We
were sorry when Bret Stephens left the helm of the Jerusalem Post. We liked him. He was young and intelligent, and not
(yet) poisoned by the left.
He
gave class and weight to our small town paper, with his Wall Street Journal editorial creds. It gave us pride to think we’d
snagged him for ourselves.
But
then he left. It was 2004, the Second Intifada, when bus bombings were a near
daily event. One of those bombs exploded near the Stephens’ family residence,
in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Rehavia. From the Sydney
Herald:
Bret Stephens, editor in chief of the
Jerusalem Post, said he heard the boom and ran to the scene.
"There was glass everywhere, human
remains everywhere, shoes, feet, pieces of guts. There were pieces of body
everywhere," he said.
We
well understood the fear, why he left. But it seemed, nonetheless, a betrayal. We
needed Stephens and his reasoned editorials. We needed him in Jerusalem.
With
regret and a longing for what might have been, we kept our eyes on Bret as he
returned to the Wall Street Journal,
taking his talent and insight with him. He usually got it right on Israel, and
for that at least, we were grateful.
Then
he went to the New York Times. As did
Bari Weiss, after having served at Tablet,
a respected Jewish interest publication, and like Stephens, a subsequent stint
at the Wall Street Journal.
When
these two went to the New York Times,
Jews collectively wondered what in the actual hell was going on. Both Stephens
and Weiss were known to be pro-Israel centrists, which is almost like being
conservative. Why would they go to the New
York Times, which has long been seen by many Jews as anti-Israel? It felt
like they’d gone to the dark side. And it was fishy.
We
had no idea what was behind the move. All we could do is hope they’d bring
reason to the pages of a newspaper that had never liked the Jews or Israel.
A
review of their columns since the move offers mixed messages. Stephens, for
instance, told us in one editorial, written on the occasion of Israel’s 70th
birthday, that some Diaspora complaints, especially with respect to religion
and refugees, are valid
and should be heeded by Jerusalem. That didn’t sit well with those of us who
feel that having left, he has no valid business telling Israel what to either heed
or disregard.
Regarding Lara Alqasem,
who was expelled from Israel (and ultimately allowed back by a turncoat Israeli
High Court), Stephens wrote,
“The case for such liberalism today is both
pragmatic and principled. In practice, expelling visitors who favor the B.D.S.
movement does little if anything to make Israel more secure. But it powerfully
reinforces the prejudice of those visitors (along with their supporters) that
Israel is a discriminatory police state. If the Israeli government takes
umbrage — and rightly so — when Israeli academics or institutions are boycotted
by foreign universities, the least it could do is not replicate their illiberal
behavior.
“Detaining people like Ms. Alqasem also does
little to stem a worrying trend among young American Jews, who are increasingly
alienated from Israel because of its hard-line policies. . .
“. . . Societies that shun or expel their
critics aren’t protecting themselves. They are advertising their weakness. Does
the Jewish state, which prides itself on ingenuity, innovation and
adaptability, really have so much to fear from a 22-year-old graduate student
from Florida?”
This
too, did not sit right with those of us who remained in Israel. The attempt to
expel Alqasem was popular in Israel, as her intention in coming here was to punish
and hurt the Jewish State, and to poison the minds of young Israelis. For far
too long, we’d been a doormat and let people like her in the front door to do
their damage. At last we’d grown a pair and told someone capable of doing harm that
she was not welcome. In criticizing Israel’s attempt to bar her entry, we
definitely felt that Stephens was playing for the wrong team.
Then
there was his response to U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, a
town that had hosted Stephens and his family. Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem
was another move popular with Israel, but apparently not with Stephens, who wrote:
“There’s the view that recognition is like giving your college freshman a graduation gift: a premature reward for an Israeli government that hasn’t yet done what’s needed to make a Palestinian state possible.”
It
is difficult to believe that Stephens is unaware of just how much Israel has
done to advance the cause of peace, and conversely, how little the other side
has done with its continuous famous no’s; its refusal to accept normalization
with Israel on any level. Stephens, having heard and witnessed the aftermath of
a bus bombing, having lived in the heart of the city that Trump recognized, would
seem to be the last person to tell Israel that it has not done “what is needed”
to satisfy the other side. In suggesting that Israel had omitted some act that
would somehow change the Arab refusal to accept anything less than all the
territory Judenrein, Stephens most
definitely drew a line in the sand between him and us, meaning between Bret
Stephens and Israel.
While
we might wonder what the New York Times
offered to get Stephens (and Weiss) on board, both physically and
metaphorically, it’s important to note that their views have not been confined
to the Grey Lady. In the pages of the Pittsburgh Post
Gazette, Stephens came
out of the closet on settlements:
“Israel is not a nation of saints and has made
its mistakes. The most serious of those is proliferation of West Bank
settlements beyond those in historically recognized blocs.”
Really?
Settlements are the problem, a mistake? This is what prevents peace? Jews
building homes in indigenous
territory? Or is it that intransigent non-peace partner who refuses a Jewish
State within any borders one might name? The “partner” who blew up the bus that
made Stephens and his family, pick up and leave?
As
for Bari Weiss, she also gets it wrong on settlements.
“So the big criticism, right, is that they're
occupying another people and that is corrosive to the State of Israel, sort of morally
like to occupy another people. On the other hand what happens if they pull out
of the West Bank tomorrow, right?
"I'm for a two-state solution ultimately ending
the occupation but if I'm real I have to be honest about what that would look
like. Well, what it looks like in Gaza is that now you have a terrorist State
right at the border which is ruled by Hamas.”
Why
is this position on settlements wrong? Because Jews have a right to build homes in Judea and Samaria. They
have the legal right and the moral right. It is their indigenous territory. Building
homes hurts no one. Building homes does not prevent peace or coexistence. Also, Israel occupies no one. Arabs either live as Israeli citizens, or under Arab
leadership in towns and villages in Judea and Samaria, or in Gaza.
The
Arabs could have had a state, and rejected every offer. And in fact, they
received 78% of the British Mandate to build their own national home. This is
Jordan, where 80% of the population is “Palestinian.” Israel furthermore gave
the Arabs a second territory to rule, expelling thousands of Jews to do so, in
the Disengagement from Gaza.
There
is so much more I would say to Bari if only we could sit down for a
heart-to-heart. I feel I know her. Both of us are from Squirrel Hill. Her
grandmother was my beloved English teacher.
 |
| Andy Weiss was not only a beloved English teacher, but served as my student adviser, inviting me to her beautiful home for Sunday brunch just so we could chat at length. I could tell her anything. And did. Her late aunt, Ellen Weiss Kander, was my dear bunk mate at summer camp, a woman who was kind and sweet as sugar. Her untimely death from liver cancer was a loss to all of Pittsburgh and certainly to the Jewish community. |
 |
| Ellen Weiss Kander, A"H, is second from right, top row. She was sweet as sugar. The author, Varda Meyers Epstein, is second from left, bottom row |
But aside from the settlement issue, Bari gets it wrong on Israel. Especially here,
where she says, “Zionists love Israel because of the way in which it brings
together the values of individual freedom and Jewish civilization, not because
of some blood and soil nationalism.”
That
is exactly wrong. I love Israel because of exactly neither of those values, but
in particular because of blood and soil nationalism. I would eat Israel’s dirt
with a spoon. I love it that much. (I kissed the tarmac at Ben Gurion. And that
was not tasty. But I digress.)
Having reviewed the evolution of views regarding Israel since the move by Stephens and Weiss to the New York Times, we come to Stephens' latest op-ed on the now infamous antisemitic cartoon of a blind, be-yarmulked Trump led by the dachshund Netanyahu.
Stephens
begins:
“As prejudices go, anti-Semitism can sometimes
be hard to pin down, but on Thursday the opinion pages of The New York
Times international edition provided a
textbook illustration of it.”
. . . and then
did so again on Saturday:
The
second antisemitic cartoon appeared a day after the publication of Stephens’
op-ed, and the same day an antisemite 1) killed Lori Kaye; 2) peppered little kids
with shrapnel; and 3) blew off a rabbi’s finger(s). Here we will give Stephens credit:
he could not have prophesied, as his deadline approached, that the second
cartoon would be published. But the second cartoon blows away Stephens’ premise
for his piece: that the (first) cartoon was an oversight, not policy.
Stephens
says what Jews long known about the New
York Times: that it buried news of the Holocaust during World War II and ever since, has been rabidly anti-Israel. “For these readers,” says
Stephens, “the cartoon would have come like the slip of the tongue that reveals
the deeper institutional prejudice. What was long suspected is, at last,
revealed.”
Stephens
fails to mention the Congress
Jew tracker that appeared, then quietly disappeared, in 2015. He also
neglected to bring up the “Jesus is a Palestinian” piece
that had been published in the pages of the NY
Times just one week prior to either antisemitic cartoon.
But with his brief mention of selected historical
facts, Stephens now thinks he has us in the palm of his hand—that we’ll now buy
anything he has to say. At this point, the op-ed becomes an apologia. “The real story is
a bit different, though not in ways that acquit The Times. The cartoon appeared
in the print version of the international edition, which has a limited overseas
circulation, a much smaller staff, and far less oversight than the regular
edition. Incredibly, the cartoon itself was selected and seen by just one
midlevel editor right before the paper went to press.”
This
does not pass the smell test. This is the New
York Times. Oversight is its middle name. But even if we were to be
persuaded it was a mere editorial oversight, what happened in the wake of
publication proves otherwise. There was the non-apology that stood only until
we wouldn’t stand for it, at which point, a “real” apology was issued. There
was the second cartoon, which, like nothing else before it, reveals the endemic
antisemitic policy at the New York Times.
Finally, there is the lack of action: no one was fired.
And there
is definitely a feeling that someone must be fired. A head needs to roll, and if, as is
suggested by Stephens, it was “just one midlevel editor” than that is the
elected head.
What happened, this situation, cannot be left as is, allowed to fester and stink. This is an
ugly bloom that must be nipped in the bud.
So first Stephens tells us it was an oversight. Then he tells us that the publication of the (first) cartoon was not a willful
expression of antisemitism, only ignorance. (Which is it? Ignorance or an oversight?) He writes:
“The problem with the cartoon isn’t that its publication
was a willful act of anti-Semitism. It wasn’t. The problem is that its
publication was an astonishing act of ignorance of anti-Semitism — and that, at
a publication that is otherwise hyper-alert to nearly every conceivable
expression of prejudice, from mansplaining to racial microaggressions to
transphobia.”
This too, does not wash. Of the two actors who let that cartoon go to press, the cartoonist and the editor, neither of them were ignorant. The grudging non-apology, as well, was a
purposeful expression of the newspaper not being sorry for hating Jews. All of what happened
sprang, indeed, from willful antisemitism.
But
this is what Jews do when they are a part of the problem: they make excuses for
the bad behavior of others toward them and their people. This is wrong. The New York Times, precisely now, must
remain in the hot seat, and do much, much more to rectify this sickness, this
evil.
Almost
as an afterthought, Stephens finishes his defense of the Times, by committing an act of fealty to the anti-Trump overlords
at his place of work: treason by omission. Stephens refers to a need to
apologize to the Israeli prime minister, “The paper owes the Israeli prime
minister an apology,” but then goes on to say nothing about the insult to his own president.
Here
was POTUS depicted as the big blind hulking Jew led by Israel, but Stephens deems this unworthy of even a pat New York Times apology. Because in Stephens’ world, it is apparently
a mitzvah to kick Trump in the teeth, to overlook any insults to him, and to
never apologize for any of it.
I’m
not sure what happened to Bret Stephens. Was this always how he felt—what he
believed? It is difficult to understand, and it is not very pretty. All I know
is, I used to admire the man, and now I find I cannot.