Why Won't Anyone Say They're Jewish
The Controversial Canadian Magazine Article
4/6/2004
Commentary -- [Bill: This is a big controversy in Canada ...]
adb
usters.org/magazine/52/articles/jewish.html
Why won't anyone say they are Jewish?
Friends help each other out. That’s why the US sends billions of dollars
every year to Israel. In return, Israel advances US strategic interests in
the
Middle East. But despite this mutual back scratching, Israeli-American
relations are enduring a rough patch. Last December, a senior State
Department
official blasted Israel for having “done too little for far too long” to
resolve the conflict with its Palestinian neighbors. Indeed, President
Bush
himself had scolded Israel a month earlier with his demand that “Israel
should
freeze settlement construction, dismantle unauthorized outposts, end the
daily
humiliation of the Palestinian people and not prejudice final negotiations
with the building of walls and fences.”
Harsh words, but is it all just window-dressing? This was not the first
time Bush criticized Israel and he has made numerous calls for a “viable”
Palestinian state during his presidency. Nevertheless, he has never
concretely
punished Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon for ignoring US directives
and
shrugging off his commitment to the peace process. It’s also worth noting
that
diplomatic admonitions are the responsibility of the State Department
which
has been on the losing end of the policy wars in Bush’s White House. One
wonders what Israeli-American relations, and indeed what American
relations
with the rest of the world would look like if the neocon hawks who control
Rumsfeld’s Defense Department were also in charge at State.
A lot of ink has been spilled chronicling the pro-Israel leanings of
American neocons and fact that a the disproportionate percentage of them
are
Jewish. Some commentators are worried that these individuals –
labeled ‘Likudniks’ for their links to Israel’s right wing Likud party –
do
not distinguish enough between American and Israeli interests. For
example,
whose interests were they protecting in pushing for war in Iraq?
Drawing attention to the Jewishness of the neocons is a tricky game.
Anyone
who does so can count on automatically being smeared as an anti-Semite.
But
the point is not that Jews (who make up less than 2 percent of the
American
population) have a monolithic perspective. Indeed, American Jews
overwhelmingly vote Democrat and many of them disagree strongly with Ariel
Sharon’s policies and Bush’s aggression in Iraq. The point is simply that
the
neocons seem to have a special affinity for Israel that influences their
political thinking and consequently American foreign policy in the Middle
East.
Here at Adbusters, we decided to tackle the issue head on and came up with
a carefully researched list of who appear to be the 50 most influential
neocons in the US (see above). Deciding exactly who is a neocon is
difficult
since some neocons reject the term while others embrace it. Some shape
policy
from within the White House, while others are more peripheral, exacting
influence indirectly as journalists, academics and think tank policy
wonks.
What they all share is the view that the US is a benevolent hyper power
that
must protect itself by reshaping the rest of the world into its morally
superior image. And half of the them are Jewish.
Kalle Lasn
From the March/April 2004 issue of Adbusters magazine.
The List:
[Bill: Note that some fractional Jews or conversos have not been marked
Jewish, though they are ...]
Norman Podhoretz*
Irving Kristol*
Midge Decter*
Jeane Kirkpatrick
Paul Wolfowitz*
Douglas Feith*
Peter Rodman
Stephen Cambone
Donald Rumsfeld
Dick Cheney
I Lewis Libby*
Elliot Abrams*
Zalmay Khalilzad
John Bolton
Dov Zakheim*
Robert B Zoelleck*
Richard Perle*
R James Woolsey
Eliot Cohen*
Robert W Tucker
Francis Fukuyama
William Kristol*
Robert Kagan*
Gary Schmitt
Ellen Bork
David Wurmser*
Joshua Muravchik*
Reuel Marc Gerecht
Michael Novak
Fr Richard J Neuhaus
Meyrav Wurmser*
Irwin Stelzer*
Rupert Murdoch
Richard Mellon Scaife
Thomas Donnelly
Owen Harries
Michael Ledeen*
Frank Gaffney
Max Boot
Gary Bauer
William Bennett
Daniel Pipes*
Lawrence Kaplan*
Marty Peretz*
Charles Krauthammer*
David Brooks*
Fred Barnes
John Podhoretz*
Neal Kozodoy*
Jonah Goldberg* |
