In the Times the other day, the main critic of the peace talks between Israel and Syria
was Dore Gold, the rightwing former ambassador under Netanyahu who
emigrated to Israel from the U.S. and doesn’t seem to believe in
territorial exchange. Gold doesn’t want to give up the West Bank or divide Jerusalem. Gold’s former boss, Benjamin Netanyahu, the Likudnik, has been the harshest critic of the initiative in the Knesset.
As I have reported, according to the latest records on guidestar.org (now 2 years old), Gold has substantial American support. The American Enterprise Institute gives $96,000 a year to Dore Gold as a “scholar” in
Jerusalem. It’s a weird deal. Gold runs a neocon thinktank in J’lem. He is not much of a scholar; he’s a
political operator, maybe a public intellectual. Why the American
Enterprise Institute is giving so much to an Israeli activist is a good
question. Why it kept Gold’s name off its website, even while giving him
all that money, is another.
Israel’s colonization of the West Bank has been underwritten by American Jews, or as Jeffrey Goldberg puts it,
“Jewish leaders, who live in Chicago and New York and behind the gates
of Boca Raton country clubs.” He and I agree that it’s time to take those
shadowy leaders on.
The chairman of the American Enterprise
Institute is Bruce S. Kovner, who lives behind high gates not far from me in Dutchess
County, New York, when he is not in his mansion on Fifth Avenue. Kovner’s AEI
has roosted many neocons who have opposed giving up the West Bank
colonies–like Richard Perle and Dore Gold and David Wurmser. I wonder what the unreconstructed David Frum, Michael Ledeen, Joshua Muravchik, Irving Kristol, Michael Rubin and John Bolton have to say about the Syria deal or the two-state solution.
The fascinating thing about Kovner is that he maintains a sparkling reputation in liberal arts-loving New York, and not just because he plays a bitchin harpsichord. He’s chairman of Juillard. He has a soft touch. He’s funny, he’s smart. He is also nullifying American effectiveness in the Arab world and, according to Goldberg and other Zionist 2-staters, threatening Israel’s very existence by underwriting hardline policies. Shouldn’t he come under pressure within his haut-bourgeois community to cast off these extremists?
