Displaying posts published in

October 2019

Ruth Wisse:What Saul Bellow Saw The Jewish writer who became America’s most decorated novelist spent his early years prodding the nation’s soul. Then, sensing danger to it, he took up the role of guardian.

https://mosaicmagazine.com/essay/arts-culture/2019/10/what-saul-bellow-saw/

In May 1949, a year after the establishment of the state of Israel, the American Jewish literary critic Leslie Fiedler published in Commentary an essay about the fundamental challenge facing American Jewish writers: that is, novelists, poets, and intellectuals like Fiedler himself.

Entitled “What Can We Do About Fagin?”—Fagin being the Jewish villain of Charles Dickens’s novel Oliver Twist—the essay shows that the modern Jew who adopts English as his language is joining a culture riddled with negative stereotypes of . . . himself. These demonic images figure in some of the best works of some of the best writers, and form an indelible part of the English literary tradition—not just in the earlier form of Dickens’ Fagin, or still earlier of Shakespeare’s Shylock, but in, to mention only two famous modern poets, Ezra Pound’s wartime broadcasts inveighing against “Jew slime” or such memorable lines by T.S. Eliot as “The rats are underneath the piles. The jew is underneath the lot” and the same venerated poet’s 1933 admonition that, in any well-ordered society, “reasons of race and religion combine to make any large number of free-thinking Jews undesirable.”

How should Jewish writers proceed on this inhospitable ground?

There was a paradox in the timing of Fiedler’s essay, since this was actually the postwar moment when Jews were themselves beginning to move into the forefront of Anglo-American culture. The “New York Intellectuals”—the first European-style intelligentsia on American soil, clustered around several magazines and publishing houses—were beginning to gain prominence as writers, thinkers, critics, and professors. Fiedler was thus not a petitioner requesting permission to enter American letters but someone already in place and intending to stay. Indeed, by the end of his essay, after laying out the problem, he proposes an answer:

[We] can begin to build rival myths of our meaning for the Western world, other images of the Jew to dispossess the ancient images of terror. Several, of varying dignity and depth, are already in existence: the happy Hebrew peasant of the new Israel; the alienated Jew as artist (Kafka’s protagonist Josef K.) or dilettante (Proust’s Charles Swann) or citizen (Joyce’s Leopold Bloom); the sensitive young victim of the recent crop of American war novels; the ambiguous figure of Saul Bellow’s novel [The Victim], both victim and oppressor.

According to Fiedler, the response to existing negative stereotypes was to create autonomous new representations. For him, as for others at the time, the modern Jew could possibly even become a literary archetype: the new Everyman of a society in which many felt somewhat alienated, or marginal. In charting this proposed new path of Jewish fiction, Fiedler singles out such forerunners as Kafka and Proust and then, as a contemporary exemplar, Saul Bellow, whose second novel, The Victim, about a New York Jew who is being stalked by an anti-Semite, had been published two years earlier.

It was an auspicious choice of writer and book.

The Washington Post doesn’t let facts get in its way The Post gives inordinate space to the tiny fraction of Jews who are against the right of Jewish self-determination, consistently omits context, and casts Israeli concerns as overblown and the Arabs as victims.Sean Durns

https://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/the-washington-post-isnt-about-to-let-facts-get-in-its-way/

The overwhelming majority of American Jewry has a positive view of Israel. Yet, the overwhelming majority of opinion pieces and reporting from major US news outlets doesn’t reflect this reality. Instead, the media promotes a small and unrepresentative minority. The Washington Post offers a case in point.

Ninety-five percent of American Jews have a “strongly positive” view of Israel, according to an August 2019 Gallup poll. The pollster noted that this was “significantly more pro-Israel than the overall national averages of 71% favorable views of Israel and 21% favorable views of the Palestinian Authority.”

Similarly, a 2013 Pew survey observed: “76% of Jews (identified by religion) said they were at least somewhat emotionally attached to Israel. In addition, almost half said that caring about Israel is an essential part of being Jewish (with most of the rest saying it is important although not essential) and nearly half reported that they had personally traveled to Israel.”

In short: American Jewry is, except for a minuscule minority, pro-Israel. Yet, the American media often chooses to give a megaphone to Jews that actively oppose, or are hypercritical of, the Jewish state.

The Washington Post, for example, gives inordinate column space to the tiny fraction of Jews, American and otherwise, who are against the right of Jewish self-determination. In a Sept. 20, 2019 tweet, Mairav Zonszein of +972 magazine cheered that her publication was “all up in The Washington Post opinion pages today,” with two pieces from the same organization appearing on the same day. Zonszein proudly noted that editors of “mainstream outlets” were no longer editing out or tweaking her use of the term “apartheid.”

Gilead Resembles an Islamic Theocracy, not Trump’s America by Phyllis Chesler

https://quillette.com/2019/10/02/gilead-resembles-

Margaret Atwood, whose work I have long admired, is now being hailed as a prophet. It is quite the phenomenon. According to the pundits, Atwood’s 1985 work, The Handmaid’s Tale, which Mary McCarthy once savaged, and the recently-published 2019 sequel, The Testaments, are dystopias which aptly describe the contemporary climate change crisis, toxic environments, the rise in infertility, and the enslavement of women in Trump’s America.

Is this all Atwood is writing about? Do the increasing restrictions on abortion in America parallel the extreme misogyny of Gilead, the theocratic state in Atwood’s saga? Is the unjust separation of mothers and children, a la Trump on the southern border, what Atwood has foretold? Every review and interview with Atwood that I could find strongly insists that this is the case.

Michelle Goldberg, in the New York Times, attributes the current popularity of The Handmaid’s Tale to Trump’s ascendancy. She writes: “It’s hardly surprising that in 2016 the book resonated—particularly women—stunned that a brazen misogynist, given to fascist rhetoric and backed by religious fundamentalists was taking power.”

Michiko Kakutani recently reviewed The Testaments for the New York Times. She writes:

Atwood understands that the fascist crimes of Gilead speak for themselves…just as their relevance to our own times does not need to be put in boldface. Many American readers and viewers of The Handmaid’s Tale are already heavily invested with the story of Gilead because we’ve come to identify with the Handmaids’ hopes that the nightmare will end and the United States—with its democratic norms and constitutional guarantees—will soon be restored. We identify because the events in Atwood’s novel…now feel frighteningly real. Because news segments on television in 2019 are filled with images of children being torn from their parents’ arms, a president using racist language to sow fear and hatred and reports of accelerating climate change jeopardizing life as we know it on the planet.

At the anti-Trump pro-women’s rights marches around the country, some feminist protesters dressed like Handmaids in billowing, shapeless red dresses, their facial identities obscured by large, white Victorian-era bonnets, carrying signs that read: “Make Margaret Atwood fiction again” and “The Handmaid’s Tale is not an instruction manual.”

They have a point. Abortion rights are being steadily challenged and nearly eviscerated in the formerly slave-owning American states. Right-to-life lawyers insist that the protection of unborn children without any gestational markers is the law of the land. We now have free states and slave states in terms of access to high quality, insurance-funded abortions. Pregnant, drug-addicted women are being jailed for child abuse.

However, Atwood’s Gilead reflects and foretells two other profoundly devastating realities, which neither the critics nor Atwood dwell upon.

ICIG Atkinson Refuses to Tell Congress Why Whistleblower Rule Changes Were Backdated Debra Heine

amgreatness.com/2019/10/07/icig-atkinson-refuses-to-tell-congress-why-whistleblower-rule-changes-were-backdated/

Michael Atkinson, the intelligence community inspector general (ICIG), reportedly refused to answer a key question during testimony before the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) on Friday.

Atkinson met with members of the committee in a closed meeting to to answer questions related to the impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump.

When asked to explain why his office made changes to its whistleblower forms in September and backdated those changes to August when the anti-Trump “whistleblower” complaint was filed, Atkinson had no answer, Sean Davis reported at the Federalist on Monday. He also reportedly admitted to lawmakers that the anti-Trump complainant had improperly concealed his previous secret interactions with House Democratic staff prior to submitting the complaint.

The Federalist first reported late last month that the ICIG secretly changed its whistleblower forms and internal rules in September to do away with a requirement that complainants provide first-hand evidence to support their allegations of wrongdoing.

The IC watchdog disclosed in a press release last week that the rule change was in response to an anti-Trump complaint filed on August 12. The whistleblower complaint was based on second-hand information, much of which was shown to be false after President Trump ordered the declassification and release of his telephone conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

During Friday’s HPSCI committee oversight hearing, Atkinson admitted that the whistleblower forms and rules changes were made in September, even though the new forms and guidance state that they were changed in August, sources told the Federalist.

Despite having a full week to come up with explanations for his office’s decisions to secretly change its forms to eliminate the requirement for first-hand evidence and to backdate those changes to August, Atkinson refused to provide any explanation to lawmakers baffled by his behavior.

CHARLOTTE’S NEWS WEB

Graham: If Dems Move Forward With Impeachment, the Identities of Anonymous Whistleblowers Will Be Revealed

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/leahbarkoukis/2019/10/07/graham-if-dems-move-forward-with-impeachment-the-anonymous-whistleblowers-will-be-exposed-n2554258

Ratcliffe: DOJ Inspector General’s Report On FISA Abuse Will Be Released Within Next “Week Or Two” Posted By Tim Hains 

https://www.fightful.com/wrestling/cm-punk-jokes-rock-should-call-him-friday-while-

The U.S. Alliance with Israel Cannot Be Sacrificed to Ideological Purity By Seth Cropsey & Harry Halem

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/10/us-israel-alliance-cannot-be-sacrificed-to-ideological-purity/

Contrary to what Robert Kagan implies, America cannot sacrifice a critical strategic alliance on the altar of ideological purity.

On September 16, in advance of Israel’s elections, the Washington Post published a long and vitriolic attack by Robert Kagan, a respected writer, on Israel and Benjamin Netanyahu. The gravamen of the accusation is that Israel and its leadership have abandoned its principles. Kagan argues that by “embracing” such caudillos as Hungary’s Viktor Orban, Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, the Philippines’ Rodrigo Duterte, and Vladimir Putin, Israel is helping to destroy the liberal international order.

This is like blaming Octavius for the Roman republic’s demise — a baseless charge, since civil conflict and competing strongmen had ended the Republic years earlier. While the U.S. remains strong enough — if its citizens possess the will — to salvage what is left of the international order, Israel has no such option. It is a regional power that has existed for 70 years in a very dangerous neighborhood. If it cannot survive, it cannot sustain its founding principles, including democracy, toleration, and respect for minority rights. Israel’s future as well as that of other states demands looking at the world clearly.

The greatest danger a nation can face is political delusion on the part of its elites. An unwillingness to face geopolitical realities jeopardizes a nation’s interest and survival.

The most pernicious form of delusion occurs when the political class cannot rid itself of paradigms stemming from heretofore extant distributions of power. Rather than recognizing a systemic change, it clings to an obsolete understanding of the balance of power. Throughout the 1920s, Britain’s policymakers were convinced that France, rather than Germany, posed a threat to European peace. Even before appeasement, they tacitly encouraged the growth of German power, while restraining Britain’s closest Great War ally.

One must look to the small to detect geopolitical change. Great powers like America can cling to old paradigms, relying on their latent strength to mitigate misperception’s consequences. For small states, however, politics is existential — political death is a persistent possibility. Small states survive by anticipating, rather than reacting to, international events.

Quid Pro Quo and Extortion: Welcome to Foreign Relations By Andrew C. McCarthy *****

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/10/quid-pro-quo-and-extortion-welcome-to-foreign-relations/

A president’s management of foreign policy and his political interests naturally overlap.

The coverage of the Trump administration’s pressure on Ukraine is verging on the absurd, as to both what is alleged to have been a wrong and the degree to which we should judge it wrong. In particular, I am referring to the concepts of quid pro quo and of extorting a foreign government.

To listen to commentary, not only by anti-Trumpers but even some Trump defenders who don’t seem to understand what they’re talking about, one would think that a quid pro quo is always bad, and that it is a terrible thing to pressure a foreign government.

This is nonsense. Foreign relations typically involve quid pro quo arrangements. Governments do not ordinarily assist each other out of fondness. Nations pursue their interests in the world. Where interests align, they assist each other. Where interests are opposed, they are adverse to each other. In any event, they bargain with each other to advance their interests. It is a matter of “We want you to do this; what do we need to do – whether for you or to you – to make you do it?”

The term quid pro quo has a sinister connotation because we most often hear it in connection with political-corruption cases, often involving bribery. In truth, all exchanges involve a quid pro quo, but most are not corrupt. When they are corrupt, it is not because Country A is asking Country B for something, but because Country A is asking for something that it is wrong to ask for. If the request is not improper, there is nothing wrong with a quid pro quo.

There is, similarly, nothing wrong with squeezing a foreign government in furtherance of American interests. Indeed, that is exactly what we are trying to do with Iran right now. If important American interests are at stake, the president’s job is to pressure other countries. International relations and domestic law enforcement are very different. In the latter, extortion is a crime. In the former, applying inducements (including threats, and sometimes worse) is what countries do to each other. As long as what an American president is asking for advances an American interest and does not violate either American law or any international obligation we’ve taken on, there is nothing wrong with pressuring other countries.

One Year After Kavanaugh’s Confirmation, Protestors Gather Outside Supreme Court By Chrissy Clark

https://thefederalist.com/2019/10/07/one-year-after-kavanaughs-confirmation-protestors-gather-outside-supreme-court/

One year ago, then Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed to the Supreme Court after facing unsubstantiated allegations of sexual assault and weeks of vicious Senate confirmation hearings. Although the hearings concluded, the smears against Kavanaugh’s character did not.

The New York Times promulgated a story that sparked calls for Kavanaugh’s impeachment. Nearly every 2020 Democratic candidate called for Justice Kavanaugh to be impeached amid media attention of more unsubstantiated allegations.

Marking the anniversary Kavanugh’s swearing in, angry protestors gathered at the Supreme Court on Monday. Julio Rosas, a senior writer at Townhall, documented the displays of insanity. Here’s what he saw:

Warning: explicit language displayed in signs below. 

Books An uncanny gift for prophecy — the genius of Michel Houellebecq His latest novel, Serotonin, written before the gilets jaunes movement, depicts the rapid deterioration of rural France, squeezed by the EU and globalisation Douglas Murray

https://www.spectator.co.uk/2019/09/an-uncanny-gift-for-prophecy

The backdrop of Michel Houellebecq’s novel is by now well established. In this — his eighth — the bleak, essentially nihilistic nature of life is once again only relieved by equally nihilistic humour and sex. From the opening of Serotonin it is clear that we are in safe Houellebecqian hands. About the new anti-depressant that the narrator has been prescribed: ‘The most undesirable side effects most frequently observed in the use of Captorix were nausea, loss of libido and impotence. I have never suffered from nausea.’

There are also those volcanic side explosions which are occasionally mistaken for bigotry by people who don’t recognise that Houellebecq suffers just one bigotry, which is species disgust. The Dutch get it early and twice from the narrator of Serotonin — ‘a race of opportunist polyglot people’.‘Holland isn’t a country, it’s a business at best.’ The narrator of Serotonin is a typical creation of the author, which is to say essentially indistinguishable from Michel Houellebecq.

Florent-Claude Labrouste is a man in his late forties whose parents have killed themselves in a suicide pact. He dislikes his name, has no friends, works in the Ministry of Agriculture and hates Paris, where he lives. Mentioning his diesel 4×4 he says: ‘I mightn’t have done much good in my life, but at least I contributed to the destruction of the planet.’

His girlfriend, for whom he feels nothing but disgust and contempt, is Japanese. He discovers that she has been cheating on him in orgies, though is neither surprised nor even bothered by the extremity of the details. Finally he chooses to leave her, resign from his job, walk out of his rented flat and do something else. ‘Clearing my office took me a little under ten minutes. It was nearly four o’clock; in less than a day I had reconfigured my life.’

Britain’s Academic Left EXPUNGES JEWS From the Holocaust by Edward Alexander

https://www.algemeiner.com/2019/10/06/britains-academic-left-expuThe late Lucy Dawidowicz once referred, decades ago in a letter to me, to the widespread practice of stealing the Holocaust from its European Jewish victims by a host of groups who not only hate but also envy Jews for having been destroyed.

“How dare the Jews,” she seemed to hear them complaining, “monopolize all that beautiful Holocaust suffering which other aggrieved groups would very much like to share, ex post facto, with them.”

We still hear that envious voice in the bitter pronouncements of “The Squad” in the Democratic Party.

Stealing the Holocaust from its Jewish victims began with small acts of relatively innocent distortion. We all remember the inflamed rhetoric of the civil rights movement of the sixties, calling curtailment of free-lunch programs in Harlem genocide, or describing Watts as a concentration camp. But why fuss about precision of language or intellectual delicacy when the exigencies of radical politics make it convenient to reduce persecuted Jews from the status of human beings to that of metaphors for other people’s suffering?

But this was an amateurish rehearsal for what was still to come. The most determined, sustained, and dangerous attempt to steal the Holocaust from its Jewish victims was begun by the Soviet Union and the Arab world after the 1967 war, and soon became, as it remains today, one of the most lethal weapons deployed against the land of Israel and the people Israel.