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Philip Weiss on AIPAC
July 10, 2008
Despite its general unwillingness to tread
too far into Jewish issues (see this gem by Edmund Connelly), The
American Conservative certainly has done itself proud with the publication
of Philip Weiss's account of the
recent AIPAC convention.
The AIPAC convention is really a ritual of Jewish dominance in
America. We read about the sheer political power able to command the presence of
both presidential candidates and over half the Congress. The politicians truckle
before their masters, competing to outdo each other with their promises and
concern for Israel. There are large banners featuring photos of wealthy
AIPAC donors with their presumably non-Jewish trophy wives.
The clear message is: "We've got your politicians eating out of
our hand. We have taken your most beautiful young women as wives (typically
after having Jewish children with our non-trophy first wife). You will do what
we want when it comes to anything related to Israel no matter what the cost
to the U.S. Life is good.
Power is not just having official Washington do one’s bidding. It’s also the ability to prevent public discussion of Jewish influence. There is almost no journalistic coverage of the event. “The reason seems obvious: the press would have to write openly about a forbidden subject, Jewish influence.”
Most egregiously, Weiss notes that the New York Times printed an article on a
major Jewish fund raiser without mentioning that his main motivation is Zionism:
There was Donald Diamond, an Arizona real
estate developer whom the New York
Times recently profiled on
the front page after he raised $250,000 for John McCain. The
Times said nothing in its piece about Diamond’s Israel work. But that
was all the banner was about. “The U.S.-Israel relationship is the single most
important determinant of democracy in the world, and we must commit to securing
it,” Diamond wrote. “It is so obvious to us that the Jewish community is a
family and that we have to take care of each
other.”
The reader of the New York Times article goes away
thinking that Diamond is just a regular Republican kind of guy, when his main
motivation is presumably to get McCain to hew to AIPAC’s line on Israel.
The result is that organized
Jewry is able to have its cake and eat it too. All those politicians and the
media elite are quite aware of Jewish influence. But they cannot mention it in
public without suffering the consequences.
Of course, in the case
of much of the media—including the NYT, the taboo against discussing Jewish influence
is self-imposed. And for very good reason:
The NYT is itself a paradigm of Jewish influence.
Another example of the media
blackout of AIPAC relates to the dual loyalty issue. AIPAC would probably not
want it widely known that “when the national anthems are played, one cantor
sings the ‘Star Spangled Banner,’ but the ‘Hatikvah’ has two cantors belting it
out, with the audience roaring along.”
Dual loyalty? What dual loyalty?
If emotions are any indication (and they are), it’s pretty clear where their
hearts lie. But don’t worry. The New York
Times or, for that matter, Fox News or any other American media outlet would
never think of publicizing such incidents.
As Weiss notes,
“AIPAC and its roll call of politicians would
say that American and Israeli interests are identical.” But how would they know?
Everything
we know about human psychology argues that their powerful emotional
attraction to Israel would cloud their judgment and bias their thinking on
anything related to Israel.
In addition to the dominance and power theme, the article is a
primer on other aspects of Jewish psychology.
1.)
There's a constant stream of
Holocaust imagery designed to motivate the Jews, legitimize whatever Israel does
to the Palestinians, and pull at the heartstrings of the goyim.
2.)
Tying in with the Holocaust
imagery, there is a palpable sense of threat. The situation is dire—1939 all
over again, and we’ve got to rally round the flag to avert total destruction.
Sure, the wine is flowing and just about everyone at an AIPAC convention is
rich; the goyish political and social elite are bowing and scraping before you.
But disaster looms, so we have to batten down the hatches and rally the troops.
3.)
But it’s not all negative
emotions. There is an unbounded love for Jews and all things Jewish.
“Even a sharp critic like myself of what AIPAC is
doing to American policy in the Middle East was frequently moved by the pure
loving feeling that surrounds you at every moment.” Of course it’s not love for
humanity as a whole (much less the Palestinians), but love for one’s
tribe.
4.)
Stuff that’s okay to say
among the tribe should not be publicized outside the ingroup. It’s okay to worry
about whether Obama is sufficiently pro-Israel. But this sort of talk should be
relegated to private conversations—exactly what Mearsheimer and Walt have found
as a general characteristic of discussion of Israel. As they note, there’s far
more public discussion of controversial aspects of Israel policy in Israel than
in America.
5.) When someone like Obama is not an entirely known quantity in the Jewish community, then the group relies on trusted tribe members to plead his case. In this case, it’s Lee Rosenberg , a board member of AIPAC, whose main point was that Obama had “gotten to know” Benjamin Netenyahu, a stalwart on the Israeli right and well known as a strong supporter of colonizing Palestinian territory.
Besides Jewish psychology, we really have to wonder what’s
going through the minds of the non-Jews in attendance. We can assume that the
politicians are completely cynical and self-serving sociopaths who feel no
twinges of guilt for truckling before their masters even though their masters
are hardly subtle about where their loyalties lie. Who else but a sociopath
could perform such a degrading ritual?
But what about the Christian evangelicals?
Weiss describes one evangelical as follows: “Carrie said that at a synagogue she addressed, the first question came from a
high-school girl who said, ‘But isn’t Israel an apartheid state?’”
That must cause a bit of
cognitive dissonance. Let’s see. God wants the Jews to control all the land of
Israel, including the West Bank, expel or otherwise dispose of the Palestinians
(even the Christian ones), and erect an apartheid state where Jew and non-Jew
live in separate worlds behind high barriers. And when all this comes about,
then God will rapture the believers, the Jews will finally be converted, and the
Second Coming will be at hand.
God works in mysterious
ways. Can these people really be
that out of touch with reality? Sadly, the answer seems to be yes. But the good
news is that, for a variety of reasons, their influence may be on
the wane. Let’s hope
so.
In the meantime, we
should all be thankful to Philip Weiss for shedding a little more light on the
Israel Lobby.
Permanent URL:http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/articles/MacDonald-AIPAC.html
