Quite.

I read this blog entry three times and still don't understand it.

 But I am Jewish.  And AIPAC, the wingnuts who started this war, and the Ann Coulters on the right who want to "perfect me" can kiss my Semitic ass.

Irony's a bit too thick here.

But I guess the Lazare quote makes the point.

You don't understand this blog entry because you simply do not understand the facts.

AIPAC did not 'start' the Iraq war.  Not even close.

With Jews like you...

And you should thank Josh for all the traffic on your sorry ass blog... 

It's reductio, not redutio. Josh Marshall is Jewish. It's odious Taki Theodoracopulos, not odious Taki Theodocropolous. Apart from that... actually that's enough to make me not trust anything else here,

So, did Josh Marshall have religious reassignment surgery, Michael? A week ago, elsewhere, he's not a real Jew, but now he's not one at all.

I mean, Josh Marshall is not only Jewish, he's a "Crypto-Zionist". Criticize Israel enough and he bans you from his blog with the lame suggestion that one "despises Jews" - despite all evidence to the contrary. Push his Jewish hot button and see how far you get.

Meanwhile, nothing in this post provides the slightest bit of evidence that M&W have gotten anything wrong in either their article or their book. It's just more of the usual slander and calumny with zero evidence to back it up.

Your typical Zionist thug intellectual dishonesty and cowardice.

Weiss and Josh Marshall would get along very well, I suspect, since they share these traits.

I've read thru twice, and I still have no idea what you think you're saying.  Is there a password that will get me to the next level where the words are rearranged in the correct order?

Michael Weiss is Jewish? He doesn't look Jewish.

I'm unsure of what (if anything) this post is intended to argue since it jumps around so much, but I think one of it's points is supposed to be that Matt Yglesias is too uncritical of Walt and Mearshimer. I therefore want to note the existence of <a href="http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/archives/2007/10/levy_on_the_lobby.php">this post</a>, which states that Daniel Levy's review of the book was the best one he's seen.

I think I understand why Josh gets 10 times the traffic that you do - Josh is able to express himself in plain English. Christ, you make Camille Paglia sound lucid in comparison.

I think this says more about Andrew Sullivan than it does Josh Marshall.

This post made plenty of sense to me. It's just that, kind of like a Russian novel, it maybe introduced too many minor characters all at once.

...I just think his writing is so clogged with snark and strained cultural references that his point is totally obscured.

If you want to swipes at Yglesias, you should just do it in clear, lucid language.  All the fluff and fillter really confuses your point(s).

Oh my, that sounds horrible! I wouldn't want to be called a crypto-zionist.  Maybe a psuedo-neo zionist, but certainly not a crypto! Ack!!! Not that!!!

AIPAC did not start this war.  But they don't represent mainstream Jews either.  And this site too is way out of touch with the mainstream of American Jewry.  Most of whom want a reasonable settlement of the Israel/Palestine conflict (like most Israelis), and most of whom do not buy into Bush's betrayal of the trust we inhered in him after 9/11.  As to why Matt Yglesias went out of his way to defend M&W, I think the reason is that wingnuts like this blogger have been attacking him for so long and accusing him of being akin to a Nazi sympathizer (see, e.g., Jonah Goldberg) that he has lost perspective.

 And referring to ourselves as "the chosen" is unhelpful and frankly inaccurate as "chosen" is not a fair translation of the original Hebrew, and implies that we are somehow superior in HaShem's view, which is clearly not what is meant by the text as any knowledgeable Jew would tell you.

If you want to swipes at Yglesias, you should just do it in clear,
lucid language. All the fluff and fillter really confuses your
point(s).

Exactly. The first sign of a bad & insecure writer is the fluff in this article. B'ezrat HaShem, you will learn to write and/or become more confident in your writing that you will learn to write in a straightforward manner without the need to use big words and big phrases.

When acknowledging your own error, it's always a good idea to, you know, just say you're sorry you made a mistake, instead of condescendingly accusing those who call you on it of being uncalm.

Is always classy.  In the words of your hero, GW Bush, you are a "first class a**h*le."  Can't swear on the eve of Shabbos.  Shabat Shalom.  

Never ask those suffering from
ideological amnesia to examine the irony of their current positions. Forget Che Guevara: the hot new silkscreen t-shirt
on campus bears the likeness of Charles Lindbergh.

If Israel did not exist we would want to invent another client state to further our military adventures.  Rumsfield's dreams for Iraq spring to mind. 

It is the location of oil that is critical, not religious demographics here or elsewhere.  They provide convenient excuses for politicians here and elsewhere but exactly the same results could be expected if the world were one religion.

Is Walt Weiss jewish?

 What about Marshall Mathers?

I suppose Michael predicted this sort of reaction by saying, "Never ask those suffering from ideological amnesia to examine the irony of their current positions."

Rhetorical stylings aside, I think the message of this post is fairly clear: Leftoid pundits like Matt Yglesias sure do find a good deal to admire in the writings of reactionaries. Do they not find that a bit curious? Perhaps even a cause for concern? Michael (and I) suggests they retrace their steps, just to ensure that in getting to this point where they sometimes sound less like social democrats and more like nativists, they might not have taken a wrong ideological turn somewhere. Just a friendly suggestion! Couldn't hurt!

In any case, an unprecedented two tagline winners in this thread.

Owenz: "Jewcy: Just your typical Zionist thug intellectual dishonesty and cowardice"
Richard Steven Hack: "Jewcy: So clogged with snark and strained cultural references that its point is totally obscured"

One goes up at the top of the homepage Monday in place of "A magazine and community for New Jews and other riffraff", the other goes up Tuesday.

they don't make jews like jesus anymore.  they don't turn the other cheek the way they did before.........

Just like the majority of the frauds on the "Jewcy" staff.

"Michael's mother is a shiksa so he's not a Jew! Just like the majority of the frauds on the 'Jewcy' staff."

Fabulous! Is there ANY topic on which you ethnocentric idiots can't work an attack on intermarriage into the thread??

I don't understand why y'all have such a problem with the left uniting with the right in opposition to war. It's an old tradition. Eugene Debbs, America Firsters. Gore Vidal. And now more than ever there's a good reason to back such a coalition. Buchanan and Chomsky disagree on all the "domestic" issues, but they're both right about US wars: namely, that they're a disaster that neither promote democracy, freedom nor "American interests".  

You can't be a Christian if you don't support Bush's foreign policy.

And how bizarre is it for Marty "Hot Lips" Peretz to be commenting on the alleged "lackluster" career of an academic? How would Martin even know, considering the simple fact that he's not an academic himself? Shouldn't academics be judged by their peers and not, say, hack rightwing neocon editors?

Your writing makes you sound like an asshole. It detracts from the substance.

I can't even read this, is it in english?

I was going to comment about how incomprehensible this post was, but seems like others beat me to it.  Dang, how much crack had you smoked???  Friends don't let friends blog stoned.

How about Juan Cole? We could blame the fact that he's not at Yale on the David Horowitz/Alan Dershowitz gang of merry bullies and their kneejerk resistance to anyone who ever questions Israeli policy on anything - or we could smear him as a "lackluster academic," pretending that his unpopular opinions cancel out any claim to scholarly excellence.

Gee, I wonder which one it will be.

Mr. Weiss,

Chris Darrouzet,

 Which goes to show that there's nothing "clever" about it. All it reveals is little rich boy, privileged Weiss reading certain books, stealing passages from them while passing them off as his own. Watch how he replicates Christopher Hitchens in a truly shameless way. It's marvelous.

And herein I find Weiss extensively quoting Lazare extensively slamming Mearsheimer and Walt's book by cleverly failing to point to a single specific inaccuracy. I'm a longtime Nation subscriber, and it saddens me to see a recent flurry of bullshit book reviews in it. In the past three months, they've paid assorted Keyboard Kommandos to hatchet Harris, Hitchens and Dawkins for their antimonotheism texts, again, long on snide, short on facts.

 Sure, Weiss is an idiot to repeat it, but Lazare is a big idiot to have written it, and most but of all vanden Heuvel needs to review whether she really wants to be the biggest idiot of the lot.

Big talk from someone who doesn't know a shin from a W.

This blog entry is an excellent imitation of the rhetoric in Mein Kampf, and of similar persuasive qualities.

Or maybe idiots and fools just all converge on the same kinds of nattering.

All I know is...

1. I subscribed to Jewcy, got three issues, and then poof! never got another issue again. Reading this freshman-in-college pontificating ass screed, I now know why.

2. Jews who tell me I'm less a Jew because I disagree with their politics toward Israel are tools, but I still enjoy the amusement.

3. "This blog entry is an excellent imitation of the rhetoric in Mein Kampf" has got to be the single dumbest thing written since Mein Kampf.

"Mearsheimer and Walt belong, along with Michael Scheuer . . ."

... and so on, and so on, and so on.

Let's be honest here. There are a lot of vocal minorities in the U.S., and compared to many of them, the Jewish minority is a relatively small one. Out of that minority, the aggressively pro-Israel (pro-Likud?) faction is an even smaller one.  And yet, AIPAC, an organization that is supposed to promote friendship between Americans and Israelis, aggressively lobbied the U.S. Congress to go to war with Iraq. 

http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/archives/2007/10/aipac_and_iraq.php

And no, I don't need to just site Matthew on this. You can read AIPAC's own press releases from 2002/2003 time period and see some very aggressive statements on Iraq. While much of this information is considerably harder to find today due to site design changes and a removal of pre-2004 archives from the site, archive.org allows us to see documents such as this one:

http://web.archive.org/web/20010418212354/www.aipac.org/documents/iraqpop1.html

". . . Baghdad is suspected of aggressively rebuilding its stockpile of missiles and weapons of mass destruction. It is thought that Iraq is amassing chemical and biological weapons and could have nuclear weapons within a year of obtaining the necessary raw materials . . .  Iraq also continues to support numerous anti-Israel and anti-American terrorist organizations."

 While I am, admittedly, a "(gentile) blogger", I have to admit... anyone who wants me to be their friend is doing me a pretty great insult by trying to get my country to launch preemptive wars on other nations, based on lies/misinformation/propaganda that AIPAC helped to spread and perpetuate. Likewise, AIPAC has been implicated as being the conduit in numerous cases of spying/ U.S. intelligence leaks to Israel, dating back decades.

 Perhaps if AIPAC wanted to encourage America/Israeli friendship, they should stop lobbying and manipulating our nation's politicians, and instead focus on promoting cultural gatherings, travel, and foriegn exchange programs... you know, all those things that ordinary organizations of this sort do. That's simply not enough for AIPAC though... they want to effect, influence, and otherwise game the U.S. political system to push forward an aggressively pro-Israel agenda, enshrining a very "special relationship" where the lives of U.S. soldiers and citizens sometimes become a commodity.

 Matthew is right for speaking out against this state of affairs. Why? Because he is both a humanitarian and an American. As a humanitarian, he should want to avoid unnecessary conflicts and unneeded provocations, and as an American, he should owe his greater loyalty to the peace of America, to the defense of its Constitution, and to speaking out against those who would jeopardize either.

As an American (gentile) blogger, it fills me with great concern to see radical pro-Israel Americans -- especially those with dual citizenship -- speak about what America should do, as if it should always should be the same thing that would be most in line benefit the rightwing goals of Israeli foriegn policy. It makes me question their balance, their reason, and ultimately, their loyalty, because what is good for Israel or any other nation and what is good for the America should always be, by definition, like a Venn diagram... circles overlapping at points, but not all-encompassing.

Ultimately, the effotts of such people are self-defeating, as their actions help create more enemies, leading Israel to be outwardly strong, yet permanently insecure. It is no coincidence that what peace Israel does have with its neighbors has been instigated by the U.S. twisting arms and forcing politicians on all sides to negotiate towards an amicable peace.

In short, you *NEED* America to restrain your pro-Israeli rightwing excesses. You just don't seem to know it yet.   

"Fortunately, a few classical leftists do remain in our
midst. They don’t support the war in Iraq, much less Israeli
colonialism in the West Bank, but they are admirably unwilling to
leverage their
internationalism in opposition to either."

I'm not saying they support the AIPAC neocon agenda, but they don't not support the AIPAC necon agenda. This is a admirable? You are a very confused young man.

Rhymes with Jew. As does flu, coup, and stew.  Bring to a boil, then simmer.

I don't make sense? Neither do you.

Neither does Paul Newman.

Style note to Weiss:

If you are going to take on the likes of Josh Marshall with snarky, "you're betryaying your fellow Jews" commentary, you should at least do so in the context of a reasonably well written blog post.  The fact that you attacked Josh in jest might excuse you from the sin of bad intentions, but nothing excuses you from greeting all those tasty TPM web hits with the kind of incoherant, poorly written tripe featured

So please, take potshots if you must, but at least make sense doing it.

I chortled at this, on Je(w?)cy's about us section: "This much we know: we’re hungry. Hungry for meaning. For community. For
continuity and clarity and inspiration. For intelligent, thoughtful
analysis of consequential ideas and issues."

But who reads mission statements? Maybe our dear Weisschen should? I'm goin' back to TPM feast. There's nothing for me here but to go hungry.  

It does sadden me to read a Jew hating Jews, but if you're hungry I guess you'll even eat your own. 

You missed a Simpson's reference in the Andrew Sullivan post that would have made all clear.  Krusty the Klown is a guest for dinner at the Simpsons' house.  He is asked to stay grace.  He says something like "Well, it's been a while, but . . . " and begins a broches.

Homer:  Ha!  He's talking funny!

Lisa: No, Dad, that's Hebrew.  Krusty must be Jewish.

Homer: A Jewish entertainer?

Lisa: Lots of entertainers have been Jewish; for example Lorne Greene, Dinah Shore, Mel Brooks, William Shatner . . .

Homer: Mel Brooks is Jewish??

And yes, both Mel Brooks and Josh Marshall are Jewish.

Weiss,

You may have missed it but there are lots of jews, and I'm one of them, who are sick and tired of the "reductio ad anti semitism" of the far right/pro israel, neo-con group that have been attacking Walt and Mearsheimer. If we are reducing the entire of human history to an almost randomly chosen set of points I'd like to point out that the far right/aipac side of things has been smearing and attacking actual jews for being unjewish since the founding of Israel. Did you know that I.F. Stone, who wrote the classic "Underground to Palestine" was essentially excommunicated for advocating a two state solution to the Palestinian problem? The *american* publishers, under pressure from conservative jews in this country, demanded he take out two sentences alluding to a two state solution while the Israeli publishers left it in. Another example, like Gush Emunim, of how fearful and militaristic and unprincipled American Jewish support for Israel has been compared to the actual Israeli political activists and peace activists.

Here's a clue: you and your friends don't get to determine who is really jewish and who isn't, and whose political beliefs are "good" and whose are "bad." But if that's the best you can do, trying to find some way to make your political history "more jewish" than that of others I have news for you--there are plenty of us out here with better political and religious pedigrees. I trace mine back to an anarchist and editor of the free worker's daily, my family has been on the front lines of political activism for four generations, and we won't be dictated to by any little pissant who thinks he's "chosen" by birth and not by action.

Oh, and f*ck scoop jackson and the horse he rode out on. If I hear any more about that political loser and his degenerate spawn I'll vomit. The very phrase "scoop jackson" has come to be synonymous with angry, childish, militarism and, of course, Joe Lieberman who has become synonymous with "shonda."

aimai

The one thing in that article that drives me nuts is that the author says that Abe Foxman's book in response is an attempt to stifle criticism.  This is a common liberal trope.  We can say whatever we want, but if anyone responds with their own book  then they are supressing my speech.  Absurd!

Dude, it's Daniel Lazare, not Denis.

SUCKS