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Sometime around the 2006 re-invasion of Lebanon I gave up on writing about Israel. On one level, I was too disgusted by such an obviously immoral, unjustified action to say anything remotely analytical. All I’d be doing would be lashing out. But on another level, I didn’t want to be another Jewish writer endlessly wringing his hands (in the liberal version) or endlessly propagandizing (in the conservative version) about Israel, which is to project an ugly solipsism onto the foreign-policy debate. And the surest way for me not to write about something is to not read about it. So, whereas once I yidle-didle-didle’d my Firefox through Ha’aretz and the J-Post and the Jerusalem Report, nowadays I just leave all that behind and say a silent prayer for the next generation of young Jewboy-writers to write about anything else.
Then other times I find myself completely ignorant about Israeli politics and come across elegant, powerful and moving essays like Gershom Gorenberg’s semi-requiem for the Labor Party and feel the old tribal itch again. But I’d only be redundant. Read this.
And one more thing: in comments, don’t push my buttons about Israel or the Jews, OK? I don’t need to hear how you think the discourse on Israel is stifled or how the Israelis get away with murder without criticism or how American Jews aren’t nearly sufficiently critical of Israel or blah blah blah. Not a single one of these statements is at all interesting or original. If you can’t tell, I am trying to betray my heritage here, and you aren’t making it easy on me.
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Your view would be appreciated, we know where you are coming from, we can filter out the bias. No different than anything else you write or anyone else writes for that matter, we must filter out bias.
What aggravates me is when those that appear not biased – tell half the story – and because they have the appearance of no bias, no filtering is done.
For example, once the Wall street journal publicized that the american executives were paid much more than their american counterparts. well, they are doing it again. I called the editor and had a conference call with him and the author in japan, they agreed i was wright but felt that they needed no more than the sentence buried in the article, “some would consider the Japanese execs perks to be excessive” I cancelled my subscription and have not read it since.
Problem is they did not and they are again not telling the whole story.
Japanese companies pay all of the executives living expenses, i mean, i new someone that was an american rep in tokyo 20 years ago and his apartment was paid for and not charged to him as income. The monthly rent on that apartment was $30,000. That was for a 1600 sq. foot apartment. Imaging the living costs and vacations of the Japanese execs. We have an open information society, we know what the compensation of the execs of public companies is – japan does not.
So as long as you do not portend to not have a bias – write away
Japanese counterparts – should read again and then post! sorry wish i could edit it
I’m a not-Jew, non-boy, that used to read Haaretz online daily (and the JPost occasionally until I couldn’t take it anymore), but I gave up that reading when it consistently made me mind-wretched. I even laughed about my unvoiced thought: Go on, Haaretz, Spoil My Day!
I do think however that US jews shouldn’t give the appearance of support to all Isreael does, by not speaking up when they disagree. That’s largely how AIPAC became the de-facto voice of US Jewry on all matters middle-east.
But I fully understand that YMMV
US jews shouldn’t give the appearance of support to all Isreael does, by not speaking up when they disagree.
I don’t think it’s fair to say that we don’t speak up. Look at the new progressive Jewish lobby J Street, which works tirelessly to represent the pro-peace/pro-Israel position. And why is it incumbent on us not to give an “appearance” of blind support? Shouldn’t it be incumbent on gentiles not to assume that we blindly support Israel because of our heritage?
If you can’t tell, I am trying to betray my heritage here
I think the “I’m off to eat 4 different kinds of pork” post cleared that up.
Not a single one of these statements is at all interesting or original.
I wonder if that’s really the point, though. Shouldn’t it be enough that it’s true that discourse on Israel is stifled? When your “beat,” if you will, is American security issues, concentrated on the Muslim and Arab worlds, making a decision not to talk about Israel/Palestine seems like a pretty big blind spot. Especially considering how tied up, in one way or another, so many of the rest of the region’s issues are with this conflict.
It may not be interesting or original to speak about Israeli settlements or America’s biased dealings in the region, but it’s yeoman’s reporting that needs to be done.
Take Patraeus’s recent stop here in Beirut. The US wants to bolster the Lebanese Armed Forces but is unwilling to supply Beirut with advanced air defense technology, because that would be used against Israeli jets that make illegal flyovers on a weekly basis. Understanding relations between Washington and Beirut necessarily involves understanding the “special relationship” between the US and Israel, and journalists who want to explain the former to their readers without touching on the latter are doing them a great disservice.