Yesterday I went on Press TV to discuss the Israel lobby with Elazar Barkan and Dan Fleshler, and after the taping, the three of us hung out in a hallway talking. We all disagreed about what the lobby is. I'd insisted on the importance of Jewish money in the
political process, and in the hallway, I
said, You cannot explain the fact that Bush and Clinton ran
against one another in '92 both in support of the settlements, a truly wicked project, without talking about Jewish political contributions. Because every president since Lyndon Johnson has said that the colonies are not in the American interest. Then Barkan said we were talking about a great mystery: and for some reason, it is impossible to separate a definition of the American interest from Israel.
Fleshler, whose book on the Israel lobby is greatly anticipated, agreed that the intertwining of interests is perplexing. He said that in 1981 he had said to his stepfather, What is it about these settlements? Why can't we stop them? It's like the Red Sox. "They can't ever get pitching!!!"
We all agreed that the Red Sox had gotten pitching. Barkan said, "Some things do change in life."
Then I said something I hadn't felt comfortable saying on air–out of the usual Jewish guilt and self-censorship–"It is absurd to even discuss all this without talking about the Jewish presence in the establishment, in finance, media, culture, and political life."
Over the next few hours, I thought about our delicious debate–which after all is not happening in the mainstream American media– and it came to me that I have been too reductive about "the Israel lobby." Without a doubt, the lobby exists. And Walt and Mearsheimer are right to describe it as a loose coalition of diverse types. Just as Joe Klein was wrong recently to say that the lobby didn't take Chas Freeman down–a "mob" took Freeman down. Mobs don't work when authority stands up to them; and leading senators failed to stand up to a neocon gang for a reason. Because the gang represents power.
It came to me that the verboten statement I'd made in the hall about Jewish power in establishment venues is critical; but that the lobby extends beyond that. It is a culture that has captured American life, a way of thinking, an outlook, a worldview–largely held by successful Jews, but extending to gentiles as well, and has at its root a redemptive idea of Jewish power after the Holocaust. If you think of the people who trashed Walt and Mearsheimer a couple years back, they were almost to a man successful Jews. They personified the idea of Jews achieving great status in American life. As for the hard core, Marty Peretz, Jeffrey Goldberg and Daniel Goldhagen, they are Jews for whom Jewish powerlessness is everything, the only story, and what power Jews have today they have achieved in the teeth of undying Jew-hatred, which is gonna rise again… But that's their problem. By and large the people who dismissed the Israel lobby weren't nearly as invested in militant Jewish identity/Israel as is Goldberg, who served in Israel's army.
The people who trashed Walt and Mearsheimer tended to be highly-successful people who have a supreme understanding of, What it is OK to think and say right now. The editors of the Washington Post who dismissed Chas Freeman as a crazy conspiracy theorist–I know one of them and believe me, he's not a Zionist, though he defers to Zionists. Walter Russell Mead, the minister's son who dismissed Walt and Mearsheimer in Foreign Affairs magazine–obviously no Zionist. A lot of my successful Harvard Jewish media friends who attacked Walt and Mearsheimer: again, they're not fervid about Israel, they're fervid about success. Ken Pollack, the liberal Jew at the Brookings Institution who did more than anyone else to serve up the Iraq War to the establishment, in disgraceful writings that completely dismissed the Israeli occupation–Pollack is a Clintonite who married Ted Koppel's daughter. In a word, an achiever. Yes he ended up working for an ardent Zionist, Haim Saban, putting out his propaganda about Arab attitudes towards the Iraq war at the Brookings Institution. But again, I say that Pollack's errors came more out of mainstream ambition than anything else. (Compare him to Iraq-chef David Frum, who who was nursed in his Palestinian-contempt by his late mother Barbara, a Palestinian-contemner in her own right, and first went after Chomsky in his late 20s).
What I'm getting at here is that the love of Israel has simply been absorbed as a part of American success culture over the last 20 years, resulting in the Israel lobby's stranglehold on foreign policy in the Middle East. Yes there are dual-loyalty organizations and publications dedicated to confusing the American interest and the Israeli interest, and making Israel's war our war; and they succeeded, the neocons and Tom Friedman succeeded. But again, Friedman and the neocons are outliers; Friedman and Doug Feith were talking nonstop about Israel in high school. Most of us weren't. Most of us were just trying to get ahead, and then wham, this Israel-loving culture overtook our public life.
Why did this happen? For a few reasons. Jews were generally taking up positions in the American Establishment and were silently exulting over this ascension. We were saying to ourselves, What a great country! What a sign of our redemption from the Holocaust! Uh-oh– is it about to happen again! And the rest of America was going along happily with it. Jews were driving the economy, making the movie business what it is, spearheading the great journalism culture, principals in the information age–I think one of the google guys is Jewish–and transforming our political life. Clinton had more Jews in his administration than anyone outside of Israel. George Bush let neocon Jews do the thinking on his foreign policy.
I'm saying it was a Mood that overtook America for 20 years, of philosemitism. And Jews had more power than ever before in history. And Israel got swept in right with it, as a liberation story and redemptive tale of Jewish success, pushed by our militant family members, Peretz and Goldberg.
All that's over. That's what this post is really about. That mood and culture have ended.
I can point to a number of important events that signal its end. First, Walt and Mearsheimer, 2006-2007, who said that Israel-love was a bad idea; and their book was attacked and attacked and attacked and attacked and never went away. Why, Marty? Because so many people secretly agreed with its central policy assertions: that the criminal Israeli occupation nullified our democratic process, and the neocons pushed a tragic American occupation of Arab lands out of concern for Israel's security. This debate is breaking out publicly, thanks not to the New York Review of Books but to Chas Freeman, who years ago recognized this great secret resentment of Israel among government officials who didn't like the policy.
Iraq was of course a necessary condition for Walt and Mearsheimer's book, as it was to the second event that is ending the philosemitic era: Barack Obama's election, in which the American redemptive dream moved on from the dream of Jewish elevation, now achieved, to the elevation of diversity. Intermarry, children, so your son can be president! Third, Bernie Madoff and the financial meltdown. The myth of Jewish invincibility– poof. (Not to mention all the brilliant Jewish journalists who gave us the Iraq war.) Fourth, Gaza/Netanyahu. Americans are waking up to what Israel really is. A thuggish state, as Freeman says.
And fifth, maybe most important,Young Jews, the very people who you'd expect to revel in this philosemitic/Israel mood and culture, don't want it. As they say in marketing, the dogs aren't eating the dog food any more. These kids like a diverse America, they're used to Jewish success and therefore don't experience it as a redemptive liberation story; frankly, they're a little entitled, but the bottom line is that the philosemitic culture has lost its sociological oomph. And more than that, these kids have been on the internet with their hip progressive friends; they understand that Israel is bad news for human rights and they don't want to go to that party. They see brave young Jewish writers like Dana Goldstein and Max Blumenthal taking a stand on Gaza and say, Wow, that's cool!
When a mood ends, it ends. When a culture ends, it's just over. The flapper era. The 50s. The counterculture. They all came and went, leaving a lot of hangers-on looking stupid. The philosemitic culture is finally ending; and we don't do things like the Europeans, this is happening in a neutral, bored American way, it's just going bye-bye, like bellbottoms.
