Thursday, September 24, 2015

JJ Goldberg - "Why Does Everybody Sound So Anti-Semitic All of a Sudden?" My opinion

Mr. Goldberg, you wrote what I thought was a most interesting opinion here and below in the Forward on the above referenced subject.  As a prolific letter, opinion writer and blogger on contemporary political and social issues your article to my own chagrin solidified views about which I had subliminally been thinking but which had not risen to the forefront nor articulated by me to spell danger, yet again, to our small Jewish group. I worried that some of my opinions might have stepped on toes I never would have stepped on before.
 
Yes, I am an ardent and forever liberal Democrat cemented in my opinion through decades of political thought beginning in the late 1960's with Howard Zinn as my political mentor against the murderous policy of the war in Vietnam and much later (perhaps a bit late) against ultimately the Iraq War and its contemporary Middle Eastern madness.  Most Jews, I dare say, were, as I was, vociferously, against the war in Vietnam and later even against the Iraq War.  The horrific debacle of Iraq and our present Middle East quagmire was promulgated by influential men -- the NeoCons – some of whom just happened to be Jewish – among them Paul Wolfowitz, Daniel Pearl,  Douglas Feith, Scooter Libby and others who were not Jewish.
 
Their views to me, like fingernails on a blackboard, screeched against my moral fiber.  Their alliances with Bush administration power was, in my eye, responsible first for the Trade Center collapse of 9/11 in that Bush was warned in his PDB but failed to act, and worse when he did act he was responsible for the worst, most costly and murderous foreign policy decision in US history – invading a country which did nothing to us and whose strong-arm leadership of Hussein we needed and even once supported in his war against Iran.  It gave Iran (supposedly our arch enemy) power and a major influence in that vital region.
 
The Iraq War killed, mutilated and dismembered thousands of American soldiers lured into battles they should not have fought and into a life of disability they should not have to suffer.  It killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis (no one knows the true number) and displaced millions.  Worse it destabilized the Middle East tinder box we encounter today.  We placed, through our nefarious Neo-Con actions, Al Qaeda in Iraq and the Levant with its offshoot the murder machine ISIS/ISIL.  It subverted Middle East peace and encouraged Middle East eternal war madness.  My moral compass changed.
 
NeoCons, made up of many in AIPAC, to my embarrassment, have brought, as I see it, the US to perpetual war.  Along with this gargantuan Iraq failure comes criticism of the nation's symbiotic relationship with Israel toward which I was never critical until the trajectory of Bush's foreign blunder and AIPAC's, it seemed to me, undue influence on American military policy became a monstrosity.  AIPAC, I perceived, was against my first alliance, America, and for some in its group their first alliance is to Israel.  I love Israel and always have.  I was supportive of it often without exception but in the end I am not Israeli.  I am an American and my first allegiance is to the US.  If Israeli influence is oppositional to what I believe American interests should be then I reject it.
 
The icing on the cake, for me, a Democrat in extremis, was Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s speech to Republicans in Congress with pointed opposition to the vital nuclear Deal with Iran; a deal which so many scientists, politicos, experts on foreign policy and many Israelis, too, deem a good one and one which will prevent yet another Middle Eastern quagmire against, this time, a capable nation, Iran, this nation could not afford.  Rejection of it would further isolate the US from the other P5 allies which support the Deal and would not back down from it.
 
Those who are waxing anti-Semitic in this nation and around the world are very worrisome, of course, to me but it is more worrisome to me that this nation be taken to a place in which its interests do not lie and toward which its morality should not go.
 
 
 

NOT ANYMORE

  I wrote this last week and for the most part sat on it because I did not want my writing to imply anything against Israel. As stated agai...