The title of the post is somewhat misleading. Chas Freeman is rumored to be Obama’s chairman for the National Intelligence Council. Freeman was an ambassador to Saudi Arabia, but he isn’t an Arabist. Prior to that posting, Freeman was assigned to Asia and he doesn’t understand Arabic. Nonetheless, Freeman severed honorable in Saudi Arabia and while there he saw - unlike the U.S. ambassador to Iraq - that Saddam Hussein was going to actually invade Kuwait. Since that posting, Freeman has been rather activity in discussions involving U.S. Middle East policy and he has been [mis]termed by the U.S. media an Arabist.

His possible appointment to head the NIC is causing some controversy. The simply reason: Freeman committed the cardinal sin of criticizing Israel in the past. Here is what former American-Israel Public Affairs Committee Policy Direction Steven Rosen - who is currently under trial for accused spying for Israel - had to say about rumored nomination.

“Freeman is a strident critic of Israel, and a textbook case of the old-line Arabism that afflicted American diplomacy at the time the state of Israel was born. His views of the region are what you would expect in the Saudi foreign ministry, with which he maintains an extremely close relationship, not the top CIA position for analytic products going to the President of the United States.

What would be Freeman’s role? Rozen writes:

Freeman has told associates that in the job, he will occasionally accompany Director of National Intelligence Adm. Dennis Blair to give the president his daily intelligence briefing. His predecessor, Thomas Fingar, wore a second hat as deputy director of national intelligence for analysis (a job held since December by Peter Lavoy); sources thought it unclear whether Freeman would have that title as well.

Here is a sample of his views on Israel, from his Remarks to the National Council on US-Arab Relations on September 12, 2005: “As long as the United States continues unconditionally to provide the subsidies and political protection that make the Israeli occupation and the high-handed and self-defeating policies it engenders possible, there is little, if any, reason to hope that anything resembling the former peace process can be resurrected. Israeli occupation and settlement of Arab lands is inherently violent. ...And as long as such Israeli violence against Palestinians continues, it is utterly unrealistic to expect that Palestinians will stand down from violent resistance and retaliation against Israelis. Mr. Sharon is far from a stupid man; he understands this. So, when he sets the complete absence of Palestinian violence as a precondition for implementing the road map or any other negotiating process, he is deliberately setting a precondition he knows can never be met.”

Here is another example from 2008: “We have reflexively supported the efforts of a series of right-wing Israeli governments to undo the Oslo accords and to pacify the Palestinians rather than make peace with them. ... The so-called “two-state solution” - is widely seen in the region as too late and too little. Too late, because so much land has been colonized by Israel that there is not enough left for a viable Palestinian state alongside Israel; too little, because what is on offer looks to Palestinians more like an Indian reservation than a country.”

Rosen is not happy. And neither is the neo-conservative American Thinker - ostensibly - magazine:

For those who are not familiar with the former Ambassador, he is a terrorist apologist and a master of bashing Israel. Freeman is a believer of the false premise that all Muslim terrorism stems from Israel’s battle with the Palestinians.

And Politico magazine reports that a prominent pro-Israel supporter says that the pro-Israel community will not let Obama get a pass on this due to any goodwill he may have cultivated from them. He then compared Ambassador Freeman to former Saudi Ambassador to the United States Bander bin Sultan.

“A well-placed pro-Israel source says there’s “no amount of good will” that would soften reaction to that appointment because “they might as well have appointed Bandar.”"

Will Obama allow the Israel lobby to have a veto over his appointment? Stay tuned.