Andrew Sullivan's Response

Andrew Sullivan's response to Leon Wieseltier's criticism is here. I'm reading it carefully, and so I don't want to comment much at all now. I agree with Andrew that he's not anti-Semitic, as I've written. I also think that, for whatever reason, he doesn't recognize the severity of his language on Israel and Jewish matters over the past year. For instance, he doesn't seem to recognize the implications of his call for the U.S. to impose a military solution on Israel and have the American army forcibly dismantle settlements. In other words, he's opposed to military action against Iran, but he's for military action against Israel. Let me put it this way: This is not how a friend constructively criticizes Israel.

And he doesn't recognize, at least from what I've read so far, that his analysis of the Middle East crisis is consistently and rather wildly one-sided. For instance, he recently wrote, "Without a permanent cessation of such (settlement) activity, there's no way to get the two sides together. But Israel simply refuses to cooperate, as it has refused for two decades in its land-grab." I'm opposed to all settlements, just as Andrew is, but it is silly to argue that for two decades Israel has simply refused to cooperate. By the end of the Camp David talks, Israel was ready to cede roughly 90 percent of the West Bank to the Palestinians. By the Taba round, more than 95 percent. Recently, the former prime minister, Ehud Olmert, made -- as an opening gambit -- an offer of 97 percent of the West Bank, plus land swaps. These offers were rejected by Israel's Palestinian interlocutors. And of course, Israel unilaterally reversed its land-grab in Gaza by forcibly evacuating eight thousand settlers there in 2005 (and it evacuated four West Bank settlements at the same time). But these are facts you will no longer learn on Andrew's blog.