Meet me on J Street
Posted on October 28th, 2009
by Scott McConnell |
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I’ve spent the last two days at the first J Street Conference, an exciting and historic event. For those who don’t know, J Street is the new “pro_Israel, pro-peace” lobby formed by a younger group of American Jews, supportive of a two state solution, and willing to grapple with the idea that Israel has done a serious wrong to the Palestinians. As I’ve long believed that America’s knee jerk support of the Israeli occupation is a big reason for this country’s terrible reputation in the Muslim world, I am enthusiastic about the group—which is generally much more calm and lucid about the supposed threats emanating from the Muslim world than the more established and more powerful AIPAC related lobbies.
There’s much to post about J Street and I hope to get to some of it here and elsewhere. But there is one element that might be especially interesting to fans of Pat Buchanan’s Death of the West. J Street and other Israeli two state solution advocates often couch their arguments not in terms of justice, or fairness, or even peace, but in terms of the demographic threat to Israel. As of now, about half the people living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea are Muslim or Christian Arabs, so Israel can maintain control only by denying the Arabs the right to vote or elementary political rights. (The Arabs who live within the green line, west of Israel’s 1967 borders, do enjoy basic political and civil rights). So one J Street argument is to play on Israel’s great fear that Arabs will being lobbying in earnest for a one state solution and a right to vote. Liberal Israeli politicians refer to it fearfully as the “Nelson Mandela scenario” – as in what will happen in ten years time if a Palestinian comes to Washington and says we want nothing more than the right to vote. What will Washington say?
I don’t believe that such co-mingling and one state could work in the near term – and that for at least a generation or two and perhaps indefinitely the Palestinians should have their own state, with time to gradually learn to get along with and actually benefit from Israel’s presence. This is the goal of Obama’s policy. But the element of demographic fear is ironic to contemplate—especially in a liberal and progressive audicence that would be mortified to hear Jared Taylor make directly parallel assertions about the fearful day when whites will become a minority in North America. (Pretty soon, I think.) For the record, I think America will survive quite decently without a white majority, though this isn’t the course I would necessarily have chosen. And I’m not sure Israel would survive a one-man one-vote situation sharing a land with a people they’ve oppressed for sixty years. And of course there are liberal Israelis, (the brilliant Bernard Avishai for one) who find this demographic threat talk offensive. But it is becoming mainstream, so that a liberal Israeli argument has some surprising similarities to a racialist American one.
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Israel is facing the likelihood of a future where the majority of people aren’t Westerners. America is facing the likelihood of a future where the majority of people are still Westerners (that is, they accept the basic tenets of Western Civilization) but are no longer white.
At least I think the newly arrived latinos accept the first principles of the West, and if they don’t, McConnell, et al. are in a good position to change that, especially since they run a journal of opinion that’s designed to change people’s minds in ways that make them more amenable to Western thought.
I hope you get to experience all the wonders of a post-white America, Scott!
Westerners don’t even accept the first principles of the West anymore, so I doubt the Latinos will–nor for that matter, do I think it would be possible for them to truly accept those principles. The fact is, a future in which the majority of “Europeans” and “Americans” are of third world extraction is a future in which any hope of reclaiming the Western tradition is lost.
Scott, we have to disagree on what all this means. I welcome some of what J Street is saying and, more important, how it is saying it, but I think it is pretty much old wine in a new bottle. J Street wants to continue current levels of military and political support for Israel from the US, endorses harsh sanctions against Iran, rejects the Goldstone report and calls Mearsheimer and Walt anti-Semites. It has a bizarre plan for creating a Palestinian state through border adjustments, pretty much sidestepping the settler problem. When you come right down to it, J Street is just another pro-Israel lobby being run by Americans to benefit Israel rather than the United States.
Rather than continue to flog a dead horse, I refer you to my article “My Problem with J Street” on today’s antiwar:
http://original.antiwar.com/giraldi/2009/10/28/my-problem-with-j-street/
McConnell’s point deserves more attention than it’s gotten over the years. It’s the Israelis on the Zionist left, the “peace camp”, whose primary argument over the last decade has been explicitly ethnic: that the occupation must be ended so that the Jews can preserve their position as the Staatvolk. The arguments by the Israeli left against the occupation are outrageously racist according to Western standards.
I see it as another sign of Israeli health as opposed to European and American sickness, that the Israeli left is warning against the disaster of their ethnic group losing its position of dominance. It’s taken for granted by almost all Israeli Jews that they must remain the Staatvolk in Israel. They’re just a bunch of racist Buchananites.
At least I think the newly arrived latinos accept the first principles of the West, and if they don’t, McConnell, et al. are in a good position to change that, especially since they run a journal of opinion that’s designed to change people’s minds in ways that make them more amenable to Western thought.
Is there a single Western tradition? Do the ancient Greeks and Christians belong in the same narrative? Sorry to sound like a deconstructionist (which I’m not), but talk of “reclaiming the Western tradition” strikes me as a little windy.
In his 2009 book on European immigration, “Reflections on the Revolution in Europe,” Philip Caldwell asks: “Can you have the same Europe with different people?” and answers the question with a resounding “no.” The same is true of both Israel and the United States.
I love the United States that had a white majority, and think its loss is a heart-breaking tragedy. I have great sympathy for Israelis who wish to preserve a Jewish state.
Philip Giraldi is right: J-Street is just AIPAC lite.
http://original.antiwar.com/giraldi/2009/10/28/my-problem-with-j-street/
Some J-Streeters are anti-Zionists actually pushing for a unified state with one-man-one-vote. I think that’s ridiculous, but that’s how it is.
http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2009/10/pro-israel-pro-peace.php
There are millions of white American and Europeans who are not racist in any meaningful sense of that world, who have no problem interacting on equal terms with non-whites both professionally and personally, but who nevertheless as a practical matter want to live in a white-majority nation, and STRONGLY insist on living in a white majority neighborhood and sending their kids to a white majority school.
As long as the elite consensus is that minority status for whites in America and Europe is a fait acompli and caring at all about this outcome is an act of indecency, then reasonable people will be drawn towards the BNP, American Renaissance and the Occidental Quarterly.
In fact, it is NOT a fait acompli. We can secure our boarders and change our immigration policies in a way that would preserve a white majority, while at the same time ensuring that non-white here already as citizens are accorded dignity and equal rights under the law. The main obstacle seems to be the idea that this is somehow an immoral goal. It isn’t.
It never fails to amuse me, hearing the fearful whispers about “whites” no longer being the majority in America, for those murmurings are coming from people who, for reasons known but to themselves and God, view whites as a monolithic group!
The U.S. is, more and more, a country not of races, nor even ethnicities, but, rather, tribes. If you doubt this, ask a few Irish-Catholic Americans what they think of the Brits. Ask some Polish-Americans how they feel about Russians and Germans. Ask Americans of Basque ancestry their opinions of Spain.
I guarantee you shall receive more than a few “politically-incorrect” replies.
Adam Rurik,
You are correct that whites in America are too heterogenous to constitute the “nation” that white nationalists desire. There is still enough commonality though that they could desire to live in a predominately white country, just as Europeans have enough in common to think that allowing Turkey into the EU would diminish its European character. I would disagree though that the U.S is a country of tribes: most of its “ethnics” have been deracinated enough that they feel little connection to their ancestral nations. Intermarriage rates are probably the best measure of that sort of thing.
“White people” are always worried that other people are going to take over. American-hating Arab terrorists are all going to come over in vessels, ships, even bathtubs and magically take over America so we should stay in the Middle East. One black family moves into the neighborhood and right away, “the blacks are taking over.” You people need to relax because you’re still the majority for now anyway and stop this paranoia. These hard economic times and more blacks/ Latinos going to school may mean they start having less children as well. This country did originally belong to non-white native Americans anyway and the white population doesn’t have the God-given right to this land like some think they do. I am half white and not against my own people either but I think you people are a little ridiculous with this topic while Israel Jews may actually be very justified with their situation.
Arabs and Muslims do not primarily hate America because it supports Israel althought that is a subsidiary reason. They hate it because it is Christian,wealthy and democratic, believes in religious freedom, and gives rights to women, Jews and minorities.
There have been Muslim bomb attacks all round the world from Spain and Britain to Argentina, to Australia (in Bali), directed against countries that have little or nothing to do with supporting Israel, simply because they are Christian, democratic and have civil rights for minorities.
Vaemar: Although you are partly right in your assessment, some of the countries you mentioned have had troops in Afghanistan. Spain, Australia and Britain have had troops in Iraq as well. So, it is not all “simply” because these are Christian, free, rights-giving nations that they are targeted by Muslim extremist terrorists. It has mostly to do with intervention in Muslim affairs which gives these terrorists the excuse to attack. This is obviously where support for Israel comes in. American, et. al. intervention, makes it easier for terrorists to recruit new people who now in recent years have seen a foreign presence of troops on Arab soil. It makes it easier to get these recruits to kill people through brainwash and lies that they are doing this for God or their people. Many Arab nations are very wealthy because they are oil rich but if this is part of the reason many Arabs hate America, then they should turn on their own corrupt governments that keep most of the oil money for themselves. American needs to change its foreign policy and start worrying about domestic affairs.
McConnell’s assertion that “For the record, I think America will survive quite decently without a white majority, though this isn’t the course I would necessarily have chosen” pretty much encapsulates the uselessness of conservatism in the face of accelerating white dispossession. First, there is the ostrich-like denial of a looming catastrophe. What is the evidence that America will survive quite decently without a white majority? Has Detroit survived quite decently without a white majority? How about Camden New Jersey, Washington, D.C., Atlanta, Birmingham, and Oakland? Second, there is the passivity. McConnell might not have chosen a non-white future for America. Of course somebody did choose to set us on that path. But it would take a revolutionary, not a conservative, to contemplate reversing that course. Those whites who are interesting in securing a future for their posterity need to start reading The Occidental Quarterly and American Renaissance. The trouble with McConnell’s conservatism is that it doesn’t conserve anything but the mistakes made by liberals.
“Arabs and Muslims do not primarily hate America because it supports Israel althought that is a subsidiary reason. They hate it because it is Christian,wealthy and democratic, believes in religious freedom, and gives rights to women, Jews and minorities.”
Vaemar, Arabs dont give a damn about west (well at least they didn’t before 50’s). But how should they respond when u kill them in millions, take their land, support brutal dictators and destroy those who are not ready to kiss your ass.