The firing of CNN anchor Rick Sanchez is the latest in line that shows the tremendous power that the pro-Israel lobby group wields over Washington
I wasted a little time before writing this article, to see if I could produce a satire or a parody. This would have consisted of a fundraising letter from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee to a potential donor.
"Dear Leo," it might begin. "We are asking you, even in these straitened times, to make the largest contribution you can afford. The security of the state of Israel is threatened as never before, and your help is urgently required. Alas, we can offer you nothing in return for your donation."
"Our representatives are still treated with scorn and contempt in the halls of Congress and by the White House. The news media remain deaf to our entreaties. If you choose to attend our annual conference, we can offer you nothing by way of ‘access.' As usual, the secretaries of state and defence and the leadership of the Joint Chiefs of Staff will find plausible reasons to be absent. So will the speaker of the House and the Senate majority leader. Try to think of your contribution as a mitzvah: a private good deed that may not even go unpunished."
I had to give the thing up. It just didn't have that ring of near-truth that a successful satire or parody demands. You may conceivably wonder what provoked this folly in the first place. Two separate fusses, one in Europe and one in the United States, have raised the awkward question of Jewish influence.
Perceived anti-Semitism
Recently, the European commissioner for trade, Karel De Gucht, a Belgian, made some remarks about the resumption of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations in Washington, in the course of which he said: "Don't underestimate the Jewish lobby on Capitol Hill. That is the best-organised lobby, you shouldn't underestimate the grip it has on American politics — no matter whether it's Republicans or Democrats."
In the ensuing uproar, this statement was described by the editor of the British magazine Standpoint as "blatant anti-Semitism" and a voice "from Europe's unspeakable past."
Then, last week, Cuban-American TV anchor Rick Sanchez, apparently maddened by the taunts of Comedy Central's Jon Stewart, made some sarcasm-inflected remarks about the power of the Jewish minority in the United States and the sharing of its liberal assumptions by many at the networks. He was fired from CNN almost before he had finished getting this off his chest.
Now, of course, some Jews will detect the usual anti-Semitic "fork" here. But what has to be noted about both sets of remarks is how uncontroversial they are.
A few months ago, I wrote that the recent sharp deterioration in Israeli-Turkish relations was at least partially explicable by a single fact: This past March, a key House committee voted to refer to the Turkish treatment of the Armenians in 1915 as genocide. The difference from previous years, was this: Until recently, the Israel lobby on the Hill had worked to protect Turkey from such condemnation. But after the Turkey's prime minister and Israel's president had a public quarrel at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the lobby was in no mood to do any more favours.
In other words, a vote with major implications for US foreign policy was determined by the supporters of a single power. I did not receive a single letter of complaint after I made this observation, and I know nobody in Washington who would have challenged its obviousness.
Excessive sway
It hasn't been that long since the late Yitzhak Rabin was complaining that groups like AIPAC had too much influence on Israel's policies. Is there a group other than AIPAC that exerts a comparable influence in the United States? Perhaps the National Rifle Association. And, of course, on the single issue of the maintenance of a failed embargo, the Cuban-American caucus and its funding base in Florida and New Jersey.
Coming to Sanchez, then, I ask myself if the world in which I have worked for so many decades is even imaginable without the presence of liberal American Jews. The answer is plainly no. Moreover, I can't think of any other "minority" of which this is remotely true, unless it were to be the other minority from which I can claim descent: people of British or Anglophile provenance.
In the manner in which Sanchez spoke, there was something like a buried resentment. He didn't descend into saying that there was Jewish control of the media, but he did imply that liberalism was linked to a single ethnic group, one of which Jon Stewart happens to be a member.
Still, there is nothing criminal about this sentiment, and the speed of his firing, like the other recent abrupt resignation of conservative talk show host Laura Schlessinger and dismissal of Octavia Nasr, CNN's former senior editor of Mideast Affairs, seems to suggest a network system that cares only about playing safe and avoiding "offence."
The best way to demonstrate the hidden influence of the ‘chosen people' would be for Jon Stewart and others to join me in calling for Rick Sanchez's reinstatement. If it then didn't happen, it would help us understand who really pulls the strings around here.
Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair and Slate Magazine.
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