zaterdag 16 maart 2019

Ian Buruma's Gebrek aan Logica 34


Zomer 2014 verklaarde de joodse Amerikaan, Henry Siegman, tegenover de joods Amerikaanse programmamaker Amy Goodman ‘Stop Killing Palestinians and End the Occupation.’  Als voormalig hoofd van ‘the American Jewish Congress and the Synagogue Council of America,’ gaf hij commentaar op 

the assault on Gaza, Hamas’ rocket attacks on Israel, and how peace could be attainable if the Obama administration reverse decades-long support for the Israeli occupation. Born in 1930 in Germany, Siegman fled as the Nazis came to power, eventually arriving in the United States.

Siegman zei: 

The difference between Hamas and Israel is that Israel is actually implementing [a destruction policy] — actually preventing a Palestinian state which doesn’t exist. Millions of Palestinians live in this subservient position without rights, without security, without hope, and without a future.’ 

In een commentaar op de Israelische 'rechtvaardiging' dat het doden van Palestijnen, vanaf 1948 tot nu, noodzakelijk is als zelfverdediging antwoordde Siegman:

'If you don’t want to kill Palestinians, if that’s what pains you so much, you don’t have to kill them. You can give them their rights, and you can end the occupation. And to put the blame for the occupation and for the killing of innocents that we are seeing in Gaza now on the Palestinians — why? Because they want a state of their own? They want what Jews wanted and achieved? This is a great moral insult.'

Dit gebrek aan ‘moreel’ besef, waarover Henry Siegman sprak, is kenmerkend voor al degenen die de Israelisch terreur tegen de Palestijnse bevolking trachten te vergoelijken of zelfs te rechtvaardigen, met voorop natuurlijk joodse organisaties als AIPAC in de VS en het CIDI in Nederland. Het weerzinwekkende van deze zionistische propagandisten is dat zij door een conspiracy of silence het regime van Netanyahu proberen te redden, zelfs nadat deze extremistische premier op woensdag 13 februari 2019, voorafgaand aan de ‘Warsaw Ministerial conference on the Middle East,’ beklemtoonde dat de bijeenkomst van meer dan 60 naties — waaronder Arabische landen — een belangrijke stap was in het najagen van hun  ‘common interest in advancing war with Iran… 

In a joint photo-op with Bibi, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo not only declined to criticize Netanyahu, he all but endorsed his war cry. ‘You can’t achieve peace and stability in the Middle East without confronting Iran,’ Pompeo told a reporter who asked about Bibi’s statement. ‘The Islamic Republic is a malign influence in Lebanon, in Yemen, in Syria and in Iraq.’ […] 

In the unlikely event that Trump actually does go to war with Iran, he will probably lose. The lesson of Iraq is that the U.S. can’t win a war in the Middle East without public support. Trump won’t get it, even at home. When things go bad, Israel will be blamed for dragging the U.S. into an unnecessary conflict for its own selfish reasons.

Maybe Trump believes that Israel, on its own, can win a shooting war that brings down the regime in Tehran. If so, he is mistaken. The Israeli Defense Forces can win tactical air battles in Syria. Stopping Iran’s spread toward Israeli territory is a worthwhile and proportional use of military force. But Israel lacks the manpower and the will to participate even in the invasion and occupation of nearby Iranian proxies in Gaza and Lebanon.

Een oorlog tegen Iran vergroot Netanyahu’s kans om alsnog de parlementsverkiezingen van 2019 te winnen, hetgeen opnieuw het premierschap een stap dichterbij zal brengen. Bovendien zou hij aan een dreigende gevangenisstraf kunnen ontsnappen nu hij door de Israëlische procureur-generaal wordt vervolgd wegens corruptie en vertrouwensbreuk. Maar eendergelijke context wordt angstvallig verzwegen door het CIDI, dat propaganda maakt voor de zelfbenoemde ‘Joodse staat’ onder de bedrieglijke leuze ‘Vóór Israel vóór vrede, tegen antisemitisme,’ terwijl het in de praktijk een beleid steunt dat ook het leven opoffert van jonge Joods-Israeli’s die het zionistisch extremisme met geweld moeten opleggen. Een nieuwe biljoenen verslindende oorlog in het Midden-Oosten klinkt vanzelfsprekend aanlokkelijk voor niet alleen de NAVO, die al enige tijd samen met de Israelische marine oefent — uitgerust met nucleaire raketten die vanaf nucleair aangedreven onderzeeboten kunnen worden gelanceerd — maar ook voor de westerse wapenfabrikanten. Tegelijkertijd twijfelt niemand met een beetje verstand eraan dat grootscheeps geweld tegen Iran — dat wordt gesteund door Rusland en China — desastreus zal aflopen voor de wereldvrede. Maar ook dit zult u van de propagandisten bij het CIDI niet snel vernemen. Zij worden betaald om juist de agressieve politiek van de ‘rogue state’ Israel in Nederland salonfähig te maken. De opdracht van zowel AIPAC als het CIDI is in feite ervoor te zorgen dat westerse politici de Israëlische terreur accepteren. Het gaat daarbij niet om wat gewone belastingbetalende burgers vinden van de Joods-Israelische terreur, maar hoe westerse politici die terreur politiek beoordelen. Europese burgers, zo blijkt uit onderzoek, wijzen het Israelisch geweld af, en beschouwen Israel een gevaar voor de wereldvrede. Maar dat interesseert de zionistische lobbyisten niet, zij richten zich op de politici van de elite en haar mainstream-media, en zijn blind voor het gevaar dat aan deze strategie kleeft. In zijn studie The Fatal Embrace. Jews and the State (1993) wijst Benjamin Ginsberg, joods- Amerikaans hoogleraar Politieke Wetenschappen, er met betrekking tot deze bedreiging op dat:

[t]hough Jews have learned to look, talk, and dress like other Americans, they are not fully assimilated either in their own minds or in the eyes of their neighbors. Even in America, the marginality of the Jews makes them at least potentially vulnerable to attack. 

In America as elsewhere, moreover, Jews are outsiders who are often more successful than their hosts. Because of their historic and, in part, religiously grounded emphasis on education and literacy, when given an opportunity Jews have tended to prosper. And, to make matters worse, Jews often, secretly or not so secretly, conceive themselves to be morally and intellectually superior to their neighbors. Jews, to be sure, by no means have a monopoly on group or national snobbery. In contemporary America every group is encouraged to take pride in its special heritage and achievements. The problem is that Jews as a group are more successful than virtually all the others. Indeed, Jews are extremely successful outsiders who sometimes have the temerity (onbedachtzaamheid. svh) to rub it in (inwrijven. svh). As one outraged right-wing columnist noted recently, a Yiddish synonym for dullard or dope is ‘goyischer kopf,’ that is, someone who thinks like a non-Jew. 

The question with which this book is concerned, however, is not so much the roots of anti-Jewish sentiment as the conditions under which such sentiment is likely to be politically mobilized. As we shall see, where an anti-Semitic politics becomes important, usually more is involved than simple malice toward the Jews. In politics, principles — even as unprincipled a principle as anti-Semitism — are seldom  completely divorced from some set of political interests. In the case of anti-Semitism, major organized campaigns against the Jews usually reflect not only ethnic hatred, they also represent efforts by the political opponents of regimes or movements with which Jews are allied to destroy or supplant them. Anti-Semitism has an instrumental as well as an emotive character. Thus to understand the cycle of Jewish success and anti-Semitic attack — and to understand why the United States is not exceptional — it is necessary to consider the place of Jews in politics particularly, as Hannah Arendt noted long ago, their peculiar relationship to the state.   

In subtiele bewoordingen en soms tussen de regels door tracht Ginsberg zijn joodse lezers duidelijk te maken dat hun huidige positie als succesvolle ‘outsiders’ met een sterk tribaal gevoel, in feite even wankel blijft als altijd. Zeker wanneer zij op de Amerikaanse en Europese ‘goj’ neerkijken en hem verslijten voor een sukkel, oftewel een ‘goyischer kopf.’ De overlevingskans van joden als buitenstaanders is altijd direct afhankelijk geweest van de bescherming door vorsten, bischoppen dan wel andere machtigen, en in het huidige tijdperk de elite in Washington en op Wall Street. Al in 1945 waarschuwde de joods-Duitse politiek theoreticus Hannah Arendt voor een dergelijke afhankelijkheid, toen zij extremistische zionisten rondom de socialistische voorman Ben-Goerion bekritiseerde vanwege hun overtuiging dat zij de ‘onafhankelijkheid’ van ‘het joodse volk’ zouden kunnen verzekeren:

onder de vleugels van elke grootmacht sterk genoeg om zijn ontwikkeling te beschermen. Paradoxaal als het mag klinken, maar juist deze nationalistische misvatting dat een natie een inherente onafhankelijkheid bezit, had tot gevolg dat de zionisten de joodse nationale emancipatie volledig afhankelijk maakten van de materiële belangen van een andere natie. Het feitelijke resultaat was een terugkeer van de nieuwe beweging naar de traditionele methoden van shtadlonus (de vroegere ‘hofjoden’ svh), die de zionisten ooit eens zo bitter hadden gehaat en zo fel hadden gehekeld. Nu kenden ook de zionisten politiek gesproken geen betere plaats meer dan de foyers van de machtigen en ze kenden geen betere basis voor hun overeenkomsten dan de goede diensten aan te bieden als agenten van buitenlandse belangen… Als de joden in Palestina kunnen worden belast met de taak om voor een deel zorg te dragen voor de Amerikaanse belangen in dat gedeelte van de wereld dan zou inderdaad de fameuze uitspraak van opperrechter Brandeis nog bewaarheid worden: men moet een zionist zijn om een perfecte Amerikaanse patriot te zijn… Maar slechts dwaasheid kan een beleid dicteren dat vertrouwt op bescherming van een verre imperiale macht terwijl het de welwillendheid van de buren verspeelt,

hetgeen Arendt tot de volgende vraag voerde: ‘Welk programma hebben de zionisten te bieden voor een oplossing van het Arabisch-joodse conflict?’  Op zijn beurt schreef  professor Ginsberg:

For nearly two thousand years, Jews lived as scattered minorities while preserving a considerable measure of communal identity and cultural distinctiveness from the societies that surrounded them. Their distinctiveness was maintained by Jews' religious and communal institutions and was often reinforced by the hostility of their neighbors and the antipathy of Moslem and Christian religious institutions. Jewish religious practice required male participants to read prayers and other texts, and hence Jewish men received a measure of education that made them considerably more literate and numerate (reciteren. svh) than the people among whom they lived. Their geographic dispersion and literacy combined to help Jews become important traders in the medieval and early modern worlds. Jewish merchants, linked by ties of religion, culture and often family, played an important role in international commerce. 

At the same time, however, their literacy, commercial acumen (scherpzinnigheid. svh), and even their social marginality often made Jews useful to kings, princes, and sultans. Into the eighteenth century, rulers regularly relied upon Jews as a source of literate administrators and advisors. European monarchs, moreover, depended upon Jewish financiers to manage their fiscal affairs and relied heavily upon Jewish merchants and bankers for loans. In addition, because Jews remained outsiders to the societies in which they lived, sovereigns found them useful instruments for carrying out unpopular tasks, notably collecting taxes. 

For their part, Jews, who like Sikhs and other ethnic minorities were offered the state’s protection in exchange for services, have usually conceived it to be to their advantages to undertake these tasks. Indeed, Jews often saw this as their only viable alternative. Social marginality made Jews the objects of popular hostility at times shading into violence, and kings could offer a Jewish community protection in exchange for its services. At the same time, the crown could provide Jews with financial opportunities and allow them to enter commercial fields that would otherwise have been closed to them. This exchange of protection and opportunity for service was the foundation for a centuries-long relationship between Jews and the state. Such alliances were responsible for the construction of some of the most powerful states of the Mediterranean and European worlds, including the Habsburg (Oostenrijk. svh), Hohenzollern (Duitsland svh), and Ottoman empires (Turkije. svh)

De joodse werkzaamheden in het belang van de doorgaans onrechtvaardige macht maakten hen gehaat onder de bevolking. Arme boeren, die nog tot de tweede helft van de negentiende eeuw in sommige delen van Europa in feodale omstandigheden leefden, en de verpauperde arbeidersbevolking in geïndustrialiseerde steden, leden onder de uitbuiting van een kleine, schatrijke elite. Daardoor ontwikkelden zij een sterke weerzin tegen de elite en haar joodse belastingophalers en bankiers. Dit was een onvermijdelijke reactie, aangezien de gemarginaliseerden nooit in contact kwamen met de rijke elite zelf, maar wel met joden die als collaborateurs van de machtigen optraden. Met betrekking tot jodenhaat stelt de joods-Amerikaanse  organisatie Jews For Racial & Economic Justice: 

Engaging in a pattern of behavior that should feel familiar to anyone listening to today’s right-wing rhetoric about immigration and refugees, Christian nobility from antiquity on through the Renaissance curried favor with their populations by placing restrictions on economic opportunities for Jews, and sometimes isolating them physically by confining them to what came to be called ghettos. Prohibited from owning land or joining tradesmen’s guilds, Jews were restricted to jobs that Christians found distasteful or were prohibited by the Church, such as money-lending and tax collecting. (There is recent scholarship that contradicts this sequence of events, and suggests that Jews arrived in the cities of early Europe armed with very high literacy rates for the era, seeking better jobs, which means that antisemitic restrictions on Jews were a form of backlash and protectionism.) 

Regardless of the chicken-and-egg nature of this debate, this era saw the genesis of many anti-Jewish myths. Laws that funneled Jews into certain professions such as money lending could only serve to reinforce these stereotypes. (A parallel is the forced illiteracy of enslaved Africans in many Southern states prior to emancipation, which re-inscribes the stereotype that Black people are inherently stupid — a painful lie that persists to this day. In both examples, a present-day oppressive stereotype originates in a prior act of oppression.) After centuries of church indoctrination claiming that Jews rejected Jesus, had killed the son of God, and were agents of the devil, it was easy for European Christians to believe that Jews were the cause of their problems. Whether it was spreading the Black Plague or hoarding a community’s wealth, they were an ideal group to scapegoat. This meant that attention and anger was diverted away from the people who levied the taxes and toward the ‘strange,’ ‘greedy’ Jews tasked with collecting them.

Once this mythology was established, it followed Jews throughout Europe, and was exported to the Middle East, North Africa, and the Americas through colonialism and imperial conquest… The key distinction is that there was no specifically anti-Jewish ideology that bore any resemblance to European antisemitism, and for long stretches of time, Jews lived safely alongside their Muslim neighbors. This history disproves narratives that assert universal persecution as the permanent condition of Jews in the world, rather than describing antisemitism as a historically specific product of European society that can also be interrupted. That’s why the histories of Mizrahi (joodse Arabieren. svh) and Sephardi Jews throw a beautiful wrench into attempts (by the right and sometimes the left) to manipulate Jewish fear by universalizing Ashkenazi historical trauma. This erasure of Mizrahi and Sephardi history fuels Islamophobia by spreading an inaccurate story about Jewish experiences outside of Europe.


Benjamin Ginsburg zet in The Fatal Embrace. Jews and the State uiteen dat deze uitzonderingspositie van de joodse ‘outsiders’ in de christelijke wereld:

persisted into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Jews have maintained a sense of distinctiveness from surrounding societies and have, as a result, continued to experience a measure of suspicion, hostility, and discrimination. Concern about their neighbors’ attitudes toward them has continued to lead Jews to seek the protection of the state. At the same time, modern Jewish secular culture, like its religious antecedents, has emphasized education. This has enabled Jews to acquire professional and technical skills that can make them as valuable to presidents, prime ministers, and commissars as they had been to monarchs. 

Where Jews have been unable to obtain protection from existing states, they have often played active roles in movements seeking to reform or supplant these regimes with new ones more favorably disposed toward them. Thus, in the nineteenth century, middle-class Jews were active in liberal movements that advocated the removal of religious disabilities. At the same time, working-class Jews were prominent in socialist and communist movements that sought the overthrow of existing regimes in the name of full social equality. In some cases, including Wilhelmian Germany and Habsburg Austria-Hungary, regimes provided access to a small number of very wealthy Jews while subjecting the remainder to various forms of exclusion. In those cases, Jews could be found both at the pinnacles of power and among the leaders of the opposition. 

Over the past several centuries, then, Jews have played a major role both in the strengthening of existing states and in efforts to supplant established regimes with new ones. Their relationship to the state has often made it possible for Jews to attain great wealth and power. At the same time, however, relationships between Jews and states have also been the chief catalysts for organized anti-Semitism. 

Voor haar eigen welzijn zou de joodse gemeenschap in het Westen, zeker in de VS, zich van dit laatste veel bewuster moeten zijn. Gezien het feit dat uit onderzoek blijkt dat hun ‘success story’ sinds de jaren zestig ‘even more phenomenal [is] considering the speed in which they became rich,’ terwijl sinds ‘1979, the bottom 90 percent of Americans have seen their very share of national income decline from 58 percent to 46 percent, costing them nearly $11,000 per household’ is het buitengewoon onverstandig om de voorafgaande geschiedenis te negeren. Vooral  ook omdat:

[e]ven when they are closely linked to the state, Jews usually continue to be a separate and distinctive group in society and, so, to arouse the suspicions of their neighbors. Indeed, in the service of the state, Jews have often become very visible and extremely powerful outsiders and thus awakened more suspicion and jealousy than ever before. As a result, the relationship between Jews and the state is always problematic. An identification with Jews can weaken the state by exposing it to attack as the servant of foreigners. Correlatively, Jews’ identification with the state invites political forces that are seeking to take over or destroy the established order to make use of anti-Semitism as a political weapon.


Voor een niet gering deel wordt  de toenemende kritiek op de houding van zionisten veroorzaakt door een immorele kongsi van joodse neoconservatieve fanatici die de VS misbruikt voor haar eigen dubieuze agenda. Zo demoniseerde op 5 maart 2019 de joods Amerikaanse senator Charles Schumer, leider van de Democratische minderheid, de voorstanders van een ‘boycott against Israel,’ door hen te beschuldigen onderdeel te zijn van een ‘anti-Semitic movement.’ Het actief bestrijden van de voortdurende Israelische schendingen van het internationaal recht kan nu dankzij een initiatiefwet van ondermeer Schumer verboden gaan worden in het land dat door Ian Buruma wordt geprezen als ‘a model of freedom and openness.’ De wet kan een oproep tot een boycot van Israel: 

make it a felony for Americans to support the international boycott against Israel, commonly known as BDS. Anyone guilty of violating the prohibitions will face a minimum civil penalty of $250,000 and a maximum criminal penalty of $1 million and 20 years in prison.

Twintig jaargevangenisstraf voor het opkomen van de mensenrechten inn het bijzonder en het internationaal recht in het algemeen. Joodse misdadigers in Israel staan daarmee boven de wet. En dit terwijl onder andere:

[c]asualties in the ongoing protests in Gaza, which began in March, continue to mount; nearly 180 mostly unarmed Palestinian protesters have been killed by Israeli forces, with more than 18,000 injured, according to the United Nations. Dozens of those deaths came in mid-May, as the United States took the provocative step of moving its embassy to Jerusalem. Tensions will surely spike again following last week’s decision by the United States to stop billions in funding to the United Nations agency that delivers aid to Palestinian refugees,

aldus de joodse Amerikaan Joseph Levine, hoogleraar filosofie aan de Universiteit van Massachusetts, en lid van de ‘Jewish Voice for Peace Academic Advisory Counci.’ In The New York Times van 4 september 2018 schreef hij: 

B.D.S. began in 2005 in response to a call by more than 100 Palestinian civil society organizations, with the successful movement against apartheid South Africa in mind. The reasoning was that Israel, with its half-century occupation of Palestinian territories, would be equally deserving of the world’s condemnation until its policies changed to respect Palestinian political and civil rights. B.D.S. calls for its stance of nonviolent protest to remain in effect until three conditions are met: that Israel ends its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantles the wall; that Israel recognizes the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and that Israel respects, protects and promotes the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in United Nations Resolution 194. […]

After fairly well characterizing a perfectly reasonable attitude Palestinians have about who is responsible for the Holocaust and who should pay any reparations for it, Mr. Schumer then appeals to the Torah to justify the Jewish claim against them. But this is a totally illegitimate appeal as a form of public reason, no different from appealing to religious doctrine when opposing abortion. In fact, I claim you can’t find any genuine argument that isn’t guilty of breaching the limits of the reasonable in this way for the alleged right to establish the Jewish state in Palestine.

This almost certainly explains why opponents of B.D.S. are now turning to the heavy hand of the state to criminalize support for it. In a ‘fair fight’ within the domain of public reason, they would indeed find themselves ‘delegitimized.’


Desondanks suggereert Ian Buruma als een volleerde liberal propagandist dat van een ‘speciale band tussen Israel en de Verenigde Staten,’ en een ‘veronderstelde dominantie van “Joodse belangen” in Washington’ geen sprake is, en 

omkleed is met zoveel lagen mythologie en kwalijke veronderstellingen dat het zeer moeilijk is geworden om de Israelische rol in de Amerikaanse politiek kritisch en koel te bediscussiëren. Maar er niet over praten lokt alleen maar nog meer samenzweringstheorieën uit. 

Daarentegen laten talloze ter zake kundige joodse critici aan de hand van zionistische misdaden gedocumenteerd zien dat er wel degelijk nauwe banden bestaan tussen ‘Amerika’ en het Joods-Israelisch regime. Daarnaast  tonen zij aan dat de joodse lobby in de VS buitengewoon invloedrijk is. Niet voor niets oordeelde een insider als president Bill Clinton dat AIPAC ‘beter dan wie dan ook in deze stad lobbyt’ en concludeerde hij dat ‘U verbluffend effectief [bent] geweest.’  

De bewijzen stapelen zich op, maar voor broodschrijvers als Buruma geldt dat met het oog op zijn imago en inkomen het verstrekken van dergelijke informatie absoluut taboe is. Eveneens blijft voor mainstream-opiniemakers het volgende onbespreekbaar: op 3 april 2003, twee weken na de illegale Shock and Awe-inval in Irak benadrukte de Joods-Israelische kwaliteitskrant Haaretz dat: 

The war in Iraq was conceived by 25 neoconservative intellectuals, most of them Jewish, who are pushing President Bush to change the course of history. 

Ruim veertien jaar later, op 7 november 2017 werd bekend dat:

U.S. spending on post-9/11 wars to reach $5.6 trillion by 2018. The latest report in the Costs of War series find that the average American taxpayer has spent $23,386 on these wars since 2001.

Kort samengevat zijn de enigen die van dit astronomisch hoog bedrag geprofiteerd hebben het westers militair-industrieel complex, dat zijn winsten almaar zag stijgen, én Israel dat de ontstane chaos benut om de hegemonie in de regio met geweld of dreigementen af te dwingen. Het is daarom niet onverklaarbaar dat een stijgend aantal burgers de joods-Amerikaanse lobby, die ‘the course of history’ wilde veranderen, ziet als een vijfde colonne van ‘outsiders,’ die niet solidair is met allereerst de belangen van de Amerikaanse bevolking, maar met die van de zelfbenoemde expansionistische ‘Joodse staat.’ Dit feit is geen manifestatie van ‘anti-semitisme,’ maar een logische reactie, gebaseerd op het eenvoudig te signaleren gegeven dat een minieme groep joodse Pro-Israel lobbyisten buitenproportioneel veel macht bezit in Washington en op Wall Street. Daar komt bij dat deze joden ‘niet volledig geassimileerd’ wil ‘zijn,’ zoals Ginsberg opmerkt. Ik voeg hieraan toe dat ook een toenemend aantal joodse Amerikanen zich van de  pro-zionistische politiek distantieert. Wanneer Ian Buruma zijn broodheren tracht te behagen door met grote stelligheid te stellen dat ‘Soros might be described as the personification’ van ‘the West,’ omdat deze veroordeelde geldspeculant ‘everything’ vertegenwoordigt ‘that nativists and anti-Semites hate: rich, cosmopolitan, Jewish, and a liberal dedicated to’ wat officieel heet ‘the open society,’ dan vermindert zijn cynische lofspraak geenszins mogelijk latent ‘anti-Semitisme,’ maar versterkt dit juist. 

Benjamin Ginsberg waarschuwt dan ook dat:

[i]t is in these struggles between regimes and their enemies that popular suspicion of Jews is often mobilized by contending political forces and transformed into organized anti-Semitism. This is when the embrace of the state, initially filled with so much promise, can prove to be fatal.

Hij baseert zich daarbij op de geschiedenis:

Jews played key roles in constructing a number of the most important states to emerge in the Mediterranean and Atlantic worlds over te past 700 years. These have included an extraordinary  variety of regimes running the gamut from absolutist through liberal to Socialist regimes. For manie of these states, Jews were crucial in building and staffing institutions of extraction, coercion, administration, and mobilization. As we shall subsequently see, these relationships between Jews and the state have been the chief catalysts for organized anti-Semitism. 

Het kan niemand met een klein beetje psychologisch inzicht verbazen dat de haat tegen de grilligheid en onrechtvaardigheid van de macht en haar opportunistische handlangers zich richtte tegen joden die zich als willig instrument lieten gebruiken en daarvan profiteerden. Met deze observatie wordt ‘anti-semitisme’ geenszins gerechtvaardigd, maar wel verklaart. Nogmaals Ginsberg:

As a foreign minority, wherever they lived Jews have faced disabilities and dangers. The protection of the state, therefore, has for centuries seemed to represent opportunity and safety. For example, in both Europe and the Middle East during the medieval era, Jews were eager to induce (ertoe brachten. svh) rulers to grant them privileges and provide them with protection from potentially hostile neighbors.

Dezelfde ondergeschikte rol speelt momenteel het zionistisch regime in het olierijke Midden-Oosten, waardoor Hannah Arendt’s opmerking dat de Joden in Israel de ‘shtadlonus’ van de huidige tijd zijn geworden, juist is gebleken. Waar de collaboratie met de macht ten koste van de bevolking uiteindelijk toe leidt, vertelt ons de geschiedenis. In verband met de lengte, volgende keer meer. 






Ian Buruma's Gebrek aan Logica 33



Vrijdag 8 maart 2019 verklaarde de vooraanstaande Joods-Israelische auteur en journalist van Haaretz tegenover de joods-Amerikaanse interviewster Amy Goodman van Democracy Now!:

The Israeli lobby, the Jewish lobby, are, by far, too strong and too aggressive. It’s not good for the Jewish community. It’s not good for Israel.

What is happening now is that some kind of fresh air, some kind of new voices are emerging from Capitol Hill, raising legitimate questions about Israel, about America’s foreign policy toward Israel and about the Israeli lobby in the States. Those are very legitimate questions, and it is more than needed to raise them. But the Israeli propaganda and the Jewish propaganda in recent years made it as a systematic method, whenever anybody dares to raise questions or to criticize Israel, he is immediately and automatically labeled as anti-Semite, and then he has to shut his mouth, because after this, what can he say?

This vicious circle should be broken. And I really hope that great, great politicians, like Mrs. Omar and others, will be courageous enough to stand in front those accusations and to say, ‘Yes, it is legitimate to criticize Israel. Yes, it is legitimate to raise questions. And this does not mean that we are anti-Semites. We are not ready to play this game anymore, in which they shut our mouths with those accusations, which, in most of the cases, are hollow.’

Wat Levy kwalificeert als ‘gerechtvaardigde vragen over Israel, over de Amerikaanse politiek ten aanzien van Israel en over de Israelisch lobby in de Verenigde Staten,’ noemt mijn oude vriend Ian Buruma ‘Links antisemitisme’ dat meestal ‘stoelt op fanatieke bezwaren tegen de Israëlische behandeling van de Palestijnen.’ Eerder al had hij als mainstream-opiniemaker de Britse Liberaal Democratische politicus David Ward beschuldigt van ‘anti-Semitisme’omdat deze volksvertegenwoordiger, volgens Buruma, ‘Israel’s right to exist’ zou hebben ontzegd. In werkelijkheid had Ward opgemerkt dat het hem pijn deed:

that the Jews, who suffered unbelievable levels of persecution during the Holocaust, could within a few years of liberation from the death camps be inflicting atrocities on Palestinians in the new State of Israel and continue to do so on a daily basis in the West Bank and Gaza.

Kortom, Buruma was juist niet getroffen door het feit dat mensen niet via ervaring leren. Ook 'Joden’ niet, die, zoals algemeen bekend is, in Israel een eigen volk vormen. Daarentegen behoren joden buiten Israel tot het volk van het land waar zij leven. Hier kan dus onmogelijk sprake zijn van ‘anti-Semitisme,’ wanneer Ward het expliciet  over de Joodse (hoofdletter!) Israeli's heeft.  Juist het over één kam scheren van alle — in Buruma’s terminologie — ‘Joden,’ dus inclusief de jodenbuiten Israel, kan een vorm van anti-semitisme zijn. Opvallender nog is het feit dat Buruma zo graag hoog opgeeft van het geloof in de Verlichting, dus in de Vooruitgang van samenleving en individu, met andere woorden: dat wij allen door meer kennis en inzicht de fouten van het verleden niet zullen herhalen. Ik hoop niet dat Buruma nu meent dat dit niet voor de ‘Joden’ in de zelfbenoemde ‘Joodse staat’ opgaat, een staat die volgens premier Netanyahu 'only of the Jewish people’ is, waarmee eenvijfde van de bevolking die uit Palestijnse burgers bestaat statenloos is verklaard. Buruma’s dwaasheid past naadloos in de huidige campagne van westerse politici en mainstream-media -- die kennelijk het internationaal recht niet accepteren -- om elke kritiek op de zionistische oorlogsmisdaden en misdaden tegen de menselijkheid meteen te demoniseren als ‘anti-Semitisme.’ 

Laat ik wat langer stilstaan bij dit onderwerp om duidelijkheid te scheppen, nu elke opportunist de kritiek op de zionistische terreur probeert te delegitimeren. In zijn boek The Fatal Embrace. The Politics of Anti-Semitism in the United States (1998), die door de Jewish Herald-Voice geprezen werd als ‘[o]ne of the most important studies on anti-Semitism in this country. It should be required reading for all Jewish community leaders and for every Jew involved in electoral politics at any level,’ benadrukt de joods-Amerikaanse hoogleraar Politieke Wetenschappen aan de Johns Hopkins Universiteit, Benjamin Ginsberg:

Their role in American economic, social, and political institutions has enabled Jews to wield considerable influence in the nation’s public life. The most obvious indicator of this influence is the $3 billion in direct military and economic aid provided to Israel by the United States each year and, for that matter, the like amount given to Egypt since it agreed to maintain peaceful relations with Israel. That fully three-fourths of America’s foreign aid budget is devoted to Israel’s security interests is a tribute in considerable measure to the lobbying prowess of AIPAC and the importance of the Jewish community in American politics. 

Ginsberg wijst erop dat:

American Jews secured their position of power quite recently. During the Second World War, the Jewish community lacked sufficient influence to induce the U.S. government to take any action that might have impeded te slaughter of European Jews.

Veelzeggend in dit verband is dat hoewel 

The United States Office of Strategic Services (the predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and which had been established in 1941–1942 to coordinate intelligence and espionage activities in enemy territory) received reports about Auschwitz during 1942,


de drie daarop volgende jaren de spoorlijnen, waarover joodse Europeanen als vee naar de vernietigingskampen werden gedeporteerd niet door de Geallieerden zijn  gebombardeerd. Bovendien werden tijdens, 

and after World War I, American Jewry became the target of anti-Semitism by a variety of social groups, including the Ku Klux Klan and various immigration restriction advocates. Ivy League universities were no exception, and several of these venerable schools moved to restrict Jewish enrollment during the 1920s… In 1922, Harvard's president, A. Lawrence Lowell, proposed a quota on the number of Jews gaining admission to the university. Lowell was convinced that Harvard could only survive if the majority of its students came from old American stock.

Lowell argued that cutting the number of Jews at Harvard to a maximum of 15% would be good for the Jews, because limits would prevent further anti-Semitism. Lowell reasoned, ‘The anti-Semitic feeling among the students is increasing, and it grows in proportion to the increase in the number of Jews. If their number should become 40% of the student body, the race feeling would become intense.’ 

En wat betreft Yale, de andere ‘Ivy League’ universiteit: 

Not until the early 1960's did Yale University end an informal admissions policy that restricted Jewish enrollment to about 10 percent, according to a new book published by Yale University Press.

Vanwaar de plotselinge omslag die heeft geleid tot de ‘aanzienlijke invloed’ van joodse Amerikanen op de ‘economische, maatschappelijke, en politieke instituten’ in hun land? Ook het Joods-Israelische Ynet wierp op 26 oktober 2011 deze vraag op, onder de kop ‘How did American Jews get so rich?’

Since the mass immigration some 100 years ago, Jews have become richest religious group in American society. They make up only 2% of US population, but 25% of 400 wealthiest Americans. How did it happen, and how crucial is their aid to Israel? […]

A study of the Pew Forum institute from 2008 found that Jews are the richest religious group in the US: Forty-six percent of Jews earn more than $100,000 a year, compared to 19% among all Americans. Another Gallup poll conducted this year found that 70% of American Jews enjoy ‘a high standard of living’ compared to 60% of the population and more than any other religious group.

More than 100 of the 400 billionaires on Forbes' list of the wealthiest people in America are Jews. Six of the 20 leading venture capital funds in the US belong to Jews, according to Forbes…

Jews are well represented in Wall Street, Silicon Valley, the US Congress and Administration, Hollywood, TV networks and the American press — way beyond their percentage in the population…

Their success story is even more phenomenal considering the speed in which they became rich…

The immigrants arrived in the US on crowded boats, and most of them were as poor as church mice. Dr. Robert Rockaway, who studied that period, wrote that 80% of US Jews were employed in manual work before World War I, most of them in textile factories.

Many workplaces were blocked to the Jews due to an anti-Semitic campaign led by industrialist Henry Ford. Most of them lived in crowded and filthy slums in New York — Brooklyn and the Lower East Side.

Many films and books describe the world established in those neighborhoods: Vibrant, but tough and brutal. There was a lively culture of cabarets and small Yiddish theaters, alongside a Jewish mafia with famous crime bosses such as Meyer Lansky, Abner ‘Longie’ Zwillman, and Louis ‘Lepke' Buchalter, who grew up in the filthy alleys.

Many of the Jews, who were socialists in Europe, became active in labor unions and in workers' strikes and protests. Many trade unions were established by Jews.

The Jewish immigrants, however, emerged from poverty and made faster progress than any other group of immigrants. According to Rockaway, in the 1930s, about 20% of the Jewish men had free professions, double the rate in the entire American population.

Anti-Semitism weakened after World War II and the restrictions on hiring Jews were reduced and later canceled as part of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, thanks to the struggle of liberal activists, many of whom were Jews.

In 1957, 75% of US Jews were white-collar workers, compared to 35% of all white people in the US; in 1970, 87% of Jewish men worked in clerical jobs, compared to 42% of all white people, and the Jews earned 72% more than the general average. The only remnant of their poverty is that most of them still support a welfare policy and the Democratic Party.

As they became richer, Jews integrated into society. They moved from the slums to the suburbs, abandoned Yiddish and adopted the clothes, culture, slang and dating and shopping habits of the non-Jewish elite…

Alongside the Jews, millions of immigrants arrived in the US from Ireland, Italy, China and dozens of other countries. They too have settled down since then, but the Jews succeeded more than everyone. Why? All the experts we asked said the reason was Jewish education. Jewish American student organization Hillel found that 9 to 33% of students in leading universities in the US are Jewish.

‘The Jewish tradition always sanctified studying, and the Jews made an effort to study from the moment they arrived in American,’ says Danny Halperin, Israel's former economic attaché in Washington. ‘In addition, the Jews have a strong tradition of business entrepreneurship. The Irish, for example, came from families of land workers with a different mentality, studied less and initiated less.

The Jews progressed because many areas were blocked to them,’ says Halperin. ‘Many Irish were integrated into the police force, for example, and only few Jews. The Jews entered new fields in which there was need for people with initiative. They didn't integrate into traditional banking, so they established the investment banking.

The cinema industry was created from scratch in the 1930s, and the Jews basically took over it. To this day there are many Jewish names in the top echelon of Hollywood and the television networks. Later on, they took high-tech by storm too — another new industry requiring learning abilities.’

‘The Jews were the first people to undergo globalization,’ says Rebecca Caspi, senior vice president of the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA). ‘They had a network of global connections way before other nations, and a strong and supportive community.

The Jewish communal organization is considered a role model for all other ethnic groups. It helped the Jews everywhere and especially in the US, which was always more open than other countries and provided equal opportunities, while on the other hand — wasn’t supportive of the individual.’  


How do community institutions help people succeed in business?

‘The mutual help allowed poor Jews to study. My family is an example of what happened to millions. My grandfather arrived in New York with two dollars in his pocket. He sold pencils, and then pants and then other things, and in the meantime studied English, German and Spanish and established ties.

He had five children, and the family had a small store in Brooklyn. They got help from the HIAS Jewish organization, which allowed them to study. They were so poor that they didn't have money for textbooks, so the siblings helped each other. My father was the youngest, and until he started university the four older siblings had already managed to settle down, so they all helped him complete his medical studies.’

‘The Jews had to excel in order to survive,’ says Avia Spivak, a professor of economic and former Bank of Israel deputy governor. ‘I once had a student of Russian descent, who told me that his parents said to him, “You must be the best, because then you might get a small role.”

That was the situation of the Jews abroad, and in America too until the 1960s. The most prestigious universities didn't take in Jewish students, so they studied in colleges and got the best grades. When the discrimination disappeared, the Jews reached the top.’

Is that why they succeeded in the US more than in other places?

‘The discrimination lessened in most countries. I think Jews succeeded in America in particular because capitalism is good for the Jews. Jews have a tendency for entrepreneurship, they study more and have quick perception, know how to seize opportunities and have networking skills. A competitive environment gives Jews an advantage.’

Is that the reason Israelis are not as rich as American Jews?

‘I think the “Jewish genius” — which is not a genetic issue but a cultural issue — is expressed in Israel in other areas. The Jews in America arrived in a country with existing, stable and strong infrastructure. Here they had to build the entire infrastructure from scratch, under harsh conditions.’

Government hurting aid, but it'll continue.

‘There is no doubt that American Jews' huge success helped Jews survive in Israel. The help is beyond the actual donations,’ says Caspi. ‘The federal aid arrives largely thanks to the Jewish pressure. Israeli businesspeople use their connections in America to open markets and raise funds, especially for the venture capital industry.’

The American aid strengthens the connection between the two communities — which together make up about 80% of the Jewish people — but also creates discomfort on both sides: The Americans view Israel as a ‘shelter for a rainy day’ and feel committed to help the State, but some feel their money is being wasted due to wrong moves; the Israelis live in fear of what will happen if and when the aid stops. The fear is increasing, with one-third of US Jews marrying non-Jews and stating that they feel less connected to Israel.

‘Israel would have been established and would have survived even without the American aid, but it would have been poorer,’ says Halperin. ‘There are areas, like higher education, in which the aid is critical — and if it suddenly disappears, things will be difficult.’

Every time there are arguments between the Israeli government and Jews in America, Israeli and American public figures warn that ‘one day they'll have enough and stop donating.’ Can that happen?

‘The scope of donations is decreasing in the past few years,’ says Halperin. ‘The Jews have a sense of belonging to the American society and give their donations to American organizations. They want to see their names at a New York museum rather than at Jerusalem museum.

As the Holocaust becomes more distant, the fear for Israel's existence drops. In addition, Israel is no longer perceived as a poor country. And the Americans have their own problems: The financial crisis and education in the US, which is becoming more and more expensive. The donations will gradually drop, and may eventually disappear.

But it's hard for me to believe that the donations will disappear at once because of a political crisis. It looks like our government is trying to make it happen with all its might, but fortunately, it can't even do that.’


Dat het ‘kapitalisme goed [is] voor de Joden’  mede omdat ’[t]hey had a network of global connections way before other nations, and a strong and supportive community,’ zoals Rebecca Caspi, vice president van de Jewish Federations of North America stelt, is absoluut geen omstreden feit. Wat ook niet betwijfeld wordt is de overmatige ambitie om de goj, die eeuwenlang op de jood neerkeek, te tonen dat een jood zeker niet de mindere is van de niet-jood. Die houding heeft in het postmoderne tijdperk tevens geleid tot een soms verregaand opportunisme en conformisme onder joden, een houding die voorheen noodzakelijk was om te kunnen overleven in een vijandige omgeving. Hieraan kleeft tevens een negatief aspect. De joods-Amerikaanse onafhankelijke senator Bernie Sanders wees 19 januari 2019 op het volgende:

The most important economic reality of our time is that, over the past four decades, there has been an enormous transfer of income and wealth from the middle class to the richest people. Since 1979, the bottom 90 percent of Americans have seen their very share of national income decline from 58 percent to 46 percent, costing them nearly $11,000 per household.

Deze wijd verspreide omwenteling loopt dus parallel met het toenemende succes van joods-Amerikaanse burgers, zoals onder andere blijkt uit het artikel ‘How did American Jews get so rich?’ in Haaretz en het boek The Fatal Embrace van professor Ginsberg. Terwijl in de VS de ‘bottom 90 percent of Americans have seen their very share of national income decline from 58 percent to 46 percent’ zijn joden in de VS erop vooruitgegaan waardoor nu meer dan  '25% of 400 wealthiest Americans’ van joodse afkomst is, hoewel joden hooguit slechts 1,8 procent van de Amerikaanse bevolking uitmaken. Bovendien zijn:

Jews well represented in Wall Street, Silicon Valley, the US Congress and Administration, Hollywood, TV networks and the American press — way beyond their percentage in the population.

Men hoeft geen psycholoog te zijn om te beseffen dat wanneer één specifieke groep profiteert van een onrechtvaardig neoliberaal systeem dat de meerderheid benadeelt, die groep op de duur bekritiseerd en zelfs gehaat zal worden. Dit is in eerste instantie geen ‘anti-Semitisme,’ zoals Israel lobby beweert, maar een gangbaar reflex van de massa. 

Wanneer bijvoorbeeld Ian Buruma propageert dat de multi-miljardair ‘Soros might be described as the personification of the West,’ omdat ‘[h]e is everything that nativists and anti-Semites hate: rich, cosmopolitan, Jewish, and a liberal dedicated to’ wat Soros ‘the open society’ noemt, dan is dit vanzelfsprekend een perverse voorstelling van zaken. Niet alleen is Soros een vanwege handel met voorkennis veroordeelde beursspeculant die in 1992 de Britse belastingbetalers miljarden verlies liet lijden en hij op dezelfde dag ‘pocketed $1 billion,’ waardoor hij ‘cemented his reputation as the premier currency speculator in the world,’ maar Soros intervenieert bovendien met zijn miljarden in de interne aangelegenheden van andere landen, waar hij dit neoliberale systeem wil importeren. Zo steunde hij met miljarden de Oekraïense, deels fascistische oppositie, die een staatsgreep organiseerde, en daarmee een burgeroorlog en een conflict met de Russische Federatie uitlokte. Bekend is tevens dat dezelfde George Soros in juli 2015 contact opnam met de Griekse premier Alexis Tsipras om het ontslag te eisen van de Griekse minister van Financiën, Yanis Varoufakis, hetgeen de vraag opwerpt ‘what kind of power Soros had over the Greek government to be able to demand his removal from government.’
https://www.independent.co.ug/comment-war-west/2/ 

Welnu wanneer Buruma, als stem van de liberale elite, de speculant George Soros als representant van ‘de open samenleving’ ziet dan is de vraag hoe ‘open’ deze neoliberale ‘samenleving,’ is die deze speculant in lucht voor ogen staat? Daarvoor dient men zich te verdiepen in wie Soros is. Op 20 december 1998 zond het bekende CBS-programma 60 Minutes een onthullend interview uit met Soros, dat de onderzoeksjournalist Steve Kroft als volgt inleidde:

When the Nazis occupied Budapest in 1944, George Soros’ father was a successful lawyer. He lived on an island in the Danube and liked to commute to work in a rowboat. But knowing there were problems ahead for the Jews, he decided to split his family up. He bought them forged papers and he bribed a government official to take 14-year-old George Soros in and swear that he was his Christian godson. But survival carried a heavy price tag. While hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews were being shipped off to the death camps, George Soros accompanied his phony godfather on his appointed rounds, confiscating property from the Jews. 

Kroft stelde Soros de vraag: My understanding is that you went out with this protector of yours who swore that you were his adopted godson.

Mr. SOROS: Yes. Yes.

KROFT: Went out, in fact, and helped in the confiscation of property from the Jews.

Mr. SOROS: Yes. That’s right. Yes.

KROFT: I mean, that sounds like an experience that would send lots of people to the psychiatric couch for many, many years. Was it difficult?

Mr. SOROS: Not – not at all. Not at all. Maybe as a child you don’t see the connection. But it was — it created no — no problem at all.

KROFT: No feeling of guilt?

Mr. SOROS: No… Well, of course I could be on the other side or I could be the one from whom the thing is being taken away. But there was no sense that I shouldn’t be there, because that was – well, actually, in a funny way, it’s just like in markets — that if I weren’t there — of course, I wasn’t doing it, but somebody else would be taking it away anyhow. And – whether I was there or not, I was only a spectator, the property was being taken away. So I had no role in taking away that property. So I had no sense of guilt.
https://www.activistpost.com/2016/11/george-soros-forgotten-interview-cannot-not-look-social-consequences.html 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUdosc33eSE 


Hetzelfde gebrek aan moraliteit maakte van de miljardair George Soros niet alleen ‘de belangrijkste geld-speculant ter wereld,’ maar ook de held van Ian Buruma die in hem  de ‘personificatie van het Westen’ ziet, omdat hij ‘alles is dat nativisten en anti-Semieten haten: rijk, kosmopolitisch, Joods, en een liberal.’ Zonder het te beseffen laat Buruma zien hoe groot en problematisch het huidige probleem van de tweedeling van de neoliberale samenleving is. De vraag blijft namelijk: wat te doen met de overgrote meerderheid die niet ‘rijk, kosmopolitisch, Joods en een liberaal’ is, maar die juist de dupe is geworden van het ‘kapitalisme’ dat volgens Rebecca Caspi, ‘goed [is] voor de Joden,’ zo goed dat de speculant George Soros door Ian Buruma tot de ‘personificatie van het Westen’ wordt gekwalificeerd. Wat te doen met de vele miljoenen ‘nativisten,’ die nooit ‘de personificatie van het Westen’ kunnen worden? Moeten deze gemarginaliseerden, die  van mening zijn dat de belangen van een inheemse bevolking boven die van immigranten gaan, door de elite worden afgeschreven als ‘collateral damage’ van het neoliberalisme? Zijn deze burgers onverzoenlijke tegenstanders van een ‘open samenleving’? Dus een ‘samenleving’ met een neoliberaal systeem dat de overgrote meerderheid van de bevolking laat verarmen en tegelijkertijd 26 individuen zo rijk heeft gemaakt dat zij nu evenveel bezitten als de helft van de hele mensheid tezamen? Dekt mijn oude vriend dat op die manier het onrecht zal verdwijnen? Buruma demonstreert hoever de ‘liberals,’ de door hem zo geprezen ‘urban elites,' van de werkelijkheid zijn afgedreven, en geen enkel alternatief bezitten voor een politiek, economisch, militair, en vooral moreel failliete cultuur. Wat te doen met de gemarginaliseerde meerderheid?

Wanneer een veroordeelde parasitaire geldspeculant als Soros door een broodschrijver wordt uitgeroepen tot ‘de personificatie van het Westen,’ dan is het Westen ten dode opgeschreven. Niet alleen omdat het voortdenderende neoliberalisme in burgeroorlogen zal uitlopen, maar ook omdat een immorele maatschappij zichzelf altijd vernietigt. Er bestaat dan namelijk geen samenhangend geheel meer. In een dergelijke chaos zal het anti-semitisme alleen maar toenemen, en wel omdat joden de schuld zullen krijgen van hun kortstondig succes en invloed. Zeker wanneer een toenemend aantal burgers de loyaliteit van joden ter discussie zal gaan stellen. De vraag wordt dan: zijn zij loyaal aan het volk van het land waarin zij leven, of zijn zij allereerst loyaal aan het Joodse volk in Israel? Die vraag is het logische gevolg van niet alleen de miljardensteun aan de zionistische staat, maar ook van de biljoenen kostende oorlogen in het Midden-Oosten, waarvan alleen het extremistische regime in Israel profiteert. Al dit Amerikaans belastinggeld gaat ten koste van onderwijs, gezondheidszorg, sociale uitkeringen, pensioenen, onderhoud van de infrastructuur, volkshuisvesting, bestrijding van de toenemende armoede in de VS, etcetera. Steeds meer stemmen gaan op dat de joods-Amerikaanse lobbygroep AIPAC niet solidair is met de belangen van de VS, maar met die van Israel. De beschuldiging in de ‘corporate press’ dat dit een exemplarisch voorbeeld is van ‘anti-semitisme’ werkt niet meer, integendeel zelfs, deze beschuldiging wordt in toenemende mate ervaren als juist een voorbeeld van ‘Jewish power.’ Ginsberg waarschuwt dan ook:

Not only is the extraordinary prominence of Jews in American politics a relatively recent development but, during the past several years, there have been some indications that Jewish influence might already be waning (tanende. svh). In 1992, for example, former President George Bush (Bush senior. svh) resisted and ultimately defeated efforts by AIPAC and other Jewish organizations to secure American loan guarantees to assist Israel in the construction of additional Jewish settlements in the territories it occupied after its 1967 war with Arab states.

In a nationally televised press conference during the loan garantee struggle, Bush seemed to question the legitimacy of American Jews’ efforts on Israel’s behalf. The president later denied that this had been his intention. The effect of the Bush press conference and subsequent comments, however, was to intimidate American Jewish organizations and weaken their support for the loan guarantees. The Bush administration’s larger goal was to undermine Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir’s Likud government, which was viewed as an obstacle to the realization of American policy aims in the Middle East. By cowing Israel’s Jewish supporters in America, the white House hoped to weaken Shamir and replace him with a more compliant Israeli government. This American effort was successful. The Likud block was defeated in Israel’s 1992 elections by a labor coalition led by Yitzhak Rabin…

Another indication that the influence of American Jews may be waning is the resurgence of anti-Semitic — sometimes veiled as anti-Zionist — rhetoric in American political discourse. 

Waar de grens ligt tussen anti-semitisme en anti-zionisme, maakt Ginsberg niet duidelijk, hetgeen opnieuw het vermoeden versterkt dat de joodse lobby dit zelf niet weet, en maar al te snel de Holocaust misbruikt om de onverdedigbare politiek van Israel vrij te pleiten. Ook hier speelt het eeuwige probleem van de dubbele loyaliteit van een ieder die zich als een buitenstaander opstelt. Professor Ginsberg schrijft in dit verband:

Whatever its psychological, social, economic, or even evolutionary basis, suspicion of strangers is the norm in all societies, while it is acceptance of outsiders that is unusual and generally ephemeral. When times are good and foreigners play a recognized ad useful role in the community, they may be tolerated. On theater hand, when times are hard and outsiders seem to compete with their hosts, any latent popular xenophobia is more likely to manifest itself, and foreigners may become useful targets for rabble-rousing politicians. Recent events throughout Western Europe are unambiguous examples of this phenomenon. 

Certainly, everywhere that Jews have lived, their social or economic marginality — their position, ‘outside society,’ as Hannah Arendt put it — sooner or later exposed Jews to suspicion, hostility, and discrimination. Even in multi-ethnic societies, Jews have usually been the most successful and visible — and, hence, the most exposed — outsiders. In America, Jews currently appear to be accepted by the larger community. Nevertheless, at least in part by their own choosing, American Jews continue to maintain a significant and visible measure of communal identity and distinctiveness in religious, cultural, and political matters. At the same time, most gentiles continue to perceive Jews to be a peculiar and distinctive group. Though Jews have learned to look, talk, and dress like other Americans, they are not fully assimilated either in their own minds or in the eyes of their neighbors. Even in America, the marginality of the Jews makes them at least potentially vulnerable to attack. 

In America as elsewhere, moreover, Jews are outsiders who are often more successful than their hosts.

Hetgeen de vraag opwerpt: gezien de consequenties, waarom wil een deel van de joodse Westerlingen ‘outsiders’ blijven? Wat drijft hen precies in een gelijkgeschakelde cultuur dat het individualisme verheerlijkt, maar het conformisme afdwingt? Waarom wil dit deel anders zijn dan alle anderen? Waarom denken deze joden tot het Joodse volk te behoren, maar piekeren ze er niet over om naar Israel te emigreren? Waarom laten zij Israel met geweld Palestijns land bezetten, maar willen zij daar zelf niet leven? Waarom kijken zij neer op joodse vredesactivisten in en buiten Israel? Volgende keer meer.


Joodse Vredesactivisten in en buiten Israel.




Peter Flik en Chuck Berry-Promised Land

mijn unieke collega Peter Flik, die de vrijzinnig protestantse radio omroep de VPRO maakte is niet meer. ik koester duizenden herinneringen ...