The Struggle to Safeguard Israel
Spencer Ackerman applauds Joe Klein for going on a mission to enhance Israel's security, and joins him:
ATTACKERMAN » Chutzpah Driven, We Battle Then We Feast: Last month I wrote about how the right-wing fake-friends of Israel in American Jewry were coming after Joe Klein... for saying something that all of us DC Jews acknowledge to be true, which is that a bunch of our neocon co-religionists, out of ignorance or mendacity, seek to steer American policy in the direction of a misguided belief of what's good for Israel. That direction is a warlike one, and often a racist one.... [T]hey... so have succeeded in intimidating the rest of us, Jew and Gentile alike, by intimating that even breathing in [the] direction [Joe Klein is taking] is antisemitic. Indeed, they will not stop until they define all of liberalism as antisemitic. The result... has been, among other things, an intellectual climate that enabled a war disastrous to both American and Israeli security. Good going, fellas! So now they've stepped up their attacks on Joe. But Joe, to his great credit, isn't backing down. Instead, he's pushing the bullies back in their flabby chests.
I am not going to make the same mistake twice. I don't think a war with Iran is coming, thank God, but this time I am not going to pull any punches. My voice isn't very important in the grand scheme of things, but I'm going to do my job--and that means letting you know exactly where I stand and what I believe. I believe there are a small group of Jewish neoconservatives who are pushing for war with Iran because they believe it is in America's long-term interests and because they believe Israel's existence is at stake. They are wrong and recent history tells us they are dangerous. They are also bullies and I'm not going to be intimidated by them.
Nor should the rest of us. These people are liars, fools and stooges. They do not actually have any idea how to protect either America or Israel. Everything they believe has been decisively disproven over the last eight years. Not only do we never need to fear them, we never need to listen to them ever again, except for the purpose of merciless ridicule.... I am challenging my fellow liberal American Jews -- the vast majority of us in this country -- to walk point... [push] back [against] the growing canard that liberalism is antisemitism, peace is antisemitism, coexistence between Israel and Palestine is antisemitism, true security for Israel and America is antisemitism. So we have to be the ones who take the initiative in beating back the rightwing Jewish minority-- something good for the Jews, good for America, good for Israel, good for the Arabs, good for peace, good for the world...
Ezra Klein joins the struggle to safeguard Israel:
EzraKlein Archive | The American Prospect: If he keeps this up, we're going to need to make a page of Joe Klein Facts ("there is no need for an Anti-Defamation League. There's only need for Joe Klein, a pair of nunchuks, and some throwing stars."). It is dead obvious to any sentient observer that the security of Israel is an eminent concern to American neoconservatives, and that they're anxious to attack Iran because they are anxious to disrupt a threat to Israel. That's not some, ahem, Straussian deep read, but the explicit argument of most all the hysteria around Iran. Ahmedinejad, after all, is not known for his threats to annihilate the US. He's known for his threats against Israel. And though Ahmedinejad does not actually control his country's foreign policy, those threats have been the explicit reason why Iran cannot be allowed to secure a nuclear weapon....
[I]t's perfectly fair to argue that America should go to war in order to preempt an attack against Israel... it's perfectly fair for them to argue that [Israel's] defense is a moral necessity [for America]. The problem is when you simultaneously argue that and emit shrieks of "anti-semite!" when anyone points out that you're arguing that. It's a dangerous strategy that makes it harder to credibly argue against those who actually do hate Jews for their intrinsic Jewishness.... Joe Klein may be on the receiving end now, but he's not the first. Years ago, when I initially came to DC, The Jewish Journal asked me to write an article about AIPAC. While I was reporting out the story, it came clear that the interesting angle was how many people were warning me not to write the story. And I'm not talking about AIPAC flacks: I mean folks who thought they were looking out for my career....
In recent years, AIPAC -- and many other organizations and actors who use the term "anti-semite" as a tool of intimidation and not a descriptor of hatred -- proved [weak]. They attacked voices who weren't inclined to back down. They assailed Walt and Mearsheimer only to find that the smear campaign had done nothing but act as publicity for the W&M thesis, and spurred other writers to make almost identical arguments. Now they're trying it on Joe Klein, and are finding that the wages of that campaign are a lot of criticism from an incredibly public and well-known writer and pundit. Their problem is that they bought into their own reputation, they believed too fully that they could fire offending writers and thinkers, that... they could shut down all dissent and criticism...
Matthew Yglesias applauds Joe Klein as well:
Matthew Yglesias: Klein versus the J-Pod Gang: [T]here's something revealing about the sense of entitlement among Joe Klein's antagonists at Commentary. As he says "They want Time Magazine to fire or silence me." The people on the hawk side of this issue are used to getting their way through bullying, and to terrifying a large number of people who disagree with them out of ever saying so. One thing I think the blogosphere has been helpful in doing is opening up the conversation a little bit by giving some voice and prominence to people who didn't have much to lose or didn't necessarily know any better. Some of that spirit has trickled back into the MSM and it's a very good thing...
