Lerner + Carter (+ Soros?) = liberal alt.AIPAC?
[Sentence-completion exercise: “What I like about the Soros
enterprise…” is that they have lots of money & I want some!]
http://www.forward.com/articles/lerner-reaches-out-to-president-carter/
Lerner Reaches Out to President Carter WEB EXCLUSIVE Gabriel Sanders | Wed. Dec 27, 2006
While leaders from across the Jewish spectrum have rushed to condemn
former president Jimmy Carter and his new book “Palestine: Peace not
Apartheid,” at least one prominent Jewish figure has headed in the
opposite direction.
Michael Lerner, the founding editor of liberal bimonthly Tikkun,
wrote in an email to the magazine’s contributors early this month
that he is the process of exploring the possibility of working with
the former president to build support for a left-wing alternative to
the American Israel Political Action Committee. Lerner mentioned that
he and Carter had just spoken on the phone about the issue, but
decline to discuss specifics, saying the chat was confidential.
Lerner is not alone among Jews on the left eager to launch a
counterweight to the pro-Israel lobbying powerhouse. The Forward and
JTA have reported that financier George Soros has been consulting
with leaders of dovish groups, including the Israel Policy Forum,
Americans for Peace Now and Brit Tzedek v’Shalom, on launching some
sort of pro-peace process initiatives.
In an interview with the Forward, Lerner said that his envisioned
collaboration with Carter would be in harmony with the efforts of
Soros and liberal Jewish groups, not in competition with them.
“What I like about the Soros enterprise is that they are trying to
bring together different groups, and I hope we’ll work together in a
cooperative way,” he said. Asked if the furor over Carter’s book
would inhibit the former president’s ability to be an agent of
change, Lerner demurred. “He’s a guy who just won the Nobel Peace
Prize. He’s the only president who actually delivered an agreement
with Arab states that has lasted,” he said. “I don’t think it’s going
to be that easy to have him be discredited. And, he’s very popular in
the United States. The Jewish world would be making a huge mistake
were they to try to make him into an enemy.”