War On Russia, War Among The Jews

How’s that war on Russia going, Neocons? The collective West is ever more urgently seeking an exit strategy from Ukraine. The concern among the ruling classes is to somehow sell to their publics that this war hasn’t turned—predictably—into a massive geopolitical debacle and defeat. ‘It’s a stalemate, not a defeat!’ is the cry that we’re hearing—from Time, NBC, The Economist, FT, etc. You can read about the hand wringing here:

Game Over: US, European Officials Quietly Nudge Ukraine To Seek Peace

The Russian response has been to ridicule the West, which is entirely understandable. The West was suckered into this war on Russia by an assortment of goofballs collectively known as Neocons—the lure was the prospect of a share in the plundering of Russia’s natural resources, or maybe revanchist dreams of lording it over the hated Russians. How can anyone feel sorry for these idiots? They did it all in our names, and the usual MIC suspects have profited handsomely, even as America’s moral and geopolitical standing has taken a serious hit. The article linked above sums the current situation up nicely:

In the wake of Ukraine's costly and futile counteroffensive, Washington's proxy war with Russia is facing strong headwinds at home: 

• The war between Hamas and Israel has diverted public attention and sapped the war state's ability to propagandize voters. Indeed, Biden's Oval Office address appealing for aid for Ukraine and Israel was originally planned to focus solely on Ukraine, NBC reports. 

• The US public's pro-Ukraine fervor has cooled: A new Gallup poll found 41% say the US is doing too much for Ukraine -- a big leap from the 29% who said that in June. Many Americans think that money should be used to improve conditions at home. 

• A growing number of congressional Republicans have put away their rubber stamp for Ukraine aid, and have thus far thwarted Biden's request for $61 billion in additional funding for the war. Biden's ploy of a joint funding request that combines controversial Ukraine aid with Israel aid is in grave jeopardy, as House Republicans demand separate votes. 

Washington's blank-check support for Israel's destruction of Gaza is further straining an already Ukraine-sapped American arsenal.

So Ukraine and the collective West continue twisting in the wind as another winter approaches but, as the globalist Atlantic Council has pointed out, it’s actually in Russia’s interest now to keep the war going to maximize their geopolitical gains.

OK, now we pivot. Just a bit.

Back in August when I enjoyed my 15 minutes—or so—of fame on the Michael Savage Show, the topic of our conversation was the war on Russia. Therefore, it came as no surprise to me at all when Savage asked me whether I thought that the war on Russia would lead to a wave of anti-semitism in the US. Whether or not you agree with Savage generally, he’s an intelligent guy. He could see the disaster of the war coming, and he also knew that a bit of digging would reveal the outsized role of Jews in the drumbeat for war on Russia. As I said, Savage is an intelligent guy. I didn’t for a moment think that he had such a low opinion of his fellow Americans that he thought the prominence of a handful of Jewish names—like Nuland and Blinken—would alone lead to a wave of anti-semitism. After all, there were and are plenty of goyische names even more prominently associated with the drumbeat for war—the McCains, Grahams, and the list goes on.

I realized that Savage’s concern was that, behind the more public names—behind the greed of the MIC, behind the motives of our running dog vassals in Europe—the driving force for war with Russia came from Jewish political muscle. Yes, there are plenty of Gentiles profiting from the war, plenty of Gentile wannabe geopolitical savants, who were totally on board and had been for years. Nevertheless, Savage knew—as economist Michael Hudson has said—that the desire for revenge against Russia for historic grievances was strong among at least some part of Jewish Americans. Jewish political muscle in America on the national scene doesn’t come from numbers—the Jewish American population is typically estimated at about 2%. The muscle comes from money. As we quoted the Jerusalem Post recently, something like 50% of Dem campaign contributions come from Jews, and about 25% of GOP campaign contributions likewise come from Jews. I’m sure Raytheon and Boeing run highly effective lobbying operations in certain corridors of power in DC, but to gin up a war on a major power like Russia, and sell it to the American public, takes real hands-on influence. Jewish American political influence wasn’t the sole factor that led America into a foolish war, but it’s arguable that it was among the handful of key factors.

Of course I knew that Savage’s fears were fueled by concern that Americans would generalize from Neocon craziness to all their Jewish American neighbors. My response to Savage was that I didn’t expect this disastrous war with Russia to lead to any wave of anti-semitism—no national blame-it-on-the-Jews convulsion. Americans are pretty math challenged, anyway, and generally slow on the uptake. I continue to doubt that Jews will be blamed for what’s shaping up to be a major geopolitical disaster. Whether Americans will wise up to the insanity of launching a war on China or Iran remains to be seen. America would be far better off debating the merits of policies.

Savage’s concerns appear to be cropping up amid the public outcry over the war in Palestine. A notable phenomenon in the media has been the campaign by fanatical pro-Israel partisans to excommunicate anyone who has any reservations about either the Zionist project itself or the war on Gaza—up to and including genocide—as an anti-Semite.

This campaign has become so extreme that some fear a backlash, especially given the changing shape of public opinion, the decline in kneejerk support for Israel. Shouting people down with vile accusations of anti-Semtism—daily fare on many “conservative” sites—does tend to become irksome to fair minded people. And the realization that the indiscriminate slaughter in Gaza is being supported in our names, well …

So, The Atlantic has run an opinion piece that deprecates this campaign:

The Atlantic @TheAtlantic

Don't equate anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism, Adam Serwer writes. "There is nothing anti-Semitic about anti-Zionists who believe that the existence of a religious or ethnically defined state is inherently racist." http://bit.ly/3Mv6jJX

5:15 PM · Nov 3, 2023

Serwer’s article focuses on statements that Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt made on CNN:

“There is no argument anymore that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism, that is as plain as day. …” Greenblatt’s sentiments were echoed among supporters of Israel, including in publications such as The Wall Street Journal and The Jerusalem Post, ...”

Serwer wryly notes:

The claim that “there is no argument anymore” is curious. Even within the ADL, staffers have objected to the argument that anti-Zionism is necessarily anti-Semitism, as Jewish Currents reported last year.

And yet Serwer’s own presentation leaves much to be desired.

There are certainly forms of anti-Zionism that are anti-Semitic, such as the belief that Jewish Israelis should all be expelled or killed or that they should be forced to live as second-class citizens under an Islamist government. ...

But there is nothing anti-Semitic about anti-Zionists who believe that the existence of a religious or ethnically defined state is inherently racist, …

The belief that “Jewish Israelis should all be expelled or killed” would appear to be straightforwardly anti-Semitic rather than anti-Zionist, judging from Serwer’s own definitions. On the other hand, why would anti-Zionists believe that “a religious or ethnically defined state is inherently racist”? Religious belief or ethnicity are not inherently racial categories. I’m not sure what Serwer is attempting to convey.

On the other hand, the article from The Jewish Current (March, 2023) that Serwer links is quite interesting, in that it shows that this tactic of smearing critics of Israeli policies as anti-Semitic has become controversial even at the ADL:

ADL Staffers Dissented After CEO Compared Palestinian Rights Groups to Right-Wing Extremists, Leaked Audio Reveals

A special meeting called to answer internal critics shows that the ADL’s vocal opposition to the anti-Zionist left is controversial even within the organization.

The fact that Greenblatt felt obliged to call such a meeting is significant in and of itself. It illustrates the division of opinion among Jewish Americans which occasioned the article at The Atlantic:

Greenblatt’s May speech was cheered by Israel advocates. ”I’ve gotten a lot of emails from people and text messages from people [saying] ‘Thank you for what you said . . . that spoke to me,’” Greenblatt said at the meeting. But it also drew significant backlash from progressives, including the publication of an open letter signed by 200 Jewish rabbis, writers, and activists arguing that Greenblatt had “defame[d] grassroots and civil rights organizations committed to Palestinian justice and falsely conflate[d] anti-Zionism with far-right and violent extremism.”

Lara Friedman, president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, hit back forcefully and, IMO, cogently—stating of Greenblatt:

… he is affirming that “because you don’t support the establishment of a Jewish ethno-religious state at the expense of Palestinians, you are ipso facto responsible for what actual antisemites do and say.” Friedman said this is “intellectually dishonest,” as it’s “predicated on the premise that there exist no legitimate reasons for rejection of Zionism that are unrelated to hatred of Jews, and morally indefensible logic because it cheapens and politicizes the very concept of antisemitism, equating legitimate viewpoints and non-violent protest with groups who are motivated by unabashed hatred of Jewish people.”

Just a few days ago a popular Jewish blogger, James Kunstler, also weighed in. His contribution

The Jewish-American Dilemma

is notable because his “trepidation” mirrors the fears that Savage expressed to me back in August. Kunstler forthrightly describes the “major” role that Jews have played in American life for the past century or more. He is also forthright in stating that he is concerned that the war on Gaza is giving Jews in general a black eye in public opinion. He goes on to present his own theory of how a conflation of revulsion against both Zionism as well as the type of progressivism that was heavily supported by American Jews could work against Jews generally. I have some reservations regarding Kunstler’s views, but …

At this moment, … one observes the Jewish American scene with trepidation. Since I am a Jewish American, I’m just going to flop this one on the table like so much meat to see what kind of animals it brings out of the woodwork to fight over it.

The Hamas war has exposed a deep current of animosity against Israel and against Jews generally world-wide, even here. ...

Jewish Americans have played a leading role in American intellectual and political life through the 20th century and into this one. We Jews increasingly dominated the arenas of literature, academia, medicine, law, news media, and show biz. Business and government, too. …

American Jews have also been major players in the political Left through the past hundred-odd years, and especially within the Democratic Party.

Lately, it appears that the Democratic Party is bent on destroying the country, so one is naturally left to wonder how this happened and what is the role of American Jews in this.

I will offer a hypothesis.

... The label Zionism has recently been confabulated with a notion that it stands for Jews wielding a disdainful sense of superiority against non-Jews.

This is, of course, a false understanding. Mostly, it is an envious projection because Jews succeeded so well in America, ….

…

Tikkun Olam means repair the world.

…

American Jews, while sympathetic to a fault with the founding of Israel, and deeply vested emotionally in its success, had a different agenda in the USA after World War Two. They endeavored to repair America. Tikkun Olam!

One sees where Kunstler is heading. Many Americans, he says, didn’t think America needed to be “repaired” in quite the way that Progressives thought it should be repaired. The results of the Progressive movement—in which, as Kunstler notes, Jews have been “major players”—have been, in the view of many ordinary Americans, nothing short of disastrous for America. The wars that the Neocons and Zionists have now led America into are also turning into major disasters in the foreign policy arena. Kunstler fears that his fellow Americans are smarter than I gave them credit for, above. Math challenged they may be, but they may yet prove capable of putting two and two together—to the detriment of Jewish Americans generally, and not just the Progs and Zionists among them.

I’ll give the last word here to Karl Denninger, who picks out the key passage from Kunstler’s blog post. KD dismisses the notion that what we’re seeing is anti-Semitism. Instead, he maintains, it’s simply resentment at Prog hubris which is based on the notion that they—the self appointed expert class (self appointed as far back as the late 19th century)—can “repair” America:

I refer you over here to Kunstler's column, which is really an astonishing indictment of arrogance.

This [the drive to “repair America”] became a growing fiasco for American Jewish liberals, who, by the 1980s, then strove to impose another set of repairs (more tikkun olam) on American society: multiculturalism, meaning it was no longer necessary to promote a common culture that people would be encouraged to assimilate into, to join a consensus of values and behaviors. Instead, all cultures could behave according to their own rules. That hasn’t worked out so well either, and the world repairers have lately had to resort to coercion such as tyrannical diversity, equity, and inclusion policies and the shoving aside of equal opportunity for enforced equal outcomes (“equity”). That business has only produced additional unintended consequences, such as the new epidemic of institutional incompetence and the resentment of at least half the population against new forms of counter-discrimination (cultural Marxism, in short).

You can't attack him for anti-Semitism -- he's Jewish!

But he's also right, and that ought to make clear what is actually driving the so-called "anti-Semitism."

Specifically, the premise that one is smarter than everyone else and when you don't like their particular nostrums they are to be imposed by force.

Tikkun olam sounds like an altruistic dreamland, but in point of fact it's bullshit -- and has always been bullshit.  Perhaps there is plenty of self-delusion involved in this rather than malevolence, but it doesn't matter when you get down to it what the prime motivating factor might be; it's a lie, it has never worked anywhere, including here, and it never will work.

For my own part, there has always been a need to repair our broken human lives. The great thing is to have a solid foundation from which to begin and to proceed with humility. Unfortunately, the Progs have proceeded by first tossing aside the solid foundation of our American Republic, rather than implementing its vision more perfectly.