I’ve long argued here that American Jewry won’t be healed, and neither will American leadership, till we come to terms with the neocons as an expression of a hawkish Jewish interest in the Middle East, and a powerful expression at that. For this conversation to take place, it is necessary for liberal and leftwing Jews, even centrists, to turn on their cousins whose thinking they understand intimately–the hawkish neocons–and explain how fears for Israel came to pervade the Jewish establishment post-67 and ‘73. It means, in essence, trusting America enough to say, "Guess what, Junior just blew up the neighborhood with his rocket set…" Can the Jewish family do that?
So far the leaders of this conversation have been outside the Jewish family: Walt and Mearsheimer. Though lately Jacob Heilbrunn has joined in with his book on the neocons. And now, on his new blog the writer Bernard Avishai comes close to turning Junior in with a discussion of Jews as a special interest. Avishai writes of neocon godfather Norman Podhoretz:
Podhoretz’s real breakthrough came, not when he reimagined blacks as more or less permanent adversaries, but when he reimagined Jews as a more or less permanent interest group—when he reimagined the old liberalism as a trendy behaviorism and argued that “Jewish interests” (protection of wealth, “support for Israel,” etc.) required nothing more than a common sense use of power.
[Emphasis Weiss's]… The liberalism we once knew assumed fallible citizens, skeptical of received wisdoms, struggling to come up with some common, provisionally defined good. Podhoretz assumed us to be atomized bundles of appetites, organized into “socialized” groups, getting what we can from a competition for inherently scarce goods (like money, power and fame). Old liberals were interested in rights; now we were right to have interests.
What’s the Jewish interest?… what if this was always the wrong question? What if American Jews are not an interest group but restless, loosely connected citizens—curiously proud of (what Aharon Appelfeld calls) their “fate,” not Christian but not unChristian, no longer immigrants, educated and well-off, to be sure, but still not quite comfortable, looking to make sense of themselves in an evolving America? What if, by choosing, they show themselves who they are?
Related posts:
- At Last, Jewish Paper Calls on Jewish Community to Repudiate Neocons, Not ‘Cover Up’ for Them
- American Jewish Leaders Yield Their Power to a Weak, Brutalized Foreign Country
- The National Interest, and the Israeli interest
- Liberals like to deceive themselves about Jewish power
- Having Paddled Joe Klein Over Dual Loyalty Charge, ADL Invokes ‘Jewish’ and ‘Israeli’ Interest in Olympics
{ 12 comments }
When Gustave Gilbert, a psychologist who interviewed the Nuremberg prisoners, talked to Hermann Goering, the former leader of the Third Reich's Luftwaffe, Goering volunteered that it was relatively easy to persuade a populace to go to war. As quoted in Gilbert's book "Nuremberg Diary," Goering said: "It is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship."
This goes for the American populace as a whole, and for the Jewish Americans as a subgroup. Most Jewish Americans are Democrats; more were against the Iraq War than the American population as a whole. It's arguable now that more Jewish Americans favor honoring the official American policy of getting rid of the settlements and simultaneously setting up a separate Palestinian state that is more than rump state than the Americans as a whole (most of whom who have no information at all on the details of the IP question since 1917). Are all Americans as complicit as Jewish Americans in allowing the political elites of both all Americans and Jewish Americans to write a blank check, arguably at the long-term expense of All Americans, and arguably Israel itself? A thought: Most Americans know virtually nothing about facts on the ground in key exotic places like the Middle East, nor do they care. Most Jewish Americans make it a point to know more about this very reality, yet they too allow themselves to be led like sheep. Goering would understand what I am saying here, I imagine.
The way to isolate a segment is to use DISTINCT language to describe them.
When you and others use the term "Israel Lobby" rather than "conservative Israel lobby", you lump all liberals in with all the perspectives that you oppose.
NO DISTINCTION.
How can we get behind that? Demonization and generalization?
Here is an Obama quote, from the article in the N.J. Jewish Standard linked by Bernard Avishai:
"I think everyone knows what the basic outlines of an agreement would look like," [Obama] said in a speech redistributed by his campaign. "It would mean that the Palestinians would have to reinterpret the notion of right of return in a way that would preserve Israel as a Jewish state."
Let me make a couple of substitutions to put this statement into a recognizable U.S. context, and let's see how it sounds:
"I think everyone knows what the basic outlines of an agreement would look like," Kennedy said in a speech redistributed by his campaign. "It would mean that the civil rights marchers would have to reinterpret the notion of civil rights in a way that would preserve America as a white Christian state."
Brave. Very brave. NOT!
Charles Keating thinks that jews are the adults and non-jews are children.
What an idiot.
if Bill Clinton was the first Black president of the US, does that make George Bush the first Jewish president?
"Junior just blew up the neighborhood with his rocket set"
Quite literally. Gary Leupp has 'A Sibel Edmonds Timeline' over at Counterpunch where he discusses the probability that "dual Israeli-American national" Marc Grossman and his Neocon claque are dealing American nuclear secrets to Turks and Pakistanis.
http://www.counterpunch.org/leupp01292008.html
Let's stop beating around the Bush: these traitorous scum have become an existential threat to us all.
Re: "Charles Keating thinks jews are the adults and non-jews are children."
Actually, both Hitler and Goering viewed the masses, subgroups included, as female. So did Ed Bernays and Goebbels. Sexism has been outed (at least in Western Civilization). The whole art of modern politics is to entertain the vanity and survival concerns of those needed to stay in power or get power. Marketing is everything. Women gained power in the West by getting tired of
their own ignorance and suspecting they were being abused by
cultural conditioning when such conditioning was no longer needed to keep the species alive. Children now follow as they reach the age of nonconsent. Economics is the other side of childhood.
Charles Enderlin is the France 2 Jerusalem correspondent who broadcast the incendiary account of the death of 12-year-old Muhammad al-Dura at the hands of Israeli troops operating in the Gaza Strip in September 2000. Based on film footage provided by a Palestinian cameraman, Enderlin's report has become infamous among students of Arab propaganda both for its destructive effects and for its probable falsity. The al-Dura affair now bids to join the Dreyfus affair in the French hall of shame.
Flogging his new book on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (The Lost Years) at Harvard's Center for European Studies on January 17, Enderlin himself exposed a probable Palestinian media hoax in which he had no involvement. The story exposed by Enderlin involved widely circulated reports by the Associated Press, Reuters, and the BBC. As Joel Pollak recounted online at the site Guide to the Perplexed, Enderlin told his Harvard audience "that Yasser Arafat had faked his blood donation to the victims of the September 11th attacks. Enderlin said the event had been staged for the media to counteract the embarrassing television images of Palestinians celebrating in the streets after the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks."
The story of Arafat's blood donation was reported around the world in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, usually accompanied by photographs depicting Arafat in the apparent act of giving blood at the Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. Enderlin elaborated on his contention that the scene depicted in the photographs was staged. According to Pollak's account of Enderlin's remarks, "Arafat didn't like needles, and so the doctor put a needle near his arm and agitated a bag of blood. The reporters took the requisite photographs."
Should we take his word for it? Enderlin is certainly an experienced and knowledgeable reporter on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But taking Enderlin's word for the hoax is a bit like trusting the paradoxical assertion of Epimenides, the Cretan philosopher who famously declared that all Cretans are liars. At the least, we should demand to see what Othello called "the ocular proof." Do the photographs conform to Enderlin's description of them? In short, the anwer is yes….
I'm sorry, I am not to bright. Please explain the connections you make here. Thank you so much.
I have no idea what he's talking about either, Charles.
But I think we can safely assume he's not really interested in any of our opinions.
The "real" issue is the "Jewish family". From the outside, in the U.S., it looks impregnably Zionist, though I know it is not. Obviously the Zionist expression is politically (and even economically) very powerful, but not invincible. But will the Jewish "left" find the courage to "betray" the Zionists? I use the word "betray" inadvisedly, but that is how it will be portrayed. Did David Kaczynski betray his brother Ted, or did he prove more loyal to justice than to family? Camus pledged a greater loyalty to his mother than to justice, but that issue is further complicated by the fashion in which the Algerians were attempting to achieve justice. My gentile hope is that the Jewish "left"–more accurately called the Jewish universalist tradition of Einstein and Magnes–join the gentile universalists in condemning racist Zionism? Only then will we begin to find justice, and thence peace, in Palestine.
greybeard…Let's hope. Amy Goodman and NOrman Finkelstein are good examples of what you are talking about.
Gentiles and Jews who try to expose the radical strategies of the Zionist are bashed Vanessa Redgrave, Art Gish ( Christian Peace Maker Team), Jimmy Carter, Professor Juan Coles etc.
Hell Norman Finkelstein has been verbally bashed himself
Comments on this entry are closed.