I’m easily amazed. Maclean’s Magazine has published a
huge piece headlined "Why Israel Can’t Survive" as a Jewish state if it wants to be democratic.
(Chris Varley , who pointed the piece out to me, notes, that Maclean’s is Time-magazine like, and "home to cranks like Barbara Amiel and Mark Steyn, and
edited by Ken Whyte [very mainstream, formerly of the National Post], so publishes the usual agit-prop.") Christopher Hitchens in Slate is saying the same thing: Israel can’t survive as a Jewish state.
And I notice that Maclean’s has a
respectful interview with John Mearsheimer here too.
I’m sure the Israel lobby is watching this as closely as I am. The conventional wisdom is solidifying. What was once radical when Tony Judt proposed it five years ago is now a real option. Some day soon the Times and Washington Post will fall into line, and from there the networks, and then, finally, the politicians will question apartheid policies in the West Bank. Mearsheimer will then be embraced, because he is for a 2-state solution.
Why is this happening? You can blame Iraq, you can blame the bankruptcy of the peace process. But I say it’s the zeitgeist. The times are changing; the left and its answers are coming in. And the Obama effect is going to change the air we breathe. I remember when a questioner at NYU challenged Judt, How can you oppose a Jewish state when we see the primacy of tribe at every hand…. Well, that feels like a long time ago; and we will soon have a postracial president.
Related posts:
- More Mainstream Voices Use ‘Cabal’ to Describe Neocons
- Several important writers declare that Israel is committing ’suicide’
- ‘Americans for Peace Now’ Bucks ‘Times,’ and Mainstream Jewish Opinion, Re Hamas
- ‘Times’ Says Israel ‘Subjugates’ Palestinians. Any Other State Would Be Sanctioned
- Purging the Neocons from Mainstream Jewish Life Won’t Be Easy
{ 11 comments }
Why does Israel even have to survive? It doesn't matter to me as long as we don't get the refugees. That may sound harsh, but neither Israel or Israelis concern me.
Also, what does postracial even mean? Is it supposed to mean that Obama and his supporters are beyond the conept of race and ethnicity? I don't think that either is even close to beig true, given the fact that 90+% of blacks in some contests have voted for Obama, and that Obama has quite solid ties with people who are definitely mired in race.
I seriously doubt that Obama will abolish affirmative action, or absolve us non-ethnic whites of our outrageous sins. I seriously do not see a case for Obama being beyond race.
Also, what divides people after the issue of race is dead? Will violence, bigotry, hatred, dishonesty and crime all disappear? I'm pretty sure that they will all be applied to something else.
the ideas that are coming in are the ideas of the old right…the ideas that distinguished (broad) US interests from non-US interests or narrow US interests.
as food and oil prices rise, people will ask is Israel worth it? Is it worth one (more) American dollar on top of trillions or one more American life?
i am not sure what the trigger point oil price will be but it 'll happen.
Seeing that it's Israel's 60th anniversary, I figured I'd give you some Independence Day reading. Below is a thorough torching of Judt's position, and, I assume, of yours:
http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=e4be13bf-86c9-4955-9ecf-5da461b8eb98
Arthur Hertzberg's introduction to "The Zionist Idea" wouldn't be terrible reading for today either…
I hate to beat a dead horse, but it's lying in the road. The road to peace and justice in the mideast and indeed the world.
"What would happen to Jews all over the world if Israel was no longer a "Jewish State"?
I am starting to believe that those who think bad things would happen, really can't present a serious argument. If they can't then their opposition becomes something based on hysteria…
What's happening to the Kurds, the Roma?
Todd, I think you're right. There is very little chance that Obama will be the first post-racial president. The magnitude of his black support will require him to reward the black community with something tangible in the way of affirmative action and/or reparations once he takes office. Most likely he will abjure the use of race and then use markers for race such as income or "obstaces overcome" to use when awarding contracts, handing out jobs or granting college admissions/scholarships.
What will he do about this:
http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/cgi-bin/blogs/voices.php/2008/05/12/p25409
"We will soon have a postracial President"
Who? Bob Barr? The Libertarian candidate looks kind of like Rev. Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr., but I don't think he has much of a chance.
It sure won't be Rev. Wright's long-time protege, who rightfully subtitled his autobiography "A Story of Race and Inheritance" because there is nothing in it but race and inheritance.
I know this is old news to many who are on to Zionism, but it is essential to know that perhaps 90-95% of the Jews of Israel have no more than negligible portions of Hebrew blood. They are known as Ashkenazi Jews who are directly descended from one of the many brands barbarians who swept out of the steppes of Russia westward to pillage the locals, only to be displaced in turn by more recent incarnations of Atilla and his boys.
In this case, we have the Khazars, who created a large empire, peaking around 700-850 CE. At that time, they controlled everything between the Caspian and Black Seas, north to well beyond Moscow. As they began to become less barbarian, their elite decided a tribe religion was necessary. They chose Judaism because they had fought the Persians for about 200 years, keeping them out of Eastern Europe in the bargain, and they had no desire to rile the Christian Empire, which at that time had its HQ in Constantinople, not far from Khazaria. Since all the Jews had been driven mostly to Spain, there was no adversary, so they opted for Judaism. Before the first Millennium came and went, they were driven from their seat of Empire by another wave of hooligans from the steppes, and thus were dispersed, mostly northward, into Eastern Europe and central Russia, where they communed in ghettos and rewrote the essence of their religion to fit their diminished circumstances…the beginning of victim hood. This, my friends, is the true Diaspora. Note that it was simply another tribe of their own blood that did the deed, but now we are all now to blame.
Zionism, like modern economics, is nothing but a con game. They were smart enough to see that essential weakness of Islam and Christianity was that both prohibited usury, or interest, now known as Capital Gains. Thus they dominated the money changing market from the beginning. They did it because everyone else had been taught that it was a Sin to make money with money, as it truly is.
Essentially, Israel was created on false pretexts. Does that sound familiar? It is nothing but a HQ for the Ashkenazi mob, where the killers and so forth can go hide without fear of being extradited. I'm no religionist, to be sure, but I'll take the old Christian fable and the Islamic set of myths over these bloodsuckers.
The Palestinians needs support to end their misery.
The KGB supported the PLO, but it was counterproductive.
The Palestinian nation needs an enlightened transformation from the false glory of the past into a decent society, with positive leaders.
We can support the people of Palestine in a intelligent way, to end the conflict.
The ban on usury by Christianity and Islam for many centuries was truly a hole card played against the masses by the elite and their lackies, the Jews, also the tax collectors, and doctors–another profession banned in earlier ages to Christians. The history of the Jewish Diaspora shows that they were a socio-economic elite class compared to the exploited masses–even more than they ever were simple victims of anti-semitism growing out of thin air.
The feudal age is now being replayed under the postmodern guise of the "special relationship" between the USA & Israel.
Domestic & foreign, it's the same.
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