Who you calling self-hating?
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has let it be known through various spokesmen/envoys that he denies ever referring to Obama aides David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel as self-hating Jews. Even if Bibi didn't say it, it's an old Likud way of thinking, says The New Republic's Leon Wieseltier:
On August 4, Haaretz reported that Benjamin Netanyahu called Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod self-hating Jews. A spokesman for the prime minister later denied this, but I have heard from Israeli friends that this conspiratorial explanation is quite popular in the prime minister's office. I have no reason to believe otherwise. The accusation of ethnic infidelity is an old feature of the political culture of the Likud. The defenders of Greater Israel have values, but the critics of Greater Israel have motives. Perhaps the nether regions of the Israeli right will soon follow the nether regions of the American right, and alongside the birthers we will have the brissers: I mean, any man who opposes Jewish settlement in the West Bank must have a foreskin. It is important to understand that for the paranoid mentality that regards disagreement as betrayal, all of Emanuel's Israeliness -- his name, his Irgun father, his Hebrew, his service in an Israeli army program for civilians during the Gulf War -- makes him more, not less, untrustworthy. There is a long and dark history, after all, of apostates and informers who came from within the community. Sometimes their defection was a matter of principle, a conversion, which was complicating, since a change of mind, when it is has intellectual integrity, has to be respected even when it has to be despised; but usually it was understood as a craven act of ingratiation, a hunger for power. When I was a student I believed this about Henry Kissinger, and stood with other students in Dag Hammarskjold Plaza to denounce him as a moser for his shuttle diplomacy. (I admit it. I am a recovering Jewish fascist.) Jewish self-hatred is another term for Jewish anti-Semitism, for the internalization of the standpoint of the enemy; and this is a genuinely grave charge. Jews who fling it about for political ends are desperate and disgraceful. And they are some of the same people who are outraged when right-wing African Americans are smeared as Uncle Toms.
So I wish to attest -- I have placed my hand on my copy of The Zionist Idea -- that Rahm Emanuel is not a self-hating Jew. I know this. I have never met David Axelrod, but I am aware of no grounds for the suspicion that he has committed "race treason." (I take that charming phrase, which sounds like it was translated from Treitschke, from David Mamet's thuggish book The Wicked Son: Anti-Semitism, Self-Hatred, and the Jews. Mamet is another one of the Most Jewish Jews of All.) Differing with Benjamin Netanyahu does not yet make you a bad Jew. If Emanuel is a self-hating Jew because he believes that Israeli settlement in the West Bank should finally cease, then I, too, am a self-hating Jew. Perhaps you will agree, friends, that this is not very plausible.
Read the full post (including Wieseltier's take on why, even though he thinks settlement expansion is a bad thing, the Obama administration is wrong in the way it's been pressing Israel on the issue).
UPDATE: I changed my original headline ("Et tu, Leon") after hearing from some people who worried that the humor wasn't coming through, leaving people with the incorrect impression that I actually think Wieseltier (and, for that matter, Emanuel) are self-hating Jews.
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Tsk, Tsk, Tsk! Our honorable brethren on the left, like Wieseltier (BTW-means “weasel” in German), the Emmanuel brothers, Axelrod and their ilk, are not self-hating Jews but simply representative of the mindset of the American Jews who live in their golden ghettos, fawned over by the pseudo- intelligentsia and assorted glitterati. Where Israel is concerned they are sooo open-minded - that their brains are falling out.
Enough with the “self-hating Jews”...these pigs and monkeys (see the Koran!) are choking on their own narcissistic dementia. They don’t hate “self”; they worshop “self”. It’s Jews who don’t share their sellout ideologies whom they hate. They are “Jew-hating Jews”!
If I had to judge my status on the basis of any ethnic or religious commonality with persons who authored the comments above, I guess I wouldn’t be feeling very good about myself, either.
I am not familiar with values in Jewish law, religion, or tradition that are consonant with the characteristics of such foul, destructive, and unredeemable nonsense.
Unless, I suppose, one can’t distinguish Rahm Emanuel or Leon Wieseltier with Amalek. Which is not a sign of very acute perceptions.
Didn’t any of your mothers ever take the occasion to wash your mouths out with soap?
And for the historically minded, reflecting on the “just so” accounting of the four sons: a rather high percentage of Jews emigrating to the US in the great wave of immigration from Eastern Europe between 1881 and WW I were not notable for their piety. The most pious tended to stay put, and those most attracted by economic opportunity (typically hard to reconcile with strict patterns of Orthodox observance in the America of those times) were the most likely to come. There were, of course, exceptions, but mass immigration of stringently observant Jews was largely a post-Holocaust phenomenon.
There is a good deal of truth about the desire for assimilation in the second generation, and the willingness to give up on old patterns. This is true much more broadly of European immigrant groups during that period, and hardly limited to Jews.
The story of the third and fourth generations is much more complicated, rich and interesting than the above account would suggest. While further attenuation of Jewish identity and knowledge is characteristic of a part of this group, it is hardly the entire story. Much to the surprise of many, the past forty years has witnessed an astounding rise in creative Jewish life, both within and without the precincts of Orthodoxy. The rise of University-level Jewish studies is an unprecedented achievement, and there has been phenomenal creative development in areas of liturgy and ritual, much of it energized by the opening to full participation in Jewish life by Jewishly well-educated women.
The folks who have participated in these creative Jewish expressions are not “simple,” and they have been awfully good at raising new questions and pursuing answers to them, drawing on both Jewish tradition and secular knowledge.
By and large these folks are too busy learning and contributing to hole up in their basements and spew venom and drivel of the sort over-represented in these comment boards.
It’s hard to know quite who reads these comments, but if you are out there, let’s take back this space from purveyors of hate who rarely have anything constructive, or reasoned, or factual to say. Calling people names does not represent a high level of moral development in secular or in Jewish terms.
Enough!
Alan Jay Weisbard ("The Wise Bard")
To “The Wise Bard” (still immersed in egomania),
When you’re done lamenting over name calling, you might look up the word “courage” and get some. If you weren’t so preoccupied with giving us gasbagging academic drivel, you’d realize that these days too few Jews stand up and fight for Israel and the Jewish People. Of, course, when you and your leftwing, libtard buddies are done multiculturalizing, gentilizing, feminizing and sissifying Judaism, there will only be a pathetic imitation of Judaism remaining.
Blackie, try to pronounce my last name, which I have the courage to publish, unlike you. it might provide some insight into my choice of screen name. As to the rest of your post--and virtually all of your other posts--I agree with precisely one word: drivel.
And that will have to do with any further direct conversation between us, at least from my side. Since you lack any apparent capacity to talk about facts, ideas, or reasoning ("gasbagging"), there reallly is no point.
Leon, I am here to bury Yasha who has been very destructive to
the Jewish people (and of course I can argue <is it the obverse>
that Christianity “freed” the Jews & gentiles to spread gospel &
build empires. Time to call, come out from behind the curtain.
A competitive Jew (like Kissinger, Rahm & his brothers) is good
for the Jewish people aval .... There have been too many quiet
Jews not so competitive in money markets and multitudes of
suffering Jews and gentiles who have ached, groaned, cry out
from the past into our present: ENOUGH! Lefty Jews who rather
be American (because they can have homes here & in Israel)
condemn the growth of Jerusalem by illegal settlements. Stop
and declare yourself. Are you a Jew or American first?
Obama (who I endorsed 5/5/08 at Pipes) is black & white being
advised by two court Jews - Rahm & David. I know neither. I trust
in Hashem that these placements (like Scooter & Rambam) are
good and true. Imperial Christian America shall be reconciled
with imperial Arab Islam when my faithnation Israel sees clear.
You and too many “progressive” Jewish intellectuals are still in
the dark. The correct position, posture if you will is: left on money
and right on Jewish power. Otherwise, go and assimilate and
bring on the destruction. POUR OUT YOUR WRATH. Ki TeTzeh.
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michael rosner
08/27/09 01:29 PM
What a wonderful article! You have now convinced me that though you may not have foreskin any more, I can still rename you by the muscle that once held it. By implying that so called right wing followers are in essence untrustworthy or somehow irrelevant because they do not conform to the leftist self destructive and self hating anti Zionists mantra that you spew; is more evidence of the racist overtone and hypocritical diarrhea- of the- mouth -words emanating from leftists such as yourself. If no one has had the opportunity yet, let me be the first: YOU ARE A SELF HATTING JEW perhaps even worse than Emanuel and Axelrod. Although their opinions may be self delusional and improper your opinions are laced with racist overtones and self grandeur. PLEASE crawl back into the hole you came out of and join your Palestinian brothers in Gaza where you belong