A lack of heated I-P debate online? If only...

Do "bloggers avoid writing about Israel"? I agree with Conor that as a general principle, it's not a topic you want to start with if you're looking to avoid a heated response, but bloggers tend to like such back-and-forths. If this is the blogosphere avoiding Israel as a topic, I'd hate to see what it would look like if people started to take an interest. I mean, there's a Facebook group about (tongue-in-cheek, if this isn't obvious) solving the I-P conflict by arguing about it on Facebook for a reason.

But yeah. I, for one, don't blog very much about Israel these days. This is for so many reasons. Too wrapped up in the nineteenth century, too much upsetting stuff happening closer to home to want to be upset by news I can do nothing substantial about, too busy stuffing my face with as many pastries as I can find in the hours that me being awake and the boulangeries being open overlap.

One big one, though, is that I was constantly arguing, alone, against those who claimed to be speaking for the underdog, not only as in Palestinians-as-underdogs, but as though, among intelligent, well-educated, politically-reasonable 20-and-30-somethings, the usual position is to identify as a Zionist. This was certainly once the dominant view, at least among American Jews, but that tide shifted ages ago. I grew tired of the claims on the part of the not-so-pro-Israel-side-loosely-defined that they're being silenced, that they're this voice that one never ever hears because powers that be won't allow it. And yet one hears from them constantly. How many liberal, moderate, or libertarian bloggers - including Jewish ones - are rah-rah Israel these days?

In reference to the point at hand - Conor says that Pejman Yousefzadeh employed a "rhetorical intimidation tactic" by making what is in effect a blanket statement about opposing discussion of US aid to Israel, and by framing the question in terms of anti-Semitism. (More on the second part in a moment.) But what does it mean to use an "intimidation tactic" if in mainstream circles it's become more socially acceptable to be the person questioning US aid to Israel than to be identified as in any way pro-Israel? (Might I mention how many times I've had to specify that I'm not an evil racist who hates Palestinians and favors a Greater Israel and fawns over Palin because Israel First, just because I do, as the blog says, identify as a Zionist and care about the continued existence of a Jewish state in give or take its current location? That I have to disclaimerize to even begin making any point on this topic? That this has something to do with why I've moved on, for the time being at least, to blogging about other ones?)

In terms of silencing, think of it like this: It's like if someone threw a 'your privilege is showing' at Prince Harry and William's bon vivant friend, the one who attended "a finishing school of sorts for the landed gentry that focuses its studies more on horses and the fields they are ridden in (a typical degree: equine management) than the liberal arts one might pursue at Oxford or Cambridge." (A school that, by the way, sounds amazing.) Yes, Yousefzadeh's post is out of line, but in the broader context, the balance of power on this issue, among young and young-ish educated types, journalists, sane-seeming bloggers, etc., favors the ostensibly silenced more than it does the would-be silencers. To repeat what I've said here many times, no one, but no one, and with the exception of Abe Foxman precisely no one takes accusations of anti-Semitism seriously these days unless they're directed at Hitler himself. (OK, I do, David Schraub does, but we're the only ones under 60 and to the left of Palin.) So if Yousefzadeh had used this term to describe Conor or something he'd written, it would have been wrong, offensive, etc., but would have mostly just made himself look the fool.

But regardless, I read the post, and Yousefzadeh says a mix of odd and sensible things, but does not accuse Conor or his post of anti-Semitism. The post title suggests he may go that route, which is probably how it got picked up by some right-wing blog or other, but, unless I'm missing a sentence from having spent too much of the day reading PDFs on this same computer screen, and I did go through the post to check, he does not.

Yousefzadeh (if we filter out the bits of his post that I don't follow) accuses Conor of being insufficiently attentive to the ways in which arguments presenting themselves as even-handed, rational discussions of US Israel policy veer off into anti-Semitic paranoia. Which, well, they do. Often enough, when someone decides that Israel is their 'thing,' and their attitude towards Israel is that it is at the root of every single thing going wrong in America and beyond, that someone isn't fantastic for the Jews; often enough, the people one finds milling about online with thoughts on aid to Israel fall into precisely that demographic. Even without knowing who this particular dude who once wrote in to the alumni magazine I would one day work at (how exciting to see it mentioned!), it is not a bad idea to Google the people who make this their 'thing,' if you're worried about guilt-by-association accusations. Conor's right in terms of the bloggy etiquette - it's not, as a rule, expected that one will dig into the archives of all link-recipients. But for those of us with a heightened sense of awareness, as it were, about such matters, unfortunately even just bringing up the topic elicits suspicion.

Let me be clear. In the abstract, it would be great to have this conversation about American aid to Israel. I, big ol' Zionist, do not have firm opinions on the matter. But the impediment to this conversation is the tendency of genuine Jew-haters to use it as a pretext for their rants, along the tendency of those rants to dominate the existing 'conversation,' making those of us said rants are directed against understandably wary. The problem is not the wariness itself. That's not to say the discussion shouldn't happen. It should, but with attentiveness to the way it's been discussed thus far.

Anyway, I'm not sure what Yousefzadeh's particular beef with the Atlantic is, whether it's just on this issue or part of some other context I'm not aware of, and part of the confusion seems to stem from him thinking Conor and Andrew Sullivan are not merely bloggers on a site that bears the latter's name, but also, in fact, the same person with precisely the same mind and memory for names of obscure bloggers. From what I can tell, Yousefzadeh doesn't accuse either Atlantic blogger of anti-Semitism. But more to the point, even if he had, he would not have silenced them or anyone else on this topic.