Bill Moyers: "An honest critic is a government’s best friend"

[kpete]

ADL's Foxman levels charges at Bill Moyers, Moyers responds
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/1/18/12129/8631/103/685357

Bill Moyers sent Mr. Foxman the following message:

Dear Mr. Foxman:

You made several errors in your letter to me of January 13 and I am writing to correct them.

First, to call someone a racist for lamenting the slaughter of civilians by the Israeli military offensive in Gaza is a slur unworthy of the tragedy unfolding there. Your resort to such a tactic is reprehensible.

Earlier this week it was widely reported that the International Red Cross "was so outraged it broke its usual silence over an attack in which the Israeli army herded a Palestinian family into a building and then shelled it, killing 30 people and leaving the surviving children clinging to the bodies of their dead mothers. The army prevented rescuers from reaching the survivors for four days."

When American troops committed a similar atrocity in Vietnam, it was called My Lai and Lt. Calley went to prison for it. As the publisher of a large newspaper at the time, I instructed our editorial staff to cover the atrocity fully because Americans should know what our military was doing in our name and with our funding. To say "my country right or wrong" is like saying "my mother drunk or sober." Patriots owe their country more than that, whether their government and their taxes are supporting atrocities in Vietnam, Iraq, or, in this case, Gaza.

Contrary to your claim, I made no reference whatsoever to "moral equivalency" between Hamas and Israel. That is an old canard often resorted to by propagandists trying to divert attention from facts on the ground, and, it, too, is unworthy of the slaughter in Gaza. Contrary to imputing "moral equivalency" between Hamas and Israel, I said that "Hamas would like to see every Jew in Israel dead." I said that "a radical stream of Islam now seeks to eliminate Israel from the face of the earth." And I described the new spate of anti-Semitism across the continent of Europe. I am curious as to why you ignored remarks which clearly counter the notion of "moral equivalency."

And although I specifically referred to "the rockets from Hamas" falling on Israel and said that "every nation has the right to defend itself, and Israel is no exception," you nonetheless accuse me of "ignorance of the terrorist threat against Israel." Once again, you are quite selective in your reading of my essay.

Your claim that "the checkpoints, the security fence and the Gaza operation" (I used the more accurate "onslaught") are not humiliating of the Palestinians is lamentable. I did not claim that these were, as you write, "tactics of humiliation rather (emphasis mine) than counter-terrorism," but perhaps it is overly simplistic to think they are one and not the other, when they are both. Also lamentable is your description of my "promotion" of the Norwegian doctor in Gaza when in fact I was simply quoting what he told CBS News: "It’s like Dante’s Inferno. They are bombing one and a half million people in a cage." The whole world has been able to see for itself what he was talking about, and as one major news organization after another has been reporting, is reeling from the sight.

And, to your claim that I was "declaring Jews are ‘genetically coded’ for violence," you are mistaken. My comment – obviously not sufficiently precise – was not directed at a specific people but to the fact that the human race has violence in its DNA, as the biblical stories so strongly affirm. I also had in mind the relationship between all the descendents of Abraham who love the same biblical land and come to such grief over it.

From my days in President Johnson’s White House forward, I have defended Israel’s right to defend itself, and still do. But sometimes an honest critic is a government’s best friend, and I am appalled by Israel’s devastation of innocent civilians in this battle, all the more so because, as I said in my column, it is exactly what Hamas wanted to happen. To be so indifferent to that suffering is, sadly, to be as blind in Gaza as Samson.

Sincerely,

Bill Moyers
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/blog/2009/01/exchange_between_bill_moyers_a.html

[Libertyfirst]

1. I applaud, "an honest critic is a government's best friend." It is what

we owe our country and our leaders.

[Still Sensible]

2. Bill Moyers is absolutely right

and he does acknowledge both sides of the story.

[clear eye]

3. Most American Jews (unlike the ADL) are finding Israel's actions

agonizing. We desperately want Israel to survive as the ultimate defense against the vulnerability of being a people w/o a country. Even sympathetic non-Jews seem to be unable to grasp how the constant undercurrent of anti-Semitism among many in the industrial nations keeps Jews aware that it may simply take another episode of hard economic times for a movement to arise where we least expect it (some German Jews, pre-Hitler, were as deeply entrenched in the establishment as some U.S. Jews are today, and all German Jews were integrated in everyday life) demanding the genocide of Jews as the solution for the world's economic woes. Having a country that is protected by international law, rather than being simply a minority ethnic group everywhere we live, makes an enormous difference in the likelihood of that happening.

So it is a twofold misery on a gut level to see both the torment of the Gaza residents, and Israel's loss of its moral footing. It looks as though all hope for peaceful co-existence has been abandoned in Israel, and that they have decided to crush the Palestininians militarily if it takes the death of every man, woman, and child. It's as if the Israeli leadership is saying, "So, you want to deal with us through force? We will oblige you and do it for real, and if winning means that no Gaza resident is left standing, so be it." As though the barrage of rockets from Gaza wiped out Israel's awareness that they are surrounded by Muslim countries sympathetic to the Palestinians. As though the Israeli leadership feels that morality is optional. We know from the current oppression of ordinary Americans by the U.S. power elite, where that leads. American Jews have always hoped and expected Israel to be better than that. That their society had learned from the European experience how deeply wrong might-makes-right is. But it seems that 60 years of insecurity have led to a kneejerk escalation of violence as a response to threats.

Other Palestinian/Israeli issues that must be resolved are complicated--the surrounding Arab countries' obligations to accept Palestinian immigration now as they did before 1948, the acceptability of birth control among Palestinians in an area where water resources are so limited (6 - 8 children is a common number), for example--but whether Israel's military should continue on the course it is taking is not. I'm sure right and wrong is harder for Israelis at the wrong end of rockets to see, and it is understandable that they resent comments from world Jews outside. I'll speak out, anyhow. The massive killing of civilians must cease. It is horrific, and nothing good can come of it.