Today The Times publishes a slightly-negative review of Dennis Ross and David Makovsky's new book on the unending peace process in which reviewer Howard French employs an indirect style that leaves the impression that he wanted to denounce the authors but was afraid to come out and say so.
[The book's] greatest intellectual energy, however, is expended attacking the
so-called realists, who believe, the authors say, that the United
States has been “too close to Israel,” and for whom, in what sounds
like another overreach, “it is largely inconceivable that Israel could
have a case or that the Arabs and Palestinians might not be living up to their side of the bargain.”
The
authors go on to denounce “the realist concept of external blueprints,
of pressuring Israelis while offering inducements to the Palestinians,”
as “strangely divorced from reality.”
The authors rely excessively for foils on John J. Mearsheimer, a political scientist at the University of Chicago,
and Stephen M. Walt, a political scientist at Harvard, who wrote “The
Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy” (2007) and who are cited
frequently. But with the warnings in “Myths, Illusions, and Peace”
about pressuring Israel, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the
Obama administration’s initial moves in the Middle East would also fall
under the authors’ realist banner.
For many readers another issue
that will arise is one of balance. Mr. Ross has led a distinguished
career that is all the more remarkable for his staying power in
Washington during both Democratic and Republican administrations — as a
high-level Middle Eastern troubleshooter, envoy and policymaker. (He
was recently transferred to the National Security Council.) At virtually no point in this book, however, are Israeli actions depicted as problematic or troublesome.
Translation: He's joined at the hip to the Israel lobby. This explains the staying power.
The
closest the authors come to this is a passage describing mounting
Palestinian disbelief in the peace process, in which they write, “They
saw Israeli obligations under Oslo flouted — prisoners not released,
withdrawals not taking place as scheduled, and the status of the
territory constantly being changed to Israeli advantage, in effect
prejudging the negotiations and their purpose.”
Elsewhere,
speaking of an increase in the Israeli settler population on the West
Bank from about 5,000 around the time of the Camp David accords in 1977
to over 300,000 now, the authors employ a counterfactual, saying
“things could have been different if the Arabs had chosen a more
pragmatic course.”
Counterfactuals and relying on foils and the expense of intellectual energy and for many readers and falling under banners… Can you speak English? Or has the lobby got your tongue?
