I just read the Jennifer Rubin “Why Jews Hate Palin” piece everyone has been talking about. It’s unbelievably stupid and pretty anti-Semitic. I remember a similar piece from the rightie Rabbi who writes for Newsweek, Marc Gellman, after Lieberman lost the primary (the link is dead, but here’s a blog post that summarizes it). And, of course I know that any American Jewish person who criticizes the Likud party is immediately decried by Commentary et al. as “self-hating”.
I know every ethnic group has its ins and and outs that people outside the ethnic group may not understand. So as a non-Jew, I ask: why do so many right-wing Jewish Americans hate other Jewish Americans so much? Both Gellman and and Rubin, for example, traffic in the most shop-worn anti-Semitic stereotypes in a way that just feels raw and out-of-control to me. Where does this come from?
Funkhauser
I think your first tag pretty much answers your question: they’re Assholes.
More broadly, I think that frustration at being unable to convince co-ethnics of the value of your cause, when your cause seems so right and pure to you, may lead one to believe bad stereotypes about your unenlightened co-ethnics. E.g., wake up sheeple!
Royce
Basically because the right-wing is animated by hatred.
The Main Gauche of Mild Reason
I’ll answer your question with a question:
why do so many right-wing
JewishAmericans hate otherJewishAmericans so much?Sentient Puddle
I started reading it, and just now got to the following part:
I’m not sure I need to read any further. I mean, that assertion goes a long way in explaining why Jews might hate Palin.
Cyrus
When you say Rubin’s piece is anti-Semitic, I didn’t read it, but are you sure about that? Because in modern America there’s a lot of overlap between stereotypes of Jews and stereotypes of liberals. Cosmopolitan, egghead, one is made of money and the other wants yours… I bring this up because it might explain…
They hate liberals in general, and it’s merely a coincidence (although very fortuitous for their careers) that they belong to a minority group that’s predominantly liberal. I’m sure you can also find plenty of blacks who hate Christians, but there’s no money in it these days.
DougJ
why do so many right-wing Jewish Americans hate other Jewish Americans so much?
This is different, though. You hear Bill Cosby lecture other African-Americans and Bill Donahue attack “cafeteria Catholics” and so on, but Rubin pretty much said that all Jewish women were frumpy, for example. That’s a different kind of criticism.
General Winfield Stuck
I think you mean sectarian group, not ethnic, though that may also apply.
The whole world of religious stick poking competition, and I do think most of it is that, just another forum of one upmanship, is something I have never been able to wrap my brain around.
Growing up in the southern Babtist realm, all the poking at Catholics and Jews, about this or that difference in belief just went on past me. Like some kind of internal bullshit filter I was lucky to have, I guess.
Couldn’t wait to get away from it and join the Church of Mary Jane which was a lot more fun and relaxingly carnal.
DougJ
When you say Rubin’s piece is anti-Semitic, I didn’t read it, but are you sure about that?
I think so. I think the stuff about Jewish women is clearly over the line and a lot of the rest is pretty close to over the line.
Scutch
Jennifer Rubin has Asperger’s Syndrome.
Mike Kay
“Commentary” is a notorious neo-con rag
LanceThruster
As an atheist goy, I find that the various factions strive to establish dominance as representing the “mainstream” of Jewish thought. Zionists try to present themselves in this way (though their ascendency is fairly recent). The animosity seems to come from not wishing to lend any other position creedence. Hence, labeling a position untennable based on who holds it or those who support it is more effective than actually challenging the ideas/positions themselves. This results in truth-tellers such as Dr. Norman Finkelstein being declared “self-hating” whereas weasels such as Alan Dershowitz are presented as champions of the mainstream Jewish sensibility.
CanadaGoose
Reading that Sarah Palin’s refusal to say what papers/magazines she read might be construed as
prompts the reply: Indeed, she has much to be modest about.
4tehlulz
How do I blood libel?
Pasquinade
Somewhat related: Coulter’s foreskin issue
Ann Coulter says she’s afraid of anal, foreskin bombings
http://rawstory.com/2009/01/ann-coulter-afraid-anus-foreskin-bombings/
Jake
You can thank the NeoCons for that. I know a hardcore Jew that went full wingnut after the Bush crowd showed unwavering support for Israel. Doesn’t matter why Israel is important to the Right, just that it is. These Jews hate those evil Liberal Jews cause they don’t have Star of David magnets on their SUVs or something.
soonergrunt
@Scutch: My son has Asperger’s Syndrome and would never talk or write about another person or group of people like that.
Jennifer Rubin is an asshole. She might happen to have AS, but that doesn’t relieve her of being an asshole. The AS may make her more intense as an asshole, but she’s an asshole by choice, not by virture of Asperger’s Syndrome.
Demo Woman
@Pasquinade: What a shitty comment.. What would she have passengers do, take laxatives four hours before boarding?
Face
Because a majority of AmJews vote Democratic. It’s a partisan thing, just like EVERYTHING is with these clowns.
Tom Traubert
As an american jew who grew up getting dragged to the temple over which Marc Gellman presides — in fact, he performed my bar mitzvah lo these many years ago — I’m chiming in here to say that I have never in my life met a more hypocritical pile of shit than him.
Carry on.
Mike Kay
Smokin’ Hot Jewish women
Natalie Portman
Scarlett Johansson
Kyra Sedgwick
Sarah Jessica Parker
SI swimsuit model Bar Refael
Rachel Weisz
Goldie Hawn
Maggie Gyllenhaal
Gwyneth Paltrow
Elizabeth Banks
Jennifer Connelly
Brooke Burke
Cain
@Pasquinade:
The question is what is she hiding in her ass and inside her penis.
cain
jl
I stopped reading at the supposed ‘supported Buchanan’ story and skimmed the rest.
Thing that first pops into my mind when I think about Palin is that she is very ready to divide this country into ‘real American’ regions and groups versus not so real regions and groups. And accused Obama and his supporters as supporting terrorists, and other little tidbits like that.
Now, I grew up on farms, and shot varmints withguns, and did manual labor (real American work) from before sun up to after sun down during much of my childhood.
But I did go get PhD educated at college and now am quite sure that I do not now and probably never did qualify for Palin’s real America.
So, if I, a white hetero dude, feel alarm bells from that type of Palin talk, I imagine that Jews (and blacks, and Asians, and Hispanics, and gays, and born city-slickers, and over educated eggheads, and Native-Americans, and… etc etc) also feel alarm bells.
So, I think it starts there. Palin has a very definite idea of what, where and who the real America is, and many just sort of sense that they are not part of it, and can never be part of it.
Basilisc
The right-wing Jews are frustrated because they don’t see why more Jews aren’t right-wing. “We make money like Episcopalians and vote like Puerto Ricans” my Dad (an Eisenhower Repub who was appalled by Goldwater in ‘ 64, left the party and never looked back) used to say. What the righties never realized is what’s obvious to everyone else: that Palin/Huckabee/Hume style Christian triumphalism is way, way more scary to Jews than any criticism of the West Bank settlements (which most American Jews have zero affection for) or shifts in tax rates will ever be. “Judeo-Christian values” strikes most of us as not just patronizing, but fundamentally anti-Semitic. American Dhimmitude, anyone?
FlipYrWhig
IMHO right-wing Jews have an enormous amount of hang-ups about looking “tough,” especially considering that another pernicious stereotype about Jews is that they’re a soft and bookish people. So rightie Jews want to prove that they’re not themselves living up to that stereotype — while nonetheless capitalizing on the existence of that same stereotype.
BDeevDad
@4tehlulz: Genetics counseling is for diseases such as Tay Sachs and Gaucher which no one should put a child through. We had one and said fuck it if our child tested likely for Downs (wife was over 35).
soonergrunt
@Demo Woman:
Shitty, indeed…
Dreggas
Maybe they hate her because they know all too well that her specific brand of christianity sees them as heretics who need to convert or be killed only after Israel and the temple are restored. Most American jews aren’t stupid, they know the “support” they receive from those on the christian right has little to do with them and what they want and more to do with the christian right’s desire to bring about the apocalypse.
Svensker
@Jake:
Yes. I have an older friend who was classic NY Jewish liberal until 9/11, then he went full-on crazy. It’s Israel 24/7 with him now and he practically froths at the mouth if you say anything he disagrees with in the slightest. The odd thing, to me, is that he’s completely secular, hasn’t been in a synagogue except for funerals or weddings in 50 years. But God forbid you should say “gee, don’t you think Israel should think about the settlements?” — for him, it’s the Holocaust all over again and all Jews will die from that one question.
Cassidy
not so much Kyra Sedgwick
Tecumseh
@Sentient Puddle: The article was kind of silly in that it listed about twenty reasons why Jews (of which I am) would hate Sarah Palin but then wonders why towards the end of it. As for the frumpy comments and amount of children Jews have all that other stuff, it’s more silly and stupid than anti-semitic although if somebody wants to call it that, go have at it.
It also goes without saying that Palin, a Jesus Freak who aligns herself with people of questionable racial attitudes and frequent calls to bring Jesus back to the country, would not be seen in a positive light by Jews.
SteveinSC
@Pasquinade:
After which Ann and Bill smoked a cigarette.
Sad_Dem
OT, but how much do you think Dodd got paid to remind the Senate who its boss is?
soonergrunt
@FlipYrWhig:
It also most likely has something to do with right-wing US jews having, with miniscule exception, never fought for either Israel (being that they are/were here) or the US being that they see themselves primarily as Israel-supporters.
You take that whole militarism thing that the right wing has where ever it is, and throw in the usual lack of actual military service (to say nothing of wartime service) and it tends to breed an over-reaction in that direction.
Look at all of the 101st Chairborne from the early days of the Iraq war. The vast majority of them were and remain service dodgers, but that didn’t stop them from questioning everyone else’s patriotism or honor, now did it?
General Winfield Stuck
wingnut pillow talk.
Sly
@Royce:
If you want to be more technical, it’s spite.
chopper
@FlipYrWhig:
which is funny as israel, a left-wing (by american standards) jewish nation is considered tough as hell by most anyone’s standards.
obviously there’s a difference between israelis and american jews, you can see it if you’ve ever met the two. but i still don’t understand the need for certain right-wing jews to preen and try to exude some sort of toughness. jews are plenty tough people when they want to be.
i guess part of it has to do with many right-wing jews being the children of holocaust survivors, and resenting their parents’ generation for not doing more to resist.
NutellaonToast
My orthodox aunt used to be a Bush supporter (dunno about now). She told me that she thought a lot of opposition to Israel was based on antisemitism. She didn’t seem particularly angry, but was just very worried that the Palestinians were gonna blow up Israel and thought Bush would do a better job keeping it safe. If she were a more angry person, I could see her feeling like her own people were letting the holocaust happen all over again, or something like that.
Not a defense, just my obs.
NutellaonToast
@soonergrunt: Yeah, that is why Israel, with its MANDATORY military service, is like 90% in favor of killin all dah Palestinians.
chopper
@Tecumseh:
well, yes. regular run-of-the-mill jews aren’t exactly jazzed by wacky christians and their rapture fantasies. “oh, she can’t wait for jesus to return and wipe out the jews left over? wow, i have to vote for this woman!”
fraught
Rubin’s piece was grossly overwritten. So much wasted prose on such a simple subject. Jews hate SP for the same reasons as everybody else who hates her. She’s un-serious, unprepared, inexperienced, dishonest and thinks she’s way hotter than she is. Why would a Jewish woman (assuming Rubin is Jewish) spend so much time parsing the merits of a non-Jewish woman and premise her imaginings on what other Jews supposedly think? It’s a neurotic neo-con projection. Thinking that other Jew hate them and throwing accusations of internalized self-hatred.
JGabriel
@The Main Gauche of Mild Reason:
I think the Main Gauche pegs it. Hate is a function of the right-wing, or perhaps diagnostic symptom would be more accurate. It has little or nothing to do with the Jewish part, and everything to do with the right-wing part.
.
soonergrunt
@NutellaonToast: I wasn’t talking about Israelis, dude. I was talking about American Jews. Different people.
And where do you get the idea that 90% of Israel is in favor of genocide for the Palestinians?
Zifnab
@Dreggas:
Read from a certain angle, it makes Christianity to be some sort of B-movie super villain.
“First we conspire to rebuild the Jewish Temple, then we trigger a conflict with a nuclear power, then… we DESTROY THE WORLD! Mwhahahahaha!”
In all seriousness, I doubt if one self-proclaimed Christian in twenty honestly thinks down the line far enough to declare him or herself even vaguely pro-apocalypse. Christians support Jews because they are the ideological second cousin once removed of the faith. It’s the same reason the United States is predisposed to get along with the British.
By the time you get to the neo-con wing and the radical Christian right, you’re dealing with such a fringe sect of a partisan ideology, it’s hardly worth it to talk in broad terms anymore. My jewish grandmother doesn’t trust Pat Buchanan because she knows he’s a racist lunatic. My friend from college won’t be voting for Sarah Palin any time soon because she’s an ignorant demagogue.
This really doesn’t have anything to do with a fear that either of these people are planning on tricking any of my family or friends into flying off to Jeruselam to be obliterated in a nuclear holocaust.
bobbo
The whole notion that Jews are especially prominent in their hatred of Palin is not supported by any facts. Rubin has two polls – showing Jews disapproving of McCain’s pick of Palin, vs. Jews approving of Obama’s pick of Biden. What about comparing Jews disapproval of Palin to other groups’ disapproval of Palin? Or to the general disapproval of Palin, which was pretty astronomical? What about the fact the Jews vote Democratic at around 78% pretty much in every Presidential election? She buttresses here initial claim with anecdotes – some Jew said this, some other Jew said that. So Rubin’s whole piece is based on a seriously dubious premise. It proceeds from there on the basis of pure evidence-free speculation. It is garbage.
MikeJ
I don’t believe the location would be visible on a body scanner.
JGabriel
@Cyrus:
In Nazi Germany, too. I’m not trying to godwin the conversation with that assertion — just pointing out that Jewish stereotypes and liberal stereotypes were purposely conflated, and often created, by Nazi’s to vilify both.
So overlap between the stereotypes is to be expected — they share a common history — and doesn’t exonerate Rubin of the “anti-semitic” charge.
.
Brick Oven Bill
Maybe the Jews who sides with the Republican Christians are hoping that they’ll have a place in the kingdom once the Christians bomb the Muslims and Israelites the fuck out of Israel.
That is their dream you know. My religious idiot brother talks about it all the time.
drillfork
@Mike Kay:
Mila Kunis. Also.
MattR
I was hesitant to read the article but figured I should if I wanted to criticize it. Now I wish I had that 10 minutes of my life back. I don’t even know where to begin. All I can say is that any decent teacher would grade that an F.
JGabriel
CanadaGoose:
It’s also an easily disproved lie, given that Palin is on record describing her refusal as motivated by being “annoyed”, though I think the words Palin was looking for were pique and insecurity.
.
MattR
@drillfork:
Or just walk through midtown Manhattan at lunchtime, especially during the summer. When I think of Jewish women, I think of high maintenance, plastic surgeried Long Islanders not frumpy.
Bill Rutherford, Princeton Admissions
God, the “liberals hate Sarah Palin because she didn’t abort Trig” stuff was disgusting enough during the election, and seeing it attributed to liberal Jew is even worse.
JL
why do so many right-wing Jewish Americans hate other Jewish Americans so much?
Same reason right-wing non-Jewish Americans hate other left-leaning Americans.
Like other sectarian/ethnic groups Jewish people are not homogeneous in social, cultural, political, etc. beliefs.
Bill Rutherford, Princeton Admissions
@MattR
Tecumseh
@Zifnab: According to the Left Behind folks (which are more than you’d think and include prominent televangelists and maybe a few members of Bush’s administration) the End of Times starts in Israel (which is why they love Israel) and will involve Jews having to decide whether to convert or not. Those who do get to live in Happy Jesus Land. Those who don’t convert get used as cannon fodder in the final battle in Jerusalem. Which is why a lot of Jews worry when right-wing Israeli politicians suck up to the Religious Right or when the occasional Jewish leader/politician (cough…Joe Lieberman…cough) always shows up at one of those “We Love Israel” rallies thrown by them. The Religious Right may “love” Israel and it may be heart-felt but there’s darker undertones to it.
@Mike Kay: If you’ve ever washed Community (or Mad Men) you know all about Alison Brie too.
Bill Rutherford, Princeton Admissions
I really hope 47 was a BOB parody written by someone who accidentally stayed logged in, because I’d be really embarrassed to admit that BOB finally said something intelligent.
JL
#52 Bill Rutherford,
Agreed. That was horrifying and inflammatory on the author’s part.
When she said ” Trig was not a selling point with many Jewish women who couldn’t imagine making a similar choice—indeed, many have, in fact, made the opposite one.” she directly implied that Jewish women are regular aborters, possibly choosing abortion in great proportion than any other religion or group. Huh? Ridiculous and totally unsupportable.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Why do Jews hate Sarah? Hmm. Comments like this might explain it:
From anyone else it might just be stupid. From a blatant TalEvangical it’s damn creepy. And stupid.
Do right wingers like anyone?
Seriously. If everyone the fRighties designated as liberal dropped dead tomorrow they’d be stoning people who didn’t have enough ReaLAMErican ribbon magnets on their cars by Saturday. Needless to say any non-Caucasian, non-Hetero, non-Christians left standing would be absolutely fucked.
BrighidG
Internalized antisemitism. Everyone else hates Jews, why should Jews be any different?
spare
Superiority complex
JL
#51 MattR:
When I think of Jewish women, I think of high maintenance, plastic surgeried Long Islanders not frumpy.
And some Jewish women are frumpy. Some are tall. Some are short. The problem with this opinion piece is that it assumes a group is (and has to be) homogenous because of one commonality. American Jews often disagree on the definition of “Jewish” sometimes too – just as a lot of Christians disagree on that definition, too.
JGabriel
Mike Kay:
Ayelet Zurer. Also.
.
techno
This issue came up here in the 2008 Minnesota Senate race. Norm Coleman was widely detested so his replacement was almost certain. The Senate race was Franken’s to lose. And he almost lost it–got roughly 350,000 fewer votes than Obama and triggered a recount that was long, expensive, and contentious. So the question comes up–what was it about Franken that caused so many people to split their tickets?
Franken waltzed into town cracking wise about the assumptions built into the quote above. “I was one of the guys who got into Blake School because they thought Jews would raise the IQ of the place,” he joked on many occasions. “I can go to any city and find the smartest Jew in town.”
This caused two problems with the Minnesota voter.
1) This is a high-tech state–there are LOTS of bright people designing heart pacemakers and valves, etc. They come in a WIDE assortment of colors and nationalities. The very idea that one group of people has a monopoly on smarts is destroyed on a regular basis by the facts on the ground.
2) There are a bunch of Nordic people in Minnesota. These folks come from traditions that have been debating how democratic government should work for at LEAST a thousand years and over time, have gotten pretty good at it. These are not folks who appreciate being treated like country hicks–especially when it comes to matters of self-government. Franken often made fun of the Scandinavians and was hated for it. As my Swedish-American neighbor said disgustedly, “You know, when my cousins run a country, you get perhaps the most admired country on earth. When Franken’s cousins run a country, you get the most reviled nation on earth. Maybe, just maybe, Franken should stop treating voters like us as objects of scorn. When it comes to good governments, we actually know SOMETHING about the subject.”
This explanation does not explain all the missing 350,000 votes, but it raises an important issue. Telling people they are not as smart as you is just plain bad politics–especially when it has zero basis in fact. Yet Franken kept telling jokes based on this absurd stereotype until he had done himself serious damage. And the reason he kept telling those jokes is because he believed the assumptions were true.
This is not going to end well.
Shmegmata
What I don’t understand is the underlying “inverse” argument – that is, there is no explanation why being non-frumpy, having a child with Down’s Syndrome, being nonintellectual, and being unabashedly willing to stand by beliefs no matter how foolish qualifies one to be the Vice President.
Mike E
@Mike Kay:
Adam Sandler may have some new verses to add to his “Hannukah Song”
GranFalloon
Wait – someone explain why we are even bothering to parse the writings of someone who purports to admire Sarah Palin? I mean, ipso facto isn’t she bound to be wrong? In my mind, having a Sarah Palin fan tell me why I’m wrong to dislike her is a compliment to my intellect.
asdf
I read that as,
“I just read the Jerry Rubin ‘Why Jews Hate Palin’ piece…”
and cracked myself up.
Mike G
First of all, any discussion of ‘anus’ combined with Coulter and O’Reilly makes me run out of vomit.
Second, a bomb concealed inside a body cavity would be pretty ineffective. This was demonstrated recently when a supposedly-reformed former Al Qaeda member tried to assassinate a Saudi prince with a bomb stuffed in his rectum. He blew himself to smithereens with minimal damage to others in the room. Body tissue in close proximity to explosive is a surprisingly good muffler of a blast; think throwing yourself on a grenade.
Bruce Schneier(sp?) has a good online blog on security issues and calls bullshit on most of what the TSA does. I’m waiting for this month’s analysis of the crotchbomber.
Mumphrey
I couldn’t get all the way through the piece. I’m not Jewish, but I felt kind of sickened and gave up when I got to the part where Rubin imputed such of snobbery to Jews that they’d turn on anybody who didn’t go to the right college. I knew a Jewish guy in college who was obsessed about how people who didn’t go to the right school were losers (we went to the U. of Pennsylvania, so we were O.K.), and he could talk endlessly about how much money he was going to make after he graduated. But I never met any other Jews as shallow as he was in my life. I mean, I have no doubt he’d sneer at Palin for the reasons Rubin gives, but I can’t think there are too many others who would.
I think she skirts the reason Jewish people can’t stand Palin when she said how it’s part of Jewish culture to take learning seriously; she skated right up to the real reason, but then she veered away to blame it on snobbery. But the real reason, I think, that Jews hate Palin is pretty much the big reason I hate her, and the reason most of those I know hate her: she’s willfully and gleefully ignorant. She’s ignorant and proud of it. She revels in it. She thinks, or at least it looks to me like she thinks, that all that “book learning” is dangerous, and really does little but make us arrogant and dangerous fools who would unleash some awful dystopian hellscape upon the world, all in the name of saving it. I think to Palin, “good” colleges are dangerous because that’s where you might read Marx, and then go all hog wild trying to “reform” society and begin ferrying everybody off to the gulag in the name of the glorious worker’s dictatorship or something.
Well, that isn’t what “book learning” or going to college means to me. To me, it means you learn, above all, how little you really know, and that we should have a little humility about what we know and what we don’t. It means you try to learn how to ask questions and then you try to work out the answers, knowing you might be wrong; it means you learn how to think. That isn’t a bad thing.
But Palin, ironically, for someone who disdains learning so, and, I would guess, has nothing but suspicion for Harvard and Yale and Stanford and all those other pointy-headed places, thinks she has all the answers. She thinks she knows she has all the answers, and knows everything she needs to, just by virtue of her being a good, red, white and blue-blooded child of Alaska, where they marinate you in good common sense until you’re 10, and everything you need to know from then on you can learn in the Pentacostal church or in a moose blind (if there are such things–but I mean that more metaphorically).
I think that’s why Jews don’t like Palin. That’s why I don’t like her; it’s why I hate George Bush and his gang of White House yokels. It’s why I hate most cheesy, ignorant Republicans, glorying in their intellectual (if not their deviant sexual) virginity.
Kyle
Combine this with a ban on using the restroom onboard and you’ve got a…er…messy situation.
MattR
@Mike G:
I kinda figured the assumption is that they would fish it out before detonating it, though when dealing with Coulter and O’Reilly such assumptions are very dangerous.
kommrade reproductive vigor
If I ever met anyone with a foreskin large enough to conceal dangerous amounts of HEX I’d circumcise that sucker and make a poncho.
Annie
Why do so many right-wing Jewish Americans hate other Jewish Americans so much?
A better question is why do most Jewish Americans hate right-wing Jewish Americans so much? Because they are ignorant hypocrites that define everything through how much you support or don’t support Israel. Of course, the right gets to define what support for Israel means…and most of us can’t abide by that definition any longer.
Ash
@techno: This is a sort of weird comment. You can’t really compare and contrast Jews and Scandinavians. On one hand you have a group of people who have been roaming around for centuries, repeatedly getting kicked out of countries and shat upon. On the other hand, you have a group of people who have had thousands of years up in Scandinavia plundering places and perfecting their way of life.
Also, some people probably just didn’t like Franken because he can be kinda scary to the uninitiated.
matoko_chan
It is simple.
Gellman and Rubin aren’t real Jews……they proselytize.
They are only pretending to be Jews.
JGabriel
kommrade reproductive vigor:
That would certainly make for a lively conversation piece.
But it might more profitable, circumcised or no, to feature its owner in a porno?
Would it be waterproof (the poncho, not the porno)?
.
mcc
And thus after a couple years in the wilderness, Ann Coulter finally finds something that will get her name in the news again
ajr22
As a jew I’m sick of these fucking articles about why jews hate republicans. Why don’t people start writing about why Muslims don’t like republicans/Palin? I think the answer is pretty clear. Palin had probably never spoke to a Jew before Kristol came knocking on her door. The republicans have one Jew in their caucus(Cantor) and he is a scumbag. I wish all these non Jews would just shut up, and keep the word Jew out of their mouths.
New Yorker
I haven’t read all the comment and I’m not Jewish, but I’m going to make two educated guesses here:
Right-wing Jews like Rubin hate other Jews because they can’t understand why American Jews might be uncomfortable with the right because they are completely blind to reality. They can’t understand how people might think Palin is unqualified to be President, remember.
And also, the dislike for Palin stems from, among other things, the far-right populism that she spews that divides this country into the “real” and the, I dunno, Rootless Cosmopolitan. David Frum, that flaming leftist, notes that throughout history, Jews haven’t fared too well at the hands of political movements like this:
http://www.frumforum.com/do-jews-hate-palin
Hiram Taine
@JGabriel:
I dunno about that but I seriously doubt it would be a *Sears* poncho.
scav
@Ash: um, as weird as the assumption that one can’t perfect things on the road? By this standard, Africa should have managed Utopia by now and the notable wanderlust of ‘Merca means, um?? OK, yeah, well, sorry for the BoBBaiT. Everyone carry on with the stereotyping while it amuses you.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
Ann Coulter’s worries about anal bomb threat convince me she’s cribbing off that old Scrutator thread where everyone speculated that terrorists could smuggle uranium into the country hidden up their butts.
Zuzu's Petals
I stopped reading when I saw her propose this as proof of her argument:
Uh, voters of all backgrounds disapproved of Palin as McCain’s pick by about the same, or greater, margin.
Doi.
ppcli
@New Yorker:
Man I never thought that I’d see the day when I would read a column by David Frum that didn’t make me think of how much I had admired his mother and how much of an idiot I thought him to be.
But he knocks this ball out of the park. Jews know all too well that whenever people have started aggressively dividing society into the genuine “us” and the alien “them”, sooner or later (usually sooner) the Jews have found themselves lumped among the “them”.
eemom
on a somewhat related note, there was a Sully post earlier about Rahm the Evil supposedly telling someone in Israel that the administration is sick of the Israelis AND the Palestinians.
It has been denied by a WH spokesperson — and it’s too bad if it is not, in fact, true. Because of one the not-so-subtle themes of the firebaggers’ hatred of Rahm is that he’s some kind of AIPAC plant, which is total and utter bullshit.
Something Fabulous
Oh for fucking fuck’s sake:
“Resonate” my blue state secular Jewish female ass. How ’bout: we just HAD one of those awesome old-style models, and repudiated it with the election of the closest to the OPPOSITE of that we could find?
sophronia
The right wingers have three responses to any woman who doesn’t support Sarah Palin: 1. They’re just jealous because she’s beautiful; 2. They’re sluts who abort all their babies; 3. They aren’t real Americans. These are recycled endlessly with various other words around them, but the essence of the attack always comes down to these three points.
Basically, none of these articles are designed to get any more Jewish (or whatever) women to support Palin. Rubin even admits it. They’re just ego-stroke pieces to get Palin’s fans to be ever more fervent and convinced of their own righteousness.
Joshua Holland
As one of those allegedly self-hating lefty Jews, I think the answer to your question is pretty simple: it’s all about the Middle East conflict.
There’s a generation gap among Jewish Americans, with older Jews convinced that the Cossacks are just around the corner and that only Israel can spare us from a second Holocaust. These folks are predisposed to the view, ‘Israel right wrong’ to a degree where they don’t even acknowledge the wrongs exist anymore.
Younger people are less likely to feel endangered in 2009, and have started to shift against Israel on questions like the legality and morality of the settlements, the wisdom of a belligerent stance towards Iran, etc. All the more so after watching Shrub put the kind of belligerence the Jewish right has always lusted after into practice, with disastrous results.
That dynamic certainly played out in my family — my Grandfather was one of the first physicians into Auschwitz and most members of his generation were strong Zionists. My parents were raised that way, but took a more equivocal view, recognizing that the Palestinians have legitimate claims of deep injustice.
And my generation — I’m 40 — was raised almost entirely during a period when a majority of Israelis and Palestinians favor a settlement along the lines of “land-for-peace,” but also an era when the rejectionists on both sides have been victorious in maintaining the conflict. It’s abundantly clear that the Israeli right — notably the settler movement — has no desire for a negotiated settlement other than ‘Israel gets what it wants.’
Returning to your question about why these Jew-o-cons so hostile to more liberal members of “the tribe,” I think the answer is simple. Jewish Americans represent a small share of the population, and our ability to influence U.S. foreign policy lies not in some conspiracy about how we control all the world’s resources and own the media; the American Jewish community is well-funded, incredibly well-organized, plays the game of constituent politics well and, until recently, was unified in its positions on the Middle East. So, us lefties saying, ‘hey, this stuff going on in the Occupied Territories is illegal and immoral’ threatens that unity, and thus a source of power.
It’s also the case that if a lot of progressive Jews are running around criticizing Israel, it’s a bit more difficult to equate that criticism with anti-Semitism. The “self-loathing Jew” thing’s become somewhat of a joke.
Finally: I agree with a previous commenter: They’re right-wingers, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that they’re assholes.
phoebes-in-santa fe
@Dreggas: Ding dong, a winner.
The funny things about the Jewish conservatives at Commentary – which actually used to be a good magazine – and their loving Sarah Palin because she’s “real” and “not hung up on education” is that they, these Jewish conservatives, were MOSTLY, if not completely, educated at Ivy League and comparable schools and would be aghast if their own children didn’t go to these schools.
I am Jewish and I think “Jewish Republicans” are kinda like “Gay Republicans” (Log-Cabin-ites), “Black Republicans”, and “Hispanic Republicans” – complete oxymorons. I can’t possibly imagine why a Jew or other minority would vote Republican. I mean, I know some do, but it still amazes me when I meet a Jewish Republican. Oh, and by the way, Norm Coleman and Eric Cantor are both nasty little shits. I can’t stand either one of them.
Oh, and to the poster who wrote about Jewish women being “high maintenance” (i.e. “Jewish princesses”) – believe me when I say I know just as many “Wasp Princesses”. It’s not an ethnic thing – it’s a wealth thing.
matoko_chan
Sheesh…..Palin is a pre-trib.
Jews loathe her for the same reason they loathe that fat toad Hagee.
She is planning on using them as staked goats to bring on the Rapture. Goldblog.
Zuzu's Petals
@sophronia:
Peggy Noonan must make their heads explode.
ellaesther
All the commenting I’ve done around here this afternoon, and somehow I missed this! The story about me! I’m one of the Jews those Jews hate! Whooot!
Well, in Chicago, anyway. I did a lot of pro-two state solution commentary writing in the Chicago Tribune for awhile, and whoo doggie! Some of these Jews sure don’t like me (or, you know, speak to me) any more.
But, truthfully, a bunch also kind of came out of the woodwork and thanked me for what I wrote and over the past ten years, the dynamic has actually changed, all over the country. Today 75% of American Jews say they support a two-state solution, and about 2/3 think the American government should put pressure on all parties (code for “on Israel, too, bitches”) to achieve the necessary compromise.
So, I would say that today, the right-wing faction of the American Jewish community knows they’re losing, and it scares the crap out of them — just as it does any group that feels its legitimacy slipping from its fingers. (It’s happening slooowly, too slowly for me, and, I fear, too slowly for Israel/Palestine — but it is happening).
(And, as I’ve been all blog pimpy the past couple of days, why stop now. If you want to see why some American Jews hate me, go here: Emily L. Hauser – In My Head: Israel/Palestine )
matoko_chan
umm…did Rubin mention anything about Palin being a pre-trib millenialist in her article?
srsly, the woman is total jesus-take-the-wheel godbotherer….i think giving her custody of the nuke lauch codes would result in the end of the Jews.
Real Jews instinctively know this.
That is another reason Rubin must be a fake-jew.
She is prolly just pretending to get dates.
Jewish men are hawt.
Peter J
Coulter is just pissed because she can’t hide anything in her anus since her penis is taking up all the space.
Peter J
I guess that one really should be moderated…
debbie
I’m assuming Rubin is Jewish, which makes it all the more depressing to read how she stereotypes American Jews so broadly and in so many negative ways.
Because right-wing Jews (American or otherwise) have adopted the same kind of ferocity which was leveled at them by anyone who ever tried to annihilate them. They’ve turned into the very thing they hated. Very sad.
Zuzu's Petals
I guess this is kind of a corollary.
All that crap about anyone who disagreed with the neocons being antisemitic: I mean seriously, is the fact that Paul Wolfowitz is Jewish the first thing you think about?
Zach
Apparently the only non-Jewish religious groups in America are Christian. There’s not a hard number for the number of people practicing Islam in the United States, but estimates put it roughly equal to the LDS population (1-2%). Given that over a quarter of American Muslims are black and Obama’s approval rate amongst blacks is like 95%, there’s a good chance his approval rating amongst American Muslims is higher than it is with Jews.
Sure enough, if Rubin wasn’t too lazy to search all of the Gallup polls instead of just one of them, she’d see that Obama has 85% approval with American Muslims.
Peter J
There’s Judeo-Christian, everything else is just a queue for an afterlife in Hell.
Mike in NC
Fixed
BSR
All of the Jews I know are students of history, and they can see and appreciate a demagogue like Palin for what she is; dangerous, decisive, and appealing to people’s worst and basest instincts.
Peter J
Those who believe in the idea that all Jews must return to the promised land to bring the second coming of Christ, what is their position on the Jews who refuses to move?
gnomedad
@Pasquinade:
She’s directing gay porn now?
matoko_chan
@Zifnab:
no…Palin is a pre-trib.
John Hagee is a pre-trib.
You can read all kinda crazipants stuff in his “books”.
Pre-tribulationists are different than regular garden variety christians.
They believe in the First and Second Regathering, and the Leftbehind series is based on their beliefs.
They believe the jews are going to group up in MENA, and the anti-christ (who was apparently the head of the EU, but who has prolly morphed into Obama by now) is going to start a global thermonuclear war that will wipe out the muslims and any jews that dont convert to xianity.
Then teh Rapture comes down and lifts off the saved xians and the saved ex-jews and leaves the rest of us behind.
matoko_chan
@Peter J:
Well…those jews could be Left Behind like the rest of us when the Rapture comes down…..alternatively, the Anti-christ might hunt them down or cause his minions to carry them to MENA where they can be destroyed in his global thermo-nuclear war.
It is my understanding from what I have read that Satan needs to kill all the jews to prevent the second coming, since apparently a jewish mother is required..again.
So I guess that means hunt them down and kill them.
Or I suppose the good christians could round them up and put them in boxcars and ship them to MENA where they need to be.
It depends.
;)
JGabriel
Hmph, you’d think Jesus could at least Rapture them up first and spare them the nukyoolar holocaust.
I guess they don’t wanna miss the suffering of the infidels. What a strange belief system.
.
Mike G
…had been rendered ridiculous by eight years of a nasty little jerk who showed no interest in acquiring such knowledge that might interfere with his ideological fantasies, and whose ‘instinctual skill set’ amounted to little more than the careless, impulsive solipsism of a spoilt child ‘going with his gut’.
4jkb4ia
Right-wing Jewish Americans hate other Jewish Americans so much because they are in the distinct minority. My $.02. However, the right-wing Jewish Americans I know during the last election regarded Obama-supporting Jews with not so much hatred as belief that they were delusional.
Bubblegum Tate
@Mike Kay:
Emmanuelle Chriqui. Oh dear god, Emmanuelle Chriqui.
Joey Maloney
@soonergrunt:
Scutch mistyped. He didn’t mean Asperger’s Syndrome, he meant Assburger Syndrome. This comes from poor personal hygiene. A buildup of dried fecal matter causes intense itching, pain, and irritation in the rectal and recto-anterior areas. This persistent irritation leads to dysphoria and other mood disorders as well as cognitive difficulties, often manifesting in outbursts of irrationality, stupidity, and racism.
Thlayli
@techno:
Refresh my memory: what religion is Norm Coleman?
And for that matter, his predecessor in the seat, Paul Wellstone?
brantl
Why wouldn’t these assholes be stereotyping, ignorant assholes about people of their own subset of the culture, if they happen to be of a different political stripe? Soon, they will be discriminating against people that are standing next to them, who are either standing on their left, or whose hair is parted on the left. They’ll be the same way about people who are facing them, whose hair is parted on the right, because it will look as though it’s parted differently. Ignorantly acting out of a bigotted outlook is a time-honored tradition with these assholes.
ksmiami
Jews hate Sarah for the same damn reason I HATE HER EFFIN GUTs – She represents a small, but VERY DANGEROUS proto-fascist element of the USA that needs to remain far far away from any of the levers of power in this country. What is funny is a lot of my indie minded Jewish friends were prepared to vote for McCain until he nominated her and they all FREAKED OUT and RAN for the hills.
catclub
matoko:
Maybe Palin read “The Yiddish Policeman’s Union”
to get the idea on Jews moving to Alaska.
I kid.
Nothing But the Ruth
Gwyneth Paltrow is Jewish?
rs
@Mike Kay: As an aficionado of 80s porn, may I humbly submit Nina Hartley for consideration as the smokin’ hot Jewish woman of all time.
Why don’t Jews like Palin? Palin doesn’t like Jews.
Political Pragmatist
Why do I get the feeling that at some point a debate between an elite and Sarah Palin would end up with her saying, “I know you are but what am I?”