Entries Tagged 'Jews' ↓

Philip Weiss discovers anti-democratic extremism.

I was shocked by Benazir Bhutto’s assassination. Any fool knew it was coming, that is the not the point. It was the pure evil infamy of it. They hate democracy. Who hates democracy? Well, some elements of radical Islam. When David Axelrod of Obama’s campaign yesterday hinted that Hillary Clinton was somehow responsible because she voted for the Iraq War, I thought, Don’t be an idiot. …

After the Cold War, Susan Sontag famously said that the National Review was more reliable than the Nation on the Soviet Union. This time around the left must show that it is more reliable than the Weekly Standard and the New Republic about “the war on terror”. We are winning this ideological battle because we have not overstated the threat, and they have, and we do not ignore the fact that the Palestinian situation is a red flag across the Muslim world. Yet we can’t forget: there are forces of darkness out there.

The sewer rats in his comments section are none too pleased about Weiss’s revelation:

We liked you better when you blamed everything on the Jews.

Posted by: Realist | December 28, 2007 at 07:57 AM

For his cheerleading of those other blamers of the Jews, Weiss made a Top Ten Moonbats of 2007 list:

Weiss has become an “Israel Lobby” fundamentalist. In his eyes, to question the scholarship of Walt and Mearsheimer is to question truth. Every page of their book is gospel. Any negative review of their work is automatically dismissed as a “smear,” and every day that passes without an expose of the “Israel Lobby” on “60 Minutes” or the cover of Time magazine is further evidence of Jewish control over the media.

This mild critique doesn’t do Weiss justice. He has to be read to be believed. I’ll give you all the pleasure of finding out for yourselves, but I won’t provide another link.

The Forward notes that in Cairo, Illinois, 55 African American recently converted to Judaism:

A rural community described as “far away from everywhere,” Cairo, Ill., boasts 40 churches, 40 blocks and fewer than 4,000 people - and as of earlier this month, it also has 55 brand-new Jews. …

[The conversion] was the culmination of an 18-month spiritual journey that has brought a number of Reform and Conservative Jews into common cause with a group of spiritual seekers from a town that is predominantly black and poor.

“It was incredible. Who would have thought that rabbis in St. Louis and Memphis would increase the number of Jews of color in America appreciably?” said Rabbi Micah Greenstein, who attended the conversion ceremonies and serves as the spiritual leader of Temple Israel, a Reform congregation in Memphis. “Judaism saved my life,” one of the converts told Greenstein. “That’s the first time in 100 converts that I’ve ever heard that,” the rabbi said.

It all began with Phillip Matthews, a disaffected Baptist. Here’s what he appreciates about Judaism:

In Matthews’s view, rising to meet challenges is part of the essential message of Judaism.

“When you read the Bible, when you read the Old Testament, and you see all the things that the ancestors of old endured, you see what it is to have endured,” Matthews said.

Yes, that’s true. I’ve long wondered whether, if we just changed the name of “the Jews” to “the Survivors,” whether Jew hatred, which refuses to die out even in the hyper-politically correct world we live in, would dissipate somewhat.

After all, the Jews’ skill at survival against the odds is what’s so mysterious about them: how stubbornly they’ve managed to survive as a self-identified collective, so to speak, despite their many travails all over the globe for thousands of years, how resistant they are even to extreme privation and to efficiently planned attempts to exterminate and eradicate them.

“If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am not for others, what am I? And if not now, when?” asked the Jewish sage Hillel two thousand years ago.

In 2007, Saul Friedlander explains what he meant:

The Nazi state first achieved the isolation of millions from their neighbours through the ever-increasing weight of official vindictiveness. Jews gradually were restricted in their shopping hours, their schools, their use of telephones, cars, bicycles, electrical appliances; they had to build their own air-raid shelters, use their own cobblers, were denied fruit, gingerbread, chocolate, pets, white bread, furs and tobacco. Even so, when, in the East, the exterminations had begun, Jews in the West could still live out for a time a restricted life without a sense of immediate danger amid neighbours who at a personal level were sometimes sympathetic but disengaged. The bleakness of this book comes above all from its portrait of the collective timidity of so many, with whom it is uncomfortably possible to identify. They may have been distressed at what they saw but, in the face of the state’s brutality and the success of its propaganda machine on popular opinion, they feared first for themselves. Jewish persecution, argues Friedlander, could not have been taken to its genocidal extremes without the personal obsession of Adolf Hitler; yet the course it took only became possible because of endemic European anti-Semitism. ‘Not one social group, not one religious community, not one scholarly institution or professional association in Germany and throughout Europe declared its solidarity with the Jews.’

The next time you hear the word “apartheid” connected to the word “Israel,” remember this picture of a group of Israeli soldiers:

IDF soldiers bowing their heads during a moment of silence at the official Memorial Day ceremony at the Western Wall in Jerusalem on Sunday. (AP)

You noted the various skin colors of all of these Israeli soldiers, yes?

Why, you seem surprised. Perhaps, because you’ve heard that Israelis are evil colonialists, you thought that they are also privileged white people doing terrible things to brown people?

That’s because you didn’t know that Israel is a multi-racial country, because the Jews who have immigrated there from all over the world in the past 60 years (including about 700,000 *** Arab Jews from Muslim countries, who were kicked out of their homelands after the formation of the State of Israel), come in all shapes, colors, and sizes … just like all other human beings in the world. Only in this case, they are a people—a nation—linked by DNA and with a common ancient background.

Class dismissed.

———-

That is a conservative figure. Joseph Braude, whose family was among them and who wrote about this in TNR (I wrote about it here), cites 900,000 as the figure.

Remembrance in Poland following dedication of the Belzec memorial, June 2004.

The World Zionist Organization jumps into the viral war of words between Ahmadinejad and the Jews.

Click here for details.

Wanna know the secret of the Jews’ success? Read about former Quiz Kid and present senior senator from New York “Chuck” Schumer, who helped take his high school to the New York City finals 40 years ago.

Then they lost the regionals, says the NYT. Where did Chuckie stumble?

Mr. Schumer said he did not remember the question that cost his team the regional. “I guess I psychologically blocked it,” he said.

Not good enough, says his mother!

Nor does his 78-year-old mother remember it, though he recalled that she said recently: “All I remember is, it’s one you should have known.”

Although it claims not to understand the reasons for this anomaly, Gallup reports, after two years of intense polling, that Jewish Americans—both Democrats and Republicans—oppose the war in Iraq at a much higher rate than Americans in general:

An analysis of Gallup Poll data collected since the beginning of 2005 finds that among the major religious groups in the United States, Jewish Americans are the most strongly opposed to the Iraq war. Catholics and Protestants are more or less divided in their views on the war, while Mormons are the most likely to favor it. Those with no religious affiliation also oppose the war, but not to the same extent that Jewish people do. The greater opposition to the war is not simply a result of high Democratic identification among U.S. Jews, as Jews of all political persuasions are more likely to oppose the war than non-Jews who share the same political leanings.

Gallup goes on to cite the specifics.

Across the time period these 13 surveys covered, an average of 52% of Americans opposed the war by saying the United States made a mistake to invade Iraq, and 46% favored the war by saying it did not make a mistake. …

Of … major religious groups, three show more opposition than support for the war:

• Jewish people oppose the Iraq war by a better than 3-to-1 margin, 77% to 21%.
• Americans without a religious preference are twice as likely to oppose (66%) as to support (33%) the war.
• Catholics are somewhat more likely to oppose (53%) than to support the war (46%).

On the other hand, Mormons and Protestants show more support than opposition to the war. Mormons are strongly in favor, as just 27% term the war “a mistake.” Overall, Protestants are divided, with 48% opposed and 49% in favor. But black Protestants and non-black Protestants diverge in their views. Black Protestants — who are overwhelmingly Democratic — show strong opposition to the war, while among non-black Protestants, support for the Iraq war surpasses the majority level (55% say the war was not a mistake).

And Gallup concludes thus:

It is unclear why Jewish Americans show such strong opposition to the war. One possibility is that U.S. Jews may hold more liberal outlooks than members of other religious groups on a variety of issues, such as abortion, civil rights, and matters of war and peace. As such, Jews may be less likely than others to favor U.S. military action in general — regardless of where it takes place.

It’s unclear why? Because everything since 9/11 has been bad for the Jews and they don’t want any trouble, that’s why … see?

Don’t believe me? Suit yourself.

the Holocaust kitsch special:

Holocaust Remembrance Hanukkah Ornament (Round)

There are so many things to remember “9/11″ and “Pearl Harbor” which is wonderful.. however we should also make a point to NEVER forget the holocaust and the millions of Jews who lost their lives.

Product Information
Instantly accessorize bare wall-space with our Round Ornament. Makes great room or office accessories, fun favors for birthday parties, wedding or baby shower Ornaments, or adding a unique, special touch to gift-wrapped packages. Comes with its own festive red ribbon for hanging. Hang ‘em up!

See the full selection of ornaments here.

The other day, as a way of pre-empting the painful, embarrassing, and shameful accusations by bigoted and/or overheated critics that American Jews who have an interest in seeing Israel remain Jewish (not to mention secure and safe from existential threats) have dual loyalties—i.e., that they are traitors to America—I called for an open discussion of the role of the Israel lobby in U.S. foreign policy (and the role of all lobbies in American government policies).

Today the subject gets exposure in a wide-ranging and thorough going-over of the current relations between Israel and the U.S. in the New York Times, in a must-read piece by Steven Erlanger. (It’s too long to summarize, but it is rich and deep with information and subtext. Read it while the link is still active; I think you can get free access to the article for 7 days after publication.)

For those of you bird-dogging subtle shifts in the wind and the impact of the Walt and Mearsheimer paper, here are the relevant passages:

In September, Israel was abuzz over a speech by an American official that got little coverage in the American news media. Philip D. Zelikow, counselor to Ms. Rice, had addressed the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, considered sympathetic to Israel’s interests, on “Building Security in the Broader Middle East.”

Mr. Zelikow, in the last of 10 points, suggested that to build a coalition to deal with Iran, the United States needed to make progress on solving the Arab-Israeli dispute.

“For the Arab moderates and for the Europeans, some sense of progress and momentum on the Arab-Israeli dispute is just a sine qua non for their ability to cooperate actively with the United States on a lot of other things that we care about,” he said.

The message seemed perfectly clear to Israelis: the Bush administration would demand Israeli concessions on the Palestinian issue to hold together an American-led coalition on Iran. American officials were quick to insist that there was no change in American policy, and that Mr. Zelikow was speaking on his own.

But Mr. Zelikow’s close ties to Ms. Rice are well known, and the furor over his comments was amplified because they appeared to some to echo criticisms published in March in The London Review of Books by two American scholars, John J. Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen M. Walt of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.

They suggested that from the White House to Capitol Hill, Israel’s interests have been confused with America’s, that Israel is more of a security burden than an asset and that the “Israel lobby” in America, including Jewish policy makers, have an undue influence over American foreign policy. In late August, appearing in front of an Islamic group in Washington, Mr. Mearsheimer extended the argument to say that American support of the war in Lebanon had been another example of Israeli interests trumping American ones.

The essay argued that without the Israel lobby the United States would not have gone to war in Iraq and implied that the same forces could drag the United States into another military confrontation on Israel’s behalf, with Iran. It urged more American pressure to solve the Palestinian question as the best cure for regional instability.

Some Israelis worried that the implicit charge of dual loyalty would be underlined by the trial of two former officials of the prominent pro-Israel lobbying group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, on charges of receiving classified information about Iran and other issues from a Defense Department official and passing it on to a journalist and an Israeli diplomat. The trial is scheduled to begin early next year.

Mr. Walt, in an interview, argued that the first President Bush had worked to restrain Israel, and that Mr. Clinton worked to attain diplomatic concessions to achieve a peace. But when this Bush administration took office, “they first had no use for the Mideast, then took a more balanced position, calling for a two-state solution, and then were completely won over by Israel’s argument that it is simply fighting terrorism.”

Former Israeli ambassadors to Washington like Mr. Rabinovich, Mr. Arens and Mr. Shoval all scoff at the Walt-Mearsheimer thesis, which echoes criticisms of Jewish influence as far back as the presidency of Harry S. Truman.

But given the intensifying debate in Washington about Iran, Mr. Rabinovich said, the essay is “disturbing,” as are the echoes of part of the argument in Mr. Zelikow’s speech. Mr. Arens said that 9/11 created “an objective reality” of an antiterrorism coalition, led by President Bush, in which Israel is a crucial member. Mr. Bush is seen here as less interested in being an honest broker than in supporting Israel as a crucial strategic partner in the region.

The Iran confrontation, Mr. Arens said, will bolster that partnership. “The president said that he sees a clear and present danger with Iran arming itself with nuclear weapons and it’s obvious that this is a clear and present danger for the state of Israel,” he said. “Although a small country, we are not a minor party. When people talk about the possibility of a military option, what are they talking about? The U.S. or maybe Israel to take that move, not the U.S. or Germany or France.”

He acknowledged, however, “That inevitably will lead people who are critical of the position of the president to be critical of Israel, because we are seen as a partner in this campaign, and it is not a very big step to say that Israel is leading the U.S., or misleading the U.S., by the nose in this thing.”

The piece is a two-parter. Tomorrow’s article promises to include the role of evangelical Christians in the “special relationship” (JFK’s term).

I’ll have more to say after I’ve read both.