March 12, 2009

Richard Silverstein on the hounding out of Chas Freeman

"Seems to me we've just completed eight years of an administration that ran from the truth tellers as fast as their feet would carry them. Similarly, the lobby wants no truth tellers when it comes to devising US policy toward Israel. It wants sycophants, yes-men, pols who know how to line up in a straight line. We can see how well this policy worked for George Bush. And it won't work for an administration that wants to act as a more honest broker, rather than a cheerleader or enabler of one side's bad habits."

(Ironically, many Jews were automatically suspect during the blacklist days of the 1940s and '50s, and now they are the ones threatening careers to silence honest analysis and dissent. Similarly, it is disturbing indeed that Israel seems to have taken the lesson of the Warsaw Ghetto not as "never again" but as "Now it's our turn".)

human rights