Everyone is talking about Roger Cohen's interchange with Marty Peretz that Peretz, being a good journalist, has posted. The exchange includes Cohen's affectionate reminder to Peretz that Peretz once explored hiring Cohen to be his editor, and also Cohen's reflections on life in Iran, which I found moving:
I was in Iran in the immediate
aftermath of the Gaza mini-war. Synagogues were being desecrated from
the Paris suburbs to Caracas. The Iranian regime was whipping up
whatever hysteria it could — not much — with posters showing
slaughtered Palestinian children. Everyone knows where the Jewish
quarters are in Tehran and Esfahan. Everyone knows where the synagogues
are, and there are a couple of dozen of them. Was there a stone thrown?
Graffiti? A single insult? Violence of any kind? Not that I heard, and
I asked and looked. I will continue to reflect on the nature of Iranian
society and the current state of Israel, but I would ask you to
consider whether you are comfortable that you know enough of Iran to
pass unequivocal judgment, and whether you might not be distracted by
one or two men's intermittent use of vile, hateful language from the
more nuanced realities of a deep civilization.
Peretz responds with Holocaust demon-rum and false modesty:
"Distracted"
indeed. "One or two men's…"; "intermittent use…"; Israel may not be
precious for Roger Cohen. The Jewish people, of which he is a high
priest and of which I am only an ordinary Israelite, may not be
precious to him either. So let me say: No, I am not distracted. I am
obsessed. And wish others had been obsessed 75 years ago.
So Peretz refuses to surrender his contempt for all non-Israeli civilization in the Middle East–even when a smart friend urges him to do so. Very non-worldly. A friend who's a better reader than I am writes:
Cohen has a certain nostalgia for good relations with
Peretz and the worldly-wise neoliberalism he once seemed to represent. Cohen is making too much hang
on his enlightened reading of the mood of the Iranian people. Too little on a
realistic appraisal, from such as ElBaradei, of the actual dangers posed by
Iran to the U.S. and Israel (and the good of maintaining a distinction between
the U.S. and Israel). This should go with a realistic view of the deliberate
campaign to spread the panic mood of Israel to American Jews and thence to
Americans generally.
