Milton Viorst, October 4, 2007
About 30 or so years ago, when I first began to write of my concern that Israel was embarked on a course that would lead only to recurring wars, or perhaps worse, I received a letter from Abraham H. Foxman, then as now the voice of the Anti-Defamation League, admonishing me as a Jew not to wash our people”s dirty linen in public. I still have it in my files. His point, of course, was not whether the washing should be public or private; he did not offer an alternative laundry. His objective was – and remains – to squelch anyone who is critical of Israel”s policies.
In the ensuing years, Foxman and a legion of like-minded leaders, most but not all of them Jewish, have been remarkably successful in suppressing an open and frank debate on Israel”s course. In view of Israel”s impact on America”s place in the world, it is astonishing how little discussion its role has generated. As a practical matter, the subject has been taboo. John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt, professors of political science at the University of Chicago and Harvard”s John F. Kennedy School of Government, respectively, have challenged this taboo in their new book, “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy.” Foxman, in an effort to discredit them, has written a rejoinder in his book “The Deadliest Lies: The Jewish Lobby and the Myth of Jewish Control.”
The controversy over Mearsheimer and Walt”s views has been going on since March of last year, when they first presented their argument in the London Review of Books. In their essay, they contended that support of the magnitude that the United States gives Israel might have been justified during the Cold War but is not defensible, “on either strategic or moral grounds,” under the conditions that currently prevail in the Middle East. America”s unconditional backing, they argued, is harmful to its own interests and possibly even to Israel”s, and it is made possible only by the influence of the Israel lobby over U.S. foreign policy. The article touched a sensitive chord among many of Israel”s defenders, generating a furor. Now Mearsheimer and Walt have written a book which, while more comprehensive at nearly 500 pages, recapitulates the original themes. Foxman acknowledges basing his book-length reply on the article, so impatient was he to proclaim its authors guilty of “distortions, omissions and errors.”
The late social critic Irving Howe, deeply committed to Israel himself, used to argue that Jewish leaders like Foxman depend for their status on ceaselessly trumpeting the dangers faced by the Jewish people, and particularly by Israel, from a hostile world. These leaders, Howe insisted, exploit the scars which inquisitions, pogroms and the Holocaust have left on the collective Jewish psyche, scars which distort Jewish political judgment. Foxman is no doubt sincere in agonizing over the dangers that Jews have historically faced. But Howe argued that these dangers had become a vested interest for the leaders of Jewish organizations, making an open and honest debate all but impossible in American Jewish circles and in America”s political culture generally.
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The Tattlesnake — Larry Tarries and Freddy’s Dead Edition
Larry Craig’s GOP ‘Wait’ Watchers Wonder: “Jiminy God! When’s He Finally Gonna Resign For Good?”
– The Dems should really thank Sen. Larry Craig, now stalling again following his original promise he’d quit Sept. 30th, and then altering that vow to after he got the verdict from the appeals judge on whether he could withdraw his guilty plea to a disorderly conduct charge involving sexual solicitation in a Minneapolis airport men’s room. The verdict’s in and, after the judge was done laughing himself to tears, he told Lar no, you can’t change your guilty plea just to keep your soft Senate gig. (Hint: If you moan “Noooooooo!” when a cop shows his badge, it’s a pretty good indication of guilt. Innocent people don’t say things like that to the police.) But the Toe-Tapping Idaho Potatohead is made of sterner stuff and has now refused to resign despite the judge’s decision. While Craig’s family may need some rehab at the Helen Keller Institute, the rest of us, and even many Idahoans, have most of our faculties working and can easily size-up this puff-adder hypocrite: “I have gay sex in public restrooms” might as well be indelibly tattooed on his forehead. Seems Craig’s decided to take a page from the Modern Neocon Republican Handbook (BushCo-Rove Illustrated Pamphlets, 2000) and is willing to selfishly watch his party go down the drain to preserve his job and possibly revamp his future reputation. So, here’s a tip o’ the tarboosh to Larry — with your help, maybe a Dem will even win your seat from Idaho next election. Well, maybe not your seat but…uh, you know what I mean…