Last night I went to a New York party and got drunk and said a few unmannerly things. My wife wasn't there, who is often my governor in these situations, or who gives me the grim assessment afterward. This morning I told her about a few things I said, in an effort to undo them. My wife has long found fault with what she calls my prosecutorial, hectoring manner. She says it makes people dislike me; and I've come to agree. I thought I was getting over it. But to the videotape:
There were a lot of media people there; and right now there is only one conversation among media people: the destruction of the old media. They bewail it and wring their hands. I come in with a very different attitude, that I have been doing this blog for three years basically for no money, having been spat out by the old media for transgressive ideas, and guys, this is the way the world is going. Media is social; alot of people are prepared to perform the vital informative function for very little money. The assertion that The New York Times is a better gatekeeper than the blogosphere is damaged by the fact that The New York Times served up the Iraq war on a silver platter, the greatest error in foreign policy in the last generation.
My problem is I make this argument too noisily, with verbal flourishes, and the two people I was talking to sort of shrunk a little. When I said, as I always do, that more people know how to write now than ever, and that's a great thing, and the internet is feeding off that energy, an old friend said, "But everyone on the internet has an agenda."
I said, "Both New York Times reporters in Israel are Jewish and married to Israelis. Isabel Kershner's husband Hirsch Goodman was involved in negotiations around Obama's Middle East plan. These reporters know that the Jewish state is in crisis now. Do you think they don't have an agenda?"
As I said these words, I could feel that I was being too aggressive. Another dear old friend said, "OK maybe that's true, Phil, but don't you recognize that the foreign reporters for the Times are professionals who have been trained for many years, and educated, and who do great work? You say you love Haaretz; that's another professional shop. Where are you going to get your information?"
I then agreed with my friend and conceded, Something is lost in any industrial transition.
But he soon went to another table. Later I saw him laughing merrily.There were many other writers at that table and there was no room for me; and I sensed with some grief my own isolation from a culture in which I was once steeped.
I know that my anger and impatience with the whole New York Jewish establishment over Zionism is embedded in the argument over the media industry. I believe that the establishment's unconscious investment in Jewish nationalism with its religious/racialist freight (even as they always denounce the Christian fundamentalists) is the main event of all our lives, intellectually and professionally–or of that part of our lives that is not concerned with the economic meltdown–and as my views have long been marginalized, and my income endangered, I have trouble not bringing all my insecurity and familial disempowerment to the table when the topic comes up. It's not pretty.
Yes, the internet has been empowering; and maybe 6 months from now I will feel even more power than I do now, and I will relax in these social situations, even having drunk too much red wine.
Still it must be said that the blogosphere is for now the province of refusees and the alienated (as neoconservatism was once that place, inside Jewish intellectual sociology); and this is not the kind of energy that anyone wants in their intellectual pilot. No, they want the equivalent of Chelsea Sullenberger at the controls. Steve Walt is probably the best role model here. He was told by many colleagues 3 years ago that he had sabotaged his own future by writing about the Israel lobby but he chose to ignore these grim pronouncements and go on in his calm straightforward goodnatured manner; and now his career is doing better than ever. Walt has a very solid ego structure, though. So does my partner Adam Horowitz. Myself, I'm spotty.
I did have a couple of satisfying conversations last night. A writer I have argued with online, once taking his head off, as my wife would say, over the Israel lobby, I was civil to. I had warned myself ahead of time not to say one intemperate word to him, no matter what the reason. I didn't. He said, "You look a little like a whaler," and I smiled and agreed: "I know. I've rusticated completely. I was going to wear a dress shirt, but I realized it would look ridiculous." Also I learned that one Jewish girl I've seen at parties from across the room over the years is a secret sharer. I generally avoid The Palestine Issue with Jews I don't know at parties because it can blow up, but she kept saying something about a Nation article I'd written and finally I said, "This is all I care about now." And she looked at me in that everything in an instant way, and said, "It's all I care about too." There was that thrill of recognition. We are going to be in touch.
(Phil Weiss)
It can be sad to be on the outside looking in. Even tragic, if one's given to drama. That there is a price to pay for having enough conscience to let it show is a given. But only those who have knowingly compromised their conscience know that clear conscience is priceless.
" Where are you going to get your information?"
Phil, you should have replied, with a (forced) smile, "Yes, that is exactly my point. Where are objective American citizens going to get
their information?"
Further, although journalists are educated, so are citizens in other professions. Journalist product daily shows its ignorance on what these other professionals know. And we all suffer from misleading journalistic reporting to that extent, which is not small. Yes, reading the blogsphere
involves the responsibility to consider narrow agendas, narrow views–but anything you doubt can be checked out there too. In contrast,
there's nowhere in the MSM to go–they all offer the same on question of Israel and its conduct.
I don't blame you for drinking too much red wine.
But you would have thought of what I just said if you drank less there.
What your story reveals, other than your personal honesty and integrity in sharing it, is that the MSM has a superiority complex about who should decide what to reveal to the unwashed masses. And, as you suggested by pointing to how the MSM gave Shrub Iraq on a silver platter, it is not warranted. As just one more example that such superiority complex is not warranted, look how the MSM never
gives the unwashed masses a real article addressing the illegal immigrant crisis in all its complexity. Hell, the MSM is not even doing it
with the Bailout. Concerned citizens have no choice but to go the blogosphere to at least see someone addressing the issues hidden
by the MSM.
I understand the sense of not belonging to an in-circle of a professional group. I missed that since I started working for myself. Working in the new media can feel and be isolating. But it is very much a transient stage: like being a foreign correspondent in Kabul in 1930ties. There will soon be professional associations of the bloggers with the joining requirement of being hit by so and so many hits a month, and before you know it, people will be sending you unsolicited op-eds. Patience.
"Last night I went to a New York party and got drunk and said a few unmannerly things."
This would be a great first sentence of a novel. Oh and I know these situations all too well. I left New York a little less than a year ago and moved back to the Middle East (Beirut, for now,) but having read this post, I almost miss it. The secret sharer makes it all worth it.
From reading your very excellent blog, I get the impression that the “This” in: "This is all I care about now” denotes more than just the “The Palestine Issue with Jews.” You seem to be immersed in Jewish society/culture generally. If so, your immersion MAY BE distorting your understand of the causes of the “Issue.” I emphasize ‘may be’ because I do not presume to understand. I’m just kibitzing.
I agree with virtually all your moral positions about the behavior of Israelis and their American supporters. However, I see the “Issue” not as a Jewish/Arab thing per se, rather a European/Arab thing. It seems to me that Israel is just the latest chapter in the 1000-year history of European efforts to dominate if not control Arabs and their land. Call it Crusades, Colonialism, Imperialism, ‘whatever’; starting in the middle of the 11th century when Europeans began their assault on Arabs in Spain, down to the present, Arabs have been the object of European machinations.
I’ve always felt that Zionist were being used by greater European powers to achieve European Middle East goals. If I were a Zionist, I would be asking myself what happens if and when Europeans (to include Euro-America) decide that the Middle East is no longer important? If I were liberal anti-Zionist Jew at a Jewish party, I would consider refraining from moral admonitions and appeal to self-interest – “Stop being a European chump.”
Just a thought!
You have a point, but only insofar as you nail the American Evangelical end-timers and the American-based international companies and their wannabees–no different than any international companies, no matter owned by whatever ethnic people. The rest of the Americans
have no desire to model the Crusades, Colonialism, or Imperialism. My only caveat is that all countries would like a lock on their access
to oil. That does not help your theory.
A somewhat related issue: Followup: BBC and Gaza Charity Appeal.
Phil, your stories of your ongoing transformation are truly entertaining. I hope you're keeping a journal against the day the battle is over and you can look back and tell exactly how our side won.
Phil will be sitting in sack cloth and ashes wondering why he deserted the Jewish people when their cause was just. He'll wonder why he supported the forces of Islamic fascism. and he'll mostly wonder, after his wife leaves him, why his heart is so bitter and his insanity so complete.
And before his death he'll say the Sh'ma, and god will tell him to go screw himself.
Citizen,
Thank you for your comment. Regarding your “caveat”, I would say that as long as Euro-Americans are players in the Middle East for whatever reason (oil, strategic position visa vis Russia, block China’s influence, Christ’s return, whatever) I think the Zionist will be their battering Ram. When the Euro-Americans decide to leave the Middle East, the Zionist will be in trouble. Just think of the implications of Evangelicalism ceasing to be a major religion in American.
To my mind, Zionist Jews suffer the ancient Greek tragic flaw hubris. They think they are invincible and do not realize that their strength is not in themselves, but in the non-Jews who support them for reasons other than Zionism. I feel sorry for them. They are hollow people. The real tragedy is that the Jewish culture is so magnificent per se, without the Zionist component.
You're a good man, Philip Weiss.
Phil, you remind me of me.
I agree, and really identify with how talking about what really matters to people who don't yet get it is hard in all the ways you describe, Phil. What a lovely valentine, Phil. Thanks for everything, Phil.
And thanks for great comments, gang. And you really nailed it, Tom: "I feel sorry for them. They are hollow people. The real tragedy is that the Jewish culture is so magnificent per se, without the Zionist component."
Sorry for all the repetition above: in a hurry and didn't proofread.
Yes, Philip certainly reminds me of lance thruster.
'What your story reveals, other than your personal honesty and integrity in sharing it, is that the MSM has a superiority complex about who should decide what to reveal to the unwashed masses'
I agree with the sentiments of both contentions. Phil's open heart surgery on himself, as someone in the centre of the widening gyre, provides the human counterpoint to the relentless march of events and the spin they are wrapped in, most of which is so assiduously caught and examined here. It's not always the worst who are full of 'passionate intensity' – I know my 'hectoring manner' on subjects like this puts a lot of friends and family off, so I try as far as possible to avoid such engagement. But the thing is, it's often they who initiate discussions now, as the truth has started to leak into their consciousness. Orwell would have alienated lots of people too, and loads of his contemporaries who didn't are now nameless and forgotten. The isolation would be hard to bear Phil, but for someone like you, the alternative would be even harder. As Eva says – patience. Don't stop being true to yourself, and don't stop telling us about it!
As for 'who should decide what to reveal to the unwashed masses' I too have personal experience of encountering that MSM superiority in a social setting, and when thinking about explanations for the often almost comically obtuse editorial stances of Big Media, I have to push the Lobby and business elites aside to make room for the simple, almost endearingly out of touch faith in their own importance that media types still entertain, even as their citadel is crumbling.
Never be ashamed, Phil. You make this worthy, essential topic safe for others. This is your great gift to us and, in my books, you're a god-damned hero. Fine-tune your delivery, sure, but never, ever, ever be ashamed.
Weiss: "The assertion that The New York Times is a better gatekeeper than the blogosphere is damaged by the fact that The New York Times served up the Iraq war on a silver platter, the greatest error in foreign policy in the last generation."
All the stories I've read about Judith Miller's disastrous reporting on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction seem to assume she was just the innocent victim of a bad source. I wish someone would do a piece about her asking if she swallowed Chalabi's lies so readily because they aligned so perfectly with her own zionist agenda–she so much wanted his tales to be true she wrote them without second sourcing or even attribution. Then the New York Times, which shared the same agenda, published them to a credulous nation.
very well-written and honest, Phil. Watch out for the 'grief'.
I love this, Berel gets to tell 'god' what to think:
And before his death he'll say the Sh'ma, and god will tell him to go screw himself. Posted by: Chris Berel | February 14, 2009 at 05:15 PM
I think I might even add that grief and alcohol are a very dangerous combination, and oddly enough, more addictive in tandem. I have found that cannabis, or the now widely available legal cannabis substitutes, are infinitely preferable to alcohol as relaxants and aids to the sociable and imaginative faculties.
"You make this worthy, essential topic safe for others. This is your great gift to us and, in my books, you're a god-damned hero."
Well said and exactly right. Phil makes it possible for gentiles to speak out about the harm done to America by Israel's actions in the Middle East and also to the harm done to this country (and to non-Zionist Jews) by the dual-loyalty crowd here. I thank him and what at times must be his long-suffering wife.
before suzanne leaps down my throat looking for cannabis, let me explain a common misconception about this substance: it is often claimed that it makes people 'nihilistic'. In fact, it facilitates coping with the fact that the western-organised human world is already completely 'nihilistic', and has been for three or four hundred years.
Chris Berel is bad for the Jews.
Chris Berel is bad for the Jews. Posted by: YHWH | February 15, 2009 at 02:25 AM
- nice, but there's no "w" in hebrew.
I am very glad I bothered to read this whole piece.
As for where we will get our sources when the old media dies, I propose we get on that in a big way. Maybe it is forming networks of good people everywhere to at least crank out the raw data or be there for questions. Everyone involved would have to be on some sort of public assistance, or charge readers, or develop a network of ad salesmen…. I think, actually, it will have to be the very young who come up with the answer and implement it because we are all too inured to individualistic and old capitalistic approaches.
Our alienation isn't fun, but it is moral, and seems to have a glimmer of potential back just now.
I'm so glad you got to meet a kindred soul.
I was trying to be at that party with you as I read along, and I wouldn't have lasted long enough to get that gem out of it…. Actually, it was sounding to me pretty much like trying to communicate at Crooks and Liars or HuffPo… not completely out of the question to find someone worth sharing with, but… well….
I can say without the remotest snobbish intent that once you have poked your head out of social conditioning long enough to get a good gander at actuality, there is no going back, less and less comfort in the herd, even though everything in your whole life pointed toward running with it as the best life to lead. It hurts like holy hell, but it is also the only hope for humanity. It is also the only fuel for your life force. Every attempt to reestablish the old feeling with the old crowd will leave you feeling worse, even if you give your best imitation of fitting in. Wrong people are not half as stupid as they insist on being. They can tell when you have busted them, even if you do everything to conceal it. If they can't somehow jolt you out of projecting this lack of theirs back onto them, with a joke or an agreement to just bullshit, and they can't, they will become more than just defensive, they will become aggressive, do whatever it takes to erase the discomfort. Honestly. All you have to do is know the truth and it is as though you suddenly became a klieg lamp and mirror, without saying anything.
The better you know it, the brighter the light. There are a few who will be attracted, but most will want to run.
The truth hurts in so many, many ways, but it is the way.
The truth is Phil you are a bitter narcissistic failure. You seem to get more bitter each day, which is understandable considering what you have been reduced to. You don't even have a real job anymore. I hope your wife works. I'm glad you found a new admirer. You really need it.
God sent israel the prophets and they were stoned, jeremiah and isaiah are just two examples, and there is a rumour that one who has not been acredited as a prophet to israel was even crucified,…fear not mr weiss, telling the truth to power has always been a dangerous profession.
but what the hey…a life worth living is a life lived,
and since you cant take it with you then give it your all and leave it all behind.
you are in an amazing place phil.
Alan Dershowitz:
Several months ago, a rabidly anti-Israel group on the Hampshire College campus began a campaign to try to get the college to divest from six companies that they claim helped "the Israeli occupation of Palestine." Those who came up with this formulation regard all of Israel, including Tel Aviv, Haifa and Ben Gurion Airport, as "occupied Palestine." In other words, their goal is to end the existence of Israel. This divestment effort is part of an international campaign against Israel.
Until now, every American university administration has categorically rejected this attempt to single out Israel in a world filled with massive human rights abusers. But Hampshire caved in to student and faculty pressure and as Board of Directors agreed to divest from these six companies along with a series of others that did not meet the standards of Hampshire College. The student group, supported by many faculty members, claimed total victory, issuing a press release that boasted that Hampshire has become the first college in the United States to divest from Israel. It urged other universities to follow its lead.
Those supporting the petition include the notorious anti-Semite Cynthia McKinney, America and Israel basher Noam Chomsky and other Israel haters. The six companies include General Electric, ITT, Motorola and other corporations that employ thousands of American workers. The divestment campaign applies to Israel and Israel alone. Hampshire will continue to deal with companies that supply Iran, Saudi Arabia, China, Cuba, North Korea, Zimbabwe, Libya, Syria, Sudan, Belarus and other brutal dictatorships around the world that routinely murder civilians, torture and imprison dissenters, deny educational opportunities to women, imprison gays and repress speech. Indeed many of those who support divestiture against Israel actively support these repressive regimes. This divestment campaign has absolutely nothing to do with human rights. It is motivated purely by hatred for the Jewish state. As New York Times columnist Tom Friedman once put it: "Criticizing Israel is not anti-Semitic, and saying so is vial. But singling out Israel for opprobrium and international sanctions – out of proportion to any other party in the Middle East – is anti-Semitic and not saying so is dishonest."
The petition itself mentions nothing about terrorism directed against Israeli civilians, rocket attacks aimed at its kindergartens, and the unwillingness of Hamas even to recognize Israel's right to exist. It seeks to express "solidarity with Palestinian students whose access to education is severely inhibited by the Israeli occupation." It fails to add that Palestinian students have more and better access to education than Arab students in nearly every other part of the Middle East. It fails to mention that students are routinely arrested for expressing dissenting views in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria and other Muslim nations. It fails to mention that Israel has affirmative action programs for its Palestinian students. It fails to mention that when Israel ended the occupation of Gaza in an effort to trade land for peace, all it got in return was more than 6,000 rockets fired from Gaza at its children. It fails to present any balance concerning the Israel-Palestine conflict.
When protests over Hampshire action began, the administration issued a statement of clarification, which did not mention Israel but claimed, obliquely, that "the decision expressly did not pertain to a political movement or single out businesses active in a specific region or country." [To read the entire statement go to: link to hampshire.edu
But Hampshire President Hexter acknowledged that "it was the good work of SJP" -the virulently anti-Israel group called Student For Justice in Palestine – "that brought this issue to the attention of the committee."
They can't have it both ways. They undertook no action based on alleged violations by any country other than Israel, which allowed the anti-Israel group to claim victory, as they have been doing even after the "clarification." Virtually every media report was headlined "Hampshire First College in United States to Divest From Israel."
Before writing this article, I spoke to the President and the Chairman of the Board. They denied that this divestment action was directed against Israel. I asked them to issue a statement which made that clear: namely, "Hampshire rejected an attempt by Students for Justice in Palestine to divest from companies supporting the occupation of Palestine, and instead applied existing principles, requiring them to divest from companies which failed to meet certain standards" They refused to issue any such statement, obviously because they didn't want to alienate the anti-Israel students. Like most universities, they do want to have it both ways. They want to appear to be saying one thing to the anti-Israel students and another thing to those who would be appalled at singling out Israel for divestment. But on an issue of this kind, they simply can't have it both ways: either they rejected efforts to single out Israel for divestiture, in which case they should say so, or they accepted these efforts, and covered it up with a cosmetically-broader divestiture, which appears to be the case.
It may well be that the anti-Israel student group has hijacked the voice of the college, but if so the hijacking has not been strongly resisted. The voice of the student group has become the voice of the college because it has been clearer and less ambiguous.
My son, who went to Hampshire College, has urged me to take this action. We have supported the college through tuition payments and occasional gifts. No more! I now call on all decent people – supporters and critics of Israel alike – to make no further contributions to a school that now promotes discrimination and is complicit in evil. There must be a price paid for bigotry, and the actions of Hampshire College in singling out only Israel for divestiture is bigotry plain and simple. Silence is not an option. Inaction is not an option. Fighting back against the likes of Cynthia McKinney is mandatory for all people of good will.
The goal is not to harm the students or faculty of Hampshire College, but the petition claims that sentiment in favor of this bigoted resolution is overwhelming among students and faculty. Students and faculty too must understand that bigotry has its cost.
Hampshire College will survive its self-inflicted wound, but decency cannot survive with the kind of double standard bigotry directed only against the Jewish state.
Hampshire is a small college without much influence. But those who are conducting the national campaign see their "victory" at Hampshire as an opening wedge with which to get other more influential universities to follow suit by adopting similarly bigoted proposals. This is a cancer that is threatening to spread around the world, and it must be stopped where it began – at Hampshire.
Until and unless the Hampshire administration clarifies its ambiguous "clarification" to make it unequivocally clear that it rejects any and all efforts to single out Israel for divestment, contributions to that otherwise fine school should be placed on hold.
If we all pasted in entire articles just because we agreed with them, Julian, these threads would become even more unwieldy than they already are. Kindly do not do this. Express your own view.
Julian, Rowan finds it hard to digest the truth.
Keep posting.
Dershie's POV:
1.) Protesting Israeli occupation policy, enabled by US tax dollars = rabidly anti-Israel group protest.
2.) Public figures (McKinney, Chomsky) supporting this protest = notorious anti-Semites, America and Israel bashers, and "other Israel haters."
So far nothing but name calling, like a little foul-mouthed kid.
3.) Singling out Israel activity is motivated by Israel hatred, that is, "anti-semitism" because the divestment protest doesn't include other countries in the world with bad humanitarian track records. Dershie ignores even a suggestion of why the protest was targeted, given in the context also that all protests groups target specific things: What other foreign state, as minute as Israel or as large as Saudi Arabia for example, currently illegally occupying another people's land gets over 30% of all
USA foreign aid (plus aid given to Egypt and Jordan to play nice with Israel), and sans any conditions and without interest? None. Not to mention Israel has no oil. And to mention that the on-going war in Iraq, plus the push for war with Iran, are all in the interest of Israel and nobody else.
4.)"The petition itself mentions nothing about terrorism directed against Israeli civilians, rocket attacks aimed at its kindergarten."
That's because the feeble rocket attacks are merely the symptom, while the long and horrendous occupation is the diseased cause.
Dershie would not have made a good doctor.
5.)Hamas doesn't recognize the right of Israel to exist? Which Israel–it has no borders, but its lebensraum keeps expanding. Further,
since when did jews in mandate Palestine and Post Israel state ever recognize the right of native arabs to exist on their own land, and in a state of life equal to foreign jews who plop over from other continents?
6.)Why use muslim nations as a standard for affirmative action for minorities or original natives? Israel is sold to Americans, Israel's main enabler, as a true democracy. That's the spiel to keep Americans giving Israel welfare and the blood of GIS under the neocon agenda carried out in Iraq, and intended for Iran. Further, arab countries have oil, Israel does not. We have to deal with China too. Nobody's happy about it, considering the internal nature of China's government. But what pragmatics dictate rubber-stamping Israel's activity in its occupation over the native population, or indeed, even in Israel proper, all land given to Jews with no authority except essentially brute force.
7.) All Israel got in return for getting out of Gaza was rockets directed against it. Yeah the troops and tanks got out, but left Israel's control of land, sea, and air–effectively turning Gaza into an open-air prison. In this way Israel could avoid legal responsibility for
the care of the Palestinians under a cheap reading of international law, avoiding that's law spirit completely–and the financial expense that goes with attendant responsibility.
8.)Dershie is outraged that out of all the colleges and universities in the USA one has allowed its students to call for divestment against a specific Israeli regime policy. All the rest so far have stifled any public economic pressure on Israel's world-condemned activity, commonly known as "the occupation."
Dershie of course was all for such activity when it was directed against apartheid S Africa. And he loves the current official economic pressure being put on Iran. How many preemptive attacks, or indeed any attacks, has Iran implemented lately, indeed how many years to you have to go back to find one?
4.)
We're with you out here, brother! Keep up the fight!