This is a sad piece. JJ Goldberg, author of Jewish Power, (pictured), used to be halfway honest about the Israel lobby and the need for more open debate of religion and politics when it comes to American Jews. But in the Forward he publishes an attack on Roger Cohen of the New York Times, just when liberal Jews really ought to be rallying to Cohen as an intellectual leader of the debate. Goldberg seeks to shame Cohen for talking about the Israel lobby and Dennis Ross, the former director of the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute who is so beloved by the lobby that he floats without danger from Republican to Democratic administrations.
Ross’s role in the administration raises many questions in Cohen’s mind, but the one that comes up over and over throughout the article, “a recurrent issue with Ross, who embraced his Jewish faith after being raised in a non-religious home by a Jewish mother and a Catholic stepfather, has been whether he is too close to the American Jewish community and Israel to be an honest broker with Iran or Arabs.” In the crisis atmosphere following the Iranian election, “Can this baggage-encumbered veteran… overcome ingrained habits and sympathies?” Indeed, “Will the Iranians be prepared to meet with Ross?” — a “reasonable question given Ross’s well-known ties with the American Jewish community.”
That, in effect, is the dilemma facing American policy toward Iran at this pivotal moment: Is there too much Jewish influence? We’ve heard the question before in Hamas sermons, in Al Qaeda videos and on some left-wing blogs. Now it’s been incorporated into the nation’s newspaper of record.
Is Cohen trying to mainstream bigotry? I suspect not. I think he’s trying to sound provocative, and I think he’s in over his head.
Compare this effort at suppressing speech with Robert Kaplan’s statement in the Atlantic: "If you think the tension between the U.S. and Israel is high now, just wait until there’s a significant spike in casualties in Iraq following an Israeli strike on Iran." Kaplan is saying that Everyone knows that we’re joined at the hip to Israel, and why is that? The lobby, which Kaplan is halfway honest about.
I’m reading the diaries of Theodor Herzl. In the 1890s he was trying to get Jewish bankers to bail out the Turkish debt so that the Sultan would basically sell Palestine to Zionists. Herzl was fully aware of the character of Jewish influence in European societies– financial and newspaper power– and stated that Jewish wealth was a factor in the anti-Semitic reaction. Was he trying to mainstream bigotry? Or was he being an honest writer about real social forces?
