The effect of Joe Klein's comment re dual loyalty has been incredible. He's broken the seal. Here is Michael Scheuer writing on antiwar.com that for the neocons and Liebermans, it's Israel first last and always, and it's time for the U.S. to separate itself from their policies re the Arab world. Hallelujah.
How did we get into this mess? It wasn't a one-stepper.
It took a generation and more. It took Ben Gurion beating down Jacob Blaustein the head of the AJC (the Standard Oil guy whose broad shadow I grew up in in Baltimore, and who represented the traditional German-Jewish opposition to dual loyalty) over the Law of Return in 1950, thereby placing a claim on American Jews. It took the '67 War. It took '73. It took the truly mendacious propaganda of the last 20 years. It took the entire Jewish leadership with notable exceptions (IPF, APN, Brit Tzedek) dragged into the illegal colonization of the West Bank. It took good liberal Jews walking into the tent with the neocon camel and being deluded. And still not denouncing the camel. Now Klein says that 60 percent of Jews are on his side. I don't know if it's so Joe. That's hopeful. I'm going to my parents' scientific community later this summer, and I wonder, on the beach how many calls for an open Jerusalem am I likely to hear?
But I have a different point to make. Exactly what Joe Klein said about Jewish neoconservatives, Tony Judt started to say more than a year ago. In his splendid NYU speech of December 2006:
Judt said the unfortunate trend in intellectual life is the prevalence of "identity intellectuals who ask themselves of a policy, of the law or of the war, not Is it true, is it just, is it bad or good, but rather is it good for people like me or people like us, is it good for my cause?" These identity intellectuals have their counterparts on campus. "The crippling organization of American intellectual life at large is reproduced and magnified here on American campuses, where many colleagues are teaching in effect identity politics masquerading as cultural classes."
At the time I wrote: "I felt a little disappointment that [Judt didn't talk] about dual loyalty, which I think he must believe is an issue for some Jews re Israel."
Here is the point. The naked emperor was naked a long time before Joe Klein said he was naked. Judt obviously believes that the neocons have divided loyalty. His statement in '06 all but fingers them. Yet he, a University professor, did not say what he thought. In fairness to Judt, he is a brave man who has picked his battles. He took a thousand arrows when he came out for a single state in Palestine, and then he did what no one of his standing would do, when he stood up for Walt and Mearsheimer in the Times and then again at Cooper Union, with electrifying statements that told the left, this is the way. My point is simply that even distinguished intellectuals have been self-censoring in this arena, the prohibitions are so severe, the contumely so neverending, the vilification, the Dershowitziana so nattering. I remember talking to a Yale professor once who didn't want to stick his head up, on his own ideas re Israel/Palestine, because he was afraid of Dershowitz. Scheuer has never been so forthright re the neocons as he is today; what loosened his tongue? This is what has to end. Free speech means free speech, wild speech, people speaking their thoughts. It is the only way we will learn, the only way to end our participation in the Middle East's cycle of violence. Amazing what Joe Klein has done. Let other gatekeepers raise the barricades. Chris Matthews, you go next!
Your blog is "kick-ass". It provides a unique "educational experience". Yours is a unique voice in the blog-o-sphere.
Wow. So this is what you write about on the day we find out that Hezbollah has basically been blackmailing Israel with the lives of two already-executed soldiers. Keeping up the moral inertia, I guess.
See you at Columbia in the fall, at some point probably.
Are you sure you mean what you say "free speech is wild speech?"
In that sense the pro-Zionist speech is certainly free speech, including the neo-conservative endorsements.
I personally don't buy the idea that the neo-conservatives were "Israel first". My read is that they were "Israel also". My criticism of them is largely that they were too patriotic (in a xenophobic sense), and not humanist enough, not that they were pro-Israel and not patriotic enough.
The "con" is what I object to, not the neo.
Also, on the Jewish reaction to Walt/Mearsheimer or single state, or "open Jerusalem". It is WIDE. The sentiment does not originate with Dershowitz. At most, he articulates sentiments and ideas that others feel strongly.
The majority of Jews bear a dual consciousness, MUCH different than a dual loyalty, that is of loving and criticizing at the same time.
I'm a case in point, not unusual among rational and liberal Jews (NOT neo or old con), that love Israel while we criticize it.
speaking of single loyality and banality of evil, saw the face of banality on tv – senator joe(banal)lieberman(evil).
tv had a clip of senator joe and senator john at the head banger's whining wall in jerusalem. both were appropriately yarmulked(does joe wear a cross when standing near to a church?).
anyway
john appeared to be wearing joe's hand up his rear. puppet and the puppet's master.
What are you up to asking such a probing question…..
"How did we get into this mess? It wasn't a one-stepper."
this is and has been a toxic relationship to the american republic…it will either be remedied or the republic continnues down the road to taxation hell.
Philip Weiss –
I am a great admirer of your blog, but I think that there is a point about Judt that you have missed.
In his fascinating 'Lunch with the FT' interview, he made clear that he thought that the intense Zionism of large sections of the Jewish community in the United States was to do as much with American conditions and problems, as with the legacy of the Holocaust.
What he ways is worth quoting at length:
'As a teenager, Judt became involved in leftwing Zionism. In 1967, he travelled to Israel as a volunteer during the Six Day War. He worked as a translator of French and Hebrew, and drove captured Syrian trucks. "Up on the Golan Heights, I met and heard officers talking, and for the first time I was seeing a side of Israel I had managed to turn a blind eye to," he tells me. "Until then, the dominant rhetoric in Israel had still been that you didn't disparage the Arabs, you believed in socialism and equality. Now it was straightforward anti-Arab sentiment. What began in 1967, and accelerated in a great tumble through the mid-1970s, was the rise of a different Israel: hard-line, rightwing, very often religious, believing they had a real-estate pact with God. It was very ugly, at least I found it very ugly."
'In those years, he says, America didn't care so much for Israel. France was the great friend of Israel, he says, providing jets for the Israeli air force. But that changed, he says, due in part to the rise of identity politics in the US. This, he argues, eventually had an effect on American foreign policy.
'"America at that time had a very low collective public consciousness of the Holocaust," he says, eating the carbonade carefully. "People were not reading Primo Levi. They were not even reading Anne Frank. It became possible, fashionable and in the end almost necessary to identify yourself – Irish-American, Italian- American, Native American, Asian-American. Part of it was because of the rise of the culture of the victim but also because it was a way of being part of the new multicultural space."
You couldn't just be Jewish-American, however, he says. To create an identity, he says, Jewish people instead tied themselves to the Holocaust and to Israel. "So it became very much a threat to American-Jewish identity to unravel one of these."'
The full interview is at link to us.ft.com
It is, interestingly, no longer available at the FT's British website, although it is at the American.
Tony Judt on youtube speaking on the issue of dual loyalty, Oct.21,2006:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQeXCLALuHI
Here he is saying that loyalty to Israel is the same as loyalty to America for many America Jews and that this is actually worse than dual loyalty because then any criticism of Israel is seen as antisemitic or at least viewed with suspicion.
I've very happy that Judt and Klien have been able to get this issue in the mainstream media, however, non Jews would have brought it out much earlier if our press were truly free.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Armin Rosen,
"If groups such as Hezbollah or Hamas "understand that Israel is willing to pay the same price for its captive whether dead or alive, then they will make no effort to keep them alive," [Yossi] Beilin said. "This is a difficult thing to say, but it is in Israel's national and security interest to maintain the principle."
The missing soldiers' relatives acknowledged slim hopes that the men would return alive.
"We have lived in doubt for two years, and the time has come to deliver us from this uncertainty," said Regev's father, Zvi. [...]"
AND
"The two soldiers, Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, were captured in a July 2006 cross-border ambush that touched off a monthlong war between Israel and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. Evidence from the scene indicated that both soldiers were wounded in the attack, one of them gravely."
They were never said to be alive, even from the beginning.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Scheuer is one of a number of former CIA men that are outspoken regarding Israel, the others are Ray McGovern and Philip Giraldi.
These men viewed Israeli actions up-close for many years and what they saw was not pretty. I feel that these men are pissed-off when they see Doug Feith, Cheney, or some other bigshot lay the blame on the CIA for the bad Intelligence about WMD.
Sheuer knows that the CIA did not fuck up the intel before the war. There were many CIA reports that stated that IRAQ HAD NO WMD. However, there were other reports that stated Iraq had WMD.
The fuck up was that Feith, Abrams, and Cheney ignored the NO WMD reports and focused only on the reports that suited their agenda. See retired Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski's articles about the Office of Special Plans at the Pentagon and Scheuer's articles about his investigations into an AL-Qaeda/Saddam connection. The Intel was cherry-picked and politicized by the Fifth Column of Zionists in the Administration and Pentagon.
See also Scheuer being interviewed by Bill Maher. Maher's head spins when Scheuer tells the truth about Israel.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZF4_oaTIH8g
Tony Judt is definitely correct that identity group politics are corrosive and self-destructive, but I don’t believe that Israel’s trajectory away from “socialism and equality” towards quasi-fascism can be solely traced to American Jewish identity politics. This pattern has played itself out before in Soviet Russia.
Remember, Jewish Bolshevism started out with claims of universalism, and then once the Jewish Bolsheviks were in positions of power and authority, and felt safe, their anti-Christian chauvinism kicked in and they went on a State-sanctioned murderous rampage for decades. Substitute Arabs in Palestine for Christians in the Soviet Union, and the pattern repeats: nice equality talk until the Jewish ideologues gain security, authority and the upper hand, and then murderous, State-organized and sanctioned chauvinism and intolerance.
Happy-talk Socialism, in both cases, is the means to the end of installing the regime and then using the State as a sledge hammer to crush Jewry’s rivals and enemies.
That said, I do believe that diaspora US Jewish Zionists have been a wholly negative influence on Israel, because they can play out their toy soldier fantasies from the safety of America’s pacific shores, and use Israelis (and now American soldiers) to exorcise their own demons without enduring any personal risk. I don’t believe Israeli Jewish Zionists would have been quite so belligerent against the Arabs and Palestinians had not diaspora Judaism projected its anger at the Nazis onto Muslims, Persians and Arabs, and goaded Israel into “punishing” them and simultaneously working towards a Greater Israel.
If diaspora Jewish Zionists were forced to shed their own blood on the Greater Israel enterprise, I don’t think they would be quite so interested, either.
"It took good liberal Jews walking into the tent with the neocon camel and being deluded. And still not denouncing the camel."
What makes you think that liberal Jews were so liberal and good? Could it be that many were just good and liberal when it was beneficial?
How did we get here? Why not ask career State Department employee Patrick Syring, who served 2 years in Beirut, and who was indicted by a grand jury last week on 2 counts.
What did Syring do? Well, during last summer's Israeli bombardment of Lebanon, he engaged in a series of communications with the Arab American Institute, the foremost and most mainstream Arab-American organization in the US. Some samples of his "diplomacy:" as listed in the indictment, along with the names of the AAI employees involved:
Voicemail, 11:17 pm, July 17, 2006
"This is Patrick Syring. I just James Zogby's statements online at the MSNBC website, and I condemn him for his anti-Semitism and anti-American statements.
The only good Lebanese is a dead Lebanese. The only good Arab is a dead Arab. Long live the IDF. Death to Lebanon and death to the Arabs (continued…)
Email, 11:17 pm, July 17, 2006, to James Zogby and Natasha Tynes (who is not an Arab-American)
"Zobgy's anti-Semitic, anti-American statements (and those of the AAI in general) are abhorrent, repulsive, and disgusting.
The only good Lebanese is a dead Lebanese (as the IDF knows and is carrying out in its security operations, God bless them).
F___ the Arabs and f___ James Zogby and his wicked Hizbollah brothers. They will burn in hellfire on this earth and in the hereafter."
Voicemail, July 18/19, 2006 to Valerie Smith (who is not an Arab-American)
"Hello Valerie, you f___ing Arab American s___. James Zogby and you are all Hezbollah supporters.
The only good Arab is a dead Arab. You god-inaudible bitch."
Email, 12:32 am, July 19, 2006 to Valerie Smith
"You are a f____ing Arab-American stooge who sympathizes with Hezbollah terror.
You and your Arab American Institute f___ers should burn in the fires of hell for eternity.
The IDF is bombing Lebanon back to the Stone Age where it belongs. Arabs are dogs.
Long live the State of Israel. Death to Arab American terrorists. The only good Lebanese is a dead Lebanese."
Email, 12:35 pm, July 19, 2006, to Rebecca Abou-Chedid
"You are a f____ing Arab-American terrorist, a Hezbollah sympathizer pig.
James Zogby is a vile evil anti-Semitic pig terrorist member of Hezbollah who is attempting to destroy the State of Israel.
God Bless America. God Bless the State of Israel. The only good Lebanese is a dead Lebanese."
So much for American diplomacy.
It's a good day for you Ed, Samir Kuntar smashes the head in of a 4yr old Jewish girl and gets out. Yes it's a good day for you isn't it?
You too Phil. Must be happy with these events. A guy like Kuntar is your kind of guy, is he not?
all i can say is…alleluyah.
http://www.antiwar.com/scheuer/?articleid=13139
Turning the Tables
on the Israel-Firsters
by Michael Scheuer
Now that the dust has settled in the spat between journalist Joe Klein and the ideologues at Commentary, it is time to regret the ink spilled over the non-issue of "dual loyalties." The idea that there are U.S. citizens who have equal loyalties to the United States and Israel is passé. American Israel-firsters have long since dropped any pretense of loyalty to the United States and its genuine national interests. They have moved brazenly into the Israel first, last, and always camp. Sen. Joseph Lieberman, Norman Podhoretz, Victor Davis Hanson, the Rev. Franklin Graham, Alan Dershowitz, Rudy Giuliani, Douglas Feith, the Rev. Rod Parsley, Paul Wolfowitz, James Woolsey, Bill Kristol, the Rev. John Hagee, and the thousands of wealthy supporters of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) appear to care about the United States only so far as Washington is willing to provide immense, unending funding and the lives of young U.S. service personnel to protect Israel. These individuals and their all-for-Israel journals – Commentary, National Review, the Weekly Standard, and the Wall Street Journal – amount to nothing less than a fifth column intent on involving 300 million Americans in other peoples' religious wars, making them pay and bleed to protect a nation in which the United States has no genuine national security interest at stake.
Scheuer has always been willing to talk frankly about the lobby. I remember him as one of the few public anti-war voices in 2002. But I definitely get the impression that lately he has grown even more angry.
It seems to have been in response to the Commentary crowd's attack on him–
link to commentarymagazine.com
His comments on Bill Maher's TV show back in March set a new standard in speaking openly about the Great Taboo. It was almost as if he was intentionally tweaking the Zionists' noses–
link to saintluke.wordpress.com
Let's hope that the Zionists' bullying makes more and more people angry enough to fight back.
Then everyone will win. Americans can take their country back, and third-category Jews like Richard Witty will get to call all this anger "anti-Semitism". After all these years, he'll finally be able to swap persecution stories with his father-in-law.
BTW, isn't this prisoner swap with Hezbollah EXACTLY what Israel refused to do in July, 2006 — preferring to launch an aerial campaign against the Lebanese people?
Well, now at least we won't have to hear any more nonsense that Israel "won" the war. Too bad that so many Lebanese civilians had to pay the price.
Today's release of the last Lebanese prisoners held in Israel seems a good occasion to replay one of the most famous videos on the Web–
George Galloway on Sky News
are these guys mishugana or are they telling the truth?
link to jewsagainstzionism.com
Rabbi Mordechai Gifter, Dean of Telshe Yeshiva, Cleveland Ohio
Rabbi Mordechai Gifter, Dean of Telshe Yeshiva, Cleveland Ohio
We know the truth. The truth is that Zionism is a curse, and that's the way it is. Zionism is murder! And that's what it really is, because it is true! Who threw the Jews into the ocean when they wanted to travel to Eretz Yisroel in 1941? Who sank the boat (called the 'Patria') with about 1000 Jews on it? Who? The Nazis? Zionists did it! Yes, the Zionists! What is that? Is it not murder? Murderers!! Because of Zionism, one is allowed to kill Jews? Didn't these murderers say that the Jews of Europe are the "sacrifices" which we have to bring to have a Jewish "state" in Eretz Yisroel (G-d forbid)? Didn't they say this? Don't they have printed black and white statements which everybody can read? Didn't this man with the name, "Yitzchok Greenbaum" say in Warsaw that all religious Jews should be thrown into the ocean? And all this because of Zionism! And he wasn't ashamed of these words! I ask you: Is this right? Is this being nice? Is this grace? This is MURDER! Without any excuse, it is murder! G-d comes and punishes us, and He says to us that if we brought up in our midst such and Esau – one who is against Torah, against religion, against everything a Jew is – then we suggest a hint to the world, and it calls us Racists, Murderers, Terrorists! We are called murderers, who kill women and children. The Gentiles say this and it makes an impression on us, and we scream. How terrible! How can they speak this way about the Jewish people?
Well the soldiers might be dead, but so is Abdelwahad Elmessiri, the Marxist anti-Semite who inaugurated a generation of junk historiography vis a vis Israel and Zionism. Although his central contribution to the debate–specifically, the idea that Zionism was a plan hatched by Jewish and European racists in the name of general, civilization conflict with the Arab world–has pathetically little grounding in reality, it still seems to be the CW among Middle Eastern studies departments that should–and probably do–know better.
He's been dead since July 3rd, but unfortunately, his work spawned our current generation of utopian postmodernists who see Israel as the primary obstacle to global harmony and understanding. His entire life's work–which lives on in "scholars" like Gil Anidjar and Joseph Massad–is proof of just how little purchase factual argument has in discussions on the Middle East. Something along similar lines: link to tnr.com
Not great compensation for two years of terrorist blackmail, especially considering that the two events aren’t causally linked. But you can’t underestimate the value of even marginally positive news in an atmosphere like this one…
The idea of a civilizational conflict with the Arab world. How silly! Everyone knows the Zionist intention was to live side by side in harmony with the inhabitants.
"But you can’t underestimate the value of even marginally positive news in an atmosphere like this one."
Indeed, times must be very hard for you right now. (Have you considered aliyah?)