Last Sunday Zev Chafets wrote a too-affectionate and familiar piece about Rush Limbaugh for the New York Times Magazine. Chafets is now a regular contributor to the Times. He had a pro-Israel Op-Ed in the spring.
This is important to note because Chafets is a rightwinger on the Middle East. He grew up in Michigan and always had strong Zionist inclinations. He was part of a synagogue youth organization. He dodged the draft here and went to serve in the Israeli army. He worked for Menachem Begin. As a journalist, Chafets is ho-hum. His book A Match Made in Heaven was distinguished by the casual, familiar style and its love for evangelical rightwingers who are going to save the Israel lobby. This book led to his main achievement as a journalist: his Huckabee profile in the Times last fall, a real coup, exposing Huckabee's religious ideas. Still, Chafets is a crude rightwinger. A few years ago, when Edward Said died, Chafets slagged the great Said in the Daily News, in the usual sloppy Zionist manner, including contumely about "72 virgins," etc. At that time my friend Hugh Cosman wrote to the author:
I took issue with a hatchet job he'd just done on Edward W. Said in
the pages of the New York Daily News. When I explained my objections
couldn't be brushed aside by typical anti-semitic ranting as my
father's immediate family just escaped Nazi Germany and members of
his extended family did not, Chafets replied "I'm sure your ancestors
are very proud of you..."
I go through this history because it speaks to an important factor in our public life: Zionist journalists getting a platform. Jeffrey Goldberg felt disapproving of Diaspora existence and went over to serve in the IDF, then came back here to write everywhere about Israel. Michael Oren, who left the U.S. for Jerusalem, comes and goes as a journalist here; as I've cracked once before, his scholarly writing is to scholarship what military music is to music. Right-leaning Israeli Benny Morris is the New Republic's main voice on issues of Israeli history, with predictable consequences. Dore Gold, who emigrated from New York to Israel, is the American Enterprise Institute's "scholar" at $96,000 a year in Jerusalem, and pumps out books no one pays much attention to. Gershom Gorenberg is first-rate, and I tend to agree with him; but he did make aliyah for religious reasons; and it is interesting that the American Prospect hires him from Israel to say that Walt and Mearsheimer are wrong about the power of the lobby in D.C., something I think Gorenberg doesn't know much about (his own scholarship on the issue stopped in the late 70s; he doesn't consider the recent history of presidential policy nullification by the lobby with any authority). Smart/entertaining/rightwing Shmuel Rosner writes for Slate--this headline asks, Why We Sell Arms to the Saudis. Wait, isn't Rosner an Israeli? Who's we?
I'm not a nativist. I'm all for 100 flowers blooming. I saw English writers invade our journalism in the '80s, and American journalism profited (and Tina Brown hiked writers' rates all by herself, god bless her). But I do think we're dealing with a factor fingered by my Arabist friend the other day: within the diverse American establishment, Zionists are the only ones with an esprit de corps. Which helps explain the elevation of a second-rater like Chafets. I said 100 flowers blooming--not 50. Where are the post-Zionists and anti-Zionists? It bears repeating that the Times Op-Ed page, which prints Chafets, used to print John Mearsheimer all the time, but seems to have blacklisted him since he opposed the Iraq war. All this is about to change. Just you watch.
chafets is ho hum. so is andrea mitchell and barbara gossip and wolf blitzer and friedman, and well, maybe, all of em. krauthamer is a raging hate monger. then there are all those sports reporting jewish females. ?. but jobs are gotten and kept because they are jews and esp jews for israel.
from frank scott via israel shamir:
Catholic Priest Converts to Judaism, Becomes Rabbi
A Roman Catholic priest charged with sex crimes by 247 of his past students became a Rabbi and charged his accusers with Anti-Semitism. The Anti-Defamation League immediately came to his defense and promised legal aid to fight against still another in a growing number of anti semitic outrages.
The pope apologized to the accusers, thanked the ADL and was considering converting to Judaism himself. “They get very sympathetic coverage in the press”, he said, ”and we could use more of that. Perhaps the time has come to talk about a merger. After all, our businesses rely on the same foundation and product line.”
chafets is ho hum. so is andrea mitchell and barbara gossip and wolf blitzer and friedman, and well, maybe, all of em. krauthamer is a raging hate monger. then there are all those jewish guys and gals sports reporting. ??. but jobs are gotten and kept because they are jews and esp jews for israel.
from frank scott via israel shamir:
Catholic Priest Converts to Judaism, Becomes Rabbi
A Roman Catholic priest charged with sex crimes by 247 of his past students became a Rabbi and charged his accusers with Anti-Semitism. The Anti-Defamation League immediately came to his defense and promised legal aid to fight against still another in a growing number of anti semitic outrages.
The pope apologized to the accusers, thanked the ADL and was considering converting to Judaism himself. “They get very sympathetic coverage in the press”, he said, ”and we could use more of that. Perhaps the time has come to talk about a merger. After all, our businesses rely on the same foundation and product line.”
sorry for the double post above. system's fault.
July 12, 2008
Nuke-Armed Paranoids
by Gordon Prather at anti war.com
Emigré scientists – many of them Jews who had fled Europe to avoid persecution under the Nazi regime – were principal instigators of the United States nuclear-fission weapons program known as the Manhattan Project.
In particular, in 1939, a group of Hungarian-born physicists – including Leo Szilard, Edward Teller and Eugene Wigner – persuaded Nobel Prize winning Physicist Albert Einstein to write President Roosevelt, bringing to his attention the possibility that recent scientific discoveries in Germany could result in "extremely powerful bombs of a new type."
Roosevelt was interested enough to meet several times with Einstein’s emissaries – Einstein, himself, spoke very little English – who convinced FDR that if we did not develop such bombs before the Nazis did, they would "blow us up."
Then, as a result of the Japanese attack on our blockade fleet, moored at Pearl Harbor – which Roosevelt provoked by imposing an oil blockade on Japan – Hitler, Japan’s ally, declared war on us on December 11, 1941.
The Manhattan Project initially focused on a Uranium-235 fission bomb. But the original process for separating the Uranium-235 isotope from natural uranium – the Electromagnetic Isotope Separation (EMIS) process, the same process employed by the Iraqis in the late 1980s – reportedly took 18 months to produce the 120 pounds or so needed for the Little Boy, the bomb we dropped on Hiroshima.
Hiroshima?
But the impetus for the Manhattan Project – instigated by the European émigré scientists – was to get nukes before Hitler did. Why bomb Japan?
Well, there were several reasons.
For one thing, the war in Europe had essentially been won by the Soviet Union at Kursk, in the summer of 1943.
For another, by late1944, most of the European émigré scientists – as a result of contacts with their former colleagues – had concluded that the German nuclear program had not gone well, and that Hitler had concluded that it could not (even if successful) contribute to winning his war.
Furthermore, it soon became apparent that both the Uranium-235 gun-type bomb – Little Boy – and the Plutonium-239 implosion-type bomb – Fat Man – would be so heavy they could only be delivered by specially modified B-29 bombers, all of which were in the Pacific.
So, as soon as it became known within the Manhattan Project that the bomb would be used against the Japanese and not the Nazis, more than a few scientists left the project and some – notably instigator Leo Szilard – even began to oppose it, as a "terrible mistake."
Why? Well, as General Leslie Groves, Director of the Manhattan Project, noted "The Japanese haven’t harmed the Jews, and Szilard couldn’t give a crap about potential losses in an invasion of Japan."
Adolph Hitler committed suicide in Berlin on April 27, 1945.
The Plutonium-239 implosion-device was tested at Trinity Site in New Mexico on July 16, 1945.
We dropped Little Boy on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, and the Fat Man on Nagasaki on August 9, thereby "obliterating them," as Hillary Clinton would say.
Now, fast forward to June 7, 1981.
On that date, the Israelis "took out" Osiraq, a small French-built research reactor, "safeguarded" by the International Atomic Energy Agency, apparently because they had concluded that Saddam Hussein expected Osiraq – in lieu of the Tooth Fairy – to miraculously leave a few nuclear weapons under Saddam’s pillow.
According to an official Israeli statement;
"The atomic bombs which that reactor was capable of producing – whether from enriched uranium or from plutonium – would be of the Hiroshima size. Thus a mortal danger to the people of Israel progressively arose."
Now, since 1991, thanks to the IAEA, the whole world has known that Saddam began his quest for nuclear weapons as a direct result of the Israeli raid on his IAEA Safeguarded research reactor.
And, since for many months now, virtually every U.S. politician – including all Presidential "hopefuls" – have declared, as did Hillary Clinton at the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee hoo-hah last year, that "we cannot, we should not, we must not permit Iran to build or acquire nuclear weapons," and that "in dealing with this threat," no option [including the use of nuclear weapons on its IAEA Safeguarded facilities] can be taken off the table."
Why not?
Well, according to Hillary;
"To deny the Holocaust places Iran's leadership in company with the most despicable bigots and historical revisionists."
Then, there’s Bush, repeatedly also refusing to take the option of the use of nuclear weapons against Iran "off the table." Quoth Bush;
"I think anyone who advocates wiping out an entire race of people has to be insane. The president of Iran has advocated for this more times than I could count. Hitler was not sane either and he wanted to do the same thing to the same people, just by different methods."
Consequently, here we are, perhaps on the eve of the Israelis attempting to "take out" – with the almost explicit support of Bush-Cheney and The Best Congress AIPAC Can Buy – all the IAEA Safeguarded facilities in Iran.
So, it’s perhaps worthwhile revisiting UN Security Council Resolution 487 condemning the Israeli unprovoked attack back in 1981 on the Iraqi IAEA-safeguarded facility.
"Fully aware of the fact that Iraq has been a party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons since it came into force in 1970, that, in accordance with that treaty, Iraq has accepted IAEA safeguards on all its nuclear activities, and that the agency has testified that these safeguards have been satisfactorily applied to date;
"Strongly condemns the military attack by Israel – in clear violation of tehe Charter of the United Nations and the norms of international conduct;
"Calls upon Israel to refrain in the future from any such acts or threats thereof;
"Further considers that the said attack constitutes a serious threat to the entire IAEA safeguards regime, which is the foundation of the non-proliferation treaty."
Of course, last time about all the Israelis had going for them was that Saddam Hussein was then fully engaged in the unprovoked war of aggression he had launched against the Iranian Mullahs.
But this time! Well, they’re finally going to get to nuke "Hitler." Leo and some of his fellow émigrés would be pleased.
"He grew up in Michigan and always had strong Zionist inclinations. He was part of a synagogue youth organization. He dodged the draft here and went to serve in the Israeli army. He worked for Menachem Begin."
Obviously, this person's American citizenship means no more to him than any illegal Mexican's concept of gratitude to the host nation. Just something to milk.
"Dore Gold, who emigrated from New York to Israel, is the American Enterprise Institute's "scholar" at $96,000 a year in Jerusalem, and pumps out books no one pays much attention to."
A midwestern congressman was on C-SPAN's Washington Journal a few days ago, saying Iran is our biggest devil as it wants to wipe Israel off the Map. When a caller contested the usual mistranslation of the Iranian president, and noted how long its been since Iran invaded any country, the US senator, as bland as can be, cited Dore Gold as gospel on the issues raised.
Product of the US meritocracy, Neo-econ Amity Shlaes was so enraged by the plight of a Jewish chicken processor in Brookyn during the depression, that she wrote a book debunking FDR. Here, Shlaes reports for duty at the WaPo:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/11/AR2008071102543.html?hpid=opinionsbox1
'Which helps explain the elevation of a second-rater like Chafets.'
Or like Feith. Or Wurmser. Or Edelman. And it's not just government. Jonah Goldberg anyone? John Podhoretz, Kristol himself.
It's hardly a Jewish phenom though. I read some appalled piece in the London Review a few years ago about how Iraqi sinecures were generally given to the chinless wonder offspring of country club GOP donors, clueless to a man.
Zionist intellectuals have an esprit-du-corps because Zionist intellectuals are mobilized as an intelligentsia (or several intelligentsias) in the Polish and Russian sense.
Anyway, feature articles like Seeking: Nosy Jewish Moms provide some strong circumstantial evidence both the Jewish old boys (and girls) network as well as the elite status of the American Jewish community.
I can't find a shred of news or even interesting feature information in the article except perhaps the paragraph:
Would a white gentile coffee matchmaking coffee klatsch with no successes merit a feature article in Boston Magazine?
How would the writer have treated the gentile group if it applied a rule to disqualify blacks as marriage candidates?
What? It's cute, the "no goyim allowed" caveat. Why on earth would a goy be offended? More to the point, are they seeking moral equation with a victim class? God Forbid. You need to remember there's a difference between being chosen, and not being chosen. By G-D. It's an anchor the good have to endure after all. Even when it comes to matchmaking blood lines.