Is Israel’s top liberal daily a fifth column?
Apropos my earlier piece arguing that the ferocious backlash by the Zionist right against Jewish critics of Israel — also targeting as ‘anti-semitic’ those like Archbishop Desomand Tutu who seek to judge Israel by universal moral standards — is a sign of panic over losing their claim to a monopoly on representing Jews, evidence is growing that they are increasingly aware of their own predicament. One reader (thanks, Sasha!) pointed out this glum editorial by arch-Zionist and neocon Daniel Pipes, warning that even if it overcomes all the mortal threats that neocons like to see all around Israel, that won’t help it cope with what he calls Israel’s ultimate challenge — “a Jewish population increasingly disenchanted with, even embarrassed by, the country’s founding ideology, Zionism, the Jewish national movement.” (Actually, Daniel, I’d call it the Jewish nationalist movement, but let’s not quibble here.)
It’s worth quoting at lenght from Pipes’ piece:
“Worse for Israel, Jewish nationalism has lost the near-automatic support it once had among secular Jews, many of whom find this nineteenth-century ideology out of date. Some accept arguments that a Jewish state represents racism or ethnic supremacism, others find universalist and multi-cultural alternatives compelling. Consider some signs of the changes underway:
Young Israelis are avoiding the military in record numbers, with 26 percent of enlistment-age Jewish males and 43 percent of females not drafted in 2006. An alarmed Israel Defense Forces has requested legislation to deny state-provided benefits to Jewish Israelis who do not serve. Israel’s Attorney General Menachem Mazuz has up-ended the work of the Jewish National Fund, one of the pioneer Zionist institutions (founded in 1901) by determining that its role of acquiring land specifically for Jews cannot continue in the future with state assistance. Prominent Israeli historians focus on showing how Israel was conceived in sin and has been a force for evil. Israel’s ministry of education has approved school books for third-grade Arab students that present the creation of Israel in 1948 as a ‘catastrophe’ (Arabic: nakba). Avraham Burg, scion of a leading Zionist household and himself a prominent Labor Party figure, has published a book comparing Israel with 1930s Germany. A 2004 poll found only 17 percent of American Jews call themselves ‘Zionist.’
Noting that these trends simply put young Israelis and American Jews in line with international trends, the only consolation he offers is that things will hopefully get better for the Zionists a quarter century from now.
Add to this the observations of Phil Weiss, whose blog is must-read for those seeking a smart and sober chronicling of the battle of ideas in today’s America, much of it focused on Jewish identity politics (although far from exclusively so).
When he heard that the rightwing Zionist media watchdog organization CAMERA was organizing a summit on “Jewish Defamers of Israel,” he did what any good journalist should: He paid his $40 and attended the event. And what he found was a bunch of alte kakkers (he didn’t call them that, of course, simply noted that the average age appeared to be over 60) kvetching in communion with stalwarts of the Zionist right. He writes:
The CAMERA people are losing and they know it. Near the end Cynthia Ozick was asked how we should go about delegitimizing the delegitimizers of the Jewish state and she sighed and said, “It’s hopeless.” Alvin Rosenfeld, the author of the disgraceful report on Jewish anti-Semitism put out by the American Jewish Committee, was mildly more optimistic. He said exactly what I say: “We are in a furious intellectual struggle. There is a war of ideas going on… it won’t end quickly…. It is steady work.” And it is “serious and worrisome” inasmuch as these ideas may now “enter the mainstream.” Amen.
…The reason It’s hopeless for the other side is that there was, in the basement of the synagogue, little to zero acknowledgement of the three great realities that are feeding Jewish post-Zionism.
1. the end of anti-Semitism. My old friend and I talked about a Jewish Daily News columnist who refused to hire Jews. That was 50 years ago. The injury is fresh. As the memories of anti-Semitism are for my parents. And they are virtually meaningless to young Americans. A panelist very briefly acknowledged this at the end, saying that Jews are so comfortable in America, how do we stir them?
2. the Israeli occupation of Arab lands and Israel’s brutal treatment of Palestinians were at no time acknowledged, but endlessly rationalized. The separate roadway system for settlers and Palestinian Arabs–rationalized. The incursion into Jenin–whitewashed. And so on. This sort of denial went on in South Africa during the campaign against apartheid. Young people don’t feel quite so defiant.
3. Not a word about Iraq. I have this feeling often in conservative Jewish gatherings. Iraq doesn’t touch them. It’s not a big deal to them, they are removed from it, they are for a hawkish policy in the Mideast and so they talk about Darfur/Sudan more than Baghdad.
And then, to cap it all, in the continuing tradition of Nixonesque paranoia that has everyone from Jimmy Carter to Bishop Tutu being closet Jew-haters, the CAMERA people identify a new target requiring urgent pressure: No, not Iran, Haaretz! Turns out the Israeli liberal daily (which, BTW, still pursues what it calls a Zionist editorial line, albeit from the left) is the latest “threat” to Israel, because it tends to report the truth about Israeli actions. And what they’re most worried about is Haaretz’s excellent English-language web site. As Weiss reports:
The heart of Levin’s concern was the American discourse. When Haaretz was just published in Israel, CAMERA didn’t care about its statements about the occupation and the destruction of Palestinian hopes and dreams and olive trees. “This all happened in Hebrew… causing little outward impact..”
Outward impact. She means: now Haaretz is affecting U.S. opinion and foreign policy. The most important statement Levin made was that she gets the brushoff from Amos Schocken, the Haaretz publisher, but with the American media, “there is an unwritten contract between them and us.” (Verbatim transcript to come later, when I have a little time…) An unwritten contract: to be fair to Israel, to print CAMERA members’ letters, to pick up the phone.
Isn’t that amazing and scandalous? Levin is explaining why there is a free debate in Israel and not here. Because of the lobby and its “unwritten contract.” Because U.S. support is crucial to Israel’s existence. And so Americans, who supposedly so love the Middle East democracy that they support it out of the goodness of their hearts, must not read the news from Israel.
When the Zionist right in America “defends Israel” by going after one of Israel’s most respected newspapers which happens to tell the truth about the occupation and related matters, it’s not hard to see why Pipes & co. have little cause for optimism. The Zionist moment is over, because most Jews around the world (and even many in Israel) are not inclined to a nationalist view of their Jewishness. And remember, Zionism is not much more than 100 years old, arising along with the nationalist currents of late 19th century Europe that accompanied the breakup of the Hapsburg empire. It’s hardly surprising that in a 21st century where we have had a free choice, almost two thirds of us have chosen to live not in a “Jewish State” but wherever in the world we choose to. Many Israelis today are excercising the same choice. And Jews who are not prone to nationalism have no need to rationalize Israel’s abuses against others.
Tony, I have just realized that you are trying very hard to destroy the Jewish State. Am I correct?
If so, why are you trying to do this?
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Tony isn’t trying to destroy the Jewish State.
Israel and the US Israelis have been destroying Israel for a long time.
The rest of us are just observing and commenting on it.
“I have this feeling often in conservative Jewish gatherings. Iraq doesn’t touch them. It’s not a big deal to them, they are removed from it”
Its sad, Tony, it really is, the quote above. maybe this is what makes me a so called anti-semite but is it too much to ask a group of older people, who most probably were touched by the Holocaust, if not actually been a part of it, to feel a little more empathy for the suffering of Iraqis? after all it is mostly poor and middle class Iraqis who are suffering, just like poor and middle class Jews bore the brunt of Nazi atrocities. I mean I know Iraqis dont exactly have a whole lotta love for Israel, but that doesnt mean they were celebrating the destruction of a whole group of people who are essentially their cousins.
At the very least Israelis should feel some guilt in pushing for this Iraq war, especially now that it turned out that Iraq never had WMD’s (which the West knew, but was itching to go to war anyways)
When the Zionist right in America “defends Israel” by going after one of Israel’s most respected newspapers which happens to tell the truth about the occupation and related matters, it’s not hard to see why Pipes & co. have little cause for optimism. The Zionist moment is over, because most Jews around the world (and even many in Israel) are not inclined to a nationalist view of their Jewishness. And remember, Zionism is not much more than 100 years old, arising along with the nationalist currents of late 19th century Europe that accompanied the breakup of the Hapsburg empire. It’s hardly surprising that in a 21st century where we have had a free choice, almost two thirds of us have chosen to live not in a “Jewish State” but wherever in the world we choose to. Many Israelis today are excercising the same choice. And Jews who are not prone to nationalism have no need to rationalize Israel’s abuses against others.
In 2004 I attended a CAMERA conference in Boston. What impressed me most about Levin, Safian et al was the extreme paranoid edge these folks live and breathe. Levin opened the conference by dramatically intoning “the New York Times allowed Michael Tarazi to call for genocide on its op-ed page.” Well, that wasn’t exactly what Tarazi called for when he wrote his one-state piece: http://www.countercurrents.org/pa-tarazi051004.htm
But what impressed me is just how much Levin really meant it, felt it, believed it, how the whole crowd believed it. I told Tarazi what had transpired and he let out a frustrated sigh. Tarazi, having grown up in the US, been mentored at prep school by a rabbi, and for whom it was perfectly natural to co-exist with Jews here, allowed himself to believe reason could break thru to anyone. I told him not to take it so hard — Levin is a tough customer.
Pipes is down. David Horowitz is not faring any better it seems with his Islamo-Fascism awareness week. If this trends continues and all the neocons’ wings are clipped, we may still avert a war with Iran.
http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2007/10/23/david-horowitz-bombs-on-opening-night/
To return to the glasnost, I remember reading a while back the following by Massad and I was very troubled by it:
“When [the] European intellectuals worry about anti-Semitism harming the Israeli settler’s colony, they are being blind to the ultimate achievement of Israel: the transformation of the Jew into the anti-Semite, and the Palestinian into the Jew. Unless their stance is one that opposes the racist basis of the Jewish State, their support for Palestinian resistance will always ring hollow. As the late Gilles Deleuze once put it, the cry of the Zionists to justify their racist violence has always been “we are not a people like any other,” while the Palestinian cry of resistance has always been “we are a people like all others.” European intellectuals must choose which cry to heed when addressing the question of Palestine.”
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/623/op33.htm
Pipes may well fear the recent developments pertaining to Israel. Yet those developments may be indicative of a yearning to join the rest of us. It will not be easy, I know, but the alternative is much too dreary to contemplate.
dass:
It wasn’t the Jews that pushed for the war in Iraq. American Jews are against the war in by percentages at least as large as other groups.
zed:
Destroying the Jewish State by replacing it with a Muslim-majority state will be a major catastrophe for Jews and Judaism, although probably not another genocide. This is the political exaggeration typical of most political or group meetings. Tarazi’s piece is generally unrealistic and counterfactual:
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FredJ,
I never said Jews pushed this war. I said Israel, policy wise, pushed for this war and encouraged its supporters, Jews and non-Jews alike, in US to push for it.
fred j — what about that quote is unrealistic or counterfactual
The use of the term “destroy Israel” when applied to a proposed one state solution should not pass without note.
“Destroy” implies violence and most if not all proponents of a one state solution do not advocate violence.
Mandela did not call for the “destruction of South Africa” when he called for a one state solution that would entirely remove the white-majority state from the map. (And rejecting bantustan offers more generous than those offered the Palestinians today.)
It becomes even more notable when propagandists for Zionism further escalate “destruction” to “eradication” and “annihilation”.
This comment is not to raise a substantive point, just to bring notice to a questionable choice of words.
Yeah, to be honest, all of you, I don’t bother to answer Fred who lurks here to do his propaganda duty to the cause (on a site with whose outlook and concerns he plainly has nothing in common) , and never offers anything interesting to what we’re discussing, but is more like the drunk at the end of the bar who keeps interrupting your conversation with “But what I want to talk about is…”
Best avoid getting distracted, I say
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Tony: What is the old joke, what is good for Jews may be bad for Judaism? (This jokes actually applies to all religions–and religious identities.)
Zionists have their Eidmund Burke moment approaching. He noted that British Empire was doomed the moment the Union Jack was planted because with the flag came the common law.
Fancy, reading Daniel Pipes on Rootless Cosmopolitan. Seen this before though. Worse thing for any repressive region is if there are doubts from within its own ranks. Remember verligtes vs verkramptes in that other former apartheid state …
Pipes is extraordinarily frank in this piece — of course he was writing it for his own base, offering them a blunt assessment of their troubles. That’s why it’s so interesting; they know they’ve lost the youth. Their best hope for reviving Zionism would be an upsurge in anti-Semitism. That’s not ironic, of course, Zionism would never have existed without anti-Semitism. The slow death of Zionism is occuring largely because so many Jews now are not basing their identity on fear. Absent the specter of imminent annihilation, Zionism has precious little to offer Jews.
Tony is, of course, right — and so is Philip Weiss. Most Diaspora Jews think of themselves as cosmopolitan Jews, not tribalists. Moreover, Zionism was borne in the age of white empires [in decline]. Read your Herzl. Back then, Zionists figured out that the only way a “people” gets respect in the world is to masculinize, militarize, establish a patriarchal state, and dispossess somebody. Those were the rules back then. We are now well into the postcolonial age. If Israelis want to survive as Israelis, they will have to do it like everyone else in the Western world: by creating a multicultural state.
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Tony, so you are happy….one fellow from the Zionist “establishment” goes bad (Abe Burg) and you extrapolate a trend (don’t forget he was even vomited out by the post-Zionist Labor Party for being too radical, so don’t assume all the post-Zionists agree with him). I personally know a decendent of a general in Stalin’s NKVD who is now a “right-wing-pro-settler-Orthodox Israeli Jew”. There a many children and grandchildren of Rootless Cosmopolitans who have become Orthodox and/or “right wing”. Over a million Jews who had the benefits of being Rootless Cosmopolitans in Stalin’s Socialist Worker’s paradise have come to Israel in recent years , are doing fine, and mostly identify with all the words your group here seethes at : “Zionism” “Likud” “right-wing”, “settlers”, etc.
I have a good friend, an American who was formerly a Trotskyite, he is also now a “Zionist” “pro-settler”, “Orthodox”, etc, etc. I know another American fellow who was a big “cosmopolitan”, who was a big activist at the anti-Vietnam War demonstrations at the Democratic Convention in Chicago in 1968 and was beaten up good by the police for his troubles…he is also now a “Zionist” , “right-wing”, “pro-settler”, Orthodox, etc.
Tony-Although your joy at reading Phillip’s article is understandable from your point of view (i.e. the Jewish “problem” will be solved by the Jews disappearing by ending their Jewish identity), you are extrapolating too much from the article. There is NOTHING new here,-open up your Bible to the story of the Exodus, we see Datan and Aviram who were “RC’s” just like yourself. People have been predicting we Jews were going to disappear for 3500 years now. Philip’s claim that “antisemitism is disappearing for good” is very interesting. People were writing the same thing 100 years ago…..Jews were being emancipated throughout Europe, and after World War I , the final restrictions on Jews in Germany and Russia were eliminated……Rootless Cosmopolitans’s DREAM WORLD. Unfortunately , it didn’t work out (to say the least), and antisemitism survived, unfortunately. Antisemitism has been around as long as the Jews have been around, so I think it is premature to predict its end.
Jewish assimilation has always been around also. But it is incorrect to say that people identify with Israel and Zionism only because of antisemitism . As I pointed out, not a few Jews from assimilated backgrounds have gotten “turned on” to Judaism and Israel. Although much of the mass support for Israel outside the country comes from the religious community, there is a considerable interest in Zionism even among the non-religious sector. The “Birthright” program which brings Jewish youth to Israel for a free 10-day visit has a major positive effect on the participant’s attitudes towards Zionism and Judaism
But, even if your dream comes true and America’s Jews cut Israel loose (something that will never happen), there are FAR, FAR more American NON-Jews who support Israel strongly and their political influence is significant. You “progressives” may look down on them, despise them, view them as “primitive red-staters”, but as long as America has universal adult sufferage politicians will take note of their positions. Don’t forget, even in France, a country where Jews are a declining minority and extreme anti-Israel and American attitudes are continually growing, a Presidential candidate won a clear victory by taking a pro-Israel, pro-American line.
Am I the only one who can smell the fear in YBD’s post? I also like this sentence: ” I personally know a decendent of a general in Stalin’s NKVD who is now a “right-wing-pro-settler-Orthodox Israeli Jew”.
Hmm…..I’ve always wondered about the pedigree of those fanatical land thieves who steal Palestinian farm land. Now I know.
Well, Matthew, you are aware that Arafat, Habash and much of the high echelons of the Palestinian terrorist organizations were trained and financed by the USSR. Arafat supported the USSR’s war in Afghanistan against his “brother” Muslims. Abu Mazen wrote his Holocaust-denying Ph.D “thesis” in Moscow. It was the USSR that pushed Nasser into war with Israel in 1967.
Matthew-it is the Arabs who are afraid. Israel is pulling farther and farther ahead of the Arab world. Time is working in Israel’s favor, the opposite of what much of the so-called “progressive” world is always babbling. I recall that there really was fear in Israel after the 1973 war that with the huge increases in national income from oil, the Arabs would invest the money in education and technology and build up their societies. In reality, the money was squandered on useless weaons that become obsolete and corrupt state apparatuses. Israel has stabilized its economy whereas the Arab world is stagnating and even regressing. You will now say “Israel gets American aid, if that were ever cut off that would be the end”. WRONG. Just look at the amount of aid given compared to the Gross Domestic Product. The aid is a tiny percentage, and given primarily for political reasons. I think the aid should be ended for that reason. Phillip and Tony seem to believe that Israel is some sort of artificial entity that would wither away if the ubilical with world Jewry were cut, but that is nonsense. Israel can stand on its own, has a strong and growing economy and a normal civil society, something almost all the Arab states lack. However, in any event, world Jewry won’t do that. There are always RC Jews who don’t want to identify with the rest of the Jewish people but they drop out and disappear from history. The strong core remains.
YBD’s confidence in the idea that we’re just a bunch of fringe lunatics who will disappear from hstory and that the Zionists represent the Jewish people seems to be belied by the fact that he lurks on this site desperately haranguing us Rootless Cosmopolitan Jews. If we’re just a fringe element of no consequence, why waste your breath? Why not just leave us to “drop out and disappear from history”? You nationalists don’t need people like us, and we don’t need you.
Tony: It’s even funnier than that. It’s full reality denial. Before Israel vandalized large portions of Lebanon last summer, Lebanon was undergoing something of an economic miracle. Instead of crushing Hizbollah, the IDF chief bragged about “setting back the clock'” in Lebanon 20 years. Those are hardly the sentiments of a confident state. They are the sentiments of an over-reactive coward.
And notice YBD doesn’t mention the “Arabs” in Dubai or any of the other Gulf States whose economies are exploding. That’s inconvenient to his argument.
He’s right on one small point : The Arabs under occupation are falling further and further behind the Israelis. Another 20 years of contact with settlers, and the Palestinians will be living in the 19th Century.
Tony, do you realize how ridiculuous your statement is? You say I just “hang around and harangue you”. This is only the second thread I have commented on. You keep, week after week, posting endless attacks on Israel and Zionism, in order to prove to your “progressive” friends, that you are not one of “them”, the primitive Jews. That is why you posted this picture, with Olmert standing with Haredim, and the book with Khomenei and Haredi Jews at the Kotel. You, who claim to oppose “racism”, view Haredi/Orthodox Jews as “primitives” and you have to prove that you are not like “them”. I looked at your link to “Six Weeks in Hevron” wherer this Arab complains he was forced to sit next to an Orthodox Jew on the plane and he says “you know what Orthodox Jews are like”. No, no, no, that is not a “racist” commment. Real hypocrisy.
Investigative journalist Robert Friedman reported in The Nation on June 7, 1987 that CAMERA was “created specifically to keep the U.S. press in line…At least in one case, it has assigned freelance reporters to dig into the personal lives of liberal journalists whose views deviate from the narrowest spectrum of pro-Israeli opinion. CAMERA, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and the rest of the lobby don’t want fairness, but bias in their favor. And they are prepared to use McCarthyite tactics, as well as the power and money of pro-Israel PACs, to get whatever Israel wants.”
Fred J says
Tony, I have just realized that you are trying very hard to destroy the Jewish State. Am I correct?
If so, why are you trying to do this?
There is truth to the Jews being the funnies people of earth! LOL
I have a question for the inflamable Y Bin David:
can the unchosen people convert to Judaism? Because you are really tempting!
In your Jewish opinion why do you think anti-semetism will survive beyond history?
What could possibly be hate-able in people who are Jewish? Is it the race? Is it the behavior? or Is it the behavior that forms around a racial identity?
And why would acting/thinking/writing in a non-ethnocentric framework be considered as “self-hating?”
If Judaism is a great religion for humanity, then why don’t you spread the message, like Christians and Muslims do? Or is it a great religion for a “chosen” group of people, separated from the rest of us mortals by “race”?
sorry for asking so many questions. I think this is your preferred method of discourse!
apologies for not turning the emphasis off.
No, Matthew, you are not the only one who “can smell the fear in YBD’s post.” I have friends who still write out that annual cheque to the JNF, friends who are otherwise perfectly sane. I think that undercurrent of fear, although irrational, just can’t be brushed off. It is tempting to agree with Philip Weiss that “antisemitism is dead,” but it is not quite dead yet — maybe never will be. And that is the basis of that fear. It would, however, be a mistake to allow that lingering fear to continue to be the deciding factor in a debate about what needs to be done in the Middle East.. It’s the Likudish exploitation of that fear that has landed us in the current impasse. YBD’s fear will never end until self-serving politicians stop exploiting it.
What YBD wrote is not to be dismissed IMO. I wrote a paper once (course assignment) on the integration of Japanese immigrants living in the Prairie provinces of Canada. I reported, based on the various documents available then, that whereas the 2nd generation was more or less integrated in the sense that it felt “at home” living in Canada, members of the 3rd generation were living “in angst”. Something was missing in their lives that Canada could not provide. Hence a tendency among the members of that generation to “search for their roots” and indeed making of the quasi-integration of the parents a factor of their feeling of alienation.
Now it’s interesting that the integration of Japanese immigrants to Canada has been compared to that of “Israeli” immigrants. In “Israeli and Japanese Immigrants to Canada: Home, Belonging, and the Territorialization of Identity”, by Ilan N. Magat, one can read the following in the abstract: “The article explores the meaning of the terms home, identity, and belonging for Israeli and Japanese immigrants to Canada. It also investigates identity formation, management, and change, and the interrelationship of the personal, the cultural, and the national. Israel and Japan are both countries with a strong sense of uniqueness, where the notions of ‘a chosen people’ and ‘the promised land’ are present in the national discourse.”
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0091-2131(199906)27%3A2%3C119%3AIAJITC%3E2.0.CO%3B2-0#abstract
I have not read the paper. It sounds very interesting. The point I’m trying to make is that identity & sense of belonging fluctuate over time. As YBD implies above, a rootless cosmopolitan may very well beget children who resent the lack of roots and hunger for some sort of anchorage, ‘Humanity’ being too nebulous a concept for them. In the end, one will decide for oneself what better fits one’s being, and that is how it should be.
However, whichever way one decides to live one’s life, it certainly should not be at the expense of other fellow human beings. And certainly, one should not force others (peoples, nations, states), openly or by stealth, to participate in the domination and exploitation of other human beings.
Tony,
Maybe you have mentioned this before, but please do re-answer this if you haven’t already:
Why are there so few people of Jewish faith who are not super Zionists like yourself? I mean YBD is right, in all my interactions with Jewish friends, almost all are super left wing guys and girls, but when it comes to Israel, they are very right wing…I mean some of these of folks just squirm at the mention of Bush but melt like butter when you mention Ariel Sharon. so maybe in some way YBD is right that people such as yourself are in the minority as far Zionism goes (and Neturei Karta)…Even American Jews, despite the disaster in Iraq, are tilting in favor of attacking Iran..if there were truly diverse views, don’t you think by now we would be seeing more opposition in the American Jewish community against attacking Iran. Does anyone honestly believe Ahmedinajad would keep good his threat to attack Israel assuming his country would even get the know how of nuclear technology? (btw I think overall USA is going batshit, we are throwing ourselves into world war 3 and no one seems opposed to Commander Codpeice attacking Iran, and its everyones fault, even liberals if we cant stop this war, after seeing what happened to Iraq). I mean I guess in your case you could say that apartheid opened your eyes to injustice, but I doubt many South Africans of Jewish descent would hold the same views as you do. In your previous blogs you did address this somewhat, but was there anything else, like your parents views on things, maybe some books you read that changed your perspective? or were you always sort of rebellious and took a different view from the get go?
btw this is in NYT today, but the respected analyst Anthony Cordesman seems to be affirming the administrations line that Iran is causing trouble for US troops in Iraq. I am quite disturbed because he wasn’t in favor of the Iraq war, and was skeptical of the admin’s claim during the run up to the war. And he was in favor of the hamilton baker report. so when a respected scholar like himself, who usually takes a cautious view on things says stuff like:
“This is a warning shot across the bow, not that the U.S. is going to invade Iran, but that Iran has pushed the level of escalation, particularly inside Iraq, to unacceptable levels,” said Anthony H. Cordesman, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “In many ways, this kind of warning is more a demonstration of restraint than a signal that we’re going to war.”
then I have reason to be nervous because if he think Iran is doing such stuff, then that is more than enough reason for Bush to bomb Iran
Naj-I will attempt to answer your important questions. Jews are not a race. Anyone can convert to Judaism. As you may know, in recent years, a large number of Jews from Ethiopia came to Israel. They are black Africans who observed their form of Judaism in Ethiopia for generations. There is currently an organized immigration of Jews from the Assam region of India. They had lost most, but not all of their Jewish culture and identity over the last 2500 years of exile but are now recovering it. A group of Indians from Peru also converted some 25 years ago and immigrated to Israel. One of my daughter’s professors is a convert from Japan and another Japanese convert attends my synagogue.
Then, why you ask, does Judaism not proselitzye? Conversion is not encouraged, but those who are interested must seek it out on their own, and there are not a few who are doing so. Because traditional Judaism requires adoption of a lifestyle with a complex law system behind it that makes demands on its adherents….male circumcision, restrictions on what kinds of foods that may be eaten, restrictions on what activities may take place on the Sabbath (Saturday), restrictions on sexual activity (not that sex is “evil”, it is even encouraged, but it must be within marriage, there is certain restriction on when it is permitted, etc), even one’s speech is controlled, (e.g. prohibition of speaking slander about people, etc). Most non-Jews would find it difficult to live like this and many Jews do as well.
Now, what is now well known is that Judaism also expects non-Jews to live according to basic rules of civilization…these are called the “Seven Laws of the Noachide people” which are the non-Jews of the world (all being decendents of Noah of “Noah and his ark” fame). These prohibit theft, murder, blasphemy, adultery, etc. Judaism, up until the arrival of Christianity on the scene, did propagate this system among non-Jews, and in the time of the Roman Empire this was quite well received, with many Romans even deciding to go all the way and formally convert to Judaism, taking on the stricter legal system.
Christianity and later Islam prohibited Jews from spreaking knowledge of their Noachide system and insisted on everyone who wasn’t a Jew on adopting their religions and prohibiting conversion out of their religions, where their religion had the force of law, e.g. in Christian Europe or Muslim Middle East. The Jews then were forced to turn inwards and stop talking about Judaism to outsiders. In any event, both Christianity and Islam require their believers to conform to the Noachide code I mentioned above, so Judaism really no longer had a need to spread it, since these two successor religions were doing it.
It is true that one’s Jewish identity is not ony a matter of faith, anyone who is born to a Jewish mother is a Jew by birth, and that identity applies whether or not one is religiously observant. Thus, one can speak of atheist Jews, whereas I don’t believe there is such a thing as an atheist Christian or Muslim.
Reading the Bible shows that Judaism recognizes that the people of the world are divided into different nationalities and languages. Although world peace is the goal Judaism is working towards, as is seen particularly in the Prophet Isaiah’s teachings in the Bible, this is NOT achieved by making everyone the same, and forcing people to some “universal” culture. All peoples and nations have a natural attachment to those who are similar in culture.and live in proxiity to them. The challenge mankind has is to get everyone to live in peace and cooperation together, not to force one culture or religion on all.
Matthew-regarding the Arab “economic miracle of Dubai” and the Gulf states-you surely realize that it is based on oil. If there was no oil there, Dubai would look like Egypt or Yemen and would be mired in poverty. The vast majority of the labor in those states is provided by foreign workers who live often in apalling conditions with few rights, and these workers outnumber the local population by many times over. The residents of these states didn’t build their economies by their own work, they lucked out by living on top of a pool of oil, and they brought in foreigners to exploit it.
Zed-you are pointing out correctly that pro-Israel groups lobby for support in the US, Europe and other places. Are you saying the Arabs don’t? The Arabs don’t use their money to buy influence in the US? The Arabs don’t “lobby” their cause. I find that hard to believe since many groups in the US, such as the Irish-Americans, Greek-Americans, Armenian-Americans (the recent “genocide resolution of the US Congress which enraged Turkey) lobby, so I assume the Arabs lobby, too. Former Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar once gave a free Jaguar automobile to Colin Powell. Was he doing this as a “favor to a friend” or was he buying influence?
Correction: I came across the link to “Six Weeks in Hevron” at Antony Loewenstein’s blog, and I got to AL’s from here in Tony’s. I would presume that if Tony is recommending AL’s blog, then he would not have a problem with those who AL recommends.
Gene-thanks for the link to the Al-Ahram column. It has clarified to me something that mystified me for a long time—how the radical “universalist-progressive” Left allies itself with radical Arab nationalism and Islamic religious fundamentalism. Somehow, arbitrarily, the “progressives” define those two things as “universalistic” (which apparently is “good”), unlike Zionism which is supposedly “particularlistic” which, apparently is “bad”. I know Tariq Ramadan is trying to make this alliance more solid, trying to convince “progressives” that would enjoy living in societies that tolerate polygamy, repress homosexuals and have restrictions of Sharia law.
I also find it interesting that this column, which must have use the term “racist” something like 30 times in reference to Israel and Zionism. I just wish someone would clarify for me how “anti-racist” Egypt under Nasser, in the 1950’s expelled almost the entire non-Arabic population of Egypt including the Jews who were dispossessed. I guess that was a “progressive, universalist” expulsion, not a “racist” one. I also wonder how it was “universalist and progressive” to tear up India in 1947 in order to create an exclusivist Islamic state (Pakistan) that expelled virtually all Hindus and stole their properties (unlike India which still has a large Muslim minority). In other words, supporting an exclusivist Muslim state like Pakistan is “progressive and universalist” according to Gilles Deleuze, but Israel is “particularist and parochial” and thus, bad. Nice intellectual gymnastics.
zed
What makes it counterfactual is that Israel pulled out of Gaza without expanding in the West Bank.
A Evans
I wrote ‘destroy the Jewish State’, not ‘Destroy Israel’. Making a binational or non-Jewish state will eliminate the Jewish nature of Israel. Violently or non-violently. Tony K seems to me to want this. I want to know why.
Tony:
See http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/ad%20hominem
FredJ-I think the answer why Tony seems to be so strongly opposed to Zionism and Israel is reflected in the image he posted at the top of the thread…..Olmert at the Western Wall with a Haredi (Ultra-Orthodox) Jew. A few threads ago he posted a book cover showing Khomenei, again with a Haredi Jew at the Western Wall. In this thread, the picture has virtually nothing to do with what he wrote, except that it deals with the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz. Why did he choose this picture to show? Is he trying to convey the message that “Olmert and the other Leftists Zionists talk about peace, but they are really no different than THEM” whereas “I am NOT one of THEM”?
Tony-I hope I am wrong, and you should correct me if I am wrong, but I am getting the very strong feeling that you have very negative feelings about Orthodox Jews, and that somehow,you identify Zionism with this.
Since you came from South Africa, and South Africa was colonized by Britain, I would imagine that British attitudes towards Jews came with them with the whites who came to South Africa. (The Afrikaners I don’t know enough to speak about) I am originally from the US and not Britain, and so I am not so familiar with the home-grown type of antisemitism prevalent in Britain, but I do know that Jews are criticized for twodifferent, contradictory reasons :
(1) Jews who try to integrate into Briish society were considered “pushy” and
(2) Jews who don’t try to integrate and maintain a separate identity were said to be “standoffish”
I suspect that for many liberal British and thus South African Jews, there was a constant battle to overcome these attitudes, and Orthodox Jews were always a reminder that many Jews are “standoffish”, and the Liberal Jews had to work doubly hard to make sure that they weren’t confused with the Orthodox. This is the message I am getting .
YBD, your “Haredi hatred” thesis cracks me up! That image was simply the first Haaretz front page I could find at the required width as an existing Jpeg on the Web (I don’t do my own images, they’re links). And I didn’t chose teh cover art of Trita’s book, but featuring him and his work, I would obviously use it. I think the Haredim are tragically misguided, but I hold them no animus — about a third of them aren’t even Zionists! Keep up the psychoanalysism, though, I’m enjoying it!
Tony, I am glad to hear that. I think that it is a reasonable observation, though. However, why did Trita put that on his cover? What was he trying to say? Haredim are maybe 10% of the population of Israel. The ruling clique in Israel is quite non-religious, and they are the ones who made the policy with Iran, not the Haredim who have no interest in national policy. Or is it that the Haredim are the world’s image of what an Israeli is?
YBD now claims that Dubai’s economic miracle is all about oil. Actually, Dubai is not reallly an oil exporter; it’s a trading station.
This is important because it reflects why Arabs can’t win with people like YBD. If they have oil, then any economic achievements are dismissed as “justi pumping oil.” If like Dubai, they are amazing entrepreurial, but their investers include oil men (from the ME and Russia), then I guess they are “close” to oil money, so you can dismiss their achievements.
A classic example of “heads I win, tails you lose.”
I suspect the world’s image of an Israeli is less likely to be of an Haredi than it is to be of a soldier bossing around Palestinians in the West Bank, actually. As for reasons for my opposition to Zionism, they’re well documented on the site, look around. And I don’t advocate destroying anything, but nor do I believe in the idea of a Jewish state, or that it justifies destroying anything else (as it has done). Israel, of course, is an historical fact, and history can’t be reversed. It may have been a bad idea, but it’s a reality now. But a troubled reality, in which a very large Jewish community will have to find a way to coexist peacefully with its neighbors. Until now, it has premised its own survival on its ability to crush them. This is untenable. And your notion that unless they are crushed and dispossessed, Israel will be “destroyed” suggests something very problematic about your conception of Israel. But also understand that the “umbilical chord” you speak of between Israel and the world’s Jews is a myth. As statistics collected by the Zionist establishment show, a large and growing proportion of young American Jews don’t identify with Israel. You see this as a mortal threat of Jewish liquidiation; I see it as progress. My idea of Jewishness doesn’t have walls, either fencing us off from others or invested with “holy” meanings worth fighting over, jealously guarded golden calves that are at the center of the nationalist iconography…
israels myths need a bodyguard of laws and censors to keep the world from discovering the truth that lies behind the myths.
the truth does not need protection it can stand as its own defendant in the court of popular opinion.
the truth witnesses for itself, while a lie must be protected by whatever means, the bigger the lie the more oppressive the laws and the more arrogant it’s defenders must become in order to keep it from discovery.
im sorry to say that my beliefs have been judged and found wanting…my christian church has turned into a crusading army in search of muslims to kill, and the israel i once supported with donations for aliyas for refugees from other lands has been weighed in the balance and found wanting.
i still hold out hope for the arab palestinian population, but the system is arrayed against them and against the nations of the middle east who do not get onboard with the plan.
Now, what is now well known is that Judaism also expects non-Jews to live according to basic rules of civilization…these are called the “Seven Laws of the Noachide people” which are the non-Jews of the world (all being decendents of Noah of “Noah and his ark” fame). These prohibit theft, murder, blasphemy, adultery, etc.
Wow! how stunningly unique!
And how stunningly ironic too!
Naj-I don’t have the faintest idea what you are talking about. What do you think the Christians and Muslims believe? They believe it is their duty to convert everyone in the world to their religion and spread these ideas.
Why is it “ironic”? You claim Jews are a “racist, chosen people”. I showed you that is not true. BTW-do the Christians and Muslims view themselves as “chosen people”?
BYD: Sorry, but you don’t understand Christian theology. Through accepting Christ, Christians believe they can become “The People of God.” The relationship is a faith relationship. It is not automatic–and it utterly derives from faith in Christ.
It is nothing like the tribalism pedaled by The People Who Chose Themselves. Compare Luke 22:20 with Gen. 15: 1-16.
YBD,
thank you for your contributions, which I find very enlightening. I had had for a time the doubt of whether a Japanese (or Chinese, or Hindu) converting to Judaism would be considered a “full” Jew with immigration rights into Israel. Since you said he would, then Zionism is definitely not a form of racism. It may be called culturalism or religious supremacism but not racism.
On another topic, I’d like to know your opinion on deeply religious non-Zionist Jews, i.e. the small minority that think that a Jewish state should be established only through divine intervention on the advent of the Messiah, and that trying to do it through purely human efforts is against divine will.
Matthew,
myself being Christian, I definitely do not agree with tagging Jews “The People Who Chose Themselves” and much less with invoking Gen. 15: 1-16 to support that. It was the LORD who brought Abram from Ur of the Chaldeans to give him that land as a possession. It was the LORD who made a covenant with Abram, saying: “To your descendants I give this land, from the Wadi of Egypt to the Great River”. Of course, for us Christians this text now holds in its spiritual sense. The disciples of Jesus Christ and members of his Mystical Body are Abraham’s descendants, and the land is the Kingdom of God. I’d suggest reading Romans ch. 9 to 11, noting particularly 11: 28-29.
I haven’t followed this argument closely, to be honest. I just checked in, read Tony’s article, and then scrolled down to see Matthew praising Christians relative to “tribalistic” Jews, “people who chose themselves”. Then I read Vox, taking a perhaps-superior tone with “Of course, for us Christians this text now holds in a spiritual sense” because presumably Christians have wised up or something.
I’ve probably been studying too hard for midterms, but based on this cursory look, it becomes easier to see why many people confuse criticism of Israel with antisemitism.
Just saying.