Israel Matzav

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Time to stop enriching Peter Beinart

Peter Beinart has taken the lessons of Professors Steven Walt and John Mearsheimer to heart. The two professors, one of whom taught at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and the other at the University of Chicago, were respected in their field, but unknown to the general population. As soon as they took on Israel and its supporters in the U.S. with their essay on the Israel Lobby in 2006, they became folk heroes to the Left and the assorted collection of Israel haters in the U.S., Europe and the Arab world.

Walt and Mearsheimer’s paper in the London Review of Books, (and later their book on the same subject) was poorly argued, poorly researched, and above all fundamentally wrong in its conclusions. (In just one example, despite the authors’ lame attempt to argue otherwise, neither Israel nor its supporters in the U.S. drove the U.S to war with Iraq.)

But none of this had any impact on the authors’ newfound notoriety. Suddenly, they were in demand at more than just dull political science conventions. They had become players. They commanded much higher speaking fees. They earned nice advances and royalties for their book. Getting the imprimatur of two icons of academia for an anti-Israel screed is a big deal.

At universities, where Israel is the least favored nation on the planet and is viewed as the source of much of what is wrong with the world, to have such distinguished professors from elite institutions make the anti-Israel case, instead of members of radical Palestinian or Muslim groups, was like manna from heaven.

Peter Beinart was one of many young editors to circulate through the New Republic in the past 20 years. After leaving the journal, his career seemed to languish a bit and his commentary did not get anyone very excited (nor did it get him noticed very much). He supported the war in Iraq in 2003, and at that point, seemed to fit pretty comfortably into the category of center-left writers who, after the Sept. 11 terror attacks, supported a more muscular U.S. foreign policy.

Then, in early 2010 , Beinart chose to follow the Walt-Mearsheimer model. In an article in the New York Review of Books, he bemoaned the loss of support (and even hostility) for Israel among young educated Jews, and decided that his sympathies were with this camp of Jews who had become alienated from Israel. Beinart argued that future generations of American Jews would be lost to Israel unless it stopped the settlements and agreed to a two-state solution that would include self-determination for the Palestinians.

Baehr goes on to do a great job of tearing Beinart to shreds - read the whole thing.

On Sunday, Beinart penned an article in the New York Times, which can be summed up in one sentence: Israel must be destroyed to save it. Just about every right-wing, right thinking pro-Israel blogger you can think of felt the need to respond, all in opposition. Except yours truly. (There's a list here; I'm linked from it, but only because my friend Soccer Dad discussed it in Sunday's Media Sampler).

Maybe it's because I live in Israel, and only feel the debate in the US via media accounts, but my feeling is that Beinart is being blown out of proportion. Ron Kampeas - hardly a supporter of the complete State of Israel (or what's often referred to in the media as 'greater Israel') - writes that despite all the hullabaloo surrounding Beinart, there are almost no takers for his proposal. Even from the 'Zionist Left.'

When I saw Baehr's column, it resonated with me. Beinart is attempting to become a younger version of Walt and Mearsheimer with a big difference: He's Jewish (and in fact, I saw somewhere that he prays in an Orthodox synagogue, which means he's identifiably Jewish). That has the potential to make him even more of a darling with the 'pro-Israel Left' than his academic ancestors. He could get richer than they have become by speaking against the Jewish state.

Unfortunately, we Jews have more than enough experience with those of our own who attempt to advance their own success on the backs of the community. Raphael Magarnik - who writes for Beinart's 'Zion Square' blog (which, by the way, cannot even use the domain name 'Zion Square' because someone else owns it - heh) - actually got one thing right:

One of Zion Square's writers, Raphael Magarik, chided those who said Jews boycotting Jews should be out of bounds, and noted that such actions have been commonplace throughout Jewish history.

“To cut from our playbook the best tactic Jews have for censuring other Jews, a tactic that dates at least to the Talmud and has as its targets the likes of Leon Trotsky, the first Lubavitcher Rebbe, and Baruch Spinoza -- well, that’s what I call painful and unnatural,” he wrote.

Remember the old joke about whether anyone hears when a bear relieves itself in the woods? If Peter Beinart writes an article, and no one responds to it, will anyone listen? We ought to be boycotting Beinart and not building him up. I feel no need to answer everything he writes.

Read the whole thing.

Labels: BDS, john Mearsheimer, Peter Beinart, Stephen Walt

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Sorry John, if you support Gilad Atzmon, you're supporting a Nazi

Three days ago, I reported that Israel Lobby author John Mearsheimer had come out of the closet and admitted to his anti-Semitism by writing an introduction to a book by Jewish Nazi Gilad Atzmon. Mearsheimer responded in a lengthy diatribe written on the Foreign Policy blog of his co-author, Stephen Walt, which I tried to read (because it was linked on Memeorandum :-) but found my eyes glazing over within two paragraphs.

Harry's Place went through it all and concludes that Atzmon is a Nazi, and that Walt and Mearsheimer are providing cover for him.

Walt’s logic goes like this: if you think his co-author is backing a Nazi sympathiser, you prove their “Israel lobby” theories to be right all along.

But that’s just silly. Atzmon is a Nazi, and Walt and Mearsheimer are now providing cover for him.

Here is Gilad Atzmon expressing a classically fascist/Nazi position on Jewish finance, in his new book The Wandering Who, in a chapter entitled “Credit Crunch or Zio-Punch?” [p.30]:
“You may wonder at this stage whether I regard the credit crunch as a Zionist plot or even a Jewish conspiracy. In fact the opposite is the case. It isn’t a plot and certainly not a conspiracy for it was all in the open.”
In this phrase, Atzmon reveals he thinks “Jewish” and “Zionist” are basically the same. He accuses Jews of openly causing the credit crunch. Remember, this is the book that Mearsheimer describes as “fascinating and provocative”.

In The Wandering Who, Atzmon interweaves his understanding of Jews today, with antisemitic caricatures, writing in The Wandering Who [p.51]:
“Fagin is the ultimate plunderer, a child exploiter and usurer. Shylock is the blood-thirsty merchant. With Fagin and Shylock in mind, the Israeli treatment of the Palestinians seems to be just a further event in an endless hellish continuum.”
We should look closely at what Atzmon is saying here. According to Atzmon, Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians is only the latest chapter in a “hellish continuum” of Jews plundering goods and exploiting children.

This means that however you consider Israeli actions, they are only the latest in a continuum of wicked actions carried out by world Jewry. In Atzmon’s “continuum” Israeli evil carries on from ancient Jewish evil, in which Shylock and Fagin are not vile racist caricatures at all, but accurately reflect Jews. That is why Atzmon can write in The Wandering Who [p.52]:
“Some Jews are rather unhappy with Charles Dickens’ Fagin and Shakespeare’s Shylock, who they regard as ‘anti-Semitic’.
It gets far worse.

Indeed, it does. Read the whole thing.

Labels: anti-Semitism, Gilad Atzmon, Israel Lobby, john Mearsheimer, Stephen Walt

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Soccer Dad's Middle East Media Sampler

Here's Soccer Dad's Middle East Media Sampler for Tuesday, September 27.

1) Ellison elides

I won't critique every aspect of Rep. Keith Ellison's op-ed Support the Palestinian Bid for Statehood, but two points he makes caught my eye.
And in this case, Arab countries that have never recognized Israel would implicitly be doing so when they voted to recognize a Palestinian state that envisioned itself beside Israel in a two-state solution to their conflict. That in itself would be a breakthrough, confirming Israel’s solid standing in the region.
This is hopelessly convoluted. Ellison is arguing that Arab votes for statehood for Palestine would implicitly mean that those countries recognized Israel and characterizes that legerdemain as a breakthrough. Who's he kidding? When Thomas Friedman launched the Saudi "peace initiative" the members of the Arab league couldn't even agree to promise normalization with Israel. If the Arab world couldn't come to expressly promise normalization then, how would a vote on a different topic (Palestinian nationhood) mean anything? Later on Ellison writes:
Criticisms of the Palestinian Authority’s desire for the United Nations to act include assertions that this approach to statehood is unilateral and precludes negotiations with Israel. Yet the process of gaining recognition from the United Nations Security Council is multilateral by definition.
Palestinian statehood was to come about by way of bilateral agreements between the Palestinian Authority and Israel. In that context, the UDI as it's called is unilateral. Ellison is simply changing the context. This isn't a serious argument it's sophistry. There's plenty more to argue with. I don't have the stomach to do a complete job.

2) Mearsheimer digs deep

Once Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer submitted to an interview with Robert Fisk that was illustrated with an American that had a filed of 6 - not 5 - pointed stars, I saw no reason to give them the benefit of the doubt about their motives. Now Mearsheimer has written a defense of his decision to write a forward to a book written by Gilad Atzmon. (via memeorandum) David Bernstein of the Volokh Conspiracy critiques Mearsheimer's defense:
Mearsheimer is not content to argue, as he does, that he didn’t know Atzmon from a hole-in-the-head, and endorsed the book because he found it provocative and interesting. If he had limited himself to this, he could have then added that he wasn’t aware of Atzmon’s anti-Semitic background and didn’t read the book in that light. Now that he knows, he regrets his association with Atzmon and the book.Nope. Mearsheimer actually defends Atzmon from the charge of anti-Semitism. So here’s my challenge to Prof. Mearsheimer: I will give you space on the Volokh Conspiracy to explain how you can absolve Atzmon from anti-Semitism after reading this excerpt from an interview with Atzmon, not coincidentally hosted on the website of notorious anti-Semite “Israel Shamir”.
After reading the quotes, I don't if anyone could explain that.

3) Stifling Oren

Back in February the Washington Post, in an editorial criticized the decision to prosecute 11 Muslim students for disrupting a speech given by Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren.
The university suspended the Muslim Student Union from campus for the fall semester; each of the offending Irvine students was disciplined. (The university declines to provide details because of federal privacy rights.) Yet the Irvine 11 - as they have become known - now face criminal misdemeanor charges for "conspiracy to disturb a meeting" and one misdemeanor count of "disturbance of a meeting." According to the prosecutor's office, each student could face up to six months in jail, if convicted. In a Feb. 4 news release announcing the charges, Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas asserted that the students' actions represented "a clear violation of the law and failing to bring charges against this conduct would amount to a failure to uphold the Constitution." Not true. Prosecutors make judgments all the time about whether justice would be served by trying particular cases. These types of disruptions are most frequently not prosecuted unless they result in threats or physical violence. Mr. Rackauckas has made his point; he should now use the power of his office wisely, give the students a warning and drop the charges. The protesters, too, have much to learn. Some have characterized the episode as trampling on the students' free-speech rights. That would have been the case had police officers tried to keep them from picketing outside of the auditorium during Mr. Oren's visit. That is not what happened. Instead, the students abused their privileges in an attempt to squelch the free-speech rights of others.
Given that the editorial acknowledged that the students went too far, I find it hard to justify the argument to drop the prosecution. Last week ten of the students were convicted. Even with Robert Mackey promoted to the Guardian, The Lede blog at the New York Times can be counted on to give a fair hearing to the anti-Israel side of the story:
Reached after the verdict on Friday, a lawyer for the students, Jacqueline Goodman, said they had acted because it was an opportunity to “speak directly to Michael Oren” about the violence in Gaza. “They couldn’t have foreseen they’d be convicted of a crime,” she said. Ms. Goodman said they planned to appeal the decision. At Sunday’s gathering in Orange County, Ms. Goodman reiterated that pledge. “We’re going to stand up and fight this,” she said, “even if it means going to the Supreme Court.”
The ADL provides background that shows that the Muslim Student Association isn't so innocent. Furthermore:
The university's investigation into the matter uncovered evidence that MSU organized a calculated demonstration at Ambassador Oren's speech in violation of university policy against disorderly conduct, obstructing university activities, furnishing false information and other campus policies.
And an interesting perspective from the Jewish Journal:
“Every time there’s an event they’re opposed to, they disrupt it,” said Pam Chozen, a Laguna Beach resident who said she had felt concerned for her personal safety. “No one from the other side would think of disrupting an MSU event.”
Prof Eugene Volokh, though, found the prosecution and conviction to be sound.
I’m inclined to think that the situation here is quite different from that in In re Kay. First, the customs of presentation at universities seem to me to be much less tolerant of heckling; there is plenty of time for audience participation during Q & A, but shouting during the speech is not at all customary. (Perhaps the California Supreme Court got it wrong in interpreting the statute in a way that requires a determination of the particular customs of a certain kind of event; but that seems to be required under the Kay decision.) Second, and relatedly, the university administrators repeatedly stressed to students that such interruptions were improper. To the extent that Kay focused on what was said by the authorities during the meeting as evidence of custom (“Indeed, the principal speaker at the rally, an elected public official, stated that the relevant custom sanctioned the demonstrative conduct of petitioners as a legitimate means of expression”), this cuts the other way here. Third, while it’s hard to tell exactly how disruptive the hecklers were in Kay, it appears from accounts of the Irvine meeting and the court’s account in Kay that the Irvine hecklers were much more disruptive, and did indeed “substantially impair[] the conduct of the meeting.”
What's interesting here, is that Volokh writes that the Oren speech included a scheduled Q & A, as that would be the standard format for such a talk in an academic setting. An account from Stand with Us, confirms that a Q & A session was scheduled. This means that the students' lawyer lied about the heckling being the only way the protesters could address Oren, to The Lede, which, of course, published the statement without challenge. In a related article, Stanley Fish the Opinionator at the New YorkTimes asks Why has the conflict between Israel and much of the Arab world become a third-rail topic in the academy? I would argue that what's happened is that due to a number of factors (Daniel Pipes considers a number of them) the study of the Middle East has become increasingly politicized. Scholarship has been replaced by political correctness. It isn't that the Middle East conflict has become a "third rail" but that those who could challenge the corruption don't.

4) The only thing he should be managing is his anger

The New York Times and Washington Post carried slightly different accounts of Turkish PM Recep Erdogan's encounter with UN security. Neil MacFarquhar reported for the New York Times:
Mr. Erdogan was having a tête-à-tête with President Jalal Talabani of Iraq on the obscure fourth floor of the General Assembly hall — tiny meeting spaces have been tucked into every nook and cranny because the Secretariat Building is gutted for renovations. Learning that the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, was making his address demanding full United Nations membership for a state of Palestine, Mr. Erdogan, a big fan, rushed to the nearest entrance to take Turkey’s seat on the main floor. But the fourth floor is actually the visitors’ gallery, with no access to the main floor, and it was packed. So a United Nations security guard refused to let the Turkish leader pass. When Mr. Erdogan pressed forward, the guard pushed him (by most accounts), and then a fracas erupted that was audible four flours below.
A UN security guard was sent to the hospital. According to the New York Times, the Ban Ki Moon apologized to Erdogan. The AP has some additional details but couldn't confirm the apology.
The tumult caused a security alert that led to diplomats outside the General Assembly hall being ordered out of U.N. headquarters to wait in a steady rainstorm until the situation was under control. The sources say that initially as many as nine U.N. security guards were suspended but after a protest, they were called back to work and placed on administrative duty, out of uniform and off the beat as the matter is investigated. It was not immediately known if the Turkish security guards have been similarly reassigned or punished. One diplomat said he witnessed Turkish security officials being involved in another incident during a high-level meeting at the U.N. on Libya last Monday. The diplomat said a Turkish security member went under the rope in a cordoned-off corridor as U.S. President Barack Obama was about to arrive and was confronted by U.N. security guards. There was some pushing and shoving until Turkey’s U.N. ambassador stepped in and calmed the situation, the diplomat said.
I'm sure that the Turkish security guards were not punished. If anything, I'd guess that they were rewarded. It sounds as if Erdogan and company think that the regular rules don't apply to them. Yesterday the New York Times also reported In Riddle of Mideast Upheaval, Turkey Offers Itself as an Answer, a paean to the vision of PM Erdogan:
Not so long ago, the foreign policy of Turkey revolved around a single issue: the divided island of Cyprus. These days, its prime minister may be the most popular figure in the Middle East, its foreign minister envisions a new order there and its officials have managed to do what the Obama administration has so far failed to: position themselves firmly on the side of change in the Arab revolts and revolutions. No one is ready to declare a Pax Turkana in the Middle East, and indeed, its foreign policy is strewn this year with missteps, crises and gains that feel largely rhetorical. It even lacks enough diplomats. But in an Arab world where the United States seems in retreat, Europe ineffectual and powers like Israel and Iran unsettled and unsure, officials of an assertive, occasionally brash Turkey have offered a vision for what may emerge from turmoil across two continents that has upended decades of assumptions. Not unexpectedly, the vision’s center is Turkey.
There are good observations here mixed with an uncritical view of Erdogan's successes. (Omri Ceren recently argued that these successes are somewhat mixed.) But if the recent incidents at the UN are any indication, Erdogan's arrogance may well be his eventual undoing.

Labels: Gilad Atzmon, Irvine 11, john Mearsheimer, Keith Ellison, Michael Oren, Palestinian state, Recep Tayyip Erdogan

Sunday, September 25, 2011

John Mearsheimer comes out of the closet

John Mearsheimer, one of the co-authors of the notorious book The Israel Lobby, has come out of the closet and declared himself an anti-Semite. Jeffrey Goldberg is in shock.

Gilad Atzmon is a jazz saxophonist who lives in London and who has a side gig disseminating the wildest sort of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. He is an ex-Israeli and a self-proclaimed "self-hater" who traffics in Holocaust denial and all sorts of grotesque, medieval anti-Jewish calumnies. Here is a small sample of his lunatic thoughts.

...

Atzmon also believes that the Jews persecuted Hitler:

...

He has also suggested that Jews specialize in the trafficking of body parts.

...

Atzmon is quite obviously a twisted and toxic hater. His antisemitism is so blatant that activists of the so-called BDS movement (boycott, divestment and sanctions), which seeks the elimination of Israel, refuse to have anything to do with him. But Atzmon still has at least one friend among anti-Israel activists: The R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, and co-author of "The Israel Lobby," John J. Mearsheimer.

Rather unbelievably (or believably, depending on where you sit) Mearsheimer has written an endorsement of Atzmon's new book, "The Wandering Who?" Here is what Mearsheimer says about Atzmon:
Gilad Atzmon has written a fascinating and provocative book on Jewish identity in the modern world. He shows how assimilation and liberalism are making it incredibly difficult for Jews in the Diaspora to maintain a powerful sense of their 'Jewishness.' Panicked Jewish leaders, he argues, have turned to Zionism (blind loyalty to Israel) and scaremongering (the threat of another Holocaust) to keep the tribe united and distinct from the surrounding goyim. As Atzmon's own case demonstrates, this strategy is not working and is causing many Jews great anguish. The Wandering Who? Should be widely read by Jews and non-Jews alike.'
In this new book, Atzmon suggests, among other things, that scholars should reopen the question of medieval blood libels leveled against Jews-- accusations that Jews used the blood of Christian children to make matzo, and which provoked countless massacres of Jews in many different countries.

One of my contacts in England writes that Goldberg has given too much credit to the local BDS movement.

Although Goldberg points out that the BDS movement coldshoulders Atzmon because of his antisemitism, there are elements within the UK BDS movement that have failed to do so. The Reading Palestine Solidarity Campaign website in the UK regularly links to Atzmon's articles in its sidebar - there's one on there at this moment. That PSC group has a standing link to the Redress site, where Atzmon's articles often appear - Redress is notoriously antisemitic, yet the Reading PSC (and by extension the Aberystwyth PSC, which shares its webspace) blatantly pimps it.

Read the whole thing.

Labels: Gilad Atzmon, Israel Lobby, Jeffrey Goldberg, john Mearsheimer

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Fuggedaboutit

Remember how Helen Thomas was going to speak at that anti-AIPAC conference next month? No more... (Hat Tip: Dan F).

Helen Thomas, who caused controversy when she called on Jews in Israel to “go back to Europe” last year, reportedly declined to take part in the Move Over AIPAC when it became clear that “several members of the coalition and our grassroots community” involved in the conference were opposed to her attendance.

Thomas was quoted by organizers as thanking Move Over AIPAC for inviting her, saying she hoped the conference’s purpose of countering Israel’s perceived influence in Washington will succeed.

“I am delighted that people are coming together for this gathering and I want to make sure that the focus stays on AIPAC and U.S. policy, not me,” she was quoted saying by the anti-Israel lobby group.

...

Move Over AIPAC has been endorsed by the likes of political scientists Stephen Walt and John Meirsheimer, who wrote a book criticizing the Israeli lobby in Washington, and Jewish Voice for Peace, a leftist Jewish organization involved in attempts to break the blockade on Gaza, according to its Website.

At the time of print several messages and phone calls to Walt, Meirsheimer and JVP went unanswered.

Medea Benjamin, a spokesperson for the event, elaborated on differences of opinion among participants regarding Thomas and her reputation.

“Some within the coalition think that the remarks were anti-Semitic and condemned what she said,” Benjamin said. “Others thought that it was a slip of the tongue and that her extended comments afterwards were a good explanation. Personally, I’ve been an admirer of her for years and her protest of the Iraq war.”

Asked if inviting a speaker who in the past made inflammatory comments about Jews proved the point of the gathering’s critics that it was pushing an anti-Semitic agenda under the guise of an anti-Israeli lobby event, Benjamin responded in the negative.

“The conference is really to talk about –and many of us are Jews- is to work for a policy where Israel and Palestine can live together in peace and get a process started,” Benjamin, who is Jewish, said. “My values are Jewish and I believe in Compassion for all and AIPAC does not represent my Jewish values. Helen Thomas is one of 30 people who have been invited and we are a community of people who cherish Jewish values.”

Bottom line: Helen Thomas is too toxic even for the Walt-Mearsheimer-Code Pink-Jewish Voice for Peace crowd. It's been less than a year. My how the mighty have fallen.

Labels: AIPAC, Barack Obama, Code Pink, Helen Thomas, Jewish Voice for Peace, john Mearsheimer, Medea Benjamin, Stephen Walt

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Walt and Mearsheimer featued at anti-AIPAC conference

While supporters of Israel gather in one part of Washington in late May, supporters of terror will gather in another part - presumably to cheer on the terror flotilla that is scheduled to attempt to breach Israel's Gaza blockade at the same time.

AIPAC's policy conference will take place in Washington May 22-24, while across town a conference of terror supporters and their academic godfathers will attempt to introduce 'new policies' in the Middle East.

From May 21 to 24, 2011, in Washington DC, join CODEPINK, the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation and a coalition of over 80 organizations at an historic gathering "Move Over AIPAC: Building a New US Middle East Policy."

It is timed to coincide with the annual policy meeting of AIPAC, which will feature Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, members of the Obama administration and hundreds of members of Congress. The Move Over AIPAC gathering will expose AIPAC’s negative influence on U.S. foreign policy and promote an alternative approach that respects the rights of all people in the region.

The impressive list of speakers includes The Israel Lobby authors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, Holocaust survivor Hedy Epstein, writer Alice Walker, consumer advocate Ralph Nader, authors Nadia Hijab and Phyllis Bennis, Palestinian blogger Laila El Haddad, Jewish Voice for Peace Director Rebecca Vilkomerson, peacemakers Cindy and Craig Corrie, Israeli researcher Dalit Baum, human rights lawyer Noura Erakat, clown doctor Patch Adams, Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb, union organizer Bill Fletcher, US Campaign to End the Israel Occupation national organizer and human rights advocate Anna Baltzer, Janet McMahon from the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs and many more!

There will be trainings, workshops, press conferences, book signings, cultural events, and culminate with peaceful, creative protests outside the AIPAC convention itself.

I'm almost surprised that Samantha Power isn't on the speakers' list.

But actually, this conference is the perfect metaphor for the 'Palestinian' side. It's not a conference about something 'positive' - for example, how to prepare for a 'state of Palestine.' It's a conference that's about something negative, a conference that defines itself as being against someone else's (in this case AIPAC's) narrative. Just like the 'Palestinian nationalist' movement isn't about creating 'Palestine' - it's about destroying Israel.

What could go wrong?

By the way, I know I have some readers in Oregon. If any of you could explain to me why the 'Salem News' is reporting a promotional item for this 'conference' as a news story, I'd much appreciate it.

Labels: anti-AIPAC conference, john Mearsheimer, Salem News, Stephen Walt