[lbo-talk] The Banality of anti-Israel Lobby Doctrine

[David Green]

Joseph Catron said: 
"It takes a lot of balls for someone who trafficks in toxic insinuations like 
that to accuse anyone else of poisoning a debate."
 
The quantity of my cajones aside, I'm not accusing M/W and others of hating Jews 
for being Jewish. But in spite of my discomfort at bring anti-Semitism into the 
discussion, I think it's important to confront the idea that here are a group of 
realist academics who are promoting a kind of updated "stab-in-the-back" 
explanation of USFP, where the stabbers are claimed to be motivated by Israel's 
interests in contradiciton to U.S. interests. What a hanging curveball over the 
middle of the plate to provide the Zionists and neocons, and all the time 
keeping the debate firmly within "realist" limits. Those who actually want to 
help the Palestinians need to reject this "higher anti-Semitism," and frame it 
as an aspect of (disgusting) realist discourse, to separate it from what Norman 
Finkelstein refers to as more understandable "spillover" in relation to Israel's 
behavior. Any truck with stab-in-the-back is symptomatic of a principled leftist 
movement shooting itself in the foot.
 
DG