The other day I got an email from Jim Klutznick, chairman of Americans for Peace Now, affirming his love of Israel and saying a two-state solution is the only hope:

Israel is an important part of my Jewish identity and I feel the efforts of Americans for Peace Now offer hope for its survival… We also know it is imperative to win this “fight,” no matter how long it takes to do so.

Klutznick has clout. His businessman father was a Secretary of Commerce under Carter. His sister is the well-connected Bettylu Saltzman– in whose Chicago home Obama held a fundraiser last month at which he called Saltzman and two other philanthropists there, Joan Harris and Judy Gaynor, his “cabal.” All three women and Klutznick are on the board of J Street. And all four were early supporters of Obama. And their liberal Zionist groups, Peace Now and J Street, called for opposing the settlement project and making a deal along the 67 lines.

My question is: If Obama had had the courage of his convictions, couldn’t he have said to himself, A lot of rich Jews support me and oppose the settlements; I will build a policy based on their support and to hell with the rightwingers? After all, George W. Bush also had a splinter group’s support inside the Jewish community. They were neocons. And he took their policy recommendations from the West Bank to Baghdad and beyond.

In June 2009 I was sitting in the hall in Cairo as Obama told us the settlements must end! I wanted to believe him. As MJ Rosenberg wrote one month later:

At the president’s meeting with Jewish leaders at the White House on July 13, Obama heard virtually no criticism of his policy on settlements. Even the more conservative Jewish groups held their tongues.

Within a year and a half, Obama folded. The larger Jewish community came down on him for taking Israel on, and Obama voted for settlements at the United Nations.

And now the two-state solution is all but a delusion, in spite of Klutznick’s hopes. Israelis are all over the West Bank and East Jerusalem and are never leaving.

Isn’t this a failure on Obama’s part, in nerve and political organizing? It’s one thing to blame Jewish politics: I believe that the lobby is powerful, and monolithic and reactionary; that Bill Kristol saw the liberals turning the tide, and stopped them; and that J Street and Peace Now also failed by giving in to the rightwing in the Jewish community out of feelings of Jewish solidarity. But couldn’t Obama have done a better job by using his Chicago base to split the lobby?

I asked two friends who follow Obama and the Jewish community. MJ Rosenberg wrote:

I think it’s just who he is. Even where he seems brave, like on GLBT, he still is intimidated. For instance, he still doesn’t issue an executive order ending discrimination by government contractors. And that is something he can just do without Congress. He told me to “speak louder” if we want to be “heard” by him. I think he meant to speak so loud ($$$) that our side drowns out the deafening noise of the billionaires Rahm Emanuel taught him are the only folks who matter. Well, our side can’t. As I always say, Dems only are brave where it won’t cost them a dime: guns, gays, etc. But taking on the occupation would cost. So…the only way anything changes will be when something huge happens on the ground (in the region).

Ilene Cohen wrote to me: