The "Boston Study Group on Middle East Peace" has issued a group of papers calling for the two-state solution in a hurry. One of the authors is blogger/professor Steve Walt. I’ll be reading them later as I struggle with my partition over partition. But there is already this attack on the document from Roger Scher, an economist writing at the Foreign Policy Association site:
The major problem I had with this document was the inclusion among the authors of Stephen Walt, whose bias against Israel and the US-Israel alliance is well-known. His inclusion undermines the seriousness of the document.
What’s the problem with Walt? Well, the "vehemence" of his argument against the Israel lobby revealed his "clear distaste for Israel." I’ve never detected Walt’s "clear distaste for Israel"– he’s a cool realist, who neither loves states nor dislikes them, and he has stated his admiration for Israel’s achievements. But wait, since when is "distaste" for some foreign country a bar to speaking in the United States? A lot of people showed distaste for France recently, are they barred from commentary? And some people have "distaste" for Jim Crow conditions on the West Bank and dropping white phosphorus on children.
This is a crazy litmus test. Of course it is what we have come to expect from the foreign policy establishment. And who is Scher? Well he says that dismantling settlements amounts to “ethnic cleansing," that granting Israel sovereignty over all of Jerusalem would "be fair," and that "Israel’s enemies are finding effective non-conventional means to seek Israel’s destruction, including… calls for one-person-one-vote."
Imagine that: calling for one-person-one-vote in a segregated land is revolutionary and anti-American.
This brings up a problem common to American Zionists. They don’t really care about the people living in Israel but they worship the state of Israel the way the ancients worshiped Ba’al.
It’s unfortunate that there are way too many Israel apologists in the world, so that the idiocies they spout are usually ignored and not held up for critical examination.
Zionists have too much money and seem to waste much of it by establishing more and more superfluous think tanks with pretentious names in order to pay unemployable pundits to churn out the same bullshit as every other similar establishment. All tax-exempt activities, of course.
If “think” tanks were taxed by the word, there would be a vast improvement in the level of discourse of this issue.
You know how Esquire magazine has its annual “Dubious Achievements” awards? Well, there should be a monthly Mondoweiss 50 table, that looks back on the previous month and ranks the previous four weeks’ worth of Zionist whackos who’s activity has been either extremist (Martin Kramer), intellectually dishonest (Abe Foxman), non-sensical Israel-first crap (this guy Scher), hasbara (Michael Oren) or otherwise anti-American (anyone who vociferously seeks to delink Israel’s conduct in I/P from the safety of American troops in the M/E).
I nominate Kramer for the Top of the Charts this month, but Alan Dershowitz could come in at any time and say torture of Palestinians is acceptable under his view of the new rules of asymetrical warfare. The other 49 runners-up would still be feted for their dubious achievements.
Then I would nominate this piece on the Frum Forum lamenting how unfair it is that the world will not let Israel pursue the “final victory” that is rightfully theirs because the world is either biased against them or entirely too pacifist. link to frumforum.com
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