Thursday, June 28, 2012

HOLIER THAN THOU: AMERICAN JEWS AND ISRAEL

There is no doubt, based on my personal experience and objective analysis, that American Jews have a sense of imperial superiority over all other Jews, including the Israelis. They call the Jews from the Soviet Union “Russians,” causing a lot of resentment, which fact is by now a matter of extensively published record. The consequent animosity of the “Russian” Jewish plebs toward the American Jewish patricians can no longer be disguised. In fact, the American Jews treat the “Russian” Jews exactly like the German Jews used to treat the shtetl Poilische Yidden before WWII. But of course the “Russians,” being very well educated, often much better educated than their counterparts in the United States, are far less tolerant of condescension than in the historical example from three quarters of a century ago, and their resentment has been real and bitter.

Characteristically, though, the general attitude of the English-speaking American Jews toward the Israelis is even more negative than toward the “Russians.” If there is anything worse than a Russian-speaking Jew, it is a Hebrew-speaking Jew. So much for the American love for Israel!

It is important to understand how the Jewish-American sense of superiority toward the rest of their race (the impatiently leaping parallel with America’s feeling of hegemonic superiority toward the rest of the world is very much in order) casts a spell on the Jewish-American attitude toward the State of Israel. Ironically, the Jews of Israel can boast of an official full-blown statehood, whereas their American brethren are officially just an ethnic minority of between two and three per cent within an overwhelmingly Gentile majority of America, and thus it appears that the real situation of who is actually superior and who is inferior should be reversed. But the incongruity of the situation is compensated by the humongously disproportionate role played by the American Jewish community today in American life and politics, caused by its disproportionate edge in the economic picture, as well as in domestic and foreign politics. No aspiring politician in the United States can survive without an explicit backing of the Jewish lobby, and, conversely, any politician who dares to act at odds with the American Jewish agenda is ipso facto marked for political annihilation.

Considering that American foreign policy is greatly influenced by the Jewish lobby, there is a strong sense of empowerment among the American Jews by the superpower might of the American State, which dwarfs the prestige of the Jewish formal sovereignty within the State of Israel and explains the superpower psychology of the American Jewish community, with its clear implication of a superiority complex.

How does this transfer to the American-Israeli relationship? The bottom line here is that the American Jews feel exceedingly qualified and entitled to represent the interests of Medinat Yisroel, as if they have acquired the power of attorney to run its affairs. The actual situation is in fact even more outrageous. American Jews are using their right under the Israeli law to come to Israel as Israeli citizens, and of all other constituents of the Jewish populace of Israel, they are the foremost troublemakers, the in-your-face settlers of the forbidden kibbutzim in the occupied Palestinian territories, the pushy ultranationalist fringe of the Israeli society.

The irony of this incongruous situation is that all of these American Jewish extremists in Israel have in their pocket a “Plan B” to fall back on, if the push comes to shove. Their American passports guarantee their secure return to the comfort of their American homes, away from the mess they have unleashed, while bona fide single-citizenship Israelis have no such luxury. Just imagine what would happen if 5+ million Israeli Jews all at once start knocking at the gates of the American superpower, asking for permanent residence, or even ‘simple’ mass admittance to the United States? Will the United States Government rush to grant them their wish? Will the American Jews second the motion? I sincerely doubt that! The last thing the American Jewish community wants are the domestic social complications caused by its overburdening of the national welfare system, particularly during a continuing economic crisis.

…It is therefore only reasonable to strenuously object to the recent push of these safely harbored American Jews to run the policies of the State of Israel from six thousand miles away, while taking unwarranted risks on behalf of the people whom they won’t be all too keen to harbor and share their homes with, in the event of trouble, the people whom they consider beneath themselves, and yet, whose interests they are so eager to represent aggressively and regardless of the cost to their unwilling clients!

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