A couple weeks back I noted that both NY Times correspondents in the Jerusalem bureau are married to Israelis. And one of the spouses, Hirsch Goodman, has been engaged in what appears to be lobbying for the two-state solution.
Years ago the Times, wary of accusations of dual loyalty, would only assign gentiles to cover Israel/Palestine. I'm glad that discriminatory policy has ended; but it's hard to say that this extraordinary degree of intimacy has been good for readers. Can I show an effect?
A week ago Brian Lehrer, the popular host of a show on WNYC, the New York public radio station, interviewed Mustafa Barghouti, the impressive Palestinian leader, and asked him a question I found stunning: And why do you believe that the window on the two-state solution is closing? Lehrer's tone suggested some degree of incredulity at this preposterous idea.
But the idea that the two-state solution has passed its sell-by date is a commonplace one on the realist/left. Tony Judt said so many years ago in The New York Review of Books, many of whose Jewish readers were enraged by the statement. Judt was prophetic. A recent issue of the LRB on Gaza was filled with voices saying as much. The same with the American Conservative. Lately Stephen Walt at Foreign Policy did two great realistic posts on What America should do if the 2-state solution is dead. He got a ton of comment.
Saying that the two-state solution is dead is hard on believers in the Jewish state, even leftwing ones. They don't want to concede as much. It would mean that the dream is dead.
I bet Lehrer's information about Israel/Palestine is coming chiefly from the Times; New York media types rely on the Times to tell them about the situation.
And that's the point: by and large, The Times has done a lousy job of reporting on this reality. It has generally behaved as if the two-state solution is a live option, to be taken off the shelf as soon as the political constellations align correctly, and then implemented. This is something of a delusion. The constellations have never aligned in the 61 years since the U.N. said there must be an Arab state, and history doesn't stand still: unending Palestinian statelessness has produced dispossession, hopelessness and apartheid for Palestinians in the occupied territories, while Jews in Israel are enjoying their vaunted western lifestyle and sending their president to Davos to talk about shared values right after Gaza.
So here is the problem with having both reporters married to Israelis: The reporters lack detachment. Their associations with Israelis have caused them (or appeared to have caused them, which is the same difference) to invest in the idea of the two-state solution and thereby to miss the real and crucial story.
Israelis have a right to believe anything they like. It's not my country. Americans have a right to know.
