Professor Alleges Jews Monopolize American Foreign Policy
Oh, we’re up to it again!
And here I thought I was so busy writing about issues, reading, working on some long-range writing projects and driving hundreds of miles doing special programs in elementary and high schools. I KNEW I was forgetting to do something. And TimesOnline’s Daniel Finkelstein has reminded me.
Finkelstein (uh, oh..that name) has a post noting an interesting comment by Professor Richard Dawkins suggesting that a) Jews monopolize American foreign policy and b) if only atheists would have that kind of influence, then the world would be a much better place.
Read Finkelstein’s short but potent post HERE. (Finkelstein always writes some of the most provocative and entertaining posts on the Internet).
I have to get going now. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice left me a message and wants me to fax over my agenda, so she can set American foreign policy. But it’s so hard to do that right now. First I have to issue orders to America’s banks, since I control them, too.
Actually, it isn’t that “the Jews” influence foreign policy (although Condi can’t issue an order without the check list from ME). There are some people in the United States who may be Jewish who work in that area who may be Conservative or Orthodox or Reform and probably don’t agree with each other on religious practices, let alone foreign policy.
And the biggest influence of “the Jews” in America isn’t on foreign policy.
It’s on the profit margins of Chinese restaurants.
P.S. America did actually have a Jewish President: Abraham Lincoln. He must have been Jewish. He was shot in the temple.
15 Responses to “Professor Alleges Jews Monopolize American Foreign Policy”
Hmm, I have to admit I’m surprised by the quote. I’ve read quite a bit of Dawkins and I’ve never seen anything that would make me think he’s an anti-Semite, in the sense of disliking Jews or the Jewish faith particularly. He naturally considers the faith itself to be a bunch of hogwash, but he thinks that of all religions; Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Scientology, all of them. Most of his energy is used against the Christian faith, being the dominant faith in the Western world, where he operates.
While this quote goes too far, in my opinion, if you know his usual points, you realize that this is actually an exaggeration of a point he makes frequently in a much more reasonable tone. The Jewish to Atheist comparison is one he makes frequently. Jews are about 3% of the population and yet have a notable influence (though of course not total control) on US policy. On the other hand atheists, which are about 10% of the population, have exactly zero influence, because of being unorganized and in many respects afraid. Would US foreign policy be much better if atheists had the influence over it Jews seem to (and they do appear to have influence, otherwise I simply can’t explain the almost totally unconditional support of Israel despite it hurting the US quite often)? Well, I don’t really know, atheists come in all shapes, sizes and ideologies, though certainly the idea of getting into wars, or supporting/attacking other countries for religious reasons would end.
Again I can’t pretend to know the heart of Richard Dawkins, but he strikes me as anything but a wide-eyed conspiracy theorist. You’re right to call him on this statement, which goes too far, but I certainly feel he can’t be written off as a bigot on it’s weight alone.
I don’t know if he’s a bigot, really. I just read the quote. My post is on the comment on the quote itself.
This could be akin to the fuss over Bill O’Reilly and the restaurant in Harlem: people commented on the quote. Also, this erroneous contention has come up enough that it was worth commenting on (gotta run, Condi says she can’t work without my marching orders..)
Truly-informed and well-educated intelligent people who are not anti-Semitic know that it is in the interests of the United States to support Israel. This does not mean having to agree with everything that the Government of Israel does.
It is an amazing achievement that some Jews have risen to the top ranks of so many countires and political movements despite their being a small minority in each case. It would make for an interedting study to look at what it is in their culture that enables so mnay to excel intellectually and succeed. Maybe whatever it is could be bottled and marketed? Other minorites would snapt it up like hotcakes.
Excerpted quotes and reactions aside, the current situation in the US was summed up by a rabbi I heard speak on the radio recently (Unfortuantely, I didn’t write down his name). He felt that the rignt-wing hawksh Jewish intellectuals and groups in the US and the right-wing hawkish Jewish leaders in
Israel reinforce and strengthern each other and foreign policy in both countires to the extent that more moderate voices are shut out of decision making. He was not speaking to the Jewishness,of these but to their mutual political slant and influence. The prophesy driven evangelical Zionists are an additional wing of this political umbrella.
It’s hard to gauge to what degree this rabbi is correct, but it certainly leads to an interesting avenue of reflection. In the end, it’s not about ethiniciry, but about politics, after all.
Reading the quote, it’s clearly not anti-Semitic. The blog the quote is taken from makes it sound hyperbolic, but the post, in context in the Guardian, is clearly referring to Israeli influence, which- let’s face it, has a hammerlock, for the ill, on American foreign policy.
Dawkins made one error, the common conflation of Jewish w Israeli.
Holly: ‘Truly-informed and well-educated intelligent people who are not anti-Semitic know that it is in the interests of the United States to support Israel. This does not mean having to agree with everything that the Government of Israel does.’
Well, no. Yes, Israel is a bit more civilized than the Arab states about it, but white-controlled South Africa was more enlightened than Nazi Germany. That did not mean South Africa was a bastion of civil liberty.
Looking back over the architects and most strident cheerleaders for the Iraq debacle, it’s impossible to not notice a definite Jewish, strongly pro-Israel component — Wolfowitz, Perl, Kristol, the Podhoretzes, to name a few.
It’s also true that President Bush and his devious veep, who wouldn’t be caught dead addressing, say, an NAACP or Urban League convention, rarely miss an opportunity to speak to conventions of the American Jewish Committee and similar groups.
That’s not to say Jewish support for this horrendous blunder is monolithic. Sen. Russ Feingold, Al Franken, Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and others are eloquent and adamant in their opposition to the war, although none of them to my knowledge are anti-Israel.
I think Holly’s comment is right on target.
Yet, I think it’s undeniable that in recent decades, and especially in the past six years, politically active, highly cohesive pro-Israel Jewish groups in America have had a powerful, sustained influence over U.S. Mideast policy. To acknowledge that is not to be either anti-Semitic or anti-Israel. It’s just recognizing a reality.
You might find an article in the Oct. 1 The Nation interesting: “Why the Silence?” by Rabbi Arthur Waskem.
SW:
Holly said: ‘Truly-informed and well-educated intelligent people who are not anti-Semitic know that it is in the interests of the United States to support Israel.’
We are in the Mideast for oil. W/o oil, we’d have as much interest in the Arabs as we do Black Africa. Do you really think it’s wise to support a state that is the object of loathing for all these radical nuts? Now, that’s putting aside political considerations of AIPAC influence, but it simply makes no sense, unless you’re a Bible thumper with Apocalyptic visions, to care about Israel, one way or the other.
cosmoetica, there’s some truth to what you wrote about our oil dependence. But you’re wrong about supporting Israel not making sense unless one is an End Times fanatic.
Many Americans admire Israelis for transforming what had been a poor, backward land into a vibrant, modern democracy. Americans admire the Israelis’ spirit of independence and willingness, and ability, to fight successfully to protect that independence. Americans admire how Israelis worked to make deserts bloom and their economy prosper. As well, there is continuing sympathy for Isreal because of the Holocaust. Add to all that the greater cultural kinship than is the case with Arabs, and you have plenty of reason for ongoing support of Israel.
You also might recall that Israel was our lone staunch supporter in the Mideast during the Cold War. I credit most Americans with being decent enough to remember who their friends were in a previous time of danger.
As a Jew and a religious agnostic I can sympathize with both positions here. The problem with Dawkins’ comment is not the supposed “anti-Semitism” of it but the lack of a parallel between atheism and Jewry. For me and for a healthy portion of American Jewry, Judaism is more of a tribal/ethnic/cultural/historic connection than it is a religion per se. Sure, we’ll get together on religious holidays but most American Jews don’t seriously accept the basic theology of Judaism – at least not to the extent that, say, evangelical Christians accept the theology of Christianity. Some do, obviously, but many (including virtually all in my family) don’t.
Yet, many of these “secular Jews” feel an attachment to Israel – even among those deeply troubled by israel’s treatment of Palestinians (much more common among actual Jews than the Jewish leadership would suggest). This attachment is part of the tribal/ethnic/historical/culture link that also links Jews in America to each other. My own family tree, for example, includes an entire branch living in Israel. The branch adjacent to it was literally wiped out in 1941 by Nazi Einsatzgruppen mobile death squads in Russia or in Auschwitz. It’s impossible to ignore the refuge that Palestine held for survivors of the Holocaust, even when we consider the horrors of Palestine’s own Nakbah (forcible removal of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs during the 1948 war).
But atheists have nothing like Israel to fall back on because atheism is defined by its negative association with religion and not with its cultural or ethnic heritage a la Jewry. But atheist have a more potent source for political power: our own American heritage. Most modern day atheists trace their roots to the Enlightenment and particularly to the Deists who founded this country: Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, Benjamin Franklin – as quintessentially American as you can get. What American atheists should do is recover that religious skepticism that informed the Founding Fathers and use their own words as a counter to evangelicals and others who misrepresent the actual religious views of the framers of our Constitution. That, more than competition with a particular religio-ethnic group over control of foreign policy, would be more fruitful in the end.
Although these types of comments have been used in the past as a slur—ie Jews control the media, Jews run Hollywood, etc, there is nothing inherently wrong with saying a certain group wields a lot of influence. In a certain way, it is a complement to the status achieved by the groups’ members.
Because these types of statements have been demagogued to inflame prejudice which often has translated into violence–(the pogroms of the 19th century in Eastern Europe, Hitler’s attempts to annihilate the Jews from Europe in the 20th century are two examples brought to mind) they usually are associated with anti-Semitism. Of course they are stereotypes made out of ignorance.
But it is true that the Israeli lobby is influential over foreign policy in the same way that the NRA is influential over domestic policy. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, unless the US takes action that is against our own self-interest, but benefits Israel.
I have heard a lot of ignorant comments stating that Israel is to blame for our invasion of Iraq– but there is no evidence at all to back this up, and actually I believe they tried to warn Bush not to go in and take out Saddam.
In former Speaker Tip O’Neill’s interesting autobio. “Man About the House” he recalls his surprise that President Reagan’s first question upon his first meeting with O’Neill after becoming President was also the first question President Carter asked him in their first meeting after Carter became President:
“So, how powerful is the Jewish lobby in Washington?”
That said, it is clearly one thing to note the obvious power of this lobby…it is quite another thing to suggest that there is some secret Jewish cabal ruling America and obsessed with the destruction of the Arab peoples.
As Krit notes, most of us have heard or read a lot of ignorant – and quasi-racist – comments in this regard lately. It seems particularly bad in Europe.
I have been researching Germany in the 20s and 30s recently, and it is most unsettling hearing parallels between rhetoric then and now.
OMG! Some European is anti-Semitic! I am shocked! Anti-Semitism is in the air in Europe, like racism is in the air here. I don’t assume europeans are anti-Semitic, but when they start talking about “The Jews,” like any American talks about “those people,” it’s a dead giveaway.
This whole idea that Israel “controls” American foreign policy is retarded, America is the main reason that Israel exists, and America gets a great deal out of Israel: arms deals, jacking oil prices, and most importantly, a foothold on the eurasian landmass. Please study rimland and heartland theory a little, so that you can understand the importance of Israel and Taiwan to American foreign policy. Because of this importance, opponents of the American Empire cynically use global anti-Semitism to try to loosen America’s foothold, in the ways this article shows: creating an anti-Semitic discourse.
All AIPAC does is serve as a voice to keep legislators and presidents from supporting these people.
That this ends up leading to arms deals and inadequate pressure on Palestinian issues doesn’t represent the wishes of a refined pinko such as myself, nor the majority of American Jews, to the extent that American Jewry actually uderstands the situation in Israel.
What is the situation? Let’s look at the resignation of Gen. Dan Halutz after the misfired attempt to invade Lebanon. Widely considered to be a “test run” for bombing Iran, inquiries in the aftermath showed that Gen. Halutz has had dealings with American arms companies, and dumped his stocks on the eve of the invasion.
Israel is not monolithic, it’s politics are more fractious than here, even. Most Israelis, while they hate and fear Iran, and will bomb Iran to keep them from getting nukes, don’t want war with them. Nor do they want to keep occupying the West Bank. They feel trapped.
It’s American interests that want war with Iran, specifically the arms and oil industries, our Christain “Zionists” (who are conspicuously invisible in previous posts), our foreign policy establishment (look up mackinder, heartland (geopolitics), and rimland in wikipedia), and, finally, a handful of ignorant or crazy (neocon) Jews.
One thing not mentioned nearly enough in previous posts is the axis of evil between the evil, crazy, anti-Semitic warmongering Christian “Zionists,” the Republicans they have wrapped around their little fingers, and the crazy, evil, racist Likud party in Israel. Let’s be absolutely clear that the current situation is a result of partisan politics, and the use of the fear of terrorism and any number of smears, including “anti-Semitic” and “soft on terror” to cow leaders, and the use of media manipulation to make peace seem impossible.
About that last point: All I can say is, if anyone really cared about peace in Israel, the international community would be building a buttload of desalinitazation plants on the Mediterranean. Why? Why do you think? Why don’t you think anybody’s talking about resources? Do you really think it’s “The Jews?” Who do you think it is?
As a half Jew and deeply spiritual person who is nevertheless a religious agnostic, I’m with Elrod.
http://www.TrueWorldHistory.info
SW: ‘Many Americans admire Israelis for transforming what had been a poor, backward land into a vibrant, modern democracy. Americans admire the Israelis’ spirit of independence and willingness, and ability, to fight successfully to protect that independence. Americans admire how Israelis worked to make deserts bloom and their economy prosper. As well, there is continuing sympathy for Isreal because of the Holocaust. Add to all that the greater cultural kinship than is the case with Arabs, and you have plenty of reason for ongoing support of Israel.’
Israel is an apartheid state. Yes, it’s better than the Arab theocracies and monarchies, but a democracy? Sorry. I’ve even worked with several Israelis, and what they describe is almost a direct parallel to S Africa, pre-Mandela.
But, yes, never underestimate the power of the Holocaust as a guilt trip vehicle, even for those not responsible for it.