Excommunication?

New Republic editor Martin Peretz not only endorses the AJC's "Jews who have different political opinions from ours are anti-semities" essay (naturally) but also advances the idiosyncratic view that George Soros isn't Jewish.

Comments

I didn't know that Jews had excommunication. Learn something every day!

Posted by: dell on January 31, 2007 04:01 PM

To hardcore zionists like Marty Mart, jews who aren't hardcore zionists are obviously self-loathing traitors.

Posted by: Murph on January 31, 2007 04:04 PM

What if you're startled that "AJC" references something other than the Atlanta Journal-Constitution? Does that make you an anti-semite?

Posted by: L. on January 31, 2007 04:11 PM

I believe the correct term is "self-loathing Jew..."

whoops, Murph beat me to that one.

Posted by: Monty on January 31, 2007 04:14 PM

Is Walter from the Big Lebowski more Jewish than Soros in Marty's mind?

"Jewish as f-in Tevye."

Posted by: Matthew Struhar on January 31, 2007 04:19 PM

I used to think Peretz was just kind of a obnoxious jerk, but after reading his post I find him completelly despicible. People that work for him should be as embarassed as those who work for Sun Myung Moon. Who does he think he is, declaring who and who is not an acceptable Jew based on how they conform to his own political ideology?

Scumbag.

Posted by: Matthew on January 31, 2007 04:22 PM

This century gets more and more like Invasion of the Body Snatchers every day. Although, in this case, I guess it's Invasion of the Yamaka Snatchers.

At any rate, is Peretz doing that thing of pointing his finger and gurgling insanely? I mean, I would pay money to see that.

m, I'm guessing the idea here is to elect an entire new set of replacement Jew

Posted by: max on January 31, 2007 04:24 PM

Regarding AJC, I read Commentary every now and again (in a sort of 'trip to the freakshow' kind of way); one particularly amusing exercise is to count the number of times "anti-semite/semitism" appears every issue.

(Note: possible drinking game?)

Posted by: Monty on January 31, 2007 04:31 PM
m, I'm guessing the idea here is to elect an entire new set of replacement Jew

Ahem: Jews. Damn, there's a whole riff in there ('New Jew Revue'!) Will there be picketing? Strikes? Scabs? Like the NFL strike in the 80's?

Anyways, it occurs to me, that they (they being 'the Jews', 'the Jews' being Marty and J-Pod and J-Pod's daddy) could just like up and declare the evangelicals 'the New Jews'. Like 'Jews for Jesus' in reverse! Seriously! The evangelicals are ready to go to war, they love the Old Testament (i.e. the Torah) and whatnot; you just gotta wedge Jesus in there somehow. Plus, if they kick out all the Anti-Semites Evil Leftists Formerly Known As Jews from Israel, they'll be plenty of room for everybody! Gonna be hell gettin' 'em to keep kosher tho.

Tom Lehrer was right to quit.

m, I'm sorry but this is some real quality entertainment here

Posted by: max on January 31, 2007 04:34 PM

I think Rosenfeld's complaint about the resurgence of tropes such as Jews as "contaminators of Palestinian water sources" would probably be more effective if Jewish settlers hadn't actually poisoned Palestinian water sources (and farmland and livestock.)

Posted by: hed on January 31, 2007 04:37 PM

Peretz might find phrenology a useful tool in assessing the Jewishness of his political opponents.

Posted by: brendan on January 31, 2007 04:37 PM

but also advances the idio...tic view that George Soros isn't Jewish.

Fixed.

Man, Cathy Young's accusation of anti-Semitism against Dr. Alterman make a lot more sense, now. (And Dr. Alterman still hasn't apologized for his attempts to deny being an anti-Semitic, self-hating Jew. Which I think is somehow redundant.)

Posted by: mds on January 31, 2007 04:43 PM

Do I understand correctly that Peretz's post on how everyone else is an anti-semite, actually ends by accusing a prominent Jew of being "animated by greed"? Wow.

Posted by: Noah on January 31, 2007 04:45 PM

Peretz jumped the shark a long time ago, but you have to hand it to him because he has enough people kissing his behind that he can blissfully be unaware of his actual perception amongst considered thinkers and keep on keeping on.

Posted by: Jimm on January 31, 2007 04:46 PM

Martin Peretz is turning me into an anti-semite

Posted by: a on January 31, 2007 04:48 PM

... he has enough people kissing his behind that he can blissfully be unaware of his actual perception amongst considered thinkers and keep on keeping on.

Alas, this phenomenon is not limited to Uber-Jewish pseudo-journalists.

Posted by: Scott Ferguson on January 31, 2007 05:17 PM

It's Jewier-than-thou, with Marty Peretz!

Martin Peretz is turning me into an anti-semite

Nah: he's turning 90% of Jews into anti-semites. The point isn't that he's a Jew: it's that he's a cunt.

Posted by: pseudonymous in nc on January 31, 2007 05:26 PM

All this time I thought the Jews were G-d's chosen people, and it turned out it's actually Marty Peretz?!

Posted by: dj moonbat on January 31, 2007 05:40 PM

Alas, this phenomenon is not limited to Uber-Jewish pseudo-journalists.

Indeed.

Posted by: Jimm on January 31, 2007 05:44 PM

Speaking as a close, personal friend of Martin Peretz, I am once again shocked and saddened to see young Matt Yglesias slinging mud at such an honorable and enlightened man.

Marty's opinion that George Soros is not actually Jewish may be unique, but it is hardly "idiosyncratic". It is the expert opinion of a brilliant and analytical mind that has cultivated the world's most powerful Jewdar. Ever since he was bitten by a radioactive Arab at the Osirak reactor site in Iraq while leading a black ops mission for the Mossad, Marty has possessed supernatural powers of observation and can detect Jewishness from up to a quarter-mile away. Soros gives off a corrupted Jewdar signature, likely due to secret feelings of self-loathing, although Peretz is willing to concede that it may have been signal interference from a nearby power line.

More importantly, Soros opposed the Iraq War, so he's obviously an anti-Semite.

Posted by: Peretzzatura on January 31, 2007 05:53 PM

Re the question of whether George Soros is a Jew, didn't the Nazis put out some guidelines a few decades back. Is that what
Marty's consulting?

Posted by: Don Williams on January 31, 2007 06:01 PM

Soros isn't Jewish? Pat Buchanon is gonna be crushed.

Posted by: aleks on January 31, 2007 06:14 PM

Spinoza was excommunicated. He was teh self-hating Jew.

Posted by: Gary Sugar on January 31, 2007 06:38 PM

Matt -- I think you're playing fast and loose with a serious issue. Just go on any blog comments -- including your own though it appears more sane than most -- and see how fast criticism of Israel degenerates into questions about whether Israel should exist -- based upon standards that no other nation has or can live up to. You're being naive and, although Marty's cheese has slipped off the cracker, yours is starting to slip the other way.

I don't buy that all those "critics of Israel" (who treat Israel as a unitary entity, your entreaties nothwithstanding) are well meaning and good natured political adversaries.

Good luck with your blog but you lost this guy.

Posted by: bob on January 31, 2007 06:42 PM

bob, unless you're talking about Trevor - who everyone here has called out as an idiot - who exactly are you talking about?

Posted by: Reality Man on January 31, 2007 06:45 PM

When Peretz says "the point is that he[Soros] isn't a Jew" he may simply mean he is not "of the faith". I am fairly certain Soros is an avowed atheist. In that case Peretz is correct to deny that he is a Jew in a religious sense. I think people in the comments seem to equate "Jew" with an ethnic, genetic, or cultural group.
However, I don't know if Peretz is an observant Jew. If he means by "Jew" only Jews who agree with his worldview thn the criticism seems fair to me.

Posted by: Irving Washington on January 31, 2007 06:57 PM

I don't buy that all those "critics of Israel" (who treat Israel as a unitary entity, your entreaties nothwithstanding) are well meaning and good natured political adversaries.

Of course there are anti-semites in the world. Of course there are anti-Zionists. Of those two groups, some of them will seek to portray themselves as mere "critics of Israel." So what? You're just knocking down strawmen here.

There are plenty of people who pass themselves off as "friends of Israel" who actually have a much more insidious agenda, but that doesn't lead me to make sweeping generalizations about "friends of Israel" in general.

Posted by: Steve on January 31, 2007 07:01 PM

I thought Yglesias was an athiest also. A lot of my Jewish friends don't believe in god, but they consider themselves culturally Jewish. Many Jewish intellectuals, such as Albert Einstein and Leo Strauss, were not exactly religious, but they were still culturally Jewish. (Does anyone know if Freud and Bohr were practicing Jews?) Personally, I don't believe in god, but I do culturally identify with the religions of my ancestors as part of my cultural heritage (Hinduism, Buddhism, Catholicism).

Posted by: Reality Man on January 31, 2007 07:21 PM

what kind of Jew is named Yglesias anyway. Seems like a plant.

Posted by: bob on January 31, 2007 07:31 PM

Matt --

two points -- first, i don't think you actually read the article (and I'm sure most of your commentators didn't). There is quite a difference between legitimate criticism of Israel and Neteurei karta, not to mention the boycott of Israeli academics organized by Hilary and Steven Rose (the type of boycott described by the head of the Anglican church as morally abtuse). In fact, the AJC article concerns radical Jews that make Chomsky look conservative by comparison (a fact noted in the article). For you not to see this and instead to get your gander up is deceitful. but hey -- you used to argue facts and now you call your opponents "hacks" and "morons". Did they teach you how to argue like that at Harvard?

second - typical of the Times the headline is misleading in its description of Israel's critics as "Liberal" Jews. I wouldn't consider Rose, Neumann, et al to be "Liberal" at all -- in fact they are quite far to the Left. You used to be the kind of guy that knew the difference.

I guess I must go to Totten and Kamm for that perspective now.

Posted by: TomKat on January 31, 2007 07:53 PM

I didn't know that Jews had excommunication. Learn something every day!

See: Spinoza, Baruch

Posted by: Betty Black on January 31, 2007 07:53 PM

I guess I must go to Totten and Kamm

Now that's a concern troll.

Posted by: Scott Lemieux on January 31, 2007 08:00 PM

Of course Peretz isn't 'motivated by greed' like Soros. He married his wife because he's fascinated by sewing machines.

Posted by: Tom Hilton on January 31, 2007 08:12 PM

Scott,

I guess in this liberal echo-chamber troll = someone who bothered to read what's being referenced.

Best,

TK

Posted by: TomKat on January 31, 2007 08:41 PM

what a cock.

meanwhile, i used to work for the AJC, and so i have a bit of perspective on alvin rosenfeld that others may not. he, for instance, is also a cock. and none of what he wrote in his latest anal-ysis is new to his more avid readers. the freaked-out arab-haters/bush-lovers at the AJC really dig his schtick. so this whole thing isn't out of nowhere. i actually am in the middle of drafting a pretty angry letter to my former employer over this. the place is a cesspool, propped up by rich jews who represent no one but their self-satisfied fearful selves. the new republic and the AJC are, in any case, obvious bedfellows in all sorts of ways.

Posted by: joe on January 31, 2007 08:49 PM

damn, i couldn't help but notice upthread that pseudonymous called peretz a cunt. i don't know how we'll ever resolve this one.

Posted by: joe on January 31, 2007 08:56 PM

Maybe he's just a fuck?

Posted by: dj moonbat on January 31, 2007 09:09 PM

"Martin Peretz is turning me into an anti-semite
Posted by: a on January 31, 2007 04:48 PM"

Considering the kind of white hot anger reading what he wrote provoked in me, I'd have to say "Me too."

Posted by: MNPundit on January 31, 2007 09:21 PM

TomKat, I've read the article, and I don't think you've read it.

Check, and mate.

As for Rosenfeld, desperate attempts at libel such as his are, at this point, rather boring. He contributes nothing new to the debate. (No kidding, there are people out there who use anti-Zionism as cover for anti-Semitism?) Typical of the genre, he tries to frame opposition to Zionism itself as an inherently anti-Jewish position, which, of course, it is not.

Posted by: M. Duss on January 31, 2007 09:23 PM

Matt Yglesias' real name is Herschel Yglesowitz

Posted by: tweez on January 31, 2007 09:37 PM

I seriously doubt that his "isn't a Jew" remark refers to Soros not being a practicing Jew. I don't think Peretz keeps kosher or anything. Anyone know whether he's ever said anything about believing in God? In any case, nobody, not even a Lubavitcher, would ever say that a member of the tribe had ceased to be a Jew because of his political beliefs. If your mother was a Jew, you're a Jew, period. You have a Jewish soul. In fact, ESPECIALLY not the Lubavitchers -- they want to win all those non-practicing Jews back, which requires that they believe that they're still Jews.

I think this basically reflects Peretz's drastic misunderstanding of what being a Jew means, and ought to mean.

Posted by: mattsteinglass on January 31, 2007 09:41 PM

I think Peretz is being idiotic on purpose. Like a drinking game. Nobody can actually think those thoughts and not drool in public.

Posted by: Jeffrey Davis on January 31, 2007 10:14 PM


Ayn Rand was a Jewish atheist. She seems to have attached no signicance to being Jewish and rarely mentioned it.

Posted by: David Tomlin on January 31, 2007 10:48 PM

She seems to have attached no signicance to being Jewish and rarely mentioned it.

She hated the hell out of some Arabs. I bet she was Marty's kind of Jew.

Posted by: Ed Marshall on January 31, 2007 11:04 PM

Excellent discussion. Martin Peretz, perched atop his scanadlous publication, has been pushing out his hateful intoxicating racism against all Peoples of Color he deems inferior to his own [Rich white jews] for much of his unfortunate career. It is of scarce surprise to me that he would also direct his wraths at those jews and non-jewish whites who refuse to stand silent to the suffering that Israel inflicts on the Palestenians & it's neighboring nations daily. I for one, am scarcely surprised that the Bell Curve [the malevolent product of 2 other racist white jews] was inflicted upon amaerican People of Color by this man and his magazine.

Posted by: Shelton on January 31, 2007 11:45 PM


TomKat:

In fact, the AJC article concerns radical Jews that make Chomsky look conservative by comparison (a fact noted in the article).

This referred to Chomsky supporting the two-state solution, while the others favored a one-state solution.

Much of the article is harping on the idea, with which I take it you concur, that it's not 'legitimate' to advocate a one-state solution.

Posted by: David Tomlin on January 31, 2007 11:53 PM


I'm Jewish, my Mom was born in a displaced persons camp in Austria, her parents survived concentration camps, the rest of her family was killed, I have many relatives in Israel, I have lived in Israel--

And I say:

The government of Israel is corrupt, expansionist, murderous, and willing to perpetuate war and terror so as to stay in power.

This criminal government is the logical result of 60 years of absolute denial about the relationship of the existence of the state of Israel to Palestinian suffering. The denial makes Palestinian anger seem incomprehensible. This has been going on, and on, for far too long.

I hope that the current government of Israel collapses. I hope that Palestinians can live as free citizens as their own country.

Given that Israel has insinuated Israelis throughout the West Bank and surrounded East Jerusalem with settlements, mutual extrication is now impossible.

Therefore the only way that Palestinians will live as free citizens in a free state is if the current state of Israel is dissolved into one state for both Israelis and Palestinians.

Saying this makes me anti-Israel and anti-Zionist.

But not an anti-Semite.

Posted by: speakingcorpse on January 31, 2007 11:57 PM

the place is a cesspool, propped up by rich jews who represent no one but their self-satisfied fearful selves.

Rich Jews? OMG those are teh WORST KIND!!!

Posted by: potter on February 1, 2007 12:03 AM

well, to potter, perhaps it was indelicate, but i made note of 'the rich jew' thing because the place is called the American Jewish Committee and purports to represent jews all over the world, e.g. at UN watch, in berlin, etc. i kid you not, they often self-refer as the American Jewish embassy. and yet, they're a bunch of rich, rightwing paranoiacs, unrepresentative of jews in the extreme.

Posted by: joe on February 1, 2007 12:14 AM

"AJC's "Jews who have different political opinions from ours are anti-semities" essay"

Yeah, except that isn't what the essay says.

Just as when you said Abe Foxman branded Wesley Clark an anti-semite, only except for where Abe Foxman expressly stated he wasn't.

Just as when you criticized Leon Wieseltier for calling Tony Judt an anti-semite, only except for that part where he explicitly wrote "Tony Judt is not an anti-semite"

You know, for someone in the midst of a crusade against rhetorical sophistry re: Israel & anti-semitism, & someone who defended Clark's inartful expression against accusations of anti-semitic conspiracy theory, you seem to have a nasty habit of misrepresenting other's views re: Israel/Jews. In the Matthew Yglesias equation, the rules are turned completely on their head; anyone who criticizes another commentator for treating the subject of Israel & the Jews in a manner, to quote Wieseltier "Icily lacking in decency" is accused of anti-semitism baiting.

This becomes especially intolerable when the commentator being taken to task is himself/herself a Jew. Apparantly for a person born to a jewish woman to express any opinion about the character of Jews as a religion or ethnic group that could be constituted as bigoted, prejudicial, stereotypical, or Anti-Semitic is to violate a natural law of physics.

Posted by: DRR on February 1, 2007 01:39 AM

Let's play a game. Compare both of these phrases:

A: "Israel is a murderous state run by members of an evil race out to rule the world via the International Jewish Conspiracy (TR)."
B: "If Jews were just, Israel would enact better policies."
C: "Israel's policies have been self-defeating. The settlement movement represents only a fraction of the Israeli populace, which just happens to be traitors to Israel. If the Israeli right would just get out of the way, Israel could enact the necessary policies to bring about peace."

A is obviously anti-Semitic. B is less obviously anti-Semitic, but it is an anti-Semitic phrase because any person using common sense could infer that the speaker would find the Jews to be unjust without putting words into the speaker's mouth. C is obviously not anti-Semitic. However, if the speaker of C the day before had burned down a synagogue, he would be anti-Semitic, yet the thrust of the phrase would still not be anti-Semitic.

Now take the case of Tony Judt and TNR. Tony Judt - one of the most respected academics on postwar Europe in the US - was fired from TNR for advocated a one-state solution. TNR's owner, Peretz, calls just about anyone who disagrees with him on Israeli issues an anti-Semite while espousing racist views on Arabs. Put two and two together. Abe Foxman has of late become a parody of himself by labeling everything in the world anti-Semitic. On the one-hand, Foxman said Clark "is not an anti-Semite," but on the other hand, said Clark "bought into conspiratorial bigotry." http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/newscontent.php3?artid=13527

In both cases, one of the actions counteracts the other. To say calling some a person who has "bought into conspiratorial bigotry" is not calling them a bigot is the height of sophistry. Saying Clark is not an anti-Semite is just a way of covering one's ass afterwards. When people who call all of their detractors various shades of anti-Semite fire someone for saying something they disagreed with on Israel, saying they don't think Judt is an anti-Semite is just a way TNR covers their collective ass. If Peretz and co. didn't think Judt was an anti-Semite, why don't they offer him his old job and compensation? After all, his last book on European history just garnered critical praise from the likes of Foreign Affairs.

Posted by: Reality Man on February 1, 2007 02:48 AM

Hehe, Replacement Jews.

Make a hell of an American Idol-style TV show.

Peretz could play the Simon judge.

Posted by: alphie on February 1, 2007 05:06 AM

I kinda suspect that Marty has never been within a 1000 miles of an active battlefield. I suspect Marty would be deeply shocked if someone suggested that a Jew would be dumb enough to join the US military. I suspect Marty thinks that the thousands of US soldiers who died in Iraq --and the thousands more who are crippled for life -- are all gentiles.

The Israel Lobby has its own form of anti-semitism -- which is total indifference to the effects of their actions on American Jews. They are like the Rosenbergs who gave Stalin the atomic bomb design because --according to Julius -- Stalin had protected their "co-religionists". As a result , the Jews of New York City have lived for the past 60 years under the threat of being turned into cinders --and will live under that threat for the foreseeable future.

Posted by: Don Williams on February 1, 2007 09:19 AM

I think a number of Rand's acolytes (like Greenspan) are "former" Objectivists since they're locked-in by history into their Jewishness, and pure Objectivism looks askance at all that tribalism. The individual stands alone. One can't be both an individual and a bitter-ender tribal member.

That Rand may have hated Arabs isn't a shock since she dismissed anyone who didn't agree with her. -You can be a great individual as long as you agree with me.

Posted by: Jeffrey Davis on February 1, 2007 09:26 AM

M. Duss -- "check and mate"? without ever citing the article? nice job but i think not.

David Tomlin -- of course advocating a binational state is not anti-semitic. Two points -- first, that's not what the article said. Rosenfeld's point is that criticism of Israel's right to exist by Jews helps to further anti-semitism. In certain respects this is incontestable. Fringe Hasidic groups like Neteurei Karta -- groups that attend the Holocaust denial conference in Iran? It seems to me that in an incontestable example. And Rosenfeld's article covers this example.

I don't believe that Tony Judt is an anti-semite. But I do believe he values certain Left Wing principles (re: the value of the nation state, the use of force, conceptions of "oppressor" and "oppressed" ) more than he values reality (for an excellent example of the left wing intellectual's tendency toward abstraction rather than facts, see Lionel Trilling's intro to George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia).

So to answer your point -- as a responsible intellectual, shouldn't you consider the effects of your advocacy? If Iraq is nearly impossible to put together because of sectarian issues (even when the whole country is Muslim) how could the Israelis and Palestinians possibly live in a state together? The likely effect of a binational state is not Belgium. with the higher Palestinian birthrate, not to mention the more Western focused Israeli mode of living, isn't this a recipe for disaster -- not only the end of the Jewish state but the end of the Jews in Israel?

Best,

TK

Posted by: TomKat on February 1, 2007 09:54 AM

Obviously what is astonishing here is not that the editors and owners of the New Republic continue to indulge in liberal self-hatred as it was 1991 all over again but just how a greedy, un-American, non-Jew like George Soros can even go on living.

Posted by: Linus on February 1, 2007 12:04 PM

more than he values reality

Ah, so you're just a bullshit merchant. Thanks for making it clear.

the more Western focused Israeli mode of living

Less blatant than Marty's raghead-phobia, but there you go. Should Israeli Arabs be expelled? Sterilised? Should the Haredim in Israel be getting even more money for having eight kids, none of whom will serve in the IDF?

Perhaps the one-state solution advocates have actually thought about this, and consider the geography, demographics and intertwined economies incapable of sustaining two states, one of which would be territorially discontiguous? Perhaps Israel can rely upon Ethiopian Jews to serve as its Mexicans, instead of Palestinians.

Posted by: pseudonymous in nc on February 1, 2007 12:24 PM

pseudonymous in nc:

Perhaps Israel can rely upon Ethiopian Jews to serve as its Mexicans, instead of Palestinians.

Israel has for some time had a 'guest worker' program, employing non-Jews who for the most part are also non-Arab.

Israeli apartheid has been more successful than the South African variety, largely because the Israelis have been careful to avoid becoming too dependent on Arab labor.

Posted by: David Tomlin on February 1, 2007 04:58 PM

Marty is a mench but only I can excommunicate.

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Second the posts above about the strategic stupidity of these "experts". They are experts at manipulating the Washington system, and actual wisdom and knowledge of the foreign countries involved would be a detriment to that. It would produce, for example, reasons not to go to war

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