Jeffrey Goldberg is very effective: he intimidates people. He is personable and funny and well-connected and vicious. The other day he called Walt and Mearsheimer neo-Lindberghian. A disgusting effort to make them out as anti-semites, when both these guys are actually trying to save Israel from itself, and one of these authors is married to a Jewish woman. Walt has called Goldberg on the character assassination and, at last (W&M have tended to avoid this) brought up the tribalist angle. It’s unavoidable. When Goldberg himself left this country, believing the Diaspora was dangerous for Jews, and went off to serve in the Israeli army in a prison full of Palestinians. When Elliott Abrams says that Jews must stand apart in any country they live in except Israel and he’s involved in Iraq war planning, and when an Iran policymaker in the Obama administration is a former chairman of the Jewish People Policy Institute (that works against assimilation), I’m glad other people are talking about tribalism. Walt:
the Likudnik wing of the Israel lobby isn’t really interested in truth or even a fair-minded discussion of the issues. They just smear their targets with made-up accusations, knowing that if you throw enough mud, some of it is bound to stick.
I suspect that what really ticks Goldberg off is this: My co-author and I (and a few others) have had the temerity to write critically about the political role of “pro-Israel” forces (both Jewish and non-Jewish) in America today. This is a topic that the goyim aren’t supposed to talk about openly. It’s fine for Goldberg to write at length about this topic, or for former Forward editor J. J. Goldberg, to devote an entire book (which is well worth reading) to it. But when a non-Jew writes about this issue, and suggests that these groups are advocating foolish and self-defeating policies, then that person must of course be an anti-Semite. If Jews express similar doubts, they must be labeled as “self-hating” and marginalized as well.
Please. I really do understand this sort of tribalism and up to a point, I’m sympathetic to it. Given Jewish history — and especially the dark legacy of genuine anti-Semitism — it is unsurprising that some people are quick to assume that any gentile who criticizes the present “special relationship” must have sinister motives, even when there’s no actual basis for the suspicion. But that sensitivity doesn’t make the elephant in the room disappear, and given that America’s Middle East policy affects all of us, the various factors that shape that policy ought to open to fair-minded discussion devoid of name-calling and character assassination.
