Israel Matzav

Why Martin Peretz attacked Jonathan Pollard

In two articles on his own blog, the New Republic's Martin Peretz attacked former Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard. Phyllis Chesler rips Peretz some new body parts, summarizing his attacks and tearing them apart here. But what I find most interesting is Chesler's description of Peretz's motivation.

Peretz stands alone. What can explain this? In my view, there is only one explanation.

Recently, Peretz himself was accused of being a “racist rat”—and at Harvard, on the very day Peretz’s many former students had chosen to honor him. I actually defended Peretz from his attackers. Now, in retrospect, I must reconsider that defense. While campus public shaming tactics are neo-fascist in style and intent, it is clear that Peretz’s unexpected attack upon Pollard is, indeed, a racist attack. It reeks of pure anti-Semitism.

This is Peretz’s bid to gain favor with the politically correct anti-racist left. How does a liberal Zionist Jew do this? He attacks, nay, he sacrifices and scapegoats the most vulnerable Jew, the Jew already accused of being a Jewish “traitor.” Pollard is guilty of dual loyalty—not Peretz. Pollard-the-dastardly-Jew chose Israel above America. No one should mistake him for Peretz-the-good-Jew.

While Peretz has, in the past, defended Israel among his left colleagues, (it is the only democracy in the Middle East, its Arab citizens will not renounce their Israeli citizenship to live under the authority of Hamas or Fatah and Peretz says so himself) and yet, at the end of the day, (which has now come), Peretz will not choose a right wing, nationalist religious Israel over and above his loyalty to the secular anti-Zionist “left.” His wild accusation against Pollard is meant to prove that once and for all. Yes, Peretz has struggled with his own dual loyalties, but he is now, publicly and emphatically choosing the liberal left which has rejected him—and he is doing so on the near-corpse of a Jew who has already been punished more than enough.

Peretz is part of a class of American Jews that is paranoid about its own position in American society. It's the same symptom that leads some American Jews to be so paranoid about expressions of religion in American public life that they oppose the public expression of their own religion to avoid seeing the public expression of other religions. It's the same symptom that leads some American Jews to attempt to hide the fact that they are Jewish - whether by changing their name or by abandoning Jewish observance - so that they will be 'safe' the next time the anti-Semites come around (a method that was proven not to work in Nazi Germany). And it's the same symptom that leads some American Jews to be willing to abandon their brethren in Israel and elsewhere in the World in the false belief that doing so will somehow protect them.

Martin Peretz has shown that his Judaism is not something of which one should be proud, but something from which one should hide in shame. Would that no other Jews catch any of his symptoms. Jonathan Pollard certainly didn't catch them.

Read the whole thing.

Labels: Jonathan Pollard, Martin Peretz, Phyllis Chesler

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 4:56 PM