A good thing, as Martha Stewart would say, that the dialogue over the Jewish role in the Iraq war is being debated at last in some precincts of the Jewish community. In his ongoing dialogue with Joe Klein, Jeffrey Goldberg asks:
Why not? American policy makers make decisions that benefit other countries all the time. American troops are in harm's way in South Korea and Japan, serving as tripwires against North Korean aggression. American troops are in Western Europe, in Kosovo, and dozens of other places, all with the aim of providing security to friends and allies. American troops died liberating Kuwait and defending Saudi Arabia, and those who argued for the first Gulf War were seldom accused of putting Kuwait's interests before America's. So why, exactly, shouldn't American policy makers consider the security of Israel, an American ally, when they're making decisions about Middle East policy? Support for Israel is a question that's worth debating, of course, just as support for Egypt and Kuwait and South Korea and a dozen other countries around the world is worth debating. But this country has been committed in a most bipartisan way to Israel's security for more than sixty years. Now Joe Klein comes along and suggests that American decisions should be made without consideration for Israel, and he argues that those who take Israel's security into account when making decisions – at least those Jews who do – are somehow disloyal to the United States.
Fascinating to me that Goldberg hasn't really thought this one through. Obviously the U.S. protects allies. It's an issue of degree. If we'd kept Muslims in the subcontinent from forming a state for 60 years, while promoting India, what would that do for our reputation in Asia, let alone our national security? That's what we've done in Israel/Palestine, seen to the neverending nullification of the Palestinians' right to self-determination, on one ground or another, because of a special-interest's influence. How did the Kosovars get a state in no time? No Bosnian lobby. I'd like to see "debate" on this issue. As Goldberg must concede, he and Klein have lately become the liberal pole of this conversation, Goldberg notably in this (historic) piece in the Times. They're both Zionists; Goldberg's Zionism caused him to join the Israeli army. Where are the anti-Zionists? Where are the voices that would sever our "special relationship?" At the Yale Political Union. I.e., they're undergraduates by 2-1. But you can't talk about this stuff and keep employment in politics or msm (that's about to change; I'm about to make $20 off my ads today). The 60 year "commitment" Goldberg regards as consensual is a manacle of identity politics, one the State Department Arabists accurately predicted would alienate the Arab world. Which brings us to Jewish identity. It is forcibly naive for Goldberg to assert that Jews don't have some special and burdensome role here (he sez elsewhere in his piece that all Americans like Israel). The idea that they are the "guardians" of Israel is a theme at AIPAC. Jews hold the breathing tube of the existential struggle of Israel. I'm sure he's felt that responsibility himself. Being appointed guardian of an apartheid state has sent young Jews flying out the door. Lastly there's the most important issue, transparency. In Goldberg's happy republic of identity-constituencies, do the ethnic/religious companies have to wear their interests openly? This is the problem an anguished Klein identified in his initial column here: the unspoken religious agenda of the Jewish neocons struck him, five years after the disaster of Iraq had unfolded with predictable consequences, as dual loyalty. At least Goldberg has been somewhat transparent. When defending Israel's treatment of Palestinians at Yivo a year ago, he related his own experience as a member of the IDF and spoke of Israel as "we." No thanks.
Related posts:
- Where Is Jeffrey Goldberg Now That Feith Needs Him?
- Can I stop myself from reading Jeffrey Goldberg?
- Netanyahu says Iran is scaring smart Jews out of Israel. But his amanuensis, Goldberg, knows better
- Klein and Goldberg Establish Code for Critiquing Neocons’ Religious Agenda: 1, Be Jewish…
- Goldberg: Do as I say not as I do
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Goldberg's argument there is almost unbelievably naive and over-simplistic — so much so that it's inconceivable that he would resort to such a dismal effort were it not for an emotional attachment to Israel so strong that it completely overrules his intellect.
Don't you think israelis should receive the usual american ally gifts before getting american "security?" What about those nuclear incinerations, the firebombing of all major cities, the creation of fake trials to ensure there will be no one to tell the tale. What about the erradication of all traces of ethnonationalism? Maybe the denazionificated land should get that much needed constitution from american hands, stating the (now reduced) boundaries of the country and limiting the size of the military to levels it would forever depend on american "friendship?" Maybe even a best-selling story about the many concentration camps the palestinians were forced into? Maybe never-to-be-found incinerated bodies said to lie under tons of concrete in places where forensic investigators are an extinct species? Why don't americans ziojews buy the whole "american ally" package for their cousins?
Goldberg:I think Americans, Jews and non-Jews alike, were worried about Saddam Hussein for many reasons, including and especially his record of genocide, and I think that many advocates of the war, myself included, were eager to see Saddam overthrown because he was a uniquely evil figure on the world stage. And if the Jewish advocates for the defeat of Saddam argued the way they did because they were sensitized to the issue of genocide…
It's crazy, and it's crazy-making. That he could say all that and never bother mentioning SCUDs, the lobbing of missiles into Israel by Saddam in Gulf War I.
Was that so unimportant it doesn't deserve any attention?
I mean he sort of attacked Israel there.
Did it not happen?
Maybe it didn't happen, maybe I'm the one that's crazy. That's how it works right?
You lose your mind – not the whole thing obviously, you can still talk and everything – but you lose the part of your mind that would notice that you've lost your mind, like getting drunk enough the part that would say enough is drunk too…
Goldberg again:
Why is it illegitimate for American Jews to care about Israel's security and argue for American measures that would strengthen Israel's security?
That one's a lot easier. Because it's fake. Nobody's faulting Jews for caring and arguing and Goldberg knows that. It's the manipulating and the lying, the blackmailing and thuggish coercion, the behind the scenes pressuring and control of information leaving basically decent people completely in the dark about what's really happening because you feel so fucking superior to them that what they think and feel means nothing and because you know that if they knew what you were really doing they'd despise you and stop letting you get away with it.
And the deaths of their children as soldiers in uniform in Iraq like the deaths of Iraqi children and the deaths of Palestinian children mean nothing because they were never important people to begin with – that's what's illegitimate, not okay.
Really seriously not okay.
Roy Belmont's last paragraph above – very very powerful! Why does it have to be like this? BTW the jews can be worse to their own. Frankly (& no one is asking me) it is all beginning to look like hell on earth.
Discussions of America's military abroad can only be about war crimes, consistently, week in week out, horrifying war crimes against the defenseless. — I can't help think alcohol is part of the problem, I could be wrong about the alcohol, but not about the war crimes. Murder on a frightening scale. — A policy from on high — is there a theological basis? A theological involvement?
Mr. Weiss:
It's not "No Bosnian lobby." Better to say "No Serbian lobby." The province/protectorate of Kosovo/Kosova isn't in Bosnia. Sigh, so many interventions, its hard to keep them straight!
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