Paul Berman's comments on Z-word about Israel/Palestine are so troubling that I need to visit them again. You know me, I'm like a dog with a bone. Well this is what he says about the occupation:
well, Israel ought to
dismantle its West Bank settlements and do a
thousand other things to allow their enemies to calm down. Me, I've never had
any patience for West Bank settlements, and I can picture a lot of ways that Israel could
improve.
I don't believe Berman is being honest about his own conduct. In 2003, he routinely dismissed the occupation as a source of Palestinian grievance in his book Terror and Liberalism, which paved the way for the Iraq war among liberal-hawk intellectuals, including the suggestible George Packer. In his belletristic manner, Berman said this about the settlements:
Ha ha. As if the settlements were a joke. As if six decades of statelessness and lack of self-government is not truly a desperate condition for a minority. This is something Jews should know. I bet that Berman actually thinks that Jews have a right to Palestine. He ought to stop talking about what "some people" or "a lot of people" think and tell us what he thinks.
