veiled4allah: chess pieces in somebody else's game veiled4allah: chess pieces in somebody else's game"Court Jew" is a term that originates in the context of anti-Semitism in "enlightened" Europe. On that blood-soaked continent, the reigning monarchs and other despotic rulers thought up an ingenious system to perpetuate their oppressive systems of government. These shrewd, Machiavellian rulers made a psychologically brilliant pact with an elite, assimilationist group of Jewish subjects who craved nothing more than acceptance by the power structure of society... ...Take a few "court Jews" and give them unimpeded access to the mainstream media and, voila, you create the impression among the masses that "the Jews" are spoiling for a war. Do you see brother how you are misrepresenting us? I wish that we in the Jewish peace movement could have as much access as you do to the mainstream media so that we could shatter the monolithic view of the Jewish community which the "court Jew" by definition is set up to propagate. Of course, we are denied that access by the same power structure which has an interest in making sure that yours is the only "Jewish" voice heard...Muslims, don't let yourselves be blinded by hatred and played for a fool. Don't fall into this trap.
...Please, before it is too late, tell the world that it is not the powerless Jews who are pushing for this war, but the greedy, venal barons of corporate America who stand to profit while cowering behind the myth of the all-powerful Jew. Tell everybody what you and I both know. That the real interests hawking for this war are the defense contractors and the oil industry who will make billions of dollars to first destroy Iraq and then "rebuild" it under the protective wing of American "democracy."
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It does raise an interesting possibility--could the Bush administration transfer the blame to the Jews, if something goes horribly wrong in Iraq? Normally I would say no, nobody would buy it, but with anti-semitism so rampant in Europe, and even in America, they might actually be able to pull it off--claim they were "mislead" by the Jews.
And since Bush is an evangelical Christian, who knows what his true opinions of the Jews are? Now I am not saying I agree with the article--but it is thought-provoking.
Even Funnier -- Mr.Harb has switched his views around 100%. More on that in a bit.
I don't think Jews are driving the US to war (hello Congressman Jim Moran). I wouldn't think this even if the US government were 100% Jewish Sharon supporters and all Jewish Americans were in favour of war with Iraq.
Jewish Americans are Americans, and have the same rights to participate in the political process without being suspected for ulterior motives as Episcopalians. And like anoyone else, Wolfowitz' proposals should be evaluated on how they satisfy US objectives and how they meet US ideals.
I think Reubner (and Harb) would agree with me there. But I would go further and say there is no reason for Reubner to try to disassociate American-Jews (as a group) from Wolfowitz because even thinking there is an association is silly. Here's where Mr,Harb turnaround becomes apparent.
Reubner does not need to disassociate Jews from Wolfowitz, and I do not need to disassociate myself from Osama Bin Laden. There is no need for me to condemn terrorism any more than any other Canadian, and there is no need for Reubner to condemn war in Iraq any more than any other American,
I'm very glad that Darulharb has come around to this point of view!
(I'm not assuming, Al-Muhajabah, that you think differently. I'm just elaborating my htoughts on the post. And note, I don't think it s wrong to argue that there are too many neo-cons in gvt, or too many Likud supporters)
Absotively, posolutely. Nobody should have to prove anything on the basis of their religion/ethnicity.
Ikram is absolutely right (interesting psychoanalysis of darulharb, but I'm not sure he's come around to our view yet, he seems to have different standards for different groups). Wolfowitz is perfectly entitled to any views that he wants. His views may well be based on his religious beliefs or because he wants the best for his ethnic group or nationality. Those are perfectly legitimate motivations. The problem is when his views are associated with others of his religion and/or ethnicity because of their religion and/or ethnicity. This I think is what Ikram was getting at.
No, Reubner should not feel that he has to disassociate himself or Jews in general from Wolfowitz, and I shouldn't feel that I have to associate myself or Muslims in general from Bin Laden and others of his kind. I wish we lived in a world where that's true.
Unfortunately, we don't. People do make those associations. They take beliefs about entire religions and ethnic groups based on those associations. Then they act to members of those religions and ethnic groups based on their beliefs. They come to a Muslim discussion forum or blog and demand that the Muslims condemn terrorism or be considered guilty of it. They make sweeping statements about "the Jews" and what "the Jews" are supposedly up to, like that moron Moran did (as I said in my anti-Semitism post, I find it terribly sad that Muslims act like this to Jews when they ought to know better).
So, whether it's fair or not, a Muslim confronted with this attitude feels that he or she has to disassociate Muslims and a Jew confronted with this attitude feels that he or she has to disassociate Jews.
I've been confronted with this too many times not to understand what Reubner thinks he has to do. He may be going about it the wrong way and reinforcing the very ideas he hopes to knock down. Maybe I am too. But he feels that he has to do something to try and correct what people think, however futile his actions may be.
I have a lot more to say about Reubner's article, but I'm still composing it.
I feel there are a number of legitimate ways to deal with bigots, as they also have their different MO's and certainly the educational route you seem to be taking makes the most sense of all. These days my own tack has been to outright refuse to do the dance at all, and turn racist assumptions on their heads by in essence standing back, folding my arms, and saying, "make me". At some point, they realize their disapproval of my position is completely irrelevant, although they don't know what to do with this, I've learned. When it happens, it's pretty funny.
Oh, BTW, Ikram, I edited your comment to remove the extra spaces. You're right. The live preview shows the HTML, no more and no less. I've set up my comments system to automatically convert line breaks when the post is processed. I don't want to make my visitors have to type HTML to get their comment to come out right. If you click the "Spell-Check" button you can see a preview of what the comment will actually looked like published, including line breaks. Sorry about the confusion. I'll add a note in the instructions, inshallah.
I'd like to get back to discussing the original blog entry, although our current discussion has been very fruitful. As I mentioned before, I've been composing a response on it. I thought about posting it to the blog, but I decided it would be too confusing to have the conversation going on in two places. So here it is:
This is what I see the situation as being. First, Israeli officials, past and present, have gone on record as saying they feel that war on Iraq will serve Israel's interests in many ways. This is a perfectly legitimate view to have, and it's their business to do what they think is best for Israel.
Second, and this is where it gets messy, there either are or appear to be people close to the Bush Administration who support war on Iraq at least in part because they believe it will serve Israel's interests (they no doubt have other reasons as well). Drarcane mentioned the Christian right and I think that's an extremely important factor. There are also people such as Wolfowitz. As I said in an earlier comment, it may well be that Wolfowitz's views come out of his religion and ethnicity and that if he weren't Jewish, he would have different views. I don't know that. None of us know that, unless we happen to be friends of his.
The problem that we are dealing with is that people attribute Wolfowitz's views to most or all Jews and we end up with moronic statements like the one Moran made. Reubner believes that there may be a deliberate strategy on someone's part to set Jews up for a fall, and that's where he starts sounding so paranoid.
But let me play around with this a bit more. As I said, I think that the Christian right may be an important factor. Some prominent Christian fundamentalist leaders like Falwell are extremely avid supporters of Israel and they cite a religious justification for their position. Born-again Christians are no more uniform in their beliefs than any other group. I doubt that very many of them really give a hang about Israel. But many of them might like to see that Bush is listening to Falwell and following Falwell's advice (or that of other leaders, I'm just using Falwell as a well-known example). And with up to 30 million born-again Christians in the U.S., most of whom vote Republican, there's a very strong motivation for Bush to either listen to Falwell or appear to be doing so. As drarcane noted, there's also the question of Bush's own beliefs. I don't know if that's significant or not.
Bush has been claiming a lot of reasons why we have to go to war on Iraq now. For many people, none of those reasons really stands up to scrutiny. That's why they begin speculating that his urgency has other motives. Some people say it's oil. Others say it's Israel. There are probably a lot of factors.
I do believe that Israel is one of those factors. But I don't think it's because of Wolfowitz or any other Jewish neoconservative and I don't think it's because of any "Jewish lobby". I don't think they have that much influence. I think that Israel is a factor because of Christian Zionists. They have the numbers and the influence in the Republican party. Even if Bush didn't believe any of that himself, he would have to pay attention to them for those reasons.
And this is where we get back to Reubner's letter. Reubner is paranoid because he thinks there's some kind of deliberate strategy to set Jews up for a fall. But it could be that people in power aren't going out of their way to stop people from scapegoating Jews so that it has the same effect in the end. Is Reubner really that paranoid to worry about the increase in anti-Semitism and what will happen if Jews are blamed? Drarcane said that too: given the past history and current circumstances, can Jews afford not to worry about this?
One of the main reasons I oppose war on Iraq is precisely that I think it will destabilize the Middle East and inflame Muslims against the aggressors. That's America, but if it appears that America is doing it for Israel's sake, Muslims will be inflamed against Jews too. That's not in Israel's interest at all. It's likely to make Israel's situation much worse. Would the pro-war crowd care to address how they're going to deal with this? Especially since they spend so much time talking about how Muslims are inherently fanatic and anti-Semitic. Given that they think that, why are they pursuing a policy that seems almost deliberately calculated to make things worse?
For right or wrong and for good or bad, Israel's name has become associated with the war on Iraq. The reason for this, in my opinion, is the influence of the Christian right on the Bush Administration. But because of a small number of high-ranking Jews like Wolfowitz, people (especially Muslims) aren't blaming the Christian right. They're blaming Jews, like Moran did. That's going to have repurcussions, and I think Reubner is right to fear the repurcussions. I fear the repurcussions.
P.S. Maybe I should start wearing a tin-foil veil
man, this is a lot of stuff. i like the open minded and educational approach. though I did learn some bad habits and ideas. I am not letting myself get brainwashed, insha Allah !
Asalamu alaykum