Last week, in serving the rightwing Jewish elements of its constituency, Open Zion ran a really nutty piece by Andrew Apostolou opposing intermarriage, “because it undermines Jewish identity and so weakens the Jewish people.” The Jewish people means the Jewish nation:
This is bad for American Jews and bad for Israel. The Jewish state needs a vibrant and viable Diaspora—as a partner and source of immigration. That relationship is endangered when the largest Jewish denomination in the U.S. enables assimilation.
The piece identified this expert on Jewish marriage as “a historian of the Sephardic Jews of Greece.”
But Apostolou’s main resume item is being an Iran hawk at the federally-funded thinktank Freedom House— where he had the ear of congress to push his anti-Iran agenda. There he teamed up with rightwing Josh Block to advocate for regime change in Iran, with hints that we should go to war there:
The administration’s initial policy was an attempt “to test Iran and give Iran a chance to say we are serious about talking about our nuclear regime, and I think the Iranian response was loud and clear that [Iran was] not serous,” Apostolou said. “What are you supposed to do, after 30 years … the same thing?
From the Freedom House bio:
Andrew Apostolou is the Director for Iran at Freedom House, America’s leading human rights and democracy promotion organization. Apostolou leads programs that assist Iranian dissidents and human rights activists as they seek to organize and protect Iranians from the abuses of the Islamic Republic. He has testified to Congress about Iranian regime human rights abuses, has provided training to Iranian activists, and has published widely on Iran and the Middle East. Apostolou also co-chairs Beyond Sanctions: the Next Iran Strategy, a joint Iran policy task force with Josh Block, Senior Fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute….
He has also been a Postgraduate Fellow at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a Visiting Fellow at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. His research on the Holocaust has been published in leading peer reviewed journals. Apostolou also sits on the board of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington.
To its credit, Open Zion has also published a piece by Sarah Posner characterizing Apostolou’s intermarriage piece as an “ugly tirade.”
Sarah Posner may have called it an “ugly tirade” and an “embarrassment” but truth be told, if Apostolou wrote a piece decrying racial intermarriage between whites and blacks , I have no doubt that her response would be much harsher.
I know this because Posner has condemned, rightfully so, the Mormon Church’s past ban on blacks in the priesthood. In fact, in a piece for Salon, she called for Romney to be held to account and be compelled to explain the past racist practices of the LDS church. But when you think about it, is such a racial restriction fundamentally any different than requiring rabbis to be Jews by birth? Why is one race-based religion inherently illegitimate and another race-based religion just fine, as long as it maintains a very slightly ajar door for the odd convert?
Iran is only deemed “serious” about negotiations when it agrees to capitulate to US/Israeli demands, in their eyes.
You’re incorrect. Converts may become rabbis.
Too bad Posner can’t put the same bright interrogation lights onto Judaism; her site if filled every day with the ridiculousness of other religions, and yet here she says she is also one of the “faithful.” That means she believes stuff on zero evidence, which means she believes in wishful thinking, which means…….well, you know where I’m going with this. And she’s gonna criticize someone else for their beliefs?
To me, this is all a good thing – the more people bend religion to their liking, the more it becomes irrelevant.
The Federally funded Freedom House should not be confused with ngos.