In April 1994, I wrote a story titled “The Bourgeoisification of Israel” for the
American Jewish magazine
Moment. Illustrated with photographs of Israelis lying
on the beach, by the swimming pool and shopping at the mall, the story’s point
was that this was no longer the austere, idealistic, hyper-politicized nation of
legend, but a “booming, capitalistic one.”
Materialism, I wrote, was the
new Israeli ideology, and the Oslo peace process appealed to many people here
for just that reason. “There’s a lot of money to be made if this peace works
out. And if most of the West Bank and Gaza are given up in the process, who goes
there anyway?...It’s not that most Israelis have suddenly begun caring
about the Palestinians; they just want to be left in peace, and they are too
busy to be bothered.”
I raised a couple of other points, such as “Why
should a bourgeois country be the world’s foremost recipient of foreign aid,
with $3 billion a year from the United States?” and “Why [does] Israel keep
schnorring money from Diaspora Jews, and why [do] Diaspora Jews keep handing it
over?”
THE STORY was well received. Forgive me for bragging, but it won the
American Jewish Press Association’s 1994 Boris Smolar Award for Excellence in
International News or Feature Reporting. (In the Jewish journalism racket, we
refer to this award simply as “a Smolar.”)
So imagine my surprise when I see
that in September 2010, the American Jewish establishment, led by the ADL, AJC
and ZOA, is screaming “anti-Semitism!” at Time magazine for writing that
Israelis are too busy chasing the good life to care about peace.
“The
insidious subtext of Israeli Jews being obsessed with money echoes the age-old
anti-Semitic falsehood that Jews care about money above any other interest, in
this case achieving peace with the Palestinians,” wrote Abraham Foxman, head of
the Anti-Defamation League, in a letter to Time.
Abe, Abe, Abe, Abe, Abe
– I don’t know what to tell you, or all the people who made “calls and emails
from around the country expressing outrage,” or the other Jewish machers and
bloggers who agree with you. I read Time’s September 13 cover story,
provocatively titled “Why Israel Doesn’t Care About Peace” and illustrated with
people lying on the beach and sitting at cafes, and there isn’t a molecule of
anti-Semitism in it. Not unless you think that telling the most basic,
obvious truth about contemporary Israeli life, one I don’t think any real live,
semi-conscious Israeli would challenge, is anti-Semitism.
“As three
presidents, a king and their own prime minister gather at the White House to
begin a fresh round of talks on peace between Israelis and the Palestinians, the
truth is Israelis are no longer preoccupied with the matter. They’re otherwise
engaged; they’re making money; they’re enjoying the rays of late summer,” wrote
Time’s Karl Vick.
Shades of Der Sturmer, right? My fellow Jews, what is
your problem? To say that Israelis are more interested in making money than in
politics, than in the peace process – which, as the article repeatedly points
out, Israelis have no faith in because they don’t trust the Palestinians –
that’s anti-Semitism?
Yes, the article’s tone is critical of the current mood.
It depicts people in this country as smug, as being zoned out on prosperity,
security and sunshine, as living in a fool’s paradise.
You disagree?
Fine. But to call it anti-Semitic? Because it makes the claim that Israelis like
money?
Everyone likes money, everyone’s politics is colored by money. This is
understood as a matter of course in the news media’s coverage of every nation in
the world – but when they say it about Israel, about the Jewish nation, it’s
bigotry, it’s hate speech.
“This anti-Semitic and misleading cover and
article plumbs new depths in Time magazine’s long-running historic bigotry
toward Israel,” said Morton Klein, head of the Zionist Organization of
America.
Mort, Mort, Mort, Mort, Mort – when are you going to stop trying
to scare people stupid? When it’s said that Americans “vote their pocketbook,”
is that anti-Americanism? When someone writes that Americans oppose raising
taxes for health care, is the point of the story that Americans value money
above human life? When commentators deplore the annual American tradition of
mobbing the department stores for the Memorial Day sales, does anyone call this
commentary “insidious”?
No. Only when you suggest that Israelis are basically
like everyone else, that they’re as self-absorbed and materialistic and
politically nearsighted as any other nation, and that they may not be
doing
everything humanly possible in the pursuit of peace and brotherhood,
then you’re
in trouble with the ADL, the ZOA and so on. Then you are up to your neck
in
American Jewish alphabet soup.
Sorry Abe, sorry Mort, it’s
2010. It’s a little late to pretend that Israelis are a nation of
altruists. Time magazine didn’t tell anyone who knows Israel anything
new; the story it told was the story of this generation. So stop crying
wolf
already. There are anti- Semitic lies, but there are no anti- Semitic
truths.