Jewish Fact Check #12: Obama, Brzezinski and Middle East peace plans (UPDATED and CLARIFICATION)

As a reporter in the Jewish press throughout the 2008 presidential campaign, there were many rumors about Barack Obama that I found myself writing about, and debunking -- but none may have been more persistent than the one about Zbigniew Brzezinski being one of his foreign policy advisers. If I was doing "Jewish Fact Checks" back then, it was the kind of thing I probably would have written about.

The charge had a grain of truth undergirding it -- Brzezinski had endorsed Obama and introduced him at a foreign policy speech Obama gave early in the primary campaign. But the Obama campaign, and even Obama himself, insisted that the former Carter national security adviser was no more than a prominent endorser of the candidate, and no role in the campaign or in formulating Obama's foreign policy views.

Which is why I was so surprised and disappointed when I read yesterday's David Ignatius column in the Washington Post suggesting that the administration was thinking about proposing an American peace plan for the Middle East. Whatever the wisdom of such a plan, I was struck by one of the "advisers" pushing such a policy...Zbigniew Brzezinski! As Ignatius writes:

Brent Scowcroft, who served as national security adviser for presidents Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush, spoke up first, according to a senior administration official. He urged Obama to launch a peace initiative based on past areas of agreement; he was followed by Zbigniew Brzezinski, the national security adviser for Jimmy Carter, who described some of the strategic parameters of such a plan.

The New York Times even added that Obama had dropped in on the meeting -- which also included a number of other former national security advisers, although not Condi Rice or Stephen Hadley from the Bush II administration (Colin Powell, who was NSA during Bush I but Secretary of State during W.'s first term, was part of the meeting.)

This is really kind of stunning, when one looks back at the efforts the Obama campaign went to in order to make sure Jewish voters knew that they had nothing to do with Brzezinski and his ideas on the Middle East. And there was good reason for that: Brzezinski is not considered much of a friend of Israel by many pro-Israel voters. Last fall, he even suggested that if Israel sent jets to attack Iran's nuclear program, the U.S. should shoot them down.

Obama surrogates, and even Obama himself, insisted that they had virtually nothing to do with Brzezinski, constantly making this case to Jewish and pro-Israel voters for months. Take this comment from an appearance Obama made before Jewish voters in Ohio in February 2008:

There is a spectrum of views in terms of how the US and Israel should be interacting. It has evolved over time. It means that somebody like Brzezinski who, when he was national security advisor would be considered not outside of the mainstream in terms of his perspective on these issues, is now considered by many in the Jewish Community anathema. I know Brzezinski he's not one of my key advisors. I've had lunch with him once, I've exchanged emails with him maybe 3 times. He came to Iowa to introduce for a speech on Iraq. He and I agree that Iraq was an enormous strategic blunder and that input from him has been useful in assessing Iraq, as well as Pakistan, where actually, traditionally, if you will recall he was considered a hawk. The liberal wing of the Democratic Party was very suspicious of Brzezinski precisely because he was so tough on many of these issues. I do not share his views with respect to Israel. I have said so clearly and unequivocally.

Such a statement didn't stop either Hillary Clinton supporters or Republicans from continuing to spread the charge. In fact, it started to annoy me how much this apparently false information was being spread. Back in March 2008, not long after Clinton adviser Ann Lewis had been quoted saying that Brzezinski was an top Obama foreign policy adviser, I asked her at a panel during the UJC Young Leadership conference why she kept repeating that charge. She responded that she had read the information in the media -- after which Obama adviser Dan Kurtzer replied that Brzezinski wasn't even an adviser to the campaign -- something that seemed to genuinely surprise both Lewis and McCain rep Larry Eagleburger.

Then Republicans, most prominently the Republican Jewish Coalition in ads like this one, continued to parrot the charge all through the general election campaign. And the Jewish press tried to set the record straight, as my former colleague Ron Kampeas did here and here, noting that while Brzezinski did represent the campaign once on a call for Democrats Abroad, he played no role in the campaign.

The Brzezinski stuff even continued after the inauguration -- I noted that Florida Republican leader Adam Hasner had incorrectly repeated it in a March 2009 piece at the American Thinker.

Well, I don't know what was happening a year ago, but, now, after Ignatius' piece, it looks like Hasner has been proven right. No, Brzezinski's not an official member of the administration, but administration officials are openly soliciting and, apparently, taking, his advice -- and then touting it proudly in public. If the RJC wants to run those ads ripping Obama for having Brzezinski as an adviser this November or in 2012, they won't hear any commplaints from me -- because they're now supported by the facts. If one wants to argue that Brzezinski isn't as "anti-Israel" as groups like the RJC claim, that's fine -- but there's no argument that he's involved with the administration in a somewhat serious way.

Do I believe that the Obama campaign advisers -- who are now serving in the administration -- telling me and others that Brzezinski had no role in the campaign were lying or trying to mislead me? No, I don't -- I think they were either telling the truth as it was at the time or at least believed what the candidate was telling them. But do I feel like sort of a sucker for actually defending the campaign against those spreading the Brzezinski rumor when the administration turns around a little more than a year later and brags about getting advice from the guy? I sure do.

CLARIFICATION: I've had a couple complaints about this post, so let me clarify what I was saying. I never said that anyone was untruthful about the Brzezinski issue during the campaign. I never said Brzezinski worked for the administration or was a key adviser to the president. I don't even think there's necessarily anything wrong with the national security adviser bringing former NSA's in to get their points of view on occasion, as was apparently happening here. But if you are going to bring them in, and then have the president drop in, ask for advice and have Scowcroft and Brzezinski outline a Middle East peace plan -- and then leak to the newspapers in an apparent trial balloon that you're seriously considering taking their advice -- how is it wrong to conclude that Brzezinski is advising the president on Middle East issues? That's my point.

Meanwhile, a postscript: Kampeas wrote in one of the articles linked above that the Obama campaign insisted that Obama's views were close to Dennis Ross, not someone like Brzezinski. And while it's unclear how influential Ross is in the administration, it's interesting that while anonymous administration officials are talking positively about Brzezinski, at least one anonymous administration official late last month smeared Ross, telling Laura Rozen of Politico that Ross "seems to be far more sensitive to Netanyahu's coalition politics than to U.S. interests." Quite a change from the campaign, one might argue -- although to be fair, NSC chief of staff Denis McDonough did respond on the record that "such an assertion is as false as it is offensive."

Jewish Fact Check #7: Where Joe Klein proves my point from Jewish Fact Check #6

Wow. When I wrote my blog post earlier this week pointing out that critics of Israel seem to take pride in being called "anti-Semite," even to the point of exaggerating or making up accusations of anti-Semitism, I never dreamed that three days later I would read something that would make my point even better than any of the examples I used in the original post.

Not surprisingly, it comes from Joe Klein, who I also cited as an example in my original post. He wrote a column for Time Magazine which began by recounting Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's speech to the U.S.-Islamic Conference in Doha on Sunday, and her statement that a solution to the blockade of Gaza can only come with a comprehensive settlement to the Israeli-Palestinian issue. Klein writes that's the "wrong answer" and suggests that when he came into office, instead of trying for a comprehensive settlement, President Obama should have tried solving the Gaza crisis first. Klein then argues that the White Hosue needs to "engage" Hamas.

That brought a retort from Commentary's Jonathan Tobin, who calls that a bad idea and says that "what Klein fails to understand is that no matter who sits in the White House, it is not in America’s interest to rescue the killers of Hamas. Rather, it should be our policy to isolate and hopefully oust them from power." Tobin, while criticizing Obama's general foreign policy, even praises the president and Clinton for opposing any engagement with Hamas.

Tobin's post seemed like a fairly standard, relatively innocuous blogosphere post , but it brought an bizarre, almost unhinged response from Klein, in an "update" to an ealrier blog post linking to his column. It has to be read in full to be believed. It begins: "The neocon extremists over at Commentary have wasted no time responding to my column with their usual bile and bullying." He then goes to on identify a couple minor errors in Tobin's piece and claims something is an error that really isn't (he says that Tobin said he blamed Israel for the Gaza situation; in fact, Tobin says Klein blamed Israel for "Obama's acknowledged failure in the Middle East," which was obviously a reference to Klein's line "U.S. envoy George Mitchell's slow-moving effort to start talks tanked because of Israel's unwillingness to stop building illegal settlements on Palestinian land.") And he reiterates some of the points he made in the column

Then Klein writes this:

My suggestions--or their distorted burlesque of my suggestions--are, apparently, what passes for anti-Israel extremism over at Commentary. But anything that doesn't conform to their half-crazed macho crusaderism is seen as either anti-Israel or anti-Semitic. Their constant fury, their slightly-veiled calumnies against the President--and against the very notion of diplomacy--would be laughable if they weren't so dangerous and disgraceful.

Whoa! Anti-Israel? Anti-Semitic? Where'd you get that, Joe? Tobin's piece said your proposal to engage with Hamas was a bad one because it wasn't in America's interest to help out terrorists. Tobin may be right, he may be wrong, but he never said anything about you being "anti-Israel" or "anti-Semitic" anywhere in the piece. He didn't even imply it. He just didn't like your ideas, and didn't like your statement that Israel was at fault for the failure of George Mitchell's efforts. But in your attempt to make yourself out to be some courageous truth-teller, you claim you've been smeared -- when you're the one doing the smearing.

Klein lowers himself even further when he writes that "the barely concealed anti-Arab bigotry so frequently found on the Commentary blog, reveals itself in this sentence: That answer pleased neither the Arabs nor Klein," a sentence which referred to Clinton's answer when asked about Gaza. Klein accurately points out that he was attending a U.S.-Islamic forum in which Arabs were just about half of the delegates. I'm not sure how that mistake is clear and convincing evidence of "anti-Arab bigotry," but it would be a bad mistake on Tobin's part. Except that here's what Klein writes in his column: "Clinton's tough talk on Iran got most of the U.S. headlines, but her position on Gaza was far more important to the Islamic participants at Doha, especially the Arabs."

In other words, Klein specifically said that those at the U.S.-Islamic forum who were most interested, and thus obviously the most disappointed, by Clinton's remarks on Gaza were the Arab delegates. Should Tobin have said Muslims? It would have been better. But in using Arabs, he was only following Klein's lead.

I used to really like Joe Klein as a writer. And I was really impressed about a decade ago when I saw him speak at a local synagogue. It was around the time of the Clinton-Lewinsky affair, and in part of his talk he discussed his view that personal matters were getting way too much attention in politics and destroying Washington. I asked him how he could make this argument when a few years earlier he had written an really interesting article for Newsweek on Bill Clinton (I think it was titled "The Politics of Promiscuity") in which he argued that Bill Clinton as a president was like Bill Clinton in his private life--promiscuous and unable to stick to one woman or one idea. I gained a lot of respect for Klein when he answered, "I was wrong" and that he shouldn't have written that article. But after his most recent attack, I've lost most of that respect. Hopefully, he'll admit he's wrong this time, too.

Jewish Fact Check #5: Obama, Israel and Haiti relief

Despite that old saying, "But is it good for the Jews," sometimes we need to remember that's it's not all about us. That's certainly the case when we talk about aid to post-earthquake Haiti.

I saw this blog post by The New Republic's Marty Peretz entitled "Maybe I'm Getting Paranoid .... About Obama" and thought, "Yes, Marty is getting paranoid about Obama." Basically, Peretz posits that the president was snubbing Israel because the Jewish state was not one of the six countries Obama mentioned in a list of those supplying aid to Haiti in a Jan. 15 speech:

At the airport, help continues to flow in, not just from the United States but from Brazil, Mexico, Canada, France, Colombia, and the Dominican Republic, among others.

Peretz notes that "next to our country, Israel sent the largest contingent of trained rescue workers, doctors, and other medical personnel," and adds that "the Israeli field hospital was the only one on the ground that could perform real surgery," and then argues that the reason Obama didn't mention Israel is because Arab states hadn't made a contribution equivalent to Israel's.

But I decided to not ignore it any longer after the Zionist Organization of America repeated Peretz's claims in a press release Monday entitled "ZOA Critical Of President Obama's Omission Of Israel From Among Countries Helping Haiti." (It's not up on the group's Web site yet--I will link when it appears.) The release also reiterates Peretz's questionable supposition that the omission of Israel somehow had to do with Obama's unwillingness to offend the Arab side in the Middle East peace process.

Let's leave aside the accuracy of that comparison (while maybe not as much as Israel, a bunch of Arab states did in fact send aid, as catalogued here, although apparently the Saudis had to be shamed to contribute $50 million), and just look at a couple important facts here.

First, as this Associated Press article from Jan. 13 notes, by the day after the earthquake, 16 countries had already pledged aid. So realistically, the president couldn't name every country, or it would have been a very boring speech (and by Jan. 15, when Obama gave the speech, the number had surely risen from 16). He did say "among others," after all--it's not like he ever implied that the countries he named were only the ones giving aid. And let's look at who he did name. All except one are immediate neighbors of Haiti, located in either North or South America (Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Colombia and, of course, the Dominican Republic, which is located on the same island). The only other country he names is France, which, of course, has a long history with Haiti. He didn't name the Netherlands, who sent $3 million and a 60 person rescue team, for instance -- or Great Britain or Spain or, for obvious reasons, Cuba.

But the main reason why the suspicion about Obama's motives is unwarranted is this glaring fact: According to the Israeli Foreign Ministry, the Israeli aid team landed in Haiti on the evening of Jan. 15. That's right, around the same time -- or perhaps a couple hours after -- Obama actually gave the speech. So that means that all the truly great work that Israelis did in Haiti -- the work in the field hospital, the rescuse of someone trapped in the rubble more than a week after the quake -- all occurred AFTER the Obama speech which Peretz cites. Sure, Israel had announced that they were sending a field hospital and rescue personnel, but they hadn't actually done anything yet. So citing the great accomplishments of Israel in Haiti and then wondering how Obama overlooked them -- when the only way he could have mentioned them in that Jan. 15 speech is if he had time-traveled to the end of January -- is ridiculous.

In their press release, ZOA unwittingly proves this point by contrasting Obama's remarks with former President Bill Clinton, who was quoted in a Haaretz piece telling Israeli President Shimon Peres, "I don't know what we would have done without the Israeli hospital at Haiti." Of course, the article is from January 29, and Clinton made the remarks the previous day at the Davos economic forum.

So if you want to be upset at Obama, you can criticize him for leading with a settlement freeze in the Middle East and then, when it seemed to backfire, apparently not having a Plan B. You can criticize him for botching health care reform, by spending way too much time talking about how health reform will magically lead to fewer tests and fewer pills, when he should have been talking about real people, and how health reform would mean you won't lose your health insurance when you lose your job and you'll be able to actually get coverage even if you have a pre-existing condition. But don't get mad at him for somehow snubbing Israel in his list of countries that helped Haiti--because it just didn't happen.