Yesterday CAMERA (the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in
For one thing, the group was almost all older
generation. I put the average age at 62. Even the snacks were
out of date, all brownies and sweet muffins and cupcakes with a quarter inch of
icing. This group is more out of the mainstream than I am! For another
thing, I recognized these older Jews as my people. I felt comfortable with them. I had a warm reunion with an old friend from the Jewish scientific
community that I went to as a boy, and we talked about antisemitism in the newspaper business. All the people in the room were Jews with a traditional sense of ethnic cohesion: Jews who feel deeply isolated from the
gentile community and have little sense of the death of anti-Semitism in
The ideas also had an isolated, garrisoned feeling to them. Andrea Levin, the group’s executive director, gave a long speech calling for an American Jewish campaign against Haaretz because it is "extremely influential" and prints "highly extreme" statements. At least with the New York Times, she said, "there is that give and take." The Times prints Camera members’ letters and listens to Camera; the Haaretz publisher gives Levin lip service and basically ignores her. Levin said that Haaretz is now "affecting us," so American Jews must become engaged. Thus the Israel lobby takes on Israel! Maybe CAMERA should change its name to CAMERIA to reflect its new mission: accuracy in Middle East reporting in Israel and America.
Cynthia Ozick went on and on about Michael Lerner in a meanspirited way, saying that he dropped out of the Jewish Theological Seminary and wound up at Naropa. Who cares? Other panelists also gave off a sense of personal grievance; they seemed alienated from the academic and cultural elite in which distinguished profs delegitimize Israel. "We are shut out,” one prof said. "All these distinguished journals!"
The CAMERA people are losing and they know it. Near the end Cynthia Ozick was asked how we should go about delegitimizing the delegitimizers of the Jewish state and she sighed and said, “It’s hopeless.” Alvin Rosenfeld, the author of the disgraceful report on Jewish anti-Semitism put out by the American Jewish Committee, was mildly more optimistic. He said exactly what I say: "We are in a furious intellectual struggle. There is a war of ideas going on… it won’t end quickly…. It is steady work." And it is "serious and worrisome" inasmuch as these ideas may now "enter the mainstream." Amen.
He is right. Any day now, post-Zionist ideas are likely to break into the mainstream. Pat Buchanan and Chris Matthews are afraid to broach "the Israel lobby"–in their discussion of Why the hell the Democrats are supporting the belligerent tone against Iran (tonight on Hardball)–but that could change any day.
The reason It’s hopeless for the other side is that there was, in the basement of the synagogue, little to zero acknowledgement of
the three great realities that are feeding Jewish post-Zionism. 1, the end of
anti-Semitism. My old friend and I talked about a Jewish Daily News columnist who refused to hire Jews. That was 50 years ago. The injury is fresh. As the memories
of anti-Semitism are for my parents. And they are virtually meaningless to young
Americans. A panelist very briefly acknowledged this at the end, saying that
Jews are so comfortable in
A pile of glossy cards on a table urged conference-goers to put pressure on international bodies to gain the release of
the Israeli soldiers held captive since the disastrous
Related posts:
- Will CAMERA Supply ‘Context’ at Its ‘Jewish Defamers’ Conference This Weekend?
- The Israel Lobby Targets Haaretz
- J Street and the battle for the Jewish soul, or wallet, or status
- CAMERA Director: ‘Many, Many Times We Have Urged’ Israeli Gov’t to Take Action Against American Publications
- Jewish student mag publishes one-state argument, signaling generational battle ahead
{ 26 comments }
I can't believe they so unabashedly attacked Haaretz and upheld the NYT…
Hmm, is there a better term than just "Zionist" to describe the anti-post-Zionist?
Mishal,
How about "schlemiel?"
They probably didn't want to mention Iraq because they didn't want to rub salt in the wound. They don't feel that Iraq is as "righteous" as Israel's march to Massada.
Hey Phil – would you tell us how old are you are (at least roughly)? I'm guessing about 40 or a little higher but maybe that's wrong. Anyway it would help in understanding your comments on this post in context.
Hey Phil – would you tell us how old are you are (at least roughly)? I'm guessing about 40 or a little higher but maybe that's wrong. Anyway it would help in understanding your comments on this post in context.
Mishal has an important question: "Is there a better term than just 'Zionist' to describe the anti-post-Zionist?" I have been grappling with that for a while now. It is a term that is currently used to describe both the "messianic" and the "national/political", according to Rabbi Berger.
http://www.ameu.org/printer.asp?iid=91&aid=308
Criticism of Zionists, as far as I can tell, is solely directed at the latter. The question is whether it is fair to the former not to make the proper distinctions. I think not.
Distinguished profs do not delegitimize Israel.
Israel delegitimizes Israel.
Profs, distinguished and undistinguished, merely do what profs are supposed to do.
Interesting implicit damning of that bulwark of integrity, the NYT.
Distinguished profs do not delegitimize Israel.
Israel delegitimizes Israel.
Profs, distinguished and undistinguished, merely do what profs are supposed to do.
Interesting implicit damning of that bulwark of integrity, the NYT.
Phil is 52, maybe 53 now.
You speak of the younger generation becoming alienated from Israel.
At home, I am both supportive (as in belonging) and very critical of Israel.
My sons are more interested in Israel than I. They both study Hebrew, which I would never. My older son is going to Israel on one of the birthright programs. The only way that I would be willing for him to go, would be if the program were definitively NOT propaganda, not biased, not rah-rah.
The program that he chose clearly isn't propaganda.
He does have an experience of both anti-semitism in his life (a striking one, if not a violent one), and of connection to his parents, grandparents, and even great-grand-parents history.
You speak in terms of the relaxation of anti-semitism as a reality.
If you truly believe that that is true, why do you think it is?
The holocaust was certainly over the edge, but long history of persecution was accepted for generations and generations by liberal Europeans. And, if the relaxation of anti-semitism is so deep to be confident, why would that have occurred?
For myself, I'm not that confident of it, as I hear the permission to express anti-semitism occur more frequently recently than at any time during my life.
"The injury is fresh". I think you fail to understand human psychology clearly. A man of 62, still with his wits and conscience at any point, is probably still skeptical, still questioning his own assumptions.
Is it possible that current rhetoric is familiar and fits the profile of genuine danger, even if not frequently or directly experienced overtly?
From your articles, I expect that my hope for change takes a different form than your own.
RW:
your son is going to Israel on a 'birthright' program. What fucking birthright?
I hope that the occupied territories are included in the curriculum.
Rabbi Michael Lerner's son is in the IDF paratroopers.
We have our own voices. Our children's are their own.
Phil implied that the Jewish youth are alienated from Judaism.
I convey that that is at most partially true.
The question is what is desired, and what actions on his part does he think is important.
He's stated that he is an assimilationist. He doesn't have children.
I do, and that constitutes a living natural tradition to me, in contrast to his armchair philosophical.
"Birthright program", not some propaganda tour… -Richard Witty
Lovely stuff, Richard. This tiramisu you're making just grows fuller with every point Phil makes.
…
Truly admirable that Phil could be upbeat about the implications of this meeting, he sees the light at the end of the tunnel… I sure don't. Because I think the American imperial mode is systemic and while Zionists (that term does just fine, thanks) are doing their part to drum up war business in the Middle East, to unite Israeli and American agendas, so too are other influential players who will continue to try to do so even if the Zionist entity actually vanished from the page of time (which coincidentally will not happen before another many thousand Palestinians die, no doubt).
There are enormous American myths that must explode, the Zionists are hardly alone in that regard, for progress to ensue in the political belly of the empire. The third and fourth estates are having it out for the crown of informational authority in a high tech propaganda age, and personally I see the populace at large becoming only more and more confused.
However I agree most passionately with Philip that Iraq is front and center in the American consciousness, and people involved in Zionism (supporting it one way or another, whether sending kids to kibbutz or writing neocon-likud propaganda) should at the very least be aware that some of their ethno-nationalist tribe were instrumental to getting this war approved by we the people, and take a stand on whether that was justified. Because the country must make a decision to end the occupation of Iraq if it is going to halt this descent into third-world division of class and complete devaluation of the currency.
Mr Witty, tell us something about the comparison between America and Europe?
===============================================
"You speak in terms of the relaxation of anti-semitism as a reality…
"I hear the permission to express anti-semitism occur more frequently recently than at any time during my life…
"The injury is fresh". I think you fail to understand human psychology clearly…
"Is it possible that current rhetoric is familiar and fits the profile of genuine danger…
===============================================
So America is in fact a nation of guilty racists and you expect that your hope for change takes a different form, exactly like some jews did in pre-bolshevik Russia. Good for you, there are so many holocaust museums in America for young americans to be indoctrinated about what they really are.
Now, Mr Witty, tell us something about the comparison between Israel and South Africa?
===============================================
"I think it would be a good effort to attempt to coin a new name for the relationship between Israel and Palestinians than "apartheid". "Apartheid" was a new name to describe specific suppressive relationships in South Africa.
"If the relationship between Israel and Palestinians does not specifically resemble South African "apartheid" (not a definition of which is better or worse), then to use the word "apartheid" is confusing. Its like using the term "nazi" or "fascist" to describe anything that is really really bad, rather than the specific meaning of "nazi" of "fascist" or "colonial" or "neo-colonial" or "neo-neo-neo-colonial".
"The problem with discussing the appropriate descriptor is that there are multiple layers to the situation.
===============================================
I see. America represents eternal antisemitism, but Israel is not a racist country at all. Thank god there are birthright programs for young jews to learn they are wictims and Israel is their hope for survival. In fact Israel is the epitome of the jewish rights movement and that means the beating of women who dare to sit amongst men in public transport, it is the construction of roads exclusive for jews, it is to be free to say what you mean, like did Arnon Soffer, the head of research for the IDF’s National Defense College:
“Our government has woken up. The only ones making noise are leftists and so-called human rights lawyers who only care about the well-being of cats, dogs and Palestinians, but never about Jews.”
Yes, Witty, americans = "old school evil racists against god's chosen people" but israelis = "misunderstood poor wictims in a world where antisemitism make people nuance-blind."
Iraq is a major issue and Iran even more so. It is too bad the term is "Israel Lobby;" it should be "Ultra-Zionist Lobby", a term which more clearly defines its agenda. (Many of us, like Mearsheimer/Walt, support Israel sans occupations, ethnic cleansing, apartheid, war-mongering, and other abhorrent policies.) Certinly it was the Pentagon ultra-Zionists who manipulated the intel and thus convinced the US to wage war. As is true in all wars, they were happily joined by war-profiteers (the military industrial complex: Halliburton, Blackwater, etc.), as well as by the would-be natural-resource-looters (oil in this case.) However, as Mearsheimer/Walt say, without the Israel Lobby, there would have been no war. This is even more true with regard to Iran. And certainly it is the Israel Lobby which is sabotaging Israeli/Palestinian peace efforts the success of which would render all these wars, (including the so-called war on terror, or more recently the so-called war on radical Islam,) unnecessary. We would be happily buying oil from or Arab and Iranian friends, and we would get our country back.
"Many of us, like Mearsheimer/Walt, support Israel sans occupations, ethnic cleansing, apartheid, war-mongering, and other abhorrent policies."
Then you support ice, as long as it is hot.
" Jews are so comfortable in America, how do we stir them?"
*********************************************
Can't you just see CAMERA operatives slinking around in the dead of night, painting Swastikas on the doors of Synagogues?
There is historical support for my paranoia.
Israel and South Africa,
In South Africa, 20% of the population ruled over 80%. There was no partition possible, as the communities were evenly mixed.
In Israel/Palestine, the population of those that identify as Jewish is roughly 50%, and similar percentage identify as Palestinian.
While there are similarities as to the wrong of Palestinians being isolated, the remedy is a different one for South Africa and Israel/Palestine.
In Israel/Palestine, the relevant remedy is effective partition, providing genuine sovereignty to the Palestinian government.
There are thousands of examples of rule by a minority over a majority, or over other minorities. The term "apartheid" is used largely because of its emotional appeal, and for the near-universal opposition to it.
Those that use the term "apartheid" rhetorically, hope to avoid inquiry into the right of the Jewish people to self-govern, and just rally for a plebiscite in Israel/Palestine.
Sadly, as the balance there is 50/50, no election would be regarded as legitimate, and therefore nearly certainly result in civil war (at least as bad as the Hamas/Fatah civil war).
Thought is useful. Rhetoric is a distortion.
Such a shame that all over the web thoughtful posts and comments are marred by horrid spats being nastily pursued by commentators in the margins.
Can people leave the digs and jabs at home?
And using swear words in replies to other posters? about their children? What is that about?!
Jimmy Carter made it clear that his use of the word apartheid is in reference to occupied Palestine with its apartheid conditions separating the settlements from the native Palestinians. Certainly partition is the answer, but Israel is greedy. The original UN partition plan divided Palestine approximately in half (see map p. xiii in Carter's book), and the Arab League Peace Plan offers Israel 78% (the 1967 borders) but this is not enough for Israel and is the reason we have to bankrupt our country fighting all these unnecessary wars. Israel as usual is refusing to even discuss the main issues, demonstrating that Israel prefers World War III. It is the Arabs who are the peace-makers.
I agree with you Courtney.
The green line or genuinely consented modifications to the border is a good basis of permanent borders.
The tangible issues should be resolvable.
In most cases though, both states will have to have the features that support the security of each state and people, from those that intentionally seek to harm or expropriate.
Both Israeli and Palestinian communities contain MANY that believe that all of the land is their's, and not the others.
And both positions are fueled at least partially from outside their borders. The unconditional Islamicists regard any "permanent" settlement with Israel as a betrayal. Even though they say "Its a Palestinian concern, not ours", they act to incite in important tangible and symbolic ways.
Certainly there are Jews that hold that the land is all theirs.
That answer though bounces off of stimuli from the other. When partition is not supported by the left, with the fantasy that the land is already civil in orientation, then Jews in America rightfully fear that they are again being "run out of town".
The combination of expressed animosity and violence, with acceptance of hate by the left as "understandable" adds up to a setting of fear, distrust.
The left is whom I'm most concerned about. We have the opportunity to offer confidence, and instead we resort to our 18-year-old version of politics and life experience.
"When partition is not supported…then Jews in America rightfully fear that they are again being 'run out of town'."
Booo americans, you either give us money, give us your lives, give us your souls or we will accuse you of antisemitism. Remember the germans, remember the russians, you will either bow to our demands or be thrown into chaos, famine, inflation and then genocide.
That's the reward of a philosemite nation. Fast growing and fast decay. Americans who dared to beilieve some people are evil because they chose to oppose such treachery will now think twice.
"…then Jews in America rightfully fear that they are again being 'run out of town'."
Jews in america should rightfully thank americans on their knees. Escaping an Europe ravaged by a disease the jews themselves helped to create (ask older europeans, they will say quietly that the zionists were behind the agitation) they found solace in american lands and yet the nowadays traitors like Witty will throw everything away for a fortnight in Jerusalem.
This is your reward, americans, sleep well in the known that the jewish comissar will protect your children from the dark winter.
What's with Cynthia Ozick? First, she provides a gushing preface to the Tova Reich novel My Holocaust that trashes frontline Holocaust awareness promoters as royally as any Holocaust-deniers' group…
now suddenly Ozick's concerned about Israel-defamers.
Is she bipolar – or what?…
"The left is whom I'm most concerned about. We have the opportunity to offer confidence, and instead we resort to our 18-year-old version of politics and life experience."
Atrios has the term for Richard Wittys of the world. "Concern trolls". And it really is exactly Witty's purpose, to see if he can express enough good-hearted charm, and pure-intentioned "concern" that Philip is somehow errant in his moral judgment, so that Philip will want to filter Mondoweiss of anything that might sour old Gran'pa Witty's milk.
But I think Philip isn't against you Gran'pa, he's just for the truth. Maybe you could go in for it, too, Gran'pa? Like: Israel is America's colony, by virtue of the "special relationship," and American and worldwide Zionist Jewry's colony, by virtue of its legitimate special relationship and family bonds.
[Now I for one don't believe in brutal colonialism, no matter which ethnic/religious group's espousing, financing, or carrying it out. It is an outrage on humanity in the year 2007 C.E. to perpetuate such a system, anywhere, by anyone.]
But do you like colonialism, Gran'pa? Shall we colonize anywhere else then? How about Isra-merican-sponsored Kurdistan, don't the long persecuted Kurds deserve their own homeland too? Maybe if Congressman Tom Lantos (D-Tel Aviv) sponsors a bill acknowledging Armenian genocide a century too late, it will look like Turkey is irrationally hating on genocide victims when, unrelatedly (except in the beautiful mind of the Zionist media), it responds to the Isra-merican-financed and -funded Kurdish militants provoking for confrontation on its border?
I can see the beautiful plum orchards now, being raised to house some refugee camps for ethnic Turks and Arabs, when the new Kurdistan is forced to barricade them due to terrorist actions against the Kurdish people.
Colonization is full of rich rewards for all of humanity, isn't it Gran'pa Witty?
But Gran'pa, you have to tell so many funny stories for people to like it…
The CAMERA people are morons. Like many diaspora communities, they espouse views which are far more extreme then citizens of the country (ie – Israel in this case) who actually live the conflict.
Haaretz rightly doesn't listen to what these ignorant morons have to say. As if some American not living in Israel, removed from the reality on the ground can tell Haaretz that it is reporting incorrectly.
CAMERA and their ilk should be utterly ignored by anyone genuinely committed to peace between Israelis and Palestinians. Israeli discourse is far more dynamic then the stale, tiresome nonsense that CAMERA pedals out.
"is there a better term than just "Zionist" to describe the anti-post-Zionist?"
well, on my blog I have taken on the task of naturalising the term "jewish nazism" – by which I do not mean just kach in its as yet sacred reboubt in the USA, namely, the Jewish Task Force; I mean that the whole of zionism is jewish nazism, bar none – avnery for instance is a jewish nazi agent of confusion with a bogus program of activism that achieves nothing except injuries to activists..
I realize that I am a bit late to this discussion and blog in general. I wouldn't know how to describe myself, perhaps 'post-zionist', but in general I eschew all labels.
For one thing I am one of those Jews who lived in Israel for several years, been in Zahal, actually set foot in Judea and Samaria (please let me use the biblical name of the territories, although I know how utterly un-pc it is).
The relationship with the US is a very complicated one that has both good and bad aspects to it. I remember Menachem Begin complaining about being treated like a banana republic, those were his exact words, in regards to being "directed" by an American official. By the way Begin also had some choice words in regards to American Jews in general during a Knesset debate — see you miss somethings in the translation… And there are other examples of the cost in the releationship, Israel having to cancel sale of equipment to China and Shimon Peres changing direction in midflight to North Korea.
But in regards to the *situation*, yes the territories and the Palestinians need a resolution of there (legitimate) issues. And so do we Jews for that matter.
Despite what has been described as 'brutal colonization' here and other media, I can tell you this that had the situation been reversed in 1948 there wouldn't have been one Jew standing.
While I know that the Arabs do have some legitimate issues I also recognize the cold fact that there is still a desire to get the Jews out of their faces, and I just don't mean in Judea and Samaria.
I believe that most of the journalists on Haaretz would support my position. And yes Camera is staffed with a bunch of jerks, etc. but there is an Anti-Israel strain in certain media outlets and we would all be better served by a more balanced reporting.
To describe the loathsome Cynthia Ozick as "meanspirited" is the height of charity.
For years I've kept her nauseating 2003 Wall Street Journal op-ed sitting around the house as a kind of textbook example of just how overtly racist you can be in the mainstream American press without being pelted with garbage.
Entitled "Where Hatred Trumps Bread: What does the Palestinian nation offer the world?", Ozick goes on to explain that Palestine's primary (perhaps only) cultural innovation is "the recruiting of children to blow themselves up with the aim of destroying as many Jews as possible in the most crowded sites accessible." She quotes a Yeats poem about the coming of the Antichrist in case we miss her point that Palestinians are evil.
She explains that Palestinians value death more than life, that the entire culture is "psychopathological", an "orgiastic deluge of fanaticism and death", where parents have "reared children unlike any other children", children who are systematically "taught to die and to kill from kindergarten on, via song and slogan in praise of bloodletting," that Palestinians themselves are "remarkabl[e] instances of anti-instinct," of "the life force traduced" , of an entire culture transformed into "cultism" and "a sinister spiritualism."
She goes on: "Out of Israel came monotheism, out of Greece philosophy, out of Arab civilization science and poetry, out of England the Magna Carta, out of France the Enlightenment. What has been the genius of Palestinian originality?"
Three guesses what Ozick's answer will be:
"hijackings [...] murder [....] slaughtering [...] murders and [....] terror, terror, terror, terror."
That this odious racist is allowed and even encouraged to speak in public forums boggles the mind.
Comments on this entry are closed.