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2010-01-07, 10:35 a.m.

http://mondoweiss. net/2010/ 01/two-state- solution- needed-and- fast-for- u-s-and-israel. html
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>
> by Philip Weiss on January 4,
> 2010 � 31
> comments
>
>
> A few weeks back
> I wrote that there are too many Jewish Israelis in the
> American press, and Lisa Goldman, a writer in Tel
> Aviv, called me an anti-Semite. I�ve been working on
> a big post responding to her charge, but in the meantime I
> was back at it again last night, when I said that
> the New York Review of Books should stop hiring so many
> Israeli writers.
> How do I justify
> such national prejudice? Especially when I�m here in
> Israel, where I�m meeting a lot of amazing Israeli journos
> and intellectuals who have walked their talk and are trying
> to change their country?
> I
> admit that it is a national prejudice on my part.
> It reflects these feelings: after the Iraq war, I woke
> up to the incredible conflation of American and Israeli
> interests that the neocons were pushing in the U.S.
> discourse. I found it extremely confusing when everyone from
> Tom Friedman to Bill Kristol was saying that a suicide
> bomber in Tel Aviv was a reason for us to invade Iraq. Those
> guys were themselves confused about which country they cared
> about more. At this time, too, Jeffrey Goldberg emerged as
> the most important Jewish journalist in the U.S., in some
> measure because he had spent time in Israel and served in
> the IDF. He has been replaced, or is starting to be
> replaced, by Gershom Gorenberg, an American-cum- Israeli, who
> has written for the New York Review of Books and the Weekly
> Standard too. Meanwhile the New York Times
> began printing Zev Chafets, a former Israeli gov�t
> spokesman, on
> American political trends, and the American Enterprise
> Institute was paying Dore Gold $98,000 a year as a scholar,
> notwithstanding the fact he is a former Israeli ambassador
> living in Jerusalem and churning out
> Islamophobia.
> It never ends.
> Rahm Emanuel, who volunteered at an IDF base,
> became the White House chief of staff, and another
> Obama appointee announced that Israel is her homeland, and
> Harvard names as the new dean of the Law School, Martha
> Minow, who has published an article with an Israel
> co-authorsaying that Israel�s
> treatment of detainees is a model! (Sorry if that irritates;
> I just returned from a demonstration for Jamal Juma, who has
> been detained on flimsy grounds because he�s a human
> rights worker, and I�m reading the Goldstone
> report, which says that 750,000 Palestinians have been
> imprisoned during the Occupation, and Omar
> Barghouti
> told me at the demonstration that imprisonment has
> touched every Palestinian family�something Dean Minow
> didn�t mention.) Oh and after the Gaza war, the New York
> Review of Books offered itself as a forum for
> Israelis to hash over the war. Not a Palestinian in sight. The
> New York Times has an Israeli reporter in its Jerusalem
> bureau, and lately the Washington Post announced that its
> next Jerusalem correspondent would be someone who had worked
> at the Jerusalem Post. Then there�s the New Republic,
> which really is the new republic�of US and Israel. It has
> featured Benny Morris and Michael Oren, both Israelis, one
> an ambassador, explaining why Israel is so cool.
> Can you see why
> I�m confused?
> It is
> true that my real objection is to Zionism in the
> American discourse, but not all of these folks wear their
> Zionist ribbons on their chests, and it�s hard enough
> sorting out American writers� agendas let alone
> Israelis�.
> So yes, on this
> score, I admit, I�m a bit of a nativist. I apologize here
> to all my Israeli friends and promise to work on my issues.
> But the special relationship has hurt America in the Middle
> East and part of the price of disentangling that
> relationship may be some discrimination against Israelis in
> the American discourse. Separation, partition; call it what
> you will. But the U.S. and Israel need to be two states, not
> one.