Why Euros hate Israel? Rage of the Repressed Anti-Semite...

Germany, Belgium Break with France, Agree to Bolster Turkish Defenses

Interesting link:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=578&u=/nm/20030217/ts_nm/iraq_nato_dc_60


Cheers,

 

I see Orson has run off and started another anti-France thread rather than continuing the dialogue here, which leads me to suspect that Bill was probably right about his motives. I apologize for contributing to this foolishness. It won't happen again.


Cheers,

 

Well, since nobody (including me) knows anything about it, I have a modest suggestion.

Luxembourg has a grand duke or grand duchess, depending. If the Letzeburgers are on our side, let's have their grand whichever formally lead the invasion of Iraq. On a horse. For about 4 minutes (then get him/her the hell out of there and back to a nice golf course in Qatar or maybe a Saudi Club Med--burkas in Hawaiian shirt patterns an' ever'thang).

It would lend badly needed panache to the whole sorry mess.

It would also give the Letzeburgers something to talk about besides their radio station and the latest German invasion nobody noticed at the time except them (including the Germans).

 

Negri's "Empire," Euro-Anti-Semitism, and US Foreign Policy

Hmmm. Let's see what pro-peace cheerleader and the poster boy for anti-Americanism, Rober Fisk, has to say--"The case against war: A conflict driven by the self-interest of America," the Independent, 15 February 2003:

"The men driving Bush to war are mostly former or still active pro-Israeli lobbyists. For years, they have advocated destroying the most powerful Arab nation [Iraq]. Richard Perle, one of Bush's most influential advisers, Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, John Bolton and Donald Rumsfeld were all campaigning for the overthrow of Iraq long before George W Bush was elected....

Although Bush and Blair dare not discuss this with us – a war for Israel is not going to have our boys lining up at the recruiting offices – Jewish American leaders talk about the advantages of an Iraqi war with enthusiasm. Indeed, those very courageous Jewish American groups who so bravely oppose this madness have been the first to point out how pro-Israeli organisations foresee Iraq not only as a new source of oil but of water, too; why should canals not link the Tigris river to the parched Levant? '"
[SNIP!]

"Israeli and US ambitions in the region are now entwined, almost synonymous. This war is about oil and regional control.'"
http://argument.independent.co.uk/commentators/story.jsp?story=378428

He calls it colonialism, but his rationale is zionism, or rather anti-zionism. Any pro-zionist super-power must be opposed to my poor, downtrodden friends, the Palestinians, says Fisk. They are the enemy who must be put down before middle-East peace will come, he believes.

But tipping his hand, Fisk objects to the "anti-semitic" charge this way:
"No wonder, then, that any discussion of this topic must be censored, as Professor Eliot Cohen, of Johns Hopkins University, tried to do in the Wall Street Journal the day after Powell's UN speech. Cohen suggested that European nations' objections to the war might – yet again – be ascribed to 'anti-Semitism of a type long thought dead in the West, a loathing that ascribes to Jews a malignant intent.' This nonsense...."

Well, Robert, first of all, it's nonsense to call it "censorship"--only government can do that!
Secondly, and more importantly, how can you and your leftist ilk so blindly back a pro-Arab, pro-Arafat line after Dennis Ross' (Clinton's chief negotiator) withering expose of him (Foreign Policy, Spring 2002?), as a duplicitous ne'er do well who never bargained for peace in good faith?

(Of course, knowing the Arab world better now, I realize that Arafat did so because the price would be his death....But for any westerners who bet on him to become another Mandela, THIS IS BETRAYAL, nevertheless!!! And the failure to face it like Fisk and company--indeed, most of establishment Europe--is only an evasion. Is it any wonder, then, that Bush & co see that breaking the terrorist group Hamas, financed by Islamic fundamentalist theocrats in Iran, through Saddam's overthrow is the REAL road to mid-East peace?)

Yet, Fisk only hates America and holds no reasonable suspicions of the side he so supinely backs.

So--to answer the top question (Jack's: what are Orson's opinions...) directly, do I believe that anti-semitism is one of the matrix of reasons why Europe opposes the US pursuit of war? And maintains only recalcitrant support of US interventionism in the post-Cold War and post 9-11 world, generally?
Reluctantly, I think yes. (Other reasons include anti-Americanism, suspicion of power, envy of success--but these reasons are unsurprising.) Fisk all but admits as much.

Anti-semitism allied by radical egalitarianism (alternate fonts of contemporary ideologically empowered forms of envy--one of the traditional "seven deadly sins"), are additional and, to me, more surprising reasons that I had never anticipated--the latter thoroughly dissected by Lee Harris in Policy Review (Dec 2002)
"The Intellectual Origins Of America-Bashing."
[http://www.policyreview.org/dec02/harris.html]
"What could they [the impoverished third world] do to us?

"The answer to this question, according to many of those who accept the global immiserization thesis, came on 9-11. Noam Chomsky, perhaps America’s most celebrated proponent of the Baran-Wallerstein thesis, expressed this idea in the immediate aftermath. Here, for the first time, the world had witnessed the oppressed finally striking a blow against the oppressor — a politically immature blow, perhaps, comparable to the taking of the Bastille by the Parisian mob in its furious disregard of all laws of humanity, but still an act equally world-historical in its significance: the dawn of a new revolutionary era.

"This judgment can make sense only in the context of the Baran-Wallerstein thesis. For if 9-11 was in fact a realistic blow against the advanced capitalist countries — or even just the most advanced — then here was an escape from the utopian deadlock of the global immiserization thesis. Here was a way that the overthrow of world capitalism could be made a viable historical outcome once again, and not merely the fantastic delusions of a [neo-Marxist] sect. This explains the otherwise baffling valorization of 9-11 on the part of the left — by which I mean the enormous world-historical significance that they have been prepared to attribute to al Qaeda’s act of terror."

Harris is a perceptive and profound observer of evolving contemporary political ideology. He explains why the Left is in radical decline: increasingly, the facts don't support its rationales or critiques. In truth, they contradict them! This catastrophe didn't cease with the Fall of Communism. AND this is why the Left flounders in the US and is found sinking internationally in terms of coherence, program, and intellectual creativity.

The intellectual bottoming that leading Left intellectual Michael Walzer so devoutly wishes for will be only be reached when its radical egalitarian leveling norms are eventually challenged and altered--and with it, its visceral anti-semitism. Or else the future will be more and more nihilistic and intellectually vacuous anti-globo protests--a very maudlin equal to Orwell's "1984" vision of the future of a boot stamping on a face forever.

--Orson

 

Note on Sources...

Dennis B. Ross, "Think Again: Yasir Arafat," Foreign Policy
July/August 2002.

The latest and best Bush policy cheerleader is John Hopkins'
Fauad Adjami, "Iraq and The Arabs' Future," Foreign Affairs,"
January/February 2003, 2-18.
__________ , "Iran Expects: will Iraq's Libetation Help Free Its
Neighbor Too?" The Wall Street Journal, 13 February 2002.

AND finally, vigorously against the US-Iraq war is:

John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt, "An Unnecessary War"
Foreign Policy, January/February 2003. http://www.foreignpolicy.com/wwwboard/walts.html
They conclude:
"Both logic and historical evidence suggest a policy of vigilant containment would work, both now and in the event Iraq acquires a nuclear arsenal. Why? Because the United States and its regional allies are far stronger than Iraq. And because it does not take a genius to figure out what would happen if Iraq tried to use WMD to blackmail its neighbors, expand its territory, or attack another state directly. It only takes a leader who wants to stay alive and who wants to remain in power. Throughout his lengthy and brutal career, Saddam Hussein has repeatedly shown that these two goals are absolutely paramount. That is why deterrence and containment would work."

For gluttons, THERE is extended discussion of this piece on the web-site above (click "Forum" top left).

 

Re: Note on Sources...

OK, so it appears that with all these postings and quotations Orson has pointed out the following:
"Different people may well have different opinions."
Thanks Orson,

Jack

 

Fouad Ajami's "Iraq and the Arabs' Future"

Fouad Ajami's "Foreign Affairs" article (noted above), "Iraq and the Arabs' Future," is now online:

http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20030101faessay10218/fouad-ajami/iraq-and-the-arabs-future.html

--Orson
PS Uh, no Jack--that's not what I'm driving at. Besides, such post-modern reductionism is does not become you.

 

Re: Fouad Ajami's "Iraq and the Arabs' Future"

Orson - of course I'm happy to accept an alternative explanation but when one is not offered then I'm left to my own, admittedly, poor devices in trying to discern just what you are driving at. Regardless of how my earlier postings might have sounded, I'm much more interested in your opinion than I am in the opinion of Fouad Ajami or any of the other people you've quoted. After all, I could easily go to newspapersonline.com (a real site) and read up on all of these people. Instead, by my choice, I am here, talking to you. It seems all you want to do is shove your reading list at us. I no longer need a librarian to help me with the card catalog (archaic reference). Thanks anyway,
Jack

 

Re the first, true--but an inherent problem with so-called "dual use" industrial products (not to add, of the many "Faustian bargains" the US made throughout the Cold War).

Regarding the second? I think your assertion is debatable!
(But I'll wait for another time to take it on.)

--Orson

 

Ah! Too easy...

"Khidir Hamza, an Iraqi defector who once headed Saddam's nuclear weapons program, recently called Germany 'the hub of Iraq's military purchases in the 1980s.'"
[Snip!]
"German firms were particularly active in striking deals with Iraq. Their relationships with Saddam's regime date back to the 1970s.
"The German daily Tageszeitung reported recently that it had seen portions of Iraq's 12,000-page arms declaration to U.N. weapons inspectors in December showing that German firms were the market leaders in supplying Iraq, even in the decade after the Gulf war.
"The paper reported that 80 German firms were named as suppliers in the Iraqi declaration.
"Even before the latest escalation of tensions, U.N. weapons inspectors had filed numerous reports of German firms complicit in aiding Iraq's covert programs in weapons of mass destruction."
[sNip!]
"French firms show up far less frequently among the companies cited by the U.N. inspectors, although Iraq did acquire French Mirage jet fighters and French-made Exocet missiles during the 1980s.
"It was a French firm that won the contract to help build Iraq's nuclear power plant at Osirak, which was bombed by Israeli jets in 1981 shortly before it was to come on line."
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20030220-11583742.htm

Well, Tom--if that's little or no evidence, then we have a major disagreement.

--Orson

 

NY TIMES' Tom Friedman observes European neglect of Arab liberation this way:

"There is only one group of Arabs for whom Europeans have consistently spoken out in favor of their liberation — and that is those Arabs living under Israeli occupation, the Palestinians.
[SNIP!]

"We all know what this is about: the Jewish question. 'For too many Europeans, Arabs are of no moral interest in and of themselves,' observes the Middle East analyst Stephen P. Cohen. 'They only become of interest if they are fighting Jews or being manhandled by Jews. Then their liberation becomes paramount, because calling for it is a way to stick it to the Jews. Europeans' demonstrations for a free Palestine — and not for a free Iraq or any other Arab country — smell too much like a politically correct form of anti-Semitism, part of a very old story.'"

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/26/opinion/26FRIE.html

 

Orson, though that may be way too stereotypical, there unfortunatly, is at least a smidge of truth. I still don't know, though, if that's because of anti-Semitism or a desire to be at peace with the Arab world at large and not become a target. Perhaps it's because of lucrative business deals concerning oil. Maybe it's a bit of all the above. Though, I must say that anti-Semitism is also alive and well here in America, as well as the rest of the world. It's not just a disease in Europe.

 

Oh, indeed it is. Given a boot by 9/11, too.
Megan McArdle (sp?), who blogs as janegalt.com, tells of an email she received about the fired State of New Jersey poet laureat--the former Leroy Jones:

"On Monday, February 24, 2002, Amiri Baraka spoke at the Afro-American Cultural Center at Yale. Before his visit, many expressed concern over the poet's bigoted and Anti-Semitic past, resulting in a Yale Daily News Editorial that criticized Baraka's visit. That afternoon, Mr. Baraka's read aloud his controversial "Somebody Blew up America" and argued point-blank in his subsequent speech that Israel knew about and was complicit in the attacks of September 11th, garnering him wild applause and numerous standing ovations. His vitriolic diatribes were indeed difficult for those of us in attendance to stomach. To make things worse, today, YDN Columnist Sahm Andrangi penned an opinion piece that has scared the heart of every Jewish member of the Yale community."
Yale Daily News commentary on the above event:
http://www.yaledailynews.com/article.asp?AID=21933

 

Thats very a convenient analysis if you happen to be a Zionist. If anyone shows any sympathy with the Palestinians, some journalistic pea-brain announces that their "real" motivation is to attack Jews.

Of course one could just as easily argue the exact reverse: that all support and sympathy for Israel is just the latest expression of Christianity's colonalist hatred towards Islam. The Kurds lack a state of their own, but they are of no interest to Christians because they are Muslims and not a separate religious group that can be used as a weapon against Islam by the West.

I'm not arguing that the latter spin is true. In fact I disagree with it. But I am arguing that the simplistic rhetoric that I just created is no less credible than that created by Friedman and Cohen in the N.Y. Times. In fact, millions of people in the Islamic world believe something very much like it.

The problem with both attempts at political spin is that they are ad-hominem. They simply dismiss, a-priori and without argument, the possibility that their opponents might have credible and defensible reasons for their views. Instead, the opposing policy is treated is if it were a symptom of some secret evil in the opponent himself.

 

Is the Catholic Church Anti-Semitic?

Bill: To Glenn Reynolds, that the Catholic Church really IS (still) Anti-Semitic, is the best explanation for the available evidence!
Can you make a better alternative case?

I'll let the master blogger from U-Tenn Law School explain his himself from objections laced from three quarters:

"[W]hy do I think that the Church is displaying antisemitism here?

"Basically, it's because it seems that the Church sides against Israel, and with Arab terrorists and dictators, at every opportunity. Now there could be other explanations for that, I guess. I posited a couple over in the comments to this post of _Tacitus's_, but here they are again:


[Reynold's Old Comment:]"If you want to be charitable, you can argue that they're pandering because they (1) want to distinguish Christians in Arab countries from Jews; and (2) think that, long-term, Jerusalem is likely to be in Arab hands. I'm skeptical, though. I think a lot of them probably *are* antisemites. The Vatican has been too consistently anti-Israel to explain it other ways. [Emphasis Reynold's.]


"[Reynold's New Comments]:"Note that these alternative theories, which Tacitus thinks are more persuasive explanations than antisemitism, don't make the Church look better, really: they merely suggest that it's willing to sacrifice moral principle for the sake of expediency rather than for the sake of prejudice. Is that better? Not much, if at all.

"_Alisa_ says that we have to understand the Catholic church as a European institution run by Europeans, though I'm not so sure that gets rid of the anti-semitism charge. Perhaps -- as another comment in the Tacitus thread suggests -- it's enough to say that the Church isn't any more anti-semitic than the rest of Europe, though that's not much of a defense, these days.

"But what really set people off was this _picture_. And, _Walker's_ rather misleading characterization notwithstanding (he puts it this way: "A cardinal has been photographed with Yasser Arafat. Got that? A church leader posed with a political opponent of a state run by Jews, therefore his church is anti-Semitic."), it's not just a picture. It's a picture of Cardinal Etchegaray, representative of the Church [sent from Rome] in full Church regalia, holding up joined hands with Arafat, terrorist murderer, at a press photo opportunity [last May].

"Now here's my question: Is it even imaginable that he would do the same thing with Ariel Sharon, elected leader of a democratic country?

"I don't think that it is. But why? I think that the reason is anti-semitism -- or, perhaps, if you want to bend over backwards, pandering to anti-semitism. If it's not that, and if Etchegaray really thinks that Arafat is less objectionable on a moral level than Sharon, then what does that say about the moral judgment of the Vatican?"
http://www.instapundit.com/

SO--how is consorting, financially supporting, and photo-oping with authoritarian if not generally anti-democratic terrorist approving (if not also insitgating) leaders, while berating and totally neglecting leaders enjoying continuous rule of law and popular sovereignty (including alien Arabs) during a terrorist state of siege merely a different "taste" and not simply Anti-Semitic?

Why isn't this out and out rationalising identification with evil? Just when does enough evidence permit--nay, oblige-- moral judgement? Or do you STILL want to argue--Bill--that this is merely an unfair ad hominem?

--Orson

 

I still owe you a response elsewhere, so I won't get into this with both feet, but I think you should distinguish between the Church (of 1.8 billion) and the upper hierarchy (of a few thousand). A distinction should also be made among the hierarchy, since it seems certain that Pope John Paul II did not order the good Cardinal to hold Arafat's hand. H.H. is personally familiar with the horrors of Nazism; I would find it very difficult to believe that he has an antisemitic bone in his body. And even if he does harbor that sort of bigotry, there are undoubtably many Cardinals who do not.

I think a distinction should also be made between pandering to antisemitism and pandering to anti-Israeli sentiment. If you want to say that the Cardinal supports Arafat to gain brownie points with folks who consider Israel an unjust and oppressive government, that's one thing--I might even agree with you, though I would want to look over the facts very carefully first. But plenty of non-bigots--and, in my experience, a significant number of American Jews--consider Israel an unjust and oppressive government, so that shouldn't necessarily be seen as a symptom of antisemitism. There's an obvious correlation--the vast majority of antisemites probably hate Israel, too--but let's be careful not to confuse cause and effect.


Cheers,

 

Re: Is the Catholic Church Anti-Semitic?

I don't know what a "blogger" is.

I think that my response to this Catholic figure's meeting Arafat (if it really happened) depends crucially on what the purpose of the meeting actually was. If it was an attempt to get Arafat to rein in the intifada and to return to the bargaining table, I have no trouble with it at all.

If there is going to be any kind of mutually agreeable settlement to the Israel-Palestinian problem, influential people on both sides have to be found who will sign on and who can deliver their constituencies.

Frankly, I wonder if Arafat has enough control of events among the Palestinians to be able to deliver his people. I also wonder if he really wants to. Nevertheless, next to Hamas, he looks good. (First time the words "looks good" and "Arafat" have appeared in the same sentence.)

The future of Israel will probably be either:

A. An indefinite continuation of the occupation status-quo. That means an endless intifada as the Jews try to hold onto the land while demography slowly turns against them and their percentage of the total population gradually declines. Israel seems to be in a long-term no-win situation right now. The situation is slowly getting worse, not better.

B. A negotiated settlement. That would mean creating a Palestinian state and finding leaders that Israel can live with to run it. Those leaders will have to have some support among their own people, so they will never be entirely satisfactory to purists. This alternative almost requires that negotiators talk to individuals like Arafat.

Unfortunately, the growing hatred and religious fanaticism that have accompanied a generation of military occupation may have poisoned the atmosphere too badly for popularly supported negotiations to be realistic any longer.

C. A unilateral solution imposed by Israel without negotiation. This would imply pulling out of most of the occupied territories (while keeping East Jerusalem and some key sites), setting up a military perimeter to control cross-border traffic, deporting troublemakers, and then simply letting the Palestinians fight it out among themselves for control.

Unfortunately, that could result in a radical militant state of some sort on Israel's border. (Hamas would be the likely winner.) It would also be extremely destabilizing to Jordan and to the whole region.

So, Orson...

I'd be interested in reading in your own words exactly how you would extract the Israelis and the Palestinians from their death-grip. How would you accomplish this wonder while maintaining your own moral purity?

 

Two thoughts, Tom.
"If you want to say that the Cardinal supports Arafat to gain brownie points with folks who consider Israel an unjust and oppressive government, that's one thing...."
Yes--and it's another thing that The Vatican didn't recognize Israel until 1997-yet another when one consideres the Church's long suspect history of actually being anti-Semitic.

It's one thing to address dogmas that are anti-Semitic, as the Church did in 1965--actions, however, are another thing. And here the Vatican's "pragmatic" foreign policy towards evil regimes bites!

Secondly, Tom, I'm not simply doing correlation here. I'm asking if, in the totality of relevant facts and competing explanations, which one best withstands critical scrutiny? In other words, which explanations fail modus ponens tests, and are thus falsified? And which survive?

In other words, I'm not simply asserting a suspicious correlation; nor am I asserting an obvious Truth of certitude. What I'm saying falls in between the merely suspicious and outrageous obvious evidence: that a reasonable conclusion is that when the Chruch sends an official to joyously and publicly clasp hands with an leading organizer of terrorism against Jewish people, that's endorsing anti-Semitism.

What would falsify this inference? If the Church's representative would do the same with Sharon--yes!--then this conclusion would stand as false, muddying the grounds for any clear conclusion save that "diplomacy" and "politics" were at work. But the fact is that the Church excoriated the Irsraeli government for sourrounding the Church of the Nativity with IDF last spring when Muslim terrorists took the church over--the Church did not similarly condemn the terrorists for doing what under UN treaty IS sacraligious!

So--Why the double standard? The best explanation, to me , is anti-Semitism.

I do not doubt that this is not Pope John Paul's doing--he himself WAS responsible for recognizing Israel! But as he has grown frail and cannot attend to all of the vast administration the Church requires, these activities are delegated out; the culprit(s) likely surround the Pontif himself.

--Orson

 

Re: Re: Is the Catholic Church Anti-Semitic?

Bill--

I agree with most if not all of your surmizes and observations.

As for a "solution?" It is possible that the Bush Administation's hope that by overturning Saddam and thereby encouraging an Iranian revolt will lead to a defunding of Hamas, Hezbolah, Islamic Jihad. Should this occur, if combined with reform of the, literal, textbook hatred that the EC funds for the Pali's then, the very process begun by Clinton can be tried again!

In other words, I have hope only for ten to twenty years out! The pre-conditions for peace, whether civil society or in term sof leadership. are simply absent. Poll after poll shows that most Pali's prefer more terrorism against Israel--and by large majorities. Religion here works to undermine peace far to fundamentally yet to make it a workable option.

To summarize in terms of your menu, option "C" is likelist for the next five to ten years--option "B" could become viable in time. But Europe makes the muddy muddling of option ''A"--unfortunately--quite competitive.

--Orson
P.S. A "blogger" is short for "web-logger," people who post diaries online, for instance, as one woman I know does. Others do so out of other interests, for example www.dianahsieh.com for her interest in philosophy. What grew most spectacularly after 9/11 were political blogs, for example www.oxblog.com, a couple of Oxford IR students from Yale. Glenn Reynold's (www.instapundit.com) wound up blogging as an extension of his academic and professional interests in hi-tech law. Welcome to the World Wide Web!

 

Re: Re: Re: Is the Catholic Church Anti-Semitic?

Frankly, I'm not sure why you say that you agree with me, but you try to stereotype your "Euros" as "repressed anti-Semites" for saying precisely the same things.

How is removing Saddam going to bring about an Iranian revolt? I would think that removing Saddam's Sunni minority dictatorship would clear the decks for Iraq's Shiite majority to claim power, and they are probably more closely alligned to Iran than to the US or its allies. Personally, I think that while the Iranian mullahs publicly call the US "the Great Satan" and tell us to keep our hands off Iraq, they secretly cheer for us to win because they hope to pick up the pieces.

What is the "EC"? My opinion is that Palestinian nationalism is a home grown phenomenon and that it doesn't really depend on foreign funding. Does anyone seriously believe that the Palestinians would suddenly start to love Israeli military occupation if they had less outside support?

That implies that there is a negotiating partner available on the Palestinian side. Who would that be? Who has the following and popular support necessary to sign an agreement that his people would honor?

You are the one who tried to roast the Catholics for talking to Arafat, so tell me who you would negotiate with. If the only people that negotiaters can morally talk to are Zionists, haven't you doomed your negotiations to failure before they ever begin?

How does "Europe" make continuation of the occupation status-quo "quite competitive"? I don't understand that.

If you are endorsing an Israeli unilateral imposed solution without negotiations (it isn't clear what you are proposing), what form would such a solution take? What do you suggest that the Israelis do?