I really think we are living in the twilight of the Israel lobby.
Just now when it seems so strong, it is starting to fade. I say this
because the AIPAC conference this year was so shameless in its display
of political candidates that Jon Stewart called it the "elders of Zion"
and Dan Fleshler says it gave ammunition to the "cabal-watchers." Across the street Rabbi Weiss spoke out
against the filthy water that the children in Gaza are being forced to
drink, and Mearsheimer and Walt, who seem sober by comparison to Stewart, Weiss and even Jeffrey Goldberg, are headed for Israel to talk about the
lobby there. The lobby has become an embarrassment to Jews.
Now here is Uri Avnery, the Israeli peace activist, blasting Obama for pandering to AIPAC.
He says the undivided Jerusalem statement (since modified by Obama’s aides) is a scandal that has has ‘mortgaged Obama’s future.’ Nice. Avnery is also more honest than Stewart about Jewish power. Stewart said the hustle is all about Florida. Avnery admits that it is much more, it has something to do with the Jewish chokehold on the political process. Then these musings:
What has caused the dizzying ascent to power of the American Jewish establishment? Organizational talent? Money? Climbing the social ladder? Shame for their lack of zeal during the Holocaust?
The more I think about this wondrous phenomenon, the stronger becomes my conviction (about which I have already written in the past) that what really matters is the similarity between the American enterprise and the Zionist one, both in the spiritual and the practical sphere. Israel is a small America, the USA is a huge Israel. The Mayflower passengers, much as the Zionists of the first and second aliya (immigration wave), fled from Europe, carrying in their hearts a messianic vision, either religious or utopian. (True, theearly Zionists were mostly atheists, but religious traditions had a powerful influence on their vision.) The founders of American society were “pilgrims”, the Zionists immigrants called themselves “olim” -short for olim beregel, pilgrims. Both sailed to a “promised land”, believing themselves to be God’s chosen people.
There is a lot more messianic stuff about claiming the land and expelling the local peoples. While Avnery is right about America’s crimes against the indigenous– one, we have done much more to acknowledge them than Israel has. And secondly, what is so wrong about Israel’s colonialist venture is it was so a-historical. The Jews were embarking on a colonialist scheme just when the age of colonialism was over, and the State Department and King-Crane and Peel and all the others warned them not to make a Jewish state. And now Israel is locked into nationalism, when the enlightened world is moving on.
I applaud Avnery for speaking of Jewish success here (though his explanation for Jewish success doesn’t really track; what does the Mayflower have to do with the shtetl?). I wish a few of our writers would do so. (Though one day before long, I’m convinced, my old friend Rick Stengel, a straightshooter, will put Jewish success on the cover of Time Magazine.) Why are we so successful? I say it’s a combination of genetics, bookish culture, and this moment in history. A moment that’s quickly ending. For two reasons. Lots of people have not absorbed bookish culture. It’s the thing! Look at the brilliant Barack Obama. And meantime, we are destroying our analytical and textual gifts by rationalizing the Israeli occupation ad nauseum.
