A Sad Commentary

Once Proud Commentary Magazine Has
Sacrificed Intellectual Honesty For Partisan Hackery

           The magazine bills itself as “America’s premier monthly magazine of opinion and a pivotal voice in American intellectual life.”  It boasts, per its self-evaluation, “a large number of articles [that] can be counted as landmarks of American letters and intellectual life.”  With such lofty ambitions, one would think its Senior Editor would recognize some scholarly obligation to provide his readers with an honest analysis of the American polity.

             In “Jews, Muslims, and the Democrats,” Mr. Schoenfeld sadly provides his readers with the opposite.  His commentary on the state of the Democratic Party is filled with tawdry demagoguery and shaky logic.  In it, he suggests that the Party has moved away from its traditional support of the U.S.-Israeli relationship.  With little evidence other than the election of Muslim Congressman Keith Ellison in Minnesota and behaviors of a few fringe party members (who have received resounding rejection from Party leaders), Schoenfeld does very little to build his case.

             After Commentary published Mr. Schoenfeld’s 3,500 word screed, I was given the opportunity to respond in a 750 word letter, which was published in Commentary’s April issue.  In my letter, I offered the following rebuttal:

Essentially, Mr. Schoenfeld feels that Muslim political power is growing exponentially, that the Democratic Party is eager to adopt an anti-Israel worldview, and that Jewish political power is largely ineffective because Jews ignorantly and slavishly vote Democratic. The exaggerations, flawed logic, and omissions here are far too many to enumerate, but some examples follow.  Mr. Schoenfeld acknowledges that there is a record number of Jews in
the present Congress. But he quickly turns to a counterfact—the election of the first Muslim-American Congressman, the Democratic Keith Ellison of Minnesota, who we are told is “Louis Farrakhan’s first Congressman.” What we are not told is that Ellison has stated that “I reject and condemn the anti-Semitic statements of the Nation of Islam, Louis Farrakhan, and Khalid Muhammed.” Nor are we told that Ellison has affirmed Israel’s right to live in peace and security, and has rejected any dealings with Hamas and Hizballah until they renounce violence and accept Israel’s right to exist. Nor does Mr. Schoenfeld mention that Ellison believes that Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons must be
stopped and its Holocaust denial decried.

Mr. Schoenfeld seems to have swallowed the propaganda of Muslim organizations that have purposefully overestimated the size of the Muslim population in the
United States. He could have easily looked up the single most rigorous analysis of this issue in the study done by Tom W. Smith for the American Jewish Committee.
Smith concluded that there are most likely 2 to 2.8 million Muslims in the United States—not Mr. Schoenfeld’s estimate of 4 to 6 million.  Moreover, Mr. Schoenfeld
produces a mythical number of 55,000 Muslim voters in Virginia (no one knows what the real number is) to illustrate how Muslim votes are swinging elections.

            I went on to explain that conservatives such as columnist William Kristol and senior Republican Representative Dan Burton have said there is no difference between the parties in regards to support of Israel.  I cited a recent article by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency which found that the new, Democratic Congress is likely to be more pro-Israel than the Republican Congress it followed.  And, I offered examples of Republican Congressmen and Senators who are weak on the Israel issue to counter his examples of Democrats.

             In response, Mr. Schoenfeld penned a follow-up in the April 2007 issue of Commentary and an entry on Contentions (Commentary’s blog) titled “Pelosi’s Pilgrimage.”  Schoenfeld begins the latter by writing that his January article invited a “sharp rebuke” from me, a ridiculous charge because, as Schoenfeld should know, his magazine contacted me to ask if I would reply.  Schoenfeld’s two efforts to defend his original piece offer little more between them than thinly veiled partisan attacks disguised as intellectual analysis.  They serve only to reinforce the contention that his original article is nothing but a partisan advertisement for the Republican Party. 

             In the follow-up written for the magazine, Mr. Schoenfeld sheepishly admits that his January piece made use of an inflated count of Muslims living in the United States, writing “if I had only opened my own book, The Return of Anit-Semitism, I would not have fallen into the trap of relying on data for a U.S. State Department fact sheet that I myself criticized there as almost certainly too high” (emphasis added). 

             Mr. Schoenfeld then departs from the path of intellectual honesty and accepts the most ridiculous of GOP claims about the Jewish vote.  Agreeing with a letter submitted by Richard Baehr, Schoenfeld suggests that “exit polling may well have overstated the lopsidedness of the tilt toward Democrats in the 2006 midterm elections.”  The Baehr letter sites discredited numbers produced by the Republican Jewish Coaltion, suggesting that Republicans received between 26 and 27 percent of the Jewish vote in 2006.  The arguments set forth in Mr. Baehr’s letter are at best laughable.  Credible academics or survey research experts would dismiss the My. Baehr’s “analysis” out of hand (just one of many examples of his ridiculous arguments: Baehr consistently understates the national exit poll sample size by at least 20%). 

             Mr. Schoenfeld then goes on to repeat his nasty attack on Congressman Keith Ellison of Minnesota.  The editor attempts to tie Rep. Ellison to the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) in an effort to paint all Democrats with a broad brush.  For the record, CAIR is a problematic organization.  It traffics in extremist, anti-Israel rhetoric, and some of its leaders have had ties to terrorist-related groups.  However, the link that Mr. Schoenfeld draws between Ellison and the sins of CAIR are tenuous at best.  Ellison’s “tie” to CAIR is that he accepted a campaign contribution from the organization’s PAC.  What Mr. Schoenfeld fails to mention is that Republican Congressman Gary Miller of California also took a check from the organization’s PAC.  If one is to believe Schoenfeld’s argument about Ellison tainting the Democratic Party, one would have to logically conclude that the Republican Party is also tainted.  And what of the Bush administration’s invitation to CAIR for a White House visit?  Are we to believe that CAIR has secretly infiltrated the highest levels of this Republican administration?

           At another point, Mr. Schoenfeld dismisses my argument that leading Democrats such as Howard Dean and Nancy Pelosi are some of the biggest critics of former President Carter’s book, Palestine:  Peace Not Apartheid, as “comical implausibility.”   He then continues to use Carter to paint the entire Democratic party in his blog entry. 

          One would have thought that the editors of “the premier monthly magazine of opinion and a pivotal voice in American intellectual life” would require a more analytical response to facts which undermine their arguments than name-calling.  Alas, all we receive from Mr. Schoenfeld is this charge of “comic implausibility” and a professional grade gloss-over.   

          Even the left wing radio program Democracy Now – hardly a stronghold of pro-Israel opinion -- admits that  “Some of the most vocal critics of Carter's book have been fellow Democrats … Incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said, ‘It is wrong to suggest that the Jewish people would support a government in Israel or anywhere else that institutionalizes ethnically based oppression, and Democrats reject that allegation vigorously.’"

          One can only assume that Mr. Schoenfeld chose to selectively ignore the opposition to Carter posed by none other than former President Bill Clinton – by any objective measure a far more popular and influential figure in today’s Democratic Party.  Among the news outlets to report on President Clinton’s rebuke of Carter was The Forward, which ran a piece headlined: “‘Apartheid’ Book Exposes Carter-Clinton Rift.”  From the article, written by Jennifer Siegel:

 Earlier this month, former president Bill Clinton spoke out against Carter’s book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, during an appearance before the United Jewish Federation of San Diego County. “If I were an Israeli I wouldn’t like it, because it’s not factually correct and it’s not fair,” Clinton reportedly said.

          Throughout all three of his pieces, Mr. Schoenfeld seems to have an obsession, and a particular need to demonize, Speaker Pelosi.  In truth, Speaker Pelosi has a long record of strong support for Israel.  Despite her strong, admirable record, Schoenfeld (with, I might add, comic implausibility) absurdly tries to tie Ms. Pelosi to anti-Israel elements like former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney.  Just as Republican leaders support incumbent politicians with problematic records on the Middle East (Rep. Daryl Issa of California, for instance) Ms. Pelosi backed McKinney’s re-election.  If so-doing were enough to make one anti-Israel, what are we to believe about the National Republican Senatorial Committee’s endorsement of Senator Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island (in whose defense they aggressively spent money in a Republican primary)?  Is the Republican Jewish Coalition anti-Israel because its Chairman wrote Chafee a campaign contribution?  What to make of George W. Bush’s efforts to court the Muslim vote in 2000 or Grover Norquist’s efforts to organize Muslim-Americans for the GOP?  And, what are we to believe about all the GOP politicians – including the Republican President – who cavort with former Secretary of State James Baker?   

           In his blog entry, Mr. Shoenfeld also attempts to demonize Speaker Pelosi by making demagogic charges about her recent trip to the Middle East.  If Shoenfeld had bothered to look at what Pelosi said in Syria to Assad, if he had bothered to read her speech to the Knesset, even he might have been embarrassed to point to Pelosi as proof of the “collision between the interests of American Jews and the present disposition of the Democratic Party.”  Perhaps it was just an oversight, and not gross hypocrisy that Shoenfeld fails to point out for criticism all the GOP Members of Congress who have also recently met with Syrian President Assad.

           In a recent interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, Tom Lantos, Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, calls Bush administration criticism of Speaker Nancy Pelosi's trip to Syria "hypocritical beyond belief.''  Yes, Chairman Lantos is a Democrat, but he is a Democrat who has a reputation as working cooperatively with Republicans on foreign policy issues.  More to the point, no one, not even Gabriel Shoenfeld I would guess, would question Rep. Lantos’ passionate record of support for Israel’s security; there is no more pro-Israel member of Congress. 

           For those to whom Rep. Lantos’ word is not enough, it is also worth noting that Republican Congressman Dave Hobson, who accompanied Speaker Pelosi to Syria, has publicly defended the trip, telling the Associated Press that the Speaker "did not engage in any bashing of Bush in any meeting I was in and she did not in any meeting I was in bash the policies as it relates to Syria."

            As I close my response to Mr. Shoenfeld, I feel compelled to add that Commentary refused to print some of my letter.  I had opened my letter by writing that “What Stephen Walt and John Mearseimer’s recent essay is to a discussion of the ‘Israel Lobby,’ Gabriel Shoenfeld’s essay, ‘Jews, Muslims, and the Democrats’ is to the discussion of the partisan politics of the Jewish and Muslim vote.”

            I was told by a Commentary editor that “we weren't about to allow the Mearsheimer-Walt comparison.”  It is a shame that “America’s premier monthly magazine of opinion and a pivotal voice in American intellectual life” felt they must censor even a letter to the editor, which they originally requested.  I was arguing that, just like the cartoonish Walt and Mearsheimer attack on the Israel lobby, Schoenfeld began with an extreme ideological thesis and then went on to prove that thesis by, “ cherry picking a few morsels of facts, adding a pinch of half truths, inflating the importance of his information and scrupulously avoiding a whole series of stronger counter facts that contradicted his conclusions.”

            Sometimes, the truth is inconvenient, even for a publication that produces “landmarks of American letters and intellectual life.” 

            Commentary was once a mighty journal of intellectual discourse and scholarly opinion.  It is a shame that its Senior Editor has chosen a path of ideological convenience over intellectual honesty.