Hullabaloo over Blumenthal’s Video

We’re now entering the realm of meta-commentary–commentary com­ment­ing on com­men­tary com­ment­ing on Max Blumenthal’s brilliant video-journalism, itself a piece of veiled social com­men­tary, in this case intended to highlight the moral degen­er­acy of American Zionist “sup­port­ers” of Israel. (In quotation marks because we support Israel much in the manner of a friend passing over car keys and a bottle of whiskey to an intox­i­cated com­pa­triot trying to get home).

Thesis 1 is that these drunken fools are unrep­re­sen­ta­tive. The standard labor Zionist, we’re meant to under­stand, is a beautiful soul: slightly misled by one-too-many Likudnik Rosh Hashana sermons, perhaps, but still committed to lib­er­al­ism, human rights, dignity, and above all pretty words justice. The creatures unearthed by Blu­men­thal were nothing of the sort. They weren’t American Zionists indoc­tri­nated by the increas­ingly gruesome (and increas­ingly bankrupt) Birthright Israel program, although Blu­men­thal notes that that is precisely what they were, but excep­tions, an ugly minority, utterly apart. This is–how to put this in a non-confrontational manner?–non-sense, as a mere moment at the Fuel for Truth website will suggest.

Thesis 2 is that these drunken fools simply would never have had such thoughts if they weren’t intox­i­cated, and so it’s unfair to single them out. This is a fair point. After all, no one took Mel Gibson’s soused rantings seriously. I mean, they barely merited seven words in the online blo­goso­phere, let alone the mass cir­cu­la­tion dailies, like, oh, the New York Times, right?

Thesis 3 takes a different path, sug­gest­ing drunk kids anywhere would speak of tea-bagging, assas­si­nat­ing, or eating water­melon with Obama. This again is a fair point, provided one properly defines anywhere: for example, a KKK rally, a fascist grouplet in Michigan, or neo-Nazis in Argentina. The problem is that this isn’t what most people think of when they hear the word anywhere (and trust me, I don’t like Obama much. I think that he’s a war criminal. I can think of a cozy cell in the Hague perfect for him to mull over the atroc­i­ties his armed forces commit daily. But those are political as opposed to bigoted quibbles).

So what’s the real issue here? And what’s been elided in this whole pseudo-controversy? Here’s what I think: that American Zionism, or at least its right wing, is so fanat­i­cally attached to the Israeli state that even a slight deviation from support for its suicidal policies, inlaid into Zionism’s messianic DNA, is met with entitled fury: how dare he not worship the Israeli state with the same religious fervor that we do.

Such fury proves Buber’s darkest pre­dic­tions: that, as Jacque­line Rose writes, “the fact that Zionism…made itself sovereign to as to enter the world of nations, is nothing short of a political and spiritual cat­a­stro­phe,” glossing Buber’s statement that “This sort of ‘Zionism’ blas­phemes the name of Zion.”

State­ments of the sheerest support from Obama, such as his remark­ably offensive comment that “if missiles were falling where my two daughters sleep, I would do every­thing in order to stop that,” regarding the Israeli winter massacre, do not matter.

As for the racism? Offensive, of course, and a symptom of the racist attitudes that are still deeply part of American culture. This is one more example of the ridicu­lous­ness of the idea that electing Obama suggested that we are “cured” of racism. But the point is fanatic support for a warrior state. And what’s revealing is that that is what people aren’t talking about.

Tech­no­rati Tags: American Zionism, Israel-Palestine, Max Blu­men­thal, Obama, Zionism

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