Sunday, June 27, 2010

Jews finally acknowledge Jewish nationalism in America and loyalty to Israel is major problem

From:
‘NYT’ story on anti-Zionists says their ‘dual loyalty’ prophecy has come to pass
(Mondoweiss) -- by Philip Weiss --

This piece on the renewal of American anti-Zionism, by Samuel G. Freedman in the Religion column of the New York Times, includes the usual disclaimer, and some religious hokey-pokey too, but it is fair and important. I wonder if Freedman is not secretly sickened by the news from Jaffa Road.

Freedman quotes Steve Naman and Allen Brownfeld of the American Council for Judaism--that lion of Judaism during the Partition era. The most exciting paragraph in the story is this one:
My sense is that they believe that events are proving they were right all along,” Jonathan D. Sarna, a historian at Brandeis University and author of the seminal book “American Judaism,” said [of the anti-Zionists] in a telephone interview. “Everything they prophesied — dual loyalty, nationalism being evil — has come to pass.”
What does this mean? It means the accusations re the Iraq war as a war for Israel's security have traction even in conventional thinking; it means that Eric Alterman's admission of dual loyalty, and Alterman's calling out Ruth Wisse for demanding dual loyalty of American Jewish youth, and John Judis's accusation of the prevalence of dual loyalty in the U.S. Jewish leadership, and Jeffrey Goldberg's coy equivocations around it, and Robert Kraft's wife Myra's blurting that she wants her sons to fight for Israel not the U.S. (Kraft is a big contributor to Freedman's school, Columbia), and Elliott Abrams's statement that Jews must stand apart in whatever country they live in except Israel, Abrams who worked in the White House as he believed this-- these statements have had an effect, they are undismissible. Now, when the Iraq war is well behind us. (Oh and yes a lot of non-Jews said this too, but got railroaded). I always said that one day the Center for Jewish History would have a debate about the Jewish contribution to the Iraq war disaster on its stage, which Freedman has spoken on. That day hastens...LINK

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