Peretz Claims Someone in White House “Has It In” for American Jews; Robinson and Tutu are Anti-Semites
Another day, a bit more smears and character assassination from New Republic editor in chief Martin Peretz:
[Obama] may not himself have made the decision to honor the contemptible Mary Robinson, arguably a real bigot, with the Medal of Freedom. But, then, there is someone in his entourage who is leading him astray, gravely astray. And that someone has it in for Israel and for American Jews, too. [...] And the fact is that Tutu will also receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom at the White House in mid-August. He is one of those many people who seems to have a tic about or a tic against the Jews. [...] So how about this rule for the White House? When conferring honors, only one anti-semite to the batch.
These are some pretty serious accusations, particularly the idea that Obama has fallen under the influence of someone in his entourage who “has it in . . . for American Jews, too.”
69 Responses to “Peretz Claims Someone in White House “Has It In” for American Jews; Robinson and Tutu are Anti-Semites”
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August 5th, 2009 at 12:19 pm
My money is on his chief of staff.
August 5th, 2009 at 12:21 pm
Ok, it’s time for these foolish people that were so misled by the Bush administration as to what would be ‘good for the Jews/Israel’ to wake up.
The Obama admin. has many American Jews who happen to be progressives rather than conservative dupes.
And isn’t there far more anti-Israeli sentiment and much graver attacks on Jews now than before Bush came to power? His holding hands with and sword dancing with Saudi royalty should be made at least one part of the story that Republicans are 100% for Israel…
August 5th, 2009 at 12:21 pm
My money is on his chief of staff.
No, it has to be somebody new. Probably the dog.
August 5th, 2009 at 12:22 pm
This is the wages of 16 years of Israeli ass-kisssing from W. Bush and Clinton. It produces this kind of batshittery from Marty and his ilk. He was always kind of crazy, but not always this crazy and it’s not just age.
August 5th, 2009 at 12:25 pm
Well, Peretzism doesn’t quite have the same ring as McCarthyism, but I think we can make it work.
August 5th, 2009 at 12:29 pm
I’ve enjoyed reading TNR and I think it’s well-edited, so I’m not going to call for Peretz’s head. He sure does have stupid opinions about Israel, though. What’s with the cat-in-a-corner defensiveness? It’s not like Israel is in any great danger of . . . well, anything, really.
August 5th, 2009 at 12:29 pm
I think Matt should call on every writer on the TNR masthead to cease going to work until their boss names names. I mean, “someone in his entourage” is flagrantly McCarthyesque and no one in polite liberal DC company should tolerate it.
August 5th, 2009 at 12:33 pm
The worst thing is that Amnesty International gave Mary Robinson their Ambassador of Conscience Award in 2004. Other award winners have been Vaclav Havel, U2, Nelson Mandela, Peter Gabriel and Aung San Suu Kyi, so obviously Robinson has it in for the Jews. Obviously.
And Desmond Tutu, don’t get me started on him.
August 5th, 2009 at 12:33 pm
I’m with Marshall, and MY, on this. Peretz has always been crazed, but the witch-hunting rhetoric is a place where we need to draw a line.
I read TNR long ago, but now I only read them when Yglesias links to them. It’s not just the Israel thing — too much neoconning altogether.
August 5th, 2009 at 12:36 pm
It’s almost as if Marty Peretz were trying to foster more anti-Semitism. But his stridency reflects the fact that it is becoming increasingly more difficult for American and European Jews to retain their emotional ties to a “Jewish” state that is quickly becoming half Russian kleptocracy, half fanatical Orthodox theocracy. So far on its own terms Israel has to be reckoned a failure. Compare Israel’s meager contributions to the world in science, art, music, literature, or politics with those of American, European or Latin American Jews over the last 60 years. Israel has not provided Jews with security, quite the contrary; it has not strengthened Jewish identity, it’s helped fracture it; and it has not by any stretch of the imagination been a beacon or symbol to the rest of humanity. But having said all that, it’s still a far better place than its awful neighbors, which is where I always get stuck.
August 5th, 2009 at 12:39 pm
I’m surprised he used “entourage,” when “posse” would have worked better.
August 5th, 2009 at 12:40 pm
I think Peretz is referring to Jeremiah Wright.
Other award winners have been Vaclav Havel, U2, Nelson Mandela, Peter Gabriel and Aung San Suu Kyi, so obviously Robinson has it in for the Jews. Obviously.
Are you saying Vaclav Havel, Peter Gabriel and Aung San Suu Kyi aren’t anti-semites? Let’s see some evidence!
August 5th, 2009 at 12:47 pm
I never read Marty, but The Treatment is among the better health care blogs and The Stash isn’t bad either. Peretz is pretty over the top though.
August 5th, 2009 at 12:48 pm
Maybe the word choice of “entourage” wasn’t a coincidence…
August 5th, 2009 at 12:50 pm
He is a Zionist, that’s all you need to know. Everything else follows.
August 5th, 2009 at 12:51 pm
Wow… that’s just idiotic. I often assume Marty is extreme, but rarely does he offer such an up-front, low-hanging fastball for this critics to hit out of the park. You can’t oppose giving the medal of freedom to Desmond Tutu without looking like a giant prick.
August 5th, 2009 at 12:56 pm
This kind of language is so ridiculously over the top and extreme that it risks making a mockery of the cause that Peretz is fighting for. Referring to one badly-managed conference in an entire career of fighting for human rights and that somehow makes her a “contemptible” person? Please. And I love the not-very-subtle racism employed in the statement as well, referring to Barack Obama’s “entourage” like he’s T-Pain or Young Jeezy. There is someone here that’s “contemptible”, but its not Mary Robinson.
August 5th, 2009 at 12:57 pm
Sure you laugh now, Matt, but wait until they herd you into one of the FEMA concentration camps Michelle Bachmann’s always talking about. My guess is that Obama’s Muslim overlords, the same ones who forged his birth certificate, have it in for the Jews. Probably there is some connection with Al Qaeda. Since Bin Laden always knew he couldn’t take on the US directly, he set in motion a long-running plan to put a Muslim plant in the White House to kill Jews and bring Sharia law to America.
On a more serious note, I think Marty Peretz is the single most racist person in acceptable mainstream media. Even more than Buchanan, Beck, Krauthammer, or Dobbs. Read his blog; just scroll down the page and see how many posts are focused on how screwed up or outright evil Arabs and Muslims are. It’s at least half of his posts and it doesn’t stop. He’s unbelievable. It’s incredible that TNR is still seen as a respectable magazine.
August 5th, 2009 at 12:58 pm
Ah yes, Red Rain was actually about the blood libel. It all makes sense now.
August 5th, 2009 at 1:04 pm
Anyone who doesn’t support a final solution against the Palestinians in “Judea” and “Samaria” is an anti-semite to the likes of Peretz.
August 5th, 2009 at 1:07 pm
Ah yes, Red Rain was actually about the blood libel. It all makes sense now.
The Babe: Pigs in the City soundtrack too. The guy’s got a rap sheet a mile long.
August 5th, 2009 at 1:07 pm
“On a more serious note, I think Marty Peretz is the single most racist person in acceptable mainstream media. Even more than Buchanan, Beck, Krauthammer, or Dobbs. Read his blog…”
Giving him a blog was a huge mistake, even if it was understandable. Back before the Spine he’d chime in with rascist drivel on the Plank; well, clearly that wasn’t going to work, so they gave him his own blog. Good idea except it seems to have encouraged him to hook his id directly to his keyboard. Before the blog, sure, he wrote neoconnery on Israel for the magazine, but it was a polished, defanged neoconnery. Now, there is no gatekeeper and look at the results.
August 5th, 2009 at 1:10 pm
But, then, there is someone in his entourage who is leading him astray, gravely astray. And that someone has it in for Israel and for American Jews, too.
Oh, who could it be? Perhaps David Axelrod? Rahm Emmanuel? This is exciting!!!!
August 5th, 2009 at 1:12 pm
I think Marty Peretz is the single most racist person in acceptable mainstream media. Even more than Buchanan, Beck, Krauthammer, or Dobbs.
No chance. Even staying within the category of “Arabs, hatred thereof,” Krauthammer’s worse.
August 5th, 2009 at 1:13 pm
Can we just accept that Peretz feels that every breathing human being on the planet is an anti-semite and move on? This endlessly adding names to the list is quite tedious.
August 5th, 2009 at 1:20 pm
Raise taxes. A lot.
Stick with me here. We’ve been told over and over again that you can’t possibly raise taxes on these people because that would destroy their motivation to do work and earn money, so if we raise taxes then the traders that generate these bubbles will not be willing to do any work, therefore no bubbles! Problem solved!
August 5th, 2009 at 1:21 pm
Shit, this was in the wrong post. Disregard the above please!
August 5th, 2009 at 1:34 pm
Another day, a bit more smears and character assassination from New Republic editor in chief Martin Peretz:
Does anyone still care, outside of some jewish circles in New York? The character of M. Peretz himself has been assassinated long ago; he has been exposed as a racist.
And the same goes for the ADL — or more accurately, M. Foxman and perhaps his family. No need to link to each of their latest rants.
August 5th, 2009 at 2:00 pm
This is an outrageous attack and personal slander against Marty Peretz, who is one of the greatest minds of this or any other generation. What young Mr. Yglesias fails to recognize is that Marty Peretz was bitten by a radioactive Arab when he was a teenager, and ever since he has been gifted with superpowers beyond the ability of your feeble minds to comprehend.
Using only a divining rod made from a young ash tree and his supernaturally acute sense of smell, Mr. Peretz can detect anti-semitism from up to 37 miles away, depending upon wind direction and ground clutter. Once, on a secret mission for the Mossad, he personally guided a missile into a West Bank orphanage where a Hamas agent was hiding while simultaneously receiving a lap dance in a Tel Aviv strip club.
It is thus with unimpeachable authority that Mr. Peretz proclaims Mary Robinson to be a bloodthirsty Jew hater, along with every other man, woman, and child in Ireland.
August 5th, 2009 at 2:27 pm
Marty Peretz is a huge fucking moron that runs a really shitty newspaper. I don’t see why anyone pays attention to anything in the New Republic. The quality of journalism down there has been apparent ever since the whole Stephen Glass thing came to light. It’s pretty damn clear that their whole staff isn’t opposed to just making shit up as they go along.
August 5th, 2009 at 2:48 pm
Man, do we have to go through this crap every day? I’m sick of it and I’m warming up to my brother’s proposal. His proposal was that every Palestinian and every Israeli gets an AK-47 and two thirty round clips. And they just shoot each other. And when the last bullet is fired, we come in and kill everyone who is left. Problem solved. I’m tired of dealing with this issue. It goes nowhere. So why don’t we just pull all of our funding and support out of the region and tell them to figure it out. Let’s just admit that we can’t solve it, and get the hell out of there. Yes, there will be a genocidal bloodbath, but that will happen anyway. Why delay it? Both sides are assholes that deserve to die. So let them die. If they decide otherwise, then let them live in peace. If not, well, then there’s nothing for us to worry about.
August 5th, 2009 at 2:50 pm
Peretz goes a bit overboard in that post. But it’s a complete distortion of what he says to claim that he’s arguing that President Obama has “fallen under the influence” of someone who has it in for Jews. Peretz makes it quite clear that he believes this was below the President’s radar and that he imagines he’s pissed about it.
Yglesias is entitled to his obviously low opinion of Peretz. However that doesn’t justify lying about what he’s saying here.
August 5th, 2009 at 2:56 pm
The only problem with my brother’s proposal is this: even if we turn the entire Middle East into a sea of glass, Jews and Arabs will still fight over it. We need to create bubbling springs of sarin to keep them from fighting over nothing. And that might not work.
August 5th, 2009 at 3:27 pm
Peretzzatura, lolz.
August 5th, 2009 at 3:38 pm
If Peretz keeps this up, I’m going to become a self-hating Jew.
August 5th, 2009 at 3:42 pm
Rich: Does that mean you’re Jewish now? Or that you’ll convert to Judaism and then start hating yourself, just to piss off Peretz?
August 5th, 2009 at 3:46 pm
vanya (#10) claims that “So far on its own terms Israel has to be reckoned a failure”, which I think is a bit overboard. It’s a first world economy, with a strong high tech sector. It has a military establishment with the manpower, training, and equipment to sufficiently defend the country. Although US aid certainly helps, I don’t think it makes or breaks Israel’s standing.
On the other hand, he may have a point regarding the cultural/demographic directions the country is taking.
August 5th, 2009 at 3:46 pm
“But it’s a complete distortion of what he says to claim that he’s arguing that President Obama has “fallen under the influence” of someone who has it in for Jews. Peretz makes it quite clear that he believes this was below the President’s radar and that he imagines he’s pissed about it.”
How do you figure? He says that it’s someone from “his entourage” who “is leading him astray.” How can you be led astray by someone from your immediate circle “below the radar”?
“Peretz goes a bit overboard in that post.”
Oh, yeah? What makes you think so? That he called Mary Robinson “contemptible” and “a real bigot” based on her non-performance at Durban? You sound like Bob Uecker in Major League: “Juuust a bit outside!”
August 5th, 2009 at 3:54 pm
If there is disaffection for Israel in the WH, it probably has to do with the increasing sway of the ultra-orthodox there. These people, like zealots of all religions, are dangerous, and should be kept at arms length.
August 5th, 2009 at 4:06 pm
It’s a first world economy, with a strong high tech sector. It has a military establishment with the manpower, training, and equipment to sufficiently defend the country. Although US aid certainly helps, I don’t think it makes or breaks Israel’s standing.
Israel’s first world economy is heavily dependent on US aid and subsidies, as well as the fact that most elite Israelis have strong family and personal ties in the US, Russia, Ukraine or elsewhere that they can leverage. How much of the high tech sector is really indigenous to Israel? You also have to wonder how much more productive residents of Israels might have been had Israel never been founded, and those people or their parents/grand-parents had stayed and worked in Iraq, Morocco, Germany, the US, Russia etc. after 1949. Clearly it’s too late now, but the post-war histories of Iraq, Iran and Egypt might have been very different if the indigenous Jewish merchant classes in those countries had been able to play a leading role in the economies of those countries rather than be driven out as enemies.
August 5th, 2009 at 4:34 pm
ather than be driven out as enemies
Enough with this “driven out” bullshit, please. In Morocco, for example, there were a couple of riots (unsurprisingly) in 1948 and a few thousands Jews emigrated because of that, but a vast majority left later by their own will. In Iraq it’s very likely that Mossad perpetrated the bombings that led to mass emigration. In Algeria pretty much all the non-Muslims left or were expelled.
You can claim “driven out” maybe in two countries, the rest is a Zionist myth.
August 5th, 2009 at 4:57 pm
I was joking before, but now I’m not. What if we just said this?: Two years from now, we will drop enough bombs to literally wipe the place off the map. We will decide not to do it if you people can learn to live with each other. If you can’t, you won’t be alive anyway. They need to solve this on their own, and we can’t solve it. But we sure as hell can light a fire under people’s asses. Maybe a threat of nuclear annhihilation might spur them on. Say I’m crazy all you want, but nobody else has produced a remotely feasible plan. My plan has two advantages. First, it will be done in two years, guaranteed. Second, whatever problems that exist there are caused by humans, so the elimination of humans will solve the problem. As an added bonus, the place will be hugely radioactive for a few thousand years. So nobody will start a new feud there for a very long time.
Think it’s inhumane? Well, maybe. But how inhumane is the next ten thousand years of people killing each other? All that happens now is to kill people at a slow enough pace that they reproduce and get killed again. Perpetual Motion may be impossible, but Perpetual Killing is the very nature of humanity. It is real, and it really will go on forever. Kill everyone now, and that machine stops.
Is it genocide? Of course it is, but genocide is exactly what both sides want. So let’s please them both. If we wipe out both sides completely, there can never be a genocide between them again. Think it’s wrong? Well, just consider the lives that will be lost in another few billion years of war. The only good news about this region is that when the sun is dying and everyone else on the planet is leaving for somewhere else, the Jews and Arabs will remain on this planet to fight over Palestine/Israel. And the Sun will finally kill them.
August 5th, 2009 at 5:39 pm
Matt: more of this please.
August 5th, 2009 at 5:49 pm
Tutu compares Jews to Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Pinochet, Milosevic, and Idi Amin; all who one day “bit the dust”.
People are scared of Jews in the USA
US jews are arrogant because of their power
In 1985 Tutu complainted about “the Jewish monopoly of the Holocaust.”
Speaking in a Connecticut church in 1984, Tutu said that
In the same speech, he compared the features of the ancient Temple in Jerusalem to the features of the apartheid system in South Africa.
August 5th, 2009 at 6:41 pm
“I want to say to all, peace is possible. These two people‘s are God‘s chosen and beloved, with a common ancestor in Abraham. I give thanks for what the Jews have given us. During Apartheid we told our people God has heard their crying. And God will deliver us as God delivered Israel from bondage.
…
In our struggle against Apartheid, the great supporters were the Jews. Jews almost instinctively had to be on the side of the disenfranchised, of the voiceless ones, fighting injustice, oppression and evil. I have continued to feel strongly with the Jews. I am patron of holocaust center in South Africa. I believe Israel has right to secure borders.”
————————
I really don’t know if Desmond Tutu was an anti-Semite or not, I’m not familiar with his life and religion isn’t really my bag. But you can just as easily take quotes from the same speech as you did that make him seem a great supporter of Israel. I don’t like when people refer to any group like they are monolithic as Desmond Tutu does, and its obvious that he has some prejudice towards them, but it seems to me like its a little more complex than simply to say that Desmond Tutu was an anti-Semite. There seem to be a lot of jewish groups expressing support for Desmond Tutu, which i think would hardly be the case if he was Anti-Semitic.
August 5th, 2009 at 7:42 pm
Can’t imagine why a black South African might have issues with Israel.
August 5th, 2009 at 8:43 pm
I’m Jewish, and a Zionist, and when someone calls Desmond Tutu an anti-semite I have this bizarre urge to say I am too.
August 5th, 2009 at 9:02 pm
Treating anything Peretz says as serious is, well, like treating anything Yglesias says as serious.
These guys are WANNABE “pundits”. They spout biased crap about stuff they know nothing about based on an education about the real world which can charitably be described as inadequate (read: non-existent).
Peretz is a Zionist freakazoid only slightly more or less demented than SLC. Ignore him.
August 5th, 2009 at 9:04 pm
What does this guy from South Africa know about Israel and apartheid, anyway?
snark
August 5th, 2009 at 9:14 pm
tomemos, there’s a very big difference between being “led astray” vs. “falling under the influence” of someone. Someone gave him bad advice — they led him astray. To say he’s falling under their influence is to say he’s internalizing their world view. Totally different things.
If Peretz believed that Obama were falling under the influence of someone who had it in for the Jews, he wouldn’t lead off his post with “I give him the benefit of the doubt,” nor would he include anything like the following:
“I’d bet, however, that there’s been a lot of shouting around the White House…and a lot of blame. Obama will smile through it all. But inside he’ll be seething. At his staff and at those of us who don’t just shut up.”
Yglesias is simply indulging in his often-exercised contempt for Peretz. It’s something one might say in the heat of the moment. But even though a blog isn’t an essay, and part of the charm of the genre is its spontaneity, still it’s a written form and I don’t think it’s appropriate to so mischaracterize someone’s position on a matter like this as to practically turn it into its opposite.
August 5th, 2009 at 9:24 pm
RSH:
You have to be nuts if you think SLC is in the same park as Marty Peretz. Peretz is completely batshit crazy in a way that makes Ann Coulter seem like a voice of reason. SLC is just some douchebag who posts comments on some blog.
August 5th, 2009 at 9:36 pm
I think Fostert should do a guest post on this issue, although he’s really framing it too narrowly.
August 5th, 2009 at 10:17 pm
Martin Peretz is a lunatic.
He wrote in the pages of his vanity magazine that Lawrence Summers was removed as President of Harvard because of “anti-Jewish animus among the Harvard faculty.”
August 5th, 2009 at 10:24 pm
Oh, man, you WIN.
Ladies and gentlemen, that’s how it’s done.
August 5th, 2009 at 10:25 pm
I fail to see how reminding oppressors in Israel of what happened to the people who similarly oppressed their fellow Jews is anti-semitic.
August 5th, 2009 at 11:45 pm
Let’s say Ireland took over some country.
Desmond Tutu says, “I say why are our memories so short? Have our Irish sisters and brothers forgotten their humiliation? Have they forgotten the collective punishment, the home demolitions, in their own history so soon? The British occupation government was very powerful, but today it no longer exists. Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Pinochet, Milosevic, and Idi Amin were all powerful, but in the end they bit the dust.”
Would that be an anti-Irish statement?
August 5th, 2009 at 11:46 pm
“Someone gave him bad advice — they led him astray.”
So that’s nowhere close to what you said earlier, about it being “below his radar,” is it? And if Obama followed their advice, he’s “under their influence,” isn’t he? You’re just picking nits to avoid the more obvious point that Peretz is completely deranged.
August 6th, 2009 at 12:40 am
“I think Fostert should do a guest post on this issue, although he’s really framing it too narrowly.”
I can see it now: Self-Loather-In-Chief Yglesias turns over his blog to a bigot demanding TWO new Holocausts
August 6th, 2009 at 12:48 am
No, you fool! It’s Larry Summers!!
August 6th, 2009 at 12:58 am
You’re missing the point, Joe. Tutu criticized Israel’s actions, therefore he’s an anti-semite.
August 6th, 2009 at 1:18 am
Sorry, but you’re pretty willfully misreading both me and Yglesias here. Regarding your misreading of me, first, there’s no contradiction, your claim to the contrary notwithstanding, between being led astray by bad advice and the factors that make that advice bad being “under the radar” — the “leading astray” in this instance is exactly the failure (purposeful or not) to fully surface or make explicit the potential problems in the course of action under consideration. The President is an awfully busy man. He knows who Mary Robinson is. He may not have known the details of her role in the Durban debacle. Those would be “under the radar” to him unless someone actually brought them to his attention. That’s basically what Peretz seems to think.
Second, your misreading of Yglesias: There’s a sinister implication in “fallen under the influence of” that’s completely absent from simply, for example, “being influenced by.”
But you (and more to the point Yglesias) already know that. If you, or he, want to beat up on Peretz for what he said, there’s plenty of things to pick on without inventing something that he didn’t say.
Leaving all this aside, it would be interesting to find out who suggested her in the first place, and how it was presented to the President.
August 6th, 2009 at 8:20 am
Because they’re definitely an anti-semite. And maybe a hypnotist too.
August 6th, 2009 at 8:57 am
Don’t be ridiculous. Being insensitive to how this might be viewed by Israelis (or American Jews), or perhaps being aware of that but deciding that it doesn’t matter, or even, in the worst case, deciding that it’s a benefit, isn’t the same as being an anti-Semite. It means that you’re insensitive to how this might be viewed by Israelis (or American Jews), or maybe that you know enough to be aware but don’t really care, or, at its worst, that you think it would be a good “message”. From an Israeli (or American Jewish) perspective, all of those are problematic.
August 6th, 2009 at 10:25 am
Or maybe all of this concern-trolling about American Jews has as much connection to the real-life opinions and concerns of actual American Jews as Barack Obama’s much-discussed “Jewish Problem” during the presidential campaign.
August 6th, 2009 at 10:48 am
Larry Birnbaum,
You’re really pathetic on this one. Most of MY’s post is simply quoting from Peretz, and Peretz does a perfectly fine job of making himself look like a deranged bigot, no help from MY needed.
Much as with your own posts.
August 6th, 2009 at 11:19 am
Larry is doing a lot more distorting of Peretz’s post than Yglesias is. Peretz is doing a classic concern-troll.
August 6th, 2009 at 11:59 am
So… an American president has the temerity to refuse meek sanction of Israel’s settlement policy, and that means we can expect pogroms to bust out all over the U.S.? Here in L.A., I suppose, hapless urban shoppers, trotting clumsily in their stylish Martini Osvaldos, will be chased up and down Rodeo Drive by saber-slashing American Cossacks. Find this unbelievable? Yes… you do. And you should – it’s nonsense. We either accept Israel’s slow, agonizing ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, or we’re vicious anti-Semites. What’s funny is how effective once was this hogwash at shutting down all legitimate debate. But, not this millennium. Get ready!
August 6th, 2009 at 5:06 pm
Further proof that The New Republic has become a tawdry Likhudist rag. How much money from Mossad do you think is flowing to Marty and Co.?
August 11th, 2009 at 4:06 pm
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