Rachel Podhoretz Decter Abrams’s Gay Problem — And Ours

Eli and Ali have been doing great reporting on the Emergency Committee for Israel, the new Likudnik group that has formed to attack Democrats on Israel. Many of the group’s principals will be familiar — Bill Kristol, of course, needs no introduction, while Gary Bauer is a well-known Christian Zionist who believes, as Matt Duss noted, that “God granted the Land of Israel to the Jewish people and there is an absolute ban on giving it away to another people.” Others are less familiar, such as the group’s executive director Noah Pollak — a young “journalist” who generally serves as an American mouthpiece for Likud talking points and who apparently moonlights as a media strategist for the IDF.

One figure who has received less attention is the group’s fourth principal, Rachel Abrams — wife of Elliott Abrams, daughter of Midge Decter, stepdaughter of Norman Podhoretz. This is a shame, because she is almost certainly the craziest of the lot.

I must confess that when I began reading her blog, I was primarily looking for evidence of her Revisionist Zionism. And, to be sure, such evidence is not in short supply — e.g. this poetic ode to the Israeli landscape, which concludes “I know why we cannot let go of any part of this land.” She also constantly adopts the argot of the Israeli settler movement by referring to the West Bank as “Judea and Samaria”. Her sympathy for the settlers is not terribly surprising; the only question is how much it is shared by her husband, who as the Bush administration’s top Middle East advisor was supposedly in charge of implementing a two-state solution. Certainly, Elliott Abrams’s disastrous tenure at the National Security Council raised the strong suspicion that he was doing everything he could to destroy the possibility of a viable Palestinian state, but unlike his wife he is always careful to couch his arguments in the pragmatic and bureaucratic language of Washington peace process-ese rather than the ideological language of Revisionist Zionism.

But as I continued reading Rachel Abrams’s writings, what jumped out at me was not so much her predictably crazy views about Israel, but her strange obsession with (and apparent hostility to) homosexuality. This first jumped out at me in her response to Peter Beinart’s New York Review of Books essay, a long rant in which Abrams pretends to write in Beinart’s voice. While most of her Beinart “parody” is devoted to accusations that he is insufficiently devoted to the state of Israel, a large chunk of it is spent on rather bizarre and gratuitous insinuations that Beinart is gay. Thus she has fake-Beinart complaining, about a focus group of Jewish students, that “an insufficient number were gay and too many were broads,” and espousing his support for “open debate that of course excludes those who would advance anti-feminist or anti-gay or pro-Israel argument”. (It’s striking that she equates “pro-Israel” with “anti-feminist” and “anti-gay” arguments.) Then she has fake-Beinart condemning Orthodox Jews for homophobia before defensively reasserting his own heterosexuality: “they condemn gays, though I want to reassert that I have children,” a trope that she repeats throughout the piece. One has to wonder why she is so intent to insist that Beinart is gay, as if this fact would have any relevance whatsoever to the content of his piece.

I was initially inclined to dismiss Abrams’s homophobic attack on Beinart as simply a failed and sophomoric attempt at humor, but the more of her writing I read, the more I noticed that this strange obsession with homosexuality seems to be a recurring feature of it. For instance, in a post claiming that Christopher Hitchens is “giving homosexuality a bad name,” and professing disinterest in the sexual pasts of “old Tory buggers,” Abrams writes:

Wherever one stands on the homosexuality question—I’m agnostic, or would be if the “gay community” would quit trying to shove legislation down my throat—there can be no denying bisexuality’s double betrayal—you never know, whether you’re the man of the hour or the woman, when the ground on which you’re standing is going to turn to ashes—nor any denying the self-admiring “nourishment” its promiscuous conquests afford.

I’m not entirely sure what it means to be “agnostic” about “the homosexuality question”. (Agnostic about whether it’s natural? Whether it’s moral? Whether it should be legal?) The upshot seems to be that Rachel Abrams would prefer not to think about “the homosexuality question” except that the dastardly gays and their quote-unquote community keep “trying to shove legislation down [her] throat”.

Similarly, Abrams is deeply offended by the Obama administrations’ human rights policy, but her complaint goes beyond the standard neocon one that Obama is not aggressive enough in pushing regime change against Israel’s rivals — what’s really galling is that the administration has identified LGBT rights in the U.S. as an important human rights issue. She froths that it’s Hillary “Clinton’s fawning speech in honor of ‘Pride Month,’ which she delivered the other day to members of the ‘LGBT community’ who have fanned out from the mother-ship of state, as it were…that’s the truly breathtaking expression of this perversion of a policy.” For telling this quote-unquote community such wildly controversial statements as “human rights are gay rights and gay rights are human rights,” Clinton is responsible for this “perversion” — I can’t imagine the word choice is accidental — of a policy.

I could go on. There’s her speculation, for instance, that the problems of the Afghan war originate in the rampant homosexuality of Pashtun males, which leads Abrams onto a long tangent about homosexuality among the ancient Greeks, concluding: “those ancient elitist pedophiles and narcissists, disturbingly fascinating as they are, will seem to many in our armed forces to have been people doing and suffering things that are very ‘base’ indeed.” There’s yet another rant about the Obama administration’s focus on LGBT rights, which she excoriates as an abandonment of America’s traditional “embracing of the rights of ordinary men and women,” (as opposed to perverts, presumably). There’s the way that Abrams throws a gratuitous warning about “a profitable surge in gay-couples-therapy sessions, as gay marriage, and divorce, become commonplace—nay, even humdrum” into an article on a completely unrelated topic. But you get the picture.

Conclusion: Rachel Abrams is a real piece of work, and seems pathologically incapable of hiding her obsession with (and distaste for) homosexuality. Perhaps it’s not surprising given her parents: Midge Decter was the author of the notoriously homophobic 1980 Commentary article “The Boys on the Beach,” while Norman Podhoretz’s particular brand of wounded, insecure, obviously-compensating hypermasculinity will be familiar to readers of essays like “My Negro Problem — And Ours” [PDF].

Israel’s defenders often contrast the state’s record on LGBT rights to those of many of its neighbors, and frankly this is one area where I think they have a point. Something tells me, however, that we won’t be seeing many of these arguments coming from Rachel Abrams.

Daniel Luban

Daniel Luban is a postdoctoral associate at Yale University. He holds a PhD in politics from the University of Chicago and was formerly a correspondent in the Washington bureau of Inter Press Service.

SHOW 21 COMMENTS

21 Comments

  1. At it’s heart Islam = liberalism.
    In fact, at its heart, Islam is pro-woman, pro-gay and pro-human and human rights.

    The following are rare exceptions and in no way represent Islam. Please do not tar an entire religion with the acts a few extremists. All religions have extremists and violent passages in their texts. Besides, Islamist extremism can and should be blamed on Western colonialism, imperialism, arrogance, Britney Spears and other blowback causing behavior such as support for Israel.

    List of Islamic Terror Attacks For the July, 2010 (so far)
    Date Country City Killed Injured Description
    2010.07.21 Russia Baksanskaya 2 0 Islamic militants murder two guards at a power plant.
    2010.07.20 Kenya Liboi 1 1 al-Shabaab snipers attack a Kenyan military patrol across the border, killing one officer.
    2010.07.20 Yemen Harf Sufyan 34 12 Thirty-four people are killed when two Shiite groups clash over ‘ideological differences.’
    2010.07.20 Iraq Qsaireen 6 8 Six Iranian pilgrims are sent straight to Allah by a Sunni suicide bomber at a restaurant.
    2010.07.20 Iraq Qurat Tabba 8 22 Jihadis blow up a market, killing at least eight patrons.
    2010.07.20 Afghanistan Mazar-i-Sharif 3 2 Two NATO civilians and an Afghan soldier are gunned down by a rogue Afghan soldier.
    2010.07.19 Afghanistan Kandahar 6 4 Religious extremists assassinate six local police with a roadside bomb.
    2010.07.19 Pakistan Faislabad 2 1 Two Christian brothers who were pastors, are accused of blasphemy and then brutally gunned down outside a courthouse while in chains.
    2010.07.19 Iraq Baqubah 4 15 Holy warriors bomb a cafe killing four Iraqis.
    2010.07.18 Iraq Balasim 48 50 Nearly fifty people are shredded into pieces by suicide bombers striking two crowds.
    2010.07.18 Afghanistan Kabul 3 42 Sunni fundamentalists take out three civilians in a bomb attack.
    2010.07.18 Pakistan Sargodha 6 20 Six Shia worshippers lose their lives, and several others are dismembered when a Sunni suicide bomber visits their mosque.
    2010.07.18 Somalia Lasanod 1 0 Islamic militants assassinate a court official.
    2010.07.18 Thailand Pattani 2 0 A middle-aged Buddhist man is among two people shot to death by Islamists in separate attacks.
    2010.07.18 Thailand Narathiwat 1 0 A Malaysian karaoke bar owner is shot to death by Muslim extremists.
    2010.07.18 Somalia Mogadishu 12 43 A dozen people are left dead after a reported al-Shabaab attack.
    2010.07.17 Nigeria Jos 10 14 Young children are among ten Christians hacked to death in their homes by Muslims, who also burn a church.
    2010.07.17 Algeria Tebessa 4 0 Four people are killed in a suspected al-Qaeda bombing.
    2010.07.17 Pakistan Kurram 18 2 A brutal ambush on Shia civilians by Sunni radicals leaves eighteen dead.
    2010.07.17 Iraq Tuz Khormato 2 3 Two boys are murdered in what is thought to be a sectarian bombing.
    2010.07.16 Pakistan North Waziristan 2 0 The Taliban execute two men by strapping dynamite to their bodies.
    2010.07.16 Pakistan Tirah Valley 10 14 Three children are among ten innocents blown to bits at a marketplace by Religion of Peace advocates.
    2010.07.16 Dagestan Makhachkala 1 0 A Pentacostal pastor and father of five is shot in the head by Muslim extremists.
    2010.07.16 Iraq Abu Ghraib 3 2 Jihadis take down three Iraqis with a roadside bomb.
    2010.07.16 Iraq Fallujah 2 0 A teacher is among two civilians shot to death by Islamic terrorists.
    2010.07.16 Thailand Yala 2 1 A 53-year-old Buddhist woman bleeds to death after Islamists set off two bombs, killing two people.
    2010.07.15 Iraq Tikrit 9 15 A Mujahid car bomb along a city street takes down nine Iraqis.
    2010.07.15 Iraq Mahmoudiya 2 10 Two people are killed by a bomb planted on a motorcycle.
    2010.07.15 Pakistan Mingora 6 45 Six innocents are taken down by a suicide bomber, including women and children.
    2010.07.15 Iran Zahedan 27 80 At least twenty-seven people are killed when a Sunni suicide bomber takes out a mosque full of Shia worshippers.
    2010.07.14 Iraq Baghdad 1 0 A university professor is assassinated by suspected fundamentalists.
    2010.07.14 Iraq Baghdad 2 4 Jihadis take down two civilians with a roadside bomb.
    2010.07.14 Yemen Zijibar 3 10 Hooded al-Qaeda militants assault a government building. At least three defenders are killed.
    2010.07.14 Iraq Amiriya 4 7 Three women and a child are brutally slaughtered in the home of a Sufi cleric by sectarian Jihadis.
    2010.07.14 Pakistan Bostikhel 2 0 Two brothers are abducted and beheaded by religious extremists.
    2010.07.14 Thailand Yala 1 0 A villager is gunned down by Islamic terrorists.
    2010.07.13 Afghanistan Helmand 3 4 A ‘renegade’ Afghan soldier shoots three British (Gurkha) troops to death in their sleep.
    2010.07.13 Afghanistan Uruzgan 1 0 Fundamentalists set up a fake roadblock and then shoot a motorist to death.
    2010.07.13 Pakistan Karachi 0 1 A Christian woman is raped and then thrown from a roof by a Muslim doctor.
    2010.07.13 Pakistan Karachi 1 0 A woman is shot to death by her son in an honor killing.
    2010.07.13 Dagestan Derbent 1 3 Terrorists fire on a group of youth, killing one.
    2010.07.13 Afghanistan Kandahar 9 9 A suicide bomb attack on an Afghan security headquarters leaves nine dead, including five civilians.
    2010.07.13 Afghanistan Paktika 2 0 Two security guards are sent to Allah by Taliban roadside bombers.
    2010.07.13 Iraq Baghdad 2 5 Two local cops are taken down by Jihad bombers.
    2010.07.13 Iraq Khalis 3 7 Three people are killed by a terrorist bombing while protesting terrorist bombings.
    2010.07.13 Iraq Yusufiya 5 0 Five members of a family are brutally slaughtered in their own home by al-Qaeda.
    2010.07.13 Afghanistan Helmand 9 0 Sunni hardliners manage to take down nine Afghan civilians by bombing their minibus.
    2010.07.12 Pakistan Karachi 1 1 A seminary teacher’s driver is killed during an assassination attempt by disgruntled fundamentalists.
    2010.07.12 Pakistan Orakzai 1 4 Islamists blow up a primary school and kill a security official.
    2010.07.12 Afghanistan Helmand 0 21 Twenty-one civilians are wounded by a Taliban blast at a crowded bazaar.
    2010.07.12 Thailand Narathiwat 1 1 Islamic insurgents ambush and murder a 55-year-old cop.
    2010.07.12 India Nadia 0 3 Three Hindu girls are gang-raped and tortured by a group of Muslims. The youngest two are 13-years-old.
    2010.07.11 Iraq Dania 1 2 A civilian is killed in a Jihad bombing.
    2010.07.11 Uganda Kampala 76 65 Over seventy innocent people watching the World Cup are blown to bits in two separate bombings by Islamic extremists.
    2010.07.11 India Doda 1 0 A civilian is cut down outside his home by Mujahideen gunmen.
    2010.07.11 Pakistan Quetta 1 0 A man is kidnapped and tortured to death by sectarian rivals.
    2010.07.10 Pakistan Makeen 3 5 Tehreek-e-Taliban ambush a police post, killing three officers.
    2010.07.10 Afghanistan Kandahar 1 5 Islamists use a remote-controlled bomb on a motorcycle to take down a civilian.
    2010.07.10 India Gari Madhiya 2 0 A 16-year-old girl and her lover are honor killed execution style by her family.
    2010.07.10 Dagestan Makhachkala 1 0 A senior judge is assassinated by Islamic terrorists.
    2010.07.10 Afghanistan Paktia 11 0 Eleven Shia men are shot to death by Sunni rivals in a sectarian attack.
    2010.07.10 Afghanistan Kabul 11 0 Eleven policemen are killed in two Taliban terror attacks.
    2010.07.09 Iraq Baghdad 6 20 A Shahid suicide successfully takes out six Iraqis in a neighborhood.
    2010.07.09 Pakistan Mohmand 105 75 Children are among over one hundred innocents blown apart by a suicide bomber while they are waiting in line for humanitarian aid, including wheelchairs.
    2010.07.09 Jordan Naur 1 0 A married woman suspected of having an extra-marital affair is stabbed to death by her brothers.
    2010.07.08 Iraq Baghdad 28 98 Twenty-eight more Shia pilgrims are massacred in at least four separate Sunni bomb attacks.
    2010.07.08 Pakistan Karachi 0 7 Seven Hindus are badly beaten after one of them (a boy) drinks water from a mosque.
    2010.07.08 Afghanistan Paktia 6 0 Six civilians are crushed by debris when hardliners fire a rocket into a bazaar.
    2010.07.07 Somalia Elasha 2 3 A teenager is among two people slain when Islamic fundamentalists toss a grenade into a house where people are watching the World Cup.
    2010.07.07 Afghanistan Kabul 1 0 Talibanis gun down a cop.
    2010.07.07 Iraq Abu Ghraib 5 6 al-Qaeda gunmen target the homes of policemen and other officials, leaving several family members dead.
    2010.07.07 Iraq Fallujah 5 4 A Fedayeen suicide bomber takes out five Iraqis.
    2010.07.07 Iraq Baghdad 54 265 Women and children are among the dead as three suicide bombers target Shia pilgrims in separate and horrific attacks.
    2010.07.06 Iraq Baghdad 6 37 Six Shiite pilgrims are dismembered by Sunni bombers in three attacks.
    2010.07.06 Afghanistan Ghazni 6 0 Six construction workers are kidnapped by Sunni hardliners and then murdered in captivity.
    2010.07.06 Iraq Mosul 2 0 Two women are brutally shot to death by Jihadis passing by in a car.
    2010.07.06 Pakistan Karachi 1 0 A Shia civilian is killed by Sunni gunmen.
    2010.07.05 Pakistan Peshawar 1 0 A tribal elder is gunned down by Islamic militants.
    2010.07.05 Pakistan Lower Dir 1 14 One person is killed by a suicide car bomber.
    2010.07.05 Nigeria Jos 3 0 Three Christian farmers are brutally slain in a ‘mindless’ attack by militant Muslims.
    2010.07.05 Yemen Hadramout 2 3 An al-Qaeda ambush leaves two locals soldiers dead.
    2010.07.05 Iraq Kirkuk 1 0 A Sunni is handcuffed and murdered by suspected al-Qaeda.
    2010.07.05 Chechnya Vedensky 1 2 A Russian serviceman is assassinated by Mujahideen gunmen.
    2010.07.05 Iraq Mosul 1 0 A 54-year-old Christian father of three bleeds to death after Islamists bomb his car in a targeted attack.
    2010.07.05 Somalia Labadhagah 8 0 Rival Islamic groups clash, leaving eight dead in drive-by assassinations.
    2010.07.05 Egypt Cairo 0 1 A Christian convert survives an attempt by Muslim radicals to behead him for leaving the faith.
    2010.07.04 Ingushetia Magas 2 4 Islamists murder two Russian soldiers in a brutal ambush.
    2010.07.04 Pakistan Kalat 4 7 Sectarian Jihadis open fire on a vehicle carrying day laborers, taking down four.
    2010.07.04 Afghanistan Helmand 5 8 Four children are among five innocents blown to bits by Taliban bombers at a market.
    2010.07.04 Thailand Yala 2 3 Two people are killed when Islamic insurgents detonate a bomb outside a school.
    2010.07.04 Iraq Baqubah 2 0 Two brothers are gunned down by Muslim terrorists.
    2010.07.04 Iraq Mosul 2 4 A Shahid suicide bomber takes out two Iraqis.
    2010.07.04 Iraq Mosul 1 0 Suspected Mujahid shoot a young child in the head and chest.
    2010.07.04 Iraq Ramadi 4 23 Women and children are among the casualties when a female suicide bomber blows herself outside a building entrance.
    2010.07.04 India Kerala 0 1 A Christian professor has his forearm and hand hacked off by Muslims for the alleged crime of insulting Muhammad.
    2010.07.04 Nigeria Ganawuri 3 0 Muslims hack three Christians to death.
    2010.07.03 Nigeria Kizachi 7 5 A school teacher and mother of six are among seven Christians brutally executed in their homes by Muslim raiders.
    2010.07.03 Yemen Batis 1 0 al-Qaeda kidnap and execute a local intelligence officer.
    2010.07.03 Pakistan Gurguri 4 7 Four security personnel are murdered by Taliban roadside bombers.
    2010.07.03 Pakistan Khyber 2 5 Islamic militants kill two locals with a bomb.
    2010.07.02 Iraq Ramadi 1 0 A Sunni scholar is murdered by sectarian rivals.
    2010.07.02 Thailand Yala 3 0 Jihadis take out three school guards with a roadside blast on their vehicle.
    2010.07.02 Thailand Pattani 1 0 A 46-year-old man is gunned down by Muslim radicals while riding home.
    2010.07.02 Pakistan Quetta 1 0 Sunnis fire from a moving car on a Shia scholar, killing him on the spot.
    2010.07.02 Afghanistan Kunduz 5 20 Six Shahid suicide bombers target a humanitarian agency, murdering five innocents.
    2010.07.02 Kosovo Mitrovica 1 10 Muslims throw a grenade into a pro-Serb rally, killing one participant.
    2010.07.02 Pakistan Khyber 3 2 Islamic hardliners execute three local soldiers and keep two others in captivity.
    2010.07.02 Iraq Mandali 1 0 A pregnant woman is found dead from a suspected honor killing.
    2010.07.01 Pakistan Lahore 44 175 Over forty Sufi worshippers are blown to bits in their own mosque by Sunni bombers.
    2010.07.01 Iraq Baghdad 1 9 A Sunni leader is killed by a bomb planted by suspected a Shia militia.
    2010.07.01 Iraq Samarrah 1 2 One person is killed in their own home by sectarian bombers.
    2010.07.01 India Kupwara 2 0 Islamic militants shoot two Indian soldiers to death during an infiltration attempt from Pakistan.
    2010.07.01 Thailand Narathiwat 5 0 Civilians are among five shot to pieces at point-blank range by Muslim radicals while riding in a truck.
    2010.07.01 Yemen Zinjibar 1 0 al-Qaeda gunmen assassinate a local official.
    2010.07.01 Pakistan Quetta 2 1 Two young girls die from splinter injuries suffered in a grenade attack on their home.
    2010.07.01 Somalia Hudur 1 0 A Christian convert from Islam is publicly executed in a soccer stadium by Islamists.
    2010.07.01 India Udhampur 1 0 Hizb-ul-Mujahideen abduct a civilian, then shoot him as he is trying to escape.
    2010.07.01 Ethiopia Shabelle 6 8 A Muslim ‘commando’ murders six Ehiopian soldiers.
    2010.06.30 Iraq Baghdad 2 1 Mujahid shoot two policemen to death at a checkpoint.
    2010.06.30 Pakistan Hub 4 5

  2. Yeah, I agree. Britney’s got a lot to answer for.

  3. Kerry – I couldn’t agree more. Out of a religion of 1 billion people, some of whose countries are engaged in civil war or repelling foreign invading forces, some people will kill other people. You are very perceptive.

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