I knew that Andrew Sullivan's abandonment of the hard right position on Israel was driving his old buds at the New Republic crazy. And today, the magazine refers to Sullivan's "venomous hostility toward Israel and Jews" Another anti-Semite!
Andrew was once TNR's wunderkind, the youngest editor in its history. Smart, Oxford-educated, and a gentile Zionist. (Sullivan himself has written that he was pro-Israel long before he got to TNR).
Sullivan left TNR and its uber-neocon publisher, Marty Peretz, on good terms, although Sullivan must have known that there was one condition for remaining on those good terms: he must never attack Israel's policies.
But, after Gaza, the increasingly liberal Sullivan could not take it anymore. He remains pro-Israel but was, and is, utterly disgusted by Israel's behavior in Gaza. Plus, he can't stand the neocons.
And so the break with TNR had to come. And here it is from Leon Wieseltier, the literary editor and bosom buddy of publisher Peretz.
Here's my summation. "Andrew Sullivan always had theological problems with Jews because they don't get the Trinity. For awhile he laid that aside. But now his virulent hatred of Israel and people like Krauthammer has caused him to revert to who he originally was. He is a Jew-hater."
The title of the piece is "Something Much Darker: Andrew Sullivan Has A Serious Problem."
It's a classic. I know most of you won't read the whole piece. Wieseltier's prose is impenetrable. But try.
God, it must drive Peretz and the Wiesel nuts that their once fair-haired (and now no-haired) boy is one of the most influential thinkers in America while they have been relegated to that microspace where Michael Goldfarb, Jonah Goldberg, and John Podhoretz reign supreme.
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