Hurt Feelings and Other Israeli Crimes

[Valin]

Bloomberg View:

Eli Lake

11/11/15

 

It's official: Thanks to Benjamin Netanyahu, the Center for American Progress is no longer a safe space for progressives.

 

 

At least this is the considered opinion of about a dozen of the liberal think tank's staff members who endorsed a 13-paragraph statement expressing how their employer's decision to invite Israel's prime minister to speak on Tuesday wounded their feelings.

 

The statement says that inviting Netanyahu was "a humanity and human rights issue universally felt," and "we are in a place of confusion and hurt." The staffers complain that it will be difficult to explain the invitation to their progressive allies.

 

Normally, the earnest and unsuccessful protests of anonymous research-institution staffers are not all that important (the statement was read aloud in a closed meeting last Friday, but eventually reported by the Nation). Brian Katulis, a senior fellow at CAP who specializes in Middle East policy, told me he respectfully listened to the dissenting voices last week, but chose to go forward with the event anyway. "We are a think tank, and if we start going down the road of only inviting voices that agree with us, our analysis will suffer and run the risk of slipping into a one-dimensional advocacy," he said.

 

Nonetheless, the uproar and the encouragement the dissidents received from many outside of the institution mark an important moment for the left in the twilight of the Barack Obama administration.

 

(Snip)