An unusual moment on NPR tonight that I read hopefully, as a sign of perestroika.
Robert Siegel did his weekly roundup of politics with E.J. Dionne and David Brooks and Brooks said that Israel had exercised its "moral" duty to keep the blockade in force, and mentioned several Israelis he had spoken to this week (he must have family there, I thought), and then EJ Dionne said he agreed with Brooks completely.
Really a disgrace, it was. Siegel moved on to other stuff, but the idea that on NPR, left and right would shake hands on the siege of Gaza, on the collective punishment of 1.5 million people because they voted the wrong way– it shows how out of touch American discourse is with any enlightened opinion. Agreed, on a prison for 600,000 Arab youth– and U.S. Rep Brian Baird, a clinical psychologist, has said that the west must mount a Berlin airlift. Baird who is leaving Congress.
I understood that Washington will change last of all, that Brooks is a true believer, who goes "gooey-eyed" on his many visits to the Jewish state, but the lobby owns Dionne because he works at Brookings, and that is the waterfront in D.C.
And I was angry at Siegel too, for not expressing any demurral. Liberal worldly Siegel.
Well I think Siegel knows this. Because a half hour or so later he had on two Muslim writers to talk about Obama’s Cairo speech a year ago, Reza Aslan of the Daily Beast and Egyptian novelist Ahdaf Suweif. Both of them were disturbed that nothing had happened in a year. Both went off on Obama’s Israel/Palestine policy, Aslan said that Obama was behaving like George Bush, and Suweif said that the United States had to break the special relationship with Israel. Aslan seemed to echo her: "Unless President Obama is willing to break from his predecessors and deal with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in a pro-active way and make sure that there are absolutely consequences to both sides"–Obama would not have "the trust factor" in the Middle East to make a difference.
It was a wonderful thing that NPR had two Muslims on to trash Obama about Israel/Palestine. It was as if NPR recognizes how unbalanced its coverage is.
Though Suweif had said that "for some reason" Obama was unable to deliver on his Cairo promises. For some reason? NPR knows why, Siegel knows why. Rahm Emanuel just took a vacation in the occupied Golan Heights, and not a word about that either. No, it is the moral paralysis of Siegel’s first panel. But no one is allowed to talk about it.
