the USA, Israel, and national interest

I think there's a kind of young liberal Jewish American "drift" from Israel.

there was some article awhile back noting this exact trend - younger generation of American Jews is becoming more alienated from Judaism in general and Israel in particular, while younger generation of Israeli Jews is becoming more hard-line/more right-wing.

I didn't read the original Awl article but I find those last few questions in Goldberg's really insulting.

my simple 4-part response to all questions israeli (and a bunch of other countries too, including ours)

1. to rule over other people without their consent is always a dirty business, no matter the reasons
2. to be ruled by people other than yourself without your consent is always intolerable, no matter who you or they are
3. neither ruling over others, nor being ruled by others, is an ennobling experience, usually the opposite.
4. a long-term conflict tend to warp all things around it, up to and including culture, sometimes permanently.

i don't think the writer of the article is really uncurious, and i don't know if i'd call its style "faux-naive" like goldberg does, but it does elide what the author actually believes about Israel. maybe that's kind of the point. her husband does come off like an asshole in her account, though.

― horseshoe, Monday, June 20, 2011 3:41 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah, i think what i like about it is that it's pointedly _not_ a "here is how was enlightened about israel"; its a "naive" account of the way the relationships in her life shaped her feelings about israel. (& i think goldberg kind of misses this). and i like that because it seems like a more... truthful way of approaching the subject.

i do think it fails is where she writes about her husband (i work with him! hes not an asshole!), since it's easy to come away with a "nice jewish girl abandons israel over her jerkoff husband" vibe if youre already suspicious

cute comment:

Second, based on the admittedly limited info provided in the essay, it seems as if there's a fairly good chance that her husband is an anti-semite. He's neither a Jew nor an Arab but he's so rabidly anti-Israel that he can't stomach the thought of visiting the country and upbraids Benedikt's relatives upon meeting them just because they live there. Perhaps her husband is a judgmental creep and castigates everyone he meets who doesn't live up to his world view. In that he case, he's not an anti-semite. But if Israel is the sole focus of his vitriol, then we know what the husband is really all about.

rmde

oh wait heh i copied the wrong one

i meant to copy the paragraph after that:

Benedikt suggests that she isn't all physically attractive, so one possible explanation for her transformation is that she settled for the first guy who would take her and rather than admit to herself that she married an anti-semite, she herself renounces Zionism. Granted, there isn't enough evidence in the essay to firmly draw this conclusion, but I'd be willing to wager that such a situation explains much of what's going on here.

yeah that was my favorite comment

also, she...never posted that she was unattractive.

She has a winning smile in her little icon picture

my simple 4-part response to all questions israeli (and a bunch of other countries too, including ours)

1. to rule over other people without their consent is always a dirty business, no matter the reasons

i like democracy, the rule of law, etc., but getting down to it, this covers every country out there. you don't consent in a meaningful way, you make the best of it.

2. to be ruled by people other than yourself without your consent is always intolerable, no matter who you or they are

this really does cover every country out there -- of course you will be ruled by people other than yourself. it is tolerable.

3. neither ruling over others, nor being ruled by others, is an ennobling experience, usually the opposite.

not even sure what you're trying to say here

4. a long-term conflict tend to warp all things around it, up to and including culture, sometimes permanently.

israel has always been in conflict, i guess this is a way of saying it's so warped it's... i don't know. this cuts both ways.

think yr kind of deliberately misreading what he's saying there...

or being overly literal perhaps

i imagine his retort would be along the lines of "well i didn't ~choose~ to live in the USA, it's just where i happen to live" whereas for some ppl israel is still a place to move to

his imagined retort is really silly, then. a) should ppl stop trying to move to the USA then? b) Israel is still a democracy and plenty of Israeli citizens disagree w/ Israeli government policy. you can live somewhere, or even move somewhere, and not agree w/ the current government positions.

she clearly makes her husband sound like an ass. whether that's the fault of reality (he is an ass) or the fault of the author (maybe he didn't actually harangue his hosts + relatives-in-law quite as dramatically) idk. it's a problem for me tho as a reader...

x-post re comment about attractiveness-- for some reason she made the following observations

She said she was cute at one point and then later says I am no longer considered cute

I agree!

2. to be ruled by people other than yourself without your consent is always intolerable, no matter who you or they are

I read this as more 'a ppl' than just 'ppl' in general.

She said she was cute at one point and then later says I am no longer considered cute

― curmudgeon, Monday, June 20, 2011 6:08 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

okay but the whole thing is narrated in the present tense, so i took the not-cuteness to be temporary. anyway the point is more that to read her entire relationship to Israel and Zionism as a function of how badly dudes want to fuck her seems to evince a...worldview.

which part? i guess they are meant to be specially relevant to israel but given the way things are in the middle east right now it is sort of funny -- not that funny and im not trying to belittle the palestinian cause but -- it's sort of funny to say that the big problem with israel is, ruling over people without their consent is the worst. it sure is. but i still don't get the 'people other than yourself' part. the nation-state is a pretty unusual phenomenon. it hasn't proven intolerable to live outside one, empirically speaking.

xpost

ah, 'a ppl'. applies better to assad's syria than israel, doesn't it?

Meaning the Alawites?

i think the article mentioned above btw was Beinart's NY Review of Books piece a bit ago that you can read here:

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/jun/10/failure-american-jewish-establishment/

I have my issues w/ that piece as well but it stands up much better imo. He's a much more critical thinker w/ a more nuanced take. This article was cute "my experience in Israel changed me" etc type of thing which if you read a certain kind of writer (look at places like New Voices or Birthright responses) is not courageous and more a trope at this point. But good for her being published in a nice big venue. For a sorta counter point that's better written / also personal voice / in pictures! check out http://www.amazon.com/How-Understand-Israel-Days-Less/dp/1401222331 which I thought was legitimately good tho suffered from a lot of same flaws as this article ("if you're not with the one who convinced you, be convinced by the one you're with!").

ah, 'a ppl'. applies better to assad's syria than israel, doesn't it?

there's a scale, difference of degrees etc

yeah that's it Mordy - thx

He's a much more critical thinker w/ a more nuanced take. This article was cute "my experience in Israel changed me" etc type of thing which if you read a certain kind of writer (look at places like New Voices or Birthright responses) is not courageous and more a trope at this point. But good for her being published in a nice big venue.

tbf i think her piece was not intended as a thinkpiece exactly...more of a this is what ambivalence feels like piece. also you sound kind of patronizing :/

i swear i've read like a hundred personal narratives about "my experience w/ the political situation in Israel" since college. every time it's called courageous i have to wonder at what point this thing stops being courageous and starts being a position/opinion a lot of ppl seem to be expressing!

xp yes, i am patronizing her, i think it's a silly piece. is that a priori bad?

i think if she'd taken a little more time to make it clear that she loves john, that she's in love with john, etc., it might make the relationship function a little better in the piece as another example of the way loyalty works even in the presence of objective assholism. i.e., to ask "why is she with this asshole" kind of misses the larger point about the way we form attachment and relatiosnhips. dunno, just riffing here. but parts of this resonated w/ me, the being attached to persons and ideas and institutions and positions that are "objectively" "bad" or "wrong" or "jerks" but being unable to change my allegiances. or allowing my allegiances to change only in the context of my relationships with other people.

heh, who called benedikt's piece "courageous"?

xp yes, i am patronizing her, i think it's a silly piece. is that a priori bad?

― Mordy, Monday, June 20, 2011 6:20 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

i just prefer calling it "silly" to calling it "cute" and saying "good for her"

oh, no one on this thread apparently but i've seen it elsewhere. here's one place:

Allison Benedikt did us all a courageous favor by willingly weathering the inevitable accusations of stupidity, shallowness, disloyalty and self-hatred that comes with being conflicted about Israel. I salute her and hope so many others will also tell their elders to shut up, sit down and listen for once. Their control of the Jewish community is waning and they can listen now, or they can listen when we’re in charge.

http://jewschool.com/2011/06/17/26374/why-allison-benedikt-is-right/

Of course, Jewschool has been hammering this point for so long this article was a gift to their echo chamber.

xp ok, what's your point? you don't like my particular tone? fill in whatever tone you want.

Their control of the Jewish community is waning and they can listen now, or they can listen when we’re in charge.

lol yeah uh not so sure about this tbh

oh, well, whatever, i just posted this cause i liked it and i thought the j goldberg response was interesting, and i thought ilx may have had some thoughts

And then there is a whole set of other questions: Does she ask herself whether she has a responsibility to make Israel a better, more humane, place? Does she question herself about the consequences of abandoning Israel? Does she think about the sin of the wicked son in the Passover story, and how that sin might echo in her own life?

the phrase 'jeffrey goldberg is a fucking asshole' really can't be said enough.

serious question -- do you know what the sin of the wicked son in the Passover story is?

come on that whole line of questioning is a pretty indefensible dick move

he's asking whether there's an extent to which she is removing herself from the lot of the Jewish ppl -- abdicating responsibility for affecting change in Israeli politics and taking a stance of removed interest. "they don't speak for me, i'm not getting involved." i think it's a legitimate question and an ethical issue not just bc of any problems of removing yourself from your background/community but also bc it's a way of ducking personal obligation to act in the face of something you may think is morally wrong. you might disagree that's at play here but i don't think it's an indefensible dick move.

it's a fairly indefensible dick move imho because if there's one thing Israel has done in the past, oh - well, since I've been alive - is make it abundantly clear that they do not give a single fuck what American liberal Jews think of their policies, and if you disagree with them, you will just be labelled a self-loathing anti-semite and ejected from the dialogue entirely. I don't know how much of a "responsibility" I have to alter the actions of people who have absolutely no interest in listening to me, and whom I have zero leverage over.

what does john think of Palestinian women and food?

it's just such a high-school level debate tactic: "oh you think this is wrong? well what have YOU ever done about it?" It's a tactic for shutting off debate, not for actually encouraging action

xp

i think you're talking about a certain story you've heard about the relationship between israel and america and not actually reality. american jews have had a huge impact on israeli policy over the years and half a decade of reactionary israeli politics do not characterize everything Israel has done in the past since you've been alive -- unless of course you haven't been alive very long. They haven't "ignored" American liberal Jews -- tho admittedly American liberal Jewish voices haven't been as well funded or loud as non-liberal ones over the last few decades. and who is doing all this labeling of self-loathing anti-semites and ejecting you? I have tons of friends in Israeli fields (specifically a number in JStreet) who don't feel this way. They feel a responsibility to change the discourse, even when they may feel discouraged. xxp

eh, you know old jerks at my old Temple mostly

esp when you talk about namecalling where i've been called a fascist zionist asshole (i think on this very thread) for posting on ilx. a little disingenuous getting butthurt about that kind fo thing. oh no, "they" (prob a message board poster?) called me an anti-semite, i'm taking my toys and going home.

for posting on ilx about my views re israel* i should clarify

american jews have had a huge impact on israeli policy over the years and half a decade of reactionary israeli politics do not characterize everything Israel has done in the past since you've been alive -- unless of course you haven't been alive very long

yeah you're right, maybe "since I've been alive" was too strong and should've been "since I've been an adult", which is definitely more accurate.

xp

unimpressed by the Wailing Wall ("it's small")

the whole piece feels like she's trying to get back at her overbearing husband tbh

really surprised my post up there came in for a history-mayneing. it all seems pretty self-evident to me!

and yeah, it applies to syria, or any country, why wouldn't it?

it does presuppose you can identify and delineate separate 'peoples' which is not unproblematic i guess, but also, you know, happens.

and no Mordy, I'm not talking about this messageboard - I'm thinking more of conversations I had at temple before I went to college, arguments I got into with young zionists while I was in college, and arguments I've gotten into with family members as an adult (after which it became abundantly clear that there's no point in discussing Israel or its policies with them) - with varying degrees of namecalling and histrionics involved (nobody in my family is going to call me an anti-semite for ex). And then beyond that there's just the larger political discourse involved in, say, broadcasts of AIPAC meetings, or Joe Lieberman or Anthony Wiener making a speech, or Rabin being assassinated by a Jew, where the level of "if you aren't with us YOU ARE AGAINST US" rhetoric is soooooooo strong and noxious.... yeah, it makes a liberal Jew like me not even want to bother.

xp