Caroline Glick on Martin Peretz
The reason I entitled this post "Martin Peretz, an appreciation," is not for what he wrote in 1967, but because of what has happened to the Left, the Jewish Left and to Peretz in the 46 years that have passed since he wrote that article.In the late 1960s, Peretz wasn't alone in defending Israel against the radical Left - white and black. In 1967, even Jewish Communists were willing to break ranks to support Israel. And as the 1968 New York Teachers Strike showed, at the time, liberal Jews in general were willing to defend themselves from attacks by black anti-Semites.But in the intervening years, fewer and fewer voices on the Left, and specifically on the Jewish Left were willing to take such positions and pit themselves against their movement. And so as the decades passed, what were the positions of the radical Left in the 1960s became increasingly the positions of the mainstream Left, until by last summer, they became the positions of the majority of delegates at the Democratic National Convention.
Read the whole thing.When I was growing up in Chicago, the local Jewish establishment's refusal to support Israel in the 1982 Lebanon War is what made me decide to make aliyah. By the time I arrived at Columbia in 1987, and the Palestinian uprising broke out, it was hard to find Jewish leaders who were willing to stand up for Israel without stuttering.Today the situation has become simply untenable. Suffice it to say that Bill Ayres's political protégé Barack Obama's success in garnering 70 percent of the Jewish vote is not an aberration.Yet through it all, Martin Peretz has rarely wavered. Despite his attempts to support the Palestinians, he has not allowed his desire to see the Arab conflict with Israel resolved diminish his support for Israel. He has remained a staunch, loyal defender of Israel. When I was growing up, I relied on his New Republic for its reporting on Israel and the Middle East. Peretz was one of my intellectual heroes.In recent years, I've felt more bemused by than respectful of Peretz. A colleague of mine quipped some years back that Peretz and Allan Dershowitz live in an intellectual universe populated only by Peretz and Dershowitz and they refuse to acknowledge that they are alone. That quip has probably anchored my thinking on both men ever since.But even if my colleague's remark was more true than false, reading the FBI report, I decided I should discard its snide diminution of Peretz. The fact is, he has been fighting this fight for nearly fifty years. As a man of the Left, he has fought the fight for Israel and Jewish rights, increasingly alone for nearly fifty years, and has done so despite what must have been enormous personal costs as his comrades all jumped ship, and in many cases, joined the cause of Israel's enemies.
As someone who grew up half a generation ahead of Caroline (I arrived at Bir Zeit on the Hudson in 1974, decided to make aliya while in yeshiva in 1980, and actually spent the summer of 1982 in Chicago watching Ted Koppel and Bibi Netanyahu every night), what bothers me is why so many American Jews were so swept up by the civil rights movement that they failed to notice or care when it turned against their Jewishness. One could place the blame for that on a lack of Jewish education.
Quite simply, 40-50 years ago. there were much fewer Jewish schools and a much smaller percentage of Jews were educated to care about our people. That wasn't done intentionally. It was just assumed by our parents' generation that we would stick together, even if we didn't have strong Jewish upbringings. We were in the goldener medina and therefore there was no need for that 'old' Jewish education to keep us in the fold (many Zionists made a similar mistake in Israel in the 50's and 60's), and we didn't want to do anything that would harm our college or job prospects. There was also a feeling that Jewish schools weren't 'good enough' academically, partly because of the quota systems that were in effect at the elite universities in the 50's and 60's.
As to how this influenced President Obama (a story to which Caroline only alludes), I discussed that at very great length here.
Labels: American Left, Barack Hussein Obama, Leftist Jews, Martin Peretz
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 10:49 AM
2 Comments:
I agree with Carl I. Jerusalem re education, including Jewish education. The New Left has imposed an education system, which is producing a huge swath of people who cannot read, and if they are lucky enough to be able to read, the schools' reading lists have been culled of classics and multiple viewpoints. I personally see ZERO difference between what is being done in education and BURNING books. What is the difference?
Also, for Caroline, Martin Peretz is the mentor of Al Gore, the Godfather of the Green $lu$h Movement. Gore's imagery, etc. have undermined the American experiment, which provided more prosperity and less world hunger levels than anything before. And Martin Peretz, like the other New Left enlightened ones, was educated by Herbert Marcuse, in Peretz's case, directly. If it is turning out that Israel supports the undermining of America's productive capacity, with the consulates, etc. speaking in support of New Left campaigns, that is a problem. Don't forget that Marcuse's New Left approach is violent. His acolytes in Germany (Baader-Meinhof) coordinated with the Palestinians in the run-up to the Munich massacre of Israeli athletes. You may think they are cool and want to be part of the cool posse, but they don't like Jews. Think it through before accepting more of the stolen property Green $lu$h.
http://madamepickwickartblog.com/2010/07/marcuse-the-power-of-negativity-2-wrongs-make-a-bomb/
And, speaking of bombs, a New Left #Occupy Wall Street organizer does not care if his neighbors, his girlfriend, or her about-to-be delivered baby (he's the Baby Daddy!) get blown up. Googling HMTD brings up a bunch of links with "peroxide" and "Madrid" in them. Peroxide explosives were the very first capable of breaching a Merkava tank years back. Mean bombs. Perfect for the Marcuse Marxist New Left Obama Posse. Friends don't go along with their lib friends supporting these New Left bombers. Not in Israel, not in the U.S., nowhere!
Greenwich Village couple busted with cache of weapons, bombmaking explosives: sources
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhattan/bombmaking_in_the_village_LoRDqNzP02SDZyfC1pLVXN
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