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The fact that the Clintons are very close to a guy like Jack Rosen is a big argument against voting for Hillary. She'll go to the right of Obama, who himself admits that he has governed like a Rockefeller Republican.
And Anthony Weiner, you might recall, himself claimed that he was in the 'ZOA Wing of the Democratic party'.
The ZOA is somewhat to the right of the Irgun gang on matters concerning Zionism.
Is this a key reason why Rosen, who is probably not far off the same position, supports Weiner?
But as you say, journalists used to be told to 'follow the money' but apparently that rule is anti-Semitic in some cases.
Touché.
Another key difference now from years past: mainstream academic organizations like the Association for Asian-American Studies(AAAS) taking a pro-boycott stance or academics like Stephen Hawking.
University of California at Berkeley's student senate voted for boycott too and their student chairmain refused to veto the bill(which they did just last year I think).
So these are mainstream universities, organizations and famous public intellectuals.
Give it 5 more years and we'll really start to see some stuff happening.
I'm glad to see this article here at Mondoweiss.
The exclusion of non-white Jewish voices has a long and ugly history - and it is happening as of this day.
Massad makes fair points about many of the inherent white supremacist ideas and ideals that the Ashkenazi of Europe brought with them as cultural baggage, some of them very enthusiastically like the founders of the facist Irgun gang - which in a normal Western country would be filled with people for prison but in Israel apparently is a breeding place for prime ministers. Go figure.
But that story isn't the only story. The white Jews of Europe decided to supercede the Jews of the Middle East, allocate them to shanty towns and tell them that their culture is inferior.
Today, Israel's Jewish population is about 55-60% non-white although this is slightly decreasing since the Haredim are mostly Ashkenazi and their birth rate is enormous.
Yet at the very top, it's all white men. Look at the business tycoons, who runs the banks, the media. And so on. Purely white Jews. There hasn't been a single non-Ashkenazi prime minister of Israel thus far. Netanyahu's cabinet is also almost entirely made up of white Jews.
This same exclusion continues in America, where most non-Jews don't even know that there are non-white Jews, and for good reason. How many of the major Jewish community organizations have non-white leaders? Zero.
The contemporary exclusion is mirrored in the exclusion in history. I'd very much would appreciate if we could get more Sephardi and Mizrahi voices on this site. I hope this isn't a one-off.
NPR is closer to the Weekly Standard on matters Israel than it is with The Nation.
There's so many people like Abramson at NPR who have been there forever and keep spewing their Zionist bile.
I bet he thinks he's doing 'Tikkun Olam' too, holding the line in the left etc.
Disgusting.
But the crime here is not what happens in this reporter's mind and his cultural milieu; it's that it is getting broadcast all over America.
You're correct, of course. It was a long time since the ADL was relevant.
I look at these two fossils and can not help anything but a slight sigh.
They are debating the world as the world is devouring their understanding of it.
ToivoS wrote:
Well, they have a production facility in Israel but they also have a strong research center, in large part because one of their chiefs in charge of research is an Israeli Jew and a committed Zionist and made sure they got it. In addition, their Dadi Perlmutter, yet another Jewish Zionist (but this guy is from America) was supportive of this all along.
Nevertheless, the next cadence step for Intel is being made by Ireland at 14 nm. Israel really wants the 10 nm cadence because if they don't, they'll slip to irrelevancy. My guess is that the economics do not make sense plus that Israel does not have the high-tech human capital it claims. Ireland can tape whole of Europe, Israel can't.
America will get at least part of the 10 nm manufacturing process, Ireland probably should get the other half but in Intel there's political lobbying too, just like in Congress ;)
We'll see what happens, but no, the main research centres in Intel by far and away are located in America.
This is good news. How will people deflect this away? Even Google is getting radical, comparatively speaking on SV-standards, now this. Although a bit of searching around the web reveals that Hawking has had this position for several years and hasn't acted on it in a big way until now. Hopefully we can write about it more thoroughly - to avoid being defined by the inevitable smear-campaign as an "anti-Semite".
Berkeley, Oberlin, now this. Things are moving up quite a bit. It seems the academic side of BDS is doing better than the economic one, for now. It was similar in the case of South Africa where the cultural opposition formed first and the economic one followed. And it was the cultural part that was more crucial against the Apartheid regime, especially at sporting events where there was immense national pride at rugby and cricket games and being socially ostracized for the racism at those events made sure that the civilian population couldn't escape the judgement of the world.
Since Israelis are not great at sport, but prominent in academia, this may be an even better tactic than against apartheid South Africa. But it's going to be a slugfest. Israel have many, many reactionary supporters among the ranks of faculty, university administrators, deans and especially the donor class that universities are dependent upon. Therefore it will be much more difficult, but I'm hopeful.
I'm frankly astounded by the ignorance of some of the replies but this takes the cake:
Re-read what I wrote. I was mocking the notion of 'humanitarian intervention'. I also explicitly stated:
"And only white liberals – yet again – can advocate an invasion so carelessly of a country most of them have never visited."
What I wrote was simple: I fail to see the outrage that Israel bombed a military target where the casualties were military targets.
Bombing Assad does not mean bombing the entire country. It means striking at his military installations, and particularly those engaged in the production of chemical weapons - to be used against their own population.
As for Israel, I noted I do not see Israel's action as either moral or immoral. I stated simply that they are cold-hearted rational actions.
To read what I wrote as somekind of endorsement of massive intervention on 'humanitarian grounds' - when I mocked that notion alltogether and drew a direct link to Iraq means that some of you are truly in a bubble where there are only two sides - and nothing in-between.
And as for the comment about Israel being a creation of European colonialists - I agree. But what does that have to do with anything? I'd favor an international U.N. force in Israel to broker a true peace because we all know America won't be able to do it's job. But in the meantime, why should I defend a monstrous dictator like Assad - who gasses his own people?
But is Assad a good guy? I don't see why Israel isn't in it's right to bomb Assad back to the dark ages.
Phil, this wasn't a cast lead. The injured people were soldiers in a brutal crackdown on their own people, these people are complicit. Secondly, it was a military research facility - most likely which carried out tests with chemical weapons to be used on civilians.
Israel acts in it's national interest - does it want Hezbollah to have chemical weapons? This isn't a moral question, but strictly about cold-hearted realism.
But all of this does not mean that invading Syria is a good idea. Bill Keller was delusional when he said that Syria is different than Iraq - it's very much like Iraq. In fact, it's even worse than Iraq because it's basically a hotpotch of a nation, created by European colonialists (like so many places in the Middle East) without regard to the cultural or ethnic diversity of the region.
Syria is a bunch of bad options. The rebels are dominated by jihadist elements and al-Qaida(supposedly 'decimated' according to Obama...) increasingly plays a leading role.
Noam Chomsky likes to say that America has a long tradition of supporting Islamists and similar extremists in the Middle East - and he's right. But that doesn't mean it's a good habit. Because the rebels in this case are as bad if not worse than Assad.
Just like Egypt. We praised the Arab spring but many on the left refused to listen to the caution by those who saw the Muslim brotherhood for the demented reactionaries that they are. Sexual assaults on women are way up after they have won and Christians are even more harrassed and brutally attacked than ever.
The thing with these Islamists revolutionaries is that while they praise democracy so that they can get to power, you're never sure of the next election. A lesson Iranian dissidents, many of whom took up arms with Islamists in the '79 revolution, learned too well and promptly fled the nation in droves.
Only white liberals - safe in their couches in their advanced Western democracies - can afford to gloss over these issues.
And only white liberals - yet again - can advocate an invasion so carelessly of a country most of them have never visited.
So I do share your disdain of the liberal establishment but I do not share the outrage of Israel's actions.
And at any rate, involvement in foreign affairs tend to give substantial blowback. Remember that Osama was radicalized by U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia?
Ironically enough, this interventionist impulse isn't conservative but actually leftist/liberal in it's origin, emanating from the French revolution, then being taken up by Trotsky and his Marxist friends in their call for the worldwide revolution. According to them, foreign powers would have a right to intervene on political grounds to save a 'country from itself' and 'liberate the people'.
This is the same exact rhetoric we've heard from neo'conservatives'. Many of whom have their roots in Jewish milieu of New York Marxism around the 1940s and 1950s.
This reminds me of a recent brouhaha that emerged in the wake of new bank notes for the Canadian dollar. The Bank of Canada had a polling group that they tested various images on and tried to measure their response in intelligent ways.
One such image, an Asian woman at a microscope, was reacted to strongly because it "played into ethnic stereotypes". The solution, according to the panel, was a more 'neutral' image.
They settled for a white woman - doing the same exact thing. And the new bank notes themselves also ended up with nothing but white people on them.
It should be noted that 11% of Canada's population is Asian, twice that of ours. So they're not a minor group; they're by far and away the largest minority group in Canada. Oh, and that's based on numbers from the 2006 Census, and Canada has a net-migration rate per capita which is two to three times higher than America and is much more dominated by Asians.
So the actual numbers today are probably quite a bit higher.
"Neutral" in the minds of many Canadians, obviously, is the white default. Many the same for many Ashkenazi Jews in Israel for what a typical(or 'neutral') Israeli looks like?
Liu is a corrupt fish. Maybe they all are, but he blows them out of the park. His donator scandals just keep piling up.
Liu knows what strings to play, because he is in 4th place. Quinn will most likely win, so she will keep Kelly on. If Liu had won, he would most likely too. He can afford to be a radical because he has no way out.
But the notion of him being a moral exemplar is laughable.
Again, we see the Asian students coming forth big time, particularly South Asian. The Latino associations, too. But where are the black student unions on this issue? I had the same question last time, during the historic Berkeley decision.
Indifference or is something else at play?
Also, another thing on the Asian angle. The motion given to the American Asian Studies Association was being created by a South Asian and pushed by, initially, by the South Asian caucus within that group.
And on the Berkeley vote, about half of the senators were of East Asian descent. All but one voted for Israel.
And here too, the South Asian groups rallied behind the efforts but no East Asian groups are seen.
Hmm.
There's definitely been a pop culture shift. From Colbert, to these TV series, to the SNL skit(sadly only online on Youtube and never aired).
Now, in Israel, the far-right is saying, we will block the budget unless you fund the settlements by a maximum amount. Remember when Yesh Atid was going to change everything?
The drumbeat will only get louder.
"I really don’t think the Israel lobby people have that much to worry about- Americans know the Cuban expat population in southern Florida controls American policy with Cuba but that doesn’t necessarily correlate to anti Cuban American sentiment."
The whole Cuban thing is overplayed. It's almost always brought up in the existance of Israel lobby-discussions which immediately makes me suspicious. It's just like Pastor Hagee has been turned into this monolithical political force when in reality he's really week and meek and just follows wherever AIPAC wants him to go(for PR reasons).
Another thing that bugged me was the whole Florida angle that Veep went with. In this sense, House of Cards were far more couragous and frankly more truthful.
When people are being hounded by the Israel lobby, Florida isn't on their mind, their political survival is.
My thoughts, too. Many of these screenwriters are most likely Jewish or move in heavily Jewish circles. When Bibi is the prime minister for so long, it's probably hard for them not to get alienated.
At this point, the main use of Beinart is to act as the 'safe critic' for scared old Jews like The Dersh who gets nervous whenever he sees a brown person who isn't on a stage singing music or on a sports field.
Much like the white liberal Jewish establishment tolerates "The Gatekeepers" because the people coming forward are white old men who are all Zionists.
5 Broken cameras is the voice of the dispossessed brown people under the boot of the occupier, which is much more threatening. The same dynamic plays out here.
The Dersh cannot really sink any lower, so that's not what I am that concerned with. What I am surprised by is the extent to which Beinart will sink to indulge in the racist fantasies of people like Dershowitz where no Palestinians (or for that matter anti-Zionist Jews or just plain gentile liberals) are allowed.
History is passing both of these gentlemen by.
If the Republican base complains about electing candidates they view as too far to the left, the Democratic sin is that we elect a bunch of Rockefeller Republicans.
Malley isn't progressive. Neither is Hillary Clinton and Obama's liberal creds are a joke. Sandberg is a billionare from Silicon Valley who's more in touch of the venture capitalist crowd than she is with the working class. The Democratic primary for '16 is already shaping up to be a disaster. Cuomo, of course, is super close to Wall St.
Basically, anyone who will fight for the progressive caucus' budget is a winner in my book. That's why I want Warren to run. She's over 60 after all and I don't think voters punish people who have been in the senate a short time anymore.
We just don't have many progressives in the party establishment.
It gets published because these people are white and live in a country many consider to be a Western country. In short: they are us.
Those foreign brown people dying are just weird so let's not focus on them, at all.
Feinberg is a mensch. He's misguided in his genteel Zionism, but he does that because he is a communitarian. Still, I remember him often refusing to brand critics of Israel as anti-Semites and often works as a calming balm on the idiots and the fanatics.
He's also not an Israel Firster, like many of his peers are.
I think we've been critical of NPR on this site for a long time - and for damned good reasons, too.
Updike's report is a welcome addition, but it's still only an abberation from a long-standing bias. Most of their foreign policy journalists are old, Jewish white men who are Zionists. One of them even volunteered to interview Lieberman(!) when he was in D.C. and smiled with him when Lieberman made a joke. That's how bad it is.
Exactly my thoughts, too. I personally think he was for it, but remember, if he is student president today he probably has political ambitions for the future. So he wants to hedge his bets. Nevertheless, if he thinks ahead 15-20 years, I'm guessing he doesn't think that you'll have to be in lockstep with Zionism as a liberal politician the same way it used to be.
He proved in his statement/action why he rose to the top in the first place. But as you said, the ultimate outcome is what we want, and if I may speculate a little, probably also the outcome he wants too.
This is in line with increased activism among Asian-Americans. No longer content with the model minority strait-jacket(excel at technical and scientific endeavours, but please do not disturb the power dynamics in our country. Be our doctor or engineer, but don't be our president or that dynamic activist organizing people in universities).
Well, that old order is crumbling apart. More and more Asians are going into humanities and are less and less stereotypical. Simply, less submissive, more activist.
This means questioning things like, hold on, why are we allied with a state that would hate me because of my skin color and my non-Jewishness? That doesn't make any sense!
Considering the brutal treatment of black people in Israel, Jewish or not(but especially non-black Jews), I'm surprised that the black academic organizations have not done this before. That Asians got there ahead of them, I think, speaks great things about Asians and it also demolishes the myth of the 'passive Asian'. Let's hope they don't rescind this or crumble under the pressure of the Israel lobby(and this would most likely go through organizations like the ADL, AJC etc instead of AIPAC).
Good catch! Yes, Israeli racism runs deep. Don't forget who white-ruled South Africa's best friend was during the entire Apartheid era!
Right, but most of those supporters, I'm talking those with a conviction, are right-wing Christian evangelicals. How many white gentile liberals actually support Israel with a conviction? The Jacobin piece is essentially a way to colonize the left, as CitizenC described. It's also a way for Jacobin's resident Zionists of the left, most of them eiuther Jewish or trying to curry favor with the New York media establishment(which is heavily Jewish/Zionist), to try to pry a way for Zionism to be included. It's essentially Hasbara. It's an age-old question: can you rise to the top of an American prestige publication without supporting Zionism of some kind? I've yet to become pursuaded that you can and this propaganda piece underlines that.
I just hope Jacobin doesn't end up like a more leftist version of the New Republic. Where we condemn all kinds of nationalisms, except the Jewish supremacism one that brutally occupies 4 million people. It's the whole "shoot-and-cry" tactic all over again. Make a bunch of concern-trolling noises but ultimately you support the racism and the apartheid. That isn't what a left-wing paper should do. But again, Zionism/tribalism is strong with this one.
The main problem with the Europe is that it is ruled by a bunch of idiots. From their economic policies to their foreign policy.
Also, Europe is basically America's puppy. Whatever America does, Europe follows(but much more meekly).
This is why it's following America's lead on I/P but, again, much more meekly.
You're right, but as C&D pointed out, that's way too subtle for the general mass to know. They just don't pick those things up. And I'm not even sure the Elvis Costella thing was related to Israel at all.
The Oren interview was great, I think, because it was more direct than usual. But nevertheless, there's definitely toeing of the party line that's extremely excessive.
But how progressive are those guys anyway? It's mostly conventional wisdom in the Democratic party, which isn't the same as being progressive. Remember, Jon Stewart himself famously dissed Occupied Wall St. I think Phil did a post about it and showed a photograph of his massive McMansion, just for perspective.
Touché.
But Colbert doesn't dare to go there.
There's a self-perpetuation, though. So I read about this guy Ryan Kavanaugh. He sounds Irish and if you look at his Wiki page he look Irish too. I googled him because I was looking at the films his company co-produced and thought to myself "hang on, these are major films. He's an important guy". Turns out he was at an ADL dinner honoring him where he explained that Jews have too few babies, he went on in a right-wing rant about Israel and generally came across as a younger Sheldon Adelson(although without the open Republican tilt, more 'Centrist' which doesn't say a lot on these issues).
And I thought to myself, well, does it help being Jewish in a town where 17 out of the 20 heads of the largest movie studios are Jewish? I would guess so. And what about that quarter of U.S. billionaires, look at Wall St. Steve Cohen, Einhorn, Loeb, Icahn, Ackman and many other Wall St billionares and hedge fund guys. They all donate to Israel.
I think this segment of fanatic support to Israel has to be explained in terms of "why is the U.S. establishment, and hence the population, so one-sided in the conflict?". But guys like Weinstein at Gawker doesn't want to talk about it(yet he still does!).
I'm guessing Weinstein is probably secretly proud of it, but is afraid of confirming stereotypes so he wants people to know it - and then immediately tries to admonish them for knowing it.
Nevertheless, this information is actually pretty important when you look at the donors behind the pro-Israel lobby as well as the donor pressure typically occuring against universities and the like whenever Israel comes up for debate. It matters.
Ah, the classic "it won't matter" defence of Apartheid. Where we have seen that before...
SPLC is a Zionist organization, however. ADL has supported tons of bigoted/pro-Apartheid policies throughout the years and never gotten listed. And then you have more extremist organizations like ZOA who have proposed pretty draconian/fascistic policies against muslims in Western countries(let alone what they want in I/P) but that doesn't get coverage.
Only the most crazed individuals like Pamela Geller get listed. But my point is: they're not a reliable source on Israel/Palestine issues, they're Zionist and biased.
I wonder, can this bill be vetoed in any way? The UC Chancellor was pressured by the donor/alumni community to overtly take the sides of the human rights abuser. Most of these bills have either been non-binding or shot down after the fact they've been voted through. You can't trust the right-wing racists, they'll throw themselves on the train tracks on behalf of Jewish apartheid. So I assume they will go above and beyond to destroy this from happening. So does anyone know if we're indeed home safe now or is there any way to gut it henceforth?
I agree with the broad thrust of Phil's observation in general, but I do think that in this instance it's sort of an overreach. Nevertheless, there are many examples, all of them far more crystalized, of actual bias/double standards.
There's so much win in your post, Donald, that it feels unfair to pick out a single paragraph. But if I had to do it, I'd pick this one.
What Millman is writing about is essentially the level of racism that has gone unchecked in the Jewish community and Israel is the fault line that reveals the pathology.
I mean, there's always been this tension between the way we perceive ourselves and how we actually behave. A good example is after MLK's death. The lore is that we fought on the barricades on civil rights issues(many of our community did, but it was still not a widespread phenomenom) but then the vast majority of Jews fled to the white suburbs along with other embittered whites. No racial sympathy or loyalty in our own personal lives with African-Americans. Better have them at an arm's length to morally grandstand our WASPish neighbour(who we secretly desire to live next to).
Another example is the entire career of Matt Weiner. Here is a classic liberal Jew, who came of age in Hollywood. Yet if you look at Man Men his portrayal of PoC is nonexistent. The defence is "well those were the times" but my crazy conspiracy theory is perhaps he enjoys working with whites/wasps a lot more than black/brown people. If you look at his previous work, it isn't a crazy thought. But by going back in time, you can deflect the kind of acusations that are inevitably levied against you like Lena Dunham had to face.
But these domestic cultural issues are complicated and there's no sure-fire way to prove one thing or another. Israel is another story. And there the racism can be laid bare, nakedly, which is why Millman's story is so striking.
But the competing narratives being fought in the background of young Jews is nothing new. We're told we're liberal but we're also told dating outside of our narrow little group is not only wrong but maybe even treasonous. Yet at the same time, would not a vast majority of us condemn a white neighbour for instructing his daughters to only date white? To have both of these belief systems in your head, one for us, one of them, requires a certain level of shizophrenia or it helps if you're an actual racist and just want to pretend in front of others that you're not.
Bingo. We have a winner.
The only thing I'd quibble with is the 'benefit' part. Sure, some of them benefit if they make or think of making aliyah but many are just blindly motivated by race.
They're not liberals. End of story. The Apartheid government in SA didn't have the benefit of having so many ardent supporters in the media or in the higher ranks of the editors.
Nope, you're wrong. She lobbied(or rather put in good words) for the 2003 invasion. That she was at that time effectively mentally disabled didn't seem to bother those who gladly took her help.
This is why the modern neocon movement loved her. She also not only backed - but actively lobbied for! - the 2003 Iraq disaster.
Strip away benefits for poor and vulnerable people, give massive tax cuts to corporations, take a pro-war militarist stance and basically give a free hand to the worst Jewish supremacists out there. If she had been asked to pose with the fundamentalists in Hebron she would have done it.
Then again, Thatcher was also crumming along with Saddam and other dictators. But that was way back when it was cool(in the 1980s). This also shows the total intellectual bankcruptcy of the neocon movement. They use democracy as a smokescreen for ultierior purposes just like they used gays and women as a facade when it was all about Israel re: Hagel hearings.
It's also a generational issue. He came of age with the 1967 war as a defining moment in his relationship to Israel. His generation were also much more comfortable with blunt ethnocentrism. These days, the older generation have to weasel the thinking in to the younger secular crowd.
It clashes with all else we're brought up to believe. It was easier for his generation. Whenever someone said, but this isn't very liberal, it was not hard to just say "the Holocaust" or point to very real anti-Semitism in the 1960s. Today? It's a lot harder. Who believes that there could be a Holocaust breaking out soon? Well, 3000 Jews who immigrate to Israel from America annually. But that's a very small number.
Incidentially, 2800 Israelis(who are distinct from Palestinians in the Canadian immigration stats) immigrate to Canada alone - a much smaller country population-wise, obvisously - each year. The vast majority of those are Jewish. I think that says a lot about the attractiveness of Israel in the Jewish world today.
It's a fantasy, a pet project. The young, educated people who live there, leave.
The Silvers of today is Ehrenreich. And what he grew up with was seeing encroaching Apartheid. From day one.
For his generation, the defining moment was the 2009 war, not the 1967.
That's the Israel they/we know.
I didn't even know about this!!
Where is the MSM on this issue? Oh, that's right, they will never ask such a question. Like, "why isn't Israel joining the WMD-free agreement?". The answer, of course, is that Israel wants to be the only nation with nukes. And it rather goes to war to prevent another nation getting one instead of aboloshing nukes in the region alltogether.
I think it's a very revealing character trait of Obama that the first thing he thinks about, his visceral instinct, is; "what will other people say?" (In this case Huffington Post).
Not - "is it right?" but "what will other people say?". Truly scary that this guy is still seen as a genuine and committed liberal by some after repeated attempts to sell out the farm for fire-sale prices. We have only the extremism of the modern GOP to thank for that Obama has thus far been stopped in his tracks. Obama is only turning left for campaigns. Then he dumps his base time after time, yet people never learn.
Obama's always had narcisssitic tendencies, something the left has chosen to overlook many times. His speech at the first Asian-American Senator from Hawaii who passed away a few months ago was really a long speech about himself. His "oceans will stop rising if you elect me" was the height of megalomania.
Krugman has it right when he says that Obama's latest sellout on the budget is not based on compromise(even if that's how the WH is trying to sell all the sellouts from Obama) but rather, as Krugman says, an attempt to win praise from 'centrist media pundits'.
Obama has essentially governed as a moderate Republican, a point he himself has made many times. Even Obamacare isn't really his own plan. It's Romneycare. And Romneycare is based on a 1988 Hertiage Foundation draft intended for the incoming Bush administration.
I just hope the grassroots have more sense to ignore the same media pundits that Obama was never able to do(because of his inflated ego) and nominate a real liberal in the primaries, and that means no Clinton and no Sandberg. Bernie Sanders may be too old(?), but what about Keith Ellison? I'd love to see Elizabeth Warren.
But whoever it is, isn't it time we're done with the Clinton centrists and the moderate Republicans? People who don't reverse the tide to the right but merely stem it somewhat.
The last guy is the hope, but he's also the kind of person to be attacked as a 'self-hating Jew' for his liberal values - the kind of values that are actually liberal and not just conventional.
It means that the only way to be complete is to be a racist, if you're giladg.
Of course, we all know it's the other way 'round. But poor gil will never understand.
It's a lecture to Jews. She masquerades it by involving other religions but the focus is clearly on Jews, because she brings up the big hammer at the very end. She has to claim she is "for it" but of course, she isn't. She's totally concerntrolling.
The vibe she's giving is that she regrets intermarrying, perhaps even marrying interracially. The entire tone reminds me of the whole "shoot and cry" linguistic we're all so familliar with in the liberal Zionist discourse.
'Liberal' Jews who cough, and excuse and apologize before finally getting down to the racist beliefs they hold. And putting in three different kinds of caveats and rationalizations why their racism isn't "really" racism - but it is.
This change is also seen in the way Israel is portrayed in popular culture. From Cobert's destruction of Ambassador Oren, to the SNL skit about Hagel and the Israel Lobby, to Bill Maher's quip that based on what he saw in the Hagel hearings, you'd be forgiven for thinking Israel owns Congress to the Netflix series House of Cards which played the Israel lobby angle very strongly.
All these things happened within a timespan of maybe 2-3 months, in 2013.
And let's not forget the glasnost we've seen in the last 2-3 years. Ehrenreich's article in the NYT magazine wasn't even possible three years ago.
Well, both. The so-called "screening laws" keep Jewish blacks out of white communities. And may god have mercy on your soul if you are gentile AND black. You will be attacked and spat upon after being forcibly put in a detention center and then deported.
A light unto the nations, you know.
Many excellent responses here. I think Khalidi is motivated by a desire of acceptance into the mainstream plus as others have suggested too much of a clinging to a classical marxist analysis.
The best argument for the overwhelming power of the Israeli lobby is the last 20 years; it has been clearly in the U.S. interest to take a dispassionate stance. But Bill Kristol and his friends have been busy purging the GOP of "WASP Arabists" (his words). The entire neocon takeover was all about 7srael and still is. And how does he explain PNAC and its influence for initiating the Iraq war?
Khalidi is no fool so this is cowardice.
Fish knows the battle is lost. After all, how can he expect young Jews to hold their gentile neighbours in contempt for insisting that their children only marry white if they're white themselves(as if this happens at any significant rate anymore!) and then hold a completely different standard for themselves and accept uncritically that their grandma is right when she says only Jews are allowed?
You can never hold these two beliefs, one racist and one liberal, at the same time for any longer duration of time without being a racist or a hypocrite. It's why these bigots have been losing the battle for decades and will continue to do so.
The intermarriage rate in New York City for secular Jews is now 55%. This includes 2nd marriages too, but even first marriages are up(they're at 35%). And besides, many Jewish men have children in second marriages anyway.
This debate mirrors the debate on Zionism. Jews are being taught that white nationalism is bad but Jewish nationalism is good. And then they're given a bunch of qualifiers. Who can say the same thing with a straight face in 2013 who isn't a racist? That's why Zionism is going out of favour. Shock people! Turns out ethnic nationalism is terrible no matter who practices is in the long run. Democracy based on blood is no democracy. It's Jim Crow.
And no, Israel within 67 lines is no full democracy. Arabs within that line are not allowed to marry who they want(other arabs from outside the borders) unlike Israeli Jews who can marry Americans Jews if they want to.
Once again, young Jews are asked to have one set of racist standards for themselves and then judge gentiles by liberal standards. Can't and won't last.
Speaking about student activism on campus...
link to haaretz.com
"One of Canada's largest student associations endorses BDS against apartheid".
Maybe. Although I still think Fein's letter was better crafted than most of the claptrap you hear from the liberal Zionists. He is basically understanding that his childhood dream is slowly being crumbled before his eyes. I do not think he will ever quite let it go, even to the end. For purely selfish reasons, he will likely keep working in the Americans for Peace Now, no matter how hopeless the situation will be.
It's more to do with maintaining a level of personal sanity. On some levle, he probably understands that the dream is over. But to admit it fully would to have his dream crashing down.
I think he's not alone in that mindset. If you've been growing up with a central idea for all your life and you're past 50 years old, you just don't give up on it.
Haaretz seems to be writing an article on every single time there's a mention of Israel on either Colbert's or Stewart's show. Then the immediate tone is "is this is how the conversation is shifting?". They obviously see those two shows as ímportant for the cultural/political debate in America. It's as if "if we lose Colbert/Stewart WE HAVE LOST AMERICA" - and maybe they're right. Still, it's a bit funny how anxious they are.
P.S. Is it just me or has Jon Stewart gone a lot more ethnic these past 12-18 months? A helluva lot more Jewish jokes. I remember watching in 2009-2010 and 2011 and there was a lot less of that.
I'm glad that he does. Americans get to see another side of Judaism than the usual "Israel, Israel and Israel". And young Jewish viewers do too.
Clever.
Well he's bringing out trolls like you. That's a big negative.
Very good investigative piece.
Part of me say, however, that Christian culture is so dominant that I don't mind if minority cultures/religions get covered disproportionally on NPR.
However - and this is a big if - if that's mainly Jews and nobody else then that's racism. I mean, as you said, Muslims get covered mostly in news reports that are about wars, violence or terrorism. Hardly very balanced. Also, notice the complete lack of coverage of Buddhism.
I don't think this is conscious racism. It's just a subconscious and latent racism by NPR's numerous Jews. Don't forget, NPR was just a year ago a completely all-white news organization without a single black employee when Juan Williams was fired.
So racism is a problem there. And apparently not just skin-color related racism but cultural racism too.
This also underscores the lack of awareness inside the Jewish community, I'm talking about intra-Jewish racism. In the Western world we'd like to think of ourselves as enlightened, and whatever racism exists is concentrated in Israel (for which we are quick to rationalize by the "tough neighbourhood", "trauma" or some other bullshit explanation).
But many are not even aware that 20-25% of the Jewish population inside the U.S. is non-white. And that share is probably higher among the secular population, especially among younger Jews.
I have friends, black friends, who discussed dating with their girlfriends. When their girlfriends, also Jewish but white, blurted out various proposals (but what about him!?) it was invariably other black Jews. It's as if a black Jew can only date another black Jew in these white Jews' imagination.
I've also been a prime witness to overt racism. I've seen young (and drunk) white Jews at parties openly question if the Jew of Color sitting across from them "is really Jewish". What they're basically saying, you can't be non-white and Jewish.
And look at the institutional Jewish world. How many hispanic, asian or black Jews do you see? They exist. Even Sephardic Jews are notoriously poorly represented, except in some corners of the Haredim.
These things correlate. There is a white-based racism inside the Jewish community and a general myopia externally, as exemplified by the findings in your article.
She's both.
Okay, even if we take this (very charitable) interpretation on it's face-value and accept it, it still means little as he also compared, as you said, his daughters to young people in a society which is incredibly racist.
Remember all those polls that showed young Israeli Jews favoring to abolish democracy just a year ago? Those people didn't change in an instant because they saw Obama whisk through for three days.
I also think Obama knows this, so why is he comparing his daughters to the society that produces that kind of filth? He's a coward. He just is.
And as David Bromwich added on your frontpage story, he basically endorsed blood-and-soil nationalism of the old-European kind. That's what Zionism is(a few Ethiopians for tokenism none-withstanding, now the remaining African Jews can hardly get in anymore and those who are already there are shunted aside inside Israel).
Would Obama support a blood-and-soil white nationalist movement in America? Would he declare himself a 'friend' of such a concept? Well, no, but that's because there isn't a strong donor base for that concept.
I'm only half-joking.
"I think it's usually 2 steps forward and 3 steps back at the Times."
It depends on what subject we're talking about. They have, like most of the liberal establishment, become vehemently anti-union for example.
But when it comes to Israel, it's more like 2 steps forward, 1 step back. If you compare their coverage today with even five years ago, it is no comparison. To even publish his piece was very daring, as was Joseph Levine's article on questioning the very nature of a specifically Jewish state, which is the kind of old-European blood-and-soil nationalism that we were supposed to be moving from.
But I don't think anyone can accuse the NYT of bravery. They are seeing the situation in Israel deteriorate and are going by the path of least resistance in their changing coverage, but it is changing.
These people make me proud. The UC system is on the frontlines, which the Israel lobby knows, it has even dispatched several spin-offs to deal specifically with the UC system. Yudof has come under pressure from donors and bigshots to never yield an inch. What we'll get so far is basically resolutions which should be obvious, but most of them are non-binding statements.
I think the ever-increasing role of money in higher education cannot be overlooked. University presidents are increasingly becomming primarily chosen for their fundraising capabilities. Back in the 1970s and even the 1980s, college was much more afforable. It was easier to buck the donors.
Poor Hophmi. Once again he thinks the world revolves around him.
Who were the leading voices in the American media at the time? I believe it was zealots like Berman, Goldberg, Chait, Remnick, Friedman (and let's not forget Beinart, the list goes on) and many other liberal Jews who on domestic policy are strongly against the Republican party but who broke bread with Krauthammer, Kristol and others on Iraq.
We've discussed this on this site many times, how liberal Jews created an informal media alliance with neocons, many of the leading ones Jewish too, when it came to matters foreign policy in the Middle East and especially Israel.
The George Packers of the world merely saw where the wind was blowing and since they have no basic principles (and are always looking over their shoulders when it comes to their jobs) just went along. They weren't the movers and the shakers, merely the enforcers of the social pecking order.
It's still early to talk about Israel in the mainstream media in this context in an open fashion.
While I do think oil was a key concern too(but more from the business community/military-industrial complex etc), Israel was a prime mover in many of these prominent journalist's opinions.
It's hard to fathom that most liberal Zionists supported the war for oil. And this is never asked. If it wasn't for oil, was Israel a concern? Many will avoid the topic, because they know they're vulnerable.
Walt/Mearsheimer touched upon this - which was one of their great crimes in the eyes of these people - they did write that while Israel wasn't the only concern, it was a necessary pillar in the motivation to go to war for many of these 'liberals'.
I think this was one of the most underreported reasons why they faced the firestorm they did face. It wasn't just AIPAC. A lot of prominent liberal Jewish journalists knew by the time of 2005-2007 that Iraq had gone to hell and many also knew that Israel was a prime motivation for them supporting the war - and now tons of Americans and Iraqi civilians were dying in a brutal and endless malaise.
And then Walt/Mearsheimer came out and called these people out on it. Remember; the Israel lobby isn't only institutions like AIPAC. It's a "loose coalition" including people in the media. Jeff Goldberg knows he's part of that coalition. And while that coalition is indeed loose(see the current disagreements about Israel's direction) back then it was very solid.
So Walt/Mearsheimer's book was also a direct and personal blow to many of these people, which is part of the reason why the reaction to it became so visceral.
Had Walt/Mearsheimer been more timid, and only focused on AIPAC, for example, I think they would have gotten away easier. But then didn't. They knew/know that the media had a key role for Iraq as well as for the ongoing support for Israel(even NPR is right-wing on Israel!).
And in the midst of all this, you look at the neocons, their liberal friends, and it's a ton of Jews. Of course it's an uncomfortable conversation to have for them. Why was Israel such a primary concern for them? It raises inevitable questions about dual loyalty, did you support a war for Israel but which was going to be paid for by American blood and treasure?
That is, ultimately, the implication here. And that's why they went ballistic on Walt/Mearsheimer. Even if they were never that direct, people understood that was the inevitable terminal to arrive at, which is, as I mentioned before, one of the reasons why the media went so nuts against them both. AIPAC is powerful but it isn't that powerful. The media onslaught contained more components.
Seconded, well done Alex.
Eisner is a notorious Zionist and racist. She's the kind of person who worries about "keeping the bloodline pure".
The Forward as a paper is split. You have genuine liberals like Nathan Jaffay or several of their women feminists. And then you have thuggish nationalists like Eisner or Guttman, who's constantly seeing anti-Semitism behind every corner.
Remember the paper has still not forgiven Walt/Mearsheimer for their book. Even today! We're not talking about gentle "we disagree" but about hysterical pronouncements of murderious anti-Semitism. How dare they not support our version of violent ethnic nationalism! How dare they!
That speaks volumes about their 'liberal' inclinations.
His sister is a disaster, though (Rosa Brooks). She's a Zionist but her feminism keeps getting her to attack the state, saying she wouldn't want to live there(duh! most fervent U.S. Zionists would never want to move to Israel, what else is new?) but then goes on to blame Palestinians for their oppression.
As for Phil's question... If we're to believe the people who have done studies on the topic, most young Jews who are estranged from Zionism are also, to some extent, estranged from Judaism. Therefore, it's hard to make a case that most Jews are actively choosing to distance themselves from Israel, rather than a function of their general detatchment. And since Jewish organizations have gone all-in on Israel in the last 20 years, if you're not into Jewish community stuff, you're bound to be disengaged on Israel too. They've become so interwoven, at least in the secular community, it's one and the same now.
I think a more important question is what young, smart liberals(regardless of race or creed) think of Israel now. Haaretz published a piece on Harvard students being uncomfortable with Israel, and the journalist, a Jewish Harvard grad himself, was greatly worried.
But is that concern valid? Most young and smart liberals I know of just avoid the topic or are just generally uncomfortable with Israel. It doesn't have that halo it used to have, but it's not like South Africa in the 1980s. There's far too much pushback for that. And liberal gentile whites also found it a lot easier to attack white gentiles in Africa, than white Jews in Israel. For whatever reason.
Heh, similar.
Also, Phil, I wish you're right but you're wrong. The "speak to the people" is Obama's hail mary pass at trying to shake the last dying gasps of liberalism from a population that boosted Yair Lapid, a man who launched his 'diplomatic' efforts from Ariel (the settlement deep in the West Bank).
And that's the 'center'. The minister responsible for housing will be a settler.
This is the government the Israeli people elected. Obama knows it's finished. He's looking only at the history books now. The leaders will never do anything. So he wants to go down as the President who "warned the Israelis before it was too late".
But Obama will wash it all off his hands. Whenever someone will ask him post-Presidency what about the I/P conflict he'll say, you know I tried in my first term. That went to hell(read: I needed those donations from Jews in Long Island!), so I went to Israel and talked directly to the people.
Then add a bunch of bromides about how it's "all up to the people", but Obama has given up. He doesn't have anything to do with it. It's a photo-op trip.
Obama, ever conscious of his place in history, is more concerned with how things will be written about than solving the conflict. In less than 2 years he'll be a lame duck anyway.
Maybe he'll launch something the last year in his presidency like Bush to give the illusion of a peace process but 2016 won't be 2007/2008. Things have progressed too far by then. Which Obama is cynically aware of.
Remember, last time they had that conference, a large chunch of the audience(which was about 30% Orthodox) booed Obama when he was mentioned, prompting Dershowitz to rise from his chair and lecture them, which just prompted more boos.
I wonder what we'll see this time. In New York, 70% of all new Jewish children are born to Orthodox mothers. This is New York Jewry's future, and they'll be the ones who will carry support for Israel in 20 years from now.
Austin, your review of Beinart's book is still the best I've read so far - at any place. I just hope you'll get to write here more often, as this article is an example of that.
And speaking towards the topic... I'm curiously wondering why these "liberal Zionist concern trolls" as some of my friends like to call them fail to remember Jim Crow? African-Americans in the South were never in the majority in any of the places and no serious demographer was projecting that they were going to be either(at least in a 50-year timeframe or so).
Yet just because whites were winning the demographic race there(in the 1930s, the black share of the population of some of the Southern states was far lower than it was during the 1980s, for instance), never meant that they could get away with atrocities, atrocities that actually pale in comparison(pun unintended) when compared to SA whites and even more so when compared against white Jews in Israel.
Whoever is going to have a majority in 20 years isn't relevant. But for some reason, it continues to be. Everyone keeps saying "well when Israeli Jews are a minority then it's over". But if Israeli Jews don't become a minority - through a combination of ethnic cleansing, redlining and various ways to count out the Palestininans - what then? Everything's fine?
Everyone keeps waiting for these demographic turning points, without saying why we should accept those arguments when the brutal suffering is going on right now, en masse.
'Naive'?
This guy is a lunatic. He blames Obama for his 'lack of an emotional connection'.
Oh gosh! I wonder why? Maybe because you have open incitement against black people in Israel, calling them a 'cancer on our body', you have interior ministers declaring that "Israel belongs to us, the white man", you have a strong, and increasingly stronger, Apartheid system in place.
And Obama, a man acutely aware of racial disparities, is supposed to ignore the Palestinians all-together? He's a coward enough for ignoring the entire situation.
I'm reminded of Eli Valley's brilliant cartoon, seen here:
link to 972mag.com
Miller has the same mindset.
I liked McConnell's reply more. While nobody in America, or outside of it, would say that America is a totalitarian society, our debate on Israel used to be, but that is changing. Nonetheless, even now, you're mostly allowed to concern troll from a 'liberal' Zionist perspective.
Genuine liberals, like say the editors of this site, Max Blumenthal or various Palestinian intellectuals are still not given a seat at a table(literally, if you're talking about J Street).
Criticism of Israel must still be couched in "I support Zionism but here's how I'd improve it". Instead of, basically "you guys, ethnic nationalism sucks. It's racism. I don't support racism and no real liberal I know would either". But that's still branded as 'anti-Semitism' when talked about in a context of Israel. Some nutjobs will even state, completely seriously, that if someone says that, like any liberal, then you "want to eliminate Israel"(and some even hint at another Holocaust).
So this kind of hysteria and out-and-out smearing of anyone critical of Zionism in the mainstream is bereft of a totalitarian system. America, when it comes to Zionism, is sort of like Soviet Union in the early 80s. Things are getting better but we still have a years to go before we are finally freed. (Also, let's hope that we won't get somekind of 'shock doctrine' while we're at it).
Yes, Colbert says that. In a way that only Colbert can get away with. He's a genius.
This reminds me of a brilliant talk by Glenn Greenwald on the rule of law, which is really that and much more where he recounts how he became radicalized. Oren's reply, which basically amounts to "I'm all for free speech but.." is a good example of what Greenwald discussed while he was speaking at Yale recently.
I wonder if Oren, if he had the power, would censure the film or even stop it being made if he could. Judging by the tone of his rage, it's seems pretty obvious that he would.
People like him are dangerous.
Harris-Perry is an Obama supporter first and a liberal second.
If Obama is at odds with Israel, she is critical(to the extent she can without her career at risk, which means she's mildly and vaguely critical).
If Obama was all chumming up with Israel she'd be on the frontlines denouncing the "anti-Semites" out there daring to criticize Apartheid.
In many ways, she's the embodiment of MSNBC. She's only interesting in the sense that she's a reliable weatherwane. She isn't a trailblazer like Chris Hayes, who's far braver (and much more intellectual) on Israel.
I still wish MSNBC stopped being an arm of the Democratic party and begun operating as independently progressive.
And that showed during the segment. Two Zionists, one Palestinian and one awkard Irish guy who was totally out of place, who bent over backwards to appease the Zionists. Also, the host kept quoting people like ultra-nationalist and ex-Kahane activist Jeff Goldberg as some sort of liberal North Star.
MSNBC in a nutshell.
P.S., on a slightly unrelated note. I've thought about affirmative action and I'm kind of divided. I still see value for it for African-Americans and poor Latinos. But even then, I'd be careful to look at class too. It makes no sense to give a rich black girl preference over a poor Asian kid raised by immigrant parents who work round-the-clock shifts in some kitchen in Brooklyn.
Or a poor white kid from rural Kentucky for that matter.
Well said. Only in the racist lens of Israeli society can a guy like that be described like a 'liberal'. He's not.
Asians on campus don't complain because
1) They've been told that the reason why they are left out is either due to affirmative action to NAMs(non-Asian minorities) or "those WASPs" which, if we're talking about the latter, I think we both can agree upon is a myth which is mostly spread by older Jews who are uncomfortable with the political implications of Jewish, well, arrival into the halls of power.
2) They just don't know. This is slowly changing. Again, read Unz's analytical piece. It's not flawless but it is a very intellectual attempt to get into the heart of the matter.
3) Unz's conclusions is that Asians would be around 30% of all Ivy League students. More so in California because they are over 10% of the population there, instead of around 5.5% nationally(and among those 5.5% you have groups like Hmong and others which are doing very poorly and are disadvantaged in numerous ways).
4) WASPs would essentially be around 60% and Jews would only a few percentage points, perhaps 5 or 6%. The rest would be NAMs.
5) There's a good article in the NYT which explains the background to this, how some of the most gifted students are being kept out of the Ivy League and buried into several paragraphs down, it's boils down to race:
link to nytimes.com
70% of poor, high-achieving students are white. I think a majority of them are non-Jewish(Jewish median income is very, very high and considering the de facto quotas for Jews(not against them), it's simply hard to believe that most of those whites are a bunch of discriminated Jews).
15% are Asian. That means that 85% of the gifted poor are either white or Asian(and most likely overwhelmingly WASP/Asian). So why is this? Racial politics.
In fact, the Times' have been slowly waging a steady and silent campaign against affirmative action in the recent year. There's a new Op-Ed today, without any balance on the other side(quote remarkable for a liberal newspaper), which essentially agrees with conservative supreme court judges. Leonhardt, their chief economic correspondant together with Appelbaum, has already written negatively about affirmative action.
There's a deep racial discrimination going on. And your defensiveness about it doesn't help. But maybe I'm old fashioned. I would've been against quotas when Jews were disproportionally affected. And I'm against them now, when we are benefitting.
But maybe your ethnic chauvinism gets in the way of being as fair and universal no matter who benefits or not.
The Forward editor, I'm guessing you're thinking about Jane Eisner, is a pretty crazy woman. Her defining trait is to take something really racist and then say, basically, I'm okay with that. But what about the [Jewish] women?.
That's why she was all over the place when those women from America got arrested at the wailing wall. Yet she's been silent at best on Palestinians, often directly mocking them.
Recently she made a (typical) scare-mongering article about the need to, and I'm paraphrasing a recent MSNBC commentator here, "boost the race" before it is too late.
She acknowledged that the language she was going to use in her article "may come across as bigoted and racist to some" but then she went on and did it anyway.
My long-winded point? Eisner is a thuggish racist. Eisner isn't representative.
I'm not sure. I think that is Jewish paranoia.
And what is there to whisper about? That Jews are successful? Not exactly a new story.
What is worth whispering about, however, is the fact that Jews continue to receive affirmative action in places like the Ivy League, actually far greater than actual needing minorities like African-Americans or hispanics when you look at the proportion, and more so than Asians or working-class white gentiles.
And that is a legacy of privilege. I think we discussed this on this site a few days ago. There was a comment about a segment on NPR where an Asian women professor raised this issue, however gently, that Jews are essentially 'taking' the place of Asians when you look at actual Jewish SAT scores etc(which have plunged from the mid 1990s).
And she made the point, Jews used to criticize, and with good reason, opaque explanations like 'leadership skills' because it was possible to discriminate on race in the 1920s and onwards against Jews, which the WASP establishment did.
But I don't think this is common knowledge. Right now it's mostly public intellectuals and laymen like myself and apparently Asian women professors who talk about this.
And finally, most of Jewish success, if not all of it, is well-earned. It's concentrated into older hands, who rose during an actual meritocracy, or what was close to one at least. Their children and grand-children? Not so sure.
I know I'm going to get hate for this but honestly, I don't think they should be pimping their daughters death like this.
It's one thing to be engaged on the isuses, and it's pretty understandable that they are passionate on the issue on which Rachel's life was - literally - sacrificed for, but her death should be dignified. Instead of being trotted out in this cynical way for their own attempt to get publicity for their political campaign. Even if that campaign's values are noble, it's still a pretty cynical thing to do.
True.
I've also noticed, and this is only slightly related, that while people talk about 'white people', it is a lot more accepted to talk about 'blacks' as if they were a mere color and nothing else.
Or, for that matter, that when adressing a white American, they tend to talk simply about them as 'American' but when it is someone who isn't white, it's "Asian-American", "African-American" or just stuff like "Latino". Their ethnicity is much more pronounced.
I haven't seen or heard people talk about Jews in terms of 'Jewish-American' however except on rare occassions where the context is usually explicitly Jewish.
Which sort of melds into people's view of Jews as basically white people, who tend to be more successful. Which is funny because I don't see myself as a white person, but that is also because I see a cultural background to that phrase, a culture I don't share, and I know many Jews who don't consider themselves white. Yet the rest of America seems to not care at all. A good example of that was the whole 'Girls whiteness' crisis. That 50% of the main characters were Jewish didn't seem to bother the critics. 20-30 years ago it would be hailed as progress, just as Seinfeld was a mark of achievement since it was so Jewish through and through, you didn't have to hide it. Well, not anymore. Another sign of assimiliation.
I think she's been reading Unz's article at American Conservative.
Nonetheless, from a sociological standpoint I found it interesting that she neglected to mention that an even bigger share of discrimination is against gentile whites(although in absolute numbers).
This suggests to me that Asian-American identity is evolving quite like Jewish identity, while integrating culturally, never quite assimilating.
Yes, but this touches upon Phil's post. Namely the arrived status of Jews in America. I don't know the percentage of Jews on American billionaire list but I'd wager it is probably quite high. Many legacies going into Harvard today are Jewish, and even if Harvard doesn't break it down in their stats, I wouldn't be surprised if it was higher than it was for WASPs.
This, of course, changes priorities. And I've written before on this site when these topics come up that I still think we will see much more ethnic activism from gentiles whites once the GOP has been finally - and belatedely - buried under the demographic change.
The question is, will Asians get there first? I'd assume so.
But one last thing. Unz explicitly stated in his article that because of the over-admission of Jews, via ethnic networking(in the administration) and/or de-facto affirmative action in the Ivies, that the direct implication is that Jews of lesser talent are taking up places of Asians and gentile whites.
I think Phil has written about this earlier but it too is a signifier that the outsiders are now the insiders and they're the new 'protestant establishment' if you'll excuse the historical anchor. The question is, will there be a such book for these new times. This is an important sociological question. I think it's impossible to talk about why America is so monolithically supportive of Israel without that sociological discussion. And, increasingly, more and more people do too. A good example is the mainstreaming of Walt/Mearsheimer.
People like that are racists. I had a guy who was Italian in my high school class and who started to harass an Italian girl for dating a black guy. Why? Well, just because they're both Italians she must apparently subscribe to what he feels is best for the Italian community, which basically means that her body should've belonged to him.
This is the same mechanism, but instead of going after the boyfriends it is going after your views simply because of your genes. And if you don't agree, the "self-hating Jew" attacks come. What was it the Jim Crow racists used to attack white women with who were dating interracially, 'n*ggerlovers' I think.
Scum of the earth.
Actually, it is Blumberg who has attacked a minority group. They're called truth-tellers and it is rare that they are as strong as Mearsheimer, for which we should be grateful.
Except that McCarthy was a lone nut. AIPAC owns the senate, except maybe Rand Paul, Bernie Sanders and a few stray dogs. There will be no such moment. But there should've been.
That's why SNL, House of Cards, Colbert and others had to jump in. Even notorious Zionist Maher quipped that based on what he saw during the last few years, you'd be forgiven for thinking that Congress is in Israel's lap.
Where the pols won't go, popular culture will.
From the name to the bait-heavy post, this one smells 'troll' from a far distance.
Can anyone imagine Apartheid South Africa getting this kind of treatment in the 1980s? I bet the Harvard Crimson was pushing for boycotting then. But South Africa couldn't scream anti-Semitism as a smear tactic, nor did it have a passionate lobby inside America.
Yet we're being told that somehow this support for Israel is entirely organic. Well, if anything, the actions of the editors in the media, some of whom are Zionists, tell a different story. I wouldn't be surprised, by the way, if most of the editors were not Zionists. But most of those of aren't, most likely don't care either way and let the zealots run the show on I/P.
Yeah and nobody will go after her and people like her for it. Why?
Because your career will be smeared by a bunch of bigots.
I've given up hope at changing or even trying to change the Israel Firsters. The goal must be to make the social price for speaking their filth that they hesitate to do so.
By the way, great piece: link to opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com
Ann Lewis is an Israel Firster. It needs to be said.
When you say:
You're basically saying, the U.S. president must be a slave to Israel.
Is there any other country Ms. Lewis would add to that list? I highly doubt it. If the German nation elected a right-wing nationalist government, it's dubious at best if she would leap to Germany's defence in the same way or any other Western democracy.
Also, the quote that Phil raised was said in a discussion with Bill Kristol.
Maybe I'm totally wrong on this one, but when you're chummy with a far-right neocon, you're not exactly representative of the progressive grassroots. To add to this; Ann Lewis is an old woman. She's a Clinton-era Democrat. A lot has changed since then. There's a much stronger shift on economic issues to the left and we're seeing a shift on foreign policy too.
The last few days of combined right/left outrage on drones is a case in point. The old establishment in both the GOP and the Democratic party are having trouble finding their feet. This is the milieu that Ann Lewis comes from and was shaped in.
She's the past. And in fact, Israel is not very progressive. Canada for one is more progressive on almost any issue. Same is true with Britain or Australia and so on.
And neither of those countries practice apartheid. That's a thing Ann Lewis isn't concerned about. Israel Firster.
Israel itself will help. Yesh Atid is the last gasp of the secular Israeli middle class.
And even now they're forced to break bread with Bennett's far-right religious party in order to have any chance at all. The hilarious thing is that it is being presented as "anti-Orthodox" but it isn't. It's anti-Haredi and that's a difference.
Second, Israel is hugely expensive as a country. There's no space and the rests are astronomical. I've read one study that showed that Israeli participation in American, Canadian, British and Australian on the professorial level is off the charts on a per-capita basis. The well-eductated get out first. The rest follows, to the best of their ability.
Despite all the Israel hype, very few actually make aliyah. Maybe you go on Birthright to have some sex, get drunk and wave a few flags. That's it.
Let me just close by saying this: I wouldn't be surprised at all, if, 10 years from now we'd be having Congress working itself up to provide "emancipation" to Jewish "refugees" from Israel to settle in America at various rates.
They're already introducing legislation which would give Israel a special privilege so that they won't even need a visa to get a job in America. Just move and start applying. And this is now. In 10 years from now you could very well see outright amnesty.
Ben-Ami's calculation is that he can change Jewry from the inside. It's probably the best bet he can do, but it's still a lousy bet.
The biggest change will not come from inside Jewry, by which I mean the institutational world, but outside it and by young, idealistic Jews joined with young Palestinians as well as genuine liberals from all backgrounds. J Street had a moment where they could act as a bridge, and ultimately an harbringer, but that moment is now gone.
Ben-Ami is the one who will be changed, not the other way around. His groups' insistence on excluding Palestinians from the conversation, an insistence which has only become ever more strident, is a case in point.
I think a lot of older bigots, like David Brooks, will defend them continously as he sees them upholding the kind of fantasies that he himself holds dear(flagrant ethnocentrism, for one).
The main dividing line will be based on gender.
Good counter.
Hagel's been so neutered that it does not matter at all that he's elected. His job is now to manage the downsizing of the Pentagon.
MJ himself admits that if Schumer would have opposed, Hagel would not have been confirmed. Even if his personal ambition was used against him, I doubt that he'd let it override any sentiment towards the lobby. If Hagel was unrepentant, Schumer would have gone negative and the lobby would have won.
Finally, let us not forget that the entire hearing was 99.99% focused on Israel. That in itself is a confirmation of the lobby's power.
Or when the Israeli general consul decided that it was to be known that he was "okay" with Hagel, which is really stunning. The assumption is that his opinion, as a representative of a foreign power, really matters as to who should be nominated in America to senior positions. But he's right about that assumption and that hasn't changed.
The buses are symbolic from a U.S. standpoint but they are not the most severe. Witness the law that forbids Palestinians from the West Bank of marrying with Palestinians inside '67 Israel(or whatever's left of it sans settlements). That's a direct blood law. And it was passed by the 'leftist' Kadima back in 2006. There's tons of more examples.
That most people don't know about this is a failure of the pro-peace movement's message efforts. I'm no PR guy, but there gotta be people who are good at that stuff. Because as the old phrase goes "if Americans knew"...
I was amused reading Steven J. Rosen, the committed ex-AIPAC chief for spying on behalf of Israel(Israel Firster if there ever was one), slamming all opposition as a 'disease'.
People like Rosen are diseased, if anything. I'm still shocked by the fact that he is actually employed by a think tank in Washington. Goes to show that a lot of people who didn't get in trouble like him are actually sharing the same basic mindset as he has, by hiring him to a top job without blinking, despite it all.
As for 'liberal' Zionists, don't be so sure. Alterman is going to turn out like Roger Cohen. Annie did a great job demolishing Cohen recently when he tries again and again to create a false equivalency between violent ethno-facists and peace-loving liberals.
A lot of people like that who call themselves 'liberals'.
Ultimately, the fight will be settled in the broader American context, which will irk the Steven J. Rosens of the world no end. Fantastic.
The main problem is that feminism has been used for cover by neocons for a long time now to justify wars oversears. Women were used prominently in the last decade as props and as justifying means for both Iraq and Afghanistan. Especially for the latter. But a key component of the neocon war selling was, basically, "we'll turn the savages into civilized men and as we do that, their women will prosper".
That was the subtext and on more than a few occassion, even the head/main argument.
Nonetheless, as you point out, the Burqa is an oppressive instrument. And it's a problem when liberals are wincing away from denouncing it, for fear of political correctness(if we are blunt).
There's been a lot of debate in Europe, for instance, over honor killings and even more so about the general culture that stems from such practices and their milder variants(such as controlling what their daughters are allowed to wear, but letting the boys get off a lot easier off the hook or even deciding which boyfriends they are allowed to date, if they can go out dancing etc).
Since the left was silent on these issues, it was hijacked by nastier people. But the problem was that there is a problem with oppressing women. The Middle East is ranked as the worst place for women - in the world. That used to be sub-Saharan Africa, but no more according to the U.N.
It's for these reasons that my patience is thin with people who dismiss feminism as a tool of "Western imperialism". While true that it has been hijacked by neocons, remember, the neocons also showed sudden affection for gays and women during the Chuck Hagel debate, and when he was finally placed before the senate, all those concerns evaporated as the true opposition came through: his stance on Israel.
Similarly, it's easy to point at neocons and others who have misused feminism as a prop for their own cynical and exploitative purposes, but that doesn't mean that there are serious grounds to be critical about the treatment of women not only in the middle east but also in the middle eastern diaspora, and the burqa is a good(albeit somewhat extreme) example. I remember reading last year that a girl who was in the Harry Potter movies was killed by her parents and/or brother for being 'too Western'. But killings are rare. Much more common is the subtle but pervasive controlling of the daughters. It'd be easy to wash your hands by saying "hey cultural patterns are different", but that's a cop-out.
Phil, you do great work covering the biases of NPR(out of all stations!) when it comes to I/P.
Abramson, Siegel and other Zionists who work at that place and basically control the reporting on the Middle East must be attacked. It's simply insane that they've been let off the hook for so long as they have.
People ask why Israel is so supported, well, if the reports they get on even NPR are like this, why are people surprised?
We don't live in 1941, although some people are perpetually stuck in that era, hence why the conversation is so halting when it comes to these issues.
Talking openly and critically about the power elite should be no different when that elite is Jewish, in the case of Hollywood, than when it used to be WASPish, when it was old Ivy League.
But there is a difference. Say what you will, but there has been no self-critical book from a prominent Jewish intellectual about Jewish power in the same way that, say, Digby paved the way with his monumental 'Protestant Establishment'.
That does suggest a lack of introspection among Jewish intellectual elites overall, and a narcissism. Those who want to talk about it, like Philip, are cast aside and branded traitors. Despite the fact that I'm Jewish myself and move in progressive circles, these topics are still somewhat taboo. Not in a general sense, if you just broach the topic, but if you seriously want to debate it, people become angry and defensive. There's not a lot of genuine introspection.
Scott, that's pretty wimpy. The reason why there has been a 'softening' is because there is no longer any real counter-force.
Does the ethnic/cultural/religious composition of the Hollywood elite matter? Does it matter a lot? Yes. To say anything otherwise would be foolish.
I actually think that in the last decade, the anti-WASP undercurrent has been overshadowed by anti-Arab racism, often explicit, when Hollywood movies portray them as terrorists or worse.
If Hollywood's elite was more diverse, don't you think that such racism would be more critically dissemniated? Also, notice that essentially all the winners at the recent Oscars are white. So while Jews do have a disproportinate representation, remember that 20 to 25% of Jews in America are non-white. Are there any non-white Jews there? No.
While it has gotten me in trouble before, I have said and continue to claim that many white Jews would prefer to intermarry with a white WASP(to their liking of course) rather than with a black Jew. That isn't the case for progressive Jews, generally, but actual progressive Jews are a minority, the vast liberal mainstream is more conservative on such matters. While most of the winners weren't Jews, almost all, if not all of them, were white.
So it isn't just a cultural/religious issue. It's also a racial issue. It's basically all Ashkenazi Jews when you look at the Jews who are there.
The underlying premise of the entire discussion is that only people with J positive blood can be allowed to talk about Israel without censorship, either imposed by themselves or by others.
Therefore, the problem with Hagel saying that Israel was becomming an apartheid state should be understood within that prism. Ehud Barak can say it how many times he wants, or Ehud Olmert for that matter.
The same is true with the "Jewish lobby". It's okay if you're a guy or a girl with J positive blood. But not okay if you happened to be one of those awful goys with a conscience.
That is the moral of the story here. The problem isn't what is said.
It's who is being allowed to say it. It's a very typical attitude of liberal Zionists. Such as when Ben-Ami of J Street refused to allow Palestinians to debate BDS as he wanted it to be "within our community".
That's why the only good christians are the crazy right-wing fundamentalists, who are uncritical of Israel. The good ones, who are sane and have a moral backbone, are smeared as anti-Semites.
I blame the decline and fall of Washington Post on Warren Buffett. He's a major owner and should have the werewithall to push the paper in a more sound direction on foreign policy.
Too bad he's a suck-up to the establishment. WaPo has excellent economics journalists and better politics journalism by the day. But the foreign policy, especially on the Op-Ed page is a total disaster. It's because of Fred Hiatt and his neocon buddies.
When will that paper be freed? I wager when the last Graham has died, and that'll be some time. Meaning: the paper will face obscurity and will have to be sold off at some point.
Exactly my thoughts.
I was thinking even before I clicked the link; "Oh, I know what kind of ethnocentrism is bad. European gentile ethnocentrism. Actually I think European gentile ethnocentrism is bad too. But the difference is that I think that all kinds of ethnocentrisms are bad".
I opened the piece and voilá. I also chuckled to myself while thinking, would the NYT run a piece on the problematic nature of Jewish ethnocentrism? No, it celebrates it.
There's still an inconsistency among liberals. But I'm an optimist. I think in due time, these kinks will be ironed out. But they won't until someone broaches the topic, and I think we'll all know what kinds of excuses we will hear why their ethnocentrism is problematic, but not ours, you see.
Well, go ask any Palestinian about that. You might get another answer. Oh, I forgot. They aren't allowed into the debate, even by the 'liberal' J Street. Wrong bloodline.
Code Pink has long been my favourite activist group and they show yet again why. They were one of the few groups who attacked the bankers and the Obama administration in the early days of 2009. A lot of people on the left didn't get it. They thought being loyal to Obama was more important. We know how well that passivity ended: the Tea Party.
On drone strikes, as you point out, Code Pink was so early, so far ahead of so many on the left. Many who, again, felt it was necessary to be loyal instead of being true to their principles(or whatever's left of them anyway).
Now even the mainstream left, best epitomized by the NYT, has woken up to the drones.
Oh, and Medea Benjamin is awesome all-around. I still feel sorry for her for the treatment she received at the Bibi @ Congress spectacle.
At the risk of shameless self-promotion. This is what I wrote almost a week ago now:
Source: link to mondoweiss.net
So yes. MJ is absolutely right. And that does feel better writing as he basically comes to the same conclusion that I came to.
Okay, okay, bragging is over.
The 'liberal' Zionist approaches.
Basically the media version of the 'liberal' Zionist insitence of yet another pointless round of 'negotiation'. Not because they believe it can be done, but because they realize it is important to go through the motions.
Now the same 'liberal' Zionists, who are basically content with the system in Israel, are having a beef over tactics, not morality.
There's nothing new or reveloratory in his piece. Just some tactical advice but no fundamental shift or conflict or even moral questioning.
I would have described him as a 'lone nut' but these days you never know.
There's plenty of crazy from where he came from. He fits all the right criteria:
1. Old
2. White
3. Male
It doesn't matter if you're Jewish or not. If you have those three criteria fulfilled, chances are pretty high you're a piggish bigot. And a lot of the financial clout, both in the Gentile world as well as the Jewish world is sadly dominated by those exact people.
Also, this is slightly unrelated, but interesting in the Israeli context and the whole "this has been our land forever":
link to ynetnews.com
Remember how Shlomo Sand was butchered over the Khazar theory? Well, it seems to be settled now. The vast majority of Ashkenazi Jews had their ancestral homeland near the Caucasus mountains near the eastern border of Turkey, and we're not from Palestine, apparently.
The report is complete bullshit.
Hillary is running for office. Her speech at the Saban Center, which showed her craving to the lobby in depths that even Obama didn't go to, was basically a huge kiss to the far-right Likudniks. Some 'liberal'. I'm always amused when people think Hillary would have been a better president. She's more of a centrist than Obama, and she would be a disaster on I/P. Dennis Ross would be back in the administration, of course.
Kerry might push for peace, but as Mearsheimer likes to say: it's all for show.
The Israel lobby will never, ever, allow the kind of meaningful pressure to occur against Israel for there to be a genuine incentive. And within Israel, the settlers are now the mainstream, not a 'lobby'. Lieberman, Bennett, even Lapid is campaigning from Ariel. It will never happen.
What they want now is a face-saving gesture. A smokescreen to continue to colonize. They understand it looks bad to the world.
But that's a given. What isn't a given is that Kerry wants to play these games.
Either he's stupid, vain or actually knows perfectly well what he is doing, and decides to play along out of pure cynicism.
I can't decide which is worse. But it's possible he's all of the above!
I have come to view the Hagel hearing not as an actual hearing - I believe it was actually a fundraiser.
When Tom Friedman worte about Congress continous applause of Bibi and how every single applause had been "bought and paid for" by the Israel lobby, a firestorm ensued. Yet, as we now know, Debbie Wasserman Schultz was leading the charge, giving hand signals to her caucus when to rise and clap.
A few days later, Nahum Barnea, one of Israel's most esteemed journalists, wrote in Yehidoth, defending Friedman, and then said that he was there at the time and he saw Jewish-Zionist right-wing donors looking down from the balcony. He never specified which or who they were, but he made clear that they were there for surveillance. Is "my" Congressman/woman doing what I paid them to do? I doubt that the Congressmen/women weren't aware of the fact that their right-wing donors were watching them, seeing how they behave.
What I wondered back then was; were the Congressmen and women aware of this?
They must have been! Their donors were looking and they required a show.
What makes you think this wasn't the case with the Hagel hearing? I think a lot of those senators knew their donors, or their donors' representatives and aides, were watching. That's why it was all about Israel.
The facade had been shattered. Gone were the liberal smokescreens about gay, women or abortion. Now, the only concern that was ever really at play came to fore: will Hagel commit to the Apartheid state? He even gritted through his teeth "Israel is our closest ally".
This was quite a show for the lobby. Hagel knows that in foreign policy, he doesn't answer to Congress, which has indeed been bought by the Israel lobby as Friedman explained in the Times. But even so, an opportunity was missed, as Beinart later said, when he failed to draw a contrast in a sufficient manner. Beinart thought it was his aides, who had briefed him and went with the 'safe route'. That was disappointing.
Nonetheless, I gather that Lindsay Graham and other whores of the lobby pleased their masters quite well. They knew it was a fundraising effort. And they did what they were great at.
Politics as it is, not as we believe it to be, was at display that day. It was sickening to watch. But at the same time, it was relieving to finally see the mask shattered. No more illusions. It was all about Israel now. As it had been from the beginning. And the hypocrisy was vanished and the venality was at full display.
When I first heard that they were given unprecedented access, I found myself, bizarrely, on the same side of conservatives.
The motives for our worry, however, were different. My worry turned out to be the correct one. That the pentagon knew exactly what it was doing when it
co-optedco-operated with the filmmakers.From a stylistic viewpoint, the movie has its strengths. But no film which deals with a topic this heavy can afford to be blindly viewed on the stylistic merits alone and the filmmakers' defensive and at times bitter defensive hasn't helped. They knew deep down that they were tools for the industrial-military complex.
As a sidenote, I'd be interested in reading your thoughts, David, on the liberal Zionist obsession on 'The Gatekeepers' while '5 broken cameras' is given scant - if any - coverage at all. Of course, another day, another post.
Yes, this is basically the gist of it. Goldberg's career has taken off despite a history of failures and incitements to war. The reason is because of the current power structure in Washington, there's a need for a guy like Goldberg to exist. He fills a role. But as Sullivan stated, it's that of an operator, not a journalist.
A quick follow-up on the white maleness of Goldberg's friends.
This was also manifested when Rudi Joduren was appointed as the Times' Jerusalem bureau chief as she accidentally messaged Ali Abuminah on Twitter and all hell brooke loose(with Goldberg leading the charge).
I don't remember who remarked it at the time, but it was pretty striking that literally every single Jew in the media who attacked her was a white Ashkenazi male, as well as middle-aged.
When it comes to Israel, apparently, Jewish women aren't welcome into the discussions. And the same is true generally in the Jewish organizational world. On position after position, the male patriarchy dominates.
Pretty striking for a group that votes liberal over 70% in national elections and that includes the ultra-Orthodox and others. If you look at only secular Jews, my guesstimate is probably over 80%. So why? Because as Beinart has pointed out, Jewish organizations used to be more active on domestic policy, but this was before the rise of the Israel Firsters. Soon, Israel and Zionism became the main reason of existance for many of them. And as you've pointed out Phil, on Israel we're all supposed to be Tea Partiers(or as former Congressman Weiner used to say, between his denouncements of Obama as too centrist, he is in the 'ZOA Wing' of the Democratic party. The ZOA is a group who thinks even AIPAC is too soft, FYI).
As Israel has begun to dominate the Jewish organizational world, it's only logical that reactionary old white men would dominate the organizations themselves, and appoint others like them. That's why these people like Goldberg. He's one of them.
And these people fear - probably rightly so - that women might actually be in favor of peace, and not get the unspoken message that you're just supposed utter the words "2 state solution" through gritted teeth and not mean it.
That fear was manifested when Goldberg and his male friends attacked Rudi for her innocent tweet, heckling her in public for being a 'bad journalist'(insufficiently slavish towards Israel, or so they feared) and his buddies joining in the hate mob.
So the problem isn't just from a general American point of view, it also shines a light on the internal Jewish debate, dominated by bigoted Ashkenazi men, who keep women out of their groups, as well as Jews of color, both groups who are suspect and may be guilty of an actual pro-peace sentiment. People like that, you know scary liberals, are hard to control.
They don't get the actual message, as supposed to the official message.
Another interesting tidbit. Notice just how white and male Goldberg's influential friends are. Nary a woman in sight who can be reliably quoted.
Only a bunch of AIPAC hacks like Indyk or the Israeli ambassador, Michael Oren and people like that.
The piece reinforces the fact that ethnic tribalism, basically an alien notion to white Gentile liberals, is the force that carries Goldberg forward. Not his writing. His friends.
But Goldberg is an ultra-nationalist. He was a fervent follower of Kahane in his youth and failed to unilaterally denounce him even in his memoirs, where he managed to sneak in a few words of praise. As I've often written on this site: no non-Jewish white 'liberal' journalist would get away with writing in lukewarm terms of David Duke, nor even have been a follower/admirer of David Duke in his youth and still been able to climb the ranks.
People ask why Jewish racism in Israel is allowed. It's because there are Jewish racists at high positions in the American MSM who enable it, like Goldberg, who are given the support of a reactionary community, of which Goldberg's friends are a part of.
He has made clear numerous times that the only people who can warn about Israeli apartheid are people he approve of, basically hawkish Jewish nationalists and racists. He will pay lip service to Israel's racism, but in effect he tries to destroy anyone who actually favours the U.S. doing something about it. Walt is a good example, but he's gone after Beinart too(until Beinart told him to stop doing 'drive-by's' on Twitter) as well as Daniel Levy, formerly of J Street.
The solution isn't more ethnic tribalism. That will increase racism as a whole in America and we don't need that. Last we need is white nationalists to counter Jewish nationalists. We need to disarm the Jewish racists, like Goldberg, just as we have made white racists taboo. And we're not there yet. But we're getting there.
I remember her. My guess is that the rank-and-file probably detested working under a committed Zionist.
She probably felt the winds blow in her face and jumped ship.
Amnesty is a far more prestigious organization in comparison to PEN, which is no ugly duckling, but it does not have the international reach and influence like Amnesty.
People ask how she got promoted. My guess is probably some kind liberal Zionist, a 'mild' one, who still resents the grassroots left and prefers the company of champagne socialists, is in her orbit. Which would make sense, since she's one of those people herself.
Either way, the fact that she even got to lead Amnesty international is pretty shocking to begin with. But it's still significant that she left after just 6 months. That's not normal and there's a reason behind it.
NormanF is most likely either hired by the Israeli government or he is a lone fanatical Zionist. Either way, he's not a "normal commenter". I see him all the time pushing violent and racist rhetoric on comment boards on Jpost and blogs like 'Israel Matzav'(which is a good guide to how the racist right in Israel thinks, run by an American Orthodox(or even ultra-Orthodox, depending on your definition) immigrant fanatic.
Just thought I'd let the mods know. There's robust debate and then there's paid and unpaid trolls belonging to the far right.
The latter category has been a problem on this place several times, and inevitably that problem has required administrative intervention.
Edit:
Here's what I mean:
link to israelmatzav.blogspot.se
Look at the comment section. Basically "there nobody before the Jews". This is above and beyond the far-right racist rhetoric of even Sheldon Adelson. It could be another NormanF, but I doubt it. He's highly active on JPost too. It's most likely either a paid troll or it could be an unpaid troll and I'm leaning towards the latter. Either case, just thought I'd give the mods a heads up about the venal rats crawling around all the way from Israel from time to time.
I sort of never understood why white supremacists disliked Israel. It's basically doing what they'd want to do for majority-white countries. Place government-sanctioned eugenics programs on "undesired" populations(a.k.a 'racial hygiene'), strictly limit immigration on all those who are not of the majority population(in Israel's case, a Jews-only immigration policy while for America, Canada etc it'd be white Gentile-only immigration).
Add to that, have a bunch of measures, like being a world-leader in IVF treatment and subsidize it heavily, in order to boost the native birth rate as much as possible.
And third, create a media complex by the help of far-right bigots to attack all those who intermarry in the media, so they pay a price socially and culturally and constantly paint all ('sadly', remaining) minorities as 'fifth columns'.
And fourth, and finally, create an apartheid state within the state and segregate all the undesired racial groups into their own enclaves as to not "contaminate" the main ethnic group. (See 'arab towns' in Israel for this).
Then do all of the above and hope that A) the undesired groups do not replicate and B) will move away as they are facing an increasingly racist and hostile society and C) prevent any of the other ethnic groups to immigrate.
My guess why the white supremacists dislike Israel, despite the fact that it's a state that is carrying out the blueprints that they'd like, is probably due to the Jewish nature of the state. So it's Jewish supremacism, not white supremacism. Other than that, there is little to no difference.
Another important detail to remember is that, as you alluded to but perhaps not fully fleshed out, British caricature culture is far more vitriolic and full of gore when compared to American caricatures.
Blair was often portrayed as a ghoulish bloodsucker after the Iraq disaster.
This is an important context and I saw only an AP report mention this, everyone else ignored it alltogether. Also, I do feel sympathy for the editor of the Times. He can't do much when the owner is looking to be with the cocktail crowd on Manhattan. If the price to pay is political consistency then so be it. Besides, after Murdoch's "Jewish media" comment he knows he's already deep in the red, so he has that incentive too.
link to ynetnews.com
Now Murdoch has gone over the head of his editors and apologized.
I'm divided over the cartoon. There are classic anti-Semitic themes invoked, but the actual subject of the cartoon is about Netanyahu and his pro-Apartheid policies which can be described as literally built on the blood on innocents. So in that sense, it's correct. But yes, on publishing it on Holocaust Rememberance Day was bad timing, something the cartoonist later admitted. Nonetheless, I think the basic message is correct but it could have been done more subtly(for example, by portraying Netanyahu as something different than a classic Jew with a big nose).
Most likely a lone voice in the wind. Still interesting that they ran with it.
I think unless more Heartland Christians become aware of the crimes against churches too, they will not support the Palestinians because they've been so brainwashed.
Also, a small sidenote: Phil and the rest(Annie, Scott, Adam etc), have you guys seen the cartoon of Bibi in the London Times that ran on Sunday? It's being smeared as anti-Semitism. What's your take on it?
The more I read Daniel Levy, the more I mourn that he left J Street.
He's a genuine liberal - and those are rare these days in the higher echelons of the media establishment.
On the other hand, that he left J Street - or AIPAC lite - is a sign in of itself of the corruption and cynicism of that organization.
On a final note: Max Blumenthal is everywhere these days. Or maybe it's just because I read progressive and independent news sites. I saw him on 'TRN'(the real news), he was on this Sunday on Beyond the Pale and more. Always brilliant.
A small detail, perhaps insignificant, but still notable to me.
Notice that in the cartoon from Politico, the phrase 'Jewish lobby' has been replaced by the much milder 'pro-Israel lobby'. That is quite remarkable. After all, using the phrase 'Jewish lobby' would just be to quote him verbatim; it wouldn't be the cartoonist's own phrase.
Self-censorship or, perhaps more likely, scared editors?
I'm by no means an expert in the Ron Paul movement but I did some of their blogs. Rand Paul apparently broke with his father's economic principles before he started whoring for Israel. I don't think Rand Paul has a lot of clout inside that movement. He's trying to become a more middle-of-the-road GOP candidate, but that's precisely what disgusts the Paul grassroots.
I even saw some blogs compare Rand to Benedict Arnold. That was pretty amusing. My point, however, is that I think neocons are seriously deluding themselves if they can an obvious political whore like Rand and use him to 'co-opt' the Paul grassroots. Those grassroots are overwhelmingly libertarian and pro-peace. Libertarians is also the political movement with the highest average IQs and usually have above-average amount of education. It'll simply be hard to fool most of them.
The neocons think that they'll get the minorities(how?) and then co-opt the libertarian young people(they know that Paul commands the attention of the youth in the party), but they won't get either.
While I'm always concerned with the GOP neocons we shouldn't forget that there is plenty of them in the Democratic party too, like Bob Rubin(who's more involved in the pro-Wall St camp, but who's still a neocon on foreign policy), Leslie Gelb and others. Since I think that a Democratic victory in 2016 is very likely it's important to look at that party even closer. Especially at a guy like Cory Booker, who may well run after just a year or two in the senate, like Obama.
The Democratic nominee in 2016 will be very important, since that winner will almost certainly be the President. I hope Hillary and Booker both fail. I'd prefer Elizabeth Warren, but she seems kind of reluctant(sadly).
Annie, you are on top of things!
Here's some more background information:
link to commentarymagazine.com
Rand Paul knows what needs to be done to get elected and rise in Washington. Still, it's more remarkable for him to do these things simply because of who his father was/is.
I'm not exactly sympathetic to Ron Paul's views on anything else except on foreign wars, drones and civil liberties(where I'm pretty libertarian), but the betrayal of principle that Rand has done is striking.
Another freudian slip here:
link to wnd.com
"President Paul.. I like the ring of that".
Also, unlike his father, he went full-prostitute for Israel by stating "an attack on Israel is an attack on America".
Meanwhile, the neocons at Commentary keeps insulting his dad as a 'nutjob' and 'an extremist' and keeps demanding that he must give them more. Apparently he doesn't care how much they insult his dad, his ambition to get re-elected and promoted - for no other reason than to get re-elected and promoted - takes the upper hand.
Rand Paul is a base case in how the Israel lobby corrupts people - although to be fair, Rand was more than willing to be corrupted.
Nonetheless, nobody forced the neocons and the Israel lobby to do it.
A 'racial hygene' program targeting Jews who happened to have the wrong color. Says it all, really, about what kind of nation Israel is.
It is often remarked, and it has more than a grain of truth to it, that there are so many ethnic and racial divisions within Israeli Jewry that if there wasn't the 'Arab'(or nowadays Iranian) threat to focus on, the society would fall apart in ethnic struggle.
This was very much the focus during the early 20 years as the Ashkenazi elite privately worried if they made a mistake by bringing in the 'barbarious' Arab Jews.
Noam Sheizaf has a pretty decent piece up at 972 mag about the increased racialization of Israeli politics.
'The ethnic vote and the white coalition':
link to 972mag.com
If you constantly talk about 'demographic time-bombs' and 'Arab fifth columns' what happens is that you legitimize racism in the mainstream political discourse and this in turn means that at some point, and Israel is there already, it becomes very hard to maintain the us vs them in times of (relative) peace and suddenly the in-group racism starts to grow.
Last year one of the top Labor MKs called Amir Peretz, who was almost PM at one point(and who's an Arab Jew) a 'moroccan' in an offhand racist comment when talking about his 'temper' - he did so when talking to the U.S. ambassador(via Wikileaks).
Netanyahu's desperate push for Moshe Kahlon is similarly an understanding of this. Shas' outburst against the 'Ashkenazi elite' this election season confirms this, as well as their racist ad about the Russian arch-shiksa 'stealing' Jewish men(a known racist meme, favoured even in the supposedly more liberal diaspora).
Netanyahu probably fears these developments, which might be one of the reasons why he lets the crazies keep burning their anti-Arab racism lest the Jewish population in Israel fall apart in racist internecine fighting.
Here's the thing that everyone, even smart people like Remnick, have missed. The only reason Lapid got so many votes was because he understands one fundamental truth: there isn't any serious debate inside Israel on the Occupation anymore. The Israeli public know Lapid won't rock the boat, so then it became a referendum on the economy, where Bibi's neoliberal policies are quite unpopular. Bibi would have preferred a candidate like Livni, no matter how flawed she is, she is still far more focused on the 'peace process' such as it is.
Therefore, the Israeli (Jewish) consensus on permanent Occupation and Apartheid would have emerged and people would have taken an economic hit in exchange for Likud policy on the foreign arena and on the Occupation.
Remnick didn't buy the myth of Lapid the peacenik, but he never went far enough to explain just how meaningless this victory for Lapid is. Simply because the right has already won the debate. It's over. As soon as you see a genuine pro-peace emerge, no matter how fractured, the Israeli public will overwhemingly vote for Likud and the settlers.
Finally, something many missed is that a record 40 MKs are now Orthodox Jews in the Knesset. If you look at the Jewish Orthodox parties they are Shas and United Torah Judaism, together they hold about 19 seats. But then you got a bunch of Orthodox Jews in Likud too as well as in Bennett's party.
Netanyahu could form a coalition of 61 with only the Orthodox parties. With Kadima he gets to 63, and it'd be a quite stable coalition. He doesn't really need Lapid but he needs a public face to drive the austerity through and Netanyahu also understands that the Israeli public wants more from the Haredi. After all, Bibi wants the next term as Prime Minister as well. He knows what needs to be done to get re-elected a fourth time.
A final word on the comic mass delusion among liberal Zionists in America.
My favorite delusional Zionist was and remains J.J. Goldberg from the Forward, who went straight ahead last summer when Mofaz and Netanyahu made their 'megacoalition'. Goldberg almost spat out his excitement - after all, he has bought the myth of 'moderate Bibi shackled by his right-wing coalition' full stop - that now, finally, "Bibi is unwound to begin his push for peace that he couldn't do earlier". A few weeks later the coalition collapsed.
Now he's back, at Beinart's Open Zion and sarcastically slams the 'smart money' for being totally wrong. Lapid is a peacenik and how dare we not see this?
If history is any guide, JJ Goldberg will be wrong this time too.
In fact, it's suffice just to make some basic observations about the MK's who got elected. Israel has shifted further to the right on the Occupation and Apartheid, but now cottage cheese prices from Jews in Tel Aviv matter more too, that is true.
Ramzi:
Well, yes and no. If you look at the totality, there are far more Christian Zionists in America. However, quality beats quantity here. Of those that matter, AIPAC, ADL, AJC, Conference of Presidents and so on, almost all of them are Jewish. This became apparent in the anti-Hagel firestorm where virtually all of the early coordinating opposition was coming from Jewish orgs.
You basically sum up in a nutshell what is the problem. These pleas are desperate 'liberal' Zionists asking Obama to save Israel. But how can he do that when the NYT refuses to, as Phil writes, to prepare the ground for him? It's cowardly and Obama is right to ignore the issue, he knows he cannot get anywhere. Yet he can't say the truth, he will be impeached. Thus, his only chance is the liberal media but again, NYT refuses to state the truth. Why? Because of the ingrained Zionism in the paper.
Again, yes. And this will become apparent in the coming years even if 'liberal' Zionists will continue to blame the Palestinians for everything.
And finally, Phil wrote:
Read the editorials from the 1960s from the NYT. There was no ambiguity there. They even compared opposition to the 1965 Act to eugenics and the KKK.
Have you seen anything they have written about the anti-black pogroms in Israel? I mean, the NYT is happy to publish articles about local soccer teams in Israel, so it's clearly a country they are incredibly interested in. They can't be in the dark about it.
The same is true on Jim Crow. The NYT didn't mince words. Or go look at the editorials from the 1980s on Apartheid. The same is true there.
The NYT was giving no cover to racists by muddying or misleading their readers.
Yet Israel is special, Israel gets the cover. And the NYT is silent on most of the systematic abuses. Instead it scolds Obama to be more supportive of the state.
It refers to outright racists and pro-ethnic cleansers as 'right-wing' and nothing else. And yet no liberal dares to take on this bias because they know what happens if they do.
Obama sees all of this, and frankly, he's probably disgusted by it too.
The reports are misleading. There are not two even blocks.
Here is the most important thing the news coverage omits:
Arab parties will never, ever, join a coalition with a man who says he 'wants to get rid of them'.
They have never joined a coalition with any Jewish Zionist party(which is basically all of them) - including even with Yitzhak Rabin who wished 'Gaza would fall into the see' as well as saying, in his last speech before the Knesset, that he wishes for the Palestinians disconnected Bantustans, or as he put it, 'something less than a state'. They were passive supporters of the government but that didn't help the settlement construction stopping - in fact it increased by a record amount.
Bibi has about 61 to 62 seats. The opposition has about 50 seats.
Bibi doesn't actually have to go with Yair Lapid, but will probably bring him into the coalition for stability's sake. Nonetheless, there won't be a center-left government because the Yair Lapid's of the world will never, ever be in a coalition with an Arab. He's a Zionist. Zionists just do not do that.
Before the election, people thought it was going to be 70 seats for the right and 40~ seats for the 'Jewish-only' left. Now it is a smaller difference but there is still 20 seats between them.
What will be most astonishing is how many of Israel's American supports, many of them fanatic, who led the way to that moment - but without their own blood, sweat and tears on the line. No, they're armchair warriors.
One day Israel will wake up as the world has abandoned it, and it's American supporters will just lament it in their neocon rags and go on with life.
There is a special dementia setting in among the 'liberal' Zionists. As Israel becomes more and more racist they have to keep telling themselves - and it is mostly about themselves - more and more brazen lies. It's about self-delusion.
The same was true when Bibi formed the 'massive' cabinet back during the summer of 2012 with Kadima. You had J.J. Goldberg at the Forward - who has far more liberal attitudes than the notorious 'other Goldberg' pretends to have - basically going on endless rants about how "Bibi was no unshackled". This is the old 'disappointed leftist' myth. Basically, Bibi is a 'moderate' and he is 'held captive' by his allies. So, explain to us, did someone actually force Bibi to create a coalition with the far-right?
Roger Cohen at this point may not be a fanatic but he cannot let his own Zionism and bigotry drop - he's wedded to ethnic nationalism full-stop. And in order to avoid the painful - and inevitable - hard discussion with himself if he's actually a liberal or just pretends to be one, he will have to lie more and more brazen lies in order to soothe and deceive himself.
The problem is that there are people out there, well-meaning liberals, who cannot see this for what it is. Roger Cohen needs to be pushed aside. He's an ethnic nationalist on the wrong side of history. And he will be.