JustASC

Larry Cohler-Esses interviews Charles Freeman in the Forward:

Some in Washington who venture criticism of Israel do so in a tone of critical sympathy that may at once blunt the criticism but also allow it to be heard. Freeman, a self-confessed “non-political” figure, does not choose to do so, and he makes no apologies for that.

One example is the speech he gave at a policy conference in 2006, which some opponents cite as the basis for their saying he blames Israel for 9/11.

“Americans need to be clear about the consequences of continuing our current counterproductive approaches to security in the Middle East,” he told his audience. “We have paid heavily and often in treasure in the past for our unflinching support and unstinting subsidies of Israel’s approach to managing its relations with the Arabs. Five years ago we began to pay with the blood of our citizens here at home. We are now paying with the lives of our soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines on battlefields in several regions of the realm of Islam, with more said by our government’s neoconservative mentors to be in prospect.”

“You have to be fairly obsessive to read that into it,” Freeman said of the charge that he blames American support of Israel for 9/11. “What it means is that our relationship with Israel, given what Israel has done to the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, has helped to create an atmosphere first in the Arab world and now through all of Islam, in which anti-Americanism flourishes.

“There is a hell of a lot of polling date to sustain this. It’s ridiculous to say it’s cause and effect. But it’s also ridiculous to say there are no consequences. There are consequences.”

Actually, I think you would have to be fairly obsessive to analyze the 9/11 attacks and mention only one root cause: U.S. support for Israel. Even Freeman clarifies that the relationship “helped” to create an atmosphere of anti-Americanism, suggesting that there are other things that contributed to creating that atmosphere. But he doesn’t mention any in his speech, which makes it quite reasonable to assume that he blames 9/11,  and the Iraq war, if not on Israel, then on U.S. support for Israel.

Try this: “The Yankees need to be clear about the consequences of acquiring Alex Rodriguez. Since he joined the team, they have not won a World Series.” Do you need to be “obsessive” to assume that the writer was blaming A-Rod for the Yankees’ woes?

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