U.S. President Barack Obama has really done it this time. To sell his Iran deal, “he’s hinting broadly at anti-Semitic conceits.” He’s “using terms that are often code words for Jews.” And his minions are using “anti-Jewish incitement as a political tool.”
How could the vast majority of American Jews have voted, twice, for a man so eager to demonize them? And how could Obama’s Jewish deputy secretary of state, his Jewish deputy national security advisor, his Jewish ambassador to Israel, his Jewish director of the Office of Foreign Assets Control (which oversees Iran sanctions) and his Orthodox Jewish Treasury secretary — all of whom are playing key roles in promoting the Iran agreement — be part of this rhetorical pogrom? Jewish self-hatred, it seems, is a mysterious and powerful thing.
The claim that Obama is peddling anti-Semitism boils down to this: He is saying things about the people and organizations who oppose the Iran deal that, in the past, anti-Semites have said about Jews. Those things fall into three categories: war, money and dual loyalty.
Let’s start with the first: war. In his speech earlier this month at American University, Obama warned that “Congressional rejection of this deal leaves any U.S. administration that is absolutely committed to preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon with one option, another war in the Middle East.” The reason is that without a deal, Iran’s “breakout time [to a nuclear weapon], which is already fairly small, could shrink to near zero.” Once that occurred, Obama asked rhetorically, “Does anyone really doubt that the same voices now raised against this deal will be demanding that whoever is president bomb those nuclear facilities?”
See the Jew-hatred? Obama, wrote former Bush administration official Elliot Abrams in The Weekly Standard, “is here feeding a deep line of anti-Semitism that accuses American Jews of getting America into wars. Of course this goes back the World War II and the accusations against Franklin Roosevelt, whose anti-Semitic critics called him ‘Rosenfeld.’”
It’s hard to know where to begin. For starters, Obama never said anything about Jews, or Jewish organizations, in his American University speech. He referred to “voices now raised against this deal,” some of whom are Jewish and most of whom are not. So if Obama slandered anyone with his claim that deal opponents are putting the United States on a path to war, it wasn’t Jews. It was hawks. As it happens, quite a few prominent hawks have, explicitly, called for war. (For instance, William Kristol, editor of the magazine where Abrams published his article.)
While other critics of the Iran agreement insist they oppose war, most consider it preferable to an Iranian bomb. (In the words of John McCain, “There’s only one thing worse than military action against Iran and that is a nuclear-armed Iran.”)
Obama’s argument is that rejecting the current agreement would free Iran to reduce its nuclear breakout time “to near zero,” and once that happened, and military action became the only way to stop an Iranian bomb, the “voices” who oppose the current deal would choose war. I find that argument convincing. Abrams may not. But comparing it to the arguments of anti-Semites who claimed Jews were behind Franklin Delano “Rosenfeld’s” decision to enter World War II is absurd.
Obama’s second supposed anti-Semitic “dog whistle” concerns money. Asked about the Iran fight by Jon Stewart, Obama said that, “If people are engaged, eventually the political system responds. Despite the money, despite the lobbyists, it still responds.” In so doing, argued Commentary’s Jonathan Tobin, Obama conjured “traditional anti-Semitic stereotypes” about Jewish money and power. His “vile tactics” constituted an anti-Semitic “smear.”
It’s true: For centuries, anti-Semites have accused Jews of using their money and power to shape government policy. It’s also true that in the United States in 2015, Jewish groups like AIPAC use their money and power to shape government policy.
It would be one thing if Obama only criticized the power of lobbyists and moneyed interests when that power was being wielded by Jews. But he’s made the same point, even more vehemently, during other fights. In 2010, for instance, he warned the Wall Street lobbyists opposing his push for financial regulation that “if these folks want a fight, it’s a fight I’m ready to have,” This June, he said that when it comes to gun control, the National Rifle Association holds Congress in its “grip.”
AIPAC is a powerful organization. It is spending up to $40 million, running ads denouncing the Iran deal in key states and congressional districts. Earlier this month, it ferried almost every freshmen member of the House of Representatives to Israel to hear Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denounce the agreement in person. Discussing the congressional debate over Iran without mentioning AIPAC is like discussing the congressional debate over guns without mentioning the NRA or discussing the congressional debate over trade without mentioning the AFL-CIO. It’s willful blindness. Yet according to Tobin, Obama must embrace this willful blindness because merely talking about Jewish economic and political power feeds anti-Semitism. By that standard, criticizing Bernie Madoff is anti-Semitic too: After all, his behavior provided a festival of anti-Semitic imagery. And condemning Bill Cosby is racist since it feeds stereotypes of African-American men as sexual predators. If every observation that could feed bigotry is itself bigotry, irrespective of whether it’s true, there’s going to be an awful lot we can’t discuss.
Obama’s third form of “anti-Jewish incitement” concerns “dual loyalty.” As evidence, Tablet’s Lee Smith cites Obama’s statement to Jon Stewart that Congress’ decision on the Iran deal should “not [be] based on lobbying, but based on what’s in the national interests of the United States of America.” Abrams cites Obama’s statement at American University that while Netanyahu opposes the Iran deal, “it would be an abrogation of my constitutional duty to act against my best judgment simply because it causes temporary friction with a dear friend and ally.”
According to Smith and Abrams, Obama is implying that while he’s upholding American national interests, his opponents have an additional motive: They’re looking out for Israeli interests too. (After all, “dual loyalty” doesn’t mean you don’t care about the United States. It means you care about another country too).
The problem with this argument is that when it comes to Iran, almost everybody in Washington claims to be looking out for Israeli interests as well as America’s own. In the Iran debate, “dual loyalty” isn’t a slur; it’s a badge of honor.
Start with Obama himself. At American University, he made a point of claiming that the nuclear agreement is in “Israel’s interests” and that in crafting it, he “listened to the Israeli security establishment.”
Deal opponents speak explicitly about what’s best for Israel too. When Obama announced the Iran agreement, Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee tweeted that it “empowers an evil Iranian regime to carry out its threat to ‘wipe Israel off the map.’” After his tweet denouncing the deal, Representative Ryan Zinke added the hashtag “#StandWithIsrael.” Republican presidential hopeful Lindsey Graham has called the deal a “death sentence for the state of Israel.”
In a recent op-ed, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach promised that his friend, New Jersey Senator Cory Booker, “would never vote against Israel.”
It’s not that Huckabee, Graham and Boteach don’t think American interests matter. They assume American and Israeli interests always coincide. But in mainstream American discourse today, you don’t even have to argue the point. Supporting Israel is considered a virtue in and of itself. The real divide isn’t over whether lawmakers should take Israeli as well as American interests into account as they weigh the nuclear deal. It’s over what Israeli interests are. Establishment American Jewish groups and congressional Republicans take their cue from Netanyahu. Obama and J Street say the Iran deal benefits the Jewish state, despite what Bibi says.
Flimsy as they are, the attacks on Obama as anti-Semitic matter. They matter because they perpetuate the core failure of organized American Jewish life: the failure to accept the moral responsibilities of Jewish power. In the early 20th century, many Jews were new to the United States, and tragically, they lacked the resources and self-confidence to demand that America’s leaders listen when it mattered most. Since then, the American Jewish community has become vastly wealthier and more self-assured. Its communal organizations, like AIPAC, have become the envy of every American ethnic group. And American Jewry uses those organizations to ensure that America’s leaders never again make decisions that affect the Jewish people without listening to Jews first.
American Jewish political power is an extraordinary accomplishment. But the uses of that power are a legitimate subject of debate. Saying that AIPAC’s lobbying makes war with Iran more likely is not anti-Semitic. It’s the truth. AIPAC’s lobbying makes war more likely because the only alternative to war that AIPAC supports is near-total Iranian capitulation. And AIPAC has never sketched a remotely plausible plan for peacefully bringing that total capitulation about. Saying that AIPAC, like every other lobbying group, spends money to convince members of Congress to do things they would otherwise not do, is not anti-Semitic. It’s the truth. If members of Congress required no political pressure to support AIPAC’s agenda, then AIPAC would not need to exist. And saying that AIPAC works to ensure that the United States government supports the policies of the Israeli government is not anti-Semitic, either. It’s the truth. If Benjamin Netanyahu supported the Iran deal, AIPAC would not be lobbying against it today.
In a democracy, every powerful institution deserves scrutiny. No lobby should be permitted to operate, as ex-AIPAC official Steve Rosen once boasted AIPAC did, as a “night flower” that “thrives in the dark.” The people accusing President Obama of anti-Semitism are trying to forestall that scrutiny. They are seeking to magnify AIPAC’s power by making criticism of it taboo.
It’s important that they fail. Because while American Jewish political power is both legitimate and necessary, unaccountable Jewish power is not. It’s not good for American national security. It’s not good for American democracy. And it’s not good for us.
