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www.albawaba.com
November
11, 2003
The Israel Lobby, Martin Peretz, Al Gore
And The Future Of The Democrats By Richard Cummings
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There was a time when Martin Peretz, the editor
in chief of The New Republic, was Al Gore’s Svengali. Gore’s radical
liberal instructor at Harvard in 1965, Brandeis-educated Peretz cut his
teeth in politics on the McCarthy campaign and the movement against the
war in Vietnam. When Peretz took over The New Republic, the venerable
publication that was once Herbert Crowley’s bully pulpit, he, too, had a
vision of the promise of American life. It would be radical liberal and
strongly pro-Israel, a vision Peretz received from his mentor at Brandeis,
Max Lerner. The New Republic would be the ideological organ of the
Democratic Party, which Peretz would transform, and its leader would be
the crown prince of the party, Al Gore, groomed from childhood to fulfill
his father’s ambition.
Al Gore Sr. was a liberal senator from
Tennessee and an opponent of the Vietnam War. Defeated for reelection by
the “Southern” strategy of the Nixon-Agnew Republicans and Kevin Phillips,
he encouraged his son to take up his mantle in pursuit of the Golden
Fleece. And Martin Peretz, starting with Gore’s election to Congress, was
with him all of the way in the creation of a post-McGovern, Patrick
Caddell party that would be both tough-minded and progressive. So
influential would Peretz become with Al Gore that he made him fire his
speechwriter, Richard Marius, for what Peretz deemed to be unacceptable
comments about Israel in a book review.
It was in 1995 that Gore,
then Vice President, fired Marius, whom he had only recently hired as his
chief speechwriter. In 1992, Marius had written a review in the
March-April edition of Harvard Magazine of Helen Winternitz’s book, A
Season of Stones, saying, “Many Israelis, the Holocaust fresh in memory,
believe that that horror gives them the right to inflict horror on others.
Winternitz’s account of the brutality of Shin Bet, the Israeli secret
police, is eerily similar to the stories of the Gestapo, the
Geheimstaatpolizei, in Nazi-occupied territories in World War II.”
An infuriated Peretz, a passionate Zionist, denounced Marius,
accusing him of anti-Semitism. No sooner had Gore appointed Marius than
Peretz went on the attack, forcing Gore to reverse the decision, as
documented in Donald Neff’s article, “It Happened In July,” in the
Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. Peretz commented: “When you make
the Nazi analogy, it cannot be tossed off as “Oh, how silly of me to have
done this.’ When you write that, you believe it. So, once the vice
president knew, he had to figure out if he wanted someone who believed
that on his staff.”
But this would come back to haunt Gore in ways
he did not imagine. Richard Marius was born and educated in Tennessee,
receiving his doctorate from Yale. A distinguished professor of history at
the University of Tennessee, Marius wrote a famous and well-received
biography of Thomas More and left for Harvard, where was made head of the
Expository Writing Program. Long an Al Gore loyalist, Marius had done
volunteer writing for him until Gore asked him to join his staff,
full-time. He gave up his position at Harvard to do this, only to find
himself jobless. Before he died, he published a rebuttal to Martin Peretz
in the Journal of Palestinian Studies in its Winter, 1996 issue. No other
American publication would take the piece.
Marius was a hero in
Tennessee, a local boy who made good in the American Establishment. And
anyone who has read Peter Taylor’s A Summons To Memphis, knows that
Tennessee people have long memories and deep loyalties. When Gore ran for
president against George W. Bush, it was not Florida that sank him. It was
his home state, Tennessee. Gore had fired a good old boy at the behest of
a Jewish Harvard Yankee. If you forget your roots in Tennessee, they don’t
want to know you.
Out of a job as well, Gore tried to reinvent
himself, “lurching leftward,” as The New Republic, in its post-Gore mode,
describes it. Distancing himself from the Democratic Leadership Council,
which he had founded and which was Bill Clinton’s base, Gore began to
appeal to what had become a powerful force in the Democratic Party since
the Vietnam war- the anti-war left-liberals. In a speech to the
Commonwealth Club in San Francisco in the fall of 2002, Gore argued
against going to war with Iraq, saying it would “severely damage” the war
on terrorism. Criticizing Bush’s opportunism, Gore also insisted that the
president was acting without sufficient regard to international opinion.
It was the beginning of the end of the Marty-Al alliance. On
September 21, 2001, William Kristol wrote to Bush on Project for New
American Century stationery, calling on him to go to depose Saddam Hussein
in Iraq. “And American forces must be prepared to back up our commitment
to the Iraqi opposition by all necessary means,” Kristol exhorted. Signing
the letter, along with Richard Perle, Robert Kagan, Midge Dectar, Francis
Fukuyama, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, William Bennett and a host of other leading
neo-conservatives, was Martin Peretz. And following Gore’s Commonwealth
Club speech, the Editors of TNR issued a joint statement entitled
“Speechless,” in which they denounced Gore for his opposition to a war
with Iraq, calling his speech, “neither honest criticism nor honest
opposition.” Shortly thereafter, TNR published Jonathan Chait’s tirade,
“Why Liberals Should Support The War,” putting Peretz and TNR firmly in
the war camp. In doing so, Chait invoked Clinton, who warned, “Predators
of the twenty-first century will be all the more lethal if we allow them
to build arsenals of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons and the
missiles to deliver them…There is no more clear example of this threat
than Saddam Hussein.” Still calling itself liberal and firmly in the
Democratic Party, TNR and Peretz became increasingly indistinguishable
from the neo-con camp. When Gore lurched even further to the left in his
August 7, 2003 speech at NYU on Bush’s Iraq policy, which was sponsored by
the anti-war, leftwing, MoveOn, TNR didn’t bother to comment.
In
the speech, Gore lambasted Bush for suggesting that Saddam Hussein was
somehow responsible for 9/11, that he misled the country when he said
Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction that he was ready to use
against America, and that he was totally wrong in saying the Iraqis would
welcome the American troops with “open arms.” In a telling portion of the
speech, Gore lamented, “Millions of Americans now share a feeling that
something pretty basic has gone wrong in our country and that some
important American values are being placed at risk. And they want to set
it right.” Was Gore running for president again? Gore vigorously denied
it, but only a fool would say he would not accept the nomination if a
deadlocked convention offered it to him. In their heart of hearts, most
Democrats want a rematch to reverse what they remain convinced was a
stolen election. But will it happen, and will TNR support the Democratic
candidate, regardless of who that might be?
It is virtually
inconceivable that Peretz would ever endorse a Republican, particularly
George w. Bush. Having held onto one-third ownership of TNR after selling
two thirds of it to financiers Roger Hertog and Michael Steinhardt, both
business partners of Conrad Black in establishing the pro-Israel The Sun
in New York, Peretz named Peter Beinart as the new editor. Beinart insists
that TNR is still a force in the liberal community and the Democratic
Party. But he is one record as saying to Sridhar Pappu of The New York
Observer, about TNR’s big rival, The Nation, that “We have not had any
trouble distancing ourselves from them in decades. The Nation is edited
for aging ex-communists on the West Side. The Upper West Side.”
The Nation-TNR split, like the Marty-Al split, represents a split
within the Democratic party, with Joseph Lieberman and Richard Gephardt on
the pro-war side, and Howard Dean and John Kerry on the anti-war side,
although Kerry voted for the war in the first place. If the convention
were held today, the odds on favorite would be Howard Dean, who has tapped
into the anger in the Democratic Party at Bush and his tactics. A no holds
barred street fighter, Dr. Dean has even gained some favorable notices in
TNR, which seems to be developing a sort of grudging admiration for him.
Strongly pro-Israel, Dean gave an interview to The Forward that Peretz
must have loved. No way would any Democratic candidate criticize Israel,
but the new take is that the war in Iraq could end up being harmful to
Israel, even though Sharon and Likud pushed hard for it. An unstable
Middle East can only create further security risks for Israel, the
argument goes, and an indefinite, unpopular occupation in Iraq can only
further engender that instability.
Putting a reverse spin on the
war, Dean argues that Bush had no plan for what to do after it, a position
that resonates with TNR, which, in its hawkish pro-war stance,
nevertheless has consistently criticized Bush for similar reasons. And
while in his dreams, Peretz sees Lieberman as the next president, he knows
that is only a pipe dream. The antiwar faction in the Democratic Party is
too strong for it to swallow him. With his campaign floundering, Lieberman
sounds more like a prophet than a viable candidate. Constantly warning
that the Democrats can’t win if they go back to failed leftwing policies,
he has considerable trouble raising money and attracting support.
John Edwards of North Carolina was the early favorite but has so
far not managed to generate much support. After keeping everyone guessing
for months, Edwards finally announced that he will not seek reelection to
the senate and will stay in the presidential. Edwards, who is now trailing
Wesley Clark in South Carolna, a must win state for him,, makes no
apologies for his vote in the senate supporting the war with Iraq and
campaigns on moderate positions, while still not part of the Democratic
Leadership Council. His closest friend in the senate is Evan Bayh of
Indiana, a DLC mainstay who would be his likely running mate. Strongly
pro-Israel, he is a pro-civil rights southern liberal in the tradition of
Terry Sanford and Frank Graham, a Democrat that even Martin Peretz could
love.
But of particular interest to people in the Middle East who
bear the burden of America’s imperial ambitions, is the debate between the
Democratic candidates at Morgan State in Maryland, a predominantly black
institution, sponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus. Howard Dean, in
a rare moment of candor, called for America to be even-handed in the
Middle East, without favoring either side in the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict. He was immediately attacked by Senator Lieberman, who denounced
him for selling out Israel and backing down from fifty years of America’s
pro-Israel posture. Dean countered, saying his position was the same as
that of Bill Clinton. If Dean is sincere, then this could be a major break
in U.S. policy, should he be elected. In the e vent Dean wins the
nomination of the Democratic Party, look for Martin Peretz, The New
Republic and the pro-Israel lobby to turn on him without explicitly
backing Bush. It would then be up to the American people to decide if they
want to continue backing Israel in its failed policies while turning the
Arab world into an enemy, or if they want America to stop being a bully
and an imperial power and start supporting the legitimate rights of the
Palestinian people.
With the entry of General Wesley Clark into
the race, Dean’s candidacy could be adversely affected. Clark, who is
often described as an “anti-war” candidate, actually favored a regime
change in Iraq. His criticism has largely been of Bush’s policy after the
invasion. The question surrounding his candidacy is whether a portion of
the American Establishment sees in a Clark presidency, the “human face” of
empire to blunt the hostility to America created by Bush and to thwart the
anti-imperial politics of Howard Dean. Henry Kissinger, who personally
despises Donald Rumsfeld, and who fears the growing rift between the
United States and France and Germany, is close to Wesley Clark. So is
Madeleine Albright.
Clark could also be Martin Peretz’s ultimate
choice, the substitute for the Al Gore he tutored the way Aristotle
tutored Alexander the Great. Should Clark gain momentum, this could result
in Bush’s defeat. But would America be on a different track in the Middle
East? Clark has endorsed Dean’s position on Israel-Palestine, calling for
an “even-handed” policy. While he is not perfect, his election would be a
considerable improvement.
Richard Cummings holds the Ph.D. in
Social and Political Sciences from Cambridge University. He has lectured
on the Middle East at Princeton, where he was hosted by the Arab Society
of Princeton, the United States Naval Academy and the Center for
International Relations of Boston University. An international lawyer, he
was a visiting professor of international law at the Haile Sellassie I
University in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
www.albawaba.com
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