DANIEL GREENFIELD: THE WEEK THAT WAS PART 2
THE GIFT THAT KEEPS ON GIVING
Peter Beinart has become the clown prince of the Anti-Israel left. His big blog project, Zion Square, Open Zion or I Can’t Believe It’s Not Zion, grinds along, unattended.
Desperate for attention, Beinart scrambles into any issue to pick a fight with the “right-wing” Jews, who have even less political influence than he does.
In his latest post, which has about 6 comments and 27 likes (The Daily Beast sure is getting value for its money), Beinart delivers this unintentional piece of comedy.
Obama does know more about American Jewishness. This is a man, after all, who has read Philip Roth, Saul Bellow, Leon Uris and David Grossman (an Israeli writer popular among American Jews) and was influenced by Saul Alinsky and Abraham Joshua Heschel.
Obama contends that he knows more about Judaism because he reads. Beinart contends that Obama knows more about Judaism because he reads Philip Roth and Leon Uris (presumably not The Haj).
So Obama’s knowledge of “Jewishness” derives from four writers, most of whom were popular before Obama was born, and of course Saul Alinsky, the man who well… had Jewish DNA.
I imagine Bush has read a few books by Jewish writers. His father almost certainly read something by Uris and Wouk. Clinton read books by Jewish writers too.
Lenin, was influenced by Karl Marx and read Marcel Proust, he was as aware of Jewishness as Obama.
But let’s bring the unintentional comedy to a close.
Second, Obama understands far better than any previous president the way in which American Jews have adapted their prophetic tradition and deployed it in the struggles against economic exploitation, racial discrimination and war.
So to sum up, Obama understands Jewish liberals who dress up their liberalism in a religious mask because he is a liberal who dresses up his liberalism in a Jewish mask.
Rather than understanding Jews… Obama understands liberals.
Beinart’s unintentional admission is that neither he nor Obama can actually talk about Jewish identity, all they can do is talk about liberalism. They view Jewish identity only as a vehicle for liberal politics.
The species of Jewishness that Obama understands is Beinartism. It’s not Jewish and it’s not Judaism. Jews don’t exist in it except as vehicles for left-wing activism.
What Obama understands, via Heschel and Alinsky and his many progressive Jewish friends, is Tikkun Olam, a form of Jewish identity that, like it or not, is more pervasive in the United States than either observant Judaism or active Zionism
But if that’s true, then why does Beinart’s screed only have 6 comments, and why do he and his ilk need to lie and call themselves “Liberal Zionists”, instead of admitting that they are not Zionists and that they would like to do away with the Jewish State?
If the left really has the upper hand in Jewish identity, then why are Beinart and his J Street ilk too afraid to own up to what they truly are?
IT’S LIKE A DISEASE OR SOMETHING…
What do you talk about when you;re handing out Medals of Freedom?
If you’re Obama, you talk about the same thing that you always talk about. Your own greatness, your own pervasive specialness and the amazing historicity that someone whose middle name is that of a Muslim warlord and mass murderer is sitting in the White House.
“No one ever picks up a guitar, or fights a disease, or starts a movement, thinking: ‘You know what? If I keep this up, in 2012 I could get a medal in the White House from a guy named Barack Obama. That wasn’t in the plan. But that’s exactly what makes this award so special,” Obama said.
Is this some kind of mental illness? I’m asking this as a serious question. Does Obama walk into pizza shops and give his order as,
“You probably never thought that in the year 2012 you would be getting an order for a deep dish pizza with extra boiled arugula and squid on top from a guy named Barack Obama, a happening dude who happens to live in the White House, and who is influencing your life and mine in many special ways.”
At this point if I ever met Obama, I would just have to ask him, “What the hell is wrong with you? Did you not get enough attention as a child?”
A COLD SUMMER’S TALE
Soldiers piled off buses, like children on their way home, lugging weapons and gear, MP3 wires dangling from their ears, mobile phones ringing, flirting and weary in rumpled uniforms and dusty boots. Two thousand three hundred years ago, the army of Alexander the Great swept through this valley, and then the armies of Rome. The Holy Temple was destroyed, again. Jews were sent into exile, and they returned.
At the end of World War I, in September, 1918, British and Allied troops led by General Edmund Allenby defeated the Turkish Army in this smoldering valley, ending 400 years of Ottoman rule in Palestine and earning him the title, Viscount of Megiddo. According to Christian tradition, the final battle of civilization, Armageddon (a reference to Megiddo), will take place here, when the forces of Good defeat those of Evil. Hopefully. The Final Showdown. The End of Days.
In this valley, as told in the Book of Judges, the Prophetess Devorah and her general, Barak rallied the tribes and defeated the Canaanite inhabitants of Ta’nakh and Megiddo, powerful allies of the Philistines, who had “nine hundred chariots of iron.” Yael seduced the enemy commander, Sisera, and drove a tent-peg into his head while he slept; and, on nearby Mt Gilboa, King Saul and his sons were slain, beheaded, their mutilated bodies hung on the walls of Bet Shean.
That’s an excerpt from a larger piece by Moshe Dann at the New English Review.
MEET THE OLD NEW BOSS
A lone protester detained in a small city east of Moscow earlier this month for spitting on an image of Russian President Vladimir Putin has reportedly been sentenced to 15 days in prison after being convicted of “minor hooliganism.”
Dimitry Karuyev insists he only sneezed on the photo
A likely story. If the authorities allow people to sneeze on Putin’s photo, next thing you know they’ll think that they can get away with spitting on the photo. And then what’s to stop them from spitting on the man himself?
WAIT, ISN’T THIS RACIST?
I don’t know, it mentions hanging and Obama in the same topic, which by the definition of our media overlords is a coded dogwhistle racebaiting incitement to a lynching. Except when they do it. And when they aim it at Bush, who unlike Elizabeth Warren, is a white man and thus can be called a chimp or taunted with language that would result in a storm of outrage if directed at the most historic leader in all of human history.
The current headline seems to be, “Political Truce for a Portrait Unveiling”. Needs more P’s.
MORE ON ELISHEVA GOLDBERG
Anti-Israel activist Elisheva Goldberg, the Rosh Beit Medrash of Uri L’Tzedek, found someone to commiserate with the expose on her in my piece on the radical left-wing group. Hussein Ibish.
Who is Hussein Ibish? Oh just this guy.
In 2000, new ADC President Hussein Ibish added, “Everywhere Hezbollah fighters, derided by the Israeli and U.S. governments as ‘terrorists,’ conducted themselves in an exemplary manner,” describing the group as “a disciplined and responsible liberation force.”
and
Ibish, says Daniel Pipes, “apologizes for many groups the U.S. government deems terrorist, starting with Osama bin Laden.
And yes Goldberg retweeted that. Next time you see a Tav HaYosher or read a story about Uri L’Tzedek, remember this is who they really are. This is what they really are.
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