Charles Freeman, Roger Cohen And The Changing Israel Debate

[Purveyor]

By Glenn Greenwald, Salon
Monday March 9, 2009

Anyone who doubts that there has been a substantial -- and very positive -- change in the rules for discussing American policy towards Israel should consider two recent episodes: (1) the last three New York Times columns by Roger Cohen; and (2) the very strong pushback from a diverse range of sources against the neoconservative lynch mob trying, in typical fashion, to smear and destroy Charles Freeman due to his critical (in all senses of the word) views of American policy towards Israel. One positive aspect of the wreckage left by the Bush presidency is that many of the most sacred Beltway pieties stand exposed as intolerable failures, prominently including our self-destructively blind enabling of virtually all Israeli actions.

First, the Cohen columns: Two weeks ago, Cohen -- writing from Iran -- mocked the war-seeking cartoon caricature of that nation as The New Nazi Germany craving a Second Holocaust. To do so, Cohen reported on the relatively free and content Iranian Jewish community (25,000 strong). When that column prompted all sorts of predictable attacks on Cohen from the standard cast of Israel-centric thought enforcers (Jeffrey Goldberg, National Review, right-wing blogs, etc. etc.), Cohen wrote a second column breezily dismissing those smears and then bolstering his arguments further by pointing out that "significant margins of liberty, even democracy, exist" in Iran; that "Iran has not waged an expansionary war in more than two centuries"; and that "hateful, ultranationalist rhetoric is no Iranian preserve" given the ascension of Avigdor Lieberman in Benjamin Netanyahu's new Israeli government.

Today, Cohen returns with his most audacious column yet. Noting the trend in Britain and elsewhere to begin treating Hezbollah and Hamas as what they are -- namely, "organizations now entrenched political and social movements without whose involvement regional peace is impossible," rather than pure "Terrorist organizations" that must be shunned -- Cohen urges the Obama administration to follow this trend: the U.S. should "should initiate diplomatic contacts with the political wing of Hezbollah" and even "look carefully at how to reach moderate Hamas elements." As for the objection that those two groups have used violence in the past, Cohen offers the obvious response, though does so quite eloquently:

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SALON: http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/03/09/freeman/

[bemildred]

1. Good piece.

What I find really interesting here is that Rahm Emmanuel seems to be on board with the Freeman appointment, he is not part of the witch hunt. He gets a lot of points from me for that, if it holds up, not just as a politician, but as someone who really supports Israel, instead of using it as a political wedge issue.

[laststeamtrain]

2. Phil Weiss: Roger Cohen, shamed by Gaza, is the realist heir to tribalist Tom Friedman's chair

Roger Cohen, shamed by Gaza, is the realist heir to tribalist Tom Friedman's chair

Roger Cohen has a brilliant column in today's Times in which he repeats his epiphany of the last 2 months: his utter shame over Gaza. Then he moves to pure realism: about Israel's threat to its neighbors and the importance of recognizing that Iran is a regional power. And so what that Hamas doesn't recognize Israel's right to exist! We're negotiators not epistemologists. Steve Walt (whom Cohen has obviously read) asked a week or so ago, why isn't this guy in the print edition? Good question.

<snip>

Couple comments. Tom Friedman's career was made by Lebanon '82: he was the Jew who could explain Israel's shocking behavior to American Jews/the Establishment. Gaza was bound to create the next Tom Friedman. We all thought it might be Ethan Bronner or Jeffrey Goldberg. Goldberg failed because he is a tribalist; he made the wrong call at the start (and since) and defended the slaughter. Bronner failed because he didn't have the chi, or chutzpah necessary, to call a slaughter a slaughter. Roger Cohen has been completely elevated by Gaza. He didn't take the Jewish talking points. He understood it was a "travesty," as he repeats; and Gaza has transformed his thinking, has revealed Israel to him. And now even a great scholar, Michael Walzer, is running to try and catch up with Cohen's moral understanding by speaking of the "awfulness" of Gaza!

<more>

http://www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/2009/03/realist-roger-cohen-of-course-gaza-travesty-has-granted-legitimacy-to-hamas-.html