When they threw Noam Chomsky out two weeks ago, I teared up. I guess at some level, I believe in the goodness of the Jewish state, these are my people, they couldn’t be that bad. How could they do that?!
Or to riff of the famous Phil Ochs line, Love me love me love me I’m a Zionist.
This reservoir of good opinion about Israel exists in almost all American Jews, I think, except for those who have spent a lot of time in the occupied territories and know better. Myself I haven’t spent much time there, and so I actually give them the benefit of the doubt (yes out of some portion of ethnic identification).
Susan Sontag said famously at Town Hall nearly 30 years ago that if you’d been reading the Nation and the National Review about the Communists for the last 30 years you’d have been far better informed by the National Review, they got it right. That Town Hall moment has arrived for sentient Americans, except now it is the New York Times versus Electronic Intifada, who is the more reliable narrator? What Americans have repeatedly denied about the nature of Israeli society has been exposed.
