And, of course, the situation here in the US is at the very minimal level of simply trying to open up a publicly recognizable space critical of US support for Israel, let alone build a movement to intervene concretely in the political arena (although here in the Bay Area we may have begun to achieve that stage). In this very repressive situation, replete with threats of vigilante terrorism, I'll support and defend any liberal - liberal Zionist or otherwise - who takes risks (as Lerner may be with his very life) to overthrow the silence here. That I respect, although I'm sure I could get a good polemic going with them over the issue of the Democratic Party in other circumstances :-).
My own simple explanation boils down to Washington. Of course, this is not about the "warring tribes" of US media fantasy, but about Washingtons' (indifferent) support for Israel as an instrument of US foreign policy, for the moment. If that policy requires promotion of a Holocaust museum and industry, so be it. This is the explanation for the pronounced rightward tilt of US Zionism vis-a-vis that in Israel (where, on the other hand, it is much more polarized). In that voice (very non-Jewish, with Roman pretensions) we really hear that of the Great Imperator
-Brad Mayer
PS. The very well written forward from, apparently, a German-Jewish commentator (whose name I can't recall right now) did make the valid point that Finkelstein overlooks the dimension of the _universalism_ of US Holocaust-worship. He then links this universalization in with the needs of US foreign policy. I think this is a correct explanation of the difference between the US vs. Germany or Israel - it's all very Wilsonian.
I certainly do not favor the "sacrilization" of anything which, judging from Finkelsteins' latest statements, is his professed aim. Sacrilization invariably leads to banalization, the very thing Finkelstein deplores. I also don't think universalization necessarily requires sacrilization, as the commentator states. It should be possible to universalize a realistic secular understanding of the Nazi Holocaust as with anything else. But universalization in the service of empire certainly requires sacrilization.
One, perhaps minor correction: Putting aside the fact that the US sits at the historical apex of the greatest pile of genocidal acts in human history (lacks the shock-trauma sacrilization requires, was stretched over 300 years and employed "Hand Manufactures" rather than the new mass production techniques pioneered by the Nazis), the US certainly _did_ have concentration camps at the end of WWII. It's just that they contained Japanese, not Jews and, although Washington never had occasion to convert these to extermination camps, they did have to spend several high desert subzero winters in Wyoming, Arizona or the Great Basin, living in tar-paper-and-wood shacks in a camp surrounded by barbed wire and armed guards with orders to shoot escapees on sight. Orders which they carried out on occasion. With the "discovery" of the Nazi extermination camps, these no doubt suddenly became an embarrassment as Washington moved to try the captured Nazi leadership for war crimes under international law. Hence the speed with which these were demolished in 1946. 40-odd years later, the victims received paltry reparations of ~$20,000 each, but "oddly", "full sacrilization" has yet to kick in.
>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