Neoconservative Eli Lake and Peter Beinart are shown here arguing about Israel at the NYT website. Lake looks to be in considerable pain. He wants to believe that Israel has not become a rightwing ethnocracy slouching toward fascism. Beinart says that Israeli democracy is in danger. He points out that Meir Kahane’s party was banned in Israel (Kach) but that Avigdor Lieberman, who has endorsed expulsion of Arabs, is today the Foreign Minister.
The significance of the dialogue is that Lake feels himself being marginalized; indeed, former AIPAC’r Beinart’s apostasy has in an instant created the new center and exposed people like Leon Wieseltier and Jeffrey Goldberg as rightwingers, made the neoconservatives look extinct. Lake’s pain is not just his illusions about Israel being challenged, but about the center moving to the left.
Speaking of the left, a lot of their dialogue is about Whether Arabs are better or worse off now than they were in 1965. Some day we will get to hear Palestinians on the NYT website discussing this question. You’d think they might actually know about Palestinian conditions? Both these guys are at bottom Israel lobbyists, concerned about American support for the Jewish state. That’s the new Establishment. Can’t wait for a little air in the room.
