Salon has a conversation with the late Gore Vidal (conducted between ’88 and ’07). An excerpt:
Jon Wiener: On the Jewish question, your article “The Empire Lovers Strike Back” in The Nation offended many people. Podhoretz says to Vidal, “To me the Civil War is as remote and as irrelevant as the War of the Roses.” Vidal writes, “I realized then that he was not planning to become an ‘assimilated American,’ rather, his first loyalty would always be to Israel.”
Gore Vidal: Let’s look it up. What I wrote is always shaded this way and that way in order to change the meaning. It’s been so shaded now that I am supposed to have said that all Jews are Fifth Columnists. Now here’s the exact sentence: “‘Well, to me,’ said Poddy, ‘the Civil War is as remote and irrelevant as the War of the Roses.’ I realized then that he was not planning to become an ‘assimilated American,’ to use the old-fashioned terminology, but, rather, his first loyalty would always be to Israel. Yet he admits that they ought to remain among us in order to make propaganda to raise money for Israel, a country they don’t seem eager to live in. Jewish joke circa 1900: A Zionist is a someone who wants to ship other people off to Palestine.”
I had this out with my old friend Norman Lear, who said “you can’t say ‘assimilated.’” I said, “Come on, you started People for the American Way. Well, which are you? If you’re not going to be an ‘assimilated’ American, then what are you? Are you an Israeli who happens to be living here?”
My argument is only weak at one point: What on earth does Vidal care about nationality? I hate the nation-state. What am I doing saying you’ve got to be either a good American or a good Israeli, but you can’t be both? Why not to hell with both of them? That would demolish my argument.
But no Jew can do that, at least none who like Israel, because they have to protect this peculiar little state. So, instead of hitting me where I really am weak, they get hung up and try to talk about anti-Semitism. Which has nothing to do with it.
Wiener: But you’re also talking here about a historical consciousness of the American past, which is increasingly rare.
That may have to do with my age and class and background, but you can’t expect me not to be.
Wiener: American historians understand why the Civil War is the key to our history, but I suspect that most 20th century immigrants — Italians or Poles, or more recently, Asian or Mexican immigrants — have the same feeling that the Civil War is as remote for them as the War of the Roses.
You’re absolutely right. But look at the context of my essay: The Podhoretzes are giving out marks for Americanism. They write about me, “He doesn’t like his country.” That’s the standard neocon line about all liberals. “Well, one thing is clear in all this muddle, writes Midge [Decter], adrift in her tautological sea, “Mr. Vidal does not like his country.” They talk about me not liking my country, but they have no interest in the Civil War — or, I suspect, in the United States except as Israel’s financier.
[Excerpted from “I Told You So: Gore Vidal Talks Politics. Interviews with Jon Wiener.” Forthcoming in November 2012, by OR Books.]
P.S. Thanks to Annie Robbins for that excerpt. It’s interesting to me that the dual loyalty idea simply won’t go away and is actually becoming part of the conversation. Because the problem is inherent in Zionism; and even leftwingers become Americanists on the subject, as Vidal did, and I do. Norman Finkelstein made this point on Saturday at the New School. He said that most American Jews will run from Israel when, say, Netanyahu summons them to loyalty lest they be accused of dual loyalty. But implicitly he is saying that some American Jews do feel dual loyalty. Just look at Sheldon Adelson’s comments on wanting to serve in the Israeli army or Patriots owner Robert Kraft’s late wife saying she wanted her son to serve for Israel or Eric Alterman saying that he feels dual loyalty.
A Zionist is a part-time American at best. Imagine that some have the nerve to run for office, doing what they can for Israel, and having the audacity to desribe those with whom they disagree as anti-American.
I am a zionist and a full time American. I love the United States. The charge of dual loyalty against Jews did not begin with the creation of the state of Israel, Gore Vidal, or assorted Straussian neocon whack jobs, and it will not end with Norman Finkelstein or the end of Israel.
biorabbi,
1. Towards which nation do you feel the stronger loyalty — the United States or Israel?
2. With which nation would you side if the United States and Israel went to war against one another?
3. What would you define as the core differences between Americanism and Zionism?
4. Would you have questioned the loyalty of German Americans who proclaimed themselves to be German nationalists in the 1930s?
5. Do you have a problem with Israelis receiving preferential treatment over Americans in the expenditure of American tax dollars?
6. Do you see much evidence that many Americans are indulging in narrow ethnic nationalism for their respective ethnic groups and ancestral nations? How often is Irish, Italian, German, Swedish, Chinese or Japanese ethnic nationalism a topic of controversy on the op-ed pages of the New York Times, Washington Post or Wall Street Journal?
“The charge of dual loyalty against Jews did not begin with the creation of the state of Israel,”
I see what you did there…. The old charge of dual loyalty and the charge that zionists have a dual loyalty issue concerning israel are not the same thing. At all.
biorabbi says: “I am a zionist and a full time American. I love the United States. The charge of dual loyalty against Jews did not begin with the creation of the state of Israel, Gore Vidal, or assorted Straussian neocon whack jobs, and it will not end with Norman Finkelstein or the end of Israel.”
However, while one could say that the accusation lacked any validity before the creation of Israel, and will lose any validity after the end of Israel, it all too often is valid for so long as Israel is in existence, does define herself as the Jewish state, and is completely dependent on the support of the United States.
We have had minorities from many nations. However, there has never been a nation as utterly dependent upon US support as Israel, and so long as that remains the case, anyone who identifies with her is vulnerable to the charge of dual loyalty — and for good reason. It creates a conflict. The interests of the United States and of Israel do not coincide.
“The charge of dual loyalty against Jews did not begin with the creation of the state of Israel …”
So what? The important question is whether the charge is ever justified.
wouldnt “a Zionist” live in Palestine, like say Abba Eban, who gave up a glittering Oxbridge (double first) gilded career to live in Israel, how so a zionist?
” It’s interesting to me that the dual loyalty idea simply won’t go away and is actually becoming part of the conversation. Because the problem is inherent in Zionism”….phil
It’s not ever going to go away because dual, or really total, loyalty to Israel it is a fact for uber zionist.
The only thing that is going to discredit them and throw them out of any influence in US gov or politics is a overwhelming public accusation of disloyalty that reaches all the way to affecting any politicians that support them and Israel.
No one can call the Israel centric US government we are living in now anything but the height of Orwellian insanity. People in the know know exactly what is going on with US zionist and our government, they just have to start describing it for what it is.
Been saying and saying we need new definitions of treason, or if not new legal definitions of treason, then new laws dealing with domestic foreign interest groups and politicians.
Or even enforcing old laws like registering as foreign lobbys or lobbist would be a start.
It’s funny how so many of these Israel Firsters always dredge up Italian-Americans or Polish-Americans. Or how they harp on the oh, so powerful “Arab Lobby” whenever they get criticized.
Yes, there were a lot of immigrants but most assimilated. Asians/non-Western immigrants post-1965 is another story because in the last few decades you’ve had overwhelmingly non-Western immigration which has in effect turned America’s credo from assimilation to multiculturalism(or a ‘salad bowl’). I view that not as a choice but a natural consequence.
But I don’t fault those immigrants, because the people who came to America post-1965 were too different, not just from the natives, but from each other too, to be made into such a coherent group as you could with the previous waves as it was almost only European immigrants who came(even if identities back then were far sharper between Europeans, as you can see in modern crisis-struck Europe today).
But what excuse do the Podhoretzes and people like them have? They are Ashkenazi Jews. Anti-Semitism is since long gone and remember, back in the 1950s there was a much crueller anti-black sentiment, or the ugly rumors spread about JFK that he would be more loyal to the pope than to the American people etc etc.
‘Yellow Peril’, anyone?
Racism was not unilaterally directed against one group and many groups suffered. Yet, Ashkenazi Jews like myself can blend in far easier than most, and our ancestry comes from Europe, not from far-away Asia, which makes it much easier to connect culturally.
So no, his Israeli Firster mentality isn’t the product of Otherness or of accident. It’s by design.
What was it that Norman Podhoretz said back in the 1970s to that Congressional magazine? “American Jews support a higher military budget to protect Israel”.
Of course, see his arrogance on display already back then.
He and his fellow neocons took it upon themselves to explain to everyone – including to most American Jews – which Jews think and ought to think.
Oh, by the way. Here’s a quote people should remember.
Coming from Larry Wilkerson, Colin Powell’s former chief of staff:
Source:
link to motherjones.com
Question: who are these people in Cheney’s and Rumsfeld office who, supposedly, work “beneath” them, but according to Wilkerson acted outside the confines of the government with their seperate plan?
In a later interview, he added:
And Bob Woodward latched on to this too, in his book “Plan of Attack” (page 292) when he reported about Colin Powell:
There were more than those three, of course, and Powell probably earned a lot of hate for his Gestapo comment, given that he knew what was going on, that this was a Jewish group working for their own interests.
It is here that things become dangerous, because just as Norman Podhoretz talked on behalf of the Jews, so did these people act on behalf of what they perceived to be Jewish interests.
That most Jews disagreed with their wars didn’t concern them, and even if they never were that outspoken about their aims, people around them aren’t idiots. They can connect the dots, like Powell and Wilkerson and others did.
They saw what was going on. This is why Powell used sarcastic remarks as ‘Gestapo office’ or remarked about the ‘JINSA crowd’.
Hundreds of thousands died in a war the neocons lobbied very, very hard for. In the early days, people thought Iran was next. Powell’s powerlessness, his sudden understanding how empty the promise of ‘public service’ can become where there is, as he put it, “a government within a government” must have deeply troubled him as he viewed blood being spilled.
I mean, of course people are going to connect the dots.
In a sense, the book “The Israel Lobby” was inevitable. It was no longer possible to pretend the elephant in the room was not there.
And that is why the thesis have been gaining so much ground since its publication; people know it is true. Just read the independent accounts of the Bush years and keep an ear close enough to the ground these days to hear the faint whispers of the influence of the neocons, AIPAC and others in pushing for war with Iran.
I think it is for this reason MJ Rosenberg and others have got engaged. If there is no challenge to these folks, if they are allowed to act and speak for all Jews(by implicit approval from major organizations like the AJC, ADL, Conference of Presidents etc), then of course anti-Semitism is going to increase.
It isn’t just bad policy for America. It’s bad for the Jews too.
It’s bad for everyone.
“Jewish joke circa 1900: A Zionist is a someone who wants to ship other people off to Palestine.” Hophmi is over 112 years old?
The entire dual-loyalty question is easily dispensed with. Jews have been such good citizens of the US, done so much for it, that they have the right to special treatment in these matters. Why, they give the US 100% and have loyalty for Israel left over!
A challenge to those who are convinced that the Second Persian Gulf War (2012-present) was forced on the US by the Israel Firsters (Wolfowitz, Feith, Libby & other neocons):
There was also First Persian Gulf War (1991-2). Some of the same people were involved: Colin Powell, a (different) George Bush, Dick Cheney. Yet nobody claims that the Israel Lobby was behind the First Persian Gulf war. In fact, President George H. W. Bush (Bush 41) had a famously frosty relationship with American Jews.
And what about the dozens of invasions of Latin American countries by the US?
My conclusion:
there really is (of course) an Israel Lobby. And they were clamoring for war. But the Israel Lobby didn’t act alone. The US is perfectly capable of invading other counties, with a long track record stretching back at least to the 1898 Spanish-American War, in which the US seized Puerto Rico, Cuba, and the Philippines from Spain. Many of these invasions occurred before there was an independent Israel.
I’m confused.
Is the CEO of BIG-BANK a dual-loyalist if he spends his money and his bank’s money lobbying for less regulation and lower taxes for banks? I would not say so.
However, if he says that there SHOULD NOT be any daylight between BIG-BANK’s policies and the USA government’s policies, he is trying to define MY loyalty, not merely to state his own, and I will resist.
And if AIPAC or Obama or Romney or the rest tell me that there IS NO DAYLIGHT between USA and Israel on foreign policy, war, defense, etc., then they are trying to TELL the American people what our priorities are (instead of ASKING us politely what we want), and that is wrong.
I want the USA and Israel to comply with international laws of war and human rights. The USA SHOULD (so I would say, but I say it politely, and I listen to the response) SUPPORT RULE OF LAW. And therefore Israel should be compelled to remove all 722,000 settlers, demolish all settlements and the wall, etc. I think this is in the USA’s interest in peace, justice, etc., and in no way contrary to our (less legitimate) imperial policies in favor of capitalism, trade, etc.
Just sayin’.
PABELMONT- You raise an interesting point regarding ‘loyalty’ and transnational corporations. While some folks object mightily to Zionists exhibiting loyalty to two states, it should be pointed out that many of our nation’s dominant elite exhibit loyalty to no state, rather, their loyalty is to a transnational corporate empire that transcends nation states, and in which money-power (capital) flows freely across borders controlling societies around the globe. Ah, an excuse to provide a link to the introduction to “The Evil Axis of Finance,” by Richard Westra: link to dissidentvoice.org
i think the whole dual loyalty/antisemitism thing is a red herring. feelings of dual loyalties are as normal as loving both your parents when they disagree.
you can be both unless the countries are in conflict which is precisely why the ‘no daylight’ rule exists. look at debbie wasserman, who could ever accuse her of not being loyal to her ‘homeland’ link to hadassahmagazine.org
in my mind, either you accept that for many jewish they have dual loyalties or you succumb to denial. but targeting people whose perceptions naturally follow to a logical conclusion (in the face of unprecedented evidence) and labeling them as antisemitic is ridiculous! i’ve always felt like this. and the illogical explanation? because in the past some jews were wrongly charged with accusations of dual loyalty.
dual loyalty should not be considered a dirty term, it should be acknowledged as a natural state of being for people who grow up learning to be loyal to two nations. when you fly both flags you are demonstrating dual loyalty. that goes for michelle bachmann as well as a variety of jewish americans. it’s fair game so accept it.
that’s what walt and mearsheimer say, and louis brandeis says. And they’re sophisticated. i dont know if i can go there, though. I think sometimes national interests conflict; which is why Israel Firsters had such resonance…
for clarification when i said “it’s fair game so accept it.” i meant it’s fair game to call it dual loyalty.
I think sometimes national interests conflict
i think they conflict too but facts are facts. if you’re raised to love someone or some place that love doesn’t up and disappear when there’s a schism.
everyone is different and should be judged accordingly in terms of how their loyalty manifests itself. but denying a loyalty exists, when clearly it does for many, is just silly. if it exists, it’s something we have to accept instead of accusing the observer of racism. i never learned about how forbidden the concept was until i used to post at dkos. it’s outrageously opposed and punished, even mentioning it.
one more thing, i think there is a difference between dual loyalties and israel firsters. israel firsters put israel first, that’s different and insinuates a hierarchy within the loyalties favoring israel. those people shouldn’t be accusing us of antisemitism when they clearly put israel’s interests before that of the US. like this:
link to mondoweiss.net
deferring to israel is wrong and in instances treasonous.
Annie,
Regarding dual loyalty:
There is an enormous difference between feeling affection for one’s ancestral nation — its geography, customs, culture, etc. — and belonging to an ethno-religious nationalist movement organized around the interests of a foreign nation.
Regarding matters of national security and the national interest, citizens of any nation are understandably expected to feel a single loyalty to that nation, without any qualifications.