The Siege
O'Brien, Conor Cruise
THE SIEGE: THE SAGA OF ISRAEL AND ZIONISM Conor Cruise O'Brien/Simon and Schuster/$24.95 William McGurn In one of the early scenes of Fiddler on the Roof, Tevye finds himself in agreement with a...
...Choose the terms you prefer—$47.50 per month for four months ($190—less than $8 per cassette), or save 10% by paying the advance price of $170 (just over $7 per cassette...
...doesn't come off too well vis-a-vis the American Indians, and the history of European nationalism is decidedly barbaric...
...Carter found a reason, frequently a craven one, to let almost every country off the hook but some in Latin America...
...The reason is that his points are so frequently tricky...
...In the epilogue he expands on this to explain why none of the current programs forpeace in the Middle East is likely to succeed, even under the best of circumstances...
...Objections put forward by assimilationists of the late nineteenth century were all negated by Hitler...
...Perhaps the modern, secular, and pluralistic state is currently impossible in the Middle East, especially for a Jewish State...
...Of Irish blood, O'Brien is sympathetic to an Israel torn between the conflicting ideals of a secular and Jewish state...
...Certainly the sorry Israeli economy ought to put to rest any myth of a world Jewish financial conspiracy, and a Jewish State where its wealthiest (and generally content) citizens were non-Jews is fully imaginable...
...Jeane Kirkpatrick wrote a famous essay on the subject...
...Unlike many other Western commentators, moreover, O'Brien does not shy away from the mutually exclusive claims that characterize Middle Eastern politics in general and the Palestinian-Israeli dispute in particular...
...True, he is mentioned at several junctures, largely as a medieval holdover from the Russian backwoods...
...Now, I have nothing against them per se, but O'Brien invokes them too often, fearing that the thick boobies who actually read his book would otherwise never get the point...
...Self-righteousness...
...DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA* *One title in a two-tape set Fur tek hone order., :all toll free & 1.800-453.9000 Ext...
...But, as he does ask, is that our only legitimate model...
...No decades later, as editor in chief of the British newspaper the Observer, he found himself once again enmeshed in Middle Eastern politics...
...TWO TREATISES OF GOVERNMENT* 12...
...Despite the Observer's standard progressive line that all would be well if only everyone would sit down to talk out their differences, O'Brien's U.N...
...The Audio Classics Series is designed for those who have the desire but not enough time to lead what Socrates called ' the informed life '. There is absolutely no risk to you...
...Among the seventy-four nations not cited as violators were Syria, Nicaragua, Angola, China, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Tanzania, all of which, Muravchik adds, "had Communist or leftist governments...
...experience and his familiarity with the impasse in Ulster inoculated him against the rationalist virus: he just didn't buy it...
...Tevye, swayed, tells him he's right...
...If you think I exaggerate just open to a page at random and read...
...The whole point about Israel is not just that there is a siege mentality, but that there is a siege...
...Lord Balfour comes in for some mildly harsh treatment, and O'Brien notes how some of the most enthusiasticearly backers of a Jewish homeland were Gentiles: those who saw in it a good way of ridding their own home-lands of Jews...
...My government will notbe deterred from . . . promoting human rights . . . in whatever ways we can," Carter told the Organization of American States in 1978...
...There was only one real insurance policy against a repeat: Israel...
...It was Begin who—after his ship, the Altalena, was attacked by Ben Gurion's forces—refused to reciprocate, broadcasting the message that his soldiers would not spill Jewish blood...
...As suggested earlier, among mine is the distinct impression that history, with which O'Brien is more than familiar, is nonetheless relative to him, with his fondness for the status quo...
...He opens it with a brief synopsis of the events and arguments over Jewry leading up to the 1917 declaration by Arthur Balfour that "Her Majesty's Government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people...
...So he uses italics to emphasize that although everyone expected such-and-such an action to do this, it actually resulted in just the opposite...
...Instead he correctly notes that "the Jews today rule in Jerusalem for the same material reason as the British ruled and the Ottoman Turks before them, and all others before them, back to Caliph Omar and beyond—because they conquered the place...
...If you become dissatisfied at any point in the series, cancel and receive a pro rata refund for all the tapes you haven't received...
...Yet Begin's record, not to mention his undeniable political successes, suggests a more complex man than the one portrayed here...
...Why, just the other day I was thinking about how courageous it was of Carter to opt for oil decontrol over the fevered protests of Democratic liberals...
...It's too bad O'Brien didn't devote some of his otherwise remarkable work to the question it so blatantly begs...
...This was Carter at his self-righteous, hypocritical, and ineffective best, which is also a good way to describe the human rights policy his administration pursued with such misguided vigor...
...Using Freedom House ratings of the degree to which a country honors human rights, Muravchik found that nations against which the Carter administration took punitive action worsened on average, while those which it didn't punish improved...
...At one point, for ex-ample, he cites Edward Said's insistence that the Arabs' only goal regarding Israel is to replace the Jewish State with the "secular and democratic" state of the Palestinian National Covenant...
...This skepticism serves him well and is responsible for much of the book's virtue...
...Listen to Jefferson...
...Muravchik juxtaposes two striking quotes from Patricia Derian, the Carter State Department's human rights honcho...
...Ironically, it was the Nazis' deliberate extermination of European Jewry that gave the final push to the movement for a Jewish nation...
...This is the Knowledge Products guarantee: return the first package of tapes within 30 days, and you owe nothing...
...Send me the first two tapes, Common Sense and the Declaration of Independence...
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...This touches on the matter of hypocrisy, or more precisely, the double standard that marked the execution of the Carter policy...
...Most annoying is the author's incessant use of italics...
...prosper more than the dominant group of the Jimmy Carter never lets you down...
...The ideas of Jefferson, Paine, Thoreau, Marx, Rousseau and others have changed the world...
...Similarly, it was this hardest of the hardliners who signed the peace ac-cord that, however shaky, still obtains with Egypt...
...The chief targets of negative U.S...
...Some in this community are shameless apologists for Vietnam, the Soviets, the Sandinistas...
...However bad the Christians may have been to the Jews (and they were frequently bad), Christianity at least insists on limits to behavior...
...This 'age of information' in which we live is not necessarily the age of wisdom...
...You know, you're also right," he concludes...
...THE UNCERTAIN CRUSADE: JIMMY CARTER AND THE DILEMMAS OF HUMAN RIGHTS POLICY Joshua Muravchik/Hamilton Press/$18.95 Fred Barnes 40 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JUNE 1986...
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...They can't bothbe right," he points out logically...
...Name Plene print dead, Address State, Zip Phone number KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTS 120 Tremont Street, Boston, MA 02108 © Knowledge Products 1985 AS570 ) THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JUNE 1986 ao Having realized that the world is not populated primarily by those who share his Western values of democracy, law, and compromise, he abandons all those precepts for a purely Machiavellian interpretation of events...
...In connection with the Food for Peace program, the Carter administration singled out six countries as human rights violators—Guinea, Haiti, Indonesia, Liberia, Somalia, and Zaire...
...votes were Argentina, Uruguay, and the Philippines...
...What it offers is, in a word, proof...
...It adds impressive substance to the conservative case that Carter screwed up badly on human rights...
...And it went along every time on votes affecting Syria, Tanzania, Somalia, Panama, Madagascar, Algeria, and Burma, all leftist dictatorships with bad human rights records...
...I will pay: By Credit Card ^ $47.50 per month for four months ($190 total payment) By Credit Card or Check ^ $170 advance payment (A savings of 10%) ^ Personal Check ^ MasterCard ^ Visa ^ American Express Acct...
...What it ought to boil down to is this: What is Israel today, with respect to what it would likely be otherwise and what it can be...
...Vladimir Jabotinsky, for example, one of the more influential early Zionists, gets short SARKES TARZIAN INC WRCB C 'DEL 3 C ATTANOO6 NNFSSEE KTVN CHNNFL 2 RENO, NEVADA WITS...
...Here the author is most helpful...
...Yet the overall effect of his book is like that of a university course in modern ethics: that no claim is really better than any other...
...Not that there's anything wrong Fred Barnes is a senior editor of the New Republic...
...Then there are the nits...
...On the same level O'Brien's contemptuous dismissal of Sharon's plans for Lebanon is just foolish: Had the PLO not assassinated Bashir Gemayel, and had the Israelis gone on to occupy all Lebanon, that country's fragile democracy might have been preserved...
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...The more serious extension of this is that the attitude extends to Israel's internal affairs as well, where he is sympathetic to the dominant, Labor party line...
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...He piously pounded on American allies, mostly in Latin America, while letting Communist regimes off scot-free...
...Exasperated, a third young man tries to call him up short...
...If so, Israel would have found itself with an ally, instead of a liability, on its northern border...
...1 understand that the balance of 22 tapes will arrive in packages of two approximately every 30 days...
...As he relates in the introduction, he "couldn't imagine a settlement concluded between representatives of the PLO, and then ratified, by both the Knesset and the people of Israel and also by a convention of PLO member-ship...
...He mixes an abundance of clear perceptions about the nature of the conflict with a failure to draw any necessary conclusions from them...
...With Celtic relish O'Brien highlights the contortions forced on the British Mandate by the Balfour Declaration, which amounted to an unsuccessful attempt to please both sides of a polar divide...
...Of course, this wasn't true...
...Just when you start to go mushy inside and think that maybe he wasn't really as awful a national leader as he often seemed, he surfaces with some zany new idea or statement...
...But again his account deals only with power...
...The first to grasp the importance of having the Jews arm themselves, Jabotinsky had the misfortune to be more perceptive than most of his European colleagues and principled enough not to color his observations...
...So it's hardly surprising they ended up despised by both...
...Two tapes will arrive approximately every 30 days, 24 cassettes in all...
...From expediency and anti-Semitism it's not a large jump to Auschwitz...
...Depending on your circumstances, this may be tax deductible...
...on the other, they tried to pretend to the Arabs that it was business as usual...
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...Fine...
...Nor does O'Brien confine his a priori dismissal of the Israeli right to Jabotinsky...
...At the same time, notes Muravchik, "Carter did not work to secure the right to vote or assemble or debate issues for the people of Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, the Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, Yemen, and especially Saudi Arabia, just to mention Arab peoples...
...Probably it was of a sort with the support Marcus Garvey received for his back-to-Africa movement (which of course never achieved the fervor of Zionism...
...Hypocritical or not, did the policy work...
...It is such a good idea, in fact, that when the Reagan Administration sought to abandon the policy entirely, it was roundly and justifiably criticized, and forced to retreat...
...Under pressure from Congress, the Carterites voted no on some funds for Vietnam and Laos, but yes on money for Yugoslavia and Rumania...
...You'll see...
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...From their perspective, the Carter policy was not nearly one-sided and punitive enough...
...In this situation it's useless to argue whether the founding of the state was "just": the U.S...
...Significant excerpts from each work are included, but these tapes are far more than a mere reading...
...A bit of the same exasperation must he shared by anyone who has shelled out $24.95 to read Conor Cruise O'Brien's latest book, The Siege...
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...Carter may not have meant to imply that Qaddafi is justified in retaliating against President Reagan, or even that he and Qaddafi have a lot in common, but that's how it sounded...
...Neither a scholarly work nor a straight-forward piece of history (although the general contours of Israeli history shadow its pages), it is, he says, loosely modeled on Edmund Wilson's To the Finland Station...
...THE SIEGE: THE SAGA OF ISRAEL AND ZIONISM Conor Cruise O'Brien/Simon and Schuster/$24.95 William McGurn In one of the early scenes of Fiddler on the Roof, Tevye finds himself in agreement with a young man who argues against getting too worked up about what goes on in the outside world...
...One final note...
...More valuable is the early distinction the author makes between Christian anti-Semitism and its more noxious Enlightenment forms...
...Muravchik documents the double standard—hit right-wing, autocratic allies, go easy on Communists or leftists—in irrefutable detail...
...Knowledge Products has gathered the works of the world's most influential writers into a collection of professionally produced, provocative audio tapes...
...he found himself seated between the Iraqi and Israeli delegates, on a committee dealing with the problem of Palestinian refugees...
...BOX b2...
...This is something O'Brien's fellow Europeans, right as well as left, do not understand, or ignore, and their tacit (often more than tacit) encouragement to terrorists like the PLO will only backfire in the long run, as the massacres at the Rome and Vienna air-ports tragically demonstrated...
...That no democratic alternative existed in either country was lost on the Carter crowd...
...But he deserves at least grudging credit for his steadfast commitment to tough principles during the most trying times...
...His interest in the subject began back in 1956 when as Ireland's delegate to the U.N...
...And the harsh judgment of Carter hardens...
...nation...
...An understanding of what kind of book The Siege is requires first an understanding of what kind of book it is not...
...Muravchik points out the crucial role that the "human rights community" has played in Washington, prompting congressional legislation and influencing Carter policy...
...worse, he argued for a strong middle class at a time when to do so was to be branded a reactionary stooge...
...Give Carter credit for fastening onto a very good idea...
...A bad move, Carter said, suggesting he knew how Colonel Qaddafi feels...
...BLOOMNGTON...
...For a book dealing with a siege, moreover, O'Brien curiously avoids saying what he thinks of it...
...In December 1977, she explained why she didn't speak out more about the holocaust in Cambodia: "I'm not sure what you can say beyond saying that it's awful, that people are dying, that there is serious trouble there...
...Revolutions are still fought over his ideas...
...The predictable outcome is a dismissal of the right without ever treating it seriously...
...Carter also has bragged about his steadfastness in seeking human rights to the point of championing the plight of the Palestinians, saying he wanted to assure them the right to assemble, debate issues, and vote...
...The Investment in Money: No Obligation For 30 Days...
...You know, I said to myself, maybe Carter wasn't all . . . My train of thought was interrupted by news of Carter's assessment of the April 15 bombing raid on Libya...
...Far from eroding anti-Semitism, O'Brien says, the spread of Enlightenment ideas "simply meant that anti-Semitism was taking a new form: racism...
...Okay, so conservatives have been saying this all along...
...Rue, Christians and Moslems do not in practice enjoy equal rights with Jews in Israel, and perhaps they never will...
...But it was a start in the right direction...
...Yet a re-reading of Jabotinsky's writings reveals him to be more modern than most of Israel's founders (and many of its present officials, too): He was one of the few to see through the predominant socialist cant that so influenced most Zionists...
...No mention is made of rising Islamic fundamentalism, or what this bodes for the rest of the world, particularly with regard to terrorism...
...Muravchik, once the executive director of the hawkish Democratic group, the Coalition for a Democratic Majority, offers plenty of it...
...Cancel with full refund within 30 days if not satisfied...
...When talking about El Salvador several years later, however, she was able to say much more: "No description of hell touches the bestiality of what is happening to the people of El Salvador...
...This movement sees human rights flourishing "in societies where, in the eyes of most Americans, those rights are brutally trampled by Communist dictatorships," Muravchik says...
...Operating here is the traditional left-wing curse of avoiding difficult thinking by reverting to abstract constructs...
...The Knowledge Products Audio Classics Series can become a mobile seminar...
...Rationalism, by contrast, has no check save expediency, even chiding Christianity for the imposition of supra-rational limits...
...BLCCr'4 GTON ODANA 47402 EFHONE 812 332 38 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JUNE 1986 shrift...
...They are still changing the world today...
...Carter was easily deterred by the Soviets from pressing the human rights issue noisily against them...
...Tevye thinks about this for a moment...
...But there is no reason they cannot, with full economic rights, prosper, even, like other minorities elsewhere (including Jews in Europe and the U.S...
...The Carterites nudged Somoza out in Nicaragua, and they did little to keep the Shah in power in Iran, even putting mild human rights pressure on him at exactly the wrong time...
...Obstinate, difficult, not given to compromise Begin certainly was...
...Not exactly, says Muravchik, though he praises Carter for making human rights a bigger international issue than it had been...
...per se with the policy of making respect—or lack of respect—for human rights a major factor in American foreign affairs...
...Anyone with even a casual interest in Israel will have his own disagreements with The Siege, inevitable when dealing with such an emotional subject...
...On the one hand the British backed a Jewish homeland, which they knew would be interpreted by Jews as a preliminary to a Jewish State...
...Muravchik explains: Because we were trying to make new friends in black Africa, because we needed oil from the nations of the Near East, because we wanted detente with the Russians and the rest of the Warsaw Pact and also to en-courage polycentrism within it, and because in Asia we were trying to build new relationships with some Communist governments while continuing to protect non-Communist countries against possible Communist aggression, practically the only place left to which the Carter administration felt it could apply its human rights policy was Latin America...
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...One would have hoped that 798 pages of investigation would have yielded a more substantive conclusion than that...
...And if you don't find this compelling, then there are the cases of Nicaragua and Iran...
...Menachem Begin emerges as a two-dimensional zealot, lacking even the grace of Jabotinsky's refinement...
...In succinct (247 pages) and crisply written fashion, he lays out the weaknesses of the Carter policy...
...There are lots of statements by Carter or his minions to choose from...
...Appropriately skeptical of this claim, O'Brien nevertheless does not say what implications he thinks this ought to have for Western diplomats, especially Europeans, who in practice contribute to the siege of Israel...
...Thus the book is more or less sympathetic to the Israeli line because the Israelis are on top...
...As its subtitle suggests, the work encompasses far more than the pariah statusthat has been conferred on Israel by the rest of the world...
...Indeed, the author traces the idea of siege back to the first Zionist glimmerings of Theodor Herzl, through its confirmation in the Holocaust, and up to its enshrinement today in institutions like the United Nations...
...That doesn't take a thing away from The Uncertain Crusade...
...If somebody killed his own daughter Amy, Carter said, he'd want revenge...
...As O'Brien states, "The Holocaust was the final, absolute confirmation that the Zionist `hunch' had been right...
...Where Carter erred was in the way he pursued the policy...
...The Value of Great Ideas...
...If you spend 20 minutes a day in your car, you have time to listen to the ideas of Locke, Mill, Tocqueville and others...
...In votes on loans or grants by international financial institutions, the same pattern prevailed...
...The Audio Classics discuss the authors, their ideas, and the historical conflicts that inspired their work...
...Immediately, another young man makes the opposite case, and William McGurn is editorial features editor of the Wall Street Journal/ Europe and a European editor of The American Spectator...
Vol. 19 • June 1986 • No. 6
