Friday, April 30, 2010
Subhead: Noam Chomsky, the Good Jew
John Mearsheimer sure is making Stephen Walt look like a piker isn't he? I've had Mearsheimer's speech from the Palestine Center in Washington, DC yesterday a number of times with comments such as, "The mask is off," "A new low," etc...
You could call it a sort of Mearsheimer fantasy. He decides that Israel is an Apartheid state, will be an Apartheid state, and will only get to be a worse Apartheid state, and part way through...muhahahahaha!...you can almost sense the glee (it must be all he can do to keep from pulling his hands in under his chin and rubbing them together) as he follows his thought experiment through...through to its GLORIOUS CONCLUSION! "Oh yes, once they laughed at me. They scorned me! They stared at me, and whispered. They spoke behind my back in the faculty lounge! But they'll see! Oh will they see! One day, one day soon, I will be VINDICATED! Everyone will come to me and say, 'Oh we're sorry Professor Mearsheimer, you were right all along. Israel is a horrible Apartheid state! Please forgive us Professor!' And then, then, with my cadre of Good Jews at my side, I will take my rightful place of respect on the cable news shows!"
Seriously. Read it. It's remarkably bizarre, an extended fantasy exercise. But really, we need to thank him for this list:
To give you a better sense of what I mean when I use the term righteous Jews, let me give you some names of people and organizations that I would put in this category. The list would include Noam Chomsky, Roger Cohen, Richard Falk, Norman Finkelstein, Tony Judt, Tony Karon, Naomi Klein, MJ Rosenberg, Sara Roy, and Philip Weiss of Mondoweiss fame, just to name a few. I would also include many of the individuals associated with J Street and everyone associated with Jewish Voice for Peace, as well as distinguished international figures such as Judge Richard Goldstone. Furthermore, I would apply the label to the many American Jews who work for different human rights organizations, such as Kenneth Roth of Human Rights Watch.
In a way I feel like that scene at the end of Animal House where the kid is sitting on his bed looking at Playboy when a girl in a bunny costume comes flying through the window and lands on the bed. "Thank you God!" Seriously. Big word up to those who made the scene, especially J Street and Richard Goldstone. You guys must be so proud. (And I have no doubt J Street will issue such a statement, but it doesn't really matter, does it?) I look forward to the statements distancing yourselves from this nut. If you read (or watch) the speech, you'll realize what an odious idea it is to be in this company.
On the other hand, here's a list I aspire to:
I would classify most of the individuals who head the Israel lobby's major organizations as new Afrikaners. That list would include Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League, David Harris of the American Jewish Committee, Malcolm Hoenlein of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Ronald Lauder of the World Jewish Congress, and Morton Klein of the Zionist Organization of America, just to name some of the more prominent ones. I would also include businessmen like Sheldon Adelson, Lester Crown, and Mortimer Zuckerman as well as media personalities like Fred Hiatt and Charles Krauthammer of the Washington Post, Bret Stephens of the Wall Street Journal, and Martin Peretz of the New Republic. It would be easy to add more names to this list.
For more on this, see: David Bernstein: Some "Realism" About John Mearsheimer
Noah Pollak: Mearsheimer Makes a List
Elder: Mearsheimer libels Zionists, panders to his Arab friends
Instapundit says: "The limit of acceptable anti-semitism has been climbing for a while, and it's been kicked up a few notches under the current regime." He has this email from Noah:
Imagine, as a thought experiment, if a white American professor gave a speech to an organization in Washington and listed, by name, "good blacks" and "bad blacks" -- and added that the bad blacks aren't just wrong, but are blindly loyal to a foreign country. That professor would be out of a job in about five minutes. Mearsheimer will get away with this.
Update: Marty Peretz: I Confess: I Am A Member Of Opus Judaei
I'd bet anything that Professor Falk, just as one other instance, has never, ever paused to think of what might be an American interest he could support in a foreign controversy.
Indeed, nor Chomsky, nor Finkelstein at the very least could be expected to take America's interests to heart in any conflict. But it isn't really about that, is it?
Update 5/2: Good post from Meryl: John Mearsheimer's speech on Jews: Echoes of the 1930s
This is so beyond outrageous.
At least he's out in the open though. As if we had any doubt.
This is interesting too, points up the damage he is doing not least to the Palestinians:
http://www.ibishblog.com/blog/hibish/2010/04/30/mearsheimers_unhelpful_unrealistic_and_disempowering_message_palestinains