More than five years ago, Adam Shatz, then the Nation magazine’s literary editor, wrote an important piece about the left’s response to 9/11. One of Shatz’s targets was Dissent magazine liberals who were pushing for war in Iraq. For them, Shatz wrote, "America’s struggle against Al Qaeda and Israel’s war
with Palestinian suicide bombers are one and the same." Then citing one of those liberals, he said:
The implication of [Paul] Berman’s argument is that no change in
Middle East policy could stem the tide of Arab anger, directed as it is
not against specific American or Israeli policies but against "our" way
of life. Though rarely cited explicitly, Israel shapes and even defines
the foreign policy views of a small but influential group of American
liberals. It’s one reason Berman and like-minded social democrats at the
journal Dissent may support a war against Iraq. Saddam Hussein
has not attacked us, but, as Ann Snitow, a member of the Dissent
editorial board, reminded me, "Who is ‘us’? Is it New York or Tel Aviv?
The ‘us’ slides around."
The Forward picked up Shatz’s comments in fall 2002–before our country so disastrously invaded Iraq–and Mitchell Cohen, Dissent’s co-editor, called Shatz’s assertion “a type of insinuation that reeks of the worst of the left.” But the Forward reminded Cohen that "many" Dissent writers are staunch supporters of Israel. Cohen responded: “If you look down the list of the editorial board you’ll see a lot
of Jewish names, but none of them came to Dissent with a Jewish
agenda."
Now Cohen, who supported the Iraq war, has gone further, saying that anti-Zionism is antisemitism:
A determined offensive is underway. Its target is in the Middle East,
and it is an old target: the legitimacy of Israel….The offensive comes from within parts of the liberal and left
intelligentsia in the United States and Europe.
When is criticism of Israel anti-semitic? Cohen suggests a smell test that includes such criteria as "If you judge a Jewish state by standards that you apply to no one else…" And who are these antisemites? Cohen mentions only two intellectuals by name: Adam Shatz, now at LRB, and Tony Judt. Both Jews, by the way. So Cohen is following in the footsteps of the AJC, which smeared progressive Jews who criticize Israel as anti-semites.
This is reckless and sad. Sad because Shatz was initiating an important discussion five years ago that is still not happening, in great measure because of slurs like Cohen’s. What Shatz said was plainly true. Paul Berman repeatedly cited Saddam’s attacks on Israel as a reason for us to go to war. He conflated American and Israeli interests. The same error was made by war-supporter Thomas Friedman. Other liberal hawks, such as Kenneth Pollack, insisted that the Israeli occupation had nothing to do with our policy in Iraq, and that the Arab street would welcome our presence in Baghdad. Delusion.
One of my themes on this site is that Jewishness played a role in the prowar movement (just as Islam plays a role in jihadist radicalism). Jewish neocons were aggressive about using American power to preserve Israel’s security, while liberal Jewish hawks asserted over and over that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East, and completely neglected the apartheid road system that is talked about across the Arab world. Until liberal Jews come to terms with this element of the war support, Jewish intellectual life will remain in denial/crisis, the left will be riven by unspoken suspicions on this score and will remain ineffective, the neocons will remain unchallenged intellectually, and our foreign policy will remain broken.
This is the conversation Shatz was initiating, notably with the
beautiful Snitow quote to the effect that for liberal Jews, the definition of national interest and
identity "slides around" between the U.S. and Israel. This is a crucial conversation, and more than 5 years later, even in the wake of the greatest foreign policy disaster since Vietnam, it is still not happening! American Jews who care about Iraq owe it to themselves and the country to clarify these identity issues, and their affinities. As it is, Cohen’s shrill piece is a continuation of his defensive claim to the Forward that Jewishness played no role in
Dissent contributors’ views of the war. (The
great thing about his co-editor, Michael Walzer, is that Walzer openly
acknowledges his Jewishness in addressing such matters–and offers a Jewish identity I find problematic).
Two other things about Cohen’s piece. In dismissing Judt’s view that Zionism is anachronistic and must yield to ideas of a binational state in Palestine, Cohen writes with typical bombast: "I suppose India
can save itself from being an unfortunate anachronism by a
reintegration with Pakistan…" The key error in this statement is that partition actually worked 60 years ago in India: Pakistan became a state. The Palestinians are stateless; the Israelis are expansionist. If the Palestinians had been given a state when real opportunity arose, there wouldn’t now be a high concrete wall on their land, the hilltops wouldn’t be colonized by religious settlers, and Muslims would have freedom to visit their holy sites.
Of course Cohen writes that he opposes the "settlements." He says this in passing as an example of legitimate criticism of Israel. The settlements. The issue here is how monstrous the Israeli policies in the West Bank are to you. One line about the settlements is like an American of 40 years ago saying, Of course I am opposed to those whites-only lunch-counters and bathrooms. The issue then was: segregation and the South were corrupting American society. We couldn’t make any claim to real democracy in the eyes of the world so long as those conditions existed. This is Israel’s situation today, and the reason that progressive intellectuals are attacking Zionist ideas.
