[Peace-discuss] From the editor of the liberal New Republic

[C. G. Estabrook]

[Suppose I asserted, "The Jews in Israel need to be governed by foreign 
powers, because they do not have yet the attributes to allow them to 
live peacefully alongside Arab states without threatening their civilian 
populations."  What would the response be?  --CGE]

	Last update - 23:46 12/02/2008
	'I don't care if our pro-Zionist stance costs us'
	By Cnaan Liphshiz

Anyone who doesn't more or less share Marty Peretz's views on Israel or 
U.S. politics has little hope of getting a job at The New Republic, the 
editor-in-chief of the prestigious U.S. journal told Haaretz while in 
Israel last month.

Those views, in short, hold that 60 years after Israel's independence, 
the world is once more "in need of a mandate for Palestine," the 
journalist and retired Harvard University lecturer said in his suite in 
the Tel Aviv Hilton.

The Palestinians, he says, need to be governed by foreign powers for the 
time being, because they "do not have yet the attributes to allow them 
to live peacefully alongside Israel without threatening its civilian 
population."
	
As for academia's growing criticism of Israeli policies toward the Gaza 
Strip, the West Bank and the Arab world, Peretz says that "for young 
scholars in the U.S., being anti-Israel is an easier way of being 
anti-American."

These "definite" opinions, as Peretz calls them, have prompted some of 
his politer critics to write him off as a "stalwart defender of Israel." 
Harsher detractors accuse him of pursuing an "iron-fisted and ugly 
approach" to Israeli-Arab relations.

"So tachlis, are we losing influence because we're vocal on the Israel 
issue?" Peretz says, relying on more than 30 years of journalistic 
experience to cut to the chase before the question is presented. "I've 
puzzled over this a lot," he says and pauses. "I don't care if our 
declaredly pro-Zionist stance is costing us some influence. But, you 
know, I get quoted an awful lot."

Peretz, 68, has edited The New Republic for the past 34 years. He says 
it has been pro-Zionist from the day it was born in 1914. "My editorship 
is not an interruption; it's just that things are clearer now," he says.

The New Republic is an unusual phenomenon in American journalism. The 
biweekly is considered pro-Democrat and liberal, yet it has a distinct 
and even declared pro-Israel agenda, and many consider its views on 
foreign policy to be more hawkish than some pro-Republican papers.

Peretz's cell phone rings. It's his son, film director Jesse Peretz, 
calling from the U.S. to discuss the primaries results. His father, a 
close friend and associate of Bill Clinton's vice president, Al Gore, 
says he prefers Barack Obama to Hillary Clinton.

"In the 1980s there developed among African Americans a deep strain of 
hostility to Jews. That's not the case any more," he says. "In the 
history of the Jewish-Black relationship, Louis Farrakhan will be a 
footnote. Al Sharpton won't even be that, he'll only be a street fighter 
with gold jewelry."

Despite his support for Obama, Peretz doesn't seem to have too much 
faith in the candidate's approach to foreign policy. "If Obama's 
elected, we will see more diplomacy in American foreign policy. But that 
doesn't mean there would be any more successful diplomacy," he says.

Although Peretz considers the Democrats to be "a little bit more 
problematic" when it comes to foreign policy, he says he bel ieves 
American support for Israel would not change under Obama - or any of the 
other candidates. "The U.S. can always twist Israel's arm. But it 
supports Israel because it has been a reliable ally and because our 
enemies are the same," he says.

Historical ignorance

While Peretz says The New Republic doesn't cover Israel very much, it 
brings history to the discussion when it does. "You never get an ounce 
of history on the media. What do most reporters know about history? They 
know squat."

That was one of the issues Peretz and The New Republic had with the 
September 2007 study by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt. "The Israel 
Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy" alleged that U.S. Middle East policy is 
driven by the "Israel Lobby" contrary to America's best interests.

Peretz, a retired lecturer in social studies, rechristened the study 
"The Walt-Mearsheimer Travesty of History." The New Republic ran a 
review by Jeffrey Goldberg, Washington editor of the Atlantic, who 
suggested the study was anti-Semitic and based on conspiracy theories 
about Jewish world domination.

Shortly after, in November, Peretz organized an event in New York 
sharply criticizing Walt and Mearsheimer. It was attended by Goldberg, 
Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, the Harvard genocide historian, and Nicholas 
Lemann, dean of the Columbia School of Journalism. They all called the 
report anti-Semitic. Walt and Mearsheimer responded to the attacks by 
saying they were both philo-Semites "and strongly support the existence 
of Israel."

In retrospect, after such an impressive tour-de-force against the 
"flimsy and meretricious fraud," as Peretz called the study, he 
downplays the whole affair.

"The book was not a success in the U.S." he says. "The publisher has 
lost a lot of money, so it's a do-not-go-here sign for others." In 
evaluating how serious the study is, academically speaking, Peretz 
proposes counting the number of times he is mentioned in it. "If they 
think I'm worth 16 mentions ... Well, that just goes to show you how 
flimsy this book really is."

People like Walt and Mearsheimer are "facing a stone wall, which is the 
fact that the American people like Israel and identify with it," he 
says. That support has little to do with the Israel lobby. "We have 
petitions upon petitions from centuries ago by Americans who wanted a 
Jewish homeland in Palestine," he says. "That's from before there were 
any Jews in the U.S. There were maybe a dozen Jews in every city."

Peretz concedes the Walt and Mearsheimer study might have had some 
profound effects. "It is possible that in some unconscious way, the 
report set the scene for the National Intelligence Assessment," he says, 
referring to the December report that concluded Iran had dropped its 
program for developing nuclear weapons - a conclusion the Israeli 
defense establishment reportedly considers erroneous.

Walt and Mearsheimer's target audience includes liberal American Jews, 
Peretz says. "Their study appeals to Jews who resent having to suffer 
the embarrassment of being connected to Israel," he says.

Dropping standards

Peretz feels the report is indicative of deteriorating scholarly 
standards, which are "rendering American academia increasingly ludicrous."

He proposes Columbia University as a case study. "This institution has a 
big problem, in the form of an Arab League propaganda arm disguised as 
its center for Middle Eastern studies," he says. As a result, it 
appoints researchers who entertain "scientifically preposterous" claims.

He names Nadia Abu El-Haj as an example. This professor of archaeology 
recently received tenure after alleging that the ancient Israelite 
kingdoms are a political fabrication crafted by politically-driven 
researchers.

"Then there's Joseph Massad," Peretz says, smiling. "An associate 
professor who wrote a book called 'Desiring Arabs,' where he says the 
gay international movement, in league with Zionism and American power, 
is trying to subvert Arab culture by making gay rights a human rights 
issue in the Arab world."

If one were to measure the journalistic accuracy of these research 
papers, Peretz says, one would realize "how little responsibility 
publishers have for what they print."

The lesson of responsibility was a painful one for The New Republic. In 
1998, reporter Steven Glass was fired for fabricating articles, quotes, 
sources and events in what became one of the most famous scandals in 
modern American journalism. It was told in the 2003 film "Shattered Glass."

While Peretz says the movie brought new subscriptions, he says he has 
issues with how it portrayed him.

"My role in the movie was distorted. First of all, I didn't have a 
beard. Second, I didn't look as old. And I would never wear a dark blue 
shirt. It's always black," he says, half-jokingly. "I realize these are 
vain things, but for a movie that was supposed to be about 
fact-checking, they got off to a bad start."

Peretz considers Glass, who was then 26 years old, "a sad figure." "I 
happen to like Steve Glass and his wife. His inventing stuff has to do 
with the psychology of a very bright, extremely funny man in a great 
hurry." But Glass' fibs, Peretz says, weren't a result of his political 
outlook.

That is, except for the March 1997 article "Spring Breakdown," where 
Glass fabricated a lurid tale of drinking and debauchery at that year's 
Conservative Political Action Conference. "I think Steve wanted to show 
up these moralists," Peretz says.

Bad things happen everywhere

As the conversation progresses, Peretz revisits the Israeli-Palestinian 
conflict through his feelings toward Haaretz. "It provides a cover for 
Jewish and non-Jewish anti-Zionists from all over the world. It gives a 
Hebrew lettering to the deep discomfort that some Jews feel toward the 
idea of Jewish sovereignty," he says.

Reports about the "horrors of Israeli occupation," Peretz adds, don't 
particularly impress him. "I'm not under the impression that Israeli 
occupation is kind and sweet. No occupation is kind or sweet. But bad 
things happen everywhere, all the time," he says dryly.

But Peretz does rely on Haaretz for raw news about Israel. "In fact, the 
English Internet edition is my home page on the computer. I mean, 
obviously I need to know what's going on in Israel as soon as I wake up 
in the morning."

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/953302.html