{"id":4480,"date":"2008-07-30T22:15:19","date_gmt":"2008-07-31T05:15:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=4480"},"modified":"2008-07-30T22:15:35","modified_gmt":"2008-07-31T05:15:35","slug":"klein-neo-con-conflict-gathers-steam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2008\/07\/30\/klein-neo-con-conflict-gathers-steam\/","title":{"rendered":"Klein-Neocon Conflict Gathers Steam"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t already know about it, the ongoing battle between Time<\/em> magazine\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Joe Klein and the hard-line neo-conservatives at Commentary<\/em>\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Contentions blog, as well as the Anti-Defamation League\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s (ADL) Abe Foxman (whose recent silence on the issue suggests he thinks this can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t turn out well for his side), over the question of divided or dual loyalties and what is in the respective interests of the U.S. and Israel appears to be heating up. One hopes that it will soon move from the blogosphere (including Tim<\/em>e\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Swampland\u00e2\u20ac\u009d) to the mainstream U.S. media. Perhaps Klein himself will get the go-ahead from his editors to devote one of his magazine columns to it so it actually gets in print.<\/p>\n

Daniel Luban and I wrote about the controversy today for IPS<\/a> in which we tried to put it in the context of a series of events that have made it possible for a mainstream, centrist journalist \u00e2\u20ac\u201d Jewish and proudly \u00e2\u20ac\u0153pro-Israel\u00e2\u20ac\u009d no less \u00e2\u20ac\u201d like Klein to go after the neo-cons for their war-mongering, their \u00e2\u20ac\u0153very, very dangerous form of extremism\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and, a propos my last post<\/a>, their \u00e2\u20ac\u0153really dangerous anachronistic neocolonial sensibility,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d as Klein described it in a very compelling interview<\/a> with Jeffrey Goldberg on the Atlantic Monthly\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s blog Tuesday. (I praised<\/a> Goldberg\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s own extraordinary attack on AIPAC<\/a> and other right-wing Jewish groups in the New York Times <\/em>two months ago as a major advance in the ongoing battle over the media\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s reflexive use of the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153pro-Israel\u00e2\u20ac\u009d moniker to describe such groups.) Klein followed up the interview with a very concise restatement of his position and his determination to continue denouncing the neo-cons in a post, entitled \u00e2\u20ac\u0153When Extremists Attack<\/a>,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d on the Swampland blog.<\/p>\n

Led by John Podhoretz<\/a> and Christian Right activist and Bill Kristol protege Peter Wehner<\/a>, now with the misnamed Ethics and Public Policy Center (where Elliott Abrams spent most of his time after his pardon by President George H.W. Bush), and provoked by Goldberg\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s interview, the neo-cons have returned to the attack, once again accusing Klein of anti-Semitism (which was Foxman\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s concern<\/a>) and adding charges of both intellectual and emotional instability for good measure. <\/p>\n

But, as he argued in his interview with Goldberg, Klein argued that he is not anti-Semitic; he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s anti-neo-conservative \u00e2\u20ac\u201d a very useful distinction that underlines the difference between religion or ethnicity, on the one hand, and political ideology on the other. Now, if all Jews were neo-conservatives, then Klein\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s critics, including Foxman, might have a point, but, as Klein notes, Jewish neo-conservatives, to their great frustration, have always been and remain a rather small minority within the larger U.S. Jewish community.<\/p>\n

In any event, both Klein\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s interview and latest post are well worth reading, and the controversy he has provoked will hopefully soon move into the mainstream press. Oh, and don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t miss M.J. Rosenberg\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s review <\/a>of the latest developments at talkingpointsmemo.com.<\/p>\n

<\/a>Visit Lobelog.com<\/a> for the latest news analysis and commentary from Inter Press News Service’s Washington bureau chief Jim Lobe.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t already know about it, the ongoing battle between Time magazine\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Joe Klein and the hard-line neo-conservatives at Commentary\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Contentions blog, as well as the Anti-Defamation League\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s (ADL) Abe Foxman (whose recent silence on the issue suggests he thinks this can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t turn out well for his side), over the question of divided or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-4480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4480"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4480\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4482,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4480\/revisions\/4482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4480"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=4480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}