T. Belman. Beinart gets it right except along the way he makes reference to the “naked embrace of anti-Muslim bigotry” by Trump and the ZOA. He makes no allowance for the fact that their anti Muslim stance is not motivated by bigotry but by self defense of both their culture and our lives. Any Muslim who loves us and our values is welcome in Trump’s America. But the left, who believe in the equality of all cultures, will have none of that.
Besides, 80% of Muslims harbour antisemitic feelings according to all surveys. Why should we allow them into our midst.
Crushed between rising extremes, the establishment’s wish to stay liberal but support Netanyahu is no longer sustainable.
By Peter Beinart, HAARETZ | Nov. 30, 2016
To understand what American Jewish politics will look like in the age of Donald Trump, look closely at what happened at New York’s Grand Hyatt Hotel on the evening of Sunday, November 20. Inside the hotel, the Zionist Organization of America held its annual gala. Never heard of the ZOA? You’re not alone. For decades, it has been overshadowed by its larger and more moderate “Pro-Israel” rival, AIPAC. But in the Trump era, ZOA’s influence is set to grow for three reasons.
First, it draws heavily from the Orthodox community, a community that because of its demographic growth and lack of assimilation will likely supply the bulk of “Pro-Israel” activists in the years to come.
Second, it does not pretend to support the two state solution, which puts it in line with Israel’s prime minister and America’s president-elect.
Third, it’s comfortable with Trump’s takeover of the GOP. Other mainstream American Jewish organizations – The Anti-Defamation League, and the leaders of the Conservative and Reform Movements, for instance – have expressed alarm about the GOP’s increasingly naked embrace of anti-Muslim bigotry. They’ve denounced Trump’s call for a ban on Muslim immigration. They’ve condemned his appointment of Steve Bannon, whose former website, Breitbart, published headlines like “Man Bites Dog: Muslim is Nice to Non-Muslim” The ZOA, by contrast, has no problem with anti-Muslim bigotry; it peddles such bigotry itself. Among the speakers invited to address the ZOA’s November gala was Bannon himself.
Read more: Trump’s pick for education secretary is pitting American Jews against each other | As Modern Orthodoxy declines, a Jewish Trump-voting religious right is ascendant | I love America, which is why I’m so worried about Trump
Bannon didn’t come. But the expectation that he would brought a very different set of Jewish organizations onto the streets outside the Grand Hyatt in protest. These organizations – which included If Not Now, T’ruah, Jews for Racial & Economic Justice and Jewish Voice for Peace – have also resided on the margins of organized American Jewish life. If the ZOA has been too far to the right, they’ve been too far left.
But in the age of Trump, these progressive groups are set to grow too. First, because they can militantly oppose Trump. Some establishment Jewish groups have criticized his policies and appointments, but their need to appear bipartisan and work with whomever is in power limits their public opposition. Leftist groups like If Not Now and T’ruah, by contrast, need not muffle their outrage. Organizing under the hashtag #JewishResistance, they’re well positioned to attract some of the Jews frightened and repulsed by Trump’s victory.
The second reason they’ll likely grow is that their Israel agenda matches their American agenda. Centrist American Jewish organizations like the Anti-Defamation League and American Jewish Committee have a split personality. Domestically, they champion human rights and anti-discrimination. But when it comes to Israeli policy in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, they ditch these values in the name of security. Some older American Jewish liberals are comfortable with this moral schizophrenia. But American Jewish millennials overwhelmingly reject it. The right leaning, disproportionately Orthodox millennials who support Israel’s occupation generally support illiberal policies at home too. The progressive Jewish millennials who want to resist Trump generally want to resist Netanyahu too.
Trump is accelerating a trend that’s been underway for decades: The collapse of the American Jewish center. Religiously, the Conservative movement embodied that center. Today it’s withering. The growth is on the religious extremes: among the Orthodox and among those secular Jews who don’t affiliate with any denomination. Politically, the American Jewish center was embodied by moderate Democrats like Charles Schumer and Ben Cardin: domestic liberals who theoretically supported the two state solution but opposed any pressure on the Israeli government. That center is dying too. What’s rising is ZOA-style Jewish Republicans who don’t support two states even in theory and Bernie Sanders-style Jewish progressives who oppose Trump and Netanyahu alike.
The losers in all this will be organizations like AIPAC that can neither support Trump nor actively oppose him and which can neither celebrate permanent Israeli control over the West Bank nor try to stop it. The losers will be those American Jews who feel comfortable on neither side of the barricades outside the Grand Hyatt. Trump, who has done so much to weaken the American political establishment, will weaken the American Jewish establishment too.
In both America and Israel, nationalism is eroding liberal democracy in horrifying ways. In the years to come, some American Jews will cheer that erosion; others will resist it. Those who do neither will gradually consign themselves to irrelevance.
@ Sebastien Zorn:
It’s only been happening since the bad virus trouble. I use an Asus laptop, but it has nothing to do with it. It always worked well BV (before virus). As you recall, there were several things wrong that shut the site down almost, and Ted’s technician began fixing them one at a time; he had many problems but managed to get it all back to where it was before…except this highlight quote that I mention.
I suppose that it isn’t significant, and probably wasn’t noticed. I erred in thinking you’d knowingly solved the problem by skipping down a line. Anyway, that’s how to get around it for those like myself.
@ Edgar G.:
It only happens on the cell phone. I will look into it .
Why does anyone who supports Israel even bother to read Ha’aretz, unless it’s in response to the adage: “Know your enemy.”?
@ Edgar G.:
What machine are you using? That happens on my phone but not on my tablet or chromebook.
@ Birdalone:
De nada.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_the_World_Is_Hollow_and_I_Have_Touched_the_Sky
It must have been filmed in NY ’cause the “planet” is named, “Yonada.”
http://www.tor.com/2016/07/12/star-trek-the-original-series-rewatch-for-the-world-is-hollow-and-i-have-touched-the-sky/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Heveb2FyUAY
About 30 or 40 years ago, I was riding a bus in Manhattan and somebody stepped on my foot. I arose in anger and pain, shouting, “YO!” only to look up into the face of Goliath who stared down at me menacingly and said impassively, “Wha?”
At which, suddenly gauging my actual situation, I explained, “Oh, that means “good” in Hungarian. And sat down.
Ted do you have a way to lower the first line of a post so that it isn’t blotted out by the “highlight and Quote” bar- the only tiny bit which didn’t go back to normal after that horrendous virus attack.
The only one who’s solved it…as usual.. is Sebastien, who keys down a line before making his comment. I do it too, but most times, wrapped up in writing the post-I forget.
what yamit82 wrote, and, horseradish for my gefilte fish.
Thanks to sebastian for the claremont.org link.
I need the antidote after reading Beinart in Haaretz.
@ yamit82:
Peter Beinart is an enemy
JANUARY 27, 2016 Accusing Others of Dishonest Language, Beinart Distorts an Ambassador’s Words
MAY 20, 2014 Haaretz Corrects: Palestinian Grove Wasn’t ‘Torched’
FEBRUARY 6, 2014 Iran and The Munich Analogy
http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=6&x_journo=687
How Peter Beinart Defends the Repulsive Views of the Antisemitic Jew Max Blumethal
BY RON RADOSH DECEMBER 30, 2013
https://pjmedia.com/ronradosh/2013/12/31/the-anti-semitic-jew-max-blumenthal-and-how-peter-beinart-views-his-repulsive-views/?singlepage=true
The Follies and Illusions of Peter Beinart
BY RON RADOSH MARCH 19, 2012
https://pjmedia.com/ronradosh/2012/03/19/the-follies-and-illusions-of-peter-beinart/
addendum:
Grosse Pointe Blank – no meetings
https://youtu.be/qbynzi1-yok
Jabotinsky to Weizmann:
“I can vouch for there being a type of Zionist who doesn’t care what kind of society our state” will have; I’m that person. If I were to know that the only way to a state was via socialism, or even that this would hasten it by a generation, I’d welcome it. More than that: give me a religiously Orthodox state in which I would be forced to eat gefilte fish all day long (but only if there were no other way) and I’ll take it.”
http://www.claremont.org/crb/article/warrior-of-zion/
“
Any combination including the inimical “ha’aretz” and an article hack of occasion, specially the specimen in question, is bound to be laced with at least a high dose of anti Jewish venom. In consequence… Why do we invest time with such combo?
Bottom line. The Jewish equivalent to “cities of refuge” in use by the so called democratic party adherents in the US to hide illegal residents and even criminals, are the Soros organizations, the NIF, uJstreet and at individual level by items such as the writer of the article. The “ha’artez” as well as the WP. the NYT’s, CNN… all function as the trash dump centers for them all.
@ Igor:
Actually, it was and remains an uneasy coalition.
And since, the machine won’t let me put it anyplace else, I started with Chit Chat, this chestnut is in response to the yelling about Stalin this and Trotsky that in another section:
@ yamit82:
A vs. B*.A said: “Above all it is the stalinist/fascist leaning sections miscalled the “left”.”
B Said: “you are a Lumpenproletariat and a cosmopolitan… Trotsky would be ashamed of you.””
From memory (it’s a chestnut, alas, I can’t take credit for anything but the retelling):
“Under capitalism, there is the oppression of man by man. Under Socialism it’s just other way around.” – unknown
https://www.google.com/search?q=spy+versus+spy&safe=active&rlz=1CAACAO_enUS720US720&espv=2&biw=1280&bih=674&tbm=isch&imgil=pPHSwFp5VKl54M%253A%253Blj1qdNP76b_HDM%253Bhttp%25253A%25252F%25252Fwww.desktopimages.org%25252Fwallpaper%25252F339921%25252Fspy-vs-spy&source=iu&pf=m&fir=pPHSwFp5VKl54M%253A%252Clj1qdNP76b_HDM%252C_&usg=__UPIjKL75844RWfl6c_HBjTrhEts%3D&ved=0ahUKEwjvqpblvNPQAhVE0oMKHdIFBq0QyjcINQ&ei=3FdAWO_ME8SkjwTSi5joCg#imgrc=pPHSwFp5VKl54M%3A
Peter Beinart is a self hating Jew and an anti-Israel POS….His denials aside he is what I named and his anti Israel anti religious venom spews out of everything he writes and says on the subjects….. He is right about Jews becoming irrelevant but not for the reasons he states.
I would like to ‘meet him behind the gym’ (Biden to Trump) and beat the crap out of him.
I think more people know who is the ZOA than they do Peter Beinart. 🙂 Yes Jews are and have become irrelevant but so is Beinart.
P. Beinart is FULL of himself! That is why he writes in Haaretz.
What is liberal democracy today: Germany? France? England? Norway, Sweden? The elitocracy in free fall but always and only for itself!
What does PB suggests about the Islamofascists? The rejection of Israel by the Muslim world?
Jews should stick to the center as long as they are in the diaspora but lean slightly to the right or the left as a matter of self-preservation! But they should always support Israel, even if imperfect! Never, ever against Israel!
Complete garbage. Jews moved to Israel to create a Jewish state not some kind of liberal heaven. US Jews who do not support Israel are one generation before assimilation
This is their right but those of us who wish to remain Jews, and religious denomination does not matter, will support Israel