The Liberal Zionists. By Jonathan Freedland. New York Review of Books, August 14, 2014 issue.
Liberal Zionism After Gaza. By Jonathan Freedland. NYR Blog. New York Review of Books, July 26, 2014.
Leibovitz:
A new genre of journalism brings up the
good, the bad, and the ugly of liberal soul-searching.
The
hottest story out of Gaza these days has nothing to do with Palestinians. It’s
not about Israelis either. It features no rockets or tunnels or tragically
misunderstood secretaries of state. Instead, it is about what is clearly at the
core of this conflict, namely the growing ennui some liberal writers are
feeling as they contemplate the fluctuating state of their support for Israel.
When
attempted intelligently, this exercise is less entirely narcissistic than it
sounds. Writing in New York magazine, for example, Jonathan Chait presented a reasonable—if far from uncontestable,
as Chait himself fairly admits—account of the peace talks between Israel and
the Palestinians, and concluded by arguing that responsibility for failing to
strike a deal lies squarely on Bibi Netanyahu’s shoulders. If you believe in
that story, the war in Gaza comes off as a cynical political maneuver by a
desperate politician who, having squandered a wonderful opportunity for
coexistence, vies for fighter jets and surges of patriotism instead.
But the
further the genre of the soul-searching liberal moved away from a well-lit
attempt at interpreting the available facts, the more it sailed up the river
and into the dark heart of emotional entanglements, the weirder the pieces
became. Jonathan Freedland—whose newspaper, The
Guardian, has a tradition of running columns with such jaunty titles as “Israel Simply Has
No Right to Exist”—produced his own musing in The New York Review of Books.
“The first week of Protective Edge produced awkward statistics,” he wrote. “The
Palestinian death toll kept climbing while Israel’s remained stubbornly at
zero.” How awkward indeed, and how stubborn those Israelis are for simply
refusing to die. And what a challenge they mount to the liberal narrative by
investing in bomb shelters, missile defense systems, and smartphone
applications to keep its citizens safe while the other side forcefully prevents its civilians from seeking a safe shelter.
Never
mind about civilians, however, when something far more important is at stake:
Maintaining the purity of the author’s identity as a good liberal as defined by
the ever-shifting tides of the high-brow magazines to which he or she contributes
and/or subscribes. “When Israelis and Palestinians appear fated to fight more
frequently and with ever-bloodier consequences,” Freedland wrote, “and when
peace initiatives seem to be Utopian pipe-dreams doomed to fail, the liberal
Zionist faces something like an existential crisis. For if there is no prospect
of two states, then liberal Zionists will have to do something they resist with
all their might. They will have to decide which of their political identities
matters more, whether they are first a liberal or first a Zionist. And that is
a choice they don’t want to make.”
Naturally, the possibility that the Zionist entity with its civil rights
lawyers and free press and internet start-ups is itself much more neatly
aligned with anyone’s version of classical liberal values than the medieval
ranting of Hamas’s bearded women-oppressing, gay-bashing, Jew-hating
missile-launching zealots is never entertained.
It’s
easy to pity the intellectual incoherence of soul-searching liberals; for the
most part, they are honestly trying to resolve what they perceive as a real
clash of values. But then there are those who let their incoherence blossom
into something vile. In a recent post titled “The Shifting Israel Debate,” Andrew Sullivan gave his readers a
thunderous account of how the times are a-changin’. Offering up Matt Yglesias’s
Liberty Lobby-style piece about how
Congress is basically bought and paid for by Jews with deep pockets and narrow
interests, Sullivan writes: “not so long ago, anyone saying that Jewish donor
money made an even-handed approach to Israel-Palestine a pretty dead letter
would be deemed ipso facto an
anti-Semite.”
As
we’re in ipso facto territory, let’s
forget about allegations of anti-Semitism—those never go very far—and focus
instead on rudimentary journalistic skills. Let’s, for the sake of argument,
assume that a curious journalist came across the
Israel-buys-congress’s-approval-with-campaign-contributions line of arguments.
What might such an aspiring muckraker do? First, he or she might seek to prove
causality, asking if cash contributions from pro-Israeli Jews were truly the
sole or major reason behind American support for Israel. How to answer that
complex question?
Hmmmmm.
Let’s start with Google, which, if tasked with the phrase “American support for
Israel,” reveals a Gallup poll from last
year announcing that while 64 percent of Americans side with and support
Israel, only 12 percent stand with the Palestinians. Did the Jewish lobby buy
the voters too? Even among Democrats, liberals, and postgraduates—groups whose
sympathies for underdogs are a matter of dogma—the Palestinians could not
muster more than 24 percent of the population.
Why is
that? The poll doesn’t specify, but it’s not hard to surmise that some folks
way down yonder in the heartland find all that business about suicide bombings
and rocket launchings and sacrificing 160 children to build death
tunnels a tad, well, un-American.
To say
that American support for Israel, then, may have something to do with shared
cultural values rather than balance sheets would have been enough. But a
serious journalist could have gone a step further and discovered that when it
comes to doling out the dough, Israel is a very low-grade player. How meek?
Number 83 out of 84 countries surveyed, with a total of $1,250 spent, which is
what some restaurants in New York charge for dinner for two with decent wine.
Topping the list are the United Arab Emirates, $14.2 million of whose money
flowed to Washington last year.
Sullivan,
however, isn’t done. The other reason the brave champions of veracity who rule
the internet can now break their shackles finally speak truth to power, he
argues, is because blogging came along and liberated the hearts, the minds, and
the pens of journalists. “Reporters from the scene,” he wrote, “can actually
express in real time—outside the usual pro-Israel self-censorship that has
existed for years at the NYT and WaPo – what they are actually witnessing.”
It’s
tempting to chuckle at the idea of the Times
censoring itself when it comes to Israel—Sullivan, apparently, is not familiar
with the literary oeuvre of the Grey Lady’s crusader Robert Mackey—but more
serious issues are at stake. To claim that the debate over Israel shifts
because journalists on the ground are finally free to report what they’re
seeing is to wantonly ignore the mounting evidence of Hamas harassing and
threatening the lives of Western journalists attempting to question its rank
propaganda. In recent days alone, we’ve heard the account of Gabriele Barbati,
an Italian journalist who, once leaving Gaza, tweeted: “Out of #Gaza far from #Hamas retaliation: misfired rocket killed children
yday in Shati. Witness: militants rushed and cleared debris.” We’ve also heard
from Radjaa Abou Dagga, a former correspondent for France’s Liberation whose attempts at practicing honest journalism got him
summoned by Hamas thugs, accused of collaborating with Israel, and told to stop
working as a reporter and leave the strip at once. If Sullivan was true to his
vision, if he believed in unfettered reporting, he’d promote these gutsy
correspondents and their accounts. But actually, Sullivan has never reported an
actual story in his long career, let alone set foot in a war zone. He’s a
click-machine with an animus.
Which
is the real problem with the “Let’s rethink Israel” genre in both its sensitive
soul-searching singer-songwriter NYRB
version and Yglesias and Sullivan’s gleeful attempt to try to rebrand rancid
bigotry as the brave new forward-think of the web. Journalists, Jewish or not,
liberal or otherwise, should indeed reexamine their positions about Israel. In
fact, they should reexamine their positions about everything. Being reporters,
their positions should be rather tightly tethered to the facts, which often
swing wildly and without warning. But when pundits with very little concrete
knowledge of what is actually happening on the ground fail to produce even
basic reporting and indulge instead their own creepy fetishes, the insight they
offer is less than meaningless.
