Friday, March 5, 2010
The Boston Globe is continuing to try to milk every last drop of juice out of the Delahunt/J Street story. This time it's on the op-ed page with a piece by Jesse Singal. Singal is a regular contributor to the Globe, but what they don't tell you is that he works for and blogs at the Center for Campus Progress, a project of the Center for American Progress, a Soros funded affair -- so basically, Singal is doing J Street's work as one hand washes the other, only they don't feel the need to tell you that: The new American Jew on Israel
WHETHER IT was a major diplomatic slight or a minor one overblown by media coverage, what happened to Representative William Delahunt in a congressional trip to Israel last month was telling.
Because the trip was sponsored by J Street, a "pro-Israel, pro-peace" organization that has criticized the Israeli government, Israel's minister of foreign affairs, Avigdor Lieberman, and his deputy, Danny Ayalon, refused to meet with the five congressmen as long as J Street and another pro-peace sponsor was present. The message was clear: Your traveling companions have criticized us, so we won't sit with you unless you keep them away from the table...
The other " pro-peace" (so-called) group was CMEP, and I'm almost getting tired of reminding people what they are really about. Yet again we're reminded that J Street isn't so much regretful of what happened, as they are fully aware that they are a pressure-, not pro-, Israel organization.
What kind of a person is this supposed "new Jew" that Singal is writing about? One that, he tells us, is more comfortable criticizing Israel than defending, presumably:
Israel's government certainly has the right to choose who it talks to. But its actions show it to be a step behind the changing composition and attitudes of American Jewry. At a time when many American Jews are feeling fewer compunctions about criticizing Israel, and are often less concerned with external threats posed by Iran and Israel's other enemies than the demographic time bomb it faces as its Palestinian population expands, what it means to be "pro-Israel'' is changing, particularly among younger Jews.
There are still plenty of young American Jews who take pride in wholeheartedly supporting the Israeli government. But this view isn't nearly as dominant as it once was, and research by Steven M. Cohen of Hebrew Union College helps show why. Cohen found that younger Jewish professional and religious leaders tend to be less likely to see Israel as threatened by its neighbors, and therefore less worried about Israel's security.
Well, after all, Americans have their interests, and Israelis have theirs. Their concerns are with survival, ours are with our cocktail parties and our classmates who are busy attending Israel Apartheid events. We wouldn't want to alienate our social groups, after all.
The idea that being an American Jew doesn't necessitate lockstep support for Israel, and that Israel is strong enough to withstand criticism from the outside world, were on full display last week at Harvard's Hillel House, which hosted a talk by J Street's head, Jeremy Ben-Ami.
In an interview before the event, Ben-Ami talked about the changing experience of being an American Jew.
"If you've had personal experience - if not you [then] at least your parents - with the destruction of your people, you're more likely to take it as a possibility that it could happen again," he said. "If you have grown up here in complete comfort and safety and no one you know in an immediate sense has been through that, I do think [you're] going to have a very fundamental[ly] different view, a different take, on how you view the Iran threat."
Yes indeed, it's all in where you live. Those silly Israelis and their fear of Iranian nukes and Iranian-backed terrorists. Don't they understand we have different priorities? And this from a group that calls itself pro-Israel. I'm thinking that unless you take Israeli concerns a bit more seriously than this, not only are you not capable of contributing anything to the peace process, you push it off and make matters worse. Get used to more rebuffs as the Israeli Government continues to put its priorities first.
This different, less fearful view of things came through clearly in some of the young members of the audience.
For instance, when asked about the prospect of Iran destroying Israel,Harvard Divinity School student Kenan Jaffe, 26, said he thought it was "unlikely."
"I also don't think it's directly related to the Palestinian question," he said, "and it is only to the extent that if Israel comes to a final status solution with the Palestinians, Iran will have nothing to say about Israel and no reason to make threats against it."
Ah yes, all would be peachy if only peace were at hand (and Israel, apparently, holds all the cards). Nothing to fear, nothing to fear, after all, the Iranians are nothing if not human rights crusaders and freedom fighters. Let me help young Kenan with something -- what you call "reasonable" and what Iran calls "reasonable" are not necessarily the same thing.
This is a far cry from the notion of a bloodthirsty, implacable Iran fueled only by hatred for Israel - a story we hear quite often from groups like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. And while most members of the audience probably weren't as sanguine about Iran as Jaffe, fear of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wasn't, for the most part, what had brought them to Cambridge on a rainy February evening.
Not just AIPAC, but every mainstream Jewish organization has recognized the serious and grave reality that Iran represents. Other groups would have heard the opinion of a person like Kenan Jaffe and said, "We need to reach people like this and explain a few things to them." J Street hears this and says, "Great, he's our constituency."
Rather, they were worried about the grim prospects that face Israel if it can't make peace with the Palestinians. Given the region's demographic patterns, absent a two-state solution, Israel will soon have to choose between being a Jewish state and a democratic one.
While J Street does strongly oppose the possibility of Iran getting nuclear weapons, the demographic crisis, not an attack from Iran, is the greatest threat facing Israel, said Ben-Ami.
Perhaps Israelis are concerned with ensuring that they are alive long enough for demographic issues to trump their physical safety concerns.
He's not alone in thinking so, if the popularity and early clout of his organization, which is just two years old, is any indication. And regardless of one's political affiliation, this shift is going to have huge ramifications for the future of US-Israeli relations. If Israel wants to continue turning its back on those who criticize it, it may soon find itself with little to say to an increasingly large, vocal segment of American Jews.
So says the Soros-backed opinionator on behalf of his J Street cousins. It remains to be seen how much clout J Street actually has beyond what their budget has bought them. So far it isn't much, and the more people learn about J Street's priorities, and the more they keep sticking a finger in the eye of more established groups with long and successful track records, the less likely they are to emerge as anything more than the fringe factor that Brit Tzedek, a group they recently absorbed, was.
AJC Boston has sent in a response that can be read here.
Norm comments here: An eccentric theory of the gravity of threats. Great title, that. J Street reveals themselves as the perfectly predictable product of a self-absorbed generation of American Jews. Groups aside from J Street have made a laudable effort to represent an American community able to see beyond its own comfort and have concern for Jews elsewhere (almost everywhere else) who do not share in our good fortune. J Street wants them to pretend they're just Americans with different geography. They're not, and this inability to face reality will guarantee J Street's irrelevancy into the foreseeable future.
BTW, you may actually enjoy reading the Globe comments to this one.
Update: An emailer writes:
Singal makes a very weird argument in that Globe piece, if I recall. In trying to explain why "new" Jews have different views on things than "old" Jews (I forget his locution, but that's the gist), he notes that Jews old enough to have lived through and survived the Holocaust focus on threats to the existence of Jews, because in their perspective, when people say they will destroy the Jews they sometimes actually try to do so. But "new" Jews who haven't lived through this experience have a more benign view of the world.
Well, this is odd. Does this mean that the "old" Jews are imagining things? That their historical experience doesn't apply to "new" Jews? That this is just a matter of opinion, like a preference for white socks over dark?
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: J Street's Provincial Priorities.
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Congratulations to the vocal congregants at Temple Beth Avodah in Newton, MA. When they heard that J Street's Jeremy Ben-Ami had been scheduled for "Conversation" tonight at their synagogue, they spoke up and got the event canceled. They had no... Read More
What fools these young Turks are. Maybe he meant a New Man:
The New Soviet man or New Soviet person (Russian: новый советский человек), as postulated by the ideologists of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, was an archetype of a person with certain qualities that were said to be emerging as dominant among all citizens of the Soviet Union, irrespective of the country's long-standing cultural, ethnic, and linguistic diversity, creating a single Soviet people, Soviet nation.[1]
Leon Trotsky wrote in his Literature and Revolution [2] :
"The human species, the sluggish Homo sapiens, will once again enter the stage of radical reconstruction and become in his own hands the object of the most complex methods of artificial selection and psychophysical training... Man will make it his goal...to create a higher sociobiological type, a superman, if you will"
Delahunt announced he is retiring. So he's probably going to work for the Iranians openly.
I'm very embarrassed that I'm bothering to respond to this. Probably a lapse in judgment. But anyway:
1) I quit CAP last year. Saying I work there is simply false. Won't hold my breath waiting for a correction. (Furthermore, if you want to get into details -- which don't seem to be your strong suit -- I worked for Campus Progress, not the Center for Campus Progress, which doesn't exist. And CP is technically a "project" of CAP, but there isn't much interchange between the two. Etc., etc. Google is your friend.)
2) The idea that I have any connection to George Soros is... there isn't a word for it. There's a certain style of blogger/pundit who loves to weave grand conspiracies about CAP and Soros, and you, my friend, are a prime example. I regret to inform you that 99.5% of the people who work at CAP haven't met the man and know nothing about him except that he's immensely wealthy, gives a lot of money to the organization they work for, and drives some conservatives absolutely crazy. Saying I'm "Soros-backed" is... well, as you can see I'm really having trouble finding terms that fully capture the amount of delusion on display here. It's like saying my writing is informed by my close personal relationship with Tupac. Or Elvis. But, hey, don't let that stop you, because the human mind is shaped perfectly to conjure and obsess over grand conspiracy theories regarding our ideological enemies.
3) Actually, that's it. I'm tired of this, you know? The Soros conspiracy thing is so 2008, and for folks who have actually lived and worked in progressive DC circles rather than feverishly fantasized about them in apocalyptic terms, it was baffling for the first ten minutes but has been boring ever since. The only time it's anything other than boring (and indicative of a complete lack of imagination) is when one gets personally called out for being a Soros pawn. Then it gets briefly maddening. I welcome you to follow up this post with a precise explanation of how my column was influenced by George Soros -- and saying "Soros gave money to CAP, Singal worked for CAP until nine months ago, therefore any opinion Singal has is related to Soros" is just dumb, so hopefully you can come up with something better. (Maybe it will involve unicorns!) But, again, as with the correction about where I work, I won't hold my breath.
Have a good night. Lock your door, stock up on ammo, and alert your neighbors -- Soros could swoop down at any moment and suck your soul right out of your body.
4) Actually, a final reiteration: I'm ashamed that I bothered responding to this. I blame my narcissistic Google News self-alert, without which I never would have been informed of this sad little blog's existence.
OMG, in reading the previous comment, I thought someone left it as a satirical parody on that guy, Jesse Singal. Having a little fun, whatever. But perhaps it is a real thing, is it? Can someone really be SO FULL of himself and not realize it? Bwahahaha.
Ha! How old do you have to be to be a Globe columnist? Not very, apparently.
See comment No. 1. The Soros connection/non-connection is incidental. The idiocy of the commentary is central.
Indeed, but that's the only thing he can "engage" on -- himself. Res ipsa loquitur. This is the kind of person the Globe gives a column and a Globe email address to.
Well, I watched George Soros on CNN the other day and he struck me as a very intelligent, well-informed person.
But then, maybe I am part of teh conspiracy:)
Did he pay you to say that?
If you are part of the conspiracy you've definitely been holding out on me!
Well so far I haven't gotten my check.
:)
Maybe that is because I am also part of that OTHER conspiracy, you know, the one with AIPAC, the "lobby" etc:)
They haven't sent me a check either, come to think of it.
I think I am annoyed.
:)
Sophia,
Soros may appear intelligent and well informed, but to what ends does he apply those traits?
I believe that he mentioned in a TV interview in the 90s that he helped the Nazis confiscate Jewish property.
Nice type of intelligence to have around one never knowing when one would be sold off for a mess of pottage.
You have a way with words so maybe you could have phrased it to portray his character better than just letting the general notion of those terms depict a benign aspect.
#3,
I welcome you to follow up this post with a precise explanation of how my column was influenced by George Soros
Maybe you should look at it the other way around: Your column was saying everything that he advocates/likes/wants so he continues giving money for the good work?
One problem with some young people is that they foolishly think that anything that occurred BEFORE they were born is irrelevant.
"Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it".
-- George Santayana
"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."
-- Edmund Burke
More Edmund Burke quotes:
http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Edmund_Burke/
Did anyone consider what would have happened had those Congressmen asked to visit a Jewish community, you know, one of those "illegal settlements'? The State Department would have expressed displeasure and tried to prevent that, the J Street hosts would have appoplexed, and there would have been a big controversy. But it's the same principle.
On Soros, since I've been asked for words - let me try to explain further what I think.
I don't think, if he did anything wrong during the war, he cannot be blamed for that or at least not entirely. Also he has been honest about his activities during the war. That takes self-awareness and courage.
Meanwhile, he was a kid. People were dying like flies. Others did worse to survive.
This might represent an ethical fine line I realize. That said, just as criminals are punished and fined and ultimately are considered to have paid for their crimes, there is such a thing as atonement.
If we have committed a crime and spend the rest of our lives trying to do good, is this not an atonement?
For how many years will a person be blamed for what he did in a warzone as a teenager, member of a hunted people?
Nobody, I should say, is writing here, blaming certain American capitalists for their non-coerced and entirely voluntary relationships with Nazi corporations so I think this should be put into perspective.
So - let there be atonement.
And, I think, in the war against terrorists for example, many lines are crossed.
I myself have a real problem with assassinations. I realize they can be justified logically, but I still have a problem with it - a big one.
I am making jokes about the situation in Dubai but the fact is, at some fundamental level, it is disturbing to me. I don't like the taking of life if it can be avoided.
That is straight down the line Jewish philosophy too. It isn't radical in any sense. And, it's ok to express discomfort with killing and with violence.
Does this make me some sort of traitor to the West, to America, to the Jewish people, to humanity? Or what? I don't think so.
I think if we are honest, killing is disturbing and we should feel free to squirm.
This is especially true to a people who have been working for thousands of years to survive as righteous people in a brutal world. We have to be willing to grasp the sword with all its ugly edges. And this means having the courage to confront the possibility that we may be wrong and we may be crossing lines from which we can't return. Rabbis and other people of conscience, Dershowitz, other philosophers deal with these issues all the time and they wouldn't be dealing with the issues, issues of life, death, if we'd simply gone over to the dark side and agreed that brutality is acceptable.
Because it isn't.
As to the ends Soros is working for - are they all bad? Read about the projects he has supported and tell me you think he's 100% wrong or even 20% wrong.
I think if you read about Soros honestly, you have to admit that a lot of his efforts have been to try and liberalize formerly oppressive states and institutions and economies nonviolently, particularly in states that had formerly been behind the Iron Curtain.
Many of the initiatives funded by Soros go to support funding for science, for education, to help civilians in war zones. He has worked to try and eradicate poverty in some of the world's nastiest regions, where hope is scant.
It's true that he worked against the re-election of George Bush. Well you can include most American Jews in that category including myself. Taking a political position on behalf of the Democratic Party is neither radical nor is it a crime.
Neither is supporting democracy in repressive regions. Indeed that's practically a pillar of neocon philosophy.
Isn't it? Actually Soros is pretty right wing if you look at it objectively, he is a capitalist right down the line albeit an unusually charitable one.
I should think you'd be supporting this! or at least understanding it to some degree; rather than buying into all the bizarre conspiracy theories about Soros and the demonization of him.
His point of view about Israel and antisemitism can hardly be called extreme. He is well aware, having been in the midst of the Shoah, that antisemitism predates Israel and that it's on the rise again. He is also aware of the demonization of Israel and has spoken against it.
Where I diverge from him here is the idea that Israel's policies are driving modern antisemitism. I think that blaming Jews in general for specific Israeli policies is a sign of antisemitism in and of itself.
Also, many Israeli policies are driven by Arab violence and Iranian and leftwing/rightwing and antisemitic provocation and can't be seen in isolation as they so often are.
That said, I don't think all Israeli policies are entirely just. It shouldn't surprise you, since I have written about these things here, that I have not been comfortable with certain Israeli policies. Some I think are just flat wrong.
Does this make me an enemy of Israel? You know better than that I think. Tzipi Livni is also uncomfortable with the Israeli far right and she isn't exactly an antizionist radical.
Right? Of course right.
Finally, the whole conspiracy theory business works both ways. People accuse "Zionists" of various conspiracies and we know that it's ridiculous if not actually slanderous.
With Soros, you are talking about a person who has given away vast sums of money to try and help people the others have forgotten; he works for education, he works to support democracy, indeed to support free enterprise and capitalism as well as peaceful solutions to conflict.
What exactly is the problem with this?
I can understand people disagreeing with Soros, but why exactly is he regarded with so much distrust and even hatred?
Sophia,
Because Soros made his money bankrupting Britain and Indonesia doesn't make him a capitalist.
He is avaricious in his greed.
If capitalism was synonymous with that America would never have risen to provide the standard of living her citizens enjoy today.
Of course the word capitalism was always the weapon of choice in their armoury of clichés by the Nazis and socialists.
Trying to excuse Soros for his behaviour during the War, I suppose, could be used for those Kapos in the camps as well, trying to eke out their days on terra firma.
What one sees is a behavioral trait of aggressive selfishness and he will stop at nothing to attain his ideal.
Sophia,
I don't see you as an enemy of Israel for your criticisms but you seem to be naive and will maybe hurt yourself when some deeply felt emotion.
George Soros Interview On 60 Minutes
Do we have to listen when the billionaire speaks?