M.J. Rosenberg pointed out in his latest post the remarkable (in the dumb way) nature of a statement made by Hillary Clinton’s chosen surrogate Ann Lewis, at a conference of the United Jewish Communities young leadership, yesterday in Washington D.C.  To recap, here is the quote:  “The role of the president of the United States is to support the decisions that are made by the people of Israel. “ MJ suggests that perhaps the role of the President of the United States is to implement the decisions made by the American people.  I’m going to briefly address the event at which Lewis spoke, as reported (poorly according to sources I have spoken to) by Dana Milbank in the WP in a moment, before the bulk of this post actually looks at the political choices currently faced by Israelis—but lost given other news here, a scandal involving Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu.

Hillary’s chosen person for this Jewish audience, Ann Lewis, clearly has an impressive record—she has worked at the White House, the DNC, chaired the US government working-group for the Women 2000 Beijing conference, and has for years directed Hillary Clinton’s political PAC.  But foreign policy or Israel expert she ain’t.  In fact a basic Google search suggests that Ann Lewis’s major involvement with Israel revolves around promoting accusations against Barack Obama on the subject.  Lewis was keen to promote the factual error of Zbigniew Brzezinski being Obama’s chief foreign policy adviser and has apparently fed into some of the less savory hate campaigns in the Jewish community against Obama.  For this she was roundly criticized by two of the Obama supporters with the most sterling of records in the Jewish community, Rep. Robert Wexler (D-FL) and former Congressman Mel Levine, both of whom have a long and quite sophisticated record of involvement on Israel issues. 

The Obama campaign’s chosen person at that UJC event was someone with a little more Israel and Middle East credibility in the bank than Ann Lewis—Daniel C. Kurtzer, the former U.S. ambassador to both Israel and Egypt.  Dana Milbank seemed to display a real lack of knowledge on these issues in his WP piece.  Kurtzer—for most of his career at the State Department working Middle East issues, is tremendously respected in the region and is now Professor in Middle East Policy Studies at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton, and was both Dean of Yeshiva College and Commissioner of the Israeli Baseball League to boot.  I personally remember how taken I was when working for a leading Israeli politician and visiting then Ambassador Kurtzer in Cairo to discover that he had a specially koshered-kitchen at the American ambassadorial residence.  Kurtzer’s Israel credentials stretch not a small distance beyond being deployed for election smear campaigns. 

The third participant in this surrogates’ debate was Lawrence Eagleburger on behalf of Senator McCain.  According to reports, it seems that this was another example of the Clinton and McCain campaigns acting as a tag-team against Obama.  In that respect Eagleburger and Lewis both seemed to pander to an imaginary Israeli interest far removed from the realities of the Middle East in which Israel actually exists.  Eagleburger, for instance, apparently took great pride in stating the Arizona Senator’s opposition to talking with Syria just as yet more reports are emerging from Jerusalem of how unhelpful and obstructive the Israelis perceive this policy to be. 

Anyway, what of that Lewis quote?  What of the political choices facing the chosen people that Ann’s candidate would be so keen on supporting? Well actually, this a rather interesting time to check the pulse of the menu of political leaders between whom me and my fellow Israeli citizens can choose.  Here’s why:  this weekend a new scandal broke in Israel involving opposition leader and former Prime Minister Likud MK Bejamin Netanyahu.  Raviv Druker of Channel 10 News exposed the hotel bill of a trip to London made by Mr. and Mrs. Netanyahu in the summer of 2006, during the Lebanon War.  While this visit was ostensibly to improve Israel’s PR, during a six-day stay Netanyahu managed to clock up 131,000 Shekels (or $38,000) in expenditures including a $6,000 restaurant and bar tab, a $3,000 theatre tally, and a $800 dollars at a hair salon (John Edwards take note that this was Mrs., not Mr. Netanyahu’s hair care). 

Ok—so Bibi was living it up while the country was at war.  Doesn’t look great, but not a hanging offense.  The story became more problematic for Netanyahu however, when details emerged that the visit had not been approved by the Parliamentary Ethics Committee, and had been paid for by a private individual—a fact that is likely to lead to a criminal investigation.  Suddenly the old Bibi was back in focus—the shady dealer, the hedonist, the man of poor judgment calls.  Playing on the Likud leader’s name, and the Hebrew word for one who pursues a decadent lifestyle (Nehentan), a new word entered the Hebrew vocabulary—‘Nehentanyahu’.

Of course Netanyahu’s two current competitors for the nation’s future leadership, Kadima head Ehud Olmert and Labor chief Ehud Barak, are hardly known for their puritanical lifestyles, and both have their own histories of police investigations. 

In addition, Ehud Barak is positioning himself as almost indistinguishable from the Likud leader on peace and security issues.  This week, Barak even went so far as to skip out on the first trilateral meeting between the new U.S. Roadmap monitor envoy General Fraser and the Palestinian Prime Minister.  Barak has made himself an obstacle to taking action to ease the West Bank closure and he has acted to undermine the prospects of a cease-fire in Gaza.  The political fall-out from the latest Netanyahu scandal is unlikely to lead to a waive of support for Barak or Olmert, but rather to deepen the despair that Israelis feel towards today’s crop of party-leaders.  In this gloomy picture, the resilience of Ehud Olmert should not be underestimated and is probably rather a good thing. 

So, Ms. Lewis, those are the choices we Israelis face, and that you are so keen to place your candidate in the hands of. Ann Lewis’s script at yesterday’s event sounded less like the representative of a supposedly serious politician and more like the caricatures of the candidates that were on display in this weekend’s edition of Israel’s most popular TV comedy show—Eretz Nehedarat (a wonderful country).  On that show characters playing Obama and Clinton found themselves on a spoof game show in which Netanyahu was quizmaster. Here was one of the questions:  As Israeli Prime Minister, I (Netanyahu) go on a frantic spree of settlement expansion.  As American President do you: a) condemn this latest violation of promises made to freeze settlements, or b) buy an apartment in the new settlement of ‘fanatic heights’.

No prizes for guessing which one was the correct answer.