I hope everyone read the Times Book Review section yesterday, the front-page blast of Kenneth Pollack's book, Out of the Desert, by Max Rodenbeck. Rodenbeck (a wonderful writer in the NY Review of Books) says just what I say about Pollack, that he ignores the Israel/Palestine issue and when he does refer to it, does so in strangely-neutral terms, as the "troubles" or some such b.s. Here's the choice bit:
Pollack seems oddly unaware of history’s motivating forces. To
assert that “what triggers revolutions, civil wars and other internal
unrest is psychological factors, particularly feelings of extreme
despair,” is plain silly. The Boston Tea Party could not have been
prevented by Prozac.
Similarly, he ascribes feelings to broad categories of Middle
Easterners, devoid of any context or explanation. They are “angry
populations” who suffer “inchoate frustration” and “a pathological
hatred of the status quo.” We repeatedly hear of “Arab rage at Israel”
and “Arab venom for Israel.” Nowhere is there a hint that such
attitudes might bear some relation to the plight of the Palestinians, the agony of military defeat or the humiliation of life under Israeli occupation.
fact, the book’s most salient distortions stem from Pollack’s
protectiveness toward Israel. He makes some absurdly cockeyed
assertions, like, “America’s support for Israel over the years has even
been a critical element in winning and securing Arab allies.” He offers
misleading false alternatives, declaring, for instance, that there is
“absolutely no reason to believe that ending American support for
Israel would somehow eliminate” the risk of Islamist zealots taking
power and cutting oil exports. [Weiss emphasis] How about making aid to Israel, and not
just to Arabs, conditional, or aiming at mitigating, rather than
eliminating, such risks? Pollack makes a peculiarly acrobatic effort to
prove that…
Well you get the point. Rodenbeck also says that Pollack is "blinkered" on Israel. Nice. The Prozac moment is directly reminiscent of Francis Fukuyama telling the neocons not to put young Arabs on the couch when there are plenty of direct grievances the west needs to address. And Rodenbeck's dismissal of Pollack's claim that changing American policy would eliminate anti-Americanism is a good response to David Remnick's wisecrack about Walt and Mearsheimer nearly a year ago: that they think that if just solved the Israeli-Palestinian fight, Osama bin Laden would go back into the family
construction business. Funny; I admit it. But my side has never said It's Everything; we've said It's Crucial.
I'm burying the lead: The Times is coming around. At last Ken Pollack, its golden boy of intervention on the Times Op-Ed pages in 2002-2003– a record that is sadly elided in this review–is suddenly in bad odor. About time. Maybe the Times will run Op-Eds now by Mearsheimer and Walt, who opposed the war that Pollack helped to give us?
The Times also ran this valiant letter last week by Michael Brown of Inter-faith Peace Builders, telling the truth about the two-state solution (Shit or get off the pot):
The choice then will be either apartheid imposed on Palestinians or
equal rights for Palestinians and Jews in the Holy Land. Just as
apartheid in South Africa was overcome and Jim Crow defeated in the
South, so, too, is it possible for Jews and Palestinians to live as
equals.
The choice is Israel’s: two states without delay or the
very real prospect of Palestinians in the near future demanding equal
rights in one state from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River.
The natural question that arises from this stuff is, When will the Times start reporting on Haim Saban's role at Brookings Institution, where Pollack works as the director of research for Middle East Policy at the Saban Center? Saban is an ardent Zionist. I saw him at AIPAC, wearing a platinum tie and surrounded by a host of his Saban fellows, young people of every color whom he is recruiting in the love of Israel. This is a guy who confronts his son's Wesleyan classmates when they have a table on campus criticizing Israel. I venture that Pollack is afraid to say a word about the Palestinians because of his paymaster. Pollack's book The Threatening Storm said not a word about the occupation, didn't even use the word, when purporting to educate Americans about the minds of Arabs in 2002, and now he repeats the error, as Rodenbeck has shown. It's an ugly pattern and a disgrace to Brookings, which as Walt and Mearsheimer pointed out, used to be a haven to William Quandt and the two-state solution way back when it didn't rely on the largesse of guys who sing Hatikvah in the shower. I say Pollack been corrupted; he is unable to say a word about Palestinian humiliations. Of course, it's a much sadder reflection on Brookings. But thank god they are finally being pilloried in the Times for it.
P.S. I went to an event last night in Woods Hole, MA, at which former US Ambassador to Yemen George Lane said that Pollack's vision for Iraq is in line with John McCain, and someone in the audience piped up, "His book got panned in the Times today!" It's this kind of public embarrassment that might cause Brookings to wake from its anti-Arab slumbers. Who wishes to be associated with McCain?
Yes, I was wondering when this would catch your attention. If it was on the Op-Ed page it would be a major marker of change at the NYT.
I read that piece in the International Herald Tribune. One should note that the reviewer Max Rodenbeck works for The Economist.
Obviously, like with Walt/Mearsheimer first publishing in London, the British got a better take on the matter than the Americans. Too bad the Hagana didn't blow up a hotel with 100 American officers in 1948.
The intelligentsia and literati are finally figuring out what us politically incorrect rogues have been saying for years: the key to determining the underpinnings and motives of the work product on questions of public policy (and even economic policy) turned out by so much of the contemporary American elite is asking the question “Is the author a committed Zionist?” If the answer is yes, much of the otherwise hidden bedrock of their thinking, and thus the foundation of their intentions, becomes clear.
I loved his final paragraph. I hope a lot of those wonks in Denver this week read it yesterday over this room-service coffee and buns.
correction: I hope the wonks in Denver read it yesterday over their room-service coffee and buns.
Yes, that last paragraph caught my eye too. As well as this sentence: "How about making aid to Israel, and not just to Arabs, conditional, or aiming at mitigating, rather than eliminating, such risks?" Perhaps the first time that the idea of making aid to Israel conditional on Israeli behavior has ever appeared in our paper of record?
How come the Financial Times gets to have a gentile Middle East correspondent and we don't?
Me, I am all for the zionist witch-hunt.
I don't care if the media has to dig up Joe McCarthy himself, wrap a Hollywood-issue Nazi SS uniform around his decomposing corpse and Arafat's own personal AIDS-contaminated keffiyeh around his head, and accuse us all of allegiance to Vlademir Putin's KGB-issue poison penis and its special agents, Chinks and Chavez. I don't care if the proceedings are interrupted with 200 Holocaust rememberance PSA's an hour.
I would just like it KNOWN if someone is in favor of spending the public's money on a religious crusade in the Middle East.
Just tell me that every time some asshole appears on television to tell me about what's happening in my democracy.
Yeah, let the zionists come down and do their bribing out in the open in this money and media-ravaged carcass of a republic. They can still throw all their money around, with all the big guns. Arab shieks, oilmen, financers, firearm makers, cold warriors.
America's no worse really than anywhere else. All countries run on bribes.
But America runs the world. Not to mention, prints the money.
Bribes in America put millions of campesinos out of work and a million grave-diggers in work, in a Mesopotamian minute.
Bribes buy up things like trillions of dollars in bad credit, as the dollar races down its slope, the Sonny Bono of currencies.
Since Barry is the shoe-in (Phil knows better than I do), could someone more responsible and careful with their data than I am PLEASE start a website,
"Who's Bribing Barry Today?"
Do the bribers have any unholy plans for my second and third children?
Is there some war or religious crusade out there that just might "stimulate" our economy and stimulate the pundits? Will Barry evince eloquent humanitarianism as he declares the bombs must fall, for the love of God?
And likewise, if it's Captain Jack and Liebowitz, can I just apply to the appropriate Chinese corrupt official for citizenship in Macau?
With my money problems I've thought about becoming a high-class political prostitute, but to do it in the U.S. you either gotta be a Republican or Democratic Zionist. Me, I only impersonate one here.
Max Rodenbeck grew up in Cairo, is fluent in written and spoken Arabic, and is the son of the man who brought Naguib Mahfouz's books into English (professor and former American U. Cairo Press publisher). Um, he's not Financial Times, D., see first comment – he's with the Economist. I knew Rodenbeck in Cairo 25 years ago and still hear tell of him through mutual friends. No other journalist in English has his contacts and his depth of experience in Egypt and the larger Middle East.
What's significant here is that the NY Times had the guts to run his piece. I would say that they feel safe enough to do so. Rodenbeck doesn't need the NY publishing world either so he can't be shut out or intimidated.
Perhaps the real reason for the sharp drop-off in newspaper sales here in the USA has to do with the constant repetition of the Jewish point of view. Considering that 98% of our population is of the gentile persuasion, it might be profitable to have a few gentiles making editorial decisions for the mainstream media once in a while.
Leila,
thanks for the information on Max Rodenbeck
A profile of Rodenbeck's father, a colorful character and Arabist in his own right:
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2002/589/profile.htm
If you look up the father in IMDB you will find his quirky movie career as an extra/bit player – zombie films and Yusuf Shaheen. The man and his wife are responsible for rescuing countless Islamic monuments from destruction in old Cairo.
"the largesse of guys who sing Hatikvah in the shower…"
once again you make me laugh out loud!
Your blog is the most insightful and delightful thing I've come across in years…
Keep up the spectacular work…
"Can’t we just admit that American support for Israel is strategically burdensome and is driven by the passion of several domestic constituencies rather than cold cost-benefit geopolitics? Can’t we see that the temptation to intervene in places like the Middle East arises as much because “they” are weak as because “we” are just and noble? No matter what good will America’s “policy community” proclaims toward the Middle East, this mix of blinkered indulgence of Israel and disdain for the rest of the region, as well as a predilection for Wilsonian dreams over achievable goals, suggests we will remain in the wilderness for some time to come."
This last paragraph of Rodenbeck's refreshing review is, unfortunately, ridiculous. American foreign policy in the Middle East, nor anywhere else, is blinkered or bumbling. We do indulge Israel's occupation of Palestine. We do so because they more than indulge our desire for control of oil, etc.
I'm really surprised that some of the people who read this blog (and Weiss) entirely miss the point of what U.S. foreign policy and support for Israel is all about. This delusion has serious practical implications in terms of challenging both the U.S. and Israel.
Once again, Wilsonian idealism (whatever that is) does not! drive American policy. That's just naive.
It's all about the oil in the West Bank?
"It's all about the oil in the West Bank?"
If the Middle East supplied the world with cabbage, Israel would be on its own, trading grapefruit. Israel's status in relation to U.S. foreign policy is due to our interest in Middle Eastern oil. The oil doesn't have to be on the West Bank. The weapons do have to be with Israel, the Shah, Turkey, and now Egypt in relation to our hegemony. Does the Egypt lobby keep the money and arms flowing to there? Again, the occupation of Palestine is a quid pro quo. Without mercenary service in relation to the Shi'ite arc, from Iran through Lebanon, Israel is on its own, and the occupation is over. Unfortunately, the "power of the Lobby" perspective does not advance intra-Jewish discourse, but derails it.
David Green, please elaborate. How does funding the Israeli occupation advance US oil interests? And by oil interests do you mean profits for the oil companies (who you will recall lobby against middle east wars and sanctions), or do you mean national access to oil? If it's the latter, wouldn't our best policy be to have good relations with the people who want to sell the stuff?
PS Why should the rest of the American public have to worry about "intra-Jewish discourse"?
D.
Funding the U.S. occupation does not advance U.S. oil interests. It supports a quid pro quo for Israel's service in destroying Arab nationalism in the 1967 war (which thretened U.S. hegemony in the region), and their service as a threatening military presence vis a vis Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, etc., anyone who threatens American hegemony in the region, which incorporates the Saudis, the Gulf States, Egyypt, and Jordan. Of course it does not have to do with access, but control. We are not "dependent" on Middle East oil. Oil companies are dependent on the profits that result from controlling the oil. Whether or not the oil companies actively support a particular war, they do not oppose the geopolitics behind the war and western control of oil supplies and profits. If they were genuinely opposed to the war, don't you think they would have lifted a finger to stop it? Oil companies accept U.S. militarism as part of the price of doing business.
In referring to intra-Jewish discourse, I was referring to intra-Jewish discourse. I'm not sure why the rest of the country should worry about intra-Jewish discourse, except that it might actually create a small political movement away from the identification of Jews with Israel, and provide some encouragement to those who are afraid to step on Jewish toes. I thought the point of this forum was for Jews to speak openly about opposition to Israel, and U.S./Jewish-American support for Israel. But it's a monumental cop-out to blame U.S. foreign policy/Jewish support for Israel on the Lobby, and that approach will mean that such a movement will be stillborn. It's not getting to the fundamentals. It's just astonishing how supposedly intelligent and moral people can just turn around and run away from the idea that the people who run this country act in their own interests, or the interests of their class. I'm with Chomsky and Finkelstein on this issue, as with most everything else.
Correction: Funding the Israeli occupation, of course.