Soccer Dad

Why does jewish come before democrat?

There's an organization called the National Jewish Democratic Council, according to its website its goal is to show " ... our commitment to those values shared by the Democratic Party and the vast majority of American Jews - including the separation of church and state, a strong US-Israel relationship, and reproductive freedom ..."

(Emphasis mine.)

However its recent performance concerning Speaker Pelosi's trip makes me wonder why the word "Jewish" precedes the word "Democratic" in its name. Clearly its priority is the latter, not the former.

The blog of the NJDC has an interesting progression over the past week.

First they featured Speaker Pelosi's speech to the Knesset, which was pretty good, though not perfect.

“In 1947, a ship bound for Tel Aviv set sail from Baltimore, my native city, with a crew of young American volunteers. History remembers this ship as the Exodus 47. Its mission was to bring war survivors from the camps of Europe to live in Israel. It was one of the first times that Americans made Israel’s cause our own.

“At that time, my father was a Congressman and later Mayor of Baltimore. His support for a Jewish state began when he was one of a small number of Congressmen who lobbied Presidents Roosevelt and Truman first to do more to rescue Jews in Europe and later to support the creation of Israel.

Later it featured a statement from Speaker Pelosi's office on the trip, which included this:

“We requested Assad's help in freeing missing and kidnapped Israeli soldiers including: Gilad Shalit; Ehud Goldwasser; Eldad Regev; Guy Hever; Zachary Baumel; Tzvi Feldman; Yehuda Katz; and Ron Arad. And we requested the return of the remains of Eli Cohen for burial in Israel.

“In Damascus, we met with opposition leaders and representatives of families of dissidents. We conveyed our strong interest in the cases of Syrian Democracy Activists Anwar al-Bunni; Aref Dalila; Kamal al-Labwani; Mahmoud Issa; Michael Kilo; and Omar Abdullah.

And then after the criticism started what did the NJDC do? Did it defend Speaker Pelosi? No, it attacked the Bush administration.

How can you tell when White House spokesperson Dana Perino is being disingenuous? Check to see whether or not she's talking.

The entry criticized the administration's strong stand against Speaker Pelosi and relatively mild treatment or non-treatment of Republican Representatives Wolf, Aderholt or Issa. Of course the NJDC may well have also noted that the administration didn't criticize Reps Lantos (who I expected more from), Wexler, Waxman, Slaughter, Ellison or Rahall. The problem is as the highest ranking member of Congress in the group, the trip was reported as Speaker Pelosi's trip. As such she was the most visible member of the group. Surely that counts for something.

The NJDC didn't even respond to a (surprising) Washington Post editorial criticizing the Speaker.

Only one problem: The Israeli prime minister entrusted Ms. Pelosi with no such message. "What was communicated to the U.S. House Speaker does not contain any change in the policies of Israel," said a statement quickly issued by the prime minister's office. In fact, Mr. Olmert told Ms. Pelosi that "a number of Senate and House members who recently visited Damascus received the impression that despite the declarations of Bashar Assad, there is no change in the position of his country regarding a possible peace process with Israel." In other words, Ms. Pelosi not only misrepresented Israel's position but was virtually alone in failing to discern that Mr. Assad's words were mere propaganda.

Ah yes. What was that about support for Israel? The Israeli Prime Minister's office offered a "clarification" about Speaker Pelosi's trip to Syria. Clarification is diplo-speak for "rebuke."

In a special statement of clarification, the bureau stressed that Olmert had told Pelosi that Israel continued to regard Syria as "part of the axis of evil and a party encouraging terrorism in the entire Middle East."

According to sources at the Prime Minister's Office, "Pelosi took part of the things that were said in the meeting, and used what suited her."

The same sources explained that the decision to issue a statement of denial stemmed from questions from Israeli and foreign press regarding a change in Israel's official stance on negotiations with Syria.

So from the Speaker's trip to the Middle East, it's safe to say that the NJDC also just used what suited its partisan purposes.

In fact apparently PM Olmert even discouraged Pelosi from speaking with Assad.

The Jerusalem Post, citing unidentified officials in Olmert's office, reported that Olmert told Pelosi before she traveled to meet Assad that the Damascus trip was a mistake.

Not surprisingly former Secretary of State (same article) defended Pelosi's trip.

``I spent a lot of time in Damascus talking to Bashar's father,'' Albright, 69, said in an interview on Bloomberg Television's ``Political Capital with Al Hunt,'' scheduled to air today. ``I talked to a lot of people that we didn't necessarily agree with, and I think that's not a bad message.''

"Not a bad message?" Well let's consider the Clinton Aministration's record with Syria. Back in 1996 the Clinton administration tried to arrange a "Summit of the Peacemakers" in order to shore up the premeirship of Shimon Peres that had been rocked by a series of terror attacks. The administration tried desperately to include Hafez Assad the father of the current leader. He refused to attend. As the Washington Post reported at the time ("SYRIANS TO SHUN SUMMIT ASSAD PROPOSES REPRISE OF '91 MADRID MEETING" - Washington Post March 12, 1996 -Author: Thomas W. Lippman; Washington Post Staff)

Senior U.S. officials said they knew when the summit plan was announced last week that President Clinton and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak were putting Assad on the spot by inviting Syria to the meeting. If Assad declined to be represented, his long-standing professed commitment to making peace with Israel would be called into question. But if Syria were to participate, its position at the meeting might be untenable because it is technically at war with Israel and supports some of the most

"The Syrians would have been furious if they weren't invited" because that would have grouped them with such anti-peace countries as Iraq and Libya, one State Department official said. According to the Syrians, they did indeed want to be invited but they did not want to participate.

Several weeks later Assad refused to meet with Secretary Christopher ( ASSAD SNUBS CHRISTOPHER, REFUSES TO MEET ON TRUCE - Washington Post
April 24, 1996 - Author: William Drozdiak; Washington Post Foreign Service )

Syrian President Hafez Assad delivered an extraordinary snub to Secretary of State Warren Christopher today, declining to receive him at a critical stage of his delicate diplomatic mission to achieve a lasting cease-fire in Lebanon.

American officials were at a loss to explain Assad's refusal to make himself available. They attributed it to possible exhaustion from seeing so many visitors this week, or perhaps time pressures because he wanted to give closer scrutiny to the latest version of U.S. proposals to end a 13-day-old Israeli offensive against Shiite Muslim guerrillas in Lebanon.

But it was the third time in four days that Assad had forced Christopher to cool his heels, in what seemed to be a gesture of humiliation. On two earlier occasions, Assad made Christopher wait a couple of hours while he held court with Russian Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov.

And finally there was the March 2000 summit in Geneva between Hafez Assad and President Clinton, in which the president attempted to get the senior Assad to agree to an Israeli withdrawal from all but a sliver of the Golan. Assad refused to budge.

The sudden announcement that Assad would travel to Geneva had stirred speculation that the Syrian leader was as eager for a deal as Barak, who took office last year with a peace mandate. Assad, age 69 and in poor health, rarely travels and has not attended any Syrian- Israeli negotiating session since 1991.

U.S. officials wanted both sides to commit themselves to work without rest to finalize a draft peace treaty within the next two months. The goal was to initial an accord before Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon produces new tensions.

The militant Islamic group Hezbollah, which receives support from both Iran and Syria, has pledged to step up attacks against retreating Israeli forces. Rather than welcome the Israeli withdrawal, Syria and its Lebanese proxies fear their leverage in peace talks will be diminished if Israel is no longer mired in a war of attrition along the Lebanese border.

U.S. officials also wanted assurances from Assad that Syria would crack down on Hezbollah and prevent attacks against Israeli troops during the final phase of talks.

The breakdown surprised many U.S. Middle East experts, who had expected Assad to tell Clinton he was ready to resume talks with Israel.

Assuming that the bad apple doesn't fall from the tree, you might wonder why the younger Assad would be willing to meet Speaker Pelosi's party. And the answer is because being visited by naive American politicians served his purposes. Assads do not play ball unless it serves their narrow interests.

The son, like the father, seeks to increase his power in the region at the expense of American interests. This is not someone with whom the administration disagrees as the former secretary of state so quaintly put it. This is someone who is at crosspurposes with us. Giving a photo-op only encourages him. (And did all that coddling of the previous administration accomplish anything?)

There is a message that Assad's sending. It is that he has time for "reasonable" American politicians who do not believe that he is beyond approach. He was meeting with Pelosi's team in order to undermine the President. In meeting with Assad, Pelosi put her own prestige over that of her country's interests and helped him send a message that there are "reasonable" alternatives to the current administration.

The NJDC, by whitewashing Olmert's snub of Pelosi and the Washington Post's criticism, has shown that partisan politics not promoting issues of interest to the Jewish community is their main interest. Nothing wrong with that. But maybe "Jewish" shouldn't come before "Democratic" in its name. It certainly doesn't in its politics.

UPDATE: I've edited this from the original form that appeared.

Blogdigger tags: NJDC, Speaker Pelosi, Israel, Syria, Bashar Assad.

Posted by SoccerDad at April 8, 2007 3:45 AM | TrackBack