{"id":82459,"date":"2020-12-13T17:05:47","date_gmt":"2020-12-13T15:05:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=82459"},"modified":"2020-12-07T09:57:35","modified_gmt":"2020-12-07T07:57:35","slug":"07-05-61","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=82459","title":{"rendered":"Memories and Expectations of Antony Blinken"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>Memories and Expectations of Antony Blinken<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/h5>\n

Martin Peretz<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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The New Republic staff with a young Antony Blinken. TOP: Left, Chuck Lane; Third from Left, Leon Wieseltier; Fourth from Left, Rick Hertzberg; Fourth from Right, Antony Blinken; Second from Right, Laura Obolensky. BOTTOM: Left, Dorothy Wickenden; Second from left, Mort Kondracke; Third from Left, Marty Peretz; Third from Right, Charles Krauthammer; Second from Right, Mike Kinsley; Right, Ann Hulbert. Photo: courtesy of Martin Peretz.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

An extended metaphor from Meir Blinkin, the immigrant Yiddish writer, born in 1879 in Pereyeslav, the Ukraine, dead at 37 in New York where mourning throngs ushered him towards his last address:<\/span><\/p>\n

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Chava was suddenly overwhelmed with the feeling that life was really beautiful, full of promise; life never betrayed those who hoped and believed\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

But\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

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When Chava finally fell asleep she dreamed she had come into possession of a marvelous violin and that all unexpectedly the main string, the one which produces the tenderest, most     heartfelt tones, had snapped.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This was the tale of a curt marriage. But this also was Blinkin\u2019s life \u2014 or the lives of his neighbors on the lower east side of New York. The next generation was someone whom I\u2019d met when I was doing \u201cgood works\u201d for the Jerusalem Foundation, actually as chairman. He called himself M.H. Blinken (with him came a new spelling of the name) when, as now, two initials as a first name translated into \u201cwealthy man\u201d or \u201cimportant man.\u201d I recall meeting him in Palm Beach \u2014 though I\u2019m not certain \u2014 and collecting a hefty five-figure gift for that philanthropy and then having to listen to him criticize Teddy Kollek, an old line Zionist and mayor of Jerusalem, \u201cthe city of gold\u201d \u2014 or perhaps more aptly \u201cthe city of God\u201d \u2014 but of a relatively dovish persuasion. Dovish but tough, if you get what I mean, which I don\u2019t quite.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tony, as I call him (but I haven\u2019t seen him for a handful of years), comes from an intriguing family\u2026 at least the part of it I know. That is, I don\u2019t know his father\u2019s side of the family \u2014Donald\u2019s \u2014 but I do know his mother\u2019s, Judith. And his sister\u2019s, Leah. This was really a case of the paterfamilias, a family whose character and color somehow descended and was etched by the father, in this case Samuel, who cut the cloth of a large part of the Paris Jewish community, more of the North Africans than the Eastern European and the old-line French, the descendants of the consistoire<\/em> of Napoleon, the sanhedrin<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n

I recall visiting the Pisars when Leah was applying to Harvard and happening in on a conversation about Sam asking prime minister Mitterand to write a letter of recommendation for his daughter. I stuck my head into the confab, arguing that Mitterand\u2019s words would not help \u2014 how well did he know the young lady? \u2014 and might only raise questions like: why does she need the PM to write for her anyway? But Pisar had survived Dachau and Maidanek: his words did carry weight. Even perhaps with his daughter.<\/span><\/p>\n

I met Antony Blinken when he was at Harvard but got to know him reasonably well only when he came on board The New Republic. One fact I learned quickly was that he was very smart, even brilliant, and if he believed in something and you didn\u2019t, he could argue you down with alacrity and depth. We spoke then only a tiny bit about Israel and the Arabs, Israel and the Palestinians. But once in a lunchtime discussion around the question \u2014 at least as I recall it \u2014 he mustered the facts of history which in my view settled the argument.<\/span><\/p>\n

Of course, Blinken worked for both vice president Biden and president Obama. I trust Biden almost as a righteous gentile Zionist\u2026 not that he grasps everything that he should; nor do I. So, yes, even Zionists can be wrong, very wrong. Settling the land, especially all of the land that is left, will destroy even the practical possibilities of peace, even the possibilities of calm. But, from my point of view at least, Obama is hostile in principle to even those of us who believe in a two-state solution but recognize that the blame for its failure to materialize has, for 40 years and more, rested squarely with the Palestinian leadership. This is too concrete a view for Obama\u2019s elevated, and incorrect, conception of liberalism as unifying all oppositions, with himself as the unifier. Israel must, somewhere, be to blame, and he and John Kerry found that \u201csomewhere\u201d in the fig leaf of the West Bank settlements.<\/span><\/p>\n

I am, obviously, not encouraged that John Kerry is part of the Biden Administration \u2014 but I am encouraged that his purview is nowhere near the immediate interests of the Jewish state, except that the universe is the concern of every state, of everyone. Under Biden and Blinken, I do not hope for the axiomatic position of Trump and Kushner, a position I believe is probably the fastest way to peace in the long run. Anyway, the new administration is very different from the old and certainly more reflective. So, I do hope, actually expect from it savvy, responsibility, practicality when it comes to the question of Israel and the Palestinians, of Israel and the other Arabs (like the Saudis) \u2014 and I believe, especially under the guidance of Blinken, that\u2019s what we will see and experience.<\/span><\/p>\n

But I don\u2019t hope or expect a 100% performance. And I have grave misgivings about the other issue of importance to Israel \u2014 Iran. Here the Biden administration confronts a choice: continue on some level the Trump policies of isolating the regime, or ease back into an approximation of the nuclear deal of 2015, Obama\u2019s foreign policy \u201clegacy,\u201d by loosening sanctions. Already some signs point to Biden leaning the second way. There is talk that Rob Malley, Obama\u2019s point-person for the Middle East, will reemerge in a Biden administration, and Malley is a supporter of rapprochement with the regime and quite frankly an antagonist \u2014 if not an enemy \u2014 of Israel. Dan Shapiro is certainly not an enemy but he believes that a lot of pressure on Israel is good for Israel \u2014 and his name is also being floated.<\/span><\/p>\n

This means that Antony Blinken may face a choice of his own: stay with and support the Obama logic, or push for a more pragmatic and assertive approach to Iran that falls short of Trump\u2019s hard line \u2014 be a \u201cteam\u201d player, or use his capital with the incoming President to urge a tougher stance. If he chooses the former approach, Blinken will be doing no favors to Israel, the Iranian people, or the Middle East as a whole. And also no favor to the United States.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Memories and Expectations of Antony Blinken Martin Peretz The New Republic staff with a young Antony Blinken. TOP: Left, Chuck Lane; Third from Left, Leon Wieseltier; Fourth from Left, Rick Hertzberg; Fourth from Right, Antony Blinken; Second from Right, Laura Obolensky. BOTTOM: Left, Dorothy Wickenden; Second from left, Mort Kondracke; Third from Left, Marty Peretz; […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[26,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82459"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=82459"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82459\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":82562,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82459\/revisions\/82562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=82459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=82459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=82459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}