My wife threw out my April Commentary–too long in the bathroom, I think–and so I can’t quote from R.R. Reno’s wonderful piece about working on oil-drilling crews in Wyoming (it’s only abstracted here). A nice contribution to the literature of working men.
But here in full is Norman Podhoretz’s piece on the peace process and it is truly shocking, as evidence of extremism and of good-for-the-Jews selfishness that pervades mainstream American argument.
This guy doesn’t believe at all in the peace process. Invoking at turns legalisms and the veto power of religious extremists inside Israel, he simply nullifies the idea of Bush and Condi’s Annapolis plans:
For even if implementation of such an agreement—which will necessarily involve
highly controversial concessions by Israel—is made to wait upon the
cessation of terrorism, it will still become the starting point of (so
to speak) the “real” final-status negotiations in Phase III [of the Road Map], where
Israel will be pressed to make even more, and more dangerous,
concessions…. [T]he actual
chance that Phase III will be reached in the near future is close to
zero. Even on the generous assumption that Mahmoud Abbas really does
wish to forswear terrorism, he is far too weak to make that wish come
true… Nor could the current Israeli
government under Ehud Olmert survive if he were to try implementing an
agreement that would, at a minimum, involve ceding East Jerusalem to
the Palestinians as the capital of their new state.
Close to
zero. A couple of times in the piece Podhoretz refers to the West Bank as Judea and Samaria, religious language that is not helpful to anyone. Note too the importance of Arab violence to the fulfillment of Podhoretz’s predictions. The Arabs are always responsible for the violence. Five Arab armies tried to strangle the Israeli state in its cradle, he says; when Ilan Pappe says that the Arab effort was sluggish and followed several months of Jewish violence in ’47-’48 (sometimes but not always rationalized as "retaliatory") that had successfully "cleansed" (the word that Ben-Gurion’s council often used that Pappe found in Israeli archives) scores of villages, as well as Haifa and Safad and Jaffa, of Palestinians. Nasser is accused by Podhoretz of launching the ’67 War. No doubt Nasser was belligerent; but again the New Historians and Shlomo Ben-Ami too describe a path of mutual aggression.
Israel has grown through the cycle of violence; and Podhoretz calls for more, against Hamas. When Olmert’s government fails, he says, Netanyahu or Barak will do much "better" for Israel by launching a war against Hamas in Gaza. These are desperate Holocaust-influenced answers. Podhoretz also argues that the colonies (settlements) in the West Bank have been legalized by the U.S. government, as well as an Israeli military presence in the Jordan Valley. The implication is thatThe
United States is legally committed to the idea that Palestinians have
no right to self-determination for as long as we can see–
presumably unless they get out of Israel.
Podhoretz doesn’t offer his vision of what should happen to them. Presumably they should all move into Jordan, as the American Jewish right has said since Time Immemorial (literally–that was author Joan Peters’s solution in 84, and remains the rightwingers’ dream). This is simply a recipe for more violence, Podhoretz’s World War IV, in which we and Israel smash more Arab cities and towns. Neverending.
Yes, I believe there is a Great Awakening of worldliness taking place today in America, of which Obama is the symptom; and American Jewish opinion is growing less selfish when it comes to Israel/Palestine. For that matter, Podhoretz seems self-marginalized in this article, inasmuch as it flows out of a conversation he is having with rightwing bloggers (who cares about bloggers?). But Podhoretz is not a schlepper, he is the godfather of the neocons.
And the questions that arise are: How many American Jews continue to support this program of war? Do Podhoretz’s views represent American Jewish leadership opinion? Certain APN and IPF and the new dovish Jewish lobby oppose these views, and do so vehemently, and god bless them; but how much traction do Podhoretz’s views still have? What is the thinking of Podhoretz’s son-in-law Elliott Abrams, the president’s top adviser on Middle East stuff? (my email: weissphilip@yahoo.com)
If anyone in government shares these ideas, it’s a scandal. As I was stunned by the non-coverage of Sheldon Adelson’s extremism yesterday, I marvel that Podhoretz’s bigoted views are not a political issue. I don’t understand why the liberal Jewish press does not make more of them. Or why the New York Times doesn’t call out the neocons on their repeated obstruction to U.S. policy. As it is, the best journalism about this extremism continues to be done in other places. Now by the astonishing Henry Siegman in the London Review of Books (thank you, Jim Haygood), who argues, based on three Israelis’ books, that the peace process has simply been a cover for relentless expansion by the Jewish state.
Siegman is a great Jew, he makes me love my people. But this is not about my people, it is about America, the responsibility of Americans to discuss the fact that over the course of the peace process our "democratic" ally has just gotten bigger and bigger, swallowed more and better land, and crushed young Arabs’ hopes for a meaningful life. A young Israeli can dream of a career and prosperity. What can a young Palestinian dream of? Some day soon Obama will ask this question. For this is an American problem. I hang on to the two-state solution, I think it is the only game in town. But is it being quietly nullified, in our country?
