From the Archives: Irving Howe and Stanley Plastrik, “After the Mideast War”

From the Archives: Howe and Plastrik on Israel

Peter Beinart?s essay in the June 10 issue of the New York Review of Books, ?The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment,? deals with a problem which, he argues, American Jewish leaders had failed to address: ?Particularly in the younger generations, fewer and fewer American Jewish liberals are Zionists; fewer and fewer American Jewish Zionists are liberal.? The responses to Beinart’s essay, which has accrued even more worldly significance after the flotilla raid, have ranged from the highly sympathetic to the thoroughly outraged, with less in between.

In 1967, in the wake of the Six-Day War, Irving Howe and Stanley Plastrik wrote a short article for Dissent addressing the new importance of Israel even for Jews who, as Howe would write fifteen years later in A Margin of Hope, ?had no intention whatever of buying a one-way ticket to Israel.? While the political circumstances of 1967 are in many ways different from our own, Howe and Plastrik?s sentiments do not feel so dated:

We support the survival of Israel as a people, but that in no way signifies acquiescence in the ?tough? and chauvinist outcries that have emerged among certain Israeli political and military leaders?If a return to the old borders seems unrealistic insofar as it would leave Israel once again open to terrorist harassment, the Israelis would nevertheless do well to forgo the temptation of large-scale territorial conquest?.Israelis should take a constructive and humane attitude toward the problem of the Arab refugees?who, even if exploited by the Arab governments, are suffering human beings and deserve more sympathy and active help than they have gotten from a nation itself comprised of refugees.

Read the entirety of ?After the Mideast War? here.

Dissent is pleased to promote the Cry Wolf Project. From the project’s coordinators:

“Colleagues:

We are writing to ask for your help in an important project in the battle with conservative ideas. Today, as in the past, the fight to transform American politics and policy takes place on a battlefield in which ideas, narratives, and the construction of a politically driven conventional wisdom constitutes a set of highly potent weapons. Too often conservatives in the Congress and the media have captured the rhetorical high ground by asserting that virtually any substantial, progressive change in public policy, especially that involving taxes on the wealthy or regulation of business, will kill jobs, generate a stifling government bureaucracy, or curtail economic growth.

But history shows that in almost every instance the opponents of needed social and economic change are ?crying wolf.? We therefore need to construct a counter narrative that demonstrates the falsity or exaggeration of such claims so that the first reaction of millions of people, as well as opinion leaders, will be ?There they go again!? Such a refrain will undermine the credibility and arguments of the organizations and individuals who use such dire social and economic prognostications to thwart progressive reform.

To give substance and scholarly integrity to this ?crying wolf? argument, we are calling upon historians and social scientists, in training or well established, to use their research skills to identify instances, in recent years as well as in the more distant past, in which the ?crying wolf? scare was put forward by industry executives, conservative politicians, and right-wing pundits before the passage of legislation or the promulgation of regulations that have become hallmarks of popular and progressive statecraft. On each issue we seek to document three things: First, historical examples and quotes drawn from speeches, legislative testimony, newspaper and other media opinion pieces, think-tank reports, or political platforms which claim that a proposed policy or regulation would generate a set of negative consequences; second, a discussion of how these crying-wolf claims impacted the new laws or regulations as they were passed into law; and third, a well-documented analysis of the extent to which conservative and special interest fears were or were not realized during the years and decades after the new laws or regulations went into effect.

This work is sponsored by the San Diego-based Center on Policy Initiatives and funded by a grant from the Public Welfare Foundation. Donald Cohen of CPI, Peter Dreier of Occidental College, and Nelson Lichtenstein of UC Santa Barbara constitute the ad hoc committee now administrating this initiative.

Based on some of the policy areas listed below, we solicit one page proposals for the kind of short studies outlined above. If we think the proposal promising, we will then ask the applicant to develop a larger policy brief, perhaps 2,000 words in length. It should be well documented and scrupulously accurate. We will pay $1,000 for each brief that meets these standards. We hope that many of these become the basis for opinion pieces designed to run in the mainstream media, on line, on the air, or in the press.

We will be focusing on the following policy areas.

1. Taxes and public budgets

2. Labor market standards

3. Food, tobacco and drug health and safety

4. Environmental protection: air, water, toxics, etc

5. Workplace safety

6. Financial regulation

7. Consumer product safety

8. Local issues (i.e. inclusionary housing, building code standards, etc.)

We will be looking for the following things in each case study/policy brief:

1. Specific Laws or Regulations within the policy area

2. Why the law or regulation was needed: citations of studies, articles that demonstrated need, etc.

3. Principle opponent interest groups

4. The quotes and claims: Reports, correspondence and/or public testimony of interest groups that lobbied against passage and implementation of laws and regulations. [While some quotes will certainly be included in the policy brief, we would like all quotes that are found to be included in appendices]

5. Principle proponent groups (for research and help)

6. Any existing retrospective qualitative and quantitative costs and benefits of laws

7. Major books, articles, sources on the history and impact of legislation/regulation.

Proposals should be sent to Donald Cohen at dcohen@onlinecpi.org.

Please feel free to forward this RFP and/or to send ideas, references and proposals.

Sincerely,

Peter Dreier, Donald Cohen, and Nelson Lichtenstein”