Sorry to be off the site, it’s a change of season, and spirit. I’ve been thinking alot about philosemitism since a friend of my wife’s spent the night last week, a Jew married to a non-Jew. She told me that her world is made up of such mixed couples, and that she finds some all-Jewish ones a little too "strong" for her. I reflected that my wife found my family culture pretty strong (as I found hers strong), but today both our worlds are adulterated, and her world is rather Jewish. Her last few bosses have been Jews, many of her best friends etc., she relies on Yiddish in a pinch, and of course she’s married to one.
Then yesterday I went to a religious ceremony that was half Hindu and half-Jewish and quite moving on that score. The two traditions blended and spoke to one another. There was a rabbi I’ve come to admire there, a non-Zionist woman with a big strong spirit.
Not enough is written about the history of philo-semitism. It’s been the big fact of Jewish life in the U.S. for the last generation. Our rise is a reflection of philo-semitism. We were accepted in the highest corridors; and even if people were afraid of the bakery-truck-driver’s intolerant son (Joe Lieberman), getting close to the football, the two offices closest to Obama’s are occupied by Jews. Jews have a ton of power in U.S. society, because Americans trust Jews.
Zionism was born of anti-Semitism, it was the natural response to it, a way to get Jews out of an unsafe place. And of course Zionists cultivate the idea of persistent anti-Semitism to justify Israel’s militancy. This morning at AIPAC, Dan Senor, who might be running for Senate from New York, said that American immigrants to Israel that you meet there today share a "history of persecution" with Jews who have come there from Ethiopia and Russia.
Please elaborate, I don’t know what you’re talking about. It is not my reality. But I know why Senor says it. Recognizing the reality of philo-semitism removes the reason for the Jewish state…
The objects of philo-semitism, myself included, feel some guilt about it. We know, or ought to, that we’re participating in an assimilatory process. We are hurting the tribe’s future as a tribe. And so for those who care about tribe, Israel gains a new significance: it is the bulwark of Jewishness, the place where Jews marry Jews. That’s why my mother’s best friend moved there, so her children would marry Jews. And here, the Israel lobby gains force as the guardians of the only thing protecting Jewishness.
It is not as if us universalist Jews have come up with a picture of a Jewish future; many of us don’t much care about tribe, in the end. We care about a genuine and equal relationship with the other, and for me that means an honest appreciation of what western society has granted me, and what my people are doing to the Palestinians. And I recognize that I’ll have little influence over the body of Jewish life in the U.S. so long as I can’t imagine a corporate future. That’s just the way it is.
These religious cultural issues are involved in the tumult of the last two weeks. The bombshell– underneath Obama’s stand on ongoing colonization– was the statement attributed to General Petraeus and then to Joe Biden too, that the special relationship with Israel is endangering American lives. This is a teaching that Zionists have denied for 10 years. They denied it at 9/11–though the 911 Commission affirmed it (along with Mickey Kaus and Eric Alterman). They denied it during the Iraq war. They denied it when Walt and Mearsheimer said it. They denied it (per The American Conservative) when former LBJ-braintruster George W. Ball said it in the ’90s.
Ball warned long ago that those who sought to divorce American interests from Israel’s were subject to "ad hominem" attacks. We saw it happen with the smearing of Walt and Mearsheimer, two men who have dealt with Jews as equals all their lives (and who admire Israeli achievements). We’ve seen that happen again with the Petraeus leak, and the Obama administration’s attempted shift to realism. The lobby will smear anyone who tries to create daylight between the two countries’ interests, or suggests that Israel’s policy of permanent war in the Middle East is not out of some bizarrely eternal coincidence good for the U.S.
And look what the AIPAC conference’s prescription is for Israel’s troubles in the Middle East: more bombs, this time, targeting Iran. That is the sole thrust of the conference, so far as I can make out: to compel the U.S. to take military action. "Could you please bomb these guys immediately?!" neocon Robert Kagan said that Iran’s neighbors demand of the U.S.–a horrifying misrepresentation of Arab sentiment.
That’s no surprise. In everything the AIPAC people say there is little respect for the other. Too little respect for Muslims in the Middle East and for gentiles in the U.S., whom they cannot trust to act wisely without being politically coerced and bribed. The lobby has returned the incredible trust that Jews have been granted in the U.S. with suspicion. And yes I know, that’s all about the Holocaust, and it’s generational. I grew up fearful of gentiles, and had to unlearn all that.
I’m hopeful. The ways the world is changing are changing all of us, and ethnocentric arrogance is unsustainable in a globalized environment. I saw it yesterday in the young people at that religious ceremony, for many of whom self-regarding ideologies have just been hurtful. When traditional barriers break down, we’re all transformed. And yes I know, good things are also lost.
The statement by Petraeus was a watershed, although he has said it before. He is impervious to the Lobby, and all it needs is for his view to be accepted, magnified and disseminated by other military respresentatives and some of the braver journalists. (I’m thinking Seymour Hersh).
The meme that Israel’s behaviour affects ‘Our Troops’, if it spreads, will do a great deal of good (however badly ‘Our Troops’ are actually treated in fact). Few Americans (especially the ‘patriots’) think of them as the mere cannon fodder they actually are.
Some brave soul needs to be at the AIPAC bash to show that the Emperor has no clothes.
‘Zionism was born of anti-Semitism, it was the natural response to it, a way to get Jews out of an unsafe place. And of course Zionists cultivate the idea of persistent anti-Semitism to justify Israel’s militancy. ‘
How many definitons are there for zionism? for ethnic preservation? for national survival? or to practice the writings of the Laws and teachings through the patriarchs? to marry people from other cultures is every one israeli’s decision…but as for a true Jew, an Israeli who lives by the tenets of Judaism (or a zionist at that) they must marry only ‘the people from their tribe’… that is one primary law for people of Israel since the days of Isaac…
“Zionism was born of anti-Semitism, it was the natural response to it, a way to get Jews out of an unsafe place.”
Really? Just musing, but if Jews were integrated into Europe the way they were in America, you think there would have been no Zionism? I really doubt it. In fact, the better the Jews are integrated, the better and more easily the demands for the “return of our homeland” can be made and facilitated. Tell me, after all, why Zionism’s greatest help comes from the US, the place where the Jews have the least need of it? (if in fact it could actually fulfill its promise of getting Jews our of danger, which of course, it doesn’t) Wasn’t Zionism the product of an era when by and large, the lot of the Jews in Europe was getting better, thus giving them the resources and influence to institute Zionism. ZIonism’s underpinnings were finished way before the Holacaust.
Zionism is not the product of the Jews exclusion, it’s the product of the Jews admission to power, the product of say, Chiam Weitzman being able to contact and appeal to high British officials.
And why is it you can’t grasp the concept that Zionism was instituted in spite of the Jews, not because of them?
Did Zionism have a strong constituency in Russia during the time of pogroms? And did things get worse when the Russian dispensation spread into partitioned Poland?
- Whatever the answer to those questions, I’d think that there’s always an affinity between Zionism and anti-Semitism, both saying nonsensically that Jewish people are out of place, foreigners with no single loyalty, anywhere but in the lands to which Zionist aspire.
Zionism’s strongest constituency was indeed in Eastern Europe, Czarist Russia, the home of pogroms and official Jew hating. That is where Ben Gurion came from and Sharet, Eshkol, Golda Meir (before a sojourn in Milwaukee), Rabin’s parents, Dayan’s parents and Menachem Begin. Chaim Weizman might have achieved his breakthroughs for Zionism and the allies in Britain but he was born in Czarist Russia.
However nonsensical the idea that Jewish people are out of place in certain regions of the world may seem today, in fact those who listened to Zionism’s preachings moved themselves out of the way of the steamroller that was heading the way of the Jewish community of Eastern Europe.
It is true that now, 62 years after its founding and 113 years after the first Zionist Congress in Basel, fault can be found with the incessant wars that the Zionist enterprise as conducted seems to have landed, but when it was born, the dangers that the Jewish community in Europe indeed would be soon facing were much more immediate than today’s mess.
Wandering Jew, that’s not entirely accurate. Read eminent historian Gabriel Kolko’s account of it. “Israel: Mythologizing a 20th Century Accident“
And BTW, he was working in Israel at its inception in 48/49.
link to antiwar.com
And most of the original zionist leaders of Israel were born in Poland; oddly, an inordinate amount came from around Bialystok (Bielsk), which went back and forth between belonging to Poland and the Ukraine (Russia). Ben Gurion. Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Shamir. Zionist revolutionaries came out of the Northern Ukraine and White Russia regions. (I grew up around these people; I understand them.)
MRW- when the individuals I cited were born, the place was ruled by the Czar.
Fault can be found right back in the earliest Zionism. The themes of ethnic cleansing, of “we matter and you don’t” reverberates through their total lack of concern for the rights, interests, or wishes of the native Muslims, Christians, and Jews of Palestine.
Don’t try to pretend that Zionism started off nicely and then took an unfortunate turn.
Exactly wandering Jew, exactly. And Zionism reflects the completely awful, ethnocentric, zenophobic and brutal outlook those folks had on nationality.
Yes sir, as an American Jew, my dream is to recreate the Balkans in the ME.
What could be better for us.
Look for the origins of Zionism in the period during WW1 Germany occupied Poland, and other areas. The Germans at that time saw the Jewish land owners and Jews who were German speakers, as their allies and help in administering the occupation.
AIPAC and Netanyahoo’s concentration on Iran is ridiculous.
The US may have enough sense now (after Iraq) not to attack Iran, although it will continue to threaten it, sanction it, and so on, to demonstrate its now impotent World Power status. No potential Arab allies have the capacity to join in (the Gulf States are terrified by the probable side-effects). Russia and China are positively not interested in such an enterprise, and certainly won’t back it.
The AIPAC conference will consist of an ‘almost deification’ of the prime minister of a shitty little Levantine state, and the customary very deep obeisances of those American ‘statesmen’ who are threatened by AIPAC’s blackmail tactics. All of them will condemn Iran for exerting its absolute right under the NPT to develop civil nuclear power.
Americans trust Jews? No, I don’t think so. Nor love them. The absence of hate isn’t love, and toleration isn’t trust.
Unfortunately, any argument for assimilation is going to be countered with the example of Germany’s assimilated Jews and their fate when faced with German ethnic nationalism.
i trust almost all the jews i know. i don’t think you can claim americans don’t love jews. i don’t think of jews collectively for the most part and i can only speak from personal experience. if my jewish friends were no longer part of my life i would experience a tremendous deep sense of loss. i shudder to think. i’m sorry you feel that way potsherd. very sad indeed.
“i trust almost all the jews i know. “
“Almost all”? Anti-Semite! Sorry, but the only way you can prove you are not a neo-Nazi is by sending me $10,000 to prove you trust me.
I’ll be waiting for the check. It’s a small price to pay to prove you’re an egalitarian.
Wait, better still, send cash! We Jews know just how far to trust non-Jews! Trust me on that, you can’t trust ‘em!
Oh, what Madoff could have done with you!
and pain. it would be too painful to imagine. the more i think about what you said the more it hurts me personally. really i feel like screaming at you but i won’t. please don’t speak for all of us.
annie, I am not speaking for myself or “all of us” but of the American worldview.
I really doubt that if the US population were polled that the results would show a widespread love and trust of Jews, generally. This is not the same thing as “some of my best friends.” The claim Phil is making is that Jews as a group are loved and trusted in the US, and I believe this is not the case. Americans generally tolerate Jews as a group but this is not the same thing.
if you polled americans you would find they don’t have a widespread love and trust for any ethnic group. please. besides that wasn’t what phil said. he said americans trust jews and for the most part whether we realize it or not i think we do. maybe we don’t think in terms of ‘i love rachel maddow because she’s jewish’ but she’s popular and people trust her. that’s one example. but if you think about people in our popular culture who are embraced and loved it might shock you to realize many of them are jewish. for me it is not about trusting ‘a group’, it is just looking around and noticing natural gravitational movements in our culture and then identifying some common attributes..like ethnicity. music, humor, art for starters. ie my youth: dylan, lenny, abbie hoffman. people instrumental in forming my culture, who i am. i don’t know i think you’re not thinking clearly. there isn’t a period of my development not impacted. even in the last year traveling w/medea benjamin an amazingly courageous woman. it’s not just friends i’m talking about, i’m talking about who we are as americans. i don’t think we would be who we are if we subtracted any of our ethnic groups. that’s what america is for me. i feel sorry for people who focus on the negative extremists and miss the masses. whatever, i don’t think most americans are bigots and if they are i don’t want to know about it, the noise drowns out all the good. i’ll just close my eyes and imagine a better place.
Zionism was an assertion, for the people that came to live there, and for the majority that took pride in it.
It was VERY DIFFERENT than the norm before, which was that Jews everywhere had to live some life of apology for being.
The pendulum swing to suppression is a great tragedy, that needs reform. It needs idealism, respectful. ANY approach that derives really any significant energy from “punitive” approach rather than reform approach, will exacerbate tensions.
Help me! The Jews have stolen all my upper-case letters!
Dylan? Forget him, Annie. As far as I know he got brain-damage in the motorcycle accident, and then as a consequence, converted to some sort of rock-and-roll Christianity. Lenny? You don’t want to know what he did with the younger male members of the orchestra!
Abbie Hoffman isn’t Jewish, not even close. Where on earth did you get that idea?
Fine, you close your eyes, I prefer to keep mine open and look at reality.
Is Maddow Jewish?
nobody can forget dylan mooser. i’m talking about the impact on our culture. it doesn’t mean he’s not a fruitcake. don’t tease me damn it ..i’m filing you under ‘jews i don’t trust and never ever will so help me jesus’.
i know you’re picking on me because i only type w/2 fingers. coordinating the shift key would require two fingers w/one hand or both hands working simultaneously on one letter. highly overrated. and what the hell would i do w/my cigarette and cocktail. i know how to do it tho: ‘S’ see? here, i’ll do it again X. all better now. don’t ever underestimate me or get on my bad side because i have a mean bite and i’m ruthless. i’m serious.
Why Annie, some of your best friends are Jews? Why, that’s wonderful!
Yes, yes I know, you would even let your daughter marry one? They do make wonderful wives.
But Annie, how do you know they’re Jews. They could be faking, people often do, it’s easier to make friends and convince people to invest.
“Americans trust Jews? No, I don’t think so. Nor love them. The absence of hate isn’t love, and toleration isn’t trust.”
And no Jew who had his, or her head screwed on straight would ask for anything more than that. I would be ashamed to if anybody said about me what Annie says about her Jews.
i don’t have a daughter i have a son and yes his girlfriend is jewish but that’s not what’s wrong w/her (confession, i haven’t met her yet he is away a college). he met her when she auditioned for a lingerie commercial he was filming and she works at the makeup counter at nordstroms. (!!!!!!) she better not be a barracuda w/long glossy fingernails. i’m hoping its a passing phase but then he does have excellent taste in people and when i asked for a description she sounded like a younger version of me which i took as a compliment. as long as she’s smart wonderful generous a little crazy but not too nuts makes him deliriously happy wants kids (soon) and is completely in love w/my perfect son i’ll be fine. maybe.
Zionism was copied from German ethinic nationalism. At the time of this copying, the Zionists did not have their own land. That’s the sole difference in a nutshell.
I think that Zionism was copied from the Slavic and Uro-Altaic nationalisms of the ninteteenth century. It seems probable that Eastern European Jews would adapt Eastern European models.
Bingo, RoHa! You have rung the bell and are entitled to the coco-nut.
Look to the Ukraine during the German occupation of WW1, for the model of what Zionists think Israel’s relationship with the West should be.
Phil,
Listen to Jeremy Ben-Ami on NPR this AM saying that the US was right to be angry about Israeli actions; it was a slap in the face to the United States. He said the US should tell Israel that moving towards peace with the Palestinians is in America’s national security interest, on troops in the region, and our economy. (Michele Keleman reporting)
link to npr.org
Thinking about relations with the “other” brings on another fit of storytelling.
When, during my marriage to a Palestinian-American — daughter of piano-playing US Quaker missionary mother and Quaker Palestinian father, an educator; who studied piano in Jerusalem for a while before 1944 with a recent European immigrant, Jewish?; who was a terrific chamber musician which is how we met —
when, as I was saying, we were living near Cambridge, MA, we entertained many Palestinians visiting the USA mostly to study at Harvard;– my impression was that these visitors were not “other”. We and they were intelligent, funny, liked food and wine, were interested in education and teaching, and none of us were noticeably “religious”. At least one, GB, was also very musical and we had a lovely session playing (my wife piano, me ‘cello) and singing (GB) the Messiah, which he had sung as a youth with the Jerusalem YMCA. (Messiah singing was an annual favorite of ours and of many around Boston.) Our visitors all spoke very American English. Not “other.”
Now, for Phil, he himself feels or felt tribal. My wife and I felt American, but not tribal. If my wife felt “hyphenated” she didn’t make much of it. Our Palestinian visitors were surely foreign, as a Frenchman or Chinese would be, and were surely Palestinian with vivid stories to tell about their childhoods and the occupation (this was in the 1980s), but were not to my perception “other”. If I could get a job teaching at BirZeit University (Ramallah) where many of our visitors came from, I would expect to fit right in, at least with the teachers. I’d expect the occupation and human rights situation to create a very strong feeling of “otherness” but from Israel, not from the Palestinians.
So, what do you make of Phil’s sense of tribalism, especially since it is still strong after being married to a WASP for many years, and having been reared in the USA?
Basically, I find that he is tribal due to his early conditioning and I am non-tribal (or tribal to some sort of vanilla American “tribe”) due to my early conditioning. My mother deliberately cooked interesting dishes combining matzo meal (as a thickener) and bacon bits (for flavor). She could have used bread crumbs. I think she had rather powerful feelings about the tribe she was avoiding. I don’t. Most of my chamber music friends in NYC are Jewish (not all), and we have friendly relations including me lecturing them sometimes on I/P and most of them (not all) resisting. We’re in our 70s and older, Hard to change. They tell Jewish jokes and sprinkle in Yiddish (to which I am a stranger). It’s New York “already”. Oi!
My later conditioning (1980-present) may have made me so concerned with Palestinian rights as to be, in some sense, a member of that tribe, but it doesn’t feel so. I imagine, but have never asked, that the US Jews who stood with blacks in 1960s felt a bit as I feel about Palestinians but I doubt that they felt themselves members in a black “tribe” for all that.
Citizen, I think Phil uses it as a goad. Any other answer is not very complimentary.
If you ask me, the answer to Israel is not going to come from the Jews in America. The best we can hope for is a divorce. But the alimony and child-support payments will be crushing.
Never forget: There is one class of people to whom Zionism is life itself, Jewish “leaders”. Democracy makes them irrelevant, and Zionism makes them necessary. That’s what it’s mostly about.
And BTW, Citizen, you should make a distinction. Phil’s sense of tribalism seems to me to be restricted to the trivial.
In terms of the big questions, the ones that matter, he’s getting his head screwed on straighter every day.
I do think he has a problem thinking there is a win-win way to solve the problems in Israel. But if he did not have a base of optimism, how on earth could he do this?
Israel’s problems are not Jewish problems. They are problems associated with the colonial, violent and supremacist nature of the project. And when American Jews (as I hope they do, and I hope for nothing more, frankly) give Israel and Zionism a big GFY, there will still be lots of Christian Zionists, and a whole lot of thoughtless people who have never got beyond the Rider Haggard stage of things who will support them.
It’s got nothing to do with Jews, really. And there have been lots of non-Jews who have done the same things. Looking at a situation, and saying “You know, I think we can take this from them and get away with it” is not an exclusively Jewish idea, you know.
If everybody in Israel converted to Christianity, would they be any different? I really doubt it. They would still have the problem of having stolen the land, oppressed and dispossessed the people, and maintaining a level of ignorance and hate among their own population sufficient to support the enterprise to the benefit of its leaders. And they would do exactly the same thing.
Problem is, the actions of the West during the age of colonialism and nationalism were so shameful and destructive that everybody wants to forget all about it, so the Zionists and Israeli regime stick out like a sore thumb.
But they are just out of their time, that’s all, the Miniver Cheever of political organizations, born too late.
Hell, if those lazy bastards had gotten started a hundred or two years earlier, the Palestinians would all be dead, and Israel well-established. Again, Judaism, Jewishness, has very little to do with it.
Miniver Cheever? Did she win a Pulitzer?
The Messiah? Call me when you find a way through “Giant Steps”.
I agree that Israel serves this function for American Jewish Zionists yet they haven’t got the solution either. Since those of them who move to Israel are a tiny exception, what have they got to offer American Jews in terms of Jewish continuity?
They’re saying: “we, American Jews, are doomed to extinction. The best we can do is make sure Israel survives.” And then they are surprised that young Jews don’t rally to the cause.
In the long run, Jewish anti-Zionism offers hope to non-Orthodox American Jews. It re-focuses our attention and energies here, not there. It incorporates the values that Phil advocates. It’s relevant.
If anything stands a chance of ensuring the corporate continuity of American Jews it is anti-Zionism.
So, I disagree with you statement:
Elliot- Since Phil Weiss’s primary measure of influence over the corporate future of Jewish life in the U.S. is intermarriage, are you saying that anti Zionism will decrease the rate of intermarriage?
WJ – I must have missed Phil’s take on the impact of intermarriage on the future of the Jewish community.
My opinion is: since a. intermarriage has been going on for millennia, b. in our generation, there would be no viable Reform Jewish community (the largest component of the organized Jewish community, here in the U.S.) without intermarriage. c. the numbers in other streams of Judaism are also significant, therefore it is not intermarriage by itself that threatens the future of the Jewish community.
In the past one could rely on anti-semitism, family opprobrium and inertia to ensure endogamy, which equaled self-identification, as a Jew.
Since the potency of all three has all but evaporated, and interfaith families are firmly planted under the tent of the Jewish community, the discussion is now framed by the question: what positive concepts draw people to choose to be Jews?
If Zionism is the answer, then the vast majority of Diaspora Zionists who have no intention of moving to Israel, have pronounced Judaism outside of Israel as dead.
Never mind the century-old debate about dual loyalty of Zionist Jews in the Diaspora, now they have abandoned the 2,000 year old project of Diaspora Judaism and they claim to speak for all Jews!
Regardless, Zionism is a non-starter for most young people, so it’s not going to answer the question.
Some interfaith families are planted under the tent of the Jewish community, but certainly not all and I question the “firmly”. Intermarriage is a fact and Jewish organizations will have to change in order to survive, but a family that celebrates both Christmas and Chanuka, I question the “firmly”. And if they celebrate Passover and Easter (and assume that the wine represents the blood of Jesus and the matzo represents his body) , I question the “firmly”. And if they live in a secular society and do not have literacy in Hebrew or in texts other than Kafka, I question the “firmly”.
I accept that Zionism is not going to help these people stay Jewish, but I doubt that antiZionism will do the job either.
The changes that the Jewish “people”/corporation will endure as this assimilation takes its toll will be interesting. From a religious point of view some combination of Judaism and Christianity might emerge. Maybe some great art might emerge from the dissolution and disappearance or the merging into the American mass. America faces many challenges in the next fifty years and maybe the assimilating group will be better suited to come up with creative solutions (I’m thinking art rather than science).
Wondering Jew, you asshole, being Jewish is whatever ther fuck we decide to make it. You can question all the “firmly” you want, but, darling, who the fuck asked you?
Or are you saying that if we are not Jewish to your specifications you will do what. BTW? ex-communicate us?
Asshole, if you know so much about being Jewish, how come you haven’t been elected King of the Jews, so you can tell the rest of us how to be Jewish?
A subject you, being two-thousand years old, and having lived everywhere, all over the world at once, is an expert on.
There is an old Yiddish expression which covers this very nicely, and I’ll leave it to others to translate: Go Fuck Yourself!
Gosh, what happens when Wandering Jew dies and nobody knows how to be Jewish anymore.
“I question” this “I question” that.
Listen Wanderful, when you get a statement from God on how to be Jewish, I’ll be impressed, until then I’ll take advice on being Jewish from someone who at least wants to start by being a decent human being, thank you.
But Oy, oy, everybody has been so awful to you? Shoulda been more careful, Wandering- God gave us the rules, we broke ‘em, time and time again, and God said, “bublels you’re own your own, maybe I’ll be back, maybe not, until then do your best” You can’t even grasp the simplest facts abiout being Jewish, because you are too high on Ziocaine.
I won’t even comment on how your little religious views would shock a decent Christian.
I think Philo-semitism is not a threat to Zionism, but might be a contradiction with an intentionally isolated form of Zionism.
When speaking of power, there are to meanings that I perceive and wonder about what others mean when they say “power”.
One meaning is “power to” empowered. Compared to the Jewish historical setting (prior to Zionism and prior to the west and east’s acceptance of Jews and Judaism really at all), Jews are now empowered. We are accepted, individually respected (or not).
The second meaning is “power over”, or oppressing. Its rarely clear when non-Jewish (and Jewish, particularly radicals) individuals use the term “Jewish power” whether they mean, “Ah… we/they are finally accepted in the world.” or they mean” Damn them, don’t they know that their place is subservient, guilty.”
So, Phil, that confusion of mine has applied to your comments. I couldn’t and often can’t tell which of those you mean, and how, and with what intended consequences.
There are cranky mean isolated Jews. There are sweet isolated Jews. There are cranky assimilated Jews. There are sweet humane assimilated Jews. There are self and community loving Jews, and there are self and community hating Jews.
Its especially confusing to me when you publish (your action) on this blog (not only comments), individuals that genuinely bear contempt for Jewish life, Jewish history, Jewish role in the world, some individuals that are Islamic, some that are Christian, some that are Jewish.
A friend of my mother-in-law’s, a Hungarian scientist that studied and taught with my wife’s father in Israel in pioneer days, married to a radical theatre director (same cultural world as I when I produced audio books: Marge Piercy, Howard Zinn, etc.), told me overtly that he believed that anti-semitism in the US would NOT have relaxed without the model of pioneering Zionism, without the accurate image of youthful, idealistic Zionists. (That image that you speak of as fantasy, just PR, isn’t in fact. Times have changed now, but revisionism is not the means to live in the present. Its possible to newly appreciate the nakba for example, WITHOUT describing the Zionist pioneering as reactionary or racist.)
Not the nazi and post-nazi image of Jew needing help, but the Zionist and post-Zionist image of Jew asserting him/herself, and then helping others in public service.
Its a maturing.
I personally lost interest in “universalism”. I met my wife in Calcutta, at an ashram. Our first wedding was a yogic one. We didn’t have a Jewish wedding until a year after we were originally married in the yogic ritual.
There is a form of universalism that is a self-abnegation, a superficial “smash monogamy” like movement. “Renounce your tribe”, ironically in settings on discussion of Israel spoken only to the Jews, not to the Palestinians, the Lebanese, the Parisians, the Germans, etc.
There is another universalism which recognizes that one is in a body, a setting, a history, a future. That is universalism from your self, your own setting. It seeks to be a good human being/Jew, rather than seeking to unJew.
Its a choice. Certainly, the callousness towards Palestinians has gotten habitual, rationalizable in too many eyes. But, the reaction to that callousness is often equally callous.
Sensitivity is better.
I agree with the part about the two types of universalism. Some “universalists” seem to want to make everyone be the same, renounce their religion or ethnicity or whatever. It’s arrogant to think that way.
Some of the rest I have mixed feelings about, knowing the details of your views. The image of idealistic pioneering Zionists might very well have decreased antisemitism, but that doesn’t mean the image was reality. People can be idealistic and blind. (Read sometime about the history of the Confederacy–those people were idealistic, self-sacrificing, and wrong.) And the flip side of that image is that it was generally accompanied by a countervailing image of Arabs who only opposed Zionism because they were irrational hate-filled anti-semites. I grew up on that sort of view.
Finishing my statement, it would therefore be a tragic irony if the heroic image of pioneering Zionism helped decrease one form of hatred by encouraging a different type, but not at all an unexpected irony if you think about it. American pioneers also have a heroic image (deserved in many ways), but it was also one often accompanied by a hatred of Native Americans. Same dynamic at work.
As MANY have noted, the right-wing Jabotinskyite version of Zionism was a very small minority of Jews in the Zionist movement.
The majority were society builders, not society destroyers.
And, the concept of “hatred” was also remote. There was definitely a fear, and an combination of isolation and determination that led to Jewish-centric agriculture and self-help.
I hope you get the change in out identity and in the way that world saw us, from helpless to independant to helpful.
If that helpful shifts to privileged and elite, that is a tragedy. That is not the Jewishness that I identify with, propose, articulate here.
I sincerely believe that you’ve missed my persona, in your continual references to some evil or racism. It just ain’t so.
I am not and have never been an enthusiastic or even reluctant advocate of expansion. I am an advocate of defense, and I am an opponent of overt and veiled anti-semitism, including the real-life definition of actually living as a Jew (not only residual).
The way to keep the dual features of Jewish and democratic alive is NOT by killing the baby, but by helping the baby mature.
” the right-wing Jabotinskyite version of Zionism was a very small minority of Jews in the Zionist movement.”
Irrelevant. You couldn’t have a majority Jewish state in Palestine without coercion and ultimately ethnic cleansing.
Any decrease in antisemitism is in itself a good thing, but in this case the romanticizing of the Zionist pioneers was tied to a view of Arabs as primitive, backwards, savage, shiftless, anti-semitic, irrational, and violent. To oppose Zionist plans was by definition evil. So this particular cure for anti-semitism, unfortunately,merely transferred the hatred from Jews to Arabs. And you know this is true, whether you admit it or not.
As for your position, you’ve repeatedly shown a willingness to downplay or even justify some Israeli atrocities. That’s fairly typical of people whose thinking has been corrupted to some extent by ideology–the counterpart to this on the “dissenting left” or whatever term you use would be those who justify Hamas atrocities using the “any means necessary” argument. You can see this in others, but you can’t see it in yourself.
Anyway, it’s not just you–quite a few people are like you and of course some rightwing Zionists are considerably worse (such as your debate opponents at Realistic Dove). But it is a problem and until liberal Zionists rid themselves of double standards (and some, like Uri Avnery or Avi Shlaim, have done so as best I can tell) you guys will to some extent be an obstacle to peace, because you’ll end up siding with Israel on some actions when you shouldn’t.
The marginal role of the Jabotinskyites is a critical reality. Who are the doers?
Just the radicals, just the ideologs?
I say no. I say that social change is popular, the people, not just the violent.
What I’ve shown is an aversion to judge before being accurately presented with facts, and on issues that my judgement is relevant at all. You mistake questioning interpretations, not taking interpretations for granted, with advocacy. Its irritating.
You think that I can assert on Realistic Dove, that the green line is Palestine, and that land is routinely stolen, through institutional machinations, without understand or believing that?
But, do you think that the only reasonable opinion is the one that identifies Israel as ultimate and perennial cause of all wrong in the region?
“Who are the doers?
Just the radicals, just the ideologs?”
I’m guessing the bulk of the Jews and Arabs in the 40′s would have been okay with living side by side in peace–that is, ordinary people usually don’t want war and disruption in their lives unless they’ve been badly misled.
“What I’ve shown is an aversion to judge before being accurately presented with facts, and on issues that my judgement is relevant at all. You mistake questioning interpretations, not taking interpretations for granted, with advocacy.”
No, you advocate. You take for granted and expect others to take for granted that Palestinian groups commit atrocities. And it’s true. But you hem and haw and squirm and wiggle and evade when the subject turns to IDF killing. And you have double standards on blockades.
” Its irritating.”
Yes, it is. It seems impossible for you to see your own double standards, but that’s not surprising. Ideology does that. You want to see yourself as the wise, calm, mature peacemaker and so no doubt it’s irritating when others point out flaws in your position that you refuse to acknowledge.
“do you think that the only reasonable opinion is the one that identifies Israel as ultimate and perennial cause of all wrong in the region?”
No. But they bear the bulk of the blame, though not all of it, for the I/P conflict.
“No. But they bear the bulk of the blame, though not all of it, for the I/P conflict.”
I’m going to modify that. If we’re talking about Israelis and Palestinians, I stand by it. But trace it back a bit farther and the blame for the I/P conflict falls on European antisemitism, which is what apparently convinced many people that Jews had a right to a state on land that was already inhabited by others. Political Zionism (as opposed to the cultural sort which seems laudable to me) is a reaction to anti-semitism, but where the Zionists fell into sin, so to speak, was in following the European colonial mindset of the time. And that’s not just the far right either. If anything, Jabotinsky was just being more honest about his goals.
But trace it back a bit farther and the blame for the I/P conflict falls on European antisemitism, which is what apparently convinced many people that Jews had a right to a state on land that was already inhabited by others.
you’re missing part of the picture. the racism of both zionists planners and europeans that must have existed to give away arab land as if their lives and homes and land was insignificant. this assumption that one people have more of a capacity than others to feel a link and attachment to land and home is racist sad and cruel.
Its a revisionism to go back and attribute racism as the fundamental theme of what actually happened.
The revisionism, the tension between what is asserted by the left as occurred and what is known by Israelis that lived it, is what paints the left as off in some significant way.
Its significant as the current state of Israel is different from what was worked for as well, requiring reform and return to prize of ideal.
The radical analysis compels a radical response (revolutionary). And, that is where the flaw lies.
To urge reform is the oppossite of urging that the status quo remain. To urge reform though is also the oppossite of urging that the baby be thrown out with the bathwater.
Well said, Annie.
Plus the assumption that Jews are a “people”.
(Incidentally, your posts are insightful and astute, but awfully difficult to read. Is your shift key broken?)
What’s to reform, Witty? Even your “liberal” version of Zionism insists that families of Palestinians who were violently expelled by Zionists should no longer even be considered to be Palestinian, and have had their right to their homeland permanently revoked — whereas Russian Jews, in your mind, have carte blanche to move in, bulldoze their homes and put up their own (thereby erasing generations of actual history).
Zionism is racism, Witty. It has been and always will be. If you’re supposed to be our evidence of the apex of Zionism, you need to take a good long look around at how many non-Zionists are willing to settle even for that.
“the racism of both zionists planners and europeans that must have existed to give away arab land as if their lives and homes and land was insignificant. this assumption that one people have more of a capacity than others to feel a link and attachment to land and home is racist sad and cruel. ”
I agree with that.
anti-semitism in the US would NOT have relaxed without the model of pioneering Zionism
i reject the idea ‘pioneering zionism’ has been any kind of cure for anti semitism. maybe it was once and i wasn’t exposed to it. perhaps it gave diaspora jews (my trip to israel aside, the only jews i know) a sense of confidence or self-assureness that resulted in that outcome. i wasn’t exposed to ‘pioneering zionism’ or any kind of zionism for that matter, nobody ever talked about it where i came from , it was a non issue. aside from the horrible politics of zionism which amounts to so much suffering and oppression my reaction to it for american jews is why? it runs totally against the grain of what america is about, its an exclusive thing, so go there already if you think that’s the way a person should live their life devoid of others or with others at a distance. it seems insulting to have americans exalting zionism as if our way isn’t a progression in terms of the melting pt aspect. all the other people who immigrated here aren’t having some spiritual real estate on the other side of the globe. i don’t personally know any jews who have ever talked about moving to israel. they are all here to stay as far as i know. this association w/zionism lessening anti semitism is ass backward. when people islolate themselves it makes for a perception of otherness. the fact remains the only zionism the world has ever known, the zionism experiment is a huge ugly racist mess imho. wrt anti semitsm i don’t see how it could do anything but increase it. zionism is a political construct and like all politics people it polarizes people. being jewish may mean zionism to some people but it doesn’t mean zionism to me. jewishness is not political to me, it isn’t zionist. when you start associating an ethnicity w/a political position is rises the chances of discord because it challenges people with conceptualizing jews as having a political commonality. take aipac for example. yuk. extremists. throw them in the toilet w/teabaggers for all i care. i’m rambling. goodnight and your radical theatre director friend was lacking in basic common sense.
“i reject the idea ‘pioneering zionism’ “
Are you kidding? Do you know how much money you could make in New York if you opened an male escort service staffed exclusively by IDF types?
You could charge anything you like!
The “pioneer Zionist” was a mortar, and rifle.
link to lawrenceofcyberia.blogs.com
cherrypicking! you can’t chop off the sentence in the middle mooser..
cheater! lol. besides idf guys are not pioneering anything at the moment. also i hate to break it to you but idf guys are just a cross section of israeli society since most israelis have to go into the service. that said i know all about sexy jewish guys, i’ve been around the block a few times.
ee gads you were pulling my leg. that’s what i get for not opening the link before posting.
RE: “…“Jewish power” whether they mean, “Ah… we/they are finally accepted in the world.” or they mean” Damn them, don’t they know that their place is subservient, guilty.”
Why the either/or; the black and white scenario only? It seems obvious to me that
if one has power in your context, one is, at least, accepted by others who are empowered, that is to say, as it is in the USA, there might be a few dissenters but
they have no power to effectively counter your power–there are always the powerful, and the feeble dissent, and the masses who are simply manipulated by the ones in power. Jewish power lives in that same arena as any other powerful
group. Don’t you remember, back before US jews became so powerful, the WASPs had the power; weren’t they railed against by the jews and others who despised the WASPs, and made fun of them in any avenue available, especialy in Entertainment
industry? I see no sign of that respecting the jews, do you? I rather see the reverse, hinting at a more solid power group than the WASPs have been since the 1950s.
“I see no sign of that respecting the jews, do you? I rather see the reverse, hinting at a more solid power group than the WASPs have been since the 1950s. ”
The Neocons’ and media’s role in jamming the Iraq war down our throats didn’t help.
If there is an economically devastating attack on Iran by Israel or the U.S./AIPAC, and most Jews are seen as supporting it at the expense of already financially suffering regular Americans (46% of Jews make over 100 K’s, after all), then there will likely be a major backlash against Jews.
There’s also the idea of noblesse oblige:
“”suggests noble ancestry constrains to honourable behavior; privilege entails to responsibility”. Being a noble meant that one had responsibilities to lead, manage and so on.”
Rich Jews in America are probably increasingly seen as lacking it. Donations to the Gugenheim, Harvard, and uniquely tax deductable Israeli bonds don’t cut it.
Mort Zuckerman: God Bless America
link to huffingtonpost.com
Greenspan, Bernanke, Rubin, Summers, and Blankfein all being Jewish and robbing the country blind and traumatizing millions of humiliated people can’t help either.
“We didn’t have a Jewish wedding until a year after we were originally married in the yogic ritual.”
You were “schtupping” a Jewish girls without benefit of wedlock? You pig! Not even I could descend to that.
Looks like Witty’s Judaism is all in his dick. He sees something that looks good in a sari and right away, he gets some Hindu fakir to mumble a couple of verses, and it’s off to bed. No Jewish ceremony needed.
Has anybody else heard the theory that Zionist bankers made a deal with the British during WWI?
I’ve heard that England was told that the U.S. would join them in WWI against the Germans (who were winning decisively), in exchange for the Balfour Declaration.
That these Zionists were in a position to basically offer U.S. participation in the war because the Federal Reserve had just been created, giving the Rothschilds and Warburgs (leaders of the Zionist movement) a great amount of power over the U.S., along with the American tycoons who also helped found the Fed (most of whom were financed by Kuhn, Loeb, the Rothschild front).
After WWI, during the negotiations of the Treaty of Versailles, the Zionists pulled out the Balfour Declaration (addressed to Baron Rothschild).
link to en.wikipedia.org
“Foreign Office,
November 2nd, 1917.
Dear Lord Rothschild,
I have much pleasure in conveying to you, on behalf of His Majesty’s Government, the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations which has been submitted to, and approved by, the Cabinet:
“His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country”.
I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation.
Yours sincerely
Arthur James Balfour”
The German people then realized that the Rothschilds and Warburgs in their own country had sold out Germany for the promise of a future Jewish homeland in Palestine, while Germany was in shambles and people were starving and upper-middle-class girls were prostituting themselves just to eat.
I’ve heard that that was the source of the backlash against Jews in Germany.
Is that way off base?
Here’s a speech by Jewish advisor to Woodrow Wilson. Sounds plausible to me:
link to youtube.com
I’ve read the same thing. American businesses supplying the Allies, especially England, and their (largely Jewish) bank creditors were very anxious if the Germans won they would never get back their investments. They looked for a pretext to get the USA into the war, and found it. Then the dumb doughboys were sent off (sans training) to go die “over there” to “make the world safe for democracy.”
And of course, then the Germans were blamed as the exclusive perps of WW1 and
taxed accordingly, which led to a starving, desperate Germany’s man of hope to get the Germans out of their miserable lives, which took a wheel barrel full of marks to buy a loaf of bread, and to find a tad of respect in the world–Adolph Hitler. And, of course, Hitler laid out by his deeds the rational for the UN support of partition, hence
now, the plight of the US-Israeli foot on the necks of the innocent Palestinians.
Well, the origins of WW1 were based in moral dilemmas about nationalism and terrorism, never solved to this day. The Serbian Government had been far too closely involved with a terrorist organisation, the Black Hand. But the German decision to support Austria in rejecting reasonable proposals from the Serbs in the wake of the terrorist outrage at Sarajevo was quite aggressive, particularly as their plans involved invading a neutral country.
The British response (using as legal exemplar the United States blockade of the Confederacy fifty years before) involved a blockade and German food supplies were seriously threatened, so after hesitation in response to American protests they resorted submarine attacks on civil shipping. President Wilson had (I think) always seen reason to intervene, since German domination of Europe would have reduced Russia as a counterweight to the fearsome Japan, but he had to get rid of a pacifist Secretary of State, William Jennings Bryan, who was no compliant Colin Powell. American public opinion had been uneasy about reports of German treatment of the civil population in Belgium and was eventually outraged by the loss of American life to German submarines. It’s clearly true that we hoped to get the support of leading Jewish figures in America by making the Balfour Declaration, which was a shameful document, and it’s clearly true that some Jewish intellectuals, who by no means represented the majority of Jews at that time, were fishing in the troubled waters, but it wasn’t all a Jewish plot.
It’s very important to note, if we want to maintain perspective, that the main Jewish role in WW1 was not the promotion of Zionism but total commitment to the different national causes. British Jews went out and killed and were killed by Germans who were as Jewish as they were. The famous ‘Hymn of Hate against England’ was written by a German Jewish poet who was duly honoured by the Kaiser. Hitler was awarded his Iron Cross Class I, a very rare decoration for a corporal, on the recommendation of his Jewish commanding officer.
Two points.
while Germany was in shambles
Germans were starving, but the destruction in Germany was comparatively small. It might help to look at the diverse WWI maps and the main battles.
dumb doughboys that might be true for Americans, but it definitively isn’t true for Europeans, quite the opposite. The vast majority wanted to go to war. The disillusion that followed is a different matter. Also, by the way, the British, on whose neutrality the Germans counted.
Before you pick out specific easy explanations you should take a look at the rather extensive literature on the topic.
“Before you pick out specific easy explanations you should take a look at the rather extensive literature on the topic. ”
Germany being destroyed economically, as opposed to physically, and Europeans being more inclined toward war than Americans doesn’t change the essential elephant in the room that American doughboys were forced into battle by a traitorous government more loyal to powerful Jewish financial interests than to America.
And it’s not an easy explanation, especially since there is so little literature on it. It’s not like it is taught in high school or even most college history classes of WWI.
If Jewish Zionist interests had that much power in 1916-1917, then maybe that should inform our understanding of everything that has happened since in America, such as the Zionist collaboration with Hitler, and the view of Palestine being more important than the lives of Jews in Europe.
yes charles, i read the speech here a few months ago when someone linked to it from this site.
PHIL- Excellent post. Very insightful and eloquently stated.
WJ –
No doubt, we are in uncharted waters here and the future is definitely art, not science.
When I said “firmly” I meant that the non-Orthodox Jewish community collectively has accepted this reality and is responding creatively to the issue. (As always, the Conservative movement is slow to see the train leaving the station, but they’re hopping on too). In my experience, the successful Jewish interfaith families are not the ones where one parent is a practicing Christian, rather where that parent is a disaffected Christian/atheist and is amenable to making Judaism the family tradition.
Regardless, Zionism is the wrong horse: practically, it diverts attention and energy away from the American Jewish community, philosophically, it pronounces the defeat of the American Jewish project.
So, anti-Zionism is the way forward for American Jews.
Eliot, before we got married, my wife-to-be offered to convert. I married her anyway, and of course, now she denies she ever said it.
It was only a few short years later she drunkenly confessed that the grand- matriarch of her family left Germany (or God-knows-where) when she was impregnated by an itinerant Jewish peddler (in those days, men on bicycles were considered very sexy). Our sex life has never been the same since, but I really shouldn’t blame the consequences of circumcision on her.
No doubt, we are in uncharted waters here and the future is definitely art, not science.
When I said “firmly” I meant that the non-Orthodox Jewish community collectively has accepted this reality and is responding creatively to the issue. (As always, the Conservative movement is slow to see the train leaving the station, but they’re hopping on too). In my experience, the successful Jewish interfaith families are not the ones where one parent is a practicing Christian, rather where that parent is a disaffected Christian/atheist and is amenable to making Judaism the family tradition.
Regardless, Zionism is the wrong horse: practically, it diverts attention and energy away from the American Jewish community, philosophically, it pronounces the defeat of the American Jewish project.
So, anti-Zionism is the way forward for American Jews.
An especially sickening case of philosemitism:
Book Review of: The Israel Test Author: George Gilder dedicated to Midge Decter
reviewed by Robert Sungenis
link to catholicintl.com
Now there’s a real friend to the Jews! Thank God for suckers like him.
Anybody wanna make any wagers about how he really feels?
So I don’t get it! We Jews have all these sterling qualities, and God is on our side, but everybody beats us up. Why is that?
Oh well, back to “Giant Steps”. Triple key centers, here I come.
I encounter little bits of anglophilia occasionally (I was once admired in a Salem Mass pub for the way I said ’26th of December’) and so long as they’re minor or trivial they’re pleasant enough.
Anti or phobe attitudes, taken to any serious degree, are unpleasant and unfair (sometimes much worse than that) to the phobed group. But pro or philo attitudes, taken to any serious degree, are rather unfair (sometimes worse than that) to everyone outside the philed group. Anglophilia and philosemitism aren’t adequate long-run substitutes for fairness and humanity applied to English or Jewish people.
I hadn’t heard of G.Gilder. Maybe I could think of a joke about gilding lilies. But I agree with Mooser that this sort of gush (just like Biden’s declarations of love) would easily be recognised by a perceptive Jewish observer (like Freud) as pathetic disguises for other repressed feelings.
Look who picked up on this!
Kevin MacDonald: Philip Weiss on Philosemitism and Ethnocentrism
link to theoccidentalobserver.net
AMERICA FIRST- Kevin MacDonald, while he has provided some useful information on Jews and other Diaspora communities, such as the Chinese ex-patriots, nonetheless must be read with caution. He is a racial determinist, in effect, a racist. The driving force behind a lot of his work is the notion that the American non-Jewish whites are suffering in competition with the Jews as a consequence of the mongrelization of the white race, hence, the need for whites to band together to defend the purity of the race. I personally avoid citing MacDonald for fear of being tainted by association. As for his comments, it seems he feels that Phil’s call for increased tolerance of the “other” is bad for necessary white ethnocentrism, and that once the damage is done, Phil will go back to being an ethnocentric Jew. Needless to say, I disagree. Further, this latest racist comment from MacDonald further justifies my already low opinion of him. Pity.
Jewish Girl Prank Calls Her Parents (by pretending to be dating an Italian guy)
link to youtube.com
Wow. Just… wow.