Tracking the American liberal discourse’s failure on the flotilla raid, it is important to note that Brian Lehrer, the cerebral conscience of the New York public radio station, WNYC, today did an interview with Rabbi Jonathan Sacks of England on his new book about Jews and Israel. So a conservative Zionist was given a platform to defend Israel’s attack on the boat.
(How’d Lehrer have done with the killings of Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman, freedom riders who died in 1963?)
Lehrer brought up some good questions. He asked about the inhuman blockade, without quoting the many legal opinions that it is collective punishment. He halfway valorized criticisms of Israel that come from "anti-Zionists" and asked whether these were anti-Semitic.
Sacks said it was anti-Semitic when people attack The Jews for supporting Israel.
So they take credit for anti-Zionist Jews, as proving diversity, when neither Sacks nor Lehrer gives a platform to an anti-Zionist Jew. No, anti-Zionist Jews and non-Zionist Jews are excommunicated by the Jewish leadership. I challenge you, Brian, if you are bragging on that diversity, to honor it: and let your listeners hear from these people. Amy Goodman does so all the time. She puts on Naomi Klein and Norman Finkelstein. Al Jazeera put me on last week. BBC put me on last month. Russian TV put Norman on yesterday.
Lehrer read from a Tom Friedman op-ed today that criticized the Israeli attack mutedly. This is how Lehrer seems to express his own discomfort with the Israeli violence, Tom Friedman. When Israel is in a crisis stemming from a simple fact: the government does not represent half the people who are under its governance.
