From: The Changing Face of American Zionism
(lobelog) -- by Daniel Luban --
...I think that both supporters of Christian Zionism like Mead and critics like Yglesias underestimate just how crucial support within the educated and affluent liberal mainstream of American Jewry has been in sustaining the special relationship; as a result, they overestimate the extent to which growing Christian Zionist support can unproblematically substitute for dwindling Jewish support. This is a case where merely looking at crude poll numbers, as Mead is fond of doing, can mislead us. For one thing, they show only breadth of support, not depth. It may be that large numbers of Christians are willing to answer “yes” to the poll question “do you support Israel?”, but this tells us very little about levels of actual commitment translating into political action. Some, like John Hagee and his followers, are no doubt exceptionally committed to the Greater Israel project, but they are by all indications a minority even among conservative evangelicals.
But more importantly, poll numbers fail to indicate influence. U.S. support for Israel has never been about the raw number of Israel’s supporters, but rather the fact that these supporters tended to make up an enormous part of the American political, intellectual, and economic elite. It was this influence, not raw numbers, that helped the Jewish community spearhead what Alan Dershowitz called “perhaps the most effective lobbying and fund-raising effort in the history of democracy.” This influence was manifested not only in support among actual Jews, but among the Gentile elites who lived in the same suburbs, went to the same colleges, and worked in the same offices as Jewish supporters of Israel. And it was manifested not only in obvious measures like campaign contributions, but in subtler ways of shaping media discourse and setting the political agenda.
Thus, even if Israel does manage to replace every lost Jewish supporter with a Christian Zionist supporter, there is every reason to believe that this demographic shift would still have enormous ramifications for the future of the U.S.-Israel relationship. In terms of concrete impact on policy, gaining ten less-affluent and less-educated evangelical supporters in Texas or Alabama does not make up for the defection of a single Peter Beinart or Haim Saban. (I don’t intend to sound snobbish here; in fact, I think that the ways in which the American political system limits the influence of its poorer and less-connected citizens is one of its least attractive aspects. I am simply stating brute facts.)
But this means that supporters of the old special relationship should not get too sanguine about the possibility of replacing the old liberal Jewish base with an influx of Christian Zionists. Even if this influx continued — which is far from inevitable, since Christians are watching the same political developments in Israel/Palestine as Jews are, and could very well become similarly disillusioned — it is unlikely that the special relationship can survive without its traditional base of liberal Jewish support...MORE...LINK
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Chris Moore comments:
If it's true, as Luban says, that "it is unlikely that the special relationship can survive without its traditional base of liberal Jewish support" (which means "liberal" U.S. Jewry has indeed always been the linchpin to American support for Jewish supremacism in Israel) then his statement begs the question: how "liberal" has U.S. Jewry ever really been? (For an answer to that, see the post directly below.) Indeed, how "liberal" have all those "Gentile elite" Judeophile liberals who lived in the same suburbs, went to the same colleges, and worked in the same offices as Jewish supporters of Israel" ever really been?
So much of American "liberalism" isn't liberalism at all, but at best, soft Marxist, Statist left-liberalism, and at worst, totalitarian Bolshevism. And as readers of this site know, there is no contradiction between Bolshevism and Zionism -- both of which are Jewish supremacist causes. All of which means lefties opposed to Zionism are either confused, stupid, or political imbeciles, because Zionism or phenomenons like it is where leftism leads, nearly inevitably. (For example, see the left-wing, racist, tribal, Israel lobby-modeled, Mexico-first group La Raza.)
American melting pot-undermining, victimist tribal supremacism -- vice of the stunted Left, actualization of the stunted Left.
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