Tonight the Yivo Institute in New York is holding a discussion on Walt & Mearsheimer’s book, called "’The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy’, A Celebration." Wait, got that wrong– "A Critical Response." The critical responders are authors Jeffrey Goldberg and Daniel Goldhagen.
I’ve long pushed for a conversation within the Jewish community of the rightwing Jewish role in the Iraq war. Such a discussion will happen next week or ten years from now, but it will happen, because there has been a special Jewish component to the Iraq War owing to the influence of the Israel-centric neoconservatives and their fellow travelers. The fascinating question is: How long will the militant neocons gain political cover from liberal Jews because the liberals also care about Israel and worry that gentiles will blame American Jews for this war? When will liberal Jews separate themselves from the Greater-Israel-driven agenda of the neocons? (Who are opposed to Oslo, describe Israel as a gleaming democracy, and at best imagine a Palestinian "entity.")
The answer so far is that liberal Jewish intellectuals have evaded the issue, arguing that Bush and Cheney bear full responsibility for the war (Even wise Eric Alterman says as much on Huffpo lately; I gather the Nation review of Walt and Mearsheimer also said so). This is pitiable; intellectuals who generally believe in the power of ideas abandon their creed and argue that Ideas Meant Nothing. Intellectual movements mean nothing (from a people who helped propel Zionism and Communism and the civil rights movement). Presidential braintrusts mean nothing. The long snailtrail of neoconservative Israel-security-driven thinking (going back to Podhoretz and Kristol writing in the ’70s that they were abandoning the Democratic Party because a strong U.S. military was necessary for Israel)–means nothing.
Inside the progressive community, there are many Jewish exceptions to this line, Jews who have been sharply critical of the Israel lobby. Some have seen its workings in Iraq. Yivo could have invited as respondents M.J. Rosenberg, Joel Kovel, Michael Massing, Michael Lerner, Tony Judt, or Daniel Fleshler, all of whom opposed the Iraq war. John Judis of the New Republic has spoken out against Zionist demands of dual loyalty, as has Alterman. A shame none of these voices was included (although happily the panel is moderated by my old friend Nicholas Lemann, a true liberal).
I wonder what status has done to Yivo. Like so many other Jewish institutions, it’s come up in the world. Last year Niall Ferguson gave a disappointing lecture there on Jews & Money. My memory is that the event was marred by the presence on the stage of an investment banker who had nothing insightful, let alone honest, to add on the subject… Also last year, I reported that in reprinting Lucien Wolf’s expose of the
Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Yivo suppressed the fact that if Wolf was a
leading anti-Zionist. So Jewish learning is instrumentalized to a political purpose, defending Israel.
Marty Peretz is on the Yivo board. Last year Peretz said that Jimmy Carter would go down in history
as "a Jew-hater"–and Jeffrey Goldberg attacked Carter in the Washington
Post. Peretz’s New Republic has gone after Walt and Mearsheimer’s ideas again and again, lately by printing Goldberg’s review of the book suggesting the authors are antisemites who believe that world events are controlled by Jews.
Can American Jewish institutional life admit the horror of the Israeli occupation? Walt and Mearsheimer and Jimmy Carter were motivated to write their books by the awareness that Palestinian suffering has no call on the American discourse. They wanted to change that; they’ve halfway succeeded. Now everyone outside the U.S. mainstream says that the occupation has brutalized the Palestinians (and Israel too). The Europeans say it. Many Israelis say it. American Protestants are starting to speak out about it. Before long Condoleezza Rice will say it. In an amazing report that has gotten no coverage in the American newspapers (I learned about it in Jerome Slater’s academic paper) the U.N. says that by cordoning Jerusalem, Israel has made a "mockery of religious freedom." I saw as much for myself. What kind of democracy is that? When will Yivo let these anguished voices in?
P.S. Imagine a Jewish organization holding a conference on Vietnam during the Vietnam War– imagine the criticism of the WASP establishment that gave us that disaster. Goldberg was the New Yorker reporter who in the runup to the Iraq war carried the water for Administration claims that Iraq was developing weapons of mass destruction and had connections to Al Qaeda. During his book tour for a memoir about being an IDF soldier, Prisoners, I heard that Goldberg declined to answer questions about this reporting as off-subject. Maybe he will do so during this discussion.
