The Big Lacuna
A smart friend tells me that despite the excited crowds gathered outside Cooper Union 3 weeks back, and the great excitement in the hall, there has been hardly a drop of ink spilled on the Israel lobby debate sponsored by the London Review of Books. The Forward covered it, the Observer covered it, so did the N.Y. Sun in passing. But as for the mainstream, zilch, on one of the most fascinating and educational evenings in memory, and an evening that consisted not of bombast or invective or accusation, or even screaming from the gallery, but in an earnest and concerted dialog aimed at determining some part of the truth. The Times is lactose-intolerant on the matter. It will be fascinating to see what coverage John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt get when FSG puts out their book. As it is, the traditional fear persists: that the seas will close over them...
AIPAC seems to represent the ideas of the party of the late Begin.
This is bad enough.
The Likud has shown no interest in improving the fate of the ordinary Palestinians.
There are a few Palestinian think tanks in Washington.
I feel that the APTF is stuck in cold war type of one-sided policies.
Both sides need to think in mutually beneficial policies.
Actually, we need a joint Israeli-Palestinian lobby.
This will have to wait until the Iranians change regime, and stop their aggressions against Israel.
All we can hope is an end to the anarchy in the Middle East.
I'm not surprised. I'm a fan of the Kushner-Solomon anthology, Wrestling with Zion: Progressive Jewish-American Reponses to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, which was published by Grove a couple of years ago. It had lots of big names - -not only Kushner, but also Arthur Miller, Susan Sontag, Jonathan Safran Foer, Marge Piercy, Grace Paley, Michael Massing, and many others. It didn't get reviewed! Not in any mainstream paper, not in the Forward. And not in the Observer, or even the Nation. (And it has good material on the Lobby, btw. W&M are hardly the first.)
Unfortunately, I got to beliefnet from this website.
Beliefnet is the opposite of OpenMindedness.
Endless praising of faith will just achieve the opposite goal.
The same is true for proving the negativity of the Israel lobby.
Please sympathize with all victims. No more prejudiced righteousness.
While many Palestinians became innocent victims, there are many corrupted Muslim ideologues who can not see clearly. These are the enemies of humanities.
Little phil weiss keeps banging away at this, but the matter has already been addressed. read on
Overstating Jewish Power
Mearsheimer and Walt give too much credit to the Israeli lobby.
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Monday, March 27, 2006, at 1:47 PM ET
It's slightly hard to understand the fuss generated by the article on the Israeli lobby produced by the joint labors of John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt that was published in the London Review of Books. My guess is that the Harvard logo has something to do with it, but then I don't understand why the doings of that campus get so much media attention, either.
The essay itself, mostly a very average "realist" and centrist critique of the influence of Israel, contains much that is true and a little that is original. But what is original is not true and what is true is not original.
Everybody knows that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and other Jewish organizations exert a vast influence over Middle East policy, especially on Capitol Hill. The influence is not as total, perhaps, as that exerted by Cuban exiles over Cuba policy, but it is an impressive demonstration of strength by an ethnic minority. Almost everybody also concedes that the Israeli occupation has been a moral and political catastrophe and has implicated the United States in a sordid and costly morass. I would have gone further than Mearsheimer and Walt and pointed up the role of Israel in supporting apartheid in South Africa, in providing arms and training for dictators in Congo and Guatemala, and helping reactionary circles in America do their dirty work
wiseking- you are proving his point. hitchens is a neo con hack. that someone who STILL supports the iraq war is attacking them couldn't be a better endorsement.
and the reason the israel-palestine issue isn't covered in the media is because most americans who aren't either jewish or muslim have no idea what it is. I mean literally don't know where it is on a map or what parties are involved. it's not taugh in schools.
wiseking, you're being as disinegenuous as Hitch, only without the erudite entertainment.
that was Hitch huffing when W&M's paper was first published (ignore the man behind the curtain!) but Phil's point is that there's not been a peep since.
Hitchens on al-Qida: "Its communiques have been notable for how little they say about the Palestinian struggle."
Hoho. Every single message has harped on the subject of the occupation of the Palestinians. That and American support for Arab dictatorships is what it's all about for him. Poor Hitchens must have been reading the MEMRI version.
What Bin Laden has never spoken out against is freedom and democracy.