All the issues are flowing together: Iran, campaign finance, the Israel lobby, the presidential election. As I said yesterday, the Financial Times can discuss it but not our press. Last night Chris Matthews was tonguetied on the subject. When do you ever see Matthews tonguetied? He said that there were "sensitivities" in the U.S. around the Israel issue. Then he said it was not just Jews who care about Israel, a great number of Christians do too. I don't know if that is true, politically, Chris, you absolute genius of politics, be intellectually honest? Who will go to the mat for Israel? On his panel were Andrea Mitchell and Roger Simon of politico. I venture that both are Jewish. There are your sensitivities. When will a journalist have the co-jones to ask a simple question: How important is Zionism to you? Gather a group of journalists and ask them that. Let us learn that there are also non-Zionists. Anti-Zionists.
I hear Sy Hersh has another great piece in the New Yorker this week. My friend Dan Swanson says Hersh is a tough kid from Chicago. No one got the better of Hersh. (And Jim Lobe says that shrimpy Jews make better neocons than tough Jews. The shrimps got beat up when they were kids, or thought they were getting beat up.) I bet Zionism is not that important to Hersh, and he is from a leftwing background. But Daniel Schorr, his mother lit candles for Palestine--and probably sent money off to help the Haganah cleanse the land of Palestinians, when the U.N. had created a state that was only slightly majority Jewish. When will Jews talk about this in the media? We owe it to this great country. Now especially, when Obama and McCain are struggling to meet Jewish expectations.
Matthews owes it to his audience to have John Mearsheimer and Trita Parsi on, realists. Mearsheimer says that the world can live with an Iran with nukes, so does Fareed Zakaria. What is the Israeli interest and what is the American one? And how much of the Israeli interest is perceived by its leaders in militarized terms, a fortress state that sometimes speaks of the '67 borders as "Auschwitz borders"? Americans should be talking about this stuff, instead of letting Israel drag us into its cycle of violence.
“Americans should be talking about this stuff, instead of letting Israel drag us into its cycle of violence.”
I’ve been thinking lately that another reason the Jewish Zionist Neocons wanted American troops in the Persian Gulf long term is to get thousands of them killed in an Iranian strike (it supposedly has thousands of Shahab-3 missiles capable of taking out ships and US bases in the Gulf and in Iraq) which of course would force massive American retaliation and perhaps even invasion and occupation.
Think about it from the Zionist perspective: when will a chance like this come along again? If Obama is elected, the troops will (hopefully) start coming home, and the odds of being able to use American forces to take out (yet another) of Israel’s enemies dwindle by the day.
I can easily picture a guy like Doug Feith doing inner jumps of joy upon hearing that Iranian missiles had taken out Balad Air Base, home to 20,000 US troops.
Our alliance with Israel has cost us
trillions of dollars, destroyed the lives of
thousands of soldiers, and earned us the
enmity of much of the Moslem world, but, of
course, no price could ever be too high for
such a precious friendship.
"How important is Zionism to you?"
What Zionism?
How important is it that the Jewish people have a safe community in which to self-govern among those that feel that that comraderie is important?
VERY.
How important is it that those ideological settlers get to continue to push Palestinians from their land without any vestige of due process?
NONE AT ALL.
Which one of these are you talking about, concisely?
I don't call John Mearsheimer a "realist", as represented by the common meaning of the word.
He is of the "realist" camp, along with Breszinski, who when he facilitated the trilateral commission was not exactly considered a realist.
____________________________________________________________________
"When will a journalist have the co-jones to ask a simple question: How important is Zionism to you? Gather a group of journalists and ask them that. Let us learn that there are also non-Zionists. Anti-Zionists."
Excellent idea.
Just listening to you now on AntiWar Radio with Scott Horton.
Great discussion.
____________________________________________________________________
"I don't know if that is true, politically, Chris, you absolute genius of politics, be intellectually honest?"
Whut?
How important is it that the American people have a safe community in which to self-govern?
VERY
How important is it that those ideological settlers get to continue to push Palestinians from their land without any vestige of due process?
VERY
IT MUST STOP or Goering was right; nothing learned.
Witty, two problems though.
First, the subset of America whose interests are served by our current Imperial Military Interests in Iraq (Zionists, "Elites," and the Very Wealthy) are the least represented in our armed forces. This makes our military no different than Blackwater, a bunch of mercenaries.
Second, I support your war tax, as long as it is not only progressive like the current State/Federal income tax, but progressive like the up-to-90% 1960's scale, where most of the burden goes on the wealthy. Why? Because if their kids aren't fighting, money is the only other thing they care about in the world. Plus, the Iraq war serves their interests, not ours. They should pay for it instead of getting forced seizures of all the poor people who are already donating their progeny.
The USA has its own "Hessians."
How times change, yet remain the same.
I agree, Phil, that many American Jews are too reactionary and knee-jerk whenever criticism of Israel is sounded. But this is not a phenomenon unique to Jews and, as Mathews said, Christians are really sensitive about criticism of Israel too. Just look at John Hagee. Or, for a less politically mired subject, how about Karen Lyons, a woman I met at an Israel at 60 celebration in LA.
Karen Lyons kept smacking my leg and acting as if she was going to jump out of her seat. She’s a church-going Christian from Pacific Palisades, married to a
temple-attending Jew, and she’s prone to such reactions when asked why she loves Israel and what she thinks of those who criticize its actions.
“It makes me physically ill, because that is not the Word of God. God have mercy on their souls because they are ignorant,” she said. “He says pray for the peace of Jerusalem. Pray for the peace of Jerusalem! That is where he is coming back!”
Nothing like bible-thumping freaks running the show for the most powerful nation on earth. The 21st Century is returning to the dark ages, after the 20th form of the secular same. I guess the age of reason as no traction, too ancient…
I had the best dream in which all the zionist and evangelics and politicans were so upset that they couldn't get the US to bomb Iran that they left en mass to set up a Jim Jones koolaid camp somehere in the darkest jungles of SA.
Anyone remember when Dick Armey said on Hardball that his first duty as a US congressperson was to protect Israel?
Or when Richardson recently said in the dem debates that Israel's security was the cornerstone of US policy?
You know, I listen to US politicans swearing alliegence to a foreign country and wonder what planet I am living on.
We know in our heart and minds this is treason in the true definition of the term. Yet Orwellington DC continues to call wrong right and black white..how long can this go on until the US is completely ruined?
Houston… we have a problem. Houston we have a problem, Houston we have a problem…and it's not in US society, it's in DC and a few cults running our policy.
John Hagee represents Christians as Meir Kahane represents Jews.
We simply have to put yellow stars on American Jews and start tattooing their arms. Myself included. How else will Phil And all the rest of his fans identify us. It simply cannot be left to chance anymore. I love the way you quote Nazi's Keating. Again, I ask, how is your kid half Jewish other than by acident of birth. Clearly your wife really hated here parents to marry a guy like you. I'm interested, what gives.
Pearlman's paranoid-masochist butt is missing Alex Chaihorsky's riding whip.
There is an old saying BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR YOU MIGHT GET IT.
If the Israel lobby succeeds in getting the US involved in a war with Iran (which I very much doubt to be sure) US Jewry may bitterly regret it. This combined with a deteriorating economy could trigger a REAL wave of anti-semitism (not the phony variety alluded to by by ADL and AIPAC)
"John Hagee represents Christians as Meir Kahane represents Jews."
I agree with you, Laurie. My guess is that there are plenty of people who would like for the average Christian to be the ignorant, blood-thirsty tool that is presented, but I don't find that to be the case. I know some idiots, but I've known plenty of Jewish idiots as well.
I would also be wiling to bet that I know far more dedicated Christians than most people who comment on Christian ignorance and violent tendencies, also. I don't believe for a second that Christianity, or Christians, are the driving force behind the subverting of U.S. interests in favor of Israel's interests.
James Petras is highly critical of Seymour Hersh in The Power of Israel in the United States.
He believes the Hersh focused on the non-Jewish Neolib Friedmanite policy makers to the exclusion of the Jewish Neocon Jabotinskians even if he would not use my terminology.
Seymour Hersh and the Missing Zionist-Israeli Connection is the chapter addressing the issue.
"I don't believe for a second that Christianity, or Christians, are the driving force behind the subverting of U.S. interests in favor of Israel's interests."
Maybe you're right Todd, but zionism's greatest business is buying jews for what they are worth and selling them for what gentiles think they are worth, as in:
"Antisemitsm has a seismographic value concerning threats to democratic societies generally."
On the other hand judaism's greatest business is buying jews for what they are worth and selling them for what they think their g-d values them.
There's no business like Judonia's business and it all depends on gentiles and g-d doing the wrong bets.
"There's no business like Judonia's business and it all depends on gentiles and g-d doing the wrong bets."
Probably. When I hear, read or see the words zionism, Israel, Jews, Judaism, holocaust or Jewish power, I usually feel more like I'm being sold to rather than accurately informed.
christians loving israel is a jewish fantasy wish fulfillment. christians in the past may have marginally like jews more than than muslims, of course all in their imaginations, since most didn't know any of either of the other group. not really. the local haberdasher maybe. then there are the crazy born-agains which are a relatively new phenomenon.
i find that jews believe what they want to believe about israel. the idea of israel is an enormous projected screen. it creates a collective narcissistic personality. joachim calls it judonia, i call it a mass personality disorder. mondoweiss is putting the jewish collective on the couch, deconstructing this warped personality full of entitlement, grandiosity, psychopathy, falseness, oversensitivy to criticism. oh, and i forgot, shamelessness.
joachim, i agree with you about seymour hersch. he is protecting the jews, but he is inching the debate forward. or is he?
where, oh where is the hero we need?
christians loving israel is a jewish fantasy wish fulfillment. christians in the past may have marginally like jews more than than muslims, of course all in their imaginations, since most didn't know any of either of the other group. not really. the local haberdasher maybe. then there are the crazy born-agains which are a relatively new phenomenon.
i find that jews believe what they want to believe about israel. the idea of israel is an enormous projected screen. it creates a collective narcissistic personality. joachim calls it judonia, i call it a mass personality disorder. mondoweiss is putting the jewish collective on the couch, deconstructing this warped personality full of entitlement, grandiosity, psychopathy, falseness, oversensitivy to criticism. oh, and i forgot, shamelessness.
joachim, i agree with you about seymour hersch. he is protecting the jews, but he is inching the debate forward. or is he?
where, oh where is the hero we need?
"There's no business like Judonia's business and it all depends on gentiles and g-d doing the wrong bets."
And what happens when Jews mistake the magnitude of their own intelligence, influence or power?
Speaking of Christian Zionism.
Here is an interesting piece by Don Wagner,
on Christian Zionism and it contribution to the creation of Israel..
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4959.htm
"Then-British Prime Minister David Lloyd-George was perhaps even more predisposed to the Zionist ideology than Balfour. Journalist Christopher Sykes (son of Mark Sykes, co-author of the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916), noted in his volume Two Studies in Virtue that Lloyd-George’s political advisers were unable to train his mind on the map of Palestine during negotiations prior to the Treaty of Versailles, due to his training by fundamentalist Christian parents and churches on the geography of ancient Israel. Lloyd-George admitted that he was far more familiar with the cities and regions of Biblical Israel than with the geography of his native Wales or of England itself."
"How else will Phil And all the rest of his fans identify us." – Easy, attitude.
Jewish and Zionist Access to Political Power is facilitated at Harvard: Eric Lesser, Harvard College Democrats President; Steve Grossman, former DNC Chairman and former AIPAC President; Amy Zelcer, HSI President.
The Harvard Hillel often sets up closed private meetings in which Jewish students can hobnob and establish relationships with powerful figures in politics, industry, academia, and the media.
The practice is hardly confined to Harvard.
ZOA does its job.
Which is defamation of just American Jewish students.
We simply have to put yellow stars on American Jews and start "…tattooing their arms. Myself included. How else will Phil And all the rest of his fans identify us. It simply cannot be left to chance anymore. I love the way you quote Nazi's Keating. Again, I ask, how is your kid half Jewish other than by acident of birth. Clearly your wife really hated here parents to marry a guy like you. I'm interested, what gives.
Posted by: sword of gideon | July 10, 2008 at 04:14 PM"
Bill Pearlman aka Sword of G: How are nearly all Jews Jewish other than by accident of birth (via their blood Jewish mother)?