Posted on 05/08/2003 7:12:25 PM PDT by quidnunc
The good news is that Tam Dalyell's outburst to Vanity Fair — in which he suggested Tony Blair was unduly influenced by a Jewish cabal — has not been ignored. His remarks made all the papers, proof that anti-semitism is no longer an uncontroversial part of public conversation.
That's welcome. If there is bad news it's that Dalyell has been treated as a naughty boy — "incorrigible," said Peter Mandelson — rather than as a man who has uttered a racist slur. Bad news, too, that so far much of the condemnation has come from Jews rather than Dalyell's comrades in Labour and on the left — who one might have hoped would be queueing up to denounce such a whiskery old prejudice in their own ranks.
In a way, this episode is a test for Britain. American journalists covering the Dalyell story say the same comments would be a career-ender in Washington — much as Republican Trent Lott's expression of nostalgic sympathy for racial segregation recently cost him his place at the helm of the US Senate. Admittedly Dalyell does not hold leadership rank in Labour, but it seems Britain's intolerance for intolerance is not quite as advanced as America's.
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The MP's defence is that the cabal he really has in mind is in Washington where, he says, a group of neoconservative Jews — the familiar roll call of Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Doug Feith et al — have won the ear of the president. This perhaps deserves more attention than his muddle-headed theories about Britain, if only because versions of this idea are gaining currency in liberal circles.
First, it's worth doing a reality check. As it happens, George Bush's cabinet is the first in decades not to include a single Jewish member. The result is that those bent on sniffing out Jewish influence have to go to the second, third and fourth rungs of the administration to find it. Among the neocons the heavyweights are not Jewish: they are Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld.
So it pays to be clear, when one hears casual references to "the tiny group of men who surround the president", who they are and who they are not. Worthwhile, too, to realise that the umbrella labels don't always fit: superhawk Wolfowitz, for example, seems to harbour some un-Sharonite views. Earlier this year, he told the Washington Post the case for a Palestinian state was getting more, not less, urgent and that he preferred "concrete steps" — for example tackling Jewish settlements in the occupied territories- to endless diplomatic process.
Second, this group is not and does not operate like a "cabal", with its connotations of secrecy and ulterior motives. On the contrary, it is explicit about its aim: a world dominated by American power and made safe for western-friendly democracy.
Crucially, this is an American aim pursued for American reasons. The people urging it are dedicated proponents of US might — the Jews among them included. They do not construct these grand designs for Israel's sake, but for America's. It just so happens that in some cases — though not all — those strategic goals are consonant with Israel's. Where they differ — as in Ronald Reagan's sale of Awacs aviation technology to Saudi Arabia — the hawks always choose the US over Israel. Even when they meddle in Israeli politics, it is to serve US ends.
Is there any connection between the Jewish neocons and their Jewishness? Perhaps a good university dissertation could be written on that, drawing on the Jewish tradition of seeking to change the world — from Christ to Marx. But any such thesis would also have to explain the consistent Jewish presence on the left, out of all proportion to their numbers. Maybe Jews are found sitting around the neocon table, but they are also found organising today's anti-war movement — to say nothing of the white ranks of both the anti-apartheid struggle and the 1960s campaign for civil rights in the US.
Real anti-semites are not troubled by that contradiction: they just say that Jews are behind everything. The Nazis used to depict the Jew as the master Bolshevik and master capitalist — often in the same sentence. But this kind of warped logic can have no place among liberals or the left.
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(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
But not all such anti-Jewish feeling expresses itself so directly. A search of the BNP's own musings shows that even they — the fascists and racists of our age — do not call themselves anti-semites. They too claim merely to be anti-Zionists.
And so say liberals and paleo-conservatives in two-part harmony.
Apparently it has quite a comfortable place there.
Anyone who doubts about how the left fawned over Hitler need only read the popular leftist media of the late 1930's which oozed with his manners, non-smoking, impeccable taste in music and art and how he charmed the ladies.
Aside from promoting their share of useful idiots like Noam Chomsky, the left is and always has been anti-Jewish.
England and the rest of the world, including the American Left, it seems. Jerks.
Like there is something wrong with what?
Elucidate if you please.
Very good. But better put it this way:
God forbid any Jew should ever influence anybody in power, let alone have any power, anywhere at anytime. The Jew haters are in an uproar.
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