Is Jeff Goldberg Of The Atlantic Loyal To The United
States

post from TPMCafe on 03 November 2009 10:46:00 AM. © TPMCafe

I will answer that question right off. As far as I know (and that is all that I can legitmiately comment on) he is.

The only reason I ask the question is because Goldberg, the Atlantic blogger, has joined with the usual neocons suspects to assert with ugly vehemence that the Iranian-American scholar, Trita Parsi, is not a loyal American but an operative of the loathsome Iranian regime.

Read this (there are now a dozen similar pieces on the web) describing precisely who Trita is, what he stands for and what the neocons (now hell bent on an attack on Iran by the end of the year) are saying about him. Why Trita? Because he is the most effective advocate for diplomacy with Iran rather than listening to the Israeli hawks and their boys here and.

Using Goldberg's standard, I could ask about his loyalties. How can an American who served in the Israeli army be a legitimate commentator on Arab-Israeli affairs? You know how many Americans join the Israeli army. Pretty much none. Even the most rightwing AIPAC kid in your high school or college never dreamed of fighting in the IDF because he or she is an American and we have our own army, navy and air force. A pretty good one too. (I never served in any army. Members of my immediately family served in various American war beginning with WW1 and ending with service in Vietnam. I would not serve in Vietnam because I opposed the war and because I did not want to be killed. One thing that never crossed my mind was choosing some other army to serve in.)

My guess is that it is legitimate to ask any American who chooses to enlist in the Israeli, French, or Indonesian military: why, if you felt the call to national service in the military, did you not choose our military? Yes, some Americans, impatient, and rightly so, to fight the Nazis joined the Canadian army to get into the war faster. But that was because they knew that FDR was hamstrung by Congress in his effort to help the allies. The fought alongside the Canadians and Brits as Americans, in a war they knew American would soon join.

That is not the case with an American joining the IDF. Those few Americans who join the Israeli army are utterly devoted to Israel and its interests. That is fine. But one has to question if they should recuse themselves (1) from questioning the loyalty of Americans of immigrant background who are "guilty" only of their foreignness by birth and (2) from reporting on Middle East affairs period. If Israel is the passion of your life, write about Japan or Africa. Don't even pretend (and Goldberg barely pretends) that you come to Middle East issues with any sort of obectivity whatsoever.

Note: Trita Parsi was in exile in Sweden. He did not join the Iranian Army.