[Peace-discuss] Response to Just Foreign Policy - J Street

[David Green]

"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."
   
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  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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