three thirty pm in moscow these iraqi headlines political turmoil in greece threatens to crush the hopes of united the euro zone despite the german chancellor and new french president vowing to fight the crisis together but austerity is keeping them at odds. thousands of police march in the u.k. to demand their rights as a massive number of officers are said to be given the boot. and the former bosnian serb general arrived home a lot of faces the hague court he's accused of war crimes during the yugoslav war in the one nine hundred ninety s. . next peter lavelle and cross talk guests have a heated debate stay with us. please.

continue. to. follow and welcome to crossfire kind of all falling out of love is this what is happening to american jews in the relationship with israel american jews may indeed be more liberal than the politics of their peers in israel but does it really matter and what is the relationship connecting american jews and the israeli lobby . if you. start. to cross talk relations between american jews in israel i'm joined by norman

finkelstein in new york he is a political analyst and author of the new book knowing too much why the american jewish love affair with israel is coming to an end in washington we have daniel pollack he is the co-director of government relations for design this organization of america and in amman we have rabbani he is an independent writer an analyst specializing in policy in affairs and the arab israeli conflict all right gentlemen crosstalk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want norman finkelstein you have a new book knowing too much why are american jews falling out of love with the state of israel as you claim in your book. i think there are basically two reasons the long term factor is that american jews are basically liberal since nine hundred thirty since the 1930's for example american jews have consistently voted democratic in the us presidential elections and for example in the last

presidential election. about eighty percent of american jews voted for barack obama which is the highest percentage among any ethnic group except for african americans some american jews are overwhelmingly liberal liberal basically means believing in the rule of law equality under the law belief in the diplomatic resolution of of crises belief in international institutions and for the longest time american jews were able to reconcile their support for liberalism with their support for israel because israel for all appearances seemed to be a liberal state but in the last you could say last twenty years much more is now known about the actually the realities of the israel palestine conflict and american jews are finding it more and more difficult to reconcile their liberal tenets their liberal creed with the way israel carries on ok daniel how do you feel about that american jews are predominantly liberal but the state of israel is it

liberal i think it is one way you could say what norman is saying but he's right about the first part and wrong about the second he's right that the american jewish community is quite liberal and a very high percentage voted for president obama. israel is liberal too that's where we disagree about the basic facts with dr finkelstein israel is a country where the rule of law is present where respect for international norms is present far more so than any of its neighbors and it's just really wrong for dr finkelstein to really his entire thesis is wrong the premise in fact the support amongst american jews for israel is quite high i strongly respect any kind of scholarship and i'm sure the dr finkelstein is aware of the polls which show that something like ninety percent of american jews agree that israel's the

spiritual center of the jewish people they're far more sympathetic to israel than to the palestinians there's really no evidence at all from any of the hard political science will try to look at any evidence in a second here mind if i go to you on the rule of law internet and respecting law as a palestinian you think israel does not. well not just as a palestinian but i think as a human being is overwhelming. you know certainly one it comes to international law israel has become world renowned for its systematic violation of international law and the law of occupation just yesterday we had the conclusion of an unprecedentedly long hunger strike by palestinian prisoners one of the key demands of which was and detention without charge or trial for six months period six month periods in the finitely renewable without providing any evidence in

a court of law where you know any of the normal rights associated with due process so israel has certainly been more observant of the law when dealing with its own citizens or at least most of its own jewish citizens and with its minorities and those that it illegally occupies but the idea that israel is somehow a paragon of observing the rule of law strikes me as simply absurd ok you know i guess the real point here would be how do you american jews actually think about it what american jews think is that you know a vast majority of american jews have a great deal of sympathy for israel they know that it's a country at war that there are people around it possibly including guests on this program who wish to destroy it or to see it no longer exist and well that's what i think you know and i mean she american jews i think american jews. as norman

finkelstein indicated used to see israel as as a nation at war rather as a nation that was consistently being attacked by its neighbors but i think increasingly they're coming to a realization that israel is in fact a state that makes war on its neighbors that occupies its neighbors and is therefore incompatible with their old liberal values ok norman jump in here. fair time here daniel said that there is no evidence what's the evidence. oh you know it's very difficult in the short time to summarize a huge amount of poll data israeli jews as well as american jews are very very heavily polled but let's take the most recent poll about two months ago quite exhaustive poll was taken of american jews and one of the questions that was put to those who are sampled they were asked what is how do you see your jewish identity

how do you identify your jewish identity about half of those surveyed said they see their jewish identity as being bound up with what they called social equality basic struggles for equality under the law quite surprisingly even to myself only twenty percent of those polled one the percent said israel was a key feature or a critical feature or for that matter any feature in their jewish identity and that's a significant drop if you take the age cohort under forty there you see even a more precipitous drop so polls have shown that forty percent of jews under the age of forty or under thirty five depending on the poll under for the are under thirty five forty percent of the age cohort said that if israel were to disappear it would not be for them

a personal tragedy i would say the irony there is actually for me it would be a personal tragedy if israel or for that matter any other state were to be destroyed but for about half of american jews under the age of forty they seem different to the fact if you move from the hole in the lower my ass normie anecdotal data you can. i know there are a lot of unknowns and i want to want to be kind of what they want you know this is relation norman and daniel again to the. gentlemen please look i knew this was going to happen everybody has their own poll evidence here ok and this is a problem here daniel you say you have polls that say that's correct just the opposite in norm and you say the polling data says another thing i mean what's going on here daniel first go ahead but what happens is i just got sworn in front of you that saying i want an answer to the exact same question ninety four percent feel that if there were no israel it would be a tragedy so we have different polling data on that i have in front of me another

poll taken of college students only that said that eighty three percent said that caring about israel is an important part of being jewish i have to tell you that i think that if you spend your time at college campuses you end up with. the loudest voices on college campuses being heard i have a son in college who frankly is concentrating on getting his graduation next month and although i'm sure that he's been raised correctly. israel is not first on his to do list it's getting a job which is appropriate at the age of twenty two but the point is that one can't go around college campus i've heard other interviews with dr finkelstein in which he gives as evidence that it is really day parades the crowds are less enthusiastic that's not the kind of science you've been trained to do dr you're a political scientist you know that many kinds of polls say different things and you should be trained to look at all these polls and come away with

a trend line and the trend line is that i'm not sure how that there's still tremendous support here as well go ahead norman. right let's look at the trend line probably i'm sure mr pollack will agree that the most authoritative poster of the jewish community is stephen cohn and stephen cohen has put forth his thesis about were jewish opinion is going regarding israel and he said there can't be any question the jewish support for israel is on a steep decline and some point in the fairly near future the only real storage defenders of the jewish of israel are going to be the orthodox jews in american society which comes to about ten percent of the american jewish community currently if you move from where i know mine it's not even counting i knew. that result but it's not correct. that's not i don't agree that stephen cohen is the most wherever you are as i said there are. you don't have to agree with anything i'm saying

that's your prerogative i'm simply putting forth what's the widespread opinion that steve cone is the most authoritative poster of the american jewish community now he moved to the anecdotal evidence in recent years you see some fairly spectacular defections say for example david remnick the editor in chief of the new yorker in recent years and especially in the past year he's come out very critically on israel and critical very critical of israeli policy or you take the former senior editor of the new republic namely peter beinart who along with remnick has also been highly critical of israeli policy now these people are not what you would so call average joes on the street they're obviously feeling well the wind's blowing in a different direction and there's a certain element of career is someone opportunism but the fact that there is career ism and opportunism is even more indicative of the fact that the american

jewish opinion is shifting ok daniel you know peter peter beinart also wrote a book. with much the same thesis that israel must change or lose its youth all right gentlemen here we're going to i was short break and after that short break we'll continue our discussion on american jews stay with our team. margaret mother could not live with because. he was afraid. and she was very cool. she filled. our lives frankenstein's monster.

we don't have the problem. every time and effort is made on the palestinian or in the european side to negotiate and to the violent attacks against israel which i have no fear of war call the cowards so long as you have no fear calling the leader of the state of israel one of the main terrorists in the world. we are supposed to be seriously examining history but you mention a few words about jewish culture happening and people get so upset this is i'm sorry to say it's a form of emotional blackmail. what

. well the turks science technology innovation all the list of elements from around russia we've got the future covered. and if you. want to. welcome back you probably thought i'm curious about your mind you were talking about the connection between the israeli lobby and american jews. and. ok when i go back to you in amman let's say norman's right ok just for argument's sake here what difference

does it make ok american jews vote for democrats but republicans have been in the white house democrats been in the white house and i would say the causes of our peace in the middle east when we look at the conflict between the palestinian israelis the palestinians have lost consistently i mean for decades there is no peace process it doesn't matter if there's a republican or a democrat in the white house. well i don't think the issue here is whether a republican or or a democrat in the white house is prefer a bill i think i think the real issue is whether or not palestinians and their supporters should actively campaign to seek to mobilize american public opinion to influence u.s. government policy and there has been this view of kind of all powerful pro israel lobby that has a stranglehold on american policy and i think not only not only is is is that view

false but i think what norman has demonstrated is also that the view of a monolithic and powerful american jewish community working day and night to prevent any change in america's uncritically pro israel policy is also mistaken and i think it's also fair to say that mobilizing significant elements of the american jewish community to try to produce change in american policy is a very effective strategy i mean i haven't studied any of these polls i'll gladly refer defer to the throw scholarship of norman finkelstein but just speaking anecdotally from my own experience i mean i you know when i was in the u.s. in the early one nine hundred eighty s. more or less in the aftermath of israel's invasion of lebanon i think it's fair to

say that at that time palestine was a dirty word and american jewish university students were quite overwhelmingly and quite uncritically pro israel from my experiences more recently what i've noticed is that if anything it is israel that is now with dirty word on college campuses and. american jews tend to be the. proportionately represented in pro palestinian solidarity activities that may be more a reflection of the college campuses than it is of the american jewish community at large i would agree that the so called pro israel lobby is. quite a bit. less the decisive reason for american support for israel than is commonly understood i work with congress all the time and i'll tell you that the biggest reason that congress is so pro israel is not because because of the

american israel. lobby but because american congressmen feel that american israel have common enemies that's the biggest single reason and because they think they have common interests and values so that hasn't changed and in fact i just dispute the perception that again you can tell always tell a story about a couple of people who are high profile leftwing careerists there's an interesting contrast actually with the so-called bravery of someone like peter beinart who's going against the jewish establishment in fact he's been lionized and so has dr finkelstein very often for his so-called decisive and courageous stand against the american jewish community in fact on the upper west side of new york such people are lionized that's true it's been true a long time when my grandparents lived in new york. there were also people who were very sympathetic in the jewish community to stalin's russia in the early years

didn't really mean it as being equated to stalin no norman everyone's going to actually i'm going to go ahead i didn't call i didn't call him a stalinist but i didn't say you did. i. i'm good i'm glad to hear from my good friend and my stock is rising in the jewish community. in the very same and not past the point of being the lionized by that you are community i hope that will help my books but now turning to the real world if you take for example in september of this year there were quite a number of polls done among the american people two in particular one by the b.b.c. and one by pew charitable trusts they asked a very simple question do you support palestinian statehood the palestinian bid for statehood at the u.n. and quite surprisingly even for myself about thirty. for the fore. the five

percent of americans in general americans in general support of the palestinian bid for statehood about thirty percent opposed it so it was a large plurality in support of the palestinian bid for statehood and yet you found no resonance whatsoever of that fact from the president of the united states who opposed the palestinian bid for statehood both houses of congress opposed did both major political parties opposed it and all the major news media oppose the palestinian bid for statehood so how do you account for this huge discrepancy between the plurality of americans saying they support it and their entire political style with the official elites the political intellectual elites opposing it and i think the only reason she introduced to her the this uterus and saying.

ok daniel jumping out reply go ahead the the answer is first of all it's all about how these questions are asked in the same way the vast majority of american souls who are straight know that they are highly opposed to u.s. aid to the palestinian authority so how would i ask you how do you account for the continued support by the american president and by congress for aid to the palestinian authority even though i'm talking about in excess of ninety percent of americans think that that's a bad idea to give them money so there's all kinds of ways to ask and answer these questions. well like itself is not a virtue of a constant state you will see is really impassioned or will give a speech in which i'll talk about two states for two peoples so it's understandable that people who don't follow this issue every day understand don't understand the subtleties of what the palestinian authority was attempting to do you know why do you think that is the case because american media western media in general are very

very. simplistic and i would you agree with you it's extremely complicated but when it gets down to the average person it's just black and white and you know if there's a human rights groups all around the world condemn a lot of behavior of what israel does from lebanon to gaza ok but that doesn't seem to filter down into grassroots politics is real good palestinians lad and that's how does it why isn't the case like dr finkelstein have have been accused of demonizing the israelis for so long that they have lost a lot of credibility. and even though you believe that norm you want to reply to that it seems to me it's a lack of knowledge you know people know too much again let me just show you know. there are. there seems to be a huge discrepancy between what mr pollack has to say and the real world in the real world it's true to is moving pointed out that the point of view of the

nineteen eighties was pretty marginal and it was certainly well out of the mainstream but if you look today and as i go through the book i just wrote i go through the human rights reports of completely mainstream respectable authoritative organizations like amnesty international human rights watch the israeli human rights organization or you look at the judgment of the international court of justice in two thousand and four if you look at all of the human rights community there is nothing at all marginal about about my opinions rather the contrary all i do is go and document based on what the human rights community is saying so to claim that my point of view that has been generational and i think in there you can certainly it's completely in the terminology that is really no no that's not true at all no no no it's in our general on one hand and he. has been unfair

only on the international phenomenon. i don't think i don't think. with all due respect to your expertise i wonder if peter can put the question to move within who had the power in the in human rights organization in the occupied territories in the one nine hundred eighty s. and he'll give you a sense of how much human rights organizations have changed between go ahead jump in. well i worked at one i didn't. but certainly i think. norman has more or less hit the nail on the head i mean it's interesting that people like him or someone like noam chomsky were twenty years ago. for advocating palestinian self-determination and if you if you look at them today they're if anything being primarily criticized . for proposing a two state settlement to the israel palestine conflict rather than. like thirty

children since i think they're still prize i think maybe irish you know if you and your club but you know my club if you go if you go to mainstream jewish congregation you'll find a lot of hostility to i mean he's called israel as a country this is not a mainstream view within the jewish community it's just what i mean i don't generally you know really going to lunatics look if you want if you want to use that remember you marry your organization was very mainstream in the early in the early one nine hundred eighty s. but i think i suspect you're now seen or your organization is now seen as very much on the right wing fringes of the. jump in your last forty seconds go ahead. well it's very dismaying that i went from being

lionized by the jewish community to being a pariah in the jewish community and about thirty or thirty seconds. it doesn't seem to me any longer if you look at public opinion in general international opinion public opinion in the united states jewish opinion in particular. has seriously declined and that there are no real possibilities for achieving a just and lasting settlement based on basic operational remain on the not positive note thank you very much gentlemen for an interesting discussion many thanks to my guest today in new york washington and you know on and thanks to our viewers for watching us here are to see you next time and remember across town halls. and.