Haaretz
Adar1 29, 5765
The American-Jewish intellectual
Irving Kristol once explained that a neoconservative is "a liberal who's
been mugged by reality." His son and the successor to the idea, William
Kristol, is under attack from around the world for his enormous influence
as one of the leading neocons influencing the American administration. The
younger Kristol, a guest here this week of Tel Aviv University's School of
Government and Policy, presented his political vision at an event held in
his honor in a lecture entitled, "President Bush's foreign policy after
September 11 and the neoconservative ideology."
The attacks on the
neoconservatives in the Arab world, Europe and the U.S. is often
characterized by anti-Semitism. For some years, the Jews among the neocons
have starred in many articles that use classic anti-Semitic imagery
depicting them as part of a Jewish "conspiracy" controlling the
world.
One of the favorite terms used by those writers is the
"neoconservative cabal," which often appears in the Arab but also the
Western press. It adds a Jewish-mystic tinge (echoes of kabbala) to the
"conspiracy" of philosophers, think tanks and writers as well as media
magnate Rupert Murdoch (even though he is not Jewish), whose goal is to
lead the U.S. into an aggressive foreign policy that aims for regime
change in anti-democratic countries that support terror as its
centerpiece.
The neocons have been speaking openly for the past
several years about how it is America's duty to assume leadership and
responsibility for global security. They say that since the fall of the
Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, the U.S. has been lax in
protecting its vital security interests, undertook deep cuts in its
military budgets and created a sense of uncertainty about its attitude
toward threats to world peace and the values represented by the democratic
superpower.
William Kristol is the editor of The Weeky Standard,
which President Bush has said he reads regularly. Eight years ago, the
magazine came out with a cover story arguing for the removal of Saddam
Hussein. Another well-known article by Kristol and Robert Kagan in a 1996
issue of Foreign Affairs emphasized the danger of terror and
non-conventional weapons, and argued that after the Soviet empire had
ceased to threaten the world, it was the duty of the U.S. to export
aggressively democracy to the world.
The first generation of
neoconservatives also included a group of Jews who had moved from left to
right - Norman Podhoretz, the former editor of Commentary, and Irving
Kristol, William's father, were both Trotskyites in their youth. In the
1980s, they, together with non-Jews in their circle, created the
ideological framework for the Reagan administration's struggle against the
evil Soviet empire. In the 1990s, they warned against the Clinton
administration's complacency in the face of threats to world peace. At
first the Bush administration did not demonstrate it had a comprehensive
foreign policy, but the events of 9/11 led it to adopt the ideology of the
group, some of whom were already serving in the administration.
It
is still difficult to assess the influence of the neoconservatives on
Bush's second term. On the one hand they are encouraged by the democratic
elections in Iraq, but on the other, as William Kristol recently pointed
out, they are disappointed by the erosion of democracy in Russia and are
especially worried by what seems to be a feeble American response to the
nuclear threats posed by Iran and North Korea.
Indeed there are a
large number of Jews among the neoconservatives, but the vast majority of
American Jewry is to the left of them. On the other hand, among the
pro-Israel Jewish neoconservatives, like Elliot Abrams of the National
Security Council, there are those who don't hide their support for the
disengagement and the establishment of a Palestinian state.
These
facts do not prevent Westerners and Europeans from accusing the Jewish
neoconservatives of nurturing a war policy against Iraq because of their
concern for Israel, or dual loyalties. There is nothing new in such
sweeping anti-Semitic accusations, and it is difficult to find any logic
or consistency in them: In the 1930s the Jews were accused of pushing
Roosevelt's New Deal from the left (anti-Semites referred to it as the Jew
Deal). But as is well-known by now that Roosevelt did not move in response
to Jewish pleas to save Jews during the Holocaust.