Salon: Can American Jews unplug the Israel lobby?

[regnaD kciN]

The touchiest aspect of all is the role played by pro-Israel neoconservatives in laying the groundwork for the Iraq war. Much of the media has been loath to go near this, for obvious and in some ways honorable reasons: It feels a little like "blame the Jews." But that taboo has faded as it has become clearer that "the Jews" are not the ones being blamed for helping pave the way to war, but a group of powerful neoconservatives, some but not all of them Jewish, who subscribe to the hard-right views of Israel's Likud Party. This group no more represents "the Jews" than the Shining Path represents "the Peruvians."

For all these reasons, a powerful spotlight has been turned on the pro-Israel lobby. And there are signs that increasing numbers of Americans, Jews and non-Jews alike, are willing to openly question whether it is in America's national interest for AIPAC, whose positions are well to the right of those held by most American Jews, to wield such disproportionate power over America's Mideast policies.

As a group, American Jews continue to be staunchly liberal. A new poll shows that 77 percent of American Jews now think that the Iraq war was a mistake, compared with 52 percent of all Americans. (Jewish support for the war has collapsed: A poll taken a month before the war showed that 56 percent of Jews supported it, somewhat below the national average at that time.) Eighty-seven percent of Jews voted Democratic in 2006. And although data here is murkier, polls also show that most American Jews hold views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that are to the left of AIPAC's.

What all this adds up to is that for liberal or moderate American Jews who don't support Bush's war in Iraq or his "war on terror" and who are willing to look at Israel warts and all, the fact that AIPAC has anointed itself as the de facto spokesmen for American Jews is becoming more and more unacceptable. And increasing numbers of them are beginning to speak out.

More here.

[durrrty libby]

1. All promoters of death and destruction need to stop

[Nikki Stone1]

2. The difference between American Jews and the Likud party needed to be addressed.

Thanks for this.

[Jim Sagle]

3. No thanks.

[David__77]

4. I would not use term "Israel lobby." This is only a specific far-right faction.

It is unfair to say that the Jabotinsky/fascist/revisionist trend of Zionism is emblematic of Israel as a whole. Labor Zionism, best represented by the martyred PM Rabin, stand starkly in opposition to this worldview and politics.

US Jews will not break with Zionism, but they certainly stand with the Labor Zionism as opposed to the neo-con/fascist variety.