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‘The New Yorker’ Gives Good Weight to Israeli Dissident Burg

Praise is due The New Yorker this week for publishing a thorough, thoughtful piece of reporting called "The Apostate," about Avram Burg, the former speaker of the Knesset who has shocked Israel by coming out as an anti-Zionist. The piece, by editor David Remnick, is most remarkable as evidence of a shift in our discourse, for it does, and very fairly at that, what I have pushed our press to do:  give airtime to the dissident voices in Israeli society. Remnick has not only demonstrated great news judgment by leaping on a good story (I wrote about Burg a month back), but has opened a window on Israel’s spiritual crisis.  Says Burg:

“In the last years, Israeliness has confined itself for itself only and
lost interest almost for what happens in the world,” he went on. “For
me, Israel is shrinking into its own shell rather than struggling for a
better world. Who is responsible for identity? The ultraOrthodox. They
sit in the yeshivot”—the religious schools. “Who is responsible
for our fundamental relation to the soil? The settlers. The two tribes
responsible for the spiritual dimension and the territorial dimension
are anti-modern Israel.”

Indeed, the piece ends on this note, when Remnick details the huge brain drain to the U.S. that Israel is now experiencing.

Three criticisms. 1, Remnick is clearly uncomfortable with Burg. His piece quotes a lot of Israelis trashing Burg as quixotic, including the American Enterprise Institute’s secret scholar, neocon Dore Gold, but only one Israeli half-praising him. No Arabs. 2, Burg is (self-proclaimedly) in the prophetic Jewish tradition; it’s no surprise that so many pols dislike him. It would have been nice if Remnick had conducted more of his inquiry on the spiritual plane, for instance by interviewing young, disaffected Israelis. 3, The piece perpetuates a journalistic tradition of, Israelis can criticize Israel, we can’t.  But Americans have something to say here. Remnick cites (and slights) the Walt-Mearsheimer paper of 2006 (saying it is about AIPAC), and says that Burg’s statements are part of an international discussion, which Zionists have come to describe as the "delegitimization" of Israel. (Benny Morris closes his TNR piece with those fearful words.) In the frame of this piece, that important discussion is just "noises off."

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