The other day I noted the groundswell response at the Greenwich Library to the nearly-censored group, If Americans Knew, which argues that If "Americans" knew the full scale of what our government and the Israel lobby were licensing against the Palestinians, "Americans" would change their policy re Israel in a heartbeat. I said that the rage against the speaker among Jews in the audience (Jews as identified by the Times) and the tremendous support she got from the rest of the crowd, was evidence of a growing division in our country over Middle East policy. And not a division among intellectuals, and not an unspoken division, which is all we have had for years. But in the end a robust debate over policy, in which empowered Jews must be open about their feelings about Israel, and interrogate them, because god knows they are having a real effect on American statecraft, or lack thereof.
Well today brings further evidence for my claim. The Jerusalem Post notes that the assiduous Abe Foxman (who is hedgehoglike, not foxlike, per the old Isaiah Berlin dichotomy) went to the Knesset and presented a survey showing that a third of American believe that American Jews are more loyal to Israel than the U.S. The writer notes:
Now, with Mearsheimer and Walt’s campaign against
the "Israel lobby" and Jimmy Carter’s righteous indignation (but
refusal to debate), American Jews are increasingly feeling the sting of
the accusation as it enters the mainstream of American political
discourse. In supporting Israel, are they in fact disloyal Americans?Is support for what they see as the "Jewish interest" –
supporting a safe haven outside America for their brethren worldwide –
somehow against the interests of America?
The writer, Haviv Rettig, goes on to say that Madison said that lots of interests should contend in a democracy and there is nothing wrong with Jews bringing their interest to bear. And the last time Jews were accused of such disloyalty, it ended badly. A blackmail, that: a reference to the Holocaust.
The problem with Rettig’s formulation is that a, Madison believed that factions could distort policy and b, Madison sought open Madisonian debate as a corrective. There is no debate. Just look at the Democratic presidential campaign, or the Republican one. Only one guy questions it, Ron Paul. Yet there truly is a large mass of Americans who are questioning our policy toward Israel, and they are shamed as antisemitic by the likes of Rettig, and nearly censored in Greenwich, as "offensive" (!) and an eyebrow is raised over their vehemence in the New York Times. They are marginalized, even as a persuasive argument is made that our skewed policies re Israel, generated by askew Jewish neocons, got us into the morass of Iraq (killing 600,000 Arabs, says Arabist Sharon Stone). Smart Americans now understand this. And yet the media are not giving a prominent place to these views, and our politicians are giving no voice to them. That’s unhealthy, that’s not Madison. Leave alone the fact that the American Jewish establishment has maintained a ban on using the words "Palestinian suffering" in the public square–a ban that more and more informed Americans find hateful.
No, there must be a robust debate of foreign policy and of what Israeli "democracy" means for Palestinians under Israeli control, and also a robust debate among Jews (and nonJews too) of Jewish identity, and what the creation of Israel has done to American Jewish loyalties (which is not an antisemitic canard, it is precisely what the anti-Zionist American Jews worried about publicly generations ago: that a Jewish state with a right of return would divide American Jewish identity/loyalty). This debate will happen without pogroms because we are Americans who debate these things. And it will happen before long, I promise. There is simply too much instability in the discourse, i.e., the natives are gettin restless. With reason.
