Soccer Dad: James traub has a semite problem

January 16, 2007

James traub has a semite problem

James Traub profiled Abe Foxman in this week's NY Times magazine in piece titled Does Abe Foxman Have an Anti-Anti-Semite Problem?.

Assuming a mocking and dismmissive tone toward his subject, Traub paints Foxman as a petty autocrat who's looking for antisemites under every bed. If one sentence sums up Traub's opinion of Foxman it's:

The A.D.L., for all its myriad activities, is a one-man Sanhedrin doling out opprobrium or absolution for those who speak ill of Israel or the Jews.

In contrast, Foxman's critics and opponents are described in complimentary terms. Tony Judt is "highly regarded"; J. J. Goldberg, is the editor of a "leading" American Jewish weekly; Mearsheimer and Walt are "distinguished figures."

Aside from the snide tone pervading the article, it's filled with mistakes and omissions.

One of Traub's themes is that antisemitism is no longer problem. The need for the ADL is therefore diminished if not gone therefore:

The A.D.L.�s world became increasingly binary � �good for the Jews,� �bad for the Jews.�

with Foxman becoming sole arbiter and - shock of shocks - moving to the right.

To dispove the notion that antisemitism is a problem Traub writes:

And yet a Pew Global Attitudes Poll in 2004 found that anti-Semitism had declined in much of the West and was lowest in the United States. A Pew poll last year found American support for Israel as strong now as at any time in the last 13 years.

According to the FBI's uniform crimes statistics for 2005 there were 900 hate crimes classified as anti-Jewish and 3200 hate crimes classified as anti-Black. Given that there are roughly 7 times as many Blacks as Jews, that means that Jews suffer hate crimes at nearly twice the rate as Blacks in the United States according to the most recent statistics.

And while anti-semitism has clearly not disappeared in the United States, it is mild compared to the rest of the world. Three years ago a survey in Europe chose Israel as the biggest threat to world peace. And let's not forget the Durban conference on racism. There is plenty of antisemitism still around and citing two Pew polls doesn't refute that.

Traub like any good liberal finds fault with Foxman for making common cause with evangelical Christians while being cool to Black leaders and ignoring the great alliance between Jews and Blacks.

While it is true that at one point Foxman did foster evangelical support for Israel, that seemed to come to an end in 2005.

And as far as the black-Jewish alliance it's folly to blame it on Foxman for moving right and away from civil rights. In recent years, the civil rights movement has made common cause with the likes of Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and Louis Farrakhan. All have shown varying degrees of antipathy to Jews.

(In a particular inapt comparison, Traub equates Foxman with Sharpton. Yes, I remember when Foxman led a threatening protest outside a Black owned business in Flatbush that ended in a massacre.)

But what's really bothering Traub isn't Foxman. It's Walt and Mearsheimer. It's not that Walt and Mearsheimer were antisemitic, but that they were right and no one seems to realize that except for objective observers like Tony Judt and Jimmy Carter.

Traub describes the effect of the publication of the Israel Lobby like this:

�The Israel Lobby� slammed into the opinion-making world with a Category 5 force. The article loosed a flood of fevered editorials, labored rebuttals and bare-knuckle debates.

In truth it came in like a whimper. Yes the New York Sun and New York Post weighed in right away. But the NY Times and Washington Post were very circumspect. The Times for its part published an article buried on page B8 about "The Israel Lobby." It followed with an essay defending Walt and Mearsheimer by Tony Judt and then about 8 letters.

(One letter, by a Chad Levinson put it brilliantly:

Taboos are things people avoid out of fear of ostracism. Here, it seems to me, people proudly proclaim their intention to criticize Israel, noting the dangers they face in shattering this supposed taboo, reminding everyone that it's not necessarily anti-Semitic to do so.

Quite the opposite of being a taboo, criticizing Israel resembles a kind of intellectual ritual, with its distinct pattern and style.

And then they congratulate themselves for their self-proclaimed courage.)

Traub overstated the impact that "The Israel Lobby" had. I suspect that even the editors of the NY Times and Washington Post realized how indefensible the paper was and so avoided it. The Post eventually did an in-depth article on The Israel Lobby in the middle of the summer and it was quite unsatisfying.

He also neglected to mention that David Duke gave an enthusiastic review to the Israel Lobby. It would have been a lot harder for Traub to argue that the paper wasn't antisemitic if Duke's inconvenient endorsement was taken into account.

Traub spends a lot of time arguing that Foxman more or less proved the point of Walt and Mearsheimer by getting the Polish consulate to cancel a talk to be given by Tony Judt. He never mentions that Foxman claims that he never demanded that the talk be canceled. (See correction below.)

Though Foxman is not above criticism, the viciousness with which Traub goes after Foxman is astounding. . Given the sloppiness of his reporting, it's fair to ask whether it is Traub who has a problem. With semites.

Also commenting on this hit piece:
Meryl Yourish

Traub�s conclusion: Foxman is an anachronism. Apparently, anti-Semitism is going to up and die any day now, and we won�t have to guard against it ever again. And that�s when there will be fairies on bluebells, and lions lying down with lambs, and Jews will return to their homes in Arab and European countries, and everyone will welcome them with open arms!

Democracy for the Middle East

Be forewarned - James Traub's daylight mugging of Abe Foxman (pictured below) is permeated with the arrogance and amateurism that we've come to expect from the mainstream press in recent decades. Nevertheless, its publication in The New York Times Magazine signals a watershed moment in the war of ideas currently being waged between advocates of a broader American engagement in the Middle East and those who would have the US withdraw. Traub's virtual assasination of Foxman makes it all but official that the Democratic withdrawal camp is flirting with the argument that has long passed for common wisdom among European intellectuals - that American militarism in the Middle East is rooted in this nation's ugly and overly influential Jewish lobby.

BangItOut!

The only thing this article does for me is remind me why so many people boycotted the NY Times a few years back.

Infotainment Rules

Nevertheless, despite the copious attention that the troubling subject of a newly resurgent worldwide anti-Semitism has received during the past five years in the popular press (not to mention the blogosphere), James Traub, in today�s New York Times Magazine, writes about it as if it were some kind of exotica that he is introducing into the American national discourse for the first time.

LaurenceJarvikOnline

I'm no fan of the ADL, I've criticized Foxman for Koshering Borat, but Traub's article a real slime job, a crude and ugly smear that reeked of was so over-the-line, so ugly, so cruel, and so dishonest, that it may be the most disgraceful thing I've seen in print yet at the Times, which might perhaps think about changing its motto to: "All the News NOT Fit to Print."

A humorous (I think) take from Jew Control.

In a telling NY Times article, surprising since the times are controlled by you know who, Abe Foxman, head of the Jewish mafia (also known as the ADL), finally owned up to the accusations sent his way. Here is his shocking statement, I kid you not: �The Jews control the media, control the government, control Congress.�

CORRECTION: Dick Weltz Sysop of the Compuserve Jewish Forum corrected me. Traub did acknowledge that Foxman's account, that he simply made an inquiry of the Polish consulate, is correct.

Actually, Traub does mention that, "Foxman had not made those serial phone calls. According to a story that he tells and others confirm, a subordinate had called on his behalf to see if the consulate was sponsoring the event. Satisfied that it was not, the group dropped the issue."

I have to learn to read more carefully.

UPDATE: The Plank (a TNR blog) writes:

What's more telling is that the paper of record - which ignored the first Holocaust - decided to devote 5,000 words to maligning and mocking a man who has made it his life's work to avert a second.

UPDATE II: tracked at TailRank.

Blogdigger tags: Abe Foxman, James Traub, Walt and Mearsheimer, NY Times, Antisemitism.