Jewish power

(Don’t let Abraham Foxman see this.)












An example of the power of Jews to affect the decisions
of what one would think is a segment of the American elite
immune to Jewish influence:

2006-06-22-NYT

Presbyterians Revise Israel Investing Policy
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN
New York Times, 2006-06-22

[Emphasis and comments are added.]

The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) voted yesterday
to back off from a decision it made two years ago
to pursue divestment from companies
that profit from Israel's involvement in the Palestinian territories.

The resolution,
passed overwhelmingly at the church's general assembly in Birmingham, Ala.,
responded to outcries by some church members and Jews
who accused the church of insensitivity to Israel.
The resolution apologized for “the pain that this has caused”
among
“many members of the Jewish community
and within our Presbyterian communion.”
[How about the pain this resolution will do nothing to mitigate
among the Palestinians?
Note the cringing, groveling, apologetic, hand-wringing tone
for daring to have offended Jews.
And by the way,
just how did the resolution for which they are apologizing cause pain?
It seems that any effective action taken
to end Israel’s occupation of the West Bank
will be vetoed and/or nullified by the American Jewish community
on the grounds that it ‘causes pain.’]

Church leaders said it still permitted divestment as a “last resort,”
but emphasized positive, not punitive, steps the church can take
to support Middle East peace efforts.
[Like what? That will be effective, anyhow.]

The church also sought to reassure Palestinians
by including in the resolution
a call for an end to Israel's involvement in Gaza and the West Bank,
along with criticism of the Israeli security wall
where it encroaches on Palestinian territory and
“fails to follow the legally recognized borders of Israel” before the 1967 war.
[Words, words, words.
Words that the Presbyterians, and everone else,
know will do absolutely nothing to prevent Israel
from establishing and maintaining the “facts on the ground”
that are the heart of the problem.
So America’s elite, yet again, sells out the Palestinians,
while it pretends to support their cause.
What hypocrisy.
No wonder the world hates America.
And the Presbyterians, as they have for the last half century,
pander to their Jewish masters.]

“The resolution makes clear that
we're not targeting Israel,
we're not abandoning our commitment to peacemaking,
we're not abandoning the Palestinian Christians,”
said Jay Rock, coordinator for interfaith relations.
[Note Rock’s background.]

The Presbyterian Church never reached the point of divesting from companies
that it said provided military equipment or technology for Israel
to use in the territories.
Church officials had begun to press four corporations —
Caterpillar, ITT, Motorola and United Technologies.
Divesting would have required a vote by the entire general assembly,
which meets every two years.

Yesterday, the church's Peacemaking and International Issues Committee drafted the resolution
after nearly 12 hours of testimony from church members and three invited guests,
an American Jew, an American Muslim and a Palestinian Christian.

After a brief debate, the general assembly adopted the resolution, 483 to 28.
The compromise mollified some Jewish leaders,
who sent several representatives to lobby delegates.

“The divestment policy was a one-sided policy
that focused only on the bad acts of Israel,”
said Mark J. Pelavin,
director of the Commission on Interreligious Affairs of Reform Judaism,
a Jewish leader who spoke to the panel.
[Well, yes.
The question that should be asked of Mr. Pelavin in this context is:
“Does PCUSA support, in any way, ‘bad acts’ of those who oppose Israel?”
If PCUSA only opposes Israel’s ‘bad acts,’ but not those of its opponents,
then Pelavin has a point.
Otherwise it is just the usual ADL smokescreen,
protecting Israel’s oppression of the Palestinian people.]
“One of the criticisms last time was they didn't hear American Jewish voices at all. To their credit, they reached out this time.”
[We hear you loud and clear, through your actions.
Your only agenda is to steal the Palestinians’ land.]

The national director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, Salam al-Marayati,
invited to represent a Muslim viewpoint,
said he was disappointed at the retreat from divestment,
because it was a nonviolent strategy to put pressure on Israel.
But Mr. Marayati said of the Presbyterians,
“There's still a commitment to opposing the occupation,
and I think that's the most important thing.”

Mr. Pelavin and Mr. Marayati said they were pleased over the support for a
“politically viable and secure Palestinian state
alongside an equally viable and secure Israeli state,
both of which have a right to exist.”
[Yeah, right.
The Israelis will pay as much attention to PCUSA General Assembly resolutions
as they pay to UN General Assembly resolutions.
The divestment issue would have gotten the Israeli's attention,
which is why AmJews fought against it so fiercely.]

The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), with 2.3 million members,
has close ties to Palestinian Christians
and has long used divestment to communicate foreign policy positions.

The divestment vote in 2004 hurt relationships with many Jewish organizations
that had long been allies on causes like
civil liberties and the separation of church and state. [!]

“Our relationships with our Jewish friends were severely strained,”
said James D. Berkley, director of Presbyterian Action,
a conservative group affiliated with the Institute on Religion and Democracy in Washington.
“We had congregations that had spent years
making excellent relationships with local temples,
and rabbis and pastors that were good friends.
And suddenly, the rabbis were calling up and saying,
'What has the church done?
I thought you were our friends.' ”
[So, there it is:
To be a friend of these American Jews,
you must support the policies of Israel.
How much more clear can it be that
American Jews who lobby for Israel are agents of Israel?
(Which, last time I checked, is a foreign power.)]

The action on divestment prompted other Protestant churches
to consider similar steps.
The World Council of Churches urged its member churches last year
to give serious consideration to divesting funds from Israel.
The Church of England voted for divestment in February.
But few others have followed suit.

Two years ago,
divestment was a sleeper issue at the Presbyterian general assembly,
passing without much controversy.

This time, opponents mounted a campaign.
They put up a billboard on the highway from the airport to the convention center saying,
“Divestment is not the way to peace.”
They invited a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency,
R. James Woolsey, a Presbyterian layman,
to speak, and he said the divestment policy put the church
“clearly on the side of theocratic, totalitarian, anti-Semitic, genocidal beliefs.”
[Woolsey is the biggest liar around.
If you think that is too harsh, note his speech on ‘World War IV,’ where he says

We're hated
because of freedom of speech,
because of freedom of religion,
because of our economic freedom,
because of our equal -- or at least almost equal treatment of women --
because of all the good things that we do.
This is like the war against Nazism.
We are hated because of what the best of what we are.

But the Muslim world has said, over and over again, [e.g., see here]
that we are hated because of our support for Israel.
Under these circumstances, and considering the knowledge of the world
a former DCI must surely have,
for him to deny what the Muslims say over and over again
must be viewed as nothing less than a particularly heinous lie.
But it is one that America’s “elite,”
from George W. Bush to the Washington Post to the Presbyterian General Assembly,
keeps repeating.
Why?
Not because of
“the corporations” or
“big oil” or
“the evangelicals” (some, but not many of them in PCUSA) or
George W. Bush or Dick Cheney or the right-wing politician you most love to hate,
but because of the Jews.]

Advocates of divestment, including some American Jews and Israelis,
worked the conference hallways.
Jewish Voice for Peace, a liberal group,
set up a table at the conference center and showed a documentary on Israeli military resisters, said a member, Judith Kolokoff of Seattle.

In the end, many delegates who spoke during the final debate
said they saw the resolution as fair and even-handed.

---

Miscellaneous Topics

2007-07-02-Green

Lobbying for Debate
by Mark Green
Letter to the Editor of The American Conservative , 2007-07-02

[The contents of Mr. Green’s letter (emphasis is added):]

Thank you for publishing Philip Weiss’s “Mondoweiss: Chapter One” (2007-06-04).
His candid disclosures about how
Jewish concerns reverberate through American politics and media
are an important step toward uncovering potent—
though often unrecognized—pressures
that shape American government and culture.

Unfortunately, these complex political currents often overlap Western taboos,
and thus
criticism (even discussion) of “Jewish issues” is often reserved for
self-censoring Jewish intellectuals or pro-Zionist Gentiles.

Weiss’s candor is commendable.
He concedes that he comes from a family milieu in which
feelings of “Jewish superiority” were a fact of life
and, in a similar vein, acknowledges implicitly that
his public musings about topics like Jewish “dual loyalty” (to Israel)
and the “predominance of Jewish money” in the Democratic Party
are beyond the pale in American discourse—
even by a Jewish blogger.
Weiss drops more than a few bombs as he explores this political minefield.
[A dangerous metaphor?]
That former President Harry Truman was a great supporter of Israel
is widely known.
But many Americans remain unaware of the covert machinations
that produced Truman’s level of political fealty to the Jewish state....

Indeed, as American’s unfolding disaster in Iraq grinds on,
and many powerful friends of Israel call for widening the war to Iran,
the political anecdotes that Weiss comfortably files under “Jewish issues”
begin to have a significance and urgency.
Clearly,
many highly placed Zionists suffer from a colossal conflict of interest.
[Compare Walt, TAP, 5.8.3.]

I hope that The American Conservative
finds a legitimate, reasonable, and honest way
to fully explore this conundrum.
The time has arrived for any informed American
to be allowed to scrutinize and weigh in on
the far-reaching political impact of America’s foremost ethnic lobby.

MARK GREEN
Palm Desert, California

2008

2008-02-26-Weiss

Chelsea Clinton's Lack of Accomplishment (and Mom's Lack of Success)
Signals the End of the Elite That Gave Us Iraq
by Philip Weiss
Mondoweiss, 2008-02-26

[Weiss starts talking about Chelsea Clinton,
but soon segues into his favorite topic,
his fellow Jews and the role they play in America.
Here is that portion (all but the first two paragraphs) of his post.
Paragraph numbers (based on the original) and emphasis are added.]

[3]
Of course I look at it from a Jewish perspective.
My people came inside with the Clintons.
The most philosemitic administration in history
(per Frum, from the next philosemitic administration).
The two Supreme Court appointees were Jewish.
The big donors to Hillary’s campaign are Jewish
and Chelsea’s boyfriend is Jewish (and works at Goldman Sachs),
as was her father’s most famous lover.
The establishment has been by my estimate half-Jewish.
The Camp David negotiating team was almost all Jewish.
When John O’Keeffe writes to me
that now is the time for Israel to cut a deal he’s right.
It seems like this era is already passing,
that the Jewish arrival-into-power generation didn’t stand for enough--
besides wealth and the Iraq war--
and so now it’s going into the dustbin of history.
The Vietnam debacle ended a blueblood establishment
that went out in the domestic convulsions of the 70s,
and the great minds that gave us Iraq will give way, even if he loses,
to an Obama-fostered rising class of
assimilating intermarrying leftleaning ethnics
who don’t play identity politics and want to reinspire our democracy.
I can’t wait.

[4]
I always use the word meritocracy to describe my generation
but it’s not precise.
What is the meritocracy?
It was a ruling class that
melded the burgeoning communications industries
with Wall Street and global entrepreneurialism,
i.e., hedge funds and the internet.
When they were young
the meritocrats made the first cut via standardized tests,
and these tests gave them the sense that they were the best,
chosen democratically;
and the meritocracy was pervaded by elitist prestige thinking.
Few of them had kids in the Iraq war,
and they felt no personal connection with Bush’s war,
which their representative almost universally supported.
And yes, my people did especially well in the meritocracy.
As I reported yesterday, Pew shows that
55 percent of Reform Jewish households make over $100,000 a year,
three times the national percent.
We brought our entrepreneurialism to the American economy
and brought our worldview to the ruling class.
When 9/11 happened,

the powerful press never said that
Osama bin Laden was motivated by anger
about Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians.

[5]
My father has said to me that when America turns against Jews,
it will happen “without fireworks.”
He’s right.
This Jewish-flavored establishment will pass without fireworks.
Though I believe Walt and Mearsheimer
have played a large subterranean role in this presidential campaign--
Newsweek cites them but can’t even mention their work by name
in a piece on whether Obama is good for the Jews.
Their ideas won’t stay subterranean.
All the murmuring from Clinton’s pro-Israel braintrust and the neocons
about Obama’s true agenda is going to break out in open accusation,
that Obama wants an evenhanded policy in the Middle East.
Again, I can’t wait.
And as Obama himself has said,
all the bleeding of Jews into the Republican party is over Israel.
Jews now make up the conservative bulwark of the Democratic Party.
We’re like Rockefeller Republicans, in their day,
just as status quo oriented.
Why change anything, Malcolm Hoenlein said to Haaretz,
when he attacked Obama,
it’s just inviting mischief...

[6]
Why change anything?
My own disappointment with the meritocracy stemmed from my awareness
that it was as smug and entitled as the ruling class it replaced.
When PBS’s Paul Solman interviewed the Indian Vandana Shiva
about her anti-globalist crusade--
to stop agriculture companies from patenting ancient indigenous cures--
he expressed irritation that she was anti-progress, anti-urban, anti-growth.
Is there any soul in his values?
When the New York Times offered a piece yesterday
on the latest trend in Holocaust education for children,
there was scarcely a word about
the importance of the Holocaust in identity politics,
to the preservation of the state of Israel and
to the Jewish campaign against intermarriage
(at a time when everyone wants to marry us,
as they wanted to marry rich gentiles back when).
And no mention of the ways that human suffering is unfolding before us now,
including in the Occupied Territories.
Some day soon these attitudes will seem quaint and ancient.

2008-10-20-NYT-Pope-Pius-XII

Vatican-Israel Tensions Rise Over Pius
By RACHEL DONADIO
New York Times, 2008-10-20

[Its beginning (what is relevant here); emphasis is added.]

ROME —
Tensions heightened this weekend between the Vatican and Israel
after a Vatican official said that
Pope Benedict XVI had halted the beatification of Pius XII,
the pope during World War II,
for fear of repercussions from Jewish groups.

[I.e.: the Jews even control the Vatican.]

2009

2009-05-05-Giraldi

Ignore AIPAC at America’s Peril
by Philip Giraldi
Antiwar.com, 2009-05-05

[Although the title of this significant column only mentions AIPAC,
it is really more about
the breadth and depth of Jewish control over
what America reads, sees, and does.]

2010

2010-03-08-WP-Supreme-Court-two-Jewish-justices-required

High Court: Does religion still matter?
By Robert Barnes
Washington Post, 2010-03-08

[An excerpt; emphasis is (obviously) added.]

There was a time, of course, in which there was a “Catholic seat” on the court,
followed in 1916 with the appointment of the court’s first Jew.
The days when one of each seemed sufficient are long over.

Catholics became a majority of the nine-member court in 2006
with the confirmation of Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor made it six last summer.
And the other two justices besides Stevens [Ginsburg, Breyer] are Jewish.

...

Religion becomes a diversity consideration just like ethnicity and gender,
especially with
51 percent of Americans identifying with one of the Protestant religions.

[According to Wikipedia (as of 2010-03-09),
2.2 percent of the U.S. population is Jewish.
(Surely the true percentage is not too far from that number.)

I assume Barnes is a professional enough journalist
to not merely be speaking for himself when he writes
“The days when one of each seemed sufficient are long over,”
referring to both Catholics and Jews.
But I deplore the idea that three percent of the population
should demand 2/9 (=22 percent) of the Supreme Court as its due.]

2012

2012-08-31-WP-patrick-pexton-what-about-israels-nuclear-weapons

What about Israel’s nuclear weapons?
By Patrick B. Pexton, Ombudsman
Washington Post, 2012-08-31

...

George Perkovich, director of the nuclear policy program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace,
said there are benign and not-so-benign reasons
that U.S. officials are so tight-lipped.
The United States and Israel are allies and friends.
“Do you ‘out’ your friends?” he asked.

And not being open about Israel’s nuclear weapons
serves both U.S. and Israeli interests, Perkovich noted.
If Israel were public about its nukes, or brandished its program recklessly —
as North Korea does every time it wants something —
it would put more pressure on Arab states to obtain their own bomb.

Among the less benign reasons U.S. sources don’t leak is that
it can hurt your career.
Said Perkovich:
“It’s like all things having to do with Israel and the United States.
If you want to get ahead,
you don’t talk about it;
you don’t criticize Israel,
you protect Israel.

You don’t talk about illegal settlements on the West Bank
even though everyone knows they are there.”

I don’t think many people fault Israel for having nuclear weapons.
If I were a child of the Holocaust, I, too,
would want such a deterrent to annihilation.
But that doesn’t mean the media shouldn’t write about
how Israel’s doomsday weapons affect the Middle East equation.
Just because a story is hard to do
doesn’t mean The Post, and the U.S. press more generally,
shouldn’t do it.

2012-09-02-Slattery-elena-kagans-diversity-problem-and-jewish-privilege

Elena Kagan’s “diversity problem” and Jewish privilege
by Patrick Slattery Ph.D.
Occidental Observer, 2012-09-02

2013

2013-03-07-WP-Wilson-obama-meets-privately-with-jewish-leaders

Obama meets privately with Jewish leaders
By Scott Wilson
Washington Post, 2013-03-07

Jewish leaders urged President Obama on Thursday
to make clear during his upcoming trip to Israel
that he will prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons —
and to correct an early diplomatic misstep
when he appeared to trace Israel’s historic claim to a modern state
to the Holocaust rather than to the Bible.

In a White House meeting that lasted longer than the scheduled hour,
Obama listened to leaders of more than a dozen Israel advocacy groups,
representing a spectrum of views
over the challenges facing the Jewish state
at a moment of regional instability and mounting threats.

The meeting was described by nearly a half-dozen participants as cordial,
led by a president who,
after an early setback attempting to revive Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations,
appeared far more self-assured
and with a policy more in line with those of his guests
than in previous encounters.

The gathering was not listed on the president’s public schedule,
and some participants spoke on the condition of anonymity
to recount the discussions.
Some said Obama engaged most energetically, although never angrily,
with those with whom he most disagreed.

...

Obama has met with Jewish leaders before,
including a seminal July 2009 meeting
held a few weeks after his call for a “new beginning” with the Muslim world in Cairo.

...

Nathan Diament, director of the Institute for Public Affairs of the Orthodox Union,
said he told Obama at the Thursday meeting that
he must reach out
not only to young secular Israelis
but also to the nation’s growing religious community.

“I emphasized the importance that as part of what he does in that regard
is speak, directly and symbolically,
to the religious sectors of society
and the millennia of connection the Jewish people have
with the land of Israel,”
said Diament, whose organization is the largest orthodox Jewish umbrella group.

[We see Jewish leaders consistently emphasizing the importance of symbolism to them.]

Asked if that would help correct the impression left with Israelis in his Cairo speech,
Diament, who attended Harvard Law School with Obama, said, “No comment.”

...

White House officials said Thursday that
Obama had no plans at this point to meet with
Palestinian — or other Arab — leaders before the trip.

[Nice that the Washington Post noted that
(and I am being serious here, not trying to be ironic.]

2013-07-30-Philip-Weiss-jewish-success-is-it-ever-a-story

Jewish success– is it ever a story?
by Philip Weiss
Mondoweiss.com, 2013-07-30

[The original of this article, at the link above,
has many links to the persons and ideas that are named,
which are for simplicity omitted here.]

This morning National Public Radio aired a story on
the rivalry between Lawrence Summers and Janet Yellen
to be the next Fed chairperson,
succeeding Ben Bernanke.
All three of these economists are Jewish.
It is plain evidence of the fact that
Jews make up a large segment of the new Establishment,
if not the leading segment.

[Kevin MacDonald has the following comment on that observation
(but the emphasis is added by KHarbaugh]:

The result will be that
Jews will have held
the most important economic post in the U.S.
for thirty years,
since Alan Greenspan’s tenure began in 1987.
But not a word in the MSM about the fact that
Fed Chairman has become a Jewish fief,
that the three leading candidates are Jews
(the short list, according to Obama, now includes Donald L. Kohn),
or that the person in charge of the search,
Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, is Jewish.

]

I had the same impression Friday night,
when the nightly news was also filled with Jews.
The sex scandals involving San Diego mayor Bob Filner
and would-be New York Mayor Anthony Weiner–
their pictures opened the NBC news.
Then the lead story was food safety,
and Nancy Snyderman was interviewing FDA head Margaret Hamburg,
then Andrea Mitchell, who is married to a former chair of the Fed [Alan Greenspan],
was interviewing Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post about the sex scandals,
and at the end of the broadcast
they teased David Gregory’s interview on Meet the Press of Jack Lew, Treasury Secretary.
All these folks are Jewish or have some Jewish background.
They’re all in the center ring.

In recent months,
I’ve heard Peter Beinart, Lester Crown, Jane Eisner, and Jeffrey Goldberg
exclaim over Jewish success.
Crown said that the acceptance of Jews
“in almost everything is unbelievable, just remarkable, every place.”
But it seems to me that Jews in the media
have largely avoided dealing with the implications of our success.
[Not only "Jews in the media".
What gentile in the MSM has dared to bring up this topic?]
They’re embarrassed about it.
Or they fear anti-Semitic riots if they say openly what everyone knows.
The exception is Marc Ellis, who writes openly about Empire Jews.

This lack of reflection is unacceptable.
Elites are traditionally criticized in the American discourse.
It’s the price.
David Brooks [who is Jewish]’s book about the “new upper class”
is filled with slams of the previous order, the “WASPs,”
but has nothing to say about Jews.
Nick Lemann [who is Jewish] wrote a highly-acclaimed book on the meritocracy
that described the last ruling elite in religious terms– as “the Episcopacy”–
and said that the folks in it got there by birth.
It seems to me that the Jewish presence in the establishment merits some scrutiny:
what is the role of birth in awarding place in the U.S.?
What is the role of social kinship networks?
What is the extent of Zionist ideology in the Jewish establishment?
And how do successful Zionist Jews justify
adherence to an ideology based on separation/colonization
when they have done so well here?
I’m a liberal and I trust Americans to have this conversation.
I don’t remember pogroms against the WASPs.

[The original article, at mondoweiss.com,
has many very interesting comments,
which add considerable additional examples of these issues.

Kevin MacDonald concludes his article with:

I think I spot a trend here.
The standard Jewish story is that the bad old WASPs
were a corrupt elite that favored their own;
they obtained their positions not as a result of talent and hard work,
but because of their connections.
Jews of course are portrayed as the opposite of all that—
but it’s completely false.

It’s a corrupt as well as hostile elite—
at least as corrupt as the WASPs,
and far less representative of the population they rule over.
A powerful elite whose power is beyond discussion.

]

2015