by Bruce S. Thornton<\/p>\n
Private Papers<\/em><\/p>\n A<\/span>s if there isn\u2019t enough evidence of the ideological corruption of America\u2019s universities, along come\u00a0Chicago\u2019s John Mearsheimer and Harvard\u2019s Stephen Walt<\/a>, arguing that the \u201cIsrael lobby\u201d dominates American foreign policy to the hurt of our own national interests.\u00a0Alan Dershowitz<\/a>\u00a0has exposed the errors of fact and the sophomoric logic that mar this thesis, and that should embarrass what are supposed to be two of the best universities in the country . Personally, I consider it intellectual malfeasance to harp on the Israel lobby while ignoring the Palestinian lobby \u2014 which includes most of the faculty of American universities, most of the Middle Eastern Studies Departments, most of the media\u2019s editorial boards, the Council on American Islamic Relations, the U.N., and a significant chunk of the State Department.<\/p>\n Critical analysis like Dershowitz\u2019s is important, but equally significant is the question of how ideas usually found on neo-Nazi websites can be seriously entertained by otherwise educated people. Anti-Semitism certainly isn\u2019t the whole answer, if only because the term is too broad to catch the various subsets of anti-Jewish bigotry. This isn\u2019t to say that anti-Semitism doesn\u2019t still exist. Obviously, old-fashioned anti-Semites, particularly in Europe, have found that in a post-Holocaust world, one can still indulge the same bigoted stereotypes of all-powerful cabals secretly manipulating world events, as long as one dresses them up in \u201cpro-Palestinian\u201d or \u201canti-Zionist\u201d camouflage. But I\u2019m not sure that most of those, including Muslims, who rail against the evil Jews really want them all to disappear, as Hitler did. They just want the Jews to stop being so uppity and to keep in their place.<\/p>\n In other words, the hater of Israel doesn\u2019t mind if Jews stick around, as long as they play the role they\u2019re supposed to: the marginalized victim whose fate is to suffer and provide us with objects of pity. That\u2019s why popular culture\u2019s favorite Jew is the Holocaust victim. As such, the Jew can even keep his religious identity, as long as it is kept thin and reduced to a few charming folkways no more significant than clog-dancing or bagpipes. In other words, don\u2019t be too observantly Jewish, and don\u2019t take being Jewish too seriously. Actually taking religion seriously is the monopoly of Muslims, who especially in Europe are allowed all sorts of leeway in expressing their fanatical devotion to their faith, even when it conflicts with the foundational political ideals of their countries.<\/p>\n But to keep someone a pitiful victim is to reduce his humanity, to leave him a passive object that exists only to arouse in others particular sorts of feelings.\u00a0 In other words, the victim can never be fully equal to others, but must remain in a subordinate condition. Here is where the position of Jews in the European imagination is similar to their status in the Muslim world. Most Muslims don\u2019t want Jews to disappear, just Israel. Jews have lived in the Muslim world for centuries, but they did so as a subordinated minority whose public behavior and demeanor were always supposed to testify that they were inferior to their Islamic overlords. As possessors of the ultimate divine revelation, Muslims were justified in reminding Jews and Christians, who both rejected that culminating revelation, that they were inferiors allowed to live only by their spiritual superiors\u2019 dispensation, which could be arbitrarily lifted at any time.<\/p>\n T<\/span>his is the contemptuous, conditional forbearance that many today extol as Muslim \u201ctolerance.\u201d It reminds me of the position of blacks in the Jim Crow South. After all, many Southerners who believed in segregation despised the Klu Klux Klan\u2019s terrorism, and sincerely liked black people. These more respectable segregationists didn\u2019t want to kill all the blacks, just to make sure that they lived in a way that publicly testified to their inferiority. Such Southerners believed that given the innate, ineradicable differences between the races, both peoples were better served by maintaining in social and political life the various mechanisms for asserting the superiority of the white race and its natural right to rule. So too with the dhimmi in Muslim societies: they can live and even practice their religion, so long as they demonstrate that they are inferior.<\/p>\n But the existence of Israel upsets all these long-established roles for Jews. Not just because Israel fights \u2014 Jews can fight, as they did at Masada and in the Warsaw ghetto. But they\u2019re not supposed to win. To have their own nation, and thus be equal to the world\u2019s other nations, and then to defeat in battle better armed, more numerous enemies, is to violate the image of the Jew established for centuries. It is to make him our equal, and to call forth paranoid fantasies about nefariously influential cabals to explain this disturbing change. For the Jew\u2019s job is to be a victim, and thus perpetually inferior. He is to suffer and die, or else to leech away his Jewish identity and thus not really be a Jew, which is another sort of death.<\/p>\n These thoughts are speculative, no doubt, but the bizarre demonization of Israel cries out for explanation. So does the obscene double standard applied to Israel\u2019s actions when defending itself, and the actions of the enemies sworn to her destruction. So does the obsession with Israel in the U.N. and in the E.U. So does the callous indifference to the murder of Israelis and the numerous attempts to destroy her. What else explains the astonishing phenomenon of a terrorist gang being taken for a legitimate government by the rest of the world? What else explains the long indulgence of the corrupt thug Arafat? What else explains an entire U.N. agency dedicated to one small group, even as in the rest of the world millions have starved and died? What else explains the way year after year propagandistic lies and disinformation such as the \u201cJenin massacre\u201d are shrugged away even after they are exposed?<\/p>\n The reason isn\u2019t just ignorance, though I have personally encountered fervent supporters of the Palestinians who could not recite two accurate facts from the history of the Middle East. Nor is anti-Semitism of the rabid Nazi variety the answer. Something else is at work here, an intellectual and moral corruption that cannot be cured with better P.R. or information campaigns. Its persistence means that Israel cannot become complacent even about the support of the United States. Israel ultimately can rely on nothing other than her own strong right arm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The use and abuse of popular culture’s favorite victim. by Bruce S. Thornton Private Papers As if there isn\u2019t enough evidence of the ideological corruption of America\u2019s universities, along come\u00a0Chicago\u2019s John Mearsheimer and Harvard\u2019s Stephen Walt, arguing that the \u201cIsrael lobby\u201d dominates American foreign policy to the hurt of our own national interests.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[22,775],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-1lg","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1445,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/despicable-israel-libels-on-display-in-california-universities\/","url_meta":{"origin":5162,"position":0},"title":"Despicable Israel Libels on Display in California Universities","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 19, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPage Magazine The moral and intellectual corruption of American universities has recently manifested itself in the California State University system, the largest in the country. A group of faculty and administrators has sent a letter to Chancellor Charles Reed asking that he not approve the reinstatement\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6606,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/bruce-thornton-on-secure-freedom-radio-with-frank-gaffney\/","url_meta":{"origin":5162,"position":1},"title":"Bruce Thornton on Secure Freedom Radio with Frank Gaffney","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 10, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Seth Jones, Bruce Thornton, Peter Pham, Diana West October 9th, 2013\u00a0\u00b7\u00a0Comments SETH JONES, Associate Director of the International Security and Defense Policy Center at the RAND Corporation, joins guest host DAN BONGINO, to help explain the terror threat from and historical background of the terrorist organization al-Shabaab. BRUCE THORNTON, a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":862,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obama-a-creature-of-the-corrupt-university\/","url_meta":{"origin":5162,"position":2},"title":"Obama a Creature of the Corrupt University","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 5, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPage Magazine The November presidential election was the favorite topic at the Freedom Center\u2019s West Coast Retreat last weekend. Amidst the prognostications and arguments about which Republican would or should get the nomination, or how pessimistic or optimistic conservatives should be about defeating the President, the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Education"","block_context":{"text":"Education","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/education\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":978,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/harvard-promotes-the-palestinians-slow-motion-final-solution\/","url_meta":{"origin":5162,"position":3},"title":"Harvard Promotes the Palestinians’ Slow-Motion ‘Final Solution’","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 12, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPage Media There is no idea so hateful or useless that some university somewhere won\u2019t hold a conference on it. The latest example of this unfortunate truism is the recently announced \u201cIsrael\/Palestine and the One-State Conference\u201d scheduled for early March at the Harvard Kennedy School. Nineteen\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Israel"","block_context":{"text":"Israel","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/israel\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":481,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-academic-establishment-goes-after-bruce-bawer\/","url_meta":{"origin":5162,"position":4},"title":"The Academic Establishment Goes After Bruce Bawer","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 2, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce Thornton Frontpage Magazine Bruce Bawer, the intrepid international journalist and Freedom Center Shillman Fellow, has just published\u00a0The Victims\u2019 Revolution, an expose of \u201cIdentity Studies\u201d in American universities. These are the programs predicated on the allegation that certain minorities in America, mainly women, gays, blacks, and Latinos, are victims\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Education"","block_context":{"text":"Education","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/education\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5316,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/a-shiv-in-the-back\/","url_meta":{"origin":5162,"position":5},"title":"A Shiv in the Back","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 6, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"How politicized college courses mangle education. by Bruce S. Thornton Private Papers A review of Ben Shapiro's\u00a0Brainwashed: How Universities Indoctrinate America's Youth. 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