The Warped Mirror: The 'anti-lobby' nominee

"That is a shame" - with this verdict Daoud Kuttab concluded his recent article Barack Obama that was featured among JPost.com's "Must Reads" last week.

It is a shame indeed when an award-winning journalist like Daoud Kuttab, who just finished a one-year appointment as professor of journalism at Princeton University, writes an article about Barack Obama's speech to AIPAC and refers to the Democrat's presidential candidate as "the anti-lobby nominee." Is this what the American presidential election is all about? Perhaps for Kuttab, because according to him, AIPAC is "the most powerful of all lobbies", and it brought Obama, "a tower of a man … to his knees."

According to Kuttab, Obama "bowed at the feet of the pro-Israel lobby," he "was kowtowing to a sector of America whose major source of power has been its ability to raise large funds." What did Kuttab want his readers to think? Perhaps: what a terrible humiliation, what a terrifying display of "Jewish power" - all the more formidable since Kuttab assures his readers that Obama didn't even need "Jewish money or votes."

What a shame indeed, when an award-winning journalist blithely invokes the anti-Semites' favorite tropes of "Jewish power" and "Jewish money", and insinuates that those sinister forces humiliated the man who was "seen worldwide as a potentially global president" and made him turn "away from every promise he ever made." What shameful hyperbole: "every promise he ever made."

To be sure, Kuttab acknowledges: "Yes, there was talk of the Palestinians needing a state 'that is contiguous and cohesive.'" But that is apparently not good enough for Kuttab: what bothers him is that "Obama repeated, verbatim, Bush's position regarding the two-state solution, calling Israel a Jewish state"; what bothers him is that "Obama also promised to give Israel $30 billion in military funding over the next decade"; what bothers him is that Obama also stated that there was "a military option in defense of Israel" and that he pledged his determined opposition to any Iranian nuclear military program - indeed, according to Kuttab, there is no reason to worry that Iran has a nuclear military program, because this "has been disproved by 16 American intelligence agencies."

What shameful dishonesty from an award-winning journalist to claim that suspicions about an Iranian nuclear military program have "been disproved by 16 American intelligence agencies."  If there was anything to this claim, there must be "proof" that Iran has no nuclear military program. Of course, no such proof exists, quite the contrary: barely a month ago it was reported that the International Atomic Energy Agency released "an unusually blunt and detailed report" which stated "that Iran's suspected research into the development of nuclear weapons remained 'a matter of serious concern' and that Iran continued to owe the agency 'substantial explanations.' The nine-page report accused the Iranians of a willful lack of cooperation, particularly in answering allegations that its nuclear program may be intended more for military use than for energy generation."

And there was certainly no proof whatsoever that would allow the conclusion that Iran has no nuclear military program in the US National Intelligence Estimate of December 2007. Indeed, immediately after its publication, a flood of critical commentary pointed out that there was no basis for the misleading headlines that highlighted the intelligence community's assessment that in 2003, Iran had halted its nuclear weapons program and that the program had probably not been restarted since. In The Jerusalem Post, David Horovitz emphasized: http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1196847275029&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
 
"But beyond the headlines, a close reading of the material released from the National Intelligence Estimate offers little legitimate reason for any sense of relief. Quite the opposite. Along with the opening judgment that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 comes the immediate caveat that "Teheran at a minimum is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons.' And then, just a few paragraphs later, comes an undermining of the original, headline-making assessment. The authors acknowledge that ‘because of intelligence gaps' they can 'assess with only moderate confidence that the halt to these activities represents a halt to Iran's entire nuclear weapons program.' ... And the further the report continues, the more worrying its text becomes: 'Iranian entities are continuing to develop a range of technical capabilities that could be applied to producing nuclear weapons...' 'We assess with moderate confidence that convincing the Iranian leadership to forgo the eventual development of nuclear weapons will be difficult...' 'We assess with moderate confidence that Iran would probably use covert facilities - rather than its declared nuclear sites -for the production of highly enriched uranium for a weapon.'And finally, 'e assess with high confidence that Iran has the scientific, technical and industrial capacity eventually to produce nuclear weapons if it decides to do so.'"

It is a shame indeed if Daoud Kuttab feels comfortable to assert on the basis of this intelligence estimate that "Bush's claim about Iran's nuclear military program … has been disproved by 16 American intelligence agencies."

Many readers of the Jerusalem Post expressed great anger in the talkback comments posted to this article by Kuttab - not just about what Kuttab had written, but also about the fact that The Jerusalem Post had published this article. But it was the right decision, and it was definitely a worthy choice for the “Must Reads”: it gave Jerusalem Post readers a glimpse of the daily dose of distortions that is the preferred reading of people who like it when an award-winning journalist demonstrates that nothing is beyond the pale when it comes to producing some more anti-Israel propaganda.

Kuttab's article is a faithful reflection of a grotesque world, where America's presidential elections are about AIPAC, where fantasies of "Jewish power" and "Jewish money" cloud clear thinking, and where there is proof that Iran's nuclear program does not serve any military purposes.