Archive for March, 2007

New Old Peace Plan Emerges From Riyadh Summit

Published by
Andrew Schamess
March 29, 2007 in Politics. 3 Comments

The Los Angeles Times has some interesting articles on the summit meeting of Arab leaders in Riadh, and the prospect of a new (well, re-warmed) Israel-Palestinian peace plan. The lead report:

the festering conflict between Palestinians and Israelis, viewed by many as the wellspring for the region’s rising Islamic radicalism, took center stage at the summit. Abdullah, in a forceful speech, condemned the U.S.-backed aid boycott of the Palestinian Authority government led by Hamas militants who don’t recognize Israel’s right to exist.

“In wounded Palestine, the resistant (Palestinian) people are still suffering from oppression and occupation, deprived of their right to independence and to have a country,” the Saudi king told the arriving diplomats.

Saudis want to revive their 2002 peace plan in which they proposed granting Arab recognition of Israel in exchange for a host of concessions, including the withdrawal of Israeli forces from land occupied after the 1967 Middle East War and a “just solution” for Palestinians who fled their homes after Israel’s founding in 1948.

Both the Israelis and the Palestinians are staking out their bargaining positions, with Israel calling for a modified proposal that drops the right of return and the Palestinians insisting on no alterations. Still, Israel is not rejecting the plan out of hand, as it did the first time around:

Israel, which shunned the proposal in the past, has warmed to it in recent months under U.S. pressure. The nation called on the Arab League to revise the document and praised Saudi attempts at generating a dialogue.

“We see it as a positive — the fact that the Arab community wants to talk with Israel after years of isolation. It’s a positive change,” said Yariv Ovadia, the Israeli Foreign Ministry’s deputy spokesman.

This doesn’t necessarily mean the initiative is going anywhere. The Saudis are in a strong position to push the proposal. Abdullah seems to have consolidated his leadership of the Arab League at the summit. The Saudis brokered the Mecca agreement that created the Palestinian unity government, and I believe they’re the main financial backer keeping it afloat, so they have influence (if not control) there.

On the other hand, just as with the Clinton-Barak proposal, this process comes at a time when the Israeli leadership is weak. It’s not clear how long Olmert’s government will last, and whether he has the clout to lead the country into meaningful peace negotiations.

Similarly, U.S. leadership is compromised by a beleaguered President with no political capital, and a Democratic congress that is in the pocket of the hard-line pro-Israel lobby.

Did I mention infighting? The other interesting piece in the LA Times is by Milton Viorst. He compares Condoleeza Rice’s current position to that of Richard Nixon’s secretary of State, William P. Rogers, whose effort to forge a land-for-peace deal in 1972 was scuttled by Henry Kissinger. The article has some fascinating historical details and I’d strongly advise reading the whole thing, but the most pertinent part is this:

Whether or not Secretary Rice knows it, she now walks in the haunted footsteps of her predecessor William Rogers. After years of near silence, she has made clear her conviction that the national interest requires Israeli-Arab peace. Like Rogers, she has been circuit-riding throughout the region to enlist support. At home, instead of Kissinger, Rice faces Vice President Dick Cheney and Elliot Abrams, deputy national security advisor — committed neocons who have the president’s ear. As a result, the peace campaign on which she has embarked has emerged as her policy, not Bush’s.

The Washington Note adds a few details and concludes:

Cheney is out there working hard to sabotage Condoleezza Rice’s efforts in the Middle East, particularly her Middle East Super Summit.

IPS reports that not only are a large majority of Palestinians in favor of the plan, but American Zionists on the left and the right are showing interest:

“The initiative is really gaining momentum,” said Ori Nir, a spokesman at Americans for Peace Now (APN), a Washington-based Zionist peace group. “Even a week ago, it wasn’t really on the (Israeli) public agenda, but now you have cabinet ministers talking about it.”

At the same time, a new poll released over the weekend by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research found that nearly three out of four Palestinian respondents in Gaza and the West Bank support the initiative…

The story also mentions that two prominent neoconservatives, Representative Steven Solarz and Kenneth Adelman, signed on to an International Crisis Group statement, which concludes that “there exists now a major opportunity to reach a comprehensive Arab-Israeli settlement.”

Shimon Tzabar Dies at 81

Published by
Andrew Schamess
March 22, 2007 in Judaism. 1 Comment

I have to admit, I had not known about Shimon Tzabar when he was alive. I find on peacepalestine this morning a lovely tribute to him by Gilad Atzmon:

Shimon participated in three Israeli wars. However, it was only after 1967 that he fully internalised the scale of the Zionist fallacy. Repulsed by emerging Israeli imperialism, Shimon left Israel and settled in London. I believe that it was then that Shimon started regarding himself as a ‘Hebrew-Speaking Palestinian’…

Shimon always loved to surround himself with creative people. When we got to know each other he asked me to join the editorial staff of the Israel Imperial News. I was on his editorial board for a while. In 2004, he asked me to join forces with him in the production of the “Better than the Michelin Guide to Israeli Prisons, Jails, Concentration Camps and Torture Chambers”.

Haaretz also gives mention:

He was a fierce opponent of Zionism and the occupation, and criticized peace groups like Peace Now and Gush Shalom. He left Israel shortly after the Six-Day War over strong opposition to the occupation, and settled in London.

In September 1967, Tzabar published a short text in Haaretz signed by 11 other left-wing figures against the occupation. “Foreign rule leads to resistance. Resistance leads to oppression. Oppression leads to terror and counter terror…keeping the territories will turn us into a nation of murderers and murder victims,” it said.

And Scott has posted the text of a lovely poem by Tzabar.

It sounds as if Mr. Tzabar lived very much according to his conscience. It must have been hard to reject the dominant belief system of the country where he was born - a country for which he risked his life in three wars - and to find solidarity with people whom he’d been taught were his enemies. One need not embrace the vehemence of his anti-Zionism to respect the courage of his stand. To hew to justice, even when reviled, is one way of being faithful to God.

In this tradition follow the Refusers and the soldiers who have spoken out about their experiences in the occupied territories.

For Shimon Tzabar: Yit’gadal v’yit’kadash sh’mei raba b’al’ma di v’ra khir’utei.

May God recompense the righteous, and may we be fortunate enough to stand among them.

Occupied Territories Under Seige: Effects of the International Boycott

Published by
Andrew Schamess
March 19, 2007 in Politics. 2 Comments

Over the weekend, the Palestinian legislature approved the new Fatah-Hamas unity government that had been hammered out in principal in Mecca last month. Israel’s cabinet voted on Sunday to block any steps toward peace negotiations

until the new Palestinian government recognizes Israel and renounces violence.

In officially rejecting the Palestinian unity government that was sworn in over the weekend, the cabinet also stated that “Israel expects the international community to maintain the policy it has taken over the past year of isolating the Palestinian government.”

Here is a snapshot what the international aid boycott has done to Palestinian society. I hope that readers - whatever their opinion of the unity government - will take a few moments to imagine what life is like right now for ordinary people in Gaza and the West Bank.

Oxfam reports:

Two thirds of Palestinians now live in poverty, a rise of 30 per cent last year. The number of families unable to get enough food has risen by 14 per cent. More than half of all Palestinians are now ‘food insecure’, unable to meet their families’ daily requirements without assistance. The health system is disintegrating.

Public servants, such as doctors, nurses, teachers and police officers, are worst hit. They haven’t had a regular income since February 2006. Their poverty rate has risen from 35 per cent in 2005 to 71 per cent in 2006.

A paper by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East notes:

Deep consumption poverty is defined as inability to meet basic human consumption needs… In 2005, the last full year of the household surveys, there were an average of 820,000 deep poor Palestinians in the oPt (occupied Palestinian Territories)…

The PA fiscal crisis resulted in an estimated decline of more than USD 500 million in oPt household income in first-half 2006. As a result, real per capita consumption levels (including external assistance) declined by about 12 percent, with food consumption down by 8 percent and non-food consumption down 13 percent relative to second-half 2005. This increased the number of deep poor from an average of 650,800 in second-half 2005 to an average of 1,069,200 in first-half 2006–a 64.3 percent increase.

The International Crisis Group, in a February 28 report, offered some accounts of daily life from interviews conducted over the past few months:

Palestinians describe levels of poverty “that we never experienced nor even imagined would ever befall us”.

In the central Gaza Strip, a housewife relates the veritable transformation of the local fruit and vegetable market, “in which produce has become more scarce and expensive because of the closure, while people are poorer and buy less because of the sanctions”.

“Those who used to buy a ratl [three kilos]”, adds her daughter-in-law, “today settle for a kilo. Those who used to buy a kilo now buy only an uqiyya [250 grammes]. You always see people who inspect the produce, haggle with the vendor, then walk away because they arrived penniless – as if they came only to relive memories of better days”.

A charity worker in the same region relates the perceptible increase in beggars: “You almost never saw them, now you can’t go to the mosque without being approached by at least several. It’s heartbreaking”. Previously, he adds, “when I used to distribute cash during the holidays, some families that I know to be poor were too proud to accept anything and could at least scrape by without help. Now if I offer $20, they respond as if I’ve given them a bar of gold. And some go so far as to come to me”.

My association is to the scene in II Kings (6:24-25):

King Ben-hadad of Aram mustered his entire army and marched upon Samaria and besieged it. There was a great famine in Samaria, and the siege continued until a donkey’s head sold for eighty shekels of sliver, and a quarter of a kab of dove’s dung for five shekels.

Because what we are conducting is, essentially, a siege. Our goal is to force the Palestinians to capitulate, disarm, and accept the terms of surrender that we dictate to them.

UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Occupied Territories John Dugard, cited in the International Crisis Group report, calls it “the first case in which an occupied people have been subjected to international sanctions”.

Some readers may feel that all this is justified, necessary to protect Jewish lives, to ensure Israel’s security. This rationale seems to outweigh any harm we might do to innocent Palestinians.

I fear we will suffer the consequences. As the institutions of Palestinian governance slowly collapse and poverty, despair and lawlessness increase, there may soon really be no one left with whom to negotiate.

In any case, when I give thanks to the Almighty this shabbos for good wine, a wonderful meal, and a day of rest, I will think for a good, long time about Palestinian children sitting down to a nearly empty table. I will pray for their deliverance; and I will pray to God to uncover our eyes and ears, and give us the wisdom to make peace.

Wearing A Yarmulkah

Published by
Andrew Schamess
March 14, 2007 in Judaism. 8 Comments

I was interested to find an essay by Rabbi Daniel Judson on the Jewish custom of covering the head. It’s in a book called Rituals and Practices of a Jewish Life.

Rabbi Judson explains that he began wearing a kippah while he was a hospital chaplain.

It started for very practical reasons. It would help patients identify me as the rabbi-chaplain. When I walked into the room of a patient whom I did not know and announced myself as the chaplain, I would unconsciously lower my head a little to let him or her see the kipah.

His decision to wear it outside the hospital provoked discomfort among his friends, even those with a strong Jewish identity. He relates that a date, a Jewish day school teacher, asked him if he was “really going to go outside wearing that thing on my head.”

For him, though, the self-consciousness associated with the public display of religiosity was worth it because this small, symbolic observance also evoked a different sort of consciousness:

I saw God in the faces of other subway passengers and at the bedside of every sick person. This is what it means to have yirat shemayim (to be in awe of God), to feel God’s presence and power in all places.

His story makes me appreciate my wife, my family, my friends and my patients - Jewish and Not - who accepted the yarmulkah that appeared on my head about a year ago with curiosity and respect, and without judgment.

My wife, especially. After all, the guy she married was barely even a practicing Jew, and a few years later, I’m possibly the only guy in the Berkshires running around with a kippah.

The really odd thing is that, when I started wearing it, I still wasn’t much of a practicing Jew. Why was I wearing it? I felt a strong impulse, which I couldn’t explain very well.

I wanted to be a good Jewish role model for my kids. Maybe I wanted to show that an anti-Zionist could also be a proud Jew; or maybe to make explicit what had been understood but never spoken throughout my childhood and adult life in rural Massachusetts: that I was a Jew “from somewhere else” in a community of Christians with generations on the land.

I also had this idea that I would, as the song says, “make my life a blessing” - that I would honor God by living a moral life and by displaying honesty and compassion in my daily acts.

Rabbi Kerry Olitzky, quoted in Rabbi Judson’s essay, describes wearing the kippah as transformative.

This was true for me, in a very practical sense. It’s made me more observant of Jewish law. You just cannot go into a restaurant wearing a yarmulkah, and order lobster.

Note: this may be the part where any Orthodox who happen upon this post gasp and choke a bit. I’m sorry. What can I say? I am coming from a place within Judaism that was quite distant from halakhah.

Wearing the kippah has prodded me to learn and observe Jewish law to an extent that I would never have imagined a few years back. This has resulted in another sort of transformation.

For most of my life, I basically did not believe in God. I love science, and I was always quite satisfied to understand the world in terms of physical structures and natural laws. I had no need at all to invoke a divine being or supernatural intervention to explain life.

The proposition was: I have no satisfactory intellectual formulation of God. Without one, I can’t believe in God - except by a sort of compartmentalization in which reality is one thing and faith is something else; and if I don’t believe God exists, there is no sense practicing rituals of worship.

Now I’d turn the proposition upside down. The more I relate to God, through observance, ritual and prayer, the more real God becomes to me. In relating to God, I am relating to something beyond knowing (by definition, beyond science, beyond our ability to describe or understand) .

This, I think, may be a central truth of Judaism: outward observance leads to faith (or, better: closeness to God), rather than the other way around.

Rachel at Velveteen Rabbi recently posted an account by Karen Armstrong, a former nun, about her first serious encounter with Judaism, a lunch meeting with one Hyam Maccaby. He expressed this concept very nicely:

“No official theology?” I repeated stupidly. “None at all? How can you be religious without a set of ideas — about God, salvation, and so on — as a basis?”

“We have orthopraxy instead of orthodoxy,” Hyam replied calmly, wiping his mouth and brushing a few crumbs off the table. “‘Right practice’ rather than ‘right belief.’ That’s all. You Christians make such a fuss about theology, but it’s not important in the way you think. It’s just poetry, really, ways of talking about the inexpressible.”

Wearing a yarmulkah definitely evokes responses from people around you. Other Jews will recall their upbringing in Orthodox or mixed neighborhoods. I’ve learned a lot about Jewish customs from these conversations. I feel rather embarrassed that I - wearing the hat - sometimes know less about Jewish culture than they do.

In Springfield, I once had a police officer stop me on the street to tell me how much he respected the Jewish community. Expressions of support from Christians are very common and touching.

Occasionally the reaction is averse. One night, in the local convenience store, an older fellow hanging out behind the counter took one look at me and started expounding on Woody Allen and Jewish pornographers. I felt sorry for the young woman at the register, whom I know. I think the guy is her uncle or something. She was very embarrassed and couldn’t figure out how to shut him up.

Although it wasn’t my intent, I find that, by wearing the kippah, I am representing the Jewish People. For the most part, I feel proud of this, if somewhat unworthy.

Rabbi Judson quotes a 1965 sermon by Rabbi William Braude, a participant in the Reverend Martin Luther King’s march from Selma to Montgomery. Although it was not the custom among Reformed rabbis at that time to wear a yarmulahe, he and another rabbi wore them to protect their heads from the sun. In the free and accepting spirit of the march, the practice caught on:

…all our colleagues who came to Selma throughout their stay there wore yarmulkes. And the Negroes (the term used then) took to the yarmulkes, (they) began wearing them and calling them freedom caps. Then the rabbis proceeded to bring in large supplies of yarmulkes, which they distributed to those on the freedom march… I learned later that they sent back for a thousand yarmulkes, but all the civil rights workers wanted to wear them.

The yarmulahe he wore transformed Rabbi Braude’s personal act of solidarity to one of solidarity between Jews and blacks - a wonderful story.

But there is another, less talked about element to wearing a kippah. Not all of what we Jews have done in the past few decades is as virtuous as our participation in the civil rights movement. The relationship between Jews and blacks has frayed significantly as Jews have gained wealth, left the inner cities, and turned away from social justice and toward Israel as our major political cause.

There is a growing Muslim presence here in the Berkshires, as there is all through the U.S. I teach residents at Berkshire Medical Center, many of whom are from Pakistan or Arab countries. Some of the local hotels and service stations are managed by Arab immigrants, and I have a few in my practice. I often wonder what they think of the kippah.

When I think of the poverty and misery we are currently inflicting on Gaza - of our comfortable settlements on stolen land - of the forgotten Palestinian villages and the waves of refugees - of the ugly, destructive wall going up across farms and olive groves in the West Bank, and everything it implies - I am not so proud to declare myself a Jew.

These actions were driven by fear and desire; by the mistaken idea that human power can protect us from harm. They could not have been carried out by people truly imbued with yirat shemiyim.

To me, the kippah conveys allegiance to something more powerful than countries, borders and politics.

Be that as it may, by wearing it, I communicate that I am a part of the people who committed these acts.

It seems important to me to live with this discomfort, to feel shame for the sins of my people as well as pride in our virtues.

In this way, too, the superficial observance is a prod to action.

Time to End Right-Wing Muslim Baiting

Published by
Andrew Schamess
March 8, 2007 in Politics. 6 Comments

A favorite trope of right-wing bloggers and commentators is to demand to know why Muslims won’t condemn terrorism. The implication, I suppose, is that Islam is an inherently violent, undemocratic religion; or that its leaders are either terrorist supporters, or too cowardly to speak out against those who are.

An advocacy group called the Islamic Political Party of America made news today by calling on Charlotte advertisers to boycott the Jeff Katz Show on WBT:

At a Wednesday news conference, Jibril Hough of the Charlotte-based Islamic Political Party of America charged that Katz speaks mockingly about Muslims and showcases only critics of Islam on his 3-6 p.m. show at 1110 AM.

“His agenda has been one of inciting fear, hatred and ignorance against Muslims,” said Hough, who is also spokesman for the Islamic Center of Charlotte. “His type of rhetoric would not be allowed against any other minority community …”

Asked for specifics, Hough said Katz sarcastically refers to Islam as “the religion of peace”; distorts passages in the Koran, the Muslims’ sacred book; calls Muslims who disagree with him “apologists for terrorists”; and refuses to let Hough and other Muslims speak on his show.

Katz replies:

I’ve been looking for the reasonable, moderate, sensible voice of Islam that says, `Stop killing in our name,’ … There are one billion Muslims in the world. I don’t for a second think there are one billion terrorists … But (radical Islamic) groups have cowed people — including practicing Muslims — into not speaking out.

I haven’t listened to Katz’s show, but he can’t have looked very hard for his moderate voices. The Study of Islam Section of the American Academy of Religion provides an exhaustive inventory of statements by leading Islamic scholars, organizations and political leaders, speaking out forcefully against terrorism.

Here, for example, is Abdulaziz bin Abdallah Al-Ashaykh, the chief mufti of Saudi Arabia:

Firstly: the recent developments in the United States including hijacking planes, terrorizing innocent people and shedding blood, constitute a form of injustice that cannot be tolerated by Islam, which views them as gross crimes and sinful acts. Secondly: any Muslim who is aware of the teachings of his religion and who adheres to the directives of the Holy Qur’an and the sunnah (the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad) will never involve himself in such acts, because they will invoke the anger of God Almighty and lead to harm and corruption on earth.

And here’s the statement of the Council on American Islamic Relations, published as an ad in the Washington Post on September 16, 2001:

We at the Council on American-Islamic Relations are deeply saddened by the massive loss of life resulting from the tragic events of September 11.

American Muslims unequivocally condemn these vicious and cowardly acts of terrorism.

It’s really time to call an end to this sort of right-wing Muslim baiting. The Jews have often been the objects of similar provocative statements by anti-Semites. There was a time when it was common to question Jewish patriotism. It was a subtext of the McCarthy hearings in the 1950’s, when Communism was seen as a threat to the U.S. in much the same way that terrorism is now.

American Muslims - including those critical of American foreign policy - are no more supporters of Osama bin Laden than leftist American Jews were minions of Stalin.

From John Birch to David Duke to Robert Spencer - the right has always used racist slurs to discredit progressives and radicals.

With the Muslims, American Jews on the left should make common cause. It’s our own history being re-enacted.

Barak Obama Speech to AIPAC -It Could Have Been Worse

Published by
Andrew Schamess
March 4, 2007 in Politics. 3 Comments

MJ Rosenberg at TPM Cafe has the full text of Obama’s speech to the AIPAC conference, plus some interesting discussion in the comments section.

It could have been worse.

He stays on safe, but moderate, ground in outlining his central goal:

Our job is to renew the United States’ efforts to help Israel achieve peace with its neighbors while remaining vigilant against those who do not share this vision. Our job is to do more than lay out another road map; our job is to rebuild the road to real peace and lasting security throughout the region.

He refers to Israel as “our strongest ally in the region and its only established democracy” and states his “clear and strong commitment” to its security. In this, he reassures his listeners that, like Clinton and Bush, he will consider U.S. interests in the Mideast to be essentially identical with those of Israel.

This, of course, is patent nonsense. Israel has every reason to delay a negotiated settlement with the Palestinians for as long as possible, since it is expanding its territory steadily under the current arrangement, and faces no real existential threat while it is under U.S. protection.

The United States, on the other hand, has a clear interest in ending the conflict as quickly as possible since it is a major driver of anti-U.S. sentiment in the region. To act on this interest would mean pressing Israel to negotiate a territorial settlement - something Obama evidently does not want to espouse, for fear of alienating potential Jewish supporters.

He adds on his post-facto support for the invasion of Lebanon:

…when Israel is attacked, we must stand up for Israel’s legitimate right to defend itself. Last summer, Hezbollah attacked Israel. By using Lebanon as an outpost for terrorism, and innocent people as shields, Hezbollah has also engulfed that entire nation in violence and conflict, and threatened the fledgling movement for democracy there. That’s why we have to press for enforcement of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701, which demands the cessation of arms shipments to Hezbollah…

He follows the Bush Administration script with regard to the Mecca Accord:

The Israelis must trust that they have a true Palestinian partner for peace. That is why we must strengthen the hands of Palestinian moderates who seek peace and that is why we must maintain the isolation of Hamas and other extremists who are committed to Israel’s destruction.

Finally, at the end, he hints at hard choices Israel might need to make. One could read this as leaving the door open to more assertive American diplomacy:

as I said at the outset, Israel will have some heavy stones to carry as well. Its history has been full of tough choices in search of peace and security.

Yitzhak Rabin had the vision to reach out to longtime enemies. Ariel Sharon had the determination to lead Israel out of Gaza. These were difficult, painful decisions that went to the heart of Israel’s identity as a nation…

We can and we should help Israelis and Palestinians both fulfill their national goals: two states living side by side in peace and security. Both the Israeli and Palestinian people have suffered from the failure to achieve this goal. The United States should leave no stone unturned in working to make that goal a reality.

But then he proceeds to un-do it all with a final pandering cop-out:

in the end, we also know that we should never seek to dictate what is best for the Israelis and their security interests. No Israeli Prime Minister should ever feel dragged to or blocked from the negotiating table by the United States.

I’ve only covered the parts of the speech relating to the Palestinian issue. He did re-affirm his commitment to withdraw from Iraq, which is central to his campaign.

As far as to Iran - as forecast - he declares that no option is off the table; but he favors

tough-minded diplomacy.

This includes direct engagement with Iran similar to the meetings we conducted with the Soviets at the height of the Cold War, laying out in clear terms our principles and interests.

So, thus. With regard to the Palestinians, anyhow, Obama pretty much hews the AIPAC line.

Little good it will do him, I suspect. Hillary Clinton has been cultivating this group much more assiduously and for a long time before he came on the scene. I’ll lay odds the lion’s share of Jewish money goes to her.

On the other hand, Obama might get a good proportion of the Jewish vote.

Barak Obama to Address AIPAC Meeting Today

Published by
Andrew Schamess
March 2, 2007 in Politics. 0 Comments

Speaking of Barak Obama… Lynn Sweet of the Sun Times says she has the scoop on the speech he’s going to give today on at Chicago’s regional AIPAC meeting:

AIPAC, whose sole interest is U.S.-Israel relations, is one of the most influential lobbying groups in the nation. Its annual policy conference starts March 11 in Washington. The gathering provides fertile territory for Obama to schmooze with well-connected backers and donors. Though no 2008 presidential candidates are on the program, Obama is hosting a reception for AIPAC members — as is archrival Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Clinton delivered a well-received speech before an AIPAC regional meeting in New York on Feb. 1. The Obama team wanted to get Obama’s pro-Israel views — not well-known — out front before the big AIPAC conference.

Sweet says he will focus on Iran:

Obama on Friday will call for tougher Iran sanctions, more bilateral diplomacy and declare he is for leaving all military options on the table. He will underscore the need for energy independence so that U.S. Mideast policy is not anchored to the country’s huge appetite for fossil fuels.

I wouldn’t be surprised to hear about his recent meeting with the family of Israeli solider Ehud Goldwasser, currently held hostage by Hizbollah. Hillary Clinton is already sponsoring a congressional resolution calling for the release of Goldwasser and two other hostages.

The New York Sun quotes Shmuel Rosner saying the obvious:

I don’t think his real motive is to win votes. It’s, of course, Jewish money. In the Democratic Party, Jewish philanthropy plays a significant role.

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