Richard Melson

October 2004

Judeocentrism in World Politics

Introduction by

L. Feiner

(Cambridge Forecast Group)

In Jews in the Japanese Mind (1995, Free Press) Goodman and Miyazawa discuss the phenomenon of anti-semitism in the non-Western world, particularly in countries such as Japan and other East Asian countries where there are very few Jews.

One reason for this phenomenon is that, with the increasing economic, political and social integration of the Western and non-Western worlds, of the developed and developing worlds, Jews are seen as symbols of Western influence. Anti-Semitism and "Judeophobia" are expressions of fears about Western influence, particularly about US influence.

Below, R. Melson addresses the corresponding phenomenon in the West, namely the phenomenon of "Philo-Semitism" or "Judeo-centrism". In this case, Jews are seen as talismans against the threats to the West posed by increasing integration with the non-Western, and developing worlds.

There are several reasons why the Jews came to be seen as menacing symbols of Western influence in the non-Western world and talismans against non-Western influence in the Western world.

First of all, as Walter Russell Mead points out in The American Empire in Transition, (1987, Houghton Mifflin), the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is a microcosm of the relation between the Western, developed world, and the non-Western, developing world. The conflict represents a First World and Third World society intertwined and interleaved. As Mead puts it, "power relations (between the West and the rest) which are usually mercifully obscured by distance, are seen up close (in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict)."

Also because of the Holocaust, the Jews are seen a white Western people who were subjected to the level of exterminist violence usually associated with Western colonization of the non-Western world. They are the one Western ethnicity which has acquired "Third World victim status."

Therefore, "Judeocentrism" allows hostility to be expressed against the non-Western world in a way which assuages the guilt over the history of Western colonialism in the non-Western world.

Dreams and Development: Part II

Richard Melson,

May 2004

In the first part of "Dreams and Development," we used Michelet’s dictum, "each era has dreams of the next one," to frame our discussion of Sharon/Kristol/Feith Zionism and the Israelization of Washington policy, as a kind of macrohistorical nightmare.

By macrohistorical I mean a level involving not the history of one person, family, region, country or society but the entire world in its transit through the decades.

There is another dimension where one sees a Zionist or "Judeocentric" view of the world subtly "injected into" the world’s consciousness and affecting its ability to orient itself: PBS/BBC programs for educational television.

In recent years we have seen various producers and writers give us the following Judeocentric views of the world:

1. "Foyle’s War," BBC, starring Michael Kitchen, predominantly concerned with Jewish themes set in WW II England. (both in series I and series II)

2. "Daniel Deronda," BBC, centering on Daniel Deronda’s self-discovery as Jew and Zionist who "extricates" himself from his British roots and finds his way to Zionism and resettlement in Palestine. Based on the George Eliot novel from the 19^{th
century.}

3. "The Way We Live Now", starring David Suchet and featuring the lives of London-based European Jews in 19th century England, including the character Brehgert played by Jim Carter, the sensitive soul who realizes that his Christian fiancee will never "be on the same page" as he is spiritually and so realizes he has to break with her. The character played by Suchet, the Jewish financier who cuts too many corners too deeply, is surrounded by efffete and grasping British aristocrats and American go-getters and their complex interaction drives the story.

4. "Ivanhoe," BBC miniseries, based on Walter Scott’s novel, showing how Isaac the Jew and his beauteous daughter Rebecca are finally forced to leave England.

5. "Nostromo," BBC/WGBH co-production, showing how intrigues and plots involving Latin American silver mines and political conflicts in "Costaguana" lead to the death of Hirsch, the Jewish character, in this series based on Conrad’s novella.

One could give many more examples such as the BBC "Disraeli" miniseries, "Reilly, Ace of Spies," Herman Wouk’s "Winds of War," as well as "Christabel" with Elizabeth Hurley. PBS’s "American Masters" on the Hungarian Jewish photographer, Robert Capa, presents Israel tangentially but in a glowing light. Abram Sachar and Abba Eban, on PBS again, present highly Judeocentric accounts of world history in years gone by.

The truth is that the Israelization of Washington policy-making and the constant drumbeat of Judeocentric images presented by BBC and BBC/WGBH writers and producers in the various high-quality TV miniseries, taken all together, are close to bringing the world-system to something like a macrohistorical "nervous breakdown."