Kabobfest (from whom I'm stealing most of my material tonight) says that David Gregory revealed himself as a "shameless Zionist" on "Meet the Press Sunday," cutting off Vice President Joe Biden in order to challenge the administration for putting all the pressure on Israel. Oh my. No balance.
On "Hardball" tonight, I was struck by Chris Matthews's unreconstructed attitudes about Israel, a subject about which he rarely reveals himself, notwithstanding his hatred of the neocons.
Commenting on Netanyahu's speech, he told Richard Engel and author Robin Wright that he thought that the Arab states, which "surround" Israel, have abandoned the "Zionist entity crap" and are going to accept its existence, so he's "optimistic" that a peace is around the corner–just like Shimon Peres.
Matthews is pointedly non-intelletual; but he failed to reflect that Netanyahu's speech was itself all about Zionism, invoking Theodor Herzl and the "Jewish people"'s right to a homeland in Israel a dozen times, without any reference to the Palestinian condition or connection to that land.
In the same segment, Richard Engel said that the Arab states are far more concerned about Iran than Israel. They are looking east, he said, because of the nuclear threat. A line you hear at AIPAC: that Israel/Palestine is back burner, and should be.
I don't know the Arab states. I've just been in Egypt, though, where according to polling reported on Arabist, 68 percent of Egyptians thought that Obama's speech was about Israel/Palestine, and only 7 percent thought it was about Iran. And as I've reported, people in the Cairo streets told me the speech was about their main concern, Israel/Palestine. If Egypt cared so much about Iran, don't you think Obama would have put it higher in his speech? And what about King Abdullah's recent statements, that unless something is done about Palestinian self-determination, there will be another war in the region within 18 months.
So: I don't trust Engel's view, and in my typical conspiratorial view, I'd note that Engel is Jewish, and so is David Gregory, and so were the next two guests on Matthews's show, my old friend David Corn and Michael Isikoff. No, identity politics aren't everything; and our (largely-Jewish-written) site is a proof of that, the end of identity politics. But there are, I maintain, tons of Jews in the media; and this is a big reason why reflexive support for Israel is still a central component of American media culture.
