I've touched slightly on the term 'Israel-Firster' – a shorthand that has an ugly neo-Nazi provenance, which is why I don't use it – even for those Americans who really do back Netanyahu's policies over Obama's. And we have a rather familiar – and familiarly creepy – attempt to censor, intimidate and generally harrass anyone even faintly connected with someone who used it. But the ever-candid Glenn Greenwald has responded with a simple proposition: do not some American citizens exist for whom Israel is the supreme issue in their politics? He mentions the plain statement of a big Democratic donor, Haim Saban:
I’m a one-issue guy and my issue is Israel.
How is this not saying that his entire interest in American politics is on behalf of a foreign country? Here's Goldblog's answer:
I think it is perfectly plausible to believe — and I've talked to right-wing American Jews who say exactly this — that pro-Israel Americans, Jewish or otherwise, are motivated to support Israel because they are Americans, and see in Israel a cause worth America's effort. Of course, Israel's self-destructive leadership, through inaction on the occupation, by proposing laws that curtail free speech, by kowtowing to religious extremists, are creating conditions in which it will no longer be easy for Americans — especially American Jews — to see in Israel a reflection of American values. But this a subject for a separate post.
I would say this is not a subject for a separate post. Because most of the people targeted by the Greater Israel lobby as anti-Semites or self-haters or "narcissists" who had a "hard time at Hebrew school" are exactly such people, anguished by Israel's open contempt for the US under Netanyahu, obliteration of civilians, including dozens of children, in its bombardment of Gaza, its brutal, unrelenting assault on the Palestinians in the occupied territories, its increasingly fundamentalist public culture, its rogue international assassinations, sometimes stealing the passports of allies to achieve its ends, and its embrace of pre-emptive warfare over America's objections. If Israel no longer represents American values, as Goldblog worries (and has worried for a long time), then there really is a growing conflict between being pro-America and being pro-Israel, is there not?
It's equally valid to argue that Israel's intransigence over its illegal settlements and occupation is against America's broader global interests, and that in the case of any other "ally", pressure would be brought to bear to end this. But pressure to end anything like it would be erased by a future Republican administration – which is now a party whose leaders deny even the existence of Palestinians and celebrate new settlements being built. Much of this comes from end-times Christianist fundamentalism. But not all. In this election campaign, for example, one leading candidate is being funded primarily by one man, Sheldon Adelson, and his wife, Miriam. Greenwald notes the following story about Adelson:
In a talk to an Israeli group in July, 2010, Adelson said he wished he had served in the Israeli Army rather than the U.S. military — and that he hoped his young son will come back to Israel and “be a sniper for the IDF,” a reference to the Israel Defense Forces. (YouTube video of speech)
“I am not Israeli. The uniform that I wore in the military, unfortunately, was not an Israeli uniform. It was an American uniform, although my wife was in the IDF and one of my daughters was in the IDF … our two little boys, one of whom will be bar mitzvahed tomorrow, hopefully he’ll come back– his hobby is shooting — and he’ll come back and be a sniper for the IDF,” Adelson said at the event.
“All we care about is being good Zionists, being good citizens of Israel, because even though I am not Israeli born, Israel is in my heart,” he said toward the end of his talk.
"All we care about is being good citizens of Israel" said this American citizen. He is saying it was "unfortunate" that he wore the uniform of the US. Now imagine an Arab-American saying that about serving, say, in Syria's army rather than America's. Can you imagine the outrage if a leading funder of a Democratic candidate had said that he "unfortunately" once wore the uniform of the US and would rather have worn that of another country?
Here's Caroline Glick on the perfidy of American Jews for believing that their country is the real promised land:
To oppose Iran’s nuclear program effectively, American Jews are required to oppose these strongly supported US policies [of sanctions]. And at some point, this may require them to announce they support Israel’s right to survive and thrive even if that paramount right conflicts with how the US government perceives US national interests. That is, it may require them to embrace Zionism unconditionally.
Require? How does any foreign country require the citizens of another country to oppose their own government? And smear any American Jews who don't as self-hating or Israel-hating? I'm old-fashioned in as much as it seems to me that foreign policy disputes should end at a country's borders; and that when traveling abroad, leading opposition politicians should go out of their way not to undermine their own president, especially if he is in difficult negotiations with a foreign government. And yet, time and again, Republicans and Democrats have done that – McCain, Lieberman and Cantor chief among them, in Jerusalem. Cantor actually pledged to a foreign prime minister that he would defend that foreign leader's policies against his own president – an act which, when done by Pelosi, he called a "felony"!
When an American sides with a foreign government against his own president in a foreign country, what does one call that? Apart, that is, from disgusting.
The Dish 