{"id":68121,"date":"2015-12-28T12:00:18","date_gmt":"2015-12-28T12:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=68121"},"modified":"2015-12-27T16:34:26","modified_gmt":"2015-12-27T16:34:26","slug":"why-did-brookings-institution-hold-a-secret-panel-countering-bds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2015\/12\/why-did-brookings-institution-hold-a-secret-panel-countering-bds\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Did Brookings Institution Hold a Secret Panel Countering BDS?"},"content":{"rendered":"

17 Dec 2015 – <\/em>Last June, Haim Saban and Sheldon Adelson held a secret summit in Las Vegas<\/a> to come up with ways of fighting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign on college campuses. They raised a reported $50 million to do so.<\/p>\n

Well now that secret process seems to have moved on to far more influential turf, to Washington, D.C., and a leading liberal thinktank: last week the Brookings Institution held a secret panel on BDS, sponsored by Haim Saban. By all appearances, the intent of the panel was to counter the BDS campaign.<\/p>\n

The panel took place during the weekend-long annual Saban Forum, which brings Israeli leaders and US leaders together to talk about \u201cthe future for Israelis and Palestinians\u201d\u2013without any Palestinians in attendance<\/a>. The BDS panel was among many meetings December 4-6 not mentioned on the Saban Forum\u2019s public agenda<\/a>.<\/p>\n

On Saturday [5 Dec] night, journalist Jeffrey Goldberg said at a public panel: \u201cThis morning at the BDS panel\u2013\u201d But he was promptly hushed.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhich was off the record,\u201d a woman\u2019s voice says; and my guess is it\u2019s the same voice who just introduced Goldberg, Tamara Cofman Wittes, the leader of the conference.<\/p>\n

Goldberg jokingly called the BDS panel the \u201cDimona\u201d of panels, a reference to Israel\u2019s secret nuclear program, and reported on its dire mood:<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the BDS panel took place, there would have been a feeling that the Israeli participant in the panel was the object of a lot of yearning and anxiety from some Americans who felt as if Israel was not paying sufficient attention to what\u2019s going on on campuses and beyond.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Goldberg wasn\u2019t the only journalist at the panel. Chemi Shalev of Haaretz was there and referred elliptically to it in print when he described the mood of the Saban forum<\/a> as being one of \u201canxiety and anguish\u201d on the part of Americans.<\/p>\n

I asked Shalev why he had agreed to treat a newsworthy panel as off the record, and I said I found it unseemly that Brookings was performing an \u201cAIPAC-like function\u201d in fighting the BDS movement, and doing so in secret. He responded to me:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Saban inviters lay down the ground rules for the entire forum and one can either choose to accept and attend or reject and not attend. I chose the former\u2026 I don\u2019t agree with characterization of what was going on at Saban, re \u2018AIPAC like function\u2019; in fact, I would say the opposite: criticism of Israeli government and deep frustration with its policies overwhelmingly outstripped praise or support, as I myself have written.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

When I asked Shalev whether any supporter of BDS was on the panel, he declined to answer, but said my guess on that score was probably right. That means no one was advocating for BDS.<\/p>\n

I wrote to Wittes, director of the Brookings Center for Middle East Policy, and to a Brookings spokesperson to ask who was on the panel and what its title was, and if any advocates for BDS were on the panel. Neither responded to my questions.<\/p>\n

Brookings would surely defend the secret panel by saying it\u2019s part of a largely off-the-record conference among Israeli and American leaders<\/a>. Shalev described the gathering in his article as a meeting of \u201c[Haim] Saban\u2019s American contingent of Brookings scholars, former Democratic administration officials and members of Congress\u201d and an \u201cIsraeli delegation of mainstream Israeli politicians, journalists and businessmen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Americans should be asking why such a conference is taking place behind closed doors at a leading liberal thinktank\u2013 and why it\u2019s tackling BDS, which Israeli leaders have termed<\/a> an \u201cexistential\u201d threat to Israel.<\/p>\n

The gathering is a reflection of the power of the Israel lobby in Washington. Saban successfully pressured President Obama to stop putting pressure on Israel over settlements, by coming out for the president in 2012 and giving a Democratic SuperPAC a $1 million donation (as documented here<\/a>). Both Wittes and Goldberg referred affectionately to Israeli politicians Yitzhak Herzog\u2013 who opposed the Iran Deal\u2013 and Avigdor Lieberman\u2013who has called for the transfer of Palestinians\u2013 by their nicknames, \u201cBoogie\u201d and \u201cYvet.\u201d<\/p>\n

What were they talking about at the BDS panel? In the Saban Forum transcript of Goldberg\u2019s public <\/a>comments on Saturday night (the audio <\/a>is a bit more inclusive), Goldberg brought up the BDS panel as evidence of the \u201cpervasive unease on the part of many Americans\u201d about Israel\u2019s conduct: \u201ctrying to warn their Israeli friends that a train is coming barreling down the tracks\u201d and they\u2019re just standing there.<\/p>\n

Many of those Americans are Jewish Zionists. Shalev reported that the American group at the conference were reassured by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s statement to the conference that he still favored the \u201ctwo-state solution.\u201d That might be hypocritical, Shalev observed, but it\u2019s how the game works:<\/p>\n

Armed with this facade, American Jews can lobby the administration to support Israel, protest against unwarranted bias in Europe and the United Nations, and, most importantly, look themselves in the mirror.<\/em><\/p>\n

Brookings might defend a secret panel on BDS by pointing out that countless US politicians are opposing BDS. Many Republicans have come out against\u00a0 BDS. And in her speech to the Saban conference the day after the BDS panel, <\/a>Hillary Clinton asserted \u2014 laughably\u2013 that BDS is hurting the American ability to counter terrorism in the Middle East, because it is hurting our closest ally in the fight against extremism. She was surely pandering to Haim Saban. Clinton wrote a letter to Saban last summer that she promptly published, <\/a>promising to work with Republican politicians to oppose BDS.<\/p>\n

I find the whole matter unseemly. BDS is one of the chief threats to Israel, Netanyahu has said. So a leading liberal American thinktank is aligning itself with Israel on that battle? And if it is, why can\u2019t it do so openly? One can fairly ask if Saban\u2019s largesse is dictating the Brookings position, and that of the Democratic Party too.<\/p>\n

BDS is clearly coming on strong despite all these efforts. At that event on December 5, Goldberg went on about the BDS panel that dare not speak its name, and related an anecdote from his daughter\u2019s college campus.<\/p>\n

Goldberg: Our oldest daughter is a freshman at a liberal arts college in New England, a pretty well-known school. And she reports to us that J Street at that street represents the Zionist right\u2013\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

[Haim Saban seems to break in on Goldberg from the audience.]<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cI wish it were funny, Haim. I wish it were funny. I mean, it\u2019s funny, but it\u2019s not funny. It could be both funny and not funny at the same time. Have you ever heard of a tragic comedy? You live in Hollywood. She reports that the largest Jewish organization \u2014 25 percent of this campus is Jewish \u2014 the largest Jewish organization is a group called Jewish Voice for Peace, which is an Orwellian name for a group that opposes Israeli\u2019s existence.<\/em><\/p>\n

Mr. HERZOG: We saw a huge write up it in Israel. It\u2019s a huge BDS group.<\/em><\/p>\n

Goldberg then said that sentiment toward Israel in the American Jewish comunity was \u201cradically shifting,\u201d and asked Lieberman if he cared. Lieberman said, \u201cTo speak frankly, I don\u2019t care.\u201d He called for better hasbara and Zionist education.<\/p>\n

Later a woman in the audience, evidently Jewish, implored Lieberman to care.<\/p>\n

you are also missing something if you think that any amount of education is going to change the fact that the millennials today do not relate to the narrative that you\u2019re expressing. And so my question for you is simple. Do you care if we lose the young Jews in the diaspora?<\/em><\/p>\n

Jewish Voice for Peace is surely the fastest-growing Jewish group in the country and the largest Jewish peace and justice organization in the US. It has 200,000 supporters. It has no place at Brookings\u2013 and it wasn\u2019t invited to the Haaretz New Israel Fund conference last weekend either.<\/p>\n

_____________________________________<\/p>\n

Philip Weiss is founder and co-editor of mondoweiss.net.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 mondoweiss.net<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Join the<\/em><\/strong> BDS-BOYCOTT, DIVESTMENT, SANCTIONS <\/em><\/strong>campaign<\/em><\/strong> <\/span>to protest the Israeli barbaric siege of Gaza, illegal occupation of the Palestine nation\u2019s territory, the apartheid wall, its inhuman and degrading treatment of the Palestinian people, and the more than 7,000 Palestinian men, women, elderly and children arbitrarily locked up in Israeli prisons.<\/p>\n

DON’T BUY<\/strong> PRODUCTS WHOSE<\/strong> BARCODE<\/strong> STARTS WITH<\/strong> 729<\/strong>, which indicates that it is produced in Israel. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0DO YOUR PART! MAKE A DIFFERENCE!<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

7 2 9: BOYCOTT FOR JUSTICE!<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Americans should be asking why such a conference is taking place behind closed doors at a leading liberal thinktank\u2013 and why it\u2019s tackling BDS, which Israeli leaders have termed an \u201cexistential\u201d threat to Israel. The gathering is a reflection of the power of the Israel lobby in Washington.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-68121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anglo-america"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68121"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68121\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}