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(1) As an outsider who watches American politics somewhat intermittently but who is generally sensitive both to anti-Semitism and to ideological movements, I'm not sure that I grasp how neoconservative comes to be a codeword for Jewish. I recently copied an article from the NY Review of Books by Norman Mailer on the Bush administration and their Middle East policies. Mailer was particularly concerned about the likelihood of the war expanding. But he also discusses at some length the various kinds of neoconservative movements, i.e., conservative movements that do not bear a strong resemblance to the historical conservative movements. Mailer describes the Bush ideologues as "flag conservatives." Nonetheless, that may well be seen as a subset of neoconservative. More to the point, what reason is there to think that the present American regime is not dominated by people (very few of whom are Jewish) who subscribe to one or another kind of extreme conservative ideology and that their rationalizations of the present war have been founded upon that ideology? While I do not doubt that anti-Semites are just as happy to blame the Jews for this war as for everything else that has happened in living memory and earlier, it is also apparent that there are no more than a handful of Jews among those who have been fostering an extreme conservative ideology. I would be grateful if someone could explain (a) how this regime is not characterized by neoconservative tendencies and (b) how that term comes to be code for Jewish. Thanks very much, Michael Posluns. (2) Dear colleagues, With regard to Don Cohen's posting of Barry Rubin's denial of the role of neo-conservatives in the current war on Iraq: this is just the sort of anti-anti-semitic nonsense that puts any genuine attempt at figuring out any REAL antisemitic intent in the criticism of American policy in the Middle East and of Israeli policy vis. the Palestinians in jeopardy. The phrase "neo-conservative" is a phrase used not only by critics of the fairly well-defined group: Kristol (senior and junior), Podhoretz, Perle, etc., but also by the general American policy community, and indeed by most of the "neo-cons" themselves, as a badge of pride. It is also fairly indisputable that a very large number of these neo-conservative figures is Jewish, and that these individuals have had a very large influence on current American policy in the Middle East. (PBS's Frontline had a programme on this the other night which made the run of events since 9/11 quite clear.) This is not conspiracy theory, because this influence is quite clear and above board, even though it might be regarded by many people, myself included, as misguided and deleterious to America's long-term interests, as well, by the way, as being deleterious to Israel's long-term interests.The denial of this fact, and the attempt to make "neo=con" a codeword for Jew is not only an insult to the intellegence of almost all commentators on the American political scene but is also evidence of what I would like to term an anti-anti-semitic prejudice based on an ignorance of the realities of American policy making. Yours collegially, Steven Beller
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