A friendly commenter makes the point that Jews voted against Bush (while the country was voting him in) and, by a good majority, opposed the Iraq war, per a lot of polls.
Fair enough. But I would say that we are talking now about attitudes, and a political movement is not built on attitudes. It requires leadership. As I wrote last year: ‘There are 14 Jewish congressmen from New York and California (as I count them in the Almanac of American Politics). Twelve of them supported the Iraq war in 2002. Including good old Vietnam doves like Henry Waxman and Howard Berman of Los Angeles.”
I don’t dispute the attitudes, but I do question the political will of the body of American Jewry; if they feel misrepresented by the Israel lobby and their congressmen, they ought to rise up against them. George Soros says he’s going to start an anti-occupation lobby. Good for him, I’m in his camp. Will he get numbers?
Jews … by a good majority opposed the Iraq war, per a lot of polls.
In the interests of accuracy, this is false and should not be continually repeated.
There is no poll from 2002 or the Spring of 2003 that shows this. On the other hand, we do know that while the world was responding to the coming war with the largest mass demonstrations ever seen, Israelis — alone among all the nations — were 80% in support of a U.S. invasion.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=269674&contrassID=2&subContrassID=5&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y&itemNo=269674
I'd be really interested to know how the fags and dykes in house and senate voted.
I'd be really interested to know how the fags and dykes in the house and senate voted.
David,
I don't know if those polls are accurate. But I do know that I've been reading your posts over the last few days, and you seem to be dedicated to proving that there is absolutely, positively, no good thing to be said about any Jews anywhere. Did I get that wrong? I hope so. If I did, please name some Jews somwhere that you don't loathe in the core of your being. When you said, on another post, that "both the occupier and the occupied cannot be victims" (or words to that effect), you didn't seem able to admit that there might be decent, humane Israeli Jews who feel like their entire society has been victimized, and corroded, by the settlement movement and a dysfunctional political system that hasn't stopped that movement. Of all the comments I have read on this blog, that was the probably the most offensive.
Oh, yeah, I forgot. David, you left out the rather important detail that most Americans backed the war in that same time period. Very curious omission. You made it seem like American Jews and Israeli Jews were the only culprits here and the rest of the world was in the right.
In my opinion thre fundamental political problem with Jewish communities everywhere is that they are run on the basis of clientelism. Jews everywhere have found themselves organised as passive clients of leaders appointed basically by the Jewish rich (who usually require their scribes to refer to them as 'philanthropists'), and polcy on all matters is determined on the basis of bargaining support for favours. This is just as true in the USA as it is anywhere else.
You thankless scumbag Rowan Berkeley, do yourself a favor and kill yourself. But first rape your ugly, dead mother.
Curious wrote: "Of all the comments I have read on this blog, that was the probably the most offensive" [referring to David's ""both the occupier and the occupied cannot be victims."]
I'm afraid that says more about you and your selective sensitivity than David or this blog. And you don't even realize it.
I would suggest it's high time to take a deep breath and be honest here, stop this knee-jerk defensive reaction every time someone points out our failings and finally do something about the lobby and the likudniks.
Shame on Curious and others like him for implying that those who do are Jew-haters…
For heaven's sake, that really got old. What a lame excuse to do nothing.
Ok, Really Concerned. Fair enough. I don't think anyone who raises the issue is a "Jew hater." I am just not sure about David and would love him to prove me wrong. I should rephrase it: it was one of the most idiotic things I've read. I am an American Jew who acknowledges the depravity of the occupation and, as you don't know anything about me, I assure you I'm doing what I can within the American Jewish community. But to ignore the fact that people on both sides are victimized by the occupation undercuts a very important argument that is needed to get the Jewish community of its collective butt.
Mass abandonment of Judaism!!!
Like Spinoza, I am in favour to close this painful chapter.
Who can defend Judaism as a religion?
I can't.
Can we be the liberated enlightened people?
There is no problem to keep the positive feelings from the religious past and Holy Scriptures, but please deflate the central myth.
It was a unfulfilled wish to find and to reach the Creator.
Now, we can recognize that it was a dream, and we are the creators of our own fate.
The rest is a question of luck.
We should live with this fact.
You people are insane. This column is insane. Hiding behind "free speach" and your own "Jewishness in order to endorce anti-Jew feelings. It is not anti-Semetic as you love some Semetics.
Just come out with it. You hate Jews. It will make all of our lives easier.
Curious wrote: "But to ignore the fact that people on both sides are victimized by the occupation undercuts a very important argument that is needed to get the Jewish community of its collective butt."
Do you realize what you are saying here?
You still don't understand. Read this and weep:
The State of Judea
By Danny Rubinstein
"In the 1980s, with the peace agreement with Egypt and the Israeli withdrawal from Sinai, Kach movement activist Michael Ben-Horin founded what he and his friends called "the State of Judea."
Their intention was symbolic: to indicate a possible alternative to Israeli rule in the West Bank, if and when Israel withdraws from the territories.
Ben-Horin took for himself the title of president of the State of Judea. Later he was one of the editors of the book Baruch Hagever, which eulogized Baruch Goldstein, the Tomb of the Patriarchs murderer, and was one of the heroes of the pulsa denura – the death curse – hounding of Yitzhak Rabin.
The hard core of settlers in Judea and Samaria, veterans of Gush Emunim, do not absolutely identify with Ben-Horin and his colleagues. They have also never declared the possibility of establishing a separate state in the West Bank along the lines of the State of Judea. However, in many respects, with the encouragement of the governments of Israel and under their auspices, a state entity with a character of its own has indeed been established in the West Bank.
At one time, there was a lot of talk about how rule over the Palestinian people is corrupting Israel. It was said it's impossible to maintain a democracy in an Israel that's ruling over a foreign people, and that the manifestations of violence and corruption in Israeli society will increase because of the denial of rights to the Palestinians.
It is difficult to measure these phenomena and to discover their source, but it can be stated rather clearly that this hasn't happened. Democracy in Israel is quite stable; the rule of law is intact, and there are ongoing efforts to combat violence and corruption. In other words, the society within the State of Israel is running itself more or less properly, with no connection to what is being done in the territories. That is to say, a separation has developed: The State of Israel is one thing and the West Bank, or the State of Judea, is something else.
Examples abound. In just the newspapers of this just last week there was a long series of articles about the settlers of Hebron and Tel Rumeida, the death of the little girl in Anata from Border Police fire, the 124 furloughs from prison granted to Ami Popper, who was sentenced to life for killing Palestinians, and the investigative report in Haaretz on the routine of orders, prohibitions and roadblocks that have effectively emptied the roads of the West Bank of Arab cars. In the Palestinian newspapers, every day there are dozens of reports of this sort, which show that the way of life in the State of Judea bears no resemblance to what is happening inside Israel.
Three bodies control the state beyond the Green Line: the Shin Bet security service and the Israeli military establishment; a limping Palestinian Authority; and the Jewish settlers' councils.
In the settlers' community, life is exemplary. There is a high level of solidarity and mutual aid. This is perhaps the only place in the land where drivers pick up hitchhikers. The settlers pay great attention to the details of life in their settlements, especially with regard to religious matters. They ask their rabbis whether there is a risk of slander in one act, or of theft in another, at least when it has to do with their colleagues. But if these things have to do with Arabs, it is a different story. Then they are insensitive and cruel. Every day, as they drive on the roads, the settlers see the distress of their neighbors from the villages suffering at the roadblocks and trailing along the tracks in the hills to scrape out a living, or to get to a field, to school or to a clinic. Their claim is that it is all the fault of terror. And when they are told that it is wrong to punish an entire population, they say anyone who feels pity for the cruel will end up being cruel to those who deserve pity.
A woman from Machsom Watch has told me that a few months ago she saw a setters' demonstration near the southern entrance to the Jewish town of Efrata in the Etzion Bloc. In the morning hours, the Jews of the area have difficult problems with transportation to Jerusalem. The Tunnels Road from the Etzion Bloc north is one big traffic jam. Heading the demonstrators was a local rabbi, who complained of "the damage to the sanctity of the freedom of movement." The settlers' freedom of movement, of course; they must suffer because on a part of this road a few Palestinian cars also travel and an IDF roadblock has to inspect them and delay traffic. In the State of Judea, it is permissible to hurt only Arabs. Do not disturb the Jews."
www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/816079.html
I know it seems pedantic of me to bring up old poll results, but I think it's important. The argument that we're hearing more and more is that although the Lobby was indeed pushing for war, these power brokers (AIPAC, AJC, ADL, think tanks, columnists, talking heads, etc.) have been hijacked and don't really reflect the wishes of the broader community. I hope that is true, but I don't regard it as an a priori truth and I'm looking for some evidence for it.
One recent event that caused some skepticism was this summer's attack on Lebanon. The American Jewish community's response to that was, frankly, rather extreme. It seemed like no amount of bloodshed was too much. While it's always hard to know whether it was really the community speaking or just their leaders, it certainly seemed like one voice was emerging, and that voice certainly seemed rather bloodthirsty.
BTW, here's the American Jewish Committee's survey (hardly an unbiased source) from just before the Iraq war –
http://www.ajc.org/site/apps/nl/content2.asp?c=ijITI2PHKoG&b=838459&ct=1051619
Respondents were interviewed by telephone during December 16, 2002 – January 5, 2003.
4. Do you approve or disapprove of the United States taking military action against Iraq to try and remove Saddam Hussein from power?
Approve 59
Disapprove 36
Not sure 5
I think Rowan is right. The leadership and money decisions count more than the base, especially if the base is essentially compliant (or attempting to curry favor) with what the leadership is doing.
The comments equating fair criticism with hatred are nonsense.
Really concerned,
I was thinking about what Ghandi and Martin Luther King believed about what an oppressive system does to the oppressor. Obviously there is no comparison between Palestinian suffering –physical and otherwise– and what happens to 18-year-old Israeli soldiers who man checkpoints and become the agents of dehumanization (especially soldiers who vote for left wing parties and revile the entire situation). But the latter are also victims. Easy enough to say, "Resist. Refuse," as some Israeli soldiers are doing. But it is a rare person who can do that in any society…. Peace…
I would add to that the multiplier effect of the media echo chamber, especially considering the loyalties involved there.
Another factor which intensifies the clientilistic aspect of Jewish Diaspora political organisation is the one that Israel pols erroneously call "existential", but really should call "identitarian". If you cease to be recognised as "a Jew" by SOMEBODY – even if it is the secular yiddishist bundist underground with its marxist rabbis – you AREN'T A JEW ANY MORE – this causes a sense of distress, since having an "identity" is terrifically addictive.
Rowan,
I am deeply grateful for this revelation about my identity, and how I wish to define myself, and what community I wish to join. After all, while the definition of "Jews" is vague, the definitions of "Serbians" and "Croations" and "Kurds" and the "Achole" tribe in Uganda (Joseph Kony's group") and Tutsis and Pashtuns for that matter "American" are perfectly clear. The Serbs and Kurds and Tutsis and (who all live in different countries) should not be expected to change their definitions of themselves and their communities, and evaporate their identities, in order to resolve ethnic and territorial disputes. That would be absurd. Only my people, the Jews, should do that, because you have decided our identity –my identity- just doesn't make sense. Thanks for choosing us.
Well, don't shoot the messenger.
Has anyone bothered to ask what the hell Rowan Berkely — a Londoner — knows about America or American jews? I would venture to say absolutely nothing. google the guys name and you get this sort of nonsense. He is a anti-semitic paranoid.
for instance — what the hell is this "secular yiddishist bundist underground with its marxist rabbis"?
the guy has never met a jew in his life. he is beyond ignorant.
and I came up with this — judge for yourself…
I am quite convinced that unless people understand the current systematic deception regarding the role of Jews* in modern international finance – and in its apparent antagonist, international proletarian revolutionism – they will not be able to do a single thing about zionism. This deception takes the form that the zionists can represent themselves as the inheritors of the oppressed anti-imperialist masses, rather than of the oppressors and imperialists, by exploiting the common ignorance of modern social and political history in general.*(not 'the Jews', as if they were a sort of telepathically coordinated solid bloc, but enough of the most powerful Jews, who among other things can use the rest as pawns)Rowan Berkeley
I'm sorry, but I don't see any anti-semitism in this post.
It explicitly makes the distinction between Jews as a whole and what SOME powerful and rich Jews might be doing. This can't be anti-semitic unless we are to believe that there could never possibly be any villains or evildoers among Jews (g-d forbid!).
"You have always hated us!" is itself a racist trope, a stark and horrible inversion of the portrait of Jews as unable to feel anything but contempt for gentiles ….
I didn't compose that sentence but it does resonate with me. It comes from the huge WaPo commentary to the op-ed by Deborah Lipstadt: "Jimmy Carter's Jewish Problem", published 1/19/07
Reading that commentary — or I should say, sampling it, it was more than I could read — made me realize Phil Weiss' blog isn't as radical as I thought it was. Out of 450-500 comments, there was only a handful which supported Lipstadt's position. The overwhelming response was stout support for Carter, outrage over the media attack, references to AIPAC/Israeli control of media message & US ME policy, repudiation of anti-semitic slander.
This kind of response in MSM publication is cause for hope. We could be seeing the Queen Mary turn around mid-ocean.
Richard Silverstein at Tikun Olam has an exciting update on the fledgling Jewish peace lobby:
"Dovish American Jews Raise Millions for New Lobby to Counter AIPAC"
posted 1/13/07 on his website, scroll down & click on 'previous page'
"secular yiddishist bundist underground with its marxist rabbis"
http://www.ifshj.org/resources_book_literature.html
will give ya tha flava.
Radosh, in this regard, recounts a joke which made the rounds in Communist circles when he was young: What Jewish holidays do you celebrate? The answer was: Paul Robesons birthday and May Day.