In The Wall Street Journal, Marty Peretz says that Jonathan Pollard is a scoundrel, but Barack Obama is indifferent to Jewish history and persecution.
I believe that Mr. Obama does exhibit a certain disdain for the Jewish state—an indifference to and ignorance of the incandescence of Jewish history. “When the chips are down,” said the president to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee last March, “I have Israel’s back.” The whole lesson of Zionism, a good and truthful lesson, is that no one but Jews can be relied on to have Israel’s back. No American troops desired, no American troops required. No Americans should die for Israel. Too many have died for Afghanistan already, a country which we will in any case leave in the deadly lurch.
This is the historical error of Zionism. No one community can depend only upon itself. That’s crazy. It won’t work. World opinion is simply too significant a force in all our lives today. We are interdependent.
Also, if Jews are really alone, how come Marty Peretz gets a platform in the Wall Street Journal? The question raises a corollary problem: we must build an Israel lobby. If Israel can only count on Jews, and Americans won’t be there for Israel when the chips are down, well then, American Jews must build a lobby to sway American political leaders.
Alan Dershowitz in Chutzpah:
My generation of Jews was too young to fight against Nazism or for Israeli independence, too American to make aliyah (emigrate to Israel), too comfortable to put our bodies on the line for anything Jewish. Instead, we observed, contributed…We became part of what is perhaps the most effective lobbying and fund-raising effort in the history of democracy.
Irving Kristol, 1973:
Jews don’t like big military budgets. But it is now an interest of the Jews to have a large and powerful military establishment in the United States… American Jews who care about the survival of the state of Israel have to say, no, we don’t want to cut the military budget, it is important to keep that military budget big, so that we can defend Israel.
Avraham Burg, 2008, at the NY Public Library, marveling at what Jews produced:
When you look around the Jewish existential reality, you realize that actually the Jewish people built two structures. One is the semi-autonomous American Jewry, which was not here 150 years ago– powerful influence, access to the corridors of power, impact on the culture, and civilization… plus the infrastructure of the community of solidarity and fraternity and support system and education etc and also the sovereignty over there in the Middle East.
The Jewish struggle seems to me to be a struggle to reconcile Burg’s pride in Jewish achievement with a sense of accountability to the world community.
Peretz is conflating love for Israel, which I think is mostly limited to Jews, with willingness to be an ally–by treaty possibly, with a Jewish state that has recognized borders and has made a fair peace with the Palestinians. I would support that kind of alliance, rather like we have with NATO countries.
But apart from that I credit him at least for ignoring the contemporary hasbara line, which holds that a majority of Americans are deeply and emotionally committed to Israel because of Judeo-Christian values or whatever. That’s a lie, no matter how often it is repeated.
I disagree with your statement, “Peretz is conflating love for Israel, which I think is mostly limited to Jews…”
Of course it depends on what you mean by “love”, but the state of Israel is unique because of it history and its location as central to the three major monotheistic religions. When I was in Jerusalem last fall I said I felt like I was in the Large Hadron Collider of religious thought. The people of these faiths have varying degrees of “love” for Israel, but those who are of a fundamentalist bent have suspended the rules of logic and reason in their uncritical support of Israel. I experienced first hand how Zionism exploits this willful ignorance of the situation of the Palestinians.
Christian Zionists, for example, think it is their divine charge to take what the Christian Old Testament says was God’s promise of the “Promised Land” to Abraham’s descendents literally for all time. A recent poll by The Pew Forum found that 44% of Americans think Israel was given to the Jewish people by God. link to pewforum.org
I don’t think Christian Zionists attachment to Israel can be characterized as “love”, however. For many, (not all, see the poll) support of Israel is really a means to an end with the Jewish people being pawns in a great celestial End Times game. At its heart, Christian Zionism is just another version of two millennium’s of anti-Semitism because they believe at the Second Coming Jews must either convert to Christianity or be annihilated.
‘I don’t think Christian Zionists attachment to Israel can be characterized as “love”, however. For many, (not all, see the poll) support of Israel is really a means to an end with the Jewish people being pawns in a great celestial End Times game. At its heart, Christian Zionism is just another version of two millennium’s of anti-Semitism because they believe at the Second Coming Jews must either convert to Christianity or be annihilated.’
More importantly, CZ’s believe they’re ‘commanded’ to love the Jewish people and that any criticism with result in a curse on them, personally, communally and even nationally. I don’t know about anyone else, but if I’m commanded to do something like love someone, I’d have to question the motive behind what was required of me.
The real kicker is that the Zionists know the CZ’s theology demands Israel’s annihilation and are quite happy about it as long as they’re supporting Israel.
Basically, CZ’s are considered useful idiots.
I just think they’re idiots.
I think we need to ask ourselves if, Christian Zionism is based on Biblical prophecy, why it has only recently become a major political force. The tendency has a pre-history extending into the 19th century, but I daresay few of us had heard of it before Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson emerged on the national stage.
The answer, I should think, is money and influence. As in, Christian evangelical leaders saw both these things accruing to them in advocating this dubious piece of theological doctrine.
I think the primary explanation of the attraction of Christian Zionism is much simpler — and really, rather innocent.
One of the frustrations that must confront any newly enthusiastic Christian is that our society just doesn’t offer many ways of expressing religious fervor. No gigantic communal rituals, no crusades, no cathedrals. No nothin’, really. Any efforts are dwarfed by the sheer size of the endeavors with a clearly secular goal. We fight World War Two to suppress a very corporeal menace. Your basic commercial skyscraper towers over even the most impressive cathedral. You spend your day sorting plumbing parts, not fighting the good fight.
There’s prayer in schools, and abortion activism, but these degenerate into sheer pettiness. Israel, and support for Israel, offers one of the few venues for expressing religious fervor. You can express your religiosity! Support Israel!
Of course, I would differ with the logic of the arguments offered, but that’s not the point. For these people, supporting Israel offers them a unique way of expressing their faith. There’s nothing else like it.
Hey Ranjit,
It’s also to do with western mentality and influence. the whole CZ thing appeals to Christians as they feel that their lives are purposeful as they are living in the ‘last days’, which gives the Bible relevance to their individual lives. It doesn’t help with movies like The Omen bringing things into a present day perspective.
Up until the last century, most Christians rightly identified Biblical allusions to ‘the end’ as being relevant to the events of AD70, when the Jewish world collapsed. Although there are usually major times such as AD 1000 and most century years when this kind of futuristic doctrine surfaces.
Last one was the millennium. Prior to that, people ascribed 1988 (40 years = 1 generation after Israel’s birth) as the coming of the Messiah.
The huge irony is that all of the prophecy pundits and date setters have a record of being wrong, but no one ever questions their failed predictions.
People really do need to relax. It all happened in AD70……..
Put it this way. As a fervent, not exactly well-read Christian you’ve got two roads to expressing your faith.
There is local action. Embarrassing yourself harassing innocents in the supermarket parking lot. Packing school board meetings to hysterically demand this and that. Walking up and down feeling mildly silly in front of some abortion clinic (although most simply move to locales far away from where you live anyway).
Dreary nights whipping yourself into a faked religious fervor in some run-down ex-store front.
Or…
There’s Israel! It’s strong! It’s violent! It’s fulfilling biblical prophesy! It’s smiting the heretic and confronting and overawing the very class of the better-educated who confront and overawe you.
It’s all really very exciting. One can see the appeal. Subsume your faith in Zion. Identify with a winning team. Succeed!
Screw ‘school prayer.’ This is going to bring on the millennium. Back Israel. Hallelujah.
I don’t know Colin. It’s hard not to notice that the rise of Christian Zionism mirrors the entry of the Jewish intelligentsia to the right (neo-conservatism). Or that it followed quickly on the heals of the abdication of the WASP ruling elite and the old Episcopal establishment in favor of a more meritocratic and more Jew hospitable ruling strata.
Religion has had plenty of ways of expressing itself in American history. We have long been an unusually religious Western nation. Christian Zionism might then have become prominent in Puritan New England, Second Great Awakening Upstate New York, or Bringham Young’s Utah. No, it only became politically and religiously significant with the rise of the Lobby. I don’t think it’s a coincidence. The heads of these evangelical churches have sold out and have sold their followers a bill of goods. And they have relied upon the bloody-mindedness of American social conservatives to do the rest.
i tend to agree. and the michael oren walter russell mead hasbara on this score is unpersuasive.
I don’t see it as one or the other, the Lobby or Christian Zionism arising in the mid-20th century. It was both, which came about within the changed political and economic situation after World War II. What led to the Zionist nationalism of both was the Nakba and the establishment of the state of Israel which, politically, was established for the Western powers to have access to the oil wealth of the region.
The religious pretext became an ideological justification for this imperial aim. Christian Zionists had been working for this for 150 years. (George W. Bush’s great-grandfather was a missionary in Palestine in the mid-19th century promoting the “return of the Jews” to establish Israel as preparation for the Second Coming.) The establishment of Israel was seen by Christian Zionists as fulfillment of prophesy.
For the Lobby it became a pretext for a nationalist ideology for its own geopolitical interests which required a break with the universalism of Enlightenment values which Jewish intellectuals played a prominent role in developing (as outlined by Citizen C below).
Do bear in mind that CZ was very much a fringe movement and considered a barmy cult in the beginning. People argue that CZ was a catalyst for secular Jews to start aspiring to a homeland. CZ started arriving at the forefront of US evangelical thinking in the early 1900′s after CI Scofield published his Study Bible.
Personally, I don’t have a problem with people adhering to theologies and philosophies as long as they don’t have detrimental real world consequences.
This has largely been the big problem with CZ thinking. With an impending Apocalypse which anchors the theology, every major event is seen as a sign of the imminence of end time events. During WWII, CZ’s saw the Shoah as a The Time of Jacob’s Trouble and believed it was necessary for God’s will to be done. The events of 1947-1948 again were seen as a prophetic miracle rather than a 50 year political chess game and a resulting Nakba.
All the time, the prophecy pundits sell millions of books and are never ever held accountable when their predictions don’t come to light, even regurgitating failed prophetic books when political situations arise (think 1973 oil crisis and Gulf War I). All the time it quickens the fervent reader and they feel their faith is validated.
There needs to be an event that will destroy this mindset and way of thinking. It’s not just influenced US and world policy in the Middle East, but as we can see in the US election run up, along with AIPAC lobbying, it’s becoming the dominant force in US domestic policy. As an Englishman, I am fully aware that our ‘special relationship’ designates the UK as the proverbial tail to be wagged by the US and it’s important for the estimated 50 million US CZ voters to realise that blind support of Israel is not a good thing for the entire planet.
I think the rise of Christian Zionism is intimately linked with the fact that median income in the US has been stagnant for the last 30 years. CZs are economic losers and belief in the Rapture gives them pride most will never have economically.
You are absolutely right about the importance of the Scofield link to en.wikipedia.org
Protestant fundamentalism developed in the 19th century as a reaction against the historical criticism of the Bible which grew out of the Enlightenment, particularly Spinoza and Hegel. The combination of Spinoza’s philosophical materialism (in his “Theological-Political Treatise” he debunked Biblical prophesy as a predictor of the future and challenged belief in the inerrancy of Scripture) and Hegel’s historical evolutionary view of human civilization had a powerful influence on all areas of thought in the 19th century, including religion. Protestant fundamentalists saw this as an attack on their core beliefs.
During the 1890′s a Protestant fundamentalist named Orno Gaebelin set up an evangelism ministry among the Jews of New York’s East Side. He learned Yiddish and preached to large meetings of Jewish men on Saturday afternoons. He began publishing a Yiddish monthly newspaper and in 1894, established an English periodical, Our Hope, to publicize his work, to proclaim the immanent second advent, and to alert Gentiles to a “remarkable Zionist awakening among the Jewish population.” Restoration of the Jews to Israel was always a key part of millenarianism, but the fervor increased after Theodor Herzl’s first Zionist congress in Basel, Switzerland in 1897.
For the next 20 years Gaebelin held Bible conferences all over the East coast and the South. One of the most significant documents to come out of this movement was the Scofield Reference Bible. (See the linked article above to see how it developed.) It took the Protestant Bible and combined an attractive format of typography, paragraphing, notes and cross references with the theology of Darbyite dispensationalism. All through the 20th century it was to have a powerful influence among millions who regularly read it unaware of the distinction between the ancient text and Scofield’s (what later came to be called) Christian Zionist interpretation in its footnotes and cross references.
World War I stimulated great interest in the second advent of Christ and the interpretation of prophecy. In May 28-30, 1918 a conference was organized by Philadelphia businessmen and attended by over 3300. The British capture of Jersusalem by General Allenby had stimulated several British prophecy conferences. The conference included a glowing tribute to C.I. Scofield and his Scofield Reference Bible. The two keynote speeches were “The Regathering of Israel in Unbelief” (the “unbelief” was Jews not recognizing Christ as the Messiah) and “War on German Theology.”
The World’s Christian Fundamentals Association was founded in Philadelphia in a conference held from May 25 to June 1, 1919. 6000 attended from 42 states and Canada. It adopted a nine-point creed which included the verbally inspired and inerrant Bible and the premillenial, immanent return of Christ. During the 1920’s the Association turned its attention to the fight against Darwinian evolution. The founder of WSFA, set-up the Anti-Evolution League of Minnestoa n 1923. Riley preached that evolution was “an international Jewish-Boshevik-Darwinist conspiracy to promote evolutionism in the classroom.”
Being widely disseminated by radio preachers in the 1930’s and 1940’s, Fundamentalism was to develop all through the 20th century and emerge as a political movement in the 1980’s. The defense against the higher criticism of the Bible increasingly turned into an attack on the scientific method itself.
The source of most of my previous post is “The Roots of Fundamentalism: British and American Millenarianism 1800-1930”; Ernest R. Sandeen; The University of Chicago Press; 1970
‘Peretz is conflating love for Israel, which I think is mostly limited to Jews’
I persist in thinking this is misconceived. When the subject of Israel comes up, most Jews I know relapse into an unhappy silence.
I keep thinking it must be like having a criminal younger brother whose rap sheet keeps getting longer and who is clearly beating his wife. He’s your brother, and you feel obliged to love him (though deep down inside, maybe you don’t), and you’re reluctant to join the chorus of his critics — but you dearly wish he’d just stop it.
Conversely, for real love of Israel as she actually is, you can’t beat Christian Fundamentalists. The more extravagant Israel’s behavior, the more outrageous her transgressions, the more she stands as a beacon of the supremacy of spiritual fervor over other considerations. No petty liberal mush-mouthing and multi-culturalism. Go Israel, and to hell (literally) with everyone and everything else.
It is not the Jews that ‘love Israel,’ but the born-again brigade. Jews WILL keep returning to the expectation that any Israel be a ‘nice’ Israel. Christian Evangelicals like her just as she is: a bad, bad boy.
“The whole lesson of Zionism, a good and truthful lesson, is that no one but Jews can be relied on to have Israel’s back. ”
That’s paranoia.
The whole lesson of Zionism is “do unto others as you would have others do unto you.”
Israel’s economy is run on the principle that Jews need the outside world. It is just that the default zionist head settings haven’t caught up. There is a fundamental conflict between the mentality that runs the occupation and the settings of the system that puts food on the tables of those running the occupation.
‘ “The whole lesson of Zionism, a good and truthful lesson, is that no one but Jews can be relied on to have Israel’s back. ”
That’s paranoia.’
It’s also sheer nonsense, that runs counter to most actual historical experience. Zionists have never cared about Jews who weren’t in Israel. Too much is made of the fact, but the primary interest of the Zionists in the Holocaust was exploiting it to acquire more settlers. Every outbreak of anti-semitism anywhere is accompanied, not by an effort to stamp out the anti-semitism, but by the trumpeting of the cry ‘come to Israel.’
Conversely, as this site clearly demonstrates, many or most of the most effective critics of Israel are Jewish themselves. It’s not David Duke who tears Zionism a new one, but Norm Finkelstein.
I’d say that if anything, ‘the whole lesson of Zionism, a good and truthful lesson’ is that there is an inherent divide between the interests of Zionism and the interests of Jews in general. Moving to a small chunk of semi-desert where you are surrounded by people who hate you and can survive only by oppressing those under you is NOT a survival strategy.
“Every outbreak of anti-semitism anywhere is accompanied, not by an effort to stamp out the anti-semitism, but by the trumpeting of the cry ‘come to Israel.’”
Most shamelessly in Toulouse a few months ago after 3 Jews were murdered outside a school.
‘The whole lesson of Zionism is “do unto others as you would have others do unto you.” ‘
Tp me, the lesson Zionism teaches seems to be “do unto others first, just in case they think of doing it unto you.”
‘But apart from that I credit him at least for ignoring the contemporary hasbara line, which holds that a majority of Americans are deeply and emotionally committed to Israel because of Judeo-Christian values or whatever. That’s a lie, no matter how often it is repeated.’
I think you’re right about Americans in general, but many American Jews and Christians are deeply (and disturbingly) committed and they’re the ones who are most politically and socially active.
Those Americans who are deeply committed to Israel are certainly not committed because of whatever they would claim are ‘Judeo-Christian values’ (I wonder precisely what in such a set would turn out not be be Islamic values as well. Given that Islam is largely a synthesis of Christianity and Judaism with a bit of ‘well, that’s not going to work’ thrown in, I doubt there could be much).
Many Americans are merely casually supportive of Israel. The Arabs are the other team, Israel is against the Arabs, therefore Israel is on our team. It doesn’t go further than that.
However, those Americans who are committed to Israel are usually committed for one or more of several identifiable reasons.
1. To support Israel affirms their identity — either as Jews or as fervent Christian evangelicals. They can’t not support Israel without abandoning a key component of their identity.
2. Israel is great if you’re a bigot. In this connection, notice the efforts Israel takes to make sure she is perceived as ‘white.’ Support Israel. She’s killing wogs. That one’s simple — although you’ll get few to admit it. They like seeing that boot ground in that face. It does it for them.
3. Israel is violent. A lot of people like violence. Israel is legitimated violence. Who else can just go ahead and invade a neighbor whenever they feel like it? Look for the guys enthusiastically discussing the exact features of the latest model of Merkava if you want to spot members of this set.
“This is the historical error of Zionism. No one community can depend only upon itself. That’s crazy. It won’t work. World opinion is simply too significant a force in all our lives today. We are interdependent. ”
Try to imagine where, and what the condition of, Jews would be today without ‘the others.”
The constant claims of the zionist that I see and hear, that no one ever helped the Jews, that they accomplished what they did ‘all by themselves’, that they can and do only depend on themselves, that all others are inherently anti semitic, is probably the biggest have your cake and eat it too lie that zionism tells.
Every day they come to the others world with a plea or a demand or a request for something for themselves and their state.
Zionism was built on “separateness” and yet Israel is totally dependent on “the others world” in every way.
If the world treated zionism and Israel or the Jews with the same philosophy, as ‘separate’ from the rest of us, as zionist treat the world, Israel would not exist.
“If the world treated zionism and Israel or the Jews with the same philosophy, as ‘separate’ from the rest of us, as zionist treat the world, Israel would not exist.”
GDP per head would be around 700 dollars.
I think that religiously inflamed love of a kind for Israel is quite common in some non-Jewish circles. The idea, mentioned by Scott, of a rational alliance with an Israel which had accepted limitations on its borders seems – don’t you think? – comparatively rare, even odd. I can see that highly educated Jewish people like Peretz might consider that the religious credulity and sentimentalism of his Christian allies makes them too unpredictable to be trustworthy, whereas every Jewish person is, he would think, chained to Israel by self-interest that can never change. I would have thought that the same hasbara could accommodate both the idea that Jewish people can in the end trust no one but each other and that Jewish values are very widely and enthusiastically shared, only not always by people who can be trusted to live by them. One of the most bleak, soul-destroying world views that I could imagine but not logically impossible.
“The Jewish struggle seems to me to reconcile Burg’s pride in Jewish achievement with a sense of accountability to the world community. ”
No, I think the Jewish struggle is, not to be Jewish, not to see the issue perpetually thru a Jewish lens, to be secular liberal citizens, for the non-religious. And even the religious must situate their faith squarely in the rights of liberal citizens to freedom of worship.
And therein hang many tales, all descended from what the late Israel Shahak (who calibrated my psyche) called the “modern, secular Jewish tradition”, which he traced to Spinoza. Marx, Rosa Luxemberg, Isaac Deutscher, Maxime Rodinson, Arendt, Shahak, were in that tradition. Elmer Berger, the great classical Reform rabbi, situated his Judaism squarely in the frame of liberal rights.
The appalling, unbelievable fact is that these views, the whole modern framework descended from the Enlightenment and emancipation, has been abandoned for Jewish identity politics. Left, right or center, there is only a Jewish interest, whether in war and genocide, or in dissent. The latter takes place on the narrowest, ahistorical terms, of “solutions” discourse/strategic asset/anti-occupation/law and rights, and in the name of “the Jewish people”, from Chomsky to JVP on down. This orthodoxy has concealed Jewish agency in the US and Zionism itself for decades.
The US organized Jewish complex that Burg noted is not something that can ever be reformed, only overcome, in concert with the gentiles, in a program centered explicitly on universal values, which begin with a categorical rejection of Zionism and Jewish privilege everywhere.
In Israel/Palestine this doesn’t necessarily mean a unitary state immediately, whether binational or secular. But it does mean recognizing that a Jewish state, and Jewish nationality, are indefensible, that Israel must be de-Zionized, reconstituted as a state of Israeli Hebrew nationality, secular and open to all.
“The appalling, unbelievable fact is that these views, the whole modern framework descended from the Enlightenment and emancipation, has been abandoned for Jewish identity politics.”
Or, as you later point out, something which is even more sickening in a way, the fungible, flexible pretence of Jewish identity politics. Every gated community a shtetl.
Rabbi Eric H. Yoffie served as President of the Union for Reform Judaism from 1996 to 2012. He is now a writer, lecturer, and teacher, and lives with his family in Westfield, New Jersey.
link to haaretz.com
American Jews worry and wonder: Is it really true that Israel’s government is not capable of putting an end to the tire-slashing and mosque-burning? How can it be that Israel does not dismantle settlements and outposts that, by its own definition, are illegal? Why is government after government, whether of the right or left, so unable to stand up to those whose explicit intent is to put an end forever to any hope of a two-state solution?
The apologists make the same tired arguments again and again. Well yes, settlement is an issue, they say, but “most” settlement is in the major settlement blocs, and therefore is not a problem. In the first place, this argument is flat-out wrong. Since the mid-1990s, the settlement population outside of the major settlement blocs has risen from about 35,000 to over 80,000, and Netanyahu’s most recent promise to build included units in this area.
And in the second place, this argument no longer makes any difference. After decades of non-stop settlement activity, most of it condemned by their own government, American Jews can no longer distinguish between one kind of settlement and another. And while they can explain and defend many things, they can neither explain nor defend the settlement mania that has gripped Israel for so long.
‘I believe that Mr. Obama does exhibit a certain disdain for the Jewish state—an indifference to and ignorance of the incandescence of Jewish history.’
Incandescence? I believe this reveals a highly selective and self-indulgent reading of Jewish history. It’s all been reduced to the Kishinev pogrom plus the Holocaust — when in fact there are rather wide swatches of rather large groups of Jews doing rather well. Jews in Muslim Spain. Jews in pre-Khmelnytsky Poland. A Jewish aristocracy in the Khazar state. Jews here. As always, a careful reading of history doesn’t support fairy tales.
Jews have nevertheless had a tough ride — but then, so have Armenians, Kurds, Serbs, Gypsies, Circassians, the entire Indian population of both the Americas, and presumably several other groups I probably have overlooked — not to mention those that really were successfully and completely exterminated and so are no longer in a position to speak up. The Mongols, by some accounts, halved the population of Iran. Actually, most ethnic groups have suffered severe trauma at some point, and for some, it’s been an endemic condition. The Jewish experience may have been severe, but it is by no means unique.
So whence cometh this sense of unique and unqualified entitlement? It can get absurd. I recall reading articles in Haaretz in which posters argued furiously against the notion that the Nazis sought to exterminate Gypsies. The Holocaust, above all, had to be reserved to Jews. The halo of victimhood was for them alone.
In any case, the whole schtick rather selectively adopts a communal identity. All Jews are entitled to special consideration because of the sufferings of some — but I wouldn’t suggest that all Jews bear responsibility for the crimes of Bernie Madoff. The floodgates of communal identity seem to open only when it’s convenient. If it’s something bad that a Jew did, rather than suffered, then Jews are, of course, autonomous individuals like the rest of us. But through some mysterious alchemy, a Jew whose last ancestor to leave Europe did so in 1903 can adopt the halo of Holocaust victimhood whenever it suits him.
Some Jews have convinced themselves that they have all always been victims, that this status is unique, and that even though they personally have had rather pleasant, secure lives, that they can partake of this heritage whenever it suits the needs of the argument. All three parts of this are subject to severe qualification.
“…incandescence of Jewish history.’”
Oy, we never keep up. Everybody knows it’s all about compact and high-output flourescents and low-volt LED devices today. Heck, some places incandescence is illegal!
>> The whole lesson of Zionism, a good and truthful lesson, is that no one but Jews can be relied on to have Israel’s back.
Jews may have Israel’s back, but does Israel have the backs of all the Jews beyond its borders? When Zionism’s blowback inevitably hits, will Jews everywhere in the world be able to count on Israel to defend them?
Maybe, although I suspect the “Jewish State” will elect to leave all those “foreigners” holding the bag while it takes care of itself.
Only Jews will have Israel’s back? Well, they better not try giving the goddam thing back to me!
“Incandescence? of Jewish history.
Def:
white, glowing, or luminous with intense heat b : strikingly bright, radiant, or clear c : marked by brilliance especially of expression
I noticed that description. I used to think these narcissist expressions were some kind of overcompensation for the actual facts of their history or the history they presented as powerless victims, but now I think the zionist in particular really do believe this. That all worthwhile accomplishments in the world have been theirs or somehow’ sprung from them’. I guess if you want to believe something and repeat it often enough to yourself you do eventually believe it.
It’s the fatal flaw of zionism imo.
a question that zionists of whatever religious persuasion must ask themselves is whether, despite its threat to life on earth, a nuclear armed israel is something that’s truly in their interest? for those who answer yes, have they really considered the full implications of a u.s. backed israeli war upon iran en route to wwiii, not to mention a subsequent blowback against such a calamity’s instigators, so many of whom the public recognizes as being jewish? what possible value & meaning, after all, a jewish state in a world devoid of human beings?
“This is the historical error of Zionism. No one community can depend only upon itself. That’s crazy. It won’t work. World opinion is simply too significant a force in all our lives today. We are interdependent.”
Straw man and inaccurate. Zionism doesn’t posit that Jews can only depend on themselves. It posits that Jews should not be in a position where they are solely dependent on others for the security and well-being. No one would say that Israel is totally alone in the world, but Jews have a right to some control over their own destiny, rather than being at the mercy of history.
Nothing about modern Israel suggests that Israel doesn’t understand interdependence. Its economy is global, much of its population is cosmopolitan and its values are largely Western values. It contributes to our interdependent world in myriad ways; nowhere more evidence than in its high-tech industry.
Israel has long made all kinds of contribution to the world at large. But the best way to ensure that it contributes even more is to support the two-state solution in particular and in general support the idea that Jews can no longer be at the mercy of history as they were for many centuries.
but isnt that what marty said, hop?
“but isnt that what marty said, hop/”
No. Marty said only that Jews can’t count on America to have its back, and he said it in the context of security. You ran with it and took it to mean that Israel is positing that it should depend on no one. It’s quite clear from Israel’s economy and from basic common sense that Israel does not operate that way.
Israel can’t depend on other countries to have its back. It’s a matter of geopolitics as much as anything. It’s got to be as self-sufficient as possible. There’s nothing wrong with self-sufficiency as a goal, particularly in a place with few natural resources. It’s admirable, not crazy.
Isn’t the irony of this that Israel has become totally dependent on the support of the United States — not just financially and militarily, but psychologically?
It’s striking. Whatever starts buzzing around here is immediately snapped up in Israel. She’s definitely a dependency — not so much in the traditional political sense, but more in the more general sense of relying on us completely.
US support cancelled, it’s difficult to visualize Israel lasting for more than five years.
For us of course, that implies we bear responsibility for every crime Israel commits. For Israel though, obviously the loss of US support would be the end just as surely as it was the end for any court Jew if he lost the affection of his master.
With Israel, the Jews have gotten exactly nowhere. All they’ve managed to do is to morally degrade themselves. They are riding high, wide, and handsome — for exactly so long as we say, and not one minute longer.
‘…and in general support the idea that Jews can no longer be at the mercy of history as they were for many centuries…’
This ignores the fact that generally, everyone is ‘at the mercy of history.’ The Russians had the Tartar Yoke. Iran was depopulated by the Mongols. Africans were shipped off to the New World as slaves. Most of the Northern European seaboard was depopulated by the Vikings. The Spaniards went from being a majority-Muslim society to being an exclusively Christian one.
Etc, etc, etc. The whole planet is a museum of abandoned cities, forgotten peoples, fallen empires. The Zionists are ‘just’ demanding what no one has ever had. And why should anyone give them this?
“This ignores the fact that generally, everyone is ‘at the mercy of history.’ ”
Oh, of course everyone is at the mercy of history. But I know of no people who volunteered to become extinct. Nations try to the extent that they can to control their own destiny. For centuries, Jews were at the mercy of Christians and to a lesser extent, Muslims, and the promises of the Enlightenment turned out not to be fulfilled. You cannot say that Jews did not try to live solely as a Diaspora people before the idea of a modern Jewish state came along. It was a conclusion we arrived at only after a lot of horror.
Nothing about modern Israel suggests that Israel doesn’t understand interdependence. Its economy is global, much of its population is cosmopolitan and its values are largely Western values.
To the extent that Israel has values, these are not Western. While the West cherishes integration, Israel’s housing minister is on record saying that Jews and Arabs are “populations that should not mix” — something unthinkable in a Western country. While Western nations strive to achieve equality among all citizens, Israel values its Jewish citizens more than it does its Arab citizens. While the West tends to abolish religious interference in civil affairs, Israel leaves key aspects of a person’s life, such as marriage, inheritance and burial, in the hands of religious authorities. While in the West anti-gay discourse is increasingly taboo, Israel’s minister of the interior calls gays sick people without hardly an eyebrow being raised. While in the West no religious leader would survive after delivering a hateful sermon, in Israel 300+ religious figures have called on their followers not to rent houses to Arabs, and the State keeps paying their salaries. While in the West any form of segregation is anathema, Israel has gender-segregated buses.
Of course, an overwhelming majority of Israelis reject all these things. But the minority that lobbies for them (i.e. the ultra-Orthodox) enjoy the status of guardians of the nation’s identity, and impose its Arab-, woman- and gay-hating values on the rest of the population. This is abnormal and quite non-Western.
Marty Peretz said:
“I believe that Mr. Obama does exhibit a certain disdain for the Jewish state—an indifference to and ignorance of the incandescence of Jewish history. ”
Interpretation:
“I believe Mr. Obama does exhibit a certain disdain for the Jewish state—an indifference to and ignorance of the *specialness* of Jewish history.”
Special special special, boy that idea sure comes up alot with these folks like Peretz. Our history is special, ergo we’re special, ergo anyone regarding us as non-special and just like everyone else is by definition exhibiting disdain for our state and an indifference and ignorance of our specialness….
Special special special. In the most important (moral) way. But not in any negative way whatsoever, no no no; that’s anti-semitism.
The two (and only two) steps in the modern dance.
“ergo anyone regarding us as non-special and just like everyone else is by definition exhibiting disdain for our state and an indifference and ignorance of our specialness…. ”
But we want the same rights as everyone else.
an interesting article about the Munich job on Israel in 1972
Plus ca change. The Palestinians took hostages to secure the release of 234 prisoners .
link to guardian.co.uk