Jews Bought Sen. Cotton's Letter to Iran

I was distressed by this article in the NYT, “GOP’s Israel Support Deepens as Political Contributions Shift.”  It says that Republican support for Israel in partly ideological, but also “a product of a surge in donations and campaign spending on their behalf by a small group of wealthy donors.”  One of the main beneficiaries of this Jewish largess was Senator Tom Cotton, the author of the Senate letter to Iran, advising it not to negotiate with Obama and Kerry.  It sounds like Sen. Cotton got well over $1 million from these Jewish contributors.  The article quotes a source downplaying speculation that the draft letter and plans for its circulation were developed by Sen. Tom Cotton, Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol, and Las Vegas billionaire Sheldon Adelson in a room of Mr. Adelson’s Venetian Hotel.

The growing Jewish support for Republicans is odd because Jews have traditionally supported the Democratic Party, and tend to support more liberal causes.  According to J Street, a majority of Jews still support liberal Democrats, but the fewer extremely wealthy Jews supporting the Republicans throw the money balance in favor of the GOP.  For this group, the main issue is support for Israel.  This one reason Republican House Speak Boehner invited Israeli PM Netanyahu to make a speech to Congress attacking President Obama. 

I don’t believe that American and Israeli interests always converge.  Thus I question Sen. Cotton’s patriotism in supporting Israel over the United States.  Clearly the choice of Netanyahu and his Republican supports was (and is) to have the United States carry out a bombing attack to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities.  There is certainly a significant risk that American planes could be shot down, or that Iran would respond to the attack.  Among other potential targets, there are thousands of American service men and women next door to Iran in Afghanistan, and a few still left in Iraq.  Sen. Cotton apparently is happy to have them die for Israel.  

Revisionist Holocaust History

For Jews, World War II was all about the Holocaust.  How many people died in the Soviet Union or Western Europe, or certainly in the Pacific doesn’t matter.  All that matters in how many Jews died in the Holocaust.  Even there, what’s important is only the Jews who died.  They don’t care about the Poles, the Gypsies, the blacks, the gays, or any other groups who died in the German prison camps.  Jews are attempting to rewrite history to support their view, and because of the single-mindedness of their effort, they are succeeding. 

The latest shot in this Jewish war against honoring the Allies’ victory in World War II is Nicholas Berg’s “The Holocaust and the West German Historians.”  According to the review in the Wall Street Journal, this book is something of an academic attack on West German historians for playing down the role of the Holocaust in their histories of World War II.  Appropriately the reviewer, Brendan Simms, is somewhat critical of the book.  He says:

Mr. Berg presents his case in a tone of polemical outrage, which occasionally jars in an academic narrative but seems excusable in light of the story he is telling.

Mr. Berg fails to acknowledge that German historians were engaged in not only a personal but also a national survival strategy. They were desperately seeking an intellectual and ethical basis upon which the German people could start again amid the wreckage of 1945.

My main complaint is that Jewish historians do not give enough credit to the Allies, Soviet, British and American, for their victory.  As bad as the Holocaust was, life for Jews would have been worse if the Germans had won.  I believe that the reason we have a World War II memorial on the Washington Mall is that history, led by Jewish historians, has been rewritten to downplay the Allied victory.  WW II vets thought that their victory would be memorial enough, but as their victory became less praiseworthy, they eventually needed something concrete to memorialized their deeds.  

Why Is the GOP More Jewish than the Jews?

Peter Baker had a great article in the NYT about how Republican support for Israel has become unquestioning and an essential element of any candidate's foreign policy platform.  It was pegged to former Secretary of State Jim Baker's speech to J Street, the moderate Jewish lobby, in which Baker was just slightly critical of Israel.  He was pilloried by virtually every Republican in Washington.  Jeb Bush had to disavow Baker's remarks, despite the fact that Baker was one of George H.W. Bush's most loyal supporters and had already been designated as an advisor to Jeb.  It sounds as if failure to support Israel 100% is treason against the US.  The article attributes this attitude to several factors:

- A greater sens of solidarity in the fight against Islamic extremism sinc 9/11
- A resulting increase in evangelical Christan support for Israel,
-The influence of wealthy Jewish political donors like Sheldon Adelson, and
- The GOP tendency to oppose anything Obama does, including feuding with Netanyahu.

The article points out that the current Republican attitude is much different from that of previous GOP leaders, who were more questioning of Israel, including Presidents George H.W. Bush, Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon, as well as Secretary Colin Powell, and NSC chair Brent Scowcroft.  Even Ronald Reagan angered Israel by selling AWACs to Saudi Arabia, and by supporting a UN resolution condemning Israel for bombing Iraq's Osirak nuclear reacator.

The article points out that traditionally Jews have supported the Democratic Party, while Protestants have been Republicans.

The article quotes George W. Bush's White House press secretary, Ari Fleischer, on Bush's strong support for Israel.  It says Fleischer is now a member of the Republican Jewish Coalition's board of directors.  Fleischer said, "Being pro-Israel is a no-brainer, absolutely moral issue to take inside the Republican Party."

No Iran Agreement Likely Worse than a Bad Agreement

Tom Friedman's last op-ed, "Look Before Leaping," in the NYT laid out pros and cons of a nuclear agreement with Iran.  However, I don't think he sufficiently recognizes the downside of a possible war if we don't get an agreement.  John Bolton's recent op-ed in the NYT, "To Stop Iran's Bomb, Bomb Iran," shows that there is sentiment for attacking Iran, in almost any case, deal or no deal, but the chances of a military attack on Iran certainly are higher if there is no agreement than if there is no agreement.  If there is no military attack, Iran's obligations under the standard Non-Proliferation Treaty agreements would allow it to develop its nuclear capability up to the last few steps required to build an atomic bomb.  In addition, the other parties to the negotiations -- Russia, China and the Europeans -- are unlikely to maintain sanctions if the deal fails, removing much of the pressure on Iran to bow to Western demands.

Friedman focuses mainly on whether an agreement is likely to bring Iran into the community of civilized nations and thus reduce its trouble-making in the Middle East.  He finds arguments on both sides, probably correctly.  But turning Iran into a responsible member of the international community is not the only issue.  There are also those atomic bombs to worry about.  Unfotunately, I think this makes Friedman's analysis faulty, and I worry that it is faulty for a reason.

Tom Friedman's analysis may be colored by the fact that he is Jewish.  It may simply be that he is under tremendous pressure from other Jews to support the Israeli line that any Iran deal is terrible and that the only solution to the Iranian nuclear problem is to bomb Iran.  I respect Friedman for his long reporting on the Middle East and his personal neutrality in the Arab-Israeli conflict.  He did exemplary reporting from Lebanon and Israel for the New York Times.  That's why when I detect even a little pro-Israel bias in his column, I suspect that he is under tremendous pressure.  I don't worry about Friedman so much as a do about all the other reporters and policy makers in Washington who have less integrity than Friedman.