David Remnick, "Threatened": Thanks, David, for Warning Me

Recently, in a New York Times op-ed entitled "Liz Cheney: Desist!" (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/07/opinion/dowd-liz-cheney-desist.html?ref=opinion), Maureen Dowd wrote a denunciation of Israel and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, which was rife with manifestations of ignorance (see: http://jgcaesarea.blogspot.com/2012/03/maureen-dowd-liz-cheney-desist-wearing.html). In her shoddy opinion piece, Dowd cited David Remnick:

"As the New Yorker editor David Remnick wrote, Netanyahu and his supporters too often 'consider the tenets of liberal democracy to be negotiable in a game of coalition politics.'"

Dowd was referring to Remnick's comment entitled "Threatened" (http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2012/03/12/120312taco_talk_remnick), which would have us believe that Israel's democracy is under attack:

"[A]s an experiment in Jewish power, unique after two millennia of persecution and exile, Israel has reached an impasse. An intensifying conflict of values has put its democratic nature under tremendous stress."

To prove his point, Remnick alleges:

"The political corrosion begins, of course, with the occupation of the Palestinian territories—the subjugation of Palestinian men, women, and children—that has lasted for forty-five years. Peter Beinart, in a forthcoming and passionately argued polemic, 'The Crisis of Zionism,' is just the latest critic to point out that a profoundly anti-democratic, even racist, political culture has become endemic among much of the Jewish population in the West Bank, and jeopardizes Israel proper."

So whereas as liberal New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd relies upon liberal New Yorker editor David Remnick for her opinions on Israel, Remnick relies upon liberal Peter Beinart's "polemic" book being published by Times Books, the publishing arm of The New York Times, whose op-ed opinions concerning Israel often border upon or descend into anti-Semitism (see, for example: http://jgcaesarea.blogspot.com/2012/02/stench-of-anti-semitism-at-new-york.html).

Do Dowd, Remnick and Beinart speak Hebrew and Arabic? Have they spent meaningful time in Israel, studying the political, social and economic climate? Of course in a democracy, everyone is entitled to his or her opinion, i.e. to spout blather.

Remnick writes of "political corrosion," "occupation" and "subjugation." It sounds almost akin to Assad's ongoing slaughter of Syria's Sunnis. But as Mahmoud Abbas, President of the Palestinian Authority, stated in May 2009 to Jackson Diehl of The Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/28/AR2009052803614.html), he couldn't care less about "the stalled peace process":

"'I will wait for Hamas to accept international commitments. I will wait for Israel to freeze settlements,' he said. 'Until then, in the West Bank we have a good reality . . . the people are living a normal life.'"

A "normal life"? How can that possibly be? I thought they were occupied and subjugated.

Is Israel's democracy "threatened"? Why don't I, a secular Jew living in Israel, who, like most Israelis favor a two-state solution but demand in return an acknowledgment of our right to exist, feel "threatened" by right wing, ultra-Orthodox extremists?

As observed by Jeffrey Goldberg in a 2010 interview with Peter Beinart in The Atlantic:

"Are Israel's failings, in fact, so terrible, especially given the line-up of enemies Israel is facing? I'm asking you to confront reality, not your Utopian vision of what a Jewish country should be. The reality is that there are organizations and countries trying to physically eliminate the Jewish state. Even with this existential problem, Israel still manages to be the freest and most democratic state in the Middle East, and one that even grants its Muslim citizens the right to build minarets and wear burqas, unlike many countries in Europe."

In any event, thanks for the warning, David, but sorry if I don't feel "threatened." Vigilant, yes. Threatened, no.