the USA, Israel, and national interest

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

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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.

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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.

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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

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/06/allison-benedikt-says-most-of-my-jewish-friends-are-disgusted-with-israel-it-seems-my-trajectory-is-not-at-all-unique

I think anti-israel is accurate.

why is john forcing his wife to tweet, is my question

"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.

^^^this is totally the narrative they sold us in hebrew school

"Allison Benedikt did send me a response to my original post, but it was caught in my spam filter"

yeahrite you fuck

his first thing is kind of ... a spectacularly wilful misleading, or one that evinces a basic incapacity to deal with english prose? i'd guess the former. on the other hand, i am english, and so have no idea who he is or why he is relevant to anything. i liked the essay, though.

J Street, the fairly new Jewish-American organization of liberal Jews who want a 2 state solution, also now do trips to Israel with students I see:

As director of J Street U, I have the privilege of traveling in Israel and the West Bank this week with an amazing group of 14 J Street U students – 7 of whom are in the region for the first time.

The trip is just over halfway through – with experiences ranging from visiting the Western Wall to viewing the separation barrier, from visiting with Knesset members to traveling to Palestinian villages, from exploring the meaning of Zionism today with Professor Gil Troy in West Jerusalem to hearing from Palestinians whose homes have just recently been demolished in the hills of South Hebron.

I can tell that these two weeks are making a life-long impact on the participants. And amidst the painful stories of this conflict, that fact is giving me tremendous hope. But I don't want you to hear it from me. I want you to hear it directly from the students

goldberg kinda got ethered there. why is he so condescending?

"Does she question herself about the consequences of abandoning Israel? I wouldn't go so far as to say I've abandoned Israel (did you read the essay?), but if you mean have I thought about what it would mean for there to be no such thing as a Jewish state? I have thought about this plenty of course! Who that takes this stuff seriously hasn't? (I guess you don't think I take it seriously, but you're wrong.) I bet I land, uncomfortably, about where you land: If the decision comes down to brutal occupation forever to maintain the Jewishness of the state OR true democracy, which would mean no Jewish state, I would have to choose the latter--but there is nothing easy or wishful in me writing that, and I hope it never comes to that (though more and more it seems like it will)."

This sums up my feelings pretty well.

Also, my father, now a reform rabbi and formerly a conservative cantor, told me last passover that he doesn't like the wicked child parable and thinks it should be taken out of the seder, because it suggests exclusion of those who express doubts or misgivings. I always hated it even as a kid. No idea where it even comes from in terms of source material -- it strikes me as being out of sync with other stuff you learn about Judaism and its values.

I think that's a misunderstanding of the parable (or at least not the normative interpretation). The wicked son excludes himself by asking, "what are these rituals to you / to you and not to him."

Notably the wise son also questions (in almost the exact same syntax as the wicked son, which is a huge area of interpretation), as does the simple son. The problem w/ the wicked son isn't the expressing doubts or misgivings. It's that he wants to exclude himself from the tribe.

Yeah but the wicked child is a child and you should give such children patience and understanding rather than reinforcing their self-exclusion, I think is the idea.

wait i don't get it. (i have always been confused by the difference between the wise and the wicked sons!) you're saying the wise son says "us" and the wicked one says "you"?

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they both say 'to you' is the point, but only one of those the haggadah says is self-exclusionary

he was just kind of a dick about it

Yeah he's the surly kid who's all like "What is this crap? What's the point of it." But in modern psych terms we're supposed to figure that that kid is already angry and already feels excluded and that the answer isn't casting him out.

also these aren't literal children -- they're symbols. the answer to the wicked son's excluding himself is making apparent the consequences of that exclusion. "if you were there, you would not have been saved." ie: the community saves you in times of trouble, and you are at risk if you leave it. It's a pretty parochial message, but the haggadah is essentially all about that theme over and over again ("in each and every generation they have raised up to destroy us.." etc etc).

the child who feels alienated is technically not the wicked son but the one who doesn't know how to ask (the tinuk sh'nishba/stolen child concept). the wicked son knows and purposefully rebels, he's an apikorsis/heretic type of figure.

Well yeah, I think you're analysis is right. But, I mean, that's also why it feels like a metaphor for pressure not to criticize Israel, which is why Jeffrey Goldberg's use of it is irritating, and why I don't like it in general.

your