>I listened to this interview a few weeks ago and I have to say I was
>a bit disappointed. There were references to the "authors in this book",
>and so on, but almost no differentiation between what the different writers
>said, and I don't think even one actual quote from the book.
Hard to do in a spontaneous radio interview. I can't speak for Joel, but here are some of the specific problems I had with the book:
* Michael Neumann (a relative of Franz Neumann, by the way) has more fun with anti-Semitism: "Undoubtedly there is genuine ant-Semitism in the Arab world: the distribution of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the myths about stealing the blood of gentile babies. This is utterly inexucsable. So was your failure to answer Aunt Bee's letter." He goes on to dismiss anti-Semitism as more a feeling than a real threat. "I'm much more scared of really dangerous situations, like driving." The book often veers spuriously between this complacency and a justified dismissal of the abuse of the term "anti-Semitism" by apologists for Israeli policy without bothering to take real anti-Semitism very seriously.
* Alexander Cockburn's piece is full of his typical turns of phrase - "a torrent of money from out of stat Jewish organizations...American Jewish money showered upon....outside Jewish money....Zionist influence on the media....Jewish families are proprietors of some of the most powerful newspapers in the country....[I]t's reasonable to point out that Jewish families control the new York Times and Washington Post." Weirdly, AC notes that the "most rabidly" pro-Israel of all the U.S. newspapers is the Wall Street Journal, "which is not Jewish owned" - so what's the relevance of pointing out the Jewish ownership of the NYT and WP, except to flirt with classic stereotypes?
* Kurt Nimmo defends Amiri Baraka's terrible 9/11 poem, with its passage asking "Who told 4000 Israeli workers at the Twin Towers/To stay home that day/Why did Sharon stay away?"
* Jeffrey Blankfort has a repulsive piece specifically aimed at refuting Chomsky's line that Israel serves U.S. imperial interests, arguing instead that it's the Israeli lobby and its money that's hijacked U.S. policy.
* A pseudonymous congressional aide, George Sutherland, likens the U.S. government's relationship with Israel to Vichy France's with Nazi Germany's, and Congressional "Likudniki" to "Quislings." In the piece, "Sutherland" actually refers to the U.S. Senate as "the world's greatest deliberative body," which Cockburn would normally have sport with, except in this context.
* Kathleen and Bill Christison, two retired CIA agents, describe Congress as "Israeli occupied territory," and refer to the "dual loyalties" of the Bush administration. They argue that the once-pragmatic Cheney was transformed by all the Israeli agents in the Bush administration. "[L]oyalty to Israel by government officials colors and influences US policymaking in ways that are extrmely dangerous," they conclude - as if Bush's neo-cons weren't driven by their own understanding of U.S. imperial interests.
Doug