David Remnick doesn't seem entirely sure how to address the horrifying news from Gaza. He has a long piece about Obama, including an intelligent reverie on the spiritual question of homeland, that sweeps the slaughter under the rug. Blames the end of the truce on Hamas and says the civilian deaths were "inevitable." Oh my.
dream of the Palestinians. In the West Bank, he will be dealing with a
leadership that, while imperfect, supports the overdue justice of a
two-state resolution. The same is true in Israel, at least with those
politicians to the left of Benjamin Netanyahu. But in Gaza Obama will
be dealing, directly or not, with political actors who, with Iranian
support, seek ceaseless battle with Israel, and may even hope to
destabilize Egypt.
Remnick's "ceaseless battle" underscores the view that during the Iraq debacle he appointed his "id" to report on the Middle East, in Jeffrey Goldberg, who said on "Meet the Press" the other day that this war is all about Hamas's ceaseless fanaticism. Well at least Remnick mentions statelessness, and accepts the Nakba.
Add this to the total silence of the blogs from George Packer and Hendrik Hertzberg and one may say of The New Yorker's stance: No show. Paralysis. I wonder whether Gaza won't be looked back upon as being the New York newspaper strike of 1963, which created The New York Review of Books and elevated the New Yorker. This time 'round the establishment media are on self-imposed opinion strike. They know that it is unsafe to side with Marty Peretz but they are afraid of Andrew Sullivan and Ezra Klein and Glenn Greenwald as Arab-lovers. And so the blogosphere romps.
israel is not perfect….from its inception the jews safety were never their real concern…only state power.
and yet jews around the world bend their knee to that state which never gave them anything.
what a con job the zionist have perpetrated on jewish men and women around the world….
Yitzchak Greenbaum
Yitzhak Gruenbaum was chairperson of the Jewish Agency's Rescue Committee.
In the beginning of February, 1943, Yitzchak Greenbaum addressed a meeting in Tel Aviv on the subject, "The Diaspora and the Redemption" in which he stated:
"For the rescue of Jews in the Diaspora, we should consolidate our excess strength and the surplus of powers that we have. When they come to us with two plans–the rescue of the masses of Jews in Europe or the redemption of the land–I vote, without a second thought, for the redemption of the land. The more said about the slaughter of our people, the greater the minimization of our efforts to strengthen and promote the Hebraization of the land. If there would be a possibility today of buying packages of food with the money of the "Keren Hayesod" (United Jewish Appeal) to send it through Lisbon, would we do such a thing? No! and once again No!"
…Holocaust Victims Accuse, pp 26.
Excerpted from a speech in 1943
http://jewsagainstzionism.com/
David Remnick deserves a prize for packing so many empty, formulaic cliches into a single paragraph. Here are five of them:
1. 'Homeland' — this sinister National Socialist term was never used in an American context until the Patriot Act sprang it on us fully-formed in the weeks after 9/11. 'Palestinian homeland' has a menacing ring, as Remnick probably intends.
2. 'West Bank leadership' — no, merely a US/Israeli puppet regime.
3. 'Two-state solution' — another moribund formula which has long since been overtaken by events. Even if it retreated to '67 borders, Israel would get nearly all of the valuable Mediterranean beachfront, leaving the Palestinians to swelter in their dusty 'Inland Empire.' Fair? No effing way.
4. 'Politicians to the left of Netanyahu' — as this blog has exhaustively chronicled, 'left-right' is a meaningless distinction as applied to zionist ideologues. Witness Barak and Livni, both presumably 'left of Netanyahu.' How could we tell?
5. 'Political actors who … hope to destabilize Egypt' — Thanks to Jimmy Carter's 'two billion a year forever,' the kleptocrat Mubarak has become a billionaire, while Egypt's moribund statist economy became a powder keg. Destabilizing Egypt is not only inevitable, but a moral imperative.
The New Yorker is another fading, faux-intellectual survivor of a lost literary era, which I long since stopped subscribing to. I'll bet the cartoons aren't even funny no more.
Wake me up when they publish another Sy Hersh story.
Actually, Haygood, there's an old French partition plan that notes that the Galilee coastline could be divided in an arc that would give a Palestinian state a seafront, with the I-P border running southeast to Jenin through Beit Jan. This would reproduce the interdependent, intertwined states of the '47 partition plan, which assumed peace and a customs union. The usual question: with peace, tiny separate states would be viable, and with peace, separate states would be unnecessary.
One state is also a non-starter, as long as the Palestinians are ruled by Islamists and Arab nationalists, and at least Israel has demonstrated a capacity to keep an Arab population, whereas Jews live nowhere in the Arab world anymore except for a few tiny communities in Morocco, Tunisia, and Yemen.
I find it interesting that Arabs choose to riot in Israel, knowing that there is at least enough of a social contract to protect their right not to be mown down as the regimes do in Lebanon, Egypt, and Syria.
Jim:
Wake me up when they publish another Sy Hersh story.
Colin:
Isn't that the truth. Mr. Hersh is one of my heroes. The rest isn't fit for toilet paper.
Eurosabra,
Pretty oversimplied views of Arab Israelis and Arab Jews. The former can be killed with impunity. Jews lived relatively securely in Arab countries until the advent of a Jewish state. The story is complicated and varied by country and decade, but it's become nothing more than propaganda fodder for the "exchange of refugees" myth. The Mizrahim themselves resent being called refugees, from what I understand. And Iranian Jews live securely to this day.
The Arabs have a long history of being liars!
The Israels would not be bombing if the Gazens choice of leaders didnât keep begging for it with there 5,000+ rockets being launched into Israel for years. The Arabs of the world are not generous to send relief or money to help the hungry fellow man. The USA has been the most generous with aid & food to the Gazens for Many, Many, Many, years. The Gazens have been ungrateful & they elected a terrorist group to lead & govern them. The USA tried to help but terrorbag Arafat could not ever be satisfied. Yea, he was a big liar too. The Gazens should be less lazy and hunt down and put in jail the criminals that keep launching rockets into Israel. No country would have tolorated more rocket attacks then Israel has. There are videos on the internet that show hamas shooting rockets and mortors from schools and mosques. I donât know why cnn is unwilling or afraid to air them. I hope they have not recieved money from Arab countries to slant there reporting. God bless all man kind.
Poor David Remnick and all those thousands of Jews like him. He just fails to make it as an American, doesn't he? Shows a lot of promise, ticks most boxes, but, sadly, just can't take the last step away from the tribal past and into the future.
A fair-weather American, but a rusted-on Zionist.