Not to get pulled back too much into the Freeman controversy, which I would prefer to see resolved sooner than later, but I did want to comment on Leon Hadar’s post on the main blog. One of the things that Freeman critics have suddenly (re)discovered is their deep concern for human rights violations in China, which would seem to mean that state policy that cultivates a strong relationship with Beijing of the sort that Freeman has endorsed for decades is cynical and maybe even amoral. As Dr. Hadar reminds us, Israel pursues such a relationship just as our government does, and just as it did with apartheid-era South Africa when the two states shared many of the same international enemies and Western critics. It is Israel’s prerogative to pursue diplomatic relations that it believes serve its national interest, and I would expect them to do nothing else, but there is something strange about holding Freeman to a standard on these matters to which his critics have never held the Israeli government. One does not want to impugn motives, but it’s almost as if protestations about Freeman’s views on Tiananmen Square and other Chinese matters are themselves opportunistic and cynical. This would be shocking indeed.

Now it is true that some of Freeman’s defenders have over-generalized when describing his critics, and so have left themselves open to the silly but rhetorically effective taunts of, “Oh yeah, what about Human Rights Watch?” Yes, what about Human Rights Watch? Despite the fact that the organization does not presume to speak on Freeman’s qualifications as an intelligence analyst, which is the most relevant issue at hand, the sudden vesting of HRW with great moral authority by the standard “pro-Israel” crowd is surreal. This is the same organization whose reports on the war in Lebanon were denounced as anti-Semitic, among other slurs, and whose credibility is constantly attacked by these very same people when it describes the abuses committed in Israeli military actions. That is part of the reason for the polemical usage of HRW in this case as a way of saying “even Human Rights Watch is against this appointment, and you all know how much we hate Human Rights Watch,” but most of the critics have zero credibility in this matter. Indeed, under other circumstances, if HRW claimed something to be true they would almost immediately assume that it was false. The people who mocked the idea of proportionality and dismissed reports of civilian casualties and war crimes in Lebanon (and Gaza) cannot expect to be taken seriously when they suddenly pose as allies of the human rights activists, whom they previously attacked and insulted and whom they are now using to serve an entirely different agenda.

Update: As you all know by now, Freeman has withdrawn and issued a statement. Here is an excerpt:

The tactics of the Israel Lobby plumb the depths of dishonor and indecency and include character assassination, selective misquotation, the willful distortion of the record, the fabrication of falsehoods, and an utter disregard for the truth. The aim of this Lobby is control of the policy process through the exercise of a veto over the appointment of people who dispute the wisdom of its views, the substitution of political correctness for analysis, and the exclusion of any and all options for decision by Americans and our government other than those that it favors.

That sounds about right.