Steve Rosen Claims Victory
Phil Weiss comes up with some great stuff.
This is something else.
It's nice that Daniel Pipes is such a sweet boss that he touts his employee's success. But Rosen certainly hasn't been shy about his role.
Is this the weirdest thing ever? One, Steve Rosen -- that Steve Rosen -- single-handedly brought down an Obama appointment to an intelligence post over the issue of devotion to the Likud party. Two,
Actually, one is enough.
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Props to Keith Ellison: "Where you find a devoted constituency" in a democracy, you will find action. There is a "strong, active group willing to lobby for Israeli security... In my opinion what we lack, is a constituency for peace."
Israeli interests and a just peace are not mutually exclusive.
March 11, 2009 4:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
Anybody know of any tips for regaining sovereignty from under Israeli occupation?
March 11, 2009 4:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
Are they always going to maintain control of our airspace and borders in any future deal?
Is State Department off the table because it's been a fact on the ground for so long?
March 11, 2009 4:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
Maybe we should start with a roadmap, to avoid uncomfortable consideration of any serious Israeli concessions in the future. There will always be some threat that keeps emancipation just out of reach, for our own good of course.
March 11, 2009 4:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
Bill - PLEASE say something serious, so I can refute it.
It's hard for me when you go into your joke-making mode.
March 12, 2009 5:55 AM | Reply | Permalink
Victories are hard to find in prison.
March 11, 2009 4:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
Steve Rosen? Headed to prison? Nope. That's not the way of the world, unless we change it. If, at this point, we can.
March 11, 2009 5:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
The poorer regular people get, the less money they can contribute to politicians. We're in a downward spiral where we are increasingly dictated to by bankers and warriors for Israel.
Our representatives just move their lips and raise their hands when the pre-written legislation is brought in.
March 11, 2009 5:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
Dude, I think you're overdue for your meds.
March 11, 2009 5:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
MJ - In fairness, if you (in your blog) single-handedly started a movement to oppose a Bush appointee that you disliked, and then the appointment was withdrawn, wouldn't you crow about it just as much?
Anyway, it was someone else touting Rosen's accomplishment in the piece you linked - If your headline is about Steve Rosen claiming victory, you should try to find a citation that actually supports it!
March 11, 2009 5:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
If I'm ever indicted for anything (let alone espionage) I promise you, I won't crow about anything.
Rosen wrote the Pipes press release, not Pipes. So it is him bragging on himself.
March 11, 2009 8:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
As progressives often stress, indictment is not the same thing as conviction.
Also, aren't suggestions being made (by the Washington Post, no less) that the charges are weak, and are based on an archaic law that generally has not been used, and that technically could ensnare many whistleblowers?
Sounds like the kind of law progressives should opppose.
March 11, 2009 8:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
As my grandma would say, indictment for espionage is not the same as conviction, but it is no great honor either.
In fact, very few of my friends have been indicted for espionage.
Very very few.
March 11, 2009 9:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
You're not related to Julius and Ethel?
[just joking!!!]
I think we can agree that any sort of indictment is not something to be pround of, certainly not espionage.
Still, the individual in question can regret his behavior and continue to live a productive life. Look at Chuck Colson, who has devoted his post-Watergate life to helping others. I don't think you would suggest that what Rosen may have done is worse than what Colson did.
Also, while I haven't followed this very closely, it looks to me like Rosen, a private citizen, received leaked information from someone in government. Isn't this what reporters and newspapers do every day? [Like when the NYT received and published the info about the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program developed by the Bush administration.] I can see indicting the leaker; but indicting the leakee?!? Isn't that a highly slippery slope for progressives to be going down? By the same logic, should Sulzberger be indicted? Or is it OK to publish leaked classified info in a liberal newspaper, but not OK to give it to an ally?
I hope you can devote some time to giving us some thoughtful commentary on this issue, as you have certainly spent a lot of time criticizing Rosen.
March 12, 2009 5:17 AM | Reply | Permalink
Someone should contact those 87 Chinese dissidents and let them know that they are being used by the Israeli lobby. They should know explicitly that they are entering an internal American political fight.They might want to think real hard how their struggle of an open and democratic Chinese society is compatible with Israeli suppression of the Palestinian people.
March 11, 2009 6:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
Maybe it's consistent since Israel is a democracy? (the only one in the Middle East?)
March 11, 2009 8:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
Israel is the only democracy in the ME?
This nutty slogan is branded about continuously. It is wrong. Lebanon and the PA have free elections. Israel does not. Certainly Jews who live in the West Bank can vote for their governining authority, but the native Christians and Moslems there do not. Jews can buy and lease property anywhere within Israel but their Arab residents are excluded from living in the most desirable properties (as enforced by the Jewish National Fund that controls much of that property). There are also the dozens if not hundreds of bureucratic rules that prevent Palestinians from travelling and building or improving their properties in the West bank. So many other restrictions to a free life for the Arab inhabitants.
March 11, 2009 10:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
That's a lovely theory.
Can you then explain to me why, in the 2008 Democracy Index listings of the prestigious Economist magazine (which is by no means pro-Israel) Israel is listed among the democracies (albeit the flawed democracies), while the Palestinian Authority and Lebanon are listed among the "Hybrid Regimes"?
See link below.
http://a330.g.akamai.net/7/330/25828/20081021185552/graphics.eiu.com/PDF/Democracy%20Index%202008.pdf
Do you know something the Economist doesn't? I suspect you've never been in the countries you're writing about, as your views have little connection with the reality on the ground. Anyway, by finding only those two extremely meager examples of pseudo democracies in the entire Arab Middle East, you have supported my point.
Israel is a democracy, has always been, will continue to be. It faces extremely difficult issues which we are lucky not to face here in the US, and has had to balance the safety of its citizens against individual rights is ways that the US has also done when pressed, for example in the Civil War and in the current war against eliminationist terror. With all that, it has a free press and free elections, and protects the rights of its Arab citizens in a way that no Arab country has ever protected the rights of its Jewish citizens (assuming Jews could even be citizens, which was rare).
In an Arab country, as we have repeatedly seen, a newspaper editor that prints articles critical of the reigning religion finds himself dead. In Israel, anti-religious newspapers thrive, as do all other points of view. The worst penalty is being vigorously disagreed with.
Progressives should be hailing Israel's accomplishments and finding means of constructive support, not constantly unthinkingly finding fault, as is common on the left blogosphere.
March 12, 2009 5:46 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for the information. I had this crazy notion that Israel actually just finished using white phosphorus munitions on civilians.
Good thing the "only" democracy in the ME is showing us how a decent country behaves.
March 12, 2009 3:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
TPC - Could we discuss 'democracy', please? Starting with what we think it means - my definition is that it describes a system by which citizens of a polity choose others to represent them in a governing body comprised of those chosen.
We, the people.
TPM is new to me; I just found the Dashboard and am excited by the utility of the format. It resolves all sorts of issues with organization!
Comments such as "I'm thinking about my response" can be posted without feeling like an interruption to the conversation of others - and such a comment is pending for those comments to which I've not yet responded - few, if any, failed to evoke a response I consider worthy to make, but which otherwise would have gotten left behind.
TPM also restores a personal level of discourse to commenting that is helpful, reducing the feeling of anonymity in which one may pop off a response unproductive for further interaction, because the other is an unknown voice, without the reality that provides greater context.
Great!
March 15, 2009 12:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
NEWS FLASH: "Ex-AIPACer Rosen suing former employer for defamation" by Ron Kampeas, JTA
SOURCE - http://jta.org/news/article/2009/03/11/1003637/suspect-in-classified-information-case-sues-aipac-for-defamaton
March 11, 2009 8:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
Listen to Chas Freeman on NPR about withdrawing his name.
NPR LINK
March 11, 2009 11:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for this informative update. It is useful to know who and what America is up against in the struggle to liberate its Mideast policy. Nor, despite the incurably rude crowing of professional hypocrites and fearmongers, does this episode represent any significant setback in that struggle. The position in question has little or no power over U.S. foreign.
March 12, 2009 8:08 AM | Reply | Permalink
PTrouble: "what America is up against in the struggle to liberate its Mideast policy"
Translation: What one group of Americans is up against in the struggle to win control of its Mideast policy from another group of Americans (which happens to be larger).
Saying, as you have done, that your fellow citizens that you disagree with are not American is the worst sort of McCarthyism - not worthy of airing on a progressive message board.
March 12, 2009 8:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
Pro-Con, Mr. Rosenberg, of course, will decide himself what is worthy of being aired. Carelessly and falsely accusing another commenter of McCarthyism is skirting the edges of worthiness, for sure.
As to the substance within your comment, I think you may discover in coming months that the two groups of Americans to which you refer are much less limited and fixed than you appear to assume. Recent Israeli "policy" towards the Palestinians is plainly inhumane, unworkable and the antithesis of progressive, even if educated Americans may be slower to realize this than most other educated people around the world.
The "group" you strive to defend was stridently on the wrong and unprogressive side of the Iraq invasion, of Guantanamo, of the support for Olmert's blunderous Lebanon adventure and many other such issues, resorting readily and often to the arrogance, habitual distortion and rude shrillness seen again in the Freeman case. You would certainly get more respect here with a less misleading moniker.
March 12, 2009 1:46 PM | Reply | Permalink