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Alexander Cockburn

An American Jew laments decline in Jewish influence; Roe v Wade: Nixon's ultimate dirty trick?
March 3, 2005

Across the world, the Jewish lobby in America is accorded extraordinary power, almost to the mythic levels of guileful effectiveness once attributed to the British Secret Service. And in truth, MI6, as the Secret Service was also known, never approached the Jewish lobby in overall clout. But these days, if you read analyses by American Jews of where their power is headed, the tone is often dour and the forecast grim. They say, in the words of the American anti-Arab fanatic Daniel Pipes, "the golden age of the Jews" in America has passed its zenith.

This may seem strange when there is universal recognition that George Bush may well be the most pro-Israel president in the nation's history, when the role of the so-called "neocons," usually shorthand for the more fanatical supporters of Israel in American public life, is identified as crucial in pushing for the war on Iraq and now on Iran, when pro-Israel votes in the U.S. Congress sweep through by margins of over 90 percent.

But listen to a man like Illinois-based political analyst Richard Baehr, writing in American Thinker. Baehr could fairly be described as a Zionist ultra. He can also read numbers objectively. Recently, he outlined in a speech and then in his publication the reasons he sees for concern.

The indices of dismay for Baehr show most clearly in population statistics. From 1990 to 2000, he points out, the Hispanic population grew by 13 million -- just over 50 percent. The black population grew by 4 million, or 11 percent. The Asian population grew by 4 million, or over 60 percent. The population of non-Hispanic whites grew by 6 million or 3 percent. Non-Hispanic whites accounted for 22 percent of the country's population growth during the 10-year period, Hispanics for half of it. Non-Hispanic whites are now 70 percent of the population, headed for 50 percent by 2050.

Meanwhile, from a peak of 6 million American Jews, or 4 percent of the U.S. population in 1950, Jews are now just about 5.2 million in number, according to the latest Jewish population surveys, or a bit less than 2 percent of the U.S. population, and the trend points down to maybe three million in the next but one generation.

Baehr laments that "With an intermarriage rate around 50 percent, and a fertility rate of 1.6 children per Jewish woman, Jews are committing population suicide." He takes a swipe at liberal American Jews, most of them supporters of legal abortion: "American Jews marry late and often never marry, and have fewer children as a result. The commitment to abortion rights as a pre-eminent political issue strikes me a particularly odd, with Jewish numbers declining at an accelerating rate. Rather than being aggressive advocates of abortion rights, Jews might more rationally be advocates of carrying unwanted pregnancies to term, and then giving up the babies for adoption. This is especially the case since many Jewish women marry late and have difficulty conceiving."

Reading Baehr you might even hypothesize Planned Parenthood is not a Malthusian plot sponsored by the Rockefellers (a view common among the populist Christian right), but Nixon's deftest dirty trick, fixing the Supreme Court to pass Roe v. Wade in 1973. Huh? Listen to Baehr: "In fact, if no abortions had occurred in the last 30 years, and the total number of abortions were added to the populations of each state since Roe v. Wade was adopted, Al Gore would have been running for re-election in 2004, since the states he won in 2000, such as California and New York, would have had several more electoral votes in that year, and Bush's states fewer. Gore would have been elected regardless of the Florida outcome." Kevin Phillips, move over! This makes the southern strategy look like chickenfeed. That's why Nixon needed the hundred grand from Howard Hughes, to bribe Harry Blackmun. You don't think Nixon would have figured this out? One of these days, I bet we'll find Operation Herod buried in Nixon's papers.

Back to Baehr's nightmare of Muslim breeders. As Jews decline in number, he points with a quivering finger at the Arab and Muslim population in America heading in the other direction. Baehr cites two academic studies putting the U.S. Muslim population at between 1.8 and 2.9 million, with the total Arab/Muslim community "probably about 3.5 million, two thirds the size of the Jewish community."

Turning to political influence in the form of financial contributions, Baehr notes that in the 2004 campaign, four Jews -- George Soros, Peter Lewis, Steven Bing and Herbert Sandler -- gave over $80 million to Democratic political funds. While "this level of political giving by a few individuals has never happened before in the history of the country . Israel is not the leading agenda item for any of them. They were Bush-haters, pure and simple. This is true of much of the political money that comes from Jews in Hollywood (from where Bing hails). Israel is not the motivator for their contributions."

Baehr goes on to portray, somewhat fancifully, the Democratic Party as increasingly falling into the clutches of what he sees as the ultra, Israel-hating Left, headed by . Michael Moore, the movie director. I seem to remember Moore taking enormous pains last year to absolve Israel from any unpleasing role in "Fahrenheit 911," by the simple tactic of not mentioning that troublesome nation. By "Israel hating" Baehr appears to mean anyone who speaks up in any way for justice for Palestinians or criticizes Ariel Sharon. Seeing the Democratic Party as a lost cause for Israel over the long term, and on the decline as a political force in America, he extols the alliance between Christian Evangelicals and Orthodox Jews and the Republican Party.

To anyone used to lamenting the overwhelming tilt toward Israel in intellectual circles and the media it is bizarre to find Baehr writing that he sees a "Distancing of media, academic and intellectual elites from Israel," and to hear him citing Frank Luntz, a pollster, as saying, "there is great danger ahead, because American elite opinion is not sympathetic to Israel, and it is getting worse. Elites view Israel as aggressive and warlike and Palestinians as victims. Academia is the community that is the least sympathetic to Israel, since lefty radicals from the '60s run the faculty at most schools."

Happily for the blood pressure of his audience, Baehr did open his often gloomy survey with these words: "There is good news and bad news. The good news is that the reports of the decline of Jewish and pro-Israel influence, and the rise of Arab/Muslim influence in the American political system are at the moment greatly exaggerated. The bad news is that change is underway, and the relative shift described above is occurring."

Alexander Cockburn is coeditor with Jeffrey St. Clair of the muckraking newsletter CounterPunch. He is also co-author of the new book "Dime's Worth of Difference: Beyond the Lesser of Two Evils," available through www.counterpunch.com. To find out more about Alexander Cockburn and read features by other columnists and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com. COPYRIGHT 2005 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

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