Israel Lobby

Jimmy Carter Grovels

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One of the virtues of being an ex-president is that there is no need to cater to the political constituencies that are essential for election. American presidential candidates, and especially Democrats, are beholden to Jewish financial support, and Jews are an important swing voting bloc in several states, especially New York. I recall that the first time I thought about Jewish influence, at least in a negative way, was during the 1976 election campaign when Jimmy Carter made the obligatory campaign stop in New York and pledged fealty to Israel.

But since his presidency, Carter has definitely gotten on the bad side of serious Zionists — prototypically the folks at David Horowitz’s Frontpagemag.com. Here’s the video version of Jimmy Carter’s War Against the Jews. (Pop Quiz: An article on Frontpagemag complains that a certain religious group defiles Christmas and this year engaged in a “hatefest” on Christmas Day. Which group is it? For answer, see here.)

But now Carter has apologized. “We must recognize Israel’s achievements under difficult circumstances, even as we strive in a positive way to help Israel continue to improve its relations with its Arab populations, but we must not permit criticisms for improvement to stigmatize Israel.” In particular, he now says that the use of the word ‘apartheid’ in the title of his 2008 book was a prediction of the future if the Palestinians are not allowed to control the West Bank, not a comment on present realities. Moreover, “Carter said he never meant to convey the impression that the pro-Israel lobby silenced criticism of Israel, only that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee was the “most influential lobbying group” and that presidents including himself and congresses have historically been “totally committed” to Israel’s security.

Since Carter realizes the West Bank is an apartheid society (complete with walls of separation, separate roads for Jews and Arabs, etc.) and since the Israel Lobby does indeed have a long history of doing everything it can to silence its critics (see Cong. Paul Finley’s aptly named They Dare to Speak Out [1st edition, 1985]) and since Carter is well aware of all of this, his apology is has to count as groveling. To be sure, Carter claims that his views are mainstream (e.g., he says his positions are the same as J Street’s). But this is surely a significant move on Carter’s part, especially since he now asserts things that are manifestly untrue. So what possessed him to make such a statement?

Although he denies it, there is a strong suspicion that the statement was intended to help Jason Carter, his grandson, in his campaign for the state senate in Georgia in a district with a “substantial” Jewish community. Indeed, JTA reports that “The younger Carter has been trying for days to reach Liane Levetan, a former state senator and CEO of DeKalb County, and as soon as they connected Tuesday, he directed her to the JTA Web site to read the letter.” Jason obviously has a bright future in politics.

Pretty much no matter what Jimmy Carter says, at this point he is persona non grata with Jews. Jimmy Carter’s former honesty will not be forgiven and it will not be forgotten. Groveling never helps, but it may well help Jason: The article notes that Jesse Jackson’s son managed to have a political life despite the transgressions of his father, but only after a lot of fence mending with Jews.

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Gabriel Schoenfeld exists in an alternate universe

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Gabriel Schoenfeld’s The Weekly Standard  article “Back to the Future: British Anti-Semitism Returns with a Vengeance” is the sort of thing that makes you want to bang your head against a wall. The idea is that those virulent anti-Semites John Mearsheimer and Steven Walt managed to “peddle” their vicious article on the Israel lobby to the London Review of Books when it was sensibly rejected by American publishers. It then metastasized into a book that was much admired in the US by the likes of David Duke and pretty much no one else. The “respectable middle” were on page with Leslie Gelb’s authoritative review in the august New York Times which accused them of “shoddy scholarship” that promoted anti-Semitism. As I noted in an earlier blog, “Some of Gelb’s charges might even seem reasonable—if you haven’t read the book.”

The fact that Mearsheimer and Walt managed to first publish their monstrosity in England is no accident. After all, the Brits are a bad lot and always have been. “Anti-Semitism has deep roots in England. In the 12th century, many of the country’s Jews were put to the sword in a wave of massacres. The 13th century began with the introduction of the yellow badge, the mandatory marking that Jews were compelled to wear, and ended with the mass expulsion of the Jews.”

There you have it. Nothing much has changed in England since the 12th century when it comes to the Jews. Anti-Semitism remained rampant in England throughout the 20thcentury, going underground when the Brits were fighting the Nazis (who were even more anti-Jewish), but re-emerging now into the open. In its latest incarnation, it manifests itself as hatred toward Israel.

According to Schoenfeld, this irrational anti-Jewish hate is more obvious than ever.  You can tell that because Britain is now “a congenial home” where radical Muslims “preach their genocidal doctrines.” (Never mind the role of Jewish organizations in facilitating immigration into England and opposing nationalist parties like the BNP that want to keep England English. See Ch. 7 of Culture of Critique.)

In fact, right now Parliament is considering a law to force Jews to report to concentration camps.

No wait. Actually, it’s an inquest into how Tony Blair made the decision to join in the Iraq invasion. Not only that, but a newspaper columnist had the temerity to complain that two of the panelists were Jews. Another chimed in that this complaint was “helpful” because the war was “initiated .  .  . by a group of influential American neocons .  .  . nearly all of whom were ardent Zionists.” And the London Times didn’t even label all of this “anti-Semitic.”

And then there was Peter Oborne’s program (see Martin Webster’s TOO article) on the influence  of the Israel Lobby: “With shades of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and shades of Mearsheimer-Walt, the program conveyed a picture of a nefarious conspiracy to plunge Britain into war in Iraq.”

The last straw is the court decision that an Orthodox school is guilty of discrimination for insisting on matrilineal descent as a criterion of admission. Schoenfeld puts ‘discrimination’ in quotes because, you see, it’s not discrimination if Jews do it. Surely it’s obvious that Jews (and no one else) ought to be able to discriminate on the basis of biological descent.

Obviously, Jews like Schoenfeld (and they’re the ones we keep hearing from in the media) are out of touch with reality. This is Abe Foxman on steroids. In Scheonfeld’s eyes, the inquest into the Blair government’s actions and the Oborne program are nothing more than updated examples of centuries-old anti-Jewish hatred. No need to look at what actually happened.

Indeed, the very thought that Jews might be biased against finding that Jews whose main allegiance is to Israel were the major force behind the decision of the British government to join the Iraq invasion is so obviously wrongheaded that even asking the question betrays vicious hatred of Jews. By their very nature Jews are impartial and completely uninfluenced by their ethnic identification. Schoenfeld doubtless sees himself as an exemplar of evenhandedness — completely above the fray and able to judge Israel’s actions and all things Jewish with brutal, impartial honesty.

Schoenfeld and the rest of these Jewish spokespeople are living in an alternate universe — a universe where mundane things like facts and truth are irrelevant. It’s an absolute article of faith that Jewish behavior is always — always —completely irrelevant to anti-Semitism. No matter how much money Jewish activists and organizations shower on politicians and no matter now much media they own and influence, Jews never actually influence anything. And if they do happen to have a slight influence, they only want the best for everyone. There could not possibly be legitimate conflicts of interest between Jews and non-Jews.

There is simply no way to communicate with people like Schoenfeld. And that’s a big part of the problem.

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Kevin MacDonald: Martin Webster on Peter Oborne's Exposé of Britain's Israel Lobby

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Kevin MacDonald: Martin Webster’s article on Peter Oborne’s exposé of Britain’s Israel Lobby was just posted on TOO. Here’s the link to the article, and we are also posting the link to Oborne’s 50-minute program in  the video section of the TOO front page. This is very long article by TOO standards, and Webster adds a lot that is not in the program, so I thought I would briefly mention a couple of things. 

He does an excellent job of exposing the twin strategies of bribery and intimidation that have been so successfully pursued by the Isaral Lobby in America and elsewhere. The article shows how the Israel Lobby has been able to avoid laws intended to prevent corruption of public officials. It also discusses a number of complicit non-Jews who profit from their connections with the Israel Lobby and, in some cases, are married to Jewish women.

Finally, the article illustrates once again the importance of media control. Oborne’s TV show has been given the silent treatment in the media and will doubtless be yet another example of how the truth is marginalized and basically irrelevant in contemporary Western societies.

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Kevin MacDonald: Making the US government Israeli-occupied territory

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Kevin MacDonald: Stephen Walt has a nice column on the Haaretz article showing that right wing Jewish groups make a huge amount of noise over US-government appointees. Even when they fail to get someone removed, it doubtless has the effect of making any administration be very wary of whom they appoint.

The Haaretz article shows the emerging divide within the Jewish community between the J Street liberals and the more hardline organizations. The recent nominees who have come under attack have in common an association with J Street. But the reality is that J Street is not really much of an improvement on the neocons and AIPAC. Philip Giraldi calls it “AIPAC lite” –little more than window dressing to appeal to liberal democrats. (See also Stephen Sniegoski’s piece.)

So we are likely to be treated to highly publicized wars between the old-time Israel Lobby and newer, “liberal” version–full of sound and fury, signifying nothing, or at least very little.

Of course, it’s the same in American politics where everyone’s attention is riveted on the miniscule differences between Republicans and Democrats — and for much the same reasons. Liberal democracies need the appearance of open, unfettered debate in order to live up to their ideals. As with the ADL’s assault on mainstream media figures who deviate from the ADL’s approved messages, the goal is to have an acceptably narrow range of public debate while still pretending we live in an open society.

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