Washington, the world's newest Third World capital

Watching the spectacle of TV legend Andrea Mitchell being ignored and ushered out of the seventh-floor parlor of the State Department as she tried to ask questions of our notoriously reclusive Secretary of State and his visiting counterpart, I was reminded of a visit to the President of Azerbaijan nearly 20 years ago.

Our audience with the late Haidar Aiyev was at the Presidential Palace in Baku, overlooking the

As a non-journalist, I was welcome to remain.

sparkling Caspian Sea. To enter the chamber, we had to navigate two dozen reporters, photographers, and TV cameras, recording the whole scene.

We were seated at one long table across from the President's table, with flowers in between. As the junior member of our delegation, I was a few places over from center, next to the U.S. Embassy's political officer. The press were strung out behind us and around the edge of the tables.

Aliyev and our delegation chair exchanged brief greetings and pleasantries. Then, before we got down to the real business, President Aliyev announced, "I would now like thank the members of the press."

As these journalists all raced for the exit, I leaned over and whispered to my new Embassy pal, "In other words, last one out gets arrested." He took umbrage, responding, "The President was merely expressing appreciation!" By the way, such a response can be one symptom of "client-itis", when a foreign service officer identifies excessively with the interests and norms of his or her host country.

Back to the present... This week, for the first time since the end of the Obama administration, the U.S. State Department finally resumed daily press briefings. But the irony of an American Secretary of State whose authoritarian counterparts -- including Russia's foreign minister -- are more accessible to the press than he is boggles the mind.

All those years ago, with the Cold War memories still fresh in my mind and still visible on the faces of the leaders and diplomats across the former Soviet Union, their degree of state control over information was understandable. That comparable optics and limitations are now imposed in Washington, DC, is both shameful and sobering.

Adding intellectual insult to physical carnage

There are no new debates and no new lessons to be learned from yesterday's wrenching, horrific, disgusting and barbaric attack in Jerusalem. I stopped being surprised a long time ago. The problems and the solutions are neither easy nor mysterious, and suggesting otherwise adds to the difficulty. May the families and the entire community find the comfort and courage to move forward in every way.

In the car yesterday morning, I listened to BBC's coverage of the synagogue attack, via our much-maligned public radio network, including an extensive chillingly vivid account by an Israeli first responder who literally jumped right into the unfolding carnage. I found his account, and the entire BBC report, to be deeply meaningful and illuminating, and couldn't have imagined a more appropriate or objectively sympathetic frame for the immediate aftermath of such an unthinkable tragedy. 

Right or left, the wasted time and effort pillorying the news media (and trumpeting every graveyard-shift breaking-news error) for supposedly biased coverage is a distraction from the real tragedy and from the real dilemmas facing Israel and the region, and the Jewish people. "All hands on deck" is a call for discipline, ingenuity and clarity of purpose, not recitations of talking points and easy answers, running around in circles, or blaming each other as our ship nears the reef.

The persistent effort to discredit open discussion and dissent within the Jewish community is beyond wasteful -- it's destructive to the very mission and purpose of the sacred enterprise. It advances the very goal of such awful but strategically irrelevant attacks, which -- beyond provoking the sort of retaliation which further alienates Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza as well as in Israel proper -- is to break the Jewish spirit and open discourse. Those who respond to external attacks by attacking other Jews are no less "self-hating" than those whose Judaism they impugn.

As I mentioned above, this is all a play that's been repeated too many times, and despite a few heroic attempts we have yet to see either progress or a dramatic shift from the same thinking. 

My Tony Auth original

As I learned this evening from veteran foreign affairs columnist Trudy Rubin, sadly the legendary Philadelphia Inquirer cartoonist Tony Auth has passed away. Growing up in Philly, I regularly saw and was impacted by his work (as by Trudy's!).

Some years back, I had occasion to meet Mr. Auth, at shiva for the late and beloved Chaim Potok with whom he had collaborated. When he introduced himself and offered his business card, I had two immediate responses: first awe, and then surprise that such a visual person could have a card with only text on it. He grabbed it back from me, pulled out a pen to doodle a few lines, and handed it back -- self-portrait complete.

No doubt his trademark selfie was widely repeated, but I don't know how many of his biz cards merited the same logo. I'm glad I asked.

Rest in peace.

The inconvenient Beilis centennial

One hundred years ago this week, a jury in Kiev acquitted Mendel Beilis of ritual murder in the death of a Christian child. Half the jurors were literally card-carrying anti-Semites, members of the infamous Black Hundreds, and still they could find no plausible evidence to convict this Jewish man. The trial was followed around the world, and 20 years later, 4,000 people attended Beilis' funeral in New York.

Jay Beilis addressing diplomats and Ukrainian officials

Last month in Kyiv (note the Ukrainian spelling), we commemorated the Beilis centennial within the context of fighting anti-Semitism, with full participation by the Government of Ukraine and many other countries. As a consultant to the Ukrainian Jewish Committee, I had the opportunity to help facilitate. As Jay Beilis pointed out to us, countless thousands of Jews are alive today because his grandfather refused to confess to a crime he didn't commit, and the highly publicized trial inspired a new mass emigration of Jews from Eastern Europe years before the Holocaust, and before the mass-murder at Babi Yar, which occurred just the other side of town from our conference.

I believe the fact that neither Israel nor the United States is hosting any major event for this centennial reflects our own politics and mythology. In Israel, they already have the earlier Dreyfus Affair and Theodor Herzl narrative. In the States, the Jewish community is largely defined (and self-identified) as a post-Holocaust community -- even though most of us are descended from pre-War arrivals. And if there's a centennial to mark here, it will be the Leo Frank trial, which ended in the lynching of an Atlanta Jewish community leader and is popularly linked to the founding of the legendary Anti-Defamation League (which was also among the cosponsors of the Kyiv conference).

Ironically, U.S. officials were precluded from participating in the Kyiv conference due to the federal government shutdown. Even The Forward, whose Yiddish-language forerunner The Forverts at the time promoted Beilis as the trial of the century, was unavailable to participate in or report on the Kyiv commemoration. 

As a culture, we choose our heroes or they are chosen for us, and then we choose or invent new heroes when it's convenient. This may be something America and Israel have in common, as new (or renewed) societies.

At least the record has been honored where it was set. 

Benghazi worse than Watergate? GOP would know.

A terrible series of events transpired last month in Benghazi, Libya. As we all know, the U.S. Ambassador and three other U.S. personnel were killed in an organized, deliberate attack on the Consulate there.

In the days following the attack,  many questions and allegations were launched against the White House, largely by the increasingly right-wing Republican House of Representatives back in Washington and its media ally, Fox News. Why didn't President Obama immediately label the incident as a terrorist attack? Why did the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations initially suggest the Benghazi attack was connected to an anti-U.S. protest march when -- as we eventually learned -- there was no protest, only the stand-alone attack? Why did the State Department not supply more security forces as had been requested by post? And so on.

While it took days for the GOP's political and media establishment to fully gear up in this very timely cause, Governor Mitt Romney was framing Benghazi as an indictment against the entire foreign policy of President Barack Obama, even as recovery operations were still underway. He was definitely ahead of the curve on using this as a political weapon.

Ironically, the Benghazi attack -- which cost us the lives of four brave Americans -- pales in comparison to unspeakably catastrophic tragedies like the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington (2,800+ dead); the 2005 Hurricane Katrina (1,800+ dead); Operation Iraqi Freedom (nearly 4,500 U.S. soldiers dead). Each of these death tolls can be in large or small part attributed to incompetent and/or ideologically forced decision-making by President George W. Bush and his advisers. And, by the way, banging the war drums and beating an apologetic retreat whenever necessary has been none other than Fox News. Yet in the years that have followed, almost no one has faced any official or political consequences for any of these failures (unless receiving a Presidential Medal of Freedom counts).

And now, Fox News' own Brit Hume is feeling righteous enough to point out that "it has fallen to this news organization, Fox News, and a couple of others to do all the heaving lifting" on exposing the as yet unproven allegations of Benghazi wrongdoing and cover-up by the Obama administration.

There are definitely important lessons to be learned and applied going forward, and possibly careers to be ended. And it is never too late to start holding our government leaders accountable on national security. But if Republican politicians and journalists are going to lead the way on this, it would be nice of them to at least acknowledge the novelty, rather than acting like turning four deaths into Obama's Watergate -- or even WORSE than Watergate (and maybe Vietnam, too?) -- is not transparently political and contrived.

Piling on 60 Minutes beats Yom Ha'atzmaut

Here's a sad consideration on the eve of Yom Ha'atzmaut, Israeli Independence Day: Hasbara (Israel advocacy) is beginning to contradict the business plan for American Jewry and for Aliyah (immigration to Israel). American Jewry's calculated over-reaction to last Sunday's "60 Minutes" story -- following on Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren's own MIS-calculated over-reaction -- is just the latest example. (I posted the interview clip yesterday, along with my own readout).

About "60 Minutes": The security barrier that now runs along the West Bank may be both effective and justified, and relatively benign for the barbarous Middle East, but its negative impact on Palestinian daily life is unmistakable. The demographic shifts among Christian communities in the West Bank and Jerusalem are complex and yet equally unmistakable.

My guess is, had Ambassador Oren known that reporter Bob Simon was going to catch him out, he might have prepared more carefully for the "60 Minutes" interview. But it was just one network show, airing the same night HBO was premiering "Veep" and AMC unleashed yet another gripping episode of "Mad Men". In other words, it's a garden-variety negative story about Israel that can be pushed down the Google ladder by a whole slew of good news, and also by whatever other bad news inevitably comes our way.

This week offered a welcome opportunity to boost Israel. And yet, rather than focusing on the infinite range of positive Israel stories, American Jewish organizations have responded by doubling down on Ambassador Oren's stumbling block. 

Rather than trying to inspire confidence and move beyond the latest inevitable "bad" press, our Jewish establishment has chosen to inspire fear and resentment -- calling for a full frontal assault on CBS News. The premise seems to be that 60 Minutes needs to be censured, so that the next time Ambassador Oren won't even have to call CBS management -- they'll already be so scared, as will other media outlets -- that they won't dare to broadcast such an unfair story.

There are at least three problems with this approach. First, it won't work. Second, it will backfire by drawing further attention to the premise of the story -- that the Jewish State is causing the decline of Christians in the birthplace of Christianity. Third, galvanizing American Jewry behind such a cause will reinforce the siege mentality in our community, and bolster those who maintain that Israel's biggest problem is bad press. 

And here's a bonus question: Is anti-media frenzy all just to defend beleaguered Israel from unfair attack, or is it also a way to fill an otherwise boring public agenda? 

Telling young Jews that "60 Minutes" is the enemy seems like a bad way to encourage them to move to Israel.  If the goal of the Aliyah movement is to bring in new Israelis who otherwise aren't considering Aliyah -- who aren't already committed Zionists -- it might help to actually improve political conditions on the ground and demonstrate there's transparency and openness to criticism here in the States -- both fair and otherwise. 

But blaming CBS News? As we say on Twitter, #goodluckwiththat.

60 Minutes slaps Israel's ambassador? Not news to me.

In case you missed the original broadcast (I certainly did), here is the link to the 60 Minutes feature on the challenges facing Christians in the West Bank.

Yes, the security barrier along the West Bank, however justified (60 Minutes says it's reduced terrorist attacks by 90 percent), does not help the image of the State of Israel. Yes, the Ambassador of Israel probably over-reacted to the story by complaining preemptively to CBS management. Yes, Ambassador Oren was ambushed/manipulated by Bob Simon, since he obviously didn't expect that his phone call would become a subject of the interview.

Yes, Israeli policies are contributing and possibly primarily responsible for the climate in which the Palestinian Christian population is declining in the West Bank. And yes, the Ambassador has a fair point, that focusing on the relatively benign plight of Christians in Jerusalem and the West Bank now -- at the very moment when other Christians are being violently and systematically persecuted (i.e, killed) in across the Middle East -- carries with it a certain absurdity. And no, there was seemingly no effort by 60 Minutes to track down some of the emigre Christians to find out directly why they left and to which destinations.

And yes, Bob Simon obviously enjoys his job (and displaying the label on his Hermes tie).

Netanyahu forfeits to New York Times - brilliant?

The Prime Minister of Israel has surrendered the debate on Israel. Amazingly, his senior adviser responded to a New York Times request for an op-ed by Prime Minister Netanyahu with a long explanation of why he was refusing. As usual, faithful American Jews will be expected to cheer this bit of audacity and be fortified by it, but the real target audience -- those Jews and non-Jews who still need to be convinced of the justice of Israel's cause (at least as the Prime Minister sees it) -- will not even miss it, because it wasn't submitted in the first place.

No matter that the latest Israeli response could have easily formed the basis for a powerful opinion piece making the case that one of the world's -- and America's -- most prominent newspapers (the "newspaper of record," as even the Prime Minister's Office refers to it) is in fact promoting anti-Israel bias.

According to the Israeli missive, the final straw was a distorted and dishonest op-ed published in the Times by Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas. Just as Israel effectively withdrew from UNESCO as soon as Palestine was admitted, Israel has now withdrawn from The New York Times because the world is unfair to Israel. Boo-hoo.

For all the talk about engaging the American public to make Israel's case, if the Prime Minister is either too proud or afraid to even publish an op-ed in The New York Times, then all the complaints about Israel's bad PR, and the need to spend countless millions on positive "hasbara" outreach, are pointless.

My 9/11

A beautiful Tuesday morning, so I took my time walking to the office, in the old B'nai B'rith Building on Rhode Island Avenue, barely a ten-minute walk from the White House. As I approached the entrance, a mid-level colleague was rushing out of the building, talking like the world was ending. Planes had hit the World Trade Center, and other wild tales, and she was fleeing back to the Maryland suburbs.

I went upstairs to my office, got online and turned on the TV. Wow. When I saw that TWO planes had crashed into the World Trade Center, I instinctively listened for the sound of fighter jets over Washington, DC, since clearly the nation's capital would be a target. But nothing outside.

I called a few of our partners in Russia and Ukraine, to make sure those Jewish communities were not affected, and to let them know we were still available to them.

After some minutes, the wife of another colleague called looking for him, and she wanted to know why I was still even in the building. She said Jewish buildings were obvious targets. I replied, "I wouldn't worry. The Jewish buildings are the soft targets. They got the World Trade Center, and the Pentagon, they may be after the Capitol and the State Department for all I know. And NOW you think they're going to hit the B'nai B'rith Building..?"

If a tabloid falls in a (Norwegian) forest...

I'm not going to compare ANYONE to the Hitler Youth. But if anyone deserves what's coming to them, it isn't the Norwegians -- we should support them in their collective and personal grief. Whether they support Israel or not, whether they're too friendly with The Muslims or not... #gimmeabreak.

No, if anyone deserves what they're getting, it's Team Murdoch. The phone-hacking of murder victims and the families of fallen heroes was an outgrowth of the Murdoch empire's objectification of humanity, and the idea that salacious details are a public commodity to be traded for fun and profit. The tragi-comic collapse of Rupert Murdoch's media enterprise is what consoles me as I watch the pathetic clips of FoxNews (I can't stomach watching their shows in full) and its alumni trashing Norway and Europe and liberals and Muslims and so many other presumed threats to civilization.

It's nice that the Murdoch media outlets have stood up for Israel along the way, and it's disappointing that so many Norwegians have fallen short on Israel (but not to the point of full-blown anti-Semitism). Yet, all this seems irrelevant to either the predicament in which the Murdochs have landed themselves or the horrible tragedy visited upon the Norwegians, who at the end of the day are fundamentally decent people -- politics and Jewish grievances aside. Murdoch has taken great pride and power by diminishing the value and dignity of human life, and I bear him neither anger nor pity. Just desserts.

"News" media convicts, celebrates, repeat.

I'm baack.. and apparently I've missed little.

I watch The Daily Show and follow the news online and in print, but until this week I knew nothing about Casey Anthony or Kim Kardashian (except for the Saturday Night Live "Kardashian" skits). I also don't think my cell phone was ever hacked by News of the World. Fresh back from my vacation, I finally Google-d both ladies and found out the gory details of Casey's notoriety and Kim's celebrity.

I felt the urge to check out the alleged killer Mom because the jury had just acquitted her, and I felt almost guilty (almost) that the story had been dragging on for three years while I skated past it all in blissful ignorance. It is definitely a horrible tale for anyone to absorb, let alone a parent of young children. However, while I do not resent the accused having competent counsel, it is unpleasant to see photos of otherwise ordinary people arriving in court with a retinue of lawyers, advisors and consultants to rival a G-20 leader, and subject to dozens of TV cameras and round-the-clock coverage on cable "news" shows -- only because such people are on trial for heinous crimes. And then a jury has the hutzpah not to convict, which gives license to someone ironically named Nancy Grace...

Kim Kardashian seems like a nice enough person, and her fame and fortune make a cute caricature of our media "culture". The fact that both Casey and Kim seem to be so much in the "news" is a neat reflection of the sick joke that it's all about the hype and melodrama, with very little redeeming information we really need to know. And "News of the World" is a poster child for this sick and sickening industry that used to parallel and now overwhelms serious journalism. Suffice it to say, the British Empire is about to lose one good-for-nothing gossip rag (or Google it).

A criminal case such as the one involving former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn is significant because of the prior status of the suspect, and specifically his potential to be the next President of France. Some cases involve police officers abusing their responsibilities, or others breaking the public trust. Don't get me wrong, the Casey Anthony trial should have been a news story, but it should never have been a regular prime-time show. Thank goodness for DVR!

Why not caring about peace may be good for Israel

A few months, ago, many pro-Israel voices were raised against Time Magazine for its cover story, "Why Israel Doesn't Care About Peace." How was this article anti-Israel? How did it hurt Israel? 


In fact, it raised the bar for what Americans, Europeans and ultimately Palestinians might feel they need to offer in exchange for a deal worthy of Israel's interest. If the perception is that Israelis don't feel any urgency about peace, doesn't this strengthen the bargaining position of any Israeli government?

Given their own public and private skepticism, why should Israelis expect the media to look the other way? These days, Time may not represent the highest class of journalism, but for anyone who's been in Israel lately, they seem to have gotten this story right. Israelis are moving on with their lives and reaching new milestones every day.


With the U.S. offer now being finalized to secure a 90-day -- non-renewable -- Israeli settlement freeze, including a $3 billion F-35 deal, perhaps the Israeli Government owes Time a fat commission.