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Marty Peretz’s message to Chris Hughes: Keep ‘The New Republic’ on Israel’s side

Martin Peretz
Martin Peretz

Great news for all those who want to see an American debate about Zionism. Martin Peretz has jumped into the discussion over his former employee John Judis’s book on Truman and the creation of Israel, saying Judis expresses “virulent anti-Zionist opinions.”

Peretz is trying to hold the line in a letter to the New York Times. Responding to a piece on divisions over Israel inside The New Republic, which he formerly owned, Peretz appeals to American liberals, and implicitly to the magazine’s new owner, Chris Hughes, to keep supporting the Jewish state.

Excerpts:

From the beginning The New Republic clearly labeled itself on its cover “a journal of opinion.” The editors of the publication during my 35-year tenure as owner — from Michael Kinsley to Frank Foer — were very comfortable with its support for the Jewish state. On occasion, in fact, I had to keep up with the enthusiasm of Mr. Foer’s Zionist opinions, which do not remotely jibe with John Judis’s virulent anti-Zionist opinions in his book. …

The American people’s support for the Jewish state has never been stronger. For Israel’s enemies, and in Mr. Judis’s book, “Genesis: Truman, American Jews and the Origins of the Arab/Israeli Conflict,” this can only be explained as a subterfuge, a big lobby’s lie. In fact, an ancestral homeland for the Jewish people has been sympathetically regarded, first as a possibility and later as a reality, by many generations of Americans.

Why is a liberal magazine like The New Republic not to be permitted to consistently make the case that the notion of Israeli statehood needs to be supported, especially in view of the current violence among Israel’s neighbors?

A great question. And I think the answer is that a liberal magazine cannot maintain such an orthodoxy any more and claim that it’s liberal. John Judis has busted loose. Eric Alterman sticks out like a red thumb at the Nation.

The New Republic’s divisions stand for the wider discourse. So let’s have an open conversation. Was Mike Kinsley (the most reasonable man in the universe, who tried to teach me how to think) in fact “comfortable” with the magazine’s relentless support for Israel? I have to believe it pinched now and then: supporting that “ancestral homeland” claim when meanwhile the magazine was running pieces against Christian biblical claims in US politics. And what about Andrew Sullivan? He certainly fell off the turnip truck.

And if Judis was an anti-Zionist, who else was in the closet there? I know that Judis kept his head down when Peretz was walking the halls. When Judis mentioned Zionist “dual loyalty,” Peretz kept the piece out of the New Republic archive. (When I asked Judis about it at the time, he blamed it on a computer glitch.)

So let us be thankful to Peretz for again planting the flag of Zionism inside liberal life, and daring liberals to support biblical religious claims.

PS. The Times identifies Peretz in this fashion: The writer is working on a book titled “The Book of Grudges and Other Loves: Defending Zion.” This was always Eric Alterman’s point about Peretz’s vociferations, he never wrote a book. Can’t wait for Defending Zion.

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“Eric Alterman sticks out like a red thumb at the Nation.”

The Nation is not a liberal magazine, and has not been for a long time. It is considerably to the left of where most American liberals are.

Yes, that was on my mind vaguely, all of the time. Thanks for linking up to the story, Phil.

Marty Peretz responds to perceived attacks upon Israel with the passion, zeal, and righteousness of a man whose God has been publically questioned- and perhaps that is Peretz’s ultimate problem.

It’s a sign of the times when the racist Likudnik former editor of the TNR pleads with Chris Hughes – in public, no less – to maintain the Zionist lockdown inside the magazine. Why public? Does he want to put pressure on him? There are no Abe Rosenthal’s and Bill Safire’s to bail him out now. The neocons are discredited even within the GOP. Rich Lowrie, of the National Review, is unlikely to embrace anti-Zionism any time soon, but he is also much more tolerant of realists and even has a whiff of disdain towards the neocons.

In short, the Zionist/Neocon axis is weaker than ever. The mainstream media, incredibly increasingly the centrist publications, are becomming very fractured on this.

I mean, TNR, folks, TNR. This is a magazine which has run articles slamming Howard Zinn and the ASA(way back in 2003, before it was popular with the Zionists) for being “anti-American”.

TNR is occupying a pretty strong centrist/Clintonite position among the left-liberal magazine/newspaper spectrum in America.

It won’t be long before the entire left is divided, not just the grassroots.
The Atlantic’s think tank hosted Max Blumenthal late last year. Now this, TNR of all places. Anti-Zionism is reaching deep within the mainstream now.

Just wait until Kerry officially fails, which he will.

This blurb on the dustjacket should increase sales: “John Judis’s virulent anti-Zionist opinions in his book.”