Finkelstein, a Victim of the Israel Lobby, Denies That It Has Power

As Jeff Blankfort and James Petras have
convincingly demonstrated, most anti-war
Jewish leftists have consistently attempted
to divert the discourse on the war away
from any suggestion of Zionist culpability,
while few among the goyim are willing to risk
being branded as anti-semites by daring
to speak of Jewish power.

Has Finkelstein finally been broken by the Lobby, or does he reflexively subscribe to the theory that only Jews should be allowed to criticize Jews even though Jewish ideologues are responsible for millions of gentile deaths?

Jews need to start getting used to the fact that their post-Holocaust days of immunity from criticism are over, because many of their co-religionists abused that immunity to turn Palestine into a gulag, to help engineer the deaths of a million+ Iraqis and thousands of Americans, and to basically trash American principles.

Finkelstein knows that and has written eloquently about Jewish chicanery and abuse of power, but he apparently thinks critique of Jewish aggression should be monopolized by Jews — classic Jewish authoritarianism. Can’t he see that it is Jewish authoritarianism that is at the root of much of what he hates?

mazzir:

When you suppress legitimate debate in the mainstream, then you have inevitably pushed it into corners where people may not be as discriminating. The solution is not to suppress the debate further, it is to make it mainstream so that it becomes obvious to all that the neocons and AIPAC don't reflect the views of Jews at large. The Finkelstein/Chomsky position is counterproductive insofar as it could easily lead to a perception that it is a 'Jewish', rather than a Zionist problem if even anti-Zionist Jews are seen as covering for the lobby.

I think I'm probably going to look at the .50 caliber desert eagle ( israeli manufactured I believe )

Posted by: the sword of gideon | February 23, 2008 at 12:01 PM

C'mon, gideon, we all know the real reason you're arming yourself to the teeth is that you fantasize about a day when Jewish Neolib/Neocon authoritarians have taken over the US government and declare open season on Christians and gentile dissidents the way Jewish Bolsheviks did in the Soviet Union.

You fancy yourself a Commissar, don't you, gideon, with all the rape-and-slaughter "perks" that Jewish Bolsheviks enjoyed in Communist Russia.

@The Fanonite

Yeah, I hope that the problem with Neoconservatives and the Israel Lobby — the faux belief that Israeli-US interests are always identical — can be dealt with in a civilised manner. So, without anti-Semitism and without hysterical rants against Israel.

The US should say this:
- Israel is an ally, in time of need, we will defend her
- Israel and US interest are not identical, it's bad for both.
- Israel and Palestine must resolve their issues: a two-state solution would be most wise, IMHO.
- Netanyahu and his ilk can sink into the ground for what we care; we will never listen to their uncrompromised radicalism again.
- Religious Right should stay out of politics. Religion and politics shouldn't be mixed–ever.

Oh, and neoconservatives did a good/respectable job as social critics, they should go back doing just that. They should stay away from foreign policy alltogether.

I really hope people won't project their anger and disappointment over the (lost) war(s) towards Jews in general. It would be a tragedy.

I have to say this though: I've never suppressed my thoughts or writings on anything; I just stand up for what I believe to be wrong or right. Even though I'm a marginal nobody, more people should have done just that. It wouldn't have come to this.

No Ed, I don't want to declare open season on Christians, just you.

@Bondo

"tired of the vile and violent liars."

I too hope the wars will end soon. It would be nice if some of them would show public humility, instead of agitating for new wars.

Ah, well..

No Ed, I don't want to declare open season on Christians, just you.

Posted by: the sword of gideon | February 23, 2008 at 12:32 PM

Gideon,
No need to waste .50 round–a 22 should be more than enough for your target!

Posted by: sim | February 23, 2008 at 12:42 PM

…the true nature of Judeofascism seems to be revealing itself under stress.

The gig is up, the scam is over. You Judeofascists aren't liked, and aren't wanted, in America. There's no use screaming at the tide and issuing threats against the ocean. Sell your guns, pack your bags and buy your one-way tickets to Israel. There will be no Jewish Bolshevik/Neocon government in America anymore, and there will be no open season on gentiles. Your murderous dream is fading fast.

Mazzir,

I just don't think that it is America's job to defend, aid or arm Israel. I really don't care about Israel, and I don't see how Israel has been much more than an unwanted and unnecessary burden.

I heard Bush repeatedly (I believe he did so in his first state of the union address) justify an invasion of Iraq, prior to doing so, by saying that we would be protecting an ally or allies. My guess is that he meant Israel, because no other country was pushing for the war.

If Phil is right about the influence of Jews, then there should be consequences for those who are responsible, and a re-thinking of where the nation is going, what it means to be an American, and who gets to be an American.

That's a fair PoV.

I believe aid and arms should be off the table as well.

I'm still not convinced that the invasion of Iraq was through some "cabal" alone. Many different things mattered as well: oil c.q. hegemony in the Gulf, human rights for the Kurds, religious-right madness, modernization of the Islamic world, WMD, UN violatons, US militarism, anti-Arab/muslim sentiment after 9/11, Al-Qaida, etc.

All these things were on the table at the time of the invasion. Some were false, some were over-estimated, some were wrong. I don't know.

What I do believe, is that Israel, when threatened by its neighbours to be driven into sea, should be helped by the West. Not by offensive pre-emptive wars, but in the case of a defensive, a provocation.

I don't have an opinion over what it should mean to be an American for the simple reason that I am not American.

"To begin with, American policy in the West Bank is hardly peripheral. It has damaged the American reputation and influence across the Arab world and in Europe too."

This is invariably true. I hold George W Bush responsible, NOT any Israel Lobby.

He and his staff formed their policies, and radically deviated from at least the pretense of the green line as border.

Their administration alone fostered the enabling of Israel.

The neo-conservatives' arguments had been made for a decade, but were rejected by both GH Bush and Clinton.

What was different this time? It wasn't 911. The biggest difference was that Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney, pulled the strings.

There are many potentially actable ideas floating around that decision-makers may adopt as policy. Those that form the ideas (from the gamut of good and bullshit motivations) are doing their responsibility.

The scope of every person's responsibility is limited. My professional responsibility for example, is limited to financial matters in the company that I work for, not organic standards compliance of the company, nor of the food manufacturing system in the world in general.

Limited. An employee of a think tank or military, asked to outline the factors that influence X, are doing their job.

Its the decision-makers, the policy-makers, the legislators, whose job it is to apply them.

And, their job is limited in scope even. National interest is NOT equivalent to humanism for example.

What is your job Phil, your responsibility here? I've seen it conflict with human responsibility (in some of the inflammatory rhetoric that you occassionally use).

My sense is that it is journalistic, with a formed outline of protocol and more specific purpose and guidelines. Frankly from my seat, the fixation conflicts with that mission in life.

"I hold George W Bush responsible, NOT any Israel Lobby. He and his staff formed their policies, and radically deviated from at least the pretense of the green line as border."

George W. Bush, like nearly every U.S. state governor, was taken to Israel at the expense of the Lobby. Once in national office, he was surrounded by Jewish neocons — Wolfowitz, Feith, Libby, et al — pushing their Iraq war agenda.

When the farmer shines his flashlight into the henhouse, Richard, it's a little too late for the foxes to all make clucking noises and claim, "Nobody here but us chickens."

George W. Bush knuckled under to the Lobby, just as his daddy did. Follow the money.

"What conclusions you reach depend on what conclusions you WANT to reach – whether you want what's best for America first, or whether you want what's best for Israel first."

Not to single you out, americangoy, but comments like that are what make me very uneasy about the comments section of this blog. I'm very critical of Israel's policies and I think the only just form of Zionism was that espoused by Judah Magnes and Martin Buber–Palestine as a land which would be a haven for Jews, but where both Arabs and Jews would live side-by-side in peace, in complete equality.

In the long run, a just solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will be good for Israel, good for the Palestinians, good for the rest of the Arabs (because of the example it could set) and good for America. I don't like this notion that what is good for America can't be good for Israel. We have to change people's minds on what is good for both.

I don't know Walzer's specific response to the Lebanon War. I doubt very much that he sadistically advocated for killing Lebanese or destroying Lebanese infrastructure.

If anything, I expect that he was on the fence about whether war was initiated by Hezbollah, which he, Israel, and I concluded that it was.

And, then once in war, the question becomes how to conduct it, with two primary considerations that are related in an effective military operation, even against a guerilla or ambush oriented army.

1. How effective are you at achieving your objectives (in the case of Lebanon a failure)? And the objective of compelling Hezbollah to submit to Lebanese sovereignty rather than militia sovereignty, I believe to be a good one, that neither the Lebanese, nor the Israelis, nor the UN have succeeded at.

2. How do you conduct the war, while in it? To what extent do you abide by the ethical value of least harm to accomplish the tangible mission? (Again Israel failed largely, but mostly because it was ambiguoous about what its mission was.)

That condition remains, as the unnatural and opportunist construction of a militia conducting a state's defense remains.

I watched the misrepresentation, known but still repeated, by the left on the origination of the war, and the utter failure to denounce with any backbone Hezbollah humanitarian abuses (indiscriminately shelling civilian cities), while vigorously condemning Israeli.

The war started with Hezbollah shelling a civilian town (and an army post) as a diversionary tactic to conduct the long-planned abduction of regular Israeli reconnaisance teams, along the Israeli side of the border.

It did not occur within Lebanon, as Nasrallah coolly lied to international press. Juan Cole, and Finkelstein ate it up and repeated the lie, vociferously, and then still claimed that Hezbollah was "honest".

I don't know of an apology by the two yet.

Israel's first responses were assertive, but limited to retrieving the hostages.

BOTH Hezbollah and Israel escalated. Each claimed to be undertaking defensive, or retaliatory, efforts.

The perception among Zionists, with the collaborative timing (probably not coordinated) of the Hamas abductions, an escalated terrorist incident in the West Bank at the same time, and the Hezbollah initiation, was of a third front in an otherwise limited conflict.

It shifted the action qualitatively from a petty miff (along the old game of "sticking it to Israel" to gain credibility on the Arab street), to a three-front war.

That was what shifted the level of seriousness about the Lebanese abduction.

It was a Hezbollah opportunism, as the Saudi, Jordanian, Egyptian ministries asserted.

Israel could have lied low and gained that propaganda victory, in which Hezbollah would be outcast. Iran and Syria would be isolated.

Walzer (I imagine) and I trusted those that new better, seeing more, as Israelis rationally rely on the IDF.

I like Donald's comments. He seems sober and kind.

I am glad Phil mentioned Finkelstein's research in the uses of the Holocaust, for the Holocaust lobbying and advocacy has a lot of similarity to Israel lobbying and advocacy. See comment http://www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/2008/02/when-we-talk-ab.html#comment-103849688 .

Finkelstein has no problem with the concept of a Holocaust Industry. Why shouldn't there be an Israel Industry, which I prefer to call Judonia for reasons of Polish history? The Holocaust Industry is in fact an important project within Judonia or the Israel Industry.

Anyway Finkelstein and Chomsky make a good point that national interest is a sort of mystical concept, but we can look at Judonia by using process instead of goals.

There is no real debate among national politicians about policy towards Israel and the Palestinians. Why but for Judonia?

In any case, Israel advocacy organizations and the organized Jewish community worked for a generation to drive the Arabists from positions of power within the foreign policy establishment and groomed the replacement group. Obviously, there once was debate in the US government over policy towards Israel and the Palestinians.

Melani McAlister has argued the pop culture determines perception of national interest, which determines foreign policy.

M&W did not address the movie industry at all, but Judonia clearly operates at a level unachievable by normal lobbies.

BTW, there is an interesting connection between Friedmanism and Neoconservatism at the University of Chicago.

The two ideologies have a sort of interesting connection.

Neoconservatism is simply an evolved form of Jabotinskianism, which was essentially a competitor with Communism for Jewish hearts and minds. In fact, Trotsky and Jabotinsky are rather similar as Russianized Czarist Jews.

Naomi Klein makes it quite clear that Friedmanism develops as a reaction to American Jewish communism.

As The Shock Doctrine points out, Friedmanism is an extremely bloody fanatic murderous ideology just like Russian Jewish Communism and Jabotinskianism.

To understand the interplay of these three ideologies which grow out of modern Jewish intellectual currents, researches really have to understand modern Jewish history much better than Finkelstein, Walt and Mearsheimer do.

Anyway, the Neocons and the Friedmanites first hook up significantly in Nicaragua to combat the Sandinistas. It was breathtaking how quickly the Friedmanites swooped down on Iraq from the earliest days of the occupation, and Lebanon has its group of U of C trained economists, who intended to impose the same sorts of privatization reforms that Pinochet introduced in Chile once Israel wiped out Hezbollah.

In a sense, Hezbollah's victory against Israel in the Lebanon war was a victory against Neoconservatism and Friedmanism.

"No question that the applied results of U. of Chicago neoliberalism in Chile were bloody. But I don't find any explicit endorsement of such aberrations in Friedman's published works."

Naomi Klein provides a fairly tight argument to the contrary, and the violence was widespread throughout the southern cone of Latin American — not just in Chile.

You are misreading Friedman's opposition to the Federal Researve and fiat money, which are completely separate issues.

Most of the shenanigans in which the US government and the Fed engage in today can be perpetrated without a Federal Reserve and with precious metal backed money.

Preventing fiscal malfeasance requires more bank regulation than Friedman was willing to allow.

I just read in an article in Haaretz a phrase stating that Israel is the 51st state of the US. Call me naive but I did not know that it is taken so for granted there. The article was about our presidential election. THEY know what is what. We in the US can deny it and debate it to death but Israelis know it. They are afraid of Obama changing this relationship of 51st statehood. (Personally I don't think he will ever have that power, the embedded power structure will be too much for him.)
People on this blog can fuss and fume about the anti-semitism in exposing this special relationship, and how Israel is our ally and friend, but I do not believe many Americans understand that this relationship even exists. No one who gets their news from television, magazines, or newspapers knows this . When they do find out, they will feel betrayed. Will the truth come out eventually? Will the foreign money coming in to buy our corporations influence how our country is run? Will these countries with these sovereign wealth funds have influence and lobbies of their own? Will they be intimidated by charges of anti-semitism?

Did quick google-fu.

So far only Mr. Randall S. Kroszner I am not sure about, although one of the Wikipedia categories he is listed under is American Jews.

So yes – it does look like all 5 board members of the Fed Reserve are Jewish.

I am sure it is just a coincidence that the ethnic group of about 2% is so overrepresented in the US government.

Which is funny when reading this:
http://www.adl.org/special_reports/control_of_fed/print.asp
"n more recent years, the anti-Semitic notion that "the Jews" dominate and command the U.S. Federal Reserve System and in effect control the world’s money has surfaced across the extremist spectrum. Contemporary economic anxieties and distrust of government have given new life to this timeworn myth.
(…)
The charge that "Jews control the Federal Reserve" is a classic example of the hatemonger's paranoid-style exploitation of legitimate concerns in this case, the nation's economy. Moreover, the wide appeal of this anti-Semitic conspiracy theory among all kinds of extremists strikingly demonstrates how the agendas of otherwise opposing hate groups meet on common ground: the scapegoating of Jews."

…considering all 5 of the Fed Reserve System ARE Jewish…

The Israeli Agenda and the Scorecard of the Zionist Power Configuration for 2008

http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/zone0/viewtopic.php?t=85354

Yes, There Is a Guerrilla War Against Zionism in the U.S. What Should Jewish Institutions Do?

http://www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/2008/02/portrait-of-a-h.html

So Kazmierczak, a youth who had educated himself about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, might have become angry and alienated at the Neocon-occupied US government's hypocritical stance in favor of the Jim Crow apartheid state of Israel, and took it out on the wrong people by killing some of his fellow American students.

On the other hand, the Jewish-American Zionists who lied America into the Iraq war are responsible for 4,000 of their fellow Americans' deaths and hundreds of billions in US debt.

Which type is the more dangerous to America? Your type, gideon. Your type.

PS: I thought you were out buying that .50 caliber you planned to menace dissident gentiles with? Maybe you and Kazmierczak aren't so different after all.

Jewish Advocates of Pre-Emptive War with Iran Come Under Increasing Criticism:

http://www.itszone.co.uk/zone0/viewtopic.php?p=422015#422015

The Israeli Agenda and the Scorecard of the Zionist Power Configuration for 2008

http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/zone0/viewtopic.php?t=85354

http://NEOCONZIONISTTHREAT.BLOGSPOT.COM

Finkelstein gives Israeli-American relations lecture

http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/zone0/viewtopic.php?t=85204

http://NEOCONZIONISTTHREAT.BLOGSPOT.COM

Thanks for the heads-up on Nader's comments.

The Freeper kids are already all over this. (They're shocked!) Here's everything with links to the transcripts–
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1975604/posts

"I give you the example, the Palestinian-Israeli issue, which is a real off the table issue for the candidates. So don't touch that, even though it's central to our security and to, to the situation in the Middle East. He was pro-Palestinian when he was in Illinois before he ran for the state Senate, during he ran–during the state Senate. Now he's, he's supporting the Israeli destruction of the tiny section called Gaza with a million and a half people. He doesn't have any sympathy for a civilian death ratio of about 300-to-1; 300 Palestinians to one Israeli. He's not taking a leadership position in supporting the Israeli peace movement, which represents former Cabinet ministers, people in the Knesset, former generals, former security officials, in addition to mayors and leading intellectuals. One would think he would at least say, "Let's have a hearing for the Israeli peace movement in the Congress," so we don't just have a monotone support of the Israeli government's attitude toward the Palestinians and their illegal occupation of Palestine."

A good post. Still, I do think this issue gets more air time than it deserves. Finkelstein is a real bastion of free speech on the Israel/Palestine conflict and we're lucky to have him among our ranks (we meaning anyone fighting to end Israel's occupation of Palestine). Whether there's a lobby or a broader institutional mechanism that leads to US support of Israel, it is clear that the US's concrete support of Israel in all its forms has to be challenged. Without that support Israel is close to unsustainable as a geopolitical enterprise.