On Tue, 6 Mar 2001, Brad Mayer wrote:
> Leo, this is a point about political repression being carried out by
> supporters of Zionism
Actually the Lerner case is not a point about political repression carried out by Zionists against their enemies, but by Conservative Zionists against Liberal Zionists (which is what Lerner is). The former dominate American intellectual life much much more than in Israel. Pledging solidarity, or even expressing sympathy, with Palestinians, which loses people their jobs here, was the position of the majority of labor party in Israel in the last election. Leading intellectuals and academics took out full page ads in Haaretz exhorting Labor voters to abstain from voting for Barak as an act of solidarity with the Palestinians; it wasn't just an email on the internet. Mind you, the right wing calls them traitors there, too. They just can't do anything about it because they don't dominate the culture in the same way. (They will however win every election from now to kingdom come, it looks like, and destroy everything that was ever worth preserving, but that's a different story.)
The simplest explanation for the dominance of arch-conservatism among America's Zionists is that they have to compensate for the contradiction that if they were really Zionists, they would have moved to Israel already. If they don't move there because they like it better here (and that is the reason) then most of the argument of Zionism falls to the ground. In order to salve their internal contradictions they denounce traitors with redoubled force.
Michael
__________________________________________________________________________ Michael Pollak................New York City..............mpollak at panix.com