But he apparently realized The New York Review of Books doesn’t hold itself to such journalistic standards. Not only does the former Times editor let Carter’s fallacious characterizations of Resolution 242 pass without comment, but himself mis-describes 242 by inserting what the resolution’s drafter’s intentionally left out – the definite article “the.”
Lelyveld echoes the partisan Palestinian line that the security situation became more dangerous “pretty much as a direct result” of the growth of Israeli settlements, ignoring the fact that anti-Israel violence by Palestinians preceded not only the settlements, but the occupation itself, and ignoring the fact that groups that perpetrate violence against Israelis continuously make clear they are fighting not against settlements, but against Israel’s very existence.
Lelyveld minimizes the success of Israel’s security barrier (which he, of course, calls a “separation wall”), claiming a Hamas declaration that it would not bomb inside Israel was “as much or even more” responsible for a decline in attacks than the barrier itself.
Even Ramadan Shalah, a leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror organization, seems more willing than Lelyveld to unequivocally credit the fence for thwarting attacks. On Hizbullah’s al-Manar television station, he admitted the barrier is “an obstacle to the resistance, and if it were not there the situation would be entirely different.”
Lelyveld also suggests that U.S. support for Israel’s reaction last summer to Hizbullah’s attacks is evidence of American “bias” for Israel.
Lelyveld’s polemic is extreme, but it is hardly the only example of radical anti-Israel rhetoric in the pages of The New York Review of Books and other supposedly “progressive” magazines – as if there is anything progressive about closed-minded, distorted and error-filled delegitimization of Israel.