Should we mix it up among ourselves here at COMMENTARY’s various blogs? Sometimes we have to.
Jamie Kirchick blew a little valentine over the weekend to the British publication, the Spectator. It read in full:
There are some great doings at the website of what I like to think of as a sister publication to COMMENTARY across the pond: the Spectator. The oldest magazine in the English-speaking world, the Spectator—or “Speccie” as it is lovingly called—represents the best opinion journalism regarding all things British, particularly politics and culture.
In addition to the Coffee House, the magazine’s staff blog, London Times contributors Stephen Pollard and Clive Davis contribute must-read daily musings. Plus, there’s the excellent Melanie Phillips, author of Londonistan (reviewed in the pages of COMMENTARY by Daniel Johnson), whose blog has just joined the Spectator website.
Is Kirchick’s praise for the “Speccie” justified?
Yes, the Spectator has the courageous Melanie Phillips writing for it, and that is mightily to its credit. But Phillips apart, the magazine has a pronounced anti-Zionist slant, not exactly a courageous position these days in the British isles or in Europe.
Consider the magazine’s treatment of The Israel Lobby by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt. The Spectator found a reviewer, Jonathan Mirsky, who wrote that “this densely footnoted and courageous book deserves praise rather than abuse.” COMMENTARY has a rather different view of this disreputable book.
Thumbing through back issues of the Spectator one can find material that is far worse than Mirsky’s apologia for anti-Semitism. Read, for example, its regular columnist Taki endorsing Ilan Pappé’s The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.
Money quote:
Pappé’s figures don’t lie. Over 90 per cent of the land was Palestinian in the early 20th century, and by 1948 the Jewish minority owned only 5.8 per cent of the land. The ethnic cleansing came under the name of Plan Dalet, and it included files on every Arab village and its inhabitants that would allow Jewish militias to attack them and drive them off their lands. . . .
The result was that 800,000 Palestinians became refugees. We in the West pride ourselves on fairness and compassion. As do the Jewish people everywhere. Where’s the fairness there after all these years?
In publishing Taki, a columnist who has long dabbled in anti-Semitic provocations, does the Spectator represent the “best opinion journalism” in Britain, especially about politics and culture? Perhaps Kirchick is right, but only if one considers what else is on offer in British publications these days.
And is the Spectator is some sense a “sister publication to COMMENTARY”? Perhaps Kirchick is right once again. To find out why, see this movie.
