'The Forward' Allows Jewish Liberals to Rewrite Their Support for Iraq Debacle
Had Sharon made his criticism public, citing the dangers posed to vital Israeli interests, might he have made a difference in the prewar debate in the United States and the world? Certainly he would have poured cold water on the postwar assertions of critics, like professors Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, who have fingered Israel, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and pro-Israelis in the administration for instigating the war...There were, of course, neoconservative types in Israel who did encourage the United States to occupy Iraq and advocated democratic elections wherever possible in the Middle East. But there were also many Israelis, this writer included, who spoke out openly and publicly against the American scheme.
This is rank misrepresentation. Whether or not Sharon warned the U.S. in a back channel, Israeli leadership opinion and U.S. Jewish leadership opinion was 4-square for the invasion. Leftwing Jews like Tony Kushner and myself demonstrated against the war and spoke out forcefully, and were marginalized for doing so. Alpher is either lying or deluding himself when he says he opposed the war. Why did he write this in bitterlemons before the war, in October 2002:
Israel is and will be cheering on the American effort, while the sentiments of the Palestinian population, as well as its key institutions, will be with Saddam Hussein
Or this just before the war:
Removing Saddam is good enoughOr this as the war began:An American-led attempt to conquer Iraq, remove the Saddam Hussein regime and destroy its weapons of mass destruction will almost certainly succeed. An American occupying force in Iraq will almost certainly pressure neighboring Syria and Iran to reconsider some of their more hostile and repressive actions. For Israel and other moderate countries in the region, this is good news. And it is good enough.... we shall have to suffice with the destruction of a regime of psychopaths who finance Palestinian terrorism and pontificate about the destruction of Israel.
The American war on Iraq, however problematic for much of the world, is for most of us in Israel a welcome attempt by a friend and ally to deal with a strategic danger that we have been struggling to cope with on our own for decades.
Or this, about the power of the neocons (whom he treats as a sideshow in his latest article):
But [the] willful alienation by Washington of the global community and the multilateral approach also bespeaks an extraordinary sense of power in the US, cultivated particularly by the neoconservative lobby.
The sad fact is that many Jewish liberals joined the neocons in pushing the Iraq invasion: Pollack, Friedman, Berman, Alpher, the hits go on and on. I've said before that the war represents a crisis for Jewish identity: it reveals the degree to which Jewish identity is now built upon the demonization of Arabs, hundreds of thousands of whom are now dying and fleeing and suffering in incomprehensible ways in part because of crazy ideas hatched in thinktanks. The Forward is responding with cowardice to an intellectual chore: What was the Jewish role in this mess? Progressive Jews have a part to play in this soul-searching. As LRB editor Mary Kay Wilmers, a progressive Jew herself, who published Walt and Mearsheimer, said to me months ago: "It seems that the American left is also claimed by the Israel lobby."
Yes Phil, It was the Jews. Much like the stab in the back, Germany 1918. yada, yada, yada,
by the way, I'm has right wing has they come, full fledged member of the lobby!!!!!!!!. And I was never for this war for the simple reason that it was an attempt to get rid of a dictator and give the people of a Iraq a chance to have a pluralistic liberal democracy and a civil society. The problem is that any student of the area knows that these things are antithetical to both Islam and the Arab mentality. They need dicatators and brutality to hold them in line. You can't look at this through a western mirror. From Casablanca to Karachi you have bunch of demented lunatics and no sacrifices from our incredibly brave military can change that. and we all know it.
Yeah Bill, we all know this war was about bringing democracy to the Middle East, starting with the most secular nation there.
And those who believe such nonsense, contact me if you are interested in bying some real estate, I have a bridge in New York for a very good price.
What was it about then, oil is a fungible commodity that trades on a world market. If anything we should have hit Iran.
Yeah Bill, let's hit Iran, it is a great threat to the US. They are plotting to send UAVs with WMDs to the coasts of America.
As one senior British official put it back in 2003, "everybody wants to go to Baghdad. Real men wanna go to Tehran."
And we know you are a real man.
The real zone of conflict is sunni/shia, the Israeli- Palestinian confict is going to be a side show to that one. When Iran has the bomb that is going to kick off a nuclear arms race in the entire area. Now personally I don't care how many Arabs kill each other in their own personal religious wars but you put a few nuclear bombs in the Persian gulf and oil goes to who knows what. Something the rest of you genuises should contemplate. Shockingly enough there is a lot of death and tragedy that goes on in the levant that is not Israel's fault. Saddam wiped out the marsh arabs and destroyed the ecological balance in the area. But thats ok, the kurds get betrayed at every turn but thats ok, try being a minority in Saudi Arabia or a coptic Christian in Egypt, but thats ok. But somehow Israel is the demon here and Hamas and Hezbollah are the good guys. And a last question for Brenda, Deborah, and even Rene. Has a woman, if given the alternative of living in Israel or any country in any country where sharia is the rule of law, what would you pick.
I read in the Independant that in its effort to protect me from islamoterra the US air forces day before yesterday shot to death about 70 somali herdsmen who were caught red-handed in the act of looking for a drink of water.
Ah, the freedom! The compassion!
Would Israel even take me? I'm not Jewish.
Look, I'm not a thrall of nations which have no separation of church and state. They tend to be very backward. But I don't get from there to seeing Arabs as a bunch of animals.
Very good piece, Philip. Thanks a bunch.
I lkie Bill Rearlman because he is a fool struggling to reach the light at the end of the tunnel yet he is unaware that it is an oncoming train.
The USA will not likely come off looking anything less than foolish because it allowed a Texas Village Idiot to be placed in charge of it.
As far as the Liberal Jews go, they are no more prescient than anyone else.
Anyone who felt that the nation of Iraq would be glad to be occupied also thinks the Palestinians should be overjoyed to live under Israeli rule.
It breaks my heart that no leaders examine history before trying to find a new path but instead repeating all the deadly errors of the past.
The Muslim world, especially its Whabbist portions, is ensconced in the throes of a dark age. It will eventually reach an enlightenment but not before it attempts to destroy all that it finds offensive or incomprehensible. Minds stuck several centuries back have no vision for a future. They seek to recapture a past that has been sanitized through time and mythology.
"The deepening political crisis surrounding Iraq has generated fears in the Jewish community that Americans are going to blame Jews for the failure
Deborah, believe it or not I actually like you has opposed to Palnicki or Lapidus who I would pull the switch on myself if I could. Here is the thing, the entire Arab world is a bunch of failed states who don't do anything except add misery to the world, the evidence is there from Casablanca to Karachi. the only thing that resembles a decent country is Turkey and their not Arab. And the enlightened EU won't even take them. Israel is out of Gaza, the border between Gaza and Egypt is in their hands. Israel is out of lebanon, fully certified by the UN. Yet war comes across the border. These are nihilistic societies that turn on themselves and the only way the average Arab despot stays in the saddle is by blaming the Jews and their media their is full of it. Israel doesn't need monetary aid from the US, what it needs is one ally that it can count on. And the US should stand for something besides realpolitic. The question is, and it always has been, are you on Israel's side or on the side of he Arabs. The same way it is concenring Korea, India/Pakistan, the way it was with Nato vs the Warsaw Pact and so it goes. And I simply can't see why people who call themselves liberal humanists would align themselves with Hamas and the Al Aksa brigades over Israel. And something else that everybody should think about if Iran hits Israel any rational thought goes completely out the window. Its not just Teheran that goes but a lot of other places. And yes I think there is a major qualitative difference between Iran and North Korea having the bomb and countries like Israel, the US, England, and even Russia and China.
By the way Gil you really are a piece of shit scumbag.
Bill, please prove to us that you are not a racist - I mean give us just one fact proving this -- you know, facts, you've heard of those? Since you tend not to use them in your silly, ignorant diatribes against Arabs and what you consider their mentality, i thought perhaps I would remind you that most honest, undeluded persons (not like yourself) try to use them when they do investigative journalism.
Also, have you ever been to Palestine? I have. So has Desmond Tutu, and he called it apartheid back in 2002.
Tina, I've been to Israel several times,including Judea and Samaria. Palestine is simply a designation that the Romans stuck on the area. Without that Yasir Arafat would have been a Judean instead of Palestinian. ( actually he was Egyptian but thats another conversation )
Desmond Tutu has his own agenda, and is hardly a nonpartisan oberver. Its intersting that both the extreme left incliding the liberation theologists and the extreme right can only agree about one thing. they hate the Jews. Its actually kind of fascianting on an intellectual level. But let me ask you this, what would you call Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, or for that matter Europe. model societies. Why is Israel the villian and its shangri la every place else.
Oh, Bill, you still haven't proved to us you are not a racist.
Oh, Bill, so you consider Palestine Israeli territory?
And Judea & Samaria? Are you an ancient Israelite, kept alive by mummification techniques we don't know about?
If you're going to get biblical on us, guess what, ancient Judea & Samaria (named by the Israelites after they arrived there and established ancient Israel) was part of the land of Canaan, which existed BEFORE the Jews arrived, and whose population are the ancestors of current day dwellers, both Arab & Jew.
Tina, first, you can't prove a negative. Second, I think your the one actually being very paternalistic and racist. I don't subscibe to the white mans burden, which is why I wasn't for this war. You can't bring enlightenment to people who don't want it, and and can't handle it. And I think the results prove that. Second, I call it Judea and Samaria, you call it Palestine. Others call it the west bank. And find me a living breathing canaanite.
haha, Bill, find me a living breathing judean and samarian.
I think your comment "i don't subscribe to the white mans burden" says it all, Bill.
Tina, It's an expression, I'm surprised you don't know that. Judea and Samaria are geographical designations. Find me a canaanite.
It was and is all about OIL. I have said it since the first hint of a war with Iraq by jr- If Iraq's export was carrots we wouldn't be there! Impeach Bush, imprision Cheney and turn them both over to the World Court an Ohio Democrat.
Yes, I know Kipling's expression - if you don't subscribe to the White Man's Burden, why do you support the creation of Israel which employed that very colonialistic practice, and after expelling and terrorizing 700,000 Palestinians, went on to ignore the existence of Arabs who remained and "de-arabized" the Arab Jews that came in.
""A voluntary reconciliation with the Arabs is out of the question either now or in the future. If you wish to colonize a land in which people are already living, you must provide a garrison for the land, or find some rich man or benefactor who will provide a garrison on your behalf. Orelse-or else, give up your colonization, for without an armed force which will render physically impossible any attempt to destroy or prevent this colonization, colonization is impossible, not difficult, not dangerous, but IMPOSSIBLE!... Zionism is a colonization adventure and therefore it stands or falls by the question of armed force. It is important... to speak Hebrew, but, unfortunately, it is even more important to be able to shoot- or else I am through with playing at colonizing."
Vladimir Jabotinsky, founder of Revisionist Zionism (precursor of Likud),
The Iron Wall, 1923.
from Cactus48.com "Zionist Quotes"
http://www.cactus48.com/Israel%20History%20X.pdf
Bill, I wouldn't consider your offer for even a nanosecond -- "given the alternative of living in Israel or any country where Sharia law is practiced..."
I keep trying to tell you, the question for Americans is "Do you support America, or do you support Israel?"
"Would you live in America or would you live in Israel?"
It is NOT "Would you live in Israel or would you live in an Islamic law country?" Because, y'see Bill, we already have a very good country to live in where our civil rights as women are fully protected. (He just doesn't get it, poor lamb)
You know Brenda its possible to be a patriotic American and still be pro-Israel. What you and the rest of your cohorts want to do is supplant a country that is very much like the west, independent judiciary, free press, rights for women, and actually a place where gays serve in the military. And you want to supplant on its ashes an Islamic junta. Thats the question. And my question to you is why? But the main point of this last entrry was the war. And I wasn't for it simply because the idea of bringing western style laws and practices to the Islamic world was doomed from the begining. They are a bunch of failed states that don't do anything but produce misery, death and destruction. Israel hhas no oil and the economy is thriving, What what the Arabs be without oil. And again, why do you take the side of the Arabs over Israel.
Notice something?
The Zionists are giving Jews a bad name.
"Would Israel even take me? I'm not Jewish"
No problem, Deborah. When you get to Tel Aviv tell them your a Jew. Russian mafiosi do it all the time.
Gil, you are really a sick fuck, whats your problem, did some Jewish kid take your lunch money way back when
yes, Gil, they absolutely DO NOT represent Jews, who have hystorically been at the forefront of justice and civil rights protections in this country and abroad.
In my view, racist zionists like Bill Pearlman falsely represent Jews/Judaism just as Pope Pius (Nazi sympathizer) and Pat Robertson falsely represent Christians/ Christianity and Mohammed Atta and Louis Farrakhan falsely represent Islam/Muslims.
"But the main point of this last entrry was the war. And I wasn't for it simply because the idea of bringing western style laws and practices to the Islamic world was doomed from the begining." (BP)
It wasn't doomed from the beginning for the reason you give, Bill. It was doomed from the beginning because Iraq was a British creation, combining three groups who couldn't co-exist. Saddam Hussein was about the only way to get them to co-exist reasonably peacefully. It did not take much forsight to know that when Saddam was taken out, civil war would result.
I said civil war would result, at the very outset of this war. And I'm not an international observer of any note.
I am frankly amazed by how little criticism the Brits get for the disarray in which they have left so many of their colonies. But small wonder Tony Blair feels compelled to join Bush Jr in an attempt to keep the damage from coming home to roost.
Pearlman,
You're a bore.
End of story.
Deborah: the British killed way more Iraqi's in 1919 than we have killed in the last 3 yrs, But I would question the relative peacefullness of Iraq under Hussein. Sure it was fine if you were sunni, or basicially from tikrit. If you were shia or kurd though you had big problems.
I have suggested before that the root of Bill Pearlman's bitterness is the fact that the world has failed to recognise and acclaim his comic gifts. Listen again to this :
"The US should stand for something besides realpolitic!"