The Caldron of Anti-Semitism. The use and abuse of popular culture’s favorite victim

victorhanson.com ^ | April 26, 2006 | Bruce Thornton

[Tolik]

As if there isn’t enough evidence of the ideological corruption of America’s universities, along come Chicago’s John Mearsheimer and Harvard’s Stephen Walt, arguing that the “Israel lobby” dominates American foreign policy to the hurt of our own national interests. Alan Dershowitz has exposed the errors of fact and the sophomoric logic that mar this thesis, and that should embarrass what are supposed to be two of the best universities in the country . Personally, I consider it intellectual malfeasance to harp on the Israel lobby while ignoring the Palestinian lobby — which includes most of the faculty of American universities, most of the Middle Eastern Studies Departments, most of the media’s editorial boards, the Council on American Islamic Relations, the U.N., and a significant chunk of the State Department.

Critical analysis like Dershowitz’s is important, but equally significant is the question of how ideas usually found on neo-Nazi websites can be seriously entertained by otherwise educated people. Anti-Semitism certainly isn’t the whole answer, if only because the term is too broad to catch the various subsets of anti-Jewish bigotry. This isn’t to say that anti-Semitism doesn’t still exist. Obviously, old-fashioned anti-Semites, particularly in Europe, have found that in a post-Holocaust world, one can still indulge the same bigoted stereotypes of all-powerful cabals secretly manipulating world events, as long as one dresses them up in “pro-Palestinian” or “anti-Zionist” camouflage. But I’m not sure that most of those, including Muslims, who rail against the evil Jews really want them all to disappear, as Hitler did. They just want the Jews to stop being so uppity and to keep in their place....

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[Tolik]

victorhanson.com is a MUST EXCERPT website; please follow the link to the rest of this excellent article

[Tolik]

Nailed It!
Moral Clarity BUMP !

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[Williams]

The real villain here is the left. Israel has been abandoned and villified even by many American Jews because of left wing propoganda. The left supports radical moslems against the U.S. and Israel, they blame Israel for terrorism.

The left promotes class, ethnic, and racial divisions. All their supposed support for one group (blacks, Islam, women, etc.) becomes hatred for other groups (whites, males, Jews, Christians, etc.) that ends up being the worst possible racism, anti-semitism, and intolerance.

[Nachum]

Well written. Good post.

[Tolik]

What you describe is a part of the phenomenon that libertarian economist Arnold Kling calls "Folk Marxism": http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1563376/posts

All other explanations of the Left's betrayal of Israel were not satisfactory logical to me until I read that article.

[Alouette]

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[Williams]

TY