The Shared Mythological History of Israel and the US (w/ Joan Scott) | The Chris Hedges Report
The Chris Hedges YouTube Channel150K subscribers85,969 views May 29, 2025Chris Hedges talks to Professor Joan Scott about the late Amy Kaplan's cultural analysis of the US and Israel's mythological shared history, and how it has manufactured consent for Israel's atrocities over the years. Support my independent journalism at Substack: https://chrishedges.substack.com/ Follow me on social media: https://linktr.ee/chrishedges
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amy Kaplan's Our American Israel the story of an entangled alliance dissects
Israel's symbiotic relationship with the United States she tells the story of how a Jewish settler colonial project
captured the imagination of the American public intertwining Israel's national myth with our own american
exceptionalism mirrors Israeli exceptionalism the belief that America ordained by God to lead the world
replicates Israel's messianic vision of itself the two countries because of
their similar national myths insist they are exempt from international
humanitarian law they share an open disdain for the quote unquote lesser
breeds of the earth each tracing their roots to European colonialism israeli
Jews Kaplan writes are at once eternal victims and lionized for their military
prowess palestinians in the process have been at best rendered invisible and often demonized as
subhumans representations of the barbarians the United States and Israel
seek to suppress in their clash of civilizations what makes Kaplan's book
unique is that she is a cultural critic seen in the myths and stories disseminated by writers filmmakers
artists and journalists the enforcement of the peculiar beliefs that sustain the bond between the Zionist state and
Washington she opens the book with a dissection of Leon Urus's novel Exodus
as well as its film adaptation which shaped a generation's understanding of Israel in the Middle East she probes
Joan Peter's 1984 book From Time Imemorial which was the template used by
pro-Israeli historians to argue falsely that the Palestinians never existed as a
distinct people israel's myth she notes is protein depending on the shifting historical realities the 1982 Israeli
invasion of Lebanon for example and the massacres in the Sabra and Chhatillaa Palestinian refugee camps the
Palestinian uprisings or intoifadas required new narratives to buttress the
Israeli-American ties suddenly the Holocaust which was a footnote at the beginning in the popular narrative
assumed central importance israel especially with the establishment of the Holocaust Museum in Washington was
intertwined with the Showa the genocide became central to Jewish identity and
playing the card that it could happen again Israel was given a license to engage in savage repression of the
Palestinians uh dismissed by Israeli leaders as the new Nazis kaplan ends the
book by chronicling the rise of Christian Zionism which has emerged as a bull work of support for the apartheid
state of Israel kaplan who died in 2020 was the Edward W kaine professor of
English at the University of Pennsylvania her book has recently been reissued by Harvard University Press
joining me to discuss Kaplan's book is Professor Joan Scott Professor Ammerida
in the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton an adjunct professor of
history at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York her many books include the classic gender and the
politics of history uh the politics of the veil and knowledge power and academic freedom let's begin with Kaplan
i I I've read many many many books on the Middle East i've spent seven years I did find this book unique in the way
that it approached the subject matter um as I mentioned to you when we spoke uh
it reminded me of Grahamsh's understanding of cultural hegemony how culture uh is essentially creates a
narrative that buttresses policy um and just talk a little bit about her uh and
and then we'll go into the book well I met her um I just have to say
Chris your your uh summary of the book was just terrific enviable because uh it
it could be a kind of review that should be everywhere so that people would know what is in this book um I thought you
you you summarized it really really well she was a as you said a professor of
English and American studies at Penn um she was here at the institute you know people come to the institute to do
research and writing for a year she had a fellowship at the institute in 20112
when she started this book um and she was just digging around to kind of as an
American studies person she was interested in just what you put your finger on in the cultural um stuff that
produced this special relationship uh the untouchable special relationship
between the United States and and Israel and she worked away at it she gave a seminar here which was that first
chapter of the book on on um Exodus and those of us who grew up in the 50s and
and early 60s I think the novel was 57 and the film was six 1960 with Paul
Newman blonde and blue-eyed is the blond and blue-eyed as the embodiment of of
right the archetypal Jew that's no it was really and she did she did it as a
seminar here and her reading of it was just terrific I mean people were just astonished And those of us as I said who
had sort of grown up knowing how popular that film had been um were really taken
aback at how astute she was in in her readings of the ways in which a certain
stereotypical image of the feeble victimized Jew is replaced by the Paul
Newman figure who was a heroic fighter for the future of Israel and and the future of of the Jewish people um and
she so she worked hard on that and then um she it took her a while so the book was published finally in 2018 i remember
reading many chapters of it um as she was producing them um and then she was
tragically diagnosed with brain cancer and died um two years later in 2020 so
that she never got to um publicize the book the way one usually does giving
talks all over the place res having um discussion sessions of a kind where
she would respond to critics and and so on uh and then um a year or so ago her
daughter her adult daughter now um in the in the wake of all of the
u discussion going on about Gaza and the and the genocidal war in Gaza thought
that this would be a time when this book would weigh in in a way that no other book does on the question of Israel
Palestine and she started a campaign with Harvard University Press and convinced them to publish it uh to issue
it in paperback it it was already published so they issued the paperback as of March 1st I think and many of us
who were committed to Amy's memory and to the book uh decided that we would go
to our local bookstores and um u promote it and talk about it which is how you
and I first discussed the book um at the bookstore in in Labyrinth bookstore in Princeton so that's that's the the story
of it and I think rereading it um for our discussions i was struck once again
with how much insight it provides into this so-called special relationship and
we should say first of all Rashid Haley the great uh Palestinian scholar gave it a glowing review uh in the nation when
it came out uh and uh uh she herself
uh you I know this only from you had come out of a Zionist background right right and and that was part of what this
was about I think was was um exploring where she had come from and
what this um indoctrination had been as she was
growing up herself in fact if you in the acknowledgements she mentions the fact I think her father died before the book
was published but she says he would have disagreed with everything I was doing here but um he would have u acknowledged
my right to do it something like that so so there's you get even in that small
acknowledgement a sense that she's coming from um a place which she had to
interrogate critically in a very deep way and she did she would come in at
lunch we we we all have lunch together at the at the people who are fellows at the institute and she'd come in and
she'd say "I can't believe it i have stone and the nation were great supporters of Israel in the 40s." This
was very depressing well for those of us who who for whom I have stone was the hero uh the
journalist hero during the Vietnam War this was like how could this be he he recanted he he in fact changed his mind
quite significantly on this question but in the 40s he was absolutely on board
for uh the land with the land with no people for a people with no land that
was Joan Joan Peters who she takes down i mean one one has to admire her deep obvious what comes through from the book
intellectual uh not just profoundity but integrity clearly yeah um so uh she just
broadly there are two templates that b are used to bond Israel and the United
States the first is the mythic version of the settling of the west and the second is the Bible just broadly can you
talk about that sure she has a quote in the the title of the book Our American
Israel comes from a 1799 sermon preached in a in a New England church which says
something like um America is the realization of the biblical Israel uh
we're we're here i think it's on on it's on page as I remember it's page five uh
the phrase our American Israel comes from a Puritan expression of colonial American exceptionalism um and his quote
was this this sermon traits of the resemblance in the people of the United States of America to ancient Israel it
has often been remarked the guy says that the people of the United States come nearer to a parallel with ancient
Israel than any other nation upon the globe hence our American Israel a term frequently used and common consent
allows it apt and proper so the biblical Israel is is there from from the the
18th century on and and gets uh recovered again in in new form in by the
evangelicals you mentioned the last couple of chapters or the the next to last chapter of the book deals with the
way in which American evangelicals pick up this notion this time that the the
second coming of Christ will come in Israel somehow and at that moment Jews
will those Jews who convert will be raptured up along with the Christians and and everyone else will will be
destroyed um in in in another um apocalyptic moment of of uh
biblical transformation so the biblical theme runs through from the beginning when it's America is the realization of
the dream of Israel to um the 20th 20th
century or even the 21st century when Israel is the fulfillment of the prophecies of the Bible
and and the same biblical passages the Puritans were using the stories of the Amalachites uh you know which Netanyahu
has repeated about you know decimating destroying I think even their children and animals and everything else they
were using exactly the same biblical passage to justify the genocide against Native Americans yeah yeah and that she
de she develops that really nicely too the the Native American parallel and the um and the Isra and the Palestinian
parallels uh which in fact echo that theme of a land with no people for a
people with no land it's the same argument made here there's no one here when the Americans came and they wipe
out or tried to wipe out the the the Native Americans similarly with with Palestinians um well and this was pushed
by the 1984 book by John Peters which was taken down when he was a graduate
student by Norman Finkelstein um which argued that they had no national identity the Palestinians had no
national identity that those Palestinians who were there had actually migrated because the Jewish uh colonists
in were reinvigorating i mean all of which was false um and she deals with
that the importance of that Peter's book because it was used by pro-Israeli historians for a long time to justify
this very false uh narrative i want to start with as she does you mentioned if Stone uh his book underground to
Palestine but I found that that this on the one hand you had the the left if
Stone being part of the counterculture uh but this identification of the
counterculture with this settler colonial state um and as you said if
Stone recantss um I'm just going to read that little passage this is his book Underground to
Palestine his first book uh Stone's book included the major
tropes of the narrative that progressive Americans told about Zionism in the years following World War II his
personal discovery of kinship with the Jews of Europe added poignency he realized that if his parents had
immigrated from Russia to America he might have gone to the gas chambers or ended up a ragged quote unquote and
homeless refugee as he drew closer to his Jewish brothers he recorded their plaintive Yiddish songs which expressed
longing for a world lost to catastrophic violence at the same time he narrated
their journey in resolutely American tones that's a fundamental theme of the book as a story of rebirth in the
transformative voyage from the old world to the new in contrast to the defeist
spirit hovering over a shattered Europe he was amazed by the tremendous vitality
of the refugees and by their determination to build a new life in a new land in his book Stone focused on
the journey not the arrival chronicling the dream of a Jewish homeland uncluttered by Arab realities that
disrupted these dreams realities that he had noted in his earlier reports from Palestine let's talk about that link
between the left and Stone was himself persecuted blacklisted he couldn't even
get a job at the nation he ends up printing if stones weekly in his basement as you said not only about the
uh Vietnam War but about the Korean War exposing many atrocities in the Korean War but there was this marriage and then
we'll go in and talk about Exodus the book and the movie um and I find that
coupling kind of fascinating well one of the things I think was the
attraction on the left to the socialist vision of of of Israel the the kibuts um
which which how many books were written about that this was this the future possibility not only for leftists but
for feminists you know you you you had collective child rearing collective uh
meal preparation all of the kind of domestic tasks uh that were thought to
be oppressive for women u are are shared in in a in a in a different kind of arrangement so I think that was one
thing and and certainly that attracted him as well as um Freda Kershwe at the
at the nation and and others this was a kind of socialist experiment that that
um was very attractive and very possible the other was the the the notion and she
uses this term a several times in in the in the course of the book of of the
invincible victims that is on the one hand they Jews had been victims of
horrific uh treatment in in in Europe and and historically uh victims of
anti-semitisms of all kinds but here they were invincible that is they were going to prevail there was a kind of
resilience that um could be admired rather than the the kind of awful notion
of victimization uh the co the notion of resistance is is important to the left
as well the the Warsaw ghetto becomes a kind of proof that the uprising of the the Warsaw ghetto becomes a proof of the
fact that Jews are resist they're not just pathetic victims they're as she calls them again invincible victims that
is whatever happens there's a kind of resilience and resistance that prevails
and that that Israel then becomes the embodiment for for many people on the left as a result of that I think well
she talks later about the importance of the Holocaust but it's important to note that initially with the establishment of
the state of Israel those refugees from Europe victims of the Holocaust were
considered somewhat shameful for not having resisted and it was only later uh
that the Holocaust became part of Jewish identity and a trope and a part of but not initially not at first and of course
as you well know the irony of the Warsaw ghetto uprising is that the only commander deputy commander of the
uprising Marik Adelman uh condemned the apartheid state the settler colonial
state uh recognized Palestinians right to self-determination and resistance
even armed resistance drawing analogies between his resistance the resistance he
and the ghetto fighters carried out in Warsaw and the resistance in Palestine and so on the one hand yes they they use
the Warsaw ghetto uprising but the uh the only major historical figure was an
anathema was a pariah in Israel uh itself well one of the things just you're mentioning that it one of the
things she tracks really nicely is the way in which there is always a dissenting voice like his like others
even when she talks about the found the history of the founding of the state of Israel there were many people Hannah
Arent Martin Buber who um refus who thought that the idea of a of a Jewish
homeland a Jewish state was a dangerous ethnational
um way of thinking about uh a place a homeland or or a place where where uh
where Jews could could come but it what she shows so clearly is how carefully
and ruthlessly those positions were eclipsed those voices were if not
silenced were just so muted that they couldn't be heard and this your your
notion of Grochi I think is right this this hegemonic vision cultural sort of
of appreciation of the importance of Israel for America prevails every time
you know you you there are chap there are places in chapters where you think oh good there's some um criti criticism
being articulated here and she goes into it at some length and then you just watch it being slapped down by the the
major forces of the media by politicians and by what becomes defined as the
Israel lobby or the the the lobbyists who are going to the um the
Anti-Defamation League and and uh what becomes Apac those groups acquire a
predominance that is that manages to silence um any kind of criticism well
Yashi Ashu Liowitz we should mention another the great Israeli philosopher who saw it all coming you know where we
are um I also want to talk about journalists because she uh boy she got
it i mean the way journalists uh there's two things having spent 20 years overseas I found with with people
especially people who parachuted in because they really didn't understand the situation around them they
immediately deform the situation to make it palatable for an American audience
but to Americanize it m um and uh and and so there's a she talks immediately
after of course 750,000 Palestinians are dispossessed
uh Jaffa was largely a Palestinian city completely emptied
um in ethnic cleansing uh thousands were killed the Darius massacre and then you
have the journalists who come from the United States and they report about it and uh they they can't even see what's
in front of their eyes there's this passage he's writing about U
Freda Kir who visited the silent quote unquote silent and deserted city of
Jaffa to address the question why did the Arabs run she registered the
momentousness of more than 50,000 people fleeing from Palestine's largest Arab
city and she briefly noted the attack and siege by the combined forces of the Argun was underground terrorist group by
lead led by Bean right and the Hagana which was the more established uh
Israeli uh you know militia army at the end of April yet she did not mention the
impact of this attack on the population instead she claimed that the mass flight from Jaffa and from other Palestinian
cities and villages seemed to have little to do with the fighting
itself at stake this is going on the bottom of the paragraph at stake for
Kiru in the image of the humane soldier was her investment in the Jewish refugee
as a universal symbol of noble suffering and the creation of the Jewish state as
a moral triumph for civilization over fascism i saw that every war every place
I ever covered I fought it but I had to fight not only the mythic narrative that
was being pedled to the American public but my own colleagues in the press i
because I was with the New York Times i didn't come and go i live there i mean I was six years in Latin America seven
years in the Middle East but these people who parachuted in who didn't have any linguistic facility uh and didn't
have really any historical knowledge immediately fed the kind of tropes that
Americans can understand and that allowed them to make sense of what they didn't understand and she gets that
really really well in the book yeah well I also think that that it comes also
from the notion that that some of these journalists think they have to feed what
you said a minute ago they have to feed the information in terms that um their
readers can already understand rather than understanding their role as
producing knowledge that people then have to deal with um and and and that
you see that now dramatically in in um in in journalism covering the Gaza war
it it's it's um the fear that they will offend readers
u is is far greater than the notion that their job is to communicate to readers
information that might not be comfortable but that they need to really know um and I think you're right she she
shows you very with very fine-tuned analysis yeah well very very very clear
examples yeah yeah how and how that oper but I think that's what we're we're living with now uh of course doesn't the
New York Times have a list of words you're not allowed to use yeah well and it's when they talk about the student
encampments they're characterized them as they harass Jewish students jewish students may have been harassed but the
bulk of the repression was carried out against the protesters a hundred of whom were arrested on the campus of Colombia
uh people who've been deported uh people who've been suspended ruha Benjamin at
Princeton is teaching under probation that goes unmentioned uh and so yes you do see it now and and of course we
should be also note the fact that and this is something I and other international journalists went to Egypt
to protest is Israel has locked out the there's no foreign press in Gaza uh for
the obvious reasons and over 100 what over 120 I think Palestinian journalists have been killed many of them targeted i
want let's talk about Exodus um okay we'll talk about a trashy novel and a
trashy writer Leon um you know the other the other book
that was like that was Oh Jerusalem that was another one the Israelis were you remember that history of the of the war
i think it was anyway of the family i don't you know I was I was probably in
in high school just beginning college and when when the the novel came out and I just remember everybody was reading it
you ride the subway in New York and people were sitting there reading well they said so it was I'll just read this
it had been compared in epic scope and massive sales to Gone with the Wind well there's another piece of
uh propaganda on behalf of slaveholders which transformed the history of the Civil War into a shared national past
but Exodus is different in that it is not a story told by Israelis about their
own country that's very important but one told by an American author for an
for American readers and then she writes later one cannot overestimate the influence of Exodus in Americanizing the
Zionist uh narrative of Israel's origins 20 million copies were sold in 20 years now
you and I need those kinds of sales then we can all go to Bermuda forever um but
let's Well let's So I mean it is just
remarkable i mean she she rips it to pieces i mean just the main characters in the You talk about the film also was
very the main characters in the film because of their whiteness are easily
seen as Euroamericans meanwhile when this film appeared in 1960 the majority of Jewish immigrants coming to Israel
from Arab and North African countries although not well treated by the European you know Netanyahu Yasi and Ai
Schlom writes a very good book on this i think it's called three worlds or it's very very good his memoir
um and then just one more pass and let you talk so so they so they have of
course they have the Christian protagonist Kitty who
represents the American who discovers in Zionism the mystical qualities of the
Holy Land that she heard about in Sunday school kitty speaks the language of the
recently invented Judeo-Christian tradition which embraces embraced Catholics Protestants and Jews
in a shared American identity and during the cold war united them in faith against godless communism in Exodus it
also unites them against Arabs yeah i mean the interesting thing in in
that and and she develops it in the book all along is the Europeanness of these
Jews who have been um ex um murdered in Europe who who are not admitted in large
numbers into the United States i mean everybody's really happy about Israel because it can take the Jews they don't
want the European the Anglo-American European countries do not want Jews in
their and let me let me just interrupt Jo the 1952 McLaren Act which was
authored by Senator McLaren a rabid anti-semite uh which is now being used against
uh Palestinian activists who have green cards and student visas and everything else was designed to keep out victims of
the Holocaust and not let them into the United States that's why he wrote it yep
no and so so but but what you have in that film and she describes it really well is the
Europeanization the whitening of the Jew no longer this sort of stereotypical
dark pathetic feminized um masculinity but but this Paul Newman
character who fights to the death and who is bringing civilization to the
Middle East because that becomes another of this of the tropes that get associated with Israel that it is the
only democratic only force for enlighten enlightenment and democracy and European
values news in the Middle East so the the film enables that kind of um
represent new representation of who Jews are and and what they
represent she writes "Exodus reenacted the primal myth of the American frontier
as a tale of regeneration through violence." She's quoting Richard Slotkin of course his great book the hero in a
western ventures across the border of the civilized world to the wilderness in order to colonize dark chaotic regions
and learn the way of the Indians thereby ridding himself and the society he represents of darkness it is the
barbarism of the other whether Indian or Arab that forces the hero to become violent he adopts their methods in order
to defeat them and to establish a border between legitimate and illegitimate violence so when she talks about the
Bible and the West she the the the the story of Israel is tailored or created
to parallel precisely our own mythology about the settling of the West by
Europeans and Euroamericans so um Chris I I wondered what you
thought about the um the violence theme as well i mean I thought that was it was really interesting the way she
um maps the the justification of violence from the very beginning but
then when you get to the war on terror the Israel becomes the model for how to
deal with terrorists in your midst how to deal with any kind of uprisings or or protests they provide some of the
technology and the advice not only to the the um the national government but
to local police forces about how to contain um um or or find track terrorism
and and and contain it in their cities i mean I thought that the way in which the
story becomes you know the idyllic socialist utopia in the in the 1940s and
50s becomes this um arms supplier or or or tech that provides the technology of
of of war for the war on terror in the United States and becomes the model for
how to resist it i thought was another fascinating aspect of Yeah but so she
talks about how particular mythologies like this one don't hold up especially
after the 1982 invasion of Lebanon i think 17,000 Lebanese were killed they bombed West
Beirut saturated bombing of southern Lebanon the war was a disaster for Israel um you had as she notes you had
foreign correspondents that was also a very important and good part of the book you had foreign correspondents based in
Beirut who were watching it John Chancellor for instance and were appalled at the savagery so suddenly
there had to be a new narrative and that's when the Holocaust took off uh and uh maybe we should talk about that
uh I just before we go she just in terms of the way uh Exodus and the narratives
portrayed Arabs uh they were accused like blacks in uh Annie Bellum South or
even during Jim Crow as sexual predators they were she exaggerated
uh Arab cowardice um so you know there was a
characterization of Arabs that very closely paralleled the own our own
defaming of the character in particular of of uh African-Americans in the United
States but let's talk about the Holocaust and Finkelstein wrote his book the Holocaust Industry so the Holocaust
is not as we mentioned earlier a huge part of the narrative uh and then uh
after Lebanon things change so there's a savagery and the Holocaust takes
preeminence in the narrative there was a miniseries i've never watched it maybe you watched it but she writes about it
in the book called The Holocaust uh you have the Holocaust Museum which she writes about raising the question of why
is there a Holocaust Museum on American soil it's a pretty good question um but
let's talk about the use of the Holocaust because that's very much part and after 911 this is all turbocharged
as you said but ideologically it's justified by the near annihilation of
the Jews and just as a caveat in defense of Jewish refugees the ones who survived
World War II uh they were locked out of everywhere number one and when they did try to go home to places like Poland uh
there were pilgrims I mean we're talking about after World War II So they really I mean that's the part of the tragedy
they had nowhere to go there was that book Neighbors uh which very good on people trying to Jewish families
after surviving the death camps trying to go back to their farms or their homes and being killed uh so I mean that is
the I think the tragedy for all of us who have covered Israel extensively but let's talk about the Holocaust because
the Holocaust becomes weaponized and boy she takes down uh Ellie Viselle of course uh
who becomes uh you know Mr holocaust uh who I knew actually um but let's let's
talk about the Holocaust and and its uses and what she writes about it well it it's Peter Novik also who writes
about the hol the Holocaust industry and and I think he dates it to even to 1967
after the Six-Day War it becomes more and more of a justification for the
kinds of things that Israel is doing and then in the 80s it it comes into its own as an attempt to justify what can't be
justified in terms of the uh the war in Lebanon but I think um the the point she
makes about it is that it becomes again it's tied to that invincible victim
thing there's always the the threat the Holocaust happened but it's never um
it's never going to go away that is it happened but it always exists as a possibility for happening again and so
part of the invincible victim story is that Jews have to always be alert about
defending themselves against any sign that the Holocaust is about to reappear
and then u attributed to uh Palestinians uh the the the the possibility that they
will bring another holocaust so the whole defense industry of Israel the whole um occupation of of Gaza and the
West Bank become a way of arguing against the possibility of another
Holocaust what does she call that chapter the the Holocaust anticipated or the apocalypse soon she calls it yeah
the two chapters the future Holocaust and apocalypse soon are are the arguments about um we can never rest
because once it's happened it always will happen again and and the existence
of Jews by definition somehow suggests the possibility always of a holocaust
and that makes them um un you can't criticize anything that's being done in
the name of not only uh not only sort of repairing the damage of the first
holocaust but of preventing the next one and this is this is Aba Iban who I also
knew very charming um another factor that worked against the image of Palestinians in America was the overt
effort by Israeli spokesmen and sympathetic journalists to undermine the revolutionary appeal of Palestinian
resistance aba Iban protested that the guerillas were not quote fighting for
freedom but were in fact fighters against freedom he explained that quote the image that world opinion should have
of them is not the image of the marquee or resistance fighters but the image of
the SS the image of the guards at Avitz and Bergen Bellson we've seen that
during the genocide where now you know was it Bean who equated Yeah bean who
told Reagan that when he was bombing West Beirut he was he was attacking
Hitler i mean he's attacking horafod but that it was he drew that analogy that
that has not gone away that now becomes the raison detra for the subjugation of
uh the Palestinians and the decimation of Gaza and and Hamas is the is the new
um Nazi for she has a thing where where it it's interesting where she talks about this further she says "Terrorist
violence by non-state actors no matter how heinous lacks the powerful state
organization behind the systematic industrialized violence that characterized the Nazi slaughter of
millions nonetheless the repeated analogy between terrorism and the Holocaust had the powerful effect of
taring the entire Palestinian cause as a hateful reincarnation of the Nazi
project to exterminate the Jews." At a time when the Carter and Reagan administrations continued Kissinger's
pledge to Israel not to speak directly to the PLO the conflation of Palestinians with terrorism and Nazism
contributed to the public perception of the illegitimacy of the PLO and the cause it represented and that goes on
now i mean I don't know how many um people I've had u fortunately they're not friends
they're just people I know who I've had conversations with who say "Well but Hamas is just like the Nazis they want
to exterminate uh Jews they want to destroy the state of Israel and you say to them well it's
not the same thing and there's no the Nazi image attached now to the
Palestinian cause is really hard to um argue against
that's a very important point clr James makes the same point that she made in Black
Jacobins where he acknowledges that there were atrocities carried out during
the only successful slave revolt in human history but that it it wasn't it
didn't have the state apparatus behind it it didn't have the imperial power it's a very very very important point i
don't want to sugarcoat Hamas i spent a lot of time with them um but uh that
point is key um and uh she she writes about the Christian
Zionism at the end of the book uh the uh
Israel becomes more and more unpalatable to a younger generation of Jews of
course a significant percentage of those protesting the genocide were Jewish we have Jewish Voice for Peace uh we had
students at Colombia just chain themselves to offense uh in protest at the uh deportation order against Makman
Halil held in a Louisiana detention center um and so they have turned more
more and more to and she writes about this these Christian Zionists Hegy these
figures uh and it's fascinating because they they themselves have expressed very open
anti-semitic uh tropes um and but they become key and
then there there's or organizing all these course of tours of the biblical holy land uh but and I I would argue as
well that uh as Israel has become more and more despotic
uh that's has also built these relations with figures like Victor Orban because it's the model of how figures like
Netanyahu seek to run the Israeli state they're all heirs of Vladimir Jabatinsky who Mussolini called a good fascist
mayor Kahana i covered Khana i knew him uh and uh uh but let's let's talk about
that which he does at the end of the book about Christian Zionism
well it's it's I think we talked about it a little at the beginning it's the notion that that somehow or another the
the biblical pro prophecy uh has the end times happen in Israel um when when the
second coming of Christ will um will bring about um a new world order
uh and in which converted Jews uh will will be raptured up with the with the
Christians and the rest of us will burn in hell um or just burn um so so but the
power of that and and you're right of these anti-semites who are endorsing the
Israeli cause and and sometimes even she has moments where Netanyahu and others realize that that they're dealing with
anti anti-semites but it doesn't matter because they're bringing um a large sector of the American population a
powerfully politically influential sector of the American population certainly now with Trump um to to u
support the activities that Israel is engaging in i mean when Trump moved the
um the American um embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem it was a fulfillment of the
demand that these Christian Zionists had been making um to prepare us for uh the
the the eventual second coming i mean it it's it's tied really tightly
um to their notion of u end time their
notion of history if we want to call it history but it's also tied to their mythic version of America of a white
patriarchal America uh of uh battling against the subhuman
elements uh and of course the
Ashkanazi European in elite like Netanyahu his family comes from Poland netanyahu was raised in Philadelphia and
went to MIT that uh that also correlates with the very demented vision of
Christian Zionism well in fact there's a a a part as you're saying it and it's it's it's um identification with Israel
did not mean identification with actual Jews however either in America or Israel
warned that Jews as a group have often yielded to secularistic even atheistic spirit brilliant minds have all too
frequently been dedicated to philosophies harmful once Jews have been restored to Zion they would have a
second chance to redeem themselves from the sin of choosing Jesus but then she says and this is the part that I think
you're pointing at just as Israel enabled God to fulfill his promise to the Jews so could America become the
promised land for Christians and this is a quote from Jimmy Swagger america is tied by a spiritual umbilical cord to
Israel he writes "The Judeo-Christian concept goes all the way back to Abraham and God's promise to Abraham the Jewish
people represent Judaism the American people represent Christianity." Swagger
viewed the American people as white evangelical Christians while Israel alone represented Jews and Judaism i
mean there's there's the the link that you're that you're talking about just because because as she points out
America is not in the Bible i mean there is no direct uh right uh biblical
passage that can be used to call Americans the chosen people
uh and so that identification with Israel becomes a way to essentially
uh bridge that gap uh I I just want to end with she does
she does a masterful job of taking down Thomas Freriedman i find great joy in
this yes i I actually loved that part and Shipler's books uh Shipller's book
Arab Jew uh Freriedman's book uh from Beirut to Jerusalem and she she calls
them out for the false narrative of equivalence um I'm just going to read
this paragraph this narrative of equivalence relies on potent analogies with America that kept Palestinians from
capturing the moral high ground in the battle for representation at the beginning of the uprising when the
Israeli army this is the inifat when the Israeli army faced criticism for firing
live ammunition at protesters I was there freriedman instructed television viewers on how to view the violence they
were not watching the equivalent of Birmingham in 1960 or Berkeley in 1968 he wrote but the equivalent of Bull Run
in 1861 um uh yeah it would no more occur to
them quote to use rubber bullets against the Palestinians than it would have occurred to the North to use rubber
bullets against the South in the Civil War the civil rights analogy compares Palestinians to black Americans fighting
for equal rights against violent police powers the civil war analogy in contrast
conveys the impression of two matched military forces capable of doing equal harm to each other that's really really
important uh and Shipler does it Freriedman does it just about even our
most of our liber quote unquote liberal commentators on Israel Palestine freriedman's no friend of Netanyahu of
course do it um and and she just um she's not buying it and let let's just
close by talking about that false equivalency well and she says in in that
section that you were reading she ends by saying the civil war analogy conveys the impression of two matched military
forces capable of doing equal harm to each other which is still how the u the
the well which is now how the Gaza war is presented it's as if Hamas and Israel
were uh the same or or the the the Palestinian resistance to Israeli u
occupation and domination were um it was is the north versus the south that you
know on the one hand you have a a nuclear armed military giant against a a
Palestinian resistance that is um nowhere near uh has nowhere near the
force or the well they're just they're just insert They're just uh an asymmetrical insurgents with small arms
exactly the other thing she points out is how they the the use the way these
writers like Freriedman will justify Israeli atrocities is they will always
search out David Hartman rabbi David Hartman used to be the figure they'd all he was quoted every week in the New York
Times about their angst about we you know we wish we didn't have to shoot them kind of thing yeah well he says
again in that he recognizes this is Freriedman the brutal ra the brutal record of Israeli rage in the x-rays
hundreds of Palestinians who had their arms or legs or ribs broken by Israeli soldiers yet he wants his readers to
understand quote the real fear behind the Israeli clubs the fear of never feeling truly at a home at home in a
land claimed by others the land that they have taken from the others so just she also writes by
seeking symmetry in the human equivalence of two sides unstructured by political power relations that's key yes
absolutely liberals like Shipler and Freriedman implicitly rejected the perspective Edward say called Zionism
from the standpoint of its victims instead they expanded the Zionist standpoint to incorporate
Palestinian perspective perspectives but these perspectives were dependent on Israeli identified narratives and that
is never unfortunately changed yeah yeah so it's a book for for now it's it's
just No it's a very smart book and as I said it's well written i didn't mean to dump on all academics when we were
together i know some academics make an effort i wish more did but uh but it is
it's it's really smart really lucid i really enjoyed it i've read so many books on the Middle East and this I
found it refreshing uh because there was just a lot in here that made me think uh and I I'm not sure
I'd ever read I don't think I've ever read a book that approached the conflict as a part of cultural studies which was
really really smart yeah yeah well you know the nice thing about that is that
you could say that our books live on after we after we don't we we we don't and and this is a case it's a real
tribute to to Amy Kaplan that she has given us something that we can still use even though she's not here anymore to to
talk about this no it's it's a really a really good book um thank you
Joan we're talking about our American Israel by Amy Kaplan i want to thank
Diego Thomas Sophia and Max who produce the show you can find me at chrisedges.substack.com
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한국어로
ChatGPT의 말:
다음은 Chris Hedges와 Joan Scott의 대화를 바탕으로 정리한 Amy Kaplan의 책 Our American Israel의 핵심 내용 요약입니다. 이 요약은 한국어로 번역되었으며, 주요 개념과 논지를 구조화하여 설명합니다.
📘 『Our American Israel』 (Amy Kaplan 저서) 핵심 주제 요약
1. 신화적 기원의 공유
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Kaplan은 미국과 이스라엘의 국가 신화가 서로 얽혀 있다고 분석합니다.
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미국의 "서부 개척 신화"는 이스라엘의 "시온주의 정착 신화"와 평행하며, 두 국가 모두 스스로를 신의 사명을 지닌 예외적인 나라로 여깁니다.
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이러한 서사는 폭력과 정복을 문명화 과정으로 정당화합니다.
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2. 문화적 헤게모니
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Gramsci의 문화 헤게모니 개념을 바탕으로 Kaplan은 소설, 영화, 언론, 박물관 등 문화 콘텐츠가 미국-이스라엘 관계를 ‘정상’으로 받아들이게 만든다고 봅니다.
3. 『엑소더스』와 시온주의의 미국화
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레온 유리스의 소설 『엑소더스』(Exodus)와 1960년 영화는 미국 독자들에게 이스라엘 건국 서사를 감정적으로 이식합니다.
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파란 눈의 폴 뉴먼이 영웅적 유대인으로 등장하며, 유대인의 이미지를 약하고 희생당한 존재에서 백인 남성적 전사로 전환시킵니다.
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4. 홀로코스트의 정치적 무기화
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Kaplan에 따르면, 1982년 레바논 침공 이후 이스라엘의 폭력에 대한 정당화가 필요해지며, 그 시점부터 홀로코스트 기억이 중심 서사로 부상합니다.
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이는 **팔레스타인인을 '새로운 나치'**로 묘사함으로써 폭력적 점령을 정당화하는 도구로 사용됩니다.
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5. 기레기 언론과 '양비론' 프레임
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미국 언론인들, 특히 팔레스타인 현실을 모르는 기자들은 미국 대중이 이해할 수 있는 틀에 맞게 현실을 왜곡함.
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Thomas Friedman, David Shipler 등은 "양쪽 다 폭력적"이라는 거짓 대칭성 서사를 통해 이스라엘의 군사적 우위를 흐립니다.
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6. 기독교 시온주의와 종말론적 연합
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미국 복음주의 기독교 세력은 유대인을 사랑해서가 아니라, 종말론적 예언 실현을 위해 이스라엘을 지지합니다.
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이스라엘을 통해 예수가 재림하고 유대인은 개종하거나 지옥에 떨어질 운명이라는 극우적 신념과 연결됨.
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트럼프의 예루살렘 대사관 이전은 이들의 요구에 부응한 사례로 언급됩니다.
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7. 비판적 목소리의 억압
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Hannah Arendt, Martin Buber 등 초기 시온주의 비판자들은 철저히 배제됨.
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이처럼 비판적 지식인·언론·예술가들이 체계적으로 침묵당함을 Kaplan은 책 전반에서 추적합니다.
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✍️ 비평적 통찰 및 현재적 함의
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이 책은 미국-이스라엘 관계를 외교나 전략이 아닌 신화·문화·감성의 산물로 분석합니다.
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피해자 신화와 문화적 동질성이 어떻게 점령과 폭력의 정당화로 이어지는지를 보여줍니다.
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오늘날 가자 지구 학살에 대한 미국 내 무조건적 지지의 뿌리를 이해하는 데 매우 유용한 텍스트입니다.
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