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Six Day War Transformed American Jewish Life
The Six-Day War transformed the world of Palestinians, Israelis, and also -- lest we forget -- American Jews. Here in the U.S. "Jewish" and "Israel" have been linked so closely for the last forty years, it's easy to forget that it was not always so. Before the Six-Day War, when social surveys asked American Jews what set them apart from their gentile neighbors, the answers rarely mentioned any special affinity for Israel. They didn't say much about antisemitism or the Holocaust either. Most Jews said that there was no special value or belief or behavior that set them apart from non-Jews. The only thing that made them different was that all their friends were Jews.
That changed dramatically in a matter of a few days in June, 1967. Jews flocked to their synagogues to show unprecedented support for Israel. Though they did not know it, they were creating a new form of Judaism. The eminent historian of Judaism, Rabbi Jacob Neusner, has called it the "Judaism of Holocaust and Redemption." It rests on four basic beliefs, which combined to create a sort of vaguely defined creed:
· Antisemitism always has been and always will be a threat to Jews everywhere.
· Jews have a special relationship with the land of Israel.
· Only as long as the Jewish state exists, with a Jewish majority population, can Jews everywhere feel safe and redeemed from the threat of antisemitism.
· Thus the secure existence of Israel is the one and only symbol of the secure existence of Jews and Judaism, forever.
No one can say for sure why the Six-Day War triggered this turnabout. Here's my theory:
By 1967, Americans of color were standing up as oppressed people, demanding their rights. As white people, the Jews could easily be classed with the oppressors. At the same time, the antiwar movement was casting the United States as the oppressor in Vietnam. How could American Jews be sure that, when oppression arose, they were on the right side?
One possibility was to depict themselves as perpetual victims of antisemitism, always among the oppressed. But Jews wanted to live fully, freely, and safely as Americans. How could they feel fully accepted, yet still count themselves among the oppressed?
The Six-Day War solved that problem. By picturing Israel as a small, weak, victimized nation, and then identifying themselves with Israel, Jews could see the U.S. as a place where Jews were increasingly accepted, yet still view themselves as victims of persecution. Then they could not be among the persecutors. So American Jews "discovered" a special, almost mystical tie between every Jew and the holy land.
But Israel now occupied all of the West Bank and Gaza. Could Jews still be sure they were on the side of the weak and the oppressed? Yes -- but only if they viewed Israel as an innocent victim of aggression. By identifying with Israel, they could participate in Israel's acts of power and feel perfectly moral at the same time. But identifying with Israel meant making Zionism the center of Jewish life. It meant equating the fate of Israel with the fate of every Jew, everywhere.
It is no coincidence that, just when American Jews "discovered" their unbreakable bond with Israel, they also "discovered" the unique importance of the Nazi Holocaust in every Jew's life. The Holocaust was offered as crucial proof that that Jews are perpetually threatened by irrational hatred and oppression. This, in turn, became the supposed proof that Israel's foes were motivated by the same hatred that moved the Nazis to their murderous project. Once this premise was accepted, there could be no doubt that Israel's military victory was a necessary act of self-defense and therefore absolutely morally justified. The slogan "Never Again" seemed to justify every kind of Jewish violence.
In order to sustain their new-found form of Judaism, Jews must exaggerate their own experience of antisemitism and believe that Israel is always threatened. That means Israel must always have an enemy. For many Jews in the U.S. as well as Israel, military conflict serves as a kind of ritual performance. It's a way to act out and confirm their belief that Jews, the perpetual victims, now have power but always use that power in a morally justified cause.
Tragically, this performance is a ritual sacrifice in which far too many real people die. Although most of them are Arabs, some are Jews. This hardly makes Israel more secure. On the contrary, it perpetuates the Jews' insecurity. Nevertheless, many Jews cling to and repeat this deadly ritual performances because the "Judaism of Holocaust and Redemption" gives them a comforting sense of meaning and identity.
Whether you accept this theory or some other to explain the dramatic change in American Jewish life forty years ago, one point is clear. Many Jews will tell you that support for Israel is the eternal and essential linchpin of Jewish identity. But the intimate link between Jews and Israel is hardly eternal. For a people who have three thousand years of history behind them, the focus on a political state is a relative newcomer. It's hardly essential, either. It emerged from specific historical conditions. Historical conditions might diminish, or even dissolve, the link to Israel in the future. But Jewish life would continue.
In fact, the moral outrages perpetrated by Israeli occupation forces are already diminishing support for Israel's policies among American Jews. There is a growing voice of dissent within American Jewry. Those of us who do not cheer for Jewish military victory are as concerned as anyone else to insure Israel's survival. Indeed, we feel that we show more concern than anyone else for Israel's peace and security. We argue that it makes little sense to seek secure survival and peace by pursuing the risks of war, when other options are surely available. Yet we are bitterly attacked by right-wing Jews, who have managed to commandeer the label "pro-Israel." Now that label usually means "pro-Israeli power and might," when it should mean "pro-genuine peace and security for Israel."
Over the past forty years, countless numbers of thoughtful, morally sensitive Jews have decided that they cannot in good conscience be part of a community dominated by a reactionary "Judaism of Holocaust and Redemption." How much energy and talent might have enriched American Jewish life if the organized community had been willing to accept the kind of debate that is commonplace in Israel, where Israeli government policies are subject to radical criticism every day?
The blame for this loss falls partly on the right-wingers who dominate most Jewish organizations. They make the institutional Jewish voice sound more hawkish than the community as a whole really is. But some of the blame must fall on the huge number of politically moderate American Jews. They cannot completely shut out the images they see on television from the Occupied Territories. Neither can they completely give up the "Judaism of Holocaust and Redemption" that has shaped their identity for so long.
Caught between two competing psychological demands, they are confused and paralyzed. They hesitate to say anything about Israel's current policies. Whatever they might say seems, to them, a half-truth at best, and quite possibly just wrong. So they censor themselves and remain silent, leaving the strident right as the only voice clearly heard in the organized Jewish community.
Some of them go a step further. In order to avoid facing the moral dilemma posed by Israel, they move Israel from the center to the margins of their Jewish identity. They find a way to be actively, even ardently, Jewish with scarcely a mention of Israel. And it may be this group, not the critics of Israeli policy, who do the most to weaken the link between American Jews and Israel in the future.
But support for Israeli policies has inflicted a grievous moral wound on the U.S. Jewish community over the last forty years. Wounds do not heal by being ignored. They heal only by t'shuvah -- repentance, reversing course and doing the right thing. It is never too late for repentance. And a community can do an about-face very quickly, as American Jews proved forty years ago.
Ira Chernus is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder. This column is adapted from his essay in the forthcoming collection, Peace, Justice, and Jews: Reclaiming Our Tradition. chernus@colorado.edu
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37 Comments so far
Show AllI get the feeling that the global economic steamroller is fueling the media to spur on these hatreds which leads to arms sales.
The obsessive self-absorption evident in this tract is nothing short of suffocating. If I believed in psychologists and psychiatrists, I would recommend one to anybody imprisoned in this or any similar manic ideation. I would like nothing more than to believe that what Mr. Chermus and other of his like-minded coreligionists think and believe is none of my business. But the influence of Zionism over my life, as a citizen of this world, if not exaggerated or imaginary, demands that I pay attention.
I strongly recommend to Mr. Chermus and others of similar disposition, that you take whatever steps are necessary to heal yourselves. And please spare me the lectures on the specialness of your history, or of the uniqueness of your relationship to your almighty, or any explanation grounded in other than the purest, most unrestrained self-indulgence.
I have long resented having supporters of the state of Israel equate criticism of the conduct and policies of the state of Israel with pro-Nazi, Hitler-loving antisemitism (Jewish critics of the conduct and policies of the state of Israel get hit with "self-hating Jew"). No nation-state is beyond criticism, and no nation-state is immune from doing evil, even a nation-state supposedly composed of "God's chosen people."
We're all jews now. Hated everywhere.
This essay is an extremely original (and I would say accurate) piece of social psychology. I thank Prof Chernus for it. In all likelihood, he will be subject to the usual vicious attacks from the "pro-Israel" lobby for this act of "self-hating."
I would be interested to see it expanded in a number of directions, e.g.:
How the massive $100+ billion (almost all military) aid provided by the US taxpayer helped to validate the "Judaism of Holocaust and Redemption;"
The ascension of AIPAC as the leading voice of the Israeli lobby. It was once considered a marginal, right-wing nut-case organization. Now, every leading US presidential candidate genuflects before this noxious outfit;
How the notion of "exceptionalism" fits into the whole mix. That is the quite obvious contradiction between a religious state, which is exclusive by definition, and democracy.
In any case, the piece shows part of the matrix of the "special relationship" between the US and Israel - a relationship that is proving destructive for both nations and millions of oppressed Mid-Easterners who suffer under the murderous and immoral domination of these two military powers.
fd - I get vilified on other boards all the time for discussing the Jewish psychology of victimhood that is driving Israeli policy and I wholeheartedly agree that we need healing (I'm Jewish). However, I'm certainly not going to argue that this sense of victimhood wasn't well-earned over the last couple of millenia. I think that in our society we get used to instant gratification, quick fixes, etc and I do think there is an aspect to which hundreds of years of oppression, persecution, pogroms throughout Eastern Europe culminating in the Holocaust led to a sense of victimhood that may take longer than we think to overcome. Please don't take any of this to mean that this justifies Israel's policies and what has happened to the Palestinian people. I also don't mean to propound on the "specialness" of our history, but, while such persuction certainly isn't unique to Jews, I think that particular aspects of the Jewish community - the small size, relatively speaking, of the worldwide Jewish community in general, the astonishing rise from victim to regional superpower in the space of a generation - lend itself to a unique psychology of victimhood that may take longer than a generation or two to overcome.
Does that make sense?
Maybe this falls under what you didn't want to hear, but I'm just talking here...
Paranoid - Hear, hear, I advocate for a just resolution to the conflict all the time and I get either the "self-hating Jew" label or, my personal favorite as of late, "pseudo-Jew" - like I can't be critical of MY government (because in some very real ways, Israel's government is just as much mine as America's government!) and be a real Jew. Frustrating and infuriating doesn't even begin to cover it....
You think if people actually had a special mystical bond to another country, they would feel compeled to move there.
The point of view that Prof. Chernus expressed in his essay is a rather typical current opinion of many jews in Europe. Being a weak minority in most European countries, jews tend to avoid public expressions of support for Israel, and of other jewish issues. They prefer to proclaim they are "French", "British", "German" etc first, and jews last. Having had multiple contacts with jews in these countries, I can testify that very often their disingenious position is based on fear of antisemitic backlash, rather than on strongly held beliefs. This observation is supported by increasing emigration of jews from the above countries to Israel. As history demonstrated many times over, no amount of assimilation by secular jews, and no efforts by diaspora jews to appear and behave just like their hosts, i.e. like regular "French", "British", "Germans", "Russians", etc does not prevent and/or reduce antisemitism in these countries. It is reported that strong antisemitic feelngs are present in Japan (!!), where there are practically no jews to speak of. The same can be said of modern Poland, where most jews were exterminated in the event that Prof. Chernus seems like is ready to forget and forgive as being just a twist of history . Only the birth of state of Israel can possibly change this not only humiliating, but mortally grave situation. One can only speculate what fate of European jews might have been like if Israel existed in 1933. Apparently, Prof. Chernus considers 50 some years since birth of Israel, and 62 years since the end of WW2 long enough time to have changed the thousands year long traditions and attitudes. I wish Prof. Chernus read a few more serious books on this subject. In this respect, the title "Professor" in front of his name seems a bit puzzling to me.
I think Chernus is right about Jewish-American (and Jewish-Canadian) psychology. Throughout the last 3 decades of the 20C, white folks across North America searched for ways to escape the "racist oppressor" label hurled at them by Blacks and Aboriginals. Every white constituency had a different way of doing that. E.g., "I don't qualify as racist cuz I'm blue-collar and therefore just as oppressed as people of colour." The Jewish establishment made good use of its "eternal victim" status for the same kind of purpose vis-a-vis the accusing Arabs. After all, how can you argue with 2000 years of serious antisemitic oppression? Well, the Jewish establishment, represented by the pro-Israel lobby, has pushed that one about as far as it can be pushed: it's now the chief manufacturer of the very antisemitism it supposedly decries. The rest of the Western world is pretty much fed up with it now. The US (and its obedient vassal states) is Israel's only friend in the world, but that friendship is fraying.
gpln - Interesting reads - thanks for posting them!
Please pray for the 34 dead, 173 wounded and other survivors of the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty.
Make it a moment of silence on June 8th, the 40th anniversary.
I wonder why all of thes writers talking about the 6 Day War ignore this event.
http://ussliberty.org/
What a bunch of hogwash, the ancient Romans destroyed ancient Israel and destroyed the temple. The Hebrews had 700-800 years to re-establish a nation before Islam even existed. There is no defensible rational for the taking of homes,property and land from perfectly innocent people to remedy the actions of another guilty people. The rest of the world understands this, and has been watching for the last 60 years as the U.S. has forced the current state of israel down the the Palestinians collective throat.
The problem is that there is not a rational aspect to the creation and subsequent support for the creation of the current israeli state. To claim that because someone has been persecuted in the past gives them the right to commit atrocities against someone else is beyond reason.
The existence of antisemitism goes all the way back to ancient times, before both christianity and islam. It is an aversion to cultural practices. I suspect that the concept of a unitary god was very frightening to most people at the time, strange dietary laws probably had some impact on acceptance since hospitality and the breaking of bread with others is a universal way people get to know each other. When people come for a visit and refuse to eat your food, for religious reasons, it isn't very well accepted. Finally and in my opinion the most obvious is the practice of infant genital mutilation. One can only imagine the consternation among those that had never heard of the practice before,"you do what to what?" Apparently it was done to their slaves as well, so it is relatively easy to understand that among people who were use to the practice of slavery, where one might end up a slave the next time ones country was sacked, that the prospect of being sold to a Hebrew and subsequently being mutilated ones self was not very well accepted.
This practice has even worked it's way into our culture for no reason whatsoever. It's original purpose wasn't even for the reason of hygiene so often given today. It is nothing more than institutionalized child abuse, pedophilia even. It is interesting to note that here in the U.S. the practice of infant female genital mutilation is illegal but infant male genital mutilation is not, why should that be?
Any sane person that honestly looks into their heart of hearts knows that this act of violence against an innocent defensles infant, without their consent is a crime.
I know that many will think this is all way off base but it isn't, there are reasons why people feel the way they do about anything. Until the roots of antisemitism are really examined, there will be nothing but name calling. By there own record they have been shunned and persecuted by everyone everywhere they go. At some point it isn't everybody else, at some point one has to accept that there is something about ones self that everyone else finds distasteful.
I agree with Chernus's historical analysis. And with his sadness at the damage done to the American Jewish community: "support for Israeli policies has inflicted a grievous moral wound on the U.S. Jewish community". But I hope his book pays due attention to the grievous wound to America's world respect, to our growing unpopularity in the Arab world, and to the incredible suffering of Palestinians and Lebanese at Israel's hands. Some day all this may change, as Arabs grow stronger or American policymakers come to their senses. I shudder at the terrible backlash against American Jewry (including the huge minority who reject the right-wing leadership propaganda) when this happens, as it inevitably will.
I fell asleep in 1948 and just woke up last week. Until I read this article I thought I was the last Jew. Now I see what happened. And I see that I'm not alone and that there are at least two of us. Landsman! Thank you Ira Chernus!
Rip Van Meyer
http://www.survivalversusdoom.net
Fascism will not mean security for Israel. The hard right relies on neo-modern fascist debate. Definitions are switched, or they are redefined to mean something else. Criticism of Israel is redefined as antisemitism thus ending the debate about Israel before it even gets started because the ensuing discussion or argument has suddenly become only about antisemitism. For a Jew to criticize Israel becomes about self hating their jewishness.
con't- Without definitions, one cannot focus on a problem. A reverse mythology where without knowing a thing's real name, one then has no power to affect it in any way? Heck, whether Jew or not, we are virtually 'unallowed' to discuss Israel in America. That is where I think a old danger waits. Freedom is the only defense to fascism. Either you have it or you don't. Fascism attacked the jews and gypsies during the Holocaust and it was the forces of the freedom loving antifascists who defeated them. The best defense for Israel is a free and open nonfascistic America. Freedom ...which includes free speech and freedom to question etc...solves problems. When you are free to ask the questions that others don't even want to be asked at all, those questions are the only ones that really matter. BUT ...if definitions are redefined...so is freedom. What could it mean if freedom was ...redefined? Would will still be free?
When you cede a moral high ground...where does one end up after going down that road? Shall we debate whether torture is evil? Some will. Some will redefine it as water boarding or intensive coercion etc...and calmly discuss whether evil is necessary. Israel is making a whole population live in what is seriously looking like a 'prison camp country'. Gaza is like a big lock down. Half the west bank has been taken by settlements, exclusive roads and walls. This is bizarre if this defines the moral high ground. We need to define things properly else even torture 'doesn't seem so bad when you put it that way'. Sometimes I think we began redefining everything so much that we one day woke up and found we no longer knew what was really what. We also woke up and found we had redefined ourselves and no longer knew who we really were. We had lost the ability to name things correctly because we refused to call things by their right names and forgot how. Nice article. It defined some of the problems clearly. A hopeful auspice.
Error...*** What could it mean if freedom was...redefined? Would it* still be free?
For what it's worth, Jews were persecuted in Christian Europe as a matter of course - ie, nobody questioned it when it happened. That persecution was markedly absent from the Islamic world, though there were a few cases of somebody powerful's unjustifiable paranoia - but the Muslims never made a habit of it.
Again, for what it's worth, the Chinese in Indonesia were the hardest-hit following the ouster of President Suharto. What they went through bears comparison to any pogrom in Europe. One should also look at the way the Fijian Indians have borne the brunt of the Fijian coups.
For some strange reason, I doubt the sufferings of the Indonesian Chinese can be ascribed to their being "victims of perpetual anti-semitism".
Clarity of thought is what's needed here. What are the features in common between the Jews in Christian Europe, the Chinese in Muslim Indonesia, and the Indians in Christian Fiji? Can we say "trade seemingly monopolized by one ethnicity"?
I'm blown away by the outpouring of hate expressed, not in the article, which is a bizarre fantasy based on an astonishing lack of human understanding, but by the supposed peace-loving readers who jump on the anti-Semite bandwagon every time it passes. I'm blown away because I see it so often. This is the same left that killed all the intellectuals in China. This is the same left that starts violence at anti-war rallies. It scares the hell out of me. It gets us nowhere. Shame on you all.
So focus on reality. Focus on a viable road to peace. Quit pointing your fingers from atop your wooden high-horse and look for the middle ground. Look for what both parties can live with.
MiddleRoad: criticism of Israel does not make one anti-semtic as much as the far right AIPAC lobbies would like to spin it that way to silence debate and discussion. Criticism of the US does not make me anti-American for example. For a Jewish person to criticize Israel doesn't make them self-hating either.
When a pregnant Palestinian Arab woman dies at acheckpoint because she is forced to give birth there and the guards don't allow her to pass (this happens often in the Palestinian territories) I will speak up. When an Arab suicide bomber blows up a Pizza Parlor I will also speak up. When human rights are violated and people lives are in the balance I won't remain silent for fear of offending people. Enough Americans are tired of their tax dollars being thrown at this conflict and we have a right to say enough is enough and because now America is more vulnerable to attacks!
Thank you, MiddleRoad for a single voice of reason in the outpouring of bigotry in this supposedly intelligent blog. Happens every time - our readers never miss an opportunity to make hateful comments. As I wrote in my earlier note above, antisemitism around the world is deeply rooted in human mentality, and is extremely difficult to erradicate, no matter how hard jews might try to "fit". Responses to this article (and the article itself) present multiple examples. This is exactly the reason why survival of Israel is vital for jews, and for human progress. One might argue about the disastrous consequences and horrible mistakes of the occupation of West Bank and Gaza by Israel, but the blame goes equally to Israel and Palestinians (they started the conflict, despite some revisionist statements to the contrary). As is known for fact, Arabs kept attacking Israel from day one of it's birth. Of course, it is easy to say that Israel should have used territories more wisely to negotiate some kind of agreement with Arabs, but remember the Arabs flatly rejected offer of negotiations unless it was done on their terms, which would mean self-destruction of Israel.
So I agree with MiddleRoad - the world has to focus on reality, as this blame game does not accomplish anything.
Published on Monday, April 8, 2002 by CommonDreams.org
Israel, Palestine, & Justice
by Dan Brook
http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0408-07.htm
I largely agree with this article. However, Chernus doesn't really unpack the political context of the need to be perceived as "oppressed." It's all mixed up with the white reaction to the Civil Rights Movement, especially as it moved north. Jews were very much part of the backlash, for example, Ocean-Hill Brownsville in 1968-69. The origins of neoconservatism are in this backlash--Podhoretz, Glazer, etc. Conservative Jewish intellectuals have since aligned themselves with dominant white culture, and lent the aura of oppression to American elites, now so fond of evoking Hitler whenever it's in their interests. The Nazi Holocaust has become America's Holocaust, rather than those that white Americans have themselves perpetrated, vs. Natives and Africans.
fd32,
What a mis-reading of Chernus' article! I feel embarassed having to explain this this to you, but Mr. Chernus made it very clear that he was being CRITICAL of post-1967 holoucaust-exceptionalism as it is used to justify killing, occupation, and ethnic cleansing. Prof. Chernus was simply summarizing the concepts which Prof. Finkelstein has written a considerable amount (The Holocaust Industry, Beyond Chutzpah).
I assume Prof. Chernus risked writing this piece because tenure is secure, unlike Finkenstein, who is being slanderously attacked.
Are some of the writers here confusing cause and effect?
If there is antisemitism, even in completely non-Jewish countries like Japan, might it be due to what they hear about Israel's behavior in the news?
When I see big "Support Israel" banners on the biggest synagogues in my city, I likewise must fight the desire to making overly sweeping conclusions about Jews. But it is Israel's behavior, and organizations like AIPAC's insistence that the state of Israel be equated with Judaism that lead to this. If it weren't for Zionism, what genuine antisemitism that does exist would be certainly be going the way of other age-old forms of racism.
Thanks vegnik. That article by Dan Brown pretty much nails it. If the Palestinians really want to end this, Gandhi style non-violent protest is their only hope. I see no way out out this for Israel since non-violence for them is suicide.
This, by the way, points to why so many anti-Israel statements are anti-semitic, since calling for Israel to end their military efforts is synonymous with calling for the violent destruction of Israel.
PJD, it is naive to think that age-old forms of racism have gone anywhere.
I understand but I can't say my heart bleeds.
Silence is complicity. Jews are afraid of the personal and public stigma of speaking out so they avoid the issue, deflect their advocacy or deny that US public policy is in any way related to the US relationship to Israel and the powerful influence Right-wing Jewish interests have on our government.
I have to come out and say I resent it. I resent the censorship, the lies, the denial, the bullying propaganda, the efforts and expense on deception, the cynical manipulation of the perennial victimization claim. I have to admit that has colored my attitude, made me often suspicious when questioning motives and allegiances to tribe and even occasionally am rendered inarticulate with rage over the barbaric cover-up and crime.
Zionism is Jewish nationalism and it is racism.
And again:
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Zinn/RespectingHolocaust.html
What good is nonviolence when the bulldozers roll right over you and the world is silent? Would non-violence have worked for the German Jews?
Non-violence only has power as a movement. Standing alone in front of a bulldozer protecting a building Israeli's are destroying is suicide. And no, non-violence would not have worked for the German Jews since the Nazis were bent on genocide.
Israel has never acted on nor had any intention of committing genocide, and if you think they have then it's time you bought a dictionary. If genocide were Israel's intention, I figure it would take them a few weeks to level the occupied territories.
middle road,
The cynical hypocracy in your call for Gandhian non- violence for the "other" side and not "your" side leaves me breathless!
Could it ever possibly occur to you that that in teh face of an obvious campain of ethnic cleansing, it is the palestinians who cannot afford non violence.
But, nonetheless, as the great anti-semite Rachal Corrie noted in the days before her murder while practicing satyaghara, the overwelming majority of Palestinians practice nonviolent civil disobiedience every day. Merely keeping ones home and livlihood and refusing to leave such places as Gaza or Hebron is an act of nonviolent civil disobiedience.
Zionism is also a manefestation of USAn imperialism, and Jewish exceptionalism is just the distillation of vile belief that all Norteamericanos are brought up to believe, that they are god-chosen people with a special moral dispensation to impose their violent will on all other people in the world, especially darker-complected Arabic and Spanish speaking ones.
MiddleRoad: Really? What do you call it? Transfer?
http://www.counterpunch.org/bahour05202004.html
And you know what worries me? So often I hear about how the AIPAC Right doesn't represent the vast majority of American Jews, but why is it, that even here and on the other progressive sites, the most vocal Jews are supporters of Zionism, spouting the lies? Sure doesn't seem like a majority...
"If genocide were Israel's intention, I figure it would take them a few weeks to level the occupied territories."
That's a disingenuous response. Israel is clearly subject to world opinion, so they must take a more gradual approach - and couple it with a powerful, well-funded propaganda campaign.
And the bulldozing vern was referring to was not that of Corrie, it is the thousands of Palestinian homes, farms, shops, livlihoods, and occasionally, palestinians themselves.
http://www.ifamericansknew.org/
Agreed Vern,
And, how can we take thes claims of opression and discrimination seriously when surely, no one can deny that the wealthiest neighborhoods in most US cities are the Jewish ones, in spite of most Jews being quite poor when they came to the US.
Surely, if there was significant discrimination, it would reflect in the average economic status of Jews, as it does for Blacks, and in my rust-belt city, even catholics and slavs to some degree.
PJD
Maybe, just maybe, you are missing the forest for the trees...
This conversation reminds me of the ones I've had with the local Minutemen. People don't always realize when they hate, nor do they realize how unrealistic their hate-based proposals are.