Published on July 22nd, 2010 | by Daniel Luban
21Why Does Lee Smith Have A Job?
Many readers will already have seen that this blog was mentioned, along with Andrew Sullivan, Glenn Greenwald, Phil Weiss, and Steve Walt, as one of the sites “using the Internet to make anti-Semitism respectable,” in a Tablet article by their neoconservative politics columnist Lee Smith. The article is silly and substanceless enough that I won’t bother responding — Walt, Weiss, and Jerry Haber have already written fine rebuttals, and even journalists who are far from sympathetic to our politics, like JTA’s Ron Kampeas and the New Jersey Jewish News‘s Andrew Silow-Carroll, have picked apart Smith’s article for the idiocy that it is. (Although Kampeas feels compelled to take a gratuitous and frankly bizarre shot at Phil Weiss–he “gets up in the morning and plans a day that includes harming Jews”? Really, Ron? This is the kind of hysteria that one expects from Jeffrey Goldberg–who, no surprise, is the only source for Smith’s article.) I’ll just note how revealing it is that Smith is unable to produce a single instance of anti-Semitism from any of his targets, and is forced to rely on random and anonymous blog comments to make his case. His gloss on Jim’s political views also indicates that he has probably never read anything Jim’s written.
The real question is why the piece was published in the first place. I’ve written for Tablet before, and found the editors to be smart, thorough, and open-minded (as evidenced by their willingness to publish my piece in the first place). Reading Smith’s screed, I have to wonder how it made it through the publication process without anyone forcing him to provide some evidence for his claims.
More generally, it’s an interesting question why Smith has his gig at Tablet in the first place. I have no objection to the magazine airing neoconservative voices–they are a small minority in the American Jewish community, but an important one–but it is strange that the magazine would give its only weekly politics column to a neoconservative political operative who uses it exclusively as an echo chamber for talking points from Commentary and the Weekly Standard (where Smith also writes). I’ve gone through just about all of Smith’s Tablet columns, and virtually without fail they fall into one of two genres: there are hit pieces against whoever the neocons’ enemy of the week is (e.g. Trita Parsi, the Leveretts, and this latest article), and there are sycophantic puff pieces touting the wisdom of various Likudnik policymakers (e.g. Elliott Abrams, Michael Oren). Last week, he attempted a deeper think piece on Israel, Intellectuals, And The Fate Of Western Civilization, and it didn’t go too well–the kind of turgid pop philosophy that would be more at home in a college newspaper.
So why are we treated to Smith’s insights every week? Is it his good looks? His winning personality? A condition imposed by a funder? Regardless, his columns are jarringly out of place with the tenor of the rest of the magazine–and if his last couple are any indication, they’re only getting worse.
About the Author
Daniel Luban is a doctoral student in political science at the University of Chicago. He was formerly a correspondent for the Washington bureau of Inter Press Service.
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Much like Walt, it’s obvious that you did not read Smith’s piece, and are simply repeating the most conventional kind of talking points in a manner you hope will seem fresh. You can’t even manage to keep yourself from using the same tired old adjectives to smear those you are trying to smear.
Why are we treated to your insights here at whatever this silly little blog is, Daniel Luban, when you can’t even write a decent paragraph? If this is indicative of the body of your work, I suggest a new line.
Of work.
Of course, it could be that “Lobeblog” is looking for tired “screed[s]” if you will, where the intent is not to address opponents about the issue (Israel) but rather to dress them down and never once make an actual argument about the issue (Israel).
Petty personal conflicts drive the internet, it’s understandable, but really, we’re scraping the bottom of the barrel now with people like Daniel Luban.
Daniel, excellent post. It seems Lee Smith took a beating from the majority of commentors at Tablet for the intellectually lazy, superficial hit piece. Ironically, his first-draft, high school newspaper caliber column has attracted over 200+ hits, probably his most-read article ever posted.
That now begs the question he originally asked: is he attempting to attract web traffic for his article by deliberately playing into anti-Semitism like the five great writers he criticized? Or is it that any intellectual discussion of Israel’s conduct with US taxpayer funds has been so suppressed, there’s now a wellspring of interest/passion on the topic?
Snobbery and then flattery will get you everywhere, Oscar.
And as I’m sure we all know, on the internet, and particularly concerning Israel, quantity of commenters on one side or another has little if anything to do with the merits of the position.
In my opinion, the Smith piece deserves rather more thought than you’ve given it here. On the one hand, it’s simply awful that it smears people like Walt by calling them (directly or by innuendo) anti-Semites. On the other hand, it raises an important point, viz., that some commenters at blogs like Walt’s, or the Race for Iran, or here at Lobelog are undoubtedly anti-Semitic. It’s probably true that some commenters, frustrated by the pro-Israel bias of major U.S. media outlets and other power centers, allow their emotions and frustrations to boil over. However, there seems little doubt that other commenters really are anti-Semites (if not, then they’re certainly good at pretending to be). This should be troubling to those of us who are seeking to level the playing field in the U.S. media and influence U.S. public opinion.
Comments are important to any blog. But the bigotry displayed by some commenters is troubling. The solution? I wish I knew. The content of all of the blogs referenced in Smith’s article is straight stuff; none of the bloggers need have second thoughts about what they’ve written. That leaves the commenters themselves. No use, in my opinion, asking them to think before they click “submit.” It’s clear from online conversations I’ve had with some of them that they see nothing wrong with even their most outrageous remarks. Does one then attempt to censor comments? That seems to me a road best not taken. Where does one stop, once one tries to decide what constitutes “acceptable” opinion, and what is out of bounds? Nevertheless, the intrusion of bigotry can only detract from any blog.
Returning to Smith’s piece, it contains the usual digs and smears. For example, it equates anti-Zionisn with anti-Semitism. Personally, I find this particularly aggravating. As I have written both here and elsewhere, I consider myself to be an anti-Zionist (although I believe that Jews should be allowed to live in Palestine, and further I would support the creation of Zion elsewhere, perhaps on federal lands in the U.S.) but a philo-Semite. I’m being libeled when I’m called an anti-Semite because I oppose a Jewish-dominated state in Palestine. But then Smith and his ilk will stoop very low in the name of their cause.
I think attacks like Smith’s are motivated by fear of people like Walt and Lobe. Such people are well-educated, articulate, and ethical. Their audience, though relatively small, appears to be growing. The Lee Smiths of the world see them as a danger in a time when Israel’s stock may be dropping. And so efforts are made to discredit these voices.
By dragging the more extreme commenters on these sites into his argument Smith is, obviously, playing with guilt by association. An unfair tactic, certainly. However, we do need to think about the issue of anti-Semitic commentary contaminating these sites. The best and most solid house you build can be ruined by termites and roaches.
Smith’s piece made a number of excellent points and I am surprised you didn’t bother to address any of them in your rebuttal.
To answer your question, he has a job because people are interested in what he has to say.
He was very brave to have written that, and posting a link to this nonsense in the comments section has to be one of the most entertaining attempts at self promotion I have ever seen.
Jon you did read the Smith piece and at least gave some thought to what was said. I would like to point out to you that Walt refered to Smith as part of the ‘lobby’ in his rebuttal, something I find quite shocking.
The clear and present anti semitism in the comments of these blogs is a clear and present reminder that yes, birds of a feather flock together and these bloggers appeal to the worst elements of our society.
Quite frankly, I fear as a Jewish person for the future of my children and my family as I agree that the numbers of followers of these people who blame Jews for Iraq and nine eleven and whatever else they can come up with are really growing.
This troubles me and should worry all good people of our country and planet. There are only 13 million Jews left, we stand at the knife edge of extinction, lets all take a breath and think long and hard about where this seems to be going.
@Vered
I find our comment quite shocking.
“we stand at the knife edge of extinction”
Where does that thinking come from? Are you being persecuted in the U.S. for being a jew? Are jews in the U.S. a discriminated ethnic or religious group?
@bandalero
“are you being persecuted in the u.s. for being a Jew?”
Yes, of course. Our synagogues and community centers and museums and schools are all required to have gates and bomb proofing and other layers of security. Our children are shot in Seattle. America is the most wonderful place to be a Jew, yes, but it’s clearly not free from danger.
@Mrein
I’m even more shocked. I understand, that such fear is real, but is it rational? Where does this fear come from?
“Our synagogues and community centers and museums and schools are all required to have gates and bomb proofing and other layers of security.”
Isn’t it a privilegue to have such a level of security? Wouldn’t it be rational to have that layers of security for black people as well? If I understand the data rigt, there were ten times more black victims of racially or reigious motivated hate crimes than jewish in 2007:
http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/hc2007/table_05.htm
“Our children are shot in Seattle.”
It sounds like something like a regular event. Is it true? How many jewish children were shot at for racial or religious reasons in Seattle this year? And last year? And the year before? I have not heard of any such incident in the last three years. Were they?
All I know about Seattle violence against jews is that there was one incident called the “Seattle Jewish Federation shooting” on July 28, 2006, where several people were shot and one woman was killed in a anti-jewish hate crime. And as far as I understood, the very vast majority of the people in the US and worldwide condemned that hate crime and the justice system quickly incarcarated the offender. Is that persecutation? I doubt it.
But it’s interesting to have a look, what was the motivation for the “Seattle Jewish Federation shooting”. The offender said it had to do with the war of aggression against Iraq, where hundreds of thousands of people were killed, scores of mothers made poverty prostitues and millions made refugees.
To remember who was in the middle of those advocating a liberation of Iraq by a war of aggression based on lies I will just quote a piece from the Washington Times from the year 2002 about Israeli FM Shimon Peres remarks on Iraq at that time:
“Mr. Peres, interviewed from Rome yesterday on CNN’s “Novak, Hunt & Shields,” said, “You cannot sit and wait” while Saddam develops weapons of mass destruction. … “But Iraq is an issue in their own right, and a very terrible one. I think that everybody is a little bit impatient because there is a feeling that Iraq is developing nuclear weapons. They possess chemical weapons. They possesss biological weapons. They are building missiles. And simply, you cannot sit and wait for meeting this challenge,” Mr. Peres said.”
I find it quite understandable when people are upset about hundreds thousand of killed people due to the slander of other people. How can it be, that the offender believed the Jewish Federation in Seattle and the people there were responsible for atrocities committed by the government of Israel and their lobby in the U.S.? May it have something to with the fact that the website of The Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle stated it exists to “ensure Jewish survival and to enhance the quality of Jewish life … in Israel …”?
“America is the most wonderful place to be a Jew, yes, but it’s clearly not free from danger.”
I doubt there is any place in the world for anyone not free from danger. Persecution is something different than the complete absence of danger. What I’m shocked about is your fear, which looks for me very irrational.
I suspect, that such fear prepared the ground for scores of dead, wounded and orphaned people in Lebanon, Afghanistan, Iraq, the occupied territories, the U.S. and last not least in Israel itself and many more places.
I quite enjoyed the way Lee Smith managed his selective quotation from my comment to a previous thread here. He adroitly left out my statement that “I regard myself as a marxist.”
It appears that the comment of mine which Lee Smith selectively quotes from has been removed from the thread concerned, so the general public are now unable to find out what I actually said in it, and are likely to assume that I said simply and solely what Lee Smith quotes me as saying. However, a response by Martin Knutsen remains, which begins: “R. Berkely: As a fellow marxist, I would like to point out…”
RE:”…this blog was mentioned, along with Andrew Sullivan, Glenn Greenwald, Phil Weiss, and Steve Walt, as one of the sites “using the Internet to make anti-Semitism respectable,” in a Tablet article…”
MY COMMENT: Take a gander at this interesting response (comment) by Jordy2010 to Lee Smith’s Tablet column, “Mainstreaming Hate”. It sounds like Jordy2010 has been “mainlining hate”. You guys might want to consider investing in some good bulletproof vests and beefing up your security details.
Jordy2010 says:
Jul 21, 2010 at 8:16 PM
Arent Jewish far-left loons the same kind of monsters who organized the Soviet-Union and are responsible for the deaths of over 100 million human beings???? I see no difference between them and neo-nazis…… when they come into a chatroom they all hate Jews!!! The Mossad shud take care of anti-Israel jews……
LINK – http://www.tabletmag.com/news-and-politics/40064/mainstreaming-hate/comment-page-3/#comment-83447
Lucchesi,
Is English your first language? I ask because I’m honestly at a complete loss finding a coherent thought in your comments.
Jon Harrison,
I agree with you that some of the material posted by “pro-Palestinian” commenters is anti-semitic, or disturbingly close to it. But it works both ways. You can also find plenty of anti-Arab & anti-Muslim sentiment among many pro-Israel commenters.
In fact, without trivializing anti-Semitism, I’d say that anti-Muslim bigotry is the one that’s becoming far more mainstream. Look at the opposition to the Cordoba Center, the Muslim community center near Ground Zero, that’s now being embraced by “mainstream” Republican politicians like Rick Lazio, Sarah Palin, & Newt Gingrich.
Rowan Berkeley,
I hate to say it, but Lee Smith was right about you. You are an anti-Semite. You’re certainly not doing the Palestinian cause any favors. Please go away.
I’m afraid I can’t agree with Vered’s comments. There is a “Lobby” and Lee Smith is a propagandist for it.
Saying “birds of feather flock together” is, again, guilt by association. You’re simply wrong to blame the blogs for that portion of the commentariat that dispkays anti-Semitic sentiments. When the World Zionist League voted in 1946 to condemn the Irgun for its “shedding of innocent blood as a means of political warfare” it did not associate all supporters of an Israeli state with these crimes. That would have been guilt by association. It is similarly wrong and base to associate Walt or Lobe or the Leveretts with the words of a few extremists who happen to comment on their blogs.
I see no need for the Jewish people to fear for their future existence. The one thing that potentially threatens them is the continuing oppression of the Palestinians by Israel. Israel is marching towards its own doom by maintaining an apartheid state in Palestine. It is amazing to me that people like yourself, Vered, cannot see the danger that has been building for the Jews as Israel carries out its wrong and shameful policies in Palestine.
On WarinContext I actually remarked on the virulent comments there. There was a frenzy building–these frenzies do scare me–of anti-Israeli sentiment. I warned them that they were becoming what they were opposing. I was accused of being a Hasbarist. ME. So, yes this can get out of hand.
That said, the Anti-Israeli movement is so feckless and impotent that it is of little threat to anything but itself. The goal of the Anti-zionist campaign starts and hopefully stops with each party acknowledging the humanity (and rights) of the other. The Golden Rule is the only fair, universal creed. It requires us to see and remember the humanity of everyone around us.
Mobs, and group think can be powerful tides that wash over nations. That said, the anti-Islamic fervor is far more ubiquitous and pernicious. The hypocritical and self damning policies advocated by Michele Malkin and Jon Yoo stand out starkly. As those people venally apologize for wrongs committed against their own forbears.
There’s nothing particularly alluring about the truth. It doesn’t pay, serve masters, nor comply to any agenda. It has few advocates and fewer still earnestly seek it out. Our system of values puts no value on truth, hence it will remain ignored and irrelevant to policy or navigating our policies.
Regarding Peter H’s comment about anti-Muslim feeling, no doubt such feeling exists in America. I was confining myself to Vered’s remarks about anti-Semitism.
There are always going to be “antis” in any cross section of people. A small minority of Muslims believe that non-Muslims are sinful and wicked, inferior to Muslims. Every group has its haters. We have to do our best to marginalize these people and work for tolerance.
@badalero
OK, you’ve convinced me. The victims of the Seattle shooting were not shot because they were Jews. They were shot because they supported Israel and the media reported that the Jews, excuse me, the Israelis, were behind the war in Iraq. They should have known better than to express their opinions on world affairs.
Forgive me for being even more afraid now that you’re blaiming me (excuse me, my fear) for killing people in Iraq, Lebanon, and around the world. I’m apparently now fair game for similar Seattle shooters.
You really have proven my point, far more than I would have wished, about how animus about Jews (excuse me, Israelis) can easily descend into violence or, just as bad, the acceptance of violence against Jews.
And, yes, it’s a tremendous luxury to have security systems. Sadly, it’s not such a tremendous luxury to need security systems because of animus against your identity. (By the way, you read the data wrong. Anti-black offenses were 3 times as common as anti-Jewish offenses and blacks are 6 times more populous than Jews in the U.S.) You make it sound like Jews are happy to have their windows look like cages and their front doors look like airport security lines.
@Mrein
I think you misunderstood me. Let me put in in two parts to make it easier understandable.
1. My point regarding the fear was, that the high level of fear of anti-jewish hate crimes in the U.S. is real, but not rational. See, in 2007, there were reported in total nine deadly hate crimes in the U.S.:
http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/hc2007/table_02.htm
So what you guess, how many of them were anti-jewish, if anti-black hate crimes are three times more common than anti-jewish ones? I doubt there were many. At least not so many to have a rational fear to say “we stand at the knife edge of extinction” as Vered did.
Don’t get me wrong, each crime and especially each hate crime is one too much, but I don’t see a rational reason to fear to “stand at the knife edge of extinction” for jews today in general and especially in the U.S.
And my fear is, that such a high level of collective fear prepared in the past and still prepare today the ground for actions done in a pre-emptive way of highly exaggerated collective self-defense, which left scores of people dead in many countries. See the sixdaywar as an example for this. You may find it was legitimate pre-emptive collective Israeli self-defense fought in real fear, but many others see it as a blunt war of aggression.
2. My other point relates to the motivation of anti-jewish hate crimes in the U.S. An there I took as an example the “Seattle Jewish Federation shooting” 2006 you yourself brought up. It was an ugly hate crime. And when I analyse what was the motivation behind it, that I accept violence against Jews, but to understand what processes lead to such horror.
There clearly exists anti-jewish hate in the world out of no reason which reaches back for thousands of years. But the “Seattle Jewish Federation shooting” was different from such a motivation. You may read some details in Wikipedia. The perpetrator was clearly motivated by anger about what he considered murderous Israeli politics, their incitement of war against Iraq and the support of these politics by the Jewish communities in the US.
And see my citation of Shimon Peres, the Israeli government participated in building up the pretext for the war of aggression against Iraq, which was based on ugly lies. So that a foreign government cooperates with the US-government as partner in crime is nothing special. The British government supported the lies leading to this war and the mass murder of Iraqi people as well.
But the Israeli government claims to speak and act in the name of the jews, when it’s commiting it’s crimes. And most of the jewish community is not challenging this claim. Indeed, as I lined out, the “Seattle Jewish Federation” had support for Israel even on their website.
So, of course, you are right, when you claim a right for jews to “express their opinions on world affairs”. But can you imagine, that support for Israel is regarded by people having empathy with the victims of Israeli policies as support for wars of aggression, mass murder and ethnic cleansing? Can you imagine that people can become very angry when they have the impression that others cheerfully celebrate a bunch of liars and the mass murder of their brothers and sisters? I have the compassion with other people to be able to understand that people can become angry in such a case.
I’m off the opinion that the support of many jewish communities abroad for horrific actions done by the Israeli government contributes to anti-Semitism. So, what I think, what could be very helpful, to combat anti-jewish hate like that of the “Seattle Jewish Federation shooting”, would be, that jewish commuinities wil not allow the Israeli government to speak in the name of the jews and clearly distance themselves from the crimes committed by the Israeli government.
Hey Dan,
I like your work. Here’s a suggestion – For most of 2007 I was researching for the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, and during that time my friend Chris Rodda (now the head MRFF researcher) and I came up with a neat heuristic for dealing with this sort of thing:
Incompetence vs. complicity.
SO:
Lee Smith accuses a number of people of promoting anti-Semitism on what I would call rather flimsy grounds (to be rather charitable about it.)
Meanwhile, Benjamin Netanyahu’s close evangelical ally John Hagee has broadcast a conspiracy theory that the ADL identifies as “A Classic Anti-Semitic Myth” around the world. Literally.
See:
http://www.talk2action.org/story/2010/7/29/174316/726
Evangelicals such as Hagee have been pumping out viciously anti-Jewish propaganda for decades. And as I chronicle in this mini-documentary, their propaganda is startlingly similar to Nazi anti-Jewish propaganda.
See “American Dolchstoss”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFoLzPChDXg
Is Lee Smith unaware of this ? – If so, he’s incompetent. If he is aware, he’s complicit.
Incompetence vs. complicity – it’s a lose/lose.
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