Richard Cohen – our newest Clayton Williams

I planned to keep this blog for pictures and stories of my travels. I read an article tonight that got me so angry, that I have to write about it. Richard Cohen in The Washington Post has an op-ed titled Hunker Down with History. In it he calls the creation of Israel "a mistake". OK. That's fine. It would be surprising to my father, who is a 6th generation Jerusalemite. It might be insulting to my mother, a holocaust survivor who moved there from Germany after the war, but OK. I’ve read worse – especially in places like The Daily Kos and comments in various blogs. Funny enough, they didn’t get me as angry as this op-ed. I expect it from those folks.

Here's the part that pissed me off. What is his solution to the current conflict?  Let me quote:

"The smart choice is to pull back to defensible -- but hardly impervious -- borders. That includes getting out of most of the West Bank -- and waiting (and hoping) that history will get distracted and move on to something else. This will take some time, and in the meantime terrorism and rocket attacks will continue.

What a great plan – I assume then that he didn’t have any problems with gubernatorial candidate Clayton Williams saying (about rape) "as long as it's inevitable, you might as well lie back and enjoy it." I did – and voted for Ann Richards for many reasons – this being one of them.

OK, maybe that's going too far. Let’s take foreign policy. Al Qaeda and others hate us – much like Hamas and Hezbollah hate Israel. We have defensible borders. So, when 9/11 happened, I guess we should have just let it go. It'll happen. No need to go into Afghanistan. If we're really upset – we can take them to court or something. BRILLIANT!

You want a real solution? Finish off Hezbollah – let Lebanon become the complete nation-state it wants and deserves to be. Whether they make peace with Israel is something that they can decide – on their own. But let them have their own parliament, a single army that is their own, and full decision making over whether to attack another sovereign nation. Let them decide whether or not to continue with their President Lahoud who was installed by the Syrians. Let them decide whether or not to continue with their own Prime Minister Siniora.

It's crap articles like this that makes me despair for the return of a Scoop Jackson liberal wing in this country.

This made me really angry. CSPAN book-TV was going to televise a lecture by an author of a book on the Holocaust. In order to "show both sides", they were then going to give an equivalent amount of time by someone who denies that there were ever death camps in Nazi Germany. As someone whose grandfather was in Auschwitz, and who lost many relatives that I never got to meet, I find this to be political correctness taken to the extreme.

As the Post article states - if someone is going to lecture on the evils of slavery, will CSPAN now put on someone glorifying it? Ridiculous.

The author, Deborah Lipstadt, opted to not appear rather than have this happen. Her publisher supported her despite the loss of publicity on a channel watched (by definition) by heavy readers.

I expect that folks will call for letters to CSPAN. I have a different idea. I just bought the book to help make up for the losses that this lack of publicity may cause. I recommend that you do the same.

Update: Let the letter writing begin!

Update 2: Professional historians have sent CSPAN a protest letter (via Roger Simon).