Sunday, November 22, 2009

Why do Diaspora Jews advocate staunch liberalism and internationalism for Gentiles, but Jewish nationalism for themselves?

(By Chris Moore) -- A recent American Jewish Committee survey of American Jewish opinion found that 94% of U.S. Jews think the Palestinians should be required to acknowledge Jewish nationalist Israel as an explicitly Jewish state (see question #12 at the link). This fact suggests that the maintenance of Jewish nationalism and an explicitly Jewish identity is very important to the vast majority of world Jewry, whether located in Zionist Israel or in the Diaspora.

Yet the overwhelming majority of Jews are also staunch advocates of secularism, internationalism, and left-liberalism (for Gentile countries only) in their Diaspora political identity. For example, Wikipedia’s “American Jews” entry, under the sub-heading of “politics,” notes “many [Jewish immigrants] came to America with experience in the socialist, anarchist and communist movements as well as the Labor Bund, emanating from Eastern Europe,” and “the majority [of American Jewry] has voted Democratic or leftist since at least 1916.” The entry itemizes strong Jewish-American support for left-liberal internationalist and interventionist Democrats like FDR, LBJ and Bill Clinton, who all received 80% or more of the Jewish vote.

The juxtaposition of these two contradictory (simultaneously Jewish nationalist-Zionist and anti-nationalist/liberal) but equally strong components of Diaspora Jewish identity, particularly in the context of the crucial role played by the Israel lobby in instigating the Iraq war, begs the question: Is such a political identity and program conducive to instigating interventionism and internationalist war-making on behalf of Israel (and other less explicit Jewish nationalist interests) on the one hand, while simultaneously discouraging inquiry into domestic Jewish-nationalist ethnic racketeering and intrigue under the rubric of liberal tolerance, pluralism and secularism on the other?

And beyond that, can’t such a powerful form of ethnically cohesive “liberalism” be used to subversively undermine and head off Gentile nationalist, populist, conservative, libertarian, and Christian identity movements, or any other Western political movements likely to be hostile, confrontational or intolerant towards subversive crypto-Jewish nationalism and its agenda?

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