Now that Jeffrey Goldberg has moved to their position, he finds it necessary to smear Walt and Mearsheimer, lately calling them "vile" so as to preserve his own good standing in the neoconlib Jewish world. This is tactical and offensive. (A journalist I know once described Goldberg as David Remnick's id, meaning that he was expressing instinctual views that Remnick was too highminded to express. Happily Goldberg has moved on, and Remnick has become ruminative and troubled though not wholly reconstructed on these issues.) I am about to post scholar Jerry Slater's vigorous defense of the scholars. And I just got this. Chris Hedges
gave a great speech in Princeton in which he embraced Walt and Mearsheimer by name and then added this:
Middle Eastern policy is shaped in the United States by those with very
close ties to the Israel lobby. Those who attempt to counter the
virulent Israeli position, such as former Secretary of State Colin
Powell, are ruthlessly slapped down. This alliance was true also during
the Clinton administration, with its array of Israeli-first Middle East
experts, including special Middle East coordinator Dennis Ross and
Martin Indyk, the former deputy director of the American Israel Public
Affairs Committee, AIPAC, one of the most powerful Israel lobbying
groups in Washington. But at least people like Indyk and Ross are sane,
willing to consider a Palestinian state, however unviable, as long as
it is palatable to Israel. The Bush administration turned to the
far-right wing of the Israel lobby, those who have not a shred of
compassion for the Palestinians or a word of criticism for Israel.
These new Middle East experts include Elliott Abrams, John Bolton,
Douglas Feith, the disgraced I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Richard Perle,
Paul Wolfowitz and David Wurmser. Washington was once willing to
stay Israel's hand. It intervened to thwart some of its most extreme
violations of human rights.
The significance of this speech is that much of the left has been wary of realists Walt and Mearsheimer. The Nation, for instance, trashed them and shows an inability to absorb their ideas. Hedges is a guy I see at Nation functions, and a true moralist. He understands that The Israel Lobby is at heart a moral work. It is just a matter of time before the denunciation of the neocons for their Israel agenda is taken up inside the Jewish house…
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