The effect of Joe Klein’s comment re dual loyalty has been incredible. He’s broken the seal. Here is Michael Scheuer writing on antiwar.com that for the neocons and Liebermans, it’s Israel first last and always, and it’s time for the U.S. to separate itself from their policies re the Arab world. Hallelujah.
How did we get into this mess? It wasn’t a one-stepper.
It took a generation and more. It took Ben Gurion beating down Jacob Blaustein the head of the AJC (the Standard Oil guy whose broad shadow I grew up in in Baltimore, and who represented the traditional German-Jewish opposition to dual loyalty) over the Law of Return in 1950, thereby placing a claim on American Jews. It took the ’67 War. It took ’73. It took the truly mendacious propaganda of the last 20 years. It took the entire Jewish leadership with notable exceptions (IPF, APN, Brit Tzedek) dragged into the illegal colonization of the West Bank. It took good liberal Jews walking into the tent with the neocon camel and being deluded. And still not denouncing the camel. Now Klein says that 60 percent of Jews are on his side. I don’t know if it’s so Joe. That’s hopeful. I’m going to my parents’ scientific community later this summer, and I wonder, on the beach how many calls for an open Jerusalem am I likely to hear?
But I have a different point to make. Exactly what Joe Klein said about Jewish neoconservatives, Tony Judt started to say more than a year ago. In his splendid NYU speech of December 2006:
Judt said the unfortunate trend in intellectual life is the prevalence of
“identity intellectuals who ask themselves of a policy, of the law or
of the war, not Is it true, is it just, is it bad or good, but rather
is it good for people like me or people like us, is it good for my
cause?” These identity intellectuals have their counterparts on campus.
“The crippling organization of American intellectual life at large is
reproduced and magnified here on American campuses, where many
colleagues are teaching in effect identity politics masquerading as
cultural classes.”
At the time I wrote: “I felt a little disappointment that [Judt didn’t talk]
about dual loyalty, which I think he must believe is an issue for some
Jews re Israel.”
Here is the point. The naked emperor was naked a long time before Joe Klein said he was naked. Judt obviously believes that the neocons have divided loyalty. His statement in ’06 all but fingers them. Yet he, a University professor, did not say what he thought. In fairness to Judt, he is a brave man who has picked his battles. He took a thousand arrows when he came out for a single state in Palestine, and then he did what no one of his standing would do, when he stood up for Walt and Mearsheimer in the Times and then again at Cooper Union, with electrifying statements that told the left, this is the way. My point is simply that even distinguished intellectuals have been self-censoring in this arena, the prohibitions are so severe, the contumely so neverending, the vilification, the Dershowitziana so nattering. I remember talking to a Yale professor once who didn’t want to stick his head up, on his own ideas re Israel/Palestine, because he was afraid of Dershowitz. Scheuer has never been so forthright re the neocons as he is today; what loosened his tongue? This is what has to end. Free speech means free speech, wild speech, people speaking their thoughts. It is the only way we will learn, the only way to end our participation in the Middle East’s cycle of violence. Amazing what Joe Klein has done. Let other gatekeepers raise the barricades. Chris Matthews, you go next!
