Brzezinski Does Not Advise Obama
The next time someone tells you that he’s “worried” about Barack Obama’s support of Israel because the “anti-Israel” diplomat Zbigniew Brzezinski is one of his advisers / his senior foreign policy adviser / his mentor / his personal hero / whatever, ask the person sharing this information with you these two questions:
- Why is Brzezinski anti-Israel?
- Can you prove that Brzezinski is advising Obama?
Here’s the truth:
Obama met with Brzezinski once early in his presidential campaign and exchanged emails with him a few times. The two have not had any contact in many months. Brzezinski is not in any way an active part of Obama’s campaign, and never was.
It would have been outrageous for Obama not to consult with at all Brzezinski, a prominent Democrat, a former US National Security Advisor, and one of the architects of the Camp David Accords and of the normalization of relations between the US and China. Obama listened to what Brzezinski had to say, something about which he really had no choice, and that was the end of it.
The claim that Brzezinski is one of Obama’s advisers, mentors, or whatever, has been circulating around the Internet for many months, but the reality is that no proof has ever been presented. This is how a smear works — a negative claim about the target of the smear “goes viral” and gets repeated many times, then people start to believe it because they’ve heard it over and over, even though they haven’t actually seen any evidence to support it. It is shameful for Jewish enemies of Barack Obama to be employing a technique once favored by Adolph Hitler.
Brzezinski isn’t anti-Israel; he’s just not as right-wing as right-wing American Jews would like him to be. As we wrote in “Ted Belman and the anti-Obama Smear Machine“, one of the favorite tricks of the American Jewish right wing is to brand as “anti-Israel” anyone who isn’t as conservative as they are. The truth is that if Brzezinski is anti-Israel, then so are half of the Jews living in Israel, since they agree with many of the positions he espouses on how to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
AIPAC says that Obama supports Israel, and Obama’s votes in the Senate on issues affecting Israel have been 100% in line with AIPAC’s positions. Rabbi Yosef Blau, a vice president at Yeshiva University and the president of the Religious Zionists of America, says, “Barack Obama’s personality, record and policy proposals reflect a candidate with whom the Jewish community should be comfortable.” Obama’s real team of advisers on the Middle East is full of Jewish and non-Jewish supporters of Israel.
Here’s what AIPAC has to say about Joe Biden, Obama’s running mate: “Joe Biden is a strong supporter of the U.S.-Israel relationship; he has been a staunch supporter of U.S. aid to Israel; he is a leader in the fight against Palestinian terrorism, and is a vocal advocate of the special relationship between the two democracies. We look forward to continuing to work with him in the Senate or in the White House.”
You can choose to believe Obama, Biden, AIPAC, and Rabbi Yosef Blau, as well as the many Jewish supporters of Obama who are also supporters of Israel, or you can choose to believe people who employ lies and deceit rather than truth and honesty. We can tell you the truth, but we can’t make you believe it — that’s a choice you need to make for yourself.