Malcolm Hoenlein: Jews 'Very Concerned' About Obama
Sunday, June 14, 2009 6:23 PM
By: Ronald Kessler
NEWSMAX
President Obama's strongest supporters among Jewish leaders are deeply
troubled by his recent Middle East initiatives, and some are questioning
what he really believes, Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the
Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, tells
Newsmax in an exclusive interview.
Though Hoenlein says he is only offering his personal views, the
conference he represents is a political powerhouse that includes 50 major
Jewish groups. Among them are the American Israel Public Affairs Committee
(AIPAC), B'nai B'rith International, the American Jewish Congress, the
American Jewish Committee, the Zionist Organization of America, Hadassah,
and the Anti-Defamation League. Hoenlein has been the professional head of
the conference since 1986, overseeing its day-to-day activities as the
coordinating body for American Jews on issues of concern in the U.S. and
globally.
Jewish leaders "are expressing concern about what was said [in Obama's
Cairo speech]," Hoenlein says. "I've heard it from some of his strongest
supporters. It's expected from his detractors. Even people close to him have
said to us that there were parts of the speech that bothered them."
Obama's speech to a Muslim audience in Cairo in early June was his
second effort early in his administration to re-define America's posture
toward the Arab world. In April, Obama traveled to Ankara, Turkey, to offer
a similar outreach to the Muslim world.
But many in the Jewish community, including some of Obama's most
ardent supporters, are troubled by his comments in the Middle East,
especially his remarks to his Cairo audience. Others are concerned that,
facing a multitude of problems on the domestic front, Obama has traveled
twice to the Middle East without visiting Israel, America's stalwart ally in
the region for more than a half-century.
"There's a lot of questioning going on about what he really believes
and what does he really stand for," Hoenlein says of Obama's outreach.
Reaction to Obama's speech has drawn a range of reaction from many
Jewish leaders. On the right, some have condemned it as a revision of the
long and close relationship between the U.S. and Israel. But many on the
left who backed Obama were also surprised and dismayed over Obama's speech.
Such reactions from major Jewish leaders have largely remained beneath the
surface, exchanged privately among them.
Hoenlein's comments to Newsmax are his first detailed appraisal of
Obama's speech and represent the first time a major Jewish leader has spoken
openly about the erosion of Jewish support for Obama.
According to the exit poll conducted by major press organizations
during the 2008 election, Obama captured overwhelming support from American
Jews, winning 78 percent of their vote. Despite the fact that Republicans
are stronger on national security and the war on terror, Obama also won
support from Jewish leaders who have been champions of Israel's security,
such as the former Democratic mayor of New York, Edward I. Koch. Koch
crossed party lines in 2004 to back George W. Bush.
Reacting to Obama's Cairo speech, Hoenlein tells Newsmax, "I have no
problem with addressing the Muslim world. I'm in fact in favor of outreach,
and we here at the conference have done it for about 12 or 15 years,
visiting Muslim countries in Central Asia and the Middle East. But the
question is, what is the message they get? It's not so much what he says,
but how do they perceive what he says?"
On the one hand, Hoenlein says, "His reference to Israel and the
special relationship being unbreakable is important, and references to
persecution and Holocaust denial were important, and some of his references
to some human rights issues also were important."
But Hoenlein notes the speech included a number of troubling
references and comparisons. He cites the fact that Obama claimed America has
seven million Muslims. That is a figure "Arab propagandists have put out,"
he says. "In fact, they say only six million, when in fact there's no study
that shows even half of that."
In 2007, the Pew Research Center estimated the Muslim American
population at 2.35 million.
Hoenlein is disturbed that Obama did not mention the Jewish people's
ancient connection with the land of Israel.
"There was no reference to the 3,000 years of Jewish connection to
this land," Hoenlein says. "And that is again one of the propaganda lines
that the Arabs have used: that the Jews are interlopers, that the two
temples never existed, that there was never any Jewish history in the land
of Israel. Even Yasser Arafat and others have used that argument because
they're trying to deny the legitimacy of the Jewish state. I don't believe
that was the president's intent, but not making those references I think is
troubling."
Jews have claimed a connection to the land of their forefathers since
1400 B.C. Even after the Roman destruction of the Second Temple in 70 A.D.
and the dispersal of many Jews throughout the Roman Empire, many Jews
continued to reside in Jerusalem through the centuries, surviving various
invasions. An Ottoman census of Jersualem conducted in 1845 showed Jews
outnumbered Muslim Arabs by almost to 2 to 1 and were the dominant ethnic
group in the region.
Hoenlein believes that the most troubling aspect of Obama's comments
in his Cairo speech was his effort to equate the Nazi killing of more than
six million Jews during the Holocaust with Israel's struggle with the
Palestinians over six decades and the suffering caused by the displacement
of the Palestinians.
"There's no comparison between the Holocaust, even if it was an
indirect one, and what happened to Palestinians," Hoenlein declares.
In his speech, President Obama addressed the issue of the Holocaust
head-on, saying "Six million Jews were killed - more than the entire Jewish
population of Israel today."
But he quickly changed the subject, comparing Hitler's genocide of the
Jews to the Palestinian struggle.
"On the other hand," Obama said, as he transitioned from the Holocaust
to the modern Middle East, "it is also undeniable that the Palestinian
people - Muslims and Christians - have suffered in pursuit of a homeland."
Hoenlein doesn't buy Obama's line of reasoning.
"The Palestinian refugee problem, or dislocation as he said, didn't
come about because of the creation of the Jewish state," Hoenlein says. "It
came about because the Arab states declared war on Israel and warned the
Arabs that they would suffer the same fate as the Jews if they didn't get
out. And then they kept them as political pawns."
Obama made no reference to the fact that "the reason the Palestinians
don't have a state is because their leaders rejected every offer for peace,"
Hoenlein says. "Whether it was in 1937 or 1947 or 1967, or later on, up
until Ehud Olmert's offer and Ehud Barak's offer, they rejected everything,
even when they were getting virtually everything they had asked for."
That is because, "The problem really is not what Israel does, it's
that Israel is," Hoenlein says. "And they're not ready to accept the
existence of the Jewish state."
In discussing the Palestinian refugee problem, Obama failed to mention
the other refugee problem involving nearly a million Jews, Hoenlein says. At
the time of the creation of the modern state of Israel in 1948, Jews
populated all of the major Arab cities from Baghdad in the East to
Casablanca in the West.
Hoenlein notes that after modern Israel saw its rebirth, Jews "were
driven out of Arab countries penniless, and some of their families had lived
there for a thousand years, and yet there was no reference to them." He
adds, "This is not a question of tit for tat. It's a question of the
realities that are communicated to a vast audience in the Arab Muslim
world."
As troubling as Obama's references to Israel and the Palestinians
were, Hoenlein found the president's failure to mention the radical regime
now running Tehran equally disturbing.
"What concerned us, concerned many people, was the message to Iran
that we didn't hear," Hoenlein says.
Iran, controlled by powerful Shia Mullahs, is set to acquire a nuclear
device. Many Sunni Muslim states, including Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain,
Egypt, and Morocco, are concerned about this prospect.
Hoenlein says these Arab states also wanted to hear "an absolute
assurance about the U.S. commitment not to allow Iran to be nuclear, not to
allow it to continue to support terrorism, not to allow it to continue being
the major state sponsor of terror around the world."
Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who declared himself the winner
in the election in Iran this past weekend, has repeatedly called for Israel's
destruction. In 2005, he declared that he is a devout follower of Iran's
late ruler Ayatollah Khomeini. He has vowed to fulfill the Ayatollah's dream
that the "occupying regime [Israel] must be wiped off the map."
Asked if he sees Obama's perceived tilt toward the Palestinians as
reflecting some of the views of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Jr., Obama's
former pastor who accused Israel of "ethnic cleansing" and "terrorism,"
Hoenlein says American Jews are concerned about Obama's policies today.
"That issue has been discussed and debated, and I don't know that it's
a relevant concern for right now," he says. "I do feel strongly about what
the [current] policy will be."
Hoenlein says flatly, "People [Jews] are genuinely very
concerned...about President Obama."
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