On Wed, 4 Aug 2010, Doug Henwood wrote:
> On Aug 4, 2010, at 8:29 PM, Michael Pollak quoted Peter Beinart:
>
>> the Jewish state also perpetrated a great deal of bigotry and violence
>> itself, especially after 1967, when it made itself occupier of millions
>> of Palestinians to whom it denied the vote
>
> This guy used to work for Marty Peretz? Did he change, or did he just
> keep to himself?
He's changed. AFAICT, he was a young orthodox-Jewish whiz kid from Harvard professor parents when he started worked there -- he became managing editor when he was 23. He had the conformism that comes from excelling in that environment. He supported the Iraq invasion -- but unlike others who did so, he has been agonizing and apologizing ever since. And on this issue of critiquing the moral hypocrasy of the Jewish establishment, he crossed a Rubicon a couple of months ago with this article in the NYRB:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/jun/10/failure-american-jewish-establishment/
which drew the flak you'd expect and kind of annealed this view in fire. He was scathing about the Gaza flottilla and lockdown shortly after.
I think he still thinks of himself as a Trumanesque coldwar liberal. But he's begun to that moral high ground guff they talked much more seriously than they ever did.
Michael