Steven Cook of the Council on Foreign Relations continues his critique of me for going after the CFR for publishing five Jewish experts on the Gaza flotilla attack:
I know it’s Shabbat, but the least you can do is a little bit of research.
See the chapter I did with the Shibley Telhami in "Restoring the Balance," which was a joint cfr/brookings effort. My US News essay on the Gaza invasion and the work I did on Iraq for Salon some years ago.
I think it undermines your implicit argument that all the Jews at CFR think alike.
Well, I did my homework (except for the book chapter), and I see that Cook’s work is Realist, in the sense that he argues that war/occupation doesn’t work in the Arab world. His US News piece during "Cast Lead" said that Israeli violence against Gaza is justified but it won’t work. His piece mentions "collective punishment" in passing, but without earnestness. Similarly, his CFR piece on the flotilla raid doesn’t say a word about Palestinian conditions under the siege; it treats the raid as a disaster for Israel’s p.r. "across the Arab and Muslim worlds" with scarce mention of Europe. I had challenged him to show me one place where he or any of the other CFR experts makes an earnest statement on behalf of Palestinian human rights. You won’t find any. And in the U.S. News/Gaza piece, Cook was writing after there was clear evidence of atrocities/disproportionate attack.
Now I admit that Cook is measured. But move on to the other four CFR panelists. They’re way worse. There was Richard Haass telling Obama to forget about settlements and a Palestinian state and join Israel in confronting Iran. There was Les Gelb saying that Israel was right! at the Daily Beast, and blockades are good. I won’t even look at the Elliott Abrams and Max Boot pieces. Those guys are lights-out neoconservatives.
So let us be clear that the political (and Jewish) diversity Cook brags on goes from his Israel-sympathizing realism on the left to the nuts on the right. There’s a party line here. Nobody at CFR questions the “special relationship.” And this at a time when the security establishment, Anthony Cordesman, General David Petraeus, and even Mossad chief Meir Dagan are saying that Israel has become a strategic liability for the U.S. Even Biden has privately said as much; but no one at CFR can say so. Shouldn’t a bipartisan organization like the Council have some balance? CFR used to have people like Richard Murphy (former State Department) and the great Henry Siegman doing ME stuff. Now it has neocons and Cook.
Keep in mind that CFR just replaced Jim Hoge as editor of Foreign Affairs with Gideon Rose, who has said that 9/11 had nothing to do with Palestine, who gives a platform to Israel lobbyists, never has a word to say about the strategic implications of Palestine, and who I gather once worked as an intern for AIPAC. Rose is from a wealthy New York real estate family. His father led efforts to stop boycotts of Israel.
Oh but there I go talking about Jews again. If I keep this kind of baiting up, the anti-Semites will take away my parents’ summer house, force Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Elena Kagan to do tax law, run Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod out of the two offices closest to the president, never mind what will happen to poor Larry Summers and Peter Orszag and Steinberg and Bernanke and Dennis Ross and Russ Feingold and Dianne Feinstein and — better shut up. Religion means nothing. Especially around the Middle East!
