Stephen Walt, in a post accusing critics of Chas Freeman's appointment of a McCarthyite "smear campaign," composes his own blacklist of Jews with divided loyalties. Walt writes:
What unites this narrow band of critics is only one thing: Freeman has dared to utter some rather mild public criticisms of Israeli policy. That's the litmus test that Chait, Goldberg, Goldfarb, Peretz, Schoenfeld et al want to apply to all public servants: thou shalt not criticize Israeli policy nor question America's "special relationship" with Israel. Never mind that this policy of unconditional support has been bad for the United States and unintentionally harmful to Israel as well. If these pundits and lobbyists had their way, anyone who pointed that fact out would be automatically disqualified from public service.
Freeman's views on Israel are troublesome, but it's absurd to say that this is the common thread running through the criticism of his appointment. (Equally ludicrous is Walt's suggestion that Freeman's views on Israel have produced only "some rather mild public criticisms.") In fact, the primary concern among Freeman's critics is, as Marty Peretz says, his instinct to "kow-tow to authoritarians and tyrants, in some measure just because they may seem able to keep the streets quiet." Jon Chait picked up the same theme in the Washington Post, accusing Freeman of a "blindness to morality," the most extreme manifestation of which, Chait says, came in his support for the bloody Chinese crackdown on democracy activists in Tienanmen Square in 1989.
Schoenfeld also focused his criticism on Freeman's ties to the Chinese and Saudis and how those ties comprise Freeman's ability to be an impartial and independent gatekeeper of this nation's intelligence products. And Goldberg accused Freeman of a "blind spot on the Saudi question." On the Hill, the complaints are the same. Reps. Kirk and Israel are both circulating letters to the Inspector General for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence requesting "an investigation into his relationships with the Saudi government."
Walt is compelled to see everything through the prism of his own brave struggle against the Israel Lobby, but the problem with Freeman is not that he is overtly hostile to Israel -- it's that his hostility to Israel seems to have been bought and paid for by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, just as his hostility to democracy activists in China seems to have been purchased by China's Communist party. If Walt wants to defend Freeman, let him defend Freeman's statements in praise of tyrants rather than Freeman's attacks on Israeli democracy. Walt will have to defend the Saudi Lobby and the China Lobby to defend Freeman. On this issue, it's not enough simply to attack the Israel Lobby.
