I've been reading The Israel Lobby over the weekend and trying to figure out the chronology of the Second Intifada and the significance of Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount. This led to some fuzzily directed googling, which led to this Atlantic article heaping opprobrium -- much of it deserved -- on Yassir Arafat.
One of the peculiarities of the nation that Arafat created was that it was founded on a festering grievance rather than any positive imagination of the future; the worse things were in the present, the stronger the Palestinian case became.
For the diplomats of the European Union, whose dream of creating a new kind of political organization that would rival the United States for global influence was burdened by the historical guilt of colonialism and the Holocaust, the image of the Jew as oppressor that Arafat offered the world was both novel and liberating; the State of Israel would become the Other of a utopian new world order that would be cleansed of destructive national, religious, and particularistic passions.
That's quite a charge. Luckily it's backed up with heaps of supporting ev--wait, what's that? No evidence at all? Oh.
For all the hysterical denunciations of the calm, methodical argument presented by Walt and Mearsheimer, this sort of thing passes unnoticed all the time. Here we've got The Atlantic Monthly, one of the most prestigious and respected magazines in America, charging that the European Union has declared Israel "the Other," and believes they singularly impede our future as laid-back, bisexual cosmopolitans drinking fair trade espresso. And yet, it appears no editor even raised an eyebrow, much less asked for a quotation of some sort.
Which is lucky, because if you go to the EU's official web site on the conflict, you get positions like "It is the EU’s position of principle that Israel should live in peace within internationally-recognised borders, accepted by all its neighbours, and free from threats to its security." Or if you look at the EU's action plan with Israel, you get "[The EU's] Enlargement offers the opportunity for the EU and Israel to develop an increasingly close relationship, going beyond co-operation, to involve a significant measure of economic integration and a deepening of political co-operation." And for that matter, former British prime minister (and thus EU member) Tony Blair is the new envoy to the Middle East. So all in all it's probably good the editors didn't press for quotes or evidence, as they really wouldn't have fit with the article.
Meanwhile, Walt and Mearsheimer construct a book entirely from footnotes and direct quotations, and they're branded anti-semites -- not because they hate the Jews, but because they tilted against Israel's chosen policies rather than towards them. Healthy.
