In a Newsweek interview, Jeremy Ben-Ami of J Street, the new Israel lobby, takes a position that Jeffrey Goldberg says is antisemitic: that 9/11 flowed in part from our policies in supporting Israel's occupation of the West Bank.
Q. You'll have to face, I imagine, Israelis who will say, 'wait a
second, you don't live here, you don't send your children to the
military here, you don't pay taxes. What right do you have to dictate
or even to influence the debate?'
A. I think that's extremely
fair [to argue]. But I think as long as the situation in Israel and
Palestine is directly related to recruitment by extremist forces, by Al
Qaeda, of the terrorists who then come here, I think it is an issue
that has ramifications here.
I agree a hunnert percent with Ben-Ami. What interests me is the jockeying for position against AIPAC. Ben-Ami mildly bashes Walt and Mearsheimer in this interview–he has to cover his right flank, of course. While Goldberg, taking a position to the right of Ben-Ami and to the left of AIPAC, bashes Walt and Mearsheimer as antisemites because they say just what Ben-Ami says. Wow. One of these guys is falling between two stools.
Thanks to Dan Sisken of Mideast Brief for the tip.
