the USA, Israel, and national interest

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

The question that Likud and the right always poses is an existential one but always posed in 'never again' military superiority terms. What will Israel's future security be like if they have done their utmost to alienate several generations of stuck, jobless, pissed off Palestinians whose numbers are growing larger and larger? My ADL friends always tell me that the Palestinians have always made the wrong decisions in such a way as to suggest that Israel's have thus always been right yet I feel like both parties are headed in bad directions.

This is a point I've made a lot on this board but characterizing Israel as being the sum of AIPAC/ADL/Likud is a lot like characterizing America only in terms of the Republican Party/Fox News. At the moment there's been a move to the right (primarily driven by a youth vote disaffected from more moderate/liberal attempts at a peace process) but it'll inevitably swing to the left. When I was in highschool there was a lot of garment-rending in the American charedi community bc Barak was seen as a huge betrayal of, for example, the settlement process. The 90s were full of labor party prime ministers (Rabin, Peres, Barak) and the 00's the discourse shifted more to the right (Sharon who started more to the right but then joined Kadima, Olmert, etc). Is Netanyahu radically right? Yes. But the US recently went through 8 years of Bush and there's plenty of consternation about Obama being more moderate-right than a leftist. Rejecting the entire country bc of the current political situation is, imo, pretty myopic. Of course I've had similar arguments about other things on US Politics thread so idk.

This is a point I've made a lot on this board but characterizing Israel as being the sum of AIPAC/ADL/Likud is a lot like characterizing America only in terms of the Republican Party/Fox News.

I don't think that Israel is the sum of AIPAC/ADL/Likud ... just that those are the people that seem to have the loudest voices/exercise the most control. Same with Fox/GOP - they are not representative of the sum total of the country, but they tell you an awful lot about how policy is made, and in many ways they control the discourse (even when they're out of power!) because the left is so weak.

But the US recently went through 8 years of Bush..

I will never forget the time a boatload of old Israeli tourists in New Zealand gave me smiling thumbs-up signals and enthusiastically big-upped Dubya as "our friend!" when they found out I was an American. this was around the time of the Iraqi invasion... yeah I don't really have much to say to these people.

I mean is there even a single Jew in congress that is allowed to be critical of Israel? I kind of doubt it.

"allowed to be"? I'm sure none of them have guns held to their heads. If they make the decision to not be critical of Israel it's bc for whatever reason (generally political expediency / general politician whoreness) they made that decision. Goldberg has made the point repeatedly that pro-Israel sentiments are very popular throughout the United States so it's not shocking to find representatives that echo that position.

which makes it kind of a dick move to ask why the minority isn't working harder to ensure the morality of the majority's politics

like, it's not THEIR fault they're morally bankrupt monsters, the real fault lies with YOU, for not showing them the error of their ways

yeah right

us government has good relations with regimes significantly worse than israel. calling its supporters 'morally bankrupt monsters', well ok, but you are talking about congress here.

calling its supporters 'morally bankrupt monsters', well ok, but you are talking about congress here.

well yeah exactly

us government has good relations with regimes significantly worse than israel

also no one gets more money from the US gov't than Israel so it's kind of fair game putting them at the top of the list (Pakistan close second)

for the record i actually am a morally bankrupt monster

tbf, much of that money is dog-eared to spend on american military technology, so it's going right back into american industry. there's definitely a discussion to have about US funding of Israel (and this is the perfect thread for it!), tho I find that ppl opposed to it a) greatly overestimate exactly how much it is (pittance in the scheme of things) and b) discount the very real advantages the US gets from Israel including the benefit of world class tech sector, and all the imperial influence the US loves to have in the middle east. not to mention that if you think Israeli democracy is precarious now, I'd hate to see it if it had to deal w/, say, Russia or China instead of the US.

(I don't mean the last bit as a threat like, "keep funding Israel or they'll become a dictatorship!" but more that the US has bought civic influence in Israel for years, and is partially the reason why the society has transitioned from socialism to free market capitalism. you buy that kind of influence w/ money.)

tbf, much of that money is dog-eared to spend on american military technology, so it's going right back into american industry.

yeah well it's not like I'm cool with this either really

I find that ppl opposed to it a) greatly overestimate exactly how much it is (pittance in the scheme of things)

hey if enrique wants to use some other yardstick for "good relations" with morally suspect regimes he's welcome to point them out. it's not like our support of Israel is all strictly $$$, we also bring their PM over for standing ovations from congress immediately after giving our president the finger.

b) discount the very real advantages the US gets from Israel including the benefit of world class tech sector, and all the imperial influence the US loves to have in the middle east.

yeah I dunno how well this is working out for us, really, given the current uprisings/instability/conflagrations. Israel is probably passing on lots of info to us about Syria, for example, but for all the wrong reasons.

i'm not privy to the inner corridors of power + intelligence but something like Stuxnet was probably worth some cash

okay yeah that was pretty cool

In re the piece that started this -- it did capture something for me, which is the particular way in which, for a lot of young American Jews, zionism feels like this innocent, carefree thing that you can't even imagine someone disagreeing with (except, I guess, Nazis or something). At least that was how I felt growing up -- "Cool, we have our own country! No one lived in the desert before we moved there and the British said we could have it [half truth], and we really showed the world that we could fend and fight for ourselves and no one can push us around! Plus it has pomegranates and shawarma." or something.

hurting otm

Benedikt emails Goldberg: http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/06/allison-benedikt-makes-her-anti-israel-case/240779/

quite a url there huh

2) Every marriage is a mystery, so who knows what goes on inside the Cook-Benedikt household, but it's strange that Benedikt would write that her "husband ordered me to retweet this," given the fact that much of the criticism of her essay centers on the way she portrays her husband as a bully and a jackass.

lol