JONATHAN CHAIT FEBRUARY 26, 2010
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Andrew Sullivan has a lengthy reply to my post, which categorically stated that he’s not an anti-Semite, but which also took sharp issue with his views on the Middle East. I truly regret that my colleague impugned Andrew’s motives. I like Andrew a great deal, and like him I believe in debating politics –sharply, at times – without impinging on friendships.
My basic take is that Andrew was a simplistic supporter of Israel and has become a simplistic critic. In response, he argues that world events have changed his mind. My criticism, he contends:
critically ignores the major shifts in the world and the situation since then: the doubling of the illegal settler population on the West Bank, the catastrophe of the Iraq war and its ramifications for the West's relationship with the Muslim world, the torture policy embraced by the US government against overwhelmingly Muslim prisoners, the move to the far right in Israeli public opinion (where approval of Obama once sunk to 6 percent), the effect of Bush's blank check for Israel for eight years, the rise of Israel's religious right, the influx of Russian immigrants, Obama's promise as a bridge between the West and moderate Muslims, the brutality of the Gaza war just before his inauguration, and the intransigence of the Netanyahu government ever since over something as basic as mere freezing settlement construction that is already illegal. Chait writes as if the last decade had never happened and that therefore the shift in my position is somehow inexplicable, apart from some psychological inability to see nuance, or some general Manicheanism in my world view.
In response, no, I don’t think these events go very far in accounting for the night-and-day transformation in Andrew's stance. The 6% figure Andrew likes to site is inaccurate. That was one poll asking if Obama is pro-Israel. Favorability of Obama in Israel is actually 41%, versus a 37% unfavorable rating. The influx of Russian immigrants has been going on for twenty years, with the heaviest levels by far taking place at the beginning of this period. The Iraq war, American torture and Obama’s Muslim outreach are American actions that do not strike me as reasons to reevaluate one’s view of Israel.
As for the rest of these events – yes, Israel’s polity has taken a disturbing rightward tilt over the last several years, which I attribute mostly to large chunks of its population living in London Blitz-like conditions for extended stretches. It strikes me as a reason to modulate one’s views of the country, not to go from viewing it as a lonely, righteous embattled beacon of freedom to a bloodthirsty religious-fundamentalist aggressor.
Andrew asks me to go through Leon’s piece point by point. I’m not going to go through every line. I do think that the criticisms of his Middle East views, in general, were trenchant. “Military adventurism” is indeed a propagandistic description of a response, even a disproportionate one, to terrorist attacks launched from adjacent territory. Casually proposing an American invasion of Israel followed by a NATO occupation of the border is, yes, bizarre. Andrew does have a highly exaggerated belief in the connection between Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and the persistence of Islamism. In general, I agree with Leon’s argument that Andrew has taken a simplistic and often facile line on Israel, though I continue to object strongly to his insinuation of anti-Semitism.
To me the most disheartening turn in Andrew’s writing is his obsession with the Israel lobby, about which his writing has taken on the tone of a Dan Brown novel. Take his two recent posts “What Often Happens To Israel’s Critics.” The passive voice is ominous. “What often happens” turns out to be that… you receive a lot of angry emails, or are viciously attacked by such organs as Pajamas Media.
At this point, for the sake of comparison, I should share an analogous experience. Last year, Chas Freeman was nominated for an intelligence post in the Obama administration. Taking in the whole his record—his close Saudi ties, his staunch backing of Walt and Mearsheimer, his full-throated defense of the Tiananmen Square Massacre—I concluded that he had taken ideological realism to the point of fanaticism. Now, I don’t read public emails. But the reaction among writers who question the U.S. alliance with Israel was highly vitriolic. I was repeatedly labeled a “neocon” or a “Likudnik,” which are the terms used by the left to describe anybody whose views on Israel correspond with any major party in Israel, including Labor or Kadima. Robert Dreyfuss, along with Stephen Walt, accused me of participating in a “coordinated assault” with several Jewish writers or lobbyists with whom I have never coordinated anything, nor contacted in any way. M.J. Rosenberg accused me of having “ethnic blinders” on the issue of Israel. Walt insisted that, whatever my protestations, my true sole motive for opposing Freeman was his position on Israel, and my intent was to intimidate other critics of Israel. Chas Freeman Jr., writing in the Washington Note, threatened to punch me in the nose.
Now, one conclusion I could draw from this data is that Israel’s enemies are powerful and legion. They operate in packs, smearing anybody who dares criticize an enemy of the Jewish state. Their goal is to intimidate American Jews into keeping silent on Israel – unless they happen to belong to the tiny minority who agree with the Walts and Mearsheimers of the world – or else their opinion will be discounted as an expression of dual loyalty.
That conclusion would be overwrought. The reality is that the authors of these rants against me are individuals expressing their (hysterical) beliefs. And the “consequences” of being insulted, or subjected to empty threats, by loons over the internet are, in reality, not very dire.
It’s easy to see why many of Israel’s supporters view themselves as brave defenders of a tiny embattled state, assaulted by bigots and radicals whenever they dare speak out. It’s also easy to see why Israel’s critics see themselves as a tiny remnant willing to endure the smears of Zionist thugs for daring to speak the truth about the Middle East. The Middle East is an emotional issue, and it’s a big internet out there. Perhaps the catcalls endured by Israel’s critics are more numerous and vicious than those endured by its supporters. The relative measure of electronic abuse does not interest me. My point is that the creation of communities of mutual believers, reinforcing each other's sensation of martyrdom and bravery, is not conducive to clear thinking.
Andrew was the editor of TNR when I started as an intern. He treated me generously, has continued to do so since then, and I have always felt gratitude toward him. He’s a gifted writer and polemicist. I hope we can disagree on Israel the way we have in the past disagreed on Al Gore, progressive taxation, George W. Bush, health care, and all the rest. Israel has always aspired to become a “normal country,” and my aspiration is for arguments about Israel to become normal arguments.
Update: Andrew replies here. I think his reply is mostly worldplay, so I'll leave it at that.
16 comments
Bravo in answering a hysteric with calm and reason.
- bigm
February 26, 2010 at 10:10am
Superb post.
- basman
February 26, 2010 at 11:37am
Your riposte is superb, Jonathan. First off, let me say that I read Andrew Sullivan's blog The Daily Dish on a daily basis and I send friends many posts from this blog. Generally it is a beautiful piece of work, ferociously intelligent, variegated in its foci, consistently interesting, with many superb links to other blogs, posts, articles, et al. All of the seriousness is leavened by a good deal of humor. But on the subject of Israel, you are dead on. Andrew has exchanged one simplistic (neocon) Weltanschauung for another (the party of Mearsheimer and the clique of Walt). It strikes me that Andrew S. is trying ex post facto to rationalize a radical sea change in his views on the Middle East and he just isn't pulling it off. You are devastating in your deconstruction of his putative reasons for swinging from a wildly pro-Israel position to a viscerally anti-Israeli orientation. His cited reasons just don't add up to going from a William Kristol-like take on Israel to that of Stephen Walt. What manifestly occurred is that Andrew's neoconservative world view imploded when he realized that the course that George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and their minions set us on was a disastrous and a dangerous one. Andrew made that judgment call in 2003, after initially being a vociferous supporter of Bush's Global War on Terror, even going so far as to writing of a Fifth Column, a comment he later retracted and regretted. Andrew has come out against torture in resolute and committed and inspiring ways, although this too bears the hallmarks of his vehement and volatile and nervous-tic Twitter-like approach to the world, in that he sees these practices as a threat to the Republic. We will - and have - survived this as we have endured so much else. We will survive Sarah Palin too, although I am not sure Andrew believes this. Surely his revulsion at the Bush/Cheney policies and his initial support for them and his repentance for having originally supported the nebbish and the tyrant have to undergird his careening on Israel. Beyond that, who knows how his mind works, or for that matter, how anyone's mind works, other than the driblets of insight and understanding that come to us at times when we reflect on the black box that is someone's mind? I wish Andrew could coolly assess Israel the way he approaches say, the political philosophy of Michael Oakeshott or Edmund Burke, or the way he contemplates the writings of the neuroscientist Jonah Lehrer, which he links to often, or the economy, but as you note, the Israeli-Palestinian imbroglio is a hot one and Andrew is gravely moralistic, though he is so much more than that at his best. I perceive that it is too late for Andrew to walk back on his Middle Eastern peregrinations now. He has made friends and admirers that he never had before because of his writings on these matters, which are far inferior to yours or those of Leon Wieseltier or Martin Peretz, who no matter how much he infuriates me is brilliant and on much sounder ground than Andrew is on matters of the Levant. So is Andrew an anti-Semite? No and no and no, and Mr. Leon W, I take issue with your characterization - as one of your great all-time admirers - but I do note that Andrew has written questionable things on the linkage between neoconservatism and the Jewish practitioners of this severely flawed Weltanschauung. So go in peace, everyone, and Andrew, can you please not take your fury at the rogue's gallery of torturati that is Cheney and Yoo and Bybee and Addington and project it on to the (flawed) democracy known as Israel? Thank you very much.
- liberal reformer
February 26, 2010 at 1:15pm
Because I spent some time considering the Wieseltier Sullivan mismatch, I want to stake out a position that I'd like to defend. My position is that Wieseltier in his recent pieces here on Sullivan did not call him an anti Semite as such but rather argued that some of what Sullivan writes--of which examples are given and analysed--are akin to anti Semitism. Wieseltier's criticism was one of anti intellectual rabidity as much as it was, if not more, one of some anti Semitic like comments. The common sense prescription for Sullivan was to stop venting and to think beofre writing. I think there is a difference in that distinction. I also think there is a mode, and kind ,of functional anti Semitism, different from straight up Jew hating, consisting of singling out Israel for criticism by standards that are not even handedly applied to other countries. So if someone is interested in arguing that out--the nature of Wieseltier's recent complaint, and its validity-- I'm all ears and am open to being convinced otherwise.
- basman
February 26, 2010 at 1:23pm
Malahat: I read Laqueur's book. And, agreed, the singling out of Israel can be founded on explicit Jew hating and can be a modern form of anti Semitism. Somtimes though it's not and when it's not its roots are tangled, gray and complex. I think the "sometimes not" is part of the overlooked subtlety of Wieseltier's problem with Sullivan. Both subjects are interesting--Wieseltier's exchange with Sullivan, and functional anti Semitic critiques of Israel from people who are not evident, or mouth foaming, Jew haters--and they tend to merge in the Wieseltier's criticism of Sullivan and their then exchange. And that's what I want to argue/discuss with someone.
- basman
February 26, 2010 at 2:33pm
Malahat: just to be clear, I wasn't including the criticism of discrete Israeli policies within my notion of functional anti Semitism. I was trying to say even those who hold Israel to standards they don't hold other countries to are not necessarily anti Semites, that theirs may be a more complicated story. In these terms, how would you classify Sullivan?
- basman
February 26, 2010 at 3:12pm
I thought Sullivan's response to Chait was completely self-dramatizing. Like, "Poor, poor Andrew, look at how those nasty Jews are beating up on him." The suggestion that he's facing anything remotely like persecution is laughable. He's on the masthead of a very prestigious magazine and probably being well-remunerated. Furthermore, I just loved his suggestion that it was the Jews at TNR who formed his earlier attachment to Israel. The poor dumb goy was defenseless against those silver-tongued Jews. They fed him the propaganda, and because he's unable to think for himself, he just had no choice but to admire Israel. Can you imagine that, an Oxford, Harvard scholar--and member of the Oxford union--being hoodwinked by those slippery yids. HOWEVER, Chait has not answered Sullivan's charge that the settler population has doubled. The thing is, if you want your antagonists to be intellectually honest, then you better offer the same and recognize for some people, like me, it gets a little tough to love a country that has policies that are flat-out wrong. Chait often does so, just not this time..
- MOLLYSIMON
February 26, 2010 at 3:27pm
It takes an enormous amount of chutzpah to write the following in The New Republic: -- My point is that the creation of communities of mutual believers, reinforcing each other's sensation of martyrdom and bravery, is not conducive to clear thinking. Jonathan Chait fails to recognize that he is an apparatchik in what is essentially a Stalinist cocoon at The New Republic with regard to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. The magazine routinely betrays its intellectual instincts when matters turn to Israel and instead advocates an ultra-nationalist and racist case that supports the decades-long Israeli oppression of the Palestinian people. It is Jonathan Chait, not Andrew Sullivan, who has the simplistic view of Israel. Andrew Sullivan is among the increasing numbers who renounced the simplistic view of this magazine that Israel can do no wrong and must be defended against each and every condemnation regardless of how justified they may be. I hope Jonathan Chait enjoys his thirty pieces of silver - perhaps one day he'll notice they are stained in the blood of many dead Israelis and a far larger number of dead Palestinians.
- ndmackenzie
February 26, 2010 at 3:34pm
Well said, Jon. I, like the other non-Likud supporters of Israel, appreciate a nuanced criticism of Sullivan's hyperbolic rants.
- rozenson
February 26, 2010 at 5:04pm
For a guy who doesn't like having his motives and honesty questioned, that's what Sullivan usually grasps for first. Chait made clear why the reasons for Sullivan's claimed Israel awakening are all nonsense. Sullivan doesn't respond but instead says that Chait is restricted from being honest because he works at TNR. Classy!
- bigm
February 26, 2010 at 5:29pm
I never liked Sullivan myself, but i have to admit that Sullivan very effectively nailed Chait on the London Blitz comparison in his reply - the one Chait is refusing to address on the grounds that it is "mostly wordplay."
- kiltubberr
February 26, 2010 at 6:18pm
kiltubberr: Chait shouldn't have used the Blitz analogy. He walked right into that one. However, the idea behind the analogy is that Israeli citizens were terrorized by the bombings of Sderot. And that's a very real point to make. Unfortunately, Chait unmade that point when he went, like Sullivan, into hyperbole.
- MOLLYSIMON
February 26, 2010 at 6:50pm
"...I was moved by what I saw in Gaza, and appalled by the triumphalist neoconservative rhetoric over the dead bodies of innocent children and what I came to see as a grotesquely disproportionate response by a regional super-power, subsidized by a global super-power, armed with 150 nuclear weapons, to the war crimes of Hamas.." Malahat, I have no interest in defending Sullivan, nor his ridiculous paragraph. But I can't see this as the pretext of personal writing or *analysis", which both covers and reveals the Jew hating at its base. I think it's just more Sullivania, an unhinged emotionality by someone smart enough to make it articulate--the very syndrome Wieseltier diagnosed and prescribed for.
- basman
February 26, 2010 at 7:06pm
Here's a question about Andrew Sullivan and Israel I haven't seen addressed anywhere else. A couple of months ago he posted a quote by Hannah Rosenthal on anti-semitism in order to prove she wasn't the "self hating J-Street charicature" she was being portrayed as. The thing that struck me was that Sullivan clearly met the definition (if I recall right, it was someone who criticizes Israel more often and intensely than worse human rights offenders). Can anyone recall a single post on Sullivan's blog about Egypt receiving $4 billion per year and us propping up their dissent-stifling, Copt Christian-discriminating, gay-persecuting (if not to Iranian standards) government? That Egypt must have one heckuva lobby for this to continue? That polls show Americans don't like the Egyptian government but Congress keeps voting for that massive aid - what could possibly explain it? If so, I missed it. To repeat, for the record, I don't think Sullivan is an anti-semite (her definition shouldn't be applied out of context). But I do think he's guilty of, I dunno, taunting? He's capable of far more rigorous thought -- as David Brooks noted, he's somewhat of a conservative of doubt of convenience. I wish he'd take a step back.
- Lymon1
February 26, 2010 at 7:37pm
For anyone who cares, here's a website that devotes a lot more time and attention illuminating Sullivan's biases and sophistry than he probably deserves: http://dailydishwater.wordpress.com/ Since Sullivan is too cowardly to allow comments on his website (for all of his talk about libertarianism and willingness to air contrary views), this will have to do.
- bigm
February 28, 2010 at 12:44am
People respect what they fear. Most people are more afraid of terrorists who fly planes into buildings than they are of an invisible God who would allow his most favored people to suffer millennia of persecution. Andrew Sullivan is not the first person to turn on the Jewish state, and he will not be the last. Most people will abandon even their closest friends in the face of a threat. It's a self-preservation mechanism, as futile as it is instinctive. Europeans did it to Jews in the 1930s in response to Nazism, and they are doing it again today with the Jewish state in response to Islam. Not "Islamism" or "Islamofascism" but Islam. For all the Israel Lobby's supposed clout, most people are more terrified of Muslims than they are of Jews, and so displace onto the Jewish state everything they fear and despise in the other. Let's stop trying to label Andrew Sullivan. All he is is human, and I suspect more of us would react the same way in his shoes than we would like to believe. (I know I would.) Much as I take exception with Andrew's columns attacking Israel, I would no sooner condemn him for his words than I would want to be judged for every one of mine. Jon's measured response also answers a question that has long vexed observers of American politics: Why do so many Jews vote for Democrats when Republicans extol Israel more? I for one find more comfort in someone who employs logic and reason, even if he reaches a conclusion leftward of mine, than in someone who blindly embraces my own position. I am not endorsing the Obama Administration's Middle East policy here, just explaining why I feel leery of someone like Sarah Palin in spite of the vehemence of her pro-Israel rhetoric. Most Jews recognize intuitively that the sword you desire can also be turned against you. Happy Purim, everybody.
- drheingold
February 28, 2010 at 10:43pm