Brave Critics of Israel

At contentions, David Billet posted an excellent rebuttal to Nicholas Kristoff’s widely noted column this week on Israel:

According to Nicholas Kristof, writing in the New York Times last Sunday, American politicians, whether Republicans or Democrats, always bite their tongues when it comes to discussions about Israel. Both sides have “learned to muzzle themselves” and to acquiesce in President Bush’s “crushing embrace” of Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians. “That silence,” he argues, “harms America, Middle East peace prospects, and Israel itself.”

Kristof’s piece is part of a growing genre: criticism of Israel whose starting point is to bemoan how such criticism cannot be made in public.

R.A.C. responded to Billet’s post by arguing that, with the end of the Cold War, “Americans will call for the balance sheet on our unquestioned alliance with Israel to be re-audited,” which caused Seth Halpern to post a response noting the latest Gallup Poll showed Americans “support Israel over the Palestinian Arabs by a ratio of three to one.” That little comment was sufficient to put R.A.C. into a Walt/Measheimer/Judt/Carter/Soros/Kristof defensive crouch:

Interesting, isn’t it, that the argument I made automatically put me, in your mind, in the “enemy of Israel” camp? This is exactly what Kristof was arguing. Friends of Israel with differing opinions of what’s in its vital interests are quick to be branded and attacked.

Seth Halpern responded as follows:  “Temper, temper, R.A.C.  Did I call you an “enemy” of Israel?” 

But your predictions of an Emerging Kristofian Majority and the death of the pro-Israel consensus seem (with apologies to Mark Twain) greatly exaggerated. Believe me, such prognostications have been around for at least 40 years. In the 1970s it was claimed (and not just by ex-Harvard Crimson types, but by some really scary generals and politicians) that our support for Israel was forcing the Arabs into the arms of the Soviets. You remember the Soviets. Then it was said, over and over and over, that Israel would commit demographic suicide. Yet Jews have kept a solid and remarkably enduring majority in the entire Land of Israel since 1967. So majority-rule-warnings don’t cut much ice there either.

Does that mean I am personally wedded to a maximalist view of the conflict? Not necessarily -- it might well be enough for me if the Palestinians literally and figuratively grew up and changed from super-weaponized, hyper-politicized, perpetually-aggrieved gang members into genuinely civilized people. But that will take at least the rest of your lifetime. That is, I’m assuming that -- since you seem to think Kristof is on to something -- you are too young to have experienced a thousand identical columns by Anthony Lewis. Lucky you.

For future historians, let’s catalogue the obscure media to which the small band of brave critics of Israel in America have been relegated over the past year:  the Harvard University School of Government website, the op-ed page of the New York Times, lead articles in the New York Review of Books, and the New York Times best seller list.

But every time, they write as if they are profiles in courage.  Gary Imhoff suggested that Kristof could have been Soros’s ghostwriter for his New York Review of Books article:

It covers almost exactly the same points -- Soros praises himself for how brave he is for criticizing Israel, paints himself as the victim of unfair charges of anti-Semitism because of his honesty, insists that Jewish interest groups prevent honest criticism of Israel in the United States (unlike the strong self-criticism within Israel), states that Israel is mostly to blame for Palestinians’ hatred of it, and recommends that the United States should deal politically with the reasonable elements that he finds in Hamas and send aid funds to a Hamas-led government.

Or do these same few talking points simply define a new genre and a new generation of anti-Israel politics?

Anne Lieberman addressed the myth of the AIPAC-muzzled politicians in her lengthy reply to Pissed Off Liberal Jew yesterday:

Do we as a country consider Hamas and Hezbollah really good people, but some Zionists are paying off our Congressmen to call them terrorists?

Am I supposed to believe that many in our government really despise Israel and want to empower her enemies, but they’re “biting their tongues”?  They would’ve been cheering for the Hezbos last summer, but they were afraid they might receive a petition from Simon Wiesenthal Center?

Richard Baeher, in Part One of a major article at American Thinker (“The War in America Against Israel”), notes Kristof’s column as part of a trend that indicates a bumpy ride is coming up, starting around the 40th anniversary of the Six-Day War, with the New York Times taking the lead.  Worth reading in its entirety.

Comments

[soccerdad]

It's worth noting that Walt and Mearsheimer are getting a book published in September by an American publishing house.
( http://backspin.typepad.com/backspin/2007/03/walt_and_mearsh.html ) Remember how they claimed last year that they had to get their paper published in London because they couldn't get it published in the States because of Israel's influence? I guess they weren't looking so hard last year. Or they were lying.

[Rick Richman]

The book is already listed at Amazon for publication on September 4, 2007 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, perhaps the most prestigious publishing house in America.

The book jacket will describe it as “a work of major importance” that will “deepen and expand their argument and confront recent developments in Lebanon and Iran.”

“Mearsheimer and Walt provocatively contend that the lobby has a far-reaching impact on America’s posture throughout the Middle East—in Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, and toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict . . . The lobby’s influence also affects America’s relationship with important allies and increases dangers that all states face from global jihadist terror."

Got that? The Israel Lobby is a danger to “all states.”

[sultan knish]

bigoted comments are often prefigured by the false claim that they're speaking what is usually "forbidden" or "censored"

this lets them damn their critics as suppressors of free speech and continue drawing a picture of evil jewish influence suppressing everyone's views, rather than dealing with the issues

[Shalom Freedman]

The 'NY Review of Books' has become persistent in its Anti- Israel naggings. It of course has a long history from the time of I.F. Stone of finding Israel to fault in this conflict.
It seems that every other issue there is a long piece explaining why if it were not for Israel's intransigence Peace would long ago have been attained in the Middle East.
I wonder what the 'money' behind NY Review is and why it takes that line.