A story with a good dramatic plot was presented as a
true story but was actually a lie based on a deceptive pretense. If you want to
know, the pretense was that immigrants come into a welcoming country as
liberals, but once they get settled, turn conservative and so do their
offspring.
This is false, and no one knows it better than
Canada's politicians –– and from the looks of it, their American counterparts
too –– who manipulate the formula that determines how wide the door of
immigration will be allowed to open so that immigration or lack of it, works to
the advantage of the party in power.
The false story was put out by the Jews who tried to
explain how and why some of them turned coat and became conservative when most
other Jews remained liberal. One group said that liberalism served the Jews
well whereas conservatism punished them for who they are. The opposing group
said that Judaism is conservative by its nature, and when the Jews feel safe,
they naturally gravitate towards it. The reality, however, is that the
undercurrent animating the debate for both sides, was not the status of the
Jews in America but the fate of Israel in the Middle East.
What was happening on the ground in the Middle East,
is that the aggressive settler movement spreading in occupied Palestine ––
composed mostly of North American Jews along with some Europeans –– was
encouraged by the non-Jewish conservatives of America who saw a religious
significance in the story that was unfolding in the region. At the same time,
however, the settler movement was generally opposed by the liberals whose bent
was globalist and non-aggressive.
And then it happened that a Jew who was born in
Brooklyn, New York to a liberal family, turned conservative. When asked, he
gave the iconic definitive explanation as to why he did it. He said he was a
liberal that turned neoconservative because he was mugged by reality. His name
was Irving Kristol, who is now recognized as having been the father of the
neoconservative or neocon movement.
Irving Kristol was also the father of William (Bill)
Kristol who followed in his father's footsteps and eventually became a force to
be reckoned with both inside and outside the neocon movement. And he stood unwaveringly
on the side of Israel. But then, as if mugged by a new reality, the junior
Kristol left the movement and walked right back into the liberal camp, though
not yet officially, and certainly not with the fanfare that his father had
generated.
However, Bill Kristol did something that irked a
diehard neocon named Jonathan S. Tobin. What he did was dissolve an
organization he had set-up to help Israel, and this did not sit well with the
notorious Tobin who expressed his disappointment in an article he wrote under
the title: “Whatever happened to the Emergency Committee for Israel?” printed
on May 31, 2020 in the Jewish publication, Algemeiner.
What the article does is push the undercurrent of the
Jewish internal debate to the surface, thus highlighting the difference between
two kinds of Jews. There is the Jonathan Tobin kind that wants no daylight
between America and Israel no matter the cost to America politically,
diplomatically and otherwise. And there is the Bill Kristol kind that continues
to support Israel but not when the relationship comes at a serious cost to
America, domestically, internationally or otherwise. Here is how the story has
unfolded, according to Jonathan Tobin:
“The Emergency Committee for Israel (ECI) came into
existence in 2010 in response to President Barack Obama's criticism of Israel.
It played a significant role in generating dissent about such folly, and
electing members of the House and Senate who disagreed with the administration.
Earlier this spring, ECI formally disbanded. It's prime mover, William Kristol
has moved on to a different cause. He has become the voice of the Never Trump
movement. He leads a new organization whose purpose is to convince Republicans
to support presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden”.
What this demonstrates is that Jonathan Tobin sees the
game of politico-diplomacy as an end in itself rather than a means to serve a
larger good. To him, the important thing is to win the game, take a victory
lap, take the trophy home and come back into the arena to play another game. As
to Bill Kristol who might have started like Jonathan Tobin, he finally saw that
light was shining bright through the natural fissure that exists between
America and Israel.
What Kristol must have seen was the reality that
Israel cannot get from America more than the latter can give away. He was
mugged by the realization that the more America got diminished by its
association with Israel, the less it will be able to give away. Thus, it is in
the interest of Israel that the abusive relationship, which Tobin and his ilk
are imposing on America, should end here and now.
If that does not happen, the exploitation of the
feeble minds seen in characters like Donald Trump, Lindsey Graham, Tom Cotton,
Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Chris Coons and others will cause America to sink below
the level at which it can still be rescued.