The best predictor of an American Jew's political take on Middle East politics is How steadfast is his or her belief in antisemitism as an enduring force. And so, Peter Beinart who is not particularly steadfast on this point, has gone from right to left. But Richard Cohen does believe in anti-Semitism as an enduring force; and the Arab spring is bringing out the ultra-Zionist in him, and sweeping him further and further to the right like a pebble in the surf... "The Arab world is saturated by Jew-hatred," he states reflexively in the Washington Post, and essentially describes the Palestinians as Nazis. Not a word about what Jewish nationalism did to the region. Though he says Israel should cut a deal right now, and by the way Palestinians, forget about Jerusalem. (Does the Post give a platform to any integrationist Jews, by the way, Jews who have put nationalism behind them?):
[I]n truth, I put more faith in the staying power of anti-Semitism than I do in the forecasting gifts of my colleagues [unnamed scholars and journalists]. If they are right, wonderful. If not, we all have something to worry about.
The trouble with democracies is that they tend to cater to the prejudices of the people - not just to their good sense.
The primary driver of what is called antisemitism in the world today is the state of Israel and its anti-arab policies. Cohen is making a self-fulfilling prophecy. The more he talks, the more people hate what he stands for.
“The trouble with democracies is that they tend to cater to the prejudices of the people – not just to their good sense.” They also, ahem, tend to deliver political power to anyone who can “game the system” as we do so successfully in the USA by delivering political power to the big-money boys (so that the prejudices of the people are replace3d by those of the oligarchs).
But Israel is a “democracy” and the trouble with that is, that it tends to cater to the prejudices (anti-Palestinian, anti-integration, anti-human-rights, anti-international-law) of the people. The Jews of good sense in Israel, who used to form a sort of liberal or left, have vanished. And most of the younger generation is being carefully propagandized and trained to adopt the very same prejudices. Unlike the young of the Arab world which is being to adopt all the highest values (such as being critical of law-breakers).
smart pab
caught that line also. What a dope Cohen is.
Agree with PW in re pabelmont’s comment: The unself-consciousness of the “yes, democracy sometimes also sucks” crowd is dramatic. They say it over and over again, and wherever the particular political results don’t suit their own prejudices and preferences, and it never seems to occur to them that other people might want to apply the same criticisms to our own and allied democratic processes.
Yet, on some level this turns into a criticism of democracy itself, and anyone, especially a democratic politician, who raises the issue becomes vulnerable to cheap criticism.
I wish I had an easier way to remember which is good R Cohen and bad R Cohen.
I wish I had an easier way to remember which is good R Cohen and bad R Cohen.
You could try this: “Roger” (good R Cohen) means “OK” or “I heard you” in radio talk. “Richard”…. well think of this forum and you’ll get it.
If anti-Semitism is a form of prejudice or inveterate refusal, in advance of experience, to trust people of the ‘wrong’ race and if it is prejudice that is so fatally powerful in democracies, then our democracies are in danger from these attitudes to ‘Arabs’. If you say ‘Arabs are always going to be anti-Semitic’ then you express a prejudice which you refuse in principle to let experience correct and you insist that you will never trust them. And this prejudice, if released into a democratic society through its press, will – at least on this view of democracy – be lapped up with dire consequences.
MH,
what if you say ‘ many Arabs are taught to be anti-Semitic ‘ ?
prejudice taught to children has been the rule in many places throughout the centuries.
This general problem with democracy, MHughes, has been fairly well understood for at least 2,500 years or so, and that’s just the written record. Correction by experience can be a very long, costly, and uncertain process.
churchill quote here
We all know the Churchill quote, but what he really meant is another question.
But Phil did comment on the conspicuous presence of Mein Kampf on bookshelves and citations of the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” in his travels.
Somehow, my sense is that the truth lies in the middle.
It is a grave error to dismiss anti-semitism entirely as either non-existent or even irrelevant.
It exists on a continuum, and that is how it should be assessed, not black/white.
Maybe its a theme intentionally presented to degrade Arabs and to dismiss Arabs’ humanity and participation in self-governance (claimed as mobocracy form of democracy).
And/or maybe its an attempt to see clearly, to not go Pollyanish.
I pictures in Haaretz from liberated Libya, there were drawings of swastikas and Jewish stars on pictures of Qaddafi, more Jewish stars in this one case. I assume they are drawn on Qaddafi as an insult, a resistance.
Is that anti-semitism, or something else?
Well, it seems that the thread where the Nazi apologists were active has been closed – not sure exactly why and how. They would take potsherd2′s proposition – that Zionism is the “primary driver” of antisemitism today – and extend it as far backward as they found it convenient. For them even the Holocaust is little more than an ideological speed bump, and I have little doubt that they could explain how this was both the fault of the victims and somehow at the same time crypto-Zionist propaganda.
The thing is, there would even be an element of truth in that argument: The people on the left in the linked illustration probably really were on some level reacting to a real threat to their belief systems and simultaneously to their political and economic lives, in some way embodied in the people on the right. If you can extend your imagination that far, then how can you deny that there is an inescapable element of truth that Zionism and the Zionist Entity itself were, whatever else they may have been or are, also inevitable and self-consistent, fully comprehensible reactions to someone else – not just, for instance, an imitation of “Blood and Soil” nationalism, as so many MWers are ready to acknowledge, but also self-defense against it?
None of these historical entities or events exists in isolation or in simple relations of causal primacy relative to their political effects and counterweights. Whether or not antisemitism is entirely or primarily “driven” by Zionism today – I find that view somewhat simplistic and ahistorical – it’s still pathological on its own terms, disfiguring and destructive to anti-semites as well as to the Jews.
@CK,
Why are ancient European persecutions of Jews such as you site a justification for Israeli/Zionist persecution and massacres of Palestinians?
Why do you only pick on anti-semitism as pathological, and not the kind of racism that gives Israeli soldiers permission to shoot Palestinian kids for sport?
Those are perverse and repugnant constructions on my comment, which was written to respond to several different statements about antisemitism. Ask Phil why he chose to write about Richard Cohen’s observations on antisemitism rather than on some other subject.
The example from the Middle Ages refers to the longer history of antisemitism that some seem intent on denying as relevant to the Zionist movement’s establishment, which occurred alongside the implementation of several other strategies of Jewish self-organization in the modern age. The disproportionate absence of the latter in the larger political discussion, including especially as objects of European anti-semitism in the traditional mode, is explained in significant part by events reminiscent of the right side of the illustration, on an industrially massive scale.
Ask Phil why he chose to write about Richard Cohen’s observations on antisemitism rather than on some other subject.
that’s a rather odd reconstruction of phil’s post.
ad hominems towards lynn aside (“perverse and repugnant constructions on my comment”) her comment wasn’t that far off the mark as i read it
could you please answer her questions:
RE: “The Arab world is saturated by Jew-hatred,” he [Richard Cohen] states reflexively in the Washington Post, and essentially describes the Palestinians as Nazis. Not a word about what Jewish nationalism did to the region. – Weiss
FROM WIKIPEDIA: