Peter Schrank of The Economist
This week the Anti-Defamation League issued an important press release condemning a patently anti-Semitic cartoon published in the globally-renowned magazine The Economist. As you can see above, the cartoon characterizes President Obama being shackled by Congress – and the congressional seal has two Jewish Stars of David.
As ADL National Director Abe Foxman said of the cartoon:
This was nothing less than a visual representation of the age-old anti-Semitic canard of Jewish control. And it conjures up yet another classic anti-Semitic myth — the accusation that Jews have “dual loyalty” and will act only on behalf of Israel to the detriment of their own country. This is the stuff of the “Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion,” recycled for a modern-day audience with a wink and a nod to Professors Mearsheimer and Walt and Jimmy Carter.
Mr. Foxman’s assessment of the cartoon is spot on, though I would not put former President Carter in the same club as Walt and Mearsheimer, both of whom not only committed one of the worst slanders against the pro-Israel American Jewish community when they published their screed “The Israel Lobby” back in 2007, but have committed massive malpractice of their field: political science.
Seven years after the publication of that wretched book, which is now apparently included in the syllabi of many international relations courses on college campuses, we seem to be approaching an entire generation – on the left and the right – imbued with a “blame the Jews” mentality. Apparently some of them have landed jobs at The Economist.
It’s not surprising that right-wingers would be prone to such conspiracy theorizing and scapegoating. What is tragic is that the left has embraced the Walt-Mearsheimer thesis, even though the two professors are right-wingers. Mearsheimer, for example, is a staunch proponent of nuclear weapons proliferation – hardly a liberal cause.
It goes to show that the unrelenting drive within simple minds to find a scapegoat for a nation’s problems is an equal opportunity disease, spanning the political spectrum.
All citizens, be they people in positions of influence or not, who encourage and indeed cultivate this drive, are throwing rhetorical soot on the inviolable First Amendment rights of all Americans, regardless of religion, to persuade others on behalf of whatever foreign policy platforms they believe in.
American liberalism demands that if one takes issue with the content of their fellow citizens’ policy prescriptions, domestic or foreign, that one challenge them on the merits of the arguments.
American liberalism does not demand that if one disagrees with the content of their fellow citizens’ policy prescriptions that one has an obligation to attack, undermine, or otherwise attempt to scandalize, the latter’s First Amendment rights. That is precisely how the band of AIPAC haters, no doubt emboldened by the Walts and Mearsheimers, are behaving.
If you don’t like the way a member of the United States Congress is voting on Israel, for pete’s sake put your name on the ballot to challenge that person, and use your own First Amendment rights to convince your fellow citizens that you would do a better job on the issue.
That’s the democratic way to do it.
To attack the First Amendment rights of your fellow citizens, or impugn the democratic political process wherein members of Congress grapple with serious war and peace policy decisions from competiting perspectives and constituencies, is nothing but throwing red meat to the simple-minded.
Such an act has nothing whatsoever to do with liberalism.
A pro-Jewish article here. Hell just froze over
Dear Mr. Pearlman,
It’s not that hell froze over, it’s just that I’m a blogger whose conscience was formed by authentic liberals and intellectuals – people who ask questions and challenge injustices and inequities in real time, not according to the political schedule of bullies.
Ultimately, authentic liberalism is a matter of the heart. It’s a desire for the safety and well-being of all people, and an endless quest for everything that will ensure fairness toward all. Being an authenic intellectual means constantly looking at current world realites against the backdrop of the human condition, as revealed by human history from the ancient to the modern.
People who jump on a bandwagon of social resentment – and worse, carve out a niche for themselves stoking such resentment – are not authentic liberals.
And believe you me, they are about as far from being intellectuals as Donald Trump is from Mother Teresa.
Mr. Villareal’s thinking is quite contorted and confusing. I do not agree with his conclusions. I suppose that the fact that Tikkun is publishing this is as a tribute to free speech. Homer Franck
Dear Mr. Franck,
Once upon a time, oh say ten years ago, it would have been considered the very height of contorted thinking to suggest that calling out anti-Semitism for the evil and hate that it is – as the ADL thankfully still does – is just wasted time and energy.
It would have been considered the height of contorted thinking to A) proclaim such a profound devotion to Israel’s survival while B) seeking the all-out demise of an organization, AIPAC, that has played a central role in securing U.S. support for Israel, which in turn has kept Israel from being completely isolated at the United Nations, and thus isolated in the world – precisely because of aforementioned anti-Semitism and the litany of moral double-standards that accompany it.
And, above all, it would have been considered the height of contorted thinking to flatly suggest (see the above post by another Tikkun Daily blogger) that somehow American Jews live in America at the invitation of, and with the permission of, non-Jews – as opposed to the gaurantee of equal citizenship for all – and that the “invitation” can somehow be rescinded if non-Jews one day get ticked off at U.S. policymaking toward Israel. To quote from the above post by another blogger:
“And, two, the lobby’s actions (now more publicized than ever before) jeopardize the Jewish future in America, the safest home we have ever had. Are we really going to repay the debt we owe to this country by allowing a bunch of unrepresentative millionaires to undermine our president and his attempts to keep Americans out of another Middle East war. Didn’t the neocons’ pointless Iraq war (4500 American dead, countless Iraqis) teach us anything?”
Well, just to remind folks – and it’s sad that there has to be a reminder here – citizens of a free country don’t “owe a debt” to anyone for their citizenship, much less their own citizen contemporaries of other religious and ethnic groups. They’re just citizens, period.
Talk about contorted thinking.
Any movement that validates – even encourages – resentment toward the success that other citizens have had in utilizing their First Amendment rights to acheive their preferred policy outcomes is manifestly anti-liberal.
The problem in this discussion, as always, is distiguishing anti-Israelism(it’s policies) from anti-Semitism. They are not the same. And this whole issue has nothing to do with liberalism in America. As well, I believe that the fortunes of Jews in the US have very little to do with the fortunes of the Jews in Israel.
Dear Mr. Franck,
Thank you for considering my point of view.
As to your last sentence, it is simply not the focus of the article at hand.
That said, I acknowledge your view that anti-Israelism and anti-Semitism are not one in the same, though I firmly disagree with that assessment. One of my aims as a blogger is to argue to my fellow liberals that when their own heartstrings are being tugged, out of authenthic, natural human sympathy for Palestinians, that, sadly, more often than not those heartstrings are being tugged by people who wholly reject Israel as a Jewish state.
I can think of no more clear evidence of this fact than Mahmoud Abbas’ firm refusal to acknowledge Israel as the Jewish state for the Jewish people. Mr. Abbas, apparently, wishes to divide the empathy of Western liberals, precisely by demanding a kind of acquiescence to his notion that supporting Palestinian human rights and dignity must – absolutely must – entail a plain denial of the Jewish character of the Jewish state of Israel.
Lastly, on your point about all of this having nothing to do with liberalism in America, in my view, you are flat wrong: it has everything to do with the increasing decay of classic liberalism in the United States of America, which I will address in future posts.
Sincerely,
Timothy
Fantastic article, and comments, Mr. Villareal. I am very pleased, and quite surprised, to find such a thing here.
Thank you for demonstrating that real liberal thought runs much deeper than the simplistic nonsense all too many of our fellows buy in wholesale, popularly-approved, packages.
The issues we have with Israel, as I speak for myself, has nothing to do with dual citizenship or dual patriotism, but it has to do with the Palestinians. No matter what Israel says that there is no people called Palestinians or country known as Palestine, but these people exist and their country is under occupation by Israel. I will vouch that there is a good democratic system in Israel existing that excludes Palestinian citizens. I am sure that there is genuine legal system in Israel, again, that applies to Israeli Jewish population. Those who are concerned regardless of our labels to any political system is that one must respect the right of all its citizens whether we believe we are God’s chosen people or not.
Dear Jay,
Thank you for your comments, particularly your point that “real liberal thought runs much deeper than the simplistic nonsense all too many of our fellows buy in wholesale, popularly-approved, packages.”
That the very act of perpetuating human resentments – certainly as concerns anti-Israel activists who can only stand up for one people, the Palestinians, by delegitmizing another people, Israeli and diaspora Jews – has found any seedbed at all within liberalism is, candidly, a monumental catastrophe of modern political thought.
Even more sad, however, it provides a window into the colder crevices of the human heart.
As spiritual progressives, I believe we have an obligation within our respective religious traditions and beliefs systems to address, heal, and ultimately warm those crevices, which is incredibly tough. But tough as it is, it cannot be done while operating under a near-total fiction about the human heart – a fiction some cling to.
Sincerely,
Timothy
Thank you. This needed to be written. Like the far righ, the far right, the far left had been caught up in s tainted narrative that needs yo focus on a demon. Israrlbis not above criticism, but when I read blogs such SD one causing Israel of “pink washing” a conflict by advocating Gay rights one had to as the motive of the writer. With regard to AIPAC, Jews have been accused by the fsr left of being “Israel firsters”. One can only wonder.