In Defense of Marty Peretz
Clearly, this is a witch-hunt against Peretz, by writers who have been waiting with knives sharpened for a long time. I have been waiting in vain, evidently, to find any defenses of Peretz by any of those major journalists he mentored and supported over the years. The sole exception is Jack Shafter in Slate, who noted accurately in September that “if Marty Peretz were to step down from the New Republic, there probably would be no New Republic.” He writes:
After 36 years, for better and worse, Peretz has basically become the New Republic. If we’re going to beat up Marty for being Marty—and, please, be my guest—let’s make ourselves uncomfortable by also acknowledging his contribution to journalism and thought. I won’t bore you with the names of people who have worked there, but he has always had a good eye for talent. He has always given young people great chunks of the magazine to run. Michael Kinsley was 26 when Peretz made him managing editor. Andrew Sullivan and Peter Beinart were each 28 when he appointed them editor. Franklin Foer was 31.
And that is a great accomplishment, one that few would risk taking, and that made Peretz a great editor and mentor. Shafer’s piece was written in September. So where are any of Peretz’s other defenders? Where is Rick Hertzberg, who writes for “Talk of the Town” at The New Yorker, as well as a regular blog in which he has commented on scores of people and what he objects to about them, from Charles Krauthammer to me, of whom he said I had “lost my marbles.”
So far only David Horowitz, who undoubtedly disagrees with much of what Peretz holds dear, has defended him, in a comment he posted on the comments section after the online edition of Wallace-Wells’ article. Is Horowitz, one solitary conservative writer, going to be the only one coming to Peretz’s defense?
Nothing is harder in partisan politics than to oppose your own side when it is morally in the wrong. During the Cold War, Marty Peretz’s great contribution was to take a stand against the appeasement mentality of his fellow leftists, and their view that Ronald Reagan and America were greater threats to their nation than Mikhail Gorbachev and the Soviet Communists. Today he is being punished for the same moral fortitude, for opposing the appeasement mentality of leftists like Beinart and Fallows, and publications like The Nation, The New York Times, The New Yorker and other similar publications towards the Islamo-fascists in Palestine and the Arab world.
If this is to be the case, it says a lot about the unwillingness of so many of the bien pensant liberal intellectuals to come forward. And what does that say about the integrity of contemporary liberalism, and about its adherents, who owe much to Marty Peretz, even if they do not realize it right now?
Ronald Radosh, an Adjunct Fellow at The Hudson Institute, blogs regularly for PJ Media. Over the years, he has written frequently for TNR, and counts Marty Peretz as a good friend.
Marty Peretz is not a racist. I have read countless numbers of his pieces dealing with the threat of Islamic extremism. He and I do not seem to disagree in the slightest on this matter. Nonetheless, Peretz has unintentionally done an enormous amount of damage with his knee jerk economic liberalism and secularist agenda. The man has greatly harmed the state of Israel and the overall fight against the Jihadis. People like me were ignored by the majority of voters when we warned that Barack Obama was a convinced left-wing ideologue and existentially hostile towards Israel. I have every moral and intellectual right to now tell Peretz: I told you so!
Peretz is also unwittingly partly responsible for the horrifically high abortion rates within the black community. He has supported—and even funded those who encouraged black Americans to destroy the lives of perhaps most of their unborn children. It is indeed unfair to charge Peretz with racism. We must still, however, marginalize the man. His judgment has proven to be overall unsound.
The Left is out to demonize good Americans – again….. How do they do it…. watch this , start with part 2…. get answers here- http://www.marcrubin.com/dada2.ivnu
The funny thing is that in Israel, where Peretz is totaly unknown, he would be considered as an extreme-left winger on the Palestinian issue, and a representant of the secular ashkenazi bourgeoisie for the rest of his positions.
Marty Peretz is unfortunately all too well known in Israel as a firm supporter of the Palestinian Authority terrorist organization and it’s leader Abu Mazen. Since his arrival in Israel Peretz has made himself notorious by routinely participating in violent anti Israel and anti Jewish demonstrations in Jerusalem protesting against Jews living in the eastern part of the city.
Marty has also expressed his unwavering support for the Palestinian side in the on again and off again Palestinian Israeli peace negotiations, even now that it is well known that the Palestinians are only using the negotiations as a front in their war to destroy Israel.
Peretz is seriously bigotted, but not towards any group except for his fellow Jews, particularly those he describes as “settlers” who are “self-righteous and often brutal.” But Mr. Peretz has no trouble grovelling and apologizing to those who loathe Israel and the Jews by stating for example “I have publicly committed the sin of wild and wounding language, especially hurtful to our Muslim brothers and sisters.”
If Peretz only knew that the Arabs he kowtows to consider him to be a “self-righteous and often brutal” settler himself.
Good ‘ol Marty seems to have a slobbering love affair going with Barack Obama too, even though by any account Barack Hussein Obama the most antagonistic and hostile President ever to despise Israel.
And as if Marty can’t get enough of his Israel and Jew bashing, he goes on to continue to condemn and abuse Jonathan Pollard, a modern day Dreyfuss who has been unjustly convicted and unfairly imprisoned a quarter of century for the “crime” of spying for a friendly nation, Israel, that should only have gotten him a maximum of a couple of years but because he was a Jew netted him practically a death sentence.
Marty Peretz is a pitiful joke compared to giant like Jonathan Pollard.
Peretz’s support of anti Israel and anti Jewish terrorist groups like the Palestinian Authority and it’s President Abu Mazen, his voluntary and wholehearted participation in violent demonstrations against Jews living in Jerusalem, his vicious verbal attacks on other Jewish Israelis, his sycophantic support of the anti Israel and often anti Jewish Democrat Party and Barack Hussein Obama, and his sickening grovelling to anti Israel and anti Jewish Moslems isn’t just distasteful and ugly, it is absolutely abhorrent and loathesome.
Ron, if this guy is your friend, then maybe you need a new friend.
Besig, I would love to see some proof of what you have written about his involvement in demonstrations etc. I read his blog like the bible and he is very pro Israel. He has never been complimentary of the PLO or any of its thugs. I was upset about his article against Pollard I must admit.
In Atlantic Magazine, January 10, 2011 the writer describes and quotes Martin Peretz thus, “Peretz participates now and then in a vigil in the East Jerusalem neighborhood Sheikh Jarrah, in solidarity with Palestinians threatened with eviction. The demonstration has drawn great attention in Israel, but there are at best 120 people there, he says. “Take away my friends, and there would be 115.”
Also in Tablet Magazine, a Leftist Jewish publication,Peretz Agonistes, Dec. 28,, 2010, is that he has been known to attend the protests in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, “in solidarity with Palestinians threatened with eviction.”
I am assuming that the following remarks in the Atlantic article as referent to Martin Peretz as well, “As the Palestinian Authority began its first halting steps toward modernization, Israeli politics and society have pivoted to the right. The country’s refusal to stop construction of new settlements; its growing hostility toward the international community and the Obama administration; its storming of an aid flotilla off the Gaza Strip in May–these postures and incidents have led some of the liberal intellectuals who have historically defended Israel to begin to edge away….” liberal intellectuals like Martin Peretz.
As for his support for Palestinian terrorists, also in Tablet Magazine, “Palestinian President Salam Fayyad is “a very modernizing person, but I would doubt that he commands loyalty,” Peretz says”.
Compare this with Peretz’s remark in the same puff piece, “—“I mean, fuck these fancy Upper West Side rabbis,” Peretz complains.”
Peretz has always been a Jewish Leftist who uses his Jewishness as a cloak amd justification to moan and whine about how awful the Jews, and especially the Jew’s State Israel is and behaves.
Marty Peretz is entitled to his own pro Palestinian opinions and he is permitted by the democratic and progressive State of Israel
to demonstrate against that state and our people as he pleases.
But don’t try to tell me or any other Jew that Marty Peretz is supportive of Israel, he is just as great a danger as his pals in the PLO and the Palestinian Authority.
Temper temper Besig. Have you ever read his web? Being a dedicated pro Israel sort of guy you know how things can be quoted out of context don’t you?
It seems to me that justice is firmly on the side of the Arabs in Sheikh Jarrah. Most of the evictions of Arabs are being done for small violations in building codes, the sort of violations that authorities routinely turn a blind eye to when it comes to Jewish settlers. And the settlers’ claims to the land are being made on the basis of deeds that, if not falsified, certainly predate the founding of the State of Israel. If an Israeli Arab tried to make the same claim in an Israeli court, he would be laughed at. Peretz is correct to side against the Jewish extremists.
http://palsolidarity.org/2010/03/11703/
“Marty Peretz is unfortunately all too well known in Israel”
No he is not. 99% of the population never even heard of him. Ask anybody in the street. The fact that he demonstrates at Sheikh Jarra proves that he is part of the extreme left wing – the intellectual extreme left wing, what someone called today or yesterday in a newspaper “the ignorant intellectuals”. The funniest thing about them is that they represent maybe 5% of the jewish population, and I am very nice, and they are convinced that they are the majority. You have to speak to these people. They live in another world.
Anyway, how such a guy as this Peretz could pass for a “rabid pro zionist” or something like that is beyond me.
If Peretz is so vilified by the left now, why doesn’t he simply start his own, new web site? Gone are the days why you need a journal or a magazine. Time and, especially, Newsweek are prime examples that printed journals are dying out big time. He could start his own, new, center-left, on-line journal and see where it takes him. Those web sites can be started for next to nothing and his name recognition would probably pull in a lot of readers. That’s the nice thing about the Internet, you don’t need a publisher, a major corporation, or a big printing press to get your message out there anymore. If Peretz wants to, he can certainly get back into the game big time.
The castigation of Peretz is just another indication of the degradation of the left into ignorance and vindictiveness. Peretz is right about the cheapness that Moslems hold life; is it not the leader of Hamas who said that Moslems love death the way Jews love life? That the left cannot deal with the reality that we are in a clash of civilizations drawn between two starkly different ideologies shows how irrelevant they truly are. To Marty Peretz I say, it is time to have a backbone and leave the Left behind. You don’t need their approval. It is time all Leftist Jews saw what is happening in their political realm and push back against the Jew hatred and Jew-killing apologists that they so try to impress.
As a leftie: I am really interested in reading whatever Peretz writes from Israel. He is an example that people are complex.
To make one small political point: The idea of democracy is the clash of ideas. We have the right and the left, and it creates the capitalistic society, where workers have some rights and a social network too, push and pull. The Tea Party was in my eyes quite good in the beginning before it got partly astroturfed, a lot of righteous anti-corruption anger was seen. But then it all became about hating Barack Obama, and lost its way. Please think through the Pajamas Media memetic virus that all liberals are evil?
Because democracy needs competent liberals too.
COMPLIMENTS AND CONGRATULATIONS FNORD. YOU ARE COMPLETELY CORRECT.
PS: “Marty Peretz is a pitiful joke compared to giant like Jonathan Pollard.”
Excuse me? A convicted traitor as a “giant”? He betrayed his freaking country, theres no doubt about that. Wtf?
Wow, now the commie fnord has become all of a suddena rock-ribbed American patriot! Always happens when he can blame it on da Joooooos.
fnord, Pollard pleaded guilty to esponiage, which he committed on behalf of a US ally. He was never convicted or charged with treason. Many people with foul motives, and many more who are ismply ignorant and should know better, are fond of saying that committed — or even was convicted of — treason. Both charges are false. Go back and read the legal definition, please.
“Pollard pleaded guilty to esponiage, which he committed on behalf of a US ally.”
The Rosenbergs were found guilty of the same offense.
Sorry,Ron…but you crapped your panties when you suggested that Andrew Sullivan is an “important public intellectual”
Martin Peretz will always be a GOD to me. The New Republic in the 80′s was THE magazine to read — before the Sullivan-Weisbergs, etc., ruined it in the 90′s and afterward. Reading what Mr. Radosh says of the others’ recent behavior toward Peretz, they aren’t fit to wash his car or socks. Thank god for Martin Peretz — he truly rocked my world, hell, SHOWED me what the world could be. My most precious memories are of plowing through the most recent (48 per year, remember) issues of The New Republic. What an education!! What a magazine! (I think the back section was the best, so Leon Wieseltier gets a dispensation, though, face it, he always was a tad windy. But if we wanted glibness, there was the ol’ Time-Newsweek style, which was definitely NOT TNR at its best.)
Long live Martin Peretz!!! He is a GOD (Al Gore notwithstanding, nobody’s perfect, even the Creator
)
AND YET HE, PERETZ, WOULD KEEP POLLARD IN JAIL FOR THE REST OF HIS LIFE JUST TO PROVE HIS OWN PATRIOTISM. #6 FNORD COMMENT HAS IT RIGHT. PERETZ IS A JOKE BY COMPARISON TO POLLARD.
BTW, obviously, I am NOT Jewish, and don’t wannabe neither. WHO CARES — TNR was/is food for MIND, not identity politics, what a bore…!
Also worthy of mention is the stance that TNR took during the culture wars, as political correctness was laying waste to the university. It was the only journal taken seriously by the intellectual elite that reported accurately on what was going on. The loss of that voice of reality has impoverished us all.
Helping Michael Kinsley become a “great” journalist is an achievement? Sounds
like a guy who is really confused. Mr. radosh you are quite an intellectual but
I sometimes wonder of you, just like this Peretz, guy have done more to hurt or
help what we call the “right”.
hmmm. I never read TNR, and only found The Spine in mid-2008 when I needed to escape from too-close-encounter with Obama’s anti-Israel base, inside his campaign website.
Glad to hear the NYMag piece was wrong about The Spine shutting down.
However, I will say Peretz has really improved his blog writing. Most of 2010 was really hard to find what he was actually trying to say. And, he never reads his comment threads, which sometimes go on for days.
His main bigotry is to the ultra-Orthodox, and his biggest dilemma is not being able to reconcile today’s Israeli electorate with whatever fantasy he still holds of a secular, sort-of-socialist Jewish State. I believe the same virus infects all of his mentees – a revulsion for the religious, and those Israelis whose origins from Muslim countries and the former Soviet Union make Likud the center, no longer the right.
I am a lonely voice in TNR that one should accept Israel as it is, not an American deluded into thinking they have the right to cleanse the Israeli electorate of that 40%.
OTOH, I have been a devoted reader of The New Yorker for more than 30 years, excluding the Tina Brown phase. While I find it unconscionable that Hertzberg abuses The New Yorker with his Israel critiques, I do not see any infiltration into the content.
One of the comments to that NYMag profile noted that Peretz had nevered mentored a woman. Duly noted.
All the venom about his bigotry? Just part of the left’s complete inability to tolerate any deviation from their echo chamber.
It has been quite an education.
“Just part of the left’s complete inability to tolerate any deviation from their echo chamber.”
No problem like that on the right, except for the RINOs who are continually vilified on this site and others like it.
In view of Marty’s recent post about the ultra Orthodox community in Israel the title of which seems to state with a certain air of approval: “Most Jewish Israelis Want To Live Separately From Their Ultra-Orthodox Brethren. And The Haredim Don’t Want To Live With Modern Jews Either”
I have to wonder if the charge of bigotry is completely baseless in his case. Perhaps not bigotry per se but certainly an undemocratic sensibility. I wonder if he realizes that the disgust and hatred he expresses with little attempt at disguise towards the strangeness, intransigence and insularity of these Jewish communities are not that much different from the way Europeans, East Europeans and other nations regarded Jewish communities before the extermination of the Jews during WWII.
I’d like to know what Ron Radosh thinks about the Marty Peretz that can be glimpsed in that post.
http://www.tnr.com/blog/the-spine/81569/most-jewish-israelis-want-live-separately-their-ultra-orthodox-brethren-and-the
For my part, even though I used to defend Marty in the past against the charge of bigotry, so repelled I am by his latest fulminations, reckless, haughty, contemptuous, that I don’t
think I will do so anymore.