Pity poor Roger Cohen. The freshman New York Times columnist has stumbled into a mess of trouble of late, and he doesn’t quite seem to know what’s hit him. And the more he tries to climb out of the hole he’s dug, the deeper he digs himself in.
Cohen’s woes started last January, when he joined the rotation of Times Op-Ed page columnists after toiling for years in humbler posts. Apparently eager to start off with a bang, he flew to Iran, a newsworthy hot spot. In a series of contrarian columns, he pooh-poohed the mullahs’ genocidal rants as a pose, masking sober pragmatism. Iran is a “flawed” but “vibrant” democracy, he wrote on February 2. Most Iranians are young, keener on cell phones than revolution. Surely the regime knows it can’t thwart its own people. The argument was not original, but it was reported live from the field and had a feel of immediacy.
Cohen probably thought his next move was canny and original, but it would end up backfiring. Evidently seeking a fresh angle, he decided to explore Iran’s 25,000-member Jewish community as a bellwether of Iranian democracy. He also decided to use his own Jewishness as a badge of credibility. His February 23 column described the happy life of Iranian Jewry, “living, working and worshiping in relative tranquility.” He found several local Jews fearless enough to state, openly and on the record, that Iran treats them just fine.
“Perhaps I have a bias toward facts over words,” he modestly wrote, “but I say the reality of Iranian civility toward Jews tells us more about Iran — its sophistication and culture — than all the inflammatory rhetoric.” Then again, he conceded, perhaps he thought that way “because I’m a Jew and have seldom been treated with such consistent warmth as in Iran.” And who could question the judgment of a landsman?
The answer: Many people could question it. Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League charged in a letter to the Times that the columnist viewed Iran through “dangerous rose-colored lenses.” Jeffrey Goldberg blogged at The Atlantic Online that Cohen was “particularly credulous.” Jason Maoz of The Jewish Press called him a “dupe of Tehran.” Private e-mails and phone messages were far less polite.
Cohen told me at the time that he was surprised and distressed at the hostile response. He shouldn’t have been. Yes, the endurance of Iranian Jewry should be teaching us something important. But that something has to do with the nature of Shiite Islam and Persian culture. It certainly doesn’t prove the benign intentions of the ayatollahs. Neither does Cohen’s gracious reception in Iran. To think otherwise is simply naïve, and dangerously so.
Does this mean Cohen has a chip on his shoulder? More likely, he’s just in over his head. A Times staffer since 1990, in 2004 he started writing opinion columns for the Times-owned International Herald Tribune, but made little splash. Critics said he was stuck in conventional wisdom. He supported invading Iraq, criticized the war’s conduct but opposed Obama’s withdrawal plans. He worried about the safety of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. Slate media critic Jack Shafer wrote in 2007 that Cohen’s work “establishes new standards for the aggressive pursuit of the trite” and “dares the reader to wade through a mush of platitudes.”
Jumping full-time into the polemical maelstrom of the Op-Ed page last January, Cohen must have decided, or been urged, to sharpen his edge and swim against the current. The trouble was, he wasn’t good at it. He was credulous when he should have been skeptical and skeptical when he should have been trusting. He responded peevishly to his critics. Column after column restated the ease of Iranian Jews and the pragmatism of the mullahs.
On March 2 he mocked Israeli fears of Iran’s nuclear efforts, saying the work had been underway for 30 years, was nowhere near completion and was more likely to produce “a Persian Chernobyl” than a nuclear war. Talk to them, he said. They’re not so bad. Also, restrain Israeli war-mongering. By April 8, a nuclear Iran had somehow become inexorable, though still “a couple of years” away. Suddenly, the “only way to stop Iran going nuclear” was to “get to the negotiating table. There’s time.” Meanwhile, “rein in” Israel.
Just four days later, Cohen announced after interviewing U.N. nuclear chief Mohamed ElBaradei that it was “almost certainly too late to stop Iran from achieving virtual nuclear power status.” Now it was really time to start talking and recognize Iran’s nuclear status. Also, “get tougher on Israel.”
All that is nothing, however, compared to his irrepressible faith in Iranian democracy. “The June presidential election,” he wrote March 1, “…will be a genuine contest as compared with the charades that pass for elections in many Arab states.” He restated that theme in various ways throughout the spring. Then came the June 10 election. Now he remembered that the regime was brutal. He did admit June 14 that he’d been wrong on a few points. Since then he’s been berating President Obama for not speaking out firmly enough against the mullahs. The only theme he’s flogged more frequently is restraining Israel.
And yet, in August he managed to outdo himself. In a 5,000-word article in the August 2 Sunday Times Magazine, he unraveled the tangled lines of authority in Obama’s Iran policy-making. The loose thread, he strongly suggested, was veteran diplomat Dennis Ross, an “ultimate Washington survivor,” who started at the Obama State Department, left in a “fiasco” and moved in a “bizarre odyssey” to the National Security Council.
Ross’s role in the administration raises many questions in Cohen’s mind, but the one that comes up over and over throughout the article, “a recurrent issue with Ross, who embraced his Jewish faith after being raised in a non-religious home by a Jewish mother and a Catholic stepfather, has been whether he is too close to the American Jewish community and Israel to be an honest broker with Iran or Arabs.” In the crisis atmosphere following the Iranian election, “Can this baggage-encumbered veteran… overcome ingrained habits and sympathies?” Indeed, “Will the Iranians be prepared to meet with Ross?” — a “reasonable question given Ross’s well-known ties with the American Jewish community.”
That, in effect, is the dilemma facing American policy toward Iran at this pivotal moment: Is there too much Jewish influence? We’ve heard the question before in Hamas sermons, in Al Qaeda videos and on some left-wing blogs. Now it’s been incorporated into the nation’s newspaper of record.
Is Cohen trying to mainstream bigotry? I suspect not. I think he’s trying to sound provocative, and I think he’s in over his head.
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Cohen's Iranian saga would make a great comic tale -- if it were funny, rather than dangerous.
One does wonder who's on the job at the NYT -- and then there was that weird Daphne Merkin piece on the Madoff Moment, written as though she didn't have family ties... One does wonder.
JJ-- Very cogently, carefully and even respectfully argued. It all rings very true and means more coming from you than Abe Foxman. I somehow admire that Cohen so wants his romantic notion of Iran to be true that he can't see past it, but the Times Op-Ed page's credibility is diminshed by his writing. Bruce
and all articles that quote Abraham Foxman are diminished as well..
I enjoyed reading your article on Roger Cohen. I would only add that during this period when Mr. Cohen was writing on how comparetively open Iranian society was, etc. he did allow that he was originally from Iran, and that his father still lived there. Also, you did not mention his reports from Iran during the crisis. It was painfully obvious that he was trying to redeem himself and show that he had no illusions about the brutal nature of the government he had so recently praised. It also appeared that no one in the regime seemed to care what he was saying or doing as he wandered around at will, while other reporters who the rulers didn't like were being thrown out of the country left and right.
I read those columns of Roger Cohen's with a mixture of pain and amazement. I could not believe someone could be so constistently wrong in his opinions.Worse, his on the ground reports from Iran, prior to the election, seemed hopelessly naive. This is one of the best analyses of that interminable series of articles I have read. My only problem, probably born of idealizing the NY Times, is why this fellow is published at all.
I think your comments about Roger Cohen are pathetic. The only aspect of his reporting from Iran that I disagree with was his misunderstanding of the situation of Iranian Jews. Otherwise, he has a shrewd understanding of the Iranian regime and people. His article in the NY Review of Books this past week was an amazing description of the unrest following the election. And I share his opinion regarding Israel's unending self-serving and possibly self-fulfilling rhetoric towards Iran's attempt to go nuclear. It's always amazing to me how right wing American Jews lap up the opinions of Israeli politicians most of whom aren't fit to be in office.
So now knocking Ross as an Iran / Mid East honcho in the administration is bigoted !!
Ross is a proud Zionist. A former President of Jewish People's Policy forum headquartered in and sponsored by Israel. Nothing wrong with any of that. But it hardly makes him a neutral party in the Mid East conflict or disinterested when it comes to Iran.
Is Ross representing American interests or Zionist interests when he advocates this or that policy from within the administration. He probably doesn't see the difference. And here, exactly, lies the problem.
J.J. Goldberg Digs Himself Deeper...
It's really the integrity of The Forward that is diminished as the result of this article by Mr. Goldberg.
Shame on you for attempting to tar Roger Cohen. Shame on you for stopping at nothing in order to protect Israel.
Great article. Cohen's desire to punish Israel has backfired and he has made himself into a buffoon.
J.J. Goldberg had gained respect from most of the Jewish community by reporting and commenting fairly on the entire spectrum of views.
However, this commentary doesn't convince me. It doesn't display J.J. Goldberg's usual logic. And it's uncharacteristically condescending and ad hominem.
It's difficult for Americans to find out or even understand what's going on in Iran. Roger Cohen has family in Iran and has been there recently. He's a trained reporter. Reporters get it wrong sometimes, but we read their stories and judge them on the facts.
I would be very interested in hearing responses to Cohen's articles from people who have recently been in Iran. I would have less confidence in the opinions of people who haven't been in Iran.
This editorial invites the response, "How do you know? You haven't been there."
It's difficult for us to understand Iran.
When Ahmadinejad came to Columbia University, instead of letting him speak so we could figure out his unfamiliar ideas, he was subjected to attacks and an abusive, condescending lecture -- by the president of Columbia University, no less.
The truth is complicated. The most popular program on Iranian tv in 2007 was "Zero Degree Turn," a 22-episode series, a love story between an Iranian-Palestinian Muslim man and a French Jewish woman. The Iranian man saves the Jewish woman from Nazi detention camps, and Iranian diplomats in France forge passports for the woman and her family to sneak on to airplanes carrying Iranian Jews to their homeland (which is historically true). According to Farnaz Fassihi, of the Wall Street Journal, the Iranian government seems to be using this program to make a distinction between Judaism, which is widely accepted in Iranian society, and Zionists, who they regard as a minority. As Fassihi says:
"Iran is home to some 25,000 Jews, the largest population in the Middle East outside of Israel. Iran's Jews -- along with Christians and Zorastrians -- are guaranteed equal rights in the country's constitution. Iran's Jews are guaranteed one member of parliament and are free to study Hebrew in school, pray in synagogues and shop at kosher supermarkets. Despite Mr. Ahmadinejad's statements, it isn't government policy to question the Holocaust, and the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, hasn't endorsed those views."
That's 25,000 Iranian Jews who could emigrate and chose not to.
Fassihi speaks Persian, and she's seen Iran first-hand. So has Cohen. Has J.J. Goldberg been to Iran?
I'll give great weight to the first-hand eyewitnesses.
P.S. The story about the Iranian embassy in Paris saving Jews during the Holocaust by issuing false passports is true.
How can we bomb a people who saved Jewish lives during the Holocaust?
> How can we bomb a people who saved Jewish lives during the Holocaust?
This is so funny. Some others who saved Jewish lives during Holocaust were Russians (of course) and Japanese. The Hiroshima still happened.
Remarkably, while the Iranian govt. claims to develop nuclear energy strictly for power generation, virtually all pro-Iranian posters on this and other sites make no such ridiculous pretenses.
Nothing surprising about the content or lack of it in Cohen's reporting from Iran. The man works for the NYTimes. To get hired on at that company you are expected to toe the Liberal-Left line that the Times espouses. In other words, Iran Good, Israel Bad.
What is it like to be a Jew in Iran?
http://www.iranian.com/Opinion/2003/March/Jews/
For Norman, the Clueless One:
'III. The Life of Jews in Iran
A. IRANIAN JEWS AND THE IRANIAN LEGAL SYSTEM
The Jews suffer from official inferior status under Iranian Law and are not protected by police or the courts. The amount of financial compensation a Jew can receive from a Muslim in case of murder or accidental death of a relative is equal to one-eighth of that which would be paid if the victim was a Muslim.
In practice this means that a life of a Jew in Iran has very little value. In addition, since Iranian courts routinely refuse to accept the testimony of a Jew against a Muslim, most cases of this sort are not even prosecuted and the police do not even investigate such claims. As a result of their legally inferior status, Jews find themselves outside the protection of the courts and police. This is not simply a perception on their part, but rather, sadly, a harsh reality. In none of the cases of the murder of Jews in Iran has a perpetrator ever been found, much less prosecuted.
B. IRANIAN JEWS AND THEIR EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITIES
Ayatollah Khomeini's edicts concerning the Jews, published in his book "Tozieh Almasael" (Explanation of Problems), state clearly that while there is no Islamic law prohibiting a situation in which a Muslim may work under a Jew, this is a shameful situation for a Muslim to be in. These edicts still carry the force of law in Iran, and as a result, Jews have been barred from any position in which they would be superior to Muslims.
Jews are excluded from most government positions. Virtually all government entities (most sectors in Iran are government-owned) have a "Muslim only" policy and they print this requirement in their job notices in newspapers. This formal exclusion of Jews from large areas of employment is badly damaging to the Jews.
Most private companies, thanks to the anti-Semitic media campaign in Iran, do not hire Jews either. Most Jews are forced into self-employment, but due to general public prejudice, few buy anything from them. The US State Department Religious Freedom Report of 2001 confirms that Jewish businesses have been targets of vandalism and boycotts.
C. IRANIAN JEWS AND THEIR EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITIES
All Jewish university students must pass a course on Islamic ideology. In general, the professors in these courses are, by definition, very dedicated to their ideology and many Jewish Students that I have interviewed have reported that attending such a course has been a humiliating experience, in which their religion has been ridiculed and trivialized. Jewish students who protest are expelled and blocked from entering the University. Jewish students have also reported that instructors have arbitrarily failed them to block their educational goals.
Parents of Jewish elementary and secondary school students, I interviewed in Vienna (processing center for Iranian Jewish refugees) in July of 2002, report frequent verbal and even physical abuse of their children by allegedly anti-Semitic teachers. Iranian "Jewish" schools are forced to stay open on the Jewish Sabbath. Principals of "Jewish" schools in Iran by law must be Muslim and are generally selected based on their Islamic credential.
D. IRANIAN JEWS AND RELIGIOUS FREEDOM
Judaism is one of the recognized minority religions in Iran. Jews, therefore, are allowed to conduct religious services and give religious education to their children. The privileges of religious education, can, however, be suspended it is thought by the authorities that such an education may prevent Jewish children from converting to Islam once they group.
Many informed observers believe that one reason that Jewish rabbis and teachers were arrested in Shiraz was the fact that they were instructing in the spirit of Orthodox Judaism. The US State Department Religious Freedom Report for 2001 notes that the Jewish community, and its religious, cultural and social organizations, are closely monitored by the Ministry of Islamic Culture and Guidance and the Ministry of Intelligence and Security.
The form that this monitoring has taken is either sending agents posing as Jews to synagogues or forcing Jewish communal leaders to inform on the activities of the Jewish community. This situation has created an atmosphere of terror and mistrust in the Jewish community. Many Jews who flee Iran relate that they told no one of their plans to emigrate, not even friends or relatives in fear of an unknown collaborator informing authorities of their plans.'
Have you been to Iran, George?
Only in the media can someone do be as terrible at his job as Mr. Cohen and not be fired. If I was as bad as he is I'd resign without waiting to be fired.
Yes, I was there in 1962. A different time and a very different Iran. However, Pooya Dayanim, the author of the previous, is an Iranian Jew who was born and lived in Iran for many years. Next question?
Amazingly, some Iranians really seem to think that, with a few crude N-bombs, they are going to initiate and would be able to win a nuclear war against the Western world and NATO that has some 10,000 N-charges ready to go and multiple means of their VERY accurate delivery. Or they believe that they could nuke Israel that itself has hundreds of N-weapons with no retaliation, and the rest of the world would stay silent. Even the USSR leaders that actually had MORE nuclear weapons and ICBMs than NATO were not that stupid, nor was Chairman Mao. Well, after all may be we in USA will get some return on the investment of 50 T in the nuclear complex since 1945 ...
Next question:
Has anybody been in Iran during the period we're talking about, 2007 and 2008, when Farnaz Fassihi and Roger Cohen were there?
Norman -
I was never in Nazi Germany. Still, I learned their language, spent years reading some of the documents they wrote, and then felt myself qualified to say things about them. Had I been there at the time I probably would have been murdred, and would not have been able to say anything at all.
One of the things I once wrote about them dealt with the deportation of the French Jews, and varioius attempts to slow them. There was indeed once an issue about Jews with Iranian passports, but so far as I remember it was not an attempt by the Iranians to save their citizens, nor did it succeed. (Eichamm mocked the attempt and cited the Book of Esther to prove that Iranian Jews were just as Jewish as European ones).
Still, it's been many years sice that research, and perhaps I don't remember correctly - so I checked with Yad Vashem. They tell me that there was one Iranian diplomat, a man named Sardari, who seems to have saved some Jews by supplying evidence they were, in fact, not Jews but rather Jugots, i.e. Persian Jews who had converted to Islam. Yad Vashem would be eager if the Iranians were to supply documnetation proving that Sardari operated in an official manner, and not, as happened with diplomats of other countries, in contravention of his orders. Alas, the Iranians haven't obliged.
So contrary to your statement, we don't have any record of "The Iranians" saving Jews. Except that TV film, of course, which is hardly evidence.
The case of Roger Cohen, it seems to me, rather proves how being in a place needs not make you wiser about it. After all, Cohen himself admitted, after the election, that he'd been wrong earlier on.
Finally, a question about this Shyryn Poupour Mossadegh woman. Does anybody get the feeling she's spoofing us? I mean, she's trotting out each and every antisemitic clischee possible; she's "too good to be true", I almost think.
Yaacov Lozowick
It may seem like just a technical point, but there is abundant evidence Iran is working hard on nuclear weapons, not just electricity. The Iranian Sajjil missile is a solid fuel ground-to-ground missile that only useful for delivering WMDs. See also this defense update article.
Here are the links that didn't get into my previous comment:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2009-05-20-iranmissile_N.htm
http://www.defense-update.com/newscast/0509/news/sejjil_test_200509.html
One hears that there is too much Jewish influence in US foreign affairs. If the USA hired only Christian state department employees would the Muslims cease murdering Jews, each other, Christians, Kurds and who knows who else?
Arabic Islam sees murder as a simple/neat solution to many problems. The religion of peace permits/encourages murders of female relatives, other Islamic sects and Christians whose families have resided in their communities for centuries. Has anyone heard any outcries from any quarters of Islam that such murders must stop? Has anyone heard of Friday sermons inciting more murders?
Of course, Roger Cohen is far from the first person to question whether Dennis Ross is too closely associated with Israel to be an effective Middle East policymaker. It was Aaron David Miller, Ross’s former colleague on the Clinton administration peace process team, who famously claimed that the U.S. had been acting as “Israel’s lawyer” under Ross’s leadership. Another Clinton administration colleague, former ambassador to Israel Dan Kurtzer, published a book containing complaints from both American and Arab participants in the peace process that Ross was “biased towards Israel and not ‘an honest broker’” (as Time magazine put it).
Are Aaron David Miller and Dan Kurtzer fomenting propaganda cribbed from “Hamas sermons” and “al Qaeda videos”? Could Miller and Kurtzer be closet al Qaeda sympathizers? Goldberg is off in Commentary/ZOA territory here, and it is beneath him.
Goldberg's immediate citation of Mossad asset Foxman and Israeli terrorist veteran Jeffrey Goldberg immediately reveals his own place within the Isreal-first hasbara brigade.
Just another attempt at defending the indefensible: six decades of Jewish Supremacist hegemony in Palestine, marked by unrelenting massacres, thefts, and ethnic cleansing.
Goldberg is the agent for racists, thieves and killers.
Hey "Joe UnAmerica" Isreal is spelled Israel. It is also a really good place to live. Even the Arabs living there prefer to remain than move to an Arab country. Many of them prefer to be a minority in Israel than to have the borders redrawn so as to be part of a Palestinian state. I don't blame them. Who in their right mind would want to live under the rule of gangsters like Fatah or nuts like Hamas. But Joe even an idiot like you can appreciate that Israel is real.
Norman Wasn't it Henry Siegman that rescued The Iranian Jews?
Dear Sayanim Danny Siegel,
Are you part of the Mossad's hasbara brigade that has been mentioned in the press lately?
As for your contention about the quality of life in occupied Palestine, I suspect it would be far better after a South African style one-state solution. With equal rights for all and an end of the racist and apartheid laws. Of course, that concept probably makes your head explode.
While your "state" of racists, killers and thieves may be "real" for now, it won't last forever. All extremist regimes ultimately collapse. The only question is whether it will end more or less peacefully, like South Africa; or whether it will be more like Algeria, with all the invaders going back where they came from. If you keep up the current course, it may end up like the Late German Fascist regime.
Joe-
We know all about you. And decided not to spend an Agora on such an insignificant case.
You have the right to remain silent.
Joe UnAmerica Why don't you go live in unoccupied Arabia. Where is your paradise? Mecca? Syria? Good luck Joe Arabia
Zionist hoodlums and their ad hominem comments. That's about all we can expect from such thugs who are bereft of any factual claims.