Fancy Store-Bought Dirt

I've never used that term lightly and it makes me wince to see anyone do so. The most I'll do is talk about "anti-Semitism" within certain statements, pieces of literature, and visual representations, but then you have to be extremely careful how you approach it. Calling someone the equivalent of a racist is a sure-fire way to get ignored and to shut down any prospects of a meaningful discussion of the real concerns. The benefit of the doubt should always be given.

It makes me cry that calling people anti-Semitic has become a weapon in current fights over 1) neoconservatism and more specifically 2) nuances of America's policy toward Israel and the Palestinians. It trivializes an important issue and I want everyone to stop doing it now. It especially bothers me when the people who call critics of America's Israel policy "anti-Semites" are from the same groups that attack the core Democratic constituencies in NYC and South Florida in very unkind terms. This is something I've observed a lot on Free Republic where nominal anti-Semitism is strictly verboten.

By the way, Cathy Young is wrong when she writes, "Alterman, as his post makes clear, acts as an apologist for the mentality that views the creation of Israel as a catastrophe for the Arabs equivalent to the Jewish catastrophe of the Holocaust."

What Alterman wrote was that the Holocaust led to the establishment of Israel which led to a catastrophe for the Arabs. There's no moral equivalence there at all, simply an establishment of a relationship which is undeniable in its fact. She explicitly states that she's replying to his post, not something he wrote elsewhere, so I'm quite confident in declaring her full of shit in going to for an easy but dishonest "gotcha!"

Can't you say something stronger than "probably not" when making a judgement on whether Eric Alterman is an anti-Semite?

Nope. Any time someone writes something as patently offensive as what Alterman wrote, and then passes up the opportunity to retract it, there's always that outside chance...

(Unless you really do think that Holocaust victims of all people can be reasonably presumed en masse to be bigots.)

It's also useful at least in passing to compare what Alterman wrote to what Gregg Easterbrook wrote for TNR that was strong enough to get him fired and purged from ESPN.

To me Alterman's writings were very obviously more offensive. Enough people punted on the Easterbook charges (if not calling him anti-Semitic themselves, at least conspicuously failing to absolve him) that I see no need to give Alterman any more benefit of the doubt than Easterbook got.

Then again, as offensiveness goes, there's always the banner ad that appeared on this post's Individual Archive as of my submitting the comment above this one.

Accusing Sharon of being the reason for peace process derailment is (in my opinion) insane but at least plausible, and arguably less insane than Alterman excusing various and sundry bigotry on the supposed grounds that European holocaust victims were bigots.

Unless you really do think that Holocaust victims of all people can be reasonably presumed en masse to be bigots.

This is what it's about--the words he used for his analogy?

I think you're really badly missing the point by taking the analogy literally. It's a crappy analogy, but that's not what you're criticizing him for. He wasn't saying that the victims were bigots, for goodness sake, he was trying to come up with an analogy for Arab anger and resentment that looped in the tenuous relationship the victim group had to the Arabs. What he'd be guilty of is making flimsy excuses for Arab anger at Jews, which is partly understandable (if pointless) and partly crazily anti-Semitic, not engaging in it himself! That's a pretty damn big distinction.

To simplify: do you believe it is possible that Eric Alterman really thinks that the victims of the Holocaust bear responsibility for Arab suffering and should be considered "bigots"?

Really, does that seem likely or plausible? Do you think that he thinks that the civilians who were shot or gassed in Poland in 1942 were anti-Arab, or even giving a moment's thought to the Arabs?

Let me say this, and it applies to lots of other criticisms and outrage you post about: if you think that a Jew like Eric Alterman could possibly hold the views you are ascribing to him, you need to work on your sense of perspective and consider alternate points of view. You are leaping to the unjustified conclusion because you assume bad things about him. And in this case, you are 100% wrong. You need to reread his post with an open mind and some willingness to concede your opponents' basic humanity and sanity, even if he votes Democratic and disagrees with you on foreign policy issues.

To get meta for a moment, this is the source of most of the tension between us politically in the past and occasionally in the present. You often read what your opponents are saying in the worst possible light, as if you have the presumption we are all bad, immoral people, and then work from that basis without an accurate understanding of what we're really saying. It's what happened with Bogg in the Iraqi elections a week ago, it's happened in any number of political discussions from the late 1990s. It's also why people get so angry--no one likes to have extraordinarily offensive, irrational, or inaccurate arguments projected on to them. It's insulting. And it's why arguments you're engaged in often culminate in a big "oh, THAT'S what you meant" where everyone exhales.

I like you as a person and I enjoy your blog, which is why I keep reading. You find interesting stories, you're a good writer, and have an interesting point of view. It's the sense of constant misrepresentation that makes me keep commenting on contentious issues--if you'll notice, most times I don't express a disagreement with your beliefs, which I respect, but with your characterization of someone you disagree with. I feel like you often characterize people as stupid, irrational, or aggressively amoral, when in fact there are extenuating circumstances or a dramatic misrepresentation of a point of view that makes all the difference in leading you to that conclusion. I feel like the basic sense that "my subject is a person who thinks basically like me," is absent. And that bothers me a lot because I want to be thought of as a human being, not an assemblage of the dumbest, least-respectable arguments you can think of.