The Changing Politics of Israel
Harold Meyerson has an excellent column in today’s Washington Post about Barack Obama’s drive for a two-state solution and the growing gaps between Jewish American public opinion and the policies of the Israeli government. He observes that “American Jews remain intensely committed to liberalism and to universal and minority rights,” ideas that used to accord strongly with support for Israel—a bastion of liberalism, born out of the Holocaust and surrounded by seemingly powerful states bent on its destruction. More recently, however, “42 years of occupation have rendered Israel a state that tests those values more than it affirms them.”
I think this is all correct, as are the things Meyerson says about J Street and everything Henrick Hertzberg says here. But I do think there’s one other dynamic that often gets missed here, namely the extent to which the mainstream “pro-Israel” organizations in the United States found themselves becoming more ideological—and more fundamentally right-wing—in recent years.
I was talking to a student of US foreign policy recently who was telling me that Lyndon Johnson used to complain about Jewish groups’ take on foreign policy. Basically, he characterized them as wanting him to send the 6th Fleet to the Gulf of Aqaba while refusing to send as much as a screwdriver to Vietnam. To Johnson that was incoherent, but it was basically just “Jews are liberal” plus parochial ethnic politics—Israel is full of Jews. What’s emerged in more recent years is a view of what “pro-Israel” politics are that makes more logical sense, but is, in practice, less appealing. But neoconservative intellectuals—many of them Jewish, and several of them hailing from Canada where Jews are traditionally on the political right—helped articulate a coherent worldview in which American support for an aggressive Israel was of a piece with a generally imperial view of America’s role in the world. Bill Kristol, David Frum, and Charles Krauthammer want to send the 6th Fleet to the Gulf of Aqaba and basically always want to send some fleet somewhere to bomb someone. Especially when, post-9/11, issues related to the entire “greater middle east” moved closer to the center of what Americans argue about, this tended to increasingly encourage everyone to adopt a more coherent view of the overall situation. Liberals, Jewish or otherwise, tend to generally take a dovish view of things and as conservatives started to draw explicit links between taking a hawkish view of Israel and a hawkish view of Iraq, North Korea, and all the rest, I think that tended to push liberal Jews toward taking a more skeptical view of Israel hawks’ arguments.
64 Responses to “The Changing Politics of Israel”
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June 17th, 2009 at 5:37 pm
And it’s about time. I’m concerned that America’s Jewish community still may be intellectually and emotionally unprepared for how fast things might unravel between the Obama and Netanyahu administrations. On the other hand, one can always count on the Palestinians to fail to rise to the occasion, as well. So on second thought, wake me when it’s over…I’ll keep skimming over the endless chin-pulling in the press meanwhile.
June 17th, 2009 at 5:43 pm
Netanyahu’s speech is solidly backed by Israeli public opinion. See
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1093234.html
Now, why is Israeli public opinion so backward? Or is it really backward?
June 17th, 2009 at 5:44 pm
“A bastion of liberalism”? Could this Meyerson guy be any more absurd – who knows whether he is self-deluded or disingenuous.
Racist ethnocentric colonialist-settler entity from day one, built by ethnic cleansing and terrorism – if this is called liberalism, sign me up for fascism, please.
June 17th, 2009 at 5:45 pm
and several of them hailing from Canada where Jews are traditionally on the political right
Huh. Is the right position a function of Canada’s left default (as compared to the US)?
I still say we need an investigation into what the hell the Canadians are doing to the Jewish population up there, because you haven’t explained the craziness of the ones the Canadians send our way.
June 17th, 2009 at 5:46 pm
sign me up for fascism, please.
There’s a real shocker to everyone.
June 17th, 2009 at 5:46 pm
A bastion of Liberalism, really? As much as I’m willing to believe that a kind of liberalism was the long term goal of Israel’s early proponents and leaders, I don’t believe they ever achieved it. Israel is a police state. Zionism is a nationalist movement based purely on identity. This is not what Mr. Locke and Mr. Smith had in mind, I think.
June 17th, 2009 at 5:49 pm
I don’t know any conservative Jews, but the liberal Jews I know are generally uninformed about Israel.
They don’t know that Reform Judaism was anti-zionist before the 1930s. They sorta believe that “Land without people for a people without land” canard. They don’t know that most of them (Reform) wouldn’t qualify to marry as Jews in Israel. They would tell me today that Iran is developing nuclear weapons.
They once saw Exodus and never thought much about it again.
June 17th, 2009 at 5:52 pm
Or, Matt, the insistence of the Israeli right that all threats are existential threats, and thus amplified can be used to justify … well, anything, really means that when the right is in control in Israel, Israel is furthest from American Jews’ traditional leftism. The tools of the Israeli right alienate their natural allies in the US.
June 17th, 2009 at 5:53 pm
Picking up on what Josh Marshall mentioned a few days ago, I think the “mindset of occupation” in Israel is weirdly paradoxical, because it involves thinking like an occupied nation — i.e. one on the brink of being wiped out — while behaving like an occupier.
And I certainly wouldn’t call Israel a “police state”, but it’s definitely a highly-militarized one, albeit in ways that are skewed demographically.
June 17th, 2009 at 5:54 pm
@6 Zionism is a nationalist movement based purely on identity.
It’s not even based on identity, it’s based purely on race; at least the modern kind. If your maternal grandmother was Jewish, you get all the privileges, otherwise you’re a piece of shit.
June 17th, 2009 at 5:59 pm
@5, do you disagree with something I wrote, do you have something to say? Then say it.
And if you got nothing, then fuck off.
June 17th, 2009 at 6:00 pm
do you disagree with something I wrote, do you have something to say? Then say it.
I was agreeing with you. You’re totally right for fascism. A match made in heaven, really. I thought that was clear.
June 17th, 2009 at 6:02 pm
Re abb1
otherwise you’re a piece of shit
An excellent description of Mr. abb1.
Re elie loca
And it’s about time. I’m concerned that America’s Jewish community still may be intellectually and emotionally unprepared for how fast things might unravel between the Obama and Netanyahu administrations. On the other hand, one can always count on the Palestinians to fail to rise to the occasion, as well. So on second thought, wake me when it’s over…I’ll keep skimming over the endless chin-pulling in the press meanwhile.
The late Israeli president Ezer Weizmann used to say, “we depend on three things, the IDF, god, and the Arabs.”
June 17th, 2009 at 6:03 pm
But neoconservative intellectuals—many of them Jewish, and several of them hailing from Canada where Jews are traditionally on the political right—helped articulate a coherent worldview in which American support for an aggressive Israel was of a piece with a generally imperial view of America’s role in the world. Bill Kristol, David Frum, and Charles Krauthammer want to send the 6th Fleet to the Gulf of Aqaba and basically always want to send some fleet somewhere to bomb someone.
Have you ever really studied Soviet politics?
During the 20s, you might have heard, there was this big to-do over whether the obliteration of the Red Army in front of Warsaw was something that needed to be corrected post haste, or whether the Sovs ought to try using subversion and, in fact, perfectly legal mass politics with their foreign sympathizers to extend the revolution.
Trotsky was the paramount leader of the first faction – of course, he was also the leader of the Red Army (had Tukachevsky been in complete command, they might have won), in the aforementioned battle – and he rather dramatically lost this battle, too.
Stalin, meanwhile, was a fairly mediocre commander, but a ruthlessly brilliant bureaucrat, who threw the party’s strength behind Socialism in One Country.
Trotsky met his end pretty brutally in Mexico, but his sympathizers, who made up a good part of the KPD and the Communists under the Republicans, kept up the fight for active revolution.
Irving Kristol, and the other neocons, started out as Trotskyists.
The Neocons’ fanatical, often bigoted nationalism can be traced to the Right. But their fetish for military action is a direct result of Soviet and international Communist intellectual debates.
Israel, mind you, was founded by a bunch of reluctantly militarist Socialists. But the Trotskyists over at the National Review – and I really wish we’d describe them as such, because I’d love to see JPod or K-Lo explode – mirror some of the shit I’ve had to read in the Communist papers of the 20s and 30s, especially what I’ve seen translated from the Republican side during the Civil War.
June 17th, 2009 at 6:04 pm
Re harold Meyerson
Mr. Meyerson is a perfect example of a JINO, just like his cronies over at Jstreet.
June 17th, 2009 at 6:08 pm
abb1: tiresome and vile, whatever the venue. SLC’s no better, of course.
June 17th, 2009 at 6:09 pm
Mr. Meyerson is a perfect example of a JINO
Of course, non-Jewish, Israeli-hating SLC is perfectly positioned to make pronouncements like this, when he’s not masturbating to mental images of Arabs getting slaughtered. Dear me, he’s tedious.
June 17th, 2009 at 6:11 pm
And I certainly wouldn’t call Israel a “police state”, but it’s definitely a highly-militarized one, albeit in ways that are skewed demographically
The really annoying thing is that the mass of the population is legally compelled to defend a bunch of religious zealots who keep picking fights with angry, hungry Arabs who’ve got nothing to lose.
Meanwhile, said zealots claim to be studying Torah when it’s their fucking time to serve.
If the Palestinian problem ever does get resolved, there’s going to be a pretty nasty civil war over there.
June 17th, 2009 at 6:13 pm
“…it’s based purely on race; at least the modern kind. If your maternal grandmother was Jewish…”
I used the term identity on purpose, as I consider terms like race and even ethnicity to be somewhat… metaphysical; I also think they’re a part of the problem. However, for the record, I do believe the policies of the state of Israel to be, in effect, racist. It is difficult, if not impossible, to favor one group without deprecating another.
June 17th, 2009 at 6:14 pm
Or just maybe, American Jews have become more assimilated and less Jewish.
June 17th, 2009 at 6:22 pm
Rabbi SLC kicking 72% of America out of the Jews. Priceless. Got that! Yer out!
June 17th, 2009 at 6:23 pm
“Mr. Meyerson is a perfect example of a JINO, just like his cronies over at Jstreet.”
And Mr. SLC is a perfect example of an uninformed, ignorant bigot.
Exactly who died and made you the official arbiter of Jewishness?
June 17th, 2009 at 6:23 pm
Jews in Canada are not traditionally on the right. They are traditionally found in the Liberal Party and the CCF/NDP. The first Jewish premier was NDP. The first Jewish national leader was NDP. The first Jewish Supreme Court justice was appointed by Trudeau.
It’s true that there has been a longstanding tendency to be suspicious of Quebec nationalism, which has been coded left since the 1960s.
June 17th, 2009 at 6:26 pm
from Canada where Jews are traditionally on the political right
What is this based on?
June 17th, 2009 at 6:29 pm
It’s true that there has been a longstanding tendency to be suspicious of Quebec nationalism, which has been coded left since the 1960s.
You could have just said “pick any separatist group within a NATO member state” and it would be equally true.
June 17th, 2009 at 6:33 pm
A bastion of Liberalism, really? As much as I’m willing to believe that a kind of liberalism was the long term goal of Israel’s early proponents and leaders, I don’t believe they ever achieved it. Israel is a police state.
Before 1967 Israel was a reasonable facsimile of a liberal democracy. And until the first Intifada it was easy enough for American Jews to ignore the occupation and continue to view Israel in that light. Even today, Israel proper is a reasonable facsimile of a liberal democracy. I’m as anti-zionist and pro-palestinian as the next person, but hyperbole is nobody’s friend.
They don’t know that Reform Judaism was anti-zionist before the 1930s. They sorta believe that “Land without people for a people without land” canard. They don’t know that most of them (Reform) wouldn’t qualify to marry as Jews in Israel.
This is not my understanding of how it works, unless most of your Reform Jewish friends have mothers or maternal grandmothers who converted to Reform Judaism. So long as your mitochondrial heritage is Jewish, you can be married as a Jew in Israel. You just have to be married by an Orthodox rabbi. If your mother converted to Reform or Conservative Judaism, though, you’re basically screwed – my understanding is that in that case you can’t get married in Israel at all without undergoing Orthodox conversion.
June 17th, 2009 at 6:37 pm
Before 1967 Israel was a reasonable facsimile of a liberal democracy.
Wow, Arabs couldn’t even *vote* until 1966.
June 17th, 2009 at 6:49 pm
Not to put too fine a point on it, and with all due respect, you seem to be conflating a feeling of normalcy with liberal democracy. I’m sure sitting in a cafe in Madrid under Franco things would feel “normal”. Liberalism is defined by specific policies and ideas, not the fact that life does, indeed, go on. Not to mention the fact that many of the freedoms Israelis enjoy come at the expense of someone else. Disneyland, after all, is a facsimile of a fairy kingdom, this doesn’t actually make it one.
June 17th, 2009 at 6:58 pm
Wow, Arabs couldn’t even *vote* until 1966.
While Israeli Arabs were under martial law until 1966, they were citizens and had the vote. See This article from the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and this article from Gush Shalom, which suggests that said vote was basically a sham because the Arabs had to vote for Mapai. But nonetheless, that’s a very different thing from explicitly not giving the vote to the Arabs.
At any rate, I was not suggesting that Israel before 1967 was some kind of perfect liberal democracy, just that it was, as I said, a “reasonable facsimile” of one.
June 17th, 2009 at 7:01 pm
While Israeli Arabs were under martial law until 1966, they were citizens and had the vote. See This article from the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and this article from Gush Shalom, which suggests that said vote was basically a sham because the Arabs had to vote for Mapai. But nonetheless, that’s a very different thing from explicitly not giving the vote to the Arabs.
Hell, that’s still better than we treated Blacks until nearly the same time.
June 17th, 2009 at 7:01 pm
Well, Franco’s Spain didn’t involve having meaningful elections, or basic civil liberties, which Israel before 1967 did have, as far as I understand it. And of course Matt was, implicitly if not explicitly, talking about perceptions of American Jews, not the actual state of things in Israel.
And who, exactly, mistook Franco’s Spain for a liberal democracy? Israel obviously has all kinds of illiberal policies, and their rule in the occupied territories is not liberal at all. But it’s ridiculous to deny that Israel also has many features of liberal democracy.
June 17th, 2009 at 7:05 pm
@Greg – yeah, I didn’t think of that, but the comparison seems apt. And, of course, it is generally not denied that the US before 1965 was a liberal democracy on the basis of its treatment of African Americans.
At any rate, I find it totally bizarre that I’m the person defending Israel here. I don’t care for the Zionist enterprise, I think the foundation of a Jewish state in Palestine was a fundamentally misguided idea which resulted in great injustice to the previous inhabitants, and I strongly dislike the way the Israeli government has made its Arab population into second-class citizens, along with the various nonsensical policies they’ve instituted to appease the Orthodox. I have very little sympathy for Israel. And yet…
June 17th, 2009 at 7:06 pm
Again, where did the idea that Canadian Jews are on the political right come from? To use the two examples Yglesias gives, Frum was the son of a much more liberal mother, broadcaster Barbara Frum. And Krauthammer started as a speech writer for Mondale when the latter was vice-President. Pierre Trudeau represented the most Jewish riding for 18 1/2 years, with overwhelming support.
June 17th, 2009 at 7:11 pm
And another thing. The Kristols haven’t been Trotskyists for more than six decades. The one thing that strikes one being the CIA backed editor of Encounter and his wife is their cynicism and manipulative character. Seth Pecksniff and Mercy Chant, like the Podhoretz’s Wackford Squeers and Lucy Van Pelt. There’s no idealism or utopianism in here. I don’t think the Kristols or any other neoconservative even LIKE Trotsky, nor have they for decades. Any Trotskyist influence is just something Christopher Hitchens repeats to justify himself. On the American right, there’s always been a “Give War a Chance” attitude” and a refusal to take seriously American limits. There’s nothing “neoconservative” about this.
June 17th, 2009 at 7:12 pm
You’ve missed my point entirely. I was trying make a broad point about perception on the ground vs. political reality. So I’ll put a finer point on it: replace Spain with Apartheid South Africa (a supposed democracy). By the way no one mistook Franco Spain for a liberal democracy, they shouldn’t mistake Israel for one either. Illiberal democracy is, perhaps, an arguable label.
June 17th, 2009 at 7:14 pm
Again, where did the idea that Canadian Jews are on the political right come from? To use the two examples Yglesias gives, Frum was the son of a much more liberal mother, broadcaster Barbara Frum. And Krauthammer started as a speech writer for Mondale when the latter was vice-President.
I told you, Matt isn’t aware that the Neocons were Trotskyists originally, or at the very least fellow travelers. Being left wing doesn’t make you less violent. More atheist maybe, but not less violent.
June 17th, 2009 at 7:20 pm
And another thing. The Kristols haven’t been Trotskyists for more than six decades. The one thing that strikes one being the CIA backed editor of Encounter and his wife is their cynicism and manipulative character. Seth Pecksniff and Mercy Chant, like the Podhoretz’s Wackford Squeers and Lucy Van Pelt. There’s no idealism or utopianism in here. I don’t think the Kristols or any other neoconservative even LIKE Trotsky, nor have they for decades. Any Trotskyist influence is just something Christopher Hitchens repeats to justify himself. On the American right, there’s always been a “Give War a Chance” attitude” and a refusal to take seriously American limits. There’s nothing “neoconservative” about this.
I don’t disagree, but the “Give War a Chance” people are traditionally, shall we say, uncomfortable with these Jewish rituals.
The Neocons are fundamentally different.
Look at Buchanan. The man was perfectly pro-war in the 80s, as were the Neocons, but when he went over the deep end into anti-semitism, well, needless to say he stopped being pro-war.
The reason I brought up Trotsky is that his vision of a proactive expanding Soviet Union was tied up in a weltanschauung that was almost millenarian.
Considering how many of the traditional pro-war brigade have always been wrapped up in Christian eschatology, the Neocons’ secular version is eminently attractive.
June 17th, 2009 at 7:21 pm
Re partisan
In addition, David Horowitz, current right wing neo-fascist started out as a Trotskite during his student days at Berkeley.
June 17th, 2009 at 7:24 pm
Re Sahu
And Mr. SLC is a perfect example of an uninformed, ignorant bigot.
Exactly who died and made you the official arbiter of Jewishness?
Me, myself, and I.
June 17th, 2009 at 7:50 pm
In his article, MY refers to the two best known right-wing, pro-Israel Canadian Jews, Krauthammer and Frum as indicative of Jews from Canada, “where Jews are traditionally on the political right”. As a Canadian with many Jewish friends, I don’t think they identify with the political right en bloc, but they are universally pro-Israel, albeit critical of many of the brutal Israeli policies.
The most influential Jewish right-winger, by far, was Izzy Asper, described as follows:
The CanWest chain of newspapers and radio and television stations, many of which are based in Canada’s largest cities, has been relentless in their pro-Israel and anti-Palestinian propaganda for many years. Perhaps the exposure that they create in their media has led MY to (mistakenly?) conclude that Canadian Jews favour the political right.
As an aside, the immensely rich Bronfman family are very much involved in pro-Israeli causes and very definitely are on the political right.
June 17th, 2009 at 7:53 pm
As an aside, the immensely rich Bronfman family are very much involved in pro-Israeli causes and very definitely are on the political right.
Though Muslim families would support Palestinian causes, what immensely rich family is not on the political right?
June 17th, 2009 at 8:35 pm
Yes, maybe all that’s standing in the way of peace is Israel’s refusal to freeze settlements.
Or maybe not. We’ll see now, won’t we?
June 17th, 2009 at 9:09 pm
Matt, would you like to clarify why you think Canadian Jews are “traditionally” on the right? Because it seems as if you are basing this merely on the presence of David Frum and Charles Krauthammer–who orginally considered himself on the left–on the political right. Do you have anything more to base that on?
June 17th, 2009 at 9:46 pm
RE: John #30
Fair enough…
Yet we now have an African American President. I’m waiting for an Arab-Israeli prime minister.
June 17th, 2009 at 10:18 pm
But neoconservative intellectuals—many of them Jewish, and several of them hailing from Canada where Jews are traditionally on the political right—
Not so.
Canadian Jews have traditionally voted for the Liberal Party in Cdn. federal elections. The Liberals are historically the urban party of immigration and multiculturalism with strong support of Israel.
The Liberal Party of Canada has always been left of centre and even though most Canadian Jews might be to the right side of the Liberal Party that would make them quite left in America. I suggest checking the number of Jewish members of parliament elected under the Liberal banner v. the other Canadian federal parties.
June 17th, 2009 at 10:25 pm
Please don’t I.D. Frum and Krockhammer as Canadians. Both fucked off long ago and we’re glad they did. Frum’s papa was a rich Toronto developer (explains plump little David’s disdain for working people,he never did any heavy lifting in his life).
Krockhammer is a hickenshit warmonger knowing full well he’d never have to serve.
June 17th, 2009 at 11:39 pm
American Jews were against killing commies in ‘Nam and Central America. Yet they are all for killing ayrabs.
American Jews are for open border immigration (diversity)here in the States. But these same people are against diversity in Israel.
btw, Buchanan was a hard core anti-communist who believed in confronting an enemy that was commited to world revolution. Once the commie threat faded, he reverted to being a non-interventionist trad conservative.
Arabs are not much of a threat to the United States. If we denied the right of entry to 19 arab men with student visas, we would still have 2 tall building standing in Manhattan.
It’s pretty simple. We have zero business being involved in these religious wars. Israel is not worth one American life or one American dollar.
June 18th, 2009 at 1:44 am
This is bizarre indeed, and it’s astonishing that MY is nodding as he reads it. It was always apartheid settler colonialism, and the underlying ideologies – such as the ‘Iron Wall’ – cannot be reconciled with any concepts of liberalism. Its a bastion of justification of ethnic cleansing (vis, the those-refugees-are-not-refugees arguments) and anti-arab hatred, and although many try hard to elide those values into liberalism, it can’t be done.
Harold M’s passage may reflect how a certain sort of US jewish pundit wants to see the developments, basically a variant of the Israel-has-lost-its-way story, but it’s nonsense.
June 18th, 2009 at 2:08 am
Zionists I understand, but all the Zionist sympathizers here – how deluded can they be, to what extend?
@16: abb1: tiresome and vile, whatever the venue. SLC’s no better, of course.
No, brother, this doesn’t work, you need to choose, and will have to choose. Either you’re for the militant racist ideology that has been committing murder, plunder, and various other atrocities for at least the last 60 years – or you are against it. You can’t be moderately and liberally racist, murderous and plunderous.
June 18th, 2009 at 3:05 am
47 – Patrick. In what world do you live in that American Jews are in favor of killing “Ayrabs”? American Jews are among the most liberal people in the country, a great majority opposed the Iraq War, and almost 80% voted for Obama for President. That doesn’t mean there aren’t any racist, Arab-hating American Jews (see Max Blumenthal’s recent video for that demographic), but it’s absolutely not true of most American Jews.
And I hate to disappoint you, Shmoe, but Israel is not a police state. I don’t like the current Israeli government any more than you do, but they didn’t gain power by force – they were elected and then made a coalition of more than 60 in the Knesset. People demonstrated during the Gaza War against the war (certainly not as many as I wished had, but there were anti-war demonstrations).
As for the claims by abb1 that Israel is a colonialist-settler entity – could we please get away from the New Left jargon?
June 18th, 2009 at 4:13 am
Rebecca, you don’t like my jargon? Well, then suggest a better one, but please try to make it reflect the reality of the situation: followers of a 19th c ethnocentric ideology moving to the ME from Europe, settling there, forming ethnically pure communities, pushing indigenous population out and later terrorizing and ethnically cleansing it; creating a state designed to uphold this ideology, implementing The Law of Return, immigration law based purely on ethnic criteria, creating multi-tier society based on ethnic criteria, expanding by military force outside its borders, starting wars, committing war crimes and justifying them, continuing ethnic cleansing for 60+ years, etc.
Here we have this Harold Meyerson person calling it “a bastion of liberalism”; would this be an example of jargon you like? Is this what the world “liberalism” means now? Just curious, you know; I would like to keep up to date with the latest developments of newspeak. Let me know. Thanks.
June 18th, 2009 at 4:47 am
Here, former president Carter, and probably Harold Meyerson’s favorite politician:
While at it, tell him to drop his jargon too, because this is exactly how people are supposed to be treated when they are in the way of Zionist goal.
Incidentally, you fellas are of course treated as useful idiots, which is exactly what you are and what you deserve.
June 18th, 2009 at 7:05 am
Re abb1
alestinians in the Gaza Strip are being “treated more like animals than human beings”, former U.S. president Jimmy Carter said on Tuesday.
While at it, tell him to drop his jargon too, because this is exactly how people are supposed to be treated when they are in the way of Zionist goal.
When people behave like animals, they may expect to be treated as such.
June 18th, 2009 at 7:06 am
With all due respect Matt, you’re incorrect about Canadian Jews being predominantly right-of-center. This article finds that Jews are more likely than others to vote for the Liberals or NDP, both left wing parties. I’ve not found statistics on more recent elections, but pretty much every riding with a large proportion of Jews still elects an MP from the left.
June 18th, 2009 at 9:26 am
Re “As an aside, the immensely rich Bronfman family are very much involved in pro-Israeli causes and very definitely are on the political right.”
—————
Yep. Major funders of Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) — just ask Clifford Mays, hee hee.
FDD’s “Board of Advisors” have all the usual suspects: Richard Perle, William Kristol, Charles Krauthammer, etc plus useful idiots (Gary Bauer). Interesting enough it formerly included Chuckie Schumer –until some of asked “Chuckie –say it ain’t so!”
Richard Perle lived for DECADES off the largesse of Canadian Billionaire Conrad Black — until Conrad was sent up the river for a few years , allegedly for ripping off Halliburton Inc for a few hundred MILLION dollars. Allegedly because Halliburton Director Richard Perle (Appointed by Black) turned
a blind eye. Prosecutor was Patrick Fitzgerald — who evidently is more deadly to some Neocons than the Waffen SS.
(Just ask Scooter Libby).
June 18th, 2009 at 10:00 am
No, brother, this doesn’t work, you need to choose, and will have to choose.
You ain’t my brother, and those ain’t my choices. So get a room with SLC and sort it out between yourselves.
June 18th, 2009 at 10:02 am
Re Matthews’s comment “Bill Kristol, David Frum, and Charles Krauthammer want to send the 6th Fleet to the Gulf of Aqaba and basically always want to send some fleet somewhere to bomb someone.”
————-
Which is why the Neocons’ biggest financier and supporter is right wing goy Rupert Murdoch. William Kristol’s Weekly Standard has LOST money in huge fat globs for years — Murdoch is his sugar daddy. Including handing Kristol the Fox News microphone weekly.
Goy Murdoch supports the Neocons because Australia is a nation of 20 million that is just a short hop, skip and jump across an island chain from 3 BILLION Asians. If the US Pacific Fleet ever withdrew, Australians would have to learn Mandarin within weeks. Just as they would have become part of Greater Tokyo in WWII is not for the US.
Conrad Black, Richard Perle’s Billionaire sugar daddy, is also goy.
Meanwhile, the opinion of 99 percent of America’s Jews don’t count for shit –because they are middle class. People who can’t give politicians bribes because they struggle to pay off their credit card every month
The interesting question about the “International Zionist Conspiracy” is: which billionaire goy is running it behind the scenes — and for what purpose? Notice how Big Oil’s whores are sticking “The JEWS” with the blame for Iraq?
June 18th, 2009 at 10:55 am
Thunderdome!
June 18th, 2009 at 11:57 am
@ 56
So, then, what are your choices, pseudonymous in nc?
It’s not quite clear from your ravings, so could you be so kind to clarify for me, please: do you judge people by who their maternal grandmother was or by the content of their character?
A little bit of both, I suppose; is that correct, my angry friend?
June 18th, 2009 at 2:09 pm
[...] Matthew Yglesias » The Changing Politics of Israel I think this is all correct, as are the things Meyerson says about J Street and everything Henrick Hertzberg says here. But I do think there’s one other dynamic that often gets missed here, namely the extent to which the mainstream “pro-Israel” organizations in the United States found themselves becoming more ideological—and more fundamentally right-wing—in recent years. (tags: jewishdiaspora usa usforeignpolicy israel) [...]
June 18th, 2009 at 4:21 pm
So get a room with SLC and sort it out between yourselves.
Thunderdome!
Just this once, could we modify the rules to “Two trolls enter, *no* trolls leave”?
You certainly can be against faith-based/ethnic colonialism, and *also* against faith-based/ethnic terrorism even when the latter occurs in response to the former.
I think there is something to Meyerson’s point – but it’s not Israel that has changed, really. Israel, even at the time, *looked* like a step forward – compared to Hitler, Mussolini and Franco, and perhaps even compared to British colonial rule. It could even be compared to the contemporary (i.e. Jim Crow) U.S. without too much embarrassment.
The bar for liberal democracy has since been raised. A lot. Calling something a liberal democracy now means comparing it to *non*-Jim-Crow U.S., or postunification Germany, or postwar England, or many other post-Cold War European states, or other democratic countries outside Europe such as Canada, Australia, etc.
Crucially, the new standards include fully equal rights for minorities and government neutrality in matters of religion, both of which Israel fails *hard*. (Theoretically, those have been part of the U.S.’s ideals since the Civil War and the Revolution, respectively, but they weren’t practically part of the standards until someone started living up to them.) Therefore, Israel looks much worse from a human rights perspective than it looked 60 years ago – even if it hasn’t gotten worse, it’s being held to a higher standard.
But if you apply modern standards retroactively, then Israel wasn’t a *real* democracy even from its inception, and has never made any serious attempt to move in the direction of becoming one. It was just harder to see when the world was full of other not-quite-democracies.
June 18th, 2009 at 4:48 pm
Actually, Meyerson and SLC are not that far apart. The former’s a “Left Zionist”, the latter a “Right Zionist”. For instance, although it’s a certainty that if Iran were to become a nuclear power – it would force Israel to make Peace – do you think either one is for it? Do you think either one would favor the dismantlement of Israel as a “Jewish State” a la Apartheid South Africa? Either one think it’s okay for Palestinians grieving over their massacred children to fight back – however feebly that is? At least with SLC – you get the straight dope.
June 18th, 2009 at 5:14 pm
Exactly, and I said it before: overt racist swine doesn’t annoy me nearly as much as hypocritical and self-righteous racist swine; nothing is more disgusting than all that J-Street crap.
And no, Zionism is nothing like Jim Crow; Jim Crow was an attempt to co-exist, and Zionism refuses to co-exist with anyone and anything. It’s impossible to imagine a Jim Crow state contemplating to demand official “this state is and will forever remain the white state” oath from all its citizens, and this is exactly what they have been discussing in Knesset recently. This is Nazi stuff.
June 18th, 2009 at 5:18 pm
Re Trevor
Mr. Trevor told us on a previous thread that his federal judge father was one of the worst federal judges on the bench. Not knowing who the gentleman is, we are in no position to evaluate this claim but given the fact that Mr. Trevor is a fucking asshole, one must not deign to accept the claim without further information.