New Yorker’s David Remnick in a Blinken interview: obsessively anti-Israel — and foolish to boot

Lev Tsitrin

The New Yorker editor David Remnick’s recent exit interview with Antony Blinken was, needless to say, intended to be about Blinken and his legacy as the head of the Biden’s State department. Yet in a strange way it wound up shedding far more light on Remnick than on Blinken, putting on display Reminck’s priorities and obsessions.

Those, it turns out, are Israel and Netanyahu — to whom Remnick is deeply hostile.

A few numbers speak to Remnick’s obsession: the roughly 35 minutes of the interview were divided between the Gaza war (18 minutes), war in Ukraine (4 minutes), China-Taiwan situation (3 minutes), philosophical reflections on the demise of the Pax Americana (3 minutes), and the impact of Biden’s decision to run for the second term on Trump’s re-election (6 minutes). This breakdown gives a good idea of Remnick’s priorities.

And the kind of questions he asked testify to Reminick’s bone-deep hostility to Israel. Won’t Israel’s right wing derail the Gaza ceasefire? Isn’t Palestinian state key to the peace in the Middle East? Isn’t Netanyahu indeed a “bad f-ing guy” as Biden was quoted to have called him? Why isn’t State department classifying the Gaza war as “genocide?” Why does Blinken feel that both the institutional, and the social media offer “deafening silence” when it comes to Hamas and its crimes? Aren’t Israelis intending more settlements? Why does Netanyahu continue to dominate Israeli politics?

Remnick’s questions drips with contempt for Netanyahu and the Israelis — so not surprisingly, he asked nothing at all about the Palestinian contributions that are necessary for peace. To Reminick, it is Israel that needs to be pressured for concessions — not the Palestinians. Most oddly, Iran — which is the most pressing Middle East problem, a nuclear-threshold state that finances terrorism around the Middle East, and fosters instability around the wider world — wasn’t discussed at all.

Blinken took it all in stride, giggling at times at the earnest silliness of Remnick’s questions, though he too at times mixed things that don’t exactly mix, suggesting for instance that Israel destroyed Hamas’ military capacity — only to say in the next breath that Hamas recruits members faster than they are killed — not exactly a sign of diminished capacity!

Such spin was not a surprise — Blinken’s argument, after all, is that Gaza war can be “settled down,” as he put it — but the vehemence of Remnick’s hostility to Israel and Netanyahu evidenced in his questions, was very surprising to hear.

Perhaps I should not be surprised after all — I approached Remnick (like I approach so many other mainstream journalists — just the other day, for instance, posing a question to Ezra Klein of the New York Times during his packed-house interview at the Strand bookstore with Oregon Senator Ron Wyden) to ask him why journalists adamantly refuse to tell the public about the absolute immunity which federal judges gave themselves, in Pierson v Ray, for acting from the bench “maliciously and corruptly” (as well as shedding light on the very fact that federal judges do act in such way, clearly in brazen violation of “due process” and the much-touted “rule of law”) — while the immunity the judges gave to Trump was widely covered in news reporting, and loudly condemned from the editorial pages — and got no reply (unless the terse “I appreciate your interest and take on board what you’ve said in your notes” can be interpreted as a reply).

Clearly, Remnick’s reporting priorities are very skewed — and utterly dishonest (for the record, Ezra Klein opined when replying to me that the matter of “corrupt and malicious” judging, and the issue of judicial immunity is so into-the-weeds that it requires specialized legal knowledge which the journalists lack, so the “corrupt and malicious judging” is at best a “page 7” issue along so many others which do not get covered. Yet branches of the federal government are co-equal; Trump’s immunity was a page-one news — why not judicial immunity (and judicial fraud that necessitates it)? Aren’t federal judges government? Isn’t all of government the purview of the press, not just its executive and legislative branches — and shouldn’t the press be informing us fully so “we the people” make informed decisions at the voting booth?)

Clearly, the very “disinformation and misinformation” which the mainstream media laments as the main consequence of its loss of monopoly on speech after the rise of the social media and of independent sites, is widely practiced by the mainstream outlets themselves — under the guise of editorial selectivity. That selectivity allows for editors’ biases to be acted out. One such bias is an anti-Trump one; the other forbids badmouthing judicial decision-making; yet another is an anti-Israel bias. All three of those are practiced by David Remnick and his New Yorker, both by omission of coverage (when it comes to judges) and by commission (when it comes to Israel and Trump).

I have no doubt that David Reminck thinks that he is very bright — yet his questioning of Blinken is an Exhibit A of the polar opposite of intelligence. To imply that Israel as an obstacle to peace while ignoring Palestinians’ repeated refusal to accept Israel’s legitimacy (amply evidenced in multiple refusals to settle the conflict by the presumably “moderate” PA — along with its public lionizing of, and paying stipends to those who attacked Israelis, and coupled with the cheering for Hamas after the Oct. 7 attack by the bulk of ordinary Palestinians both in the West Bank and Gaza), is no sign of Mr. Remnick’s great intelligence or knowledge. Rather, it is a testimony to his bigotry and stupidity — or at best, as his expectation that his audience is stupid and ignorant enough to share his anti-Israel sentiment.

Clearly, Antony Blinken wasn’t impressed with Mr. Remnick’s questions, and spoke down to him. The pecking order was obvious — and not in favor of Mr. Remnick who proved very subpar in his knowledge and grasp on events.

This is a reminder to us hillbillies that we shouldn’t venerate the press “elites” too much. Yes, they control the nation’s loudspeaker — yet speaking through a loudspeaker does not automatically make what’s being said through it either intelligent, or true. Far from that indeed — as Mr Reminick’s questioning of Mr. Blinken, broadcasted far and wide by NPR, amply proves.