Letters Letters
Children farming the land… JFK… Eric Hobsbawm/“Francis Newton”… the world wars…
Dec 30, 2013 / Our Readers
Letters Letters
Keep talkin' happy talk… till the fat lady sings…
Dec 18, 2013 / Our Readers, Jackson Lears, and Eric Alterman
Exchange: Eric and ‘Goliath’ Exchange: Eric and ‘Goliath’
Eric and Goliath We were barraged with letters and web comments about two pieces that ran in our November 4 issue: one was Eric Alterman’s column, titled “The ‘I Hate Israel’ Handbook,” in which he attacks Max Blumenthal’s book Goliath. The other was Blumenthal’s “Israel Cranks Up the Right-Wing PR Machine,” an excerpt from Goliath. A debate between the two authors migrated to our website (see TheNation.com/blog/176861/eric-alterman-replies-max-blumenthals-letter and TheNation.com/article/176802/response-eric-alterman). —The editors Eric Alterman’s review of Goliath says more about Alterman’s views than about the book. And if this is the best that liberal Zionism has to offer, then Zionism—not to mention the Palestinians—is in deeper trouble than I had imagined. I am troubled by The Nation’s need to present “two sides of the story.” Having Alterman do his hatchet job in the same issue as Blumenthal’s article is a case in point. There is no equivalency between whatever Palestinians have done or are doing and what Israel and Zionism have done to the Palestinians. And no section of the media, particularly the progressive one, should try to make it so. Let Alterman’s piece be published, but either not in The Nation—or with The Nation’s disclaimer. Abdeen Jabara Past president, American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee I grew up reading The Nation, and I was shocked that this bastion of enlightened thought would publish that horrendous piece by Eric Alterman defending Zionism. Isn’t it time the left rejected this kind of overt racism and petty, chauvinistic nationalism? How could The Nation betray its legacy by pandering to those who defend an apartheid regime? As Phan Nguyen has said, can we look forward to Nation pieces like “Two Views on Homosexuality,” “Two Views on Neoliberal Globalization” or “Two Views on Obama’s Birthplace”? Shame! Keith S. Schuerholz oakland, calif. Since Eric Alterman singled me out in his online response to Max Blumenthal, I would like to respond with a few words about the legacy of the Israeli thinker and social critic Yeshayahu Leibowitz. I have no desire to respond to Alterman’s defense of his claim that “Jews all over the world ‘revered’ Leibowitz for the brilliance of his Talmud exegesis,” except to reiterate the accepted scholarly view that Leibowitz’s writings on Jewish philosophy do not constitute Talmudic exegesis. Obviously, as a philosopher writing about Judaism, Leibowitz cites the Talmud, as do Martin Buber and Michael Walzer, for example. But this hardly makes him, or them, brilliant Talmudic exegetes. As for being revered by “Jews all over the world”: I wish Leibowitz was better known outside Israel. I have been teaching his thought for more than thirty years, since I attended his public lectures in Jerusalem. Enter any US synagogue (including Orthodox) and ask Jews if they have heard of Yeshayahu Leibowitz, and you will generally encounter blank stares. The philosopher’s sister Nechamah is better-known, especially among the Orthodox. Apparently Alterman knows of Leibowitz as a Jewish philosopher who merited an entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (as one of the SEP’s editors I can recommend it). That apparently explains his surprise at Blumenthal’s claim in Goliath that Leibowitz was revered by the Israeli left. But the Israeli left knew and revered Leibowitz as an outspoken Orthodox Jewish moral critic who foresaw in 1967 how the occupation would cause Israeli society to rot; who accordingly demanded an immediate, total Israeli withdrawal to the 1949 armistice lines even without a peace agreement; who referred to the nationalist fervor around the conquest of Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza as “fascism”; who coined the memorable term Diskotel for the religio-nationalist infatuation with the Western Wall (Kotel in Hebrew); who called the religious Zionist settlers “worshipers of stones and trees” (i.e., idolaters); and who claimed that the Israeli public enjoyed the murder of Arabs in Beirut in 1982. Much of the above can be found in Leibowitz’s book Judaism, Human Values, and the Jewish State (for a good English website see giorab.wix.com/leibowitz). On the centenary of Leibowitz’s birth, in 2003, and at the height of the Second Intifada, the magazine section of Haaretz published a cover article whose inside headline began, “What Remains of the Worship of Yeshayahu Leibowitz?” That “worship” was not of Leibowitz the philosopher but of the sharp-tongued social critic who railed against the establishment. The fact that the left did not understand that critique in the context of Leibowitz’s religious philosophy is irrelevant to that reverence. Is Leibowitz revered by the left now? Two months ago, Haaretz’s columnist and critic Gideon Levy delivered a birthday tribute to that grand Israeli leftist Uri Avnery, saying, “Avnery was one of the first to utter the words that everyone mumbles now—‘two states for two peoples.’ Together with Yeshayahu Leibowitz and the radical socialist organization Matzpen, he was the pillar of fire that went before the camp.” From Leibowitz and Matzpen to Avnery and Levy, there is an Israeli tradition of harsh criticism of mainstream Zionist policies toward the Palestinians. Leibowitz’s criticism of the actions of the Israeli army and government began in the early 1950s and was based on general and Jewish morality. This earned him the reverence of the left. Perhaps I do Alterman an injustice by inferring that he did not know this aspect of Leibowitz’s persona. But in wishing to discredit Blumenthal, Alterman gave his readers no reason to believe that he did. Charles H. Manekin college park, md. Eric Alterman cites Max Blumenthal’s reference to the Labor Zionist leader Berl Katznelson’s remark that “the Zionist enterprise is an enterprise of conquest,” and points out that Katznelson also said that he did not wish to see the realization of Zionism with the Arabs in the position of the Jews of Poland. However, a gulf often existed between the public statements of Labor Zionist leaders and their private views. A standard official position held that there was no conflict between the interests of Palestinian Arabs and Zionists, that the real conflict was between the Palestinian Arab masses and their landowners and effendis, and that this conflict could be solved through an alliance of Palestinian Arab and Jewish workers. That position was largely for external consumption. Arthur Ruppin, who oversaw Zionist colonization during the 1920s and ’30s, noted in 1936 that “on every site where we purchase land and where we settle people, the present cultivators will inevitably be dispossessed.” His successor Yoseph Weitz reported in the official Histadrut daily that in 1940 he and other leaders, including Katznelson, had reached the following conclusion: “The only solution is Palestine, or at least western Palestine without Arabs…and there is no other way but to transfer all the Arabs from here to the neighboring countries. To transfer all of them; not one village, not one tribe, should be left behind.” Labor had a penchant for obfuscation, mystification and out-and-out deception. Katznelson also said, “We have never been a colonialist movement; we are a movement of colonization.” Ralph M. Coury new haven, conn. Brandishing the flag of objectivity, even-handedness and liberal savoir-faire, Eric Alterman accuses Max Blumenthal of “selectivity” and of being “naïve.” However, it is Alterman who, in his shallow, reductive review, displays these traits. Rather than deal with Blumenthal’s thesis—that Israeli society is damaged emotionally and corrupted morally by the occupation and its treatment of Palestinian citizens—Alterman wrests the argument back onto the familiar terrain of equivalency between the Jewish state and the Palestinians. Alterman focuses on hatred rather than history, sentiment rather than system. That is why, besides invoking that old song of Israel as a democracy in a sea of existential threat (as if that nuclear power had never invaded Lebanon or Gaza), Alterman ends with a comment on the novelist David Grossman’s loss and anger. This is the trump card—the noble Peace Now activist who supported the devastating bombing campaign of Lebanon in 2006—behind which is a pack of shabby tricks designed to dismiss Blumenthal’s unblinking look at Israeli society. Naomi Wallace otterburn, north yorkshire, uk I’d like to thank Eric Alterman for his review of Goliath, since immediately after reading it, I went out and bought a copy. It was identical to my experience when listening to an interview of Benny Morris calling books by Avi Shlaim “garbage”: I went out and acquired several. So thank you, Eric and other Israeli apologists, for identifying another potential great read. Blumenthal’s book can keep company with those of many other authors I have on this topic, including Rashid Khalidi, Noam Chomsky, Ilan Pappé, Jimmy Carter, Walid Khalidi, James Ennes Jr., Gershom Gorenberg, Victor Ostrovsky and Norman Finkelstein. I look forward to reading more of Alterman’s unbiased reviews. But for diversity, perhaps The Nation should reach out to AIPAC to find a reviewer who is less partisan. Robin Adams amesbury, mass. Alterman Replies I was sorry to see the close-minded call for The Nation to censor me by Abdeen Jabara. He might be interested in knowing that I appeared as an invited speaker at an Anti-Discrimination Committee convention in Washington and at a council of local businessmen in South Dakota to speak about US press coverage of the Palestinian conflict. In both cases, I was the guest of ADC founder Senator James Abourezk. We did not agree on everything, to be sure, but there was no attempt to censor my views. (And by the way, there would not be a “disclaimer” attached to my column; I wrote it at the express request of my editors.) Keith S. Schuerholz’s and Phan Nguyen’s comparison of “Two Views of Israel” to “two views on Obama’s birthplace” tells you all you need to know about the mindset of defenders of Blumenthal’s book. Despite what they and he may wish to believe, Israel is an actual country in the Middle East. It takes a certain kind of crazy to equate it with birtherism. Unfortunately, it’s the kind of crazy wishful thinking one sees altogether too often in Blumenthal’s book and in the arguments of its defenders. With regard to the letter from Charles H. Manekin, better known as the pro-BDS blogger “Jerry Haber,” his argument is as tendentious as it is wrongheaded. Manekin/Haber has toned down his argument quite a bit since he originally claimed on his blog, “Alterman (or his research assistant) may be interested to learn that Yeshayahu Leibowitz didn’t write any Talmudic exegesis and was NOT revered by Jews all over the world—in fact, virtually nobody outside of Israel knew who he was.” Having read my responses to his myriad blog posts on the topic, he now apparently accepts the fact that both of his earlier assertions were false, and hence he has not repeated them here. Nevertheless his pretenses to “accepted scholarly views” bear no relation to any such thing. Even in its present form, Manekin’s complaint remains ridiculous. Leibowitz spent decades as the editor in chief of Encyclopedia Hebraica and his writings, including his myriad Talmudic exegeses, were published in three languages during his lifetime. Manekin/Haber claims, “Enter any US synagogue (including Orthodox) and ask Jews if they have heard of Yeshayahu Leibowitz, and you will generally encounter blank stares.” He presents no evidence for this, and of course he has none. He continues: “Apparently Alterman knows of Leibowitz as a Jewish philosopher who merited an entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.” Here again, Mankekin’s method is to simply make stuff up and then assert it as if that makes it true. As it happens, I long ago read Leibowitz’s Faith of Maimonides and his Judaism, Human Values, and the Jewish State. Recently, I’ve appreciated his challenging Torah commentaries, Accepting the Yoke of Heaven. Manekin, on his blog (where his letter also appears), imagined that I think about Israel for “maybe five minutes a month” (though he has since deleted this nonsensical accusation) and added “Alterman clearly doesn’t read Haaretz or YNETdaily…he gets his reporting on Israel from the mainstream media.” Here yet again, he is simply making this up and pretending it’s true. As for the rest of his contentions, let’s just say the record does not fill me with much confidence about anything this fellow has to say. Ralph M. Coury does not, as far as I am aware, dispute anything I wrote in my column. Naomi Wallace writes of my “invoking that old song of Israel as a democracy in a sea of existential threat (as if the nuclear power had never invaded Lebanon or Gaza).” Sorry, but this invocation took place exclusively in her imagination. I wrote nothing of the kind. I congratulate Robin Adams on her library. Overall, I need to say I’m deeply disappointed in the reaction to my column. Blumenthal’s defenders, unable to defend the veracity of his dreadful book—a book, I might add, recently endorsed on the website of neo-Nazi David Duke—have filled Nation letter boxes, Twitter and the blogosphere with personal invective, ad hominem attacks and purposeful distortion of my work in an attempt to discredit a column that has proven to be 100 percent accurate. As someone who has spent more than thirty years arguing on behalf of a two-state solution that would allow the Palestinians to live in peace and dignity alongside Israel—and severely criticizing those in Israel and the American Jewish community who work to undermine such a solution—I have often heard it remarked that the Palestinian people have been profoundly ill served by their leaders. Unfortunately, much the same can be said about their cheerleaders as well. Eric Alterman new york city
Nov 25, 2013 / Our Readers and Eric Alterman
Exchange: Trials and Designs Exchange: Trials and Designs
On May 13, The Nation published Michael Sorkin’s appallingly inaccurate “The Trials of Rafi Segal,” which presented a dramatic tale of betrayal. However, the article has the facts backwards and the truth upside down and violated fundamental standards of journalism. Sorkin’s journalistic travesty recounted the tale of Rafi Segal, an Israeli architect, who was selected to be the “preferred architect” to design the Israel National Library, only to have the winning title and potential contract snatched away. According to Sorkin, Segal was betrayed by the competition sponsor, an Israeli foundation funded by the Rothschilds. Sorkin also blamed me personally for raising questions about the ownership of rights to the winning design. Sorkin called Segal’s disqualification the “narrowest (and phoniest) legalism” and claimed that Segal was “forced to go to the courts to counter the manifest injustice he has suffered.” A dramatic tale, as related by Sorkin, but not the truth. In reality, Segal violated the rules of the competition to obtain an unfair advantage, lied about it, was eventually found out and was disqualified as a result. Segal’s disqualification was the result of his own misdeeds and deceit. Segal’s meritless lawsuit, in which he sought to be reinstated as the designer of the National Library of Israel, was a complete failure. In September, facing the certainty of final dismissal of his claim by the court, Segal entirely abandoned his case. Moreover, overruling Segal’s objections, the Jerusalem District Court awarded to HyperBina the sum of 30,000 Israeli new shekels in attorneys’ fees and costs, an unusually large fee award in Israel for a pre-trial resolution, and the second award of attorneys’ fees made by the court against Segal and in favor of HyperBina. In addition to his failed lawsuit, during the process, Segal spread falsehoods in public. Segal’s behavior was described in a public statement by the competition organizer, the Israeli National Library Construction Company (with board directors from the Israeli National Library and Yad Hanadiv): “All the detailed facts [about the disqualification] have been made known to Segal and we regret his attempts to slant and distort the truth by spreading fabrications and claims that have no basis in reality.” The competition organizer also stated, “The decision [to disqualify Segal] was taken separately by both the board of the National Library Construction Company and the board of the [Israeli] National Library—unanimously in both instances.” Segal exemplifies a classic case of manipulation by someone who is dealing with two parties that do not have direct contact with each other. Segal lacked (or did not want to spend) the resources needed to compete in the Israel National Library competition, so he approached HyperBina Design Group to contribute essential design work. However, the competition rules allowed only Israeli-registered architects to participate in the first round of the competition. So, in his dealing with HyperBina in Cambridge, Segal concealed the portion of the competition rules that stated the nationality requirement. He promised, in writing, that HyperBina, which did the majority of design work, would be an “equal partner” in the competition. In dealings with the competition authorities in Jerusalem, Segal concealed HyperBina’s contributions and falsely claimed to be the sole creator and sole owner of rights to the project. When the competition authorities investigated, the chain of project e-mails and the detailed project documents showed what actually had happened. In the end, the competition authorities disqualified Segal because, as they told the Israeli court, Segal “blatantly violated the rules of the competition and had been deceitful.” Why did Sorkin get this story so completely backwards? In part, the answer is that Segal is his personal friend, and the two share political views. However, the fundamental reason for Sorkin’s distortion is that he was unwilling to spend the effort and time in proper investigation, expected from responsible journalists, to seek the truth. When Sorkin contacted HyperBina, I, as its owner, offered to make available to Sorkin the full Israeli court record (which was in Hebrew). Sorkin e-mailed back: “No need to worry about those Hebrew language documents… Greek to me!” So he did not bother to review the evidence filed by the competition authorities. Sorkin did not ask to examine the project records that display every step in the project design process; nor did he interview all those at my firm who witnessed how the project was produced. Instead Sorkin blindly repeated distortions supplied by Segal to the court. Sorkin failed to inform his readers that Segal’s legal case was a failure from the start. The Israeli court rejected Segal’s first request for a temporary injunction barring the selection of another project architect. Then, on the evening before the date of the full hearing on such request this past January, Segal abruptly withdrew his petition for the injunction, clearly because the requested injunction was going to be denied. The court then granted HyperBina its costs and attorneys’ fees relating to this motion for the first time in the legal case. All this occurred before Sorkin wrote his article, but Sorkin did not mention these facts at all. Fundamentally, Sorkin pretended to be informed, while in fact he was not. Amazingly, Sorkin’s 2,900-word article about the alleged “injustice” done to Segal does not mention once that Segal’s violation of competition rules and deceit were the official grounds for Segal’s disqualification. Moreover, Sorkin’s article is full of Segal’s falsehoods defaming HyperBina, me and the competition authorities, as well as inaccurate allegations by another of Segal’s friends, Preston Scott Cohen, all of which Sorkin irresponsibly portrays as facts. Sorkin’s article reveals a careless and irresponsible disregard of facts, a lack of professional integrity, lack of concern for those he attacked and a failure to meet basic standards of professional journalism. The Nation and Michael Sorkin should apologize to those who were attacked so unfairly in this article. Bing Wang cambridge, mass. Sorkin Replies In preparing my essay, I accumulated and reviewed hundreds of pages of documents, including the affidavits filed by Bing Wang and Rafi Segal. I corresponded with the competition sponsors, members of the jury, Segal, Wang and other interested parties. I took careful note of the extensive coverage in the Israeli media, much of which was in English and some of which was in Hebrew and translated for me. I stand by my conclusions, which are not unique to me. My main point is that Segal’s design was, for a combination of reasons, including Wang’s claims of authorship, unfairly quashed. I remain persuaded that in all legitimate artistic and creative dimensions, the design of the library was Segal’s. Wang’s letter does nothing to dissuade me. When I contacted Wang asking for an interview, she refused on the advice of her counsel. She also declined, again on the advice of her counsel, to send me unspecified materials she claimed would significantly clarify the facts and asked that I delay the article to await them. The quotations and assertions in Wang’s letter do not reflect legal conclusions of the court but are expressions by the party—“the competition organizer”—that disqualified Segal in the first place, the subject of my criticism. Italicizing these comments does not increase their accuracy or disinterestedness. Preston Scott Cohen, whose “inaccurate allegations” are denounced by Wang, was the chair of the architecture department at Harvard and stands by his statements. Wang neglects to mention the other quoted source of my information about the authorship of the project: an Israeli architect who was employed by Wang at the time and was a main contributor to the project in her office (italics mine). That members of Wang’s firm assisted in the preparation of the design submission is not in dispute. It remains for Segal to comment on why he has declined to pursue further legal remedies in Israel (at least one other is pending), but the fact that the library has long since signed a contract with other architects, selected without benefit of a design competition, may have persuaded him of the futility of throwing good money after bad. Michael Sorkin new york city
Nov 19, 2013 / Bing Wang and Michael Sorkin
Letters Letters
Immodest proposals… of skinheads and Tea Partiers… Queequeg rules… literate reviews
Nov 12, 2013 / Our Readers and Stuart Klawans
Letters Letters
Destroy the planet for profit… BP = bitter pill… let sixty golf courses bloom?… correction in Bean Town…
Nov 6, 2013 / Our Readers
Letters Letters
People’s pope? Well, half of them… going hungry in America… atom death toll numbers: too low… Thou swell, thou witty…
Oct 22, 2013 / Our Readers
Letters Letters
Horror in Afghanistan… the great Charlie Mingus… field trip to the South Bronx
Oct 16, 2013 / Our Readers and Barry Schwabsky