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Obama is said to have chosen Dennis Ross, Richard Holbrooke and Richard Haass as his envoys re Iran, Afghanistan/Pakistan, and Israel/Palestine respectively. And the Israel lobby is just another lobby. It is not that some Jews can’t be fairminded. And I don’t know much about Haass except that he’s utterly conventional, a former Bushie, pro-Iraq, mobbed up with Martin Indyk. The issue here is, religion and ethnicity matter. Where’s the balance? Where’s [Daniel] Kurtzer? Where’s [Aaron David] Miller? Where’s an Arab-American? Where’s…. Obama? 

There is still no MSM (main stream media) official word on these appointments, but the conservative Atlantic Monthly blog seems pretty sure that the envoy team is set (though in an update he is not quite certain on Haass):

Transition officials confirm that President-elect Obama has asked Dennis Ross, Richard Haass, and Richard Holbrooke, to serve as his chief emissaries to  world hot spots.

It’s expected that Ross will get the Iran portfolio, that Holbrooke, the hard-headed architect of the Dayton Peace Accords, will take the tough (and tougher) Southwest Asia portfolio, which includes India, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and that Haass will deal with the Middle East.  Each men’s turf is still in flux, so the assignments might change. Other envoys will be added to this list; they’ll deal with Africa and South America.

All three have the chops; all three are considered realists; all three have direct experience as envoys; Haass was the U.S. government’s chief negotiator in Northern Ireland; Ross shuttled between Mideast capitals during the Clinton administration, and Holbrooke, as mentioned, brought warring sides together in the Balkans.  Haas served under Presidents Clinton and Bush and is currently the president of the Council on Foreign Relations.   A transition spokesman declined to comment. . . .

No question but that this trio has “chops”, are “realists” and extensive experience as envoys.  All three beamed down from pictures on the State Department wall during the eight years of the Clinton administration. Their loyalty to Israel is well known to AIPAC, the Jewish Lobby, and politicians in Washington and Tel Aviv.  They all possess what Holly Hunter in O Brother Where Art Thou, calls “bona fides”, the seal of approval that satisfied the editorial boards of, you know, the usual crowd, the Post, Times, Tribune, Wall Street Journal.

Palestinians now under fire in Gaza are crying out to Barack Obama with their own version of a question from Spike Lee’s 1989 film, Do the Right Thing: 

The place in Sal’s Pizzeria. The location is New York City’s Harlem. It is the hottest day of the summer. Tensions are high.                                  

Young African American patron: (Giancarlo Esposito): “Hey, hey Sal, how come there ain’t no brothers on the wall here?”

Sal, the owner, behind the counter: (Danny Aiello): You want brothers on the wall? Get your own place. You can do what you wanna do.  You can put your brothers and uncles and nieces and nephews, your step fathers, step mothers, you want, you see? But this is my pizzeria, American Italians on the wall, only.

If the Obama administration can only name envoys who have bona fides handed to it by AIPAC, how does that differ from Sal’s statement: “This is my pizzeria, American Italians on the wall, only?”

The American public, oblivious to what is done in their name and with their money, need to know that Dennis Ross, slated as an envoy to Iran, brings to the table a hard line loyalty to Israel. His picture has been hanging on the State Department pizzeria wall for a long time.  Here is a news story of a recent Ross address to a Jewish audience:

Washington DC–Dennis Ross said the United States should back a cease-fire in Gaza only if it ensures that Hamas “can’t rebuild.”  ”We want some stability,” said Ross, a former top Middle East negotiator in the Clinton administration, in a talk at Temple Beth Ami in Rockville, Md.

“If Hamas is left with the capability to rearm,” he said, then the current conflict will have been “just a prelude” to the next round. He hoped that some sort of “enforcement mechanisms” to restrain the terrorist group could be developed in any kind of truce. –Global News Service of  the Jewish People.

Another recent posting on Mondoweiss is from David Bromwich who teaches literature at Yale. Bromwich has written on politics and culture for The New Republic, The Nation, The New York Review of Books, and other magazines.

Bromwich responds to AIPAC favorite Thomas Friedman’s New York Times column, which was published  January 7, in the midst of the current Israeli-Hamas conflict. Here is part of Bromwich’s reaction to the column: 

. . . [Friedman] does not speak of the facts of the slaughter: the 100-to-1 ratio of Palestinian to Israeli dead; the bombing of institutions and private houses that were known to be entirely or almost entirely inhabited by civilians. Not one word of pity for the sufferings of Gaza, and not a hint of reproach to Israel. Friedman espouses the righteousness of these killings as a benefit to all parties, whether they realize it or not. If one were looking for evidence that Israel’s special relationship to the U.S. has corroded the moral sense of both countries, one could hardly point to a more finished specimen of the corruption of heart in question. . . .(For the complete Bromwich posting, click here.) 

The future looks dark in the Middle East for any hope of a change we can believe in. But could this Cassandra cry be premature? Maybe the State Department walls will not be completely filled with Sal’s “Italian Americans only.”  Maybe, just maybe, two non AIPAC-certified candidates (both also Jewish) Daniel Kurtzer and Aaron David Miller, could still join the Obama team.

Aaron David Miller was at Camp David in 2000 as an advisor to Bill Clinton. Miller later wrote critical essays debunking the AIPAC doctrinal belief that Arafat turned down “a generous offer” from Israel.  His picture on the State Department pizzeria wall was put in storage. Even so, Miller, fully aware that the Obama envoy choices are still pending, chose to go bold himself.

He wrote a Newsweek column that speaks bluntly to the need for the new president to get tough with Israel:

The Wall Street Journal has pointed to a broader role for Daniel Kurtzer in the Obama administration:

President-elect Barack Obama may name Daniel Kurtzer, a veteran U.S. diplomat, to the post of special envoy to the Middle East, a senior Israeli diplomatic source told the daily Ha’aretz. Kurtzer has served as U.S. ambassador to Egypt, from 1997 to 2001, and to Israel, from 2001 to 2005. The appointment of Kurtzer, 59, to a post reporting directly to the president instead of to the secretary of state would emphasize the importance Obama places on the regional peace process, Ha’aretz reported. 

In one of his final essays, written in 2000, Edward Said reminded described an ongoing harsh reality that continues today in Gaza: ” [t]he cries of Palestinian orphans, sick old women, bereaved communities, and tortured prisoners simply go unheard and unrecorded.” Said had lost patience with talk of “sides” in the conflict. It was time, he wrote:

“to pause and declare indignantly that there is only one side with an army and a country:  the other is a stateless dispossessed population of people without rights or any present way of securing them. . . .