A central question for American Jews in the media when considering the Middle East is: How much authority do they grant Israeli Jewish voices? Do they elevate Israeli Jewish opinion about Israel/Palestine over, say,
progressive American Jewish opinion or American Arab opinion, or
American non-Jewish opinion? Does the tail wag the dog in terms of ideas? I think the answer is Yes. When the Washington Post attacks the settlements, it turns to an Israeli. Gershom Gorenberg is so important to the American media now that he is writing for the Weekly Standard, the New York Review of Books, and American Prospect. (They're not calling Rashid Khalidi.) This surely reflects the fact that in Jewish life (and by extension the Establishment media, which draw heavily from my culture), Israel is said to be aliyah, or high, and the Diaspora low.
This reliance becomes more of an issue as the distance between the two Jewish communites grows: American Jews voted 4 to 1 for a minority president. While Israel has
turned to the right, and Israelis regularly bash Obama.
Take the case of Ari Shavit. Shavit has written for the New Yorker. Editor David Remnick took Shavit very seriously in recent years, citing his history on the left. And the other day in the Times, Shavit stood up for Netanyahu as a visionary of the two-state-solution and challenged Obama to respond with vision, too.
Then yesterday, in Haaretz, (i.e., not for the Times audience) Shavit patronized Obama with an unfortunately-laden phrase, the "blackberry president," and again attacked him for failure of vision, this time with respect to the Iranian government. Shavit went on to caricature me– Obama's progressive base–with a lot of sloganeering:
Due to a profound sense of guilt for the white man's sins, the politically correct left is incapable of properly confronting the sins of a non-white person. The result is patently immoral: It is the very people who consider themselves obligated to the third world who are turning their backs on the victims of oppression there. It is the champions of human rights who are abandoning the Middle East's residents to the mercies of despots.
Magnes Zionist, whom I would follow into the sea, most days anyway, called this a "screed" and declined to link it, saying that Shavit lacks the cultural awareness even to understand Obama. Magnes passes along this comment at Haaretz on Shavit's piece:
Ari, you simply do not have the tools, the cultural background to explain Obama.
This is a revolutionary leader, proposing reforms in so many fields of American life that you simply do not understand, because you do not understand America. [Magnes talking again:] That about sums up my feeling about Shavit, and the many other anti-Obama Israelis. According to a recent poll, only 6% of Jewish Israelis think that Obama is pro-Israel.
Today I got an email from Ilene Cohen underlining the same issue about the retrograde Israeli conversation:
Unfortunately, this Obama hate fest is not limited to raging types like Shavit; Aluf Benn, in much more respectable language, does
it all the time. And there's more throughout the media.
Why does this matter? It matters, I think, because there are (as
yet) no voices coming from within the consensus–whether
"intellectuals," journalists, folks in the grassroots, politicians–who
are regrouping intellectually to make sense of the changing reality
(that no one outside of Israel, other than Jewish Republicans and
neocons, is buying the colonial occupation anymore–just today the G8
told Israel to freeze settlements). To make sense of it and to begin to
tell Israelis the truth and to prepare them for what inevitably lies
ahead–to tell them that it was fun while it lasted but that expending
Israel's future on trying to continue the occupation is a dead end.
It is worrisome indeed that the consensus in Israel remains
silent. It is worrisome indeed that Netanyahu's speech was so well
received (Netanyahu's finest moment), worrisome for the following
reasons: (1) for now, at least, they believe he has "won over" or
tricked Obama (they do know that US support is all they have) and (2)
he blamed the Arabs. One must always blame the Arabs. That, I'm afraid,
is the Israeli Weltanschauung as of today. No change. And no signs of
any epiphany coming soon.
It's time for the Diaspora Jews to take their power. To say that their social/political/historical experience is as valid as any Israeli's, more valid in a liberal age. And far more important in determining American policy.
