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September/October 2008-Opinion
Stop Blaming the (Jewish) Neo-Conservative Cabal!
David Frum
Who wrote the following?
“The fact that a great many Jewish neoconservatives—people like Joe Lieberman and the crowd over at Commentary—plumped for this war, and now for an even more foolish assault on Iran, raised the question of divided loyalties….”
Pat Buchanan? The notorious British MP George Galloway? No—it was Joe Klein, a Jewish columnist for Time Magazine, writing on the magazine’s website on June 24, 2008.
Okay, how about this explanation of the U.S.-Israel relationship: “The pro-Israel lobby has been remarkably successful in suppressing criticism.” Jimmy Carter? The head of Aramco? No again: That was from Holocaust survivor George Soros.
See if you can identify who replied thus to a question about the likelihood of war with Iran: “You just have to read what’s in the Israeli press. The Jewish community is divided, but there is so much pressure being channeled from the New York money people to the office seekers.”
Former congresswoman Cynthia McKinney? Some ranting imam recorded by MEMRI.org? Nope. It was General Wesley Clark, descendant of Jewish immigrants from Belarus.
Finally, who would dare suggest that Jews see the Holocaust as a device that “authorizes Jews to make [claims] upon the international community”? David Irving? Once again, no: It is Tony Judt, a descendant of a line of Lithuanian rabbis and a distinguished professor at NYU.
Since 9/11, anti-Semitic conspiracy theories have gained a new audience in the United States and around the world. These theories have often won unexpected endorsements. In 2002, for example, The New Statesman—an English publication whose board of directors was once ornamented by John Maynard Keynes—published a story titled “A Kosher Conspiracy,” illustrated with a cover image of a shiny golden Star of David piercing and crushing a flattened Union Jack. In this country, the conspiracizing comes courtesy of the distinguished house of Farrar Straus & Giroux, publishers of The Israel Lobby by Professors Walt and Mearsheimer. The American variant is rather less explicit than the British version, but no less sinister.
These examples are only the most lurid manifestation of a broader trend. I cannot even begin to tally how many hundreds of times in the past half-dozen years I have been asked the same question: “So tell me about the role of the [long pause] neocons in the Bush administration?” The question is asked with excruciating embarrassment by German journalists, with guileless bluntness by Korean civil servants and with every possible range of emotion in between—but it is always, always asked, sustained by a global media campaign of breathless insinuation.
What can one say in reply? That the conspiracy theory is all wrong, bizarre, crazy? But then of course…that’s exactly what a conspirator would say, wouldn’t he?
The idea that world events are manipulated by a secretive Jewish cabal is hardly a new one. Since 1945, however, such theories have become rather disreputable. Even those who continue to believe them until recently felt constrained to conceal their beliefs.
Those decencies have weakened in the past decade. Dark fantasies once banished to the crackpot corners of modern life can now command an hour of airtime on the BBC’s flagship documentary program, Panorama. Here’s the opening of a program that aired May 18, 2003:
Guest 1: “It’s like a gang, you know… it’s like Mafia. They’ll take on everyone.”
Host: “It’s a story of people who stick together.”
Guest 2: “It’s real fundamental love and power.”
Host: “But to outsiders they could be a mystery.”
Guest 3: “How is it that these people, you know, gain such influence so quickly?”
Such fantasizing has never required the permission or the cooperation of Jews. But as the saying goes: It helps.
When prominent persons of Jewish origin like those I quoted above lend credence to anti-Semitic delusions, they embolden and empower the deluded. Their words matter—and tragically, words are not necessarily rendered less harmful by their falsity. Indeed, if falsehood were enough to render an accusation harmless, the annals of Jewish history would have been spared almost all their saddest pages.
These people do not, of course, intend harm to the Jewish community. But partisan passions make idiots of us all. Those passions have run strong in recent years—intensified by new technologies that allow journalists to publish almost faster than they can think.
Politically, the American Jewish community remains predominantly liberal. Anti-Bush feeling runs strong. In the urgency of debate, some Bush critics have shown themselves willing to reach for any weapon at hand. Some of these critics, including some of the Jewish critics, have found one of the most ancient and vicious weapons waiting ready for their use—and they have not scrupled to make use of it, overconfident that they will be able to put it away when they have finished with it.
Let us all hope that they (and we) do not discover what generations of suffering Jews before our time discovered at terrible cost: Hatreds are easy to stoke and easy to exploit—but not so easy to quell when the stokers’ and exploiters’ purposes are fulfilled.
David Frum is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and writes a daily column for National Review Online.