Al Arabiya First

Good points.
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Also, "Middle East" should be in caps.
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Do people find these typo corrections annoying? It cuts both ways for me.

Gershom Gorenburg has posted a thoughtful piece ( ref by Josh at TPM). Let's see what Marty Peretz and the Gang at Commentary do. I guess the Anti-Defam gang can be relied upon to bloviate. Sen Mitchell took some heavy incoming on the Irish troubles. Let's hope that has seasoned him somewhat. But the interview on Al Arabiya will be noted in Arab circles because the President's reminded viewers that he has Muslim relatives.

i couldn't understand why tapper's political punch was on the verge of collapsing yesterday, while every other post anywhere about the subject received a reasonable response. The vitriol was so intense that i had to investigate. Turns out, drudge was linking to it.
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Entertaining stuff. In retrospect, i can understand why someone like limbaugh is so idiotic. There's a public for it.
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but i digress. Im not an expert on Middle Eastern issues. I know marc ambider has said that obama chose Al Arabiya over Al Jazeera because the former is of a reformer vein, whereas the latter is more traditional. And i know that Al Arabiya has a circulation of about 23 million.
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Question is, how seriously is the publication taken throughout the musllim world. kinda have a hunch that a Dubai-based newspaper would be perceived as pro-western. as indulging in material orgy whereas 'we delight in purity' kinda attitude. So, really, how effective was it? how much weree we willing to sacrifice to achieve a kinda homeostatis between the American public, and the muslim public?

As an aside, I wonder if Obama will continue the policy of purchasing oil from Arab countries, refining it in Texas, and then shipping it all back to run the entire Israeli military.
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Seems like program that might benefit from some review.

lupercal5: we will have to wait and see. After all I don't recall anything like this during the Bush years. You might want to watch the Doha Debates on BBC World, televised once a month. It is an Arab forum and has evolved over time into an interesting place.

What does "Israel First" mean? Presumably it is an attack on the loyalty of those Klein is attacking, in contrast to those who Klein perceives are "America First" (like Klein, I suppose, and, historically, Charles Lindbergh).

Anyway, if Klein is suggesting that the people at Commentary care about Israel's welfare first (and presumably foremost), he's doing himself no favors. By making that statement, he draws a distinction with himself and implicitly suggests that his chosen policy is not in the interest of Israel. There's nothing wrong with choosing a policy that is against Israel's interest, of course, but I doubt Klein thinks his policies are not in Israel's interest.

Klein should just choose a more accurate, and less juvenile, slur for his opponents than "Israel First". Surely there can be some other way to question their patriotism.

bitterpill8-

I do recall something like this during the Bush years. Bush directly spoke on Arab news channels in a similarly condescending manner, assuring the Muslim world, to paraphrase, that they are a great and noble people.

The problem with appearing on al-Arabiya is that it is al-Arabiya. Very few people actually watch that network, compared with the viewership of Al Jazeera. If the President really wants to reach out to the Muslim world, he needs to be interviewed on Al Jazeera, the BBC News of the Arab-speaking world.

mrein: If your point was that we must not question our political opponents' motives when debating policy the you have immediately and hypocritically discredited yourself by comparing Klein to Limburgh, a notorious anti-semite.
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Most Americans are able to distinguish between questioning an American's patriotism based purely upon his or her religious, ethnic, or racial background and questioning someone's patriotism because they openly, repeatedly, and unapologetically support policies or actions that, quite literally, put the interests of another state ahead of the interests of the U.S.
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Anyway, if Klein is suggesting that the people at Commentary care about Israel's welfare first (and presumably foremost), he's doing himself no favors.
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Au contraire, those who "do themselves no favors" are those who refuse to accept that is possible to believe that the interests of the U.S. and Israel are not 100% aligned (and aligned in favor of neoconservative/Likudnik policies) without being an anti-semite.

It is the only path to middle east peace, which, if it comes at all, will come very very slowly.
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This is true of almost all the issues Obama faces. It will be very interesting to see how many people turn on him a year from now for failing to have already fixed everything!

Dirks--
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It's a weird combination of a low (hey, he can speak clearly and perceives reality) and high (undepress the economy and unclusterf*ck foreign policy) bar.

Giving his first "major television interview" to Al Jazeera would be too controversial, I suspect. Al-Arabiya is probably a good compromise. Maybe fewer people watch it, but everyone will know about it.

Art;

Not everyone:

I talked to lots of people today in Beirut and not one person I asked had seen the interview.

sqr1-

I didn't call Klein an anti-semite or even suggest that he is. I just noted the similarity between the terms Israel First and America First, which was Limbergh's movement before WWII. I have no reason whatsoever to believe that Klein thinks like Limbergh.

The Al Arabiya interview was fairly low key - no more than a signal that attitudes have changed here in Washington and it will get around in a few days.

I follow Joe's clash with the denizens at Commentary with interest.

Via Sully, this is the audience that matters: Well, this interview changed a lot of their minds! The most skeptical, my brother in law, who is from Syria, was shocked that he mentioned his Muslim family, knowing that during the campaign he tried to downplay this information. He was also surprised (and elated) when Obama said "[The U.S] needs to start by listening...typically in the past we have started by dictating". The rest of my family was pleasantly surprised, and very happy when he said (paraphrase) "But these are just words, and what we need now are actions." This impressed them greatly. The most striking aspect they liked was his empathy for Muslim children and their lives. This really resonated for them.
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If the reaction of my family is any indication (cynical, jaded, suspicious of American influence) he hit it out of the park.

Al-Arabiya was created to be a more moderate rival to al-Jazeera, and the last 8 years haven't made that a good business model. It's big in Pakistan, but even though it's Saudi financed and UAE based, it's much less popular than al-Jazeera in the Gulf/Levant area.

Hisham Melhem was based in London before moving to Washington and a regular on BBC panels. He is a credible guy.

Israeli PC is so invasive that the BBC, fearing a backlash from Israeli supporters, won't air a clip pleading for humanitarian assistance in Gaza.
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At least over there, some of their legislative people signed a petition asking BBC to air it:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7850407.stm
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All I can say is that Barak Obama, for once among American presidents, is not going to shy away from the pro-Israeli lobby.
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They get more poisonous and bloody-minded by the day...

i don't know how obama could have managed to appear less 'condescending', as you put it. dang. before you start spewing, why don't you lay out your argument?
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bitterpill8, thanx for the reference. sure will look it up. But yeah, i think a good point was made as to the dissemination of the information. I mean, Al Jazeera is bound to report on it no matter what. how they spin it might be different. But i suppose if you have a tv in the Middle East, then you'll prolly have some exposure.
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in the meanwhile, we don't have blowback for the al jazeera interview. nor the spooky symbolism attached to it. (isn't al jazeera the default channel for dissemination of al qaeda messages?)

lupercal8: In addition to widespread personal tv ownership, villages and remote locations have communal tv sets. Watching tv is a communal event. I am sure Obama's interview will be seen by many. And they have YouTube, too!!!

Joe, Good post.
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I couldn't be more pleased by this sequence of events. It's a bold move that may begin to get us out of the rut we've been in for so many decades. It's politically risky for Obama and he deserves credit for taking a statesmanlike approach to the problem.
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We must begin to treat both sides with respect. We must begin to recognize that both sides have legitimate grievances that must be addressed.
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If the Israeli right overreacts to a balanced approach by Obama, they run the risk of reducing the knee jerk American support they've always received and counted on. Hopefully the 'Israel First crowd' will moderate their positions (although I'm not optimistic for the short term). Let's hope the rightward tilt in Israel moderates and that pragmatists regain some influence.

test

There is another view.
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Joe Klein, why this pre-occupation with Israel?
And why do you want us to be interested?

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Last time I checked we were spending billions of our scarce dollars on that scraggly piece of barren wasteland and getting nothing in return. [Well, maybe in return we get the finger from their leaders and Rahm Emmanuel.]

And we were feeding the lazy bums inhabiting that third world with over $2,000 per person per year - which is over 4 times what people in third world countries live on.

Even as over 30,000,000 starving American kids - AMERICANS! - cry out for help.

What makes them so lucky - and why can't the Americans be similarly lucky just sitting around and having the world - and Israel - feed us as we hatch murderous schemes? Don't we have the brains?

" .. and getting nothing in return. .. "
Americans know about "cost and benefit" analysis, don't they?

" .. They are just itching to go after Obama, to fire a broadside as soon as he strays from the Bush policy .."
And when Olmert, a strutting gang-leader of a bellicose, flea-bitten third rate barren country wants to talk to our POTUS Mr. Bush, he must drop everything he is doing immediately and rush to get his orders. And obey ...

Why? Is it because Israel IS the superpower" Is it because it has WMDs and we don't?

Do we want more of that from our POTUS? Should the USA be scared of Israel's posturing? Should JK frequently waste blog space whenever some Israeli burps?