With Friends Like These: The Jewish Critics of Israel

by Edward Alexander (Editor)

Jews who criticize Israel have become the darlings of the media, the State Department, and, of course, the Arabs. One can hardly open a newspaper or tune in to a television talk show without encountering these detractors. Now Edward Alexander offers analysis and includes controversial essays by leading writers on this hot topic.

Contents:
Anti-semitism, Israeli-style ; Michael Lerner : the would-be king of American Jewry / Edward Alexander --
Thomas Friedman's Israel : the myth of unrequited love / Jerold S. Auerbach --
Milton Viorst : master of the double standard / David Bar-Illan --
Anthony Lewis : savior of Israel's soul / Yitzhak Ben-Zvi --
The hidden alliances of Noam Chomsky / Werner Cohn --
Israelis against themselves / Rael Jean and Erich Isaac --
New Jewish agenda : the Jewish wing of the Anti-Israel lobby / Rael Jean Isaac --
The normalization of the Jews : Jerome Segal and the Stockholm five / Jacob Neusner --
Israel : a lamentation from the future / Norman Podhoretz --
The new Israel fund : financing Palestinian nationalism / Joseph Puder --
"Phony Israel" : an exercise in nastiness / Marie Syrkin --
Epilogue / Edward Alexander.

Edward Alexander, editor ; preamble by Cynthia Ozick.

Paperback

First published January 1, 1992

Reviews

[Gary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Last year during the Israel-Hezbullah War, after Hezbullah had attacked Israel from Lebanon, and while Jewish children were hiding terrified in bomb shelters, something was done in South Africa that really revolted me.

A group of about 40 'South Africans of Jewish descent': mainly academics, media people and partisans of the ruling Marxist-Leninist ANC signed a petition in the country's major newspapers, viciously condemmning Israel, accusing her of war crimes and genocide and muttering dark threats that support for Israel threatened the moral and physical survival of the Jewish people.
The phenomenon of Jews who side with Israel's genocidal enemies has been with us for decades, but these characters have become particularly brazen and vicious since Arafat launched the simultaneous propaganda and terror war against Israel in September, 2000.

This book was first published 7 years before the Rosh ha Shana War that I have mentioned, at a time when fewer Jews where willing to denounce Israel in the vicious and genocidal terms that we are observing today.

Then it was the PLO that they expressed such overt sympathy and support for. Today it is Hamas, Hezbullah and the Ahmadinejad and Assad regimes in Iran and Syria.

This book deals with both murderous Israel-haters like Noam Chomsky who make their desire for the destruction of Israel and their support for the PLO (now Hamas, Hezbullah, Iran and Syria) quite clear, and also
with Jews like Thomas Friedman and Anthony Lewis who believe that they must be cruel to ber kind to Israel, and that supporting pressure on Israel is a necesary prelude to peace or at least the "purification' of Israel's soul".
As Alexander points out: ' Jews who sympathize with the aims of the PLO are few in number, but exercise a tyranny over the majority in the prominence they command in public discourse and in their influence on public decisions.
The ease with which such "display Jews" vault to international prominence is not hard to explain. They are like the proverbial dog dancing on hind legs. It is not done well, but people are surprised to find it done at all. Surprise guarantees attention.'
Observing that these so-called critics aim to play the role of Biblical prophets "it is the aim of this book to strip away these long robes and reveal the naked hatred and self-love they often feel".
In the introduction the editor refers to the story by the Yiddish writer IL Peretz called "The Shabbos Goy". The story concerns a Chelm Rabbi adept at explaining away the brutality of a non-Jewish servant towards a Jew named Yankele. The Rabbi eventually concludes that Yankele's very existance and preference of living over dying is a provocation to murder. He banishes Yankele from the town and increases the pay and liquor rations of the gentile servant.
Referring to diaspora Jews who say that Israel must dissapear because it is an embarassment to them in their circles (Tony Judt comes to mind) Alexander concludes with reference to "The Shabbos Goy": "We will not consent that Yankele should be asked to leave Zion just so that his co-religionists should be at ease in exile."
In the chapter entitled "anti-Semitism Israeli-style" Edward Alexander refers to the repulsive and evil strategy of transforming, in the popular imagination, "Jews into Nazis and Arabs into Jews".
He refers to the resentment by Palestinian Arabs 'that Jews should monopolize all that beautiful holocaust suffering which they would very much like, ex post facto, to share. Freud spoke of a sickness he called "penis envy". Palestinian Arabs suffer from what might be called "Holocaust envy", a feeling so strong that it prevents them from seeing that their compulsive desire to appropriate a history that is not their own is itself powerful proof of just how contrived and artificial is the Palestinian sense of national identity. A movement that can concieve of itself only as a mirror of it's Jewish enemy is an anti-nation that deserves it's whole purpose and meaning from the desire to destroy a living nation'.
One of the contributors to this digest, David Bar-Illan, demolishes the myths by anti-zionist American journalist and pro-Arab propagandist Milton Viorst., while Werner Cohn reveals in the "The Hidden Alliances of Noam Chomsky", Chomsky's close association with Neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers, in his vicious jihad against Israel. Usually left-wingers are very sensitive about Neo-Nazis, but they will make an aception for their idol and ideological mentor Noam Chomsky.
Cohn quotes Chomsky who wrote the following:
"I see no anti-Semitic implications in denial of the gas chambers or even denial of the Holocaust.
The editor even reveals how pro-Arab and anti-Israel Jewish propagandists like Israel Shahak and Michael Lerner have been praised by the USA's top Neo-Nazi and right wing anti-Semite Pat Buchanan.
The contributors to this book demolish the myths put forward by Jewish anti-Zionists, exposing them as the moral charlatans and hate-mongers that they are, and blow away the covers that they use to conceal their cowardice.
The editor quotes Isaiah's warning that "Your destroyers and those who lay you waste shall come forth from your midst."