Exchange: Eric and ‘Goliath’ Exchange: Eric and ‘Goliath’
Eric and Goliath We were barraged with letters and web comments about two pieces that ran in our November 4 issue: one was Eric Alterman’s column, titled “The ‘I Hate Israel’ Handbook,” in which he attacks Max Blumenthal’s book Goliath. The other was Blumenthal’s “Israel Cranks Up the Right-Wing PR Machine,” an excerpt from Goliath. A debate between the two authors migrated to our website (see TheNation.com/blog/176861/eric-alterman-replies-max-blumenthals-letter and TheNation.com/article/176802/response-eric-alterman). —The editors Eric Alterman’s review of Goliath says more about Alterman’s views than about the book. And if this is the best that liberal Zionism has to offer, then Zionism—not to mention the Palestinians—is in deeper trouble than I had imagined. I am troubled by The Nation’s need to present “two sides of the story.” Having Alterman do his hatchet job in the same issue as Blumenthal’s article is a case in point. There is no equivalency between whatever Palestinians have done or are doing and what Israel and Zionism have done to the Palestinians. And no section of the media, particularly the progressive one, should try to make it so. Let Alterman’s piece be published, but either not in The Nation—or with The Nation’s disclaimer. Abdeen Jabara Past president, American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee I grew up reading The Nation, and I was shocked that this bastion of enlightened thought would publish that horrendous piece by Eric Alterman defending Zionism. Isn’t it time the left rejected this kind of overt racism and petty, chauvinistic nationalism? How could The Nation betray its legacy by pandering to those who defend an apartheid regime? As Phan Nguyen has said, can we look forward to Nation pieces like “Two Views on Homosexuality,” “Two Views on Neoliberal Globalization” or “Two Views on Obama’s Birthplace”? Shame! Keith S. Schuerholz oakland, calif. Since Eric Alterman singled me out in his online response to Max Blumenthal, I would like to respond with a few words about the legacy of the Israeli thinker and social critic Yeshayahu Leibowitz. I have no desire to respond to Alterman’s defense of his claim that “Jews all over the world ‘revered’ Leibowitz for the brilliance of his Talmud exegesis,” except to reiterate the accepted scholarly view that Leibowitz’s writings on Jewish philosophy do not constitute Talmudic exegesis. Obviously, as a philosopher writing about Judaism, Leibowitz cites the Talmud, as do Martin Buber and Michael Walzer, for example. But this hardly makes him, or them, brilliant Talmudic exegetes. As for being revered by “Jews all over the world”: I wish Leibowitz was better known outside Israel. I have been teaching his thought for more than thirty years, since I attended his public lectures in Jerusalem. Enter any US synagogue (including Orthodox) and ask Jews if they have heard of Yeshayahu Leibowitz, and you will generally encounter blank stares. The philosopher’s sister Nechamah is better-known, especially among the Orthodox. Apparently Alterman knows of Leibowitz as a Jewish philosopher who merited an entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (as one of the SEP’s editors I can recommend it). That apparently explains his surprise at Blumenthal’s claim in Goliath that Leibowitz was revered by the Israeli left. But the Israeli left knew and revered Leibowitz as an outspoken Orthodox Jewish moral critic who foresaw in 1967 how the occupation would cause Israeli society to rot; who accordingly demanded an immediate, total Israeli withdrawal to the 1949 armistice lines even without a peace agreement; who referred to the nationalist fervor around the conquest of Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza as “fascism”; who coined the memorable term Diskotel for the religio-nationalist infatuation with the Western Wall (Kotel in Hebrew); who called the religious Zionist settlers “worshipers of stones and trees” (i.e., idolaters); and who claimed that the Israeli public enjoyed the murder of Arabs in Beirut in 1982. Much of the above can be found in Leibowitz’s book Judaism, Human Values, and the Jewish State (for a good English website see giorab.wix.com/leibowitz). On the centenary of Leibowitz’s birth, in 2003, and at the height of the Second Intifada, the magazine section of Haaretz published a cover article whose inside headline began, “What Remains of the Worship of Yeshayahu Leibowitz?” That “worship” was not of Leibowitz the philosopher but of the sharp-tongued social critic who railed against the establishment. The fact that the left did not understand that critique in the context of Leibowitz’s religious philosophy is irrelevant to that reverence. Is Leibowitz revered by the left now? Two months ago, Haaretz’s columnist and critic Gideon Levy delivered a birthday tribute to that grand Israeli leftist Uri Avnery, saying, “Avnery was one of the first to utter the words that everyone mumbles now—‘two states for two peoples.’ Together with Yeshayahu Leibowitz and the radical socialist organization Matzpen, he was the pillar of fire that went before the camp.” From Leibowitz and Matzpen to Avnery and Levy, there is an Israeli tradition of harsh criticism of mainstream Zionist policies toward the Palestinians. Leibowitz’s criticism of the actions of the Israeli army and government began in the early 1950s and was based on general and Jewish morality. This earned him the reverence of the left. Perhaps I do Alterman an injustice by inferring that he did not know this aspect of Leibowitz’s persona. But in wishing to discredit Blumenthal, Alterman gave his readers no reason to believe that he did. Charles H. Manekin college park, md. Eric Alterman cites Max Blumenthal’s reference to the Labor Zionist leader Berl Katznelson’s remark that “the Zionist enterprise is an enterprise of conquest,” and points out that Katznelson also said that he did not wish to see the realization of Zionism with the Arabs in the position of the Jews of Poland. However, a gulf often existed between the public statements of Labor Zionist leaders and their private views. A standard official position held that there was no conflict between the interests of Palestinian Arabs and Zionists, that the real conflict was between the Palestinian Arab masses and their landowners and effendis, and that this conflict could be solved through an alliance of Palestinian Arab and Jewish workers. That position was largely for external consumption. Arthur Ruppin, who oversaw Zionist colonization during the 1920s and ’30s, noted in 1936 that “on every site where we purchase land and where we settle people, the present cultivators will inevitably be dispossessed.” His successor Yoseph Weitz reported in the official Histadrut daily that in 1940 he and other leaders, including Katznelson, had reached the following conclusion: “The only solution is Palestine, or at least western Palestine without Arabs…and there is no other way but to transfer all the Arabs from here to the neighboring countries. To transfer all of them; not one village, not one tribe, should be left behind.” Labor had a penchant for obfuscation, mystification and out-and-out deception. Katznelson also said, “We have never been a colonialist movement; we are a movement of colonization.” Ralph M. Coury new haven, conn. Brandishing the flag of objectivity, even-handedness and liberal savoir-faire, Eric Alterman accuses Max Blumenthal of “selectivity” and of being “naïve.” However, it is Alterman who, in his shallow, reductive review, displays these traits. Rather than deal with Blumenthal’s thesis—that Israeli society is damaged emotionally and corrupted morally by the occupation and its treatment of Palestinian citizens—Alterman wrests the argument back onto the familiar terrain of equivalency between the Jewish state and the Palestinians. Alterman focuses on hatred rather than history, sentiment rather than system. That is why, besides invoking that old song of Israel as a democracy in a sea of existential threat (as if that nuclear power had never invaded Lebanon or Gaza), Alterman ends with a comment on the novelist David Grossman’s loss and anger. This is the trump card—the noble Peace Now activist who supported the devastating bombing campaign of Lebanon in 2006—behind which is a pack of shabby tricks designed to dismiss Blumenthal’s unblinking look at Israeli society. Naomi Wallace otterburn, north yorkshire, uk I’d like to thank Eric Alterman for his review of Goliath, since immediately after reading it, I went out and bought a copy. It was identical to my experience when listening to an interview of Benny Morris calling books by Avi Shlaim “garbage”: I went out and acquired several. So thank you, Eric and other Israeli apologists, for identifying another potential great read. Blumenthal’s book can keep company with those of many other authors I have on this topic, including Rashid Khalidi, Noam Chomsky, Ilan Pappé, Jimmy Carter, Walid Khalidi, James Ennes Jr., Gershom Gorenberg, Victor Ostrovsky and Norman Finkelstein. I look forward to reading more of Alterman’s unbiased reviews. But for diversity, perhaps The Nation should reach out to AIPAC to find a reviewer who is less partisan. Robin Adams amesbury, mass. Alterman Replies I was sorry to see the close-minded call for The Nation to censor me by Abdeen Jabara. He might be interested in knowing that I appeared as an invited speaker at an Anti-Discrimination Committee convention in Washington and at a council of local businessmen in South Dakota to speak about US press coverage of the Palestinian conflict. In both cases, I was the guest of ADC founder Senator James Abourezk. We did not agree on everything, to be sure, but there was no attempt to censor my views. (And by the way, there would not be a “disclaimer” attached to my column; I wrote it at the express request of my editors.) Keith S. Schuerholz’s and Phan Nguyen’s comparison of “Two Views of Israel” to “two views on Obama’s birthplace” tells you all you need to know about the mindset of defenders of Blumenthal’s book. Despite what they and he may wish to believe, Israel is an actual country in the Middle East. It takes a certain kind of crazy to equate it with birtherism. Unfortunately, it’s the kind of crazy wishful thinking one sees altogether too often in Blumenthal’s book and in the arguments of its defenders. With regard to the letter from Charles H. Manekin, better known as the pro-BDS blogger “Jerry Haber,” his argument is as tendentious as it is wrongheaded. Manekin/Haber has toned down his argument quite a bit since he originally claimed on his blog, “Alterman (or his research assistant) may be interested to learn that Yeshayahu Leibowitz didn’t write any Talmudic exegesis and was NOT revered by Jews all over the world—in fact, virtually nobody outside of Israel knew who he was.” Having read my responses to his myriad blog posts on the topic, he now apparently accepts the fact that both of his earlier assertions were false, and hence he has not repeated them here. Nevertheless his pretenses to “accepted scholarly views” bear no relation to any such thing. Even in its present form, Manekin’s complaint remains ridiculous. Leibowitz spent decades as the editor in chief of Encyclopedia Hebraica and his writings, including his myriad Talmudic exegeses, were published in three languages during his lifetime. Manekin/Haber claims, “Enter any US synagogue (including Orthodox) and ask Jews if they have heard of Yeshayahu Leibowitz, and you will generally encounter blank stares.” He presents no evidence for this, and of course he has none. He continues: “Apparently Alterman knows of Leibowitz as a Jewish philosopher who merited an entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.” Here again, Mankekin’s method is to simply make stuff up and then assert it as if that makes it true. As it happens, I long ago read Leibowitz’s Faith of Maimonides and his Judaism, Human Values, and the Jewish State. Recently, I’ve appreciated his challenging Torah commentaries, Accepting the Yoke of Heaven. Manekin, on his blog (where his letter also appears), imagined that I think about Israel for “maybe five minutes a month” (though he has since deleted this nonsensical accusation) and added “Alterman clearly doesn’t read Haaretz or YNETdaily…he gets his reporting on Israel from the mainstream media.” Here yet again, he is simply making this up and pretending it’s true. As for the rest of his contentions, let’s just say the record does not fill me with much confidence about anything this fellow has to say. Ralph M. Coury does not, as far as I am aware, dispute anything I wrote in my column. Naomi Wallace writes of my “invoking that old song of Israel as a democracy in a sea of existential threat (as if the nuclear power had never invaded Lebanon or Gaza).” Sorry, but this invocation took place exclusively in her imagination. I wrote nothing of the kind. I congratulate Robin Adams on her library. Overall, I need to say I’m deeply disappointed in the reaction to my column. Blumenthal’s defenders, unable to defend the veracity of his dreadful book—a book, I might add, recently endorsed on the website of neo-Nazi David Duke—have filled Nation letter boxes, Twitter and the blogosphere with personal invective, ad hominem attacks and purposeful distortion of my work in an attempt to discredit a column that has proven to be 100 percent accurate. As someone who has spent more than thirty years arguing on behalf of a two-state solution that would allow the Palestinians to live in peace and dignity alongside Israel—and severely criticizing those in Israel and the American Jewish community who work to undermine such a solution—I have often heard it remarked that the Palestinian people have been profoundly ill served by their leaders. Unfortunately, much the same can be said about their cheerleaders as well. Eric Alterman new york city
Nov 25, 2013 / Our Readers and Eric Alterman
Exchange: Trials and Designs Exchange: Trials and Designs
On May 13, The Nation published Michael Sorkin’s appallingly inaccurate “The Trials of Rafi Segal,” which presented a dramatic tale of betrayal. However, the article has the facts backwards and the truth upside down and violated fundamental standards of journalism. Sorkin’s journalistic travesty recounted the tale of Rafi Segal, an Israeli architect, who was selected to be the “preferred architect” to design the Israel National Library, only to have the winning title and potential contract snatched away. According to Sorkin, Segal was betrayed by the competition sponsor, an Israeli foundation funded by the Rothschilds. Sorkin also blamed me personally for raising questions about the ownership of rights to the winning design. Sorkin called Segal’s disqualification the “narrowest (and phoniest) legalism” and claimed that Segal was “forced to go to the courts to counter the manifest injustice he has suffered.” A dramatic tale, as related by Sorkin, but not the truth. In reality, Segal violated the rules of the competition to obtain an unfair advantage, lied about it, was eventually found out and was disqualified as a result. Segal’s disqualification was the result of his own misdeeds and deceit. Segal’s meritless lawsuit, in which he sought to be reinstated as the designer of the National Library of Israel, was a complete failure. In September, facing the certainty of final dismissal of his claim by the court, Segal entirely abandoned his case. Moreover, overruling Segal’s objections, the Jerusalem District Court awarded to HyperBina the sum of 30,000 Israeli new shekels in attorneys’ fees and costs, an unusually large fee award in Israel for a pre-trial resolution, and the second award of attorneys’ fees made by the court against Segal and in favor of HyperBina. In addition to his failed lawsuit, during the process, Segal spread falsehoods in public. Segal’s behavior was described in a public statement by the competition organizer, the Israeli National Library Construction Company (with board directors from the Israeli National Library and Yad Hanadiv): “All the detailed facts [about the disqualification] have been made known to Segal and we regret his attempts to slant and distort the truth by spreading fabrications and claims that have no basis in reality.” The competition organizer also stated, “The decision [to disqualify Segal] was taken separately by both the board of the National Library Construction Company and the board of the [Israeli] National Library—unanimously in both instances.” Segal exemplifies a classic case of manipulation by someone who is dealing with two parties that do not have direct contact with each other. Segal lacked (or did not want to spend) the resources needed to compete in the Israel National Library competition, so he approached HyperBina Design Group to contribute essential design work. However, the competition rules allowed only Israeli-registered architects to participate in the first round of the competition. So, in his dealing with HyperBina in Cambridge, Segal concealed the portion of the competition rules that stated the nationality requirement. He promised, in writing, that HyperBina, which did the majority of design work, would be an “equal partner” in the competition. In dealings with the competition authorities in Jerusalem, Segal concealed HyperBina’s contributions and falsely claimed to be the sole creator and sole owner of rights to the project. When the competition authorities investigated, the chain of project e-mails and the detailed project documents showed what actually had happened. In the end, the competition authorities disqualified Segal because, as they told the Israeli court, Segal “blatantly violated the rules of the competition and had been deceitful.” Why did Sorkin get this story so completely backwards? In part, the answer is that Segal is his personal friend, and the two share political views. However, the fundamental reason for Sorkin’s distortion is that he was unwilling to spend the effort and time in proper investigation, expected from responsible journalists, to seek the truth. When Sorkin contacted HyperBina, I, as its owner, offered to make available to Sorkin the full Israeli court record (which was in Hebrew). Sorkin e-mailed back: “No need to worry about those Hebrew language documents… Greek to me!” So he did not bother to review the evidence filed by the competition authorities. Sorkin did not ask to examine the project records that display every step in the project design process; nor did he interview all those at my firm who witnessed how the project was produced. Instead Sorkin blindly repeated distortions supplied by Segal to the court. Sorkin failed to inform his readers that Segal’s legal case was a failure from the start. The Israeli court rejected Segal’s first request for a temporary injunction barring the selection of another project architect. Then, on the evening before the date of the full hearing on such request this past January, Segal abruptly withdrew his petition for the injunction, clearly because the requested injunction was going to be denied. The court then granted HyperBina its costs and attorneys’ fees relating to this motion for the first time in the legal case. All this occurred before Sorkin wrote his article, but Sorkin did not mention these facts at all. Fundamentally, Sorkin pretended to be informed, while in fact he was not. Amazingly, Sorkin’s 2,900-word article about the alleged “injustice” done to Segal does not mention once that Segal’s violation of competition rules and deceit were the official grounds for Segal’s disqualification. Moreover, Sorkin’s article is full of Segal’s falsehoods defaming HyperBina, me and the competition authorities, as well as inaccurate allegations by another of Segal’s friends, Preston Scott Cohen, all of which Sorkin irresponsibly portrays as facts. Sorkin’s article reveals a careless and irresponsible disregard of facts, a lack of professional integrity, lack of concern for those he attacked and a failure to meet basic standards of professional journalism. The Nation and Michael Sorkin should apologize to those who were attacked so unfairly in this article. Bing Wang cambridge, mass. Sorkin Replies In preparing my essay, I accumulated and reviewed hundreds of pages of documents, including the affidavits filed by Bing Wang and Rafi Segal. I corresponded with the competition sponsors, members of the jury, Segal, Wang and other interested parties. I took careful note of the extensive coverage in the Israeli media, much of which was in English and some of which was in Hebrew and translated for me. I stand by my conclusions, which are not unique to me. My main point is that Segal’s design was, for a combination of reasons, including Wang’s claims of authorship, unfairly quashed. I remain persuaded that in all legitimate artistic and creative dimensions, the design of the library was Segal’s. Wang’s letter does nothing to dissuade me. When I contacted Wang asking for an interview, she refused on the advice of her counsel. She also declined, again on the advice of her counsel, to send me unspecified materials she claimed would significantly clarify the facts and asked that I delay the article to await them. The quotations and assertions in Wang’s letter do not reflect legal conclusions of the court but are expressions by the party—“the competition organizer”—that disqualified Segal in the first place, the subject of my criticism. Italicizing these comments does not increase their accuracy or disinterestedness. Preston Scott Cohen, whose “inaccurate allegations” are denounced by Wang, was the chair of the architecture department at Harvard and stands by his statements. Wang neglects to mention the other quoted source of my information about the authorship of the project: an Israeli architect who was employed by Wang at the time and was a main contributor to the project in her office (italics mine). That members of Wang’s firm assisted in the preparation of the design submission is not in dispute. It remains for Segal to comment on why he has declined to pursue further legal remedies in Israel (at least one other is pending), but the fact that the library has long since signed a contract with other architects, selected without benefit of a design competition, may have persuaded him of the futility of throwing good money after bad. Michael Sorkin new york city
Nov 19, 2013 / Bing Wang and Michael Sorkin
Letters Letters
Immodest proposals… of skinheads and Tea Partiers… Queequeg rules… literate reviews
Nov 12, 2013 / Our Readers and Stuart Klawans
Letters Letters
Destroy the planet for profit… BP = bitter pill… let sixty golf courses bloom?… correction in Bean Town…
Nov 6, 2013 / Our Readers
Letters Letters
People’s pope? Well, half of them… going hungry in America… atom death toll numbers: too low… Thou swell, thou witty…
Oct 22, 2013 / Our Readers
Letters Letters
Horror in Afghanistan… the great Charlie Mingus… field trip to the South Bronx
Oct 16, 2013 / Our Readers and Barry Schwabsky
Letters Letters
Stop the rot!… run over on the runway… diapers: the new luxury… students always come last… ditch the bells & whistles
Oct 8, 2013 / Our Readers
FDR and the Holocaust FDR and the Holocaust
Washington, D.C. In early 1943, at the height of the Holocaust, a prominent journalist denounced President Franklin Roosevelt’s response to the Nazi genocide in harsh terms: “You and I and the President and the Congress and the State Department are accessories to the crime and share Hitler’s guilt,” she wrote. “If we had behaved like humane and generous people instead of complacent, cowardly ones, the two million Jews lying today in the earth of Poland and Hitler’s other crowded graveyards would be alive and safe…. We had it in our power to rescue this doomed people and we did not lift a hand to do it—or perhaps it would be fairer to say that we lifted just one cautious hand, encased in a tight-fitting glove of quotas and visas and affidavits, and a thick layer of prejudice.” This stunning critique of FDR’s Jewish refugee policy was written by none other than Freda Kirchwey, staunch New Dealer, Roosevelt supporter and editor in chief of The Nation. Evidently journalist Laurence Zuckerman was not aware of the Holocaust record of the magazine for which he was writing when he wrote “FDR’s Jewish Problem” [Aug. 5/12]. It completely refutes Zuckerman’s thesis that criticism of FDR’s Holocaust record is all the handiwork of conservatives and right-wing Zionists to drum up support for Israel. The Nation spoke out early and vociferously for US action to rescue Europe’s Jews. After the 1938 Kristallnacht pogrom, it called for admission to the United States of at least 15,000 German Jewish refugee children. (The administration declined to endorse the proposal.) The Roosevelt administration’s refugee policy “is one which must sicken any person of ordinarily humane instinct,” Kirchwey wrote in 1940. “It is as if we were to examine laboriously the curriculum vitae of flood victims clinging to a piece of floating wreckage and finally to decide that no matter what their virtues, all but a few had better be allowed to drown.” In 1941, FDR’s administration devised a harsh new immigration regulation that barred admission to anyone with close relatives in Europe, on the grounds that the Nazis might compel them to spy for Hitler by threatening their relatives. The Nation denounced that as “reckless and ridiculous.” Numerous prominent progressives have followed in The Nation’s and Kirchwey’s footsteps by frankly acknowledging FDR’s failings in this regard. Walter Mondale called President Roosevelt’s 1938 refugee conference in Evian, France, a “legacy of shame” and said the participants “failed the test of civilization.” At the opening of the US Holocaust Museum in 1993, President Clinton pointed out that under the Roosevelt administration, “doors to liberty were shut and…rail lines to the camps within miles of militarily significant targets were left undisturbed.” Nancy Pelosi, in her autobiography, recalled with pride how her father, Congressman Thomas D’Alesandro, broke with FDR over the Holocaust and supported the Bergson Group, which challenged FDR’s refugee policy. George McGovern, in a 2004 interview about the missions he flew near Auschwitz as a young bomber pilot, said: “Franklin Roosevelt was a great man and he was my political hero. But I think he made two great mistakes”: the internment of Japanese-Americans, and the decision “not to go after Auschwitz…. God forgive us…. There was a pretty good chance we could have blasted those rail lines off the face of the earth [and] interrupted the flow of people to those death chambers, and we had a pretty good chance of knocking out those gas ovens.” Progressives have a long and admirable record of honestly acknowledging FDR’s failings alongside his achievements. Roosevelt’s response to the Holocaust is no more defensible than his internment of Japanese-Americans or his troubling record on the rights of African-Americans. Recognizing that fact does not endanger the legacy of the New Deal or diminish FDR’s accomplishments in bringing America out of the Depression or his leadership in World War II. It merely acknowledges his flaws as well. RAFAEL MEDOFF, founding director, The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies Northampton, Mass. Laurence Zuckerman suggests that Roosevelt’s critics are judging him harshly with the advantage of hindsight. He writes that “when he did learn about the murder of millions of Jews, he had no understanding of ‘the Holocaust,’ which came later and is now so embedded in our consciousness that it is hard to imagine what it was like to live without such knowledge.” But this does not accurately reflect public awareness at the time. One needs only to read Freda Kirchwey: “Jews in Europe are being killed because they are Jews. Hitler has promised their total liquidation. The ways…these slaughters are conducted have been reported. The numbers have been verified…. You and I and the President and the Congress and the State Department are accessories to the crime and share Hitler’s guilt.” Zuckerman also belittles the contributions of the Bergson Group in the formation of the War Refugee Board, saying that the group’s “biggest feat is something that Roosevelt created.” The Bergson Group sponsored legislation in Congress to establish a rescue agency. It is probable that at hearings on the bill, the State Department’s obstruction of efforts by US Jewish groups to rescue their European brethren would become public. Faced with a scandal, Roosevelt got ahead of the situation by creating the WRB—this was not a moral awakening but a political calculation. Regarding the bombing of Auschwitz: the WRB investigated bombing the rail lines, gas chambers and crematoriums, but officials claimed that bombing Auschwitz would use air power needed elsewhere. However, US planes were bombing the I.G. Farben complex at nearby Monowitz. Between July and November 1944, more than 2,800 US planes bombed the oil factories, sometimes flying right over the Birkenau death camp. Military experts and historians continue to debate the issue. Could precision bombing have been done without loss of prisoners’ lives? And would bombing the gas chambers actually have impeded the extermination? Historian Richard Breitman points out: “the historians’ debate…misses the main problem…: [the War Department] was opposed to the whole idea of a military mission for humanitarian purposes…and stopped the [WRB] from pursuing it.” Of course, one cannot ever know if bombing Auschwitz would have had the desired results. But as Breitman concludes: “bombing the gas chambers would have been a potent symbol of American concern for European Jews.” MARK GERSTEIN, former instructor in Holocaust Studies, University of Massachusetts Washington, D.C. In response to Laurence Zuckerman’s fine article, we might explain the thinking behind our book FDR and the Jews. We wrote the book because, first, scholarship is typically polarized between lauding FDR as the savior of the Jews and condemning him as a bystander or worse to the Holocaust. Second, we sought to analyze FDR’s approach to Jewish issues from the perspective of his entire life and career. Third, we tried to avoid writing history backward and making unverifiable counterfactual assumptions. The real story of FDR and the Jews is how a humane but pragmatic president navigated competing priorities during the Great Depression, foreign policy crises and World War II. We do not whitewash FDR. “For most of his presidency Roosevelt did little to aid the imperiled Jews of Germany and Europe,” we wrote. Still, FDR was not monolithic in his policies and “at times acted decisively to rescue Jews, often withstanding contrary pressures from the American public, Congress, and his own State Department.” Overall, FDR was far better for the Jews than his political opposition at home or any other world leader of his time. Our loudest critic has been Rafael Medoff, a longstanding FDR critic who assails all those who do not follow his party line. Political decisions during the Holocaust had a moral dimension that still elicits an emotional response. But some judgments—that FDR blithely sent passengers on the St. Louis to their death in the gas chambers, or that he refused to order the bombing of Auschwitz out of indifference or anti-Semitism—are historical distortions. We hope our readers will be able to judge with more and better information than they had. RICHARD BREITMAN, ALLAN J. LICHTMAN, Distinguished Professors, American University Zuckerman Replies New York City I am familiar with Freda Kirchwey and the articles from which Rafael Medoff quotes. But is he aware of this quote: “President Roosevelt has been a man whose greatness shines brightly in times of crisis. He is the only possible leader for the next four years.” It is from Kirchwey’s endorsement of Roosevelt’s historic bid for a fourth term, in The Nation of July 22, 1944, long after the condemnations of FDR’s refugee policies that Medoff cites—showing that the picture of FDR is more complex than Medoff would have us believe. It is disturbing that in his latest book, FDR and the Holocaust: A Breach of Faith, Medoff quotes Kirchwey’s criticisms of FDR at length while failing to mention that she still supported him. Emphasizing the former while ignoring the latter illustrates his flawed approach to writing history. Neither my article nor the book FDR and the Jews, as its authors Richard Breitman and Allan Lichtman point out, portrayed FDR as beyond criticism for his handling of the Holocaust. But neither was he a total villain. Medoff’s articles and latest book contain a litany of criticisms of Roosevelt but virtually nothing about his achievements. One can read Medoff and forget that during FDR’s presidency the country was suffering through the worst economic catastrophe in its history, that the fates of Great Britain and the Soviet Union were hanging by a thread, and that America had suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of the Japanese in Asia. In his letter, Medoff writes approvingly that “progressives have a long and admirable record of honestly acknowledging FDR’s failings alongside his achievements.” If only Medoff were equally fair-minded. As I wrote in my article, over the last thirty years a group of ideologically driven activists, of whom Medoff is the most energetic, have made it their business to cast Roosevelt’s handling of the Holocaust in the harshest possible light. These activists have largely had the field to themselves, and so a distorted image of FDR has become widely accepted. It is easy for politicians of all stripes to go along. Their homilies curry favor with Jewish supporters at little or no political cost. One of my goals for the article was to re-balance the scales and expose the agenda of FDR’s most vociferous critics. Medoff does not address the central question of my piece: What contemporary purpose does it serve to portray Roosevelt as complicit in the Holocaust? Why do so many of Medoff’s articles link Roosevelt to current events in Israel, a country that didn’t exist during FDR’s lifetime? At a time when our country’s leaders and many of its citizens are agonizing over how to respond to the use of chemical weapons in Syria, we might all agree that figuring out the best way to stop mass murder overseas has never been an easy task. LAURENCE ZUCKERMAN
Sep 24, 2013 / Our Readers and Laurence Zuckerman