Marty Peretz, running wild and free like a mighty horse in a Marlboro ad not stopping for commas:
But [Chas] Freeman's real offense (and the
president's if he were to appoint him) is that he has questioned the
loyalty and patriotism of not only Zionists and other friends of
Israel, the great swath of American Jews and their Christian
countrymen, who believed that the protection of Zion is at the core of
our religious and secular history, from the Pilgrim fathers through
Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy. And how has he offended this
tradition? By publishing and peddling the unabridged John Mearsheimer
and Stephen Walt book, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, with
panegyric and hysteria. If Freeman believes that this book is the truth
he can't be trusted by anyone, least of all Barack Obama. I can't
believe that Obama wants to appoint someone who is quintessentially an
insult to the patriotism of some many of his supporters, me included.
So wait: You're disloyal to America when you're not loyal to Israel?
I believe that Peretz has potted this idea from Michael Oren's weird/superficial completely-unpersuasive book on America's historical attachment to Zion. (If the argument is true, it means there is no need for an Israel lobby.)
Marty, seriously: This is precisely why I–and John Judis, implicitly, in a piece that you have apparently censored from your website–have questioned the intensity of your attachment to Israel's interests: it is a recipe for dual loyalty. And not just the recipe, the souffle!
