I’m often impatient with Shmuel Rosner’s blog on Haaretz because he is so unreconstructed in his support for Israel, and his support for American pols who support Israel, but Rosner is, in the end, a small price to pay for Haaretz’s tremendous influence and bravery.
And this week, in a piece on Ron Paul, Rosner offers very fair comment on Ron Paul’s criticism of the Israel lobby:
Is this anti-Semitic? Is it biased?
I think
it is the obvious price that Israel supporters are paying for being –
well – influential. No, AIPAC is not responsible for the war in Iraq.
But being a strong lobby comes with a price: the price of being singled
out by a libertarian candidate for the Presidency….So why does it seem as if he deals with Israel more
than with many other countries? The reason is simple: Israel’s profile
in America is high, and the issues of concern to Israel are also those
troubling America. One can plausibly suspect that Paul is somewhat more
irritated with Israel than with most other countries. But for a
candidate opposing foreign aid and any American involvement in the
Middle East, this is not an unreasonable annoyance.
Rosner should be congratulated for the grownup way he’s talking about this stuff. Would that the American media would take it on so directly…
