Barack Obama is like any candidate for president in that he’s opted for the politically expedient at the expense of a higher principle – most notably when he thumbed his nose at the same public financing system that he’d long championed. Not surprisingly, his supporters shrugged that one off and echoed their candidate’s rationalizations. Better to implement real reform as president than to stand on principle and lose an election, he and they both reasoned.

That logic also explains why so many of his supporters on the left have remained silent, save for some grumbling among themselves that occasionally spills into the blogosphere, while Mr.  read more »

From Observer contributor Em Whitney:

Brooklyn’s Hasidic community was well represented last night at the Polonaise Terrace in Greenpoint, where the Seneca Club – the borough’s oldest Democratic organization -- held its 109th annual dinner dance. During an awards ceremony, I sat at the kosher table and talked to some of the attendees about presidential politics.

“It’s sad that Hillary’s not in the race anymore,” said Simcha Eichenstein, the associate director of political and governmental services at The Friedlander Group. “She was the best remaining candidate of the final three. But when it comes to our issues, Obama could be very good.”

He went on to list Obama’s presidential qualities and the liberal policies that Eichenstein said put Obama in line with Democrats in Hasidic community, pausing only briefly to express a familiar reservation: “He could have more of a stance on Israel.”

“I wish I could vote for Hillary,” he concluded.

Another Hasidic attendee, who didn’t want to be named, said, “As Democrats, we now have to be unified behind the Democratic candidate, but it’s not so good because [Clinton] is a senator from our neighborhood. We felt that she had a better understanding of our needs.”

Better, he explained, than others: “We have more access to her than we do Schumer.”

Democratic Assemblyman Dov Hikind of Brooklyn will introduce former Republican Governor Mike Huckabee at a Manhattan dinner tonight honoring the 60th anniversary of the founding of Israel.

According to the press release, headlined "HIKIND & HUCKABEE," the two will appear at the Jerusalem Reclamation Project Dinner at 7:30 p.m. at the Marriott.  read more »

TEL AVIV—As if staring at each other across the front page of the newspaper, the 10-year-old boy bleeding from a Gaza rocket attack looked up into the controversial photo of the Illinois senator wrapped in a white turban.

“A Hillary Clinton Production,’’ proclaimed the headline in the tabloid Yediot Ahronot, Israel’s top-selling daily paper. “Obama, the Muslim.’’

The next day, however, Obama was back on the front page of Yediot, this time declaring, “I’m a friend of Israel,’’ in an exclusive interview.  read more »

Bernard-Henri Lévy undid the top three buttons of his shirt as soon as he was done with his oration last night. “Now I’m free!” he said. “My love of freedom goes till that. I never wore a tie in my life. Even in very official circumstances, I never wore a tie. Which is very unusual for a Frenchman!”

Mr. Lévy, the dramatic French intellectual with the wavy hair and the persistently bare chest, was standing amid a circle of admirers at the 92nd Street Y, minutes after delivering the annual State of World Jewry address. The address had been mostly grim: Jewry is in peril, was the main idea, and Israel is really good. Also that Islamic radicalism is not to be tolerated, and that to do so is to betray the principles of liberalism.

The Jewish people have never been more “lonely, vulnerable and threatened” than they are right now, Mr. Lévy said.

About 1,000 people had come to hear Mr. Lévy talk about this idea, among them Isabella Rosellini, former New Republic owner Marty Peretz and someone important from the French consulate. Also, Maer Roshan from Radar was there; he sat in the balcony with Portfolio media blogger Jeff Bercovici.  read more »

Ron Paul is the only presidential candidate who doesn't embrace the idea that the United States has an obligation to provide economic, military and diplomatic support to Israel.

This could be taken as an extension of Paul's non-interventionist foreign policy, which calls for all nations to be treated neutrally—no foreign aid and no "entangling alliances," as he frequently argues.

Paul's critics contend that his approach would expose Israel to a mortal threat from hostile neighbors. And his views have also been invoked by critics to charge that he is anti-Semitic, or, at the very least, that his campaign has become a magnet for people who hate Jews.  read more »

Comedian Jerry Seinfeld made such a stir during his trip to Israel over the weekend, talk of his visit threatened to eclipse media chatter surrounding major upcoming Mideast peace negotiations, the AP reports today. Mr. Seinfeld was in the Holy Land to promote his new animated feature, Bee Movie, but the sojourn apparently seemed more like a state visit by a foreign dignitary. Very few entertainers who visit the country are able to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert or President Shimon Peres. Mr. Seinfeld, on the other hand, hung out with both men. He also toured the Israeli Holocaust memorial in a fashion normally reserved for heads of state.

His visit marked quite a change from Mr. Seinfeld’s last visit to Israel in 1971 as a 15-year-old on kibbutz. Speaking to reporters, the funnyman said, “I would be in the fields, and nobody wanted my autograph and nobody wanted to take their picture with me…They just let me hack away at those banana leaves, and no, I didn't meet the prime minister even once."

Referring to the regional political meeting requested by President Bush, which began today, an Israeli political analyst named Amon Abramovitz had only one thing to say: “Yada, yada, yada.”

But I'm going to try to not be self-serving here. The fascinating thing about this Jewish perestroika is that it liberates everyone. Not just my camp, the anti- or non-Zionist camp that wonders if the dream of a Jewish state hasn't slid hopelessly away, but also the We-are-very-upset-about-Israel's-current-policies-but-we-love-her-and-believe-in-her camp. The Zionist left is angered and embarrassed by the AJC report, feel that it's broadbrush and reactionary, and so are standing up with renewed energy, as if the ball is about to be handed to them, at last—the rightwing having shot itself in the foot.

Just as the AJC gave leftish John Judis of the New Republic freedom to talk about something he has probably been secretly bitching about for years: the pressure on Jewish intellectuals to be loyal to Israel, from people like his boss, Marty Peretz (he didn't say that part out loud). When is Mickey Kaus, another not-all-the-way-on-the-reservation Jewish intellectual whose career has been boosted by Peretz, going to speak up about this pressure? Or Mike Kinsley? Time is now, boys. Everyone's letting their hair down in the sweatlodge.

I question as to whether recent events indicate the presence of a movement so much as what I regard as fractious groups with overlapping areas of interest and little coordination. Some folks are focused on liberal domestic political issues such as labor practices, women's rights, gay rights, etc., others are focused on shifting the priorities of the Jewish funding establishment away from intermarriage and Israel advocacy towards Jewish education and cultural initiatives; while others yet still are focused on finding a just resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

That last group is broken into left-leaning Zionists (of the Meretz/Labor cadre), post-Zionists (who believe either in two states or a binational solution, yet overall, a solution which respects both Jewish and Palestinian rights), and anti-Zionists who are more often than not anti-Israel reactionaries.  read more »

The one thing these three groups can agree on is that things are headed in the wrong direction and that the mainstream Jewish leadership is steering us down a dark road. However, it is practically impossible for these groups to collaborate because of:

Well now in The New Republic, John Judis has joined me in legitimizing this question. Here is the money quote:

On the one hand, Rosenfeld, Harris, and others want to deny that American Jews and American Jewish organizations like AIPAC suffer from dual loyalty in trying to influence U.S. foreign policy. It's anti-Semitic or contributes to anti-Semitism, they say, to make that charge. On the other hand, they want to demand of American Jewish intellectuals a certain loyalty to Israel, Israeli policies, and to Zionism as part of their being Jewish. They make dual loyalty an inescapable part of being Jewish in a world in which a Jewish state exists. And that's probably the case. Many Jews now suffer from dual loyalty--the same way that Cuban-Americans or Mexican-Americans do. By ignoring this dilemma--and, worse still, by charging those who acknowledge its existence with anti-Semitism-- the critics of the new anti-Semitism are engaged in a flight from their own political selves. They are guilty of a certain kind of bad faith.

This is intellectually valiant work, Judis should be applauded; and TNR praised for running the piece. As for the demand made on Jewish intellectuals to be loyal to Israel, it is one that anyone who has worked for the New Republic (I did it once, and carried Marty Peretz's anti-U.N. water for him) has experienced.