w w w . h a a r e t z . c o m
Last update - 14:17 21/04/2008
Dear Diplomat, whose side are you really on?
By Akiva Eldar
In his recent book, "The Much Too Promised Land: America's Elusive Search for Arab-Israeli Peace" (Bantam Books; scheduled to be published in Hebrew translation next week by Yedioth Books), Aaron David Miller relates...
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In the fall of 1990, his son, Aaron David Miller, a U.S. State Department official, met with a group of Jewish leaders in a Washington hotel. Miller, then the young deputy of Dennis Ross, head of the American peace team to the Middle East, reported progress being made under the leadership of James Baker, then secretary of state for George Bush, Sr. One reaction was very unpleasant: "'You're nothing but a self-hating Jew, and your boss is an anti-Semite,' a man from Atlanta shouted at me. 'You ought to be ashamed of yourself.'" (p. 87). As an American and as a Jew, Miller was deeply offended. "'Let's get out of the gutter,' I told Mr. Atlanta. 'If you have problems with U.S. policy, let's talk about them. But don't drag the secretary of state or his staff through the mud while you're doing it.'" Miller writes that many ethnic groups, such as the Irish and the Cubans, are deeply involved in American foreign relations; however, no group in America can compete with the clout of the Jewish community with its influence on centers of power. This former senior Jewish official is the first to accuse the U.S. administrations of the last 15 years, both Democratic and Republican, of a bias in the Israeli-Arab conflict.«
In May 2005, after leaving the State Department, Dr. Miller (he holds a Ph.D. in history) wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post with the provocative title, "Israel's Lawyer." Miller, who had been closely involved in the Israeli-Arab peace process over the past two decades, confessed: "Far too often the small group with whom I had worked in the Clinton administration, myself included, had acted as a lawyer for only one side, Israel." (p. 75) The title, "Israel's Lawyer," turned the former Jewish-American official into a celebrity in the Arab world. Two professors, Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, were quick to add his confession to their harsh indictment of the impact of the American Jewish lobby on U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. With Jimmy Carter, Henry Kissinger, and Baker as his heroes, Miller's book will certainly become the topic of conversation in both the Middle East community and within the American Jewish choir. The veteran national director of the Anti-Defamation League, Abraham Foxman, admitted to Miller that the American Jewish community "wants to exercise power and influence, but we don't like it when people talk about it." (p. 77)
One of those theories concerns both the large number of Jewish officials in the administration's Middle East section and the sensitive issue of dual loyalty. In a telephone call I made to his office in Washington, Miller stated categorically that this point has never troubled him; he told me that he had always considered himself to be a Jewish American rather than a American Jew. "Today," he writes in his book, "the issue is no longer whether an American political leader is for or against Israel and a close U.S.-Israeli relationship but the degree to which they are." According to Miller, "Bill Clinton was the most pro-Israel Democratic president since Harry Truman, and George W. Bush is the most pro-Israel Republican president ever." (p. 79)
Miller, who collaborated on the first drafts of the road map, initiated by the Quartet (the United Nations, the European Union, the U.S. and Russia) comments: "But few people I know, and I'd put myself at the top of the list, really believed the road map had much of a chance to get the car out of the parking lot, let alone onto the highway." (p. 351) Powell once said to him that he – that is, Powell – was the only one in the administration who ever used the words "road map" or "the Quartet."




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Wow, CMM-- interesting and highly plausible proposition. Is it your own? Nice work, in any event.