http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/981934.html
Last update - 05:31 09/05/2008
Jews bend over backward to stay neutral in U.S. vote
By Anshel Pfeffer
Tags: Jews, Barack Obama, Israel
"During Bibi's last visit to the United States,
Jewish leaders were continuously coming up to
him and telling him how worried they are
about Obama getting elected,"
said an aide to opposition leader,
Benjamin Netanyahu.
He refused though to go on
record or name any of the
concerned grandees.
Everyone knows the rules.
The American Jewish leader****p cannot
allow itself to be seen taking any
particular side in a political contest.
They have to be capable of working both
sides of Congress and enjoy good relations
with whatever administration is sitting
in the White House.
When the head of the Conference of Presidents
of Major American Jewish Organizations,
Malcolm Hoenlein,
slipped up in a Jerusalem press conference,
and expressed concern about the atmosphere
around Obama's campaign,
he was roundly criticized by other
Jewish American leaders and tried
to deny he had ever said such a thing.
Sigh of relief
A similar logic applies to
Jewish leaders in other
western democracies.
London emerged
this week from a mayoral elections
in which the local Jewish community
studiously tried to stay above the fray.
Their true loyalties have not been hard to divine.
As Shabbat came in last Friday in London,
and the win of the Conservative Party
candidate, Boris Johnson,
was officially announced,
it's easy to imagine the collective
sigh of relief being heaved in Hendon
and Golders Green.
After eight years of almost open
warfare with the Jewish establishment,
Ken Livingstone was leaving office.
Nevertheless,
despite repeated condemnations by
major Jewish organizations of Livingstone's
statements and positions,
his counter-accusations that
the Board of Deputies were running
a "McCarthyite" witch hunt against him
and the fact that his challenger,
Johnson, certainly went out his
way to court Jewish voters and
present a pro-Israel agenda,
in the elections,
no significant Jewish figure of
authority suggested openly that
the community as a whole had a
duty to punish Livingstone.
It can, of course,
be argued that there is no analogy
between the American presidential
campaign and the mayoral contest
in London;
while Obama has been assiduously
courting the Jewish community,
repeating his constant, if nuanced,
sup****t for Israel and distancing
himself from sup****ters with
anti-Semitic leanings,
Livingstone was quite the opposite,
welcoming an Islamic cleric who called
for suicide bombings and failing to
apologize for his own utterances that
could easily be construed as being anti-Jewish.
But then, of course,
American politics and local electioneering
in Britain are different, words that could
easily condemn a campaign in the U.S. go
down quite well in some of the boroughs
of East London.
The Jewish policy
though stays the same,
also in other countries.
While Angela Merkel, Silvio Berlusconi
and Nicolas Sarkozy were inarguably more
open to the Jewish community and pro-Israel
then there opponents,
the official policy of
not taking sides remained.
Telling silence
There are of course multiple reasons
for this artificial neutrality.
The Jews are never cut from one political cloth;
many of Obama's closest
advisors and backers are Jewish,
and even Livingstone had a Jewish
deputy in the London Assembly.
The potential damage of the endorsement of
one particular candidate by a Jewish community,
in internal unity,
in relations with other communities
and in the ability to work with the
government if the opposite candidate
is elected is huge.
But to escape all suspicion
of political partisan****p,
Jewish leaders,
normally loquacious on the
main of issues of state,
head for the opposite extreme
when an election is on,
gritting their teeth and
sitting on their hands
until the votes are counted.
But what is presented as wise statesman****p
and clever political maneuvering is basically
the modern version of the Jewish fear of
anti-Semitism,
a minority's feeling of insecurity.
The Jewish communities of North America
and Western Europe like to present
themselves as well-integrated,
successful parts of the general society,
proud defenders of Israel with no
dual-loyalty complex.
But they still draw the line at
taking open political stances.
Instead they continue to prefer
the use of time-hallowed practices
such as back channels,
discreet lobbying
and the connections
of wealthy Jewish donors.
Perhaps, decades ago,
these quiet machinations
could go on undetected,
but in today's media environment,
it all emerges sooner or later.
Recent scandals on both sides of
the Atlantic involving Jewish lobbyists,
fund-raisers and power brokers at the
highest levels of government should
show the limitations of the traditional methods.
It's very fa****onable
to talk nowadays of "soft power,"
of how the Jewish people
can use its collective
political, financial,
cultural and moral clout in
the interests of the tribe.
But such a scenario of the Elders of Zion,
so beloved of the anti-Semites, is impossible.
Just take for an example two
of the world's richest Jews,
Sheldon Adelson and George Soros,
both using their money to finance
radically different causes.
Jews are a much too diverse,
and disparate people to vote
uniformly for the same candidates
or parties and major national
Jewish organizations can't
endorse one side.
But the other alternative of keeping
mum during elections, and not voicing
what should be legitimate concerns over
a candidate's personality and policy,
is simply evading responsibility.
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