http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=5508
by Philip http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=5290
One of the most important political posts I’ve seen in a while was done by Richard Silverstein out of Washington State yesterday. He went to a fundraiser for a congressional candidate for Washington’s 8th district, and did so because J Street, the new alt Israel lobby, had endorsed her: Darcy Burner. Love that name. Silverstein ran into a member of the local AIPAC board, who said that the guy Burner”s running against, Dave Reichert, has made all the right noises about Israel so AIPAC loves him. Then Silverstein ran into another blogger (we’re underfoot these days) who was from http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=5586, the beloved left-Dem site. (I go there every day.) Silverstein asked her whether the site ‘ever covered the foreign policy implications of the Israeli-Arab conflict. She shook her head sagely and said: “No.” I asked her why. “Because there’s just no upside in it for us. Too much dissension and disagreement.”’
This is a hugely important interchange. It shows that, as Mary-Kay Wilmers of the London Review of Books said to me so sagaciously 2 years ago, “The American left is also claimed by the Israel lobby.” It means that the burden of waging Israel’s p.r. war falls so heavily even on liberal Democrats that you cannot broach the subject in good lefty circles without fear of ending the dinner party. It means that Jews are a tremendously important part of the Democratic base, left (Dailykos) or lib (Huffpo) it makes no difference. It explains why Peace Now never left AIPAC’s constituent body and why brave J Street must be careful about how it attacks McCain on Jerusalem. It explains Mel Levine and Steve Grossman and the other Lieberman hawks who remain good bedfellows in the Democratic base and are Atilla the Hun when it comes to Israel, and explains why Dershowitz can call himself a “liberal Democrat” without demurral, and Jimmy http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=4761 is PNG.Why is this so revealing? Because if anyone has balls, it’s Dailykos. If anyone has independence, you’d think it’s Dailykos. They’re the leftwing base of the party. They are freethinkers and free-sayers. They’re not the Steve Grossmans or the Hillarys. They were for Obama all the way, which is why I go there all the time. And my point is that the left is so claimed by this concern that they cannot talk about it. And therefore they give Grossman cover, and with him Sheldon Adelson on the right, and John McCain, and all the neocons. If Jewish American social existence were not corrupted by the burden of supporting the Jewish state, then it would be a simple and obvious matter for dailykos to bring up the giant wedge issue of Where is McCain on Jerusalem and Is this not a recipe for violence in the Middle East unto the last day? But they are corrupted, and so Dailykos is silent, and no one is talking about the neocons in the mainstream.
This touches other institutions on the left. Beloved ones. It touches the Nation magazine, which I and Richard count it a privilege to work for from time to time. It touches the New York Review of Books. It means that antiwar.com, maybe because it is on the west coast and feels the burden less than leftwing institutions in NY and DC, has done the brave important task of taking on the lobby, and thereby alienated some of its natural base. It means that David Bromwich of Yale has shown real fortitude by standing up for Walt and Mearsheimer on Huffington Post. It means that I am allied with anti-immigration paleos, at the brave American Conservative, and god knows what we will birth. It means that at Yale’s Mearsheimer debate of 9/9, the tongue of the left is a torn sack flapping on a fenceline in the wind while the electrifying voices are: the neocon, the rightwinger, and a trig blonde prog from Arabist England. It means that the soul of the left is corrupted by this concern.