The quality of thought that generally prevails in circles where the right of Jews to be politically self-determining is opposed rarely rises above the level of prejudice and innuendo.

But this enterprise was infused with a serious dose of intellectual gravitas a few years back when Tony Judt, celebrated historian and public intellectual par excellence, warmed to the cause. Writing in the influential New York Review of Books, Judt argued that we have moved beyond the parochial notion that the nation-state is the locus of political life. Harder words followed. He proceeded to declare the very idea of a Jewish state as hopelessly "rooted in another time and place." As Judt describes it, the transnational ethos of our age demands that Jews, once again, invest their trust in the collective humanity of civilization (and, more specifically, in the political competence and decency of Palestinians).

"In a world where nations and peoples increasingly intermingle and intermarry at will; where cultural and national impediments to communication have all but collapsed; where more and more of us have multiple elective identities and would feel falsely constrained if we had to answer to just one of them; in such a world Israel is truly an anachronism. And not just an anachronism but a dysfunctional one."

	Advertisement

The Jews, it seems, were late to the party. But not just late, irremediably late. Judt warned his readers that, "the time has come to think the unthinkable." He sermonized that the troubles between Israelis and Palestinians had but one prudent remedy: binationalism.

In a surprise to no one, least of all Judt himself, this exercise in unthinkable thinking touched off a maelstrom of controversy. He was rapidly excised from his perch on the masthead of The New Republic. The conservative pundit David Frum charged Judt with "genocidal liberalism." A "pro-Israel" media watchdog group accused him of "pandering to genocide." But everything was not critical. Writing in The Nation, the leftist critic Daniel Lazare breathlessly rejoiced that "a long-standing taboo has finally begun to fall."

All of which brings me to page three of the October 9 edition of The Washington Post, which carried an article with the following, cringe-inducing, opening paragraph: "Two major American Jewish organizations helped block a prominent New York University historian from speaking at the Polish consulate [in New York] last week, saying the academic was too critical of Israel and American Jewry."

The organizations in question are the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Congress. The academic: Tony Judt. The event, titled "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy," was organized by an independent nonprofit group that routinely rents space from the Polish consulate in Manhattan. This is a critical distinction. The gathering was not organized nor sanctioned by the government of Poland.

The ADL denies exerting pressure or issuing threats. Other accounts vary. (The Polish consul general diplomatically claims that the calls were "very elegant but may be interpreted as exercising a delicate pressure.") However delicate the pressure, Abraham Foxman, national director of the ADL, was evidently satisfied enough by the cancellation to remark: "I think they [the Polish consulate] made the right decision. He [Judt] has taken the position that Israel shouldn't exist. That puts him on our radar."

I am not sure what it means to be on Abe Foxman's radar (nor would I like to find out), but the idea that Tony Judt being denied an audience and a microphone is a positive outcome to this dispute is outrageously stupid and counterproductive. Not only has our public discourse been cheapened, but those that seek to shut Judt up will succeed only in turning him into a free-speech martyr. He should not be silenced, he should be engaged, he should be challenged.

Somewhere in his writings Leo Strauss remarks that the moment "man abandons the task of raising the question regarding what is right - he abandons his humanity." Questioning, free debate, and diversity of thought are the cornerstones of a decent society. And at least since Spinoza, Jews have benefited from consistent and uncompromising criticism. We - Jews, Israelis, Americans, liberals - must be guarded in defense of these principles.

However pretentious, outrageous, and morally bankrupt Judt's views on Israel are, I do not doubt his sincerity, nor do I question his motives. Dissent is not necessarily disloyalty, and anti-Zionism is not necessarily anti-Semitism. Tony Judt has a right to wrong.

Evan R. Goldstein is a writer in Washington, D.C. and a contributing editor at Moment magazine.