Terrible Day

So, going into Shabbas, there's the North Japanese Tsunami, but after Shabbas I find out that (1) the 'quake/tsunami damaged a nuclear reactor and they need to act quick to prevent a meltdown. Like one Godzilla wasn't enough!

Then, a small header on the Times front page, I read about (2) an absolute horror in Israel where terrorist slaughter a family - including a months old baby. I'm mute with rage over this. It's been a while since we've had this kind of attack and that's enough time for me to again be stupefied at the world's silence and/or complicity over the crimes of the (so-called) Palestinians and the cheapness of Jewish blood.

Then I read, in the same Times, in a minute's reading, about the terrible bus accident in the Bronx confirming most of my fears about these cheap Chinatown buses.

I need some good news quick.

Reverse Boycott Time

While I'm not in favor of anti-Semites, and their Halloween costume cousins Anti-Zionists, being so loud (hate speech is rough on the psyche) I am glad when they are vocal. According to Jacob Weisberg's recent Slate column (h.t. Goldblog), a number of celebrities are boycotting Israel. A great quote:

What they're saying instead is: "We consider your country so intrinsically reprehensible that we are gong to treat all of your citizens as pariahs." Instead of warning that Israel risks becoming an apartheid society if it fails to make peace, boycotters have concluded that Israel already is an irredeemable apartheid society.

Now, as I've mentioned here, I keep my eye on those moral artists who davka tour Israel, so I'm happy to track the opposite side of the spectrum as well. So, according to Slate, here are the new immoral anti-Zionist scum: Meg Ryan, The Pixies, Elvis Costello. Now I have no idea who the Pixies are, and now I'm glad that I don't have to, but I have experience with the other two scumbags and I find a bittersweet silver lining to the hate cloud.

First of all, sweet anorexic airhead shiksa Meg Ryan. What red-blooded American GenX male has not feared her presence in any movie? She's in the category of "pretty only to women" (other members of this group: Julia Roberts and Sarah Jessica Parker) and her one character, recycled in numerous romantic comedies, is the same shrill high-maintenance ditz we discovered when Sally met Harry. Those of us who have secretly detested her reduction of femininity to the most irritating traits (helpless, brainless, neurotic, impossible to please, materialist, irresponsible) can have a concrete reason to hate her.

But the real prize is Elvis Costello. Man oh man, I do not like that guy's music. And yet, all the pallid hipster music snobs have insisted for decades that he's some kind of genius. Yet, these aesthetes seem to overlook that the man sings like a geek. It's his own pretentiousness, the arrogance of his fans, and his utter lack of voice quality that has earned my ire before his latest bigoted escapade. And, hey, look at the Wiki, it says that "Elvis" (a.k.a. Declan Patrick MacManus) had a famous incident in 1979 of publicly calling James Brown and Ray Charles the N-word.

So here ya go, the great entertainers and the moral conscience.

Cotello pic from here.

Helen Thomas and Applying the Double Standard

As you doubtless have heard, Helen Thomas - the bubbie-like senior White House Correspondent for the world, a chum of Steven Colbert and champion of freedom under George "The Scumbag" Bush - turns out to be a raging wacko anti-Semite. Thankfully, she has announced her retirement after her these comments were spread all throughout modern technology's platforms:

Thomas was asked by Rabbi David Nesenoff on May 27 if she had "any comments on Israel."

"Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine," she said.

Nesenoff, who was attending the first Jewish American Heritage Month event at the White House, asked where Jews should go.

"Go home," Thomas said. Asked to elaborate, she said: "Poland, Germany and America, and everywhere else."

Ya see, simple point for Helen and her fellow Nazis: it rankles many of us Hebrews, or really any thinking educated human, when someone tells Jews to go back to Germany. It's clear Nazi talk. Just a reminder.

You got to see the video for the full effect. She's one crazy Nazi:


OK, now that she's been successfully retired, let's apply a little bit of the double standard that's normally applied to us (Jews/Israelis). First, it should be noted that her comments were made before the Flotilla Debacle, so unlike her soul-brother Mel Gibson, who made his drunken comments in the midst of the Second Lebanon War, she was neither drunk nor responding to a recent crisis.

Second of all, it turns out that she's the child of Lebanese Christians - which shows that it's not easy to profile the enemies of Israel and the Jews into simple categories.

Third: a good sign for an anti-Semite is the automatic conflation of "Israel" with "Jew." Israelis should go back to where they came from? Yeah? And that's Germany & Poland - the wonderlands of genocide - or America (part of the Jewish American notorious Israel lobby, no doubt). An anti-Zionist non-Anti-Semite (who may exist) would say, possibly, "Europe" instead of the concentration-camp intensive specific countries. Just playing Devil's advocate. Almost literally.

Fourth: let's apply the double standard here. This evil woman was a "dean" of the Press Corps and she's a closet neo-Nazi. I think that just as every Jew is put on the hot-seat every time Netanyahu commits another in his colossal string of screw-ups, so now every journalist should be under the presumption of being a barely hidden anti-Semite. Payback's a beeyatch.

Is Sullivan an Anti-Zionist? Part 3

OK, this may be strike three. As I detailed in two (recently published back-)posts here and here, Andrew Sullivan has been worrying me, as of late, with his unnecessary swipes against Israel. But yesterday he totally crossed the line. Here's the letter I wrote him:

Dear Andrew,

You were making an important point in the [linked] post about taking Plain and Cheney seriously as potential GOP candidates. Then you said this (emphasis mine):

"[Palin and Cheney] represent a real populist and authoritarian option for a declining power. In the face of a bewilderingly changing world, they stand for white America, the extension of its power across the globe, the elevation of torture as a core American value, the permanent Israeli occupation of the West Bank, and American occupation of client states like Iraq and Afghanistan."

Now, I have been a Democrat - and a liberal - all my life. I'm also a born American. I am repulsed by Cheney and Palin and the entire Republican party, and this revulsion has partially come from my growing up in the Reagan era (another Republican who I believe damaged my country). And I am also a Zionist and in favor of nuance and wisdom about the Arab-Israeli conflict. You are committing a great wrong by equating the Palin/Cheney lust for torture and preemptive war with anything to do with Israel. Israel's occupation of the West Bank is a matter of international law and is something with which reasonable people can disagree. I am a liberal, and a Zionist, and I'm calling you to task.

I know Goldblog defends your Zionist bona-fides and you get angry when someone accuses you of being Anti-Zionist... but that was an evil thing you said. It's so strange - you single out the behavior of a U.S. ally as a symbol of a domestic political party's depravity. That's not such a 'Zionist' thing to do.

Why are you so insistent to be called a 'Zionist' anyway? Just say that you're neutral about Israel - that you're treating it with the same ignorance and apathy that you would for Kashmir or Northern Ireland or Quebec, or any other of our U.S. allies.

It reminds me of Ta-Nehisi Coates' talk about 'racism' - that it's impossible to call a racist by that title in the U.S. despite a person's actual bigoted words and deeds. [ed: e.g. how Rush Limbaugh or Joe 'You Lie' Wilson will push back against being called racist even though they clearly are.] So to with you - just admit that being a Zionist isn't actually that important. And, again speaking as a liberal and a Democrat, your support for Reagan while you attack Cheney makes you sound daft.

Sincerely, JC

No, I don't expect him to respond. And I really should have cc:ed Goldblog, but he's not my constituency. And, as I said in part 2, there are reasons to read Sully as an info-resource and not as an editorialist. So be it.

Is Sullivan an Anti-Zionist? Part 2

As I asked below, here, Sullivan's swipes against Israel have been getting more frequent and irritating. It's like he's gone enough to the left because of Bush-Cheney that he now has to hate Israel like a J-Streeter.

So thank goodness Jeff Goldberg has been on top of the case. First here in August 2008 he gives Sullivan some pro-Zion backing:

I know Andrew as a supporter of Israel, a Zionist, even,

Fine, but just a few days later he notices the glimmering of a problem:

But "unregistered Israeli lobbyist"? This is vile, like Pat Buchanan-vile. Robert Wexler is pro-Israel, too. Is he an unregistered Israeli lobbyist? What about Rahm Emanuel, and Barbara Boxer, and Frank Lautenberg, and Henry Waxman, and Howard Berman? Are they dual-loyalists as well? Or is their tribal-based treason excused because they're Obama supporters? I wish Andrew would go back to bashing the Jew-baiters, rather than reveling in their smears.

I'd say that it's one of the early signs that Sullivan is equating the GOP with Israel (a problem that I warned about back in 2001 with the stupid frummie love of the evil GWBush) and thus to repudiate the GOP (like Sullivan's been doing) means also attacking Israel.

But in the year since, Sullivan has gotten worse. 'Goldblog' is still defending him, be in doing so we brings up some disturbing counter-proof:

I've gotten a fair number of hostile e-mails for stating that Andrew, in my understanding, is a Zionist. Here's Andrew on his own understanding of what "pro-Israel," or "Zionist," means:

My own definition of pro-Israel would simply be, I think: support for the existence of a secure Jewish state in Palestine. That's my position, and it is as deeply held as it is open to all sorts of arguments about what is best for its security and the interests of the US. I think it should easily be enough to earn one's credentials as a Zionist, as I proudly and passionately remain.

I would make only two points about this. One is small (but actually consequential); the word "Palestine" was invented by the Romans as a deliberate attempt to erase the word "Judea" from the map. So I wouldn't say that Israel is a Jewish home in Palestine; if anything, the future state of Palestine could be called the Arab state in Judea. I know this sounds like a nitpick, but names matter, and chronology matters.

The second, larger point: Zionists generally hold Israel to the same standard they hold every other country. People who don't like Israel very much hold it to a special standard, created for one scapegoated country alone. On this count -- and only this count, so far as I can tell -- Andrew sometimes fails the test. There are times lately when he seems to single out Israel for special excoriation, and times when he holds Israel to a double-standard. By the way, this doesn't make him an anti-Semite, as some marginal figures claim he is. It makes him, if anything, normal. Most of the world holds Israel to a higher standard than it does other countries. Many Jews do, as well. One of our specialties is self-criticism. But even when it comes from Jews, it isn't fair. Context is everything. I'll continue with these profound thoughts on Andrew later on.

I'm not as charitable as Jeff here. Just off-the-bat anybody who casually uses 'Palestine' like Sullivan does is the first strike (he also does a related strike by constantly referring to an 'Israel Lobby' as if it exists as the bogeyman the Looney Left desires it to be). Sullivan's well-known friendship with the scummy anti-Semite Christopher Hitchens is strike two.

And while I have growing respect for Goldberg, I definitely break with him about self-hating Jewish anti-Zionism (J-streetism, for now, until they redeem themselves). Jstreeters hate Israel because it makes them look bad to their imagined goyish friends and neighbors. It's not OK when they do it and definitely not when it's done by goyim.

I'll take this up more later, but there's just something very British about Sullivan's take on Israel - it's a combined paternalism and moral hauteur, as if the Europeans (any of them) have taken the proper moral path on anything.

Backpost finished 2009-12-02.

Is Sullivan an Anti-Zionist?

Quick answer: Evidently not, but its complicated. In the past few months, really ever since Cast Lead, he has been getting more an more crazy about Israel. He's bought straight into the canard that the settlements cause Palestinian violence, and he seems to knee-jerk respond *against* Israel. This is bothersome.

But this is sort of the price I pay when I read Sullivan.

So why do I? Why should I care about him? Especially since he does no reporting and holds many ideas I find stupid, annoying, and/or just plain wrong. So, here's something I wrote about him for another blog's comments:

The thing about Sullivan is that when he gets an idea, he clings to it with fierce tenacity. And the tenacity results in massive amounts of near real-time linkage that comes as close to reporting as an opinion blog will get.

Examples: he hates Hillary with a weird rancor, so he was great in links to support Obama; he hates Palin even more than Hillary so he was the go-to guy for that; he hates that the US tortured, so he gave great linkage for that.

So when I agree with his obsession, his website is gold, because he gives me enormous amounts of info. But for all those things that he's wrong about, no matter of facts will sway him, and I just skip those posts.

Caveat: Nothing will sway him - except his own tortured mind. That's why it's hard to predict where he'll wind up on an issue, because of the above-mentioned personality quirkiness (British Catholic Gay HIV-Positive Thatcherite). His load of cognitive dissonance is enormous and it's now cracking into pieces. Somehow, I think he hates being associated for so long with the Democrats...

So I still read him, and send him letters (which he has never, nor will ever, respond to), because I still think he's an important resource. He's the purest form of blogger, and as such, the purest expression of the power of the internet. And so far his weirdness about Israel hasn't undermined that; I just put it in the same category as his worship of Ronald Reagan and his British drag equivalent (Thatcher).

Backpost finished 2009-12-02. Pic from around the 'net.

M.J. Rosenberg's True Colors

For a while, TPM has had M.J. Rosenberg as the de-facto official voice of American Jewish opinion about Israel. I've long felt that MJR is a complete tool and a self-hater. Finally here's some clear proof that he's not a friend of ours:

Well, here's one that is decidedly NOT good for the Jews. Franken and Coleman, both Jewish, come together in support of Israel's Gaza war.

They hate each other. They agree on nothing. One is a Mideast hawk. One is a dove.

But when it comes to Israel and its Gaza war, they join hands and sing Kumbaya, I mean Hava Nagila.

It's breathtaking how he has full confidence that the Gaza War is so evil that it's just 'crazy' to support it, and his full knowledge of Judaism is properly summed up by an invocation of 'Hava Na-Frickin-Gila.'

For a decent response, here's some dude on the Volkh Conspiracy.

Pic from here. Backpost finished 2009-12-06.

Backpost: Why they deny the Holocaust

Backpost from 12/18/06, 9:51 PM. I just had the link

Notes: The story is still online and it gives over some important facts about the virulent anti-Semitism in the Muslim world.

From the Los Angeles Times: Why they deny the Holocaust

Video of the Day

Why have I never even *heard* of this sketch before? From 1992 SNL "Sabra Price is Right" with Tom Hanks as an Israeli electronics store owner. Whooo! Making fun of yordim* is the only time when I will claim that being anti-"Israeli" is not being either anti-Zionist or anti-Semitic. And boy is this anti-Yordim. (And since it's SNL, the ending stinks).

Here's the transcript, and below is the video:



*Yordim (sing. yoreid) are Israelis who have left Israel to settle in the Diaspora. The word literally means "one who goes down" (it's the inverse of someone who immigrates to Israel, called an oleh, someone who goes up). It's an accurate term, but not a nice thing to say to a yoreid's face.

h/t: Onion AV Club.

Richard Falk

I had no idea who Richard Falk was, nor that he was on Princeton's faculty while I was there, but Marty Peretz thinks he's an anti-Zionist conspiracy theorist and despite MP's lunacies, he's usually right about who's an enemy. I don't like Princeton harboring schkutzes like that.

More About Columbia's Hypocrisy

From the comments section of the New Republic's Marty Peretz's Spine, about Columbia U President Bollinger and his aiding/abetting anti-Semitic nonsense:

When there was a scandal at Columbia with anti-Semitic professors in 2005, he named a committee to investigate that.

Of the five faculty omn the committee, two had signed anti-Israel boycotts (Farah Jasmine Grifin and Jean Howard - subsequently promoted university vice-president). A third (Mark Mazower) had written Israel is Nazi and should not exist. A fourth was none other than lovely Lisa Anderson.

Lisa Anderson had been the PhD advisor of Joseph Massad (and recruited him as a faculty subsequently), one of the most anti-Semitic professors and one of the accused. So much for the honorable lawyer Bollinger handles conflict of interest. Lisa Anderson, as a dean, also invited Khaddafi at a Columbia conference (he din't come but addressed them by video) and then, one year later, invited Ahmadinejad at Columbia.

The man overseeing Bollinger's committee was Nicholas Dirks,a university vice-president who was one of the initiators of the anti-Israel boycott.

Not so surprising that Aminabalajad was invited, eh?

{2009 Update: pic from here.}

What Kind of Lies Constitute Anti-Semitism?

Another response to the werid TNR/Judis argument about the Israel Lobby:

What Kind of Lies Constitute Anti-Semitism?
by Jeffrey Herf & Andrei S. Markovits
Post date: 02.13.07

John B. Judis minimizes the radicalism of John Mearsheimer and Steven Walt's arguments about the Israel lobby in their now much discussed attack of 2006 ("Split Personality," February 8). In a letter to the London Review of Books at the time, we wrote that Walt and Mearsheimer's assertions did evoke comparison to an older tradition of anti-Semitic argumentation. Judis recognizes that Mearsheimer and Walt argued that an "Israel lobby" exerted influence not only over American policy toward Israel but toward the Middle East as a whole and thus was instrumental as well in the decision to invade and occupy Iraq. Yet Judis then writes that Mearsheimer and Walt's case would be "similar to older anti-Semitism" only if they had claimed that the Israel lobby "controls, rather than influences, foreign policy and that its reach extends to all regions and not merely the Middle East."

With use of this dubious redefinition of what constitutes an anti-Semitic argument, Judis minimizes the extent to which Mearsheimer and Walt ignored elementary facts. American foreign policy in the Middle East has been and remains a balancing act between support for Israel, on the one hand, and support for various states--most of whom are deeply inimical toward Israel, to say the least--upon whom we and the world economy depend for oil. The assertions that an Israel lobby also controls American policy toward Saudi Arabia or Egypt, or that it was pushing for an invasion of Iraq are blatantly false. For Mearsheimer and Walt to have made them in March of 2006--when more than 2,000 Americans had died in Iraq, thousands more had been wounded, billions of dollars had been spent, and the war was going badly--was also dangerous. It amounted to saying that Jews are at least partly, if not fully, to blame for these losses. Judis now wants to raise the bar for calling an argument anti-Semitic by insisting that it refer to control over American policy toward the whole world. We think elementary distortions of the facts regarding American policy in the Middle East suffice.

Further, contrary to the claims of Israel's critics, we do not see evidence that criticism of Israel is being stifled anywhere in the United States. It is not suppressed in the universities, in the print or electronic media, or in Congress. To the contrary, it is expressed frequently and with vigor in prominent places by people with influence, including tenured full professors at the University of Chicago, Harvard University, and New York University, as well as a former president of the United States. These critics have access to the op-ed pages of The New York Times and The Washington Post. They have been able to write long essays critical of Israel in The New York Review of Books, probably the most widely read bi-weekly intellectual review in this country, as well as in the London Review of Books and many other leading newspapers in Europe. They have done so without having incurred the danger of losing their jobs, their voices, their prestige, or their incomes. To invoke, as some have, the specter of McCarthyism for the purpose of delegitimating the criticism that their views rightfully engenders conflates critique with persecution and represents an effort to stifle perfectly legitimate objections to their views. We have never tried to prevent anyone from using their constitutional right to free speech to make what we regard as outrageous claims about Jews or anyone else. Many people criticize Israel without anyone suggesting that either their intentions or arguments have any link to anti-Semitism.

It is ironic that Judis, a senior editor at The New Republic, lends credibility to accusations of dual loyalty. If this is the case, then TNR is certainly guilty, for, more than any other journal of opinion, it has made the case that support for Israel should be a key component of U.S. foreign policy. Judis lends credence to a double standard. When some Jewish intellectuals in the 1980s made the case in favor of NATO's hard line in Europe in the face of the Soviet Union's "peace offensive," no one accused them of having dual loyalty to the NATO countries of Western Europe, even though they were supporting policies of extended nuclear deterrence. Then, as now, they argued that it was in the vital interests of the United States to take these measures. Moreover, on many occasions, the two of us, like many other liberal supporters of Israel, including the editors of this magazine, have criticized Israel's policy of settlements in the West Bank.

Israel's critics in this country have the freedom to say what they wish, including the freedom to exaggerate vastly the power of Jews and the Israel lobby. We who criticize some of their views also have the freedom and obligation to explain why we think such arguments are false, dangerous, and bear comparisons to older anti-Semitic traditions. In a period in which Iran's president threatens to wipe Israel off the face of this earth and Hezbollah, Hamas, and Al Qaeda seek its destruction as well, a weakening of American support for Israel would be a catastrophe of the first order not only for Israel, but for its supporters in this country. It would also be both a strategic blunder and moral debacle from the perspective of U.S. national security in the conventional sense of that term.

Jeffrey Herf teaches Modern European history at the University of Maryland, College Park. His most recent book is The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda During World War II and the Holocaust (Harvard University Press, 2006). Andrei S. Markovits is the Karl W. Deutsch Collegiate Professor of Comparative Politics and German Studies at the University of Michigan. He is the author of Uncouth Nation: Why Europe Dislikes America (Princeton University Press).

Backpost finished 2009-12-13.

Anti-anti-Semitism Defended

This is a very good TNR piece by Bret Stevens (former editor of the JPost and now at the WSJ) about the current fog of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism:

"Anti-anti-Semitism Defended: Loyalty Oath"by Bret Stephens
Post date: 02.12.07

John B. Judis calls the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, an anti-Semite ("Split Personality," February 8). But how does he know this?

Certainly not from any of Ahmadinejad's public utterances. I've searched high-and-low for any instance in which the Iranian speaks specifically of Jews, and can find nothing overtly anti-Semitic. Yes, he has raised questions about the Holocaust, and further questions about why a Jewish state was not established somewhere in Europe. But that's just a matter of establishing historical facts and assigning historical responsibility, right? Yes, he has called for Israel to be "wiped off the map," or, if you prefer another translation, "vanished from the page of time." But this, as a columnist in The Guardian has pointed out, is nothing more than an expression of anti-Zionism that admits of interpretations not embracing acts of genocide. Then, too, Ahmadinejad has boasted about the inclusion of Iranian Jews in the Islamic Republic's parliament. He's even been seen embracing the ultra-orthodox rabbis of the anti-Zionist Neturei Karta sect.

So, again, on what grounds does Judis accuse Ahmadinejad of anti-Semitism?

The question is asked partly tongue-in-cheek. Of course Ahmadinejad is an anti-Semite, and anyone who doubts it is either a knave or a fool. Yet it also cuts to the heart of the argument Judis and many others have made about the so-called "anti-anti-Semites," myself included, which is that we brandish the charge of anti-Semitism too freely. "Anyone who criticizes Israel's actions or argues that pro-Israel groups have significant influence over U.S. Middle East policy ... stands a good chance of getting labeled an anti-Semite," complain professors John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt in their notorious paper on the "Israel Lobby." For his part, Judis believes that we anti-anti-Semites "are attempting to suppress an important debate on American foreign policy toward Israel and the Middle East." More about the latter below. The first point is to establish how it is we all just "know" Ahmadinejad is an anti-Semite. There aren't many anti-Semites today who will actually come out with it and say "I hate Jews." Even the Muslim Brotherhood's Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi, who ministers to the Sunni masses via his pulpit on Al Jazeera, tends to be careful with his utterances about Jews. Spotting an anti-Semite therefore requires forensic skills, interpretive wits, and moral judgment. Judis's theory is that the distinctive, tell-tale feature of real anti-Semitism is that it contains a "large element of pure fantasy." Thus Ahmadinejad's Holocaust-denial/skepticism would qualify as anti-Semitic to Judis, as would the allegation, common in the Arab world, that Jews were behind the attacks of September 11. By contrast, to suggest that Israel is practicing apartheid, as Jimmy Carter has, or that the Israel lobby all-but runs U.S. policy in the Middle East, as Walt and Mearsheimer have, contains just enough by way of reality or plausibility to acquit them of the charge of anti-Semitism.

Yet plenty of anti-Semitic stereotypes are not simply fantasy-based. Do Jews run Hollywood? I haven't exactly made a study of it, but I'd wager Jews are disproportionately represented among studio executives and sundry movers-and-shakers. Wall Street? I'm guessing the same. Yet of the man who says "the Jews run Hollywood," or "the Jews run Wall Street," most of us would say he is probably an anti-Semite. To what end does he make the claim? Why, if Jews really do run Hollywood, should the fact be significant? Would Hollywood be a better place if Jews didn't run the place? And so on.

In other words, racial, religious, or ethnic prejudice is not so much a matter of libel as it is of malice. Take dual loyalty. "Critics of the new anti-Semitism are engaged in a flight from their own selves," writes Judis, noting the apparent contradiction between American Jews simultaneously denouncing accusations of dual loyalty while insisting that Jews everywhere support Israel. Yet what rankles about the charge of dual loyalty is not that it doesn't contain its share of truth--of course American Jews generally have strong, if subsidiary, loyalties to Israel. What rankles is that it is leveled as a charge. When given voice by the likes of Walt and Mearsheimer, it suggests that the loyalties of millions of American Jews are evenly split and that, in extremis, the Israeli loyalty could win out over the American one, posing a permanent risk of betrayal or treason.

Nor is this the only way in which Judis gets things wrong. Regarding Tony Judt, he writes that what most provoked the critics was Judt's call for the Jewish state to be replaced by a binational one. Please. Binationalism is too obviously stupid an idea to qualify as vile. What made Judt's polemic uniquely nasty was its curious indulgence of Arab youth whose violence against Jewish persons or property he defined as a "misdirected effort ... to get back at Israel." No anti-Semitism there, just legitimate anti-Zionism with the wrong mailing address! As for the Walt-Mearsheimer paper, Judis fails to understand that its real smear does not lie in its claims about The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Rather, it is in its claims that Israel is a nation based "on the principle of blood kinship," that it is a faithless ally to the U.S., that it was born by way of theft and ethnic cleansing and so on. The argument about AIPAC is offered merely by way of explanation for the premise that Israel is a rogue state.

Finally there is Judis's point about the supposed attempt to "suppress debate." How does joining a debate become an effort to suppress it? I am not aware that Mearsheimer and Walt have been sent from the field to cower behind the bleachers. Indeed, nothing so perfectly gives the lie to their claims about the vast power of the Israel lobby as the fact that they have now been contracted--by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, no less--to turn their article into a book.

Still, were it up to me Judt, Mearsheimer, Carter et al would be run out of polite society. What's wrong with that? A decade ago, Judis himself tried to do the same to Charles Murray for the "ominous racial theory" suggested by The Bell Curve. The plain fact is that some ideas simply foul our public discourse. Some "controversies" open doors to scoundrels. Some small truths serve as vehicles for big lies. It is not a resort to censorship to ask of the people who hold the keys to magazines like The New Republic or newspapers like The Wall Street Journal to exercise judgment and discretion. Indeed, it is the essence of our responsibility.

Bret Stephens is a Wall Street Journal columnist and a member of the paper's
editorial board.

Backpost finished 2009-12-13.

An Important Paper from AJC

About left-wing academics (Jews) helping anti-Semtism:

"Progressive" Jewish Thought and the New Anti-Semitism by Alvin H. Rosenfeld

Backpost finished 2009-11-29. Another one totally done by stamped date. Historical note - I actually was assigned this essay in one of my graduate classes.

France authorizes troops to fire at IAF jets over Lebanon

From the Jerusalem Post:

French soldiers in Lebanon who feel threatened by aggressive Israeli overflights are permitted to shoot at IAF fighter jets, a high-ranking French military officer told The Jerusalem Post.

Ya know, if France fires at Israel, then it could be the first overt military exchange between two nuclear powers. And it may be the only time that anyone can fire a nuclear weapon (Israel to France) where you're guaranteed the opponent won't fire back.

The World of Jimmy Carter

Backpost, but I'm keeping the original post-date because it's not so relevant to us in '08. 8/1/2008

This review of Carter's book from "The American Thinker" is too good to excerpt. Read the whole she-bang:

The World According to Jimmy Carter
November 14th, 2006

A review of: Jimmy Carter, Palestine Peace Not Apartheid (Simon & Schuster, November 2006)

It is not difficult to understand why Democrats wanted the publication of Jimmy Carter’s slim new book (216 pages of text, large print and no footnotes), with its tendentious title and its superficial analysis, delayed until today, a week after the election. The anti-Israel bias is so clear, the credulous description of Arab positions so cringe-producing, the key “facts” on which Carter relies so easily refuted by public documents, that the book is an embarrassment to Carter, the Democrats, the presidency and Americans.

It is hard to decide which is more discomforting—what Carter put in or what he left out. Let’s start with his own words, and let him speak for himself, and then note what no knowledgeable observer of the Middle East could have ingenuously omitted.

Carter says he paid his first visit to Israel in June 1973 (when he was privately “planning a future role as president”), and he devotes an entire chapter to it. The trip “formed most of my lasting impressions of Israel”—and they do not seem to have been good ones.

On his trip, he traveled “along the paths of Jesus” around the Sea of Galilee and found that:

“It was especially interesting to visit with some of the few surviving Samaritans, who complained to us that their holy sites and culture were not being respected by Israeli authorities – the same complaint heard by Jesus and his disciples almost two thousand years earlier.”

He describes his visit to several kibbutzim and finds that Israel fails his religious test again (at least on one kibbutz):

“The next morning was the Sabbath, and at the appointed time we entered the synagogue, said a silent prayer, and then stood quietly just inside the door. Only two other worshippers appeared. When I asked if this was typical, [the guide] gave a wry smile and shrugged his shoulders as if it was not important either way.”

Later on the trip, when asked to participate in a graduation ceremony at an IDF training camp, Carter helps by presenting a Hebrew bible to each graduate,

“which was one of the few indications of a religious commitment that I observed during our visit.”

Carter states that he has

“to admit that, at the time, I equated the ejection of Palestinians from their previous homes within the State of Israel to the forcing of Lower Creek Indians from the Georgia land where our family farm was now located.”

(So far as the book indicates, he apparently has no plans to give any portion of his farm back).

At the end of his visit, he meets with Prime Minister Golda Meir and when asked to share his observations, responds to her as follows.

“I said that I had long taught lessons from the Hebrew Scriptures and that a common historical pattern was that Israel was punished whenever the leaders turned away from devout worship of God. I asked if she was concerned about the secular nature of her Labor government.”

Guttman Follow-Up

The Augean Stables is a good pro-Israel academic blog (which has one of the best blog names this side of the Styx).

Here's his rather detailed take on the hack, President of Penn (and Good Witch) Amy Guttman.

P.S. Guttman seems to suffer from Martha Stewart syndrome - if you make too many enemies on the way up, they won't help you on the way down.

Guttman Follow Up

Michael Freund, a fellow Princetonian and a columnist for the Jerusalem Post, follows up on the Gutmann photo (as detailed below).

I found the story linked from my man Martin Peretz at the New Republic.

Anti-Zionism = Anti-Semitism Debate, Exhibit 3 billion

There is a larger conversation going on whether you can be Anti-Zionist without being Anti-Semitic. However, it must be understood that for many Anti-Zionists, the two are synonymous. To attack Israel, they attack Jews (cf. the Seattle shooting, Mel Gibson).

The most recent example is from a group of Turkish hackers who broke into the Yeshiva University website:

Hackers protesting the Israel-Lebanon war broke into Yeshiva University's Web site yesterday and changed the content to read "Lebanon-israel ... STOP!" with images of injured civilians.

And, in case you don't feel safe enough:

The hacker claimed to have downloaded sensitive information from the university, but said that he would not use it.

Scary Numbers

According to this poll in U.S. News,

Should the United States continue to align itself with Israel, adopt a more neutral posture, or align more with Arab countries?
____________________Reps_Inds_Dems
Continue_with_Israel_____64___46__39
More_neutral_posture____29___49__54
Side_with_Arabs________1____2___2

Get this? Democrats, to a bad margin, want the US to distance itself from Israel. Now, I need to see how the numbers compare to "distancing" from the UK, Canada, or "Palestine" to see whether this is anti-Zionism or just isolationism.