CommentaryMARCH 2020 The Progressive Prosecutor Project How and why the nation,s crime busters are becoming criminal enablers Commentary by ANDREW C. McCARTHY MARCH 2020 : VOLUME 149 NUMBER 3 149 2020 : VOLUME MARCH $5.95 US : $7.00 CANADA THE TWO BRIGHT LIGHTS, THE KEY NOVELIST STEPHEN STATE BLIGHTED OF AN ANTI- SONDHEIM SOMETHING CITY NOVELISTIC AGE AT 90 by JOHN by EDWARD by CHRISTOPHER by TERRY PODHORETZ KOSNER CALDWELL TEACHOUT For emergency medical care, who do Israelis depend on? They depend on you. Magen David Adom (MDA) is Israel’s official ambulance, blood-services, and disaster-relief agency, serving the nation’s 9 million people. But like every other Red Cross agency around the world, MDA doesn’t receive regular government support. That’s why it relies on people like you. Since the 1930s, generous Americans like you have provided the vehicles, training, and equipment that’s kept Israelis healthy and strong. There are many ways to support Israel, but none that has a greater effect on its people and its future than a gift to Magen David Adom. Your support isn’t just changing lives — it’s literally saving them. Help save lives in Israel. Support Magen David Adom at afmda.org/donate. EDITOR’S COMMENTARY The Two-State Something JOHN PODHORETZ F THE BOND shan’t burst,” Friedrich Nietzsche that Jews have no ancestral history in Jerusalem, and once wrote, “bite upon it first.” He called this a finger-wagging demands that their beloved terrorist ‘ I“rule as a riddle,” a way of describing how an ir- Jew-killers be released from Israeli jails. rationally insoluble problem sometimes requires an The Israelis offered Palestinians a state twice unconventional solution. It’s Alexander the Great and in 2000. The Palestinians answered those offers with the Gordian knot—or Indiana Jones facing a scimitar- terrorism, hate-filled propaganda, and war. The hope wielding foe in a dusty marketplace and saving him- of optimistic Israelis that there could be a favorable self with a single shot from a pistol. resolution of this intractable problem exploded like That is the logic of the Trump-administration a suicide vest. plan for Israel and the Palestinians. Its designers are In the two decades since the second intifada be- seeking to slice through two decades of stasis by means gan, there has been only one half-serious, half-ludicrous of a radical alteration in the role of the United States as proposal—made in 2008 in secret by the unpopular, un- one of the players in the so-called peace process. elected, and bribery-tarnished accidental prime min- Since the Oslo accords in 1993 effectively created ister, Ehud Olmert. The Olmert plan was rejected on a negotiating partner for Israel by incepting a “Pales- spurious grounds by the Palestinian Authority’s leader, tinian Authority” led by Yasser Arafat, the American Mahmoud Abbas. When he came into office in 2009, approach was to propose various trust-building and Benjamin Netanyahu immediately offered to move to confidence-building measures. They were explic- final-status negotiations with the Palestinians, only to itly designed as precursors, as ways of smoothing the be rebuffed—and there matters have lain dormant. rocky road to a final deal that would be negotiated Donald Trump came into office promising the between the Israelis and the Palestinians. “deal of the century,” and his administration’s ap- That strategy was wish-based, not fact-based. It proach is inventive. No confidence-building. No “it’s assumed that the difficulty in settling the existential not up to us to shape the ultimate arrangement.” It’s row between the two parties was based in misunder- a full-blown plan that lays out the geography of the standings and suspicions that could be calmed by me- two states, including a mammoth tunnel connecting diated behavior. That can work when the ultimate aim Gaza and the West Bank. It ends the weird fiction of both sides is a deal. But even then, such measures that Israel could ever surrender neighborhoods, are not really necessary since the two sides basically some half a century old, because they sit on suppos- have the same goal. They didn’t. Israel demonstrated edly “occupied” land—land that was never under any its willingness to fulfill the 1947 notion of two states nation’s modern sovereignty. living side by side—not so their interlocutors. The Pal- And, most dramatically, it basically challenges estinians didn’t need confidence-building. What they the Palestinians to take it or leave it. They have four seemed to have confidence in was the idea that Israel’s years to come to the table, at which point the deal is acquiescence to international demands marked it as a dead and the Israelis are (in American eyes) free to do paper tiger. Their long-expressed hope of pushing the what they want. The outrage with which the plan has Jews into the sea was within reach. been received in certain quarters ignores the central Over the decades, the Palestinians have never question: Why not try this? Nothing else has worked. come to the table with a plan of their own, or any Cut the Gordian knot. Bite the bond that won’t plan, only lists of grievances, jaw-dropping claims burst. See what happens.q Commentary 1 March 2020 Vol. 149 : No. 3 Articles Andrew C. The Progressive Prosecutor Project 15 McCarthy How and why the nation’s crime busters are becoming criminal enablers. Edward Bright Lights, Blighted City 24 Kosner A journey through the mayors culminates in the de Blasio disaster. Seth The Rot Inside American 29 Mandel Jewish Organizations How they refuse to engage. Michael J. Yale’s Art Department Commits Suicide 33 Lewis The shutdown of a Western survey course is a historic debacle. Christopher A Bellow from France 37 Caldwell Why don’t Americans ‘get’ Michel Houellebecq, the most important European novelist of the last quarter-century? Emily Mamzer 43 Fox Gordon A memoir of my father-in-law. Politics & Ideas Kevin D. Why Ezra Klein is Polarized 51 Williamson Why We’re Polarized, by Ezra Klein Politics & Ideas Jay P. A Man in Full 56 Lefkowitz Touched with Fire, by David Lowe Naomi Oh, No! 59 Schaefer Riley Boys and Sex, by Peggy Orenstein Jonathan Mixed Up 61 Silver Remix Judaism, by Roberta Rosenthal Kwall Culture & Civilization Terry Sondheim at 90 65 Teachout What has the greatest theatrical talent of our time achieved? Mark Mother Courage 69 Horowitz The Kindness of Strangers, by Salka Viertel The Sun and Her Stars, by Donna Rifkind Monthly Commentaries Editor’s Commentary Washington Commentary 1 John Podhoretz Matthew Continetti 10 The Two-State Something The Wages of Political Paranoia Reader Commentary Jewish Commentary 4 Letters Meir Y. Soloveichik 12 on the January issue Hath Not a Jew Costumes? Social Commentary Hollywood Commentary 8 Christine Rosen Rob Long 72 The Confessions of Jeanine Cummins Growing Old in Hollywood READER COMMENTARY Our Social- Media Problem To the Editor: exposed them for what they are. Christine Rosen writes: HRISTINE ROSEN makes Barely a day goes by without some OSHUA BERNS is correct to C many important points in her journalist letting the cat out of the Jnote that one of the most article on the perils of social media bag on Twitter and showing for all significant changes wrought by (“The Social-Media Decade,” Janu- the world that he is not deserving the social-media revolution has ary). But is there not some reason of our blind trust. been the effect of social media to suppose that the initial hopes of Some journalistic institutions on mainstream media institutions. the social-media revolution have choose to punish their employees Reporters who once wove their come to fruition after all? Namely, for this kind of thing. Others don’t. ideological leanings into their re- social media has revealed the But, in the end, it doesn’t really portage have now been liberated to traditional media as a collection matter. What’s important is that tweet them—but they are also now of hopelessly biased and forever the American people get a fuller subject to greater public scrutiny. preening activists. view of the press in which they In some cases, real-time criticism In a country that holds its free place so much stock. I, for one, from social-media users creates press in such high esteem, it’s only would hate to see us go back to the much-needed correctives to media right that citizens get to see the day when journalists can disguise bias, as it did when high-school true face of that press. Traditional their biases by employing subtle students from Covington Catholic journalism made it easy for ideo- journalistic slant with impunity. A were slandered by reporters for logues to hide behind institutional truly informed public is one with a supposedly bullying and harass- walls. But with the advent of social clear picture of its informers. ing a Native American activist at media, the temptations of personal Joshua Berns a monument in Washington, D.C. Norwich, Connecticut celebrity, brand-building, and sim- (Video footage of the event later ple narcissism drew out the most revealed that the high-school boys vociferous activists in the press and 1 were not guilty of anything but run- 4 March 2020 of-the-mill teenage awkwardness… and wearing MAGA hats). But I would nevertheless urge caution in celebrating this change too enthusiastically. Although in some cases the media have had to acknowledge their own bias be- March 2020 Vol. 149 : No. 3 cause of revelations by critics using social media, the ubiquity of social- media use has also given such expo- John Podhoretz, Editor sés less and less force as time goes Abe Greenwald, Senior Editor on.