[Peace-discuss] Response to Just Foreign Policy - J Street
Brussel Morton K.
mkbrussel at comcast.net
Sat Apr 26 18:36:09 CDT 2008
David, I think you will be interested in this clip from Finkelstein
about liberals/liberalism and Jews. The rest of the interview he
gives is also worth reading, stimulating. Finkelstein comes on so
strongly that it's difficult not to at least partially oppose him…
He also briefly discusses Venezuela, teaching, and of course Israel-
Palestine.
http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/17229
JH/ML: You're writing a book titled A Farewell to Israel: The Coming
Breakup of American Zionism. What's your argument going to be?
NF: Basically the argument can be summed up pretty simply. American
Jews are basically liberal - you see it in polls, you see it in party
affiliations - for a simple reason. American Jews flourished and
thrived in the United States on the basis of basically liberal
principles: separation of church and state, rule of law, all that.
Jews were tremendous beneficiaries of that, which is why Jews are by
far and way the most prosperous ethnic group in the United States.
And for the longest time, there seemed to be no conflict between the
liberal values which American Jews espoused - you can sort call them
the ‘Clintonite values', liberal on social issues, liberal on
political issues, not so liberal on economic issues, at least not
liberal in the modern sense - and for the longest time, you were able
to reconcile your liberal values with Israeli policy.
But the argument I make in the book is, our knowledge of the Israel-
Palestine conflict has substantially changed in the last twenty
years, and there's much more informed criticism of Israel right in
the heart of the mainstream of the political spectrum. You saw that
in a pretty vivid way with President Carter's book. Carter may not
be the heart of the Democratic Party establishment, but he's within
the mainstream of American values. And he was hitting Israel not
particularly hard from the point of view of the world community, but
quite hard from the point of view of the United States. It was kind
of striking; this morning I was looking at my e-mail, and today there
was an editorial in Haaretz. The title is "Our debt to Jimmy
Carter." And then it refers to his criticisms [quoting the
editorial]: "Israelis have not liked Carter since he wrote the book
Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. Israel is not ready for such
comparisons, even though the situation begs it." And they go on to
say it is apartheid.
What's my point? My point is mainstream people are saying it's
apartheid. Haaretz is saying it's apartheid. If you're American, if
you're Jewish, you're liberal; how can you reconcile your liberal
values with supporting what mainstream American and Israeli
institutions and officials are calling apartheid? And so as a
consequence, you see - especially among the younger generation, which
I'm more familiar with because I lecture a lot around the country -
on college campuses, Israel now has zero support, apart from that
core around Hillel. Apart from that core, there's nothing. Even
among college Jews, it's about one third and less hard core around
Hillel; one third which are indifferent; and one third which are on
my side when I speak. And that's among Jews. It's falling apart.
Now there have been different explanations put forth; I mean the
polls show support for Israel is eroding. Some say it's because of
the high rate of intermarriage among Jews, and things like that. I
don't think that's it. I think it's the issue I just pointed to.
When you have Israel's most influential paper saying it's apartheid,
what do American Jews say to that? ‘Oh yeah, we support apartheid'?
You can say that if you're Pat Robertson or Dick Cheney. But it's
very hard if you're an American Jew who claims to be a liberal to be
making arguments like that. And I think you see the erosion in
particular among college students because they study and they're
better informed, and they see that all of this stuff Israel is doing
has now become morally indefensible. And so there's some who are
just embarrassed, and they have become, as it were, indifferent; and
then there are those who have become completely hostile, in an active
way.
And I'm pretty confident about that conclusion because I lecture at
forty schools a year; I know the campuses, and I see what happens.
[Pro-Israel groups] have lost a huge amount of ground. There was a
time when I came [to speak at colleges] and it was like a Daniel in
the Lion's Den. But it's not like that any more; it really isn't.
They're losing ground, it's obvious. I see it everywhere I go. They
come to where I speak, there's one row, all primed to attack me, but
they don't say anything at the end. Because all I do is say ‘This is
what international law says, this is what Amnesty says, this is what
Human Rights Watch says.' So do they really want to have to stand up
and say ‘Amnesty, they're anti-Semites; Human Rights Watch, they're
anti-Semites; the International Court of Justice, they're anti-
Semites; all these Israeli authors, they're anti-Semites; Haaretz,
they're anti-Semites.' Do they really want to go there? No, so they
shut up.
On Apr 26, 2008, at 1:24 PM, David Green wrote:
> Point taken. Unfortunately, it was the cold war liberals who won
> out, in a pretty decisive way. And even so-called social democrats
> like Irving Howe, Michael Walzer, etc. vehemently opposed the New
> Left and stereotyped the student antiwar movement in a really ugly
> way. That of course includes Martin Peretz, first publsiher of new
> left Ramparts, later of the Zionist New Republic. They were just
> uncomfortable with a clear challenge to authority, again on a
> principled basis, which was seen as a threat to all authority. The
> Old Left had a more top-down, authoritarian, sectarian culture, in
> spite of their careless accusations that the New Left was
> captivated by Maoism--just an insult, really. Again, liberals and
> even some socialists chose to maintain their identity by rejecting
> the antiwar left, even if they had to do so not by arguing in favor
> of the Vietnam War, but by means of cultural stereotypes defining
> those who on a more principled basis opposed that war. These folks
> were truly elitist. They just hated the counterculture.
>
> "Morton K. Brussel" <brussel at uiuc.edu> wrote:
> Language is often deforming. "Liberal", "left", "conservative",
> etc., are words often without any definite meaning, often used only
> in order to excoriate or praise. There is no politically
> homogeneous block of "liberals", although as used in current
> discourse, those who promote aspects of domestic social welfare,
> but who are aggressive in, or passive about, expanding U.S.
> hegemony, are often called "liberals". But there is a continuous
> spectrum of beliefs of those characterized as "liberal". I've known
> (self described) "liberals" who indeed were against American
> foreign wars and interventions, against the cold war actions of our
> foreign policy, against McCarthyism, but indeed there were
> "liberals" on the other side.
>
> ("Liberal" in the European sense is used as an economic moniker to
> indicate those generally promoting free trade and capitalism
> (albeit with exceptions); we don't usually use the term in that way. )
>
> So, I guess I'm saying that the critique of liberals or liberal
> ideology in the following is overly broad brush, and hence disputable.
>
> On Apr 26, 2008, at 9:17 AM, David Green wrote:
>> Because liberal ideology, which includes a desire to control
>> global resources, during the 20th century invested a lot in anti-
>> communism and the Cold War, on the basis of which we entered
>> World War I, undermined the Greek revolultion after World War II,
>> Vietnam, etc., right up to Serbia. Which is to say that the sort
>> of liberalism you're referring to is probably of the 18th century
>> Jeffersonian sort, or at least that aspect of the Hamiltonian
>> version that, by the time of Roosevelt, saw the federal government
>> as an agency of general social welfare, which of course it should
>> be. That version has since competed with foreign adventurism, the
>> latter obviously undermining the former during the Vietnam War/War
>> on Poverty era. In the final analysis, liberalism as it has
>> evolved has been more comfortable with real rather than symbolic
>> wars. Maybe the war metaphor ought not to be used anymore, just in
>> case it pales in comparison to the real thing.
>>
>> DG
>>
>> Stuart Levy <slevy at ncsa.uiuc.edu> wrote:
>>
>> > I fear, however, that instead of the Left, it is now the U.S.
>> that is giving war a bad name.
>>
>> Yes! Long may that bad name stick...
>>
>> But... how would giving war a bad name, *on principle*, threaten
>> liberal ideology?
>> This sounds like some understanding of liberalism that I wouldn't
>> recognize...
>>
>> On Fri, Apr 25, 2008 at 05:13:43PM -0700, David Green wrote:
>> > "5) The New York Times reports on the creation by several
>> prominent American Jews of J Street, a new pro-Israel lobby that
>> seeks to be an alternative to other organizations that often
>> impede progress toward Middle East peace because of their
>> reflexive support of Israel. For example, it seeks to support
>> candidates who support Israel but question some of its policies,
>> like maintaining and expanding settlements."
>> >
>> > _______________
>> >
>> > In their book "The Real Anti-Semitism in America" (1982), Nathan
>> and Ruth Ann Perlmutter (the latter then head of the Anti-
>> Defamation League) wrote in the aftermath of the Vietnam War,
>> "What we are saying is that that in the defamations by the Left of
>> the promptings for our warrings in Vietnam and latterly that in
>> their sniping at American defense budgets, war as such is getting
>> the bad name."
>> >
>> > I think that the problem of liberalism in this country during
>> the 20th century was how to maintain an increasingly threadbare
>> appearance of progressivism while not "giving war a bad name."
>> This has been primarily used, to put it crudely, as a way for
>> liberals to distinguish themselves from the Left on the basis of
>> not being unpatriotic wimps. Every opportunity is taken to display
>> the macho mentality, from Panama to Serbia to Iraq, what Chomsky
>> calls the "new military humanism."
>> >
>> > But as a dominant and persistent theme, support for Israel has
>> more recently been the mainstay in this regard. Beginning in 1967,
>> and throughout the rest of the Vietnam War and beyond, support for
>> Israel has been vital to maintaining liberal claims that there are
>> a"good wars" and "just wars." In fact, the latter is the title of
>> a book justifying Israel's 1967 invasion of Egypt, etc., by
>> Princeton political philospher Michael Walzer. Ever since, he has
>> been a staunch supporter of Israel, and liberal/left journals that
>> he writes for like Dissent and The New Republic have conformed to
>> the Zionist party line, and then some, combining nastiness and
>> erudition in novel ways.
>> >
>> > So now we find Walzer's name (and I must admit the names of a
>> few decent people like Henry Siegman) listed as supporters of "J
>> Street." I fear, however, that instead of the Left, it is now the
>> U.S. that is giving war a bad name. The war in Iraq is going
>> badly, at least for the general population, and opposition is
>> pervasive if distracted. The antiwar movement is generally at
>> loose ends, but it also cannot be framed by opponents or cynics in
>> the manner that the antiwar movement was in the 60s, as
>> unshowered, ungrateful, Mao-loving draft dodgers. Ironically, an
>> ineffective antiwar movement has somehow given peace a good name,
>> at least as an abstract concept, partly because the targets of
>> 1960s liberal venom now spend more time with their pharmacist than
>> their dope supplier, and the heirs of the most venomous liberals
>> of the 1960s are now nasty neocons.
>> >
>> > Liberals are not comfortable with this state of affairs. They
>> don't want to oppose unjust wars on principle--that would be too
>> Leftist. But their problem now is more to maintain their identity
>> by distinguishing themselves from the nasty neocons who have gone
>> to far and become "ideological," and there is no longer a basis in
>> domestic policy to do this--they're all corporate. Regarding
>> foreign policy, liberals are suddenly at a loss to triangulate.
>> >
>> > So let's have a niche market strategy for unprincipled liberal
>> peaceniks. Let's put the Iraq War on the back burner, as the
>> Democrats have, because joining a broad, effective, serious
>> antiwar movement might really give war a bad name on principle in
>> ways that would threaten liberal ideology. But how to give peace a
>> tentative good name, a positive brand identity that can be
>> adjusted, if necessry, for changing market dynamics?
>> >
>> > Oh yes, conveniently and always to the rescue, there is Israel
>> once again. If it bailed out the liberal warmongers in the 1960s,
>> why can't it bail out the pragmatic liberal peaceniks in 2008.
>> What a brilliant idea: let's support Israel to promote "peace."
>> Let's base our pragmatic dovish identity around "support for
>> Israel." Let's use "support for Israel" to distinguish oursevles
>> from both the nasty neocons and the pie-in-the-sky, clueless
>> peaceniks who just don't understand that Israel is still truly a
>> shining light. But let's do so by reassuring ourselves that if
>> anyone is entitled to a violent swift sword, that would be Israel.
>> >
>> > The bottom line, I fear, is that this movement is going to be
>> both ineffective and pathetic. Yes, American policy is the key to
>> ending the occupation, but JStreet can in no significant way shift
>> the balance of power within Jewish institutions and Congress away
>> from AIPAC. It is simply liberal Jewish identity politics, re-
>> branding the nature of liberal identification with Israel (which
>> has been going on since the mid 70s, in one form or another) while
>> not challenging the central tenets of Zionism, and all of course
>> without a word of compassion for the Palestinian people--
>> shamelessly apparent on their website (sorry, I'm beginning to
>> rant, I'm gesticulating at my keyboard, and my face is turning red).
>> >
>> > This organization is not even about Israel, its about domestic
>> politics. It's about triangulation. And as is always the case with
>> professional Jews, it's about making a living. In the short to
>> long run, I don't know what will distinguish these folks from
>> Dennis Ross, or even from the Washington Institute for Near East
>> Policy colonialist hack that spoke at Hillel on April 1st.
>> >
>> > Sorry to be so cynical. It's been a rough week.
>> >
>> > But really, liberalism is done for. Woodrow Wilson marched it
>> out, Harry Truman blindfolded it, John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson
>> provided the rifle, and Bill Clinton murdered it.
>> >
>> > Let's not waste any more time trying to clean up this mess. And
>> please stop pandering to every Jewish liberal who claims to be a
>> "moderate" supporter of Israel. It's unseemly.
>> >
>> > DG
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > ---------------------------------
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