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

[Ricky Baldwin]

Or in fact, "The Americans in the US need to be governed by foreign 
> powers, because they do not have yet the attributes to allow them to 
> live peacefully alongside very many states without threatening their civilian 
> populations."

By the way, I'm just getting around to reading Kinzer's Overthrow, and I'm struck again
by how frequently Peretz's sort of argument actually works on supposedly intelligent
people. [sigh]

Ricky


--- "C. G. Estabrook" <galliher at uiuc.edu> wrote:

> [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
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