The Inside Assyria Discussion Forum #5

=> Re: some data....

Re: some data....
Posted by Marcello (Guest) - Saturday, November 7 2015, 6:51:45 (UTC)
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Most of what you said is true with which I'm in agreement and I'll even add this from Professor Aviad Kleinberg from Telaviv University: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4059299,00.html

"The loan with interest did not make them rich. They were dealing with change. The Jews were just the middlemen who loaned the aristocrats' money to the poor. The aristocrats made most of the money.

It's true that the poor debtors hated the Jews, with whom they had to settle accounts in their daily life. People hate those who collect from them directly, not the strong people behind them. Most drivers who get a parking ticket are angry with the inspector, not with the mayor who employs him, and the Jews were in the same situation as inspectors."


But when you wrote: "The point is; where did the massive influx or birth of Jews occur so that in one generation they can be accused of running anything..let alone American foreign policy."



Professor Petras may have pushed it a bit, but the main argument isn't about global U.S. policy, but policies relating to Israel and the Arab and Muslim West Asia. You may mention the Iran deal, but the Iran deal isn't over yet. The Republicans are already planning on bombing Iran the first day in office if they win, and folks like Sheldon Adelson and other billionaires are betting on and supporting the Republican horse in the race. And even if the Dem.s win with Clinton, she has already made statements about "obliterating Iran" and at the last debate when asked "which enemy are you proud of?" she replied "the Iranians". And who's one of her biggest donors? Another pro-Israel billionaire, Haim Saban. As I wrote previously, if you go to Mondoweiss and read the comment threads, you will come across a number of East Coast Jewish leftists who disagree with Finkelstein and Chomsky about the Lobby and it's influence. Among those are former AIPAC empolyee, MJ Rosen. I'll post a short talk by him during the yearly (unreported) conference: How Does AIPAC Influence Congress?

As far as how American Jews climbed the socioeconomic ladder in just a few generations, journalist Tani Golden from Ynet offers this explanation from the article, "How did American Jews get so Rich?" http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4099803,00.html

"The Jewish immigrants, however, emerged from poverty and made faster progress than any other group of immigrants. According to Rockaway, in the 1930s, about 20% of the Jewish men had free professions, double the rate in the entire American population.

Anti-Semitism weakened after World War II and the restrictions on hiring Jews were reduced and later canceled as part of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, thanks to the struggle of liberal activists, many of whom were Jews.

In 1957, 75% of US Jews were white-collar workers, compared to 35% of all white people in the US; in 1970, 87% of Jewish men worked in clerical jobs, compared to 42% of all white people, and the Jews earned 72% more than the general average. The only remnant of their poverty is that most of them still support a welfare policy and the Democratic Party.

As they became richer, Jews integrated into society. They moved from the slums to the suburbs, abandoned Yiddish and adopted the clothes, culture, slang and dating and shopping habits of the non-Jewish elite.

Most Jews left religion when they immigrated to the US, but returned to it later on and joined Reform and Conservative communities, becoming more alike the Americans, most of whom are religious Christians."


And this is from "Former AIPAC employee M J Rosenberg: Is it all about the Money?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMVeKK2UhQs


Even Finkelstein states that "after the June 1967 war, Israel acquired a huge importance for American Jews for reasons that are too complex to go into now. And then the Holocaust was used by American Jews to protect Israel or immunize Israel from criticism but it was in an all together different magnitude, because American Jewry was very powerful and very wealthy, it occupied key places in publishing, Hollywood and the media so when they threw their weight behind the Holocaust, then it became a huge industry and it became a formidable weapon in the arsenal of Israel to deflect criticism of it."

The above statement begins at 9:11 @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRLgsyqJ_wI

Again, I doubt Finkelstein is implying that "Jews own America or rule the world" as he said in his opening statement in his debate with renown Professor James Petras, that "I would situate on the spectrum somewhere in the middle. I don't think it's just the Lobby that determines the U.S. relationship with Israel, and I don't think that it's just U.S. interest that determines the relationship with Israel. I think you have to look at the broad picture, and you have to look at the local picture. On the broad picture, that is to say U.S. policy in the Middle East generally speaking, the historical connection between U.S. and Israel, you have to see the useful services that Israel has performed for the United States in the region as a whole, and that became more prominent in June 1967 when Israel knocked out the main challenge, or potential challenge to U.S. dominance in the region, mainly Abdel Nasser of Egypt. So on the broad question of the U.S./Israel relationship, that is the regional relationship, I think it's reasonable to say that the alliances is based on services rendered. On the other hand, looking at the documentary record, just as it's clear looking at the documentary record, that the U.S. was euphoric when Israel knocked out Nasser, Nasserism. It's also clear from looking at the documentary record, that the United States has never had any big stake in trying to maintain Israel's control over the territories it conquered in the June 1967 war, that is to say the Egyptian Sinai and the Syran Golan Heights and at that time the Jordanian West Bank and Jerusalem. The U.S. has no stake in it, and from very early, from July 1967, wanted to apply pressures to Israel to commit itself to fully withdrawing. And it was pretty obvious if you look at the record again that at that point Israel was bring to bare the Lobby. In 1967-'68, it meant principally the fourth coming Presidential election, the Jewish vote, it was able to bring to bare the power of the Jewish vote to resist efforts to withdraw. And since '67 the Lobby has been pretty effective, I think, in raising the threshold before the U.S. is willing to act and force a withdraw, pretty much like the withdrawal it enforced on Indonesia in 2000, to leave [East] Timor. The two occupations begin roughly in the same period: In 1974 Indonesia invades Timor with a U.S. "green-light", '67 Israel conquers the West Bank, Gaza and so forth with the U.S. "green-light". And so the obvious question is both occupations endured for a long period. The Indonesian occupation was more destructive, killed about one-third of the East Timorese population. But it's true to say come 2000, the U.S. does order Indonesia to withdraw its troops, but why hasn't it done so in the Israel/Palestine occupation, and there I think it's true to say it's the Lobby."

^ This is from 6:43 @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJi7eugSRAM in which I side with Finkelstein's more nuanced explanation than James Petras' argument about "ethnic loyalties". But I found it disturbing that when he did bring up the fact that Wofowitz in the 1980s or sometime in the '90s was passing important information to a foreign government (Israel) or how Doug Feith lost his clearance for doing the same, the moderator, the Israeli-born Hagit Borer, continued to interrupt Prof. Petras when he was making these points.

Anyway, as I said earlier the debate regarding the Lobby started with Walt and Mearshimer's book, "The Israel Lobby" and continues to this day in various leftist sites where American Jews, mostly on the comment threads of Mondoweiss, tend to side to some degree with Prof. Petras' argument. But like Finkelstein, I'm somewhere in the middle of the spectrum.



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