Jews

That same year, LBJ warned a Jewish friend that European Jews faced annihilation. Somehow, Johnson provided him with a pile of signed immigration papers that were used to get 42 Jews out of Warsaw. But that wasn’t enough. According to historian, James M. Smallwood, Congressman Johnson used legal and sometimes illegal methods to smuggle “hundreds of Jews into Texas, using Galveston as the entry port. Enough money could buy false passports and fake visas in Cuba, Mexico, and other Latin American countries. … Johnson smuggled boatloads and planeloads of Jews into Texas. He hid them in the Texas National Youth Administration…. Johnson saved at least four or five hundred Jews, possibly more..”

On June 4, 1945, Johnson visited the Dachau concentration camp. According to historian Smallwood, Lady Bird later recalled that “when her husband returned home, he was still shaken, stunned, terrorized, and ‘bursting with an overpowering revulsion and incredulous horror at what he had seen.’”

Click here for an update on LBJ, the Righteous Gentile

As President, Johnson met with Israel’s Prime Minister Levi Eshkol and undertook to replace the recalcitrant France as Israel’s principal arms supplier, providing Patton tanks and Skyhawk jets and Phantom jets. (Pictured: Johnson greets Yitzhak Rabin in the Oval office.)

Soviet Premier Aleksei Kosygin once asked Johnson why the United States supported Israel when there are 80 million Arabs and only three million Israelis. “Because it is right,” responded the straight-shooting Texan.

Another event took place on Johnson’s watch

In 1965, some 100 kilo of highly enriched uranium went missing from the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation, or NUMEC, in Apollo, Pennsylvania, a small fuel rod fabrication plant. Although investigated by the Atomic Energy Commission, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and other government agencies and inquiring reporters, no trace of the uranium was found. Some investigators suggested that Israel received the enriched uranium. According to a U.S. Air Force report, “In the 1990s when the NUMEC plant was disassembled, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission found over 100 kilograms of plutonium in the structural components of the contaminated plant,” casting doubt on the Israel conspiracy theory.

Carter's Big Mouth

P.S. In a recently de-classified memo to President Richard Nixon in 1969, National Security Henry Kissinger discussed the possibility of Israel having nuclear weapons. “There is circumstantial evidence,” Kissinger wrote, “that some fissionable material available for Israel's weapons development was illegally obtained from the United States about 1965," Kissinger wrote. When Jimmy Carter announced this week that Israel had 150 nuclear weapons, he was clearly violating American security policy. Back in 1969, Kissinger expressed the need to keep Israel nuclear issues secret, “While we might ideally like to halt actual Israeli possession, what we really want at a minimum may be just to keep Israeli possession from becoming an established international fact.”

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More from Jimmy Carter: Pays for Students’ Trip to “Occupied Territories” and Preaches Pure Anti-Semitism in Church

Did anyone notice that 11 Brandeis students took up Jimmy Carter’s challenge to ““visit the occupied territories for a few days to determine whether I have exaggerated or incorrectly described the plight of the Palestinians?” To top it off, Carter reportedly picked up a large chunk of the trip’s $28,500 cost.

The students’ itinerary was published in the Brandeis “community newspaper,” The Hoot: “The delegation spent their first three days in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, where they toured Mt. Zion, the Jewish Quarter, and the Armenian Quarter, and visited Brandeis’ sister school, Al-Quds University and its Center for Political Prisoners’ Affairs. Continuing through Bethlehem, Hebron, Mas’ha, and Ramallah, the delegates then slept with host families in the Deheisheh refugee camp and met with Palestinian Authority presidential runner-up Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, Amal Jadou, the U.S. foreign policy advisor to PA president Mahmoud Abbas, and Omar Barghouti and Jamal Juma, both involved in the Palestinian boycott/divestment campaign. The trip concluded with a two-day stay in Neve Shalom, a mixed Jewish-Arab border community called the ‘Oasis of Peace.’”

Carter’s Center is known as the recipient of millions of dollars from the governments of Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and Oman and from several prominent Arab leaders, foundations and families, including the “Saudi BinLadin Group.” Did Carter really shell out for the trip, or did he ask one of Saudi buddies to spill out some pocket change?

Carter’s Church Preachings against the Pharisees, Israelis, Jews and Israelites

Carter’s infamous book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid generated widespread debate on whether Carter was an anti-Semite. His anti-Semitism and anti-Israel credentials are now proven in the recently released CD audio series Sunday Mornings in Plains: Bible Study with Jimmy Carter. Published by Simon and Schuster, the CD records Bible lessons over the last 10 years. In a S & S video promo, Carter explains that his lessons relate current events to the Bible.

The following is a recent press report with Carter’s quotes:

“So with impunity, and approved by the Pharisaic law, they [the Pharisees] could avoid taking care of their needy parents by a trick that had been evolved by the incorrect and improper interpretation of the law primarily designed by religious leaders to benefit whom? The rich folks. The powerful people.”

During another Bible lesson Carter discussed the Jewish attitude toward non-Jews. “[‘Uncircumcised’] was an epithet, a highly discriminatory phrase… How would you characterize from a Jew’s point of view the uncircumcised? Non-believer. And what? Unclean. What? They called them dogs, that’s true.”

Michael Miller, a former activist for the Anti Missionary Institute, found that at times Carter actually conflates ancient and modern Jewish history by mistakenly calling Israelites Israelis or Judea Israel. In one example, Carter says, “God would save the Israelites, they would sign a firm commitment or contract or covenant. The Israelis would what? Violate the covenant, break their promises to God. They would be punished.”

More analyses of Carter’s preachings, including his references to Jews killing Jesus, can be found here.

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