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A NEWSLETTER WITH AN EYE ON POLITICAL MEDIA

All Israel and the Jews Edition

The latest in books, articles, films, plays, and off-Broadway musicals

I admit I have not read Martin Indyk's 688-page love letter to Henry
Kissinger, Master of the Game: Henry Kissinger and the Art of Middle
East Diplomacy
.
I sort of feel like I have though, as the book has now scored excerpts
in The Forward, The Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, and The Wall Street
Journal, as well as reviews and/or interviews in The Wall Street
Journal, The New York Times, Haaretz, The Forward, The Guardian, Jewish
Insider, The Jerusalem Post, and CNN.com. Of the above, here is the
funniest headline: "Was Henry Kissinger a Misunderstood Idealist?
"
And here is the worst idea: Perhaps Biden could learn something from
America's most accomplished diplomat, Henry Kissinger
.

Indyk thinks Kissinger's diplomacy with regard to Egypt and Israel
before, during, and after the 1973 war was brilliant and idealistically
driven. I beg to differ. Kissinger discouraged the Israelis from
entering into peace talks with the Egyptians, encouraged the Egyptians
to go to war, and encouraged the Israelis to remain unprepared for that
war and therefore endure terrible, unnecessary loss of life. He then
fought Nixon tooth and nail (together with the Pentagon) to try to stop
Nixon from resupplying Israel in the midst of the crisis, though Nixon
overruled him. Unless Indyk somehow convinces me otherwise, I will make
this argument in my forthcoming book, now tentatively titled What We
Talk About When We Talk About Israel, to be published by Basic Books
next fall. In the meantime, here are some of Kissinger's greatest hits
on this and related topics, drawn from the draft of what will be that
most excellent book.

The Israelis, Kissinger said at various times, were "as obnoxious as
the Vietnamese," "psychopathic," "fools and common thugs,"
"a sick bunch," and "the world's worst shits." Even worse,
however, were American Jews because "they seek to prove their manhood
by total acquiescence in whatever Jerusalem wants." Of anti-Semitism,
Kissinger avers: "Any people who has been persecuted for two thousand
years must be doing something wrong."

Of course Nixon, his boss, may have been America's most anti-Semitic
president

(and Spiro Agnew was unquestionably America's most anti-Semitic vice
president
).
William Safire's favorite president
used to call
Kissinger "Jewish, Jewish ... Jewish as hell" and "a rag
merchant" when Nixon was angry, but "my Jewboy" when apparently in
a good mood. Kissinger played to these prejudices. Before the war began,
he told one aide that what was needed was "psychological warfare
against Israel ... which has treated us as no other country could." He
privately threatened that "if the Jewish Community comes after us, we
will have to go public with the whole record." He instructed his State
Department colleagues: "We are to see it through and even if they win
it will do so much damage to the Jewish community here that it may never
recover." During the lengthy, drawn-out 1974 negotiations over
Israel's withdrawal from the Sinai, he told the president, "I have
never seen such cold-blooded playing with the American national
interest."

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I've not seen much talk about Marc Tracy's big piece "Inside the
Unraveling of American Zionism
"
in The New York Times Magazine. I thought it well done, with complicated
arguments and emotions portrayed with sensitivity and subtlety (though
my friend Rabbi Jill Jacobs did not, as she writes here
).
I think the piece might have benefited from some more time spent in the
Times archives, as this is the latest chapter in a struggle that has
been going on among American Jews (and especially among rabbis) for
about a half-century. For instance, there is this page-one piece from
December 30, 1976: "American Jewish Leaders Are Split Over Issue of
Meeting With P.L.O.
"
Even more useful would have been "SOUL-SEARCHING
,"
from the May 8, 1988, Times Magazine. Authored during the first intifada
by Albert Vorspan, then a leading voice of Reform Jewry, it spoke of
American Jews "suffering under the shame and stress of pictures of
Israeli brutality televised nightly," and suggested they would have
liked "to crawl into a hole." Vorspan deemed this depressing reality
to be "the price we pay for having made of Israel an icon-a
surrogate faith, surrogate synagogue, surrogate God." As Don McLean
sadly concluded in a decidedly different context, "They would not
listen, they're not listening still. Perhaps they never will
."
 
(By the way, what was secret idealist Henry Kissinger's advice to
Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin after he instructed his military to
put down the teenage rock throwers with "might, power, beatings"? He
told them Israel needed to suppress the uprising "brutally and
rapidly," adding: "The first step should be to throw out television,
à la South Africa.")

Speaking of Jews, history, and the echoes of the past that continue to
haunt our lives today, for God's sake, go see the Roundabout
Theatre's revival of the 2003 Public Theater production of Tony
Kushner and Jeanine Tesori's Caroline, or Change at Studio 54 if you
can.

The autobiographical operetta that "mashes klezmer, spirituals,
sixties pop, and half a dozen other genres to create one irrepressible
American sound," as The New Yorker noted, takes place in the fateful
month of November 1963 in Lake Charles, Louisiana
. Caroline is the angry, illiterate Black
maid to a complicated Jewish household and does not know what to do with
her anger. (Sharon D. Clarke, who plays her in her first Broadway
appearance, is more than enough reason to see the play by itself.)
Kushner-who I think is by far this country's most important living
dramatist-examines the historical moment from the perspectives of his
stand-in, Noah, a sad, motherless eight-year-old boy; his stepmother, a
transplanted New York Jew; her father, a Communist rabble-rouser (who
wishes Blacks would cut out all this nonviolence bullshit); Caroline's
children, one of whom is caught up in the civil rights struggle; and
another maid who is going to night school and getting caught up in the
political moment as well. I saw the original and remembered it quite
fondly, and even bought the CD, but this production felt far more
powerful than the one I remember. The New Yorker's Alexandra Schwartz
writes
:
"The musical hasn't just stood the test of time; it has grown into
the present-or maybe the present has grown to meet it." And this
endorsement comes across as rather tepid compared to the enthusiasm
evident in the rave it received in the Times from Jesse Green
,
who argued that "the world around 'Caroline' has changed in ways
that make it seem more prescient, more painful and ... more hopeful now
than it did back then." And that review comes across as tepid compared
to Helen Shaw in New York magazine, who calls it a candidate for the
century's greatest piece of musical theater. (Prophetically, or
perhaps coincidentally, the play actually begins with an attack on the
statue of a Confederate general.) So much has been written about Blacks
and Jews and continues to be written, but I've never seen the issues
that underlie this troubled relationship illustrated so
sympathetically-and powerfully-as in this magnificent work. It
closes on January 9.

I read two books about Israel this past week. The first, Can We Talk
About Israel?: A Guide for the Curious, Confused, and Conflicted

by Daniel Sokatch of the estimable and admirable New Israel Fund, is one
of the best short contemporary guides to the complicated politics of the
place I've come across, provided the person reading it has an open
mind and almost no knowledge of what the hell is happening over there. I
particularly admire Sokatch for his title and subtitle, which perfectly
explain the book's purpose. The second one was The State of Israel vs.
the Jews

by Sylvain Cypel. This is not a well-titled book as the author does not
really appear to discuss "Jews" except in the most superficial
sense. But if you are in need of a book that compiles virtually every
terrible thing that the Israelis have said or done-at least until the
closing date for the author's submissions-you will find it here. You
won't find much context and you certainly won't find any
consideration of the (admittedly, often remote) possibility that Israel
had any non-nefarious reasons for anything it did. But for a
straightforward indictment, if you want it, here it is, come and get it
.

I also saw two movies about Israel this week. The first was a
documentary called The Forgotten Ones
,
about the manner in which Mizrahi Jews (Jews who came from Arab
countries) have been historically discriminated against in Israel and
how that historic discrimination continues to reverberate today. It's
playing at DOC NYC, America's largest documentary festival
.
If you know nothing about the Israeli "Black Panthers," this
engrossing film will fill that void.

The second, also a documentary, was called Our Natural Right
. It's based on a gimmick, but
one that works: The grandchildren of the signers of Israel's
Declaration of Independence return to the hall in Tel Aviv where the
document was signed 70 years later and are interviewed both about their
lives and about how each one thinks things have since turned out. All
(Jewish) Israeli perspectives are represented, including from those who
say it would be better to just throw the Arabs out, and those who say
there really shouldn't be an "Israel" at all. It also helps one to
recall the heady days of the sadly unrealized promises of that
wonderfully idealistic declaration.

I did not see any films at the Other Israel Film Festival
, and neither will you, because it ended
yesterday. (I tried to, opening night, but the auditorium was full when
I got there.) But you can maybe stream some in the future, here
.

See you next week.

~ ERIC ALTERMAN

Become A Member of The American Prospect Today!

Eric Alterman is a CUNY Distinguished Professor of English at Brooklyn
College, an award-winning journalist, and the author of 11 books, most
recently Lying in State: Why Presidents Lie-and Why Trump Is Worse
(Basic, 2020). Previously, he wrote The Nation's "Liberal Media"
column for 25 years. Follow him on Twitter @eric_alterman

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