The New Jersey Jewish Standard has a review by Abraham Foxman of former Indiana congressman John Hostettler's book Nothing for the Nation, which blames Israel firsters for pushing the Iraq war. Foxman ends his piece:
Hostettler has
settled upon the oldest answer to policy failures in which, having
failed to persuade his colleagues to act otherwise, he must
unfortunately feel implicated: It’s the Jews that did it.
Sadly, this is the conspiracy theory that keeps on ticking.
I've heard of the Oldest Profession, but never the Oldest Answer to policy failures.
Anyway, when have people blamed Jews for policy failures in the U.S.? I can't remember it. People don't blame The Jews for Iraq either. We are blaming ultra-Zionist Jews who think nothing of the Israeli occupation and who wanted to reform the Arab world at the point of a gun for playing a decisive part in a disaster.
I think about the time that Arlen Specter voted "unproven" in Clinton's impeachment trial in 1999. He was a key vote, a Republican who sided with the Democrats. Specter is Jewish and I remember Jews taking pride in Specter's vote. He was just one of 50, but he was the guy who made the difference, a supposedly sage jurist. Well we're talking about far more significant political power in the case of the neocons, these were the guys who supplied the toxic ideas that fed the Iraq war. Where is the reflection in the Jewish community? Why always this angry defensiveness? We're a powerful community. Where's the introspection, the honesty, the responsibility?
(Thanks to Idrees Ahmad for the tip…)
