> This is why when I hear third parties who are not Jewish taking such a
> deep interest in my culture and my politics make such generalizations, it
> makes me bristle, like I'm being examined through a tourist's eyes. I'm
> not an advocate of the "you gotta walk in my shoes to know what its like"
> ethos, but I feel like that when i hear such crazy statements in an
> increasingly Christian political environment.
===============================
I've asked this question many times over the years with many friends, and
they have never given me what I have found to be a satisfying answer: What
precisely is "Jewish" culture and "Jewish" politics?
Often, they've reduced "Jewishness" to "a concern for social justice and an emphasis on learning", values which they see embedded in the Torah and related commentaries. But these are universal strivings, even though all groups - not only Jews - make self-flattering proprietory claims on them. They surface within and between groups depending on historical circumstances rather than anything innate.
There is, of course, a Hebrew-speaking culture which has arisen in the Middle East over the past century, and there used to be a Yiddish-speaking culture which existed in Eastern Europe, and the political appearance of the state of Israel in 1948 literally served to bridge them.
However, I'm not able to identify a "Jewish" culture or "Jewish" politics as such. A Swedish-speaking academic in Stockholm might share a common set of inherited Jewish religious rituals with an Arabic-speaking cab driver in Rabat and an historical memory of persecution on those grounds - the same is true of all international religions - but I can't think of anything beyond that of any consequence where they would have more in common with each other than with their "non-Jewish" Swedish and Morrocan neighbours.
Wouldn't you agree? You clearly share the culture and politics of the people on this list, even though you may have religious ties with the Morrocan cab driver, who is almost certainly a stranger to you in all other crucial respects. To frame the issue more directly in the context of the current discussion, aren't Yoshie's comments - or, even Mearsheimer's and Walt's, for that matter - more consistent with your outlook than those of Netanyahu and Perle and others with whom you claim a "Jewish" cultural and political kinship, and shouldn't it be their interventions on these matters rather than ours - including their calculated use of the the anti-semitism card to chill criticism of Israel - which should cause you to "bristle"?