NeoCon Dreams, American Nightmares
Is Alterman, a Jew, anti-semitic? Is the Nation?
"One does not need to take a position on the wisdom--or lack thereof--of Israel's current invasion of Lebanon to question whether Israel's interests are in fact identical to America's. Kristol can title his editorial "It's Our War," but Hezbollah was not shooting missiles into Manhattan. And while we may not like its sponsor, Iran, last I checked we were not at war with that nation either. (In fact, we're doing its dirty work, destabilizing antagonist Iraq and preparing the way for a Shiite ascendancy led by an Iranian cleric.) But whenever one raises the issue of just how large Israel's perceived well-being looms in the minds of those who seek to risk America's blood and treasure for actions that happen to be at the top of AIPAC's wish list, one is immediately accused of either anti-Semitism or, as the case may be, self-hatred. New York Times columnist David Brooks, for example, has argued that those who use the very term "neoconservative" are anti-Semites, "full-mooners" living on "Planet Chomsky." "
The virulently "anti-semitic" (whatever that means) piece by Alterman is all right here.
"One does not need to take a position on the wisdom--or lack thereof--of Israel's current invasion of Lebanon to question whether Israel's interests are in fact identical to America's. Kristol can title his editorial "It's Our War," but Hezbollah was not shooting missiles into Manhattan. And while we may not like its sponsor, Iran, last I checked we were not at war with that nation either. (In fact, we're doing its dirty work, destabilizing antagonist Iraq and preparing the way for a Shiite ascendancy led by an Iranian cleric.) But whenever one raises the issue of just how large Israel's perceived well-being looms in the minds of those who seek to risk America's blood and treasure for actions that happen to be at the top of AIPAC's wish list, one is immediately accused of either anti-Semitism or, as the case may be, self-hatred. New York Times columnist David Brooks, for example, has argued that those who use the very term "neoconservative" are anti-Semites, "full-mooners" living on "Planet Chomsky." "
The virulently "anti-semitic" (whatever that means) piece by Alterman is all right here.
posted by George W. Bush at 1:17 PM
4 Comments:
Obviously, GW, one mustn't be anti-Semitic just because he/she is against he actions (or even existence) of a Zionist state. I reckon someone can wish the Jewish people well without wishing the nation of Israel to continue on as it is.
At the same time, charges of anti-Semitism being confused with merely criticizing the actions of the Israeli government come from a template created by the left. You can't oppose affirmative action without being a racist, you know.
Both are ridiculous. I don't think the average leftist is the least big anti-Semitics, and nobody else would either, had there not been a pattern of accepted hyperbole spewing from the mouths of a great many people who know better, and that for quite some time.
"At the same time, charges of anti-Semitism being confused with merely criticizing the actions of the Israeli government come from a template created by the left. You can't oppose affirmative action without being a racist, you know."
I agree wholeheartedly with the analogy, but what's your evidence that the left created that template? The earliest version of it I can think of in modern political history (post Civil War) is when everyone who cared about young immigrant girls being burned alive in shirt factories was labeled a communist or an anarchist (obviously many of them were, but many were just good old fashioned American reformers too).
I know I'm repeating myself like a daffy old man, but I give you LA Rollins' definition of an anti-semite: Any who hates, or is hated by, Jews.
You are a beautiful, daffy old man, and I hope you never change. How goes the family?
You are quite correct that my history is short-sighted. Let me amend my previous statement and suggest that a political environment which tolerates equating a certain political position with being a racist is far more likely to tolerate equating someone who has a particular political position with being anti-Semitic. If the debate over affirmative action were more civil and less Jezebelian, so too could the debate over what the United States response should be in Israel.
Of course, people who favor child labor laws are pinko commies working for Josef Stalin. I'm glad that we agree on that, and that all union organizers (past and present) are political subversives working to let Castro's successor annex Florida into a Caribbean uber-collective.
I believe that Israel has a divine right to exist and will exist as a Jewish state at the end of the world, but I don't think that the nation is blameless.
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