Truly weird post by Marty Peretz calling J Street a "circle jerk" of cranks, and hurling Yiddish curses at Jim Traub of the New York Times. Sad and pathetic, this writing suggests he’s delaminating.
Meantime, Dan Fleshler boldly defends J Street against the Israelis and raises one of my favorite themes, Jews with guns:
Haaretz columnist Anshel Pfeffer sums up the attitude of Israeli government officials towards J Street: “What do these limp-wristed shtetl Jews who have never held an M-16 know about running a country?”
These complaints are a variation of the message American Jews have been hearing from Israelis and some American supporters for decades: unless we serve in the Israeli army or vote in its elections, we have no right to criticize Israel in public. But those who bring out that old chestnut now are discounting or ignoring an inconvenient truth: J Street’s supporters –myself included- are American citizens who back American policies that we believe are in our own country’s interests, as well as the interests of Israelis, Palestinians and the rest of the world.
There is outsize respect among American Jews for Jews who have served in the Israeli armed forces, for instance Michael Oren and Jeffrey Goldberg.
Goldberg is also attacking J Street. He says he won’t be there and attacks the endorsement of J Street by Harvard professor Stephen Walt. He calls Walt "one of
America’s leading Jew-baiters." And last month a "grubby Jew-baiter…" And he claims that Walt "demonizes Jews by blaming them for the Iraq War." What about when Ari Shavit of Haaretz, citing Tom Friedman, wrote that the Iraq war was conceived by 25 intellectuals, most of them Jewish? (A company that credulous Goldberg was in himself). Are Shavit/Friedman demonizing Jews, or merely describing the way the world works? And are non-Jews ever allowed to discuss this? I guess not.
