Here.
This is an essay that first appeared in the New York Review of Books. It’s generating a lot of passionate debate around the journals, mostly among Jews. It looks like it’s going to become a pretty important work. Anyone passionately interested in the Jewish Question as it relates to the US and Israel and the symbiotic relationship between the two might want to read it and think about it.
I agree with Beinart’s essay.
I’ve been thinking a lot along these lines myself for some time now. This setup has never really made sense. Zionism is nothing but Jewish fascism, hence we on the Left oppose it. Nevertheless, the super-liberal US Jews, committed and impassioned liberals all, support this fascist state that in so many ways opposes everything they stand for.
Well, it’s tribal thinking. They’re supporting their people. But US Jews won’t let Whites do the same thing: support our people.
This was always a foundation made of clay, and it’s starting to crumble. Young Jews are increasingly estranged from and apathetic about Israel. They act like the less they hear about it, the better. And it makes sense, since Israel represents the polar opposite of the liberal values that young American Jews uphold.
Jewish liberalism in Israel is also dying, as it never made sense anyway. Liberalism in a fascist state? Come on. What’s happening now is that Zionism’s logic is finally starting to manifest itself. Zionism has always been fascist, but at the same time Israel has always prided itself on being some kind of liberal democratic state. The two views of course are incompatible.
Hence, in recent years, Israel has been moving further and further to the Right and towards a fascist politics more in line with the founding logic of the state. Sure this makes sense. A society founded on fascist ideology would seem to logically support a fascist politics. So lately the Orthodox, the settlers, and out and out fascists like Avignor Lieberman and Benjamin Netanyahu have become increasingly powerful in the Jewish state.
Orthodox Jewry is profoundly illiberal, and Jewish fascism would seem to go over well with the Orthodox. So the Orthodox play an increasing role in Israeli society. In the US, the strong supporters of Israel are increasingly the Orthodox as the secular liberals sit on their hands, close their eyes or put fingers in their ears. A recent pro-Israel rally in Washington DC attended by Paul Wolfowitz drew 10,000’s, 70
The Jewish Establishment, including punks like Abe Foxman of the ADL, still cheers for Israel nonstop, even as it moves increasingly towards a fascism repellent to most liberal Jews. The Establishment deals with this conundrum by denying Israel’s move towards fascism, cheering on the fascists, or redrawing the fascists as democrats.
It isn’t working, and young liberal Jews can see through it.
um, everything we’ve ever said about this on the internet ever. But also, as we have said before, we think the Jews are bound by the same natural laws everyone else is, their ascendancy was an interchangeable example of a successful group subject to the same dangers, now they’re over-reaching and getting soft from their own restrictions against competition, so the fact that this was published in NYRB and the fact that we have heard Jewish acquaintances voluntarily make wincing comparisons to the Weimar republic shows they’re pretty aware of what’s happening and have the ability, should they ever get tired of murdering children or always looking over their shoulder, of changing.
Thanks comrades! You are some of my smartest and favorite commenters.
Dear Robert
First a pedantic observation. The relationship between the US and Israel is not symbiotic. In a symbiotic relationship both sides need each other and benefit from each other. However, the US does not need Israel and derives no benefit from Israel. The US fought two wars in the Middle East in the recent past, and in both cases it had to ask its “ally” Israel to stay out of it. Now, that’s a useful ally, one that you have to ask to stay away when the fighting starts!
The Jewish future looks more and more Orthodox for two reasons. First, the Orthodox have a much higher birth rate, and second, they rarely marry outside their group. Due to intermarriage, the non-Orthodox will progressively become less Jewish and may eventually cease to exist.
Ultimately, Judaism is a religion, and for that reason secular Jews will eventually cease to be Jews altogether. We can’t expect that the great-grandchildren of religious Jews will still have a Jewish identity, any more than the great-grandchildren of Italian immigrants will still see themselves as Italians.
Regards. James
Well, it’s tribal thinking. They’re supporting their people. But US Jews won’t let Whites do the same thing: support our people.
Bingo. I think Malcolm X has some good insight on why Jews were disproportionately involved in the Civil Rights movement, in addition to supporting anti-white policies and ideas.
They didn’t do so out of any sense of humanitarianism or love for blacks. As Malcolm puts it (my own paraphrase), “the more attention and venom the white man focuses on the black man, the less he’ll focus on the Jew.”
In other words, by using blacks and other non-whites as a stick with which to beat whites, Jews improve their own status. They don’t care about helping blacks, they just want to take down whites and distract whites from them.
If Jews really were so humanitarian, they wouldn’t support the apartheid state of Israel. But, since Israelis are part of their tribe, they’re willing to abandon their idealism.
Again, I don’t hate Jews just for being Jewish, and I know that there are many Jews (such as Jewamongyou) who aren’t like that.
Still, much of their hypocrisy and deviousness annoys the hell out of me.
To clarify, I don’t begrudge Jews their ethnocentrism and pride.
I only wish they would extend the same courtesy to us whites.
Robert, you do raise some interesting points. Zionism to me is a lot like Kemalism, and a number of other of these late 19th and early 20th century ideologies. They are trying to create an ethnicity, nation and nationalism where none existed before, or at the very least the connection was loose.
After all, European Jews, of which the vast majority of American Jews are descended from, did have a unique European culture and identity of their own. Their religion was a variant of Judaism. The majority of Europeans followed Christianity, itself spawned from Judaism. They spoke Yiddish, and that here is the key.
They had a community based on a language that was not directly from the Middle East. Not like Near Eastern Jews, who spoke Aramaic or later Arabic. Or Central Asian Jews, who spoke Persian or even Turkish. This goes to show the diversity of the followers of Judaism.
It is from that diversity, that Zionism is trying to build a single identity, centered around a single nation state. Not just a diverse religious identity, but a singular ethnic identity, with a single language, Hebrew. Yiddish is now effectively a dead language, to my understanding. Hebrew was brought back from the dead, and a new identity was formed. Not to mention the fact that all those Central Asian Jewish folks spoke the language of their home. Persian or Uzbek or whatever.
So, my question is, how much farther towards fascism will Israel slide? Zionism as a proponent of an ethnic identity is one thing, but adding a religious “orthodox” element into it makes it even more extreme, I would imagine. Hell, I have been saying for years that the mindset of hardcore Orthodox Jews and extremist Muslims are like mirror reflections of each other in more ways than I can count.
What is the long term result of all this? Perhaps younger generation Jewish folks are not as militantly “pro all things” Israel(though I personally know plenty), but their parents sure are. U.S foreign policy is dictated by money and influence. The older generation will be around for a while.
Israel no longer needs ANY U.S money to maintain it’s military grip, but I have no doubt that they U.S establishment will continue to support Israel for years to come. Israel is not going anywhere. The Arabs around them are effectively neutered for years to come. So then, what happens long term?
Speaking of Israel’s turn towards fascism:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100531/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_israel_palestinians
Giving into the fact that the aid ships carried not only Palestinian and Arab activists, but even Greek and Turkish participants…Are they trying to piss the world off? How often do they come together for anything?
They just could have searched the boats to make sure they were not carrying arms. Opening fire, though? Killing two people? I don’t think they much care about how the rest of the world views them anymore.
I’ve said it here before and I’ll say it again and again: the Jews are our undoing. They must be stopped.