- Almost 3 12 years ago, I published Thinking about Neoconservatism,
analyzing the neoconservative movement in the context of my studies of
the behavior pattern of Jewish groups in the societies where they live.
I concluded neoconservatism was the latest of a long procession of political
and intellectual movements dominated and essentially controlled by members
of the Jewish community, in effect dedicated to a particular concept of
how to promote the interests of that community. I specifically cited foreign
policy and immigration as hallmark interests.
-
- At the time, and for a couple of years later, this was
an unmentionable theory. I am told certain prominent web sites stopped
linking to VDARE.com after my essay was published. The malign presence
of the SPLC (the "Southern Poverty Law Center", a notorious ethnically-oriented
Political Correctness enforcer) was soon felt on the scene, not coincidentally,
and it named VDARE.COM a "hate group", a sobriquet more normally
associated with groups advocating violence and other forms of illegality.
-
- But now public debate has changed considerably. Serious
antiwar commentary routinely connects the Iraq/Iran policy problem with
the influence of Israel and her friends in America.
- (See http://mondoweiss.observer.com/2007/01/why-im-right-about-liberal-jews-and-the-antiwar-movement.html
- and
- http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=10399
- and
- http://www.vdare.com/buchanan/070108_war.htm)
-
- So I ask now: will the other boot drop? Will this candor
next extend to the immigration controversy ?
-
- The vast majority of Americans live under the comfortable
illusion that theirs is a free country. They suppose that issues are openly
and honestly debated in the newspapers and on talk shows. In this imaginary
world, all issues affecting public policy are on the table and are constantly
scrutinized by the best and the brightest.
-
- But that is simply not the case. In fact, I would go
so far as to argue the opposite-that virtually all of the really critical
issues affecting the United States and its role in the world are actually
excluded from discussion in the elite media or in the political arena.
-
- The classic case: US policy in the Middle East. Despite
the obvious fact that US support for Israel has crucial implications for
war and peace, the vast majority of Americans are oblivious to what is
really going on in this region.
-
- Most Americans would be appalled to learn the truth about
what former President Jimmy Carter terms "the abominable oppression
and persecution in the occupied Palestinian territories, with a rigid system
of required passes and strict segregation between Palestine's citizens
and Jewish settlers in the West Bank." Carter calls attention to the
"enormous imprisonment wall now under construction, snaking through
what is left of Palestine to encompass more and more land for Israeli settlers."
(Los Angeles Times, December 8 2006).
-
- Carter's recent book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid,
and his courageous defense of it, seem finally to be triggering a newly
open discussion of Israeli actions and Jewish influence in the U.S. Coming
on the heels of the work of the University of Chicago's John Mearsheimer
and Harvard University's Stephen Walt on the Israel Lobby, it highlights
many of the same issues. Indeed, Carter has explicitly endorsed Mearsheimer
and Walt's conclusion that American policy in the Middle East does not
reflect genuine American interests, but instead those of the Israel Lobby.
( Carter Shares Insight On Peace In Mideast, by Marty Rosen, Coastal Post,
January 3 2007)
-
- This is why it is possible to hope that the role of Jewish
influence in promoting the epochal change inaugurated by the 1965 Immigration
Act might also now be discussed openly and honestly
-
- Carter is quite clear that open discussion of Israel's
policies in the U.S. has been suppressed:
-
- "This reluctance to criticize any policies of the
Israeli government is because of the extraordinary lobbying efforts of
the American-Israel Political Action Committee and the absence of any significant
contrary voices. It would be almost politically suicidal for members of
Congress to suggest that Israel comply with international law or to speak
in defense of justice or human rights for Palestinians. What is even more
difficult to comprehend is why the editorial pages of the major newspapers
and magazines in the United States exercise similar self-restraint, quite
contrary to private assessments expressed quite forcefully by their correspondents
in the Holy Land."
-
- In fact, it is not at all difficult to comprehend how
this regime of "self-restraint" is maintained. President Carter
himself, and Profs. Mearsheimer and Walt, point to pressure by the Israel
Lobby on the media, consequent media self-censorship, and the intimidation
of dissidents.
-
- Carter's book has created the astounding spectacle of
a former president of the United States and Nobel Peace Prize winner being
called an anti-Semite, being condemned by mainstream Jewish organizations
such as the ADL and the Simon Wiesenthal Center, and having his offers
to give talks at major universities with high Jewish enrollment rejected.
The saga of the book's treatment on Amazon has been a farce.
-
- The ADL's Abe Foxman is one of many who have used the
old canard of anti-Semitism to condemn both President Carter and Mearsheimer
and Walt. (My favorite title in this genre is by David Horowitz: "
Jimmy Carter: Jew-Hater, Genocide-Enabler, Liar".)
-
- I focus on Foxman's comments because he heads a mainstream
Jewish activist organization and thus reflects the opinions of at least
a major component of the organized Jewish community. (It has long been
noticed that there is a gap between the attitudes of the majority of American
Jews and the attitudes of the established Jewish leaders. This is especially
apparent on issues such as the neoconservative agenda of regime change
in the Middle East and support of expansionist right-wing governments in
Israel.)
-
- The point here is that the Jewish Establishment will
strongly resist any discussion of Jewish influence or dual loyalty in any
area of public policy, no matter how judicious and factually-based it may
be. These Jewish leaders have a strong sense of history. They know that
Jews have repeatedly become elites in European societies. But they also
realize that Jewish power and influence and dual loyalty have been potent
themes of anti-Semitism throughout the ages. And they know that increases
in Jewish power and influence have often been followed by the rise of
rise of anti-jewish movements spearheaded by people whose interests have
been damaged by that Jewish power and influence.
-
- The strategy used by the Jewish Establishment is not
to condemn the neocons for acting on their strong emotional and ethnic
ties to Israel and manipulating the Bush administration into the disaster
of Iraq and a looming war with Iran. Nor is it to urge that the Israel
Lobby be scaled back in an effort to bring it more in line with a reasonable
view of American interests. Rather, they go into the full blown smear and
intimidation mode.
-
- Hence the fury among Jewish activists when General Wesley
Clark blurted our that "New York money people" are gung-ho for
bankrolling politicians who will support US involvement in a war against
Iran; and that talk of a war with Iran is common in Israel. As Matthew
Iglesias, himself Jewish, notes: "Everything Clark said is true.
What's more, everybody knows it's true." (American Prospect, January
23, 2007). But, as we should know by now, truth is irrelevant here.
-
- Partly this is because, thus far, these tactics have
been tremendously effective. The American Jewish Establishment will not
change these tactics until they stop working. After all, it is a long road
from widespread discussion on the internet and occasional mentions in the
above-ground media to having a real influence on the President and in the
halls of Congress. There, change will be much slower.
-
- This is especially true given the very large role of
Jewish money infunding the newly-resurgent Democrats. On the Republican
side, as Scott McConnell has argued , the neocons may be down, but they
are far from out. And they are still pushing for <http://antiwar.com/pat/?articleid=10308>war
against Iran .
-
- I think, too, that the American Jewish leadership no
longer has the flexibility to use any other strategy. The radical expansionists,
often motivated by religious and ethnic fanaticism, have long been in control
in Israel-since 1967 really. They are the vanguard of the Jewish community,
and as usual, they they pull the rest of the Jewish community with
them. The moderates (aka "self-hating Jews") have been shoved
aside and do not really count any more. Similarly, the organized Jewish
community in America is dominated by the expansionists. Jews who do not
sign on to Israel's expansionist agenda are relegated to the fringes.
-
- Indeed, one of the arguments of Mearsheimer and Walt
is that Israel would be far better off if it could not persuade Washington
to support its expansionist agenda. And reasonable Jews like Jerome Slater
are wondering what it takes to "save Israel from itself":
-
- "The real issue is the willed ignorance-the psychological
need not to know-of our community. The price-to the Palestinians, to the
Israelis, and to American national security-is already unbearable, and
it may well soon become apocalyptic."
-
- These comments bring to mind historian Albert Lindemann's
statement in his book Esau's Tears (P535)
-
- "Jews actually do not want to understand their
past-or at least those aspects of their past that have to do with the hatred
directed at them, since understanding may threaten other elements of their
complex and often contradictory identities."
-
- Whether it's about the past or the present, the pattern
among Jews is self-deception and willful ignorance.
-
-
- Kevin MacDonald [kmacd@csulb.edu] is Professor of Psychology
at California State University-Long Beach. For his website, go to http://www.csulb.edu/~kmacd/
-
- Excerpted from Mr. MacDonald's essay Immigration Policy:
Is The Other Boot About To Drop?
|