Stop Me Before I Vote Again

Is American zionism about to grow a second head? Two parties, two lobbies -- all the better to scam you with, my dear?

A top staffer for billionaire philanthropist George Soros has met recently with senior representatives of the dovish pro-Israel community to discuss setting up an alternative to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee....

Morton Halperin, a director of Soros' Open Society Institute and a veteran of senior positions in the Clinton, Nixon and Johnson administrations, confirmed... that a meeting took place last month.... [A]nother meeting focused on funding will take place in New York on Oct. 25.

Soros is to attend that meeting, and other major Jewish liberals are invited, including Peter Lewis, who like Soros is a major contributor to MoveOn.org, the Web-based, liberal fund-raising group; Edgar and Charles Bronfman, former liquor magnates who are major contributors to Israel and Jewish causes; and Mel Levine, a former Democratic congressman and high-powered West Coast lawyer.... One of the leaders of the initiative is Jeremy Ben-Ami, a senior policy adviser to President Clinton....

In addition to Halperin and Ben-Ami, those in attendance at the September meeting in Washington included David Elcott, the executive director of the Israel Policy Forum, Debra DeLee, president and CEO of Americans for Peace Now; Mara Rudman, a Clinton-era member of the National Security Council and now a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a Washington think tank; Daniel Levy, a former adviser to dovish Israeli politician Yossi Beilin who now works at the New America Foundation, another Washington think tank; M.J. Rosenberg, director of IPF's Washington office; Jeremy Rabinovitz, chief of staff to U.S. Rep. Lois Capps (D-Calif.), a congresswoman who often backs positions taken by the dovish pro-Israel groups; Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Reform movement's Religious Action Center, and his deputy, Mark Pelavin; and representatives of Brit Tzedek v'Shalom, another dovish, pro-Israel advocacy group.

Establishment figures like those listed above are seldom monomaniacs. Many of them are no doubt quite devoted to Israel, either because of conviction or because Israel's importance in American politics enhances their personal influence through their connection with it. But they are also people who understand that ultimately, the various factions and blocs and sectors of the loosely-structured American elite need to play nice with each other. This is an insight that Captain Ahabs -- or better, Captain Queegs -- like Wolfowitz and Perle have forgotten, or failed to grasp in the first place.

When the famous Mearshiemer-Walt paper appeared, a few months back, I rather suspected that it might be a straw in the wind -- an indication that other factions or blocs or sectors of the aforementioned elite were starting to feel that institutional Zionomania was getting a wee bit off the reservation. It's tempting to read the Soros initiative in a similar way.