Jeffrey Goldberg's a colleague at The Atlantic so perhaps the less said about his TNR article on how John Mearsheimer and Steven Walt are anti-semites and it's about time someone had the courage to say so the better. Readers will know, obviously, that I disagree and probably be familiar with my views on the situation.
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For the Record
01 Oct 2007 11:28 am
Comments (48)
The amazing thing about Goldberg's review is that by calling Walt and Mearsheimer anti-semites, he reinforces their argument that those who criticize Israel are called anti-semites.
As to Matt being careful on this issue, give him a break. We are all careful on this issue and with good reason. That is just the point.
Well, thank god Mark Steyn no longer writes for the Atlantic, or else you wouldn't be able to say anything critical about him. I hope they never make Marty Peretz an Atlantic "Voice."
Man, first Patrick Healy's a great guy and now you'd better keep your mouth shut rather than disagree publicly with a colleague. It's almost as if you're trying to piss off your readers intentionally.
Query: L. Gelb was at pains to distance himself from wild charges of anti-semitism against M & W. and, on the whole, seemed to engage their views seriously. (Though, as MY observed, there was a bizarre bit that seemed to treat the China lobby as though it were an active force.) Nonetheless, throughout the review Gelb speaks of "the Jewish lobby", implying that M & W do the same. The title of the book refers to the "Israel Lobby", and I'd be surprised if the same phrase isn't used in the body of the book. Can someone who has read the book enlighten me?
I really miss "small-media Matt".
what is an anti-semite? name some verifiable anti-semites so I can really fix the definition in stone.
I mean, at least Matt's being honest about his new professional incentives to keep his mouth shut.
But you really think Goldberg can't handle some thoughtful, measured criticism?
The first quarter of Goldberg's piece -- ostensibly a review of a book by Mearsheimer and Walt -- is about Osama bin Laden's anti-Semitic views. With that as a start, who can take the rest seriously? I didn't even bother to read the rest of it.
Jeffrey Goldberg, whose "The Great Terror" showed us Saddams "possible ties" to al-Qaeda using Cheney-inspired primary sources? That Jeffrey Goldberg?
Or maybe you are talking about the Goldberg who uses Nathan Sharansky as a primary source for insights into the mind of Bush?
Or my favorite Goldberg, his "Letters from Gaza" where the vast majority of his sources were either IDF officers quoted anonymously or quoted remarks from West Bank colonists. brilliant!
could one find a propagandist less qualified to discuss the Israel Lobby than Jeffrey Goldberg? I guess maybe Abe Foxman? Par for the course, of course, in the pages of The New Racist magazine.
It is an interesting question whether such a poorly argued article would be acceptable to the New Republic and Atlantic if Mearsheimer and Walt were not at least partly right.
Goldberg uses a rhetorical trick that I first heard from Foxman of trying to link M and W to 9/11 truthers because they claim that American middle east policy, as driven by the Israel lobby was a causal factor in the 9/11 attack. He is nice enough to say that it is not exactly like claiming that Israel planned and carried out the attack. But this is clearly a way of sliding over the fact that it is absolutely nothing like claiming that in and relevant way whatsoever.
Two other arguments which only survive because people apparently are so dogmatic that they don't have a clue as to what the other side is arguing for: Goldberg claims that bin Laden does not think modern day Jews are real jews. The evidence given for this is that he thinks the claim that jews do not have a right to Israel based on the bible is laughable.
I consider myself a real jew. But I also think that the idea that jews have a right to Israel based on God's promise in the Torah is laughable. On this one point I guess I agree with bin Laden. But how much do you have to miss the point to think that the only reason one could doubt the efficacy of a biblical claim is that today's jews are not real jews.
Another is his claiming that W and M are documentably wrong to say that Ahmadinejad has not called for the physical destruction of Israel, but only for the end of the Israeli government. And to do this he points to the fact that some translations talk of Israel being wiped off the map. But there is nothing in the contexts to indicate that this is a reference to a physical destruction of the land and people of Israel. That is to say, having correctly noted what M & W's point is, he completely fails to consider whether the evidence he puts forward actually answers them, which it does not. And then he calls them shabby scholars for failing to have noted the non-evidence he puts forward.
Which is a long way of saying that the Goldberg paper is one worthy of careful analysis just to show how poor defenses of Israel can get away with being in the US.
I think W & M are guilty of awful oversimplification in everything I have seen by them. But as Goldberg illustrates, it would be almost impossible for them to outdo the oversimplification on the other side.
I agree with Tyrone completely. Goldberg's piece simply reinforced the cliche that every criticism of Israel is met with charges of anti-Semitism. M&W deserve their share of criticism, but claiming they're, in effect, Islamo-Nazis, is ludicrous. Is Goldberg's real name Marty Peretz?
Re: Healy, that was supposed to be sarcasm. As in, "I'm told he's a nice guy but his work as a journalist sucks."
I thought MY's point, at least in part, was "I've written everything I have to say about the subject already, so read that & you'll see what I think of Goldberg's article."
He's not keeping silent about the subject; his collegial deference merely extends to his not repeating himself on the subject.
He's not keeping silent about the subject; his collegial deference merely extends to his not repeating himself on the subject.
Exactly. It's not like I've never written on this general topic before.
"Anti-Semite" now has no more content or meaning than "fascist." Both words used to mean something, once.
I wonder if those who use the word will find the world a better place when the overwhelming response to "Anti-Semite!" will be "what.ev.er!"
Is there a funnier line in the political discourse of the 21st century than this?
The two men gained their fame--which is wildly disproportionate to their achievement
It's like Bob Beamon's 1968 long jump record.
Because lord knows you can discuss US relations with Israel without bringing up Father Coughlin.
I have to admit, I've been somewhat reflexively pro-Israel. This kind of overheated response to the charge that our relationship with Israel isn't good for our security makes me question my support for Israel.
Neither you, Matt, nor any of the comments here engaged in any significant way, let alone fully and seriously, with the arguments Goldberg made. He also never called Walt and Mearsheimer anti-semites, at least not in the direct and simplistic way you suggest. His was an extended and interesting argument, and provided some historical perspective on Walt and Mearsheimer's point of view. Is it really too much to ask to react to the argument, instead of reflexively dismissing the very existence of the argument as "proof" that the "Lobby" is just as Walt and Mearsheimer describe it?
Winston writes:
[Goldberg] also never called Walt and Mearsheimer anti-semites, at least not in the direct and simplistic way you suggest.
The intro on the front page of TNR is:
Mearsheimer and Walt's The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy is not an act of scholarship, but an act of anti-Semitic intimidation.
While Goldberg presumably did not write this anyone going to the article presumably read it and knows that TNR intends the article to demonstrate that Mearsheimer and Walt are anti-Semitic.
Comparing Walt and Mearsheimer to Father Coughlin, and pretending that this book is an "attack on Jewish enfranchisement," makes this article less convincing.
Goldberg's points about Ahmadinejad's quote, about W&M's selective quotation of columnists, about their overemphasis on the importance of Israel to bin Laden, and about a slanted reading of Israeli history seem to be solid.
But Mearsheimer was interviewed on NPR's Talk of the Nation a week or so ago, and stressed that American Jews are far from monolithic, that the lobbying efforts of the groups they describe are perfectly normal and American, and that "neoconservative" isn't the same thing as "Jewish" (mentioning John Bolton, among others)-- all things that Goldberg contradicts in his article.
As far as I could tell from that interview, you can make the same argument they make in this book about the lobby for farm subsidies.
It just might be that Mearsheimer was hiding his true colors, and advancing views he didn't advance in his book. But given Goldberg's excesses, it's hard to give him the benefit of the doubt as to this article's other points that seem to be well-grounded.
The issues are, does US support for Israel, as currently practiced, proceed from a solid moral and strategic rationale? I'm of the belief that it does, the vast bulk of the time. But the eagerness to dismiss counterarguments as anti-Semetic is quite unseemly.
He also never called Walt and Mearsheimer anti-semites, at least not in the direct and simplistic way you suggest. His was an extended and interesting argument, and provided some historical perspective on Walt and Mearsheimer's point of view
specifically he provided the historical perspective of saying that everything in W&M was in the historical perspective of anti-semites.
As far as I can tell, Goldberg's argument was that AIPAC raises its money on utterly false pretences and that AIPAC is lying on its website and in its marketing material about its political influence. This would seem to me to be pretty libellous to AIPAC and I'm surprised that TNR had the nerve to print it. I personally think that AIPAC is broadly honest in its self-assessment of its purposes and effectiveness in achieving them, and am rather surprised that doing so is in some way a conspiracy theory.
ndm, here's Goldberg's use of the word "intimidation": "Mearsheimer and Walt have set themselves a similar goal: to convince non-Jews that their Jewish fellow citizens do not have their best interests at heart, and, further, to harass or to rattle or to embarrass American Jews into silence. Their book is not an act of scholarship, but an act of intimidation." Not quite the point you suggest. spoonman, you oversimplify Goldberg's argument by a factor of at least 10; dsquared, Goldberg never argued AIPAC had no power; in fact part of his article concerns his own disagreement with what it has wrought. I suggest those of you who haven't yet done so read the entire piece and make up your own mind. I suspect you will still disagree with him - that is the nature of the viewpoints this blog attracts - but I would bet you will also walk away more skeptical of M&W's scholarship and objectivity.
Cower a little more, Matt.
I bet Joke Line had this moment too, twenty years ago. And look how he turned out.
Grow a pair or disclaim your position as a serious commentator. Your choice.
Goldberg writes:
They do not deny, though, that "there is anti-Semitism among European Muslims, some of it provoked by Israel's behavior toward the Palestinians and some of it straightforwardly racist." This is a bizarre and foul passage, its foulness easily clarified by a simple act of substitution. Imagine Farrar, Straus and Giroux publishing the following sentence: "We would not deny that there is some racial prejudice among whites, some of it provoked by the misbehavior of African- Americans, and some of it straightforwardly racist."
But of course "Israel's behavior" is not analogous to "misbehavior of African-Americans".
Israel is not an ethnic group, Jeffrey. It's a friggin state, Jeffrey. Comprende? That's your problem in a nutshell; snap out of it, man.
How about this: there is some prejudice among the French against Germans, provoked, in part, by Germany's behavior in the WWII. Does it make sense?
It's interesting to wonder whether David Dukes would have effusively praised a book making a balanced case against AIPAC's influence and the injustice of Israeli settlement policy and arguing for less financial support of Israel - which incidentally Goldberg does in the article. But ok, I don't really care what Dukes thinks - what about the comments on M/W's shoddy scholarship and the demonstration of the weakness of several of their central points? What about this:
'Howard Dean's "unabashed" pro-Israel stance, for example, is explicable when you grasp that "Dean's wife is Jewish and his children were raised Jewish as well."'
'But of course "Israel's behavior" is not analogous to "misbehavior of African-Americans".'
Note that some prominent African-Americans have expressed opinions not so different from "We would not deny that there is some racial prejudice among whites, some of it provoked by the misbehavior of African- Americans, and some of it straightforwardly racist" - the difference being the frame equating the causes (and the whole question of the possibility of denial).
It is W & M who chose not to focus on American policy itself, but on the incredible influence of shadowy Jewish groups on it.
They've earned their enemies, and probably by design.
I would like to see the full quote with "Dean's wife is Jewish" etc. If the meaning of it is what Goldberg says it is (i.e. explanation for Dean's pro-Israel stance), then it is indeed quite tasteless. But why didn't he produce the whole quote?
The problem with Goldberg's proofs of shoddy scholarship is that too much of it consists of criticizing W & M for not accepting tendentious claims as facts.
People like Krauthammer have tried to goad us into war with the claim that Ahmadinejad has called for attacking Israel. W & M note that this is a misreading of what he said. He never threatened an attack, he has called for the region containing Israel and the West Bank and Gaza to revert to Palestinian rule. Sometimes this has been translated as "wiping Israel off the map" but the problem with that phrase is that it is ambigous between the two sides of the contraversy. Ahmadinejad has disambiguated the claim a few times by pointing to the way that the USSR has been wiped off the map. Obviously this is not a question of dropping nuclear bombs on them. The USSR dissolved as a legal entity.
So which is the poor scholarship, W & M who accurately report what he has said, or Goldberg who notes that some sources have been ambiguous enough to allow for the distorted reading?
Similarly to the claim by W & M that Barak never gave the Palestinians a fair and interesting offer he points to the fact that Clinton said Barak did. But Clinton is not actually disinterested in the matter. The offer Barak gave them left Israel controlling all exernal borders to the Palestine state. Would jews ever except a situation in which an outside power controlled all of its borders an offer of peace? Would any human beings? Perhaps it is a matter of opinion whether this offer was fair, but it is certainly not unreasonable to claim what W & M do, and seems to me to show how slanted our debate is on Israel that it is considered reasonable to call that a fair peace offer. (I do think it was an interesting offer because of the forward thinking offer on Jerusalem, so I would disagree with W & M on that half of things).
But much of the claim that W & M are guilty of poor scholarship seems to boil down to their not accepting the Israeli side of the debate.
Similarly, Goldberg accuses W & M of making a circular argument in saying that our reason for supporting Israel is the Israeli lobby, even going so far as to quote the passage to show how unreasonable it is. But no evidence is given that this is circular unless one equates Israel and the Israeli lobby. Most of the book is devoted to their evidence for the claim, so Goldberg's attack at this level of scholarship seems bizarre.
It is hard to appreciate the subtlety of Goldberg's article when it is hard to go more than a paragraph of two without hitting an argument of pure nonsense.
The amazing thing about Goldberg's review is that by calling Walt and Mearsheimer anti-semites, he reinforces their argument that those who criticize Israel are called anti-semites.
Funny. But sad.
>>Do you think there's some kind of obligation not to argue with someone who writes for the same publication?
On the contrary, at The Atlantic the obligation is to link, link, link to everything Atlantic. Sullivan and Matt's daily linking to everything Atlantic ("Here's a random article from 1912! Here's McArdle musing on her shoe size!" etc.) is really turning me off.
I'll be interested to see if the NYT's "bloggers" are going to link to every freakin' article in the Times on a daily basis. Look, it is just painfully obvious at this point that this is some sort of "buzz/marketing" strategy ("If you link, they will come.") The only problem is that it really cuts into your credibility.
But I also think that the idea that jews have a right to Israel based on God's promise in the Torah is laughable. On this one point I guess I agree with bin Laden
I doubt that.
I imagine that you view the entire idea of "God given land" as nonsense, but OBL does not. For example, he seems to think that the holy Lands of Islam (esp. Mecca and Medina) belong only and exclusively to Muslims. The only thing OBL finds laughable is that Jews would think that they own land which, in his eyes, obviously belongs to Muslims.
Re: On this one point I guess I agree with bin Laden
I fully recognize that it was a narrow point of agreement.
Does any of the additions to bin Laden's view make Goldberg's use of that quote to show that bin Laden does not think that today's jews are real jews any less bizarre?
But there is nothing in the contexts to indicate that this is a reference to a physical destruction of the land and people of Israel.
Yeah, cause no one veils their threats. I mean, everyone tells the whole truth all the time, right?
Many common threats do not literally mean what they translate to. "Im gonna kick your ass" almost NEVER means merely "Im going to restrict myself to applying my foot to your hind regions". It usually means much more.
If a mob boss told you that you had better pay up or you might have an "accident" would you feel confident because "He said I might have an accident, not that he might hurt me"?
I think you are being either willfully naive or "blinded" by a desire to oppose the "bomb Iran" nutz.
Lon,
I consider myself a real jew.
What does it mean exactly, just curious. Are you referring to some chromosome thing, religion, language, dancing moves you learned from your parents?
Thanks.
M & W's depiction of the Israel lobby reminds me nothing so much as David Horowitz's depiction of "the Left".
A vast organization whose boundaries are constantly shifting to include whomever it needs to to make a given allegation true.
A bit more context for abb1:
This worry [from anonymous email during the '04 primary campaign that claimed "that Dean would somehow be bad for Israel"] was absurd, because Dean is in fact an unabashed supporter of Israel. His campaign cochair was former AIPAC president Steven Grossman, and Dean said his own views on the Middle East more closely reflected those of AIPAC than the more moderate Americans for Peace Now. Moreover, Dean's wife is Jewish and his children were raised Jewish as well. Dean wasn't questioning U.S. support for Israel; he had merely suggested that to "bring the sides together," Washington should act as an honest broker. This is not a radical idea, but key groups in the lobby do not welcome the idea of evenhandedness when it comes to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Dean's failure to win the Democratic nomination has many causes, of course, but the incident underscored the potential cost of being anything less than ardently pro-Israel during a presidential campaign.
I don't think this is fair quoting by Goldberg, but I think the above paragraph is pretty bad.
Thanks, RF. I agree that the the 'wife and children' thing is uncalled for.
I just want to say that I'm not a fan of M&W; and not because of their alleged Judeocentrism, but rather because of their obvious Americentrism. American tribalism isn't any better.
Well, well, MJ Rosenberg weighs in on the blog! Hi, MJ! Slumming from TPM? Bar-kochba and Greenbaum drive you off temporarily?
As for the "wife and children" "thing" - if your wife is Jewish and your children are raised Jewish, how is it "anti-Semitic" to suggest that you MIGHT be pro-Israel - especially when you've said you support AIPAC?
I mean, this is like saying, "Gee, he's black - maybe he supports civil rights for blacks!"
Sure, it doesn't necessarily follow - but the odds are much better than not.
This political correctness crap has been twisted to mean that you can't refer to ANYTHING that might remotely be considered "personal" to explain someone's views. We are all supposed to assume that every single statement from any politician or pundit is only and forever a carefully reasoned position divorced from any personal interest whatsoever.
It's bullshit.
Especially since AT THE SAME TIME, the SLIGHTEST criticism of somebody's policies which MIGHT have something to do with their personal life is IMMEDIATELY seized on as evidence that one is an "anti-whatever".
The mere fact that M&W reference the Jewish nature of some politician to indicate that said politician might NOT be anti-Israeli, THEY get accused of being "anti-Semites."
It's ILLEGAL now to even REFER to someone as being Jewish? And possibly influenced by the fact that they are Jewish?
The hypocrisy and intellectual dishonesty is astounding.
But not unusual for Zionists and neocons.
r4d20,
It is quite possible that despite the fact that Ahmadinejad has not threatened to attack Israel he harbors the intention to do so. I suppose it is even possible, but unlikely that he believes that the USSR fell apart because it was physically attacked from outside.
But a far more reasonable interpretation of the claim that Israel will be wiped off the face of the map in the way that the USSR was is that it will politically cease to exist.
Certainly people make veiled threats. But when they do, they do not compare what is going to happen to an event which did not involve the threatening consequence.
This debate about what Ahmadinejad said seems to be about as clear an example of a debate between people who care about what he actually said and people who want to be able to attribute to him whatever helps their cause. In that sense it is a particularly bad example to use against W & M because they often seem ready to believe whatever helps their cause. But in this case they happen to be right.
When the mob boss warns of an "accident" he does not then point to examples that were actually accidents. If he did it would completely ruin his point. Do you really not see that disanalogy, or why it is relevant in this case?
abb1,
In my case it is ethnic and cultural. But as it happens, that is how we count jews in this country.
abb1: "I just want to say that I'm not a fan of M&W; and not because of their alleged Judeocentrism, but rather because of their obvious Americentrism."
Well, fair enough, if you're philosophically opposed to realist analysis you're not going to like realists (esp. [from what I've seen] shoddy ones). In my view it's impossible to rationally motivate any position on the realist/idealist spectrum except maybe the endpoints, though, and I think they're manifestly impractical. I'm probably fairly moderate on the r/i spectrum, but given the above I'm more interested in seeing such important issues getting scholarly, reasoned treatment, which is my beef with M/W.
I am starting to laugh.
How many people commenting on this have even read "the Israel Lobby"?
Shoddy scholarship?
Listen, there is no way to be scholarly about the dirty game of political influence.
W&M did just what they set out to do with their book..."aimed at the general public".
First they made it "factual"..BUT.."readable" for the public. Then they defused the bombs while throwing them to deflect the anti-semite smears.
It was a master stroke in it's intended purpose.
Now the "public" is talking about Israel,the lobby and agents of influence in US foreign policy.
And the anti-semite smear no longer works.
I give them credit for the cunning way they did this...cold facts, but not too dry and scholarly, not too gossipy, ...just right for general consumption.
Objective acheived.
Lon,
we count Jews by self-identification and nothing else. You're an ethnic Jew when you identify yourself as a Jew; so your saying that you're a Jew because you're an ethnic Jew is circular. I suspect the answer is: you identify yourself as a Jew because your parents identified themselves as Jews. Which is fair enough.
RF, what they represent is not 'realism', but rather rabid American nationalism. You should hear how these guys argue that we need to sabotage China's progress by all means necessary. They are quite mad.
abb1,
I am not sure what the issue of real jews is for you (that sounds more attacking than it is meant to be, I really am simply not sure, no reason to think it is anything bad). Although I think you are wrong about what qualifies someone as an ethnic jew. One can convert into the jewish religion (although it is not overly encouraged) but I don't think one can convert into an ethnicity.
I recently met a woman who is religiously a jew but ethnically a WASP. There was something surreal about talking with her since not having grown up culturally jewish she accepted the worst stereotypes of ethnic jews and knew none of the jokes I grew up with, not even the ones about the jewish family who sent their kid to Catholic school.
My original comment was simply meant to highlight the absurdity of Goldberg using the fact that bin Laden thinks it is laughable to base the jewish claim to Israel on the Torah covenant as proof that he does not think modern jews are "real jews". This is just one example from Goldberg's piece in which he completely misses the part of an argument which actually requires an argument. (As it happens something he unfairly accuses M & W of). I only used the phrase "real jew" because Goldberg used it. I seldom feel the need to establish my bonifides in that regard.
Never mind, obviously we can't discuss it here. I was just curious what it meant to you. Try this book.
Um, until the people who call themselves Jews can agree on what it means to be a Jew, can we have a moratorium on accusing people of hating Jews?
It's kind of hard to hate an incoherent concept or vague working fiction, you know.
.
Comments closed October 15, 2007.
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Heads in the Sand
Why do you think that the less said, the better? Do you fear for your position at the Atlantic if you take him on? Do you think there's some kind of obligation not to argue with someone who writes for the same publication?
Posted by Joe Buck | October 1, 2007 11:43 AM