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Eric Fingerhut wrote a story for JTA today about the controversies swirling around J Street’s decision to cancel a performance by Josh Healy, a Jewish poet and performance artist, because of his likening of Palestinian suffering to the Holocaust. In the course of the article, Fingerhut writes this:
Another a [sic] session, which is not officially part of the conference but to which J Street is giving hotel space during the event, will include writers who have harshly criticized Israel and questioned its right to exist as a Jewish state. It is sponsored by blogger Richard Silverstein; J Street officials said they have nothing to do with the program.
Unfortunately, Fingerhut did not call me or even e mail to verify the statements with which he described our session. That actually would’ve been fair. Apparently, that’s not a value Fingerhut or JTA observes when it comes to Jews like us. If he had contacted me I would have told him that the luncheon meeting was devised by me and Jerry Haber of Magnes Zionist. While I cannot speak for every member of our panel, I know that I make very clear that I criticize Israel POLICY and not Israel itself. This is an important distinction which the Jewish right (within which I include Fingerhut) conveniently omits. As for the claim about questioning Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state–yes, there are such panel members. We have a Gazan blogger who likely doesn’t feel much sympathy for this concept. I imagine from what I know of Phil Weiss’ views, he’s quite ambivalent on this issue. Helena Cobban likely feels the same.
But let me tell Eric Fingerhut a thing or two about what this panel is meant (and not meant) to do: it is NOT meant to be carefully circumscribed as much of the political discourse on Israel within the organized Jewish community is. I don’t want to talk only to bloggers who follow a party line or who make Eric Fingerhut comfortable. I want to talk to a Gazan blogger. And davka, I want to do it during a J Street conference to give other conference guests a chance to get outside their Jewish comfort zone and hear how the other side sees things.
Will I agree with everything Laila El-Haddad says? Probably not. Will she agree with everything I say? I doubt it. But I’d rather be sitting and talking to her and 11 other provocative I-P bloggers than to Ami Eden or Eric Fingerhut or Jeffrey Goldberg. I’ll learn more from these panelists than I would from the latter three any day.
While I am a progressive Zionist, I don’t want to talk only to Zionists about critical issues facing Israel and the Jewish people. I often disagree with Phil Weiss, who does not consider himself a Zionist. I even disagree quite often with Dan Sieradski, who is a Zionist. But I refuse to put Phil Weiss in herem because he has a different view than I do on these issues. Phil Weiss deserves to be heard within the Jewish community as much as I or even Eric Fingerhut does. His views on some issues may not be at the heart of the current consensus among American Jews, but many ideas which later became commonly accepted started out at the fringes of social discourse. If we’d excommunicated Galileo and Spinoza and “disappeared” their ideas, where would intellectual thought be today?
Similarly, my friend Zvi Solow, professor at Ben Gurion University, reminds me that the political slogan shtey medinot l’shney amim (“two states for two peoples”) was first coined by Rakah, the Israeli Communist party, in the 1970s. At the time, this concept was considered politically outlandish by most Israelis. Now, even Bibi Netanyhau claims to believe in it. Does that make him an Israeli Communist? In 1972, I attended a political rally in Jerusalem advocating Israeli negotations with the PLO (which was a criminal offense). I was stoned by right-wing demonstrators. Isn’t it funny how what is treasonous in one era becomes commonplace in another. Eric Fingerhut should remember that.
JTA is part of corporate American Jewry. They would like to tell us what we can and can’t discuss within the community. But I reject this notion. They are not going to tell me who is kosher for this panel or what subjects are treif. The very reason I blog is to avoid this notion like the plague. So if you want a free-flowing debate about these ideas, come to the blogger panel and tell Eric Fingerhut and JTA that your ideas about Israel can’t be confined or controlled.
A few of the issues Jerry and I hope to cover during the discussion:
- How have blogs impacted &/or changed the debate over the Israeli-Arab conflict in Israel, Palestine & the U.S.
- What can we do to have a bigger impact
- Iran: how can bloggers influence the debate over Iranian nukes and what can/should we do if there is a military attack
- Goldstone Report, human rights & BDS
There may be other hot issues that come up bet. now and Oct. 26th that could be added to the agenda. If you have any other issues important to you, pls. let me know. We would like to keep the issues to a small, manageable number due to the large panel & short time allotted to it.
End of My Run at Comment is Free
Tuesday, October 20th, 2009[UPDATE: I'm pleased to say that my editor has contacted me and asked me to continue to write for CiF. He had not read my e mail and did not know I had withdrawn from writing for the Guardian. This is an outcome that pleases me. So you'll be seeing that Friedman piece in print in the near future plus coverage of the J Street conference at CiF.]
I’m probably going to violate a sacred rule of journalism: that is, that one shouldn’t write about the nitty gritty that goes on behind the scenes between writer and editor–something like Toto pulling the curtains aside to reveal the blustering fellow pretending to be the Great and Powerful Oz. Also, it may not be the best idea to write about publishing relationships that don’t end up working out for one party or the other. But I’m going to do it anyway to get a few things off my chest.
I had a good run at Comment is Free. I began writing for them just after the Lebanon war during the time of their extraordinary coverage of that war, under the rubric of Independent Jewish Voices, through blog posts from every conceivable angle on the conflict. This in turn led to my writing a chapter for A Time to Speak Out, a collection of essays originally published in CiF. After the Guardian opened a U.S. bureau in Washington, I began writing for CIF America. When they first launched, my new editor told me he saw me publishing once a week or more in CIF. Though that never happened, I did publish every two weeks or so and developed a good working relationship with my editor.
But writing freelance can be very frustrating and the relationship between writer and editor is often tenuous and unstable. I had an awkward situation in which I couldn’t write about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict unless it was accepted by a different editor based in London. This editor hardly ever accepted any of my queries, so my writing had to be confined to issues involving Israel and U.S. policy. Still, I managed to follow the protocol and find subjects to write about.
Then I began to notice that pieces I wrote which had been accepted wouldn’t run for long periods. When I asked I was told the editor was waiting for a suitable opening to run it. Since my earlier pieces were always published promptly, I found this puzzling.
A few months ago Tom Friedman wrote what I considered an especially condescending NY Times column about the wonders of Salaam Fayyad and the West Bank economic miracle. My editor, who also shared a distaste for Friedman, liked the idea of a critique and I wrote one. He responded that he liked it. All well and good. Except that the piece never ran. A few weeks later, I finally called my editor and asked if there was anything in particular holding up publication. He replied that the piece was too long. So I edited it and cut it almost by half. He said he liked it once again. And I thought finally the piece would be published. But it wasn’t. I waited weeks longer and e-mailed several times. The answer was always “we’re waiting for an opening to publish it.”
Finally, after working this over in my mind many months, I decided to pull the piece and let my editor know I wouldn’t be writing for CIF anymore. It’s damn hard to get a freelance gig and some may say I was foolish in what I did. But I just didn’t see any other way. I didn’t feel my work was receiving the respect I felt it deserved. Perhaps if I were a professional journalist and had other publication venues, I might have approached this differently since falling out of favor with one publisher could be compensated by building relationship with new ones. But I didn’t have that luxury.
To prove my point about the the regard in which I was held, neither my editor nor Georgia Henry, CIF general editor, replied to my e mail announcing my decision. You’d think it might deserve just a few words in reply if just for old times’ sake.
There are writers still writing for CiF who I respect and they tell me their relationships remain strong with it and their editors. So I don’t precisely to know what to attribute this. But certainly despite my ending my run, it remains an important venue for progressive writing about the Israel-Palestine conflict.
At any rate, CIF’s loss if your gain. The next post I publish here will be the original story I wrote for CIF. It’s a tad out of date, but savaging Tom Friedman can never be out of date because he so richly deserves it.
Tags: comment-is-free
Posted in Blogs-Tech-Science, Mideast Peace | 16 Comments »