[lit-ideas] Re: Vanunu's Secret
- From: Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 25 Apr 2004 04:01:41 -0700 (PDT)
Carol was saying somewhere that Andreas and
overestimate the power of the Zionist lobby, and then
that there are American Jews who are not sympathetic
to Israel. I cannot provide the exact quote, because
it would require me to wade through a dozen scattered
messages, but it is pretty clear that the equation of
'the Zionist lobby' with the Jews was made by Carol
herself. I recognize the fact that there are American
Jews who are critical of Israel, though this seldom
goes as deep as questioning the Zionist ideal itself -
oddly enough given that these people themselves do not
live in the self-designated 'Jewish state.'
Unfortunately, these people do not have anything like
the organization and influence of the Zionist Jews.
Another point that could be made here, though Carol
for some reason does not make it, is that the American
Zionism today is increasingly an ideology of
fundamentalist Christians, who may not be motivated by
love of Israel as much as hatred of Arabs and Muslims.
Neither group is obviously guided by rational
considerations of US interest.
In general, I would be skeptical about the proposition
that states, like some kind of Nietzschean Supermen,
always act on their rationally perceived
self-interest. States are at least as complex and
fragmented as human individuals, and at least as prone
to act irrationally. They also make mistakes, and
seemingly rational calculations may not be completely
so at bottom.
O.K.
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