Letters
Editors: In his response to my criticism of his arguments on Israeli policy in Lebanon and Gaza (Winter 2007), Michael Walzer ignores most of the evidence I pointed to as well as the arguments I...
...Such a policy would have disastrous consequences—consequences that bring to mind the political and military fate of Germany during the first half of the twentieth century as its own hegemonic ambitions were defeated...
...Aside from the recently initiated "kill and capture" policy of Iranian "agents" in Iraq, the United States has stationed vast naval forces in the Persian Gulf, to which no Iranian government could impute friendly intentions...
...Michael Walzer Replies I am not going to debate Israel's sins with Jerome Slater...
...On the contrary, administration officials have denounced the Iranian government as Nazis, although Iran has yet to attack a foreign country...
...The Islamic revolution that brought it to power had, after all, "deep popular roots...
...Questions on Iran Editors: Why has Iran been pursuing the development of what has been widely suspected as nuclear armament...
...With the exception of Shlomo Avineri, none of the participants in Dissent's symposium on Iran (Winter 2007) dwells on this question...
...BRAND Bethesda, Md...
...JEROME SLATER Buffalo, N.Y...
...It represents a display of hegemonic power that in this postcolonial era few, if any, countries, least of all Iran, would find tolerable...
...But the editors gave him four thousand words (and then a little more when he asked for that...
...I confess to ignorance regarding the power of Iran's president to decide questions of war and peace, as opposed to the ayatollahs, a theocracy by its nature conservative and hardly messianic...
...I criticized a couple of the exaggerations, but that is not the crucial issue between us...
...Fischer reiterates these thoughts more briefly later in his speech, assuring his audience that he understands "the desire for independence, security, and dignity...
...No doubt...
...I could say everything I wanted to say, at least in outline, about any subject in the world in four thousand words...
...The Amnesty International report came to a similar conclusion, that Israel had committed "war crimes": "The evidence strongly suggests that the extensive destruction of public works, power systems, civilian homes and industry was deliberate and an integral part of the military strategy, rather than 'collateral damage.' " 3. Similarly, Walzer ignores most of my long list of the ways in which Israel has deliberately imposed collective punishment on the Palestinian population in the occupied territories, responding only to one item, the impact on Palestinian health systems...
...Avineri may not have in mind "regime change," which his analysis suggests...
...He assumes that Iran's leaders are capable of making a rational choice in the sense of reason as he conceives reason...
...110 DISSENT / Spring 2007...
...Slater's one-sidedness was the result of his own political commitments and priorities, not of Dissent's word limit...
...That is not how Avineri sees it...
...And so there is no good reason for refusing to provide both sides with the criticism they need and for failing to alert the general reader to the complexities, ambiguities, and dangers of contemporary Middle Eastern politics...
...This means that Iran's regime is not merely that country's internal affair...
...some he exaggerates...
...At any rate, deterrence, the means for which Israel appears to he amply supplied, remains "the best recourse," as Michael Doyle writes in his contribution to the Dissent symposium, if wiser counsels in Tehran or such as Joschka Fischer's fail to prevent Iran's nuclear armament...
...Yet, it would quite likely underestimate Ahmedinejad's smartness to assume he would risk the annihilation of Tehran and other Persian cities and their populations...
...Walzer claims that in 2000 Palestinian health standards were "relatively high" compared to other Arab countries and have declined only since the "admittedly harsh" Israeli reaction to the intifada...
...Editors: In his response to my criticism of his arguments on Israeli policy in Lebanon and Gaza (Winter 2007), Michael Walzer ignores most of the evidence I pointed to as well as the arguments I made that Israel has been deliberately imposing collective punishment against civilians, their institutions, and their infrastructures in Lebanon and Gaza...
...But intellectuals have another responsibility, which is to tell the truth as they understand it to all possible readers...
...We actually agree on the last point he makes in his letter: that Israel's best interests are not served by its occupation and settlement policies...
...Once our argument was posted on the Dissent Web site, it was universally available...
...Joschka Fischer, however, in the text of the speech he delivered in Tehran and which Dissent reprints, displays profound awareness of the roots of that pursuit...
...The first is insufficient space...
...But here he warns of the danger that a legitimate national policy be transformed into a "hegemonial policy," which nuclearization implies...
...and its Revolutionary Guards, especially its Quds division as "S.S...
...He said, Anyone familiar with recent Iranian history knows that its politics have been marked by a constant search for independence and for security from aggression and influence from its neighbors or from greater powers...
...Iran's "political regime, unpalatable as it is, is its internal affair...
...Some he gets right, it seems to me...
...It is a non sequitur to compare Palestinian health standards with other Arab countries for which Israel has no responsibility...
...by European liberals and leftists...
...However, as an American Jewish Zionist, I do feel partly responsible for the behavior of the Israelis and their uncritical American Jewish supporters, so I have no choice but to hope that I have a chance—in theory, anyway—of persuading Israelis and American Jews that Israel's policies have been not only morally wrong, but destructive of the best interests of Israel...
...and by Palestinian writers and militants, too...
...Aside from the problem of insufficient space, I am not a Palestinian and have no moral responsibility for their actions or hope of influencing them...
...The Guards, although a repressive organization, have not to my knowledge touched the twenty-five thousand Jews who still reside in Iran, and who, again to my knowledge, may freely travel abroad, including to Israel...
...And yet a beneficial alternative to such a course is exemplified by the successful collaborationist endeavor of the European Union in the second half of that century and into the twenty-first...
...Walzer asserts that my statements concerning the need to deal seriously with the problems of Hezbollah and Palestinian terrorism are just "throwaway lines," else I would have more fully discussed what to do...
...If Islam has "deep popular roots," as Avineri avers, regime change could not be undertaken without encountering vast and violent resistance...
...But Gur was not merely stating his personal views of what should be done...
...Walzer ignores all of this except the HRW report, which he wrongly claims was inaccurate...
...And Slater knew that he would be read by non-Jewish Americans, including Arab Americans...
...by active citizens and policymakers of all faiths and ethnicities...
...What was wrong with his original piece was its radical one-sidedness: he was unwilling to acknowledge Israel's vulnerability or to offer any description at all of the character of its enemies...
...More important, that takes us to Walzer's overall argument: if it weren't for the intifada, Israeli policies would be much less harsh...
...Even so, Iran's evident buildup of nuclear armament cannot be separated from the anti-Zionist rhetoric of its president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad...
...That tells us nothing about the justice of the occupation or of all forms of resistance to it, except terrorism...
...Now he gives us two excuses for those omissions...
...4. Which leads to my final point...
...he was describing what Israel had in fact already done and continued doing, and no one has challenged his facts...
...In a sense, Fischer responds to one of the questions posed by Dissent editors to the symposium participants—should Iran be considered just one state among others, seeking its legitimate self-interest...
...I doubt that he is, in fact, responsible, though I understand the feeling...
...His second excuse is that he was writing only for Israelis and American Jews, for whose behavior, as a ZionDISSENT / Spring 2007 109 ist, he feels partly responsible...
...Ahmadinejad's words may just be bluster, but as Michael Walzer has written in reference to the Islamists' threats to destroy Israel or parts of it, "It's not smart to pretend that they don't mean what they say...
...Yet, there is a contradiction when he also implies that Iran's "messianic fundamentalism" represents an ideology such as the world experienced during the 1930s "totalitarian in outlook and with universal aspirations that spill immanently into external affairs...
...2. To illustrate that Israel deliberately caused mass civilian suffering of the Lebanese population in last summer's war, I cited reports in Ha'aretz and other Israeli media, strongly worded charges by prominent Israeli establishment figures, reporting by the New York Times, and detailed reports by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch...
...For Iran, the lack of respect for and recognition of its independence...
...There is no question in my mind that denying Israel the right to exist, which such rhetoric means, is to advocate genocide...
...and the talent and capabilities of its people has been particularly humiliating and indeed insulting throughout its modern history...
...Occupiers usually prefer to rule peacefully —so long as their rule is not challenged...
...For example: 1. Walzer objects to my quote from General Gur about how Israel had always deliberately attacked Arab civilians, on the grounds that Gur was a "cruel and stupid" blusterer...
...But the Bush administration has not taken the notion of regime change in Iran off the table...
Vol. 54 • April 2007 • No. 2
