Judis responds to those calling his new book anti-Semitic. God, I hope we can move past that idiotic and foul rhetorical device. His broader argument:
Theodor Herzl, Chaim Weizmann and the British Zionists who helped draft the Balfour Declaration did not aspire to create an empire like that of the British or French, but to be junior partners of the Western imperialist powers. Herzl, who admired CecilRhodes, described the Jewish state as “a part of a wall of defense for Europe in Asia, an outpost of civilization against barbarism.” The Zionist movement established “colonies” and aspired to create a Jewish state in a territory where, at the beginning of the Zionist movement, Arabs made up 95 percent of the population. American Zionists compared the Zionists in Palestine with American colonial settlers. At the time, colonialism and imperialism were not dirty words they way they are now. So yes, I think much of the Zionist movement—with the exception of Ahad Ha’am and his followers—saw themselves engaged in a mission that could be described as settler colonialism.
I think the problem is that some enthusiastic supporters of Israel may believe that by acknowledging that history, they thereby confirm that Israel is “illegitimate.” But
many states, including the United States, are products of settler colonialism and conquest. There is no going back in these cases. 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. If there is a lesson to Genesis—and I happen to believe that history can tell us things about the present—that’s what it is.
For a great summary of the bile Leon Wieseltier has unleashed on one colleague after another, check out this Jacob Heilbrunn piece at the National Interest. Money quote:
Among those who have felt the lash are Andrew Sullivan, Peter Beinart, James Wood and Louis Menand. The latter two worked directly for Wieseltier, and he championed both Sullivan and Beinart, at least initially. Some of the quotes that a brief web search excavates include these morsels. On Menand: “Menand is the professor of littleness. He is a man in flight from the seriousness of his own vocation.” Menand’s offense? Not to bow sufficiently at the shrine of Lionel Trilling. In the case of Sullivan, he diagnosed “something much darker,” namely, anti-Semitism: “To me, he looks increasingly like the Buchanan of the left. He is the master, and the prisoner, of the technology of sickly obsession: blogging–and the divine right of bloggers to exempt themselves from the interrogations of editors–is also a method of hounding.”
In another piece, Wieseltier offered a twofer, criticizing (if that is not too andoyne a word) Beinart and Wood simultaneously. On Beinart: “Beinart’s pseudo-courageous article is an anthology of xenophobic quotations by Israeli hawks and anguished quotations by Israeli doves: familiar stuff.” Then came Wood’s spanking: “So what if Wood’s authorities are Jews? Can Jews not be wrong, or anti-Semitic? Wood’s Jews are certainly anti-Zionist.” Is it really an accident that, having left the New Republic, several of its editors have repudiated its long-time reflexive support for Israel?
The Dish 