Happy birthday to the New York Review of Books, now 50 years old. Robert Silvers has a conversation with Mark Danner at New York Magazine about the publication. Of course, Israel is an inevitable topic. But Golda Meir and Isaiah Berlin? Old school.
On the Middle East, the Review has carved out a fairly distinctive role.
We’ve had some of the most informed and today realistic articles I know of from Rob Malley, the Middle East Director of the International Crisis Group, and Hussein Agha of St. Antony’s, Oxford, particularly in their very skeptical view of the Arab Spring. They called their essay “This Is Not a Revolution.”It has become increasingly hard to write about issues involving Israel with any subtlety.
You have to get used to the fact that any serious criticism of Israeli policy will be seen by some as heresy, a form of betrayal, and we’ve had a lot of such denunciation. What such critics don’t say about the Review is that much of what we’ve published has come from some of the most respected and brilliant Israeli writers—the late Amos Elon, Avishai Margalit, David Grossman, David Shulman, among them. What emerges from them is a sense that occupying land and people year after year can only lead to a sad and bad result.
I’ll not forget going to see Golda Meir—then prime minister—with Isaiah Berlin in 1969. Golda asked me, “What do you think of all this that you’ve seen?” And I said, “I come from a Zionist family, and I’ve seen, as I expected, remarkable accomplishments in Israel—in agriculture, in education, in technology, in helping people to start new lives. But I do keep asking myself about what happened to the Palestinians who lived here and the Palestinians who are now living under military occupation. And it’s very hard for me to reconcile the two.” And she said, “We’re not an occupying power, an aggressive power. It’s like Pakistan and the break with India. People thought they had to leave and form a different society, have their own country, defend themselves.” And I said, “Is that really the way you want Israel to be seen? As a kind of Pakistan?” She thought and said, “No, I want to say that we’re a moral people, as concerned about the Palestinian people as anybody else.” And then she said, “Isaiah, what do you think?”
She put him on the spot.
He said, “Military occupation. Seldom a good thing. Seldom works out. Shouldn’t go on and on.”
The pities of Silvers’s discussion are: a, he cites Israeli contributors to his magazine because he seems only concerned about criticism from the right, and declaring that he comes from a Zionist family, you can see why he thinks that way; b, his lightbulb moment with Golda Meir took place so long ago, more than 40 years, and what has changed? Nothing, it’s only gotten worse; and c, one thing that actually did change is that Silvers ran former Zionist Tony Judt’s groundbreaking piece, Israel: The Alternative, stating that a Jewish state is an anachronism and that the occupation is never going away and so Americans should begin to imagine an alternative. Yes: Americans, who live in a society that has struggled to honor minority rights are actually pushing him, from the left. Not Israelis like David Grossman and Avishai Margalit in the consciousness prison over there, supported by Zionist families here. Judt’s piece was ten years ago. Silvers doesn’t mention it.
If memory serves, the NYRB rejected M & W’s original article, the basis of their subsequent book–yes? To refresh your memory re Judt’s take on the Israel Lobby, and on said book, see here, circa 2006: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/19/opinion/19judt.html?ei=5088&en=309d2e3dc279ff48&ex=1303099200&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&pagewanted=print&_r=0
And, more recently, see this article on the mainstreaming of M & W’s POV: http://forward.com/articles/172014/walt-and-mearsheimer-are-ready-for-their-close-up/
Given this trajectory, what exactly is Silvers trying to do, hold back the tides? Fool me once, fool me twice….
It’s also a generational issue. He came of age with the 1967 war as a defining moment in his relationship to Israel. His generation were also much more comfortable with blunt ethnocentrism. These days, the older generation have to weasel the thinking in to the younger secular crowd.
It clashes with all else we’re brought up to believe. It was easier for his generation. Whenever someone said, but this isn’t very liberal, it was not hard to just say “the Holocaust” or point to very real anti-Semitism in the 1960s. Today? It’s a lot harder. Who believes that there could be a Holocaust breaking out soon? Well, 3000 Jews who immigrate to Israel from America annually. But that’s a very small number.
Incidentially, 2800 Israelis(who are distinct from Palestinians in the Canadian immigration stats) immigrate to Canada alone – a much smaller country population-wise, obvisously – each year. The vast majority of those are Jewish. I think that says a lot about the attractiveness of Israel in the Jewish world today.
It’s a fantasy, a pet project. The young, educated people who live there, leave.
The Silvers of today is Ehrenreich. And what he grew up with was seeing encroaching Apartheid. From day one.
For his generation, the defining moment was the 2009 war, not the 1967.
That’s the Israel they/we know.
Nearing the end of the interview, we come across:
Interviewer: “Although often you will scrawl a note in the margins saying, ‘It might be helpful here to have a word or a line about X.'”
Silver: “Yes! We do often in the galley.”
Yet Silver says not a word or a line about Tony Judt when he discussed NYRB’s coverage of the Middle East.
What Silver thought worthy to talk about in the interview was the NYRB’s “very skeptical view of the Arab Spring.” Nothing about Judt’s very skeptical view of Israel and of those who smeared Walt & Mearsheimer who so vastly courageously sowed the seed to bring The Israel Lobby to the attention of mass America.
what has changed? Nothing, it’s only gotten worse
well, yes, that changed. it’s gotten much worse.
“We’ve had some of the most informed and today realistic articles I know of from Rob Malley, the Middle East Director of the International Crisis Group, and Hussein Agha of St. Antony’s”
Malley and Agha are very poor. They could just as easily employ Hophmi for a fraction of the price.
We get fabulous articles about the brain. There was a magnificently thorough academic destruction of Ray Kurzweil’s computer brain fantasy by Colin McGinn recently but we get Kurzweilesque Zionist crap as default.
Very poor for the Review.
I wonder if any of the slender, serene, indulgent, flexible, tall, attractive, passionate well read , fit, (horny) , vivacious, life-loving 60 year old+ Manhattan females who keep the personals ads in business ever join the dots on Israel.