Let's try transferring this to a different ethnic group and see if it still seems so innocuous:

"Is it not intolerant of you to insist that we who believe in the value of Aryan peoplehood, culture and/or religion are somehow unenlightened or not politically progressive?"

Doesn't quite seem so innocent, does it? And yet it's basically the same sentiment. If we don't approve of Aryanism and "White Nationalism", why do the Jews get a free pass for the same sort of ethnocentrism and the disregard for the rights of others that always seems to go with it?

Because according to their "peoplehood, culture and/or religion" they are "the chosen," and this belief is affirmed, endorsed and sanctified by billions in annual aid sent to Israel by the US government and US politicians, and by wars fought on Israel’s behalf by the US military. Also, because this hypocritical state of affairs is relentlessly lobbied for by US organized Judaism, most of whose members profess to be progressive.

And because, notwithstanding Phil Weiss, only a handful of Jews have the courage to call them on it.

Phil, i know i have said this a few times before but i will repeat it again…youre a breath of fresh american air in the stale room of dual allegience jewish american zionism.

mazel tov.

yours is the voice of one crying in the wilderness..the best to you in your endeavor as you enlighten those who cannot and will not leave dual allegience behind.

"With Malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds."
a.lincoln

our nation….and mankind.

This belief 'in the value of Jewish peoplehood, culture and/or religion' sounds harmlessly anodyne, even vaguely commendable. But there is a vital clause missing, isn't there, the one relating to the 'value' of, or more accurately, the need for the appropriation of other people's land in order to realise these dreams of 'peoplehood' and so on.

If Zionism entails support, or tolerance, of this theft, if it means endlessly coming up with novel ways to defend what's indefensible, then Zionism is itself intolerant. Palestinian rights, if they exist, take a back seat to Jewish rights. That's intolerance.

Phil, and most of the rest of us, are indeed intolerant toward this intolerance, which is morally the only thing a decent person can be intolerant about. Similarly, if you are tolerant of intolerance, you are abetting it. Which are you, Ralph?

To call Phil 'intolerant' is pot/kettle territory, and yet another example of how easily Zionists project their own shortcomings upon those who disagree with them.

Also, you cannot be truly 'progressive' if your otherwise global egalitarian concern stops at the checkpoints of the West Bank. There is no equivalence between those illegally evicted from their homes and the immigrants sent out (and protected) by Israel to occupy them. One side is the perpetrator, the other is the victim. Sympathy with and action on behalf of the victim is not intolerance. Sympathy with and action on behalf of the perpetrator is. The former can be regarded as progressive, the latter surely not.

And I echo Phil's outrage at the term 'short term'. You live in a bubble Ralph, one that allows, even encourages an attitude that clinically airbrushes Palestinians and their rights out of mind, before their irritating presence can contaminate the beautiful idea of 'peoplehood' and all that other Jewish stuff that lies at the centre of your universe.

Hey, you're not the Lone Ranger, whole classes of you over there, elites in particular, fall prey to this sort of magical thinking. ('We're the light on the hill/they hate our freedoms/Saddam's got nukes/whatever) You can afford to in a hyperpower like the US; indeed, the insulated warmth of a (still) prosperous and blissfully ignorant military giant is the only place that fantasies which fly so comprehensively in the face of reality can take root and thrive.

Your community in the US, as Phil keeps pointing out, is an especially priviliged and insulated community within that privileged and insulated nation, which makes the embrace of an essentially anti-progressive position vis-a-vis the Palestinians by erstwhile progressives more understandable, if no less repugnant.

In the American "peoplehood", we start BIG and little wars for our interests.

The reality of the world is not homogenious assimilation, as that is what really describes modern commercialism, but multiple associations at multiple scales.

It is rational to be sympathetic with the concerns of other populations of one's own people, as Jews are largely concerned with the experience of Israelis (even as we very often differ as to life conditions and choices). Palestinians and Lebanese diaspora are similarly concerned with the experience of their peoples. Consider the comments of Saif, or Leila.

Are they tribalist, and then their comments are dismissable?

Phil chose to adopt an assimilationist approach in personal life, intermarriage, no children (so no question of how to bring them up). From my perspective, I consider that a LESS universalistic approach than to be affirmatively Jewish AND universalistic.

Universalistic in a real continuing social life, rather than just politically.

You've gotta speak your truth, but to say "I will never change my mind" is something that I would expect of John McCain.

Its true the Jews have a shared experience of irrational antisemitism, but its kind of vacuous to define yourself by your enemies. The Zionists keep clinging to the fear of antisemitism because its the only thing todays 'Jews' have got in common.

I should have noted in the first place that the Zionists 'peoplehood' has nullified the practice of the Jewish religion.

In his book, Sand manages to prove beyond any reasonable doubt that the Jewish people never existed as a ‘nation-race’, they never shared a common origin. Instead they are a colourful mix of groups that at various stages in history adopted the Jewish religion.

In case you follow Sand’s line of thinking and happen to ask yourself, “when was the Jewish People invented?” Sand’s answer is rather simple. “At a certain stage in the 19th century, intellectuals of Jewish origin in Germany, influenced by the folk character of German nationalism, took upon themselves the task of inventing a people ‘retrospectively,’ out of a thirst to create a modern Jewish people.” [2]

Accordingly, the ‘Jewish people’ is a ‘made up’ notion consisting of a fictional and imaginary past with very little to back it up forensically, historically or textually. Furthermore, Sand – who elaborated on early sources of antiquity – comes to the conclusion that Jewish exile is also a myth, and that the present-day Palestinians are far more likely to be the descendants of the ancient Semitic people in Judea/Canaan than the current predominantly Khazarian-origin Ashkenazi crowd to which he himself admittedly belongs."