It is impossible to discuss the action of the Israel lobby in our foreign policy without acknowledging a sociological reality: Jews are big winners of the meritocracy, we are the richest group by religion in the U.S. I have to keep hitting this point because a, no one talks about it out of fear of pogroms, though everyone knows it to be true; b, meanwhile, a lot of people talk about this reality in the Arab world, where it fuels anti-Semitic broadbrush statements (Jews own Congress, a youth in Sheikh Jarrah, Jerusalem, said to me).
Sorry about the preamble. I'm never entirely comfortable writing about this, but it's just too important. Lately, the New York Times reported on the donors lining up in opposing camps over the possible NY Democratic Senate primary race between Harold Ford Jr. and incumbent Kirsten Gillibrand. It appears that most of the names of the powerbrokers in the piece are Jewish: Kovner, Tisch, Cohn, Lerer, Frucher, Wolf, Perelman, Steve Rattner. The key figure in the story, hedge fund manager Orin Kramer, is said to support many Jewish causes, and bankrolled Obama. (Another big-money Jewish Obama backer, this one from Chicago, is now ambassador to the UK).
The Washington Post once estimated that 60 percent of the money in Democratic Party coffers comes from Jews. I once asked Steve Rabinowitz, a campaign consultant, about this; and he said that Jewish giving to Democrats was so high that if anyone did a study of it, it would fuel conspiracy theories.
I emphasize that my answer to this predominance is not in any way to deprive Jews of political access (though a certain WASPy voluntary declination of privilege might be in order, to make a little room for others...) but to urge a wider consciousness of social responsibility on my people. And yes, to fuel the critique of Zionism. With this much power, we must show greater consideration for others.
What are you saying here? I can’t make hide nor hair of it. What is the central thesis of this posting?
I thought Weiss was pretty clear. Because Jews are so rich and powerful in America, he is saying, “we must show greater consideration for others.”
Campaign Finance Reform – but HOW?
No way except public financing of congressional electoral campaigns. TV campaign ads and debates should be paid for by all Americans with a TV. Too bad most Americans don’t realize they’d be better of than with the present scheme, especially now that corporations are equal to people (except we also pay for their risks).
Our congressmen all have the same goal: Retain or get power and congressional pay and perks. That’s it. They all know if they need funding, they have to back Israel to the hilt. Jewish donors are the key to getting votes.
Meritocracy? Did you mean kleptocracy? Are you writing from the States, Phil?
As soon as Jews made it through the door of civil rights they attempted to slam it shut on everyone else. By the early 1970′s , the neocons –many former libs and a lot of Jewish names (Kristol, Wattenberg, Wolfowitz, Pearle, Feith)– were working to unwind the very same American opportunities that their families had successfully exploited: social programs were rebranded ‘entitlements’ and wealth would now piss down onto the rest of the country from some holy, dare not speak its name, top.
And how’s that working out for everyone today? How are all of those Establishment idols — .gov, schools, media– performing under the direction from, in your words, Jewish privilege? Or did you mean nepotism?
Jews own Congress – Phil, you’d be hard put to find anyone at all in the Middle East or most of Europe who wouldn’t agree with that statement.
The vote against Goldstone, for instance demonstrates it almost as a well-established fact
http://griid.org/2009/11/07/us-house-votes-to-condemn-goldstone-report/
In fact, I’m very surprised that you had to go all the way to Jerusalem to have it said to your face. Perhaps it’s the New York Bubble. It’s certainly the result of total American blindness and deafness to the world beyond its shores.
Jews own Congress – Phil, you’d be hard put to find anyone at all in the Middle East or most of Europe who wouldn’t agree with that statement. Aw, bollocks. Everyone knows that the US is very pro-Israel, but “Jews own congress? ” , that’s not a common opinion here.
It depends on the definition of “Jews”, “own” and “congress”.
Which Jews?
What exactly do they “OWN” and in what sense?
Is a 51 to 49 majority enough to constitute “Congress”, and by extension said ownership?
If you want to see whether majorities have anything to do with legislative process in the US, just look at the Senate. Health care reform lived (and died) basically at the hands of Joe Lieberman. Oh he’s not the only one to blame, surely, but ultimately he was given the deciding vote in the whole process. Why, exactly…?
Jews own Congress – Phil, you’d be hard put to find anyone at all in the Middle East or most of Europe who wouldn’t agree with that statement. (R. Parker)
Richard, I just disagreed with that concept on the “How to Run for President” thread. In fact, I said it in a roundeabout way that Congress owns the Jews with all the “Israeli-strings tied money its members are gleefully accepting. Congressmen are playing the Jewish bag men like violins while most are thinking it’s the other way around. I appear to be giving more credit to the Americans than Americans are giving to themselves. They are not the twits being led by Israelis and Jews as we are being made to believe. Israelis and Jews in general are being given more credit in steering America than they deserve. They are good, but not THAT good.
Congress is a handful of people. They take as much money as possible from Jewish entities and private donors. It’s quid pro quo. The Jewish donations to Congress
benefit Israel’s right-wing regime which commits war crimes as it sees fit. The US
at the UN SC veto any attempt to hold Israel to account under international law since 1945. The American masses get no benefit whatsoever. In fact their pockets are picked in behalf Israel and their reputation in the world is greatly harmed. As in any other
country, in the USA, most citizens pay no attention to foreign policy unless their
own family is directly affected. It is very harmful to US interests for its own government to treat Israel as the 51st state. And it enables it’s spoiled rotten brat,
Israel, to act out without reprimand.
Do you know what is the most horrific part about all of this? It is that everything has been forgotten, the entire past by many people who feel they have “made it” and now they think they can break it with impunity.
So the kindness and the mercy has ebbed out of the community, and in some instances what was fought early on is now what we have become. What I would have gladly faced has now become a personal burden, and those forces which I would have opposed have now developed to opposing and fighting what I feared the most. Those who at one time helped to deliver the tools necessary to stand in life, so that all could prosper have become ingrown.
Would it help to walk down what I will call “memory lane” for lack of a better phrase? OK, lets take a walk, and lets see where we were and in many instances compare it to what we have become –
THE WAY WE WERE
What have we become? Many will not even identify with this now (they have no idea), and so it is left to us to tear down and rebuild again. I am so glad this has been given to me, handed down by generations, but it is such a burden.
WHAT HAVE WE BECOME?
“Hurt”
“I hurt myself today
To see if I still feel
I focus on the pain
The only thing that’s real
The needle tears a hole
The old familiar sting
Try to kill it all away
But I remember everything
What have I become?
My sweetest friend
Everyone I know
Goes away in the end
You could have it all
My empire of dirt
I will let you down
I will make you hurt
I wear this crown of shit
Upon my liar’s chair
Full of broken thoughts
I cannot repair
Beneath the stains of time
The feelings disappear
You are someone else
I am still right here
What have I become?
My sweetest friend
Everyone I know
Goes away in the end
You could have it all
My empire of dirt
I will let you down
I will make you hurt
If I could start again
A million miles away
I would keep myself
I would find a way.”
Quite a bit of research has been done on the economic attainment of American Jews; here’s a place to start:
Paul Burstein, “Jewish Educational and Economic Success in the United States: A Search for Explanations.” Sociological Perspectives 50:209-228.
It’s not democracy if Phil is suggesting Jews be a bit nicer to the Natives, considering how much weaker they are. Or that Jews be a bit more ‘fair’ (and let someone else have a ‘try’) at ‘democracy’.
Phil wrote a pretty honest article about social networking and how that might help Jews in power transition their power to other like-minded Jews.
I think you’ll also find a symbiotic relationship between multinational corporate greed and the Christian Right.
So Jewishness should be fair game. Jewishness in this regard I suppose. Tribalism, ethnocentrism, superiority-complex, etc.
Arabs (not necessarily Muslims) are going to be hated so long as Zionist Jews, the MIC, corporate/political hacks and the Christian Right want something they got.
Zionist Jews want Palestinian land and resources. They will justify it by talking about how deeply ‘Jewish’ the land is, hence they can steal it without it being stealing. Hacks like Obama will support anyone and anything so long as it gets him what he wants. And the Christian nutters wants to convert the heathens, out of sake of converting the heathens. Corporations want to make money too.
Kind of the basic gist of it. You can’t justify Zionism. There were people there already and no Jewish State was ever going to exist with all those Arabs. Violence or not, it was going to be a messy messy situation.
No, it’s neither a democracy nor a meritocracy, and to suggest otherwise is delusional. As you noted, PW wrote an earlier article attributing a significant measure of Jewish success to ‘Jewish kinship networks’. This is a polite euphemism for what goes on, which in practice incorporates 19th century racial theory into hiring policies, mate selection, etc. In other words, contrary to the continued resort to talk of a meritocracy, the beneficiaries of a brief period of egalitarianism in the 40s-70s have come to the conclusion that their success is the result of racial or ethnic superiority (mixed in with a dose of old world paranoia) and have further concluded that their ascendancy is the appropriate occasion to slam shut the once open door. One example of the decidedly anti-meritocratic principles of the current elite is the debate over the value of college entrance testing. The tests were of supreme value when high results benefited one group, but when Asians, for example, began to excel in test taking for a variety of reasons, suddenly the value of the tests were brought into question, and a racist mental picture of ant-like Asians on the march was conjured up. Whichever ‘chosen’ group is in relative power, whether it was a select section of WASPs, or the current Jewish elite, that group manages to justify selection policies in education, hiring, etc. that favor them. That is what was so unique about the turbulent 60s (really the 40s-70s). It was a period of unparalleled opportunity.
marc: One thing I’d add is that not only are the lines being unfairly redrawn (which, I agree, is more a symptom of elitism in general than Judaism), but the institutions effected by these changes are suffering. Simply graph the rise of the so-called Jewish elite alongside the decline of American productivity and the inverse relationship here is painful.
The point is: Phil, or others, who assume Jewish intelligence and persistent effort even as they criticize the results should be careful –the objective facts tell a very different story.
marc: Noam Chomsky said in an interview: “When I got to Harvard in the 1950s, the anti-Semitism was so thick you could cut it with a knife”. That’s all changed completely of course, as he points out, but I don’t think you can date that change to the 1940s or 50s.
Interestingly, sociologist Jerome Karabel, who has written a book on the history of US university admissions policies, argues that that the emphasis on students’ “extracurricular activities” in university admissions was introduced by the Ivy League schools in the 1920s because
Thanks, Benjamin. I have Karabel’s book, which is collecting dust on my night stand. (It’s an awfully big book.) I thought that he had written an article in the New York Review of Books providing a thumbnail sketch of his analysis, but I couldn’t find it via Google this morning. At least not with my limited time available at work. Have you read the Karabel book? If I recall, part of the character question in the quote above revolved around the manliness of athletic endeavor, all that blood and scar tissue on the football field being a sign of Gentile superiority, Americans’ version of Waterloo being won on the playing fields of Eaton.
And speaking of unfinished reading, in ‘American Prometheus’, one of the biographies of Oppenheimer, the first few chapters in that book paint a neat little picture of the Ivy League’s ambivalent attitude towards Jewish applicants in the pre-war period. If I had the time I’d like to take a closer look at the development of the parallel university system for Catholics, Jews, etc. in America, with the likes of Georgetown, Holy Cross, Yeshiva, etc., being but a few examples.
marc, I haven’t read Karabel’s book, just skimmed an earlier article of his that presents some of the same argument. There he seems to be saying that between the two world wars, Harvard, Yale and Princeton were mainly social clubs for the reproduction of upper-class WASP privilege, and that most students therefore took social activities (including sports) more seriously than grades. In contrast, most of the Jewish students were from more modest backgrounds and took grades much more seriously. Hence they disturbed the upper-class atmosphere of these universities, threatened “the WASP quasi-monopoly on the unusual cultural and economic opportunities provided by the elite colleges”, and made their WASP classmates look bad. Therefore admissions policies were modified in an attempt to reduce their numbers. “Character” was used basically as a euphemism for whatever upper-class WASP manners and tastes happened to be.
Interesting CV. Since your interest is the intersection of nationalism and religion, do you have an opinion on Israel in that regard? It seems to me that Israel exhibits characteristics of a theocracy, defining citizenship, its geographical boundaries, its relationships to other states, through Judaic principles.
marc, I think Alain Dieckhoff gives a pretty convincing analysis of the relationship between Judaism and Zionism in his chapter in the book Citizenship and Ethnic Conflict: Challenging the Nation-State (ed. Haldun Gülalp). He argues that, although Theodor Herzl’s Zionism was based on an emphatically secular concept of a Jewish nation, Israel’s secular leaders have ended up giving more and more power to religious authorities (and thus, as you say, Israel has gained characteristics of a theocracy), because it turned out to be “impossible to define the national tie that unites Jews on any other grounds than religious criteria”. This is, of course, a disaster for Israel’s non-Jewish population, as Dieckhoff points out.
My own research is all about how and why nationalism and religion are so similar. Even the most secular nationalisms (like French nationalism of the late 18th century) bear striking resemblances to religion. Nationalisms have holy books, catechisms, priests, prophets, saints, martyrs, hymns, temples, pilgrimages, etc. (My article on Nasser has examples and references.) I’d love to see someone do a study of these aspects of Zionism.
Benjamin, I had picked up a book entitled ‘Civil Religion in Israel’ a while back, but haven’t read through it again recently. I believe that the authors compared the similarities between traditional religion, as they call it, and the belief systems in secular Israeli society, as opposed to simply labeling Israel a theocracy as I did.
‘Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society’ also has some interesting insight into the uses of ‘biblical archaeology’ in support of nation-building in Israel, particularly its use in creating a shared sense of community amongst the various immigrant populations in post-WWII Israel.
marc, thanks for the tip about Civil Religion in Israel; it looks very interesting, e.g. this part (pp. 94-95):
“Meritocracy” means an economic system that rewards people with merit, doesn’t it? Or is it a political system where those with merit rule? Either way, we live in an anti-meritocracy,
The fact of the matter is that religion and government have always been tools of the state, but the state always stands above the government. It is the failure to make this distinction that is the cause of many errors. When the religious element is brought to the fore it is meant to drive the people, especially in an atrocious endeavor like that of Zionism, and this is because these acts of barbarism have to appeal to something above the trappings of a colonial enterprise. So the “religious criteria” is the tool of an elite, nothing more and nothing less. It projects the unbridled use of force and power in the name of the divine, it is no better than Manifest Destiny.
I emphasize that my answer to this predominance is not in any way to deprive Jews of political access (though a certain WASPy voluntary declination of privilege might be in order, to make a little room for others…) but to urge a wider consciousness of social responsibility on my people. And yes, to fuel the critique of Zionism. With this much power, we must show greater consideration for others.
I believe that people who become power brokers don’t do so out of concern for others, so it is unrealistic to expect power-broker Jews to be charitable when others in the same position are not. And based on what values system do you expect them to be considerate of others? Judaism to the Jews you speak of seems to mean little more than bagels, ethnocentrism, Zionism, antisemitism (to the extent that it exists) and networking. Perhaps that’s stereotypical, but I find it to be true. How do you appeal to a Jewishness that has lost its ethical meaning to the most powerful Jews (Israeli and American both)?
I emphasize that my answer to this predominance is not in any way to deprive Jews of political access (though a certain WASPy voluntary declination of privilege might be in order, to make a little room for others…) but to urge a wider consciousness of social responsibility on my people. And yes, to fuel the critique of Zionism. With this much power, we must show greater consideration for others.
Meant to just italicize that, sorry.
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