Matt Yglesias

Peretz Claims Someone in White House “Has It In” for American Jews; Robinson and Tutu are Anti-Semites

Another day, a bit more smears and character assassination from New Republic editor in chief Martin Peretz:

[Obama] may not himself have made the decision to honor the contemptible Mary Robinson, arguably a real bigot, with the Medal of Freedom. But, then, there is someone in his entourage who is leading him astray, gravely astray. And that someone has it in for Israel and for American Jews, too. [...] And the fact is that Tutu will also receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom at the White House in mid-August. He is one of those many people who seems to have a tic about or a tic against the Jews. [...] So how about this rule for the White House? When conferring honors, only one anti-semite to the batch.

These are some pretty serious accusations, particularly the idea that Obama has fallen under the influence of someone in his entourage who “has it in . . . for American Jews, too.”

The Israel Test

Around the office last week we all had a good chuckle over the arrival of a book called The Israel Test whose promotional sheet advertises the book with the headline “WASP Prophet of Reaganomics calls Israel the crucial battlefield for Capitalism and Freedom in our time.” But it was just today that I started reading further. The argument turns out to be somewhat unusual in that it hinges in part on what chapter three dubs “The Tale of the Bell Curve,” in other words the innate genetic superiority of the Chosen People relative to the goyim. He offers some intriguing examples to illustrate this point beyond the familiar fact that Jews win lots of Nobel Prizes and are good at chess. For example:

Yes, there is a religious component in anti-Semitism, but there is also a political and economic element, reflected in the objective anti-Semitism of Karl Marx, Noam Chomsky, Friedrich Engels, Howard Zinn, Naomi Klein, and other Jewish leftist leaders who above all abhor capitalism. Jews, amazingly, excel so readily in all intellectual fields that they outperform all rivals even in the arena of anti-Semitism.

Alternative interpretations would include the possibility that Naomi Klein probably isn’t an anti-Semite, or even that when you combine belief Jewish genetic superiority with the fact of Jewish proclivity for left-wing politics that you seem to get the conclusion that left-wing politics is correct. Back to the publicity material, we learn that what’s so awesome about Israel is that it “concentrates the genius of the Jews in one place.” Which at least to my eye makes it sound a bit as if Gilder likes Israel in part because he wishes American Jews would leave him alone and go live there instead.

The Democrats’ Jewish Problem

Before the 2008 election, there were three Jewish Republicans in congress. Now one of them (Norm Coleman) lost his seat and another (Arlen Specter) has switched parties. It’s gonna be a lonely Hanukkah for Eric Cantor.

A Job for Norm

Norm Coleman’s still fighting for the Minnesota Senate seat he already lost, but he’s also taken new employment as a consultant to the Republican Jewish Committee. The RJC is extremely good at getting the press to write stories every four years about Jewish voters turning against the Democrats. It’s not so good at actually getting Jewish voters to turn against the Democrats, who regularly get 75-80 percent of the Jewish vote.

RJC: Obama Will Lead to Second Holocaust

Greg Sargent got his hands on this charming mailer from the Republican Jewish Committee:

Concerned about Barack Obama? You should be. History has shown that a naive and weak foreign policy has resulted in tragic outcomes for the Jewish people.

Charming stuff, and following hot on the heels of a Pennsylvania GOP email making similar fearmongering efforts aimed at Jewish voters. Meanwhile, polling shows that American Jews are likely to vote for the Democratic candidate in the same overwhelming numbers we always do. The whole subplot over the past seven years wherein far-right elements whose political views have nothing in common with those of American Jews and whose candidates are rejected by American Jews in staggering numbers pose as the world’s great defenders of Jewish interests has been very odd. Out of all American ethnic groups, Jews are second only to African-Americans in their loyalty to the Democratic Party and arguably have the most firmly progressive convictions of any group out there. Presumably a Republican could win a larger share of the Jewish vote, but that would have to be accomplished by taking steps to actually move closer to the views and concerns of Jewish voters instead of endless repetition of this kind of fearmongering.

Obama and the Jews

Ethan Porter has an interesting piece on “Why the Jews finally came home to Obama.”

When thinking about this kind of issue, though, it’s worth recalling that what normally happens in elections is that people vote the way they normally vote. Nobody’s surprised to see Barack Obama getting a huge share of the black vote, and Bill Clinton was always wildly popular in the African-American community, but of course black voters also overwhelmingly pulled the lever for John Kerry. But at one point in the spring and summer of 2004, it was thought that Kerry might have trouble motivating black voters for various reasons. That’s not to say that the worrying was useless or unnecessary, but it is to say that research shows that the main thing that campaigns do is “remind” partisans of the reasons that they’re partisans and bring them around to voting for the party that they always vote for. Thus, when we started this general election cycle there were certain traditional Democratic demographic groups (Jews, Hispanics) that seemed skeptical of Obama, while McCain was a widely popular “maverick” views skeptically by conservatives. But over the course of the campaign, Jews and Hispanics came to like Obama, conservatives came to like McCain, and both candidates saw their cross-partisan appeal fade. Campaigns are important because if you didn’t actually do the campaigning this stuff might not happen and then you’d be in a world of pain. But it shouldn’t come as shocking to anyone that a presidential campaign was able to bring its party’s traditional voters along.

Palin and the Jewish Agency

Sarah Palin does Israel policy:

Palin, Republican John McCain’s running mate, also tried to burnish her foreign policy credentials by meeting here with Israel’s ambassador to the United States, apologizing for the session’s delay.

“We look forward to … working with your Jewish agency,” she told Ambassador Sallai Meridor just before her speech outside Washington.

This is a reference to The Jewish Agency for Israel which helps Jews leave their current countries and move to Israel. Which is nice. But I think that most American Jews like the United States of America just fine. What we’d like to see is a commitment to policies here in the USA that help secure the interests and security of religious and ethnic minorities rather than, say, demagogic rhetoric about which kinds of people and which kinds of places are authentically American.

UPDATE: Corrected quote makes much more sense:

“I look forward to hearing about your work with the Jewish Agency and all the plans that we have. We’ll be working together.”

Dunno what that reporter was thinking; the alternations completely changed the meaning of what he was attributing to Palin.