A few weeks ago, Michelle Goldberg, who has made her career in good measure by criticizing the Christian right, said that if you criticize Israel, you sacrifice your journalistic career. An important point, and one I agree with based on my own experience. Well the other day I was talking to a young journalist who said that this was particularly true with respect to the New Republic. The New Republic won't run anything you write if you are a critic of Israel. Won't run your financial journalism, your arts journalism, your love journalism, etc. And The New Republic is such an important publication, especially for young journalists--I know; being published there was a huge advantage to me when I was young-- that my friend said that no young journalist in D.C. or New York wants to eliminate it as a career station by coming out on the Israel-Palestine question.
Some weeks ago Jonathan Chait of the New Republic said that Steve Walt's writing career had been greatly enhanced by his publication of The Israel Lobby. A true observation; it has been, though he has suffered tremendous obloquy along the way, and as Larry Summers said, kissed goodbye to government service by doing so. Chait used Walt's example to argue that it doesn't hurt a writer's career to criticize Israel. I disagree. I think Walt is truly exceptional. (And I'm not going into a list of all the publications that will not publish a writer who criticizes Israel. I'm hoping they change; I still hope to derive income from some of them.)
The best test of any idea is whether it is true in front of your nose, what your own experience is. And my challenge to Chait is: Can he point to anyone who has criticized Israel who has been published by the New Republic? (I'd extend that challenge to Rick Hertzberg and Andrew Sullivan, who edited the New Republic; gentlemen?)
That David won against Goliath does not mean that everyone who goes up against a giant will win, nor that the giant isn't really a giant. Chait's grasp of logic is as weak as ever.
RE: "And my challenge to Chait is: Can he point to anyone who has criticized Israel who has been published by the New Republic?"
MY QUESTION: Does this include "The New Republic" from the period before Marty "Macho Man" Peretz's wife bought it for him in 1974?
SEE ERIC ALTERMAN'S ARTICLE –
Way back in the late 1980s, I engaged in a brief collaboration with an Israeli guy called Yagil Weinberg, a former Likudnik who had become a bit of a peacenik. We published a joint op-ed on the Palestine Question in the NYT, and buoyed by that proposed a longer follow-up for TNR. Yagil had an introduction to Marty Peretz so we went round and had a meeting to make the pitch to him. The proposed piece was (gasp!) critical of Yitzhak Shamir's Likud government.
Um, we never heard back from Marty.
As for whether criticizing the policies of the government of Israel can kill (or severely stymie) the career of young writers, middle-aged writers, or even getting-to-be-old writers, I can tell you from my personal experience the answer is absolutely yes. It just makes me very grateful (abjectly grateful!) for the courage of editors like those at the CSM or at Boston Review who over the years have been prepared to take the heat from the highly organized (and well-funded) pro-"Israel" discourse-suppression industry.