God's Jewish Warriors

August 22, 2007

Last night CNN aired the Jewish segment of Christiane Amanpour's God's Warriors. It is doubtless the best and most refreshing comment about what's going on in Israel ever to appear on American television. The take-home message—the one that will be lurking around in the back of the minds of viewers long after watching it—is the image of fanatical Jews. There are repeated images of religious Jews referring to the West Bank and Jerusalem as promised to Jews in Genesis and advocating that Arabs either move or be expelled. There are Jewish activists bent on destroying the Al-Aqsa Mosque built at the site of the ancient Jewish temple and plotting to kill Palestinian schoolchildren; Jewish settlers being hauled out of the Sinai, Gaza, and various West Bank outposts by the Israeli army; Baruch Goldstein's massacre of praying Palestinians; masses of Jews expressing hatred toward Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin because of his endorsement of the Oslo peace process; the assassination of Rabin by Yigal Amir, a Jewish fanatic inspired by Goldstein; Ariel Sharon, "the Godfather of the Settlements," visiting the Al-Aqsa Mosque and fomenting the Second Intifada.

There is a particularly striking segment on Jewish woman from New York who moved to Israel because "I was never fully American. I was Jewish." As a child, she learned Hebrew before she learned English, and her summers were spent at Zionist youth camps. She now recruits financial support for the settlements from Christian Zionists in America. The Christian congregation sings songs in Hebrew, and the Israeli and American flags are juxtaposed..

In America we tend to think that Jews are "just like us. After all, Israel is the "only democracy in the Middle East" and a "staunch American ally." We have been led to think of Judaism as one of the three mainstream American religions. ("Have you heard the one where a priest, a minister, and a rabbi go into a bar? ...") When most Americans think of Jews, they think of the the friendly doctor who lives in the neighborhood, the brilliant scientist at the university, or the liberal social activist on behalf of the downtrodden.

But the Jews in God's Jewish Warriors often don't look like us at all. They are often religious Jews with long braided hair, beards, and names like Dvir and Dov. (New York State Assemblyman and West Bank settler Dov Hikind is depicted contributing some of his campaign funds to the settlements.) Many of the men use tefillin and wear yarmulkes, and they rock back and forth when they pray. The women often cover their hair and wear long gowns resembling a mild version of the Muslim purdah.

Judaism's Middle Eastern roots are on display, and there is nothing Western about it at all. These people don't seem very democratic, and they seem massively ethnocentric. They live in a completely Jewish world where their every thought and perception seem colored by their Jewish identity. Theirs is in an apartheid world separated by high concrete walls from their Palestinian neighbors, where even tiny settlements are necessarily protected by the Israeli army. And at a time when Americans are constantly being encouraged by Jewish organizations like the ADL to be ever more tolerant of all kinds of diversity, these people are anything but tolerant. Calls for expropriation and expulsion of the Palestinians are commonplace among them. Israel has created a classic Middle Eastern segmentary society in which different groups live in an ingroup/outgroup world, completely isolated from each other. (Click here for a discussion of contrasts between Middle Eastern and Western societies.)

Not surprisingly, pro-Israel activist groups in the U.S. are not pleased. The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) calls it "CNN's Abomination." Depictions of influential Jews who are obviously "not like us" are likely to trigger feelings of estrangement and alienation in most Americans—a natural consequence of our evolved psychology. CAMERA's main complaint is that there is too much focus on extremists rather than on more typical Jews. But as Amanpour notes at the beginning, "in the last 40 years [God's Jewish warriors] have changed the history of the Middle East." The question is not how representative these Jews are of American Jews or even Israeli Jews. The question is how much influence they have had. As I have argued, the settlement movement is the vanguard of Judaism, and Jews who actively oppose this state of affairs are eventually marginalized. If Jewish history shows anything, it's that the radicals eventually come to dominate the Jewish community.

Amanpour does an excellent job showing how the organized Jewish community in America, and especially AIPAC, has rallied to the defense of the settlements in defiance of international law and every president since Jimmy Carter. Missing is a depiction of the internal politics of American Jews in which Jewish voices who oppose support for Jewish radicals are rendered powerless. But this is an incredibly brave and informed presentation of the radical vanguard of the Jewish community that is having such a huge impact on the Middle East and, via its effects on US foreign policy, the entire world.

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Jewish Intelligence

August 19. 2007

Jewish intelligence has become a hot topic following the publication of a paper by Greg Cochran and Henry Harpending in The Journal of Biological Science. Charles Murray weighed in with an article in Commentary (Jewish Genius, April, 2007). Murray's theory is quite a bit like the one I published in my 1994 book, A People That Shall Dwell Alone (Ch. 7). I discussed eugenic events such as the Babylonian exile in which the elite Israelites were relocated to Babylon and refused to intermarry with those left behind when they returned (as graphically recounted in the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah). I also described a great deal of discrimination against the illiterate in the ancient world, with the effect that such people were excluded from the Jewish community. Marriage to such a person was especially abhorrent. And I recounted the history of Jewish education and Jewish idealization of the scholar, including especially the practice of wealthy Jews marrying their daughters to scholars and providing them with business opportunities. Because wealth was correlated with reproductive success in traditional societies, this had the effect of eugenic selection for intelligence. All of these practices originated in the ancient world and are well attested among both Ashkenazi and Sephardic populations in later centuries.

The argument of Cochran and Harpending depends on Ashkenazi uniqueness. Their major contribution is to elaborate evidence that Ashkenazi intelligence is linked to mutations linked to brain metabolism and to certain Jewish genetic diseases (e.g., Tay-Sachs disease). I certainly do not want to deny that there is some unique genetic basis for Ashkenazi IQ. Indeed, I described the evidence available as of 1994 on Ashkenazi CNS mutations linked to brain metabolism in A People That Shall Dwell Alone (Ch.2):

Eldridge (1970; see also Eldridge & Koerber 1977) suggests that a gene causing primary torsion dystonia, which occurs at high levels among Ashkenazi Jews, may have a heterozygote advantage because of beneficial effects on intelligence. Further supporting the importance of selective processes, eight of the 11 genetic diseases found predominantly among Ashkenazi Jews involve the central nervous system, and three are closely related in their biochemical effects (see Goodman 1979, 463). [Further,] Motulsky (1977a) suggests that the higher incidence of myopia in Ashkenazi Jewish populations could be the result of selection for higher verbal intelligence. Myopia and intelligence have been linked in other populations, and Jews tend to have higher intelligence and higher rates of myopia.
Eldridge, R. (1970). The torsion dystonias: Literature review and genetic and clinical studies. Neurology 20:1–78.
Eldridge, & T. Koerber (1979). Torsion dystonia: Autosomal recessive form. In Genetic Diseases among Ashkenazi Jews, ed. R. M. Goodman & A. G. Motulsky. New York: Raven Press.
Motulsky, A. G. (1979a). Possible selective effects of urbanization on Ashkenazi Jews. In Genetic Diseases Among Ashkenazi Jews, ed. R. M. Goodman & A. G. Motulsky. New York: Raven Press.
Cochran and Harpending base their argument of Ashkenazi uniqueness on their belief that Jews did not have a reputation of being smart in the ancient world.
However, if you look at Jewish religious writings, such as the Mishnah (2nd century AD) and the Talmuds (4th and 6th century), their elites were at a very high level. And it should be remembered that until the Enlightenment, the vast majority of Jewish scholarship was directed within the Jewish community, rather than at science or philosophy. As a result, Jewish intelligence may not have been apparent to non-Jews. In the ancient world, Jewish education was the norm and the system where scholars benefited with advantageous marriages was already in place. And in any case, the historical record supports the idea that Jews were quite successful economically in the ancient world. After the failed rebellions against the Romans during the 1st and 2nd century, Jews achieved a very prominent economic position in the Roman Empire and dominated some industries, so the familiar pattern of Jews as an elite group was well underway at that time. Consider, for example, the following passage from Separation and Its Discontents:

Bachrach (1985) suggested that the Jews were so wealthy, powerful, and aggressive that until around the middle of the 5th century the government viewed a strong anti-Jewish policy as not politically viable, even though it was continually being pressured in this direction by the Church. The rather limited anti-Jewish actions of the government during the 150 years following the Edict of Toleration of 313 are interpreted “as attempts to protect Christians from a vigorous, powerful, and often aggressive Jewish gens” (Bachrach 1985, 408). The Jews themselves were perceived by the emperors, the government, and the Church fathers as “an aggressive, well-organized, wealthy, and powerful minority” (p. 408). Particularly revealing are the suggestion that the solvency of the municipalities depended on Jews paying their taxes and the fear that offending the Jews could set off widespread and costly revolts, such as the one led by Patricius in 351.
Bachrach, B. S. (1985). The Jewish community in the Later Roman Empire as seen in the Codex Theodosianus. In “To See Ourselves as Others See Us”: Christians, Jews, “Others” in Late Antiquity, ed. J. Neusner & E. S. Frerichs. Chico, CA: Scholars Press.
In short, Jews in the ancient world had all of the characteristics associated with later Ashkenazi populations: Economic preeminence, an occupational profile emphasizing business, finance, trading, and manufacturing, high levels of education, and a scholarly elite producing complex, religious writing. Scholarship was an excellent means to achieve upward mobility and presumably greater than average reproductive success.
These traits also characterized the Sephardim. I agree with Murray on the Sephardim because of the complete dominance of Spain by the New Christians (economic, political, and intellectual) after the "conversions" of the early 15th century. This group remained influential in Amsterdam and elsewhere, but they gradually lost their grip in Spain because of the Inquisition. They became separated from the wider Jewish community—mainly the lower classes of Jewish society—after the expulsion of 1492. This was a dysgenic event for that group, and their descendants do not seem especially accomplished. This is a passage from Ch. 7 of A People that Shall Dwell Alone:
Jews who continued to practice Judaism in Spain during the 15th century and were subsequently expelled in 1492 were less educated and less economically successful than their Converso brethren who remained to endure the wrath of the Inquisition. In this case, the less wealthy Jews certainly suffered fewer casualties and eventually were able to emigrate to North Africa or the Levant. Eventually, the Levantine Sephardim underwent a distinct atrophy of their culture (see below), while the descendants of the Conversos continued their highly elite and exclusivist profile on the international economic scene. When these Levantine Sephardim immigrated to the United States in the 20th century, they exhibited much higher rates of illiteracy, alcoholism, prostitution, and wife abandonment than did the Ashkenazim (Sachar 1992, 338). While the Ashkenazim were quickly upwardly mobile in American society, the Sephardim achieved only “a modest economic foothold” and were more likely to engage in lower-status occupations (Sachar 1992, 340).

My view is that the Jewish population of Spain had all the characteristics of Ashkenazi populations, including the emphasis on Jewish scholarship and favorable marriages for scholars. The Conversos were at least as accomplished as Ashkenazi groups and dominated Spain at least until the Inquisition and even for quite a while thereafter. The section on the ups and downs of Jews in the Muslim world is here:

http://www.csulb.edu/~kmacd/OrientalJewsIQ.htm
The argument emphasizes the pattern of lower Sephardic IQ than for Ashkenazi populations within Israel. Nevertheless, it also notes that in general Jewish populations had higher intelligence and achievement in Arab societies when they were politically allowed to prosper. Perhaps the accomplishments of the Levantine Sephardim during some periods were facilitated because of the low average IQ of the peoples they lived among. In other words, they were highly capable compared to the native populations. There seems to be good evidence that the decline of the Levantine Sephardim was due at least partly to anti-Jewish actions.
Anthropologist Peter Frost has proposed a variation on the theme of Cochran and Harpending. Frost emphasizes the shift to early marriage, especially by "semi-rural artisans who produced on contract for urban merchants and who could ably exploit these larger, more elastic markets. . . . Their workforce was their household. In more successful households, the workers would marry earlier and have as many children as possible. In less successful ones, they would postpone marriage, or never marry."
This theory also demands Ashkenazi uniqueness, which is at least questionable given the above. The cottage industry niche was a fairly short-lived phenomenon, so the a more formal argument would have to be made involving the power of selection among Jewish artisan families and between Jews and non-Jews. Frost's proposal reminds us that the stereotype of Jews as financiers, money lenders, merchants, and traders can be overdone. Indeed, the general pattern was for Jews to be involved in vertically integrated business and trading arrangements. For example, in Poland by the end of the 18th century, Jews dominated almost all areas of trading, manufacturing, and estate managing, and they had become dominant among the artisans as well (A People That Shall Dwell Alone, Ch. 5; Zionism and the Internal Dynamics of Judaism). The Jewish economic niche began with trading, estate managing, and money lending, but eventually they dominated virtually the entire economy except agricultural labor as the Jewish population increased.
Given this pattern, it seems gratuitous to attribute causality to one part of this pattern, especially when artisanry was the last economic niche to become dominated by Jews. Indeed, the Jewish involvement with artisanry seems to have been a consequence of their already dominating other areas; artisanry was the last remaining niche above agricultural labor to be dominated by Jews. For Frost's model to work, he must assume that the IQ of the Jewish population prior to their involvement in artisanry was at the population average. But the progenitors of Jewish artisans in Eastern Europe were Jewish traders, money lenders, and estate managers—hardly low-IQ professions. Overall, the Jewish occupational profile in Eastern Europe is familiar in other times and places, including the ancient world and Spain prior to the Inquisition, so it's difficult to see how this fits as an argument for Ashkenazi uniqueness.
It should also be noted that Jewish fertility was very high not simply because they were involved in artisanry, but also for religious reasons: the rise of the Hasidic movement. Poor Jewish families continued to have high fertility even when the result was poverty (see Zionism and the Internal Dynamics of Judaism). My argument is that eventually Jews overshot their economic niche entirely. This had huge consequences for the modern world not only because it figured prominently in the pressures resulting in anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe throughout the 19th and into the 20th century, but also because the main Jewish responses to their misery in Eastern Europe were Zionism and political radicalism—two very potent forces indeed.
August 2, 2007
Pinker on race
Steven Pinker has apparently assumed the Stephen Jay Gould Chair for Politically Correct Popularization of Evolutionary Biology at Harvard. Gould, of course, had a long and distinguished career devoted to disinformation in the areas of IQ research and other leftist causes — so much so that I devoted a large section of a chapter to him in Culture of Critique. I suspect that the folks at Harvard understand the power that their position as an elite academic institution exerts in the mainstream media and that Pinker's appointment was tacitly understood to be a safe bet that he would carry on the Gouldian tradition and not stray too far off the reservation, at least on the key issues of race and ethnicity.
I should note that I am not entirely disinterested in discussing Pinker. He has attacked my work on Judaism from an evolutionary perspective without reading it. However, it's interesting that he now seems comfortable with the possibility that Ashkenazi Jews on average have a higher IQ, and he seems to agree that it's quite possibly because of the same sorts of selective pressures that I discuss in A People That Shall Dwell Alone. Indeed, on the one hand, he is quite proud of Jewish intelligence and accomplishment, but on the other he is a bit worried about its consequences: Is it good for the Jews if non-Jews know it?
In any case, there is no question that Steven Pinker is the popular voice of evolutionary biology in the elite media. His latest effort, Strangled by Roots: The Genealogy Craze in America (The New Republic online, July 30) has some good points, notably the statement that "blood relatives are likely to share genes. To the extent that minds are shaped by genomes, relatives are likely to be of like minds. Close relatives, whether raised together or apart, have been found to be correlated in intelligence, personality, tastes, and vices." Such statements of the importance of behavior genetics to understanding IQ and other important human traits are certainly none too common in the media. Gould would certainly not be happy with this.
However, Pinker pledges allegiance to some of the central theories and data in evolutionary biology while nevertheless vitiating their importance for understanding the world we live in.
Pinker's central claim is as follows:
The same arithmetic that makes an individual's pedigree collapse onto itself also makes everyone's pedigree collapse into everyone else's. We are all related — not just in the obvious sense that we are all descended from the same population of the first humans, but also because everyone's ancestors mated with everyone else's at many points since that dawn of humanity.
This claim fails to acknowledge that people's pedigrees don't collapse into everyone else's for the simple reason that populations did not interbreed for thousands of years. This led to distinct races and to distinct ethnic groups within races. (See, e.g., V. Sarich & F. Miele, Race: The Reality of Human Differences.) Particularly egregious is that there is no appreciation of the work of Frank Salter (On Genetic Interests: Family, Ethnicity, and Humanity in an Age of Mass Migration). Salter shows that when world populations are sampled, genetic variance between groups is about .125—equivalent to the kinship between grandparent and grandchild. This is a far from trivial amount, and the result is that humans have an enormous genetic interest in their ethnic groups. Just as with genealogical kinship where people with larger families have a higher inclusive fitness, this genetic interest becomes enormous because it is tied to the actual number of ethnic group members which, in the modern world, can total in the millions, or, I suppose billions, in the case of the Chinese.
Pinker creates an imaginary world in which family ties are "biologically tenuous" because of the exponential decay of relatedness as one goes back in time. But for a European, say, going back for a very long time still means finding ancestors that were also from the European gene pool. And it's a very different gene pool than the Chinese or Africans find when they look into their past. And, as Salter's work implies, individual Europeans have a very large genetic interest in furthering the numbers and influence of their groups, just as other peoples do. This implies that ethnic and racial interests are real, not illusory.
Secondly, Pinker gives an air of expertise when he discusses the psychological mechanisms underlying kinship but he only includes socialization mechanisms (growing up in the same household and seeing siblings cared for by mother). Notably missing is any mention of J. Philippe Rushton's Genetic Similarity Theory. This theory attempts to account not specifically for perceptions of kinship, but rather for the general human tendency to assort with genetically similar others.
The implication is that when there is a choice to be made whether in marriage, friendship, or other type of alliance, all things being equal, we are more likely to choose similar others as a way of enhancing the benefits of relationships and lessening the risks. Obviously, being of the same race is a very important basis of similarity. In a recent paper, I describe what I call implicit white communities: communities, such as NASCAR and country music fandom in the United States, where the vast majority of participants are white but not necessarily self-consciously so. That is, white people choose to be among people who are white like themselves, but they don’t necessarily think of their choice as resulting from a conscious desire to be part of a white community.
Pinker portrays appeals to wider kinship ties beyond the immediate family as little more than demagoguery, made possible by a variety of tricks, such as using the language of kinship (e.g., brotherhood, motherland). But the reality of racial and ethnic differences and the fact that we are drawn to people like ourselves means that appeals to kinship often have a firm basis in self-interest and psychological reality. Not for nothing the question "Is it good for the Jews?"
Finally, Pinker correctly calls attention to the problem that extended families present to modernization. As he notes, Iraq is a classic example of a society based on kinship ties cemented by first cousin marriage. Without using the terms, Pinker is pointing to the classic divide between individualist cultures and collectivist cultures. But what he doesn't point out is that the differences between these cultures may well be biological, reflecting natural selection in different environments. European individualism has its roots in a northern hunting ecology, while the collectivism of much of the rest of the world is rooted in prolonged evolution in environments that support group conflict.
Individualism is linked to a suite of traits that together form the basis of Western modernization: the nuclear family, bilateral kinship patterns, monogamy, moral universalism, civil societies based on trust and reputation rather than kinship connections, relative lack of ethnocentrism and group orientation, and science. Collectivist cultures typical of the Middle East, China, India, and African cultures have the opposite suite of traits. Like Iraq, they are are based on extended kinship and tribal relationships.
If we have learned anything by the disaster in Iraq, it is that it is not easy to change these patterns. It's ironic that, as Pinker notes, journalist and blogger extraordinaire Steve Sailer pointed out the collectivism of Iraqi society and its implications for social disintegration in post-invasion Iraq around the same time that neocon Bernard Lewis, the most widely respected academic expert on the Middle East and Arab culture, was crowing about the democratic potential of Arab societies.
At a time when Western peoples and culture are under massive assault via the mass immigration of peoples with very different family and cultural patterns, Pinker's assurances that resistance ultimately has no basis in science will certainly not help the cause of defense. But I rather doubt that he would be troubled by this. And it certainly will play well at Harvard.

July 30, 2007
Bratz
Not having any young daughters I was quite unaware of the "wildly successful" Bratz dolls or the recent movie featuring them. ( "A Good-Girl Make-Over for the Bratz," LA Times, July 30, 2007). The dolls are aimed at 4-8-year-old girls, with "dewy lips, fishnet stockings and barely-there miniskirts — a creep-out factor for a lot of moms. Earlier this year, a report from the American Psychological Assn. even mentioned the Bratz dolls by name and said 'it is worrisome when dolls designed specifically for 4- to 8-year-olds are associated with an objectified adult sexuality.' " So we have the cultural subversion theme going on: "ten-inch tall hoochie mamas" for little girls to play with. Director Sean McNamara's first reaction to the dolls is revealing: "These aren't cute dolls — they look like sluts." (Here's a collection from Google Images.)
But for the movie, they probably figured that the teenage girls as sluts theme would mean that the girls would actually have to act slutty rather than just look slutty. That would bring about an R-rating or worse, and therefore cut down on the profits. So the hoochie mama theme was downplayed in favor of a strong multicultural conflict between multi-race good guys versus "country club white" bad guys. The bad guys are led by "student-body president Meredith, who is platinum blond, affluent, haughty and in possession of both nefarious plans to rule the school and a pampered pooch named (ahem) Paris." On the other hand, the Bratz "are the urban poly-hues of a Benetton ad": one "lily-white," one African-American, one Asian, and one Latino (played by the daughter of an Australian Jew and a Spanish Catholic). So there is a Jewish theme as well: "The loopy vision of a Jewish grandmother who, with no explanation, has a mariachi band strumming away and munching on bagels in her kitchen."
All of the non-white characters look about as white as possible while nevertheless retaining distinctive racial characteristics. This doubtless makes the characters more attractive to white girls who constitute the core audience for the movie. After all, it's natural to be attracted to those like yourself (part of the deep structure of Philippe Rushton's Genetic Similarity Theory)— even when the ingroup crosses racial lines. Having a dark-skinned Muslim character dressed in a Burkha would definitely ruin the aura.
The driving force behind Bratz is Avi Arad, an Israeli-American who is very big on diversity, at least for America: "The first thing I saw in them was diversity." ... "I really liked the idea that they had a Latino girl, an Asian girl, an African American girl and a lily-white kid. They show that your color is not going to set up your path in life. And I think that works because, among kids, it's becoming more and more of 'one world for a change.'" The dolls and the movie are just the beginning. A Broadway musical and sequels to the movie will in due time be coming to theaters near you. Perhaps in the sequels they can continue with the "diversity is good — white without diversity is bad" theme, but maybe spice it up with some slutty behavior more in line with what the Bratz dolls are all about.
Hey Avi, how about a movie aimed at Israeli kids? I've got the perfect plot. A Jewish girl from Israel, an Israeli Arab, a Palestinian Muslim from the West Bank, and an Arab Christian do battle against a stereotypically evil Jewish-Israeli girl. A religiously fundamentalist West Bank settler who wants all Arabs removed from Israel and the occupied territories would be perfect. Or we could play it safe and have the bad guy be a Jewish girl who simply wants Israel to remain a Jewish state. Since you're into physical stereotypes, the evil Jewish girl could have all the stereotypical Jewish physical features—something right out of Der Sturmer, and we could even do an Israeli version of the "Jewish American Princess" bit. I'm telling you, Avi, this idea has legs. Have your people call me. We'll do lunch.

July 28, 2007
"Marriage wall pains new Israelis"
Following closely on the heels of news that Israel is considering a law allowing the Housing Agency to discriminate against Arabs in leasing land (see entry for July 21, 2007), the LA Times reports on the difficulties caused by the fact that control over marriage in Israel resides with the Orthodox rabbinate. This means that marriage is restricted to people who can prove Jewish descent through their mothers or who have undergone the grueling process of converting to Orthodox Judaism.. So Israelis with a Jewish father don't count, and even if you have a Jewish mother it may not be easy to prove it to the authorities. Documents must be authenticated, often at considerable cost. It is possible to go abroad and have a civil ceremony, but this too is costly.
This is not a rare problem. Over 300,000 Israelis cannot be legally married, even though they are eligible for the military draft.
One of the criticisms of my work is to argue that even if I am right about the extreme concern that traditional Jews had in racial purity, this surely does not apply today when there are very high rates of conversion and intermarriage. Consider the following:
1. To the extent that this is true at all, the argument is really about how to characterize Diaspora Judaism in certain Western countries. High levels of intermarriage do not occur in Israel or in other parts of the world. In fact, the article notes that each religious community in Israel has its own marriage laws. The Jewish state becomes a microcosm of traditional Middle Eastern societies and traditional Judaism itself: Different groups living among their own people and with their own cultural practices, walled off from other groups.
2. In the U.S., estimates of rates of intermarriage tend to be inflated because Orthodox Jews are undersampled while Southern, black, and poor Jews were oversampled. The best-known survey inflated the number of out-marrying Jews by including people who themselves were of mixed parentage and were not raised as Jews.
3. The vast majority of the intermarried and their children will eventually leave Judaism both because their descendents will be less committed to the Jewish community and because they are made to feel unwelcome in the Jewish community. Outreach efforts routinely overlook the children of intermarried couples. Thus, the issue is not so much about what Judaism is, as about whether there will be a decline in Jewish numbers in the long run.
4. There is a robust core of ethnically conscious Jews (fundamentalist, Orthodox, and Conservative)—at least 33% but probably more because these groups are undercounted probably for political reasons—for whom intermarriage is anathema. This group will retain their genetic integrity into the foreseeable future, and they are prone to high fertility levels.
5. The Jewish community has made a major effort to minimize intermarriage (see also Separation and Its Discontents, Ch. 9). This effort is one factor likely to discourage conversionary families and their descendents from remaining in the Jewish community. It is still very common for Jews to self-consciously assert the ethnic basis of Judaism. Charles Bronfman, a main sponsor of the $210 million "Birthright Israel" project which attempts to deepen the commitment of American Jews, stated, "You can live a perfectly decent life not being Jewish, but I think you're losing a lot—losing the kind of feeling you have when you know [that] throughout the world there are people who somehow or other have the same kind of DNA that you have."(Washington Post, Jan. 17, 2000). Even in Reform Judaism, it is common to think of Judaism as having a biological basis. And the fence mending has been particularly vigorous in the outer layers of the Jewish community. Recent guidelines for Reform Judaism emphasize traditional practices of conversion, such as circumcision, that are likely to minimize converts, and proselytism is explicitly rejected ("Reform Judaism Nears a Guide to Conversion.", p. A19, New York Times, June 27, 2001). It would appear that Conservative religious forms of Judaism will be the rule in the Diaspora and there will be a self-conscious ethnic aspect to Jewish religiosity.
6. There is no attempt by the organized Jewish community to simply convert non-Jews to Judaism. Quite the opposite. Every effort now is directed at mending the fences and preventing intermarriage. Orthodox conversion is a very grueling process, presumably designed to weed out all but the most motivated.
7. So far as I am aware, conversionary couples and their children do not have a leadership role within the Jewish community. I would be amazed if the ADL had significant number of Jews coming from intermarried families--certainly not people like Abe Foxman, Mortimer Zuckerman, Alan Dershowitz or the Jewish activists I am aware of. Again, the issue of conversion and its effects on Judaism is really a question about the future, not the present, and certainly not about the past.
When you put all this together, "the only democracy in the Middle East" and its supporters in the U.S. don't seem very Western at all. Ethnic purity and apartheid-like discrimination and separation from outgroups are the reality.


July 26, 2007
Jonah Goldberg
In writing Tuesday's blog I Jonah Goldberg I read over an old column of his on why we shouldn't blame the Jews for the Iraq war. (Jews and the war. National Review Online, March 13, 2003). This is a really disingenuous piece. I say that because that's the only explanation for why someone with a presumably high IQ could write such nonsense. Of course, not all Jews were in favor of the war, or even a majority. But he seems to think that it's obviously a bad case of anti-Semitism to suppose that some Jews could have influenced the Bush Administration to invade Iraq because of their sense of Jewish interests and specifically their attachment to Israel. No need to go over the types of evidence that has struck quite a few people to conclude otherwise. To even entertain the thought that Jews "pull strings" is to cross the line. To be sure, Goldberg is more forthright than many, noting, for example, that indeed "it's perfectly fair to argue that some Jewish (and non-Jewish) conservatives overemphasize the importance of Israel." Thanks!!
But then he argues that "maybe instead of Richard Perle secretly receiving orders from Ariel Sharon, he might actually believe what he says. After all, if the 'Dark Prince' thinks it's in America's interest to risk American blood and treasure in defense of our Taiwanese or South Korean allies, is it so treasonous that he might think we should do it for our Israeli ones as well?"
The problem, of course, is that it's just about impossible to think that someone like Perle could possibly have an evenhanded, unbiased view of the relationship between Israeli and American interests. We're talking about someone who has been credibly charged with spying for Israel, who is on the editorial board of the Jerusalem Post, has worked for an Israeli defense technology company, is a close personal friend of Israeli ultra-hawk Ariel Sharon, and was a leading force behind the notorious "A Clean Break" report for an Israeli military think tank that advocated the removal of Saddam Hussein as being an important Israeli interest. Goldberg, of course, fails to include any of this information about Perle in his op-ed. It's truly amazing that such a person could ever be taken seriously in foreign policy circles in the U.S. — or that people like Goldberg could have influential positions in the mainstream media.

July 24, 2007
Goldberg: Seeking the Moral High Ground
One of the features of Jewish intellectual and political movements I noticed in my research is a strong tendency to claim the moral high ground (See Culture of Critique, passim). The neocons, of course, are no exception to this, and Jonah Goldberg's "In Iraq Liberals Flip on Genocide" (L. A. Times, July, 24, 2007) is a great example. It is now widely known that the neocons, including Goldberg, were the main force leading us into the war in Iraq and that the motivations of many of the principal neocons were firmly rooted in their ethnic ties to the interests of Israel. The public rationale for this disastrous policy was based on a whole series of lies about weapons of mass destruction and strong ties between Saddam Hussein and El Qaeda. It was also based on an illusory desire for democracy and Western-style social and political institutions on the part of the Iraqi people.
So what we have here is a huge moral abyss in which the ethnic interests of a narrow segment of the American population have resulted in a huge loss of many thousands of American and Iraqi lives as well as hundreds of billions of dollars of unnecessary expenditures. Goldberg nevertheless tries to seize the moral high ground by saying that those who want to leave Iraq are condemning the Iraqis to an ocean of bloodshed. Ergo, the U.S. has a moral obligation to remain in Iraq.
The problem with this from a moral perspective is it was well known prior to the invasion that Iraq was deeply divided along sectarian religious and ethnic lines, and that toppling Hussein might well unleash a nightmare of violence not only on the Iraqis but also the U.S. troops. (Click here for Vice President Dick Cheney's prescient 1994 video clearly stating all the reasons why invading Iraq would be a bad idea..) The idea that the invasion would lead to a society remotely resembling Western societies was a fundamental lie promoted by respected neocon academics like Middle East expert Bernard Lewis of Princeton. (IMO, Lewis should be a prime candidate for the Franz Boas Award for Using Academic Credentials to Advance an Ethnic Agenda. Close runner-up: Alan Dershowitz of Harvard for his multi-faceted activities in defense of Israel, but more on that another time.) And Israeli strategists have long proposed downsizing Arab regimes along ethnic and sectarian lines so that they are less powerful and pose less of a threat to Israel. See "Neoconservatism as a Jewish Movement."
So I can just see the denouement: Goldberg and his ilk will pose as morally pure defenders of continued U.S. presence in Iraq, and when that becomes politically or militarily untenable, they will wring their hands publicly, and condemn the liberals and anyone else who advocates withdrawal. But privately, they and the Israelis will be crying some very big crocodile tears.

July 21, 2007
A Racist Jewish State: Haaretz, July 21 2007
President Carter's book, Palestine: Peace or Apartheid, caused an uproar among the pro-Zionist media in the U.S. because the word 'apartheid' appeared in the title. David Horowitz (Jimmy Carter: Jew-Hater, Genocide-Enabler, Liar) was especially pained by Carter's description of the lives of the Palestinians living behind walled off areas and restrained in their movements, while modern roads connected the Jewish settlements. If this isn't apartheid, the word has lost it's meaning. But Carter was very careful to state that apartheid only characterized the occupied territories, not Israel proper. But we have long known that Jews and non-Jews do not have the same access to public services even in pre-1967 Israel, and Haaretz now reports that a law being considered in the Knesset would allow discrimination against non-Jews in leasing land through the Jewish Agency. The law would also allow the establishment of universities and other public institutions reserved only for Jews. This law would in effect overturn a Supreme Court decision prohibiting discrimination—a decision that was ignored in practice by local communities.
It will be interesting to see if the American Jewish community is motivated to take a leading role to protest this state of affairs, but we shouldn't hold our breath on that one. American Jews have a long history of advocating policies in the U.S. that are quite the opposite of Israeli policies within Israel. (Immigration comes to mind.) It is well-known that the American Jewish community played a major role in the civil rights movement in the U.S., but less well known that from the beginning in the early 20th century there was a a strong sense among many Zionists that Jews constitute a biological entity. Many prominent Zionists (e.g., Vladimir Jabotinsky and Arthur Ruppin) saw the establishment of Israel as a way to preserve ethnic purity among Jews and advance the interests of the Jewish people seen as a racial group (reviewed in Ch. 5 of Separation and Its Discontents; see also http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/776995.html). It's abundantly clear that that is exactly how Israel is functioning. Indeed, the prime advocates of the proposed law (Uri Ariel, Benjamin Netanyahu, Ami Ayalon, Michael Eitan, Reuven Rivlin and Shalom Simhon) are the intellectual and political descendants of Jabotinsky. They are Jewish ethnonationalists who have been in the forefront of the settler movement and the erection of the apartheid society in the occupied territories. These practices certainly depart from the image of Israel as a democratic, Western society, but they fit well with a Jewish ethnonationalist agenda and, from my perspective, are yet another example of Judaism as a group evolutionary strategy.


Wednesday, March 22, 2006
Argumentum ad David Duke
This is an absolutely outrageous example of "journalism" from the New York Sun. According to the article, the supporters of the excellent piece by Mearsheimer and Walt are listed as David Duke (= KKK = Nazi), the PLO, and "a senior member of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist organization." Obviously a bad lot. On the other hand, the opponents include prominent ex-government officials, academics, and media people: Marvin Kalb, Dennis Ross, and Mort Zuckerman, and Daniel Pipes—all well-known members of the Israel Lobby. A previous article, titled David Duke Claims to be Vindicated by Harvard Dean, did the same thing, but the opponents in that one included a different set of Zionist operatives: Alan Dershowitz, Malcolm Hoenlein (executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations), Martin Peretz, Aaron Miller, Andrea Levin, and Morris Amitay. The main technique is to find fault with some quibble and thereby discredit the whole thing. The classic is the statement in the article that Daniel Pipes has offered a reward to anyone who can prove that he started Campus Watch at the behest of the Lobby. But M & W simply point to Pipes being a member of the Lobby—someone with a long record of pro-Israel activism (perhaps fanaticism is a better word in Pipes' case). Rather than debate the truth of this, Pipes interprets M & W's to imply some sort of secret organization giving Pipes his marching orders. But of course, this can't be proven, and is probably not true anyway. So the implication is that everything M&W say is tainted.
Not to be outdone, James Taranto picked up the David Duke theme in his op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal. This piece does deal with some of the actual arguments in M & W (although it leaves an awful lot out), but Taranto just can't help tying it all together by emphasizing the Duke angle. I guess the idea is that if you embed your arguments in the Duke stuff, maybe people won't look too closely at the arguments. Think of Duke as a tool for focusing the mind and simplifying the issues.
Too bad Hitler isn't still alive so the Sun and Taranto could find out the Fuhrer's attitude on this one. I guess we'll have to settle for the argumentum ad David Duke.
PS: Sept. 20, 2007: This type of attack continues. Mearsheimer and Walt gave a talk at UCLA on Sept. 19. A flyer distributed to audience members by "Stand With Us" has a page titled "Extremists Endorse 'The Israel Lobby.'" On it are listed David Duke, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood's guidance council, Abdulmo'em Abulfotah, Hamas, and Mark Weber, director of the Institute for Historical Review. The first page sums up their critique: "Fails to Meet Academic Standards; Includes Factual Errors; Carries Anti-Semitic Overtones.