The New Yorker ran a short profile of Maurice R. "Hank" Greenberg of AIG last week that contained a curious statement:
In the current election, he’s supporting John McCain, largely because of the Arizonan’s support for the war in Iraq. Greenberg’s reasons might well serve as his credo. “I don’t think you tell the enemy when you are going to leave,” he said. “It’s painful and expensive, but we’re committed.”
Reading that, I found it hard to believe that Greenberg supports McCain just because of his exit plans for the war in Iraq; then I had my usual suspicion about the unspoken agendas of rightwing Jews in our public life, and wondered whether the statement was not shorthand for a larger belief on Greenberg's part about McCain's hawkish policy in the Middle East. Hunting the net, I found some evidence for my suspicion. Greenberg is a big deal in the Council on Foreign Relations; and two years ago he was interviewed by the National Interest after meeting the Iranian President Ahmadinejad. Greenberg said that he had had had a "personal exchange" with Ahmadinejad over his statements about the Holocaust, and had cited his own experience as an American infantryman in World War 2.
MRG: I responded: "Listen, I went through Dachau during the war. To suggest it didn't occur is simply a lie." … I think it's almost impossible to do business with him as long as he has those views. He says: "Why should the Palestinians suffer even if there was a Holocaust? What does one have to do with the other?" I mean, they have nothing to do with each other. We don't link them together. And we discussed that. They're not linked.
He thinks the Palestinians should be permitted to return, that's never going to happen. If the Palestinians returned to Israel, they'd swamp the country and there wouldn't be an Israel. But he doesn't want an Israel.
Q: It sounds like he didn't make any effort to try to reach out…
MRG: No, no. There was no effort to reach out. He's offensive. He's smug. He's a danger.
Q: Did the council make the right decision in inviting him?
MRG: I think we made the right decision to meet with him because now we have confirmed what he is….We can't deal with him. You can't deal with this guy. I do not believe that we should let him come into possession of the capabilities to manufacture a nuclear device, or achieve it by an indirect means, such as buying it from somebody else.
There's actually a strong connection between the Holocaust and the Palestinian dispossession: Jewish suffering in the Holocaust justified for Harry Truman, and many others in the west, the 1947 partition that guaranteed a Jewish state on 56 percent of historical Palestine. Truman has said that his subsequent recognition of the Israeli state on 78 percent of those lands, following a war that included a lot of ethnic cleansing, stemmed from his empathy for Jewish suffering. So the Palestinians lost out because of European crimes.
Back to the agenda issue. Greenberg expresses the usual outrage over Ahmadinejad and the Palestinians that a lot of center-right Jews of his generation have. He says that Israel can do no wrong, completely accepts the 2006 Lebanaon war, and says the right of return is crazy.
I'm back to the question of suspicion. I wonder how much of Greenberg's positions on the Middle East are driven by his feelings about Israel, the Palestinians and Iran, and possibly too by his Zionism. It's a legitimate suspicion on my part; and one that the New Yorker's mystification only fosters. Even as the Republican Jewish Coalition stokes Holocaust fervor against Obama and Ahmadinejad–no hidden agenda there–Greenberg gets to say, He's for McCain because he's for the Iraq war… It's funny how religious motivation is completely accepted by journalists when it comes to rightwing Christians in Ohio who don't like gay marriage, but completely off the books when it comes to blue state Jews who have played an important role in a 60-year cycle of violence in Israel/Palestine.
Related posts:
- Former Indiana Congressman Says Securing Israel Was Hidden Agenda for Iraq War
- Does the Save Darfur Coalition Have a Hidden Pro-Israel Agenda?
- More Obama=Hitler Talk from Right Wing Jews
- Did Financial Deregulation Serve the Neocons’ Hidden Agenda?
- ‘New Yorker’ Editor: Israel and Lobby Bear Responsibility for Iraq War
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Interesting that he is on the Council of Foreign Relations. I admire his stewardship of AIG, in transforming a modest multi-million dollar insurance company into the biggest insurance company in the world (right before it croaked), but I disagree with his views on the Middle East, obviously.
What this makes me think of is the fact that there have been books written about how CIA officers posed as insurance adjusters at AIG in its overseas subsidiaries in China and the Middle East. Insurance appraiser is the perfect cover for a CIA officer, because they get to snoop around industrial sites, commercial properties, government buildings, seeking out weaknesses, etc etc. When Greenberg was interviewed about why AIG should be bailed out, he practically admitted this in his despair, saying, "AIG has been more important than any other American corporation in opening up other countries to American business and American interests."
But reading that interview makes me wonder if AIG wasn't also a cover for other intelligience agencies as well.
For some more information on AIG and American intelligence officers, see Fallen Giant: The Amazing Story of Hank Greenberg and the History of AIG by Ron Shelp and Al Ehrbar.
i appreciate phil calling out the new yorker. it's high time someone turned the floodlights on it. my feeling is that there has been one profile after another of big jewish businessmen and that there is a code embedded here somewhere. there is something fishy about it. it is possibly purely jewish triumphalism but i don't think so. there are plenty of jewish artists or scientists or poets, but it's always businessmen who get the big write up. who cares about these guys ? they are usually pretty unpleasant characters.
remnick is a neolib/zionist, but he's trying to appear as if he is not. he gave the thumbs down to w&m in the lead article when the 'israel lobby' came out. the usual spurious reasons. i hate this hiding.
What makes Greenberg a “rightwing” as opposed to a mainstream or a left-liberal Jewish Zionist? His support for the Iraq war (likely) as an outgrowth of his Zionism? I suspect that mainstream and left-liberal Jewish Zionists think along similar lines, but just don’t admit it.
Nearly all Jewish Zionists could be accurately described as “rightwing” on any Jews-vis-à-vis-gentiles issue; that is to say, nearly all staunch Jewish Zionists deep down regard most gentiles with the same suspicion and loathing that, for example, non-Jewish staunch right-wingers regard other out-group member. That is why “Jewish Zionist liberalism” is so unconvincing. It’s impossible to be rightwing-authoritarian in one’s perspective regarding one’s family, one’s ethnic attitudes, and one’s closest community and their interaction with out-group members, and simultaneously be authentically “liberal” in other areas. It just doesn’t work that way. And it looks like the Holocaust-related Jewish Zionist “pass” on their hypocrisy is finally coming to an end. It probably would have come to an end a lot sooner but for the wealth of Jewish Zionists like Greenberg and their ability to use their money to buy and influence public opinion and policy.
it's neither painful nor expensive for people like Hank Greenberg
"I wonder how much of Greenberg's positions on the Middle East are driven by his feelings about Israel, the Palestinians and Iran, and possibly too by his Zionism."
I WOULDN'T SPEND MUCH TIME WONDERING ABOUT IT. FOR MY OWN INTERNAL PURPOSES (NOT SPOKEN TO OTHERS), I THINK IT'S SAFE TO ASSUME HIS POSITIONS ARE SIGNIFICANTLY DRIVEN AS YOU SUSPECT. OF COURSE, I COULD BE WRONG!
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