|| -----Original Message-----
|| From: C. G. Estabrook
|| Abba Eban said a generation ago that "one of the chief tasks of any
|| dialogue with the Gentile world is to prove that the distinction between
|| anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism is not a distinction at all." But now
|| we've gone further: even to draw attention to American
|| anti-Jewishness in
|| the conversation of an ex-president, or to note that "this sort of stuff
|| is consonant with the standard conversational bill of fare at
|| 75 per cent
|| of the country clubs in America, not to mention many a Baptist
|| soiree," is
|| somehow to be tarred with he same brush, especially if like
|| Cockburn, one
|| has written mordant attacks on current Israeli policy, made
|| possible only
|| by the United States. (See "The Nightmare in Israel,"
|| www.counterpunch.org/nightmareisrael.html.)
||
|| On what can be said and not said in the US, and the political motives
|| behind it, Cockburn seems to me to have it right, and his critics
|| obfuscating that. --CGE
I have no problem with Cockburn exposing WASP antisemitism but why does he go on to mention how the Jews control Hollywood and how Mossad is spying on the US? The problem of Israel, an ethnical racist state founded on religious dogma, is bad enough without this confused Jew-talk. There are many "Jews" in the US who would like to speak out against Zionism but are simply afraid to bec Mossad has paid them a visit, as it has to each and every prominent US "Jew". Mossad is so active in the US that it's impossible to say with certainty how much the US Jewish community support for Israel is due to "Jewishness" and how much to sheer intimidation. When Jewish ethnicity becomes state ideology, Jewish ethnical identity becomes subject to state policy. It reminds me of Turkish Cypriots, who would much rather be Europeans but are forced by the Turkish Cypriot state to remain loyal to their ethnicity and hold the line.
Hakki