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Friday 5 September 2008

Podhoretz, Israel, the US and antisemitism

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The Jerusalem Post has a marvellous interview with Norman Podhoretz (my intellectual hero). It's all the more interesting for being conducted by his daughter. Here's an extended extract, on the US and antisemitism:

In your books Making it and My Love Affair with America, you make the point that there has never before been a country as good to the Jews. Given the spread of anti-Semitism in universities across the US, is this haven for Jews now threatened?

I'm glad to hear you talking like a Zionist, Ruthie. [He laughs.] There's been less anti-Semitism in America than in any other country in the world - even Japan, where there are almost no Jews. This doesn't mean there was never any anti-Semitism in America; there's always been some and there still is. But, especially in the two decades after World War II - because people began to understand how what might have seemed harmless anti-Jewish sentiment could lead to something as horrendous as Auschwitz - there was an implicit taboo against its open expression. The anti-Semites more or less went underground, and anyone who revealed himself in public as an anti-Semite was pretty well ruled out of polite political society. But I never took this to mean that anti-Semitism had entirely disappeared.

Then, immediately after the Six Day War, it began to reemerge into the open, mainly on the Left, and especially among radical blacks. Because they were considered the prime victims of American society, blacks were given a license to say anything they wanted - and one of the things the new "Black Power" movement wanted to say was that American Jews, and the Jewish state, were the worst oppressors of "people of color."

I warned then that nobody could predict how far this might go - that once anti-Semitism was released into the air, there was no telling where it would end. And it has in fact grown since 1967. In 1982, during the first war in Lebanon, I wrote an article called "J'Accuse," in which I documented very carefully the resurgence of anti-Semitism not only in the United States but all over the world. In return, many people, including many Jews, accused me of saying that anyone who criticized Israel was an anti-Semite. Of course, I never said that, nor did I think it or mean it. On the contrary, I was very careful to distinguish between anti-Semitism and opposition to Israeli policies or actions - and to show that anti-Semitism was now taking the cover of anti-Zionism.

The next big wave came in 1990, during the run-up to the first Gulf War. That was when people like Pat Buchanan - the leader of the "paleoconservatives" - charged the neoconservatives with trying to drag the US into a war against Saddam Hussein only because the Israelis wanted us to. Here, then, was another stage in the exfoliation of the new anti-Semitism - new in that Israel, the Jewish state among states, rather than the Jews among the gentiles, became the main focus. In the process, all the charges that had been made for centuries against Jews in the Diaspora were translated into the language of international affairs and then directed at the Jewish state. Actually, the new anti-Semitism didn't even bother attacking Diaspora Jews - until, that is, the latest wave that was triggered by the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, when American Jews began to be openly denounced as de-facto agents of Israel. That's the bad news.

The good news is that there are traditions and mechanisms in America that will prevent anti-Semitism from going too far. For one thing, anti-Semitism is not in the American bloodstream to the extent that it is in the European. In fact, the Pilgrims and the founding fathers of America were all very philo-Semitic. The early American Christians identified with the ancient Hebrews, and even saw themselves as "The New Israel."

Though this was a long time ago, it's a strain that has persisted throughout American history, and it's still there, acting as one of the countervailing forces against whatever anti-Semitism is also present. And then, of course, you have democratic politics, which makes it very difficult for anything like anti-Semitism to flourish in the United States. Jews are a tiny minority - maybe two and a half percent of the population, maybe less - but they are considered part of the majority. And there's some justification for that. American Jews are very prosperous. They are very successful in practically every area of life, except maybe professional sports [he laughs].

Furthermore, there are many millions of Evangelical Christians who are even more pro-Israel than the Jews, and because of their great numbers, they are a much more powerful political force than the universities or the media. Speaking of which reminds me to emphasize that there's been a real reversal of roles where anti-Semitism is concerned. Once upon a time, and especially in Europe, anti-Semitism mostly came from the Right. But today, the forces most hostile to Israel tend to be on the Left, and in America they have found a home in the Democratic Party. Yet despite the fact that these forces are extremely influential within the Democratic Party, all the Democrats running for president in the primaries this year - from Hillary Clinton to John Edwards to Barack Obama - are tripping over themselves to demonstrate how pro-Israel they are.

So much food for thought in that one answer, with imlications way beyond the US' shores.

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