Tikkun Daily Blog Archive (https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/category/.../healing-israel-palestine/page/29/)
Does that mean the Israeli election changed nothing?
Absolutely not. It changed a great deal because Netanyahu did so poorly. Yes, he will likely remain as prime minister but in a far weaker position than he was before the election. Prior to this week’s election, Netanyahu’s Likud-Beiteinu party held 42 seats. It is now down to 31, a dramatic decline and a personal repudiation of the prime minister who leads the party.
Having worked at AIPAC and having worked with it as a legislative aide in Congress for 20 years, I know that the lobby is not really about Israel. It is about exerting influence, pushing our government around and promoting war with Muslims and Arabs, but it hasn’t been about Israel for decades.
American Jews (with the exception of a tiny, tiny minority) will not tolerate the suggestion that they are anything but loyal Americans. Hence opposing a president in favor of the prime minister of Israel, after the president invoked the U.S. national interest, would not be sustainable. In that situation, the lobby would back down. And with it Congress and, then, the Israeli government (which depends on U.S. assistance to survive).
It is hard to believe that the lobby (call it the Israel Lobby, the Jewish Lobby or whatever) is going to oppose President Obama’s choice of former Senator Chuck Hagel for Secretary of Defense in the name of Jews.
With Israel’s election only weeks away, a rather remarkable online initiative has begun: Israelis are offering to give their votes to Palestinians occupied by Israel in the West Bank.
The idea behind this initiative is simple: Palestinians subjected to a military system of justice in the Occupied Territories, and wholly under Israel’s control, have no democratic say in the process that binds them. And so Israelis, to protest the occupation and this undemocratic dynamic, are offering to give their vote to a Palestinian and cast a ballot as their matched counterpart in the West Bank desires.
Thus far, President Barack Obama is sitting out the January 22nd Israeli elections. There is no indication about who he hopes to see as the next Israeli prime minister. His noninterference, even disinterest, is not surprising except when contrasted with Prime Minister Netanyahu’s open preference for the Republicans in the U.S. election two months ago. One might have thought that a little payback would be in order.
Nonetheless, presidential rejection of Hagel will not represent victory for the lobby because, as never before, its behind-the-scenes machinations have been exposed by virtually ever major news outlet.
The lobby hates that kind of exposure more than almost anything.
A progressive Zionist doesn’t support a “Jewish state” that is either theocratic or exclusively Jewish, but rather a country that is always open to Jews seeking refuge from persecution, discrimination or oppression….
The neoconservatives’ battle to sink the potential nomination of former Senator Chuck Hagel has again raised the issue of the power of the Israel lobby. And it should. Hagel, as a respected former senator would be sailing to an easy confirmation, if not for the power of the Israel lobby which considers him insufficiently loyal to the policies of the Israeli government.
The American Jewish Committee was the latest Jewish organization to enlist in the battle to prevent President Barack Obama from naming former Nebraska senator Chuck Hagel to be Secretary of Defense. The onslaught is unprecedented. Never before has virtually the entire organized Jewish community combined to stop a presidential cabinet appointment because it deems the potential nominee insufficiently devoted to Israel.