In his review of our book “The Jewish Divide over Israel” in last week’s Chronicle, Leon Cohen accuses me and Paul Bogdanor and some of our 11 co-conspirators in the volume of being “eager to attack as an anti-Israel defamer any Jewish person with whom [we] disagree on … whether or not Israel should keep the West Bank … for example, Rabbi Michael Lerner of Tikkun.”
Then, in a dramatic rhetorical flourish, he asks all of us: “Do you recognize even the possibility that any Jewish person could disagree with you on good faith grounds over what is best for Israel’s existence and survival?”
The answer, of course, is yes, we do — as the contents of the book amply demonstrate. Our book takes no position whatever on such issues as “settlements.” Indeed, neither of its editors even knows what the other thinks about the matter.
If we had an editorial policy with respect to settlements or a political litmus test of any kind, why would we have invoked, at the beginning and the end of our general introduction, the blessing of Irving Howe, who was in his lifetime the most eminent intellectual of Americans for Peace Now?
Why would we have included an essay by a long-time left-wing Israeli peace activist and critic of settlements like Menachem Kellner? Why would we have allowed Alvin Rosenfeld, in his long essay on “Modern Jewish Intellectual Failure,” to criticize settlements as ill-advised?
The point — which Cohen seems to miss entirely — that several of our contributors do make, and with hammering insistence, is that settlements or “occupation” did not lead to Arab hatred of and violence against Israel; rather it was Arab hatred and violence, in 1948 and 1967 and well beyond, that led to “occupation.”
Philosophy and character
Likewise, our remarks on Lerner had nothing to do with his position (which is of no interest to us) on “whether or not Israel should keep the West Bank.” Rather it centered on the guiding principle of his entire career, which has been to blame Jews for the violence unleashed against them.
In 1969, Lerner wrote (in Judaism Magazine) that “Black anti-Semitism is a tremendous disgrace to Jews; for this is not an anti-Semitism rooted in … hatred of the Christ-killers but rather one rooted in the concrete fact of oppression by Jews of blacks … an earned anti-Semitism.”
In May 2002, in the midst of Palestinian suicide bombings, lynchings and pogroms, Lerner declared in The Nation magazine that “Israeli treatment of Palestinians has been immoral and outrageous” and has caused “a frightening upsurge of anti-Semitism,” endangering Jews in Berkeley and other centers of prophetic morality.
In defense of Lerner, Cohen assures us, partly on the basis of a personal meeting, that Lerner is “sincere,” i.e., that his intentions are good. But does Cohen think that every malefactor is like Shakespeare’s Richard III, who steps to the front of the stage and announces, “I am determined to be a villain”?
If someone promotes, as Lerner has eagerly done, such Israel-haters as the late Edward Said or the omnipresent Cindy Sheehan, or writers who fill Tikkun Magazine with references to “conspirators” running our government on behalf of “Jewish interests” and to the “industrial-sized grain of truth” in the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” his declared good intentions count for little. As the old adage has it, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”
Cohen finds the epithet “cowardice” unduly “personal” and “vituperative” when applied to Israel’s inveterate Jewish accusers. Perhaps.
But what better word would he propose to describe people who — historian Tony Judt being the classic example — lash out obsessively at Israel and advocate its removal from the family of nations because, by their own admission, they suffer extreme embarrassment, downright shame, at faculty cocktail parties and dinners because, as Jews, they are linked to the Jewish state?
Ultimately, philosophy is no more than character. If one is corrupt, so will the other be.
Edward Alexander is professor emeritus of English at University of Washington.
Editor’s note: The quotation from the review that Prof. Alexander selectively cited in his first paragraph actually stated (with emphasis added): “The editors and some of their contributors also seem eager to attack as an Israel defamer any Jewish person with whom they disagree on such matters as whether or not Israel should keep the West Bank…”
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