My New York Review of Books arrived in my mailbox yesterday, and it has one piece on Gaza by Roger Cohen that's very good but not great. I wrote about it a few days ago; it seems to me to refuse the black revelation of Gaza that Israel has destroyed the idea of the Jewish state in the eyes of the world. Fine; Cohen does not believe that. But it is amazing how many people on the left now hold that view, and disturbing that the Review cannot represent them. I believe this reflects the fact that the New York Review, though left, is enmeshed in generational/Jewish/Zionist and even neoconservative narratives about Israel. The American Conservative understands the ghastly importance of this moment and runs pieces by John Mearsheimer, Daniel Levy, Avi Shlaim, and Glenn Greenwald. Levy and Greenwald are the next generation. The London Review of Books runs a battery, too, which includes the next generation, David Bromwich, as well as non-Zionist Jacqueline Rose, realist Mearsheimer, Arab Rashid Khalidi, and the wonderful Yonatan Mendel of Israel. Anti-Zionist Ilan Pappe. The American Conservative and LRB are trying to help their readers think by offering far more pessimistic responses to the slaughter. My feeling about the NYRB is that it is trying to comfort its readers and not challenge them particularly. Maybe I said this before, but the NYRB was born of an industrial freak: the newspaper strike of 1963. And I think it is losing its authority because of the industrial effect of the internet/Gaza. This discussion is simply too important, and the debate too diverse, to limit your contribution on Gaza to the writing of a Jew who is sorrowful about Israel and not include other voices. Cohen himself has said that Obama's Middle East team should not be all Jewish. And Joe Klein has echoed that. Let 100 flowers bloom. Some of them will be angry Arab flowers. Some will be anti-Zionist Jews. Let them bloom. –Phil Weiss
