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**MARCH 19, 2024**
On the Prospect website
Google and Apple Discuss an Exclusive Deal-Again
The two tech giants are talking about licensing Google's AI technology
for the iPhone. This is precisely the kind of deal that landed Google in
court over its search engine. BY DAVID DAYEN
How the Welfare State Fails the Poor
A bureaucratic paper chase undermines compassion and practical help for
the needy, while Wall Street gets whatever it wants. It doesn't have
to be that way. BY ROBERT KUTTNER
Gulf Coast Petrochemical Buildout Draws Billions in Tax Breaks for
Polluters
A new report by the Environmental Integrity Project compiled data on
every U.S. plastics plant built, expanded or proposed since 2012,
revealing massive growth in Texas. BY DYLAN BADDOUR
Elon and the Daleks
Tom Tomorrow brings you This Modern World BY TOM TOMORROW
Meyerson on TAP
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**** Schumer Spoke for Diaspora Jews
His break with Bibi made explicit, and official, the inherent rifts
between diaspora and Israeli Jews.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer's speech last week excoriating
Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu for his conduct of the Gaza war and
calling for him to step down (and not incidentally, raising the specter
of conditioning America's hitherto unconditional aid to Israel) has
brought forth a host of assessments: Schumer was giving voice to what
most other Democratic officeholders believed but were afraid to say; he
was also giving voice to the sentiments of most rank-and-file Democrats
and most American Jews; and he clearly had the blessing of President
Biden to go ahead and make that speech.
All those assessments are true, but there's one more that needs to be
made: Schumer's speech also illuminated in dramatic fashion the
fundamental differences between Israeli Jews and diaspora Jews.
For reasons of self-preservation, diaspora Jews are strong proponents of
minority rights-and not just minority rights for themselves. When
they've been confronted with Hillel's second question-
**If I am only for myself, what am I?**-the answer they've come up
with has usually been:
**politically very weak**. Hence, they've tended to become strong
proponents of minority rights across the board, joining campaigns for
equal rights for Blacks, Latinos, immigrants, gays and lesbians, and so
on. That's long positioned them on the left side of the political
spectrum, so much so that, in a reciprocal causal relationship
impossible to disentangle, being on the left side has kept them as
defenders of minority rights.
Israel, of course, is the one nation where Jews constitute the majority.
The structural imperatives that lead most diaspora Jews to staunchly
defend minority rights no longer pertain when Jews are an empowered
majority, most particularly when they view their nation's (or
territory's) minority population as a latent or very real force
contesting for power-and, perhaps, with the possibility of becoming
the majority themselves. Most liberal Israeli Jews accept the idea of
co-existence, but their number was dwindling even before October 7th.
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But wasn't Israel initially a democratic socialist state, establishing
communal institutions for its Jews that were the envy of their leftist
diaspora co-religionists? Doesn't that dispel the notion of an
inherent gulf between diaspora Jews and Israeli Jews?
I don't think it does. For one thing, the Ashkenazi Jews who
formulated the Labor Zionism that characterized Israel in its early
decades had chiefly become socialists while still in Eastern and Central
Europe, where they were a hated and threatened minority. Like those who
migrated to Palestine, those who migrated to America were also
disproportionately socialist when they arrived at Ellis Island, building
institutions and unions here along socialist lines until the New Deal
opened a way for them to become a welcomed minority within a powerful
majority that had state power. In both Israel and America, that
Ashkenazi strain of socialism faded after three or four decades, but the
minority status of American Jews persisted, as did their strong
inclination to champion minority rights. Despite the prominence and
power that American Jews have attained, however provisionally, the
muscle memory of minority status and the liberal social democratic
tendencies that came with it have anchored most of them on the left side
of American politics.
Having a nation of one's own can tend to erode such politics. That's
not a condition peculiar to Israeli Jews; it's a condition common to
most peoples and nations. In Israel, it's exacerbated by
Palestinians' claim to land and power, and greatly exacerbated by
Israel's occupation of the West Bank, as occupations invariably
brutalize not just the occupied but the occupiers, too.
Which returns us to Schumer's speech, and the events that compelled
him to make it. While a longtime champion of Israel, Schumer voiced the
revulsion and horror common to most diaspora Jews (AIPAC
notwithstanding) at Israel's war on Palestinian civilians and the
ethnic cleansing that Bibi's government is violently undertaking,
whether by bombardment or starvation. He also voiced the exasperation of
diaspora Jews at Bibi's obdurate opposition to a two-state solution.
There are American Jews, of course, who fully support Bibi's war, just
as there are Israeli Jews who've long called for a two-state solution.
And, to be sure, the kind of rift that's now opened up between the
Israelis and the diasporans, to which Schumer's speech has given a
kind of official imprimatur, hasn't always or invariably been so
acute, or even that visible. But it's always been there, like a
geologic fault that, under sufficient pressure, yields an earthquake.
We're feeling that earthquake now.
~ HAROLD MEYERSON
Follow Harold Meyerson on Twitter
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