Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!lll-crg!nike!ucbcad!ucbvax!maynard.UUCP!campbell From: campbell@maynard.UUCP Newsgroups: mod.politics Subject: Re: Press Censorship - really anti-Zionism Message-ID: <12235887440.16.MCGREW@RED.RUTGERS.EDU> Date: Wed, 3-Sep-86 00:57:09 EDT Article-I.D.: RED.12235887440.16.MCGREW Posted: Wed Sep 3 00:57:09 1986 Date-Received: Wed, 3-Sep-86 05:13:13 EDT Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Reply-To: campbell%maynard.uucp@harvisr.harvard.edu Organization: The ARPA Internet Lines: 140 Approved: poli-sci@red.rutgers.edu Apologies for the length of this; those uninterested in truth in reporting can skip it. Summary: Cramer misquotes and misconstrues Gore Vidal's article, and I correct his mistakes. I wonder if he actually read the article, or if he only read some out-of-context quotes published in an anti-Vidal flame somewhere. cramer@sun.com writes: >Here Campbell presumes to tell Jews what they are, and what they >believe. Fortunately, the American Jewish community, which is >virtually entirely pro-Zionist, understands the centrality of Israel >to the Jewish religion, not being as ignorant of Judaism as Mr. >Campbell. Did you know, for example, that a religious Jew prays >*three times a day* for the restoration of the Jewish homeland? Or >that he says, in grace prayers *after every meal*, "rebuild >Jerusalem, the holy city, speedily in our days"? ... No, I didn't know that. Lots of religions include formulaic and outmoded jargon in their worship that no one really believes or examines. It's been a long time since I've been to communion, but the mumbo-jumbo goes something like "Drink of my blood and eat of my flesh" -- you're supposed to be eating the body of Christ. And yet no one seriously believes that Christians practice symbolic ritual cannibalism. Also, for what it's worth, most Jews I know (even the Zionist ones) don't pray three times a day for *anything*, and also eat ham and sausage. If you're talking about Orthodox Jews, I could believe you, but they're essentially a crank minority, about as central to American politics as the Amish or the Mennonites. >Now, on to "waving the red flag of the holocaust": This is a >revealing remark. In the posting which seems to have so unbalanced >our friend, I said *nothing* about the Holocaust. Why does Mr. >Campbell bring up this *Jewish* tragedy? After all, he has already >told us that "Zionism is not the same as Judaism." Peculiar. I brought it up because it is often (perhaps not in this case though) implicitly stated whenever the emotionally-charged phrase "anti-Semitism" is used. The corollary goes like this: Anti-Semite => Nazi => holocaust. [Aside: why does "Semite" mean "One of a people of Caucasian stock comprising chiefly Jews and Arabs but in ancient times also including Babylonians, Assyrians, Phoenicians, and others of the eastern Mediterranean area", while "anti-Semitic" means "anti-Jew"? The dictionary would make Rabbi Kahane an anti-Semite.] OK, here come some wildly out-of-context quotes I must laboriously clarify -- the way Cramer excerpts them makes them seem anti-Semitic while they're really anti-Midge Decter and Norman Podhoretz (and their other right-wing cohorts). > ... I don't >particulary enjoy reading in mass circulation magazines that American >Jews are in America in order to "make propaganda and raise money for >Israel" ... Vidal didn't say "Jews are in America in order to..."; he said "Yet he and Midge stay on among us, in order to...". He was referring specifically to Midge Decter and Norman Podhoretz. His larger point was that Podhoretz and the American Jewish Committee have ...moved from those liberal positions traditionally occupied by American Jews (and me) to the far right of American politics. The reason for that is simple. In order to get Treasury money for Israel (last year $3 billion), pro-Israel lobbyists must see to it that America's "the Russians are coming" squads are in place so that they can continue to frighten the American people into spending enormous sums for "defense", which also means the support of Israel in its never-ending wars against just about everyone. > ...while their "predatory" co-religionists in the Middle East >are "busy stealing another peoples' land in the name of an alien >theocracy." ... "Co-religionists" is Cramer's term, not Vidal's. Here's the actual section in question (explanatory comments in [] are mine): We [the U.S.] stole other people's land [California, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, the Philippines]. We murdered many of the inhabitants. We imposed our religion -- and rule -- on the survivors. General Grant was ashamed of what we did to Mexico, and so am I. Mark Twain was ashamed of what we did in the Philippines, and so am I. Midge is not because in the Middle East another predatory people is busy stealing other people's land in the name of an alien theocracy. She is a propagandist for these predators (paid for?), and that is what this nonsense is all about. >Or that American Jews constitute an "Israeli Fifth Column." He never said that. The two sentences containing the phrase "fifth column" are: The Lunts of the right wing (Israeli Fifth Column Division), they [Decter and Podhoretz] are now, in their old age, more and more like refugees from a Woody Allen film: 'The Purple Prose of West End Avenue'. and But then, like most of our Israeli fifth columnists, Midge isn't much interested in what the _goyim_ were up to before Ellis Island. He is specifically talking about the Jewish/Zionist right wing, not "American Jews" as a whole. In case that's not clear, here's another quote: Since spades may not be called spades in freedom's land, let me spell it all out. In order to get military and economic support for Israel, a small number of American Jews, who should know better, have made common cause with every sort of reactionary and anti-Semitic group in the United States, from the corridors of the Pentagon to the TV studios of the evangelical Jesus-Christers. >Anti-Zionism is an unusual movement. Of all the peoples in the >world, it finds the Jews uniquely undeserving of a state. First, Anti-Zionism is not a "movement". It is not particularly organized, at least not in the U.S., while Zionism is clearly a well-organized movement -- heck, it's got a state! Now, if Anti-Zionism finds Jews "uniquely undeserving" of a state, then I assume Zionists find that Jews "deserve" a state. Well, then. Do Catholics "deserve" a state? Shall we restore the Holy Roman Empire? Do Moslems "deserve" a state? Shall we restore the Ottoman Empire? What makes Jews so unique in all this? As far as I can see, it's because they have the only religion that thinks it deserves a state. Somehow I thought that this was the twentieth century, and that theocracy was an outmoded concept. Frighteningly, Israel and Iran are proving me wrong. -- Larry Campbell The Boston Software Works, Inc. ARPA: campbell%maynard.uucp@harvard.ARPA 120 Fulton Street, Boston MA UUCP: {alliant,wjh12}!maynard!campbell (617) 367-6846 -------