-
-
- Video: Medea Benjamin interrupts Obama speech on US drone … 6
- Glenn Greenwald on the Woolwich attack and blowback from the … 11
- Church of Scotland accepts controversial report on Israel/Palestine 1
- Half of Israel’s eligible youth don’t enlist– and ranks of … 4
- Chelsea Clinton’s multifaith initiative 7
- More on the ‘creepy’ al-Dura report 7
- Exile and the Prophetic: Does John Kerry have the keys … 6
- Wolf Blitzer looks for a religious state 12
-
- Israeli airport sorts passengers with ‘Jewish stickers’ and ‘Arab stickers’ 2240
- Washington state bus-ad campaign dares to state: ‘Equal rights for … 1716
- Two friends meet for 5 minutes in Jerusalem 1699
- Palestinian-American Raed Zidan plants flag on top of Everest, dedicates … 1359
- Christians denounce Israel’s manhandling of worshipers at Holy Sepulcher on … 952
- Barbara Boxer’s visa bill for Israel comes under concerted attack 809
- In photos: Gaza marches and rallies mark 65 years of … 442
- Washington Post’s racism map omits Israel 438
-
- International Criminal Court opens preliminary investigation into attack on Mavi … 96
- Kennedy’s insistence on right of return prompted Ben-Gurion to rewrite … 93
- Barbara Boxer’s visa bill for Israel comes under concerted attack 93
- Abulhawa declines to ‘balance out’ several Israelis in ‘Al Jazeera’ … 87
- Washington Post’s racism map omits Israel 73
- Uncompromising hope inspired by Ghassan Kanafani 63
- Dershowitz should stop lying about Tutu’s record 56
- Two friends meet for 5 minutes in Jerusalem 48
-
- RT @alexbkane: Obama says expanded surveillance raises "difficult questions" , but his Justice Dept. has stalled on an inquiry into NYPD sp…, 6 hours ago
- RT @samknight1: Flashback: Israel helped train Guatemalan dictator Rios Montt, recently convicted of genocide. https://t.co/oYsxDokunE, 7 hours ago
- RT @samknight1: Israel to train Chiapas police? Well. Say goodnight to the Zapatistas and probably a whole lot of indigenous groups http://…, 7 hours ago
- RT @RodrigoEBR: Medea Benjamin also told Obama "I love my country. I love the rule of law. Abide by the rule of law. You're a constitutiona…, 7 hours ago
- RT @allisonkilkenny: I've never seen this level of outrage from journos levelled at the president for, say, droning people in secret. But f…, 7 hours ago
-
Recent Comments
click link to see last 100 comments- Glenn Greenwald on the Woolwich attack and blowback from the ‘war on terror’ (11)
- RoHa: Boykin was the “my God is bigger” guy who didn’t seem to notice that rescuing American...
- ActivistGal: I’m not as enamoured of Finkelstein as I used to be, particularly with his dismissal of BDS as a...
- biorabbi: Every religion has grievances. I don’t understand Greenwald’s point. Yes, I understand the...
- Mohammed Assaf, singing sensation out of Gaza refugee camp, torches Arab Idol competition (24)
- RJL: Annie, thanks for avoiding an answer. Not even a link to a previous discussion on the matter. So, with all your...
- Wolf Blitzer looks for a religious state (12)
- ToivoS: If she had been down on her knees pleading for help from baby Jebus, she probably would have lost her kid...
- Pamela Olson: Yup, fishing for his Okie soundbite. Guess what, dumbass? We’re not all the same. K? Even in my...
- DICKERSON3870: P.P.S. FROM WIKIPEDIA [The Castle (novel)]: [EXCERPTS] The Castle (German: Das Schloss) is a novel by...
- Israel cracks down on American travel to West Bank by requiring tourists to obtain military permit (35)
- James Canning: Bravo, Rusty. What imbecility on part of the US, to oppose Palestine’s membership in UNESCO....
- James Canning: @Newclench – - Do we care? Virtually every country on earth in effect accepts the Green Line as...
- James Canning: @Rityl – - The security threat posed by the illegal Jewish settlers in WB is more of an...
- Glenn Greenwald on the Woolwich attack and blowback from the ‘war on terror’ (11)
Our Writers
- Philip Weiss
- Adam Horowitz
- Annie Robbins
- Alex Kane
- Kate
- Allison Deger
- David Samel
- Philip Weiss and Adam Horowitz
Blogroll
The War of Ideas in the Middle East
So, let me get this straight: it's now the policy of this blog that we can't criticize the Jewish religion or Jewish identity politics but we can go ahead and trash Mormon religion and eschatology?
Of course he's serious. Why the devil are American police departments receiving training in Israel?
The notion is utterly bizarre. A country of over 300 million, the world's superpower, is sending its cops to train in a little ethno-religious state in the Middle East. Thomas Paine pointed out the absurdity of the American colonies being the satellite of England. The same is true, to a much greater extent, in the case of America and Israel.
Sarah Posner may have called it an "ugly tirade" and an "embarrassment" but truth be told, if Apostolou wrote a piece decrying racial intermarriage between whites and blacks , I have no doubt that her response would be much harsher.
I know this because Posner has condemned, rightfully so, the Mormon Church's past ban on blacks in the priesthood. In fact, in a piece for Salon, she called for Romney to be held to account and be compelled to explain the past racist practices of the LDS church. But when you think about it, is such a racial restriction fundamentally any different than requiring rabbis to be Jews by birth? Why is one race-based religion inherently illegitimate and another race-based religion just fine, as long as it maintains a very slightly ajar door for the odd convert?
I doubt that this matters. Americans - who afterall, are Israel's principal benefactors - are not aware of, and do not recognize the distinction between Ashkenazi and Haredi Jews. In American discourse, a Jew is a Jew, regardless of how swarthy they are.
Nobody in the U.S. will mind if Israel becomes a fundamentalist Jewish state, because the truth is, Americans don't know anything about Judaism to begin with. How can someone criticize a fundamentalist strain of a religion if they don't even know what the mainstream is like?
Your average American has a vague sense that Jews believe in the Old Testament. They don't even know about the Talmud. In other words, many Americans know more about Islam than Judaism.
Notice how you evade the central issue: the fact that Israeli's and ethnocentric Jews throughout the Diaspora regularly return to rhetoric about the "Jewish mind", "Jewish genius", and the like. There's no mistaking it - there is a definite narrative within the community that Jews are inherently more intellectually gifted than other groups. When you combine this attitude with the Israeli subjugation, dehumanization, and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians, you have the most odious instance of state-sponsored racial supremacy in the world today.
Well, I hate to say it, but is that so different than what Philip Weiss says? He has stated that he senses that Jews are the motor of America's economy. Is that anti-Semitic?
No, of course not. It could be framed as such, but it's no more anti-Semitic than opposition to Assad is inherently anti-Alawite. I have to say, I'm not entirely fond of a term like Islamophobia either. Let's be frank about it - Geller doesn't hate Islam so much as she hates that devout Muslims tend to oppose Zionism. After all, if her Christian fundamentalist friends shook off their fashionable Christian Zionism, she'd be just as happy to demonize them as well. And indeed, liberal Zionists do make a sport out of denigrating the Christian right, and indeed Christianity in general.
Thus, the American populace is exposed to right-wing "Islamophobia" and left-wing assaults on Christian fundamentalism. Anything except forthright critiques of right-wing Jewish nationalism, i.e. Zionism and neoconservatism properly understood.
With respect to Fallows, no, the neoconservative architects of the Iraq invasion shouldn't merely live in disgrace. They should be tried and convicted of war crimes and suffer the civilized punishment of life imprisonment.
It cannot be said enough. The Iraq invasion was a crime of historical proportions. At the turn of the 21st century, war was in steep decline. Aggressive wars of conquest were becoming an anachronism. The neocons resurrected the worst atrocities of the past in waging an unprovoked war against Iraq.
Ostracism is not enough. The Zionists behind the Iraq war need to answer for their crimes before a legitimate court. Anything less justifies punitive sanctions that cause mass suffering of civilians as in Iran today. Anything less fosters the next preventive war. As we saw in Libya. As we may yet see in Syria and Iran, whether under this administration or a successor.
Who cares? Let's be real - this whole Netanyahu, Adelson, Romney business amounts to a civil conflict among elite American Jewry. What's new is that gentiles are being exposed to these divisions. From my perspective, the blatant nature of this debate simply underlines how much the U.S. ruling elite is openly Jewish. American Jews are so confident now that they can expose their dirty laundry. Maybe that's progress.
The only thing that really matters is that some American Jewish elites have for their own reasons for the moment overruled a war on Iran. That's great, but meanwhile they promote sanctions that diminish the lives of tens of millions of Iranians just because Israeli's can't handle a powerful Middle Eastern country other than their own. More importantly, sanctions premised upon Iran's nuclear program pave the way for military intervention down the road either under this president's second term or under a future president, Democrat or Republican. Clinton helped make the 2003 invasion possible by not relenting on sanctions and by striking at Iraq in 1998.
I'll be frank. I get the sense that liberal Jews (and I do *not* mean Philip and the others who run this remarkable site) hate Romney not because they're worried about going to war in the Middle East but because they like to see middle America brought down to size. They want to underline how the hillbillies and white blue collar guys alike have lost this country. There is an intense antipathy to fly-over-country, to Bible Belt types, to remnants of the industrial working class among elites both gentile and Jewish that needs to be remarked upon. And I'm sick of it. As a child of immigrants, I love not just this country but the people who built it, white and black.
David Axelrod, by his silence on the issue driving Adelson, is making one thing crystal clear: there is one sphere of politics for Americans as a whole and another level entirely for the leading members of America's Jewish community. Obama was thrust to prominence by figures in Chicago politics like Abner Mivka, Betty Lu Saltzman, and Axelrod himself. Of course Israel is the issue in Adelson's support for Gingrich and then Romney. And of course it's a central issue in Obama's reelection campaign as well.
His career was destroyed, perhaps. But he was able to work at a left-wing rag called the Nation for many years, before it became a shallow partisan Democratic mouthpiece. He was able to reach young radicals at Counterpunch. He found readers on the right, particularly among paleoconservatives and isolationists. He made an impact.
Between the lives of the many well heeled, but forgettable journalists at the New York Times and the life of a radical gadfly like Cockburn, there is no choice.
Is it career suicide to challenge the lobby? It's time for mass suicide. Life is short anyway - make it shorter for a cause. Let's be honest: America is going down at this rate, anyway.
Yonah - I follow your comments. And they all seem to be encapsulated by the simple refrain: my people are special. We are unique before God, and nobody shall take that away from us.
That's fine. Honestly, if you want to remain so archaically tribal-minded, fine.
The problem emerges when people with tribal loyalties like your own happen to be comprise the political and economic elite of a society comprised of people outside the tribe. Then it becomes an issue of civil rights. Then it becomes a matter of you denying civil rights and indeed basic humanity to people outside your anachronistic community.
There's a difference. He has accepted a universalistic creed. Personally, I won't beat around the bush about this point anymore.
To put it bluntly: a universal vision of man, however superstitious, is ethically more advanced than a tribal ethos.
How the devil is he full of himself? Thus far, Kovel has expressed his sentiments as springing from a sense of universalism and humanism. Maybe thats too much to bear for the narrow minded.
Note the breathtaking lying that Salon.com's Alex Seitz-Wald engages in on the undemocratic Democratic platform:
Source: Salon
This pathetic representative of the media tries to sell us that the language is meaningless to everyone except those in "interest groups" - nevermind the fact that the language was changed to recognize an illegal capital to serve the most powerful of interest groups and not the American people or Democratic electorate as a whole.
Pathetic. The entire Democratic convention amounts to a series of speeches extolling how diverse and accepting the party is of minorities, gays, and women.
It's a fraud. A party cannot have its leader intervene at the last minute to change its platform to recognize the illegal capital of a racial supremacist state and still claim to be progressive.
No matter how diverse the rainbow coalition of Obama's Democratic party is, in the end it is made up of spokesmen and stooges for the Lobby. Which is why, for me, all the Democratic rhetoric about Republican racists rings a bit hollow. Both parties are united in declaring that the Palestinians are less than human.
Wikipedia is a fantastic idea. The problem is that an ecosystem like Wikipedia, driven by thousands of individual contributors, only works when those contributors are genuine free agents. It only works when they are, in fact, individuals.
It doesn't function properly when a collective of people operate in coordination to promote their groups interests, irrespective of Enlightenment notions of truth and intellectual integrity.
The same, alas, can be said for finance, the media, academia, and a myriad of other industries. They work in theory - when meritocracy reigns. In practice, we have vigorous nepotism and ethnocentric favoritism.
Ok, but the media business in America consolidated to that six companies or thereabouts well before the decline of the industry in the face of the Internet and financial crash. It culminated in the 1990's - the 1996 Telecommunications Act was a milestone in that process. The timeline is that it consolidated years before newspapers and magazines started going under.
Meanwhile, even though the press is in a difficult financial position, ideological hegemony (to use a Gramscian Marxist turn of phrase) is still decisively managed by the media and entertainment industries.
When the average Joe knows about the Israel lobby, let alone who Rachel Corrie was or about the U.S.S. Liberty, we'll know there's been a paradigm shift. Today we have a growing collection of niches on the web that serve only small minorities of the population.
Yep. Not only do Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Virgin Islands get little or no mention, but major NATO, Asian, and Latin American allies are mostly ignored as well.
I'm waiting for Romney or Obama to run ads declaring their loyalty to our ally South Korea and the Korean community.
So on Nov. 22nd, 1963, Robert Kennedy's brother, the President of the United States was assassinated. A weird and convenient coincidence, at any rate.
As a student of American and world history, conspiracy theories like this are disturbing precisely because of their plausibility. And ham-fisted denials don't constitute firm rebuttals. On the contrary, they simply reaffirm the original suspicion.
Thanks. This from Palestine Chronicle is the hard-hitting truth:
"Those pseudo-Christians, who would have us all believe that God is some kind of racist real estate agent, thereafter made her life a misery. . ."
Is God racist? Are some people superior not on account of achievement or morality but blood? Is one man's parents enough to make him the master over another man, whatever his character, because of his parentage?
There's no disguising this issue. It is, I would argue, the central question when confronting Zionism. Do we believe that all men were created equal or not?
I have a different take on this. Outside of a border state like Arizona, the Republicans would rather not commit to a broad-ranging attack on America's open immigration policy. Thus, they focus upon peripheral issues like border fences and opposition to amnesty for the undocumented. At the same time, they know that the conservative (and indeed much of the liberal) population in this country is susceptible to anti-immigrant xenophobia. The Republicans, by using anti-Islamic and anti-sharia rhetoric can essentially exploit anti-immigrant sentiments without coming out against the immigration of cheap labor that American business wants and that the Israel lobby is in favor of.
We see this in Europe as well. Anti-immigrant politics is elided with Islamophobia as a way of scapegoating Muslims, promoting Israel, but at the same time preventing xenophobia from taking on the openly anti-foreigner and white nationalist character it might otherwise assume.
Well, maybe we've been worrying about real anti-semitism long after it's sell date.
To wit, anti-Chinese racism was extraordinarily virulent in 19th century and early 20th century California. There were more lynchings of Chinese in the state than of Jews in all of American history. Now? Anti-Chinese racism basically irrelevant. Anti-semitism in California is not just basically, but absolutely irrelevant.
To be frank, this is why we should be opposed to hate speech laws. In fact, we should go ahead and remove this Orwellian phrase from the English vernacular.
By infringing upon free speech rights and the First Amendment, even in the name of anti-racism or anti-homophobia, hate speech laws simply pave the way for criminalizing unpopular or anti-establishment political positions.
"If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind." - John Stuart Mill.
Maybe, but then why are the news networks guilty of the same muddle? In the case of CNN and MSNBC it can't be subscribers. Is it then advertisers? Pressure groups? Or might it simply be the owners?
Because the same dynamic exists across the board in the media and political establishment. It can't all be because of people like your mom, can it?
It's too bad Rachel Corrie was a goy, because then you'd care about her life too.
The rest of us believe in the equality and brotherhood of man. Do you?
Okay, well it's the middle of the day. We know if an outlet's going to cover the whitewash of the murder of Corrie by the apartheid state by this point.
Indeed, as I predicted, Slate did not have a single story. It's not even a sidebar item.
Salon - nothing. Salon is more resolutely liberal than Slate, but there's no coverage. Glenn Greenwald might have discussed it, but he no longer is with the site.
Imagine if all the pro-marriage equality, feminist, and anti-racist journalists and commentators actually favored racial equality in Israel/Palestine. They don't - because they're hypocritical frauds.
Watch as the liberal press downplays or outright ignores this ruling, just as they ignored the murder of Corrie to begin with.
On Slate, which is always up in arms over the faintest whiff of white racism in the U.S., so far there is nothing. Might this have something to do with the fact that its editor-in-chief David Plotz went on an AIEF trip to Israel as reported by the Forward and Philip Weiss? Maybe it'll be a side-bar item later in the day - but I guarantee it will not be a main story.
When are African Americans, Latinos, and other minorities going to wake up and realize that their ostensible political allies defend the murder of U.S. citizens in defense of a racist state?
Nope. You wouldn't get a crowd of white people *today* in 2012 cheering the murder of a black kid.
It will not happen. I know we assume the worst of white southerners, but really that sort of thing has gone out of style. Public lynchings still occur in Israel. They do not happen in the U.S.
Would this be likely to happen in the U.S. today, in 2012?
Nope. Not even with all the anti-Muslim, anti-Arab rhetoric we've been flooded with in the last decade. A individual or small group might commit such a crime, but they would not receive the kind of open support seen in the end of the video. All those oh-so-sophisticated New York and D.C. liberals who laugh at white southern yokels and bible-thumpers nevertheless support racists that make most Americans in fly-over country look like open-minded cosmopolitans.
Nice try. But, there's no comparison. Ovadia Yosef, unlike his Iranian counterparts, has made clear that he adheres to a racial supremacist ideology:
“Goyim were born only to serve us. Without that, they have no place in the world – only to serve the People of Israel... In Israel, death has no dominion over them... With gentiles, it will be like any person – they need to die, but [God] will give them longevity. Why? Imagine that one’s donkey would die, they’d lose their money. This is his servant... That’s why he gets a long life, to work well for this Jew... Why are gentiles needed? They will work, they will plow, they will reap. We will sit like an effendi and eat. That is why gentiles were created."
link to jpost.com
Let me say it again: there's no comparison. He promotes a vision of racial supremacy in which the lives of Iranians and all other gentiles have no *intrinsic* value.
At some point, you have to wonder: if you're that suspicious of even your closest, and most selfless allies, might it be springing from a sense of guilty conscience?
Thank you bilal. Alas, it will never happen. Some forms of elitist, ethnic-discrimination are acceptable and are not considered a legitimate subject of debate.
We can only discuss it in muted voices of praise - hence the constant invocation of the 15 point IQ advantage by commentators on this blog. We can never address it for what it is - a genuine infringement of civil rights.
Why? Why is it commendable to think that your racial heritage endows you with some special moral sensibility?
No. People laughed at Romney when he talked about America's and Great Britain's shared Anglo-Saxon ancestry. Well, if someone went much further than Romney's modest claim and said that Anglo-Saxons have some special moral obligation simply on account of blood - and not on behalf of a culture that other groups can share in the U.S. and UK - they'd be rightly considered racist.
Why do we make special allowance here? Eisner is expressing in an ostensibly liberal, secular disguise the same old tired notion that some races are endowed with an inherent dignity denied to members of other groups.
It's different Krauss. Believe me - no Indian would feign outrage if people started noticing how many of us there are in IT or medicine. We wouldn't call it anti-Indianism and claim that it can only pave the way to a recolonization of India by white people.
No Indian would respond that way in part because there's no hiding who in fact is Indian. The same is not true in the case of writers for the New Yorker, executive members of the American Enterprise Institute, Harvard associate deans, Silicon Valley executives, hedge fund managers, etc. As a result, if Indians came to dominate all these industries - guess what? People would speak about it and there might be efforts to increase diversity and enforce fair employment.
What are you talking about? Dan is calling out Eisner precisely for being intolerant. And you're saying - what? - that being intolerant of intolerance is itself intolerant? This is no different than saying a civil rights activist is a race-baiter or is playing the race card. It's a form of obfuscation and verbal chicanery whose sole purpose is to turn the eyes of the public away from wrongdoing and towards those rare individuals calling it out.
So Eisner wants to see Jews as a community? It matters because no Hispanic, no Asian, no Christian, no African American is allowed to say what she said in this speech. Nobody - without running the risk of serious repercussions to career, to access, and to your reputation. It matters when you have an elite group that self-identifies among themselves but refuses the right of the rest of society to recognize the extent to which they act as a cohesive group. A group which views other Americans as the other, but wants Americans to see them as just white people.
Sorry, but it's dishonest, it's damaging to our national discourse, it undermines the sense that we can be a country based on fair play and merit, and its wrong.
Yup. Meanwhile, Interior Minister Eli Yishai says Israel "belongs to us, the white man." Guess what, fool? You're not even as white as some Palestinians. Nor as white as the Turks you murdered on the Gaza flotilla. In fact, you're not even white, period.
Of course, it doesn't matter. Israel's racial supremacy is built upon the most narrow of genetic lines and doesn't fall along the European white/colored dichotomy. That's why I and many other Americans are bored to tears of hearing about white supremacy in the U.S. in the media. A rare mass shooting in a Sikh temple doesn't change the fact that Palestinians wish they were treated like Indians like Sikhs are in the United States: as equal citizens.
Yeah. Maybe its time people stop asking questions like that and instead inquire: "is it good for mankind?"
Anyway, why are jokers like Wilders, Nick Griffin, Marine Le Pen, etc. Islamophobic and pro-Zionist, unlike their ideological forebears? Because they're following the money. They know where the money and power is found today. The same realization is what drives Christian Zionists like the living caricature John Hagee.
In other words, Ron Paul has more integrity than President Obama and virtually all Democratic politicians, aside from, in this particular vote, John Dingell. Although, not enough alas to break with the Republicans or risk the career of his son.
At some point, liberals in America may have to decide if Medicare or the Department of Education is more important than America bombing other countries, imposing sanctions on civilians, and supporting a racist garrison state on the other side of the globe. What's better: a genuinely isolationist paleoconservative or a neoliberal interventionist like Obama? The choice is obvious to me. But then, we'll never be given the opportunity to make the decision.
Sure, but opposition in the U.S. to the wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq grew to sizable proportions and ultimately came to encompass majorities of the public. Japan has not repented, and politicians still provocatively visit the shrine of war criminals, and yet the country has in practice made amends - by neutering itself as a military power.
Rachel Maddow is worse. On a daily basis she effervescently castigates right-wingers, American racists, misogynists, and jingoists. She practically yells and laughs in the face of her audience about how evil, wrong, and *dumb* the right is and how she is defending victims of oppression and exploitation.
But the Palestinians? Forget about it. They don't exist. Imagine a similar black hole during the 80's concerning Apartheid or America's dirty wars in Central America.
I can't take liberals like Maddow seriously. In fact, the only way I might take such figures seriously is if you can persuade me that they don't simply have a blind spot but are malicious in intent, self-consciously hypocritical, and utterly insincere in their support of liberal causes. Which may well be the case.
How can anyone make excuses for lynchings, home demolitions, anti-immigrant pogroms, collective punishment, and racialist nationalism while being a liberal or civil libertarian concerning American domestic affairs? You can't. Which raises the question: is the right-left rivalry in American politics a sham?
It's edifying to compare the comments on the Jerusalem Post or Ynet's sites and the comments on American right-wing websites. Take your pick with the latter. Even if you look at one of the most virulently race-baiting American political sites like Breitbart.com (which of course is also militantly Zionist), the comments are not on average as bigoted and racially supremacist as those on the Israeli sites.
As a matter of fact, real counterparts to comments on JP or Ynet can't even be found in all white nationalist websites. Some, like Occidental Observer and David Duke's site, are staid in comparison.
Basically, you can only find analogous hate on extreme sites like Stormfront. That is Israel's company today. Now, bear in mind one is an outcast fringe of American politics. The other is the most powerful lobby in Washington, the major power in the Middle East, and the ideological impetus for perpetual war.
You're working hard on damage control. We've just come out of two decades of destroying Iraq as a nation, and while foreign companies like ENI, BP, and China National Petroleum are tapping their reserves, we're supposed to believe that the U.S. oil industry is the prime mover here. I suppose the petroleum industry is also in favor of punitive sanctions against Iran, regime change in Libya, toppling Assad, cutting off Hezbollah's funding, choking off Gaza, and stopping nuclear proliferation among Muslim countries.
If they act simply as bankers (say as a Platonic ideal of generic bankers), then why is the U.S. threatening Syria, treating Hezbollah as a serious terrorist threat, imposing punitive sanctions on Iran and drifting towards war against that country?
Weiss is courageous for broaching this subject. Incidentally, the Russo-Japanese war was momentous. Without the Japanese defeat of czarist Russia there would have been no 1905 Revolution. No 1905 Revolution and quite possibly no successful 1917 Revolution either.
Well, as a former chief Sephardic rabbi, what racist statements he has made are entirely in keeping with what the late Chabad-Lubavitch Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson said. Or for that matter, some writings by Moses Maimonides.
Religious fundamentalism is ugly. What we're dealing with here is even more extreme than, for example, Salafi and Wahhabi Islam. I would only compare it to the white supremacist Christian Identity movement.
They're worried about their own asses in a horrible job market because speaking up on the issue is a ticket to getting blacklisted. Moreover, why would 5 million Israeli refugees push gentiles out of the few elite positions unless favoritism, nepotism, and blacklisting were already standard employment practices in the U.S.?
The bottom line is that the New York Times, by having policies like ensuring foreign correspondent positions for members of a particular ethnic group, is effectively in violation of the spirit, if not the letter of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. Does Rudoren have bona fide occupational qualifications that an Arab scholar or Christian American journalist bilingual in Hebrew, and versed in regional affairs do not? Of course not. We've become inured to blatant discrimination and violation of civil rights in journalism and employment in the media. At best we flatter it by calling it ethnic networking. But it needs to stop.
Come on. Broad majorities of whites have taken responsibility for regimes like Apartheid South Africa, Australia during the White Australia policy, Nazi Germany, Jim Crow South, etc.
Yet to be frank, in Jesse Benjamin's post and in your comment there seems to be a shucking of responsibility. Was the lynching in Zion Square the result of the adulterating influence of American racism? Or was it simply part and parcel of Jewish supremacism?
For example, the chant: "A Jew is a soul and (an) Arab is a son of a ----.” is not one with roots in American or Christian culture. No, it is idiomatically based upon a certain fundamentalist reading of the Talmud.
Newclench, it appears your disagreement is not so much with the veracity of Keith's accusation - that Judaism's Halakha does in fact make a distinction between two classes of human beings, and more with the fact that we shouldn't be allowed to address it.
In point of fact, this only reinforces the point - people outside the group don't have the right to question that group's doctrines, however antithetical to the values of Enlightenment.
Also, I notice you changed my "decades" into "a 20th century pass".
I will say it more clearly: any religion which still adheres to ideas of blood and ancestry is in need of deep and sustained reform in order to be in accordance with modern principles of democracy and human rights. If the issue were, for example, gender equality in fundamentalist Islam, Orthodox Judaism, or Catholicism, I suspect you would not be so in arms. Well, guess what? The principle of the equality of mankind is just as essential. And it cuts to the core of all of the issues debated on this blog. Or else why do some people have the right to return and others do not, merely on account of birth?
This is an issue of civil rights and should not be subordinated to a pious respect for barbaric traditions.
Get over it. Americans and Europeans have been inundated for decades with criticism not just of individual Christians and Muslims, but of Christian and Islamic doctrines as such. Whats good for the goose is good for the gander. All religions have ugly and frankly anachronistic dogmas. Keith called out one.
Yeah, I think you might be. The polls here have the presidential contest in a dead heat. Obama wins more polls than not nationally and in so-called swing states, but it's a virtual tie. Either man can win right now. Why? Because the economy is stagnant - neither declining precipitously nor recovering at the pace all Americans alive today are used to.
Who the devil cares about brown vs. white? Is one side defined by blood, by ancestry, by genetic heritage and the other defined as falling outside that group on account of heredity?
That's all that matters. If you define some men as more worthy of respect than others only on account of parentage then you're barbaric and pre-modern. Actually, there's no "if - then" statement here. Dimadok, you are barbaric and pre-modern, full stop.
10x more worthy? Operation Cast Lead indicates it's over 100x.
Think about that. The U.S. Constitution originally had blacks at 3/5 of a white man. We're talking here about 1 part of 100.
Washington, America's founder and perhaps the greatest statesman of the last two thousand years said in his farewell address: "The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible." Speaking of Europe, but which we may extend to the world he continued: "Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves by artificial ties in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics, or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities."
In a better America, the President, State Department, Congress, and intelligence agencies would have no position on the state of Egypt and its internal affairs regarding civilian vs. military government. That America was dead on arrival, but its corpse was decisively laid to rest with the World Wars.
I wish the Egyptian people the best, but it is their own affair. Obama and Clinton should keep out of it, as much as they should abandon their roles as defenders of Israel.
This is exactly right. Frankly, most white nationalists these days pay lip service to the right of self-determination for colored peoples. They just insist that we should express that autonomy elsewhere.
People like Zell, I argue, are more extreme. They deny self-determination and autonomy to everyone except their kinship network. This is the mindset of empire-builders.
By the time of Caracalla, all free men were granted citizenship in the Roman Empire - including in Palestine. In other words, Zell and his type are more parochial, supremacist, and backward minded than a Roman emperor of the 3rd century.
Zell is a professional liar. If he really and sincerely desires separation, why is he so deeply involved in American politics and neoconservatism? Why does he still have law offices in Washington? Why was he a member of the Iraqi International Law Group in 2003 when the country was still a smoldering pile of ruins as a result of America's aggressive war?
No, Zell's international involvements in politics reveals that he does not honestly want separation. He wants control.
Come on Sean. We all know unusually high IQ's and a culture of prizing education are behind neoconservative dynastic success.
With all due respect sir, any person or group which practices a devout form of *self-worship* cannot claim to be clear-headed atheists.
If that's the case, then why use kinship groups so extensively, as Philip and many others have testified?
Consider: you have a disproportionately powerful, wealthy, and as you say, intelligent ethnicity. This ethnic group then magnifies their status through preferential hiring practices.
When any other elite racial group does this, it becomes a civil rights issue. It should be recognized as one here, as well.
Because no matter how rich he is (something approaching 20 billion dollars), he can't get American boys to fight for him in the Middle East. Only the embalmed corpse of Uncle Sam can do that. Hence the need for winning the White House.
Of course, he could always settle for drone strikes, punitive sanctions, and covert operations. The current administration is more than happy to supply those already.
Well I hate to be blunt about it. But, southern whites used to target blacks not Arab Muslims. When blacks like jazz great Thelonius Monk affected an Arab appearance, they did so to escape racism. The New Yorker reported in 1948 of this phenomenon: "Many Negro boppers like to pretend that they are Arabs. Thelonius Monk sometimes foegets that he was born on W. 63rd St. and announces that he is a native of Damascus. Dizzy sometimes wears a turban to make people think he's a Mohammedan. The large number of beboppers who have become Mohammedans want to escape from their American environment. "
Read more link to newyorker.com
The obsession with "Islamofascism" is, by contrast, a relatively recent phenomenon. It is the product of a media and political driven propaganda campaign akin to that which, as was pointed out by a recent commentator on this site, was used to demonize the German Huns during World War I. When whites in this country attack Muslims, they're essentially being used as tools for the sake of wars in the Middle East that scarcely concern them and for the infringement of civil liberties which they themselves howl about as soon as a Democrat is president.
The Syrian rebels have proven themselves to be led, if not largely comprised, by thugs. Anytime the Zionist media fixates upon a civil war, as in Syria today, we read hyperbolic commentary. But, any sane appraisal of the facts makes clear that the Assad regime, however despicable, has not committed crimes so egregious that they begin to excuse the blatant communal politics of the opposition. The Free Syrian Army could have called upon patriotic Alawites. It could have linked arms with Shiites and Christians as fully the equal to Sunnis. It could have done these things in the name of a broad-based uprising for a free republic. Instead, like it's Libyan counterparts, it has exposed itself to be an utterly compromised, infiltrated, and bigoted movement. In the end, despite the loud protestations of Syrian rebel spokesmen on Al Jazeera, the U.S. and Israel are the real victors.
It wasn't so long ago that Mondoweiss noted how, according to Haaretz and as admitted by Homeland Security Secretary Napolitano, an incredible 97% of federal defense grants for non-profits go to Jewish organizations.
link to mondoweiss.net
Despite the fact that Sikhs have been repeatedly targeted in this country, not just since 9/11 but going back to the Persian Gulf War two decades ago, their community did not elicit a serious commitment by the so-called Homeland Security Department.
We should ask: whose "Homeland" is the U.S. government defending?
With respect to Phil, who makes this conversation possible, Dan is right here.
Indeed, the fact that so many are resistant to his obvious point (that Phil and other Jewish progressives make excuses for their own people's selfish amorality) is simply further evidence that the masses have been indoctrinated in lies.
Listen. Would we tolerate Afrikaner's making excuses for white South Africans circa 1980? No. Would we excuse white Southerner's pleading for time to change the hearts of their kin in the 50's? No.
For Palestinians, these are the relevant analogies. It's not good enough. We are dealing with an oppressive ethnic elite that needs not just to change its collective minds but be systematically *dethroned*.
With respect: it matters enormously.
I know it's easy for knowledgeable people here to forget, but it needs to be said.
The majority of white, and indeed black and Hispanic goyim in America have only the faintest idea that Jewish Americans constitute a separate nation. Where should they find out this useful nugget of anthropological information? Not the media. Not their schools. Not the popular culture.
I daresay, a rather inscrutable comment.
I'm more concerned with *tribal* politics than party politics, quite frankly. Tribalism was rational and appropriate in the Bronze Age.
Today? It's not even an anachronism. It's an abomination.
If they wanted to join NATO, they would have long ago. Turkey has been a member since 1952, when it was admitted along with Greece.
Being part of NATO would mean having mutual obligations.
Anan, it's okay. Save your breath. We know you care neither for Christians nor Muslims. Neither for Sunni's nor Shiites nor Druze nor Alawites. Anyone who makes apologies for people like Netanyahu, for the Israeli invasion of Lebanon (which was all Arafat's fault according to you, Arafat a man who was assassinated by cowards who could not even admit their crime), for telling fairy-tales about a tolerant multicultural Israeli society, for making bloodless assertions that the people of the world should submit to the rule of a financial elite led, no doubt, by nations like your imaginary hi-tech, prosperous garrison state.
You care for your own people. Most of the rest of us care for all mankind.
I got it. So you think Jesus meant Christianity to be a tiny sect in the Levant and for Europe to remain shrouded in paganism for eternity. And for universalism, human rights, and the notion of all men as brothers to be stillborn.
I wish I could say I respect your view on the matter. But I don't. And I daresay Paul wasn't a liar as you appear to suggest.
See the above. There are contradictory verses, but then there are clear examples such as the above verses. "No difference between the Jew and the Greek" kind of puts a damper on any special claims to the Holy Land. At best we can say the evidence is mixed on this point, contrary to the Christian Zionist sell-outs.
They've basically abrogated the basic teachings of Pauline Christianity.
Romans 10:12 For there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek: for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him.
Galatians 3:28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.
Matthew 28:19 Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost
Considering that the wiping out is an eschatological fantasy while the political implications of millions of Americans being turned into useful idiots for a foreign nation are very real, I would say that one side definitely has the upper hand in this relationship. And that side isn't U.S. Christians, who have sold their Christian brethren in the Holy Land out for thirty pieces of silver.
As Woody Allen told Newsweek: "The French make two mistakes about me. They think I'm an intellectual because I wear these glasses and they think I'm an artist because my films lose money."
Personally, I appreciate this level of frankness. When the cognoscenti call a non-entity like Elena Kagan "brilliant", I recall Allen's quote.
Colin are you really proposing that American Jews could be become as politically irrelevant as Armenian Americans?
I like Philip's optimism here, but we're talking about the single largest, most well funded lobby in U.S. politics. If things are going to change then presumably we'll see the emergence of a comparable counter-lobby, and I'm not talking about J Street. I don't see it happening personally. Who is the Haim Saban, the Sheldon Adelson of anti-Zionism? They don't exist because, frankly, you don't get that rich committing yourself to such a controversial cause.
No, it's definitely a bit racist. Except it's a type of racism most Americans are ignorant of: a racism that denigrates white cowboy yahoo's alongside black basketball players and Sikh taxi drivers.
The whole video is a laughable product of an imperial culture that has lost all sense of dignity, modesty, and self-restraint.
Yeah, you're right hophmi. I'm now allowed to speak about Jewish power. Jews are allowed to inveigh upon white power, black nationalism, and Arab fanaticism, but your own elite is beyond reproach. I leave it to this writer from the Times of Israel to say what we're not allowed to say:
"We Jews are a funny breed. We love to brag about every Jewish actor. Sometimes we even pretend an actor is Jewish just because we like him enough that we think he deserves to be on our team. We brag about Jewish authors, Jewish politicians, Jewish directors. Every time someone mentions any movie or book or piece of art, we inevitably say something like, “Did you know that he was Jewish?” That’s just how we roll.
We’re a driven group, and not just in regards to the art world. We have, for example, AIPAC, which was essentially constructed just to drive agenda in Washington DC. And it succeeds admirably. And we brag about it. Again, it’s just what we do.
But the funny part is when any anti-Semite or anti-Israel person starts to spout stuff like, “The Jews control the media!” and “The Jews control Washington!”
Suddenly we’re up in arms. We create huge campaigns to take these people down. We do what we can to put them out of work. We publish articles. We’ve created entire organizations that exist just to tell everyone that the Jews don’t control nothin’. No, we don’t control the media, we don’t have any more sway in DC than anyone else. No, no, no, we swear: We’re just like everybody else!
Does anyone else (who’s not a bigot) see the irony of this?
Let’s be honest with ourselves, here, fellow Jews. We do control the media. We’ve got so many dudes up in the executive offices in all the big movie production companies it’s almost obscene. Just about every movie or TV show, whether it be “Tropic Thunder” or “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” is rife with actors, directors, and writers who are Jewish. Did you know that all eight major film studios are run by Jews?
We Jews are a funny breed. We love to brag about every Jewish actor. Sometimes we even pretend an actor is Jewish just because we like him enough that we think he deserves to be on our team. We brag about Jewish authors, Jewish politicians, Jewish directors. Every time someone mentions any movie or book or piece of art, we inevitably say something like, “Did you know that he was Jewish?” That’s just how we roll.
We’re a driven group, and not just in regards to the art world. We have, for example, AIPAC, which was essentially constructed just to drive agenda in Washington DC. And it succeeds admirably. And we brag about it. Again, it’s just what we do.
But the funny part is when any anti-Semite or anti-Israel person starts to spout stuff like, “The Jews control the media!” and “The Jews control Washington!”
Suddenly we’re up in arms. We create huge campaigns to take these people down. We do what we can to put them out of work. We publish articles. We’ve created entire organizations that exist just to tell everyone that the Jews don’t control nothin’. No, we don’t control the media, we don’t have any more sway in DC than anyone else. No, no, no, we swear: We’re just like everybody else!
Does anyone else (who’s not a bigot) see the irony of this?
Let’s be honest with ourselves, here, fellow Jews. We do control the media. We’ve got so many dudes up in the executive offices in all the big movie production companies it’s almost obscene. Just about every movie or TV show, whether it be “Tropic Thunder” or “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” is rife with actors, directors, and writers who are Jewish. Did you know that all eight major film studios are run by Jews?
Pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty good. (photo credit: CC BY-SA Angela George/Wikimedia Commons)
But that’s not all. We also control the ads that go on those TV shows.
And let’s not forget AIPAC, every anti-Semite’s favorite punching bag. We’re talking an organization that’s practically the equivalent of the Elders of Zion. I’ll never forget when I was involved in Israeli advocacy in college and being at one of the many AIPAC conventions. A man literally stood in front of us and told us that their whole goal was to only work with top-50 school graduate students because they would eventually be the people making changes in the government. Here I am, an idealistic little kid that goes to a bottom 50 school (ASU) who wants to do some grassroots advocacy, and these guys are literally talking about infiltrating the government. Intense."
Link:
link to blogs.timesofisrael.com
It's different. Imagine if most Washington think tanks, Ivy league political science, economics, and sociology departments, Wall Street financial firms, major media corporations, non-profit groups, and political action committees were led by prominent Asian Americans.
Well, it's plausible, but here's the thing: everyone would know about it. It would be utterly transparent that some combination of merit and networking allowed such a distribution of power to occur.
Thus, Asian networking, to the extent it exists in America, (and I would argue it mostly exists in ethnic enclaves, expressly ethnic organizations, and in a few industries like IT) is by its nature highly visible. And this in itself constrains it from ever becoming remotely comparable to Jewish networking. Notice here that even discussing the latter is the equivalent of opening a canister of radioactive waste.
It's not the same. Asians do not practice relentless ethnic networking in academia, politics, finance, and the media. Nor do Asians benefit from blending in physically with the white majority. These two factors: ethnic networking and the fact that Jews benefit from white privilege, mean that these two groups are different in kind, not degree.
Nonsense. The elite issue matters, because in the absence of this factor, the "I/P issue" as you put it, would not illicit such a one-sided policy from American political establishment.
If an Afrikaner elite based out of New York City, the Northeast Corridor, D.C, and California were driving a U.S. foreign policy that sent billions of tax dollars the way of apartheid South Africa... guess what? It would be absolutely necessary to have a discussion about that elite.
I heard this the other day and thought of posting about it here. My jaw dropped when I heard it. What the devil was going through Robert Siegel's mind when he said that? And what are Americans supposed to think? It's just weird and out of place. Actually, it comes across as a joke being played on NPR listeners. The subtext is: "You people are such suckers that we can push the most blatant propaganda upon you and there's nothing you can do about it."
Note the phrasing: "Think of situations..." As if this particular one comes naturally to mind. We're supposed to sigh in agreement and recognition. Well, no, the overwhelming majority of listeners are not going to think of the IDF in this situation.
Citizen - forward her images of Christian churches in the Middle East: Coptic, Syriac, Orthodox, Maronite, Catholic, etc. Is she saying these are all fake Christians because they care more about Jesus than about a modern nation-state? If so, then she simply confirms my prior statement in this thread.
We should be frank about it. The fact is, American Christians are not, by and large, all that serious about their faith. This explains why they are indifferent to the fate of Christians in Palestine, Syria, Iraq, Egypt, and Lebanon. Note how much this is in contrast to Western Christians of earlier generations, who painstakingly, if often hypocritically, scoured the globe for persecuted communities of the faithful.
Christianity in America is powerful only in relative terms. In comparison to Europe, yes, America is religious. But Tocqueville wrote of an America in which all business and all entertainment stopped on the Sabbath. And not because of legal regulation principally, but because of social consensus. That is not the America of today.
I would say it's broader than that. Despite recurrent claims from recent administrations of a shifting of U.S. foreign policy away from Europe and the Middle East to the Far East and Pacific, it never seems to happen. Iran looms larger than China, Syria is more important than North Korea, and Israel is a more important ally than Japan. If the goal is the preservation of American power, then U.S. foreign policy is about as counterproductive as British policy was in the first half of the 20th century.
Having said all that, I don't believe North Korea is a threat to the United States and that we should have normal relations with that country.
I don't know Colin. It's hard not to notice that the rise of Christian Zionism mirrors the entry of the Jewish intelligentsia to the right (neo-conservatism). Or that it followed quickly on the heals of the abdication of the WASP ruling elite and the old Episcopal establishment in favor of a more meritocratic and more Jew hospitable ruling strata.
Religion has had plenty of ways of expressing itself in American history. We have long been an unusually religious Western nation. Christian Zionism might then have become prominent in Puritan New England, Second Great Awakening Upstate New York, or Bringham Young's Utah. No, it only became politically and religiously significant with the rise of the Lobby. I don't think it's a coincidence. The heads of these evangelical churches have sold out and have sold their followers a bill of goods. And they have relied upon the bloody-mindedness of American social conservatives to do the rest.
I think we need to ask ourselves if, Christian Zionism is based on Biblical prophecy, why it has only recently become a major political force. The tendency has a pre-history extending into the 19th century, but I daresay few of us had heard of it before Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson emerged on the national stage.
The answer, I should think, is money and influence. As in, Christian evangelical leaders saw both these things accruing to them in advocating this dubious piece of theological doctrine.
Woody - In Japan there is no mandate to be an exclusive adherent of Shinto or Buddhism, right? The kamikaze pilots could be following State Shinto, and yet upon their death they received Buddhist funeral rites.
At any rate, it seems that unlike in the monotheistic religions, Japanese religion offers little in the way of protective injunctions against suicide.
It's good to be aware of this basic level of ethnic decorum. As it happens, other faiths view themselves much more in terms of belief and ritual. Only a minuscule minority identify themselves in such a reductionistic genetic fashion.
Tokyobk - You're struggling. The vast and overwhelming majority of mosques, Islamic centers, and Islamic schools have no flags of foreign nations flying before them. Why? Because most Muslims in America implicitly and explicitly accept a separation of church and state and would not dream of confusing their religious commitments with their patriotic loyalties. I only wish all faiths shared this sensibility. Luckily, most do.
Of course there's no comparison between the two flags. At least since the Civil Rights era and immigration reform in 1965, if not back to Ellis Island or the Irish and German immigration of 19th century, the American flag has not been the exclusive symbol of a single ethnic or religious collective. The other flag is inherently a collectivist symbol for a small sub-population of the U.S. that is all but closed to outsiders.
There are already departments in Jewish Studies. So, there's already a complement to Arab departments. When you add the fact that most social sciences are dominated by Jewish academics in any event, then the gratuitousness of Israeli Studies propaganda departments become even more blatant.
Well, why would the New Yorker never have a pro-Afrikaner propagandist? What's the difference?
Let's be real here. Anybody, of any racial, ethnic, or religious minority, who demonstrates such an extent of moral myopia as this deserves to be called out and exposed. Exposed as what they are: utter frauds.
I disagree. The U.S. actually supported the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt during the 50's and 60's in order to combat Nasser and Arab nationalism. The Brotherhood has long been, in economic, social, and even foreign policy terms, a conservative force.
The U.S., without the influence of Israel, would be supporting this military coup if there was an impending threat of Marxist revolution, left-wing Arab nationalism, or Soviet influence. None of these forces are at work - Arab nationalism didn't even make it to the run-off in the presidential election. What is at work? Well, the same foreign policy dictate that forces American taxpayers to subsidize the participants to the Camp David accords.
The most obvious hole is the fact that Palestinian Christians are every bit as occupied as Muslims are. Strange to say, but Westerners in the 19th century had a greater awareness of Christian minorities in the Ottoman Empire, including in Palestine, than they do today. Again in Syria, whatever you may think of the rebellion there, the fate of Christians has been noticeably absent from American discourse and policy.
Considering that America is a majority Christian nation, at least nominally, I find this blithe ignorance strange when juxtaposed against our interventionist Middle East policy.
Notice how Romney avoided confronting Obama's decision regarding young undocumented immigrants and instead responded by changing the subject to how much more hawkish he is regarding Israel.
Something remarkable has happened to the American body politic when even the ostensibly conservative, largely white major party defers on illegal immigration while pushing for an interventionist policy on behalf of a foreign entity.
In this regard, note the venue for Romney's speech on religion - the Faith and Freedom Coalition. Who, if you examine its staff is at least as Zionist as it is Christian: link to ffcoalition.com
Normally the young woman after the betrothal ritual goes ahead and moves in with that young man. Imagine if instead, she continued to live under her parents roof and genuflected ritually in the direction of her nominal husband and demanded that her parents send a generous allowance his way.
Of course, this has been precisely the accusation of white nationalists like David Duke for decades, and frankly, whether you view it positively or not, they're right. Jewish organizations were at the forefront of immigration reform and I can probably thank my existence to their lobbying for the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965.
I do think there's something to the claim of white racists that the Jewish community advocated immigration not simply out of liberal sympathies but out of a view that a more diverse society was less likely to exhibit marked anti-Semitism. Well, it makes sense doesn't it? The more whites there are proportionally in America, the more likely they are to notice the Jewish minority among them and distinguish them as the other, especially in those parts of the country where blacks are only a small minority. On the other hand, add an infusion of Hispanic and Asian immigrants, and the distinction between white gentile and Jew diminishes considerably. Note that this strategy, if indeed it is one, only works to the extent that whites and minorities do not identify with each other as much as white Christians do with Jews. And of course, this is indeed the case.
At this point, it is quite clear why LGBT rights are so passionately highlighted by Zionist hardliners like this "Brian" fellow. To be frank, gay rights, valid as they may be, are being used as a battering ram against Christian and Muslim religion and culture.
Terry Gross never really challenges the Washington consensus on Iran or Middle Eastern policy in general. This is apparent in the many interviews she has done regarding Iran. I suppose she retains certain loyalties. This site has reviewed her position on Israel and the occupation in the past:
link to mondoweiss.net
With respect to Gross, I rather prefer Christopher Lydon, formerly of The Connection and now of Radio Open Source: link to radioopensource.org
American imperialism precedes Zionism, but today the two are almost synonymous. America's Middle Eastern-centric foreign policy and strategic doctrine is incomprehensible without the Israel Lobby.
Not to provide apologies for it, but America's original imperialism was Western Hemisphere and Pacific oriented. U.S. isolationism meant periodic interventions in Caribbean and Central American Banana Republics and Pacific island outposts. America's rise as a world, rather than hemispheric power, largely coincides with the ascendance of American Jewry. Today the Obama administration makes noises about returning to an Asia-Pacific focused foreign policy, but in fact Syria, Iran, Afghanistan, Yemen, etc. seem more important than ever to American policy makers and defense establishment.