More on Schumer and the Zionism in our politics

by on March 13, 2009 14
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I need to say more about Chuck Schumer, who played a critical role in the destruction of Chas Freeman. In fact, Schumer bragged that he had talked to the White House about Freeman—reportedly going to Rahm Emanuel.
Someone who was once friendly with Schumer tells me: “Schumer is a lad from Brooklyn, and deep down he is a Labor Zionist. He admires Ben Gurion, and Israel is very important to him. So important that back in the 70s when some of us were talking about who we admire, one of us said, the Vietnamese revolutionary leaders, and he said, 'the founders of Israel.'
“His view has surely enlarged since then. He is a gregarious man. I am sure he is concerned with his Haitian constituents and feels a connection to them, too. But there is an inertia in his world view. He has a genuine passion for Israel and now it is combined with the fact that it guarantees him a lot of campaign contributions.
“What about all the disturbing reports from Israel today? He would say, ‘I don’t live there, so I can’t judge. I don’t make decisions for them. I give them all the support they need so that they can look after their safety.’”
So we are talking about a politician with real Zionist feeling and a typical Jewish sense of the exceptionalism of other Jews halfway around the world. And it is astonishing to me that the media can even discuss the Israel lobby without addressing the issue of this powerful man’s religious investment. Remember how they harped on George Bush’s being born again?
Imagine for just one moment that a senator closely associated with the religious right had helped force out a presidential nominee who took the wrong line on abortion. Can you imagine the hue and cry in the media? The liberal media would go insane with rage. It would be all over the Rachel Maddow show and Keith Olbermann too and Brian Lehrer on WNYC.
There is really no difference in the case of Schumer, except that his religious engagement is Jewish. And when Chas Freeman says that the Israel lobby took him down out of an adherence to the will and interests of a foreign government, an honest exploration of Freeman’s charge must in the end entail an exploration of American Jewish identity. In 1995, Freeman himself addressed the claims of Israel on American Jews when he told an interviewer for the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training (adst.org), "There has been, historically, a sense that it's better not to put ardently pro-Israeli American Jews to the test by putting them in the middle of U.S.-Israeli relations, where they will anguish over where their duty lies." The reason the Times used not to send Jews to cover Israel/Palestine.
I would emphasize that Schumer's investment is not unusual: Virtually every Jew in America with any communal life at all has been inculcated to some degree with Zionist ideas—the “secular religion,” per Dershowitz; to be anti-Zionist is to be anti-Semitic, says the American Jewish Committee—and has either gone along with it, in the great majority of cases, or agonized and had to form a reasoned opposition or criticism of it, as I have. I bet that Rahm Emanuel, the gameplayer nonpareil, has never thought twice about his Zionism, which was as natural to him as the fact that his father was a member of the Israeli terrorist organization the Irgun; and so when Israel was under attack in 1991, Rahm ran over there to serve on a civilian base, in uniform. And while most American Jews have never been to Israel, a majority of us say that Jerusalem must never be divided: again, a nationalist-religious belief, which they have not examined, or been forced to examine.
There are many Jews in our public life who have struggled to reconcile Zionist ideals with Israel’s behavior. Eric Alterman is a good example. He’s a liberal Jew who is also a Zionist. And he is, to his great credit, upfront about his investment; he is doing a forum on an alternative Jewish Israel lobby on Monday night. Now I disgree with Alterman on many issues around Israel; but at least he says, I’m a Zionist, the Jewish state is important to me. I think such a view is irreconcilable with liberal democracy in view of what Israel has become; but that’s another conversation.
Dan Fleshler is a blogger and author who understands his Zionism. Jeremy Ben-Ami is a political activist for J Street who has examined his Zionism. And so is Shaul Magid of Indiana University, who challenges Zionist thinking in this week’s Forward.
These people have all examined their religious commitment to a nationalist ideology in the light of Israel’s behavior. And what I am saying and I am sure I’m repeating myself, but it doesn’t matter, this bears repetition, is that our public life is filled with Jews with similar types of religious/tribal inscription who have never interrogated themselves about that investment, or more important, had to answer publicly about it. Neocon extremist Daniel Pipes also bragged about helping to bring down Freeman. Pipes believes in an unending war with Islam. How is Chuck Schumer’s Jewish identification different from Pipes, whom he supported to be on the United States Institute of Peace? I'd like to know.
We will get nowhere on the Middle East American policy, until Jews, who are so central in the life of the establishment, speak honestly about these social/emotional/political investments, or are compelled to do so by, for instance, journalists. Any fair examination of Chas Freeman’s assertion that the Israel lobby puts adherence to the wills and interests of a foreign country over the American interest will not be complete without such an examination. And Jewish intellectual life, post-Iraq-disaster and the neocons, will remain broken.

About Philip Weiss

Philip Weiss is Founder and Co-Editor of Mondoweiss.net.
Posted in American Jewish Community, Beyondoweiss, Israel Lobby, Neocons, US Politics

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

  1. Grumpy Old Man says:
    March 13, 2009 at 5:54 pm

    Schumer beats his chest about his liberalism by hassling GOP judicial nominees and prating about gun control (hardly a libertarian position, but that's another story).

    Meanwhile he carries water for the financial industry and apparently, the Israel lobby as well.

    Fuggedabadit.

  2. LanceThruster says:
    March 13, 2009 at 6:02 pm

    I give them all the support they need so that they can look after their safety.

    —

    Even at the expense of our own? And what you "give" is taken from many of those who do not feel the same obligation.

  3. Jaffr says:
    March 13, 2009 at 6:10 pm

    These attitudes are creating problems for well-meaning non-Israeli Jews (even Zionist ones), who were raised on different values.

    See, for example:

    It is my first day at the youth cafe in Ofakim. I pick up a ping-pong paddle and start whacking the ball back and forth with an Israeli teenager. Others hear of my arrival and gather around the table. "Eh, you speak Hebrew?"

    I say I speak a little.

    "Eh, from where are you?"

    I say New Jersey.

    "Eh, you like Arabs?"

    I tell the kids I do not know many.

    "I hate them," they yell in unison.

    I saw this enmity at the youth cafe and I see it also among the children at various schools at which I teach English here. The kids wear this bigotry with pride, as if it were a source of patriotism. . .

    http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull&cid=1236764174383

  4. Craig says:
    March 13, 2009 at 6:10 pm

    Chas Freeman wasn't "destroyed" and I dislike seeing it said that he was. He appears to have voluntarily elected to step aside rather than put up with the tons of crap that would, in his expectation, continued to flow his way from the Israel lobby as long as he was in office. To some of us, his decision is disappointing, but it is his to make. This is not at all to say, of course, that the Israel lobby doesn't deserve condemnation for their malicious and shameless lies.

  5. Julian says:
    March 13, 2009 at 6:27 pm

    Of course Freeman was destroyed. His toadying to the Saudis and Chinese was revealed publicly. His reaction showed he is now a broken man. Maybe Walt can put him back together.

  6. Saleema says:
    March 13, 2009 at 7:14 pm

    @ Julian

    The best person to contact on how to put together anything, no matter what it is, would be your average Israeli. They put together a country where there was none.

  7. Richard Witty says:
    March 13, 2009 at 8:57 pm

    So much presumption.

    If Freeman was unqualified for the job due to doubts about the prospect of prejudicial performance of his duties, how is that bad that that was discovered?

    Are you sure that the story that you are making is a story in fact?

    If someone that you don't like tells the truth, do you then believe the lie? (The truth being that likely Freeman was the wrong man for the job.)

    Should someone that you don't like shut up?

  8. Chris Berel says:
    March 13, 2009 at 9:35 pm

    Saleema pays a compliment and doesn't know it. One could certainly say that the average Israeli took a small, miserable, dysfuntional region and turned it into a vibrant 1st world nation.

  9. BluePearl says:
    March 13, 2009 at 9:46 pm

    It's all about Iran, the next target for Israel. The point is to have Israel-First pods in positions of power to promote a position of attacking Iran. The Israel lobby is unlike any other lobby. You cannot compare them to the AARP, or to the NRA, or to the Florida Cuban lobby. None of those are advocating that the US go to war with Iran.

    And Obama got punked.

  10. Saleema says:
    March 13, 2009 at 10:00 pm

    @ Chris Berel,

    Only a Zionist finds it complimentary that Israel stole land and then called it "Israel." That's because they are RACISTS.

    You have got to be kidding.

  11. Saleema says:
    March 13, 2009 at 11:24 pm

    @ Chris Berel,

    Only Racist Zionists would find it complimentary to be called theives.

  12. D. says:
    March 14, 2009 at 12:01 am

    Speaking of Eric Alterman, he wrote an important essay back in 2003 which anticipated some of the themes that Phil has subsequently taken up and explored more fully–

    "Can We Talk?"

    "… My own dual loyalties–there, I admitted it–were drilled into me by my parents, my grandparents, my Hebrew school teachers and my rabbis, not to mention Israeli teen-tour leaders and AIPAC college representatives.

    "It was just about the only thing they all agreed upon. Yet this milk- (and honey-) fed loyalty to Israel as the primary component of American Jewish identity–always taught in the context of the Holocaust–inspires a certain confusion in its adherents, namely: Whose interests come first, America's or Israel's?

    "Leftist landsmen are certain that an end to the occupation and a peaceful and prosperous Palestinian state are the best ways to secure both Israeli security and American interests. Likudniks think it's best for both Israel and the United States to beat the crap out of as many Arabs as possible, as 'force is the only thing these people understand.' But we ought to be honest enough to at least imagine a hypothetical clash between American and Israeli interests. Here, I feel pretty lonely admitting that, every once in a while, I'm going to go with what's best for Israel. As I was lectured over and over while growing up, America can make a million mistakes and nobody is going to take away our country and murder us. Israel is nowhere near as vulnerable as many would have us believe, but it remains a tiny Jewish island surrounded by a sea of largely hostile Arabs. …"

  13. Witty's anonymous critic says:
    March 14, 2009 at 10:55 am

    "So much presumption."

    Speaking of that, Witty, where was it shown that Freeman was incapable of doing his job?

    I'm openminded about this–so far as I can tell, the charge against him on China is probably false. The charge on Saudi Arabia is partly true–he does have connections there, though why those should disqualify him is never explained. I don't like Saudi connections, but many in D.C. have them (including the Bush family). And I also don't like Israel connections.

    But anyway, Witty, you pretend as though you know Freeman was shown as incapable of doing his job, when it's clear that, whatever the truth about his Saudi and China statements, the real reason he came under so much fire was his criticism of Israel. Do you think the US government should only have advisors who are in the pro-Israel column?

  14. LanceThruster says:
    March 14, 2009 at 10:46 pm

    America can make a million mistakes and nobody is going to take away our country and murder us.

    —

    How many mistakes can Palestinians make? Is it OK for them to be murdered and have their land taken away because there are 'other' Arab lands? And as far as America goes, considering the rot from within, don't be too sure about the fate of our country as well. Empires fall all the time.

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