Longtime colleagues Leon Wieseltier and Marty Peretz are on opposite sides of the Islamic center argument, reports J.J. Goldberg in the Forward.
Wieseltier's latest Washington Diarist in the New Republic is smart and refreshing. A true intellectual, he endorses the right of the Islamic center to set up shop downtown. And he speaks openly of his own youth in the Revisionist Zionist movement and arrives at a point any sensible person must agree with, these old timey religions sure propagate a lot of war:
Collective responsibility. One of the most accomplished Jewish terrorists of our time, Baruch Goldstein, came from the Jewish universe in which I was raised. When he committed his crime, there were a few former and present citizens of that universe, a revered rabbi of mine among them, who demanded a stringent communal introspection; but the critics were denounced as slanderers who tarred all of religious Zionism, or all of “Modern Orthodox” Judaism, or all of Judaism, with the same treasonous brush. The killer, we were angrily instructed, was an aberration, and any generalization from his action was an unwarranted imputation of collective responsibility. I disagreed. Baruch Goldstein murdered in the name of Judaism, with an interpretation of Judaism, from a social and intellectual position within Judaism. The same was later true of Yigal Amir. They did not represent the entirety of Judaism, or of the Jewish institutions that formed them—but the massacre in Hebron and the assassination in Tel Aviv were among their effects. If the standpoint of broadly collective responsibility was the wrong way to explain the atrocities, so too was the standpoint of purely individual responsibility. There were currents of culture behind the killers. Their ideas were not only their own. I am reminded of those complications when I hear that Islam is a religion of peace. I have no quarrel with the construction of Cordoba House, but not because Islam is a religion of peace. It is not. Like Christianity and like Judaism, Islam is a religion of peace and a religion of war. All the religions have all the tendencies within them, and in varying historical circumstances varying beliefs and practices have come to the fore.
This is a helpful way of looking at religious nationalism. And I'd insist that neoconservatism falls into a similar category. Murray Friedman, Benjamin Ginsberg, and Adam Garfinkle all wrote in their books that neoconservatism came out of the Jewish community. I'm sure Wieseltier would agree, he has too much intellectual honesty not to. But remember that when Walt and Mearsheimer wrote that Zionism played a crucial role in the disastrous decision to invade Iraq, JJ Goldberg published an editorial titled "In Dark Times Blame the Jews," and Leonard Fein of the Forward trashed the authors for "recklessness" and Peace Now posted his attack, and the New Republic conducted a campaign against them as alleged antisemites. So Wieseltier underlines what I have always said, that the Jewish community will not move out of this moment, this ethnocentric locked down Spartan ignore the cries of the victim moment, until there is a forum at Yivo Institute on the neocons' Zionism and their contribution to an American war. Wait till 2050.
intellectual honesty? really?
i’m impressed and happy with this piece, but let’s not forget about his mean-spirited and irrational attack against andrew sullivan a few months ago. or his countless articles obfuscating the I/P issue and his role in the iraq war buildup.
it’s nice that he has some clarity on this issue, but it doesn’t expunge all the awful stuff he’s done in the past. and all the stuff i’m sure he will do very soon.
Neo-conservatism is a current within Jewish culture.
That is why a reliable, confident better argument is needed, NOT the radical gamble that is presented here.
Yes, Jewish culture has made the necons’ idea/perception of threat predominent. Everything happening is skewed to that end.
The neocons applied it more generally after 9/11, especially in the foreign policy arena. They greatly influenced the attack on Iran in 2003, which would not have happened without them, although at the time they were a mere handful of people. Their coded words, their lingo abounds everyday.
Now they preach fear of Islam, and most specifically, Iran. Syria and Saudi Arabia are their most plausible future dominos to fall after Iran. Nothing is more important than their safe haven in a treacherous world. Any means to that insurance is ethical and, to them, also moral.
The idea fix of eternal enemies always behind the next bush, or the next, or the next–never goes away, no matter how far down any road they go–as I type this Fox News is now saying via the lips of Mike Galagher that Newsweek’s article on America’s overeaction to 9/11 is that the article ignores the threat of Israel being “wiped off the map.”
The article itself refers only to the USA, and never mentions Israel.
link to newsweek.com
I thought it was antisemitic to connect Israel with 9/11 in any way.
Potsherd, just about everything is anti-Semitic.
Threats, fears are important information. The better argument is constructed by weighing the different fears, and forming a bold strategy to diminish the likelihood that the fears will occur.
In the case of Iraq, the explosion of violence resulting from chaos after a 30-year dictator falls, was predictable. To not include those likely consequences in the math of their decisions, was poor governance and decision-making.
Were realists, Arabists, consulted in the decision? I expect that the CIA, State Department and other agencies in which there were many career realists and Arabists, were consulted.
Maybe I’m wrong. Decisions like the one to invade seem to require complicity of many agencies/administration that is frankly not potentially explainable by “the Jewish neo-conservatives caused it”.
A bad argument was made, believed, promoted, endorsed legislatively.
Rumsfeldt & Cheney tossed out anything that didn’t fit their world view, much like yourself. Hence a bloody awful mess.
Yeah, check out who the biggest promoters were. They are still doing it. The new target is Iran. They don’t need Rumsfeldt & Cheney. Petreaus and Mitchell will do. The gate keeper and party strategist will do too.
The larger point is that fear is the most important disinformation. Real objective information is irrelevant.
this morning C Span reaired a truly awful panel discussion featuring T Boone Pickens, Ted Turner, Sam Wyly, Mike Plotsky, and a couple other guys, in an Aspen-sponsored event concerned with alternative energy resources for US.
Pickens has a hard on to engender hatred for the Mideast. “We have to stop buying foreign oil because those people are not our friends.”
Pickens is intellectually bankrupt; tragically, he has a lot of money and can conceal his puny intellect by purchasing flash and persistence — and more than a few congresspersons. He is a dangerous ideologue, as dangerous as any roomful of neocons.
Witty. “Were realists, Arabists, consulted in the decision? I expect that the CIA, State Department and other agencies in which there were many career realists and Arabists, were consulted.”
Were you asleep during the run-up to the war? Did you not read how the entire thing was planned and executed by neoconservatives? Are you so unaware of the Office of Special Plans, and who ran it, that you could write this with ‘a straight face’?
Your supposed ruminating is devoid of knowledge, history, or fact. Apparently, you don’t even consult or read Haaretz. Ari Shavitz wrote The White Man’s Burden in March 2003, where he stated quite clearly:
This was printed just before the bombs fell in 2003 and these Jewish neoconservatives in DC said on the record that they were responsible, and it was printed in an Israeli paper.
“That is why a reliable, confident better argument is needed, NOT the radical gamble that is presented here”
You don’t consider neoconservatism to be radical Witty. Well that comes as a shock!
“Like Christianity and like Judaism, Islam is a religion of peace and a religion of war. All the religions have all the tendencies within them, and in varying historical circumstances varying beliefs and practices have come to the fore.”
That is undeniably true.
Under all these religions are cults, sects and fractions that come to the fore and probably always will.
To my mind the christian evangelicals are a good example of a religious cult as are the some of the zionist.
I am not sure if it is Judaism or just the Jewish tribal culture itself or some combination that spawned the ‘supremacist or militant’ zionism.
Who can tell in the various individual militant zionist whether it is secular racist zionism or religious mysticism or combinations thereof that inspire some of them?
The christian evangelicals definitely spring solely from the religious, but among the zionist there are many for whom it seems more ethno
cultural than religiously inspired.
I am not into the religious aspects of the Israeli zionist issue but probably a lot of books not on the public’s reading list have been and will be written about it.
I think basically although it has a lot to do with Israel and jewish/zionist thinking, it is best left to jews to examine Judaism’s part if it applies.
The Israeli and I/P issue though can’t be sidetracked by figuring this out, by considering religion or culture or it will go on for centuries like these clashes have gone on for 21 centuries already.
It has to be based on realism, international law and universally accepted humanitarian standards…………justice and law in other words.
If you want to live in a world where religion, tribes or culture are built into decisions of law instead of the stability of unbiased law, go back to the stone age…..and start making plenty of axes and knives to defend yourself.
Marty conveniently forgets to mention that it was the Spanish Jews that invited Maghrebi Muslims to invade Visigothic Spain because they were being persecuted. Effing ingrate.