The latest negative review of Walt and Mearsheimer’s book was particularly baroque: Samuel G. Freedman in the Washington Post writing about the Christian concept of original sin and saying that W/M have that view of Israel (and nary a word about the separate road system in the Occupied Territories). I know my people don’t control the news media, but in reflecting on the many print reviews of The Israel Lobby (good and bad, but mostly bad), I’m struck by how many of them have been penned by Jews. Michael Lerner, David Remnick, Richard Cohen, Jeffrey Goldberg, Leslie Gelb, Samuel Freedman. Maybe I’m missing some gentile voices, but isn’t there some value in diversity here? Could someone have assigned the book to James Baker, Francis Fukuyama, Fritz Hollings or Jimmy Carter? You say, Well we know what Hollings and Carter would say. Maybe. But we knew what Freedman would say. Mearsheimer says he unloaded on their paper last year.
Besides, if Freedman and Gelb are right and America, i.e., non-Jews, actually love Israel because of shared interests and democratic values, not because of any lobby, shouldn’t the editors of America put reviewers to the test?
(Shmuel Rosner made a related point last year during the Carter book uproar. He noted that only Jews were resigning in protest from the Carter Center board.)
