Let’s talk about the dual loyalty that support for Israel inevitably engenders in the bosom of an American Jew. This is the unspoken essence of Robert Kaplan’s statement in the Atlantic, that the US and Israel do not have identical interests with respect to Iran:
Israel’s supporters [this is a euphemism for American Jews in the Status Quo lobby] believe that because both the U.S. and Israel are democracies, the two countries share identical national interests. But Israel is half a world away from America, virtually surrounded by enemies on land, while America is an island nation bordered by two vast oceans. [and we are not a Jewish state, hon]… Iran threatens Israel much more than it does America. It may very well be in Israel’s best interest to attack Iran. But it is probably not in America’s for Israel to do so, given America’s exposure in Iraq. And an Israeli attack could destroy President Barack Obama’s efforts to reach out to the Muslim world. If you think the tension between the U.S. and Israel is high now, just wait until there’s a significant spike in casualties in Iraq following an Israeli strike on Iran.
In June Jeffrey Goldberg (pictured, in his element), who like Kaplan is also a former IDF soldier who writes for the Atlantic (yes; there are professional barriers to success in the magazine world), identified the same issue but emphasized he had loyalty to the US:
For years, we in the American Jewish community have been able to say to ourselves [that] Israel’s interests and America’s interests overlap so much that we never have an internal conflict. If you’re being intellectually honest with yourself, you have to say that what’s good for Israel in this case might not be the best thing in the world for America. You have to be open to that discussion…
I’ve decided in my life that I’m an American Jew. I love Israel, I want Israel protected and I want it safe. [But] do I want America to do things that possibly endangers its own national interest in order to protect Israel? I don’t think so.
In March, Eric Alterman laid out the same principle at the 92d Street Y, but I believe was more honest than Goldberg or Kaplan, and said because of his love of Israel, he would go with Israel in some cases. "Sometimes I’m going to go with Israel," Alterman said. Why? Because the US can take a lot of hits, but Israel can’t. And when the moderator asked in what instances the countries’ interests diverge, Alterman said that terrorist attacks on the US were motivated in some degree by the U.S.-Israel relationship.
"Dammit, if that’s the price we have to pay [for the special relationship], let’s pay it… But let’s be honest about it."
Liberals don’t want to talk about dual loyalty in the Jewish community because it is an ancient "canard" of the antisemites. But Herzl himself battled this problem 110 years ago: rich Jews didn’t want to go with him because they feared that their "patriotism" would be questioned. Now who’s talking about the issue? Three American Jews who love Israel. And notice: no pogroms. This isn’t just about Iran; it’s soul-searching over Iraq. I believe that both Goldberg and Kaplan supported the Iraq War. The ultimate question, which will be discussed on the stage at Yivo, some day, when the Jewish community fully reckons with its culpability in that disaster, is to what degree influential Jewish supporters of the Iraq war did so out of concern for Israel’s security.
PNAC.
Scoop Jackson to BushCo-Obama.
Israel is right now expanding settlements in the face of Obama’s Cairo speech.
By the time average Americans go duh it will be too late. There are 2 reasons for this beyond AIPAC power: (1) unthinking white guilt over the Shoah, and (2) the fact that the MSM keeps information from the working and job-looking masses. Case closed.
By the time average Americans go duh it will be too late.
Too late for what and for whom? America has time to work through and overcome damage done by the Lobby. It is Israel that doesn’t. Some of their fools think that having nuclear weapons and a militarized civilian population guarantees their security. Their overwhelmingly pr0-colonization political establishment has already ensured that the only way there will be a Jewish state in 50 years is if they commit an act of punctuated ethnic cleansing, as opposed to the house by house, hilltop by hilltop creeping ethnic cleansing that has been par for the course since 1967, on Palestinians that would dwarf the 1948 Nakba. I don’t think European guilt and unwitting unconditional American support are going to last even that long. It’s pure fantasy to think that the world, including America and Europe, won’t terminally turn on an Israel that commits such an atrocity.
If they were smart, they would be leveraging their current regional dominance to become an accepted fixture in the eastern Med, akin to widespread acceptance that French people live in France, Spanish people live in Spain, etc. Even when those nations have been conquered and their native political structures disabled or destroyed, no one has questioned the right of their people to live in their traditional lands. Israelis don’t have that acceptance, and they will never get it with their current strategy. Sooner or later they will lose a war, and the victors will decide that the violence and chaos Israel has inflicted upon the region require them, in order to guarantee the security of their own people, to ensure that there is never again a Jewish ruled state.
Readers who think this sounds ridiculous should do a little reading on the 1973 Arab-Israeli war. Israel came within a hair of losing it all in a war that likely would not have happened if the Israelis had had any intention of returning land conquered in 1967. Only a massive American airlift of munitions, facilitated by the Lobby, saved them. The trauma of their near-defeat is the only reason they signed a peace treaty with Egypt. They didn’t want peace. They wanted the Sinai. They don’t want peace now. They want the West Bank.
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