Jeffrey Goldberg is very effective: he intimidates people. He is personable and funny well-connected and vicious. The other day he called Walt and Mearsheimer neo-Lindberghian. A disgusting effort to make them out as anti-semites, when both these guys are actually trying to save Israel from itself, and one of these authors is married to a Jewish woman. Walt has called Goldberg on the character assassination and, at last (W&M have tended to avoid this) brought up the tribalist angle. It's unavoidable. When Elliott Abrams says that Jews must stand apart in any country they live in except Israel and he's involved in Iraq war planning, and when an Iran policymaker in the Obama administration is a former chairman of the Jewish People Policy Institute (that works against assimilation), I'm glad other people are talking about tribalism. Walt:

... the Likudnik wing of the Israel lobby isn't really interested in truth or even a fair-minded discussion of the issues. They just smear their targets with made-up accusations, knowing that if you throw enough mud, some of it is bound to stick.

I suspect that what really ticks Goldberg off is this: My co-author and I (and a few others) have had the temerity to write critically about the political role of "pro-Israel" forces (both Jewish and non-Jewish) in America today. This is a topic that the goyim aren't supposed to talk about openly. It's fine for Goldberg to write at length about this topic, or for former Forward editor J. J. Goldberg, to devote an entire book (which is well worth reading) to it. But when a non-Jew writes about this issue, and suggests that these groups are advocating foolish and self-defeating policies, then that person must of course be an anti-Semite. If Jews express similar doubts, they must be labeled as "self-hating" and marginalized as well.

by Philip Weiss on December 3, 2010

http://mondoweiss.net/2010/12/walt-tribalist-goldberg-is-smearing-us-b...

Submitted by Aletho News on Fri, 2010-12-03 21:08

• Aletho News's blog
• Login or register to post comments
• 353 reads
•