Real world lessons. Reform Rabbi Eric Yoffie trashed J Street last January for having the temerity to criticize the Gaza slaughter. What did J Street do? It shut up about Gaza and gave Yoffie a podium for a major speech at its first policy conference this week.
And what does Yoffie do? He goes on NPR today, in a piece on J Street, and praises… AIPAC:
Mr. ERIC YOFFIE (President, Union for Reform Judaism): AIPAC does essential work. It has a huge organization. It maintains military support for Israel from the United States government. And, look, I don’t agree with AIPAC on everything, but AIPAC is a very valuable and important organization. If this becomes an anti-AIPAC effort, then the American Jewish community will turn against it. [emphasis mine]
Reporter MICHELE KELEMEN: One J Street supporter who overheard those remarks said J Street is not meant to counter what AIPAC is doing, but to let members of Congress and the White House know that they can be both pro-Israel and pro-peace.
Yoffie’s implacability reminds me of Dennis Ross. A guy who’s worked on the failed peace process forever through Republican and Democratic administrations and what happens? He turns up in the Obama administration. These people never go away because they represent a powerful conservative force in American political life: Jewish identity constructed around Zionism. Yoffie is surely right when he says the Jewish community is pro-AIPAC; if J Street is going to be effective it will have to build its tabernacle in a wider community.
Thanks to Hannah Schwarzschild.
Jewish identity constructed around Zionism.
Perhaps it’s time many American Zionist Jews looked in the mirror and asked, “What aspects of my upbringing have contributed to my being vulnerable and susceptible to Zionist rhetoric and instruction?”
Having been brought up in a very secular home, I honestly cannot wrap my head around the idea of people feeling such a strong connection based on religious heritage or perhaps ideology. I mean, don’t people have free and open minds with which they can judge for themselves what’s good and what’s bad, what’s humane and what’s just?
If a person is basing his or her personal identity on religious heritage or religious teachings, then there might be something missing in that person’s life, a kind of an unfulfilled need.
Nolan, the sad fact is there is a lot of cash in it for Jews who toe the Zionist line. Scholarships, “learning trips” to Israel, job placement, lucrative business deals, access to corporate and political circles of power, government contracts (in both countries), etc. It isn’t really about personal identity or religious heritage — that’s only the mask that legitimizes what really goes on.
I should know. I was raised Catholic — and one thing Catholics do pretty well, especially nowadays, is penance. Zionism is to Judaism what the Catholic Church was, at one point, to Christianity — a corrupting force more concerned with political power and economic control than with theology or morality. Catholics don’t like to talk about that part of our history, but they do teach it to us in school so that we don’t let it happen again.
I might want to get in on that racket. It sounds like a lucrative field.
No, not really.
Back when Cheney and his puppet Bush were in power and gas prices were hovering around $3.60/ gal it dawned on me how much profit all those oil moguls, Cheney himself and all his clients made from the destruction of so many lives in Iraq and by extension in the US.
Talk about selling one’s soul to the devil.
Wow, I watched the first of those Zionist brainwashing videos on the linked page, and I’m astonished by how many lies the guy managed to spout. One could write a solid graduate thesis just by going into detail in dispelling the propaganda in that four minute video alone.
J Street — when they’re not selling out, they’re shooting themselves in both feet.
The only thing that’s impressing me about J Street is that they stumbled along for as long as they have with such horrendous leadership.
J Street has the right approach.
Policies are the opponent.
How are you all silent on Hillary’s statement this morning,
link to haaretz.com
During a press conference on Saturday night with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem, Clinton said: “What the Prime Minister has offered in specifics of a restraint on the policy of settlements which he has just described – no new starts for example, is unprecedented in the context of prior-to negotiations.”
Yes, Hillary’s statement is shameful, but there is so much shame these days to go around.
Posherd,
I would ignore the schizophrenic troll.
Silent on Hillary?
Ashamed would be more like it.
Hillary has now denied that a freeze of all settlement activity shoudl be a precondition to negotiations.
link to jpost.com
Not silent – just too disgusted for words!
The craven Hillary has superglued herself to the nefarious Zionist lobby.
It’s not gonna stop that war coming Israel’s way.
Hillary has been glued to the Zionist lobby ever since she decided to run for office in NY, but this isn’t just Hillary, it’s her spineless boss, too. Let them try to deny now that Israel runs US foreign policy.
And I’m done with any respect I might have had for Yoffie.
Then there are the slime molds in Congress. If AIPAC were pushing single-payer healthcare, Congress would have passed it on a voice vote.
Chaos4700, that first paragraph was as succinct a synopsis of that aspect of ZIonism as I’ve ever seen
“It isn’t really about personal identity or religious heritage — that’s only the mask that legitimizes what really goes on.” I wish some other posters could absorb that, in a real way.
So what is it gonna come down to? Bunches of Jews re-affirming their Jewishness to give themselves credibility for the fight against Zionism? “When I went up against Israel, it was only then I knew what being a Jew meant!” I don’t think that is going to work for a lot of people (more’s the pity). And it’ll never work. Or will it?
I used to be an atheist not long ago. In the last year or so I’ve met people — Christian, Muslim and Jewish — who have lead me to change my mind about it.
Absolute control over the debate via the media and the circle of lobbyists used to mean total dominion over the American public. I think that domination has been abused and consequently weakened — newspapers are failing and both political parties are fracturing significantly, for a start. Monopolies, ultimately destroy themselves out of sheer avarice and paranoia.
Not to be trite, but as they say in one of my favorite movies, “You can’t stop the signal.”