The Klein Effect: Huffpo Accuses Mainstream Jewish Groups of Feting the Bloody Neocons

Joe Klein is getting an army. Here is Daniel Levy of the Century Foundation and J Street, writing in Huffpo, to say it's time for a soul-searching over the Jewish community's giving of haven to Feith and the other neocons:

[T]here was a failure within the mainstream, Jewish and non-Jewish, to identify the existence of a particular Jewish neoconservative narrative and then to challenge that narrative as being fundamentally flawed in its reading of both American and Israeli interests. One of the causes of that vacuum was the abuse and cheapening of the term anti-Semitism as it was hurled at many who went after Podhoretz, Perle, Feith, and co. They tried, and sadly rather successfully, built a wall of untouchability. Klein is taking his shofar or trumpet to that wall, as many have done before, but Joe is particularly MSM, and therefore important.

Too many Jewish communal leaders and institutions made the mistake of not standing up and speaking out more against the right-wing excesses of a small minority of their co-religionists. Some even embraced and feted the neocons -- a mistake AIPAC particularly excelled in and something I get the impression that AIPAC is at least partially trying to walk itself back from.

Two problems in that argument. The Jewish community willingly provided harbor. Ask Feith. And since when did American Jews get the responsibility to identify and argue for Israeli interests? No thanks, dude. Israel is a religious state that discriminates against minorities and maintains apartheid conditions in a 40-year military occupation. Jews in the U.S. are a minority with all the rights we could dream of. When are we going to apply the political values under our Guccis to the Middle East? Thus have Israeli values beclouded the American Jewish mind. (Levy worked for the Israeli P.M. Revolving doorism.)

Levy also says, "Are the Jews or Israel to blame for the Bush Middle East debacle? Get outta here." Alas, too blanket. The neocons were fed and lodged by the pro-Israel Jewish community for many years, even as they dandled their semiautomatic weapons and brass knuckles. Let the reckoning begin. Hark, the sound of tumbrils in the streets of New York!

About Philip Weiss

Philip Weiss is Founder and Co-Editor of Mondoweiss.net.
Posted in Israel/Palestine, US Policy in the Middle East, US Politics

{ 12 comments... read them below or add one }

  1. 5 dancing shlomos says:

    "Let the reckoning begin". yes. and that is why so many jews are speaking small and half and pretzeled truths so late – fear.

  2. The same people (American Zionist oligarchs) that fund the organized Jewish community fund the think tanks and media organizations that have hosted Neocons and other members of the Zionist intelligentsia.

    But keep in mind that the relationship is circular. The Zionist intelligentsia mobilizes and canvasses the Zionist oligarchs, and without this mobilization the OJC simply would not function.

    For example, the oligarchs fund all sorts of Jewish educational activities from pre-school through post-graduate both because the Zionist intelligentsia needs to train/indoctrinate American Jews as a resource and also because the intelligentsia needs to train and recruit the next generation of the intelligentsia.

  3. Richard Witty says:

    When are we going to apply those political values to the Middle East?

    The Middle East objectively is a DIFFERENT WORLD than the US.

    What would you do Phil? 2002 was real.

  4. the Sword of Gideon says:

    Joachim, does your wife like to take it up the ass or is she more of the blow job type.

  5. Breasal says:

    Witty and SOG

    good cop bad cop

    same police force

    By the way Pearlman, everyone knows it's you, aren't you ashamed to talk like that? Or is miscegenation such a crime that shame goes out the window?

  6. Breasal says:

    Witty and SOG

    good cop bad cop

    same police force

    By the way Pearlman, everyone knows it's you, aren't you ashamed to talk like that? Or is miscegenation such a crime that shame goes out the window?

  7. Doppler says:

    Klein says neocons are trying to get him fired at Time. Perhaps someone could report on exactly how this plays out. Who calls whom? Because, if a major advertiser calls and says my ad dollars will be cut off if you don't retaliate to marginalize this guy, well, it would be good to know who that is. That way, neocons could patronize that advertiser, and America firsters could maybe vote their dollars elsewhere.

    Doppler

  8. roy belmont says:

    Todd's comments link to tiny.cc
    are the most cogent I've seen anywhere. Calm, reasoned, with obvious restraint. And like the best Americans now, frustrated and disgusted.
    (I had an amazingly bizarre series of obstacle getting this to publish)

  9. grettir says:

    Phil,

    I think I am your mirror image from the other side: Jewish mate and interest and respect for Jewish mores from childhood. At an individual level "Jewish" has always meant the best to me.

    And yet one must ask, How is it that the interest and profit of this tiny group must shake the world?

    In all seriousness, How would the world not better itself by ridding itself of their influence?

    I do not raise the National Socialist slogans such as "The Jews are our misfortune." But their aptness and the temptation to use them are daily more evident. Shoot out the eye of another Arab child, anyone?

    Jews must live with this: the organized community tried to bury Spinoza and Mendelssohn, and in their place put goy-hating Maimonides on a pedestal.

    For all you Heebs, Kikes, Yids, out there, I feel your pain, share the memory of your traditions. Sadly, this is the end of the line, the bus stops here. Geh shoin! You cannot daily davan that the goy should perish and simultaneously wish to be one. Ghetto or freedom, the choice is yours.

  10. Glenn Condell says:

    xymphora says:

    'False-flag self-hating? There is a rather obvious attempt at damage control orchestrated by World Jewry and fronted by Zionist – not to mention, huge Iraq attack cheerleader – Joe Klein. The fear is that the Iraq/Iran war debacle, which is now directly impinging on the privileged lifestyle of the average American, will end up being blamed on the two-faced American Jewish community, and in particular on its Jewish Billionaire 'leaders'. It is thus time to throw Doug Feith and his fellow war criminal co-conspirators under the bus (". . . a small group of Jewish neoconservatives"), and save the larger group so it may continue to scheme for future war crimes. The idea is to put all the blame on a handful of neocons, making sure to emphasize that the real blame still lies with Gentiles Bush and Cheney, increase the credibility of the charge by having the usual suspects like Foxman throw the slur around, and thus limit the damage to a tiny group of 'dual loyalists'.'

  11. Todd says:

    "The idea is to put all the blame on a handful of neocons, making sure to emphasize that the real blame still lies with Gentiles Bush and Cheney, increase the credibility of the charge by having the usual suspects like Foxman throw the slur around, and thus limit the damage to a tiny group of 'dual loyalists'."

    I agree. I think shifting the blame is well under way. Neocons have been claiming mismanagement by Bush and Cheney for years.

    Based on my own experiences, I have to believe that more than a small part of the Jewish community suported the neocons. In Israel I met many Jews who were dovish and leftist on U.S. issues, but were hawks on Israeli social and military issues-and this was before the first Iraq war. Neocon types are not new to the Jewish community.

    My personal experience wtihin the U.S. is similar, but much more limited.

  12. charles Keating says:

    Yeah, it's a bloodline attack, in the interests of saving Jews at the expense of goys. So what's new?

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