NY Sun on the supposed muzzling of Israel critics

The rest of this editorial offers a good discussion of HRW's credibility problems. Here the author squashes a common Israel-bashing cliche:

The latest institution to buy into the notion that it has become impossible in America to criticize Israel without getting set down as an anti-Semite is none other than the New York Review of Books. It has just published an article to that effect by a former executive director of Human Rights Watch, Arieh Neier, who seeks to defend his former employer's criticism of Israel in the recent conflict in Lebanon . . .

These kinds of factual errors in the New York Review of Books piece are dwarfed by a larger falsehood — that here in America an atmosphere obtains in which, as Mr. Neier puts it, "rational discussion is precluded by charges of anti-Semitism against anyone with the temerity to criticize Israeli policy or practice." In fact, America is echoing with critics of Israel and has been for years. To propagate a theory of an all-powerful Israel lobby Professors Walt and Mearsheimer are given tenured positions at Harvard and the University of Chicago, a podium at the National Press Club and Cooper Union, and a book contract at Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Their discussion mightn't be rational, but it's hard to say it has been precluded.

Few would know this better than the editors of the New York Review of Books, which has published some of the most hysterical criticisms of Israel, most notably Tony Judt's call for a bi-national state. His criticism is hostile to the Jewish state, because bi-nationalism means precisely the end of the Jewish state. But he and the New York Review of Books have managed to get it about so widely that Leon Wieseltier writes in the latest number of the New Republic, "If there is life on Mars, it knows what he thinks."

(Hat Tip: Martin Kramer)

Tags: Israel, Walt and Mearsheimer, anti-Zionism, leftism, HRW