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CounterPunch
December
14, 2002
Zionism Unbound
by ANN PETTIFER
In the spring of 1986, Gore Vidal, novelist and
chronicler of US history, published an essay in The Nation which
became instantly notorious. Called "The Empire Lovers Strike
Back," its subject was the relationship of American Jewish
neo-conservatives to the state of Israel. He chose as exemplars
of the phenomenon, Commentary magazine editor, Norman Podhoretz,
and spouse, Midge Decter (mother-in-law of Elliot Abrams of Iran
Contra infamy; Abrams, a racial purist who disdains intermarriage,
now serves as White House Director of Middle Eastern Affairs).
Podhoretz and Decter had once been liberals, but an aggressive
Zionism led them to pitch their tent in the Republican Party.
Their aim was to use US economic and political heft to advance
Israel's interests in the Middle East. The essay was vintage
Vidal and it greatly provoked his critics. To ensure that no
one took seriously what he had to say--to silence the debate
before it started--he was rubbished as the worst kind of anti-Semite.
So, exactly what had Vidal said to earn
this most feared of labels? In recent weeks we have heard a good
deal about the cynical alliance between fundamentalist Christian
Zionists in the US and Jewish settlers (supported by the right-wing
Likud party) in the Occupied Territories. Sixteen years ago in
a display of considerable prescience, Vidal wrote: "since
spades may not be called spades in freedom's land, let me spell
it out. In order to get military and economic support for Israel,
a small number of American Jews, who should know better, have
made common cause with every sort of reactionary and anti-Semitic
group in the United States, from the corridors of the Pentagon
to the TV studios of the evangelical Jesus ChristersS all in
the interest of supporting the likes of Sharon as opposed to
the Peace Now Israelis whom they disdain."
Central to Vidal's case was the indifference
to US history which he discerned among these Jewish neo-conservatives.
When he was writing a play set during the American Civil War,
he recalls Norman Podhoretz asking him, "Why are you writing
a play about, of all things, the Civil War?" When Vidal
explained that this was/is "the great, single tragic event
that gives resonance to our Republic" Podhoretz replied,
"To me, the Civil War is as remote and irrelevant as the
War of the Roses." Vidal calls Podhoretz and his ilk Fifth
Columnists (Israeli division) to indicate their extra-territorial
priorities. They pursue political power not in order to make
the US a better place, to right wrongs or to fight inequality
here, but to promote Israel's pre-eminence in the Middle East,
to confine Palestinians to a couple of Bantustans or, better
still, engineer their expulsion to Jordan. Judith Shulavitz,
writing last month in The New York Times about Podhoretz's new
book, The Prophets: Who They Were And What They Are, observes
that for Podhoretz the biblical prophet's message is: "the
Jews are the people chosen to redeem the worldS They will perform
their divinely appointed duty only if they cling to the Covenant
between God and themselvesSand support Zionism." Any appropriation
of the prophets in support of social justice he dismisses as
false--a Christian overlay or redaction.
The influence of old-guard Jewish neo-cons,
such as Podhoretz and Decter, was exercised mainly through journals
of opinion they edited or owned (in addition to Commentary, Martin
Peretz's New Republic comes to mind). Now, however, a new generation
has its hand on the tiller of power. In September, Bill Keller
profiled Deputy Secretary of Defence, Paul Wolfowitz, for The
New York Times' Sunday Magazine. Wolfowitz and fellow Jewish
neo-cons Richard Perle and Douglas Feith have emerged as the
Pentagon's Paladins, their aim being to subdue the Islamic world
through decisive, pre-emptive use of American military superiority.
While Wolfowitz is pressing for war against Saddam Hussein, Keller
notes his "scholarly detachment" from the disastrous
Vietnam War (as remote as the War of the Roses?), in which, while
eligible, he had chosen not to serve. Wolfowitz first formed
ties to Israel when he accompanied his father there for a sabbatical
year. He is known to have close links to Israeli generals and
Likud politicians. Keller, somewhat hesitatingly, discloses that
there are people in Washington who hint at Wolfowitz's "dual
loyalties." The (London) Guardian columnist, Hugo Young,
is less reticent: "Only in Washington does one get a true
sense of the obsession of these Pentagon civilians. Conversationally,
it is common talk that some of them, not including Rumsfeld,
are as much Israeli as American nationalists. Behind nervous,
confiding hands come sardonic whispers of an American outpost
of Likud. Most striking of all, however, is how unmentionable
this is in the liberal press."
If dragons' teeth are being sown by American
foreign policy in the Middle East, the urgent question is why
a craven liberal press is not addressing the Israeli nationalism
of the policy's architects. Thinking I might find clues, I trawled
through a piece by Cliff Rothman in The Nation, entitled "Jewish
Media Stranglehold?" At the outset, Rothman delegitimizes
the question by reminding us that it was Richard Nixon who first
posed it; he then proceeds to associate it with White Power rhetoric,
trailer parks and compounds in Montana. Nothing of substance
emerges. There was, however, an interesting exchange with Lewis
Lapham, the editor of Harpers, whose essays are surely some of
the best political writing in the US. When the question was put
to him, Rothman writes that Lapham "ventured onto the treacherous
terrain of hypothosizing a unique Jewish sensibility impacting
the media because of the sheer number of Jewish editors and writers.
But, Lapham then recoiled: 'If I am going to take shit, I may
as well write my own column.'"
About three years ago, Nightline's Ted
Koppel came to the University of Notre Dame to give the Red Smith
journalism lecture. I remember summoning every ounce of courage
during question time in order to express my concern about the
importance of even-handedness in the US media when reporting
on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Then I asked Koppel how
he felt, as a Jewish-American, about a foreign policy team which
at that time was overwhelmingly Jewish. Madelaine Albright and
her spokesman, James Rubin, were at the State Department, Sandy
Berger was Security Advisor and William Cohen Secretary of Defense;
Richard Holbrooke was Ambassador to the UN. I was sure that had
the shoe been on the other foot--had the team's composition been
almost entirely Arab-American--the issue of fairness would most
certainly have been raised. Koppel was nonplussed by the question
and responded that in the US gifted individuals, regardless of
background, could rise to the top--an answer that did not address
my concern.
Each week, I have a marathon phone conversation
with a Jewish friend, an octogenarian whose mental vigor remains
undiminished. A retired college teacher, her take on virtually
every political issue of importance is exemplary. Our friendship
is very close and has easily survived occasional squalls over
the one topic on which we have some disagreement, namely Israel
and the Occupation. After reading something I had written on
the neocon Zionists at the Pentagon, she gave me a no-holds-barred
dressing down. In identifying Paul Wolfovitz, Richard Perle and
Douglas Feith, the Pentagon troika planning the war against Saddam
Hussein, as Jewish-Americans, I had crossed the line into anti-Semitism.
Go after them as bad guys, not as Jews, she said. After all,
there were lots of Jews, herself included, who find the troika
a frightening bunch. For days I brooded about her comments, but
in the end I demurred. Sure these are bad guys, but it is as
Zionists that they are pursuing their war aims. The connections
Gore Vidal was making in 1986 still need to be made in 2002.
Robert Dreyfus, a senior correspondent
at The American Prospect, came close in a first class expose
on how the Pentagon's "well-placed hawks" are muzzling
the CIA so that intelligence data that contradicts the case for
war is not presented to the White House. Dreyfus is blunt: "For
Perle, Wolfovitz and FeithSan attack on Iraq is a strategic necessity,
not because Saddam Hussein is a threat, but because America needs
to display an overwhelming show of force to keep unruly Arabs
and Muslims all over the world in line." However, Dreyfus
still cannot mention the elephant in the room, namely that these
well-placed hawks are Jewish-Americans and it is their hard-core
Zionism that is shaping American foreign policy. Zionism is fast
becoming a poisoned chalice, yet the US is poised for a war largely
propelled by its agenda. Most of the country is ignorant or in
denial, and the mainstream media either too conflicted or in
cahoots to sound the alarm. In the meantime, Richard Perle, addressing
British members of parliament even as UN arms inspectors were
returning to Iraq, asserted that the US will go to war no matter
what. And on the BBC World Service, The Washington Times' Barry
Fein proclaimed war as absolutely necessary, saying that from
now on the US would decide what constituted international law.
There is real madness here, but who will stop it?
Do I think the case against Zionism could
be made more effectively by Jews themselves? Certainly, but the
evidence suggests it is not any easier. In the early 1960s, there
was a bitter correspondence between two German Jews, the political
philosopher Hannah Arendt and Gershom Scholem, the great scholar
of Kabbalah. Much of the disagreement turned on Arendt's rejection
of Zionism which led the Zionist Scholem to accuse her of having
no love for the Jewish people. Arendt acknowledged that she had
no love for any nation or collective--believing, as she did,
that love of humankind trumped tribal or parochial affections.
Insofar as Zionism had led Jews from belief in God to belief
in themselves, she continued, "in this sense I do not love
the Jews."
Ann Pettifer
is a freelance writer and a the publisher of Common Sense, the
alternative newspaper at the University of Notre Dame. She can
be reached at awalshe@nd.edu
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