Steven Plaut
In some ways it is a depressing period in Jewish history. The American Jewish Diaspora community, or at least the non-Orthodox bulk therein, is in the process of committing cultural/national/religious suicide. Most American Jews are indifferent to their Jewishness; intermarriage is close to and may be above 50%; and the dominant "religion" of the American non-Orthodox Jews is the pseudo-religion of Liberalism-as-Judaism, its chief tenet that Judaism is nothing more nor less than the political agenda of the American left, never mind that this agenda is totally bankrupt intellectually on its own demerits. The Reform movement and the Deconstructionist Reconstructionists are simply religious Liberals.
Many Conservatives are also--no, liberal Conservative is not an oxymoron. The "defense" organizations, American Jewish Congress, Bnai Brith, etc., are largely devoted to the practice of political liberalism as pseudo-religion.
And then we have the chattering classes in Israel, the media and intelligentsia and literati, devoted to seeing Israel weakened, dismembered and then destroyed through the Oslo process of national suicide.
We have even the Likud, under Netanyahu, still pursuing the delusion of the "peace process", still trying to buy Arab toleration through strategic endangerment of Israel's existence, still thinking that just a few more concessions to the PLO will nudge the PLO away from terror and its genocidal ambitions and move it to peaceful coexistence.
Well, in these days of frustration, I think there is one idea that we should bear in mind. And that is that the Zionist movement and ideology has many fantastic accomplishments under its belt, one of the more important of which is that it forced a major change in the nature and expression of anti-Semitism.
Not that anti-Semites are really any different when they hide behind the mask of anti-Zionism. These are the same gutter bigots, the same people who refuse to acknowledge that Jews are humans, that Jews are entitled to rights and equality. But they have been forced to express their bigotry differently.
This should be obvious any time you observe the campus anti-Semites, the Left and the Arab fascists and the self-hating Jewish leftist Uncle Toms, demonstrating against Israel.
For centuries, the slogans of the anti-Semites were that Jews were racially inferior, intellectually inferior, cowards, money-grubbers, killers of God, sub-humans. But observe the main slogan of anti-Semites today. It is that Jews are mean. They are mean to the poor Palestinians. Ooooh, soooo mean.
What a marvelous transformation!! That the
main calumny thrown at the Jews is that they are
bullies, meanies. What greater accomplishment of Zionism
could be imagined?
Of course, this does not mean that the anti-Semites really do think that the Jews are mean or cruel to the Palestinians. The anti-Zionists do not give a damn about the Palestinians, and the last thing they care about is Arab human rights. This is why they have absolutely nothing to say about the treatment of Arabs in Arab countries or by the Palestinian Authority's Gestapo. When Saddam Hussein ordered Kuwaiti civilians to be forced to drink gasoline and then had his troops shoot into their bellies to make them explode to the cheers and laughs of his storm troopers, there was not a single anti-Zionist who expressed disapproval or concern. The anti-Zionists know perfectly well that Arabs are treated 1000 times better in Israel (even if one were to believe all of their accusations and allegations of mistreatment) than are Arabs in Arab countries, and, of course, they refuse to admit that the Arab treatment of non-Arab minorities in the Arab countries is even a legitimate topic of discourse.
The anti-Semites lament supposed Israeli mistreatment of the poor Palestinians because they think this
For centuries, anti-Semites called Jews cowards and money-grubbers. Now the main calumny thrown at Jews is that they are bullies. What a marvelous transformation!
The anti-Semites have lost their ability to march about and accuse the Jews of ritual murders and similar medieval libels, at least outside the Arab world's press. Such things make them laughable in the West. No one outside the Arab world takes the Protocols of the Elders
(Continued on p.11)
June 1998 - 3 - Outpost