Total number of comments: 3 (since 2010-02-26 22:12:05)
eugnid
experience and language skill in Hebrew and Arabic provide me with a picture of Mideast very different from that in US media. It seems to me that 90% of Americans don't care, 5% Zionist and 5% pro-Arab. The latter 10% prefers to kill the messenger rather than face the truth. As a result I've had to interrupt my life quite often to go to the region to see things for what they are. Having made many deep friendships on all sides, one fears more for people than for ideologies in Mideast. My goal continues to be a HAPPY peace for all peoples of the Mideast.
One should, I would think, distinguish the Zionist cloak worn by American Jews whose entire existence from embryonic life to cantankerous old age is as American as apple pie.... as in the case of Dershowitz-- one of the 70% of World Jewry for whom Israel is a nice place to visit but not to live-- from that worn by a true Sabra or a self-directed olim. As a model lawyer Dershowitz practices shysterism, wherein the lawyer knows not the truth but finesses the facts as much as needed to get his client off. That's a lawyer's professional oath: EVERYTHING FOR THE CLIENT! This he has done over and over again for his client, the right wing of the Zionist movement, with dedication. Given someone for whom hasbara is a professional deformation, one should not make much of it when he applies it for Israel. Afterall, how little of a Zionist he is personally can be judged by how little of himself he has invested in Israel.
It is much the same with many older Diaspora Jews. The Zionists used the Holocaust to build a great guilt club of American Jews, hitting the "parasitic" Jews they can't convince to join the Great Aliyah. They speak of Israel invoking guilt (of Palestine in deceptive hyperboles) asuaged by fulfillment of that gnawing obligation. Theyremind of the courageous "pilgrimages to the land of our forefathers"-- something many of them know next to nothing about; but what wrong is there in distorting and disembling as "scholarship" on behalf of the true causeto: HASBARA!
Perhaps that is why Israelis so impatiently say to Diasporic Jews that question them: "you owe us, you chicken heart parasites, so go back to your country and send in the gelt to appease your guilt.....but don't ever tell us what to do!
There were Zionist founding fathers for whom Israel was to be an enlightened land where Jews bring their Arab cousins into modernity, making Israel "a light onto the [Arab] nations." But by now Israel has gotten fat, greedy, secular and with a sense of history that begins, not in God's 7 days, but in 1948. Israelis are too used to the American dole, the German reparations and the Diasporic guilt gelt. These Sabras fought for Israel's survival and expansion and they want royalties from Jews trying to use Zionism as elevator shoes.
At a Jewish dinner party in NY, where an Israeli figure of sorts was the honored guest, he flicked the long rod of lit ash from his cigarette on the floor, burning the white carpet a bit. Unflapped by the home owner running to put out the cigarette burn, he said: "What's this you Americans don't bring us ashtrays anymore?" The host tried to take it good stride. But clearly, the room filled with an air of discomfort as all those Jews who had come to honor this Sabra wondered: have we come to the point where they're such holy can-do-no-wrong saints and we're mere servants desperate to please?
Zionism is a threatened but, nevertheless, ongoing profession. And professional Zionists feel that in these times when real jobs are hard to find, a bit a hyperbolic genuflection is not too much to do to assure such a low stress job. And so, the hasbara blows up even bigger.
In politie Diasporic Jewish society all this is taken in stride. The college professors who author Judeo-Zionist books like diarrhea do so because they know that there are no standards; publication is a sure thing if you're honing of that "line" is right. Every Diasporic writer is trying to outdo his/her follow such Ziophilic writers, knowing that there's a shallow bottom to what you can say but, literally, the sky's the limit for hasbara in favor of the Zionist project.
None of that is real, none of that is bound by intellectual or moral strictures. Yet, what really makes it possible is that everyone understands that no one will ever pay attention to it-- many will buy, none will really read. Only Palestinian authors will quote these hyperboles....and then Zionists can always say that they're quoting out of context or that, in the best of cases, "you just don't understand," as if we "dumb goyim" are too stupid to grasp the enormous complexity of Israel.
Zionism does not reflect a moral deterioration in Judiasm, however. To the contrary, Jews may be the moral pillars that hold up what's left of Western Culture. But Zionism has tuned out to be AN INDUSTRY meant to fog up the reality that more Jews are leaving the "Promised Land" after graduating from Israel's wonderful universities than are coming in. SO ISRAEL IS GROWING WHILE ISRAELIS IS SHRINKING! Diaspora Jews are basic to the fabric of the West where they were born rather than to the Mideast. Hence, anyone can say anything because it really doesn't matter anymore. The truth is a bitter plant sweetened with gooey hasbara. The Iran issue just may bring everyone back face to face with reality (maybe not all those Israeli honchos with multiple passports in their pockets and bank accounts abroad). But then the Iranians nuclear soldiers are just as much an illusion as the Israeli ones, so we'll get a lot of huffs and puffs but not much dealing with the real issue. That real issue is simply: for the Arab Spring to succeeds it needs Israel's leadership and guidance in achieving modernity. Arabs know this as they watch how Palestinians prepare for a Palestinian state by making carbon copy cities and institutions to those of Israel. Only with a true drive to modernity can peace really be at hand.
A recent poll found that 70% of Americans do NOT consider Israel an ally. Indeed, there are signs that many American Jews also feel that way-- their primary allegiance being to their homeland, USA. This was in large part due to the way the neocons identified American interests with Israeli desires. So twisted was the presentation that many Americans came to feel that Israel is not a cooperative ally but an exploiter of the allegiances it enjoys in America. Jewish critics of Zionism were labeled as "self-hating Jews" and the many that the neocons ridicule as "dumb goyim" were declared "anti-Semites" for criticizing Israel. The neocons have not only demonstrated that Israel is their only not-for-hire issue, but also that their raison d'etre is argued in terms of "Jewish interests" rather than American ones. Their careers as "public intellectuals were funded by CIA, then military-industrial complex and now by rabid Zionists. Their mainhead publication, COMMENTARY, is a Jewish publication.
So the issue is not that Siegel called Lasn an anti-Semite because he really thought him so for connecting neocons to Zionism, but because he knows which side of the bread is buttered on NPR, a dying liberal entity depending for funds on a conservative Congress. The 100 Senators vote for Iran censure mentioned herein, despite the raised oil cost risk to Americans, suggests that intense pro-Israel programming and commentary is how NPR hopes to survive financially.
Mosr Diaspora Jews are loyal citizens of their native nations. More Israelis are emigrating than Diasporics immigrating. As a result, the radical Zionists are desperately fomenting anti-Semitism in the Diaspora because they deeply believe that without TOTAL Jewish aliyah, Israel can neither expand to "Greater Israel"-- far "greater" than what it is now-- nor survive. Zionism is an idea that needs serious and responsible discussion, not slanderous "self-hating Jew" insults such as non-Zionists confront at the hands of secular neocons whom themselves live in the West, not in Israel. The "DUAL" passports of Israeli leaders is quite worrisome from the point of view of most Israelis with no where else to go but the Israel homeland where they were born. Dialogue now is the only solution unless Zionists seek to turn Diaspora Jews against Israel.