ADL Overboard

Todd Gitlin's take on the Anti-Defamation League's shameful efforts to intimidate people out of hosting a talk by Tony Judt is probably the best one I've read. Again, for the record, I think Judt's espousal of binationalism for Israel-Palestine is fairly daft. Still, he's a smart, well-respected guy, people are rightly interested in what he has to say, and reasonable people would just let him speak. It's especially noteworthy -- and unfortunate -- that this is the ADL we're talking about here which is not really an "Israel lobby" institution, as such. It's a bit of a sensitive subject to raise, but I get a sense that over the past few years the ADL has been wrestling with the problem that there's arguably too little anti-semitism in the United States to justify the existence of an organization of its size dedicated to combatting it. But the staff and leadership need to do something all day, so they've started fighting phantom anti-semitism in the form of vigorous criticism of Israel.

The conflation of anti-semitism with "has political opinions I disagree with" is, however, unlikely to prove Good for the Jews in the long run. Lurking somewhere in this Spine post is the notion that Michael Moore and Jimmy Carter are, not too left-wing, but . . . anti-semites. This I find to be a ludicrous notion. Political disputes are just that, political disputes. Meanwhile, I've never really understood why Carter is so loathed in "pro-Israel" circles; it seems to me that the Camp David Accords and attendant arrangements have been an unambiguous boon to Israel -- I never seem to see Carter-haters suggesting a return to the previous situation. Israel should be so lucky as to have more American presidents engaged with the conflict in such a constructive way. Bush has been much more "supportive" of Israel, but what's actually been accomplished?

Comments

Not that this is the ADL's thing, but it really bugs me when I see charges of anti-Semitism being tossed around by people who basically just want to fight wars against Muslims, and whose sympathies with Israel are entirely dependent on their being engaged in that conflict.

Posted by Neil the Ethical Werewolf | October 10, 2006 4:10 PM

The thing is, right-wing Israelis toss around the terms "pro-Israel" and "anti-Israel" in much the same way as our own wingnuts accuse liberals of being "anti-American." Yeah, it's not particularly good for Jews overall. But it's a right-wing problem, a nationalist problem, not a Jewish problem.

Posted by Steve | October 10, 2006 4:15 PM

not liking Carter, etc... because the people who run AIPAC are neocon. Republicans and Likudniks. They do NOT automatically support Israel... They skunked Rabin and Barak negotiations with Syria and PA. Massings piece in NYR was pretty good on this.

Posted by steve | October 10, 2006 4:17 PM

Bush has been much more "supportive" of Israel, but what's actually been accomplished?

My strong suspicion is that Israelis will look at the last five years as a series of really, really costly blunders by both Bush and themselves. Has Bush done anything but harm the Israelis? And they must just love that Baker's back, perhaps setting policy. Jeebus. Well, the Israelis can thank Peretz, Brooks, Kristol, et al., at their leisure, I guess.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | October 10, 2006 4:18 PM

I suspect there's not actually too little anti-semitism, but not enough focus on actual antisemitism (and discrimination & jingoism in general) from opinion leaders. The Clinton era brough an awful lot of concern about "hate crimes", and the focus on the militia movement also brought a lot of anti-semitism into the glare of the public eye. But either the militia movement has scaled back since the '90s, or the Bush administration has decided to deal with conflicts in a much quieter fashion. So there is not the national focus on internal discrimination that there was ten years ago.

That said, as Chuck Schumer is fond of saying, when crime goes down, racism goes down, so there is probably less anti-semitism now than there was before. But that doesn't mean it doesn't exist anymore. $40 million isn't that much money.

Posted by Nicholas Beaudrot | October 10, 2006 4:29 PM

The idea of a binational state to replace Israel may be daft in terms of its chances of political acceptance, but I think it makes a lot of sense. It does seem to me a bit anachronistic to have a state "for" a particular ethnic or religious group in today's world. Since the failure of the Oslo process, which was dedicated to a two-state solution, it makes sense to consider the alternative: a one-state solution with legally guarenteed rights for minorities.

As time goes on, as unilateral withdrawals become unacceptable to Israelis, and as a reliable negotiating partner does not emerge on the Palestinian side, this option might start seeming more and more palatable.

Posted by Jim W | October 10, 2006 4:31 PM

I'm shocked, shocked to see an ethnic-rights group go completely overboard for no good reason. That surely has never happened before.

Posted by Al | October 10, 2006 4:37 PM

I agree that it's a right-wing thing, not an anti-semetic thing. I remember being astounded by those self-proclaimed Israel-supporters who praised the pope for quoting medieval sources on the Muslims. The exact same people who were supporting Crusader rhetoric seemed to forget what medieval Christian sources -- and a great number of post-medieval Christian sources -- said about the Jews.

Posted by Diana | October 10, 2006 4:37 PM

Incidentally, someone might want to pay attention to what is happening in the Palestinian territories recently. (Hint: try a non-American news source like The Guardian.)

Posted by Kiril | October 10, 2006 5:09 PM

>>My strong suspicion is that Israelis will look at the last five years as a series of really, really costly blunders by both Bush and themselves. Has Bush done anything but harm the Israelis?

That, in effect, is what Walt and Mearsheimer said about AIPAC at the National Press Club. They were rewarded by being called antisemites by Dana Milbank in the next day's Washington Post.

Posted by skip | October 10, 2006 5:13 PM

It's just a slight exaggeration to say that the ultra-Zionist lobby invented political correctness.

Posted by Pithlord | October 10, 2006 5:46 PM

This is a must-see for anyone interested in the general theme of Israel and the U.S. and the inability for this relationship to be discussed openly and candidly in the American media. Tony Judt is one of the panelists, as is John Mearsheimer.

I myself don't know what is more "daft,"--
Judt's one-state solution, or Israel's belief that it can operate an ever-expanding apartheid state--and not face resistance in the form of terrorism.

Posted by Murph | October 10, 2006 5:46 PM

I'd really like to see an argument why the colonists of South Africa and its indigenous african bantustans should have a one state solution but the jewish colonists of Israel and its indigenous arab bantustans should not. You really have to believe that arabs are more deserving of colonisation and ethnic cleansing than africans to avoid applying the same solution.

Posted by otto | October 10, 2006 6:08 PM

Peretz: "(Before too long, the Democratic Party will have to confront this reality and drive it out of the liberal tent, from Jimmy Carter to Michael Moore to well, let's just watch.)"

It seems to me much more likely that, before too long, the Democratic Party will have to confront the reality of Peretz and co. and drive it out of the liberal tent ... Indeed Peretz seems to be moving Republican all by himself.

Posted by otto | October 10, 2006 6:16 PM

Another point, made by Gitlin, but I'll make it again:

A) Tony Judt speaks frankly about Israel's problems, and advocates a one-state solution.

B) Abe Foxman then says he "has taken the position that Israel shouldn't exist."

Excuse me--isn't Foxman's statement, umm, "defamation"--the harming of one's reputation by libel or slander?

Will anyone point out to Abe Foxman that the name of his organization is the "Anti-Defamation League" (not "Liars for Israel" or whatever he apparently conceives it as)?

Posted by Murph | October 10, 2006 8:03 PM

Speaking of defamation, Peretz's description of Finkelstein as a Holocaust denier is purely and simply a lie. I hope Finkelstein sues him, and I hope he takes him to the cleaners.

Posted by William Burns | October 10, 2006 8:16 PM

It does seem to me a bit anachronistic to have a state "for" a particular ethnic or religious group in today's world.

Tell that to the Croats, Bosnians, Serbs, Kosovars, Basques, North Irish, Czechs, Slovaks, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Quebecois, Tibetans, East Timorese, etc. I think that one of the real reasons Europe has been relatively free of bloodshed since WWII (aside from having two superpowers basically sitting on them) and especially the Cold War is that state boundaries are largely nowadays drawn along ethnic lines. Nationalism is the most powerful social force in human history, and I don't think it's proper to write it off at this stage. We are most certainly not in a post-nationalist period, and the demise of the nation-state has been greatly exaggerated. The idea of having a state "for" a particular ethnic, religious, or cultural group is definitely a more influential idea than most people realize, even in supposedly post-national states like those of Western Europe.

Posted by woot | October 10, 2006 9:01 PM

Yeah, Peretz's claim that Finkelstein is a Holocaust denier is a flat out lie and the case for libel seems pretty plausible (the little I know about libel law that is) to me. His mother was a Holocaust survivor; Peretz's commments are beyond the pale. Having read a fair amount of Finkelstein I'm hardly a huge fan of the guy (though there's some interesting stuff mixed in with the overwrought invective), but Peretz should be called to account for the attempt at defamation.

Posted by Joel | October 10, 2006 9:13 PM

The argument's quite simple, really - x obviously implies y, A is smart and well-informed, A advocates x, thus A advocates y. Here A is Judt, x is the single-state solution, y is the death of many many Israeli Jews, the destruction of Israeli society, and a new diaspora. The only way out of the argument is to claim that y is going to happen anyway or to fall back on the position that A is suffering from some combination of unfortunate bias and localized stupidity. It's much the same question one faces when trying to understand America's attempt to completely reorganize Iraqi society by force - were advocates naive or stupid, or did they just not care very much what happened there?

Posted by rilkefan | October 10, 2006 11:25 PM

Judt's proposal is less daft than the plan that was enacted in 1948! If there was a worse post-colonial map-making decision, I'm not aware of it.

And if you find this comment absurd and offensive, it's not as bad as Rilkefan's tripe!
You might as well photoshop a picture of Judt holding Anne Frank's dead body if you're going to be that dishonest.
And the analogy about Iraq is completely laughable---it was the imposition of the Zionist state which was imposed from outside, just like the current Iraqi government.

Look, I don't have any personal stake in whether Israel continues in its present course. My interest in the matter is in how it affects US politics and security. I understand the reasonableness of Zionists wanting a Jewish state, compared to any other nationalism, but the continual dirge of crazy people saying that all Jews will be killed if Israel is not allowed to do as it likes is quite a bit less than helpful.

Posted by Marky | October 11, 2006 2:55 AM

It is puzzling that in Israel itself there is a robust, self-critical, no-holds-barred discussion of all such questions, but here in the US there is an insistence on monolithic views, and suppression of dissenters.

Posted by bob h | October 11, 2006 7:47 AM

The idea of a binational state to replace Israel may be daft in terms of its chances of political acceptance, but I think it makes a lot of sense.

Edward Said favoured a one-state solution, too: 'The land's too small. Our history's so mixed.' Most Americans really don't have the necessary sense of scale to appreciate it: while the CIA Factbook says 'slightly smaller than New Jersey', NJ isn't mostly the Negev. You're basically looking at a map in which an area the size of Rhode Island is distributed in non-contiguous chunks around the borders of Connecticut.

Anyway, the ADL has had many shark-jumping moments, but I'd note the recent release on the 'Borat' movie suggesting that while Sacha Baron Cohen may be a good Jew, his audience might not get the joke. To me, that says Foxman and co. have too much fucking time on their hands.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | October 11, 2006 8:09 AM

Correct me if I'm wrong, but judging from the dozens of Israeli 20-somethings I've talked to, I don't think there's a very "robust, self-critical, no-holds-barred" discussion of ZIONISM (and its history) in Israeli schools. There is, from what I could see, a heavy indoctrination however, holding that the Arab people simply detest the Jews and have throughout history. I was rather amazed at how little was known about David Ben Gurion and the founding ideology of Israel, which today would be called ethnic cleansing.

I don't doubt that political discussions are indeed more robust in Israel, largely due to its multi-party system. But any real conversation about the Palestinians must include what happened pre-1948, and the kids I talked to all seemed to think the Arabs left "voluntarily"--that's sort of like saying the Native Americans in North America "decided" to die off and move to reservations.

Posted by Murph | October 11, 2006 8:24 AM

Yet another point: Isn't conflating "Israel" and "the Jews" injurious to Jews who don't advocate ethnic cleansing, territorial expansion by force, etc? I've made that mistake before, unintentionally. But people like Abe Foxman and the other attack poodles of "the Lobby" seem to WANT to confuse the two in the public mind: criticisism of Israel, they contend, is inherently anti-Jewish. That, to me, is pure anti-semitism: making Jews around the world foot the blame for the actions of the state of Israel.

Posted by Murph | October 11, 2006 8:33 AM

"Binationalism for Israel-Palestine" = destroy the world's only jewish state and let millions of people who HATE israel and HATE israeli jews flood in and become the majority. So the 40 or so muslim countries get to still exist, but the world's only
jewish state gets taken over and destroyed, forcing a third of the world's jews to either have to live under Islamic rule or, yet again, roam earth looking for a new home. Antisemites are the ones who come up with that brilliant idea and they present it as something "fair and democratic" when they know full well they're just promoting "destroy Israel."

Posted by Brad Sellers | October 11, 2006 10:02 AM

rilkefan, "x obviously leads to y" is contestable and contested, and without that premise your argument collapses. As it happens, I agree that legal guarentees of protections for the Jews would not be adequate, as laws that are contrary to the strong desires of the majority will fail. I think proponents of this position have too much faith in legalism. So I think x does lead pretty much to y, and therefore oppose a one state solution. But that's my position, not, I believe, Judt's. If Judt believes a one-state solution could guarentee safety to the Jews, even if he is wrong, and even if he is "obviously" wrong, then he is not advocating many, many jewish deaths or any of the rest of what you said.

Posted by Martin Bento | October 11, 2006 10:05 AM

The day you people suggest that Israel, the world's only Jewish state, should be "undone" and turned into a "bi-national" state is the same day you spend 40 times the energy promoting the idea that the 40 or so Muslim countries should be "undone" as well. A "one-state solution" isn't a "solution" unless the problem you're trying to solve is "How can we destroy the world's only Jewish state and pretend we mean well when we do it." As for Normal Finkelstein, who knows if he's really Jewish? Who knows if his mother really was in the Holocaust? I sure don't. But I do know that his books and his speeches are some of the most dishonest, anti-Israel, anti-Jew speeches around. His books are nothing but accusing jews of exaggerating the holocaust, accusing them of exaggerating anti-semitism (while essentially promoting anti-semitism himself in the process of accusing them of exaggerating the holocaust) and dishonest, one-sided arguments against Israel where he takes facts out of context, or twists them in biased fashion.

Posted by Brad Sellers | October 11, 2006 10:07 AM

Hey Jim, you said "It does seem to me a bit anachronistic to have a state "for" a particular ethnic or religious group in today's world."

My question is, then why are you picking Israel as the place you want to destroy, oh, excuse me, "undo?" Aren't there MANY, MUCH BIGGER COUNTRIES around the world that are dominated in one way or another by "a particular ethnic or religious group?"

Posted by Brad Sellers | October 11, 2006 10:13 AM

I'll take it "Brad Sellers" is referring to Finkelstein's "The Holocaust Industry". If he is he's either never read the book or is lying about its content. Either way, he's defaming Finkelstein. The book doesn't address particulars of the Holocaust at all and therefore doesn't claim anyone's "exaggerating" it. It broadly addresses how Israelis and Americans use consciousness of the Holocaust as a political tool, takes on unqualified historians like Johah Goldhagen, and also addresses the issues specific of holocaust-related lawsuits.

Brad Sellers is a hysteric and a liar. For calmer types, Finkelstein's book makes short reading, is sardonically witty, and, like most stuff that hysterics try to censor, turns out to be not particularly shocking stuff.

Posted by brendan | October 11, 2006 11:16 AM

Cripes, and just above we see the attitude that was so roundly condemned rear its ugly head, a combination of "you're focusing on Israel and thus hate Jewish people" and "Jews who are critical of Israel aren't really Jewish", with a dash of "I want to simultaneously have Israel get the credit for being a modern liberal democracy and not have the state be judged by that standard, but instead by the standard of the dictatorships that surround it".

All of these are, of course, ludicrous, especially the latter, but they all add up to one basic argument: "Do as I say or you're a Nazi and, thus, discredited." Sad, pathetic, unlikely to work, very likely to lead to unintended consequences, but oh-so-popular nonetheless. Pity.

Posted by Demosthenes | October 11, 2006 11:21 AM

I've never really understood why Carter is so loathed in "pro-Israel" circles;

I think a distinction needs to be made between "pro-Israel," people who support Israel's right to exist within secure and defined borders, which also includes many of Israel's liberal and leftist critics, and "more Israel", people who support the constant expansion of settlements, the creation of "facts on the ground", and who generally respond with howls of "anti-Semitism!" to any suggestion that Israel isn't under siege by the people whose land it has been occupying militarily since 1967.

Posted by M. Duss | October 11, 2006 12:43 PM

M. Duss --

I gave up my conscientious efforts to make that distinction with Israel's recent destruction of Lebanon. The event was "clarifying" for me, as they say. I didn't find a whole lot of "pro-Israel" people here or at similar blogs who reacted with any kind of decent outrage or disgust. It was either excuse-making or wagon-circling.

Posted by brendan | October 11, 2006 1:45 PM

"Israel's recent destruction of Lebanon"

Surely you mean "Israel's recent destruction of Atlantis".

Posted by rilkefan | October 11, 2006 3:36 PM

Brad Sellers: thanks for bringing that tolerant, non-kneejerking ADL spirit to this thread. Point proven, I think.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | October 11, 2006 9:06 PM

Can we integrate Iran too? I gather it's an Arab state that kicked out Jews. Let's make sure that they become an Arab-minority state, shall we? While we're at it, I hear there are another 34 primarily-Arab countries that do not permit Jews to be fully participatory citizens. How about we integrate them as well? This will be fun.

Posted by Anon | October 13, 2006 12:37 AM

Anon, if you actually think Iran is an Arab state, you're not qualified to join the discussion.

Posted by William Burns | October 13, 2006 7:56 AM