Israel Lobby

Elena Kagan Gets the Nomination

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It’s great to be Jewish in the year 2010. The latest evidence is the appointment of Elena Kagan as the third Jew on the Supreme Court. Philip Weiss puts it this way:

The Kagan appointment means that we have entered a period in which Jews are equal members, if not actually predominant members, of the American Establishment. Obama’s two closest political advisers are Jewish, Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod, and are said to be his foreign-policy braintrust. The economy is supervised to a large degree by Jewish appointees, Larry Summers and Fed Reserve Board chair Paul Bernanke (Time‘s man of the year last year, a selection overseen by Rick Stengel, the Time magazine editor, who is also Jewish).

Of course, that’s just scratching the surface on Jewish representation among the elites in politics, law, the financial world, the media, and personal wealth. Weiss goes on to take the standard line that Jews have achieved so much because of their bookish culture. But if there’s anything that stands out about Kagan, it’s how utterly ordinary she is in terms of scholarly accomplishment or anything else that would qualify her for the court–very few publications, no experience as a judge, little courtroom experience — the Harriet Miers of the Obama administration. (I stole that one from someone on the Rachel Maddow show, maybe Maddow herself. But it shows the depth of her inaptitude that even liberals are sensitive to it. For example, Paul Campos writes on the Daily Beast, “if Kagan is a brilliant legal scholar, the evidence must be lurking somewhere other than in her publications. Kagan’s scholarly writings are lifeless, dull, and eminently forgettable. They are, on the whole, cautious academic exercises in the sort of banal on-the-other-handing whose prime virtue is that it’s unlikely to offend anyone in a position of power.”  Here’s my version: “When she received tenure at the University of Chicago in 1995, she had exactly two scholarly articles published in law journals — a record that would ordinarily not get her tenure even at quite a few third tier universities much less an elite institution like the University of Chicago.”)

Her only talent seems to be getting really prestigious jobs without any obvious qualifications apart from her ethnic background. And her appointment is a sure thing for the left: Whereas Republicans have been disappointed several times by nominees who converted into liberals (like John Paul Stevens), Kagan’s ethnic identity ensures that she is on the side of all things multicultural.

My take (see also here) is that this is an affirmative action appointment of someone who has benefited greatly from Jewish ethnic networking and has dangerous views on the First Amendment that are in line with the views of the ADL, the SPLC, and the rest of the organized Jewish community. (See also Patrick Cleburne’s post at VDARE.com.)

It’s amazing to see liberals expressing doubts about Kagan. (In fact, one wonders where these people were before her nomination was a done deal. Kagan’s name has been floated since the Sotomayor nomination, but suddenly we see all these doubts about her — mainly from liberals feigning concern.) She is clearly on the left, perhaps with some neocon tendencies regarding executive power. But that is hardly reassuring. Put these tendencies together and you have someone who could be very dangerous to an incipient racialist movement: Anti-“hate speech” and comfortable with using government power to suppress political action that conflicts with the aims of the regime.

Another thought that crossed my mind was that Obama and his advisers may have wanted to court Jews [bad pun] because of the fallout from the tensions with Israel. Despite the fact that, as John Mearsheimer recently noted, the confrontation with Israel was won hands down by Israel, a recent poll shows that American Jews are defecting from Obama in droves, with only 42% saying they would now vote for Obama (down from 83% who voted for him in 2008). A recent visit to the White House (“Obama Tries to Mend Fences with Jews“, NYTimes, May 4, 2010)  by Elie Wiesel indicated shows that Obama sees a need to placate the Jewish community:

The lunch meeting between Mr. Wiesel and Mr. Obama came three weeks after Mr. Wiesel took out a full-page advertisement in a number of United States newspapers criticizing the Obama administration for pressuring Mr. Netanyahu to stop Jewish settlement construction in East Jerusalem, where Palestinians would like to put the capital of an eventual Palestinian state.

The advertisement, in which Mr. Wiesel wrote that “Jerusalem is the heart of our heart, the soul of our soul,” alarmed White House officials, in part because it came on the heels of similar advertisements from the World Jewish Congress and grumbling from members of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a powerful pro-Israel lobbying group, that Mr. Obama was pushing Mr. Netanyahu too hard.

Giving them yet another appointment to the Supreme Court certainly can’t hurt.

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Kevin MacDonald: Dr. Lasha Darkmoon's latest

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Kevin MacDonald: Whenever Lasha Darkmoon sends me something to post I get a bit of an anxiety attack. On one hand, I know that her articles draw huge interest from readers. Her articles on Jewish influence on art struck a real chord, leading to dozens of emails to her and two later articles that summarized some of the comments — many from artists grateful that someone had finally put a finger on the problem.

On the other hand, she seeks to have impact an an emotional level that is at times unsettling and may be seen by many as “over the top.” Her latest articles (see here and here) definitely push the envelope — beginning with the illustrations from Dees that appear at the top of each article. I cringed at both, especially the one that graces the top of the second article and only left it in after special pleading from Lasha. It’s not my style, certainly. But then I said to myself: Is it really wrong or inaccurate? Comparisons between Israel and Nazism are common these days, and this website has many examples (particularly by Edmund Connelly and me)  where the future is depicted as a brutal dystopia in which Whites are victimized by the emerging non-White coalition. Dees, who is a graphic genius, is simply depicting it in a very powerful way.

So as I went through the article, I tried to make sure that what she writes is accurate but to allow her to present her emotional appeal, toning it down and eliminating quite a bit of material that I thought was needlessly offensive.

One example that got the editorial ax: The famous quote from T.S. Eliot: The rats are underneath the piles./The Jew is underneath the lot. Maybe I should have left it in, but that’s the kind of anti-Jewish comment that I find unhelpful, even if it is comes from a great poet. In the absence of a real analysis, it just lends itself to being rejected out of hand as merely an expression of prejudice — as, of course, it has: Here’s a review of a recent book on Eliot titled: “‘Underneath the lot’: An incredible mind, for sure, though touched by blatant prejudice.”

But I left in the section where she depicts the horrific crimes against Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom — even though she thought I would remove them. Probably most TOO readers have heard this crime discussed, but Darkmoon’s treatment hits home emotionally in a way that I have never seen.

Will readers be upset? Perhaps. But the mainstream media does exactly the same thing in sensationalizing crimes by Whites against non-Whites — and particularly the crimes against Jews committed in WWII. And if one really has an image of this crime in your mind, the result will be a righteous anger that will motivate people to challenge what’s going on. This, of course, is exactly why such crimes against Whites are completely ignored by the media.

Darkmoon also did a photo essay interspersed with poetry that is a tribute to Rachel Corrie, martyr for the Palestinians (“She Died for Palestine”). Again, there was a huge positive response. I think that because the fate of the Palestinians has become a moral touchstone in the contemporary world to many across the entire political spectrum, the response was uniformly positive. (We don’t have many pro-Zionist readers.)

So I said to myself, why is this any different? TOO has posted numerous articles primarily directed at the left side of the brain — the facts and analysis that are entirely on our side. But facts and analysis only go so far in motivating people.  The fact is that we have to start screaming about what is happening, not only in Israel but in the West generally. We should have a righteous anger not only about the crimes of Israel, but about the crimes of Freud and the Frankfurt School. We have to have clear, emotionally compelling images in our memories — memories that motivate action. And Lasha Darkmoon is screaming.

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Lawrence Auster Gets Unhinged

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I made a resolution to not to waste time and energy on Internet squabbles with people like Lawrence Auster. Auster’s agenda is pretty clear. As I said in some previous comments on him, “Auster’s comments, posted on his website, are first and foremost an attempt to place me beyond the realm of legitimate discourse. By titling the article ‘The idiocy of Kevin MacDonald,’ Auster is saying, “Don’t go near MacDonald—he is off limits.” Auster continues to draw lines, now trying to anathematize anyone who is remotely associated with me.

For awhile, it seemed that Auster had decided not to bother with any arguments at all. His complaints about my review of Norman Podhoretz’s Why are Jews Liberals? referred to “MacDonald-style Jew-hatred” and then had long quotes from the article. Not exactly an overwhelming argument.

Now Auster has taken to calling me an “exterminationist anti-Semite,” again with the aim of drawing boundaries for acceptable discourse and again without much of an argument:

Since Kevin MacDonald sees the Jews as a group that are genetically determined by Darwinian evolution to subvert and destroy white gentile societies wherever they encounter them, in the same way that rattlesnakes are genetically determined to sink their venomous fangs into the flesh of mammals wherever they encounter them, we must conclude that he doesn’t want Jews to exist in America and Europe. Further, as I explain here with regard to MacDonald’s recent article at Alternative Right, it is clear that he doesn’t want Jews to exist in Israel either. So MacDonald doesn’t want Jews to exist anywhere.

If anyone has a reasonable interpretation of MacDonald other than that he is an exterminationist anti-Semite, I’d like to hear it.

There is a whole lot wrong with this, starting with interpreting me as saying that “Jews as a group … are genetically determined by Darwinian evolution to subvert and destroy white gentile societies wherever they encounter them.”

I certainly do think I have shown that Jews have a powerful sense of groupness. This is apparent throughout history and can be seen today in pretty much any statement put out by organizations like the ADL. And I do think that there are conflicts of interest between Jews and non-Jews in a wide range of areas — my writing has focused on immigration policy, policy toward Israel, and the construction of culture generally.  Whenever I discuss these issues I always qualify my remarks by noting that not all Jews hold the same opinions. Making a case for Jewish influence is a matter of looking at where the great mass of Jewish money and influence is being brought to bear and trying to determine if their efforts are effective. For example, in the case of immigration policy, it matters little if Auster and Stephen Steinlight oppose our anti-White immigration policy when the organized Jewish community and the vast majority of Jews (including a great number of Jews with influential positions in the media and in politics) are in favor of it. (Here‘s a recent example: the ADL condemning the Arizona law that attempts to rid the state of illegal immigrants.) My argument is that Jewish influence was a critically necessary condition for the passage of the disastrous 1965 immigration law.

But this is a far cry from saying that Jews are “genetically determined by Darwinian evolution to subvert and destroy white gentile societies wherever they encounter them.” Even a casual reading of my work would show that it’s all about culture–why else write a book titled The Culture of Critique. (This is a recent academic version of my theory of culture.) Genetic determinism plays no role in my theory.

When it comes to why the organized Jewish community and most Jews have supported policies that oppose the interests of people of  European descent, I implicate Jewish ethnocentrism combined with their lachrymose view of their own history among Europeans — summarized in my review of Podhoretz. Briefly stated, Jews have a historical grudge against Europeans and their culture.

Besides the historical grudge that has fueled so much Jewish hostility toward European-descended peoples and their culture, the rise of a Jewish elite in 20th-century America is a story of ethnic displacement. No evolutionist is surprised at the desire to achieve elite status and displace previously dominant elites, and Jews are certainly no exception. Jews are doing what pretty much any ethnic group would do if they could. In today’s column, Pat Buchanan writes, “The Chinese of 2010 call to mind 19th-century Americans who shoved aside Mexicans, Indians and Spanish to populate a continent, build a mighty nation, challenge the British Empire — superpower of the day — and swiftly move past her in manufacturing to become first nation on earth.”

Yeah, we shoved aside other peoples. And now it’s happening to us — mainly, in my opinion, because of the  power of the new Jewish elite. The Indians didn’t like it when  it happened to them. I don’t like it as it’s happening to me and people like me. The Palestinians don’t like it either.

The only thing is that I suspect that everyone would have assumed that a 19th-century American Indian complaining about what was happening was being entirely rational. But now someone like me is treated as a raving lunatic and moral reprobate — ignored by the  elite media and vilified by the lavishly funded Jewish activist organizations like the ADL and the SPLC. We are not supposed to put up a fight. We are supposed to simply accept our displacement and pledge fealty to our new elite.

But I am not an exterminationist. Since when is someone who calls attention to conflicts of interest between groups necessarily advocating the extermination of one of the groups? By that logic, a historian documenting the influence of, say, Christian Zionists  and noting how their interests conflict with those of others would necessarily be advocating their extermination. By that logic Mearsheimer and Walt are exterminationists. Auster’s comment is nothing but an attempt to have any discussion of Jewish interests and Jewish influence be completely off the table–unlike the interests and influence of any other group.

I am perfectly happy for Jews to live where they want. I just wish they would not continue to oppose the interests of people like me.  Obviously, in saying this, I am implying that  I don’t believe in genetic determinism in the area of political choices. It is within the power of Jews to change their political behavior. In fact, rather than behaving like mindless robots acting out of a genetic imperative, Jews have always been flexibly responsive to historical contingencies, and this agrees with everything we know about human psychology.

It really doesn’t matter if groups with little power and influence oppose the interests of White Americans. But it matters greatly if a substantial component of the elite in terms of wealth as well as political power and media influence opposes our interests and brings to economic ruin and political oblivion anyone (Jew or non-Jew) who comes to our defense.

Nor do I have any conceptual problem with Jews living in Israel. As I wrote in my previous comments on Auster, I would be willing to make a quid pro quo with the organized Jewish community: If you support white ethno-nationalism in the US and provide intensive, effective support for ending and reversing the immigration policy of recent decades (i.e., something approaching the support you presently provide Israel), I would be willing to go to the wall to support Jewish ethno-nationalism in Israel, even at substantial cost for the US. The fact that a minuscule number of Jews — none of them part of the main Jewish activist organizations that have been so destructive to White ethno-nationalism — are immigration patriots and see value in America as ethnically and culturally European is certainly not a reason for someone like me to support Jewish ethno-nationalism in Israel.

But I don’t see the organized Jewish community getting behind a White America any time soon — from which I infer that they continue to believe that it is their self-interest to oppose the interests of White Americans (not that they are the victims of some phantasmagorical genetic imperative). The fact is that Israel is costing the US dearly in terms of blood and treasure at the same time that the Jewish community in the US opposes the interests of White Americans. I really don’t see why I should support it.

However, that’s not the same as wishing Israel would be wiped off the map — only that they should fend for themselves. I do not believe that it is in my ethnic interests nor is in the interests of the United States to antagonize the Arab and Muslim world in the interests of an expansionist, apartheid, ethno-nationalist Israel. It’s simply not our fight.

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A Tale of Two Rich Guys, Haim Saban and Charles T. Munger

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A Sacramento Bee op-ed by Dan Morain points out that the motives for all the money going into a California ballot proposition on redistricting are hidden from the public. The two men couldn’t be more different. Haim Saban, the billionaire media tycoon, wants the politicians to redraw boundaries so that the Congressional seat of Howard Berman, a Jewish politician who is strongly pro-Israel  is protected from the ever expanding Latino population. As Morain notes, Saban’s only motivation in life is to advance the cause of the Jewish state, famously telling the New York Times “I’m a one-issue guy, and my issue is Israel.”

It’s interesting that activist Jews are now worried that there will be fewer Jewish politicians with the rise of the same minorities that Jewish activist organizations have been so eager to populate the country with. Organizations like the ADL have expressed concerned that new ethnic blocs will not be appropriately sympathetic to Jewish causes such as Israel. Their solution is not to try to stem the tide of non-White immigration but to make political alliances with the new arrivals and, as indicated by Saban’s actions, skew the political process in a way where Jewish political assets (particularly money) will still be effective.

Charles T. Munger is a completely different story. Munger, a Stanford physicist,  is also very wealthy, his wealth stemming from his father’s partnership with Warren Buffet. Munger wants a citizen’s panel to draw the redistricting lines in the hopes that politics will be less partisan — a position that sounds like high-minded idealism. As a Republican, he may well want more  Republicans, but as Morain notes, he is almost certainly wrong about that. If he really wanted to have more Republicans elected, he should have invested his money in anti-immigration efforts. No matter how California is redistricted, Latinos and other minorities are going to continue to increase in political power while Whites are increasingly dispossessed.

So Munger is tilting at windmills while Saban is helping his people. There is a great deal of wealth controlled by people like Munger, but in general its wasted on things like this. As I noted in an earlier blog:

One of the biggest problems for European-Americans is that wealthy non-Jews seem far more interested in funding the opera or getting their name on a building at the local university than in helping their people. A good example is the Chandler family who formerly owned the L. A. Times. They had no interest in the media, and the company is now controlled by Sam Zell, who is Jewish. The family remains wealthy but in general seems to be involved in finding fun and interesting ways to spend their time (one of them flies around the world to attend the opera; another is into building outsize model trains) rather than influencing the world.

Munger is more politically involved than the Chandlers, but his efforts are absolutely useless in really achieving anything remotely beneficial to Republicans — or, more importantly, White Californians.

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More on Dual Loyalty — Dr. Lani Kass and Gen. Norton Schwartz

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Dual loyalty issues have once again arisen, this time in conjunction with Philip Giraldi’s astonishing essay on antiwar.com. Giraldi discusses the curious career of Dr. Lani Kass — formerly a senior military officer in the Israeli Defense Force, and now the  senior Special Assistant to the Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force General Norton A. Schwartz. “Kass appears to have close and continuing ties to her country of birth, frequently spicing her public statements with comments about life in Israel while parroting simplistic views of the nature of the Islamic threat that might have been scripted in Tel Aviv’s Foreign Ministry.”

Giraldi notes that her appointment raises a host of issues, including the possibility that she is an Israeli spy and exactly how she managed to get security clearance. Given that the official policy of the Israeli government is to advocate a war with Iran, it is more than interesting that she has an important influence on US policy and that she is involved in Project CHECKMATE responsible for drawing up war plans. She is quoted as having what Giraldi characterizes as a “dismissive” comment on a possible war with Iran, and has the views on the Islamic threat usually associated with neocons.

The role of Kass in the Defense Department is at least as questionable as the role of Dennis Ross in the State Department. In fact, it would seem to be an even more clear-cut case because Kass was actually born and raised in Israel and rose to the rank of major in the IDF. Although she is a naturalized US citizen, she has doubtless retained her Israeli citizenship. It would more than a bit surprising if she did not retain an allegiance to Israel. And is there any evidence at all that she has allegiance to the US? When asked about possible war with Iran, she responded, “We can defeat Iran, but are Americans willing to pay the price?” — as if she is not an American.

By Stephen Walt’s criteria, therefore, Kass should not have any policy-making role on any issue that relates to Israel. A more difficult case is that of her boss, Gen. Norton Schwartz. Schwartz is also Jewish, although does not have the close ties to Jewish activist organizations like Ross or the strong connections to Israel like Kass. As reported in the Forward,

Schwartz’s Jewish identity did not go unnoticed after his appointment, particularly given the current military tensions with Iran. Press TV, an Iranian English language media outlet, wrote an article last week, titled “U.S. Names Jewish [sic — presumably an intentionally awkward translation] as Air Force Chief.”

There have long been rumors that Schwartz’s predecessor, Michael Moseley, was opposed to a military attack on Iran. The appointment of Schwartz has prompted speculation in the Iranian press and on some blogs that the Bush administration is yet again seriously considering the military option to thwart Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.

Unlike the vast majority of Americans, the Iranians assume that Schwartz’s ethnic identity would make a difference, and I must agree that it should raise red flags. The vast majority of American Jews have a very strong emotional commitment to Israel that may bias their judgment even if they are not consciously aware of their biases.

As I noted elsewhere,

In my ideal world, Jonah Goldberg’s op-eds and Paul Wolfowitz’s advice to presidents and defense secretaries should be accompanied by a disclaimer: “You should be cautious in following my advice or even believing what I say about Israel. Deception and manipulation are very common tactics in ethnic conflict, so that my pose as an American patriot should be taken with a grain of salt. And even if I am entirely sincere in what I say, the fact is that I have a deep psychological and ethnic commitment to Israel and Judaism. Psychologists have shown that this sort of deep commitment is likely to bias my perceptions of any policy that could possibly affect Israel even though I am not aware of it.”

We would certainly like to know the details of Schwartz’s ties with Jewish organizations and activist groups, as well as any ties that he has with Israel. (For example, Paul Wolfowitz has family members living in Israel.) The fact that Schwartz has hired Kass as his senior Special Assistant suggests that the taboo against discussing Jewish loyalty issues is so strong that they feel free to be entirely public about it. (There might be some sensitivity, however, since the Pentagon has removed Kass’s biography from its website.)

Nevertheless, a war with Iran would be very costly for the US and may well have huge long term implications for the region and the world. Surely if the government wanted to project the image that US policy was not being shaped by people with a strong personal ethnic attachment to Israel (as clearly happened in the war with Iraq), they would remove people like Ross, Kass, and Schwartz from any role in making policy.

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Robert Satloff and the Jewish Culture of Deceit

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Stephen Walt had the audacity to suggest, given Dennis Ross’s close ties to WINEP, that Ross should not have a policy-making position on Middle East issues in the Obama Administration. Neocon Robert Satloff responded with outrage, claiming that Ross has been doing nothing but promoting “U.S. interests in peace and security for the past quarter-century.” And he disingenuously asks, “To which country do we allegedly have a ‘strong attachment’?  Our foreign-born scholars hail from virtually every country in the Middle East — Turkey, Iran, Israel, and at least a dozen different Arab countries.”

The best response is by MJ Rosenberg of the Israel Policy Forum, an organization that advocates a two-state solution to the conflict:

Steve Rosen [who was acquited on charges of spying for Israel in 2009] … cleverly came up with the idea for an AIPAC controlled think-tank that would put forth the AIPAC line but in a way that would disguise its connections.

There was no question that WINEP was to be AIPAC’s cutout. It was funded by AIPAC donors, staffed by AIPAC employees, and located one door away, down the hall, from AIPAC Headquarters (no more. It has its own digs). It would also hire all kinds of people not identified with Israel as a cover and would encourage them to write whatever they liked on matters not related to Israel. “Say what you want on Morocco, kid.” But on Israel, never deviate more than a degree or two.

In other words, Satloff’s claims that WINEP is not tied to any particular lobby or country are part of an ongoing subterfuge that fools no one except the mainstream media: “It matters because the media has totally fallen for this sleight of hand and WINEP spokespersons appear (especially on PBS) as if WINEP was not part of the Israel lobby. Some truth-in-labeling is warranted.”

This sort of subterfuge is central to Jewish efforts at influencing policy in a wide range of areas. Because they are a small minority in the US and other Western societies, Jews must recruit support from the wider community. Their positions cannot be phrased as benefiting Jews, but as benefiting the interests of the society as a whole. As a result, these movements cannot tell their name.

A great example is the $PLC, an organization that we now know is funded by Jews and, apart from the sociopathic Morris Dees, is also largely staffed by Jews. Yet whenever there is a story about “immigrant rights” or angry White people, the SPLC is called on by the mainstream media as a “respected civil rights organization” rather than for what it is: A Jewish activist organization actively attempting to further the ethnic  interests of Jews, typically at the expense of White Americans.

This sort of subterfuge was true of all the Jewish intellectual and political movements discussed in The Culture of Critique. As I noted in Ch. 6:

It is thus not surprising that although these theories were directed at achieving specific Jewish interests in the manipulation of culture, they “could not tell their name”; that is, they were forced to minimize any overt indication that Jewish group identity or that Jewish group interests were involved …. Because of the need for invisibility, the theories and movements discussed here were forced to deemphasize Judaism as a social category—a form of crypsis discussed extensively in SAID (Ch. 6) as a common Jewish technique in combating anti-Semitism. In the case of the Frankfurt School, “What strikes the current observer is the intensity with which many of the Institute’s members denied, and in some cases still deny, any meaning at all to their Jewish identities” (Jay 1973, 32). The originators and practitioners of these theories attempted to conceal their Jewish identities, as in the case of Freud, and to engage in massive self-deception, as appears to have been common among many Jewish political radicals. Recall the Jewish radicals who believed in their own invisibility as Jews while nevertheless appearing as the quintessential ethnics to outside observers and at the same time taking steps to ensure that [non-Jews] would have highly visible positions in the movement (pp. 91–93). The technique of having non-Jews] as highly visible exemplars of Jewish-dominated movements has been commonly used by Jewish groups attempting to appeal to gentiles on a wide range of Jewish issues (SAID, Ch. 6) and is apparent in the discussion of Jewish involvement in influencing immigration policy. …  [Chap. 7]: Beginning in the late nineteenth century, anti-restrictionist arguments [on immigration]  developed by Jews were typically couched in terms of universalist humanitarian ideals; as part of this universalizing effort, [non-Jews] from old-line Protestant families were recruited to act as window dressing for their efforts, and Jewish groups such as the AJCommittee funded pro-immigration groups composed of non-Jews (Neuringer 1971, 92).

It’s an old technique, arguably present (see also here)  from the origins of Judaism as a group evolutionary strategy. The sad thing is that people who should know better continue to be deceived.

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Stephen Walt on Dennis Ross

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Stephen Walt has once again raised the issue of dual loyalty of American Jews — this time in the context of the role of Dennis Ross in shaping Obama Administration policy in the direction of Israel. As I have argued previously, I think that Walt (and Mearsheimer) tend to underestimate the problem of Jewish dual loyalty. It’s often been said of Jews that they are just like everyone else, only more so. In the case of dual loyalty, it’s certainly true that other people have various loyalties, but no other group has had such a passionate attachment to a foreign country. As The Israel Lobby shows, the American Jewish community is galvanized around doing the bidding of a foreign government. Dissent within the Jewish community has been effectively silenced, and the most energized, radical elements of the Jewish community determine the direction of the entire community.

Given all that, it is certainly not surprising that issues of loyalty would be raised. And, because of their status as a wealthy, powerful elite, Jews, far more than other minority groups, have been able to influence American foreign policy in the direction of Israel despite making up less than 3% of the population.

The charge of dual loyalty is an ancient one (reviewed here under the heading “The Theme of Disloyalty”), present in Jewish religious writing. In the Book of Exodus, Pharaoh states, “Behold, the people of the children of Israel are too mighty for us; come, let us deal wisely with them, lest they multiply, and it come to pass, that, when there befalleth us any war, they also join themselves unto our enemies, and fight against us, and get them up out of the land” (Exod. 1:9–10).

Walt writes that the accusation of dual loyalty was “a nasty anti-Semitic canard in old Europe.” But, then as now, dual loyalty accusations had much more than a grain of truth. For example, between the mid-19th century and the Bolshevik Revolution, there can be little doubt that the Jewish Diaspora throughout Europe and America opposed the Russian government and often influenced policy in other countries to oppose Russia — often in opposition to the governments of those countries. In 1911, long before Jews attained the level of power in the US that they have now, there was a successful Jewish campaign to abrogate a US trade agreement with Russia aimed at getting Russia to change its policies on Jews in opposition to the views of the Taft Administration.

The similarities to today are striking: AIPAC has rammed through punitive trade restrictions on Iran not because such restrictions benefit the US, but because Iran is seen as threatening Israel. And now there is a major push to get the US to bomb Iran — again promoted by Israel’s friends in the US. (Here’s Bill Kristol stating that it’s better for the US to attack Iran than for Israel to have to do it.)

Walt writes:

Needless to say, in a melting-pot society like the United States, it was inevitable that many Americans would also have strong attachments to other countries. These different attachments may reflect ancestry, religious affiliation, personal experience (such as overseas study), or any number of other sources. The key point, however, is that in the United States it is entirely legitimate to manifest such attachments in political life.  Americans can hold dual citizenship, for example, or form an interest group whose avowed purpose is to shape U.S. policy towards a specific country. This is how the American system of government works, and there is nothing “disloyal” about such conduct.

Dual loyalty issues therefore mesh with America as a multicultural society. Jewish dual loyalties are no different, say, from Mexican dual loyalties. But, whatever its legitimacy in multicultural America, dual loyalties are surely not ideal for the country as a whole because they detract from cohesion and sense of common interest and purpose. Whereas in the past assimilation was the norm (and was easy because the vast majority of immigrants were European ethnically), immigrants now are encouraged to retain their own language and culture, and they are encouraged to retrain powerful ties to their countries of origin.

Historically, this ideology of multiculturalism was the product of Jewish intellectuals (prominently Horace Kallen) designed to legitimize Jewish separateness in America while at the same time legitimizing the continuing ties between American Jews and the rest of the Diaspora. (Kallen, for example, was a strong Zionist and activist on behalf of Jews in Eastern Europe.) In the future we can expect that the US will be increasingly Balkanized as different ethnic and national groups jockey for political power in the US and seek to influence foreign policy in favor of the countries they left behind.

But I have to agree with Walt that even accepting the legitimacy of a multicultural model, people like Dennis Ross should not be allowed to have a voice within the administration. Walt points out that Ross has a long involvement with pro-Israel activist organizations, such as being director of WINEP.

But Ross’s ties to Israel are even deeper than that. Until his appointment as Middle East envoy in the Obama Administration, from 2002–2009 Ross was Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute. This organization has assumed the role of long term planning for the Jewish people, not only in Israel but also the Diaspora. The JPPPI is an independent think tank that reports to the Israeli government and has close ties with other Jewish organizations. Its mission is “to promote the thriving of the Jewish people via professional strategic thinking and planning on issues of primary concern to world Jewry. JPPPI’s work is based on deep commitment to the future of the Jewish people with Israel as its core state.”

The JPPPI’s report Facing Tomorrow 2008 is interesting because it focuses on the threat of Iran and but also because it sees people like Stephen Walt as a threat to Israel:

The Jewish people must, as the highest priority, develop an appropriate response to the Iranian nuclear threat to Israel and to global stability as a whole. While there is no ambiguity about the need to do so in Israel, it is necessary to mobilize Jewish opinion around the world as well. The American Jewish community cannot be intimidated either by a post Iraq syndrome in the United States, or by the false and pernicious allegations of Professors Walt and Mearsheimer, or former President Carter.

In other words, Jews around the world are encouraged to mobilize to combat the threat to Israel represented by Iran. The assumption is that Jews have common interests as Jews no matter what country they happen to live in. Dennis Ross is doing his best to promote exactly this view within the Obama administration.

One might think that such a view would leave Jews in the Diaspora open to the charge of disloyalty, but the problem is easily finessed: Jews in the Diaspora are told to frame Israel’s concerns about Iran as a global threat, not simply as a threat to Israel.

Of course, that’s what we are seeing now. But we needn’t be naïve. Jews like Dennis Ross are clearly far more loyal to Israel than to the US. Speaking as a psychologist, they wouldn’t be able to see a conflict of interest between the US and Israel if it was staring them in the face. Indeed, as Gore Vidal said of Norman Podhoretz, they are unregistered agents of a foreign government.

In a sane society, there would be a huge groundswell of public opposition to Ross’s appointment–as there has been for a number of Obama’s appointments. But that won’t happen.

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