From: Shmuel Rosner

To: Adam LeBor

Dear Adam,

Thank you for your thoughtful response. The lesson of your experience seems quite obvious: if even someone like yourself, whose instincts (I suspect) are much more pro-UN than mine, has turned skeptical, then the organization is really as useless as I imagined. And the point you've raised regarding its treatment of Israel is but one example of why it should be scrapped, or at least marginalized. Giving it more power will be very costly to Israel, as instead of working to better the world as it should, what I expect the UN to do it is to try and use any power it might obtain to make Israel less secure.

So let us agree (I think we do) on that, and turn to the question of Darfur, and to Jewish-American involvement in trying to make this cause a keystone of using Jewish political power to improve the world.

The facts are indisputable: Jewish Americans were on the forefront of the battle toScene From The Armenian Genocide: Jews fought against genocide even before the Holocaust save Darfur. If you happened to attend the largest Washington demonstration for Darfur you couldn't ignore the fact that although it wasn't a "Jewish" rally, most of the participants happened to be Jewish. Jewish legislators (among them the late Tom Lantos) were vocal, Jewish activists were, well, very active, Jewish organizations were, and still are, making space for this issue on their agenda.

But what is the reason for all that?

One possible explanation should make all of us very proud: Jews, who suffered the most from genocide, feel compelled to raise their voices against it in every part of the world. They feel they have the moral authority and obligation to do so. And they're right.

But there's also a second possibility (which isn't mutually exclusive from the first): For the past few decades, American Jews were spent most of their political capital on the just cause of securing Israel --- and then got tired of it. They got tired of being seen by some elite groups as particularistic and tribal. They got tired as the cause (Israel) has shifted from being David to being Goliath. And they were looking to prove that American Judaism is not a hostage of the Israel-first school of thought, that it has its own priorities.

This comes out in discussions of Darfur as well as other humanistarian causes. One expression of those sentiments the outrageous letter (former IDF civilian volunteer) Representative Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) sent to Israel's Ambassador in Washington, demanding that Israel be more receptive to Sudanese refugees who reach Israel's borders. Another expression was the denunciation (in which Jewcy played no small part) of the Anti Defamation League after its leader, Abe Foxman, came out in opposition to the Armenian Genocide bill presented to Congress by --- you guessed it --- a Jewish legislator. (The bill was defeated for the very reasons on which Foxman based his opposition, but you didn't hear much criticism of its sponsors and of the leadership of the House when they failed to deliver on their unrealistic pledges).

So you see where I'm going with this --- and I hope the readers will spare me comments blaming me for not caring enough about genocide. I'm happy to see the Jewish community as active as it is in humanitarian causes. I do also think, however, that there's some merit to this niggling question that keeps coming back: Will universalist causes eventually replace Israel as the great political cause of American Jewry?

One might suspect that domestic considerations are also in play here. American JewsBeta Israel: The Jews of Ethiopia were always at the forefront of fighting for the rights of African-Americans. They were marching alongside Reverend King in the high days of cooperation between the two communities, but sometimes along the way the bond between Jews and African Americans have soured. The Jewish community has been trying to prove, ever since, that it did not abandon African-Americans for racial reasons --- hence some of the appeal to Jews of Barack Obama, offers the community the intriguing hope of repairing those historic relations.

That's why Israelis interpret the intense involvement of American Jews in shaping the policies toward Ethiopian Jews, as being motivated by domestic considerations. The same logic applies to the very active role Jews are playing in trying to help Darfurians. The Jews, arguably, were not as involved as a group during the crisis in the former Yugoslavia. (Interestingly, Ariel Sharon opposed international involvement in the crisis, fearing it would set a dangerous precedent. He anticipated an effort by the countries in control of international organizations hostile to Israel to influence the outcome of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by the use of international force).

And again, this is not an indictment of the Jewish community for acting for the "wrong" reasons. Motivations that lead to the outcome of fighting genocide are all "good". However, I think one should be able to have an honest discussion of such motivations, because other than implicating the just war against genocide, it also raises issues related to the relations between Israel and Diaspora Jews, especially in cases in which the interests of the communities come apart.

Such contradiction was visible in the case of Turkey and the Armenian genocide, when fighting to establish historical truth ran contrary to Israel national interests (and American interests, to judge by the coverage and the outcome). The case the Ethiopian Jews was a similar story of American Jews pressuring Israel to accept more immigrants than it wanted to.

So: we started with the UN and its inability to stop genocide, and we now turn to explore Jewish involvement with stopping genocide. Is there a special Jewish responsibility here? Does it also apply to Israel? And what happens when the preservation of the State of Israel contradict the cause of stopping genocide?

I'm looking forward to your answers.

Best,
Shmuel

From: Shmuel Rosner

To: Adam LeBor

Dear Adam,

Thank you for your letter. I now see that it was probably an error not to first detail more of the stories highlighted in your book, and only then move to ask the grand-question of "the UN, an angel or Satan."

So now you corrected my structural mistake, and we can go back to this question. You say that you'd first like to see a "a system of internal UN accountability that calls to account those officials involved in the UN’s failures" – but that is not a real answer to my question.

Or maybe it is; if one wants to see more accountability at the UN headquarters, oneAli Khamenei: Can the UN stop him from going nuclear? can still see the benefit of having the organization function properly. However, this is not an obvious conclusion for the reader of your book. As you rightly blame the permanent five members of the Security Council for failing to meet their duty, you also reveal the incoherence that is inherent to the process necessary to achieving any goal through this paralyzed body.

Consider a problem that we're all familiar with by now, sanctions on Iran. Whether it is wise or not to sanction Iran, whether sanctions can really stop Iran from pursuing its nuclear goals, whether it is even necessary to stop Iran from achieving its goals – all these are beside the point. We are now looking at the mechanism at the heart of every decision reached by the UN, and what you've masterfully detailed in regard to genocide in Rwanda is repeating itself in regard to Iran: an inability to reach a decision and to act upon it decisively that originates with the domestic considerations of the different members, and their conflicting interests in dealing with the world.

In his book A War In A Time Of Peace, the late David Halberstam was quoting an interview with Canadian General Romeo Dallaire – the one commander that was left in the field in Rwanda whom you mention in your letter. "Rarely had a commander at such a tragic venue" writes Haberstam, "been so unsparing of himself, even though his superiors had not listened to his warnings." Here is what Dallaire had to say:

I haven't even started my real mourning of the apathy and the absolute detachment of the international community, and particularly the western world, from the plight of Rwandans. Because fundamentally, to be very candid and soldierly, who the hell cared about Rwanda? I mean, face it. Essentially how many people remember the genocide in Rwanda?... Who comprehends that more people were killed, injured and displaced in three and a half months in Rwanda than in the whole of the Yugoslavian campaign in which we poured sixty thousand troops and the whole of the western world was involved there?

So yes – in theory they are all against murder and rape and violence. I'm sure they are. But you'll have hard time convincing Dallaire that they care enough. Not enough for the Chinese to support a more robust response to stop the atrocities in Darfur, not enough for Russia to stop Slobodan Milosevic, and apparently, not enough for Bill Clinton to support a military response in Rwanda. Washington, wrote Halberstam, "wanted no part of Rwanda. The political fallout from Somalia had caused enough damage."

Damage – political damage at home. And Clinton didn't really move in the Balkans until he was certain that the political damage would be greater if he didn't act, than the possible damage if he did. Political considerations at home were always a decisive factor for any government. When the British government headed by Tony Blair was reluctant to deal with Darfur, you write, "several British members of Parliament began to press the Blair government, which had once proudly announced a new, ethical, foreign policy, on its unwillingness to take a robust stand."

Now, you highlight the fact that careers were not hurt by the failure to preventBill Clinton With Rwandan Children: Ballsy catastrophe, but why would they be if, as you write in the book, "the Secretariat takes its cues from the P5." On the one hand you blame the countries represented at the Security Council, but on the other hand – lacking the means to punish them for their deeds or lack thereof – you want the bureaucrats to pay a price.

So maybe the problem is with the way this system was devised. Maybe we should stop hoping that the UN will somehow miraculously improve, and be more realistic about it. Maybe genocide can only be stopped if someone is willing to pick up the tab and pay the price of stopping it. Maybe sharing the power in a parliament-like world institution is the less efficient way of dealing with the horrors of the world.

And if that is the case – no technical fine-tuning of the way the UN operates can fix the problem. This can only be fixed by an overhaul of the international system. It could be this old-new idea of League of Democracies now promoted by presidential candidate John McCain, or it could be a decision by powerful countries, like the US, or powerful organizations, like NATO, that preventing genocide is a cause important enough as to justify circumventing the UN. This means unilateral action – an idea that was discredited by the Iraq war and that people here have no appetite for.

My grim conclusion will be this: as soon as the next genocide starts to take shape, you can start working on your new book. Unfortunately, it will be very similar to the one you already wrote.

Best,

Shmuel

In researching Complicity with Evil, Adam LeBor discovered that the three great killing fields of the last decade—Bosnia, Rwanda, and Darfur—were not only ravaged by murderous convulsions (still ongoing in the case of Darfur), but abetted in doing so by the appalling negligence of the United Nations, which sat idle without shutting the killing fields down. LeBor's bleak conclusion is that the UN, at present, is simply incapable of fulfilling its foundational obligation to "save succeeding generations from the scourge of war." Shmuel Rosner, Haaretz's chief U.S. correspondent, has seen his share of war-zones as well, and explores the questions of genocide, the duty to stop evil, and the legitimacy of international institutions with LeBor in the dialogue below.

From: Shmuel Rosner

To: Adam LeBor

Dear Adam,

That is one depressing book.

Complicity with Evil you call it, but it is also complicity with hypocrisy, withMass Graves At Srebrenica cynicism. "The United Nations in the age of modern genocide" is an example of complicity with mediocrity. Your book is the story of an institution incapable of doing the one task that is important enough to justify its less than obviously justified existence. A depressing book. I will recommend it to anyone who's still idealistic enough, or naïve enough, or stupid enough, to think that the United Nations has the power of moral authority. Amazingly, I do meet such people from time to time.

This story has been told before in many ways. How the world failed to defend the people of Srebrenica, and the people of Rwanda, and the people of Darfur. Samantha Power, in her masterful work, A Problem From Hell, was pointing at America and asking, essentially, the questions you're asking now. Her work was extraordinary, but I find yours more persuasive in at least one respect. That is, one can claim that America has no duty to stop all evil, and that its policies are justifiably aimed at maximizing American interests. But one can not say the same of the United Nations.

You make this point right at the beginning of this book: "If the United Nations, whose very raison d'être is the maintenance of international peace and security, does not bare some responsibility for failing to stop the slaughters… than who does?"

The power of this book is the way it assembles the details, the everyday decisionsRwanda's Killing Fields that made genocide possible. "Bosnia could not be saved because it was small and mountainous. Darfur cannot be saved because it is large and flat." A couple of months ago, writing for Slate about Darfur, I angered some activists by stating that "The campaign to save Darfur is alive, but it is no longer kicking. You could say that it has achieved all its stated goals: public awareness, international pressure, congressional action, the administration's involvement. Well, all but one: The crisis in Darfur is not yet solved, and the campaign to save Darfur is running out of options."

Sadly, I do not see a reason to change even one word in that paragraph. But after reading your book I now understand even better why this campaign—to save Darfur—was probably doomed to fail before it even started.

When I was interviewing President Bush in mid May at the Oval Office, one of the questions he was asked referred to recent events in Lebanon: "We have in place U.N. resolutions, Security Council resolutions that were meant to deal with the problem of Hezbollah. Nevertheless, it has not seemed to help." Unfortunately, only by translating the President's body language to words can one convey his response. "If you're going to pass a resolution, you better mean it," he said. In the case of Lebanon—a country suffering from the aggression of Hezbollah, but that cannot be compared to a country in which a genocide in taking place—the UN has proved incompetent. In many ways, this incompetence is no different in nature than the ones you describe in your book. The UN is hesitant whenever there's an aggressor involved, whenever there's a threat of violence involved. The UN can only keep the peace in places of—well—relative peace.

But here is the question I have for you, the expert on UN incompetence. It is actuallyRemnants Of Darfur a dilemma on which I also wrote in the past. Reading your book, one might conclude that what the world needs is a more vigorous, more determined world body. But I have my doubts, and the reason is simple: I do not believe such body will be more moral—and if I do not trust it to be more moral, why would I want it to be more competent?

Here is the way I framed it, writing to an Israeli audience about the Security Council, Lebanon and Iran:

A powerful and effective Security Council is a double-edged sword. More than once in the past Israel benefited from the fact that the council did not press for the implementation of resolutions less favorable to it. The U.S. administration, which has a complex relation with the UN and its institutions as well, also faces a similar dilemma… Use the Security Council for your needs, but do not seek to make it more powerful than necessary so that it will not turn around and bite you.

So: this will be my question for this first session of our dialogue: Do you want a more efficient UN, or would you prefer a more robust response against genocide from countries like the US, while giving up on this righteous-UN idea once and for all?

Best,

Shmuel

To: David Samuels

From: Shmuel Rosner

Dear David,

How lucky I am to have a thick skin.

So, thank you for complimenting my relatively meager talents; I'll just ignore the insults, as I'm sure you did not really mean any of the bad things you said about my lack of literary skills. You're right: "Kafka and Babel, Saul Bellow, Philip Roth" were all geniuses of literary work. It was probably my short-sightedness that prevented me from making the connection between your work and theirs.

Moving forward: you started by asking many questions, and some of them merit an answer. But I need to warn you first: this might not be the literary, sophisticated answer you'd expect, but rather an answer that resonates with the simple narrow-minded people of "Potomac, Maryland" (I'm in Rockville, not far but a little bit different). Anyway, I'm going to try:

Why do they pray every Sabbath for the welfare of a foreign government and its leaders, and the soldiers who defend its borders?

That's easy: because they care about this country and believe it is the homeland of the Jewish people. They also see the people inhabiting this country as their brothers and sisters, and wish them well.

Why do they celebrate the new year in September instead of in January?

Because they are Jews, and according to the Jewish calendar the year starts in the fall, not winter.

Why do they insist on converting their goyish wives or children's children to their religion instead of simply letting them chose to be whoever they want to be?

Because people, generally speaking, tend to want their children to value the same things they value. That is why educated people tend to want their children to succeed at school and artsy people tend to want their children to go to the theatre.

Now let me turn to one of the things you've said at the bottom of your letter. "You", you write, referring to Israelis, "live in the largest Jewish ghetto in history, under threat of nuclear catastrophe, and under the thumb of a corrupt ultra-orthodox religious establishment whose definition of Judaism is quite literally medieval." Like many of the other assumptions you've made in your letter, this is both condescending and factually wrong.

Israel is not a ghetto, but rather a place in which Jews get to live and make decisionsIsrael: Not a ghetto about their own lives. If the ghettos of the past were like Israel, there would be no Zionism --- which, contrary to your assumption, is not just about making Jews safer, but even more so about making them the masters of their own fate.

But this is not the end of it: You also claim that Israelis live under the "thumb of a corrupt ultra-orthodox religious establishment." I don't know when and if you ever visited Israel, but such description is laughable. I could easily argue that the influence of religious zealots in the US is much more significant than the influence such zealots have on Israel's society and daily life. (Though of course, you can always argue that your literary imagination allows you to fabricate such nonsensical-realities.)

And anyway, how did this become a debate about my assumed Israeli mindset? I think what happened is that you pushed aside all the arguments I was making and was trying to get away with it by simply claiming that as an Israeli I'm probably too dumb to understand your position. Then again, your position is not that complex, and the quasi-courageous posture you've adopted cannot hide its many flaws. So many, in fact, that it's scarcely a position.

To make this long story short let me first summarize our differences:

You said that Jews are liars, pretending to be Americans when they are not.

I disagreed and said that the "weirdness" you ascribe to Jewish Americans is what makes them even more American.

You got angry, though I'm not exactly sure why. "We live as Americans even as we also live sometimes contradictory lives as Jews," you wrote. I can live with that, but still insist that "contradictory lives" is not the equivalent of "double-ness, lying and imposture." I also said that such allegations are dangerous. This is not a difference of opinion, but one of style. Like a rebellious child, you're toying with naughty words so as to impress us with your "speaking the truth." Sorry, but I'm not at all impressed. Words are not just toys, they can also be weapons. Maybe it is time to grow up?

You argue that if all Jewish Americans are lying, because their Americanism is a posture. But on the other hand you seem to praise the Jewish "outsider" state of mind. It seems as if your prescription will only allow American Jews to be in one of two problematic situations: the lying outsiders, or the boring insiders. They can never get it right, can they?

And this is funny because you blame Israelis for thinking that "the doubleness of the Jew in exile is a diseased condition." But the way I see it, you're the one claiming time and again that the American Jewish condition is inherently diseased.

In holding this position, you're certainly in the company of many thinkers. And I was not thinking of Babel and Kafka.

Regards,

Rosner

To: David Samuels
From: Shmuel Rosner

Dear David,

Thank you for your explanation. My impression is that this could become a long and detailed dialogue about the nature of journalism, literature and all things in between, but I'm really not sure Jewcy's the right venue for such discussion.

However, after reading your comments, I think we stand to benefit from summarizing the differences between our respective approaches to our journalistic work. While I think my job is to make the world more orderly and understandable for readers, to try and overcome the chaos, your work does the exact opposite: You meddle with your readers' minds and make them more confused.

The American Melting Pot: Where do Jews fit? Having said that, I'm a little confused now myself: Is what you say in your letter is what you really think or just one of your mind-games? You write a lot of things (that's one lengthy letter, why do they tell me to write up to 800 words, and let you go crazy with a 1300 words - I wonder), but do you really mean them? I'll take a chance here, and assume that you do. So let's make this our topic of discussion for today:

If Americans are self-made people who embrace an imagined future in order to escape the burdens of the past, American Jews seek to have their cake and eat it too by embracing the future-oriented American idea without relinquishing their historically bound identity as Jews.

This, you imply, is the reason that "the themes of double-ness, lying and imposture have a special significance" for you "as an American Jewish writer." And these qualities are self-evidently vicious: Lying isn't be good, trying to have a cake and eat it too is what our mothers warned us not to do. But therein lies your irony. You go on to say that such characteristics "can be the source of a tremendous amount of creative tension." Which is a good thing, isn't it?

Basically, what you're up to is blaming American Jews for misleading their fellow-citizens, their communities, their friends: pretending to be aligned with American society while they really aren't. This is a serious charge, with potentially grave consequences --- a charge that shouldn't be made lightly just for the sake of toying with outrageous ideas. And I must say I am not yet convinced about your motives (if you haven't noticed, I'm the self-appointed responsible adult in this crowded neighborhood of rogue writers).

So the question arises: Is this accusatory description of American Jewry even accurate? Many American Jews whom I know --- who take the trouble to constantly marvel at the extent to which they are an integral part of the great American melting pot --- might dispute your narrative. And they might be even right. They see a tolerant society that can put up with the cultural and religious differences inherent in so many groups playing a part in it. They see an influential group overcoming the difficulties of being a true American minority while preserving its distinctiveness and uniqueness. This, they will say, is not "lying" or "posturing," but rather living a complicated and rich life in this shining city on the hill.

You want to ruin this for them, and one has to ask oneself why. What's bothering you?

"Life Is Full Of Important Choices" is the name of an article you published in the second book you've just released, Only Love Can Break Your Heart, a collection of articles you wrote for all sorts of magazines. Supposedly, the piece is about 9/11; it takes time for the reader to realize that as most of it is dedicated to, well, David Samuel's life. And too some degree, this old article of yours pulls the rug out from under the argument you made in your letter to me:

No one could dispute how beautiful Brooklyn was less than one year later, the summer after the towers fell. It was as if the ashes from the tower had fertilized our neighborhood. The local population of stoop-sitters, myself included, were the recipients of an unexpected bounty.

Can't this description of your Brooklyn count as proof that this joint venture of Americanness is no mirage, but rather the daily reality of "worshippers at the Mosque," and of your wife's mother who "called to tell us that Jesus Christ offered the only pathway to salvation," and of "Virginia and I" who "lit the Sabbath candles together, and said our blessings over the wine"?

"What is happening?", Virginia repeated as we stared at the picture on the television screen of the towers falling, one after the other. We went to the hardware store and bought white paper masks so we could safely breath, and then we went down to the Promenade, where my father used to take me to look at the cargo ships. We stood in the crowd of onlookers and watched the black cloud cross over the river.

Thus you, with your candles, and your decision to "not eat pork," were an integral part of an American tragedy. Not as a pretender, but as a participant. I'm no American, but it seems to me that your behavior that day, and the days following, is anything but part of an "ungracious refusal of large numbers of American Jews to buy into the full weirdness and wonder and scariness of the American idea."

It is your American-Jewish weirdness, your American-Jewish scariness --- that is the American idea.

Best,
Rosner