Faking It

Ira Chernus is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He writes frequently for progressive websites, especially on Israel, Palestine, and the U.S. These columns are collected here. His personal website is here.

On January 13 at 7:23 AM, he posted a blog post here, entitled "Jews’ Insecurity Blocking U.S. Mideast Peace Plan", first posted on Truthout.org.

I became interested for two reasons: first, the convoluted thinking and paying homage to the radical progressive ideological camp ands second, the apparent links from without to the within, from the periphery to corridors of power, whether direct or apparently indirect.

I've cut it down but follow the names:

There’s a media drumbeat growing for Barack Obama to treat the Israeli leadership like addicts: stop waiting for them to help themselves, recognize that they are powerless to do it on their own, and start telling them what they must do if they want to save their nation.

Robert Wright, a blogger on New York Times.com, urges Obama to support a UN move to “create a Palestinian state now … define the borders, set the timetable.”

...In Israel, prominent peace educator Gershon Baskin wants the administration to bring Israeli and Palestinian negotiators to the U.S. “for intensive negotiations for as long as it takes...Israeli analyst Avi Isacharoff sees it coming..
...But few progressives seem to expect a U.S. plan. Most agree with Josh Ruebner of the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation...

...Too many Jews “have moved into the realm of paranoia,” as Israeli historian Daniel Gavron writes in Newsweek.  What a sign of change in the U.S. mass media that Newsweek would publish Gavron’s column. It’s as startling as the New York Times publishing, a year ago, an op-ed by Henry Siegman, former head of the American Jewish Congress, labeling fear of another Holocaust as “pathological.”

But now read what Chernus does:

Zionist theologian Emil Fackenheim once praised what he called the Israelis’ “Holocaust psychosis,” their penchant for seeing all opposition to Israel as Nazi-like anti-semitism. He called on Jews everywhere to adopt that view because, he claimed, they would then fulfill God’s command to support Israeli military violence in order to prevent another Holocaust.

First of all, there is no such thing as "Zionist theology" since Zionism is not a religion.  That is really a nasty term to use for an academic.  It's polemical besides being false.  Second, Israelis don't see "all opposition to Israel as Nazi-like anti-semitism".  Reminds you of the off-the-cuff line:

Fackenheim has written:

Therefore, as Jewish philosopher, I have no choice but to see "the fate of European Jewry" not merely as one- case- among- others, of racism-in-general, but, as a unique and ultimate assault on Jewish faith, -- nay, on the God of Israel.  Now, more than half a century later, Christians and Muslims must ask: was it also an assault on the God of Abraham? Must not, after Auschwitz, Christian and Muslim theology be other than they were, for centuries, millennia, even from the start? Both should check their Holy Scriptures, New Testament and Qur'an and eliminate what can longer be said. Matthew 27:25: no Jewish parents ever asked that their children be cursed. Allah Akbar "God is great": this, if said by a Muslim murdering a Jew, contradicts bismillahu rahmani rahim, the opening words of the Qur'an, "in the name of Allah, the merciful."

Let me re-state the 614th commandment: "Jews are forbidden to give Hitler posthumous victories."

Is that psychosis?

To be clear, there is a psychosis (see here; and here) for examples but what Chernus is implying is a false psychosis, one that affects Israelis who are not Holocaust survivors nor second or even third generation survivors.

So, on two points, his "professorship" is a cover for ideological viewpoints: that "Zionists theology" and the "Holocaust psychosis" (I would have appreciated a reference to that).

Is that what "progressivism" is all about: faking it?

^