Some of Their Best Friends are Arabs: The Liberal Press and Zionism

By Lenni Brenner

Those demanding justice for the Palestinians find little support in our mass media and are therefore appreciative of those publications that sometimes expose Zionism's inequities. Foremost in this regard are the Nation and the Village Voice. But if we examine them closely we see that they willfully endorse candidates whom they know hustle money and votes from Jewish chauvinists.

The public calls them liberal but they define themselves as democratic socialists, meaning they are not Stalinists or Trotskyists. Thinking themselves superior to the capitalists and other leftists gives them a holier-than-thou tone while, in fact, they are no more than "high-minded but safe," as managing editor JoAnn Wypijewski critically describes the Nation. In life, liberal journalism is nothing more than a fifth leg on the Democratic Party jackass.

In 1984 the Voice declared that "there is little to choose between Mondale and Hart on the Middle East, especially during this [New York] primary when both vie without dignity or restraint to please the most intractable supporters of a belligerent Israel." Then—on the same page!—the Voice endorsed Walter Mondale, who was "rooted in a political tradition of government which serves people....We think that he has chosen the course of principle."

"The challenge of modernity," says the Voice, "is to live without illusions, and without becoming disillusioned." Democratic socialists grow up in 'the real world,' a tough neighborhood, where they learn 'street-wise politics' while playing 'hardball.' Mondale was a 'lesser evil,' bad on Palestinian rights but not so bad on issues of more importance to them. Of course this was crackpot realism. They knew Reagan would win. Betraying the Palestinians availed them nothing.

Tension between their ideals and support for a party they see as corrupt, capitalist, imperialist and rightward-moving, makes these little-league Machiavellis into suckers for left-talking populists who they hope will build a movement against the party sachems. Here is Micah Sifry, assistant editor of the Nation, in another journal, on Jesse Jackson in 1988:

"[H]e began speaking of 'secure borders' for Israel (as opposed to internationally recognized borders)...he avoided singling out Israel's relationship with South Africa....Only at one point...before the New York primary, did Jackson waver from his forthright stand in favor of opening talks with the PLO. Asked on Face the Nation if he would 'sit down with Arafat,' he replied, 'it's not necessary to do that. We must not equate Arafat and the PLO with the...Palestinian people'...Jackson organizers...pushed for the adoption of a...plank...which would have stated 'that this country, maintaining the special relationship with Israel...must...end the impasse...by adopting a policy which establishes peace based on mutual recognition, territorial compromise, and self-determination for Israelis and Palestinians'...Jackson's inner circle was divided as to how far to push the plank....the plank was raised for debate and then withdrawn 'in the interest of party unity.'"

Betraying the Palestinians availed them nothing.

Our peace Zionist Pollyanna closed with "thanks to...Jackson's insurgency, Palestinian rights have finally made it onto the U.S. political agenda." Sifry couldn't see that adapting to Zionism meant that Jackson was coming to terms with the party regulars. Both journals then endorsed Michael Dukakis, another sure loser, who wanted to reward Israeli torture during the intifada by moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem.

Their need to see a savior in every passing demagogue came out again in 1992. Alexander Cockburn complained to Jerry Brown during the New York primary: "[H]ere you are favoring the $10 billion in loan guarantees to Israel in a fairly abandoned way," but both journals backed him. Then they shilled for Clinton even as the Nation acknowledged that "Clinton has moved to Bush's right on...the Middle East. (Clinton supported the Likud government's demand for unlinked loan guarantees to Israel.)"

Inevitably these "leftists" tolerated domestic anti-Arab racism. New York dailies reported in 1989 that Arab Americans were told not to build a support group for Democratic mayoralty candidate David Dinkins, because such an organization would lose him Jewish votes. Voice columnist Nat Hentoff—who always denounces Black anti-Semitism aimed at Jews—confirmed this but kept silent and the paper endorsed Dinkins: "[A]ll New Yorkers will benefit when a principled honorable mayor occupies the Black leadership role that has recently been usurped by frauds and demagogues." I called Victor Navasky, now publisher of the Nation, and was told this was just "a New York story," and the magazine printed nothing. In 1991 Dinkins was invited to the Nation's 125th anniversary party.

"A Good Question"

The Dec. 29, 1992 Voice ran a letter by me, denouncing it for supporting Dinkins' re-election. Executive editor Richard Goldstein replied: "Brenner's rage is really directed at the possible. Blacks, gays and feminists have put together a working coalition...Dinkins...has managed to stave off the worst predations of the white-ethnic right. To ignore this political reality...is indulgent at best." Goldstein, gay and Jewish, was interviewed for this article. Would he back a candidate who excluded gays or Jews? "That's a good question," he responded. "I might, if his opponent was worse."

These chattering-class heroes could never organize to attain their inchoate principles. They perforce rely on the Democrats to fend off the GOP. They acknowledge their party's pandering to its crucial Jewish funders. Navasky once suggested—but not in the Nation—that Gary Hart talk about "the role of American Jewish money in forming American Mideastern policy." While his magazine exposes the corrupting impact of capitalist campaign money on our politicians, it rarely mentions pro-Zionist lucre.

Goldstein is equally cynical. He hailed Jackson's 1992 appearance before the World Jewish Congress, where Jackson called Zionism "a liberation movement," because "Jackson has much to gain from peace with the Jews. His rise within the Democratic Party has been stalled, and his access to funding stymied, in part, because of the perception that he is a bigot."

Such candidates get substantial donations from Jewish "treehuggers." But these already forgave Jesse's "Hymietown" remark. The editor surely knows that single-issue Zionist political action committees only give cash to a liberal if they are convinced he would back Israel regardless of all outrages against Palestinians. The cash-sources he fantasized were investment bankers and realty moguls, the biggest giver-getters among the "Jews" who the Jan. 5, 1993 New York Times said "contributed about 60 percent of Mr. Clinton's noninstitutional campaign funds."

Many leading investment banking houses are of German-Jewish origin. These government bond underwriters love the "big-spending," i.e., big-borrowing, Democrats. Eastern European Jews arriving here before 1924 found realty easy to enter and now their proportion among major developers is colossal. As construction is crucially affected by local governments granting zoning variances, material interest puts them in the party of most big-city mayors. They are intensely pro-Israel. Realtor Walter Shorenstein, perhaps the Democratic Party's biggest fund-raiser, says that when he goes to his colleagues for a candidate "the fact that he's been good to Israel...is indicative...that he is one that they should be considerate of."

Although contributors Thomas Ferguson and Joel Rogers discussed the realtors and bankers as such, and Sifry wrote, in another publication, about pro-Zionist funders, the Nation can't deal with the fact that they are largely the same characters. The magazine's enthusiasm for its election-day tigers might not survive such scrutiny. Their fealty to those land barons is actually screened by their howling for their racist, theocratic torture state.

Still, readers may say I'm too harsh on these folks. Didn't the Voice just trumpet Rudolph Giuliani's intimacy with Meir Kahane's friends? Didn't the Nation run Edward Said's denunciations of the Oslo accords? But New York's mayor is a Republican. The Voice will support another Dinkins against him. And Said didn't speak for Navasky: "A bad treaty is better than no treaty."

Realistic Politicians

Is it? Is it legitimate for America, which guarantees equal protection before the law to all citizens, to subsidize a pact which creates Jews-only roads? Neither journal likes the Clinton-brokered accords. Yet both will endorse him again. They might add a caveat deploring his Middle Eastern policy. If so, he will ignore it. Some politicians are quite realistic. People from all points on the ideological compass come before them. Eventually they silently ask one question about all pleaders: If we don't give the beggars what they want, what will they do to hurt us?

What will these scribblers do to hurt Clinton on this issue? They won't tell their readers to vote Republican. They don't call for a new party. The Voice clammed-up on Dinkins' ethnic-cleansing because he was for gay rights. Yet when Clinton reneged on allowing open gays in the military, the issue that hits them where they live, it didn't call a march.

Voting Democrat is the liberals' substitute for a strategy; it's how they fill in the blank if asked how they intend to get to their highfalutin' goals. They expect little out of the Democrats and on this issue they expect nothing. To them that's okay because they have come to see the Palestinians as ritual human sacrifices before the one true god, the Lesser Evil, which they believe in like the Thugs who worshipped Kali, the goddess of destruction.

"War," said Karl von Clausewicz, "is the continuation of politics by other means." Well then, isn't foreign policy the continuation of domestic politics in other places? In a world economy there is no Green Line between domestic and foreign affairs. We apply—or do not apply—the same world-view in both spheres. A president who went back on his gay supporters became the Godfather of a treaty sanctioning Jews-only roads. And "realistic" journalists who repeatedly betrayed the Palestinians did nothing when the gays were sold out.

As such cleverness gets next to nothing for ordinary Americans, and is disastrous for Palestinians, act toward them as the Middle Eastern proverb—from the Old Testament—would have us do: "Go from the presence of fools when thou perceivest not in them the lips of knowledge." It is past time for liberty's true friends to organize a deep discussion of credible electoral programs for 1996 and beyond.

Lenni Brenner is the author of The Lesser Evil: The Democratic Party; Zionism in the Age of the Dictators; and The Anti-Defamation League's National Director is Crazy Like a Foxman, an AET White Paper.