David Remnick, the editor of the New Yorker, has repeatedly criticized the occupation in interviews in recent months; now he puts his foot down in his magazine, saying that the occupation violates “Jewish values” and has isolated Israel internationally, and it is a “delusion” to wait on Netanyahu with his “proto-fascistic” coalition to produce a viable Palestinian state.
“Jewish values” is a frank appeal to the New Yorker’s base, the liberal American Jewish establishment; and this is a Jewish power-conversation. Remnick consolidates the new liberal Zionist position, the one staked out by J Street at its recent conference, by Peter Beinart in his speeches, and by Bernard Avishai in the New York Times. This position is that after 44 years of occupation it is now an emergency to give Palestinians a state, the Egyptian revolution has only upped the ante, and Obama can bring about the two-state solution, but he must defy Netanyahu and the Israel lobby– and, Remnick says, he must defy his own aide, Dennis Ross, too.
Some excerpts:
Now in his second term and ruling in a coalition government that includes anti-democratic, even proto-fascistic ministers, such as Avigdor Lieberman, Netanyahu has stubbornly refused the appeals of Washington and of the Palestinian leaders Mahmoud Abbas and Salam Fayyad, who have shown themselves willing to make the concessions needed for a peace deal. In the midst of a revolution in the Arab world, Netanyahu seems lost, defensive, and unable or unwilling to recognize the changing circumstances in which he finds himself.
The occupation—illegal, inhumane, and inconsistent with Jewish values—has lasted forty-four years. Netanyahu thinks that he can keep on going, secure behind a wall….
Netanyahu told [German Chancellor Angela] Merkel that he intends to give a speech in the next few weeks supporting an interim Palestinian state on about half the territory of the West Bank. If that is his plan, it will be unacceptable to the Palestinians, and he knows it. Smug and lacking in diplomatic creativity, Netanyahu has alienated and undermined the forces of progressivism in the West Bank and is, step by ugly step, deepening Israel’s isolation.
It is time for President Obama to speak clearly and firmly….
For decades, AIPAC, the Anti-Defamation League, and other such right-leaning groups have played an outsized role in American politics, pressuring members of Congress and Presidents with their capacity to raise money and swing elections. But Democratic Presidents in particular should recognize that these groups are hardly representative and should be met head on. Obama won seventy-eight per cent of the Jewish vote; he is more likely to lose some of that vote if he reverses his position on, say, abortion than if he tries to organize international opinion on the Israeli-Arab conflict. However, some senior members of the Administration have internalized the political restraints that they believe they are under, and cannot think beyond them. Some, like Dennis Ross, who has served five Presidents, can think only in incremental terms.
…[In Chicago, Obama] came to know liberal Zionists and Palestinian academics, and to understand both the necessity of a Jewish state after the Second World War and the tragedy and the depths of Palestinian suffering….
it is important as a way for the United States to assert that it stands not with the supporters of Greater Israel but with what the writer Bernard Avishai calls “Global Israel,” the constituencies that accept the moral necessity of a Palestinian state and understand the dire cost of Israeli isolation. Even as Obama continues to stress his commitment to Israeli security, he has to emphasize the truth that, without serious progress toward an agreement, matters will likely deteriorate, perhaps to the point, yet again, of violence…
[R]ecords of the first [Israeli] cabinet meeting after the [1967] war show that the Justice Minister, Yaakov Shimshon Shapira, said, “In a time of decolonization in the whole world can we consider an area in which mainly Arabs live, and we control defense and foreign policy? . . . Who’s going to accept that?”
Ultimately, no one.
A couple of comments. The belief of many Palestinians and American realists and leftwing Jews that the two-state solution has expired is nowhere reflected here, except in the concern about Israel’s isolation. I question Remnick’s sense of reality. Can a viable Palestinian state emerge under the Avishai plan, which allows a ring of Jewish colonies in East Jerusalem and calls for a 25-mile tunnel under the desert to connect Gaza and the West Bank– something Jews would never accept in their state?
Still, Remnick’s piece is remarkable for two developments: first, the admission, five years after he trashed Walt and Mearsheimer in his magazine, that the Israel lobby has humiliated Obama. Notice his lines about senior members of the Obama administration who “internalized” the fears that the Israel lobby cost politicians elections. As if this is a chimera. Remnick presses Obama to put aside these fears and ignore Dennis Ross, who has served in five administrations. But there is a reason that Ross hangs on forever: he is known to be “Israel’s advocate” and therefore his appointment appeases a powerful faction in Washington life. And as for the overblown fears of that lobby– well, the last two one-term presidents, Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush, both crossed the lobby and didn’t get another four years. Chimera or not, George W. Bush learned the lesson well; and now Obama is learning it. And when Barney Frank is quoted saying that he privately opposes settlements but won’t come out against them publicly, in one of the most liberal districts in the country, because it’ll cost him– again, this is no chimera, but the concerted attitude of the Jewish organizational community, which to his credit Remnick is taking on.
The other thing I find interesting about the piece is its bumptious Diaspora tone: Liberal American Jewry ain’t taking the fascists in Israel lying down any more! We have our own values to assert. A few weeks back Remnick served notice when he said that Israel treated the American Jewish community as “a nice breakfast at the Regency,” and now he’s taking his power. That’s great; it portends the open battle inside the Jewish family that I have long sought.
Note the statement that a Jewish state seemed like a good idea after World War II– a hidden acknowledgment that young Jews don’t see it as necessary today. Also note the last quote about colonies being a bad idea 44 years ago. Right. This was obvious to thinking people 44 years ago. And where has the American Jewish community been all those years? Supporting the colonies, denying the Palestinians self-determination. What a great thing the Arab revolutions are, if they are actually waking up powerful American Jews to the idea of human dignity.
