This morning I got a between-the-eyes email from a Jewish friend:
This is a trend that this site has tracked: Jews who are so upset by Israel
that they have slipped their communal bonds.
They've done it because Jewish communal life is corrupted by the pro-Israel commandment. The example of Tikkun Magazine offering space to the American Jewish Committee to justify the Gaza slaughter is the best example I can think of right now: a leftwing organization, offering shelter to madness. During Gaza a few Jewish orgs did speak out against the horror: J Street, Brit Tzedek, Americans for Peace Now, and the Israel Policy Forum. Though even their statements were mild. And they came under terrific pressure for issuing them.
"Forget about the Jews. The overwhelming non-Jewish American majority could halt the genocide of Palestinians." That is the conclusion of the anti-Zionist physicist George Salzman. "Until now I have been far too focused on arguing with... Jews, simply as a result of my own ethnic and professional background. I need to break out of that trap. It is up to us all, the vast majority of whom are non-Jewish, to struggle together for the future of humanity. " I think Anna Baltzer reached this understanding a long time ago.
All these Jews have risked/accepted the "self-hating" tag because opposing the use of white phosphorous on schoolchildren is more important to them than preserving their standing within an ancient community. It's not as if there isn't grief that goes along with that. Jews have been governing their own community for thousands of years. Many Jews who are agonized about Gaza and Lieberman can't break with communal life, even if they're sitting next to neocons. The idea of breaking out violates old norms. Because as David Harris says, Jews are supposed to stick together against common enemies! And generally they do.
This post is not aimed at Jews. Note the headline. Many non-Jews have not come into this space--Criticizing Israel-- because of fears of being called anti-Semites and written off. Years ago my friend Rob Buchanan said to me, Phil you have to speak out on this 'cause they'll just smear non-Jews as anti-Semites. And I accepted that responsibility.
But the point of this post is that the passivity of likeminded gentiles has now become a problem. We need more prominent gentiles to step forward. Here is Scott McConnell's interesting take on the matter:
Now I can think of gentiles who defended Ambassador Freeman, including Walt and Mearsheimer and Andrew Sullivan. But I take McConnell's point. And the point of this post is an appeal to other bloggers, profs, commenters, and journalists to be inspired by Congressman Brian Baird and come forward on this issue. Speak out if you were appalled by Gaza and are concerned about the militant approach to dealing with Iran. Obama will simply be owned by the lobby on this question unless we form our own new community.
(And as for the religious consequences, who knows.)
It's damned hard for a gentile to come out on this issue if they haven't already established a legitimate record of opposition to antisemitism. Without that established record, they can simply be shot down as having always been a closet antisemite. For example, for years I've taught a course tracing the history of European antisemitism from the Church Dads to Weininger. That more or less disarms any attacks on my motives when, in a second course, I teach Orientalism and the North American media collusion with the Israeli occupation and its flouting of international law; and in a third, the founding of Zionism. Few gentiles are as lucky as I am, so it's gonna take a lot to get that community active.
Gentiles in the intellectual professions can't criticize the Israeli assault on Gaza because it will ruin their careers. There are however exceptions. Pat Oliphant, can draw a critical cartoon because he was born in 1934. At the relatively advanced age of 75 with nine-tenths his career behind him he can pretty much say what he wants. What are they going to do? Cancel his Social Security benefits?
Many other gentiles don't have so prominent a platform, but gentile doctors, scientists, engineers, businessmen and lawyers could speak out, as could union leaders and industrialists. Artists will never speak out. They are too dependent on Jewish philanthropy.
The dam will finally break when prominent mainstream Jews break the ice, thereby giving the rest of us permission. A bunch of politicians need to have a big dinner to honor people like Chuck Hagel Jimmy Carter for speaking truth to power over Gaza.
Finally, a bunch of big gentiles have spoken out already–Brzezinski and Scowcraft, for example–to no apparent effect. The media and congress are still virtually monlithic in their blind support for Israel. They need to show us the way. Unfortunately they are too candy-ass to do so and rather react with aggression whenever our Israel policy is questioned.
*NEWS ON ARMS SHIPMENTS TO ISRAEL
From: Amnesty International USA (alerts@takeaction.amnestyusa.org)
Sent: Fri 4/03/09 4:20 PM
New information obtained by Amnesty researchers this week confirmed a massive shipment of U.S. weapons was delivered to Israel on March 22nd.
The administration allowed the delivery, despite clear evidence of Israeli human rights violations, some amounting to war crimes, including the controversial use of U.S. made white phosphorous munitions over densely populated areas. That's the white phosphorous that sticks to flesh and sears it until completely deprived of oxygen.
You and I need the State Department to know that they can't just plop tons of weapons into the hands of a known serious human rights violator without getting grilled.
Please ask State Department officials why the U.S. would deliver these arms to Israel.
TO SEND A PRE-WRITTEN E-MAIL – link to takeaction.amnestyusa.org
@ Duscany | April 03, 2009 at 05:59 PM
The media and congress are still virtually monlithic in their blind support for Israel.
The answer is money. Public support is of course important, but the Lobby will go on sponsoring foreign barbarism long after public opinion changes, even 'opinion-maker' public opinion, as long as campaign contributions dictate political party policies.
I see only two realistic ways this will change, a combination probably being necessary. First, anti-Zionists form political action groups to lobby against the Lobby. They would need enough money and organization to counter-act Lobby efforts to punish the disobedient by flooding their electoral opponents with contributions, and because the single issue would be Israel, they would be sitting duck targets for accusations of anti-semitism. Second, neocon and colonial Zionist treason against the United States needs to be prosecuted in the justice system (wow, impartially enforcing our own laws, what a radical concept), making colonial Zionist money too toxic to take, thereby evening the playing field. At the very least the latter would seriously constrain Lobby effectiveness via FARA registration, proper screening of obvious security risks, i.e. neocons and other colonial Zionists, for national security billets, etc.
Both of these solutions would be damaging to the standing of the Jewish community in the United States, with the mitigation proportional to the amount of public Jewish support for changing the status quo. However, the damage will be done eventually, one way or another, and the longer this issue festers the worse the consequences will be. If anyone else has any alternate ideas on how America can sever its ties with ethnic cleansing and colonization, I'd love to hear them.
Hi Delia, I have a real problem with the Faith & Fatricide meme.
Do you have an opinion on:
I hate to belabor the point, but WASPs being too whipped and cowardly to speak out against Zionists is a relatively recent, post-Christian phenomenon. Since they've completely traded in their religious heritage for mammon-worship, WASPs have lost all integrity, principles, ethics and confidence.
Christian WASPs down through Western civilization have heretofore had no problem whatsoever speaking out against organized Jewish chicanery perpetrated by certain segments of the Jewish community, of which Zionism is just the most potent and deadly manifestation. That's why the anti-Christian establishment Left has been Jewish Zionism's most useful idiot from the Soviet era through today.
Yes the gentiles have to do it… I have been saying this for several years.
There is no way the average Jews are going to tip the scale on Israel for a lot of reasons, no real political $$$ among doves, peer pressure, fear of alienation from the tribe,the elder brainwashed community and so on.
The first time I was called an anti semite in I-P debates I was totally shocked, then pissed off and now I could care less.
Israel, the US Jew's fetish about Israel, congressional corruption on Israel, the US-Isr marriage made in political hell .. IS WHAT IT IS.
As a gentile I have been calling this spade a spade for a long time. Do I want to make my personal jewish friends uneasy and uncomfortable? No. Do I want to make the zionist community that has created this and supports it uneasy? Absolutely.
What is going on with the US-Isr and Pal is way beyond considering hurt feelings or discomfort or political correctness.
We have to tell the truth about all of this. We have to call it out and be very specific about what it is….it is a organized group of zionist for Israel, a rouge Israeli state and a US government throughly corrupted by money and personal political considerations and for some, ethnic ideology.
America
Twenty years from now one of your kids will ask you, "What did you do in the war against Zionism, daddy?" If you can't say, "I spoke out so much against it they denounced me as an anti-Semite," you'll feel ashamed, like those slug-a-beds in Henry IV:
"And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day."
Phil, do not attempt to lambaste the gentiles with amateur psychology, accusing them of having "hang-ups" that they need to "get over." This is Jewish personalising jargon, normally used to stigmatise critics of Israel as having "personality issues," bla bla bla, and you are simply using it in reverse.
I agree with McConnell that WASPs never quite accepted the leadership role that they in fact possessed. The problem, I think, is that Protestantism (the P in WASP, we may note) tends to be strongly egalitarian — in Jefferson's words, "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal…" You can't be an egalitarian and fully accept your role as a member of a hereditary elite; the conflict between those two concepts will tend to undermine your ability to really lead without apology and will give you tremendous moral hangups for which you may attempt to compensate by going out of your way to do "moral" or "nice" things that aren't necessarily in the best interest of either the elite that you belong to or the nation that your elite leads.
More amateur political psychology. Just face it, they don't want to lose their slave jobs in the ZOG economy.
So what, exactly, in your mind, would constitute professional political psychology?
It's ironic: for over thirty years, American patriots have been warning the rest of you that you were living under a ZOG — a Zionist Occupation Government — and you have dismissed them as 'tinfoil hatters' and 'cranks.' Well; now you know.
I was just thinking that humans can be divided into three categories, sheep, wolves and goats. Most people, obviously, are sheep ('sheeple'). I personally am a goat, though Suzanne etc. often accuse me of being a wolf. The fascists are the wolves, and I am not one of them.
The hang-ups have been instilled in three generations of American gentiles since birth. This socialization fact, plus the PC reinforcement mirror of it throughout the entertainment industry & and its products (with partial exception in black ghetto lyrics), plus the reality of AIPAC-directed campaign financing, plus the reality of needing to keep or get a higher class job–all welded to the stigma and guilt attached
to merely suggesting a subset/group of Jews may not have the best interests of the world at heart–it's no small demand for atomized white Americans, deprived of any shred of minority
moral authority glue ( even in those areas of the USA where they a minority) to speak out.
Former President Carter. How hard is it to be a tiny carter anywhere in the USA?
Gil Scott-Heron got quite a big laugh out of referring to Gerald Ford as "oatmeal man" and Jimmy Carter as "skippy," back in … oh, let's see … 1976, in "Bicentennial Blues."
Dear Philip,
Your comments are on the mark. My only concern is that casting too much responsibility on gentiles might encourage Jews who are on the brink of criticizing Israel to pass the buck. Some of the iron-fisted Zionists' harshest critics are Jews. I greatly admire their courage – they are my heroes. We can't wait for Christians and those who depend on them to wake up. Too many are at this point hopelessly steeped in Bible myths and entranced by compliant mass media. We need courageous Jews like you to cut through the morass of myth and mis-information about "chosen" Jews and evil Muslims, restore the godliness of human equality, and use jewishness as authority as they do so.
C. McCann
This is a great blog plus comments. Fresh air. My God, how unusual. Maybe at last it can go somewhere. I have written against the smallish but greatly wealthy and intensely powerful usurious Jews (think Rothschild) in Culture Wars Magazine. That magazine is Catholic in orientation and takes the position that one must not be anti-Semitic (else where and who is Christ?) but clearly must be anti-Jew, if "Jew" means, as it plainly does, anti-Christian, anti-government, anti-family, anti-normal-gender, etc. Hollywood is the characteristic abomination. "The Jews" are on the point of winning. Not clear to me whether the present meltdown following the long term usury-based attack on America, which coincides with the rise here of the Jews (1960/70 to now) is a move to deliver the coup de grace or rather the failure of the Jewish plan to rule the world. That has to fail anyway, but maybe not now. Anyway, nobody but nobody in the gentile world is presently going to hang out a shingle saying "anti-semitism peddled here." All lauds to Phillip for his bravery in getting this started. Tom White, Odessa, TX
The problem with the thesis isn't about anti-semitism. Its with being insufficiently educated on the history.
Most dissenters know very little about the history of the region. For their "study", they read a single book with a snappy title by Ilan Pappe or Norman Finkelstein, and then conclude that they're "well read".
To be well read, means to read at length the objective events, the on the ground different narrative experiences of the events, constructing a philosophical/political map of what is possible.
All read skeptically. Including skeptical reading of what supports your own conclusion.
and become meaningless windbags like you, witty, sure they must, then you could sleep easy.
Maybe we need a new version of the movie Exodus? Brad Pitt could take over Paul Newman's role–or, more accurately, that Schwimmer guy from Friends…
I can’t claim to be a prominent gentile but I’m certainly one who has never been terribly worried about being accused of being an anti-Semite. (Everyone has to be able to read their own moral compass and so long as you are confident in doing that, it doesn’t really matter what kinds of slurs get flung in your direction.)
But the challenge now is not one of recruiting gentiles; it is one of transcending tribalism.
Pro-Israel Jews have two weapons that they predictably unleash. They demean and belittle fellow Jews by calling them “self-hating” whereas they vilify non-Jews by implying that they harbor the murderous intent of anti-Semites.
This is a divide-and-rule tactic and maybe the best way of responding to it is by forging solidarity and recognizing that those who draw attention to the ethnicity of Israel’s critics are merely trying to deflect attention from the criticism to the critic.
Paul Woodward, "Israel’s critics are merely trying to deflect attention from the criticism to the critic."
The problem with most critics of Israel is that they panic and try to defend themselves the second anyone raises the anti-semitism charge. It's the wrong thing to do. Even if you conclusively win, establishing beyond all doubt that there's no way on God's green earth that any reasonable person could ever consider you anti-Semetic, you still have still lost the debate. You have let the other side off the hook when it comes to answering your charges. It's far better to simply ignore the slander and insist the other side answer your charge, which they most likely can't. Otherwise they wouldn't have been calling you names in the first place.
epitaph for a nations zeal
sowed the seeds for the real
new one world order
like from space
no nasty lines
for her figure
to disgrace
no army’s
standing
lying
buried
underground
no opposition needed
and never any found
we all must look
out for each other
that's what this life’s about
it's there in the waves cascading
and in the rooftop shout