Even though I am on vacation with my family this week, I was
planning to blog today about the Washington
Post's stunning series on the extraordinary expansion of America's
intelligence apparatus since 9/11. It is outstanding investigative journalism, and its authors -- Dana Priest
and William Arkin -- deserve enormous kudos. I'll share my thoughts on this matter later this week.
Instead of writing today about quality journalism, I
unfortunately have to write about an article that fits squarely at the other
end of the journalism spectrum. I
refer here to the nasty column in Tablet magazine by Lee Smith, denouncing Glenn Greenwald,
Andrew Sullivan, Philip Weiss, Jim Lobe and me for being "career Jew-baiters" and
serving as facilitators of anti-Semitism.
As one might expect, the piece is long on invective and
innuendo but almost completely devoid of meaningful evidence. Its only real value is to once again
demonstrate the usual tactics that many of the so-called defenders of Israel
employ against anyone who is critical either of Israel's actions or of America's special
relationship with Israel.
The first thing to observe about Smith's screed is that even
though he accuses me and my fellow bloggers of being anti-Semites and "Jew-baiters,"
his article contains not a scintilla of evidence that Sullivan, Greenwald,
Weiss, or I have written or said anything that is remotely anti-Semitic, much
less that involves "Jew-baiting." There's an obvious reason for this omission: None of us has ever written
or said anything that supports Smith's outrageous charges.
Smith therefore has to resort to a new and bizarre form of
"guilt-by-association." He attacks
the four of us-and me in particular-by looking at some of the anonymous reader comments
that appear in response to some of our posts. He finds that a few of those individuals who comment make
some extreme statements, which he uses to argue that we are deliberately fostering
anti-Semitism on our blogs. In
other words, we must be anti-Semites because a handful of people whom we don't
even know -- because their identities are secret -- are commenting on our posts. (It's not clear how this applies to
Sullivan, by the way, because his blog doesn't have a comments thread.)
The problems with this line of argument should be
obvious. First, people of all
persuasions write in to disagree -- sometimes vehemently -- with my views on Middle
East policy, and that includes individuals who defend Israel down the
line. So, one could just as easily
use the comments thread to argue that I am providing a platform for pro-Israel hasbara. Second, any website that deals with Middle East
subjects, especially Israel, will inevitably attract some wing-nuts. Just take a look at the comments on New York Times or Washington Post pieces dealing with Israel, or even better, check
out the "talk-backs" in the Jerusalem
Post or Ha'aretz. There is virtually no difference between what you
will find at those sites and what you will find on the Greenwald, Weiss, and
Walt sites. Does Smith also believe that Ha'aretz and the Jerusalem Post are "mainstreaming hate?" Third, if we judge bloggers
not by what they write but by what
some of their readers write in response,
we would be giving opponents of those bloggers an easy way to discredit
them. If you don't like what a
particular blogger says, write an anonymous comment praising him or her, add
some bigoted statements of your own, and then send Smith an anonymous email and
tell him to check out the comments thread. Voila! Lastly,
if we take freedom-of-speech seriously (and I do) we have to be tolerant of
discourse that we personally find offensive and sometimes even hateful. I am confident that the vast majority
of people who read my blog can tell the difference between what I write under
my own name and what anyone else says about what I have written, even if Smith
cannot.
Smith's other source of "evidence" against me and my fellow
bloggers is a handful of outlandish quotations from the Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg, who has made some of those same bogus charges
against me in the past. Goldberg, in case you didn't know, is a journalist
whose intense passion for Israel led him to emigrate there and enlist in the
IDF, where he served as a prison guard.
I have no problem with that, as Americans are allowed to hold dual
citizenship; but it does help you understand why he is quick to attack anyone
who criticizes Israel. Objectivity
about the Middle East is not his strong suit.
He was also a vocal advocate of invading Iraq in 2003, and
wrote a long-since discredited article about Saddam Hussein's supposed links to al Qaeda. This embarrassing error gives
you some idea of the reliability of his expertise about the Middle East. He also wrote a comically overwrought review
of my book with John Mearsheimer on the Israel lobby in the New Republic that began by comparing us
to Osama bin Laden, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Father Coughlin, and managed to
misrepresent our views on nearly every page. I seem to have become a favorite punching bag of his, given that he has
repeatedly accused me on his own blog of being a "Jew-baiter." Of course, he never offers a shred of
evidence to support that ludicrous (and truth be told, obscene) charge.
The fact that Goldberg's ravings are the best ammunition Smith
has shows you that he has no case.
What is really going on here? Smith's article is just another illustration of what has
become a familiar and depressing story here in the United States. Anyone who writes or says something
that is critical of Israeli policy, who questions the wisdom of the special
relationship, or who talks about the negative influence of the Israel lobby, is
almost certain to smeared, usually by being labeled either an anti-Semite or a
self-hating Jew. It is as
predictable as the sun rising in the east each morning.
It doesn't matter how often you remind people that lobbying
on behalf of a foreign country is a legitimate political activity in the American
political system, how often you emphasize that you support Israel's existence,
or how often you denounce genuine anti-Semitism. Nor does it matter how carefully you document your
claims.
People like Smith (and Goldberg) will simply ignore all of
that and instead come up with bizarre arguments designed to portray you as a
virulent and dangerous bigot. Of
course, the purpose of this smearing is two-fold: to deter others from speaking
out in public, and to discourage those who have spoken out from doing so
again. And when someone cannot be
silenced, the goal is to marginalize them so that they cannot influence the
discourse about Israel and Middle East politics in meaningful ways.
Why do they use such ugly tactics? The answer is simple: the case they are defending is so weak
that they cannot rely on facts, logic, and claims of justice to win the day. To be perfectly clear, I am not talking
about the case for Israel's existence inside its pre-1967 borders, which I
wholeheartedly support. Rather, I
am talking about the case for defending many of Israel's policies, including
its actions in the Occupied Territories, and its recent wars against Lebanon
(2006) and Gaza (2008-2009). I am
talking about the case for giving Israel unconditional and uncritical backing no matter what it does,
which is not in either America's or Israel's interest. Those
cases cannot stand up to scrutiny, which is why Smith and Goldberg have to rely
on name-calling and character assassination instead of facts, logic, and
rational discussion.
One final point is in order about the lobby's efforts to
marginalize individuals who criticize Israel. Smith's attack is obviously designed to try to convince the
people who run Foreign Policy to drop
me from its site. Why else would Smith
make a pointed reference to the "owners of the Washington Post" and to the "advertising staff" there?
The fact is that the blogosphere has succeeded in opening up
a freewheeling and informative discourse about Israel and Middle East politics
that is still largely absent from the mainstream media. Subjects relating to Israel that were
taboo not too long ago are now being openly discussed on the internet, and by writers who have a large audience. This is a major headache for the lobby,
which is used to the relatively easy task of policing the mainstream
media. But rest assured that "pro-Israel"
forces are hard at work trying to figure out how to silence the likes of Greenwald,
Sullivan, Weiss, and me. Smith and
Goldberg are part of that effort.
In any case, I am flattered to be included with Messrs. Weiss, Sullivan, Greenwald and Lobe. I
don't agree with everything they write and I'm sure that's their view of my
work as well, but they are courageous and intelligent writers who have done
much to expand our understanding of a range of vital issues, which is more than
one can say of our attacker. To be
smeared by the likes of Mr. Smith is a badge of honor, and it tells me that I
must be doing something right.
UPDATE: In my original post on this topic, I neglected to include Jim Lobe and his associates, who were also targeted in Smith's hatchet job. Jim is a terrific journalist who has done important work on the neoconservative movement (among other topics), and I am pleased to be his friend. I've corrected the omission in the above post, and I recommend the work that he and his associates put up at LobeLog. My apologies to them for the omission.
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