A small point, but an important one.
Aaron David Miller mounts the usual strenuous defense of Rob Malley, who either is or is not an adviser to Obama (sorry can’t keep this straight):
Perhaps most offensive, several publications have run personal attacks
on Malley because his father, in the 1960s, founded and edited a
left-wing magazine called Afrique-Asie, which was friendly toward the
Palestine Liberation Organization and other Third World movements.But
so what? These charges are ridiculous. There’s no question that Malley
has been critical of certain Israeli actions and behavior (as have I)….[But] he is well-respected by Arabs and Israelis alike, and he
believes deeply in the idea and the reality of Israel’s right to exist
as a sovereign and secure Jewish state. He would never do anything to
jeopardize that…As for the
mean-spirited guilt-by-association charges having to do with his
family, Malley told the Forward, a Jewish newspaper, that while he
loved and respected his father — who died in 2006 — he did not agree
with him on everything.
Simon Malley wasn’t some crazy. He was a legend on the left. As Idrees Ahmad has pointed out to me, what does it say that a man who has intellectual ambition, Rob Malley, is forced to renounce the views of his father? George W. Bush doesn’t go around denouncing his father. Susan Sontag got stuff wrong, but do you hear David Rieff denouncing her? On this issue, there must be complete orthodoxy. Honor thy lobby.
