{"id":5735,"date":"2009-05-31T06:40:55","date_gmt":"2009-05-31T14:40:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=5735"},"modified":"2009-05-31T06:42:03","modified_gmt":"2009-05-31T14:42:03","slug":"daniel-luban-a-final-word-on-amalek","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2009\/05\/31\/daniel-luban-a-final-word-on-amalek\/","title":{"rendered":"Daniel Luban: A Final Word on Amalek"},"content":{"rendered":"

A guest post from Daniel Luban:<\/em><\/p>\n

I have no desire to bore the reader with endless discussion of the Amalek controversy, so I will just weigh in with one final comment on the controversy and Jeffrey Goldberg\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s response to it. First, Andrew Sullivan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s post<\/a> on the controversy is worth reading, and reiterates the same basic point that both Zakaria and I made: how would Goldberg read the Amalek statement if it had come from Ahmadinejad?<\/p>\n

An annoyed Goldberg responds<\/a> that Netanyahu himself never used the Amalek analogy; rather, it was an anonymous Netanyahu advisor who mentioned it<\/a> to Goldberg. This response is unconvincing. While it is true that Netanyahu\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s advisor was the one who uttered the now-notorious words \u00e2\u20ac\u0153think Amalek,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d the advisor made this statement in response to Goldberg\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s request to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153gauge for me the depth of Mr. Netanyahu\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s anxiety about Iran.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d That is to say, the advisor was not stating his own opinions about the Iranian threat; rather, he was indicating that Netanyahu himself sees Iran as the new Amalek. It is, of course, perfectly possible that the advisor mischaracterized his boss\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s views, but Goldberg gave no indication in his original op-ed that he sees it this way. Rather, he deliberately sought to play up the Amalek analogy and made it the centerpiece of his intellectual profile of Netanyahu. (Note his title: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Israel\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Fears, Amalek\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Arsenal\u00e2\u20ac\u009d.)<\/p>\n

Goldberg has clearly become frustrated that the Amalek debate has slipped out of his control and ultimately backfired. His op-ed deployed the Amalek reference to convince American audiences that, far from being a shallow opportunist or unthinking warmonger, Netanyahu is in fact a serious statesman whose belligerence toward Iran is deeply rooted in Jewish history, the Bible, the Inquisition, the Holocaust, and so on. Readers are meant to come away with the impression (although it is never quite stated explicitly) that they should put aside their skepticism of the new Israeli government and trust its hawkish inclinations on the Iranian issue.<\/p>\n

As it turns out, his op-ed seems to have had the opposite effect. Rather than reassuring American Jews about Netanyahu\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s seriousness of purpose, all the talk of Amalek has simply reinforced their impression that Netanyahu is a dangerous zealot who should not be dictating U.S. policy towards Iran.<\/p>\n

It is only now that Goldberg steps in to do damage control \u00e2\u20ac\u201d claiming at first that there is nothing at all troubling about the Amalek analogy, next that there may be troubling aspects of the analogy but that these were completely unintended by those who used it, before finally falling back on the position that Netanyahu never espoused the analogy at all. He covers this retreat with familiar claims of expert knowledge, maintaining that anyone who draws attention to the commonsensical implications of the analogy is simply \u00e2\u20ac\u0153misreading\u00e2\u20ac\u009d or \u00e2\u20ac\u0153misunderstanding\u00e2\u20ac\u009d it, no doubt due to their lack of nuanced understanding of the rabbinic Jewish tradition. (Strangely, he does not demand that Western pundits refrain from commenting on the pronouncements of Iran\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s ayatollahs unless they have a thorough grounding in Islamic law and a few years of seminary at Qom under their belts.)<\/p>\n

In any case, the basic message throughout seems to be \u00e2\u20ac\u0153defer to Netanyahu\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. If the Amalek analogy increases our confidence in the prime minister, then we should focus on it; if it decreases our confidence, we should ignore it and pretend that it was never brought up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A guest post from Daniel Luban: I have no desire to bore the reader with endless discussion of the Amalek controversy, so I will just weigh in with one final comment on the controversy and Jeffrey Goldberg\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s response to it. First, Andrew Sullivan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s post on the controversy is worth reading, and reiterates the same basic […]<\/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-5735","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\/5735","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=5735"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5735\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5737,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5735\/revisions\/5737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5735"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=5735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}