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.
Link to the video
I had exactly the same reaction to the Matthews/Engel exchange. I thought Matthews' comments about the hard concern of LA Jews over Iran were ignorant. I looked at him and said to myself "This guy doesn't read. He coasts on what he and his wife hear in DC when they are out for dinner." It's like he walks away with the opinion of the last person he spoke to. Hls knowledge of Iran is substandard, "It's somewhere between a third and second-world country. It's definitely not first-world," he said. He probably never heard of Cyrus the Great, or the great Persian civilization with its universities over 1,000 years ago in what is now Konya, Turkey and northern Iran, the 13th C poet Rumi (the most popular poet worldwide in 2007), one of the most disciplined and cunning military forces in the world, its long literary, intellectual, and cultural traditions, and a first-world infrastructure, including a national airlines started in 1927 that TWA took a minority interest in in 1948 or 1949 when Iran Air was flying the most travelled routes in the world. So when this Hardball hick drools on afternoon teevee that Iran is some third to second-world but "definitely not first-world," the only thing he's reporting to America is his ignorance. And Gregory….well, Gregory has apparently got religion. He started studying Judaism seriously two months after Tim Russert died. Paid off. He got MTP.
http://blogs.jta.org/politics/article/2008/12/02/...
What happened in the 13 century or that Iran was flying the most traveled routes in 1948 doesn't change the fact that Iran, today, is not a first world country.
Regarding Mathews, i heard him say off handedly a couple of weeks ago that "of course, we (americans) are pro Israel" as if that were axiomatic. (Mathews usually avoid I/P). Also, Mathews was Carter's speech writer and when Carter's Apartheid book came out he managed to be off that night and had his substitute, david shuster, do the interview (which was quite testy). There was also some scuttlebutt several years ago that Mathews, like that other commentator of the Irish Catholic persuasion, Pat Buchanan, had at one point had made comments that AIPAC had found sub-optimal re IP. My take is that Mathews is terrified of the Israeli lobby and is essentially a coward.
My feeling is that Gregory's discovering Judaism is more about the importance of spirituality and an ethical code, than identity, as is MOST that consider Judaism important in their adult and later adult years. When I first saw Gregory on TV, I thought of him as Phil frankly. They are both handsome, looking younger than their years, intelligent, probing. I thought, "I wish that were Phil, it could have been him". (You know, so I could name-drop. I used to sail with him. We talked revolution at 15. We went to seders together. My aunt and his mother were best friends.) There is "not trusting" as in professional skepticism, and there is "not trusting" as in prejudicial bias.
Similarly, what happened 2-3 thousand years ago in the same area, doesn't change the fact that Israel, today, is the last standing colonial power, supported without condition by the last standing super power. WW3 is on the horizon.
My feeling is that Gregory, like Matthews, are wily PEPs; their main drive is career opportunism.
Remember Stalin's Jews. They were his henchman and executed. Then came their turn. You are SO naive.