Progressives and Israel

I have a major issue with many Pro-Israeli Jewish groups in America. I understand that Israel faces numerous terrorists attacks from Palestinian terrorist, but the fact remains that Israel continues to murder innocent Palestinians as well.

My issue is that these groups seem unable to seperate opposition to Israel from anti-semitism. Today in America it is nearly impossible to disagree with Israeli policy without being labeled an anti-semite. However, connecting the apartheid-like treatment of Palestinians by the Israeli govt. with bigoted hatred of Jewish individuals is ludacris.

This weekend my Jewish (very ish) step family had a Christmas-day brunch of latkes and bacon before settling in to the last of the minora lightings in the evening. Bickering about Israel over red wine and craft beers is the annual sport around the dinner table this time of year, with leveling a charge of antisemitism holding the place of something like a Ronaldian flop at the top of the box - an embarrassment to the whole exercise, an insult to the intelligence of everyone involved, and a sort of last-ditch desperate defense of a position that cannot support itself within the rules of reason or discourse. It's a cheap shot that turns a heated dialogue into two simultaneous screeching monologues, and it's only ever pulled out when one side has utterly lost on all fronts besides the nakedly emotional.

There seems to be a serious thread of opinion in parts of conservative America (both Jewish and evangelical Christian, although not limited to them) that sees no difference between being anti-Israel (and anti-semetic) and being less than enthused about the current Israeli government and its policies.

Anyone who is paying attention could point out that Netanyahu looks to be on course to accomplishing what Hamas and Hezbollah (like the Arab countries before them) could not: the destruction of the state of Israel. Unfortunately. Yet saying so in public is anathema.

This dispute originated with Media Matters senior fellow MJ Rosenberg habitually referring to U.S. Zionists as "Israel firsters". This term equates Zionism with disloyalty to the U.S., an idea which is grossly offensive to Jews who have a long history of being accused of disloyalty by dint of their minority status. While criticism of Israel is of course not equivalent to anti-Semitism, calling Jewish supporters of Israel unpatriotic most certainly is. How can the editors of the Economist not see this?

In the same way that you can (apparently) not see a difference between someone who is very strongly pro-Israel, and someone who says that, as President, he would put Israel's interests above those of the United States.

The former is by no means unpatriotic. The latter, however....

Stop defending an "over the top" exaggeration. It makes you look like a self-hating Semite. The statement is false and not all that different from the others. You're allowing your opposition to the Iraq war and right-wing Israeli politics to cloud your judgement.

It's true that the antisemitism charge is often inappropriately leveled against those who voice legitimate criticism of Israeli policy. You just picked a piss-poor example.

It looks like what we have here is over-correction. Pro-Israeli groups inappropriately accuse Israel critics of antisemitism so left-wingers push back making the case that nothing is antisemitic anymore, except for Mel Gibson. Saying that Jews caused the Iraq war isn't antisemitic. Not Israel. Jews. How you can defend that as "legitimate criticism of specific political factions with the Jewish community and Israel" is beyond me but MS managed to do it.

THIS is a little down in the weeds

A did x to B.
C did yto A.
D, well we don't know.
E through Z don't really care as "It's the economy stupid."

And it is snowing outside, 1-3" by midnight.

So if I don't see the weeds, I don't care.

I had enough cooked red meat (ham) over the last few days.

Regards

With regards to this example...I think it's important to note that while many neoconservatives in government and in public policy think tanks are Jewish, the vast majority of Jewish-Americans are not neoconservative.

That's why I favor just referring to neoconservatives as just "neoconservatives" without mentioning the religious affiliations of people like Paul Wolfowitz, Charles Krauthammer, and Bill Kristol.

Why are these claims about the Iraq war problematic?

Because there is a substantial subset of the population that sees Iraq through this lens: The President and his advisers publicly claimed there were WMDs in Iraq, this was their foremost justification of war which they *knew at the time* to be false or were unconcerned about the veracity of those claims because they had an ulterior (unspoken) motive to go into war.

Putting into this claim (the "conspiracy" if you will) "the Israel lobby" or "Jewish neocons" is problematic because of the conspiratorial bent with which many see the Iraq war.

There are other answers to the question, "What is the real reason we went to war?" The most prominent would be "To get their oil." Or perhaps, "Bush Jr. wanted to finish what Bush Sr. started out of filial piety." But "Jewish neocons/the Israel lobby convinced the President to go to war on faulty intelligence to fulfill their own (hidden) agenda" is obviously far more problematic.

It ascribes to them disproportionate power and hidden influence on the levers of power such that the so-called "cheerleading" and the public case made can be completely decoupled from the sinister Jewish purpose.

Isn't that what he's saying?

And with regards to Neoconservatism itself, one of the nice parts about the Egyptian pro-democracy protests is that they revealed for ALL to see Neoconservatism's hypocrisy.

Neoconservatives, while talking up the Iraq War, emphasized the importance of Arab democracy as a means of limiting Islamic extremism.
When the target of regime change was the anti-Israel Saddam Hussein, they said that argument loud and proud, and loudly denounced opposition to the Iraq Wars as being pro-tyranny, anti-democracy.

During the Egyptian protests, when the person being toppled was the (relatively...) pro-Israel President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, Neoconservatives either went silent or criticized Obama for "Letting" Mubarak fall.

Mubarak was a dictator in every sense of the word, but he was more than happy to accept American aid in exchange for playing nice with Israel, and all of a sudden, democracy for Arabs wasn't so amazing anymore in the eyes of neoconservatives.

And that's what people mean when they describe them as "Israel first." When you argue that democracy limits anti-American Islamic extremism, but then oppose pro-democracy movements in nations with Israel-friendly dictators, you're putting Israel first.

The Wiesenthal Center got it right. Criticism of neocons or other advocates of the Iraq war, Jewish or otherwise, is not the problem. Rather, it is the charge that American Jewish neocons advocated for the Iraq war because they put Israel's interests ahead of America's that is the problem. Such aspersions on the loyalty of Jewish Americans to the country of their birth does, in fact, demonstrate an anti-Jewish bias, if not outright anti-semitism. As for Israel, shouldn't we expect them to advocate for American policies that they perceive as advancing their national security concerns. Personally, I think the Iraq war was a disaster for Israel. It left a power vacum filled by Iran, which is a much, much more dangerous enemy than Iraq ever was.

Man nothing's changed in 30 years. The Jewish lobby is accused of dual loyalty, and the critics of the Jewish lobby are accused of anti-Semitism. A pox on both houses.

I agree. The larger issue this is part of, though, is the legitimation since the 1960s of "victimization politics." I believe they began with worthy causes and in proportional degree, but, inevitably, teaching people that this or that narrative is what gets them what they want teaches them to seem that way. Abusing idealism destroys it.

The problem, as you fail to see, is that Rosenberg applies the term arbitrarily. Arbitrarily applying a disloyalty slur to Jews is bigotry. Not only that, the term "Israel firster" was scrubbed from the Center for American Progress website and an apology was issued. Media Matters, on the other hand, keeps letting Rosenberg use the slur.

The term "Israel firster" is intrinsically offensive and is made to slur Jews. As a liberal, pro-peace supporter of Israel, I wish that Media Matters and Rosenberg would see the light and stop the smears.

No, papa, criticizing the loyalty of Jewish Americans does not demonstrate an anti-Jewish bias. A public criticism of disloyalty is a serious charge, but by itself, without more facts about the accuser and the case to be made, can never be tantamount to racial or religious bias.

Divided loyalties are a concern whose validity only increases every year in these times of diaspora and the celebration of diversity. Israel and America are perhaps more than allies, but not in a way that diminishes the concern; Jonathan Pollard comes to mind. Jewish Americans must be American first and Jewish second, or, frankly, emigrate to Israel; they must declare publicly where their first loyalty lies.

Applying "Israel firster" to Jews in general would, as you say, probably be intended as a slur. But the term might also be used objectively: for example, someone who states explicitly that "Israel's interests must guide US policy. Period." So I don't see that the term is, as you put it, "intrinsically offensive." Rather than its application may be offensive, depending on how it is applied.

I am not sufficiently familiar with Rosenberg to know which application best describes his use. But I am familiar with several other columnists who have used the term in specific cases, and been denounced for being anti-semetic. Their long-standing, and vocal, support for Israel (if not for Israel's current administration) notwithstanding.

P.S. I would also note that some of those individuals to whom the term has been applied are not, themselves, Jewish. They merely take the position, for whatever reason, that Israel's interests should trump American interests in setting US policy.

Handworn, I hate to use this language, but totally.

Also, while reaing it occurred to me that this post can be condensed to: in order to be libel, a statement must be libelous. I admit, the text seems bolder in the long form.

OK, and on your reply to Papa, Handworn, I'd say totally not. Divided loyalty is pretty near a diagnostic trait of humanity. Do we want to question the loyalty of everyone who identifies two or more ways? Are evangelical Americans dubious? Scots-Irish Americans even more dubious? What does the "celebration of diversity" have to do with it?

If you want to make the case that there's too many identities available to us these days, then I'd say maybe, but that's a whole other discourse in which Jews are not a noteworthy example. It's hard for me to get to a thesis that Jewish-Americans as a group are less loyal than other Americans without anti-semitism. On the other, it's pretty easy to reach a thesis that someone who believes American policy should be deferential to Israeli policy isn't loyal enough to the U.S. But that applies to AIPAC and most of its supporters which as far as I can tell aren't coterminous with or representative of American Jews in general.

"Their confusion on this point is symptomatic of the inability of many conservative Jewish institutions to distinguish between legitimate criticism of specific political factions with the Jewish community and Israel, and anti-semitism."

I would go further than that and say that charges of anti-Semitism today seem to be done in bad faith, and are just as conspiratorial as Charles Lindbergh's belief that Jews wanted to drag America into WWII

On a side note, it's very much a good thing that American Jews are taking a more critical view of Israel, but we ought to maintain our stance on Israel even if this were not the case. Support for the two-state solution is based on the principle of self-determination, and such principles should not be subject to popular will.