I think the main problem is Israel, not Jews in general. There are many American Jews who are loyal, patriotic Americans. Ironically, I had more friendships and interactions with Jews, blacks, and other minorities growing up in Alabama than I have had in Colorado, where the most visible minority is Hispanic. Growing up, the family next door was Jewish, and I never thought of them as anything but American. The main difference was that we seldom shared meals because they kept kosher. However, today I am worried by people like Sheldon Adelson, Haim Saban, even Senator Charles Schumer, as well as organizations like AIPAC, and Israelis like Bibi Netanyahu and Avigdor Lieberman. How would they come down if they had to choose between Israel and America?
Israel is in a difficult position. It wants to be a racially pure country, the “Jewish state” that Netanyahu wants the Palestinians to recognize, which unfortunately echoes Hitler’s attempt to make Germany racially pure. More and more, Israel is a country of Ashkenazi Jews; even Sephardic Jews are second rate citizens, much less other ethnicities. On the other hand, if Israel does not remain an ethnically pure Jewish state, the Palestinians will in a few years become the majority population of Israel, ending Jewish dominance of the government.
White men, mainly Anglo-Saxons of British ancestry, took North America from the Indians; so, it would be just another page for the history books for the Jews to take North America from the Anglo-Saxons
Of course it is not just the Jews, Asians, including the Indians from South Asia, are also on the ascendant, but they so far are not acquiring the financial and political power that the Jews have. They are not united in supporting one country outside of the US. Many of them, except for a few Indian financiers, seem content to remain millionaires, not become billionaires. They also don’t have the political power that Jews do. There are relatively few in Congress, compared to the huge caucus of Jews, who make up a much larger percentage of the political elite in Washington, than their proportion of the population at large. There is also a different attitude toward the country they came from. Asians left their own country, India, China or Vietnam for example, because they wanted to go somewhere else. As a result I don’t feel that America is nearly as threatened by Asians as it is by Jews.
Most Jews immigrated to the U.S. before Israel was created. They never left their “homeland” for political or other reasons. They left Germany or Russia because things were bad there, but they didn’t leave Israel because things were bad there. Many Jews slip back and forth between the US and Israel, often having dual citizenship. Rahm Emanuel, the mayor of Chicago, chose to serve as a volunteer in the Israeli military rather than the American military. He apparently served in the IDF in Israel during the first Gulf War in 1991. It’s possible that he might not have qualified for the American military because he is missing part of a finger. Also his father emigrated from Israel to the US, not from Europe. Nevertheless, it is odd to have someone who held one of the most influential positions in the US Government, President Obama’s chief of staff, who served in a foreign army while remaining an American citizen.
Another question for me is Stanley Fischer, the new vice chairman of the Federal Reserve, a job he took after being governor of the Bank of Israel from 2005 to 2013. He was born in Rhodesia, studied in Israel as a teenager, got undergraduate degrees in England, and got a Ph.D. at MIT, where he also taught. He became an American citizen in 1976. Apparently Israel made him take Israeli citizenship to be governor of their central bank, but Israel did not force him to give up his American citizenship; so, he is now a dual national. I guess I should be happy that he was an American citizen before he was an Israeli citizen and that he didn’t renounce his American citizenship. Also, at the Fed, Israel’s interests are unlikely to conflict with America’s, but if they do, can he be trusted, especially since his boss, Janet Yellen, is also Jewish, and of course most bankers, especially in New York City are Jewish. When America was founded, almost everybody in the American government was of British birth or ancestry, but they also fought several wars (the Revolution and 1812) against Britain.
I am not well connected to any immigrant community, but got some glimpses when I served in the American embassies in Warsaw and Rome. The embassy in Warsaw had a big contingent of Polish-Americans, and the embassy in Rome had a huge contingent of Italian-Americans. Italian-Americans had a very close, loving relationship with Italy. It was a little different in Warsaw because Warsaw was just coming out of 50 years under Communist rule. The Polish-Americans had never lived under Communism; in some ways they wanted to do more to help their former countrymen than the Italians did, but in some ways, they were a little more distant, trying to figure out how to handle the remaining Communist influences in Poland.
So, what do American Jews think about Israel being such a racist country? Clearly some are worried about it, the Jews who support J-Street, for example, but most seem to say, “Israel right or wrong, I love it.” There are a lot of bad countries in the world that violate human rights more than Israel does, but the United States is not their sugar daddy. When it wants to, Israel acts like it is a 51st state, insatiably taking, taking, taking all that its Jewish Congressmen and Senators will give it, aided by their born-again, fundamentalist Christian colleagues who also support Israel strongly in Congress. Israel is the biggest recipient of US assistance, except Afghanistan because of the war, despite the fact that Israel is much richer and more developed than any other recipient of such aid.
Jews curse America for refusing to take in more Jews before and during World War II; yet, Israel declares itself a Jewish state, accepting only Jews. Why couldn’t America have done like Israel and declared itself a Christian state in the 1940s, refusing to take in any Jews at all?
The New York Times recently reported that Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League conducted a poll that found that 26% of the world population was anti-Semitic. It turns out that most of those anti-Semites are Arabs and Muslims, especially Palestinians. However, the article says, “The most widely held stereotype, the survey showed, was an affirmative answer to this statement: “Jews are more loyal to Israel than to this country/the countries they live in.” I’m sorry Mr. Foxman, but I worry that this statement is true. While you may think this says something bad about me, I think it shows that many Jews need to do more to show that they are loyal and patriotic citizens of the United States.
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