Dueling Loyalties
At many times and in many places, Jews have been accused of having dual loyalties, and never more often than when their home country’s policy towards Israel is involved. We see a classic example of it from Rep. Steve King of Iowa, discussing Prime Minister Netanyahu’s address to Congress:
One thing that’s happened is — just look at the polling, that means — here is what thing that I don’t understand, I don’t understand how Jews in America can be Democrats first and Jewish second and support Israel along the line of just following their president.
Yes, that’s right. King is criticizing American Jews for placing loyalty to their own country above loyalty to another country.
We’ve already seen this happen with Catholics.Report
Thing is, I know rad-trad Catholics that actually do put loyalty to the Vatican ahead of loyalty to the U.S. It’s a pretty small percentage of American Catholics but they certainly exist.Report
I know what you mean, @road-scholar . I had been raised Catholic, but I don’t recall having encountered such people until my 20s. (Actually, I’m not sure about their loyalty to the *Vatican* per se, but they seemed hyper-loyal to the Pope such that any criticism or difference from his (John Paul II’s) views was anathema.Report
I wonder what those same people think about Pope Francis.Report
I wonder, too. My guess is, they might not think too highly.Report
Go read the comment section of any post about Francis Rod Dreher puts up. And then follow the links the commenters put out. Lots of fun there.Report
Fundamentalism, yo.
You don’t need to think, you just react.Report
Where they’re criticized for putting loyalty to America ahead of loyalty to the Pope?Report
What makes it doubly weird is that evidently Steven King is, in fact, a convert to Roman Catholicism.Report
There’s that. But it isn’t even necessarily about “loyalty” at all. Plenty of Israeli Jews, who I’m sure are as loyal as anyone, disagree with Netanyahu, and the right-wing in general, over how to deal with the Palestinians.
Is King sorta admitting to being disloyal to the U.S. by disagreeing with Obama?Report
“Patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrals”
There seem to be plenty of people on the American right who equate being Democratic with being a traitor to America. I would not be surprised if the Israeli right felt the same way about the Israeli left.Report
Often, it’s the first.Report
Patriotism is not the LAST refuge of the scoundrel.
Try “piety.”Report
As I’ve said, after stealing it from somebody else online, a decent chunk of the voting populace (I’d say 20-30%), considers any Democratic victory illegitimate, for a variety of reasons (ie. free stuff, the “race card”, voter fraud, etc.), and has done so since probably FDR.Report
Aside from the fact that you probably just took that at face value because it made you feel good, do you really need to be reminded about “President-Select Bush,” “voter suppression,” or claims that American democracy is irreparably broken because of inequality, Citizens United, and/or the Koch Brothers?Report
Yes, actual close elections with actual shady things happening in them – cause for concern. I mean, unless you’re 100% sure who actually won Florida. Or ya’ know, actual instances of voter suppression that have happened, even after John Roberts declared that racism was over and there was no real need for large bits of the VRA anymore.
But, ya’ know, I know of zero Democrats, even though maybe there are some small pockets out there, who think, for example, Mitch McConnell or Paul LePage’s victories were illegitimate. Unfortunate. and perhaps, with public funding or such, maybe a different result would’ve happened, but I don’t see anybody they didn’t get enough votes of “real American’s” so they aren’t a real Senator or President like I’ve seen in various comment boards.
Yes, we’ll get pissed over losses, and maybe some of us think the whole concept of the Senate is horribly reactionary and undemocratic, but I don’t think Ted Cruz is a illegitimate Senator because of that fact.Report
“The last refuge of the scoundrel is actually a no-tell motel.”
– Joe QuimbyReport
@jesse-ewiak
No doubt. I am reminded of the 25 percent of the electorate is nuts theory from Balloon Juice.Report
John Rogers pegs the crazification factor at 27 percent.Report
@alan-scott
I was within the margin of error!Report
The israeli right has reason, though. If you think that the Israeli left actually still believes in the two state solution, which I mind is still a question.Report
1. To be slightly fair, I’ve seen plenty of Jewish Republicans who have made similar statements. I am going to start challenging them on whether they remember Tikkun Olam or their Maimonides.
2. Yeah. Chait might be right. Israel might soon be a partisan issue and people like King aren’t helping. Of course, he probably want it to be a partisan wedge issue.Report
Are those something like dogma or central doctrine? I had thought Judaism was different from, say, the Catholic Church in that respect.Report
Gab,
Note: Maimonides is from the Middle Ages. It’s quite traditional learning, and quite towards the level of “cherished elder”… but not quite dogma, because Judaism doesn’t do dogma. Judaism sees you at the level of deeds first and foremost. You don’t need to believe in god to be Jewish — but you’re well advised to keep that thought to yourself. And you still need to behave as if you were a believer.
THAT said, the decline of the ages doctrine is still in force among the traditionalists. And in that way, Saul has something here to hang ’em by.Report
If Israel becomes a partisan issue that will be a crushing disaster for Israel.Report
Isn’t there a saying about how a philo-semite is just an anti-Semite who likes Jews?Report
I don’t think that’s what’s going on here. King doesn’t hold any hatred for Jews in particular, he just hates and fears everyone who thinks differently than he does.Report
I didn’t say he hates Jews. Quite the opposite. He just decided that anti-Semitic tropes are true, but admirable. He’s still trafficking in the same stereotypes, though.Report
Kind of. He’s citing “Jews love Israel and want it to be safe”, which, as stereotypes go, isn’t particularly damaging and has a lot of truth in it. But that’s in service of his real point, that Obama-worshipping liberals abandon all of their other values.
That opposing Netanyahu can come from loving Israel would, of course, never enter his hermitically sealed mind.Report
Why would you take Steve King seriously?Report
Because he is popular and powerful enough within the GOP to make another popular and powerful GOP pol fire an aide?Report
There certainly is something about GOP congressmen named “King”.Report
This is a nice dodge right-leaning people tend to take.
“Why are you taking out crazies seriously. Nobody on our side does.”
Yes, people do. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be elected to Congress. This is not a BSDI thing. Even Dennis Kucinich, the wackiest, most out there guy in the Democratic Congress, never said as many dumb things per congressman as the whole Republican caucus does.Report
I don’t consider J-R to be right-leaning. (But maybe he’d disagree. I’ve never asked him.)Report
This is true. But I think people also tend to inflate the importance of crazies on the other side of the aisle. To hear my mother tell it, the very most powerful person among liberals and democrats is Al Sharpton!Report
True as the rest of your comment may be, Cynthia McKinney would like a word with you.Report
J.R. is, IIRC, a libertarian.Report
Cynthia McKinney
Insert Alabama joke.Report
@patrick – OK.
Report
Patrick, Georgia should be on your mind, the McKinney family’s* sweet home is not in Alabama.
*she would have never have been any kind of (successful) politician if her dad weren’t also a state legislature.Report
Ah, but she was *born* in Alabama.Report
Is he bicameral or unicameral?Report
@patrick
Then we tried to remove the tusks. The tusks. That’s not so easy to say. Tusks. You try it some time. As I say, we tried to remove the tusks. But they were embedded so firmly we couldn’t budge them. Of course, in Alabama the Tuscaloosa.Report
Why would you take ANY politician seriously?Report
Some of them have nuclear weapons at their disposal, Damon.
And not all of those lot are exactly … stable.Report
This probably doesn’t make the list of the top 5 offensive and/or stupid things Rep King has said. Maybe in the top ten.Report
He apparently responded to a pissed off Jewish-person-on-Twitter that he “defends Israel from leftists and misogynists”. Which is mighty white of him!Report
And he took time out of his busy anatomical research schedule to do so. I don’t throw around the word hero often – but i had a big lunch and want something lighter for dinner.Report
I may have missed both jokes. Is his research in the area of craniorectal exploration, and is your dinner going to be a sandwich?Report
Rep King is the same guy who came out with the “calves the size of cantaloupes” assertion a couple of years ago.
And dinner wound up being turkey chili & thai chicken salad combo because Paneras doesn’t do the tubular sandwich.Report
“calves the size of cantaloupes”
He’s not a calf, he’s a mini-cow!Report
For a growing number of American politicians, Israel is not a country – it’s a totem, a kind of idol that exists on an existential plane and which might disappear if anyone is less than obeisant towards it.
What exactly does America get out of this alliance with Israel? It’s a puzzler for residents of countries that are real American allies.Report
It’s important to remember that during the Cold War, the Middle East was one of the major flash points, with its resources coveted by both sides. Israel was a major piece in the Super Power chess game, as were Egypt, the Saudis, Lebanon, Syria, Iran and Iraq, and so on. Israel and Egypt in particular were able to capitalize on their Cold War client status in the form of a great deal of aid. After the fall of the Soviet Union, it remained politically, and perhaps ethically infeasible to reduce, to say nothing of eliminating, aid to Israel, while Egypt remained a major player now without a patron. And it wasn’t long after the end of the Cold War that terrorism associated with Islamic extremism became a truly global phenomenon (the first World Trade Center bombing was in February ’93, barely a year after the dissolution of the USSR), which meant Israel’s status as a U.S. ally would remain important indefinitely, even if it was that status (along with our military presence in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait) that made us such an important symbolic target for extremists.
People like to say that Israel is important because it’s the only state resembling a Western liberal democracy in the region, but the truth is, our loyalty to Saudi Arabia and other despotic Middle Eastern states shows that it wouldn’t really matter what sort of government Israel had. As long as they are an ally in a region where we have national defense concerns, they’re going to be important to us.
People also like to point out that Americans and Europeans, on both sides of the issue, pay much closer attention to this conflict than they do to the dozens of other often significantly bloodier conflicts across the globe. This is sometimes used as evidence of anti-Semitism or of anti-Islamism, which ignores the impact that conflict, above pretty much every other post-WWII conflict (except Vietnam and Afghanistan), has had on the world, and the U.S., and it ignores the importance that Israel and some of the other countries involved have played in international dramas within which the U.S. has played a central role.Report
Yeah, okay, so that’s what Israel got from the US. But I ask again: what benefits has the US derived from being an ally of Israel? You’re basically saying that Israel is an ally because Israel is an ally. And you might not have some of those “security concerns” in the Middle East if you jettisoned Israel. Also: Jonathan Pollard anyone?
Saudi Arabia is another thread but a lot of that extremist Islamism was funded by Saudi money. So another “ally” who doesn’t seem to care that it’s acting against America’s interests.Report
Shorter history of Judaism:
With friends like these . . .Report