The New York Times says it "condensed" this interview with Norman Podhoretz, presumably because he was longwinded. I am going to condense it further and leave out most of Podhoretz’s answers, which are slippery and old school, and keep the questions. Note the point of view of the interviewer, Deborah Solomon: liberal Jews are passionately pro-Israel, the settlements may have "oppressed" the Palestinians, and that neocons allegedly provided the intellectual justification for the Iraq war. These questions show how head-stuck-in-the-sand are mainstream media Jews, who are mostly all PEP, progressive except for Palestine. As if there is any doubt that neocons provided the thinking for the war. As if there is any question that the occupation has oppressed Palestinians–with two systems of roads, and 600 checkpoints! Solomon/Podhoretz:
What you’re overlooking is that many American Jews on the left are passionately pro-Israel.
…The ideology of the left, in the last 50 years roughly, has represented the Palestinians as a kind of dark-skinned oppressed people like the blacks in this country. Obama believes that. [did we ever take slavery out of the textbooks?]
You mean that the Palestinians are oppressed by Jewish settlements?
It’s a crazy idea… [planet check!]
Do you think the neoconservative movement discredited itself by pushing the Iraq war?
the idea that Doug Feith and Paul Wolfowitz somehow manipulated Don Rumsfeld into doing something he didn’t want to do is lunatic. [man up, Norman, take some g-d responsibility]
The charge is not that they manipulated Rumsfeld but that they provided the intellectual justification for the war.
Neoconservatives were never quite as powerful as people thought we were. [slippery]
Just as I exclaimed in my inner monologue “how dumb do they think we are,” I recalled how Strauss explicitly thought we were dumber.
Sorry, Neocons, you don’t get to dodge that debacle as easy as Iran Contra (+Israel)
Given that a Republican was president on 9/11, it seems self apparent to me that the president would react in a muscular militaristic fashion. An attack on Afghanistan with its easy U.S. takeover of Kabul could hardly suffice to a Republican president. Some other target was needed. Iraq was the obvious target.
I agree, wondering Jew. It somehow was a carpe diem scenario. But I also understood why some Americans immediately had the Reichstag Fire on their minds, another seize the day scenario.
‘Liberal Jews’ are passionately pro-apartheid.
Liberal Jews don’t think or talk about apartheid. It’s not part of the vocabulary. They remind me of American patriots who cannot imagine that the US invaded Iraq for oil. “We wouldn’t do that”. IT”S time for a PARADIGM shift.
Liberal Jews are passionately pro reform, resulting from the clear and effective articulation of persuasive argument.
That the left has failed to make that persuasive argument, either to Israelis or to Americans, is a statement of its failure.
And, rather than seek to improve and clarify its goals and method, it adopts boycott with the provision that it must follow the leadership of the Palestinian vanguard, whether ethical and just or not.
Rather than articulate an argument that results in lessening of the pendulum swings between zero-sum contending parties, the left (Phil) endorses punitive approaches.
I see low expectations applied to Americans and Israelis here.
They must be persuaded by someone that encouraging settlers to freely roam the West Bank setting up outposts on stolen land, brutally clubbing shepherds, burning olive trees and stoning schoolgirls is wrong and must be punished. They can’t draw that conclusion on their own.
When America did nothing to stop the genocide in Auschwitz, it was because nobody made a persuasive argument that Jews were being mass-murdered there, I assume. It may have even been the victims’ fault.
(I’m not comparing the settlers’ behavior to the Nazis’, only making a reductio ad absurdum argument. Normally I would not be inclined to clarify this, but I’m beginning to have low expectations myself.)
Yes,
Those individuals that break the law should be punished. And, relative to the West Bank, there is law prohibiting vandalism and harrassment.
Relative to the West Bank there are two sets of law, one which is civilian in nature that applies only to the Jewish settlers, and one that is military in nature, and applies only to the occupied Palestinians. Testimony from Palestinians against Jewish settlers is most often discounted and ignored, testimony from Jewish settlers against Palestinians usually results in administrative detention for a Palestinian, in other words, indefinite jail time without a trial or a chance to even know or contest the charges against one.
The existence of laws on the books does not guarantee safety for Palestinians.
From the latest Ta’ayush email:
Laws mean nothing in a practical sense when the enforcer of those laws seeks to help the law-breakers instead. Welcome to the West Bank.
And, as the left in this case has morphed with the left/right, it represents the opposite of “POP” (Progressive on Palestine). It renounced it in its frustration to see change occur, but without it doing its responsible part.
It reminds me somewhat of what I’ve seen of early domestic abuse. “I’m frustrated that you won’t do what I need you to do.”
It can shift to a communication heard on both sides, or devolve to escalation.
If it seems like it devolves to an approach that is persecutorial, will you change your views? Will you have the scope to? Or will you be too much involved with the movement, with the objective itself, to SEE?
And, as the left in this case has morphed with the left/right
I’d appreciate definition and elaboration.
Definition of: “left/right”, ideally the basic ideological strains of left and right in this context and its common ideological ground.
Elaboration of why and how “the left” as a collective has morphed into something called “left/right” on the issue.
The left/right is where dissent turns into authoritarian and fascist approaches.
Conclusions include a conspiratorial approach, usually with a scapegoat.
Mode of “discussion” includes character assassination over reasoning, and is usually binary (either/or, already at war).
Witty, the short version:
Anyone who disagrees with my approach is wrong and bordering on fascist thinking. Anyone who disagrees with me is guilty of binary thinking.
Notice that Witty uses binary thinking here: Either you agree with his viewpoint, or you are using binary thinking. A classic case of projection.
“Witty, the short version:
Anyone who disagrees with my approach is wrong and bordering on fascist thinking. Anyone who disagrees with me is guilty of binary thinking.
Notice that Witty uses binary thinking here: Either you agree with his viewpoint, or you are using binary thinking. A classic case of projection.”
Yes, exactly. I’ll add, as I usually do, that Richard sincerely wants peace, but he wants all discussion conducted on his own terms and if you are more critical of Zionism than he is, you aren’t interested in peace. More specifically, Richard will condemn Arab violence without hesitation and he will also condemn violence by the far right in the Zionist movement, but he won’t condemn violence or admit to any fundamental sort of sin on the part of the liberal mainstream Zionists that he identifies with. At least I’ve never seen him do it. That cuts too close to the bone.
Richard is useful to have around, however–if there is ever peace between Israel and the Palestinians, the leadership on the Zionist side will probably think like he does. There will be face-saving admissions that some Zionists (those evil rightwingers) did some bad things, and they will comfort themselves with the notion that peace could have come much sooner if only the Palestinians hadn’t used terror (thereby putting ultimate blame on them). Tom Friedman said something like this–as a liberal Zionist he would know. He quoted an Israeli who said that the two sides could concede a lot, so long as they weren’t made to feel that they were the ones to blame. That’s as good a description of Richard’s position as any.
Considering how long we have been enabling Israel, and at what cost to us, when’s the last time
our MSM, where most Americans get their news, offered to average Americans the Palestinian POV, including it’s historical context? And did such ever come out of Hollywood?
The best dissection of this bloodthirsty warmonger I’ve seen comes from the late Murray Rothbard:
“To the extent that Podhoretz’s ideological goals extend beyond his own navel, they rest fully and squarely in his own ethnic group. Explicitly and unabashedly, Podhoretz assumes ideological positions “on the basis of the old question ‘Is it good for the Jews?’” Not for Podhoretz the older, broader, but presumably namby-pamby ideal of the intellectual as citizen of the world. And so, Podhoretz opposes affirmative action, not on the basis of justice, but because it would be bad for the (male) Jews. His foreign policy is grounded on an all-out and unmitigated support for the state of Israel, which he identifies with the cause of Jewry. A foreign policy of nonintervention is attacked, not on the basis of moral principle or even of American security, but because it “represented a direct threat to the security of Israel.” Podhoretz seems not to have given a thought to the fact that Breaking Ranks is bad for the Jews. For what if American non-Jews, who are after all in the vast majority, begin to gauge foreign policy on the basis of the question: Is it good for the gentiles? By confirming the worst fears of overriding loyalty to the state of Israel, Breaking Ranks can hardly fail to harm Podhoretz’s own cause. But we do have the consolation that few people outside of his circle of back-stabbing friends will bother to read this book.”
This is all the way back from 1979. Some things–like American Zionut chickenhawk’s narrow-minded racism and insatiable appetite for murder–never change.
Israel is bad for the Jews.