[lbo-talk] AJC: "it does not help American Jews to appear to be stimulators of any action against Iran"

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

On 5/4/06, Joel Schalit <managingeditor at tikkun.org> wrote:
> Hey Yoshie -
>
> One good way to avoid charges of anti-Semitism when you write about
> Jewish politics is to rethink using language like "not good for the
> Jews," or "it does not help American Jews."
>
> Help us from what - the threat of persecution? You can see what I am
> getting at. There is a history to this kind of discourse that's
> loaded with prejudicial assumptions about Jews living under the
> threat of punishment for what we do and what we say.

What's fair and what's real are different, unless we live in an ideal
world.  It is not fair for Americans to be held responsible for the US
power elite's actions overseas, especially considering that most of
them aren't even aware of what's going on.  It's not fair for Jews to
be held responsible for Tel Aviv's actions, over which a majority of
them -- including those who live in Israel -- have no control
whatsoever and to which many of them are positively opposed.  And yet,
the reality is that US imperialism increases anti-American hatred, and
the Israeli occupation increases anti-Jewish hatred.  If I suspect
that a Sudan intervention gone wrong would increase anti-Jewish
hatred, I don't think that I'm being paranoid or anti-Semitic -- I'm
being realistic.

Taking leadership for something puts one in a position to take credit
if it goes well and to take responsibility for it if it goes wrong. 
If Bush wants to do Sudan, let him own the issue, wholly.
--
Yoshie
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