RUTHFULLY YOURS

Haaretz, the paper of the Israeli left, has spent the past few weeks running a series of shrill attacks on former Israeli ambassador Michael Oren over his book Ally, which complains about Israel’s treatment by Obama. The New York Times has tried to top them by bringing in former New Republic man and National Interest editor Jacob Heilbrunn, still atoning for his ideological sins by denouncing the “neo-cons” to pen an even shriller screed about Oren.

Even though Jacob Heilbrunn’s rant is technically a review, the first half of it doesn’t talk about the book, but instead condenses every single attack on Oren as if providing a Media Matters reading list.

We hear about everyone who denounced Oren making it clear that he is a very, very bad man. That’s the book reviewing style of Pravda. And apparently the New York Times.

By the second half, Jacob Heilbrunn completely loses it.

It’s difficult to avoid the impression that Oren continues to carry a large chip on his shoulder. He complains, for example, that “The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books, both Jewish­ edited, rarely ran non-incriminating reports on Israeli affairs.” The odd formulation “Jewish­­ edited” suggests that Oren views everything through the lens of ethnic identity.

These three sentences barely have anything to do with each other.

An Israeli ambassador complaining about media bias is not evidence that he carries “a large chip on his shoulder”. It suggests that he’s doing his job. Barely a day goes by when I don’t get an email blast from the Egyptian embassy or some other country’s embassy complaining about media bias against their country.

If Jacob Heilbrunn thinks that’s what a chip on his shoulder looks like, he’s oddly unfamiliar with international affairs.

The third sentence is Heilbrunn attempting to psychoanalyze Oren while telling us more about himself instead. And it only gets worse.

“In addition, Oren hastily dismisses the historian Tony Judt as someone who “opposed Israel’s existence.” If anything, Judt’s apprehensions about Israel’s future seem more cogent than ever. To criticize Israel is not tantamount to being anti­-Israel, a tiresome tactic that too many of the country’s would­ be defenders have adopted.”

Heilbrunn earlier quotes Foxman’s criticism of Oren. Here’s what Foxman said of Judt.

“I think they made the right decision,” said Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League. “He’s taken the position that Israel shouldn’t exist. That puts him on our radar.”

This should sound familiar. That’s the guy Heilbrunn just quoted when it was a convenient means of attacking Oren.

Tony Judt has called for the destruction of Israel. That’s not simply criticism.

Jacob Heilbrunn penned this incoherent and intellectually absurd rant because Michael Oren “criticized” Obama. Is attacking Oren for it also a “tiresome tactic”? Or is it just a tiresome tactic when people point out that a fellow who calls for destroying Israel opposes its existence?

But it gets even worse…

Obama has never sought to resuscitate warmed­over pacifist ideas from the 1960s. As it happens, Obama ramped up the drone war and attacked Libya. Nor has he extricated the United States from either Afghanistan or Iraq.

Obama announced twice that the US had left Iraq. Maybe Heilbrunn missed that?

Obama’s campaign pledge was for a speedy withdrawal from Iraq. He’s announced that Afghanistan is being wrapped up and has made numerous efforts to negotiate with the Taliban. He bombed Libya illegally only in support of Islamist Jihadis.

For a guy who edits a magazine named National Interest, Jacob Heilbrunn doesn’t seem to be too aware of what’s going on.

“So much for the bogus notion that Obama reviles military power.”

That would be the bogus notion that Obama has articulated on numerous occasions?

This isn’t a review. It’s an unreadable rant in which one sentence barely seems to relate to the next. Its only themes are that Netanyahu and Oren are terrible, that Israel is terrible, and that Obama and assorted anti-Israel personalities are great. That’s not too unusual for the New York Times, but it would be nice if the next time around they got someone to pen it who can stop spitting with rage long enough to finish a thought.