The debate Commentary doesn’t like
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The Chas Freeman affair continues to reverberate and for good reason—a lot is at stake. The coalition of pro-Israel bloggers that started the campaign against him wished things would end there. He would go quietly and be replaced by a pliable figure who would put no roadblocks in the way of their desired war with Iran. But he didn’t. He named the Israel lobby in his withdrawal statement, and much of the mainstream media agreed with him.
The lobby sits uneasily now: Israel’s new government is naming an out-and-out racist as foreign minister, President Obama supports a two-state solution, boycotts against goods produced in the occupied territories are gaining traction in Europe. Its essential instinct is defensive, to try to block all discussion. America should go on as before, giving Israel $4 billion dollars a year, blocking critical resolutions in the UN, saying that peace with the Palestinians would be nice while doing nothing serious.
But discussion is happening anyway. It can no longer be contained or marginalized. Still they try. Commentary blogger Noah Pollak has produced a post attacking TAC for what he considers “un-American” language criticizing the lobby. TAC takes its polemical manners seriously, and Pollak’s charge deserves an answer.
He links to one Pat Buchanan syndicated column, on the TAC website, though he flags another website’s title for the column. He claims the magazine “repeatedly” refers to “Jews” as a “fifth column”—asserting “the attempt to write one religious or ethnic group out of the debate by assigning them membership in conspiracies and imputing to them dual loyalties is indeed un-American, and there should be nothing controversial about saying so.”
But TAC had done nothing of the kind. It published the phrase “fifth column” in a Justin Raimondo piece four years ago about convicted spy Larry Franklin. This was a focused and limited usage—unless Pollack wants to imply that all American Jews support Israeli espionage against the United States, a position that really would be absurd. Another syndicated Buchanan column, published in TAC last summer, said, “Israel and its Fifth Column in this city seek to stampede us into war with Iran.” One can debate the language—though it sadly obvious that Israel hopes for an American war against Iran—but clearly “Israel and its Washington fifth column” refers to a very specific group of people, including bellicose Christians. No honest reader could conclude that it referred to “the contribution of Jews to the public debate”—unless, of course, Pollak seeks to insinuate that all American Jews are pushing the United States to attack Iran, a truly loony proposition.
There is a deeper motive to Pollak’s attack. A monumental sea change is underway in the American Jewish community. For many years, liberal Jews more or less let AIPAC or Commentary or The New Republic speak for them on the issues of Israel, Palestine, and the Middle East. That’s over. J Street has emerged as a new pro-peace PAC to challenge AIPAC. It opposes the war with Iran that Pollak would like to start. So do dozens of important bloggers—M.J. Rosenberg, Matt Yglesias, Ezra Klein, Philip Weiss, Tony Karon, Josh Marshall, and David Bromwich, to name a few. Joe Klein, the popular Time writer has been challenging Freeman’s attackers. Taken together, these writers are challenging the entire Likudnik ideological complex that stretches from Jerusalem to the offices of Commentary and The Weekly Standard.
The Iraq War probably initiated this springtime of debate. Walt and Mearsheimer pushed it along, and no, they haven’t been marginalized—though not for lack of trying. Just last night, at the 92nd Street Y, liberal Jews were debating what their loyalties are, what it means that Israel now has a quasi-fascist government and hopes to have continued American support for its colonization policies. Noah Pollak’s view—that any raising of these questions is un-American—is losing out. He’s worried, and he seeks to fight back by misrepresenting us.
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Commentary, as usual, is dead right. Your organization is neither American nor conservative in any righteous sense of those words. Attacking Israel and defending the actions of Arab states, in the current world crisis, is rather like siding with Vichy France “against” the Nazis. Buchanan’s toleration for fascistic and Islamist regimes is another unfortunate instance of your fundamental anti-Americanism. I say this, by the way, as a pious Christian and one who does not support Israel on any Biblical or eschatological grounds, but rather because it is America’s only true ally in the Middle East. For that matter, it is the only true Western Civilization in the Middle East. Charles Freeman, whose life is dedicated to cutting Israel off and creating an alliance with the corrupt Saudi government, was and is an intellectual hoodlum who richly deserved his public disgrace. As does TAC.
It’s so tiresome to see World War II and the Nazi’s dragged out again and again.
It’s curious that the Saudi’s who have a lot to answer for, never the less manage to avoid some of the behaviors of our ally Israel. I can’t remember the last time organized Saudi-Americans through their money and voting clout, targeting and defeating American Congressmen. Neither can I remember repeated, blatant instances of Saudi espionage and transfer of American weapons technology to our enemies. And I haven’t seen many Saudi’s commenting on this site accusing us of not being sufficiently American.
Why do we need and ally in the Middle East? No one has been able to adequately explain that to me. Israel is so valuable, apparently, that the United States must bend over backwards to accomodate that country, regardless of how those accomodations are perceived by other nations.
Israel provides the United States with little actionalbe intelligence, hardly any convertable resources, and positively no strategic benefits.
And should it matter that Israel, in the broadest sense, and even that is stretching it, is a “Western” country surrounded by hostile non-Western countries? I didn’t put Israel there. And Americans should not be responsible for Israel’s bad real-estate decisions.
My hunch is that Obama isn’t so much interested in changing his relationship with the Israel lobby as he is in making sure that they don’t take him for granted.
He’s accomplished that. Also, he now has a little political cover on his “left” for attempting to stand up to the Lobby. This is his imitation of classic Clinton-style triangulation.
‘America’s only true ally in the Middle East’
Yet America has military bases in Kuwait, Turkey, Qatar, Bahrain, UAE, Oman, and Iraq. Quit the platitudes please.
Al Myers wrote:
“Attacking Israel and defending the actions of Arab states, in the current world crisis, is rather like siding with Vichy France ‘against’ the Nazis.”
Hmm … trying to understand this: Vichy France was the one that collaborated with the Nazis and indeed was essentially a German puppet state.
Ergo … the Arab states are puppets of Nazi-like Israel?
No….
Really Mr. Myers, if you want to become a proficient name-caller (an obvious aspiration) you simply must understand your epithets: The slander you meant was that “criticizing Israel is like supporting the Nazi’s against the Free French Forces” (who were the ones who were actually opposing the Nazis).
You can do it, I know you can: Just make sure you understand at least the most elementary meaning of your words before you sling them. After that it’s just practice, practice, practice.
Cheers,
Amusing how this particular faction of the pro-Israel movement is so dependent on “you’re not an American.” Of course, to people of this mindset, being American is just a matter of thinking the right things on issues. Someone in India can be as fully American as these folks.
How tiresome. This recalls going all the way back to Buckley’s empty-headed screed on antisemitism in 1991 where he accused Buchanan. If the fat is boiled out of that article, his argument against Buchanan, Sobran and others was premised entirely on his belief that Jews were entitled to special treatment and statements that were perfectly acceptable to other groups were forbidden when directed towards Jews. You could only agree with Buckley’s conclusions if you first agreed that somehow different rules applied to Jews–a dubious and, frankly, unjust assertion.
So now it is a redux of 1991, 2004, etc. I suppose, as the author notes, the one difference is this hysterical propaganda is now spouted in defense of a gov’t of extremists and crooks. Perhaps that will make a difference . . .
The “un-American” slur is simply a sloppy ad hominem attack used by people who don’t have a legitimate argument. It’s the kind of thinking Orwell deplored and described in “Politics and the English Language.”
And how can someone assert that Israel reflects core American values of liberty and equality for all, when it is running an apartheid society? How does Israel’s indiscriminate killing of Palestinian civilians reflect the basic American value of basic human rights?
As the chess games (with US military lives) is being played over how to force America to take ownership of Israel’s ill conceived wars, a question people should consider is this: How many African American, Latino and poor white families are going to continue to supply their children to die for the vanity of myopic Israeli and Likud supporters in the US? I predict that the public’s patience has been stretched to a breaking point by the Iraqi and Afghan wars.
So when the US decides that it is no longer an ally to Israel and will no longer provide aid, I’m sure that China and Russia will sit on the sidelines rather than fill in the vaccum left by the Americans.
Regardless of how one feels about Israeli policy, the idea that cutting off funding will somehow punish Israel is unrealistic, all it would do is provide an opportunity for someone else to step in. Lord knows Russia has been waiting for such an opportunity…
Maybe instead of using such words as “semi-fascist” to describe Israel we can all come down to reality and provide an alternative. What is the proper response to being hit by rockets for over a year while not a slingle UN “emergency meeting” is called for???
[...] continue reading on Chaz Freeman debate here [...]
[...] The debate Commentary doesn’t like By Scott McConnell, TAC blog, March 17, 2009 [...]
Russia wanting to take up (again) the mantle of Israel’s patron? Are you serious with such nonsense?
And what has Israel to offer China that she isn’t already providing China, while the PRC avoids the taint of association with Israel?
More of the nonsense from the “Israel all the way” folks that cannot survive a moment’s analysis.
And as to your last question–the answer is clearly to kill over 400 children and more women and old people, clearly. As dozens more Americans have been killed by Mexicans in Mexico due to the drug wars than Israelis killed by Hamas, et al–perhaps you can formulate invasion plans to the South for us?
Then again, perhaps the answer was to actually live up to commitments made under the ceasefire during a period in which such attacks were drastically reduced as Israel’s own intelligence services conceded? Naah.
Adler- if china or russia want planes flown into their buildings and 4 billion drained from their treasury every year they can have at it
I’d welcome Israel’s call for an emergency meeting from the UN.
Of course that would mean opening themselves up to having to listen to the various UN criticisms levied over the years, which have been blocked by the US at the Security Council level.
Please Israel, go to the UN and ask for help resolving your conflict. Or go to any honest broker who will weigh your case looking for a just resolution.
Don’t feel too bad. I’ve been called unamerican and a traitor since @ 7/2003. It’s how they avoid confronting ideas that challenge their view of the world or, more likely, the view of the world some want them to have.
Buchanan = Hitler
I get a bad taste, sometimes, from the knee-jerk anti-American anti-Israel politics that I find in this blog.
But somewhere behind my large single eyebrow, I have to admit that I have been uneasy about a lot of our foreign support over the last 40 years, to include what we hand Israel.
Here’s my suggestion to Obama. We know that you want to increase support for those who oppose Isreal. We know that you will use any advantage to your own benefit, including the threat of cutting funds to Isreal. Here’s my 3-step plan for you, that would conform to your goals, and yet possibly benefit the American public.
Open up another one of your “accountability” websites, and show us who all has gotten foreign money in the last 3 years, and break down as low as $100 increments, where ALL the money has been spent inside those countries (to include Isreal, of course).
Open up yet another website, and show ALL flow of capital/favors/perks/travel, and any meetings, between PACs and Federal-level politicians. Make life-imprisonment the penalty for failure to comply. Allow public whistle-blowing, for any connection found between laws supported, and “favors” done for politicians by folks benefitting from those laws. A successful whistle-blower should “win the lottery”.
Pass a law that there will henceforth be a 10-year limit on US taxpayer monetary support to ANY sovereign nation. That is, monetary assistance must demand an accompanying plan for 10-year-max withdrawal.
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Daily Kos folks win, Limbaugh folks win, and Obama administration wins. (The elites, from both sides, will be unhappy, no matter what.)
Al Myers is a plant. McConnell just made him up to fuel the fires. Joke’s on us.
The STATE of Israel is the problem, not the Israelis or Americans with divided loyalties. Freeman made a good point that unconditional support for the decisions of the ruling party of the Israeli STATE might just be undermining the long term interests of the people of Israel.
This isn’t rocket science, folks.
If people of another religion took over your house and homeland, put their religious symbol on the flag, and relegated you to either second class toleration or imprisonment in a deportee colony, you wouldn’t accept it.
Sure, some Palestinians have become radicalized after decades without legal recourse.
One secular state with equality for all — regardless of religion — is the choice of the younger generation. Those who don’t want to live in equality can leave.
Rosen and Weissman are obvious traitors, and should be jailed. Hopefully the FBI has their various supporters under surveillance so they can be picked up in due course if there’s any further trouble of this kind. We can’t afford to let Israel keep draining us of blood and treasure. American Jews who support these spies should be deported. In any case they have no role to play in the growing debate among non-Jews as to what must be done about the Israel Lobby.