I Don’t Like Henry Kissinger, Norman Podhoretz, Paul Wolfowitz, Elliot Abrams, Edward Teller and a Whole Lot Of Other People…For The Same Reason

Isaac Chotiner quotes this Niall Ferguson review of a Kissinger biography, in which the English historian asks if all the special hatred directed towards Kissinger is, at least, partially anti-Semitic:

Has the ferocity of the criticism which Kissinger has attracted perhaps got something to do with the fact that he, like the Rothschilds, is Jewish?

I tend to sympathize with the “all American foreign policy after the War was horrible” view, but one can easily make the argument that Kissinger was especially bad. As Chotiner points out, he was the foreign policy vizier for the least popular president, helped prosecute the worst possible war and not only is still alive today (unlike, say, Dulles), but he’s an incredibly rich, popular and influential individual. And if you’re looking for a single figure to represent just how vicious American foreign policy could be, Kissinger is about as good a symbol as you can get.

But I’ll admit that some of my dislike for Kissinger is not just because he is Jewish, but because he’s almost the perfect example of a Jewish American immigrant story. He was born in Germany, fled his homeland as the Holocaust was starting and then, when he reached New York, attended City College. Tack on some more degrees from Harvard and incredibly sucessful civil service career, and you have the dream of every Jewish parent. But, from the perspective of a liberal jew, he took his amazing cultural values and incredibly high intelligence and put it in service of the most regressive forces in America. Nixon, himself someone who had nothing nice to say about Jews, was able to draw from 3000 years of beautiful history from Moses to Sandy Koufax to implement his horrific policy vision (with the exception of China). Now, I recognize that accusing minorities who politically go off the reservation of being sellouts is a regressive thing to do, but there is a visceral reaction to seeing someone who could personally symbolize the incredible story of American Jews be so loathsome. To quote Abbie Hoffman, Kissinger is a shonda for the goyim.

What Does AIPAC, Joe Lieberman and Abe Foxman Do About Hagee Now

Now that John McCain has been forced to admit that Hagee is an anti-Semite and reject his endorsement, there should be some reckoning for those Jews who have trumpeted him as a friend of Israel and the Jewish people.

At an Christians United For Israel event where Hagee was speaking, Joe Lieberman described him as “An Ish Elohim. A man of God..Like Moses.” Abe Foxman has said that Hagee deserves to be heard and recognized by pro Israel types “because of his support of Israel. And AIPAC has repeatedly had Hagee speak at events and be something of an officially sanctioned advocate for Israel. So why were these two prominent Jews, and the most prominent Jewish political organization, supporting a conspiratorial, pseudo-Holocaust denying anti-Semite? That’s because short-term and unquestioning support for a hardline stance on Israel  has replaced any substantive committment to Jewish values or more enlightened support for Israel as a mark of true Jewishness in the mind of Lieberman, Foxman and AIPAC. But because of McCain’s denouncing, the jig, fortunately, is up (or at least it should be).

And while AIPAC, Foxman and Lieberman may denounce Hagee now (despite his anti-Semitic ravings having been widely known for years), their dalliance with him just shows how morally and intellectually bankrupt the “pro-Israel” project is.

This is probably as good a time as any to implore everyone (especially Jews) to sign up for J Street’s email list. They did a great job of trumpeting the Hagee-Holocaust story and definitely helped raise its profile among Jews.

The End of the Jewish Establishment? I Sure Hope So

For far too long, the major Jewish organizations have been controlled by people who don’t have the politics, interests, history or temperament of the American Jews they claim to represent. Although everyone always knew that the ADL, AJC and AIPAC were almost Jurassic in their approach to American Jewish politics and Israel and only represented a narrow sliver of American Jewry, it all came to the surface when Abe Foxman angrily yelled at a student criticizing the ADL’s stand against the Armenian Genocide resolution that he doesn’t “represent you nor the Jewish community! I represent the donors.” Sure, we all knew this, but at least it was good to know that Foxman’s suppression of free debate about Israel (see Tony Judt and the Polish Consulate) and smearing of respected academics (Mearsheimer and Walt) wasn’t being done in our name.

And today, we are on the verge of having the presumptive Democratic nominee - who’s likely to win the election - who has little to no support from the Jewish Establishment. It’s not surprising that Obama hasn’t been able to win the support of prominent Jewish fund raisers and players in Democratic circles. After all, the Clintons have been the number one Democrats since 1992, and have had the strong support of the Jewish community all that time. It also didn’t hurt that the Clintons enthusiastically supported a series of absurd AIPAC-promoted initiatives that did nothing to improve Israel’s security and only inflamed the situation more - like Clinton’s support for an “undivided Jerusalem” as Israel’s capital. Obama, on the other hand, hasn’t been kissing the ring of Haim Saban since the early 1990s, and also because of his middle name, association with Jeremiah Wright and some things said by advisers, is now perceived to have a “Jewish problem.” Of course, Obama hasn’t actually gone very far off the reservation about Israel. He still went to AIPAC and assured them that Israel is our most important ally and so on and so forth.

But today, as it now appears impossible for Clinton to get the nomination, I can’t help but smile that the candidate who the AJC criticized for insisting that Israel take risky steps for peace, the candidate that Haim Saban said was only 1/10th as qualified as Clinton, the one who makes AIPAC “uncomfortable” and the one that the Jewish Establishment has rallied against is now the presumptive Democratic nominee. Of course, I expect plenty of these types to come out for McCain and insist that four more years of reckless hawkishness is exactly what American Jews and Israel needs. But considering that younger American Jews don’t vote in the narrowly sectarian manner that AIPAC and the AJC would want us to, and that the overwhelming majority of Jews are Democrats, hopefully this election could signal the end of an leadership class who have served their constituents so poorly.

Phil Weiss sums it up the best:

Will Obama be as “good for the Jews” as Hillary? No. But I bet younger Jews aren’t asking that selfish question. They don’t feel themselves to be outsiders, and I imagine that many of them see our tragic Israel/Iraq policy, that deathly double-play combination of Pollack-to-Kristol-to-Perle, as the Jewish establishment at work. I often think of what Michael Walzer said at the Center for Jewish History last year. For 3000 years, “we governed only ourselves, as best we could… Sometimes [we were] semi-autonomous… responsible only for ourselves.” Not so good, he added ruefully, at governing others. I’m looking forward to more power-sharing, in a rainbow establishment…

It’s Like Ilsa: She-Wolf of the SS…But Real

The case of Max Mosley seems to be something that a philosophy professor would use to see if her students were really serious when they said things like “consensual sexual acts among adults are private.”  She could say, “but imagine if the son of the founder of the British Union of Fascists was engaged in a four hour long tryst with several prostitutes in which he role-played both as a concentration camp guard and prisoner”  This would be one of those classic philosophy-class thought experiments, whereby the professor finds the most absurd example of something to make her students understand the full consequences of a certain line of thought.  The problem is that Max Mosley, the head of F1 racing, and yes, the son of the most prominent British Hitler supporter Oswald Mosley actually did all that stuff.  Let us all imagine the American equivalent.

David Stern is caught on video in a multi-hour tryst with five prostitues in which he role-plays both slave and slave master…with lots of whipping involved.  Pretty creepy, no?  This would be a great way to test one’s liberalness, to see if they really don’t care about  “purity”, to use Jonathan Haidt’s moral calibration schema.   Because, really, there isn’t anything that wrong, or at least anything I’d want to criticize, in what Mosley did or in the Stern example.  Sure, it’s creepy because Mosley’s father was a Hitlerite, but there’s no really good evidence that Mosley’s sexual activities are indicative of any greater, or more consequential, anti-Semitism.  It just seems like a more extreme version of standard S&M, and it even makes sense to brings Nazis into it, because of their fondness for leather and boots.  If we’re serious about privacy, and especially sexual privacy, we should be angry at News of the World for running the story and releasing the video.

Attractive Jews!

No no, the title isn’t a joke.  But I just want to register that contra W magazine, my “celebrity crush list” includes both Scarlett Johansson and Natalie Portman (real name Hershlag).  Me and every other guy in the world.

And while many people may have crushes on those two, I think I’m in a unique spot.  You see, Scarlett Johansson called my family to tell us to vote for Barack Obama* and, when I was visiting my brother while he was in college, I saw Natalie Portman at a restaurant.

And yes, this entire post was just an excuse to post this picture

Small gene pool my ass! (well, Scarlett is half, but the point still stands) I should note, however, that many of my friends who share this opinion are also Jewish, likes Ms. Johansen and Ms. Portman, so maybe it’s an unrepresentative sample.  And since every American Jew is also a part time fantasy matchmaker/husbander, can you imagine if Natalie Portman and Noah Feldman were to get together? The resulting offspring would be as close to the Messiah as we’re ever going to get.

Can we please get Phoebe Maltz to comment on this?

*A recording of Johansson, but still.

Obama and the Jews

MJ Rosenberg reacts to Roger Cohen’s sickening Op-Ed trying to imply that even though Obama won’t admit he’s an anti-Semite or a Muslim, he probably is because the pastor at this church said some nice things about Louis Farrakhan. I will not be suprised that if Obama gets the nomination if right wing Jews and liberal Jews that like to denounce black leaders will be making these BS implications that not only is Obama a Muslim, but a Black Muslim, a group that all right-thinking Jews despise or at least find questionable(and, because of Farrakhan, with at least some good reason).

Nonetheless, the whispers about Obama go like this. “You know, Obama’s minister is a big Farrakhan supporter.” “He’s also Muslim, or half Muslim.” “He studied in a madrassa.” “And he’s very anti-Israel.”

No one knows if any campaign is behind these charges. According to the informative analysis and poll by Shmuel Rosner in Ha’aretz, the right-wing of the Jewish community does not like Obama and strongly favors Giuliani and Clinton because of their hardline stances on Israel.

But I don’t think any campaign is behind this round of swiftboating because it bears all the markings of the Jewish far right, the camp that cheered Rabin’s assassination. Nevertheless, the smears will have an effect, regardless of its origins. It will be felt on Super Tuesday when hundreds of thousands of Jews vote in New York, California, and elsewhere.

I, at least anecdotally, find this to be true. In the American Jewish Committee survey of Jewish public opinion found a lot of support for Hillary. In the survey, Clinton got over 75% approval from Jewish Democrats, while Edwards and Obama were under 50. Much of this can be attributed to Clinton being a known quality and to her husband being absolutely adorded by liberal Jews. Also, being the Senator from Jew York New York State, she has had to pursue good relations with the Jewish community, and that has paid off in their high support for her.

But I won’t be surprised if we see more of this underground rumor mongering and questions about Obama on Israel and on Islam. American Jews have a testy relationship with black leaders; on one hand, American Jews were literally on the barricades for civil rights and even died for them, while on the other hand, we still remember Crown Heights and leaders like Farrakhan and Sharpton’s anti-Semitism. It’s a sensitive issue, and Obama’s ascent will probably bring about some ugliness.

PS - The “Obama is a Muslim” meme/smear has found its way into Israel.

What’s Left, What’s Right, Why Does It Matter?

Phoebe Maltz takes another step in her mission of self-discovery and decides that between the left and right, there are plenty of people motivated by bigotry, but because the left has more anti-Semitism, she doesn’t really want to be a leftist.  I definitely disagree with her on which side is more motivated by bigotry or that contemporary American leftism/liberalism has a large number of anti-Semites, the mission itself, to find oneself on the left or the right, seems slightly quixotic.

Most people really don’t have the need to identify with an all encompassin political movement or ideology like “left” “right” “conservatism” “liberalism”, they can vote for Democrats or Republicans and just leave it at that.  Now, people who like disucssing politics, political philosophy, political science etc, they can and should find an ideology or “side” they identify with.  But if you claim that “I need to relearn about US politics,” then searching for a grand political identification before a simple party of candidate political affiliation looks like putting the horse before the cart.

What Should Phoebe Do?

While it is indeed shocking that a New York born Jew who is currently a graduate student at NYU has more Democratic-than-not political views, I think we should still help Phoebe Maltz realize that she is probably a Democrat, and if she isn’t, that she should be. The core problem for her, it seems, is that she recognizes that the social backwardness of the GOP makes a vote for them untenable, but she has some trouble identifying herself as one of “the left.” I guess I don’t really see why this is all that important a concern.

There are all sorts of people in America who may generally vote for Democrats or for Republicans, but aren’t well represented by either side. My dad, for instance, has exclusively voted for Democrats his entire life (except when voting for Schwarzenegger), but he constantly rails against how liberals hate businesses, want to raise taxes and strangle the economy. He is not, certainly, “of the left”, but he votes Democratic because on a few key issues — namely ones like abortion and the War in Iraq, he agrees with Democrats. And in America, unlike Israel, there are two political parties, so a lot of people get shoehorned into one of them, without really being fully on board with their hole program. Just look at how libertarians held their nose and voted for Republicans all these years, and how some of them may have to vote for Democrats.

The second large issue she has with realizing that she is, in fact, a liberal is the perceived animosity or issues between liberalism and Jews. While she’s correct that, if you look at it a certain way, some populist anti-corporate and anti-foreign rhetoric could be interpreted as having a familiar resemblance to anti-Semitism, she is just wrong to say that there is some deep connection between American left-liberalism and animosity towards Jews.

I’m sure she knows the old Milton Himmelfarb line, “Jews earn like Episcopalians, but vote like Puerto Ricans”, and while the language he used may not be particularly fashionable today, it is still true. 58% of Jews identify as Democrats, while only 15% say they are Republicans. The AJC released an survey which, among other things, concludes that generally Jews hold moderate-to-liberal policy views on just about everything — including the war in Iraq and war on terrorism. For instance, 59% of American Jews disapprove of how the government is handling the war on terror and 67% think we shouldn’t have invaded Iraq. So Maltz’s opinion that being fully Jewish and being fully American-liberal is somehow opposed is pretty isolated within the Jewish community.

One of her finals points is that among “the left” (which she never really defines, largely because it may be impossible to do so), “it’s far more startling to hear someone on the left grudgingly accept rather than enthusiastically embrace the officially leftist stance on an issue than it is to witness someone on the right doing the same.” I think she is taking a snapshot of the last four or so years, and drawing a conclusion about left wingers in America that hasn’t always been true. There is a long and proud tradition of left contrarianism, even within the Democratic party. Not only have leftists always attacked mainstream Democrats for not being left enough, but from about 1980 to 1992, there were entire magazines and an intellectual movement devoted to bring the Democratic party and the American left closer to the center. Michael Kinsley of The New Republic and Charles Peters of the Washington Monthly delighted in attacking their fellow left wingers and Democrats, as well as core constituencies like unions. Bill Clinton issued the New Orleans Declaration in 1990, which was mostly an attack on the left wing elements of the Democratic Party for being too far to the left. It’s just that as the Bush administration and the GOP is currently going up in flames, it’s easy for the American left to unite against a force that they all agree is malevolent. The only reason that there has been any flourishing of contrarian opinion among Republicans is because they are quickly trying to disassociate themselves from the Bush administration. Another reason why being contrarian could be more accepted on the right than on the left is that, in standard historical terms, the left is a movement, while the right is a reaction. In America, for reasons I’ll explain very soon, I think the opposite is true, but it’s still something to consider.

I take issue with how Maltz implicitly defines “left.” I assume that because she is an academic, and one that studies Europe, she takes “left” to mean the genuine European left that has existed since 1848.The American left, in so much as there is one, is not the European left, which is a more proper left. Socialism or Social Democracy, except for a brief period in the 1910s, has never had a remotely comparable following in America as it has in Europe, and so it’s incorrect to say that the European left and what she calls the American left are equivalent.

Another oddity in Maltz’s discussion of what it means to be “left” is that she, like those who write for Dissent or Democratiya, implies that thinking that democracy isn’t always superior to theocracy or that horrible human rights abuses in Muslim countries aren’t all that bad compared to the evil that is America is a genuine left wing sentiment. And many academic and British leftists, I agree, are horribly soft on terrorists and theocrats and really hate America more than anything else; but that does not mean that any sort of real-existing-left in America holds those views to be mainstream or even acceptable.

I guess what I’m really trying to say is that politics and political identification are about choices. And in this upcoming election, there will be a choice between a Democrat and a Republican. And Maltz can easily choose to vote for a Democrat, without identifying with a left, which I think doesn’t really exist, she doesn’t want to be aligned with. And that’s just fine.

On a final note…Holy crap, I just wrote nearly 1000 words trying to tell a woman I don’t even know how she should identify politically. Blogger narcissism knows no bounds…

When Israeli Newspapers Hate Israel

First it was Commentary accusing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of being anti-Israel, now they’ve moved on to Israel’s leading newspaper, Haaertz.  Their sin is that they ran an Op-Ed by Tom Segev, who commemorated the 60th anniversary of the UN vote to partition British Palestine and create Israel by pointing out that Israel tarnishes its moral standing by a continued occupation.  This opinion, if I may note, is rather uncontroversial among diaspora Jews and Israeils.  Haaertz also committed the grave sin of criticizing a right wing Israeli think tank.  In Commentary world, this makes Haaertz likes the New York Times, but worse.

Anti-Semitism in America

I agree with Isaac Chotiner that David Samuels melodramatic, alarmist essay “The Silence of the Lambs” is poor stuff. Specifically, when he begins to talk about the supposed resurgence of anti-Semitism in America, his examples are almost self refuting:

Yes, Jewish life in America remains a flowering paradise compared with the realities of being a Jew in contemporary Britain or France. But it is impossible to ignore the fact that America has changed, too. At bookstores in major airports, I am no longer surprised to be greeted by a pictures of a smiling former U.S. president comparing Israel to the loathsome apartheid government of South Africa, or a Harvard professor explaining how a small but powerful coterie of Jews is responsible for the misfortunes that have befallen America in the Middle East.

Every American Jew has been quietly putting together their own pocket-sized file of stories they would rather not tell the children.

There is the story of the gunman who walked into a Jewish community center in Seattle last year and murdered one community worker and wounded five others. The silence of the mainstream American Jewish leadership in this country was met by widespread silence in the press.

Lobbyists for AIPAC are being put on trial for the crime of gossiping with U.S. government officials over lunch, an offense of which every single foreign lobbyist in Washington – and every working journalist – is guilty. Again, the American Jewish community is silent, for fear of making things worse.

Last week I logged onto the New York Times website and read excerpts from a speech by Senator Joe Lieberman condemning the extremist fringe of the Democratic Party. The comments section – moderated by the Times – began with an attack on Lieberman as the “Senator from Tel Aviv” and went downhill from there, in language that ten years ago would have been confined to white supremacist compounds in Idaho and Washington State.

Let’s go through these claims one by one. There’s the common smear that Jimmy Carter is an anti-Semite. While I disagree with his characterization of Israel, it is within the bounds of acceptable discourse to say that there are similarities between systems where there are functionally two sets of laws based on location. Moreover, I can’t imagine why an anti-Semite would broker a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel that been an unqualified success for Israel’s security. There’s also an allusion to Walt-Mearsheimer. I guess if one wants to make the absurd argument that the best place for the safety, freedom, respect and tolerance for Jews in history (the contemporary United States) is having a resurgence in anti-Semitism, it’s necessary to misrepresent The Israel Lobby. WM never claim that Jews, writ large, are responsible for our Israel policy, or are constitutive of the “Israel Lobby.” From their original London Review of Books paper, “This is not meant to suggest that ‘the Lobby’ is a unified movement with a central leadership, or that individuals within it do not disagree on certain issues. Not all Jewish Americans are part of the Lobby […] Jewish Americans also differ on specific Israeli policies […] The Lobby also includes prominent Christian evangelicals.” While the shooting in Seattle was a tragedy, I was largely informed of it by the Jewish press, and it’s hardly indicative of a greater trend. But smears of Jimmy Carter and blatant misrepersentations of Walt-Mearsheimer are standard practice for this type of essay. What’s starkly original is the defense of Lawrence Franklin.

Franklin is the DoD employee who passed along classified government documents about Iran to two AIPAC employees and an Israeli government official. Franklin plead guilty to the espionage charges. This is more than just “gossiping,” it’s the unauthorized sharing of classified information with agents of a foreign country. It’s a pretty cut and dry case, and Samuels is crying wolf by trying to turn this matter into a latter day Dreyfus Affair. Moreover, defending blatantly illegal activity by calling its prosecution anti-Semitic is playing into the hands of the more conspiratorial, anti-Israel fringe. If the American Jewish community were to rise to the defense of the two AIPAC staffers committing espionage, it would be shameful. Samuels is demanding the worse type of dual loyalty, whereby American Jews have an obligation to defend every action of the Israeli government. And yet, Samuels and his ilk are so quick to criticize others for saying that some hawkish Israel boosters clearly exhibit dual loyalties

The final proof that Samuels case for the rise of anti-Semitism in America is quite weak is when he looks to an anonymous comment thread about Joe Lieberman. There’s the snide implication that the Times encouraged or at least condoned this apparently awful language, despite the fact that the worse thing Samuels could find was calling Lieberman the “senator from Tel Aviv”

If Samuels is so concerned about anti-Semitism in the United States, I wonder what he thinks about Rudy Giuliani. Of course, Giuiliani would probably appeal to Samuels because of his denigration of Palestinian statehood and hawkish militarism in the Middle Eat and Israel. On the other hand, Giuliani gladly accepted the endorsement of a real anti-Semite, Pat Robertson. But in Samuels’ world, if you disagree with him about Israel or AIPAC, that’s a surefire sign that America is devolving into Jew hatred.

How Success Can Kill A Movement

Kay Steiger’s reaction to Ricardo Hausman’s post showing encouraging data of how women worldwide are reversing the education gap (inadvertently) demonstrates how success can potentially become an anathema to those movements pushing for change

I’m highly skeptical about this post (via Ezra) that claims women seem to be reversing the gender gap worldwide. Good news! All those feminists can pack up their bags and go home! Inequality doesn’t exist anymore!

Steiger is definitely correct in saying that just because women are becoming more educated, gender inequality isn’t going to become a thing of the past. But Steiger’s (snarky, not totally serious) response is illustrative. Let’s propose for a moment that gender inequality in education, earnings and opportunity totally disappeared. A whole lot of organizations and activists would suddenly become purposeless. Their first response would be to deny that gender inequality had in fact disappeared, and then move on to other, more marginal struggles. This is because those organizations and activists raison d’etre was agitating against gender inequality, and thus they would be incentived to perpetuate the notion that there was a problem, in order to survive.

Let me be very clear, I am not saying that Steiger is exhibiting this tendency, or that feminism or the women’s movement has outlived its uselessness. A better example of this phenomenon is an organization like the Anti Defamation League. When it was founded in 1913 to fight Antisemitism, it made sense. America was rife with Antisemitism, popular anti-Semites like Henry Ford and Father Coughlin were still on the horizon. In short, the ADL had a good reason to exist.

These days, with widespread, damaging anti-Semitism largely a thing of the past, the ADL can’t just pat itself on the back and ride off into the sunset. So while they should be reflecting on how amazing it is that the western world has done a remarkable job in the last 50 years curing itself of one of its most long-lasting and potent afflictions, the ADL has turned into an extension of the Likudnik wing of American politics. It now polices critics of Israeli policy and influence, namely Walt and Mearsheimer, using their (declining) moral authority to label their political enemies as anti-Semites. They also manage to find time to push for genocide denial on Israel’s behalf. For the ADL, antisemitism in America will always be a huge problem. It’s simply impossible for them to conceptualize the world in any other way.

Do any activist groups or movements ever just ride off into the sunset after they accomplish their goals? It’s hard to see a scenario where the incentives would line up to encourage that.

 

The Derb Asks What’s Good For the Jews

Am I the only one that finds it all odd that John Derbyshire, the oddly charming, geeky, borderline bigot National Review columnist, is on Jewcy, is telling us American Jews where we should stand immigration?  He includes his usual rap about how immigration is bad because of negative demograhic and economic effects, but also tells us why, as Jews, we should oppose increased immigration:

My own impression, talking to these people, is that they actually believe it is good for the U.S.A. Indeed, given that most of present-day immigration is of either (a) Muslims, who are antisemitic almost to a man, or (b) Latin Americans, which is to say, people from countries where antisemitism is more common, and more frank, than it ever was in the U.S.A. (where do they think all the old Nazis retired to?)—given that, the persistence of extravagant pro-immigration sentiment among American Jews today is rather astonishing. Perhaps the only explanation can be that Jews have so thoroughly internalized the Good For America justification that it overrides the understanding—which they must surely possess—that it is Bad For The Jews.

Count me as one Jew that is happy that such simplistic and atavistic considerations aren’t part of most American Jews’ calculus in immigration.  Derbyshire’s reasons for why we Jews should, as Jews, oppose immigration are just mind bafflingly dumb.  He wants us to believe that poor Latin Americans are anti-semitic because their governments had liberal immigration policies in the 1940s and 50s, because of which both Nazis and  Jews made their home in Latin America.  Argentina boasts the world’s eight largest Jewish population, with 250,000 of us.  But this is all academic, the point is, it isn’t octo and nonogenarian former Nazis who are coming over the border from Mexico and Guatemala.  Derbyshire, I have to imagine, knows this, but because he has the absurd task of trying to convince the overwhelmingly liberal American Jewish population to go against their political, ethical and religious instincts and prevent the world’s poor from making a better life, he resorts to pulling BS justifications for curtailing immigration out of his ass.  His first implication, that Muslims who immigrate to the United States are “anti-semitic the man” is just another BS assertion that reflects little knowledge of the assimilation patterns and overall state of the American muslim community.

What’s more important about the Derb’s exercise is that it shows how much the American Jewish community has matured.  His attempts to justify a massive clampdown on immigration based purely on what’s Good for the Jews is clearly forced, the real reasons Derb believes are the “national” ones.  That’s because American Jewry knows that the time for looking at every policy by asking what’s Good for the Jews has passed.  We are no longer a despised religious and ethnic minority, huddling in urban ghettos, seeing WASP America as yet another oppressor in a long line going back to Babylon.  We can finally conceptualize polices by not making harried short term calculations, worrying about an imminent pogrom.  Instead, we can confidently express our political and ethical inclinations — both of which lead towards an open, liberal immigration system and say that the resulting polices are good for the Jews and good for America. What’s Good for the Jews and What’s Good for America, contra Derbyshire, are the exact same thing.

Debbie Schlussel Is Way Worse Than Coulter

I defended Ann Coulter’s comments about Christians being “perfected Jews” because that is one of the most basic tenets of Christianity.  I will not, however, defend fellow Jews Debbie Schlussel’s hateful Nazi-baiting of George Soros:

Contrast that with the villain here: Media Matters. It’s anti-American, anti-Israel, and funded by George Soros, a Jew who proudly worked for the Nazis rounding up Jews and sending them to their deaths. Hmmm . . . him versus Ann Coulter? That’s an easy choice. I’d much rather go with the woman who looks like an Aryan but is a friend to the Jews and their allies than the billionaire atheist Jew who’s lived his entire life like a Nazi.

Since when was it OK to call a Holocaust survivor a Nazi? This is not the first time Schlussel has promoted this hateful lie; she  also has this charming post, where she claims that Soros “is a fake Holocaust survivor, who–instead of “surviving” the Holocaust–helped the Nazis perpetrate it.”  Later on, she calls Soros a “jewish nazi.”

This is a popular line of attack for those who find Soros’ atheism, wealth and liberalism offensive.  They claim that because Soros, when he was fourteen, pretended to be the godson of the Hungarian Minister of Agriculture and unwittingly participated in the confiscation of some Jewish property this means that he was a Nazi collaborator.  In the twisted mind of Schlussel and her fellow haters, the desperate actions of fourteen year old to survive amidst the mass extermination of his entire religious group, makes him a “Jewish Nazi” and a “fake Holocaust survivor.”

This smear of Soros is worse than anything Coulter has said  and is common currency among much of the right.  Again, “fake holocaust survivor” “Jewish Nazi” “lived his entire life like a Nazi” - these are all direct quotes from Schlussel.   This is a man who has devoted his life to the ideals of Karl Popper: liberalism and open societies, and has opposed Israeli expansionism and George Bush.   For daring to disagree with neoconservative foreign policy and be Jewish at the same time, the conservative Sanhedrin has promoted this libelous and offensive line of attack against a Holocaust survivor.  They have no shame.

Soros cleared up this smear at TNR  in February:

I need to set the record straight. In 1944, when the Nazis occupied Hungary, my father arranged false identities for his family. He placed me with an official of the Hungarian Ministry of Agriculture who claimed that I was his godson. In return, my father arranged a false identity for the official’s Jewish wife. In my capacity as 14-year-old godson, I accompanied the official on a trip to inventory the estate of a wealthy Jewish family that had fled the country. That is the episode “60 Minutes” quizzed me about in the interview that Peretz quotes. In the same interview I also said “I had no role in taking away that property.”

Gossip Girls Confusion

Yglesias links to this Deborah Solomon interview with Gossip Girls creator Josh Schwartz, wondering where all the Jews are:

Why are the characters uniformly white, with old-money names like Blair Waldorf and Serena van der Woodsen that hark back to a time when high society was not integrated? Why are there no Jewish characters? It’s interesting, because on “The O.C.” I went out of my way to make those characters Jewish, not what you would expect to find in Orange County. But in New York, weirdly, I failed. I was working off of the source material.

This is confused for a few reasons. There are plenty of Jews in Orange County, especially in the wealthier Laguna/Newport areas. So Schwartz may have been going for “diversity for diversity sake” but it wasn’t all that inaccurate.

Yglesias notes that the source material is clearly wrong when it depicts a world of exclusive New York City day schools without Jews, and he’s right — the Upper East Side is plenty Jewish. But Cecily von Ziegesar, who actually attended Nightingale-Bamford, the school that Constance Ballard is based on, surely knows that the Upper East Side isn’t the WASP enclave she depicts. She isn’t trying to create an accurate representation of the Upper East Side that Yglesias or people like him will recognize. She is instead creating a fantasy world that American teenagers can aspire to. This means fantasy New York, with silly waspy names and a lack of Jews and minorities. To America, Jewish New Yorkers are intellectual and/or neurotic , in the model of Woody Allen or Jerry Seinfeld, hardly the fodder for an American fairy tale aimed at teen girls.

Seth Cohen, who took the classic Jewish traits of neuroticism and intelligence and put them into a clever, good looking package, was an aspirational character for Jewish teens as well as a familiar archetype for the TV watching audience. The Gossip Girls characters — Waldorf, Archibald, van der Woodsen — are too familiar archetypes that won’t disturb the book and TV audience’s perceptions of their imaginary Upper East Side. Throw in a smart, bespectacled Jew named Yglesias and everyone would just get confused.

Not Quite Perfect

So Ann Coulter ran off her mouth and said…well, she said something that every serious Christian believes:

COULTER: Do you know what Christianity is? We believe your religion, but you have to obey.

DEUTSCH: No, no, no, but I mean –

COULTER: We have the fast-track program.

DEUTSCH: Why don’t I put you with the head of Iran? I mean, come on. You can’t believe that.

COULTER: The head of Iran is not a Christian.

DEUTSCH: No, but in fact, “Let’s wipe Israel” –

COULTER: I don’t know if you’ve been paying attention.

DEUTSCH: “Let’s wipe Israel off the earth.” I mean, what, no Jews?

COULTER: No, we think — we just want Jews to be perfected, as they say.

DEUTSCH: Wow, you didn’t really say that, did you?

COULTER: Yes. That is what Christianity is. We believe the Old Testament, but ours is more like Federal Express. You have to obey laws. We know we’re all sinners —

As a full time member of the tribe of the imperfect, allow me to say how unoffended I am. Last time I checked, being a believing Christian meant believing that you’re similiar to the Jews, except better. And somehow, with millions of people believing this, we get along OK. Even among believing Christians who all think they’re perfected Jews, you have Catholics who think Protestantism is a lame wannabe Christianity, not part of the “one true church.” Protestants think Catholics are a bunch of Magic Cracker eating idol worshipers. They all think Mormons are positively wacky. Oh yeah, us Jews think all of you silly Christians are worshiping a false messiah.

What makes this especially strange is Andrew Sullivan’s renunciation of these remarks. Andrew says that he is a believing Catholic, does he not believe that Jesus superseded the Old Testament and the Torah? It’s perfectly understandable - and preferable - for believing Christians to not talk about their views regarding the Old Testament and Judaism in the public sphere, but they shouldn’t then denounce people who hold those views that they (probably, I don’t know in Sullivan’s case, but he says that he’s a believing Catholic…) too hold. How else to interpret Luke 22:20 when Jesus makes a new Covenant, or multiple other times in the New Testament where Jesus claims to supersede the Torah. What about Protestants? Does Sullivan think Protestants are members of the one true Church? I don’t like asking these questions, but Sullivan is kinda begging for it with this shtick of being a believing Christian on one side, but then denouncing those who profess to have the views that most Christians have.

In the history of the Jewish Diaspora, whenever blond haired Aryans like Coulter said something like this, it was usually followed by a harsh bout of repression. Shouldn’t we Jews be celebrating that someone can say this, and there are no negative consequences for American Jewry? Of course, the perpetual outrage machines like the National Jewish Democratic Council are just horrified, but if they couldn’t get outraged about trivialities, why would they exist?

As Yglesias says, one of the great things about liberal society is that it encourages people to bracket off these eschatological or metaphysical commitments when they enter the public sphere, so we can have political debates without devolving into arguments about who is going to hell faster. While this is certainly a good thing, it doesn’t mean we should freak out whenever some hack like Coulter gleefully breaks the taboo. I wouldn’t be the first to point out that liberalism has some issues accommodating those who insist on bringing their prior metaphysical commitments into the public sphere, and Slavoj Zizek isn’t either, but you should definitely read his Times Op-Ed concerning religion and the public sphere.

ADL on CAIR

Not too long ago (two days ago) I wrote a post about how criticizing religious organizations, and thus implying criticism of the religious adherents those groups represent was totally lame. I even wrote about how the ADL’s (now changed) stance on the Armenian Genocide (which was basically, “meh, maybe, we don’t really know”). Well today, the ADL lambasted the Council on American Islamic Relations for not taking terrorism seriously enough:

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) today said it was deeply troubled by the failure of the leadership of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) to address its past affiliation with groups such as the Islamic Association for Palestine and to clearly and unequivocally condemn terrorists by name (emphasis added - mz).

I think the relevant saying has something to do with pots and kettles…(via Jewcy)

Religious Organizations Don’t Repersent Religious People

A common trope of many English-language right wingers is pointing to statements by CAIR or equivalant British organizations as not condemnatory enough of terrorism or just as generally objectionable. The point of right wingers saying this is to imply that Muslims as a whole in either Britain or America don’t care enough about terrorism. It makes some sense, these organizations claim to speak on behalf of Muslims in their countries and it’s reasonable to take these organizations declarations as representative of their constituents, right?

Wrong. As an American Jew, many organizations “represent me.” One of these groups is the Anti Defamation League, one of the oldest and most widely respected American Jewish organizations. So when the ADL takes the stance that they have “no position” on whether or not the Armenian genocide took place, and fires a regional director who dared to say that the Armenian Genocide actually happened, is that action representative of me, as an American Jew, or of American Jewry as a whole? No, it isn’t.  More importantly, an Armenian or really anyone, could take Foxman’s words and claim that all of American Jewry denies the historicity of the Armenian Genocide.  That accusation would, of course, be absurd, but it’s a caveat worth remembering the next time anyone decries CAIR and by extension, the whole of American Muslims.

UPDATE: Check out Jewcy’s brief on why Abe Foxman should resign or be fired.  One tasty bit - after a confrontation with an Israeli college student over divestment, he openly declared “I don’t represent you nor the Jewish community! I represent the donors.”  That’s about all you need to know about what an odious character Abe Foxman is.

Goblins and Jews - Photographic evidence

Some people wanted photographic evidence of my thinking that JK Rowlings’ depiction of goblins draws upon (almost certainly unconsciously) on some common stereotypes of Jews. Well, via a message board post that linked to me, I’ve tracked down these pictures. Once again, I’m not calling JK Rowling an anti semite, or anything of that nature. Just thought it was interesting how greedy, miserly, cheap, hooked nose, treacherous, studiously neutral, short and banker all got thrown into the mix of a single magical race. All the stereotyped fun is below the fold.

Splitting the Eschatological Difference

For those of you who don’t know, Orthodox Jew Joseph Lieberman and many other prominent Jews and Israelis have allied themselves with people who’s support for Israel is due to their desire to see all Jews killed, converted or “left behind” in the End Times. Max Blumenthal, the liberal Sascha Baron Cohen himself, has a sweet video of the recent “Christians United for Israel” conference, run by by pastor John Hagee, whose recommendations for a prudent Israeli foreign policy are…how do you say this…batshit crazy:

In Hagee’s telling, Israel has no choice but to strike at Iran’s nuclear facilities, with or without America’s help. The strike will provoke Russia — which wants Persian Gulf oil — to lead an army of Arab nations against Israel. Then God will wipe out all but one-sixth of the Russian-led army, as the world watches “with shock and awe,” he says, lending either a divine quality to the Bush administration phrase or a Bush-like quality to God’s wrath.

…

To fill the power vacuum left by God’s decimation of the Russian army, the Antichrist — identified by Hagee as the head of the European Union — will rule “a one-world government, a one-world currency and a one-world religion” for three and a half years. (He adds that “one need only be a casual observer of current events to see that all three of these things are coming into reality.”) The “demonic world leader” will then be confronted by a false prophet, identified by Hagee as China, at Armageddon, the Mount of Megiddo in Israel. As they prepare for the final battle, Jesus will return on a white horse and cast both villains — and presumably any nonbelievers — into a “lake of fire burning with brimstone,” thus marking the beginning of his millennial reign.

For Likudnik hawks like Lieberman and the AIPAC gang, there’s a perfectly cynical reason for cavorting with people who just 50 years ago were harsh anti-semites, and have managed to contort their eschatological Jew hate into “support for Israel” - AIPAC and Lieberman know that the end times won’t come, but they do know that those who think the rapture is around the corner are plenty willing to write checks and provide fervent political support for their foreign policy agenda. Moreover, if there appears to be backlash from this hawkishness or even short term negative results, their entire worldview inoculates them from even paying attention to that policy’s shortfalls or failings.

And at a certain level, this practice isn’t morally objectionable, part of politics is making unlikely alliances around certain issues of common interest. What makes this objectionable is that when your strongest political support base has moved from broadly liberal, anti Iraq War American Jews to people who think that God is literally pre-ordaining an aggressive foreign policy, it gives hawkish Israelis free rein to do pursue their unwise earthly polices.

So sure, we should point out that accepting this type of support is awfully ugly and that Jews should be more honorable than to shill for the likes of Hagee, but politics isn’t about honor. What we should do is try to win the argument that the policies that evangelical support for Israel promotes are harmful to both Israel’s and America’s self interest and security. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter who supports shitty policies, but that those polices are shitty.

Harry Potter and the Jewish Goblins

Dana Goldstein’s TAP article on “Harry Potter and the Complicated Identity Politics” got me thinking about how JK Rowling depicts one of the most despised groups in the magical world, the goblins.

The goblins in the Harry Potterverse have one purpose - running the Gringotts bank, where all wizards, good and evil, store their treasures.  The goblins, especially as depicted in the movies, are universally hooked nosed, short, unattractive and green.  Furthermore, they are considered by the wizard world to be miserly, stingy, greedy and two-faced.  Professor Binns soporific History of Magic lectures tell tales of centuries of goblin oppression, segregation,  mistrust, bad relations, exclusion and revolts.  Sound like any European ethnic minority you know?  That’s right, Rowlings’ depiction of goblins reflects the type of stereotypes that are more fitting for Russia in the late 19th century or a second rate Gazan newspaper.

The connection between how goblins are represented in Harry Potter and certain anti semitic stereotypes seems undeniable - the question becomes one of intentionality.  Do I think Rowling is an anti semite who used this imagery to whip up a pogrom against jews? No.  We shouldn’t obsess over it, I certainly don’t want Abe Foxman onRowlings’ case, but it sure is interesting what parts of the our common culture she drew upon to depict her bankers.