When the ultimate American Jewish macher turns left vs. Israel - by Vic Rosenthal

...Israel is a very small country which has been in a continuous fight for its life since its founding. We need to find our friends where we can. Ronald Lauder and the liberal Jewish establishment in the US, along with their associates in the Israeli Left, in essence want us to give up our Zionist principles so that we will better fit their universalist worldview. But if we surrender Zionism, we surrender everything. If that is the condition for their friendship and support, then we must respectfully decline.

Vic Rosenthal..
Abu Yehuda..
17 August '18..
Link: http://abuyehuda.com/2018/08/lauders-left-turn/

(Macher. big shot; an important person. Y.)

I recently got an email from a liberal Jewish friend in America. He’s a Zionist, he’s interested in Jewish issues, and he’s not dumb. To my horror, he highly recommended the op-ed published in the NY Times on Sunday by Ronald Lauder, President of the World Jewish Congress, billionaire heir to the Estée Lauder fortune, former US Ambassador to Austria, and the ultimate American Jewish macher.

Lauder suggests that the State of Israel is defective from a moral point of view. He suggests that Israel has changed for the worse in recent years, and blames Israel’s government for “[undermining] the covenant between Judaism and enlightenment,” so as to “crush the core of contemporary Jewish existence.”

The article – like a previous piece of his about the “two-state solution” published in March – is a sloppily constructed collection of talking points of the Israeli Left, the overall thrust of which is that Israel is turning into an undemocratic theocracy. The implication is that the “right-wing” government of Benjamin Netanyahu, which has become a tool of the ultra-Orthodox factions, must be replaced.

This thesis was promulgated back in 2016 in a piece by Ha’aretz editor Aluf Benn, which I examined here, and found to be the kvetching of a left-wing elite whose electoral strength evaporated after it almost destroyed the country, and which has been striving to come back ever since. Lauder makes similar arguments, but his examples are tuned to resonate with the liberal American public.

Lauder says that “we cannot allow the politics of a radical [ultra-Orthodox] minority to alienate millions of Jews worldwide.” If indeed that is what is going on, then one would expect that the majority of Israelis, who are also not ultra-Orthodox, would also be alienated from the government, and would not elect the Likud and Benjamin Netanyahu again and again. But as a matter of fact, despite the recent actions of the government, especially the passage of the Nation-State Law, support for it has never been higher.


Could it be that the view from Israel is different from the view from America? I think it is.

Critical of Israel? NY Times Suddenly Elevates Ronald Lauder To Sulzberger-Level Sage - by Ira Stoll

...My own prediction? If Lauder ever returns to defending Israeli policy, as I hope he does, the newspaper heirs that publish the Times will quickly return to describing him as a “cosmetics heir,” “disappointed office-seeker,” or “laughingstock.”

Ira Stoll..
Algemeiner..
14 August '18..

For the past 30 years, The New York Times has been dismissive and condescending toward Ronald Lauder. Now, all of a sudden, he’s the newspaper’s favorite editorial voice.

What changed? The Times? Or Lauder, who, now that he’s willing publicly to lambaste the government of Israel, has miraculously been transformed in the view of Times editors to a Sulzberger-level sage?

Let’s review the record.

(Continue to Full Column)

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Leibler - When Ron Lauder Calls on Mahmoud Abbas

Isi Leibler..
Candidly Speaking From Jerusalem..
23 January '12..

During a recent visit to London, World Jewish Congress (WJC) President Ronald Lauder accompanied by the President of his Latin American region, Jack Terpins, called on Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Saeb Erekat who were also in the city.

I was unable to obtain any meaningful details or justification for the meeting from WJC professionals but executive members informed me that neither the Secretary General Dan Diker nor the chair of the Israeli executive was advised in advance of the meeting. Lauder also rejected pleas from colleagues to consult with Israeli government authorities.

Furthermore, after the meeting the WJC head dismissed entreaties to consult with senior colleagues prior to making public pronouncements. Instead, the WJC released a bizarre press statement maintaining that as diaspora Jews and diaspora (sic) Palestinians lived harmoniously they could promote the peace process. Terpins was also quoted saying that throughout South America, Jews and Palestinians enjoyed a wonderful relationship.

The timing of a meeting between the head of an organization purporting to represent world Jewry and PA Prime Minister Abbas – who refuses to meet with the Israeli Prime Minister – was certainly questionable. But at least one would have expected Lauder to publicly call on Abbas to resume peace negotiations without pre-conditions, demand an end to the venomous anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic incitement being promoted at all levels of Palestinian society under his jurisdiction and challenge his determination to ensure that a future Palestinian State is Judenrein. He might also have protested against the recent State TV broadcast in which the most senior Mufti in the PA (personally appointed by Abbas), called on the faithful to go out and kill Jews in order to expedite the Islamic Resurrection.

It is also utterly incomprehensible how a Jewish spokesman can relate to Palestinian emigrants as a diaspora, implicitly comparing them to Jews who retained their identity for over 2000 years despite enduring persecutions and expulsion from their ancestral homeland. Yet aside from being an utterly bogus analogy, in the context of current demands by Abbas to accept the right of return of millions of Arab refugees and their descendants to Israel, it was simply bizarre.

Does Obama Really Think He Can Micromanage American Jews?

Marty Peretz
The New Republic
22 April '10

There are signs that he thinks he can. Barak Ravid reports in yesterday’s Ha’aretz that a high-level but unnamed U.S. official has complained about American Jews speaking up about how they feel and what they think about U.S. policy towards Jerusalem. I don’t particularly agree with what I’ve discerned as Ravid’s political views. But he is certainly a reliable journalist. He did not make this up.

It’s one thing, however unbecoming, for the Obami to lecture Israel about its capital. Still, truth be told, the U.S. not only is apoplectic about the 180-odd thousands of Jews who live (and have lived) in areas of the city beyond the temporary armistice lines of 1949, it has never recognized anything specifically Israeli in even western Jerusalem. If an American baby is born, for example, in Kiryat Yovel, an old Jewish neighborhood in the “new city” (or the “western sector,” as it used to be called), of Jerusalem, his or her place of birth will be registered by the American consulate not as “Jerusalem, Israel” but just as plain “Jerusalem.” How is that for the U.S. sticking its head in the sand? And, even though the Congress has legislated transferring the ambassadorial mission from shabby Hayarkon Street in Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, several presidents have simply refused.

Look up “U.S. Consulate, Jerusalem.” It is eerie how unresponsive and indifferent to historical realities the site is. It’s almost as if Israel does not exist there at all.

In any case, the churlish American factotum cited above was upset that prominent American Jews had made their views known about Obama’s obvious hostility to Jewish Jerusalem in general. In fact, the president has never, NEVER acknowledged the special role of Jerusalem in Jewish history, in Jewish religion, in the Jewish present. Believe me: this is not an oversight. I wrote about this twice during Passover.

(Read full article)

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Is the Obama Administration Trying to Silence Critics of its Middle East Policy?

Ron Radosh
pajamasmedia.com
21 April '10

As readers of The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal know, last week Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel and World Jewish Congress head Ronald S. Lauder purchased full page ads challenging President Obama’s policies on the Middle East and Israel.

Lauder’s ad appeared on April 15th. “We are concerned,” Lauder began, “about the nuclear ambitions of an Iranian regime that brags about its genocidal intentions against Israel. We are concerned that the Jewish state is being isolated and delegitimized.” He continued:

Our concern grows to alarm as we consider some disturbing questions. Why does the thrust of this Administration’s Middle East rhetoric seem to blame Israel for the lack of movement on peace talks? After all, it is the Palestinians, not Israel, who refuse to negotiate.

Israel has made unprecedented concessions. It has enacted the most far reaching West Bank settlement moratorium in Israeli history.

Israel has publicly declared support for a two-state solution. Conversely, many Palestinians continue their refusal to even acknowledge Israel’s right to exist.

The conflict’s root cause has always been the Palestinian refusal to accept Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people. Every American President who has tried to broker a peace agreement has collided with that Palestinian intransigence, sooner or later. Recall President Clinton’s anguish when his peace proposals were bluntly rejected by the Palestinians in 2000. Settlements were not the key issue then.

They are not the key issue now.

“Appeasement,” Lauder wrote the President, “does not work.” The real threat was not Israeli settlements, but “a nuclear armed Iran.”

(Read full article)

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The Jewish rebellion against Barack Obama

Fresnozionism.org
21 April '10

Shmuel Rosner asks,

What’s with all those new “Jewish ads” against Obama?

I understand the frustration with Obama, but can’t quite see the logic behind the ads. It only raises the stakes and makes Obama less prone let Netanyahu off the hook. An American President can’t lose an internal battle to a foreign leader – and the ads (Lauder, Wiesel) makes this an internal battle.

In addition to the Lauder and Wiesel advertisements, we should include this article by Ed Koch, former New York Mayor. Koch is important because he is a Democrat who strongly supported Obama in 2008; Lauder is a Republican who has been reported to be a possible challenger to NY Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer, while Wiesel’s public persona is apolitical.

So why have high-profile Jews of various political stripes found it necessary to take Obama to task over Mideast policy?

It’s Obama who started the latter day Jewish Wars when he empowered his own personal Jewish Lobby, J Street. Invited to the White House while “right-wing” groups like the Zionist Organization of America were dis-invited, J (Judenrat) Street pumps out propaganda in the form of misleading polls and press releases whose purpose is to give the impression that most American Jews are behind Obama and his policies — especially including his anti-Zionist stance.

The intent is to bolster support for his position among non-Jews — who, after all, are 98% of the population — who reason that if even Jews support Obama’s efforts to forcibly create a Palestinian state, reestablish 1949 borders and divide Jerusalem, then it must be the best thing for the region as a whole, including Israel.

(Read full article)

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