Greetings!
"Some on the right in the American Jewish community, including some at the top of key organizations, are encouraging Netanyahu to openly challenge Obama as part of a campaign - begun in last year's presidential campaign - to paint this president as an enemy of Israel...
"Some observers say [Netanyahu] feels a spat with Washington over Jerusalem - unlike the unpopular settlements - may help him rally American Jews against Obama's peace policies," reported Washington insider Douglas Bloomfield in the Jerusalem Post last week.
No longer is it just right-wing extremists who attack Obama over his push to renew hope for Israeli-Arab peace and rapprochement between America and Israel with the Muslim and Arab worlds. Now it's gone mainstream.
Some Jewish leaders and commentators charge that Obama is "appeasing the Arabs, humiliating Israel and in the process, undermining the security of the Jewish state...offering Israel as a sacrificial lamb on the altar of Arab appeasement."
Enough is enough! Reprising our role during the election, the Jewish Alliance for Change announces a new " Obama Middle East Myths and Facts" site which debunks, on an ongoing basis, the most frequently heard smears and calumnies deployed against President Obama and his bold effort to achieve a new beginning in the Middle East.
Here are the
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President Obama met recently with 16 Jewish leaders in an effort to assuage concerns among some in the American Jewish community over his policies on Israel and the Middle East.
While most Jewish leaders emerged from that meeting feeling assured of the President's unswerving support for Israel's security and well-being, ADL leader Abe Foxman, who has been at the forefront of Obama's critics, wrote in the Jerusalem Post that "he continues to feel uncomfortable with the assumptions that underlie President Obama's approach" to Israel and the Middle East.
Foxman suggests that Obama's outreach to the Muslim world is being conducted "at Israel's expense," that the administration is putting too much weight on solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, that the Arabs aren't prepared to make peace, and that the President is ignoring the history of peace efforts.
But Foxman's criticisms of Obama stand reality on its head.
Read the Open Letter here. |
Helping Obama win the presidency was the first half of the battle. Now we have to make sure that President Obama has the public support he needs to move forward on his Mideast agenda despite the strong, and growing, opposition he faces.
Right-wing Jewish leaders and commentators claim that President Obama is reaching out to the Muslim world "at Israel's expense."
Or that "The only free country in the Middle East no longer has a friend in the leader of the free world" and that "Obama is the most hostile sitting American president in the history of the state of Israel."
They claim that President Obama has gone "into overdrive in an effort to make nice with Israel's Arab and Islamic foes, [which] speaks volumes about his sympathies."
They say that he "compared Israel's treatment of the Palestinians to the Nazi Holocaust of European Jewry" and "embraced Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's claim that Israel owes its existence to the Holocaust..."
They smeared him before the election to try to stop him from reaching the White House.
Now they defame him to try to stop him from bringing about the change we, Israel and the world so badly need.
Help us help President Obama fight back and get the truth out to the American Jewish community and the wider American public.
Please chip in with $36, $72, $108, $250, $500, or whatever you can, to help the Jewish Alliance for Change's new advocacy campaign in support of President Obama's New Middle East Beginning. |
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Why have hawks and doves reversed roles on talking to Iran?
 The National Iranian American Council points out that "many people who previously advocated for engagement with Iran now say that we need to hold off" until the dust settles "because Iran's fragmented political system is in too much disarray to respond to U.S.-backed diplomacy. Conversely, many hawks in the U.S. are now arguing that engagement must begin immediately."
"Why the role reversal? Many in Washington believe engagement is a pointless exercise and are eager to impose sanctions and/or bomb Iran. The perma-skeptics of diplomacy think we should impose an artificial deadline, rush to engage, and then run headlong into Iran's political paralysis. Their plan would have us miss the deadline, sanction Iran as much as possible, and then lobby for the U.S. to bomb Iran when sanctions fail to stop Iran's nuclear ambitions."
In "The Iranian Nuclear Threat, Obama and Israel," a new article published in Israel Horizons magazine summer issue and on the Meretz USA blog, I warn that new tensions between President Obama and the pro-Israel lobby may soon arise over Obama's plan to pursue a negotiated solution to the threat of Iranian nuclear weapons.
Click here to read more. | |
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Doni
Doni Remba
Executive Director
The Jewish Alliance for Change
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Point/Counter-Point on an Israeli Preemptive Strike on Iran:
"If the Obama administration were to shift toward learning to live with a nuclear Iran and attempt to deny Israel the painful option of attacking its nuclear targets as a last resort, that would...weaken the security of the Jewish state." - Alan Dershowitz, "Has Obama Turned on Israel?," Wall Street Journal
An attack on Iran "could have grave consequences and would be very destabilizing." Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
"The consequences of" an attack on Iran "are completely unpredictable, and likely [to be] very bad." Secretary of Defense Robert Gates
Major-General Aharon Zeevi Farkash, Former Chief of Israel's Military Intelligence
Many in Israel's security and intelligence services oppose a preemptive attack on Iran. |
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Point/Counter-Point: Negotiating with Iran
"American decision-making on how far to go in condemning the [Iranian] regime should not be influenced one iota in the vain hope of a productive dialogue with this delegitimized government."
- Anti-Defamation League National Director Abe Foxman
vs.
"I'm actually encouraged by our political leadership committed to the dialogue, even after the challenges that obviously arose in the election cycle in Iran."
- Admiral Michael Mullen, Chairman of The Joint Chiefs of Staff
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton:
"Smart power counsels that we lead with diplomacy, even in the case of adversaries or nations with whom we disagree. We cannot be afraid or unwilling to engage. Yet some suggest that this is a sign of weakness or naiveté - or acquiescence to these countries' repression of their own people. That is wrong.
"The President and I believe that refusing to talk to countries rarely punishes them. And as long as engagement might advance our interests and our values, it is unwise to take it off the table.
"Refusing to deal with the Islamic Republic has not succeeded in altering the Iranian march toward a nuclear weapon, reducing Iranian support for terror, or improving Iran's treatment of its citizens." |
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Spread the word to friends and family! |
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the special interests, neocons and religious fundamentalists who will try to block the President's
progressive agenda for change.
The Jewish Alliance for Change
is an independent voter-supported
501(c)(4) nonprofit organization which receives no funds from any candidate or political campaign.
The work of enacting a progressive agenda for change has only just begun. | |
