What New York’s ((((Chattering Class)))) Gets Wrong about Israel

Atlantic Centurion
May 27, 2016

The mouthpiece of American Jewry, the New York Times, is aghast at the actions of their co-ethnics in the State of Israel, namely describing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s appointment of the “ultranationalist” and West Bank settler-colonist Avigdor Lieberman as Defense Minister as “A Baffling, Hard-Line Choice,” and referencing his previous appointments as “a disaster for Israeli-American relations.” The editorial board considers the Lieberman appointment to be a case of realpolitik on the part of Netanyahu, who seeks to maintain his razor-thin coalition majority in the Israeli government. But they are engaging in their own political maneuvering, by opposing him for not ideological reasons but those of appearance. He isn’t wrong, just too extreme. Through an American Jewish lens, they view Lieberman as an almost Trumpist figure, one who is going to destroy international relations and the country’s reputation, which are of course implied to be more important than domestic issues and security. This sounds similar to their reaction to nationalism in any country actually, treating it as dangerous and low-status—though here we see the added urgency of wanting to keep Israel safe by maintaining its reputation or using soft power. The alternative, Israel muscularly asserting itself through hard power, or supporting politicians who advocate for it, is read as more existentially threatening than the threats themselves that said politicians want to fight. Overseas Israelis believe this will alienate goy governments from supporting Israel, though there is one allied government that has stood by them through actual wars, cabinet appointments be damned.

The motive is to defend the Jewish State from supposed losing clout within the United States and to maintain a good relationship with our so-called leadership. Leftist Jews seem to take on almost ((((neoconservative)))) attitudes about this particular country for some reason. You either want a nation-state or you don’t, and here there is clearly some tension between opposing policies which are a logical conclusion of Zionism while at the same time being, well, a Zionist.

Here are some of the wow-just-wow things supported by Lieberman, who had he not been born into the camp of our enemies would be a fashy goy. Keep in mind the context, that these are all rational policies for a settler-colonial Jewish ethnostate regardless of our opinions of such policies as outsiders:

• He has threatened to conquer Gaza or bomb the Aswan Dam in the event of a war with Egypt. Conquest of a friendly Muslim neighbor by the hated enemy would destroy the legitimacy of the numerically and territorially larger Egyptian state in the eyes of its Muslim population, and disabling the dam would cripple Egypt’s energy infrastructure, thus preventing it from further conducting a war.
• He resigned from the government last year over Netanyahu’s failure to destroy the enemy, Hamas, and because Netanyahu did not proactively support and expand colonization of the West Bank. Failure to defeat the enemy or make an agreeable peace means there will be another war, and not supporting your constituents is an obvious betrayal.
• He has called for removing Arabic as an official language. Opposition to becoming a binational state, which is the Israeli form of racial suicide.
• He wants the death penalty for convicted terrorists. Life in society will be impossible if they are not suppressed with physical punishment.
• (He has defended an Israeli soldier for “executing a wounded Palestinian.” The NY Times neglects to mention he was of the stabby West Bank variety.

These policy positions are illiberal to be sure, but they do not endanger the colony. Rather they keep it safe, a peace through strength. The actual concern is—as mentioned earlier—that being so nakedly a muscular Zionist will hurt the country’s reputation and sour its allies. In my opinion, the Lieberman appointment will have little negative impact on Israel’s supporters, and only anger existing opponents.

None of Lieberman’s positions truly threaten the US-Israeli relationship; they only make it less legitimate to the increasingly non-white population of the United States. Such people have been anti-zionists since the foundation of Israel, because of both decolonization and Cold War geopolitics (though there was a brief period where black activists supported Israel in the 1970s). They see Israel as a ((((White)))) oppressor and therefore a racial enemy. Your standard New Left party.

There is a reason anti-zionists are always trying to tie Israel to apartheid, and that’s without even getting into the history of Israeli-South African relations, which are too arcane a topic for the current year. If Israel can merely be equated with such an evil institution, then Israel must be transitively the greatest evil in the world, racism. In fact, this was the official position of the UN General Assembly for the latter half of the Cold War, that Zionism was literally racism (see Resolution 3379).

Calling Israel racist may be enough to make garden variety Democrats and non-whites oppose it, but they are not really the ones in control of foreign policy in this country. That is firmly in the hands of internationalists with a soft spot for the Jewish State. And foreign policy is seldom up for a vote, meaning politicians will tend to sell their foreign policy to the electorate rather than get it from them. And since the media is instrumental in facilitating this sale, outlets like NYT don’t have too much to worry about, yet.

Nothing Israel does per se will make its American backers and their financial advisors abandon Israel; rather it is a changing American electorate which will ultimately undermine support for Israel. Expecting a brazilianized United States to be the sword and shield of Israel is a pipe dream. When the 2040s roll around, good luck convincing the American population we should be sending billions of shekels to a ((((White)))) supremacist capitalist imperialist country. That is really what the Zionist members of New York’s Jewish colony should be concerned about, immigration as a threat to the US-Israeli relationship. But then again, they are instrumental in advocating for those very demographic changes, and for funding and administering groups like the ADL and the SPLC, which target White opponents of such enrichment policies for slander and public defamation.

On a cohencidental note, Lieberman himself is a product of immigration. As reported in The Washington Post, he was born in the Moldovan SSR and immigrated to Israel. The political party he founded and currently leads, the secular ultranationalist Yisrael Beitenu, is mainly popular with other Soviet immigrants. I guess Israel could have avoided this so-called problem if it hadn’t let in so many damn Jews.