Jewish elites divorcing Zionism, courting Islamism

One of the most interesting and unstudied shifts in contemporary politics is the gradual distancing away from Zionism by Jewish elites in the West, when some flavor of Zionism used to be obligatory during the last several decades of the 20th century.

But with Muslims growing among the grassroots thanks to mass migration, the liberal base choosing "Islamophobia" as their bigotry boogeyman to battle, and Wall Street wanting to open up Muslim societies to foreign investment, the Jewish elites of the 21st century have little choice but to slink away from Zionism and develop at least a friendly working relationship with Islamism. And with Israel's waning military dominance in the Middle East, the Pentagon-led GOP has less and less need for Jews who are Zionist.

This represents just the latest case of a Jewish managerial elite favoring whichever group is rising in power -- making peace with them so that the middleman minority elite can be left alone to manage entire sectors of the society. The Ashkenazim played this role in the German and Slavic societies for century after century, without any thought of establishing their own ethno-state or supporting such a state at a distance. The Sephardim played a similar role under the Muslim rulers of Medieval Spain and, when they were expelled in 1492, under the Ottomans.

In America, too, most Jews didn't care about Israel during the first half of the 20th century. They wanted to rise up the ranks of the managers of the newly industrialized American nation. Not even the Holocaust made American Jews fixate on Israel as a supposed release valve nation.

It wasn't until the Israeli military began defeating the Arab armies around them, including the mighty nation of Egypt, that American Jews started to feel patriotic about Israel. That is also what brought it to the attention of the federal government, who had decades earlier turned back boats of Jews fleeing the Nazis. Now that the Jewish state could offer something we wanted -- local muscle to apply against our enemies in the oil-rich Middle East -- suddenly the Pentagon wanted to be best buds.

But Israel has not won major battles for decades now, making their triumph during the late 1960s and '70s look like more of a fluke. When a grassroots nationalist army like Hezbollah manages to drive you out of their homeland, Uncle Sam is going to start questioning your ability to serve as one of the "local cops on the beat" (Nixon).

Of course our #1 ally in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia, has not had much better luck at pushing around its neighbors (ISIS in Iraq in Syria, invasion of Yemen, stand-off with Qatar). But at least the Saudis are sitting on a shitload of oil, unlike Israel, and we've been partners with them for far longer. Among the Pentagon brass, this means a weakening concern over Israel, and relatively more emphasis on Saudi Arabia.

The Pentagon is the main power group that controls the GOP; the junior partner is the Cultural Right, including evangelical Christians. And they have made the opposite shift in emphasis -- after September 11th, they've become more suspicious of Muslims generally and of Jihadi Arabia in particular, while growing ever more attached to Israel as the site of the Holy Land and "the only democracy" in the increasingly unstable region.

These diverging trends have created cracks in the Jihadist-Zionist coalition.

So, Zionists can no longer rely on the elites on the Pentagon / GOP side to reflexively have Israel's back. Can they turn instead to the Democrats? After all, the main power group controlling the Dems is the finance sector, and that is overwhelmingly Jewish, along with lesser power groups controlling the Democrats, such as the media and academia. Recall the mismatched demographics of the two parties: GOP elite leans jihadist, while base leans Zionist; Dem elite leans Zionist, while base leans jihadist.

They're bound to find sympathy there, but slowly those Jewish elites are beginning to cool on the idea of kneejerk defense and promotion of Israeli interests.

The main interest of the big Wall Street banks is opening up new countries for investors and central banking concerns. Israel is not that big of a market to break into -- but Iran, with nearly 10 times the population of Israel, is. That's the real reason why the Democrats were so big on removing the sanctions against Iran -- so the financial elites could finally start investing there and selling there, which is of no concern to the Pentagon.

They had to work in a nuclear non-proliferation angle to throw a bone to the Pentagon / GOP, but the main goal reflected the financial elites who control the Democrats. That's also their main worry about Trump pulling out of the Iran deal -- they don't care about nuclear weapons, but about the uncertainty that such moves will create for the investors and bankers who thought they were going to have a nice sanction-free business environment in Iran.

Aside from Wall Street wanting to get along with Iran for investment purposes, even if that displeases their co-ethnics in Israel, the Democrats also face anti-Israeli sentiment from their electoral base. Some are Muslim themselves, while most are liberal white people who are obsessed with eradicating "Islamophobia" from their society. This includes a rising share of younger Jewish liberals.

From these various grassroots factions, the movement to Boycott / Divest / Sanction Israel has grown rapidly, and within another bastion of the Democrats -- college campuses. This movement has mainstreamed the view of Israel as a European colonialist invader that has been exploiting the native population of Palestinians. Since the subjects are Muslim, that makes the state of Israel ipso facto Islamophobic.

The media have to both reflect the interests of the power groups who are their senior partners -- like Wall Street -- as well as resonate with the views of their lay liberal audience. Both of those sources are increasingly hostile toward Israel, or at least losing patience, so the media can no longer present a ceaseless narrative of "Israel has done nothing wrong".

None of these shifts has been completed, and the process is still ongoing. But it is clear in which direction the trends are headed. Whether you're a member of the Jewish elite that controls the banks, the media, academia, or Democrat politics, you have no choice but to distance yourself from Zionism. And the weakening Jewish state offers you little in return nowadays anyway, so that just makes the decision easier.

Note that this change is not away from Israel-first and toward America-first -- far from it! It is back to the rootless cosmopolitan stereotype, where there are no nations, and you simply throw in with whoever happens to be rising in power, wealth, and influence.

These days, that includes radical Islamists and their liberal sympathizers: "Behead those who blaspheme Allah!" = "Fire the Islamophobic bigots from their jobs!" A century ago it would not have included Muslims at all, and in another century, it may go back to not including Muslims. Goy group A, goy group B -- as long as you ingratiate yourself with them, they'll leave you alone to manage the complex society.

Nowhere is this tendency most striking than in the devil himself, George Soros. A recent NYT op-ed laments the punishment that Soros is taking from the government of the Jewish state, which has grown hostile to the world's premier promoter of dissolving demographic barriers between nations. That would erode the Jewish character of Israel, and Soros the progressive globalist has been happy to push for turning it into a melting pot of Jews and Palestinians.

Mr. Soros’s humanitarianism and universalism represent an expression of post-Holocaust Jewish identity that is anathema to the hard-line nationalism of Mr. Netanyahu’s governing coalition, which adheres to the classic Zionist mission that sought to end anti-Semitism and diaspora existence by gathering all Jews in the historic land of Israel. As in this case with Hungary, Mr. Netanyahu is increasingly aligning Israel with illiberal, autocratic states like Russia, Turkey and Egypt. The ultimate cynicism of such alliances is visible in Mr. Netanyahu’s willingness to tolerate the anti-Semitism of the global right-wing nationalist camp if it will bolster the Greater Israel movement.

Don't take the writer's word for it: Soros strongly came out against both Putin and Assad during their joint liberation of Aleppo from the jihadist militias. That proves that Soros doesn't care about Arabs in general, but only those who do not resist globalist interventions and takeover of their societies, and the Islamic radicals who have been trying to overthrow Assad are thoroughly international in scope.

The irony of Soros being opposed to Israel as a Jewish ethno-state, and the Israeli government being hostile toward Soros, is lost on the "Joooz" dead-enders among the Alt-Right. They think powerful globalist Jews must be pro-Israel, and that Israel would promote such individuals as agents of Israeli influence.

Someone writing for one of their blogs tried to get the message out two years ago, pointing out how fruitless and backwards it was for the Twitter troll armies to descend on globalist Leftist Jews with supposed killshots like "How about open borders for Israel, then, huh?" -- when the target is on the record enthusiastically wanting Israel to open its borders, make peace with Palestinians a la the South African whites did with the colonized blacks, and so on and so forth.

As the internal dynamics of the Democrat side lead more and more elite Jews to distance themselves from Zionism, these attacks will become even more outdated. Jewish elites are going back to rootless cosmopolitanism, so why would they bind themselves to a particular state like Israel? That would make them Islamophobic in the eyes of their grassroots base, and it would halt the investments made in Israel's enemies like Iran by the Wall Street banks who are their senior partners on Team Democrat.