This mock-realist piece by David Samuels on Slate arguing for an Israeli strike on Iran is outlandish in a number of ways.
Most outlandish: Samuels's assessment that it is a "fiction" that there would be a "mass public outcry" in the Muslim world against an Israeli strike. That prediction would seem to carry the same authority about the Muslim world as Ken Pollack had about the Arab one when he predicted that it would not care about a U.S. invasion of Iraq. Both writers fail to address Israel's human-rights violations
against the Palestinians. These echo around the Muslim world. The
occupation is mentioned by neither of them. The desperate conditions under which
Palestinians must try to live their lives--unmentioned. Given these oversights, Samuels is a far less reliable narrator about Muslim attitudes than, say, Rashid Khalidi, who said last week that an Israeli strike on Iran could bring the Muslim brotherhood to power in Egypt.
The West Bank is twice mentioned by Samuels for the "demographic threat" it presents to the Jewish state. That is to say, the eventuality of a Palestinian majority is the big problem with Israel's holding it. Not the apartheid conditions, the demographic threat.
Later, demographic benefits. No quotation marks. Imagine someone accepting Boer or French or Japanese nationalist arguments with the same credulity.
Credulity is the issue here--point of view. Gaza is cited by Samuels only for its "stomach-turning" imagery. The
imagery, mind you. Not the slaughter, which has
rightfully isolated Israel in world opinion. Then Samuels says that the "price" of a strike on Iran would be a Palestinian state.
The price?
I thought a Palestinian state was a desideratum.
It is a desideratum for Obama, for the U.N., for the Palestinians themselves. It is a desideratum for anyone who favors democratic self-determination for a people who were promised a state 60 years ago and who live today as "helots," per Khalidi.
Point of view... David Samuels grew up in an Orthodox Jewish household, the Times says, and he once visited this blog to talk with some real authority about Jewish belief; his refusal ever to look at Israel's human-rights abuses make me suspicious. It's like if I was reading someone from a Christian background telling me why the alternative procedures to stem-cell research are far more sensible on scientific grounds than stem-cell research. I wouldn't trust his argument. And I don't trust Samuels either, I wonder if there is some religious belief at work here.
That's why I said mock-realist at the start. Throughout the piece, Samuels affects a cold, realist tone about the American interest. He says that Israel is our client-state in the Middle East, important to us only because it is powerful. Remember: it served us so well in both Iraq wars we waged. Now it serves the Sunni Arab states as their army against the Shi'as, Samuels says.
So you see, religion means a lot to him when it comes to political strains in the Arab world. But he dismisses the Israel lobby explanation of American support for Israel as a "dim-witted" theory of Jewish power. I say Samuels's realism is an affect because this piece feels like the same old Israel-lobby-in-journalism: putting Israel forward as a strategic American interest and leaving out any consideration of the power of religion in our public life.
Weiss: '[Samuels] dismisses the Israel lobby explanation of American support for Israel as a "dim-witted" theory of Jewish power.'
Of course he does; he's part of the Israel lobby and a Jewish Zionist with an agenda. How many times do deviant subversives like these have to be outed before they finally slither back under the rocks from whence they came? I guess the left-liberal MSM is hell-bent on ramming deviant subversives down the throat of Western civilization until it gags to death.
It might not upset some sunnis, I'm very ahsamed to say.
However, it would certainly upset me. As long as Israel has nuclear weapons, then whey can't others have nuclear techonology for civilian purposes, and even for the bomb itself?
Clean out your house before telling others.
If anything can happen anytime then it's very likely that perhaps the Israelis will elect a madman who will destroy themselves and others in the quest to win it all.
This is a widespread meme, broadly accepted here. Colonel (ret) Pat Lang thinks otherwise. An expert in ME arab culture, he was right on the effectiveness of the "surge" or rather the Awakening in Iraq back in early 2006 when most were giving it short shrift. I think I'll believe Lang before Samuel and the standard AIPAC line on Arab response to an attack on Iran.
they will greet the bombing with open arms and flowers.. it was supposed to work something like that in iraq… these folks never cease to amaze for the degree of bullshit they are willing to peddle for an ugly agenda…
I think it very much would upset Sunnis, in the same way that the excessive attack (rather than a slightly disproportionate one) on Gaza, upset them.
It upset their sense of morality, and it upset their political posturing.
With Hamas as extra-legal irritant, they could isolated Hamas. With Hamas as righteous victim, they couldn't. Similarly for Iran.
MANY definitely fear Iran's objectives in the Islamic world.
People like Samuels and Pollack must be tried and get a lifelong vacation at a prison for lying the American people into wars against Israels enemies.
It's called treason, and Samuels and Pollack should be glad that many of us don't like the hangings they did many years ago.
Either dad, or they're really really dumb. But then, why are they getting so much airtime if they can't count to 11?
It’s quite simple: don’t read Slate (and don’t subscribe to Harper’s where Samuel is a contributing editor.)
If you find Goldberg’s or Peretz’s views offensive don’t subscribe to the Atlantic Monthly or the New Republic.
Not pleased by what Remnick has done to the New Yorker? Again, don’t subscribe.
New York Times? Ditto.
Proprietors like Zuckerman or the Asper family (Canwest), their editors and journalists are entitled to their views but without a viable business model they will no longer have a platform to proselytize from. Sites like this and other media outlets are much more deserving of financial support.
BDS: an effective tactic to resist colonial occupation in Palestine and cultural occupation at home.
Similarly, Iranian strike on Israel would not upset Jewish world.
If a non-westernized state bombed the USA in the ultimate form of righteous blowback, there would be a few Americans who'd applaud public, and more who'd applaud in their heart –both so long as they didn't get hit. But would any reader here say, in such a scenario, that most Americans
would not react with hatred (mixed with fear) against that bombing state?
And the same model regarding occupation seems applicable on a more simmering table.
@Otto:
LOL :-) Good point.
@shoot and cry:
"It’s quite simple: don’t read Slate (and don’t subscribe to Harper’s where Samuel is a contributing editor.)"
Yes, and tell them why you refuse to read/support them.
This is why Witty gets so much flak:
"MANY definitely fear Iran's objectives in the Islamic world."
Notice how fucking vague he is. Who comprises this "MANY"?
What are Iran's 'objectives'? Are they unique? For example, are they better or worse or equal than the US and Israel's objectives?
You're such a fraud Witty.
It's not about Iran being a nuclear threat. It's about Iran being a challenge to American and Israeli hegemony in that region.
Witty and his scumbag constituency want us to believe that Iran wants to kill all 'the Jews' and blah blah blah.
It's Israel and the US that are disrupting and destabilizing the region.
Of course Arabs and Muslims would care.
Just as the West would care if they were attacked. Just as Jews would and DO care when Israel is attacked.
Fucking phonies like Witty will of course downplay and whitewash the dissent. That's typical.
Just like his regular dishonest rhetoric.
Dear Sir,
With some regret I have decided not to renew my longstanding subscription to the magazine due to its failure, for whatever reasons, to broadly address the thorny issue of the Israel lobby in the U.S.
Telling, I felt, was the fact that whilst Harper’s was "brave" enough to run ads for “The Israel Lobby” by Walt and Mearsheimer, the book was not reviewed in your pages.
On other issues Harper’s is invaluable because of its willingness to challenge the orthodoxy. On this particular topic, the failure to offer more than the occasional bleating by Bernard Avishai or Ken Silverstein (online only) renders the magazine as irrelevant as most other media sources.
You do your readers and the country a disservice by ducking the debate. It is a pity.
Kind regards,
I read through Samuels' article and thought, "This is nothing more than wishful thinking on this guy's part."
Phil, there's no need for you to 'apologize' for your use of the term "mock-realist". Could you imagine Stephen Walt writing this piece? Mock-realist is spot-on.