One request in the navel-gazing post was for more Marty Peretz-bashing. Your wish is my demand! Like the other day Matt Duss was smacking Peretz around for his outrageous smear campaign against Archbishop Desmond Tutu prompting, naturally, James “Lil’ Marty” Kirchick to leap to the defense of dark master, but as Duss notes in a followup he’s not making any sense either.
The thing about the archbiship, though, is that unlike, say, Jimmy Carter it’s genuinely the case that he’s never done anything to massively improve Israel’s strategic position. Carter, by contrast, though definitely pissing off some Israeli politicians and their self-proclaimed friends in the United States did, by brokering a peace agreement between Israel and Egypt, wind up doing perhaps the biggest favor to Israel that any American president has done since Harry Truman’s decision to recognize the Jewish state back in the 1940s. Naturally, the prospect of him trying to offer advice on the business of peacemaking to Secretary Rice has incensed Peretz who seems to consistently place hatred of Arabs and love of war ahead of even his much-professed love of Israel.
But as a bonus, Peretz yet again puts the words “Jewish lobby” into the mouths of those who would criticize the pernicious activities of the Israel lobby in the United States. It’s much easier to pretend that your political opponents are all motivated by a racist hatred of Jewish people if you refuse to engage with what they’re actually saying and instead just attribute some different words to them! Nice work if you can get it, but somewhat despicable from an ethical point of view.