Yesterday, Jenny Merkin posted Max Blumenthal’s recent video of mostly young Jewish internationals in Jerusalem swearing allegiance to the State of Israel via a loyalty oath crafted by Blumenthal in the spirit of the Führereid, you know that oath the Nazi Wehrmacht swore to ze Führer. Astonishingly, most of Blumenthal’s subjects proudly swore the oath (some with a disturbing level of zealotry).
Max has a penchant for showing us that the goyim don’t have a monopoly on crazy. Though, recent developments (i.e. Rabbis Yehuda Levin and Ovadia Yosef to name but two) make me think that radically right-wing Jews are doing that just fine on their own.
Jenny argues that this particular video is “disingenuous” and “purposefully damning.”
Well, of course it’s purposefully damning. That’s the point. As for being disingenuous, … I’m not so sure.
Ultimately, what Max Blumenthal has shown us is that inebriated college students and twenty-somethings will say just about anything on camera. I’m fairly certain I could get footage of college students agreeing to some horrifying propaganda on a Friday night here in liberal, hippie Boulder if I had any desire to. Some might argue that this is when we see people’s true colors. Could be. But, Blumenthal’s experiment is dubious to say the least, which I think he would likely admit to.
Nonetheless, the video brings up two important points.
1. Liberal (and not so liberal) Jewish youth love to make an exception for Israel.
In one of his interviews, Max asks one of his subjects if they would swear loyalty to the hypothetical “Christian state of the U.S.”
The young woman from L.A. answers:
“The U.S. is not a Christian state … if they would ask me [that], then it wouldn’t be the U.S. … because the U.S. is freedom for all, freedom of religion.”
Right, so there is a contradiction. You can’t demand loyalty to the dominant group in the U.S. because it would go against the state’s liberal democratic tendencies. Good point.
Then, Max asks her if she was a Palestinian would she declare loyalty to a Jewish state.
She responds: “If I agreed with what they had to say, yes. If not, then I’d move. That’s how it is. That’s where you live. They’re not bad to the Palestinians at all. I’ve done the research and I’m happy with it.”
Yeah! Wait, what? But you just said that the U.S. can’t demand a similar oath because it would be undemocratic. So, it’s not OK for the U.S. to do it, but for Israel, it’s cool? “Freedom for all” isn’t the Israeli way apparently. Sigh.
Is it about Jewish solidarity?
Here’s the thing. You can’t be all liberal and lefty in terms of American politics and then argue for absolutist Jewish hegemony for Israel or, worse, stay tacitly supportive. If that’s truly the state that you want in Israel (homogenous, illiberally democratic, absurdly nationalist) great, fine. But you can’t have it both ways. Let’s show a little consistency in our politics, people.
2. In this ongoing debate on the loyalty oaths, we all really love to draw comparisons between Israel and other countries.
Case in point, Max making the comparison to Nazi Germany. Come on now, comparing Israel to the Nazis is a bit much. Glenn Beck is the one with the Hitler fetish, and no one wants to be like Glenn Beck. So, let’s try again and lose the comparisons to ze Germans.
I know, I know Max writes:
“Were we suggesting that the Jewish state of Israel represented a new incarnation of Hitler’s Third Reich? Of course not. We repudiate sweeping comparisons of Israel to Nazi Germany as shallow and ahistorical.”
Nice sentiment, but you do seem to draw quite the parallel.
Lee Smith’s article for Tablet, which was heralded as a “reasonable argument” in favor of loyalty oaths makes the point that jus sanguinis or “right of blood” is common throughout European countries, therefore it is not racist for Israel to employ a similar measure. Jus sanguinis is a tired relic of 19th century nationalism and is ethnocentric and prejudicial in any context, including the Israeli one.
To use a choice Obama phrase: let me be clear, it’s all bad.
