Opinion | Columnists
Pandering to the Jewish lobby
Republican statements on Palestine are aimed primarily at increasing right-wing campaign contributions
- By George S. Hishmeh, Special to Gulf News
- Published: 00:00 December 15, 2011
- Image Credit: Gulf News archive
- Newt Gingrich
It is now considered a safe bet that if Newt Gingrich, the controversial Republican presidential front-runner and former House speaker, manages to win his party's nomination and makes it to the White House in 2013, he will cause major harm to America's global image.
The likelihood that Gingrich will achieve that is seen as far-fetched considering his outrageous statements of late. He described Palestinians as an "invented" people and said Sharia "has principles and punishments totally abhorrent to the western world". To put things in perspective, Gingrich's description of Palestinians is also applicable to Americans, who did not exist 300 years ago, as well as to several other nations.
Dr Murad Abusabe, an Egyptian professor in New Jersey, recalled that a renowned historical publication titled The Timetables of History authored by Bernard Grun, "dates Palestine to the period between 3000 and 2500BC, which is hundreds of years before Prophet Ebrahim left the city of Ur, in Chaldea, around 2100BC".
Other historians say that the start of the Palestinian nationalist movement began in 1834, when Arab residents of the Palestinian region revolted against Ottoman rule.
A Washington Post columnist, Michael Gerson, took Gingrich to task. "With due respect to the speaker and his recent reading, what qualification does Gingrich have to identify Sharia's ‘natural form'?"
He quoted Gingrich as saying recently that Sharia was "the heart of the enemy movement from which terrorists spring forth and went on to remind the Republican presidential hopeful that "in the US, public officials respect the conscience of citizens while protecting them from violence", adding that "the proper role of government is to aggressively fight terrorism, not to engage in theological judgments".
Demeaning rhetoric
The pandering of several Republican presidential contenders began when they appeared last week at a Republican Jewish Coalition forum. Their public exchanges were demeaning.
Gingrich, for example, promised that within two hours of taking oath of office, he will move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to occupied Jerusalem.
Gingrich also promised to appoint John R. Bolton as secretary of state. (Bolton, a neo-conservative, was named for a little over a year as US permanent representative to the United Nations in 2005, but after his recess appointment he failed to gain confirmation by the Senate. He is now involved with many think-tanks, including the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA).
Another surprise concession Gingrich promised to consider was granting clemency to Jonathan Jay Pollard, who has been serving a life sentence since 1987 for passing US secrets to Israel. Since then all US presidents have refused Israel's requests to grant him freedom. But Gingrich told the forum that he would be "inclined to consider clemency".
Most of the other Republican presidential hopefuls, including former governor Mitt Romney and Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, also joined in showering Israel with concessions.
Romney, the runner-up, pledged to make Israel his first trip abroad as president. Bachmann also declared that as president she will recognise any future expansion of colonies in the Palestinian areas by Israel.
This unprecedented public drive within the Jewish community by the Republican candidates was seen mainly as a bid to attract Jewish money for their campaigns and, in a few cases, winning over their votes in swing states like Pennsylvania, Florida and Ohio.
Christian evangelists
"It's not a secret to them that in terms of campaign contributions, Jewish Americans give quite a lot of money," David Remnick, the editor of the prestigious New Yorker magazine, told Haaretz, the Israeli daily. "And at the same time, it's a signal to the Christian evangelical community as well, it's not just the Jewish vote. It's part of a package for Christian evangelicals," a large right-wing pro-Israel community in the US.
What has been bewildering and sadly missing from all these political manoeuvring or ‘verbal warfare' has been the absence of Arab or Arab-American intervention. There have been a few columns contributed to small newspapers, but efforts to advertise or explain Palestinian history or positions are lacking — steps that should have been sponsored by Arab governments or well-financed Arab organisations, all permitted under US law.
Coincidentally, a hard-hitting editorial in Haaretz on December 12 was titled ‘In Israel, the life of a Palestinian is cheap'. The liberal Israeli paper took to task Israeli authorities after published photos showed an Israeli soldier open "the back door of an armoured military jeep, and from a distance of just a few metres, fire a tear-gas canister directly at a young [Palestinian] man who was throwing stones".
The newspaper continued: "After the canister is fired the jeep continues on its way without stopping". This was a scene, it added, that was "hard to swallow" — not much unlike the shady and shameless manoeuvring of the Republican leaders in the US — a situation that many Democrats hope will improve their chances of retaining the White House.
George S. Hishmeh is a Washington-based columnist. He can be contacted at ghishmeh@gulfnews.com
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