calling someone anti-semetic has come to mean they are telling the truth.

i always read and reread everything that person has said once he is labled anti-semetic.

there probably is a lot to learn in those words.

Sullivan's about to get Goldstoned!

I have generally felt that a significant distinction was to be made between Wieseltier and Peretz; that for all his limitations, the Wiesel was qualitatively better than crazy Marty. Clearly it's time to revisit that assumption.

Not having ever heard of Wieseltier or Peretz and only having heard of new republic, in passing, as an online rant by frustrated skinheads from downtown somewhere or other - I am not at all surprised at their latest attempt to gain attention.

Frustrated people, especially those with nothing to do all day, tend to become ever more vocal and insistent the more they are ignored.

To call one of their own band of crazy fundamentalists 'antisemitic' is to expected as they shout ever louder to be heard, and wave bananas and paint their faces blue and white. But it's all to no avail, nobody cares and I know for a fact that my cat is a lot more influential than these sad guys sitting in front of their screens in a darkened room eating pitta .. but then my cat is a clever pussy who knows what he wants and gets it.

I feel a bit sad for poor Sullie as a moderately sane conservative, but only a little bit. He did his part as editor to create this festering fever swamp that is the american right and is now paying for it.

Right, Brad. I have to get away from my "preconceived narrative" which leads me to believe that a 4300 word piece denouncing Sullivan as an anti-semite because he criticizes Israel is neither about Israel nor about anti-Semitism.

Maybe it's really about Leon being a Blackberry guy while Andrew swears by his iPhone.

brad delong on the TNR editor: is the question, "is sully an anti-semite?" or is the question, "is frank foer a human being?"

Time for the old joke

A jew is shipwrecked on a desert island..To keep himself sane, he builds an entire town.

Finally he's rescued. Before leaving he shows the captain around

Here's the fire station.Here's the bowling alley.
Here's the Temple. Here's the Post Office. Here's the Mayor's office. Here's the other Temple. Here's the.....

The Captain interrupting

But why did you build the second temple ?

Jew, pointing to it,

To that one I don't go

The best part of Wieseltier's article is his discussion of the Trinity, in which he argues that his people's irrational belief in God is more rational than other people's irrational belief in God.

I can't pretend much of an interest in this contretemps between the dispeptic (Weiseltier) and the preening (Sullivan). But since the snow has slowed business to a crawl, I'll offer a few thoughts.

I agreed with Weiseltier's criticisms of the substance of Sullivan's recent writings on Israel. I also agree that many of the themes of Sullivan's writing bear traces of antisemitic tropes when taken to extremes (i.e., the supernatural power of the Lobby). It doesn't follow, however, that the subjects Sullivan raises are illegitimate or that the man himself flirts with antisemitism. That's an innacurate and unwarranted slur.

That said, I have little sympathy for Sullivan and shudder at the idea that he is, as MJ puts it, "one of the most influential thinkers in America." Here's a guy who seems incapable of any type of reflection and instead passes off emotional outbursts as reasoning. Whatever trendy thought appeals to him at the moment is uncritically accepted as absolute and all who dare to disagree become the enemies of truth. This utter incapacity for self-criticism (read: narcissism) allows him to completely change course on a dime with scarcely a nod to his prior incarnation. Consider some of Sullivan's writings before his recent "conversion" (courtesy of Jonathan Chait, the first from August 2001, the second from 2002):

[T]he notion of a negotiable peace with the murdering hoodlums who run the PLO was always a fantasy. ...

Or maybe these optimists simply read the report of the recent suicide bombing printed in USA Today and noted by conservative commentator George Will: "The blast ... sent flesh flying onto second-storey balconies a block away. Three men were blown 30ft; their heads, separated from their bodies by the blast, rolled down the glass-strewn street ... One woman had at least six nails embedded in her neck. Another had a nail in her left eye. Two men, one with a six-inch piece of glass in his right temple ... tried to walk away ... A man groaned ... His legs were blown off. Blood poured from his torso ... A three-year-old girl, her face covered with glass, walked among the bodies calling her mother's name" ...

Here's the scenario, floated by the Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, the brilliant analyst who helped formulate the Reagan doctrine: "A lightning and massive Israeli attack on every element of Arafat's police state infrastructure -the headquarters and commanders of his eight security services, his police stations, weapons depots, training camps, communications and propaganda facilities--with a simultaneous attack on the headquarters and leadership of Arafat's Hamas and Islamic Jihad allies.

"Arafat has given Israel war; he will now receive it." ...

Under the onslaught of constant murder and fear, the Jewish public might be convinced to surrender enough arms and territory to give the PLO what they really want: a chance to destroy Israel altogether and murder any Jew they can find.

Then there was the recent Not In Our Name rally in Central Park, demonstrating against a potential war against Iraq. Around the edges of the rally copies of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the classic forged document of 19th-century anti-semitism, were being sold. According to the New York Sun, this peddling of anti-semitic tripe was not entirely accidental.

One protester said: “There are interest groups that want Israel to dominate Palestine. If Bush goes with them and is too critical, he might lose their support . . . the international financiers have their hooks in everything.” Ah, those international financiers. Remember them? America’s anti-war movement, still puny and struggling, is showing signs of being hijacked by one of the oldest and darkest prejudices there is. Perhaps it was inevitable. The conflict against Islamo-fascism obviously circles back to the question of Israel. Fanatical anti-semitism, as bad or even worse than Hitler’s, is now a cultural norm across much of the Middle East. It’s the acrid glue that unites Saddam, Arafat, Al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, Iran and the Saudis.

It's not just on Israel that Sullivan has done a complete pivot. On most significant issues, Sullivan has reversed himself with the same thoughtless and bullying style he once employed in support of conservativism. All of which is to say, I wouldn't be so quick to embrace Sullivan's conversion. He's just exchanged one set of spots for another.

They all ought to get out more.

They're smart guys and I have absolutely no doubt, good human beings. But they spend too much time talking to one another, reading one another's articles and working themselves into a sincere fury over the articles of those they have appointed as their bete noir of the week.

It can happen to anyone: the Nation, the New York Review probably the conservative publications altho in order to be able to make that statement I'd first have to read them and there are certain sacrifices I'm not willing to make. It's enough that Christopher Caldwell occupies space, uselessly, in the FT.

But those poor guys/gals in the NR, should go to a movie, shovel snow, watch a football game, anything but continue to torture themselves over imagined slights to Israel. Sure there are indeed slights to Israel , and to the Palestinians, the Northern Irish, whomever. Join the club. That's life. Those are all groups of good and bad people who do good and bad things and have valid and invalid reasons for hating one another. You can spend 25 hours a day seeking out the particular invalid complaints of any one group against any other. Or you can try to fix things that can be fixed. Or you can just shut up.

If anyone still cares, Sullivan has posted a thoughtful, heartfelt reply in which he acquits himself quite well.

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/02/something-much-sadder.html#more

user-pic

What are editors for? Couldn't someone have sent Wieseltier's rant back to him with a note saying "do you really mean this?".

I'm happy to include among the list of things I never read the NR and anything by either Wieseltier or Sullivan. But it depresses me seeing intelligent people losing control of themselves this way

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I agree with that Andrew Sullivan always had theological problems with Jews because they don't get the Trinity. For awhile he laid that aside. But now his virulent hatred of Israel and people like Krauthammer has caused him to revert to who he originally was. He is a Jew-hater.

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Marty Peretz, on good terms although Sullivan must have known that there was one condition for remaining on those good terms: he must never attack Israel's policies.
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