I've been agitating about J Street, the alternative lobby to AIPAC. Dan Fleshler has posted a response to me at Realistic Dove. Here it is, then I respond to him:
The Israeli-Arab problem is America’s problem. Solving it can and should be a high priority for all Americans. It is critically important for a wider, more broad-based coalition of Americans –Jewish and non-Jewish—to counter the right wing Jewish and Christian Zionist furies. I completely agree with you. Church groups, Arab American organizations, unions, everyone who wants evenhanded American diplomacy should weigh in. Some of them already do, often working side by side with my camp: e.g., Churches for Middle East Peace, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, centrist and left wing evangelicals trying to show that John Hagee doesn’t speak for them, the Arab American Institute and the American Task Force on Palestine.
There is nothing stopping you, and all of your fans from organizing all Americans. Go ahead, if you want to.
But you will notice that all of those other groups are organizations based on specific religious or ethnic identities. We all understand that it is in America’s interests to end the nightmare of the occupation, but we all bring other aspects of our identities to the table.
Some of your fans resent the whole idea of American Jews having ANYTHING to say about this issue. Do they also think those who are organized as Catholics, or Arab Americans, should have no say? Or should self-identified Jews just step back and shut up and let “real Americans” fix the mess the Zionists have made? Guess what? Even if that proposition weren’t offensive and racist, it would a disastrous political move.
Right now, the political reality is that the conventional Israel lobby in the Jewish community has persuaded politicians that it speaks on behalf of the only Jews who matter, and that retribution awaits those who cross it. (The Christian Zionists have had similar successes with some in Congress, so that evangelicals like the Sojourners also don’t get taken seriously enough). One way to help change this political reality is to demonstrate that another, large, vocal, politically engaged part of the American Jewish community exists, and that it will support American leaders who don’t always do what the conventional lobby wants. That is not the only thing that needs to be done. But it is one of the things that needs to be done. I can’t possibly convince the people who comment on your posts why there is a big difference between AIPAC and J Street or Brit Tzedek ‘v Shalom or APN. I, and others, have been trying to counter AIPAC and the right wing of the Jewish community for many years. We’ve lost. We’ve blown it. But we’ve tried. I was among those who called for the U.S, and Israel to talk to the PLO long before the Oslo years. APN, on whose board I serve, was one of the few Jewish groups that supported GH Bush on penalizing Israel financially because of its stance on the settlements. As far as I’m concerned, targeted financial penalties should be on the table now. Did I and others make mistakes? Zillions of them. But if people see no distinction between those positions and AIPAC’s, there is no sense in discussing it further. Right now, though I have a very specific goal that J Street and others share. The specific goal is to help create a political environment in which the next president feels like he has the leeway to exert necessary pressure on both sides, rather than just one side, of the Israeli-Arab conflict. It is to give the president the sense that he will have broad based support from a vocal, strong constituency if, for example, he tells the Israelis to stop the madness of continuing settlement expansion and, if they don’t, to impose real costs.
And yes, of course, just stopping expansion is not the end goal; getting the settlers out of there is the goal, but the freeze has to be the first step. The next step will be more difficult but that has to be taken, too. The mission in life of some American Jews is to prevent American pressure of any kind on any Israeli government. All the other policy matters you are talking about –e.g, whether they want Jerusalem to be united or not—are important, but they are much less important than whether the U.S. has the diplomatic flexibility it needs to take a balanced approach instead of a one-sided approach.
As you know, I have been hard at work writing a book about all of this. And I can tell you that based on my own, rather painful experience in the American Jewish trenches and a good many interviews with members of Congress, their aides, and American officials from several administration, I KNOW the following to be true: politicians need to hear from many more American Jews, including political contributors, who will say that AIPAC and the rest of the conventional lobby do not speak for them. That is the political reality. That is the battle J Street and its allies are trying to wage. But it is only part of the battle. I hope there is a broader coalition of Americans, speaking together as Americans, who press our government to press Israel. Be my guest. Go out and organize!
Weiss again: Dan, first the stuff we agree on. You've been in the trenches and opposing horrifying policies for a long time. Great. Also, I'm for J Street. But I'm for them in the same way that I'm for people taking aspirin to stop a heart attack. Very nice; I don't think it's going to make much difference. Not with the tepid statements they've made so far on conditions I think are as bad as South Africa was. I'm glad that J Street is speaking out against striking Iran, I'm glad it's against the settlements. But not fiercely. Yesterday Israel showed Obama who's boss by announcing new settlements right after he left. I want an outraged statement on that. J Street is silent, trying to rally its crowd by attacking Joe Lieberman and Christian Zionists.
Also, J Street wants continued aid to Israel, apparently without conditions. I'm sick of paying for the stuff they do in the occupied territories, I want to send a clear message. The Council for the National Interest, Paul Findley's group, which is nonsectarian, says that we should put conditions on the $3 billion in U.S. aid to Israel: no more illegal settlements, dismantle checkpoints. That's where I am. I don't trust the Jewish community on these issues. You say that every group that's engaged on these issues comes with a special ethnic identity, Arabs, Christians, et al. That's the grand weakness in your position. You are seeking to rationalize identity politics and with it, Zionism, the identity politics nonpareil. What with the Iraq war horror and the threat of more Arab terrorism against my country, I want to work for an American interest here. And that interest, undoubtedly, is to have a shared Jerusalem and an end to colonization. Given Jewish attitudes on these issues, progressive Jews have to work both inside and outside the Jewish community if they want to see action.
My mom (a Jew) once told me she didn't support what Israel does. But when I recently told her we shouldn't be sending them money to buy guns to continue it, she was surprised: "Then how will they defend themselves?"
Well, with all due respect to the great people of Israel, that shouldn't be any of our business. It has nothing to do with our own security and they certainly ought to have enough guns for any sort of self-defense by now.
Shii, the real flaw in your mother's response is that — like just about every other American — she doesn't understand the profound imbalance between Israel's might and that of the Palestinians or any of their neighbors. Israel is the size of New Jersey but has the fourth most powerful military in the world — armed with at least 200 nuclear warheads. Yet almost no one in this country grasps the degree to which Israel is the aggressor — and not the victim. It's this basic perception — Israel as the heroic underdog and the Palestinians as dangerous terrorists– that drives American public opinion and basically allows the lobby to get whatever it wants.
"Some of your fans resent the whole idea of American Jews having ANYTHING to say about this issue. Do they also think those who are organized as Catholics, or Arab Americans, should have no say? Or should self-identified Jews just step back and shut up and let “real Americans” fix the mess the Zionists have made? Guess what? Even if that proposition weren’t offensive and racist, it would a disastrous political move."
The disastrous political move is privileging Jewish political activism here, when so many Jews both in Israel and the US have permanently bigoted views of Arabs and the Palestinians in particular. That includes most of the 'liberal' ones, who say things about the Palestinians that only out-and-out bigots would say about other colonised peoples. Of course, when we wanted to end South African apartheid, there were people in London who had white relatives in South Africa who wanted democratic change and end to white domination, but privileging these sort of people as a group in policy-making would have permanently tended to privilege colonial attitudes. In exactly the same way, to rely in any way on Jewish liberals in the US to organise pressure on Israel is to rely on Texas politicians to increase the US taxation of gas. It's a decision not to do anything.
That may be sad for one or two the people who really are doing good work here, but waiting for Jewish groups to put the necessary pressure on Israel is like running towards the football that Lucy is holding for you to kick.
Otto, ok, I'll bite. Obviously to you this is all the fault of Israel. Hence, it is totally within Israel's power to wind the conflict up by Tuesday. So, if you were PM of Israel what would you do. What's the plan.
"It's a decision not to do anything."
Thats an utterly false conclusion. Dan stated clearly that if you sought to organize among others to accomplish good ends, all blessings to you.
Why not INVEST your energy into J Street's efforts and see if something useful can come of it, rather than rationalizing why you should only criticize (as if that were in itself an action).
I'd rather see aid to Israel cut completely and permanently without conditions. An arms embargo would also be a step in the right direction. If Israel were to suffer financially, and its arsenal start to age, maybe some progress would be made. Either way, Israel isn't my responsibility.
Why should Americans have to organize to alter the situation in Israel? My concern is why my government is so far removed from its purpose that the ties to Israel exist in the first place.
Fleshler: "There is nothing stopping you and all of your fans from organizing all Americans. Go ahead, if you want to. But you will notice that all of those other groups are organizations based on specific religious or ethnic identities…Some of your fans resent the whole idea of American Jews having ANYTHING to say about this issue…Even if that proposition weren’t offensive and racist, it would a disastrous political move."
Fleshler and his ilk still just don't get it. Zionists aren’t just some run of the mill interests group, ethnic group or religious affiliation. Zionism is a full-blown political ideology, just shy of being the moral equivalent of Nazism. And if gentiles were to organize in a similar manner, Nazism would be the outcome.
Historically, this is why Jewish fanatics have repeatedly and inevitably ended up despised by non-Jews and ultimately pogrommed: they reserve the right for themselves to organize as fascists, but profess to believe that those that organize in a similar manner are “racists” (look at their reaction to Hamas, which is merely the mirror image of the Zionism–actually, more moderate) and then demand that the world wage war against these evil racists on behalf of the poor, innocent Jews.
This pattern has repeated itself time and again, the Holocaust merely being a large scale pogrom in reaction to Jewish Bolshevism and its millions of murders. One would think by now they would have learned something; much of the rest of Western humanity seemed to have learned something in the wake of WWII. But they haven’t.
No wonder Jewish Zionists are useful to warmongering gentiles like Bush, Cheney and the other primates, who still haven’t learned anything, either.
Actually, I would argue that Zionism is a full-blown imperial system with a political economic oligarchy, an intelligentsia, and a bureaucracy as well as an effective propaganda apparatus and a quickly mobilizable population that gets no real benefit from the system but serves the other three groups reflexively at certain psychological queues rather like Pavlov's dogs slobbered at the sound of a bell.
Modern political scientists fail to understand the Zionist Imperial System and the Zionist Virtual Colonial Motherland because of the short-sighted, limiting and fundamentally false assumption that an imperial system requires a traditional nation state with some well defined physical territory.
"Modern political scientists fail to understand the Zionist Imperial System and the Zionist Virtual Colonial Motherland because of the short-sighted, limiting and fundamentally false assumption that an imperial system requires a traditional nation state with some well defined physical territory."
I agree. But aren't Jews an even smaller portion of the world's population and holder's of the world's wealth than is the case in the United States?
I don't know what the true extent of Jewish power and influence is, but I would guess that, to a large extent, it all rests on media manipulation. How solid is that, and how long can it last?
In 2004 Gilad Atzmon wrote a rather famous (infamous?) paper on why fifty years of treating Israel policy as a "Jewish issue" has created the disaster we're stuck with today. It's not surprising that opposing racist practices in the name of one's racial group has proven such an ineffective strategy.
'Not In My Name': An analysis of Jewish righteousness
Joachim wrote: "I would argue that Zionism is a full-blown imperial system with a political economic oligarchy, an intelligentsia, and a bureaucracy…and a quickly mobilizable population that gets no real benefit from the system"
But the same could be said of Nazism vis-à-vis the German people. The actual Nazi party membership was a relatively small percentage of the German population, and the Party served its own interests first, but served those members of the German population that it wasn’t persecuting as well (until its warmongering ended up consuming all Germans).
The diaspora Jewish Zionists who are in-group members of the virtual party serve themselves first, but also serve the larger Jewish Zionist population through various well-funded Zionist Synagogues, organizations, associations and business networks.
In fact, no doubt the percentage of out-party voluntary Jewish supporters of Zionism as a percentage of the entire US Jewish population is much higher than the percentage of out-party voluntary supporters of Nazism as a percentage of the German population leading up to WWII — much higher. And the fact that much support of the Nazis was coerced, whereas virtually ALL US Jewish Zionist support of Zionism is voluntary (whether voluntary out of indoctrination, because they are principled supporters of Israel, or because they hope to gain some material advantage through the network) is an even graver indictment of the overwhelming majority of Jews.
That said, by liberal Christian law as formulated through the course of Western civilization, so long as there is even one decent non-Zionist Jew, it is unfair and unjust to indict every Jew for the sins of the Zionists. But like Lot departing Sodom, most decent Jews have left Zionism by now, and the smart ones won't look back.
Zionists–like NAZIs–always assume a zero-sum game.