I finally read David Remnick’s piece about Haaretz in the New Yorker last night. It’s very good, it signals his now-fierce opposition to the occupation (too late to do anything about it). The most remarkable thing about the piece is that Remnick spent a whole day with the heroic Amira Hass inside the occupation. Hass is not Remnick’s type, she is an outsider, and so this represents a very generous extension of his and his magazine’s prestige to her in an effort to influence the Israeli discourse. A few weeks back I told a friend that Remnick has the power to bring down the Netanyahu gov’t. My friend said, I want to know what brand of gefilte fish you’re eating. I said Well the Netanyahu gov’t will fall within a year and then I will credit Remnick. But I’m not really joking. The American Jewish establishment has the ability to snap the Israeli polity around, a few degrees anyway, J Street devoted its recent conference to slagging Netanyahu, and I think Remnick will only get more vociferous. He also honors Gideon Levy in the piece, though it seems he just had one interview with him in the newsroom (the two male influential Jewish writers have a same-spot problem, as my wife would say.)
