Jay Adler directs me to this correspondence of his with Andrew Sullivan. Inter alia, Adler writes: “The problem in this is that Max Blumenthal and those particular ‘young left-wing Jewish political writers who criticise right-wing Israeli policies’ are not, simply, ‘writers who criticise right-wing Israeli policies.’ Blumenthal and Mondoweiss are both anti-Zionist. They are opposed to the existence of the Jewish state and are expressly working to bring about its demise.”
Well put, though Sullivan is apparently unmoved and remains rather taken with Blumenthal and Weiss, the Cheech and Chong of the debate about US policy in the Middle East. Indeed, Sullivan is so breathlessly defensive of his pals that he actually tells Adler, “at the rate things are going i cannot imagine israel having a 60th anniversary (sic).”
Adler correctly notes that Israel has already marked its 60th anniversary, but he pointedly adds, “it is the very fact that you can conceive of the nation’s end that is the point in all this.” Quite. What a shame that Andrew Sullivan, in his desire to rescue the credibility of a clownish mediocrity like Max Blumenthal, seems to be veering towards moonbattery as a result.
I praised Sullivan for his Iran uprising coverage at first until I realized he was pushing the NIAC (National Iranian American Council), don’t-say-anything-to-upset-the-mullahs, don’t-speak-up-for-Iranians line in every other post.
Sullivan can serve as a yellow or red flag, an indicator, a secondary or tertiary indicator, further signifying which way the wind is blowing; to be sampled and then spit out, not consumed.
There is also in interesting bit on Sullivan who think that the US has become a “police State” under
Obama:
http://normblog.typepad.com/normblog/2009/07/on-tendencies-and-categories.html
Moonbat is too mild for good old Andrew.
As for “mondoweiss,” he is very hostile to Jews not just to Israel wanting all Jews to assimilate. He is the very embodiment of those old pre-Nazi German Jewish assimilationists with one exception, he knows very little about Judaism or Jewish history.
I disagree with much of what Sullivan says re Zionism/anti-Zionism, Walt/Mearsheimer, Chas Freeman etc. But to call him an antisemite and a moonbat is nonsense and deeply unserious, as any careful reading of his blog would indicate.
NIAC’s “don’t speak up for Iranians” line? Here’s from their mission statement:
“NIAC is committed to shedding much needed light on the abuses of the Iranian government against its own people. … NIAC affirms the universality of human rights and rejects all attempts to disassociate Iranian culture from internationally recognized standards of human rights as enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
“Iran’s disregard for the international treaties it has signed and its deteriorating human rights record is deeply troubling to Iranian Americans and the global community. NIAC stands with human rights defenders in Iran and around the world…”
Hi David - I plead guilty on the moonbattery part. I mean, that’s a fair thing to say, given that he argues it’s likely that Israel will disappear before an anniversary which it’s already marked. But I didn’t call him an antisemite.
I now see that Jacob called Sullivan an antisemite. Jacob, I have removed that part of your comment. You are welcome to post your thoughts here, but I would ask you not to throw the term “antisemite” around in the way that some people throw the term “apartheid” around. Let’s save it for those who can be reasonably described as such. There are plenty of them, but Andrew Sullivan, for all his faults, isn’t one of them.
Generally, people, I am really, really busy with so many different projects - please don’t add to my workload (or Eamonn’s) by forcing us to police every dot and comma of your comments. I like to think that trust prevails here - please don’t abuse it.
David Adler and Ben Cohen my views are based on my reading of his posts over a couple of years.
Sullivan is very careful not to say anything about Jews directly but often links to comments which sometime are antisemitic. His attacks also on “neo cons,” whom I don’t support, also have a kind of “those” people about them. This comes out when he is arguing against some one he considers a neo con.
That’s just my impression. I don’t have the time right now, but I intend to do go through his posts and find some concrete evidence in support of my views.
Moreover, his insistence that we live in a “police State” is pretty far out:
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/07/whose-police-state.html
On another note dealing with Israel, what do people here make of this bit of information:
“How did Israel stop being a free country?
Here’s a story about how un-professional a pro-democracy organization becomes when dealing with the State of Israel.”
http://www.adi-schwartz.com/israel-not-free-country/
Is this an indication of antisemitism on the part of “Freedom House?”
David,
I didn’t see your post until now, so I apologize for the late reply.
An organization like NIAC, seeking as it does to win the support of the Iranian-American community, is forced to make statements like the one you posted. If it didn’t, NIAC would lose legitimacy and credibility in the eyes of average Iranian-Americans who are all too familiar with what goes on inside Iran. The reason NIAC is considered an important element of the IRI’s “unofficial diplomacy” efforts is that it consistently advocates for the removal of sanctions, the softening of US gov’t rhetoric toward the regime, the discontinuation of congressional funding for Iranian HR organizations and other aspects of Iranian civil society, etc.
Hassan Dai, a great Iranian dissident journalist, has done a tremendous amount of work to expose NIAC’s role in advancing pro-IRI policies such as the ones I mentioned above while claiming to represent the interests and values of Iranian-Americans! Please visit his website, http://www.iranianlobby.com, to learn more about why so many Iranian-Americans despise NIAC.
I don’t doubt that Iranian-American diaspora politics are complex, and that you know more about them than I do. But it’s not like NIAC’s pro-human rights statements are tucked away like a footnote in some press release - they form the bulk of the group’s very mission statement. To dismiss the group as somehow pro-regime strikes me as an unfair partisan shot. But I will seek more information on this and I thank you for your reply.
Andrew Sullivan’s latest:
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/08/israels-nukes.html
“Israel’s Nukes”
The link to the non story is just an excuse to again attack in mealy mouthed fashion the “Israel lobby,” which of course he doesn’t mention. Instead we get this:
“Did John Bolton just call for getting rid of them? And am I allowed to acknowledge publicly that they exist but we can’t talk about them?”
The “am I allowed” phrase says it all.
So who is stopping Sullivan from talking about Israel or its nuclear arsenal?
Goldberg’s sardonic comment:
“Andrew Sullivan’s Zionism, Explained”
http://jeffreygoldberg.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/08/andrew_sullivans_zionism_expla.php
Sullivan is a clown of the first order. His black dotting on the repugnant Trig Palin non-story is a very good indicator of how low this moron will go to get a story.
Mailman