If it only were more simple, if only the disagreements less barbed
and poisonous, if only those who come inevitably — if the starting point is in
any way sane — to similarly sane conclusions by whatever diverse readings,
could underline the commonality — the ineluctable commonality — of such conclusions
above the turf war and the exuberant nastiness it encourages.
If only. But this is the Middle East — the Arab/Israeli
dispute — we're talking about, in which vitriol is oxygen.
John Judis's "Genesis:
Truman, American Jews, And The Origins Of The Arab-Israeli Conflict"
is case in point. Leon Wieseltier rises from his lair
at The New Republic to spew forth the kind of hostility that Mama Grendel would
have savored, were she a New Republic writer.
(As an aside: why does Wieseltier have to go all Mama
Grendel on the Judis book? Because he likes to? Because fulmination is his forte,
makes him feel alive. It's worth recalling that during Mary Peretz's, extremely
right wing Zionist ownership of TNR, Wieseltier was always someone you could
turn to for a whiff of sanity about the Middle East. Maybe minus Peretz he has
lost his mooring.)
The NY Times, in any case, has devoted a piece to this
hydrogen bomb within a Jewish teacup.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/01/business/media/a-bastion-for-israel-seething-inside.html?hpw&rref=business&action=click&module=Search®ion=searchResults%230&version=&url=http%3A%2F%2Fquery.nytimes.com%2Fsearch%2Fsitesearch%2F%23%2Fnew%2Brepublic%2F7days%2F
But when it comes to it, Ronald Radosh, Judis's chief, most
informed and most hostile critic, begrudgingly agrees with what he calls Judis's
begrudging conclusion, namely, to quote from Judis:
What Israel’s early history does suggest, though, is that
Palestinian Arabs have a legitimate grievance against Israelis that has never
been satisfactorily addressed. It won’t be addressed by abolishing
Israel—that’s not going to happen—but it can be addressed by an equitable
two-state solution that gives both peoples a state and that opens the way for
Israel’s reconciliation with its neighbors.
But let us not hold back from eviscerating each other on the
way to the obvious.
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