A ‘Frightening’ Evening at Yivo Institute, Talking About Walt & Mearsheimer

I missed last night’s event at Yivo Institute cause I felt fluish (rhymes with…). My friend Rob Buchanan, a longtime journalist who teaches journalism at the New School University, went, and had this to report:

I
went with the news team from the New School Free Press—Hannah Rappleye, Peter and Darya.
Hannah’s writing something about the event, as a followup to an op-ed
piece she did entitled "The Israel Lobby—it’s not anti-semitic.’ Of
course the first thing that happened, after Marty Peretz introduced the
panelists and said we were in for a "frightening" evening, was that Jeffrey Goldberg stood up and said, "I’m going to tell you that this
book is anti-semitic, and he (Daniel Goldhagen) is going to tell you
that it’s really, really anti-semitic." That got a good laugh, and it
was kind of typical of the whole evening—lots of winks and inside jokes
about how we (all of us in the room) were basically in agreement on the
book and whole idea that "lobby" was just another way of saying "cabal." Of the two speakers, Goldberg was by far the more interesting
and entertaining; he’s funny and urbane and totally confident. Also made some reasonable sounding noises—that
settlement project was a terrible mistake, that a book needed to be
written (this one just wasn’t it), that college kids in the U.S. were
becoming "hostile to the narrative" of the creation of Israel as bold
pioneers carving a nation out of the wilderness. Goldhagen was less
impressive, going on about the "smell" of the book being not right but
not producing anything in the way of evidence or real argument.

One
question was interesting: why don’t you debate these guys? answer: we
can’t have a debate if we can’t agree on the basic facts (Goldberg),
and it would only give their argument more prominence (Goldhagen).

Here’s
the crux, as it were, of my problem. Goldberg says, in his New Republic
article, that the book is heinous because its “unmistakable message” is
that “the destruction on September 11 was caused in significant
measure by the Jews.” Yet here are the quotes from the book that he
offers as support for that: “The United States has a terrorism problem
in good part because it has long been so supportive of Israel” and
“Many people may not realize how much America’s one-sided policies have
cost it over the years. Not only have these policies helped inspire al-Qaeda,
but they have also facilitated its recruitment efforts and contributed
to growing anti-Americanism throughout the region.” He also quotes Walt
as saying “American policy gives some individuals in the Arab and
Islamic world cause to attack the United States as happened on 9/11.” I
just don’t see how you can go from what seems like a reasonable thing
to say—our support for Israel has allowed support for
terrorists to grow in the Arab world—to the obviously ridiculous
assertion that the destruction of september 11 was "caused by the Jews." Yet that’s what Goldberg, whom I really kind of liked and
admired for his general competence and amiability, seems to be
saying—you can’t argue that support for Israel has come back to us in
the form of increased terrorism, because what you’re really saying is Jews cause terrorism. How can you have a serious discussion with
someone who’s going to jump from a to e like that?