Clinton and Rosenthal: Unremarkable “Unprecedenteds”

Read this superb post by American for Peace Now’s Lara Friedman on why the kerfuffle over Hillary Rodham Clinton’s use of  "unprecedented" in describing Israel’s partial settlements freeze offer is much ado about nothing:

It should surprise no one that the media and pundits prefer to view Middle East peace effort through a lens of controversy.  Reporting that Mitchell took another trip and held more closed-door meetings is not interesting.  Saying that Clinton went to Jerusalem and nothing happened is not news.  (Likewise, the definition of "unprecedented" is not especially newsworthy.  For the record, the word means "having no previous example" – not, as some seem to think, "laudable," "fantastic," "satisfying our demands" or "consistent with US policy.") But one has to wonder why so many in the media and so many pundits have decided that the only "lens" they care about is the one that sees evidence of the Obama Administration’s fecklessness in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. 

This is part of a larger "Obama is dithering" narrative and watching it unfold as the conventional wisdom is a little like driving with a delusional paranoid in the passenger seat: You know you’re staying in the lane, observing the speed limit and heeding the yield and stop signs, but Peter Pothead to your right sees phantom headlights up ahead and can’t stop screaming "watch out!!!"

No one pulls off the simultaneous trick of backseat driving and inhaling the most delusional of conventional wisdoms better than Andrew Sullivan:

The immense damage done by secretary of state Clinton’s "unprecedented" gaffe is clearly being walked back as thoroughly as possible. It is easily the worst diplomatic error she has made so far.

Lara wonders what’s behind this hyperanxiety; Sullivan is a self-confessed Clinton hater, so in his particular case, you know he’s been on the edge of his seat for nine months waiting for her to screw up.

That also might explain it more broadly — Clinton derangement is a persistent DC malady — but I wouldn’t count out the manic fallout that has afflicted every Democratic president: Some conservatives (doing their jobs) shout, "The president is failing!" and some liberals (losing their minds) shout back, "What if he is? Aaaaaggggh!"

For some reason, I’ve found, the reverse isn’t true: The right doesn’t get spooked when liberals attack. Or not as spooked, in any case.

Speaking of the right and bomb-throwing and arguments that have nothing to do with the case at hand, here’s Ed Lasky in The American Thinker working himself up into a full-bodied fret about reports that Hannah Rosenthal is set to be Obama’s envoy on anti-Semitism:

The rumored envoy, Hannah Rosenthal, does not care much for Israel — the home of half the world’s Jews, with plenty of anti-Semites (three hundred million or so) surrounding it.

Nothing in the article he links to suggests that Rosenthal "does not care much for Israel," only that she believes caring for it involves different strategies than those embraced by Lasky:

Perhaps out of fear, perhaps out of timidity, we have failed to stand up to those who favor military solutions to political problems or oppose peaceful resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian and Arab-Israeli conflicts in the name of promoting Israel’s best interests.

I think Rosenthal overstates, in the article, the failure of American Jewish leaders to back the two-state solution — Lasky links to an effective rebuttal from the ADL’s Abe Foxman.

But what in heaven’s name does any of this have to do with monitoring, reporting and confronting allies about anti-Semitism?

Rosenthal, the daughter of Holocaust survivors, took a leading behind-the-scenes role in shaping, as the director of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, the communal response to the debacle at the U.N. anti-racism conference in 2001. Her strategy was to marginalize the event, to declare that rampant anti-Semitism rendered the whole thing treif, whatever "good" might have come out of it. It was a strategy, by the way, that was emulated — not formulated, Ed, emulated — by the Bush administration.

Here she is a couple of months later, citing the Durban debacle in urging European nations to keep well away from another U.N.-organized farce.

So: She’s a Democrat. She believes, like the Democratic president does, in aggressive U.S. engagement toward a two-state solution. Gregg Rickman (her predecessor) was a Republican, and might have had different beliefs.

These differences will in no way keep Rosenthal from effectively doing what Rickman effectively did: Traveling around the world and informing countries that want to cozy up to Washington that one of the bottom lines is, cut out the Jew hatred. Now, and without quibbling.