Speak for Yourself, Seth Lipsky

Weird that neocon Seth Lipsky, the founder of the late New York Sun, is granted space on Sunday's NYT Op-Ed page to argue that the Marc Rich pardon–which is threatening to ensnare Obama AG pick Eric Holder 8 years on–was a good thing… And in doing so, Lipsky once again displaces his own love of Israel on to an American political figure. Here is the only reference to Israel in the piece:

Mr. Clinton mentioned foreign policy concerns as well: he’d been urged
to pardon Mr. Rich by “many present and former high-ranking Israeli
officials of both major political parties and leaders of Jewish
communities in America and Europe.” He said they had cited Mr. Rich’s
“contributions and services to Israeli charitable causes, to the
Mossad’s efforts to rescue and evacuate Jews from hostile countries,
and to the peace process through sponsorship of education and health
programs in Gaza and the West Bank.”

Weird that Lipsky, who sought to confound the "peace process," now gets to invoke it piously at the Times…

None of these guys is ever guilty. Marc Rich. Pincus Green, Steve Rosen, Keith Weissman, Jonathan Pollard. The issue at the bottom here is dual loyalty. Suspicions of dual loyalty legitimately proliferate because the neocons were never transparent about their affections. Lipsky ought to be forced by the Times editors to make some declaration of his own love of Israel here. As it is, like John Alden declaring Miles Standish's love in the famous Jewish story (sorry, that was ironical), he hides it behind Clinton, and it adds to the subterfuge that has wrecked our politics. The Sun is gone, the neocons are gone in the tides of November, still our journalism is broken.

Thanks to Richard Silverstein.

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