Comment on the NYT Review of TIL

Good comment on the NYT review of "The Israel Lobby" in a comment on Mondoweiss blog:

The reviewer, William Grimes, would obviously like to rip their hearts out, but he cannot dismiss them in Dershowitz fashion. Finally his arguments are reduced to whimpering and whining, here is a sample:

(...)"The general tone of hostility to Israel grates on the nerves, however, along with an unignorable impression that hardheaded political realism can be subject to its own peculiar fantasies. Israel is not simply one country among many, for example, just as Britain is not. Americans feel strong ties of history, religion, culture and, yes, sentiment, that the authors recognize, but only in an airy, abstract way.

They also seem to feel that, with Israel and its lobby pushed to the side, the desert will bloom with flowers. A peace deal with Syria would surely follow, with a resultant end to hostile activity by Hezbollah and Hamas. Next would come a Palestinian state, depriving Al Qaeda of its principal recruiting tool. (The authors wave away the idea that Islamic terrorism thrives for other reasons.) Well, yes, Iran does seem to be a problem, but the authors argue that no one should be particularly bothered by an Iran with nuclear weapons. And on and on.

“It is time,” Mr. Mearsheimer and Mr. Walt write, “for the United States to treat Israel not as a special case but as a normal state, and to deal with it much as it deals with any other country.” But it’s not. And America won’t. That’s realism."(END QUOTE)

That for the "gray lady" is the equivalent of throwing in the towel: they cannot ignore or really trash the book, they would like to, but they can't...

Trying to compare Israel to Britain is really a pitiful ploy... Do you know how many times the USA nearly went to war with the UK? We actually went to war twice. Do you know how much we charged them for the "lend-lease destroyers" when they had their backs to the wall in WWII? Do you know how "special" England is for Irish Americans? What a load of rubbish!

I would say then that it's "official", the book cannot be "ignored". The NYT is America's newspaper of reference and they have not ignored it and they have gingerly waltzed around the charge of antisemitism... hinting around it by calling the analysis, "cold". Not only is the book not to be ignored, its hot, hot, hot. The Israelis better start their war soon, by next week it might be too late.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/06/books/06grim.html?em&ex=1189224000&en=8f89c79af3597120&ei=5087%0A

http://www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/2007/09/a-hot-time-in-t.html#comment-81837545