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.
” 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.
“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.