Jeffrey Goldberg nearly breaks his arm patting himself on the back for his op-ed article Israel’s America problem.
My op-ed in the Times has provoked a certain amount of unhappiness in people who believe it to be an attack on AIPAC.
Well actually it was a criticism of AIPAC. I criticized Goldberg because his criticism was unfair.
Apparently, we are all supposed to behave as if Israel has never made a mistake in its 60 years of existence.
This isn’t even logical. The criticism was that his prescription hasn’t exactly worked as well as he seems to think it has. Consider Max Boot who has the quality of admitting admiration for Goldberg:
How can he argue with a straight face that more territorial concessions on Israel’s part will “buttress†Palestinian moderates when we’ve seen just the opposite happen in the recent past? Israel unilaterally evacuated southern Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, in the latter case dismantling settlements as Goldberg urged. (I was in favor of this move, too.) The result, as we all know now, was to empower Hezbollah and Hamas–not the “moderates.†Why Goldberg thinks the result of a West Bank pullout would be any different is not readily apparent from his Times essay.
Worse, even as he dismisses those who disagree with him as unthinking Barry Rubin notes that those who hold Goldberg’s views hold them despite years of experience that show them to be wrong:
Given this experience, someone might conclude that concessions didn’t work and that the Palestinians and Syria were not ready for peace. But such a conclusion is not permissible for those wedded to certain notions. Instead, they say: ignore all that because no matter how high the price you must make concessions and take risks in order to survive. Is this obvious nonsense? Yes. But obvious nonsense backed by the New York Times and Maclean’s in Canada, etc., drowns out the point that it is obvious nonsense.Second, of course, this expresses wishful thinking. A lot of people want Israel to disappear and thus feel good in asserting it is going to happen. The line in “pro-Palestinian” circles in the West seems to be that it doesn’t matter that they lose all the confrontations, that their state-building effort has collapsed, and that the movement is more split than at any time in the last forty years. More important, they say, they now have control of the narrative. That and a few bucks will get you a cup of coffee.
There are also some ideological reasons on the left, or what passes for it nowadays, that have invested heavily in the idea of Israel disappearing. One is that nationalism is obsolete.
This is clearly absurd. It might be disappearing in Western Europe–I mean European nationalism, not that of the new immigrants–yet it is not a generalized global phenomenon. Quite the opposite. But the people who think this way want nationalism to die in their own countries very badly and detest those who have pride in their heritage.
And while he isn’t addressing Goldberg’s assertion that Israeli needs American pressure to survive, Rubin makes clear that those who question Israel’s (future) legitimacy aren’t exactly harmless:
It assures radical Islamists and radical Arab nationalists that they will win. Thus it encourages Arabs, and especially Palestinians, to keep fighting rather than to make peace and act moderately or constructively.It promotes terrorism, recruitment to terrorist groups, violence against moderates, and dictatorships. After all, if victory is in sight why stop fighting? If triumph is possible than it follows logically that anyone who wants to make peace is a traitor who should be killed.
Goldberg may congratulate himself on his perceptiveness and sophistication, but it he, not his critics, who unthinkingly prescribes a disastrous policy. And he doesn’t possess the awareness to realize how wrong and counterproductive he is.
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
