Noam Chomsky : Why America Holds Israel as a Sacred Cow?
07 Nov 2023, 12:18 pm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hofWP7X ... l=FreeWill
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07 Nov 2023, 1:08 pm
Chomsky occasionally has a good take, but given his track record with stuff like denying and/or minimizing the Cambodian genocide, I wouldn't take his word for anything.
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07 Nov 2023, 6:09 pm
Distortions at Fourth Hand
Noam Chomsky & Edward S. Herman
The Nation, June 6, 1977
https://chomsky.info/19770625/
It is a fair generalization that the larger the number of deaths attributed to the Khmer Rouge, and the more the U.S. role is set aside, the larger the audience that will be reached...
The authors are writing at a point when very little was known, outside of Cambodia, about the Khmer Rouge atrocities, and they were just commenting on the possible distortions that might have been presented to the public. I hope that Mr. Chomsky hasn't continued in "denying and/or minimizing the Cambodian genocide." Still, one shouldn't necessarily take anyone's word for anything.
But, when it comes to America's relationship with Israel, there is no shortage of information. Israel is, indeed, our "sacred cow", and I think that Mr. Chomsky did a good presentation.
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07 Nov 2023, 7:25 pm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8mP2jN ... Philosophy
In this interview, Mr. Chomsky says
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08 Nov 2023, 11:07 am
That's what I was hoping to discuss, rather than going down the Pol Pot rabbit hole.
On the one hand, we do have Americans (generally Republicans) pushing the Great Replacement Theory
https://www.ajc.org/news/great-replacem ... -supremacy
And, we have Republicans who insist that Israel is God's special country and can do no wrong.
https://cufi.org/
I suspect that most Europeans, on the other hand, aren't quite so pro-Israel. A lot of Israelis are descended from European Jews who found that they could not live safely in Europe. I don't know what Europeans generally have or had against Jews in particular, but their thoughts about Jews may not have evolved much. There probably aren't many Europeans who think that the creation of Israel will lead to Jesus returning on his Cloud of Glory. Europeans probably think of Israelis as their former neighbors. Also, Europe has had a lot of immigration from North African and Arab countries--quite a lot of recent Islamic influence. So, there are bound to be more sympathies for Palestinians.
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08 Nov 2023, 12:00 pm
^
I've noticed this apparent contradiction before, the US right-wing support for Israel as a state with a sense of moral panic about Jews taking over the US itself. I'd feel sorry for any Jew who thought "I'll be OK in the US, everybody supports Israel." I guess the support for Israel over the Arabs is a case of "our enemy's enemy is our friend, for now." At least that's one possible angle.
In the UK, the elite's official line is to support Israel, with local antisemitism more or less confined to the grass roots of the far right, and that doesn't get expressed much in public. Maybe the only difference is that a larger proportion of the US population is signed up to the moral panic thing, or at least isn't so much afraid of admitting it. I guess it's hard to know the numbers if people hide their true feelings.
08 Nov 2023, 2:22 pm
I've noticed this apparent contradiction before, the US right-wing support for Israel as a state with a sense of moral panic about Jews taking over the US itself.
This is actually not a contradiction. It seems to me that many American religious right wingers want Jews to live in Israel but NOT here in the U.S.A. (After all, Israel and the U.S.A. are indeed geographically distinct places, despite the belief of many American Christian nationalists that the U.S.A. is a similarly divinely "chosen" country.)
Many of these folks also believe that Jews will convert to Christianity en masse after the Rapture....
EDIT: It seems to me that most Christian religious right wing "sympathy for Israel" is based NOT on sympathy for the Israeli people as fellow human beings, but rather on a belief that Christians are commanded by God to "bless Israel." I think a lot of Christian religious right wingers put Jews on a pedestal as "God's chosen people," seeing Jews as almost superhuman -- and as being capable of almost-superhuman evil (hence the conspiracy theories) as well as almost-superhuman good.
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08 Nov 2023, 9:31 pm
https://www.jns.org/a-night-to-honor-is ... upporters/
...“Israel is not a political issue,” said Hagee. “Israel is a biblical issue. If you believe the Bible, you will support the Jewish people.”
He said that especially, those who do not believe the 12th Chapter of Genesis do not understand the Bible.
“I shall bless those who bless you, and shall curse those who curse you, and all clans on earth will bless themselves by you,” the verse states.
Hagee believes that besides blessing Israel, non-Jews are indebted to Jews and should provide them with material blessings, as the Jews have provided gentiles with spiritual blessings.
“What spiritual things? the Jewish people have given us the Bible. Every word in the Bible was written by Jewish people. They [gave us] the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob,” he said. “They gave to us the prophets. There’s not a Baptist in the bunch; they’re all Jewish people.”
And finally, he said, the Jewish people gave the world Jesus, without who they would not be there at all.
Christian support, he continued, included the recognition of as an eternal, biblically mandated Jewish land. “The point is, the Jewish people today do not occupy the land as the media claims; they own the land and they own it forever,” he said. “I’ve heard theologians say, ‘Well, their reward is heavenly.’ ”
“Nonsense!” Hagee said, citing the Bible verses describing the borders of Israel. “The borders of Israel are very much recorded in scripture, and they include terra firma and that’s all.”...
I remember some of his shows when he was talking about his charity work in Israel. He had some Israeli Jews, who said that they welcomed the gifts, but did not want to be asked to convert. And, he agreed that they shouldn't have to convert--that God's promise to the Jews was still valid.
Now the Lord had said unto Abram, "Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will shew thee: And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing: And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed."
I gather that some Jews may have a sense of entitlement, based on this. And, Mr. Hagee and other American Christians certainly perceive Israeli Jews as being entitled.
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10 Nov 2023, 1:21 am
Chomsky is also a noted linguist. Some of his theories have also had a significant role in the development of computer science.
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MushroomPrincess
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10 Nov 2023, 11:59 am
I've noticed this apparent contradiction before, the US right-wing support for Israel as a state with a sense of moral panic about Jews taking over the US itself.
This is actually not a contradiction. It seems to me that many American religious right wingers want Jews to live in Israel but NOT here in the U.S.A. (After all, Israel and the U.S.A. are indeed geographically distinct places, despite the belief of many American Christian nationalists that the U.S.A. is a similarly divinely "chosen" country.)
Many of these folks also believe that Jews will convert to Christianity en masse after the Rapture....
EDIT: It seems to me that most Christian religious right wing "sympathy for Israel" is based NOT on sympathy for the Israeli people as fellow human beings, but rather on a belief that Christians are commanded by God to "bless Israel." I think a lot of Christian religious right wingers put Jews on a pedestal as "God's chosen people," seeing Jews as almost superhuman -- and as being capable of almost-superhuman evil (hence the conspiracy theories) as well as almost-superhuman good.
Pretty much this ^^
Evangelical Christians' "support" for Israel is completely cynical and actually, ironically, comes from a place of deeply-rooted antisemitism.
10 Nov 2023, 11:53 pm
Because Jews are the one group of people killed during the Holocaust that you can semi-consistently get Both Sides to give a damn about. When's the last time you heard a conservative lament the fact that queers were gassed same as the Jews? When's the last time you heard.....ANY supporter of Israel (or anyone else) also advocate for a state for the Roma (G-psies--though that is considered a slur)? If Israel is so necessary for the safety of the Jewish people, then do you just not care about the Roma? Or do you just do what most people do and just pretend they don't exist?
And because Israel is a glorified military base for the US and its allies to protect their interests in a region which is understandably fed up with Europeans and Americans setting up colonies wherever they damn well please.
Many of these folks also believe that Jews will convert to Christianity en masse after the Rapture....
EDIT: It seems to me that most Christian religious right wing "sympathy for Israel" is based NOT on sympathy for the Israeli people as fellow human beings, but rather on a belief that Christians are commanded by God to "bless Israel." I think a lot of Christian religious right wingers put Jews on a pedestal as "God's chosen people," seeing Jews as almost superhuman -- and as being capable of almost-superhuman evil (hence the conspiracy theories) as well as almost-superhuman good.
This. Christian nationalists overwhelmingly support Israel for reasons which have little to do with concern for the Jewish people. Many consider the existence of Israel as a pre-requisite for Armageddon. I've heard from people alive during the Yom Kippur War that many Christians in America saw it (sometimes enthusiastically) as the beginning of the End Times. Evangelicals are infamously enthusiastic about the coming of Judgement Day, so their support for Israel is just another piece of their suicidal cult mentality.
Israel also sets a precedent in international relations which is music to the ears of white nationalists. White nationalists who support Israel see it as a shining example of an ethnostate where those who are not members of the in-group are second class citizens. They enjoy pushing the narrative that a given ethnic group can only guarantee its safety and survival through the creation of an ethnostate wherein that group holds sole power over government and society. "If the Jews can do it, why can't white Americans do it?" "Israel killed and expelled Palestinians to form their state, so was it really that wrong that white Americans killed and expelled native Americans?" The implications get very ugly very fast.
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11 Nov 2023, 5:15 am
It’s a little bit surreal reading threads like this and seeing how the conversation gets directed towards focusing almost solely on Christian Zionists and other White right-wingers, as if Jewish Zionists themselves have no agency.
The main reason for America’s support of Israel is the political influence in America of Jewish Zionists. Chomsky covers this for about five seconds in his talk when he mentions AIPAC, but most of his other arguments are pretty much nonsense.
There are others out there (on both the left and right) who have provided far more persuasive readings of the situation than Chomsky. The leftist sociology professor James Petras is one, and he has also specifically critiqued Chomsky. Petras wrote the following in 2006, but it still holds true today.
Despite [Chomsky’s] respected reputation for documenting, dissecting and exposing the hypocrisy of the US and European regimes and acutely analyzing the intellectual deceptions of imperial apologists, these analytical virtues are totally absent when it comes to discussing the formulation of US foreign policy in the Middle East, particularly the role of his own ethnic group, the Jewish Pro-Israel lobby and their Zionist supporters in the government.
…
I am referring to the essay published by the London Review of Books entitled “The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy” by Professor John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Professor Stephan Walt, the purged Academic Dean of the Kenney School of Government at Harvard University.
…
Chomsky’s speeches and writing on the Lobby emphasizes several dubious propositions.
- The pro-Israel Lobby is just like any other lobby; it has no special influence or place in US politics.
…
- The Lobby’s agenda succeeds because it coincides with the interests of the dominant powers and interests of the US State
..
- The major forces shaping US Middle East policy are “big oil” and the “military-industrial complex”, neither of which is connected to the pro-Israel lobby.
- The interests of the US generally coincide with the interests of Israel
…
Chomsky claims that the Lobby is just another lobby in Washington. Yet he fails to observe that the lobby has secured the biggest Congressional majorities in favor of allocating three times the annual foreign aid designated to all of Africa, Asia and Latin America to Israel (over 100 billion dollars over the past 40 years). The Lobby has 150 full time functionaries working for the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), accompanied by an army of lobbyists from all the major Jewish organizations (Anti-Defamation League, B?nai Brith, American Jewish Committee, etc) and the nation-wide, regional and local Jewish Federations which hew closely to the line of the ‘majors’ and are active in policy and local opinion on Israel and promote and finance legislative candidates on the basis of their adherence to the Lobby’s party line.
…
Chomsky’s cliché-ridden attribution of war aims to ‘Big Oil’ is totally unsubstantiated. In fact the US-Middle East wars prejudice the oil interests in several strategic senses. The wars generate generalized hostility to oil companies with long-term relations with Arab countries. The wars result in undermining new contracts opening in Arab countries for US oil investments. US oil companies have been much friendlier to peacefully resolving conflicts than Israel and especially its Lobbyists as any reading of the specialized oil industry journals and spokespeople emphasize.
11 Nov 2023, 5:19 am
Another thing that strikes me about reading this thread is how poorly some people understand the American Right (or at least how careless they are when talking about it).
Christian Zionists, Christian Nationalists and White Nationalists are three different groups.
Christian Zionists obviously support Israel. Christian Zionists might want Jews to move to Israel, but apart from that they seem to have no interest in the racial demographics of America.
Christian Nationalists, in contrast, usually don’t support Israel. And they also generally don’t have any opposition to non-White immigration, as long as America retains its “Christian culture”. Most Christian Nationalists claim they would rather live among non-White Christians than among White atheists (particularly of the ‘SJW’ variety).
White Nationalists also overwhelmingly don’t support Israel, and (obviously) they oppose non-White immigration to America. Their argument would go something like “why should our tax dollars go towards protecting a Middle-Eastern ethnostate thousands of miles away when our government refuses to protect our borders here?”
On the other hand, large numbers of Republican voters (perhaps the majority) are moderate conservatives who don’t belong to any of the groups listed above.
And there is another distinction again to be drawn between Republican voters and Republican politicians. Most Republican politicians are just paid actors who say whatever their donors want to hear, safe in the conviction that millions of White conservative types will vote Republican no matter what. Then there is Donald Trump, an actor who says what he thinks Republican voters want to hear, since he knows most donors aren’t interested in giving him money (money that he hardly needs in any case).
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