Daniel Larison jumps to Anonymous's defense. It's as if Larison
has the blogging equivalent of a Bat Signal that alerts him whenever
anybody gets criticized for attacking Israel or its supporters, so
he can rapidly come to the aid of the basher in question. The most
amusing aspect of Larison's item is that he claims Anonymous didn't
really mean to accuse Jewish conservatives of "divided loyalties"
before Anonymous wrote a follow-up post making
it abundantly clear that that's exactly what he meant. As I wrote
before, there's no evidence that Israeli security concerns prompted
the Bush administration to invade Iraq. Larison believes that
American foreign policy is bad for both our own security and
Israel's, but the current debate is one about motives. The most
disgusting aspect of the "divided loyalties" smear is that it
questions the patriotism of Jewish conservatives by arguing that
we'd actually advocate policies that are against America's security
interest because we're actually more loyal to Israel than our own
country. That is a shameful charge.
This subject particularly hits home with me because I didn't
start off as a strong supporter of Israel. In fact, even in the
early stages of the Second Intifada, I tended to be more
sympathetic to the Palestinian side because I hadn't studied the
conflict carefully, and my views were colored by news accounts
emphasizing the disproportionate death toll. When did everything
change? On Sept. 11, when my city and country were under attack,
and Palestinians were celebrating in the
streets. Only then did I begin to identify with Israelis for
what they had been dealing with for decades, and the more I read
about the history of the conflict, the more I sympathized with the
Israeli position. The Palestinians allied themselves with Hitler
during WWII and with the Soviets during the Cold War, and cheered
while innocent civilians were still dying within a few miles of
where I lived and worked. The point is that my support for Israel
is firmly rooted in my love of America, and so I don't take it
lightly when somebody throws around the "divided loyalty" smear to
taint all Jewish supporters of the Iraq War. The fact that the
charge is coming from another Jew makes it worse, because now
despicable anti-Semites can point and say, "See, even some Jews
admit it!"
UPDATE: Larison responds, distancing himself from
the "divided loyalties" argument, but still insisting that concerns
about Israeli security interest played a significant role in the
decision to invade Iraq, a point of view evidently shared by
Andrew Sullivan as well. Neither
offer any evidence to back up their assertion, yet they utter it as
if it's so obviously true. Larison asks whether I went after
attempts to question the patriotism of Pat Buchanan in 2003. I find
Buchanan's views on foreign policy abhorent, but I always had a
problem when people questioned the patriotism of Americans who
opposed the Iraq War. I just wasn't blogging or writing opinion
columns in 2003, because I was still a Reuters journalist at the
time and my contract precluded me from offering outside commentary.
topics:
Foreign Policy, Iraq, Israel
