Truly weird post by Marty Peretz calling J Street a "circle jerk" of cranks, and hurling Yiddish curses at Jim Traub of the New York Times. Sad and pathetic, this writing suggests he’s delaminating.
Meantime, Dan Fleshler boldly defends J Street against the Israelis and raises one of my favorite themes, Jews with guns:
Haaretz columnist Anshel Pfeffer sums up the attitude of Israeli government officials towards J Street: “What do these limp-wristed shtetl Jews who have never held an M-16 know about running a country?”
These complaints are a variation of the message American Jews have been hearing from Israelis and some American supporters for decades: unless we serve in the Israeli army or vote in its elections, we have no right to criticize Israel in public. But those who bring out that old chestnut now are discounting or ignoring an inconvenient truth: J Street’s supporters –myself included- are American citizens who back American policies that we believe are in our own country’s interests, as well as the interests of Israelis, Palestinians and the rest of the world.
There is outsize respect among American Jews for Jews who have served in the Israeli armed forces, for instance Michael Oren and Jeffrey Goldberg.
Goldberg is also attacking J Street. He says he won’t be there and attacks the endorsement of J Street by Harvard professor Stephen Walt. He calls Walt "one of
America’s leading Jew-baiters." And last month a "grubby Jew-baiter…" And he claims that Walt "demonizes Jews by blaming them for the Iraq War." What about when Ari Shavit of Haaretz, citing Tom Friedman, wrote that the Iraq war was conceived by 25 intellectuals, most of them Jewish? (A company that credulous Goldberg was in himself). Are Shavit/Friedman demonizing Jews, or merely describing the way the world works? And are non-Jews ever allowed to discuss this? I guess not.
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So sayeth Marty: I don’t like cranks, and I especially don’t like cranks who exaggerate their own importance.
Um, really, Marty? Aren’t you kind of a walking, talking version of the same?
Let them continue to bloviate, They will do a good enough job of canceling themselves by their own words. They will be like Sharon which alienated the entire French Jewry by intimating that they were not Jews unless they ended up in Israel.
Like v… and US_Objector have stated, in most cases, people like Marty Peretz end up destroying their credibility and careers on their own. That self-destruct mechanism seems to go unnoticed by his ilk until its too late and one ends up like Sarah Palin.
Phil and Adam: Please broaden your coverage because the case against Israeli propaganda is breaking open as never before; it’s now or never to stop this State of Zionist Junkers before it commits suicide pursuing it’s lebensraum and Israel uber Alles program.
Item: Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! featured the great Amira Hass this morning Wed 10/21. Although a weasel worded intro by Christiane Amanpour avoided stepping in any Israeli do-do, Ms. Hass spoke directly to the point about Israeli brutality and occupation. Even she has trouble encapsulating and summarizing the I/P issue, and stated that “I have been a failure” in trying to wake people up to the truth. What a Wensche! (i don’t know the term for a female Mensche)
Item: The Goldstone Report continues to gather momentum, lighting fires under the rear of B Yahoo and Company. Another eminent mediocre black named Rice comes forth with inanities trying to protect Israel from the truths so self-evident in TGR. Judge Goldstone in person defends his report here and he knocks the hasbara out of the stadium:
link to english.aljazeera.net
Item: My comment on the above: Where in the effing hell has the Christian religion placed it’s sense of morals and courage on this issue? Don’t we have any authoritative voices of traditional Christianity left who are brave enough and powerful enough to enunciate the things which Phil, Adam, Glen, Tony, Uri, Amos, Avraham, Amy, and Amira are discussing?
John Marker, Los Angeles
It seems to me that when “traditional Christian voices” describe Israeli atrocities and Zionist supremacism, they immediately get branded as “antisemites.”
Thanks for the video clip reference cogit8. Here’s a subsequent article summarizing
key points of what Mr Goldstone said during the interview:
link to english.aljazeera.net
The Methodists and Presbyterians are speaking out increasingly. The Catholics
don’t want to upset the Jews; Christian Zionists of course are not only in
Evangelical churches. I guess Christian passivity is due to guilt? Problem is, two wrongs don’t make a right and any church leader should see that. I wonder what muslim Americans think about the silence of Christianity in the USA?
Here’s a link to a recent conference of churches in the matter–Methodists and
Presbyterians (sic?): link to theird.org
The linked article is pretty informative, though the product of the very neo-connish IRD. Ms. Reuther is right on:
<>
“Sharing ecumenical relations” is a very broad concept, but often involves an extreme sensitivity to criticism by Jews, business ties among elite parishioners, etc. Basically it means a lot of reasons to look the other way.
Thanks for the link to the Goldstone interview, Cogit. (Wouldn’t it be great if Americans were allowed to watch Al Jazeera?)
Just for note.
Dan defends and SUPPORTS J Street’s positions, efforts, work, not only its reputation against petty mudslinging.
That is not the standard of Mondoweiss currently, for which the attacks on J Street are itself a form of self-advertising red herring.
Are you liberal and support J Street, or are you radical and condemn J Street for its liberalness?
The Jewish McCarthy speaks out on Mondoweiss!
“Jewish McCarthy”.
Bother to find out my views.
I am an opponent of fanatacism and prejudice. Is that blacklisting.
I argue against it directly.
No you don’t. You merely claim you do, and then proceed to do exactly what you claim you aren’t doing.
“Are you liberal and support J Street, or are you radical and condemn J Street for its liberalness? “
You, sir, are subverting liberalism by trying to cast the “radical” label on people you disagree with. You are trying to say people must support the Jewish lobby (even one of the fragments) or they aren’t really liberal (and the subtext is, they aren’t really Jewish then either). Like I said, Jewish McCarthy.
Many of us support a vision of justice more basic and far-reaching than J-Street’s. So we critique its vision, and actions, where we see fit. But we recognize the group’s value in pushing American policy towards the right direction, and many of us support it for that.
The shtetl Jews are the ones running Israel; they’re the ones who created this cancer that can’t think, imagine, like an enlightened nation. Re-read the line above. These penny ante gangsters think holding (and using) an M-16 is a criteria for running a country. And Americans, and American Jews in particular, should hold them in anything less than contempt?
Pferrer’s comment plays to a particular “anti-Semitic” stereotype about US Jews – that they do not serve their country, that they evade military service.
I guess it’s OK to promulgate these stereotypes about US Jews if you’re Israeli, but the Hounds of ZOA and ADL would be howling if anyone here made such a remark.
No, we’re not. We’re only allowed to send tax dollars. But these days are coming to an end that these emoters, these Jewish Israeli-Firster screamers, have not perceived coming. You can only stand on the block and hurl overwrought and hyperbolic epithets for so long before you get the backlash. And it’s coming.
When Israel attacks Iran and the Gentile at the gas pump finds himself paying $5/gal, he’ll sure as shit have something to say about it.
Cost of supporting Israel to US Citizens up to 2002: 3 trillion dollars:
link to washington-report.org
Great link. Too bad the tables are screwed up.
If the formatting is chopping off the edges, try cutting and pasting the table images into something like Paint in order to read them.
With interest on that money over time, the cost is closer to $6-8 trillion. That’s not me making it up: I read it somewhere.
The issue is going to change to Anti-Gentilism.
Iran denies holding secret nuclear talks with Israel
A representative of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission and a senior Iranian official met last month to discuss the chances of declaring the Middle East a nuclear-free zone, Haaretz has learned. This is the first direct meeting between official representatives of the two states since the fall of the Shah in 1979.
The Iranian Atomic Organization on Thursday denied that officials from Israel and Iran recently took part in the Cairo conference, calling the report “sheer lies.”
link to haaretz.com
In addition to the implied willingness of Israel for a nuclear free zone, another important comment is the use of the term “lies”.
Wouldn’t this require Israel to stop being a rogue nuclear-armed power? Are we forgetting that Iran is A) a signatory of the NPT and B) not found to be in violation of any of its treaty obligations, whereas Israel is neither?
How do you think bringing this up helps? It doesn’t prove anything about Israel’s sincerity. If anything, it only shows how much they really are talking out of both sides of the mouth, pretending they don’t have nukes, then threatening to attack Iran, then making secret deals.
They are calling Iran’s bluff.
And yours.
If you call for a nuclear free middle east in earnest then you would encourage and support the effort, not support the denial of the effort.
Kind of like we called Iraq’s bluff?
Seriously? Are you a complete fool? You want a nuclear free Middle East? Sanction Israel for developing rogue nuclear weapons outside of treaty. Make them open up to UN inspection — like Iran has.
The fact is, Iran is a legitimate nuclear power. Israel is a rogue nuclear state and a threat to the world.
“If you call for a nuclear free middle east in earnest then you would encourage and support the effort, not support the denial of the effort. ”
There is no bluff to be called. Israel has already finger then finger to the IAEA when they were asked to become a signatory to the NPT, while Iran has been for over a decade. So until Iran and Israel are on equal terms, it is not up to Iran to lead by example.
How about this slant Witty?
Israel officials ordered to keep mum on reported Iran deal
The national security adviser has instructed all government officials involved in the Iranian nuclear issue not to respond to media reports on a draft agreement between Iran and the West regarding uranium enrichment in Russia.
link to haaretz.com
Peretz’s rant prompted my overdue donation to Human Rights Watch. www.hrw.org
Looks like just another day in standard Zionist discourse to me. I keep hearing that Zionism is supposed to have this great intellectual aspect… but all I’ve ever seen is schoolyard bully tactics dressed up in various states of pseudo-academia.
On the contrary, Zionism is explicitly anti-intellectual. The Zionist state has dumbed down the Israeli school system until it ranks in the cellar of the world. The Zionist state’s criterion for a school’s success is how many of its graduates end up in elite IDF combat units.
Zionism is bad for the Jews. It turns a people with a long history of intellectual achievement into a bunch of ignorant thugs.
This is like calling tax protestors teabaggers. Is dressing up crude sexual inuendo as legitimate criticism supposed to come off as clever?
Peretz has suffered a complete mental breakdown. His obsession with the (metaphorical) interesection of politics and bodily functions is a sign of senility and his increasing inability to see beyond his swollen prostate and stopped bowels. Any argument that contradicts his perverted view of liberal sensibilities is the product of ‘sickness’. Human Rights Watch seeks to ‘penetrate . . . [and] expose’ Israel. J Street’s efforts amount to a ‘circle jerk’, ‘a bit tawdry, a bit showy.’ Does Peretz even know what that term means? Or does he simply have a vague, befuddled sense that a ‘circle jerk’ suggests sexual activity of a sort, and use of the term would, naturally, appeal to a youthful readership. The rest of his name-dropping, resume waiving, platitude-laced discourse is evidence of an ‘old hand’ who has no interest in trying to incorporate contemporary developments into his brittle analysis. (Peretz writes, ‘I’m no naif. [The IDF] are far from perfect.’ But later on his reliance on the superlative gets the better of him when he quotes a British Colonel who praises IDF conduct in Gaza as the most sensitive to civilian rights “in the history of warfare.”)
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