I have never pictured AJC, the organization which sponsors Z Word, and where I proudly work, as being driven by a particularly American Jewish “psychopathology;” nor have I ever been aware that AJC actively colludes with those who seek to wipe Israel out of existence; nor did I know that my colleagues would sit happily in the same room as those who would deny the Holocaust in which six million Jews, including members of my own family, were exterminated.
Yet all these accusations were leveled by the discordant trio of Melanie Phillips (she’s the one who came out with the unforgettably looney reference to “psychopathology”), Caroline Glick and Anne Bayefsky. And David Harris deftly responds to them all:
In sum, in their consequences-be-damned approach to Durban II, three well-known observers got it wrong.
They viciously lashed out at anyone who dared to disagree about tactics, irresponsibly questioned motives, incorrectly prophesied the US position and failed to see that European nations were now more, not less, likely to walk out because of the US strategy.
To become so blatantly and blindly partisan, and to irresponsibly and viciously accuse groups like AJC of cavorting with Holocaust deniers and doing willful damage to Israel, is, I’d say, deliriously over the top.
Indeed, the three of them rather remind me of the opening scene of Shakespeare’s Macbeth:
Fair is foul and foul is fair:
Hover through the fog and the filthy air.
“Yet all these accusations were leveled by the discordant trio of Melanie Phillips (she’s the one who came out with the unforgettably looney reference to “psychopathology”), Caroline Glick and Anne Bayefsky.”
I have never read Bayerfsky and from the few quotes people post here and there I am not eager to be introduced to her comments.
I also stopped reading Glick a while back since she is a one note parrot who can never see anything positive in any of the admittedly mostly dismal news about the Arab Israeli conflict.
Melanie Phillips is a puzzle to me. I like her spirited defense of Israel but am often taken aback by the sarcastic vitriol she dishes out to other supporters of Israel with whom she disagrees.
I still look at her comments once in a while but read them with a double grain of salt.
Phillips’s is less a “spirited defense of Israel” than a spirited defense of the Israeli ultra-right and defamation of anyone who opposes it. She has become a grotesque mirror-image of the ANSWER left.
It’s interesting reading the response from the trio who have taken such exception to the criticism. Its fair for them to run their motor-mouths off against everyone else but no-one should criticise them.
That said, I still enjoy Melanie and I think Anne Bayefsky does a remarkable job.
Glick on the other hand - I think I prefer Fisk to her vitriolic nonesense.