Quote from the website:
Mondoweiss is a news website devoted to covering American foreign policy in the Middle East, chiefly from a progressive Jewish perspective.
It has four principal aims:
To
publish important developments touching on Israel/Palestine, the
American Jewish community and the shifting debate over US foreign
policy in a timely fashion.
To publish a diversity of voices to promote dialogue on these important issues.
To foster the movement for greater fairness and justice for Palestinians in American foreign policy.
To offer alternatives to pro-Zionist ideology as a basis for American Jewish identity.
My Jewish Problem: Jewish Superiority, Jewish Elite"Still it is interesting that my friend and I shared a premise: Jews are superior; for whatever reason Jewish culture is superior in areas of modern civilized achievement" http://mondoweiss.net/2006/05/my_jewish_probl-2.htmlby Philip Weiss on
May 10, 2006
I
went to a friend’s son’s bar mitzvah on Saturday and in some part
because of my blog, and its discussion of Jewish politics, felt a little
alienated. I forgot to get a yarmulke, then I ran to get one. I
wondered who if anyone there had seen my ideas. Later, at the reception,
I got into a discussion about these issues with an old friend, who was
joined by a friend of his.
My friend said he was a secular Jew
and asked me how I define myself. An assimilating Jew, I said. Shortly
after that, his friend said, I don’t know what an assimilating Jew is,
and walked away.
My friend is more intellectual. He said, What
do you think will be lost if Jews assimilate into America? He answered
his own question: the excellence that Jews have brought to any number
of endeavors, science, the arts, finance, education, and so forth.
I said, But what if these qualities are more widely shared with assimilation? Will our excellence pull up others’ mediocrity?
He said, I think those qualities will be diluted. I.e., lost.
I
said I wondered if the process wasn’t inevitable. Jews are successful
and prominent, and the more successful people get, the more
sociological pressure there is on them to melt in, including pressure on
their children to marry out. That is what happened to me. I went to
the Ivy League because my family pushed me to excel and I met people
who weren’t anti-Semitic. I liked the water.
I had to admit to
my friend my indifference as to whether the institutional element of my
tribe persists. Religion may well be necessary to social structure and
order, but we need some new ones. Pedophilia seems to be inherent to
the Catholic church; and its hierarchy is covering it up.
Islam has all kinds of problems, with free speech, patriarchalism, and the tolerance of violence.
Indifference or disdain for Palestinian suffering seems inherent to
the Jewish church. I don’t see why I should revere these institutions.
Still it is interesting that my friend and I shared a premise: Jews are superior; for whatever reason Jewish culture is superior in areas of modern civilized achievement. In discussing My Jewish Problem on this blog, that’s a core Jewish value I would point to:
Jewish exceptionalism. Belief in that idea underlies so much of Jewish social attitudes and achievement. (Maugham extols it in
The Alien Corn; Hemingway throws it in Robert
Cohn’s face in The Sun Also Rises). Larry Summers sought to broach the issue of
Jewish innate intelligence in his
notorious women-and-science speechof January 2005:
…Catholics
are substantially underrepresented in investment banking, which is an
enormously high-paying profession in our society;… white men are very
substantially underrepresented in the National Basketball Association;
and… Jews are very substantially underrepresented in farming and in
agriculture. These are all phenomena in which one observes
underrepresentation, and I think it’s important to try to think
systematically and clinically about the reasons for
underrepresentation.
Summers was bumping backwards into the
fact of Jews as an elite. And, sociologically, Jewish achievement in
the last generation is stunning. We entered the Establishment. A Jewish
hedge
fund guy who owns oil tankers chairs the American Enterprise Institute, the harbor to Mr. and Mrs. Cheney, and fount of bad ideas.
That’s
why this is a public issue: this elite has conducted itself at times
in Jewish ways that deserve discussion. Specifically, the
neoconservative promotion of a deluded disastrous war out of some degree
of love for Israel, and the degree to which their agenda has been
afforded political cover by the larger, liberal Jewish community—that is
the heart of my interest. When you consider the overall failure of the
Jewish intelligentsia and of Democratic politicians to even look at
the way religious zealots on the West Bank are affecting American
foreign policy, you have to ask, What does secular Judaism mean? Does
it also have its faith-based ideologies?
But outside of private
conversations like the one I had at the bar mitzvah, these things are
not discussed. Of course there is a reason for that. The last time Jews
had such prominence in the life of societies, Europe in the first
third of the last century, we know what happened. The Nazis pointed to
the Jewish elite as a cause for extermination. So the Holocaust has
acted as a ban on our even broaching the issue. Myself I don’t have any
choice, it’s mine. It’s knit into the fabric of my life, from my
tribal beginnings to my achievement phase as a youth, to my involvement
in progressive ideas post 9/11.
==============================
We’re just smarter, that’s why
Over the weekend I watched Julius Genachowski, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission
on CSPAN
(talking about a good issue, phone companies stealing from their
customers in quiet unauthorized ways) and I thought what I always think
when I see Genachowski: I was once his boss.
I was an editor at a
New York journalism publication in the 1980s, and Julius was an intern
or an assistant there for a time while he was an undergraduate at
Columbia.
My wife likes to point out here that I got fired from the
job, and it was the last time I ever worked in an office. But I have a
different point to make.
I got hired to that job by an old friend,
who just happened to be Jewish. The top editor of the publication also
happened to be Jewish, and so did the managing editor (who was very
pro-Israel). There was one editor who wasn't Jewish. Smart guy, and a
poet. He used to say "neckbolt" a lot.
Genachowski was Jewish,
with European refugees survivors in his own family, I believe. And the
guy who came in as an assistant editor after me, who I helped hire, was
also Jewish.
On CSpan the other day, Genachowski shared the stage
with Sarah Rosen Wartell of the Center for American Progress and Joel
Gurin, chief of the Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau of the
FCC. I'm guessing both are Jewish, but I don't know.
Oh, and full disclosure: when I had a chance in 2008 to bring someone in as co-editor of this website, he was Jewish.
My
friends and I came of age during the meritocracy. Standardized tests
and all that. No more quotas. A good thing, too. Only the meritorious
would get ahead.
But if you don't think
kinship networks mean anything, well-- you can believe anything you like. I'm just too old to be that naive.
At
least a half dozen times in recent months, the suggestion has come
from serious people that Jews predominate in the American media–that if
we are not dominant, we are a major bloc. In a
Yivo event on Jews in journalism I’ve blogged about, a questioner said that Jews’ outsize proportion in the media has granted us "a large influence over power." In
his groundbreaking paper on the New York Times’s role in shaping American policy
toward Israel, Jerome Slater spoke of "religious beliefs and
identifications" that affected the Times, and cited former executive
editor Max Frankel’s admission in his memoir (one also cited
by Walt and Mearsheimer): "I was much more deeply devoted to Israel than I dared to assert."
Lately broadcast reporter John Hockenberry related
that he wanted to do a piece on the hijackers’ motivation after 9/11 but that NBC executive Jeff Zucker scotched the notion:
"Maybe," Zucker said, "we ought to do a series of specials on
firehouses where we just ride along with our cameras. Like the show Cops,
only with firefighters."… [H]e could make room in the
prime-time lineup for firefighters, but then smiled at me and said, in
effect, that he had no time for any subtitled interviews with jihadists
raging about Palestine. [Weiss's emphasis]
Then last month at
a forum at the Nixon Center, former Bushie Dov Zackheim said, Jews don’t dominate the policy-making process, but the media is a different story…
I
don’t know that anyone has visited the simple question raised by these
statements: Do Jews dominate the media? This is something I know about
personally. I’ve worked in print journalism for more than 30 years.
I’ve worked for many magazines and newspapers, and for a time my whole
social circle was editors and writers in New York. I don’t know
television. I don’t know Washington journalism well. I don’t know the
west coast. My sample is surely skewed by the fact that I’m Jewish and
have always felt great comfort with other Jews. But in my experience,
Jews have made up the majority of the important positions in the
publications I worked for, a majority of the writers I’ve known at
these place, and the majority of the owners who have paid me. Yes my
own sample may be skewed, but I think it shows that Jews make up a
significant proportion of power positions in media, half, if not more.
Before considering what this means, let me make my experience concrete:
My
serious journalism began at the Harvard Crimson in the 70s. A friend
said the paper was a Jewish boys club; it was dominated by middle class
Jews– as apparently today there are a lot of Asians. Many of these
Jews are now powerful presences in the media. Zucker is one of them. My
first paying job was in Minneapolis. Five Harvard guys started a
weekly; four of them were Jewish, including the publisher paying our
meager salaries. I remember our editor walking the halls parodying the
jingle we had on the radio. The jingle went: "We’ve got the news, we’ve
got the sports…" He sang it as “We’ve got the Jews, we’ve got the
sports.” Funny.
I was hired by a Jewish editor at my next job,
the Philadelphia Daily News in 1978, and when I started freelancing in
1981, Jewish Harvard friends got me work at the Columbia Journalism
Review and the Washington Monthly. A gentile brought me in at Harper’s
and the New Republic. It was at the New Republic, a launching pad for
any number of highly-successful journalists, that I briefly associated
with Marty Peretz, and did a story for him mocking the United Nations,
whose judgment he seeks at every turn to nullify because the U.N. is
critical of Israel.
Fast forward. In New York, I have worked for
a dozen magazines. Most of my editors have been Jewish. Both my book
publishers were Jewish. At one point at one publishing house, the
editor, his boss, and her boss were all Jewish, and so was the lawyer
vetting the work—I remember her saying she would never travel to
Malaysia because of the anti-Semitic Prime minister. Oh–and the
assistant editor was half-Jewish.
I should point out that I have
worked with many gentile editors and writers, and I have never been
aware of any employment discrimination against them (though I may not
be the best source). In fact, at Spy, the three top editors were all
non-Jews and when I used the epithet WASP it was removed from my copy.
But that is the exception. Generally it’s been Jews Jews Jews. When I
hear NPR do a piece with its top political team and both are Jews…
when
a Jewish friend calls me and gossips about lunches with two top news
execs at major publications who are both Jewish and who I’ve known for
20 years… when a Jewish editor friend tells me that Si Newhouse would
be disturbed if Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter– who has done such
courageous work against the Iraq war– did anything to expose the Israel
lobby… and when I say that my income has been derived overwhelmingly
from Jewish-owned publications for years—this is simply the ordinary
culture of the magazine business as I know it.
I have some ideas
why
Jews have predominated, but that’s not the purpose of this posting.
Last year Senator Russ Feingold, buttonholed on CSPAN about why so many
speakers on air were Jewish, said, “Well, we’re good at talking…”
That’ll do for now.
The real issue is,
Does it matter? Most of my life I felt it didn’t. It’s just the way it
is, at this point in history. It will change (as Clyde Haberman pointed
out at that Yivo event). Jews are the latest flavor of the
establishment. In his landmark book, The Jewish Century, Slezkine
reports that Jews were the majority of journalists in Berlin and Vienna and Prague, too, in the late 1800s, if I remember correctly.
Now
I think it does matter, for two reasons. Elitist establishment
culture, and Israel. As to elitism, I worry when any affluent group has
power and little sense of what the common man is experiencing. I feel
the same discomfort with my prestige-oriented "caste" that E. Digby
Baltzell did with his calcified caste, the WASPs–when he called for an
end to discrimination against Jews in the early ’60s. The values of my
cohort sometimes seem narrow: globalism, prosperity, professionalism.
In Israel the values are a lot broader. None of my cohort has served in
the military, myself included. A lot of our fathers did; but I bet
none
of our kids do. Military service is for losers–or for Israelis.
So
we are way overrepresented in the chattering classes, and way
underrepresented in the battering classes. Not a great recipe for
leadership, especially in wartime. Then there’s Israel.
Support for Israel is an element of Jewish religious practice and more important, part of the Jewish cultural experience.
Even if you’re a secular Jewish professional who prides himself on his
objectivity, there is a ton of cultural pressure on you to support
Israel or at least not to betray Israel. We are talking about a
religion, after all, and the pressures faced by Jews who are critical
of Israel are not that different from what Muslim women who want
greater freedom undergo psychically or by evangelical Christians who
want to support gay rights. It is worth noting that great
Jewish heretics on the Israel question suffer anger or even ostracism inside their own families.
Henry Siegman talked about this on Charlie Rose once, I recall–that
even close family were not speaking to him over Israel. And I have seen
this for myself on numerous occasions.
There is not a lot of
bandwidth on this issue. Conversations about Israel even inside the
liberal Jewish community are emotionally loaded, and result in people
not speaking to one another. I lost this blog at a mainstream
publication because the editor was Jewish and conservative on Israel
and so was the new owner, and the publisher had worked for AIPAC. And
all of them would likely call themselves liberal Democrats.
As former CNN correspondent Linda Scherzer
has said, "We, as Jews, must understand that we come with a certain bias
…We
believe in the Israeli narrative of history. We support the values
that we as Americans, Westerners, and Jews espouse. Thus, we see news
reporting through our own prism."
There are many American Jewish
journalists who have done great independent work re Israel/Palestine.
Richard Ben Cramer and the late Robbie Friedman leap to mind. But both
these guys are exceptional, and had to overcome/ignore a ton of
pressure that most of us would quail under. They had to step outside
the Jewish family to do their work…
The result is that Americans
are not getting the full story re Israel/Palestine. Slater says this
dramatically in his paper–that the Times has deprived American
leadership of reporting on the moral/political crisis that Israel is
undergoing, one that Haaretz has covered unstintingly. At Columbia the
other night, Jew, Arab and gentile on a panel about the human-rights
crisis in Gaza all said that Americans are not getting the full story.
Ilan Pappe has marveled in his book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine,
that the Nakba is all but unmentioned in the U.S.–while Haaretz has
sought at times to document it, for instance a former officer saying in
2004 that if he had not helped to destroy 200 villages in southern
Israel in ’48, there would be another million Palestinians in Israel.
To repeat Scherzer’s admission: "We believe in the Israeli narrative of
history…"
Why does the American press behave differently from
the Israeli press? I think the answer is guilt. The Jewish cohort of
which I am a part has largely accepted the duty that Max Frankel felt,
of supporting Israel. This duty is rarely interrogated, and yet
consciously or not we all know that American public opinion/leadership
is critical to Israel’s political invulnerability; and we think that
if we take their fingers out of the dike, who knows what will happen.
That is a ton of responsibility. This responsibility is not executed
with special care.
Generally, my cohort hasn’t been
to Israel, hasn’t seen the West Bank. But they do feel kinship with
Israeli Jews, and–above all–have guilt feelings about the Holocaust, or
the American Jewish silence about
it
during the event, the Jewish passivity; and they are determined not to
be passive during Israel’s neverending existential crises. And thus
they misunderstand Israel and fail to serve their readers.
****
nahida's comment:
"Jewish Superiority, Jewish Elite" is indeed his/their problem NOT anyone else's, but
when I feel disturbed by it, and when I look at it
objectionably and in
disbelief,
does that make me a racist??
The same
Philip Weiss , the progressive, who is struggling with his problem of "
Jewish superiority and Jewish elite" described what it means
to be Jewish to him using the very disturbing words:
"
Tribalism", "
Jewish Self-interest", "
Us-ness", "
Distinction to them", "
Sense of Difference", and an "
Elite Identity"
Philip Weiss, the progressive, also admitted that
his anti-zionist stance is
“concerned with a Jewish self-interest”. Then he elaborated: “A theory of
political life based on
altruism or
concern for victims purely is
doomed to fail.”
Philip Weiss, the progressive, who claims that "
Islam has all kinds of problems, with free speech, patriarchalism, and the tolerance of violence", sees
it perfectly OK to ban a Palestinian Muslim from commenting on his
"progressive" website, it appears that as far as Mr. Philip Weiss's
concerned, I am not a member of his
"elite tribe", and my voice does not particularly serve his
"Jewish self-interest", therefore,
censoring my comments and muffling my voice is not much of a worry to him.
Heck,
I am only a Palestinian, you know, one of those who "don't exist" and
whose homeland "never existed", and the principle of freedom of speech
does not apply to them.
How ironic to read this call for "give us your money" kind of thing on Philip's website:
"Help Mondoweiss Break the Media Blockade" while at the same time he actively participates in
blocking an authentic Palestinian voice.
He IS part of the media blockade, and his slogan aught to be
"Help Mondoweiss Enforce the Media Blockade"This is the email that was sent to Philip after he
censored my comments, he did NOT have the politeness to even acknowledge the email with a response:
- Quote:
- Dear
Philip I would like to ask a direct question: are you censoring a
Palestinian voice? or is it just a routine slow moderating methods? I
have posted these comments on your website, but apparently, whomever is
moderating the site chose to mute a Palestinian voice.
- I
find this rather shocking, specially when your site presents itself as
a "progressive", which deals with the "war of ideas in the ME". to
be frank and honest, I am sick and tired of people who pretend to be
supporters, pretending to speak for the sake of, and on behalf of
Palestinians, yet at the same time muting our faint voices even in the
comment section!
-
- These are the comments that are CENSORED at Mondoweiss:
- Quote:
- First comment:
- The article that has prompted this interview with Philip was Jewish Voice for Peace? Really?? .
- Second comment:
- and for more info about the ideology that I talked about earlier:
- The worm is in the can
- Supremacist and Racist
- Chabad Chabad around the world
- BEHOLD WORLD.. BREAKING NEWS
- NO... This is not a Synagogue
- Meet the Rebbe
- Chabad Lubavitch & the zionist Law-Makers
- Why the Rebbe hates Islam?
- World Leaders and the Rebbe
- chabad in US Senate & congress
- Meet the Jewish Settlers
- Sharing Our House with Settlers
- Third comment:
- "This
presentation uncovers the side of Jewish-zionist-Israeli face that is
kept carefully hidden from the general public. I present it here in
all its ugliness, for the sake of truth and truth-seekers.
- Disclaimer: Quoting people and books is NOT antisemitism
- A “Benign” culture with “Benign individuals”!
IRAN- Islamic world media urged to help defuse western media propaganda ( -VS- '''GCC MEDIA AND NATO OPEN PARTNERSHIP ? ''' ) http://thenakedfacts.blogspot.com/2011/10/media-in-changing-worldperspectives.html
Amnesty International’s Allegations on Abuse Practices against Patients at Hospitals Fabrication http://thenakedfacts.blogspot.com/2011/10/amnesty-internationals-allegations-on.html
Brazilians Get Ready to Dig Up the Truth(ON US BACKED COUP IN 60'S AND BEYOND)BUT WAIT,THERE IS A''CATCH'' http://thenakedfacts.blogspot.com/2011/10/brazilians-get-ready-to-dig-up-truthon.html
SYRIA - MASS PRO ASSAD RALLY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFvYrKakR0k Pro Assad Carnival in Omaween square http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lve7nv7hnwg
PRO-ASSAD DEMOS http://www.youtube.com/user/bashar0g0w#p/u/1/tFcJjqOQTgI
SYRIA- Umayyad square - Damscus : Massive Gathering in support of president Bashar Al-Assad - Part 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOHIMt6yG-M&feature=channel_video_title PART 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhqmuyhnDns&feature=channel_video_title "
Truth Counts: DON’T COUNT ON GETTING IT
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REMEMBER WHEN END THE WARS AND CREATE ENERGY JOBS WAS THE AGENDA?
What happened, just how did lobbies and profiteers continue to control government?
None of you pay attention, but wonder why we keep sliding down the tube of ill fate. Stay in denial that our congress is Israeli occupied, and such continues.
Subject: Purchase "Truth Counts: DON’T COUNT ON GETTING IT"
www.universal-peace.com (Home)
Unemployment, and the coming elections 2012.
What can we, the average American, do to bring back our jobs and force
government to work for us?
First boycott the Republican party who gave tax cuts to corporations that
then out-sourced our jobs.
Boycott all products and merchandise imported from China, and other foreign
countries, until our
unemployment rate is at or below 7%. In fact a bill should be proposed for
such and made into law.
Demand tax reform, and drastic change in our foreign policies including
foreign aid to any state
that is violating international law and/or illegal occupation.
THE TOP TEN ISSUES FOR 2012
1. Audit the fed.
2. Total international investigation of 911, the actual facts, presently
undisclosed.
3. End ear marks, reform GOVERNMENT, and investigate all lobby activity.
4. End the occupation of Palestine and the Israeli atrocities.
5. Hold each and every elected
official accountable. Prosecute
corruption & criminal activity.
6. Tax reform, fair taxation for all. No exemptions.
7. End to private military & police agencies, paid by tax-payer monies.
8. All jobs paid by American tax-payers, shall be American citizens. No duel
citizenship employees at top security positions.
9. End the Wars now, bring home the troops.
10. Transparency, break up the media conglomerates controlling the News
received by the general public.
How important is our constitution and maintaining Democracy to you??
Will it take a third party to break the corporate hold on Washington ??
Go to: www.universal-peace.com
Google: Ronald L. Waldron
Instead of creating jobs and solving the problems of middle-class working
families, some state politicians are in a real state of denial. They've been
saying "thank you" to the corporate CEOs who financed their 2010 election
victories by pushing legislation to cut good jobs, lower wages, threaten job
safety and weaken unions.
In state after state, newly elected Republican legislators and governors
have been playing politics as usual by launching a coordinated attack on
working families designed to swell already-record-size corporate profits and
keep those CEO bonuses coming. These politicians aren't offering up their
own pay or pensions—they want working families to bear the burden.
With Congress spending TRILLIONS of taxpayer dollars and the
Federal Reserve literally creating money out of thin air, it's never been
more important you and I force Congress to Audit the Fed.
Audit the Fed,a full-scale audit? Close all tax loop holes, no more exemptions.
"Audit the Federal Reserve"
Petition to the US Congress
68% of the people of Jewish Faith residing in America, are opposed to the Lobby (AIPAC) and
other so called Jewish organizations.
They do not believe that the actions of Israel are
justified in any way. Nor do they want such government and organizations associated as
being a part of their faith.
Are they really anti-Semitic as others are accused.
Or are they proud to be American, and concerned
about the direction of such foreign policy as lead
by a lobby and its money trail.
They see this administration, the Zionist movement
the same as we do. Anti-American.
BIGGEST STRIKE IN AMERICAN HISTORY COMING!!
We the American people demand that the WAR be ended and our troops be brought home.
We are prepared to STRIKE and cause complete
shut down.
We expect the Senate and House to demand
such end to the atrocities committed.
No more appropriation bills, no more immigration bills, no more spending at all until the vetoed bill
is resubmitted and signed.
No action on any issue until this Illegal War Issue
is resolved.
Petition all agencies, offices, unions, organizations,
and fraternities regarding an end to the conflict.
We Americans know that 911 happened.
We also know that it could have been prevented.
We know something could happen again, and the
necessary steps to secure us and borders has not
happened. We are no safer, in fact are less safe.
We know that Israel, has caused MOST ALL the
problems in the Middle East.
None of you talk about steps to be taken against
Israel. Their aggression and terror activities for
59 years now.
We do not want to continue giving and giving to that
regime, as if they were another part of the USA, they
are not, nor do we want them to be.
We understand, more then you corrupt officials that
accept AIPAC money & support, how and why we
there.
The fear factor of terrorist, is not so much about our
safety as it is Israel's.
We do know that Iraq had nothing to do with 911, and
there is question as to who was. Answer the questions
about Mossad agents, and Saudi royalty and flights.
You want to trace history and other wars.
Have we ever pre-empted an attack under such pretense
in the past. If so what were those results.
We know six more wrongs, will never correct the first,
and until some one is held responsible, and made
accountable, nothing good will come out of this mess.
It seems you all are in bed together. No one wants to
hold BUSH/CHENEY to account for their actions.
The UN has tried to make Israel responsible for their
evil actions, but is always vetoed by the USA.
If we don't bring fair, honest, & credible solutions to
the table. Which means holding the culprits to pay
for the injustice we all have witnessed, and you all
denied and continue to.
We know we will pay dearly for your mistakes,
Bush/Cheney mistakes, and Israel's mistakes,
simply because of your unwavering support
for a regime that is absolutely the worst in the
region.
We want America to be the America we knew,
prior to the ambush of AIPAC and other such
foreign influences.
Will any of you stand up for the principles of
consequence and truth...
Regardless, we Americans know the truth, and
when you all decide to face it, do something about
it.
We then will be behind you 150 %, but until that, the
captain is going down with his ship. Mission accomplished or not.
IT IS UP TO YOU, IF YOU ALL STAY IN DENIAL !!