http://tonykaron.com/2007/08/31/mearshimer-walt-and-the-erudite-hysteria-of-david-remnick/
First,
an illustrative anecdote: A little over a year ago, Iraq’s
prime minister Nuri al-Maliki arrived in Washington and addressed
Congress. The event was supposed to be a booster for the elected
Iraqi leadership, showing U.S. support for the new government. But
at the time, Israel was pummeling Beirut in response to Hizballah’s
capture of two Israeli soldiers, so U.S. legislators naively
tried — and failed — to get Maliki to condemn Hizballah.
And, revealing the extent to which Washington is encased in a bubble
when it comes to matters involving Israel in the Middle East,
Senators Chuck Schumer, Harry Reid and Dick Durbin wrote Maliki a
letter saying the following: “Your failure to condemn
Hezbollah’s aggression and recognize Israel’s right to
defend itself raise serious questions about whether Iraq under your
leadership can play a constructive role in resolving the current
crisis and bringing stability to the Middle East.”
To cut bluntly to the chase, there is scarcely a single
politician in the Arab world willing to endorse Washington’s
definitions of the problems or the solutions when it comes to
Israel’s impact on the region — and that even among the
autocrats with whom the U.S. prefers to work, much less that rare
breed that Maliki represents, i.e. a democratically elected leader.
It is the U.S. leadership that is in denial about what is needed to
create security in the region.
Indeed, the grownups in Washington know this better than anyone.
In response to the same crisis in Lebanon, former National Security
Adviser Brent Scowcroft wrote:
Hezbollah is not the source of the problem; it is a
derivative of the cause, which is the tragic conflict over Palestine
that began in 1948.
The eastern shore of the Mediterranean is in turmoil
from end to end, a repetition of continuing conflicts in one part or
another since the abortive attempts of the United Nations to create
separate Israeli and Palestinian states in 1948.
But nobody in power listens to Brent Scowcroft any more.
Washington’s Israel bubble so detaches it from an objective
view of the Middle East that Howard Dean’s 2003 call
for the U.S. to adopt an “even-handed” position between
Israel and the Palestinians has longsince entered the U.S.
political playbook as an example of foot-in-mouth campaigning. (See
my earlier entry on how
well Barack Obama has learned this lesson.)
Like the tech-bubble and real estate-bubble, Washington’s
“Israel bubble” is unhealthy and dangerous — in
fact, it not only jeopardizes U.S. interests throughout the region
and beyond (by serving as Exhibit A for any anti-American element
anywhere in the Islamic world to win the political contest with
America’s friends), but it is also exceedingly bad for Israel:
Particularly over the past decade, the U.S. has essentially enabled
Israeli behavior so self-destructive that it may have already
precluded any chance of it being able to live at peace with its
neighbors.
It is the lancing of this Israel bubble — in the best
interests of the United States, the Arab world, and Israel’s
own prospects for peaceful coexistence with its neighbors —
that John Mearshimer and Steven Walt have dedicated themselves,
first in last year’s London
Review of Books essay and now in a new book, titled “The
Israel Lobby.”
They argue, firstly, that the absolute bias hardwired into U.S.
policy towards Israel is neither a rational foreign policy for the
U.S. or even particularly helpful to Israel. And they further make
the case that this policy has been maintained and extended with
increasingly destructive effect by the interventions and activities
of a network of groupings they broadly define as the Israel lobby,
which actively puts Israel positions (rather than American ones) at
the forefront of U.S. policy (on issues ranging from the
Palestinians to Iran), and which uses its considerable reach in the
political process in Washington to ensure that challenging the U.S.
bias towards Israel, as Dean did, is considered political suicide
for a politician with presidential ambitions.
Their book is a comprehensive scholarly work, but its purpose is
unashamedly political. The book has a number of weaknesses — I
find its analytical approach often static and institutional;
insufficiently dynamic and, dare I say it, insufficiently
dialectical. On the nature of the U.S.-Israel relationship in last
summer’s disastrous war in Lebanon, for example, I disagree
with their denial of responsibility on Washington’s part —
the original impulse to take some form of action may have come from
the Israeli leadership, but as I made clear at the time, it was hard
to avoid the suspicion that the scale and objectives of the
operation became defined by Washington, and they were plainly goals
for which Israel had not prepared its forces.
Also, the process of skewing U.S. bias towards Israel may reveal
the machinations of a lobby, but they have also become
deeply-entrenched tropes in U.S. political and civil society —
tropes which now function quite independently of the lobby’s
interventions.
But regardless of a number of specific instances that I might
analyse somewhat differently, I have no quarrel with its central
argument that U.S. policy on Israel and its neighbors is grotesquely
biased in favor not only of Israel, but of Israel’s most
self-destructive impulses. As such, it is a policy dangerous to U.S.
interests and ultimately to those of Israel itself. This biased is
maintained and policed in substantial part by an aggressive lobbying
effort by an elaborate pro-Israel political
infrastructure. Despite its analytical weaknesses, it is a
refreshingly candid and courageous (given the all too common fate of
those who tackle this taboo — just take a look at the
important logging of this stuff at Muzzlewatch)
embrace of what has long been the “third rail” of
American foreign policy, insisting that a debate be conducted where
none has been tolerated until now.
And, its significance may be measured in part by the response it
has elicted. Not so much the predictable fulminations of Abe
Foxman in his prebuttal of Mearshimer and Walt, The Deadliest Lies,
or the
manic chatter of Haaretz’s resident arbiter of all things
Hebrew Nationalist in America, Shmuel Rosner — all of that
may be par for the course. But M&W share with Jimmy Carter that
ability to call forth a rather unfortunate habit among sections of
America’s liberal punditocracy, in which sharp and fundamental
criticisms of Israel must be discredited and squashed, even at the
cost of the cool reason for which the pundits in question are
usually known. To put it unkindly, when Israel is under the
spotlight, many liberal commentators feel compelled to embarrass
themselves in its defense.
I noticed this phenomenon last year when Jimmy Carter made the
entirely valid comparison between Israel’s West Bank regime
and the apartheid system that prevailed in South Africa until 1994.
That prompted Michael Kinsley — a well-known and generally
smart liberal pundit — to denounce
Carter’s comparison in an op-ed that only served to show
how little he knew about either the Middle East or apartheid South
Africa. Clearly, though, the idea that Israel was committing crimes
equivalent to apartheid clearly made Kinsley so uncomfortable that
he felt compelled to blurt out something — anything, really,
to negate Carter, and make the discomfort he caused go away. (I
critiqued
his lame response to Carter in an earlier post.)
This phenomenon is reflective of a trend that has been confirmed
to me anecdotally dozens of times, both in the U.S. and at home in
South Africa, where some Jewish liberals of faultlessly progressive
politics on every other issue turn into raving tribal belligerents
of the Ariel Sharon hue when the conversation turns to Israel. We’ve
all seen it, dozens of times, I’m sure — although I’m
pleased to say I know a lot more whose politics are consistent, and
are not prone to being possessed by Zionist Mr. Hydes.
David Remnick is not among them, unfortunately. In response to
Mearshimer and Walt, New
Yorker editor Remnick offers a fresh specimen of the denial
pathology.
What is most strking about his piece, however, is that it is more
of a kvetch, designed to discredit M&W in the eyes of
New Yorker readers, than a serious engagement with their argument.
For example, Remnick notes that M&W are realists, i.e. they make
their case for a foreign policy based on national interests. Remnick
writes:
“There is a strong moral case for supporting
Israel’s existence,” [M&W] write, but they deny that
Israel is of critical strategic value to the United States. The
disappearance of Israel, in their view, would jeopardize neither
America’s geopolitical interests nor its core values. Such is
their “realism.”
The latter line seems to be dropped in with a note of bitter
irony, as if it somehow damns the authors, who repeatedly make clear
their belief that the U.S. should support Israel where it’s
right to exist is threatened, but note that its existence is not
actually under threat, right now — instead, the U.S. is being
called upon to underwrite its brutal occupation policies. But the
argument that Israel’s disappearance would not substantially
harm U.S. national interests is a perfectly legitimate one in the
realist framework, bereft of emotion: Israel safeguards no vital
national interests of the United States, and is more of a liability
than an asset in the broad U.S. strategic approach to the Middle
East. Those who argue that Israel has value as a U.S. ally can point
only to tactical advantages, e.g. Israel’s intelligence
services can better infiltrate radical groups than can their
American allies. No doubt. But on the strategic plane, such
advantages are negated by the fact that by unconditionally backing
Israel and its regime of occupation over the Palestinians, it
becomes virtually impossible for any Arab leader to openly associate
with U.S. goals.
It was precisely this recognition of Israel’s limited
strategic value to the U.S. in a post-Cold War world that led
Yitzhak Rabin, a longtime hawk, to embrace the Oslo deal presented
to him by Shimon Peres. Like the leaders of apartheid South Africa
in the late 80s, Rabin had come to recognize (particularly in the
era of the first Bush administration) that Israel could no longer
count on unconditional U.S. backing given Washington’s
interests elsewhere in the region. As a result, it was compelled to
seek an accomodation with the Palestinian national leadership. Of
course, this was an exceedingly good thing. Unfortunately, Rabin
needn’t have worried, because the changing domestic political
atmosphere in the U.S. — the success of the Israel lobby
beyond its wildest dreams, particularly as a result of the backing
of perhaps its latterly most important constituent, the Evangelical
Christian Zionists, had meant that Israel could count on U.S.
backing regardless of its behavior in relation to the Palestinians.
M&W are simply pointing out that this does not accord with an
accurate reading of U.S. national interests.
Remnick notes that M&W “are right to describe the moral
violation in Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands. (In
this, most Israelis and most American Jews agree with them.)”
But then he complains that they reveal a nefarious agenda in blaming
Israel for all ills in its relationship with the Palestinians, and
the Arab more broadly.
The narrative rightly points out the destructiveness of
the Israeli settlements in the occupied territories and America’s
reluctance to do much to curtail them, but there is scant mention of
Palestinian violence or diplomatic bungling, only a recitation of
the claim that, in 2000, Israel offered “a disarmed set of
Bantustans under de-facto Israeli control.” (Strange that, at
the time, the Saudi Prince Bandar told Yasir Arafat, “If we
lose this opportunity, it is not going to be a tragedy. This is
going to be a crime.”)
But while Remnick may satisfy his liberal conscience by conceding
the idea that the occupation is bad, what he’s not answering
is M&W’s case that it is bizarre to the point of
inexplicable that the U.S. no longer bothers to even threaten to
take steps to restrain Israel from this “moral violation.”
U.S. support for Israel is unconditional, settlements and all. The
sad fact, for the likes of Remnick, is that the occupation is not
some aberration on Israel’s part; there really is no longer
any real distinction, in practice on the ground, between Israel and
its occupation of the lands it captured in 1967. As Henry
Siegman recently explained in an excellent piece in the London
Review of Books, Israel quite simply has no inclination to
withdraw from the occupied territories, and its ideas of a “peace
process” are essentially limited to the pursuit of Palestinian
surrender.
As for evoking the authority of Prince Bandar, oy. Remnick
himself had suggested that debate on U.S. Middle East policy was
welcome, and that it should include questions such as “whether
we should be supplying arms to the Saudis.” Uh, Dave, those
deals are typically negotiated by Bandar. And by the way, since when
did this Bush-Cheney acolyte become a voice of Arab authority? How
many Arab leaders were willing to publicly endorse the deal offered
at Camp David? (Bandar himself wouldn’t, you can be sure. And
nor would Mahmoud Abbas.)
Remnick is entirely correct that most American Jews would agree
with M&W about the occupation, but that simply underlines a
point they make throughout the book — that the positions and
interventions of the Israel lobby are not representative of
mainstream American Jewish opinion; they’re way to the right
of it. It’s not a “Jewish lobby,” it’s a
lobby of people — many of them Evangelical Christians —
supporting the positions of the hardline nationalist right in
Israel.
Remnick also attempts the rather silly argument that U.S. support
for Israel has little impact on the appeal of Osama bin Laden and
other radicals in the Arab world, because Bin Laden’s
objective is to overthrow Arab autocracies backed by the U.S. Yes,
of course it is, but the point is that Bin Laden hardly needs to
break a sweat in “proving” American malfeasance to any
Muslim audience — he simply needs to point for Washington’s
unswerving support of Israel, and the argument is over. And that
precludes U.S. allies in the Arab world from attaining any popular
legitimacy.
While denying that M&W are anti-Semites, Remnick nonetheless
questions the bona fides of their intervention. His message to his
readers is, don’t worry about what these guys are saying,
they’re just grinding an axe. Wink. “Taming the
influence of lobbies, if that is what Mearsheimer and Walt desire,
is a matter of reforming the lobbying and campaign-finance laws,”
but he suggests that, intead, the authors are a product of a
polarized political moment, reducing all ills to a single cause —
the Israel lobby. But Remnick hasn’t honestly engaged with
their arguments aside from clucking over the settlements: Does
Remnick agree, for example, that the U.S. should leave Israel no
choice but to withdraw its West Bank settlements, by threatening to
cut off the spigot if it doesn’t stop and reverse its
colonization of the West Bank? Should the U.S. not use its
considerable power over Israel to march it back to its 1967 borders?
That, really, is what’s at issue here.
Remnick’s own Israel bubble has been taking a bit of a
battering of late: Just three weeks ago, he found himelf compelled
to write a subtle
smear of Avrum Burg, largely attributing the former Knesset
speaker’s renunciation of Zionism to his supposed personality
defects! Plainly, Remnick has little appetite for engaging with
Burg’s notion that, as he put it, he had always considered
himself a human being, a Jew and a Zionist until he began to
recognize that his Zionism negated the other two aspects of his
identity.
Burg, like Mearshimer and Walt, had clearly made Remnick
uncomfortable. But he’s substantially correct in challenging
the M&W idea that the lobby is singularly responsible for
policing America’s public discourse on Israel. After all,
nobody asked Remnick to write these pieces. Nor did anyone tell
Kinsley to try and shoot down Jimmy Carter’s apartheid
argument. Just as important as challenging the Israel lobby is
drawing attention to the deep-rooted tropes of knee-jerk
defensiveness in sections of the liberal-Jewish intelligentsia that
allows them to avert their eyes and cling to fantasy when Israel is
an agent of oppression.
You can leave
a response, or trackback
from your own site.
[…] Wimbledon Mearshimer, Walt and the Erudite Hysteria of
David Remnick » This Summary is from an article posted at
Rootless Cosmopolitan on Friday, August 31, 2007 First, an
illustrative anecdote: A little over a year ago, Iraq’s prime
minister Nuri al-Maliki arrived in Washington and addressed
Congress. The event was supposed to be a booster for the elected
Iraqi leadership, showing U.S. support for the new government
Summary Provided by Technorati.comView Original Article at Rootless
Cosmopolitan » 10 Most Recent News Articles About WWE […]
Posted by University
Update - WWE - Mearshimer, Walt and the Erudite Hysteria of David
Remnick | August
31st, 2007 9:02 pm
There is nothing more amusing in America than seeing how
seemingly intelligent people become complete moronic cretins when
the issue of Israel comes up. Remnick is the perfect illustration of
this.
Not only does he lash out with these moronic editorials, but he
also hires criminal racists like Jeffrey Goldberg to preach to the
world how great Israel’s occupation is and how all of the
world’s problems are because of Palestinian extremists.
Once this bubble of Israeli worship erodes in America, morons
like Remnick, Kinsley and Goldberg will be laughed at like we laugh
at segregationists from the South.
Posted by Jimbo |
September
1st, 2007 12:40 am
The USA may be captive, if not prisoner to the Israeli lobby, but
not most of the globe sees APIAC, the Defammation League and
equivalent and its reciprocity in returning American taxpayer’s
dollars, by bribing congress men and women, as immoral/unethical.
And as Tony Karon makes clear, abundantly dangerous, for USA foreign
policy.
The Palestinian situation encapsulates this circular funding in
purusuit of deterrming foreign policy, but it comes with a price.
And that price is becoming inordinantly expensive as is evident by
the drum beats of the Israeli led neocons, preparing for an attack
on Iran, Hizbollah and consolidation of their current scorched earth
,on Hamas.
The blowback on America will be much more than 9/11 and 3754
fatalities by American military in Iraq, but do obsessed Zionist
idelogues care. Not a bit.
Mersheimer and Walt do the world a favour to expose this
poisonous relationship. Can’t wait to get their book.
Posted by Richard
Mayson | September
1st, 2007 12:58 am
Funny, I read the Remnick profile of Avram Berg (Sp?) and had a
different take on it. I thought it was revolutionary that the New
Yorker was airing Berg’s views at all. Such ideas have never
been seen in a mainstream US publication that’s not The Nation
or something even farther to the left.
I perceived Remnick’s attempts to discredit Burg as a
rhetorical move meant to pacify all the hysterics who would have
conniptions over Burg’s ideas on Zionism and the state of
Israel today.
If you think like a Communist Party newspaper editor or reporter,
the maneuver becomes clear. You want to present an idea that the
ruling party cannot bear to have published. You present it by first
saying “look at this crazy idea, look at how insane or
unreliable this person is. Isn’t it terrible what a perverse
person he has become?” Then you present the whole idea in
great detail. People get to read it. If the ruling party apparatchik
or the loyalist readers complain, you can say - but I think the
public has a right to know about this terrible person. I just wanted
to expose his wrong ideas.
Few New Yorker readers would have given a hoot about Avram Burg
without this article. He is not exactly on the radar in America. Why
profile him then? If Remnick really wanted to smear him or take him
down a peg or three, couldn’t he just have ignored him? Why
give him the New Yorker’s attention?
No, I posit that the Burg article, at least, was Remnick’s
way of getting the ideas out in front of the American public despite
the incredible atmosphere of censorship that prevails on the topic
of Israel.
On the M&W article, however, I am not as sure of my theory.
The piece does seem more like an attempt to reassure those who are
worried. But on the other hand, how many New Yorker readers were
following Mearshimer and Walt, anyway? What if once again this were
Remnick bringing attention to an issue that was percolating under
the surface, and he has to poopoo the ideas in order to slip them
past the censor?
OK I don’t understand how Remnick can hire Jeffrey
Goldberg. I have some speculations but they start to sound too
conspiratorial to discuss in public. Why does that guy Michael
Gordon get his pieces on the front page of the Times when experts in
the field claim he’s making stuff up about Iran?
The way the US media operates these days, you are best off
approaching it as if it were similar to the Soviet media of the USSR
years. Look for byzantine conspiracies, propaganda, and signs of
factions jockeying for position. Assume that everything is a lie or
a cover-up or a feint to distract the public’s attention from
real news. Etc.
Posted by Leila
| September
1st, 2007 1:06 am
In the end, Israel will probably succeed in its campaign of
deception, but it will be a pyrrhic victory. As Henry Siegman notes
in his essay referenced above, Israel has created enough “facts
on the ground,” and scared enough people about the “great
Arab menace,” that they should be able to keep the status quo
for a few more years. BUT, since the conditions are so unstable, I
fully expect that within 25 years Israel will cease to exist. That
is, the Jews in the so-called Holy Land will either leave or die. In
addition to the destruction of Israel, the US will suffer who knows
what horror.
This is the real problem with Israel successfully shutting down
debate, most people will never understand the likely consequences to
the US, Israel and the rest of the world as a result of Israel’s
actions. Nothing every gets debated. This is good for Israel which
would not like the results of such a debate in the short term but
will be tragic to everyone in the long term.
To anyone that understands the flow of history it is obvious that
the whole situation is unstable and in a logical world would never
have been allowed to even get started. Israel should NOT exist
because for Israel to exist requires the ethnic cleansing of huge
amounts of land. The western countries should never have allowed the
Jews into the ME, but they did, because of guilt over the Holocaust,
unwillingness to accept Jewish refugees (antisemitism) after WW2,
and willingness to treat the Arabs like second-class world citizens
(since the early 1800s the Arabs had warned repeatedly to keep the
Jews out of the ME). As a result, the Arabs in the ME have been
punished for the sins of the Nazis.
In the end, as world power shifts away frorm the US to China and
to a lesser extent Russia, the Arabs will eventually have the means
to destroy Israel and since they are still upset about the Crusades
there is no reason to expect they will not take advantage of the
opportunity. I expect that the world will causally watch in
amusement.
This is what the folks in Israel can not seem to internalize.
They can not hold off the Arab anger forever. They do not have
enough financial, people or technology resources to do this.
It is tragic to see a group of people on the path to destruction
and not be able to persuade them of the danger they are in. Every
conversation I have with Israelis about the future has them
confident that they can control everything forever but the lesson of
history is they can not.
Oh well, some people have to learn the hard way. Unfortunately i
suspect the people in the US will pay a very heavy price for letting
Israel suck the US into the black hole Israel has created. I suspect
also that the people of the US will wrongly blame the Arabs instead
of placing the blame on the Israelis where it should be, causing
additional problems for the US.
Posted by Spyguy |
September
1st, 2007 4:44 am
“Mearsheimer”, I believe.
Apart from that quibble, cracking piece.
Posted by assisi asobie |
September
1st, 2007 12:08 pm
I subscribe to the New Yorker and I have strong views about its
writers (some are supremely gifted; others should be writing
greeting cards for Hallmark). Like Leila, therefore, I really wonder
how they do their recruiting.
But my comment is about Tony’s point regarding the lobby’s
power. Perhaps more than AIPAC and the Christian fundies,
history
itself helps explain some of the reflexive pro-Israel
bias in the
public discourse.
And no, I don’t mean the Promised Land status of
both
countries in their respective mythologies.
1967 was a watershed year for Israel and the European Left. Prior
to 67, Israel was a plucky little country that embodied much of the
progressive values of the Left: fairness, social justice, embrace of
ethnic diversity, etc. Among Jews and non-Jews alike, it was the
height of coolness to go visit a kibbutz in the late 60s.
1967 changed all that. The occupation exposed the increased
militarization of Israeli society and its colonial outlook.
Economically, meanwhile, Israel slowly but surely came to embrace
the dog-eat-dog brand of American capitalism. (Israel has never been
richer than today yet one child out of three lives in poverty. Sound
familiar?)
Israel moved from Athens to Sparta. And Americans loved
every
bit of it. The late 60s is when Civil Rights made
it increasingly
impossible to spew out racist hate openly
in America. It’s
when the Democrats lost their majority
in the South (which,
you’ll recall, they had won when Southerners suddently noticed
that Lincoln was a Republican).
Israel isn’t that whitey white really, but Americans like
to believe it is. Arabs are not that dark really, but Americans like
to believe they are. So the analogy works: Arabs are the new Blacks
and Israelis are the new Americans. Bibi Netanyahu is more American
than George Bush (he can actually speak English), and Nasrallah
is
Malcolm X, a dark, threatening figure.
Americans identify with Israelis. Now that Israelis
are
getting into the American habit of losing their wars,
the
identification –and insecurity — will grow even stronger
as time goes by.
Americans and Israelis also share a common paranoia. No other
nations believe they are so hated by everyone else.
(OK, maybe
that’s because no other nation is).
Israel and America are the only two Western countries still
fighting the natives. That’s a tie that binds.
Posted by Bernard
Chazelle | September
2nd, 2007 12:44 am
I think that In 2000, when the Second Intifadah was just getting
started, there far more debate over Israeli treatment of the
Palestinians. Then came Al Queda’s attacks on 9/11, and
subsequent images of Palestinians dancing in the streets of East
Jerusalem. In the months following the attacks, I watched in horror
as public opinion ossifying around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,
and as Likudnik Zionists triumphantly exclaimed “NOW America
understands!”
Then came the War on Terror, which was basically a global
application of American Israel policy. At one point, Bush explicitly
used the term “Crusade” in reference to the War. He
later apologized, but one could see his true intent. The War on
Terror is an apocalyptic vision of a Clash of Civilizations, a
Christian-Moslem conflict modelled on and reinforcing the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Since then, I can barely recognize
either America or Israel, the two countries I call home.
In 2003, America launched an unprovoked and unecessary attack
against Iraq that ruined the country. In 2006, Israel with minimal
provocation launched an unecessary attack against Lebanon that
ruined the country. I am convinced the 2nd Lebanon War would not
have been possible without the political cover provided by the War
on Terror. When I argue with my conservative Zionist friends about
the Lebanon War, they say Israel is not to be blamed because its
actions were fine within the context of the War on Terror.
Today, the road to Ramallah runs through Washington; there is
zero chance of a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict until
the War on Terror is repudiated. If the War is not ended, we will
see the Israeli-Palestinian conflict repeat itself on a global
scale. Israel/Palestine itself will be a living vision of
apocalypse: probably, one side will completely exterminate the
other, but neither side will win.
I evaluate a politician almost entirely based on his ideas toward
the War on Terror. The Republicans are completely out of control,
with Giuliani holding the “moderate” opinion that a
Palestinian state is a terrorist state. Hillary Clinton truly is
Bush-Cheney lite, with no objections to this hopeless War itself,
only to “incompetence” and “irresponsibility”
in its execution. Edwards has explicitly denounced the War on Terror
as no more than a “bumper sticker”, and is the only
major candidate to do so.
Obama is not as hawkish as he seems. I truly believe that he is
against the War on Terror. He does not say so openly because this
would alienate conservatives, and he prides himself on bridging
political gaps. But look at his positions, which in many cases go
further than Edwards: no unconditional support for Musharraf (as bad
for Pakistanis as unconditional aid to Israel is to Israelis), a big
antipoverty initiative, negotiations with “evil dictators”,
and a new dialogue with Islam.
America never really recovered from 9/11. Our political discourse
has been dead since then. To revive this country, and then Israel,
the 2008 Presidential Election must exact a searing defeat against
the basic principles of the War on Terror. Otherwise, the American
and Zionist dreams both may perish.
Posted by Shlomo |
September
2nd, 2007 1:27 am
More than 20 years ago I was invited to Israel to participate at
a seminary for journalists. Avraham Burg, who was at the time
leading the Jewish Agency gave us a very Zionist speech. He was not
a youngster anymore. His sudden change is not one of Saulus to
Paulus. Change came because he was unsuccessful in his political
career. The moment a prominent Israeli decides to lash out at
Zionism, he can be sure to get plenty of invitations to Europe,
where in complete contradiction to the USA such people are welcome
to speak and write.
Lets imagine for one moment there is no more State of Israel.
Would then Saudi-Arabia turn democratic, would be less poverty in
Egypt, less stoning and hanging of homosexuals and women who had
illicit sexual relations in Iran? Would the rape of young boys in
Pakistans religious schools stop? Would Palestinians stop killing
each other and be able to form a democratic society?
Posted by Eli in Austria
| September
2nd, 2007 4:59 am
Abolishing the state of Israel probably wouldn’t end global
warming either, so what?
Posted by Bill |
September
2nd, 2007 6:56 am
Israel is in no danger of being “terminated” by
anyone. That’s a right-wing talking point that has no basis in
reality.
Israel is in danger of becoming a pariah state where no sane
person would want to live. That’s the issue Israelis and
friends of Israel should worry about instead of conjuring up
imaginary existential threats.
Posted by Bernard
Chazelle | September
2nd, 2007 1:28 pm
Long before M&W and Carter, I came to my own conclusions
about the Lobby and Israel through close observation of the pattern
of events in Israel-Palestine and the US congress over the past
decades.
It doesn’t even need to be “debated”, it needs
to end.
I have written my congressman and senator and the heads of both
parites to say I, my extended family, and everyone else I have
contact and influence will not support or vote for any candidate for
any office who pledges alliegence to Israel and continues this
corruption of American values and government. Instead we will
actively work against them and name the reason we are doing so
Anyone who isn’t wiling to notify their elected
representives that they won’t support this perversion is just
pontificating and wasting their time.
Only when congress fears American voters more than they fear
groups like AIPAC will it end.
Posted by Julia |
September
2nd, 2007 2:25 pm
Julia,
The main issue is not that the candidate “pledges
allegiance” to Israel. If we exclude the West Bank, Israel
proper is one of the only democracies in the Middle East, and one
that gives nearly equal rights to Israeli Arabs. I view this not as
a corruption of American values, but as an embodyment of the best of
American values. All men are created equal. Everyone’s voice
matters. Of course, Israeli laws will have a Jewish flavor–that
is to be expected in a state with the highest concentration of Jews
in the world.
The problem is that Israel was founded on contradictory
principles: a Jewish democracy. As Jews will eventually be in the
minority, they will eventually have to choose between a
majority-Arab democracy with a Jewish flavor, and a Jewish apartheid
state. The former is far superior from a ZIONIST perspective,
because Israel can be majority Arab and retain a Jewish character,
but can not possibly be apartheidal while retaining its democratic
character.
So the problem is not that American politicians pledge their
support for Israel. The problem is that they don’t mean it,
and are as insincere about Zionism as the American neocons are about
American patriotism. By essentially promoting the aparheidal
solution, the so-called “friends” of Israel are in fact
destroying the country–just as American “patriots”
here, with their War on Terror, are bombing the American dream.
I am a Zionist. I am an American patriot. It is not in spite of
this but because of this that I criticize both my home countries;
the fundamental principle of democracy is loyal dissent. Take that
away, democracy dies.
Posted by Shlomo |
September
2nd, 2007 3:14 pm
Shlomon — you’re in a fantasy world when you say “if
we exclude the West Bank” — the West Bank has been part
of the Israeli regime for the past 40 years, and Israel is not
planning to end that regime for the foreseeable future. The West
Bank settlements, walls, checkpoints etc. are as much part of Israel
today as the beaches of Tel Aviv…
Posted by Tony |
September
2nd, 2007 4:27 pm
There is a dreariness to all this. We are faced with a complex,
fast-changing world and we have politicians chanting meaningless
“verities” about Israel and Arabs. (Cue: Bill Cutty.)
Instead of an Armaggedon, we are watching the tide go out on
American power. Most of our Fundies and Fox News watchers speak to
so few foreigners, they don’t understand that the American
brand is tarnished; the American dream is a self-reinforcing myth,
and American ingenuity involves importing brains from Europe, India,
and China. Has anyone looked at origin of almost every American
Chess Grandmaster? (Okay, not the best example….)
Considering the overt religiousity of our current public square,
why should we expect our foreign policy to have less obscurantism?
Simple question: Would John Hagee have been a national figure 20
years ago? Would any self-respecting Jew have invited him to address
AIPAC 20 years ago?
Posted by Matthew |
September
2nd, 2007 8:10 pm
Shlomo — “Israel proper is one of the only
democracies in the Middle East, and one that gives nearly equal
rights to Israeli Arabs.”
“gives NEARLY equal rights to Israeli Arabs?” Then
it’s not a democracy. Quit fooling yourself or us.
“Of course, Israeli laws will have a Jewish flavor–that
is to be expected in a state with the highest concentration of Jews
in the world.”
You mean Russian emigres, who claim Jewish as their religion
whether observant or not, dont you? Israel’s population is
around 6 million. 4.8 million of them are Russian. Eighty percent
(80%). The US paid for them to emigrate since 1970. Israel is a
Russian satellite now.
Posted by Janie |
September
2nd, 2007 11:17 pm
[…] Tony Karon, Rootless Cosmopolitan, August 31: […]
Posted by Let
the onslaught begin at Antony Loewenstein | September
2nd, 2007 11:27 pm
600 000 of those russians have left for the u s & europe
the
countdown has already started
geo graphical time bomb
350 000
000 arabs in 2025
Posted by feroze |
September
3rd, 2007 2:28 am
Actually Israel is an Israeli-Russian Mafia satellite now.
But I digress from my main point.
Based on Tony’s reference to Burg, I looked up this
interview with him in Haaretz.:
Leaving the Zionist
ghetto
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/868385.html
Amazingly, the man sounds like me - if I were Jewish and
disgusted with the Zionist program. He does everything I’ve
done (and been castigated for, and banned from Talking Points Memo
by Josh Marshall for, and called “anti-Semitic” for):
comparing the Israeli regime with the Nazi regime, declaring that
the concept of a “Jewish state” is not workable,
accepting the Diaspora as the best thing that ever happened to
Judaism, suggesting that Israelis would be smart to move, etc,,
etc.) And this guy is not only Jewish, he’s a former Zionist,
and a former member of the Israeli government!
Guess he, as Josh Marshall likes to accuse me of, “despises
Jews”…
Sounds to me, however, that he loves Jews and despises what
Zionism has become.
Posted by Richard
Steven Hack | September
3rd, 2007 4:00 am
See Noam Chomsky’s comments on this issue (link below).
The basic idea, quoting Stephen Zunes,
“there are far more powerful interests that have a stake in
what happens in the Persian Gulf region than does AIPAC [or the
Lobby generally], such as the oil companies, the arms industry and
other special interests whose lobbying influence and campaign
contributions far surpass that of the much-vaunted Zionist lobby and
its allied donors to congressional races.”
Noam concludes, “Convenient, but not too convincing. In
either case.”
http://www.chomsky.info/articles/20060328.htm
Posted by Adamchik |
September
3rd, 2007 4:42 am
Excellent rebuttal to a piece which I think I found more
disturbing. I wrote this to editor Remnick a few days ago:
I read with astonishment your curiously untimely comments about
Palestine and Israel, and the putative “symptomatic”
essay that prompted your ravings. That will do it; no more
subscription, ever, for me. There are many issues of global
importance, from economic inequality to US militarization to
worldwide poverty and climate change, yet when one
piece is such
fascist journalism, I must register my complaint about your support
of the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people. There are many
good and honorable people in Israel and here who do not promote
the
on-going violence against the refugees in Palestine; it is in
their name, and most specifically that of Norman Finkelstein, upon
whose momentous case you have been silent, that I ask that my
association with your
magazine be terminated.
I’m just one reader, one no-account like everybody else,
but I got incensed when a Princeton boomer with a million readers
gets on his high horse…
Posted by Mjosef |
September
3rd, 2007 6:49 am
After reading the above comments,as well as the review itself, it
is increasingly apparent that M&W have succeeded in bringing
this subject to the fore,one of their stated objectives. The
placement of Remnick’s review in the NYer’s “editorials”
section (first!) is in direct relation to this topic’s
currency and weight. Though the conversation will inevitably include
all forms of whackos,haters,denyers and everything in between,at
least there IS discussion and this is good for all.
Posted by Giulio |
September
3rd, 2007 7:36 am
@ Adamchik
While there may be other interests involved, I don’t
believe the arms or oil industries could or would bring the total
unanimity of praise for Israel among the U.S. political class. Do
you really believe Exxon would attack a congressman for expressing
mild sympathy for the Palestinians? Would General Dynamics lobby
congress AGAINST arms sails to Saudi Arabia? Seems unlikely to me.
Posted by Ziad |
September
3rd, 2007 7:59 am
I’m 61 years of age and hope that I live long enough to
read- “All Israelies have left M.E. and settled in America “.
Try this tid bit,never talked about–Hitler’s Germany was
trying hard to settle Palestine as a Jewish state—WHY ?
Posted by JoJo |
September
3rd, 2007 8:54 am
The irony of this Israel’s American lobby is that they are
fueling a rising tide of American anti-semitism. It is a tide that
continues to accellerate. Israel and its lobby are hastening the
coming crisis for itself and American Jews.
Posted by J Wittenmyer | September
3rd, 2007 8:58 am