Last Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, which I did not know really still existed, had an impressive article by Nathan Thrall, “How the Battle Over Israel and Anti-Semitism Is Fracturing American Politics”, which, shockingly enough, confirms about half of what the notorious Ilhan Omar had to say about Jews, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), and, you know, Benjamins. According to Thall,
Despite pointed critiques of American support for Israel by representatives like Betty McCollum of Minnesota, [Rashida] Tlaib (Mich) and Omar, there is little willingness among Democrats to argue publicly for substantially changing longstanding policy toward Israel. In part, some Hill staff members and former White House officials say, this is because of the influence of megadonors: Of the dozens of personal checks greater than $500,000 made out to the largest PAC for Democrats in 2018, the Senate Majority PAC, around three-fourths were written by Jewish donors.
It isn’t quite clear if Thrall is telling us that “some Hill staff members and former White House officials” say that Jewish donors write three fourths of the big checks or if he’s telling us that on his own. I can recall reading an article in the New Yorker back in the very early, pre-9/11 days of the Bush Administration, when Karl “Turd Blossom” Rove was trying to co-op the “moderate centrist” vote rather than solidify the right, that one of Rove’s goals was, not to stop the Jews from voting Democratic (that was deemed impossible), but to stop them from giving the Democrats so damn much money—80 percent of the take.
Thrall quotes loquacious former Obama advisor Ben Rhodes as saying “The Washington view of Israel-Palestine is still shaped by the donor class. The donor class is profoundly to the right of where the activists are, and frankly, where the majority of the Jewish community is.” He also quotes Peter Joseph, “an emeritus chairman of the center-left Israel Policy Forum,” as saying “I can’t imagine that mainstream Democratic Jewish donors are going to be happy about any Democratic Party that is moving in that direction,” “that direction” being regarding Israeli treatment of Palestinians as “apartheid”, in Jimmy Carter’s memorable phrase.
Much of Thrall’s article is devoted to discussing the “Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions” (“BDS”) movement, which Omar supports and which AIPAC is trying to make illegal. BDS is, to my mind, hypocritical and anti-Semitic—and, really, “anti-thought”, a form of intellectual shunning that effectively labels Israel as “unclean”. Israel is no worse than many other countries, and better than quite a few. But it is far from perfect, and the real goal of AIPAC in this matter is not so much to prevent BDS—though of course that is a goal—but to prevent a discussion of Israel’s many shortcomings and crimes. I don’t support BDS, but I do support ending the $4 billion a year subsidy the U.S. provides Israel, a subsidy which functions largely as an annual AIPAC fund-raising tool—“Save Israel! Make this year’s subsidy the biggest and best ever! Write a check to AIPAC today!”—and I support ending our massive overinvestment in the Middle East on behalf of both Israel and Saudi Arabia, an overinvestment that has brought us little but disaster, as I have claimed and proclaimed lo these many times.
Afterwords (largely nostalgic]
I personally have not seen a Sunday Times in years. The last time I did the magazine resembled a razor (single edge). I can remember when the magazine alone weighed a pound or more, and carried more ads than a December issue of Playboy, which at that time resembled a Christmas Sears catalog for teenage boys—that is to say, a “September Vogue” for teenage boys, to find a simile that (maybe) has some continued cultural relevance. The Internet tells me that the September 2007 issue of Vogue was so fat with “Fall Looks” that it weighed almost five pounds and was the subject of a 2009 documentary, The September Issue. I have not seen The September Issue, nor have I seen an issue of Vogue since about 2007, when I read an article about how money can so make you beautiful while waiting for a haircut. I suspect that the 2019 September will still be fat, but I can’t believe it will weigh five pounds.
