A friend writes:
Today’s New York Times Book Review contains three reviews in three pages (pp.
10-12) directly or indirectly about Israel. This odd concentration is not
explained by a national or religious holiday, a special issue or a designated
section. The shortest of the pieces, "Zionist in the White House," a review by
Jonathan Tepperman of a book by Allis and Ronald Radosh about Harry Truman in
1948, answers for the "readable prose" and "good anecdotal color" of the book
and its "general sense of fairmindedness (except perhaps toward the Arabs)." No
detail is offered to specify the reservation behind the parenthesis.
Stephen Pollard, the editor of The Jewish Chronicle, is the reviewer assigned
for a polemical book by the neoconservative journalist Bruce Bawer, entitled
Surrender: Appeasing Islam, Sacrificing Freedom. Bawer, an American expatriate
in Norway, judges that Europe is on the brink of cultural surrender to radical
Islam. If the process continues, Bawer argues and the Times reviewer agrees,
the cultural surrender will be followed by political collapse. "Bawer is
unquestionably correct, and that fact is quite simply terrifying."
A full page is given to the review of Israel is Real: An Obsessive Quest to
Understand the Jewish Nation and its History, by Rich Cohen. The reviewer, a
former Wall Street Journal correspondent, Tony Horwitz, is also featured on p.
4 with an "Up Front" box signed by the editors, which quotes Horwitz’s e-mail
in praise of Cohen’s book: "I admire Cohen for not only asking tough questions
but gleefully puncturing every Zionist piety. He’s sure to hear from his own
Uncle Mort, as well as Aipac and other enforcers of Jewish correctness on
Israel." These bold words scarcely correspond to the content of the review.
Horwitz quotes with jocular approval Cohen’s portrait of Menachem Begin, "the
hawkish but shlumpy prime minister elected in 1977: ‘He looked like my Grandma
Esther’s second husband, Izzy Greenspun, of Skokie, Ill., who stuttered and
repeated and got flustered and died while wiping a dish.’" And Horwitz admires
Cohen’s deftness at "humanizing a man like Ariel Sharon, ‘the fat old kosher
butcher, with blood on his apron and a sly grin on his face’ who is also a
beloved general, grief-stricken father and tragic old man." The second-to-last
paragraph touches briefly in passing the "plight" of the Palestinians (plight–
word dear to sympathizers in a rush), with some breezy raillery against the West
Bank settlers and "their spiritual forefather, the ‘perfectly named Rabbi
Abraham Kook.’" Horwitz reports that Cohen looks on Zionism as "fatally flawed
from the start"; but if that is a central premise of the book, it can hardly be
inferred from this account. The Times message is spelled out, rather, by the
subtitle of the review–"The history of Israel is full of nutritious morsels,
leavened with the absurd." There are problems, yes. But violence? From the
shlumpy Izzy Greenspun? Oppression? From the friendly neighborhood butcher?
Silly dismissals.
Read the books. Appreciate what you find insightful, conspicuously. Criticize without demonizing what you find overtly untrue or inconclusive.
Suggest alternative conclusions, political significance, and/or proposal.
Otherwise, you end up functioning in a “thought police” role.
Otherwise, you end up functioning in a “thought police” role.
Sort of like the role you’ve carved out for yourself here, Witty…
Phil is criticizing the reviews more than the books. The reviews show a dismissive attitude towards the Palestinians, particularly the Tepperman piece which talks about fairmindedness, except perhaps to the Arabs. That’s like a review of a book on the history of the settlement of America, which says it was fairminded, except perhaps to the Indians.
As for the “thought police” role, 90 percent of what you type around here is one-sided criticism of anything which seems too critical of Israel or its defenders. Notice I said 90 percent, because there is a small subset of your words which don’t fall into that category. But most of them do. If I’m charitable about it, I’d have to say you’re one of the most un-self-aware people I’ve ever seen in my life.
And above all, keep peddling hasbara BS under the mask of universal humanism–like the anti-American Richard Witty.
Keep it up Richard, by the comments, you have them running scared.
Bruce Bawer is not a reliable guide to religious issues. I met him at a party on the Upper Westside of Manhattan when he was working on or had just finished his earlier book “Stealing Jesus: How Fundamentalism Betrays Christianity.” (I believe that the party was in December 1997, but I am not sure.) While Bawer was talking about his book, I noticed that he used Fundamentalist and Evangelical interchangeably. I knew that was incorrect, but I was not clear on the relationship between the two. (I grew up Catholic.) I asked Bawer about that. He was unaware that the two terms were not synonymous. Although he was a nice guy on a personal level, why would I trust him if he could not get that issue right after working on a book about Christian Fundamentalism?