Israel: The Country That Won't Grow Up

[whimsicaldeb]

As I read this, I found I agreed with what Tony Judt is saying 100%... and I was equally surprised, according to the few immediate replies I took the time to glance at the end of this article (accessible from the link) … apparently, I'm not alone; and not just in the US – but other Israelis as well. ~Wow!~

As it says in the article ... "The times they are indeed a-changing."

Yes, indeed.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/711997.html
The country that wouldn't grow up
By Tony Judt

By the age of 58 a country - like a man - should have achieved a certain maturity. After nearly six decades of existence we know, for good and for bad, who we are, what we have done and how we appear to others, warts and all. We acknowledge, however reluctantly and privately, our mistakes and our shortcomings. And though we still harbor the occasional illusion about ourselves and our prospects, we are wise enough to recognize that these are indeed for the most part just that: illusions. In short, we are adults.

But the State of Israel remains curiously (and among Western-style democracies, uniquely) immature. The social transformations of the country - and its many economic achievements - have not brought the political wisdom that usually accompanies age. Seen from the outside, Israel still comports itself like an adolescent: consumed by a brittle confidence in its own uniqueness; certain that no one "understands" it and everyone is "against" it; full of wounded self-esteem, quick to take offense and quick to give it. Like many adolescents Israel is convinced - and makes a point of aggressively and repeatedly asserting - that it can do as it wishes, that its actions carry no consequences and that it is immortal. Appropriately enough, this country that has somehow failed to grow up was until very recently still in the hands of a generation of men who were prominent in its public affairs 40 years ago: an Israeli Rip Van Winkle who fell asleep in, say, 1967 would be surprised indeed to awake in 2006 and find Shimon Peres and General Ariel Sharon still hovering over the affairs of the country - the latter albeit only in spirit.

But that, Israeli readers will tell me, is the prejudiced view of the outsider. What looks from abroad like a self-indulgent, wayward country - delinquent in its international obligations and resentfully indifferent to world opinion - is simply an independent little state doing what it has always done: looking after its own interests in an inhospitable part of the globe. Why should embattled Israel even acknowledge such foreign criticism, much less act upon it? They - gentiles, Muslims, leftists - have reasons of their own for disliking Israel. They - Europeans, Arabs, fascists - have always singled out Israel for special criticism. Their motives are timeless. They haven't changed. Why should Israel change?

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But they have changed. And it is this change, which has passed largely unrecognized within Israel, to which I want to draw attention here. Before 1967 the State of Israel may have been tiny and embattled, but it was not typically hated: certainly not in the West. Official Soviet-bloc communism was anti-Zionist of course, but for just that reason Israel was rather well regarded by everyone else, including the non-communist left. The romantic image of the kibbutz and the kibbutznik had a broad foreign appeal in the first two decades of Israel's existence. Most admirers of Israel (Jews and non-Jews) knew little about the Palestinian Nakba (catastrophe) of 1948. They preferred to see in the Jewish state the last surviving incarnation of the 19th century idyll of agrarian socialism - or else a paragon of modernizing energy "making the desert bloom."

I remember well, in the spring of 1967, how the balance of student opinion at Cambridge University was overwhelmingly pro-Israel in the weeks leading up to the Six-Day War - and how little attention anyone paid either to the condition of the Palestinians or to Israel's earlier collusion with France and Britain in the disastrous Suez adventure of 1956. In politics and in policy-making circles only old-fashioned conservative Arabists expressed any criticism of the Jewish state; even neo-Fascists rather favored Zionism, on traditional anti-Semitic grounds.

For a while after the 1967 war these sentiments continued unaltered. The pro-Palestinian enthusiasms of post-1960s radical groups and nationalist movements, reflected in joint training camps and shared projects for terrorist attacks, were offset by the growing international acknowledgment of the Holocaust in education and the media: What Israel lost by its continuing occupation of Arab lands it gained through its close identification with the recovered memory of Europe's dead Jews. Even the inauguration of the illegal settlements and the disastrous invasion of Lebanon, while they strengthened the arguments of Israel's critics, did not yet shift the international balance of opinion. As recently as the early 1990s, most people in the world were only vaguely aware of the "West Bank" and what was happening there. Even those who pressed the Palestinians' case in international forums conceded that almost no one was listening. Israel could still do as it wished.

The Israeli nakba

But today everything is different. We can see, in retrospect, that the victory of Israel in June 1967 and its continuing occupation of the territories it conquered then have been the Jewish state's very own nakba: a moral and political catastrophe. Israel's actions in the West Bank and Gaza have magnified and publicized the country's shortcomings and displayed them to a watching world. Curfews, checkpoints, bulldozers, public humiliations, home destructions, land seizures, shootings, "targeted assassinations," the separation fence: All of these routines of occupation and repression were once familiar only to an informed minority of specialists and activists. Today they can be watched, in real time, by anyone with a computer or a satellite dish - which means that Israel's behavior is under daily scrutiny by hundreds of millions of people worldwide. The result has been a complete transformation in the international view of Israel. Until very recently the carefully burnished image of an ultra-modern society - built by survivors and pioneers and peopled by peace-loving democrats - still held sway over international opinion. But today? What is the universal shorthand symbol for Israel, reproduced worldwide in thousands of newspaper editorials and political cartoons? The Star of David emblazoned upon a tank.

Today only a tiny minority of outsiders see Israelis as victims. The true victims, it is now widely accepted, are the Palestinians. Indeed, Palestinians have now displaced Jews as the emblematic persecuted minority: vulnerable, humiliated and stateless. This unsought distinction does little to advance the Palestinian case any more than it ever helped Jews, but it has redefined Israel forever. It has become commonplace to compare Israel at best to an occupying colonizer, at worst to the South Africa of race laws and Bantustans. In this capacity Israel elicits scant sympathy even when its own citizens suffer: Dead Israelis - like the occasional assassinated white South African in the apartheid era, or British colonists hacked to death by native insurgents - are typically perceived abroad not as the victims of terrorism but as the collateral damage of their own government's mistaken policies.

Such comparisons are lethal to Israel's moral credibility. They strike at what was once its strongest suit: the claim of being a vulnerable island of democracy and decency in a sea of authoritarianism and cruelty; an oasis of rights and freedoms surrounded by a desert of repression. But democrats don't fence into Bantustans helpless people whose land they have conquered, and free men don't ignore international law and steal other men's homes. The contradictions of Israeli self-presentation - "we are very strong/we are very vulnerable"; "we are in control of our fate/we are the victims"; "we are a normal state/we demand special treatment" - are not new: they have been part of the country's peculiar identity almost from the outset. And Israel's insistent emphasis upon its isolation and uniqueness, its claim to be both victim and hero, were once part of its David versus Goliath appeal.

Collective cognitive dysfunction

But today the country's national narrative of macho victimhood appears to the rest of the world as simply bizarre: evidence of a sort of collective cognitive dysfunction that has gripped Israel's political culture. And the long cultivated persecution mania - "everyone's out to get us" - no longer elicits sympathy. Instead it attracts some very unappetizing comparisons: At a recent international meeting I heard one speaker, by analogy with Helmut Schmidt's famous dismissal of the Soviet Union as "Upper Volta with Missiles," describe Israel as "Serbia with nukes."

Israel has stayed the same, but the world - as I noted above - has changed. Whatever purchase Israel's self-description still has upon the imagination of Israelis themselves, it no longer operates beyond the country's frontiers. Even the Holocaust can no longer be instrumentalized to excuse Israel's behavior. Thanks to the passage of time, most Western European states have now come to terms with their part in the Holocaust, something that was not true a quarter century ago. From Israel's point of view, this has had paradoxical consequences: Until the end of the Cold War Israeli governments could still play upon the guilt of Germans and other Europeans, exploiting their failure to acknowledge fully what was done to Jews on their territory. Today, now that the history of World War II is retreating from the public square into the classroom and from the classroom into the history books, a growing majority of voters in Europe and elsewhere (young voters above all) simply cannot understand how the horrors of the last European war can be invoked to license or condone unacceptable behavior in another time and place. In the eyes of a watching world, the fact that the great-grandmother of an Israeli soldier died in Treblinka is no excuse for his own abusive treatment of a Palestinian woman waiting to cross a checkpoint. "Remember Auschwitz" is not an acceptable response.

In short: Israel, in the world's eyes, is a normal state, but one behaving in abnormal ways. It is in control of its fate, but the victims are someone else. It is strong, very strong, but its behavior is making everyone else vulnerable. And so, shorn of all other justifications for its behavior, Israel and its supporters today fall back with increasing shrillness upon the oldest claim of all: Israel is a Jewish state and that is why people criticize it. This - the charge that criticism of Israel is implicitly anti-Semitic - is regarded in Israel and the United States as Israel's trump card. If it has been played more insistently and aggressively in recent years, that is because it is now the only card left.

The habit of tarring any foreign criticism with the brush of anti-Semitism is deeply engrained in Israeli political instincts: Ariel Sharon used it with characteristic excess but he was only the latest in a long line of Israeli leaders to exploit the claim. David Ben-Gurion and Golda Meir did no different. But Jews outside of Israel pay a high price for this tactic. Not only does it inhibit their own criticisms of Israel for fear of appearing to associate with bad company, but it encourages others to look upon Jews everywhere as de facto collaborators in Israel's misbehavior. When Israel breaks international law in the occupied territories, when Israel publicly humiliates the subject populations whose land it has seized - but then responds to its critics with loud cries of "anti-Semitism" - it is in effect saying that these acts are not Israeli acts, they are Jewish acts: The occupation is not an Israeli occupation, it is a Jewish occupation, and if you don't like these things it is because you don't like Jews.

In many parts of the world this is in danger of becoming a self-fulfilling assertion: Israel's reckless behavior and insistent identification of all criticism with anti-Semitism is now the leading source of anti-Jewish sentiment in Western Europe and much of Asia. But the traditional corollary - if anti-Jewish feeling is linked to dislike of Israel then right-thinking people should rush to Israel's defense - no longer applies. Instead, the ironies of the Zionist dream have come full circle: For tens of millions of people in the world today, Israel is indeed the state of all the Jews. And thus, reasonably enough, many observers believe that one way to take the sting out of rising anti-Semitism in the suburbs of Paris or the streets of Jakarta would be for Israel to give the Palestinians back their land.

Israel's undoing

If Israel's leaders have been able to ignore such developments it is in large measure because they have hitherto counted upon the unquestioning support of the United States - the one country in the world where the claim that anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism is still echoed not only in the opinions of many Jews but also in the public pronouncements of mainstream politicians and the mass media. But this lazy, ingrained confidence in unconditional American approval - and the moral, military and financial support that accompanies it - may prove to be Israel's undoing.

Something is changing in the United States. To be sure, it was only a few short years ago that prime minister Sharon's advisers could gleefully celebrate their success in dictating to U.S. President George W. Bush the terms of a public statement approving Israel's illegal settlements. No U.S. Congressman has yet proposed reducing or rescinding the $3 billion in aid Israel receives annually - 20 percent of the total U.S. foreign aid budget - which has helped sustain the Israeli defense budget and the cost of settlement construction in the West Bank. And Israel and the United States appear increasingly bound together in a symbiotic embrace whereby the actions of each party exacerbate their common unpopularity abroad - and thus their ever-closer association in the eyes of critics.

But whereas Israel has no choice but to look to America - it has no other friends, at best only the conditional affection of the enemies of its enemies, such as India - the United States is a great power; and great powers have interests that sooner or later transcend the local obsessions of even the closest of their client states and satellites. It seems to me of no small significance that the recent essay on "The Israel Lobby" by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt has aroused so much public interest and debate. Mearsheimer and Walt are prominent senior academics of impeccable conservative credentials. It is true that - by their own account - they could still not have published their damning indictment of the influence of the Israel lobby on U.S. foreign policy in a major U.S.-based journal (it appeared in the London Review of Books), but the point is that 10 years ago they would not - and probably could not - have published it at all. And while the debate that has ensued may generate more heat than light, it is of great significance: As Dr. Johnson said of female preachers, it is not well done but one is amazed to see it done at all.

The fact is that the disastrous Iraq invasion and its aftermath are beginning to engineer a sea-change in foreign policy debate here in the U.S. It is becoming clear to prominent thinkers across the political spectrum - from erstwhile neo-conservative interventionists like Francis Fukuyama to hard-nosed realists like Mearsheimer - that in recent years the United States has suffered a catastrophic loss of international political influence and an unprecedented degradation of its moral image. The country's foreign undertakings have been self-defeating and even irrational. There is going to be a long job of repair ahead, above all in Washington's dealings with economically and strategically vital communities and regions from the Middle East to Southeast Asia. And this reconstruction of the country's foreign image and influence cannot hope to succeed while U.S. foreign policy is tied by an umbilical cord to the needs and interests (if that is what they are) of one small Middle Eastern country of very little relevance to America's long-term concerns - a country that is, in the words of the Mearsheimer/Walt essay, a strategic burden: "A liability in the war on terror and the broader effort to deal with rogue states."

That essay is thus a straw in the wind - an indication of the likely direction of future domestic debate here in the U.S. about the country's peculiar ties to Israel. Of course it has been met by a firestorm of criticism from the usual suspects - and, just as they anticipated, the authors have been charged with anti-Semitism (or with advancing the interests of anti-Semitism: "objective anti-Semitism," as it might be). But it is striking to me how few people with whom I have spoken take that accusation seriously, so predictable has it become. This is bad for Jews - since it means that genuine anti-Semitism may also in time cease to be taken seriously, thanks to the Israel lobby's abuse of the term. But it is worse for Israel.

This new willingness to take one's distance from Israel is not confined to foreign policy specialists. As a teacher I have also been struck in recent years by a sea-change in the attitude of students. One example among many: Here at New York University I was teaching this past month a class on post-war Europe. I was trying to explain to young Americans the importance of the Spanish Civil War in the political memory of Europeans and why Franco's Spain has such a special place in our moral imagination: as a reminder of lost struggles, a symbol of oppression in an age of liberalism and freedom, and a land of shame that people boycotted for its crimes and repression. I cannot think, I told the students, of any country that occupies such a pejorative space in democratic public consciousness today. You are wrong, one young woman replied: What about Israel? To my great surprise most of the class - including many of the sizable Jewish contingent - nodded approval. The times they are indeed a-changing.

That Israel can now stand in comparison with the Spain of General Franco in the eyes of young Americans ought to come as a shock and an eleventh-hour wake-up call to Israelis. Nothing lasts forever, and it seems likely to me that we shall look back upon the years 1973-2003 as an era of tragic illusion for Israel: years that the locust ate, consumed by the bizarre notion that, whatever it chose to do or demand, Israel could count indefinitely upon the unquestioning support of the United States and would never risk encountering a backlash. This blinkered arrogance is tragically summed up in an assertion by Shimon Peres on the very eve of the calamitous war that will in retrospect be seen, I believe, to have precipitated the onset of America's alienation from its Israeli ally: "The campaign against Saddam Hussein is a must."

The future of Israel

From one perspective Israel's future is bleak. Not for the first time, a Jewish state has found itself on the vulnerable periphery of someone else's empire: overconfident in its own righteousness, willfully blind to the danger that its indulgent excesses might ultimately provoke its imperial mentor to the point of irritation and beyond, and heedless of its own failure to make any other friends. To be sure, the modern Israeli state has big weapons - very big weapons. But can it do with them except make more enemies? However, modern Israel also has options. Precisely because the country is an object of such universal mistrust and resentment - because people expect so little from Israel today - a truly statesmanlike shift in its policies (dismantling of major settlements, opening unconditional negotiations with Palestinians, calling Hamas' bluff by offering the movement's leaders something serious in return for recognition of Israel and a cease-fire) could have disproportionately beneficial effects.

But such a radical realignment of Israeli strategy would entail a difficult reappraisal of every cliche and illusion under which the country and its political elite have nestled for most of their life. It would entail acknowledging that Israel no longer has any special claim upon international sympathy or indulgence; that the United States won't always be there; that weapons and walls can no more preserve Israel forever than they preserved the German Democratic Republic or white South Africa; that colonies are always doomed unless you are willing to expel or exterminate the indigenous population. Other countries and their leaders have understood this and managed comparable realignments: Charles De Gaulle realized that France's settlement in Algeria, which was far older and better established than Israel's West Bank colonies, was a military and moral disaster for his country. In an exercise of outstanding political courage, he acted upon that insight and withdrew. But when De Gaulle came to that realization he was a mature statesman, nearly 70 years old. Israel cannot afford to wait that long. At the age of 58 the time has come for it to grow up.

Tony Judt is a professor and the director of the Remarque Institute at New York University, and his book "Postwar: The History of Europe Since 1945" was published in 2005.

[judih]

Judt has his opinion as a historian and some agree with him. Others do not.
I am one of those.

In any case, here is an article published in response to Judt. On the link are other comments, as well.

http://jpundit.typepad.com/jci/2006/04/ ... o_ton.html

Jewish Current Issues (articles, essays, books and comments relating to current Jewish issues)

April 21, 2006
Response to Tony Judt
Given his last two efforts (discussed here (http://rrichman.blogspot.com/2003_10_01 ... 6557152291 and here (http://rrichman.blogspot.com/2003_10_01 ... 5156623715), Tony Judt was probably not the best choice to reassure us in The New York Times that the Harvard “research” paper posted by Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer is not anti-Semitic.


Having written that Israelis are “trapped” in “the story of their own uniqueness,” that their “invocation” of the Holocaust is “special pleading,” that the term “terrorist” is a “rhetorical device” (comparable to “Communist”), that Ariel Sharon “blackmailed” the U.S., that Israel may be described as a “rogue state,” to which the “fascist” label now “fits better than ever” and that the Jewish state itself is an “anachronism” that is “bad for the Jews,” and that such a state “has no place,” Judt lacks a certain critical perspective in evaluating Walt and Mearsheimer’s efforts.


But since Judt's piece, like Walt and Mearsheimer’s, will circle the globe, a substantive response to his effort is required. Here is the beginning of one.


Judt concluded his New York Times piece by raising a “pressing question” that we “cannot ignore:”

“It will not be self-evident to future generations of Americans why the imperial might and international reputation of the United States are so closely aligned with one small, controversial Mediterranean client state. It is already not at all self-evident to Europeans, Latin Americans, Africans or Asians.”




Let’s re-write those sentences, eliminating some of the adjectives that are tendentious (“imperial” might and “client” state) or euphemistic (“Mediterranean” for “Middle East”), and state the issue more directly: Tony Judt cannot understand why the U.S. would align its power and reputation with a democratic state under attack in the Middle East, since the state is “small” and “controversial” with the rest of the world.




His question epitomizes the cynicism and amorality of realism, but Judt is not a realist foreign policy expert; he is an historian. An historical answer to his professed puzzlement may thus be the best way to respond. So herewith some 20th century history, and then some history even older than that, to provide some perspective:




Before he became president, John F. Kennedy visited Palestine and Israel twice -- once in 1939 and again in 1951. He wrote about the trips in his 1960 collection of speeches entitled “The Strategy of Peace.”




In 1939 I first saw Palestine, then an unhappy land under alien rule, and to a large extent then a barren land. . . . In 1951, I traveled again to the land by the River Jordan, to see firsthand the new State of Israel. The transformation that had taken place was hard to believe.




For in those twelve years, a nation had been born, a desert had been reclaimed, and the most tragic victims of World War II . . . had found a home.




Kennedy used that recollection to introduce his February 9, 1959 speech to the Golden Jubilee Banquet of B’nai Zion in New York City. Future historians should consult it to assist in deciphering what is not self-evident to Tony Judt:




[O]ur own history as a nation and Israel’s have many parallels -- in the diversity of their origins, in their capacity to reach the unattainable, in the receptivity to new ideas and social experimentation. . . .




History records several [] breakthroughs -- great efforts to which spiritual conviction and human endurance have combined to make realities out of prophecies. The Puritans in Massachusetts, the Mormons in Salt Lake City, the Scotch-Irish in the Western territories were all imbued with the truth of the old Jewish thought that a people can have only as much sky over its head as it has land under its feet. . . .




I would like to . . . dispel a prevalent myth . . . the assertion that it is Zionism which has been the unsettling and fevered infection in the Middle East, the belief that without Israel there would somehow be a natural harmony throughout the Middle East and Arab world. Quite apart from the values and hopes which the State of Israel enshrines . . . it twists reality to suggest that it is the democratic tendency of Israel which has injected discord and dissension into the Near East. Even by the coldest calculations, the removal of Israel would not alter the basic crisis in the area. . . . The basic rivalries within the Arab world, the quarrels over boundaries, the tensions involved in lifting their economies from stagnation, the cross pressures of nationalism -- all of these factors would still be there, even if there were no Israel. . . .



Israel, on the other hand, embodying all the characteristics of a Western democracy and having long passed the threshold of economic development, shares with the West a tradition of civil liberties, of cultural freedom, of parliamentary democracy, of social mobility. . . .




The choice today is not between either the Arab states or Israel. Ways must be found of supporting the legitimate aspirations of each. The United States, whose President was first to recognize the new State of Israel, need have no apologies – indeed should pride itself – for the action it took. . . .




The Jewish state found its fulfillment during a time when it bore witness, to use the words of Markham, to humanity betrayed, “plundered, profaned, and disinherited.”




But it is yet possible that history will record this event as only the prelude to the betterment and therapy, not merely of a strip of land, but of a broad expanse of almost continental dimensions. . . . [A]s we observe the inspiring experience of Israel, we know that we must make the effort . . .




Call it The Case for Democracy. Or the case for what David Gelernter has termed “Americanism:”




The Bible is not merely the fertile soil that brought Americanism forth. It is the energy source that makes it live and thrive; that makes believing Americans willing to prescribe freedom, equality, and democracy even for a place like Afghanistan, once regarded as perhaps the remotest region on the face of the globe. . . .




From the 17th century through John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Americans kept talking about their country as if it were the biblical Israel and they were the chosen people. Where did that view of America come from? It came from Puritanism . . .




The “political” goal of Puritanism was to reach back to the pure Christianity of the New Testament -- and then even farther back. Puritans spoke of themselves as God’s new chosen people, living in God’s new promised land -- in short, as God’s new Israel. . . .




Freedom, equality, democracy: the Declaration held these truths to be self-evident, but “self-evident” they were certainly not. Otherwise, America would hardly have been the first nation in history to be built on this foundation. Deriving all three from the Bible, theologians of Americanism understood these doctrines not as philosophical ideas but as the word of God. Hence the fervor and passion with which Americans believe their creed. Americans, virtually alone in the world, insist that freedom, equality, and democracy are right not only for France and Spain but for Afghanistan and Iraq.




Both America and Israel are exceptional nations -- the beacons of freedom, equality and democracy in the world. George W. Bush is only the latest in a long line of American presidents -- including Lincoln, Truman, Kennedy and Reagan -- who considered Americans (in Lincoln’s phrase) “an almost chosen people,” living in a country whose beginning in 1776 (in Truman’s phrase) “really had its beginning in Hebrew times,” that is (in Reagan’s phrase) a “shining city upon a hill,” and stands ready (in Kennedy’s phrase) to “bear any burden and oppose any foe” to insure the survival of liberty.




Today, the forefront of that battle is in Israel, the target of an unrelenting barbaric Islamic fascism. Whether Israel succeeds or fails will set the course of the 21st century. The fact that Israel is “small” and “controversial” is besides the point.

Judt undoubtedly does not understand why George W. Bush said on March 20 that "we will use military might to protect our ally Israel," nor would he have understood why John F. Kennedy committed U.S. power and prestige in 1962 to Quemoy and Matsu -- two "small" and "controversial" islands off the coast of China -- in order to protect our ally Taiwan. But that is because he is a professor of European history, not American.


Posted by Rick Richman | Permalink

[whimsicaldeb]

Excerpt from:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0324/dailyUpdate.html

Israeli media condemn, discuss report on US-Israel ties
Some say Harvard report 'riddled with factual errors,' others call it important 'wake-up call.'
By Tom Regan | csmonitor.com
March 24, 2006 at 12:10 p.m.

(emphasis added by me)

Daniel Levy, however, writing in the Israeli paper Ha'aretz, says that the Walt-Mearsheimer paper "should serve as a wake-up call, on both sides of the ocean." Mr. Levy, a former adviser in the Israeli prime minister's office, a member of the official Israeli negotiating team at the Oslo Accords and Taba talks, and the lead Israeli drafter of the 2003 Geneva Initiative, says the paper is flawed in some ways – it gives too much credence to the idea of AIPAC's power in Washington, and ignores moments when the US has taken a different opinion than the Israeli government. And he says that it "ignores AIPAC run-ins with more dovish Israeli administrations, most notably when it undermined Yitzhak Rabin, and how excessive hawkishness is often out of step with mainstream American Jewish opinion, turning many, especially young American Jews, away from taking any interest in Israel."

But Levy also says Walt's and Mearsheimer's case is a potent one.

... that identification of American with Israeli interests can be principally explained via the impact of the Lobby in Washington, and in limiting the parameters of public debate, rather than by virtue of Israel being a vital strategic asset or having a uniquely compelling moral case for support (beyond, as the authors point out, the right to exist, which is anyway not in jeopardy). The study is at its most devastating when it describes how the Lobby "stifles debate by intimidation" and at its most current when it details how America's interests (and ultimately Israel's, too) are ill-served by following the Lobby's agenda.

The bottom line might read as follows: that defending the occupation [of land originally captured by Israel during the Six-Day War in 1967] has done to the American pro-Israel community what living as an occupier has done to Israel – muddied both its moral compass and its rational self-interest compass.

In an editorial, Ha'aretz also calls for a debate on the paper, saying that even with its flaws, "it would be irresponsible to ignore the article's serious and disturbing message."

The conclusion that Israel can draw from the anti-Israel feeling expressed in the article is that it will not be immune for eternity. America's unhesitating support for Israel and its willingness to restrain itself over all of Israel's mistakes can be interpreted as conflicting with America's essential interests and are liable to prove burdensome. The fact that Israelis view the United States' support for and tremendous assistance to Israel as natural causes excess complacence, and it fails to take into account currents in public opinion that run deep and are liable to completely change American policy.

--end excerpt

[stilltrucking]

I am waiting for the United States to grow up. This article is four years old. Since then the situation has grown worse. This is George W Bush's base. Forty million people and growing.

Analysis: America's new Christian Zionists

"It's more than damaging," he says. "It's frightening."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/1969542.stm

Statement of Purpose
The purpose of Christians United For Israel (C.U.F.I.) is to provide a national association through which every pro-Israel church, Para-church organization, ministry or individual in America can speak and act with one voice in support of Israel in matters related to Biblical issues.

Why Christians must support the State of Israel. “Those nations who align with God’s purpose will receive His blessing. Those who follow a policy of opposition to God’s purpose will receive the swift and sever judgment of God without limitation.” - JOHN HAGEE

http://www.jhm.org/


Just a bunch of harmless wackos, I suppose.



.

[whimsicaldeb]

Updates ....

Beware that you are reading treasonable material. If you "out" the Israeli lobby and you are Gentile, you're branded an anti-Semite; if you are Jewish, you're obviously a self-hating Jew. The Jewish establishment abides no criticism of Israel. -- excerpted from "Israel Lobby" Bad For Israel, the U.S. by Rabbi Bruce Warshal below ...


'Israel Lobby' bad for Israel, the U.S.

BY RABBI BRUCE WARSHAL

05/12/06 "St Louis Jewish Light" -- -- Oh my God, someone has publicly outed the "Israel Lobby." For those readers who do not closely follow the machinations in academia, let me explain. John Walt, the academic dean of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, and John Mearsheimer, a political scientist at the University of Chicago, have written a blistering critique of the Jewish lobby, focusing primarily on AIPAC.

Their main complaint is that "the thrust of US policy in the region (the Middle East) derives almost entirely from domestic politics, and especially the activities of the 'Israel Lobby'." There is much with which to disagree in the paper, including their assertion that Israel is not a vital strategic asset (there are many generals who would challenge that assertion). But there is also much truth, if we would only be honest with ourselves.

The usual suspects have jumped on the bandwagon, not merely to criticize but to condemn the paper in vitriolic words. Rep. Eliot Engel, a Democrat who represents the Bronx, declared it "anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist drivel." This is somewhat ironic since one of the complaints of Walt and Mearsheimer is that anyone who criticizes Israel is automatically labeled anti-Semitic. The ubiquitous Alan Dershowitz accused the authors of cribbing from neo-Nazi Web sites, which was a sophisticated way of tarnishing them as anti-Semites without using the phrase. The right-wing New York Sun called it a "scandal" and warned that if Harvard is not careful, "the Kennedy School will become known as Bir Zeit on the Charles."

The Forward was most responsible. Before writing an extensive critical analysis of the paper it acknowledged that "the authors are not fringe gadflies but two of America's most respected foreign-affairs theorists. ... Though it's tempting, they can't be dismissed as cranks outside the mainstream. They are the mainstream."

I agree with Walt and Mearsheimer that AIPAC controls our American government policy toward Israel. But in their paper the two political scientists point out that, "In its basic operations, the Israel Lobby is no different from the farm lobby, steel or textile workers' unions, or other ethnic lobbies. There is nothing improper about American Jews and their Christian allies attempting to sway US policy; the Lobby's activities are not a conspiracy of the sort depicted in tracts like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion."

Coming from South Florida, I am acutely aware that our government policy toward Cuba is dictated by the Cuban Lobby. Why else would we have such an absurd opposition to Castro? If we can make peace with Red China and the "evil empire" of the Soviet Union, why do we continue an embargo against an obscure Communist island, if it were not for domestic political pressure? So it is with the Jewish domestic lobby. My complaint is that the self-appointed Jewish leaders who control AIPAC and other positions of power within the Jewish community do not represent the best interests of Jews, Israel or the United States in the long run.

Let's zero in on AIPAC. It is controlled by right-wing, rich Jewish neo-conservatives. As one manifestation of the truth of this assertion one merely has to look at its annual meeting this past month. At a time when Vice President Cheney's popularity has dropped below 20 percent, the 4,500 delegates to the AIPAC convention gave him a standing ovation for almost a minute before he even opened his mouth and then proceeded to give him 48 rounds of applause in a 35-minute speech. (As my colleague Leonard Fein pointed out, that's once every 43.7 seconds). Considering that 75 percent of American Jews voted for Kerry, it is obvious that these people are out of the mainstream of Jewish thought.

At the same conference, preceding the recent Israeli elections, these delegates were addressed by Ehud Olmert (Kadima), Amir Peretz (Labor) and Benjamin Netanyahu (Likud) by video link from Israel. Olmert and Peretz received polite applause. The AIPAC delegates cheered enthusiastically for Netanyahu, especially when he presented his hard line that was overwhelmingly rejected by the Israeli electorate. Once a great organization, today AIPAC does not even represent the feelings of the average Israeli, let alone the average American Jew.

This American Jewish neo-conservatism is unhealthy not only for America but for Israel as well. A prime example: The Israeli press reports that Israel is trying to find a way to deal with the Palestinians while not dealing with Hamas. Official public statements aside, they realize that they cannot cut off all contacts with the Palestinians and that the world cannot discontinue financial help; otherwise Israel will find a million starving Palestinians on its border, and this will not lead to peace or security for Israel. Privately, the Israeli government was against the Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act (the Ross-Lehtinen-Lantos bill) which recently passed the House of Representatives. It would cut off all American contacts with the Palestinian Authority, even with its president Mahmoud Abbas, who is a moderate seeking peace. Despite Israel's private reservations, AIPAC not only pushed this bill, it was instrumental in writing it. Even though the AIPAC candidate lost in Israel, he won in the U.S. House of Representatives. Hopefully, the Senate and the White House will correct this.

Beware that you are reading treasonable material. If you "out" the Israeli lobby and you are Gentile, you're branded an anti-Semite; if you are Jewish, you're obviously a self-hating Jew. The Jewish establishment abides no criticism of Israel. You don't agree with me? Take this example: Last month a pro-Palestinian play entitled My Name is Rachel Corrie was to open at the New York Theatre Workshop, a "progressive" company on East Fourth Street. The play is based on the writings of a young British girl who was crushed to death by an Israeli bulldozer when she was protesting the demolition of Palestinian homes in Gaza two years ago. Although the play was widely praised in London last year, it never opened in New York. The theater producers spoke to the ADL and other Jewish leaders, including big-money Jews on its board, and that was the end of that. But, of course, we don't "censor" discussion concerning Israel. We just politely give our opinions and the voice of the other side disappears.

Another example: 400 rabbis, including myself, signed a letter sponsored by Brit Tzedek v'Shalom that appeared in the Forward this past month. It was a mildly liberal statement that proclaimed that "we are deeply troubled by the recent victory of Hamas," but went on to urge "indirect assistance to the Palestinian people via NGO's, with the appropriate conditions to ensure that it does not reach the hands of terrorists." Pretty mild stuff. Yet pulpit rabbis across this country who signed the letter have reported a concerted effort to silence them. The letter has been branded a "piece of back-stabbing abandonment of the Jews of Israel." Synagogue boards have been pressured to silence their rabbis by that loose coalition called the "Israel Lobby."

Just another example of the Jewish establishment stifling any discussion of Israel that does not conform to the neo-conservative tenets of AIPAC and its cohorts. Beware of these self-appointed guardians of Israel and Jewish values. In the end they will destroy everything that makes Judaism a compassionate religion, and if in their zeal they do not destroy Israel, they certainly will not make it more secure.

Source:
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article13014.htm

--end article


Additional Links of Interest:

http://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/

Excerpt:

Jewish Voice for Peace calls for a U.S. foreign policy that promotes democracy and human rights. The United States must stop supporting repressive policies in Israel and elsewhere. U.S. military aid to countries in the Middle East must be based on rigorous enforcement of the Arms Export Control and Foreign Assistance Acts, which mandate that military aid may be used for only defensive purposes within the recipient country's borders, and that aid may not be delivered to countries that abuse human rights.

Under these guidelines, U.S. military aid to Israel must be suspended until the occupation ends, since the occupation itself is in violation of these guidelines. Military aid allows Israel to avoid making serious efforts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as well as conflicts with its other neighbors. It enables the occupation, contributes to the devastation of Palestinian society and fosters the increasing militarization of Israeli society.

JVP also calls for suspension of military aid to other human rights abusers and occupiers in the Middle East. This aid helps prop up autocratic and repressive regimes, promotes violations of human rights and international law, obstructs democratic movements, prolongs the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and fosters militarism and violence at home and abroad.

~~~

http://www.nimn.org/

Excerpts:

Not In My Name is a predominantly Jewish peace group that was founded in November 2000 to organize opposition to the Israeli Occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem. We believe that the Israelis and Palestinians deserve a chance to live in peace but that there are obstacles that prevent this from happening.

The main obstacles include the Israeli Occupation and the U.S. government’s support of it. We believe that the first step toward attaining peace must be for Israel to end its Occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem and for the U.S. to stop using our tax dollars to support it.

...

We call ourselves "Not In My Name" because the State of Israel often claims to act in the name and interests of all the Jews in the world. Taking our place within the Jewish community, we offer an alternative voice, motivated first and foremost by a love for peace and justice.



"We have been punished for speaking out, for wanting not only to have no share in the evil ourselves, but to get rid of the evil. They said in the verdict that we are undermining the legitimacy of what the government and the army are doing. That's absolutely true, and that's what we intend to continue doing."

—Haggai Matar after being sentenced to one year in jail for refusing to serve in the Israeli military (January 5, 2004).

Haggai, pictured here when he attended our Vigil in Chicago, was released from prison (along with Matan Kaminer, Shimri Zameret, Adam Maor and Noam Bahat) on September 15, 2004. They were immediately presented "call-up" orders and told to report for interviews on September 19th.

[stilltrucking]

Daughter Zion as a Gendered Space in the Book of Isaiah

http://www.cwru.edu/affil/GAIR/papers/2 ... /maier.pdf

I think of the women who watched over me nurtured me, and the one who brought me into this world. It is hard for me to say anything critical of Israel but I think it is naive for American Jews to think that America's interests and Israel's interest are congruent.

The Daughters of Zion are never far from my heart.
I do not blame Israel, it is our problem. We have the best government money can buy. I can't blame them for doing what they must do to defend themselves. But we do Israel no favors by getting sentimental about the Holy Land.

Case in point. The USS Liberty. LBJ did not want to embarrass our dear friend Israel so we cover it up. A tragic mistake for which Israel made profound apologies. But the Israeli government honored the torpedo boat that took part in the attack. The result? The incident is now fodder for every neo-naz holocaust denial website on the net. Google it and you will see what I mean.

I think the Manchester Guardian is a pretty reliable news source but I could be wrong.

From The Manchester Guardian

In the days following the attack, the Israeli government gave the US government a classified report that attempted to justify the claim that the attack was a mistake. On the basis of that same report, an Israeli court of inquiry completely exonerated the government and all those involved. No one was ever court-martialled, reduced in rank or even reprimanded. On the contrary, Israel chose instead to honour motor torpedo boat 203, which fired the deadly torpedo at the Liberty. The ship's wheel and bell were placed on prominent display at the naval museum, among the maritime artefacts of which the Israeli navy was most proud.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/ ... 83,00.html




We killed eight Canadian soldiers by friendly fire in Afghanistan. I wonder how the Canadians would feel if we gave the pilot a medal instead of a court martial.


More about the book from Salon.com

"Body of Secrets" by James Bamford
The author of a pioneering work on the NSA delivers a new book of revelations about the mysterious agency's coverups, eavesdropping and secret missions.

In 1967, the Israeli military attacked and destroyed the USS Liberty, a spy ship that had eavesdropped on an Israeli massacre of surrendered Egyptian soldiers in the Sinai. The ship's intercepts were destroyed, but the NSA also had spy planes eavesdropping. The details, including President Johnson's coverup to save the Jewish vote in the next election, were in a box in the back of the NSA Museum. They were in a public place, but no one had bothered to look at them before

http://archive.salon.com/books/review/2 ... index.html

WD: The link to the Daughter of Zion has nothing to do with this. But you know what an old f*cking fool I am.

Judih: you are like sunshine for me. I mean Israel no harm. If you stopped posting here because of my rant on fireplace I would feel lower than the lowest pile of whale sh*t in the deepest part of the ocean. But I think you are naive about your government.

[whimsicaldeb]

... But we do Israel no favors by getting sentimental about the Holy Land. - ST

I agree

Case in point. The USS Liberty. LBJ did not want to embarrass our dear friend Israel so we cover it up. A tragic mistake for which Israel made profound apologies. But the Israeli government honored the torpedo boat that took part in the attack. The result? The incident is now fodder for every neo-naz holocaust denial website on the net. Google it and you will see what I mean.

I didn't know about this; in fact, I'm finding there is a great many things concerning Israel I have been naive about. Things I've never been told, never knew. Things that disturb me each time I find out. Things such as this.

Yet it's exactly what you say here, about how these things have been covered up, are being kept secret, and are considered "taboo" subjects and how all that serves the hate; those that would hate – those that would hate regardless. And it was that, this understanding that I had in my mind but beyond words when I told someone (a Jewish person) … "Now I know why they hate Jewish people, you do it to yourselves."

When a non-Jewish person says something like this to an Jewish person … 99.9% of the time, it’s going to be misunderstood. And, it was. And yet, if we never bring these things out into the open, they will always remain food for those that hate, as well as never be healed. So ... people have begun speaking out. Not well; not eloquently. None the less, chip by chip by chip ~ the taboo is falling.

WD: The link to the Daughter of Zion has nothing to do with this. But you know what an old f*cking fool I am. - ST

~soft chuckle...~

Yes, ST, I know...

"The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool." ~ Touchstone to William
in William Shakespeare's "As You Like It;"
Act 5, Sc. 1, line 31

I know you are the wise man who knows himself to be the fool. I know, it is "as you like it."

[knip]

I may get branded as being wishy-washy, or non-commital (again), but what I see in this conversation is the continuance of side-taking. I think us humans really want to 'pull for our team' and 'pick the winner to stand behind'. Otherwise, why would so much that is written on this topic so clearly align itself in an 'anti-something' stance so often and so predictably?

I enjoyed all the readings and opinions here, but I'm still struck by how much side-taking there is. I fully agree with the assertion that world opinion has largely shifted to one that is anti-Israel. But I also laugh at these educators and academics who continue to use the term 'anti-semitic' as if it means 'anti-Jewish'. I would have thought people such as these so knowledgeable of the region might have taken the time to figure out what the word means. Palestinians are Semitic. Kurds are Semitic. Some Somalis are Semitic. Jews are Semitic. Judih, if I am wrong, please correct me. But I'm pretty sure I'm not. When I read educators and academics so obviously misuse words such that I begin to doubt the depth of their understanding of the region, I also start to doubt the motives behind what they say, and their ability to be objective.

"Dead Israelis today are typically seen as collateral damage of their own government policies." Maybe so; that would be consistent with the shift in global thought to one of anti-Israel. But that doesn't make the statement correct. It is a circular argument. If these folks want to convince me these arguments aren't circular, then they need to have a better understanding of pre-1967 Israel, what Zionism was, the fact that most of the Zionists bought their land from Palestinians, the fact that (stated correctly in one of the articles above) Zionists and, later, Israel truly saved the region from becoming one huge desert wasteland, the collective memory that is produced by so many years of your neighbours stating publicly (many still) that they won't be happy until all Jews are driven into the ocean, and the effects of winning wars against against all odds on a growing collective identity, nurtured through 60 years of cultural and family tradition, growing prosperity, and heightened feelings of belonging to something that for thousands of years the collective culture had an inherent knowledge of, but could never operationalize through something palpable and strongly identifiable. To understand Israel, I think one has to understand these things - how the Diaspora created a stronger but disconnected culture that remained glued together, somehow, by oral tradition and written laws, and was then re-connected through the return to their Holy Land. This is the reason why all Jews are still welcomed into Israel (I think), despite population problems.

If these academics want me to put much stock in what they say, then they better show a memory that is as good pre-1967 as it is post-1967, and can do it using the proper terms, instead of whipping out the handy 'anti-Semite' descriptor. Otherwise, it just looks too much like side-taking to me.


Lest I be accused of taking sides myself, I wouldn't call myself pro-Israeli. I'm pro-people. My Arabist friends even seem to want to pigeonhole me to this side. But I don't think they understand one can be pro-Israel and an Arabist at the same time. During my experiences walking the souks, talking to locals, migrant workers, Arab military men, I can offer one perspective - they are linked by a common feeling of despair and love for their mistreated Palestinian brothers and sisters. But this is not to say they are anti-Israel. They are certainly concerned, very concerned, but the average common Arab, the average Arab professional, the average migrant worker do not want to sweep the Jews into the Sea. They do want a better solution than the one they perceive is being stalled right now, though. (Bear in mind I haven't been to the more fundamental Arab countries, so these perceptions may not be fully representative. But I think they are mostly representative, based on folks I've talked to from those places)


But I still come back to the basic tenet of the original article - Israel's inability to mature after a whole 60 years! Well golly, that makes Israel just about the youngest damned country of all those with influence in the world on a global scale, including the US and Canada, all of Europe (less, perhaps, the post-wall collapse states), Russia, all of central, east, southeast, southwest Asia...hell - just about the whole world that has something to say on the topic. So what is the argument again? Israel needs to mature like all these other countries have? Give me a break. More propoganda. Let that writer give me some examples. Israel needs to mature like _____ country did after 60 years. I'm interested in what example he might use that could compare and show me the light.

[stilltrucking]

This is not about Israel really. This is about the Bible thumpers in The United Snakes that want the mighty smighty Jewish god on their side. Kind of like Raiders of The Lost Arc.
This is about the James Haggee’s of the world and George Bush standing at the Wailing Wall wearing a yarmulke.


Knip not sarcasm, have you seen any blue eyed Arabs. Yeah the Arabs and Hebrew children are Semites. But there are Jews and then there are Jews.

Millions of Jews traced to four women','About 3.5 million of today’s Ashkenazi Jews — 40 percent of the total Ashkenazi population — are descended from just four women, a genetic study indicates.','Technology & Science','Science','Genetic Genealogy

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10827385/

The Thirteenth Tribe. Not usre if it is true, I would be interested if there is any genetic proof of his theory. The book was written about fifty years ago I think. MtDna was a total mystery back then. That is mitochondrial dna.

This book traces the history of the ancient Khazar Empire, a major but almost forgotten power in Eastern Europe, which in A.D. 740 converted to Judaism. Khazaria, a conglomerate of Aryan Turkish tribes, was finally wiped out by the forces of Genghis Han, but evidence indicates that the Khazars themselves migrated to Poland and formed the craddle of Western (Ashkenazim) Jewry...
The Khazars' sway extended from the Black sea to the Caspian, from the Caucasus to the Volga, and they were instrumental in stopping the Muslim onslaught against Byzantium, the eastern jaw of the gigantic pincer movement that in the West swept across northern Africa and into Spain.
Thereafter the Khazars found themselves in a precarious position between the two major world powers: the Eastern Roman Empire in Byzantium and the triumphant followers of Mohammed. As Arthur Koestler points out, the Khazars were the Third World of their day, and they chose a surprising method of resisting both the Western pressure to become Christian and the Eastern to adopt Islam. Rejecting both, they converted to Judaism.
The second part of Mr. Koestler's book deals with the Khazar migration to Polish and Lithuanian territories, caused by the Mongol onslaught, and their impact on the racial composition and social heritage of modern Jewry. He produces a large body of meticulously detailed research in support of a theory that sounds all the more convincing for the restraint with which it is advanced.
Mr. Koestler concludes: "The evidence presented in the previous chapters adds up to a strong case in favour of those modern historians - whether Austrian, Israeli or Polish - who, independently from each other, have argued that the bulk of modern Jewry is not of Palestinian, but of Caucasian origin.

http://198.62.75.1/www2/koestler/



And then of course there are black Jews too, pardon the N word but some of those Israeli soldiers I saw in a video clip looked like Negroes to me.

[knip]

My knowledge isn't deep enough to comment on the Ashkenazi theories, although I've heard of them. My gut tells me that sometimes these theories (like religions) are advanced to answer questions whose answers are difficult, i.e. "how did the Jews maintain their culture while dipersed through time and continents?" For instance, how does the Ashkenazi theory address the question of Jewish enclaves in places like China, Mesopotamia & Persia, etc? The answer, as I've been led to believe, lies in the <i>Talmud</i>, but I can't claim authority on it.

[stilltrucking]

Not the change the subject buddreau would you mind answering my question.

Hell I am the world’s worst kind of Jew knip. I am totally assimilated, my father was a Jew too but he was a stone cold atheist. I thank him for that. I was never indoctrinated, not even a bar mitzvah. So I suppose I am the eternal Jew boy, I will never be a man. In fact I been thinking about having my circumcision reversed. Yeah chosen people my ass. Chosen to suffer.

All I know about Jews is that it is all up to your mother. Sisterhood is powerful. I have only read a little little bit about Talmud. If you say it is a lie than it must be so. Your new head guy in Canada, Harper? I read somewhere he is a Straussian too. Good luck.

[knip]

What was the question? Have I seen blue-eyed Arabs? Can't say I pay particular attention to eye colour.

I never said the <i>Talmud</i> was full of lies; I said it lies in it. As I understand it, its rites and prescriptions were the main glue that held the culture together during the Diaspora.

Harper...yeah...he scares the shit out of me.

[stilltrucking]

Thanks knip. I appriciate the comeback.

I think we are getting away from the topic. Or at least I are.

This is not really about Jews as such, it is about governments and
Lobbyists
.

judih. If she stopped posting her poetry here I would cry like a baby.


Yeah the Straussians got me puckered up too. Everyday I find another one of his disciples in high position.

[whimsicaldeb]

But I still come back to the basic tenet of the original article - Israel's inability to mature after a whole 60 years! Well golly, that makes Israel just about the youngest damned country of all those with influence in the world on a global scale, including the US and Canada, all of Europe (less, perhaps, the post-wall collapse states), Russia, all of central, east, southeast, southwest Asia...hell - just about the whole world that has something to say on the topic. So what is the argument again? – knip

Well first off …there is no argument. You are correct. Israel is“just about the youngest damned country of all those with influence in the world on a global scale” … and that’s why the questioning, the debating. What kind of influence, and when, where, how and why.


That’s why I highlighted from the the very beginning …... "The times they are indeed a-changing." What used to be considered a “taboo” is now becoming acceptable. As it should.

In case you’re not aware, let me give you the history as to why I posted this article: I had wanted to bring this subject up much sooner I had held back out of respect for Judih, I didn’t know how she’d feel about it. But then she posted about ‘maturity’ herself in this other thread … http://www.studioeight.tv/phpbb/viewtop ... c&start=60

But then relating to one another involves maturity. Maturity! Is that too much to expect on a college campus, a workplace, in a bus or any other public place? – Judih

uuuummm (!) .... maturity.
Synch!
– me (wd)

And I linked back to this “new” thread.

Since posting that original article I found some other additional articles (which I posted) … but I’ve also a few others that your comments makes me feel I should post as well:

"Dead Israelis today are typically seen as collateral damage of their own government policies." Maybe so; that would be consistent with the shift in global thought to one of anti-Israel. – knip

Actually, that’s incorrect … the shifting of thought is not to ‘anti’ Israel; but to Israel, as/ike any other country. (i.e.: no longer special, no longer “singled” out)

Example, I think you’d agree with me on the accuracy of the following statements (a modification of your own statement):

Dead “soldiers” today are typically seen as collateral damage of their own government policies. And then you can expand that to: Dead “Americans” soldiers today are typically seen as collateral damage of their own government policies; or dead “Canadian” soldiers today are typically seen as collateral damage of their own government policies; or dead “Iraqi” soldiers today are typically seen as collateral damage of their own government policies, etc.


The statements, the questioning, the conversations that are coming out now is the shifting of thoughts of but Israel, like any other country and just like any other country that influences this world … their influence is going to be questioned.

For those peoples who would be “anti” anything – Israel, liberals, republicans, whatever … they will still be. But that is the same for all, there is no country or peoples that do not have this somewhere in their lives.

So, this comment made me remember a couple of articles, including an interview exchange I had read awhile back which I’ll post links to now. Which btw, the first one I’ll list does give history information before 1967, which you also asked about:


"How Israel Lost" by Richard Ben Cramer
This startling new book asks brave, naive and absolutely necessary questions. They must be answered if Israel is to save itself from destruction.
By Baruch Kimmerling
Source:
http://dir.salon.com/story/books/review ... index.html

The article is from July, 2004 and he ends it with this excerpt:

Cramer is completely correct in his intuition that Israel is behaving today like a suicidal nation. Unlike Europe, the United States has not yet come to reject Israel's behavior as unacceptable. Nonetheless, such a time will surely come, probably as a part of an increasing general awareness that the American responses to 9/11, including George W. Bush's blank-check acquiescence in all of Sharon's schemes, were evil, wrong and counterproductive. When the time comes that Americans realize, in the words of Cramer, that "we, the Americans, don't want to be like them," and Israel is forced to stand alone and choose its course, we will witness Israel's finest or worst historical moment. – end article/end excerpt

Well, this assessment of the US citizens ‘rejecting’ certain aspects of the Israeli influence turns out to be correct … and it brings me to the other article/interview I want to share. It’s the Norman Finkelstein & Former Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami (Amy Goodman narrator) debate from Democracy Now.
Source: http://www.democracynow.org/finkelstein-benami.shtml

AMY GOODMAN: And the issue of torture of tens of thousands of Palestinians by Israel?

SHLOMO BEN-AMI: To tell you the truth, I don't know about the numbers, and we have seen different governments in — the British have done it. What the British did in Palestine in the '30s, there is nothing new in what we did that the British didn't do before us, and the Americans now in Iraq and elsewhere — what I find very, very uncomfortable is really this singling out Israel that lives in a very unique sort of situation in comparison with other countries, but —

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Norman Finkelstein makes the point, "Israel's Abu Ghraib," so that's making reference to what America did in Iraq.

SHLOMO BEN-AMI: Okay, okay. But if you — if you would come from another planet and examine the resolutions of the U.N., the Security Council, you might reach the conclusion there is only one sinner in this planet, and it's the state of Israel, and not anybody else.

NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: But I am quoting your own human rights organizations. You know, B'Tselem is not the United Nations.

SHLOMO BEN-AMI: Okay, that's okay. I mean, I'm not — but it speaks in favor of Israel that we have human rights, we have B'Tselem, and we criticize ourselves.

NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: Right.

SHLOMO BEN-AMI: And we want to change things, but the solution —

NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: I will agree with that, but then you have to say it doesn't speak too much in Israel's favor that it's the only country in the world that legalized torture. It was also the only country in the world that legalized hostage taking. It was also the only country in the —

SHLOMO BEN-AMI: It wasn't legalized —

NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: Well, yes. As your chief justice called it, “keeping Lebanese as bargaining chips.” Israel was the only country in the world that's legalized house demolitions as a form of punishment. Those things have to also be included in the record.

AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Ben-Ami.

NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: In addition to — I totally agree with you, it's to Israel's credit that it has a B'Tselem, an organization for which I have the highest regard and esteem. I agree with that.

SHLOMO BEN-AMI: Okay, but the thing is that the conditions where Israel has to operate, this is — we do not have a Sweden and Denmark as neighbors, and we have neighbors that have taken hostages, and have taken hostages that forced us to exchange things that were not very popular. Rabin himself gave away 1,500 Palestinian and Lebanese prisoners in exchange for three Israeli soldiers, and Sharon gave away 400 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for four bodies of Israeli soldiers. So we are living in that kind of place.

NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: But that may tell you that's because they take so many people prisoner that they have a lot to give back. Right now, as we speak, there are 9,000 Palestinian political prisoners in Israel.

SHLOMO BEN-AMI: This is because we live in the conditions that we live. We are not, as I said — this is not Scandinavia.

NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: But, Dr. Ben-Ami, you know, as well as I do, international law does not apply to some countries and not to others and some continents and not to others. Either it applies to everybody, or it applies to nobody. So to use the excuse, "Well, in our neighborhood we don't have to recognize international law," is simply a repudiation of international law.

SHLOMO BEN-AMI: No, I'm not saying — No, no, I'm not saying that we do not have to recognize international law. I say that the conditions —

NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: Well, then, it applies —

SHLOMO BEN-AMI: No, no. I mean, there are conditions where you cannot apply these lofty principles, which are very important, but you cannot apply them. And the British — and the British —

NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: The British is an interesting example.

SHLOMO BEN-AMI: Well, it's an interesting example. They didn't —

NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: B'Tselem did a comparison —

SHLOMO BEN-AMI: They did it in Gibraltar —

NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: The British — that's right.

SHLOMO BEN-AMI: They did it in the Falklands. They did — anywhere —

NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: B'Tselem did an interesting comparison. It compared the British policies of torture in Northern Ireland with Israeli policies of torture. In the 1970s, there were thousands of terrorist attacks by the I.R.A., and B'Tselem's comparison showed that the Israeli record is much worse than the British on the question of torture. That's the facts.

SHLOMO BEN-AMI: Yeah. You face now in this country a challenge of terrorism, so you go to PATRIOT Act and you go to —

NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: But you won't find me justifying torture.

SHLOMO BEN-AMI: These are the conditions that can be very dire, very difficult —

NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: No conditions justify torture.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, let me ask Dr. Ben-Ami, on the issue of the United States, as you look here, coming here for a few days, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, do you feel there are problems with the detention of the hundreds of men that are being held at Guantanamo without charge and what happened at Abu Ghraib?

SHLOMO BEN-AMI: Well, I cannot condone that. I mean, I think that, obviously, it is a violation of international norms. There is no doubt about it. But I don't follow the internal American debate. I don't know if this society is scandalized by what happens and what is the degree of civil opposition, civic opposition, and if you have here organizations like not only B'Tselem, even Shalom Achshav, which is a centrist — it's not a leftwing — organization that exposes the seams of your own government, I don't know. Maybe yes.

I think we are a society in the middle of a very complicated conflict. As I do admit, in this conflict many atrocities were committed by both sides, however, but I do recognize our own shortcomings, blunders and things. And the only solution to this situation — the only, the only solution — is to try and reach a final settlement between us and the Palestinians. There is no other way. There is no other way: to split the land into two states, two capitals, trying to find the best way to end this conflict, because much of the instability of the Middle East has to do with our condition. You don't need to be a bin Laden or a Saddam Hussein, who tried to put on themselves the mantle of the vindicators of the Palestinian cause in order to say that the Palestinian issue is a platform of instability in the region that needs to be solved.

But even when it is solved, let us not fool ourselves. Many of the problems that the West is facing today with the Arab world will persist. The Palestinian issue has been used frequently by many Arab rulers as a pretext for not doing things that need to be done in their own societies. But for the sake of the Israelis, I am not — I am not — when I say that we need to make concessions, it is not because I am concerned with the future of the Palestinians or because I am concerned with international law. I want to say it very clearly, it is because I define myself as an ardent Zionist that thinks that the best for the Jews in Israel is that we abandon the territories and we dismantle settlements and we try to reach a reasonable settlement with our Palestinian partners. It's not because I am concerned with the Palestinians. I want to be very clear about it. My interpretation, my approach is not moralistic. It's strictly political. And this is what I'm trying to explain in the book.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you both very much for being with us. Shlomo Ben-Ami, former Israeli Foreign Minister, author of Scars of War, Wounds of Peace: The Israeli-Arab Tragedy, and Dr. Norman Finkelstein, professor at DePaul University, author of Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History, thank you both for joining us.

Legalized torture; legalized holding of political prisoners; going against UN directives … Israel, and the US – but for many US citizens … this is “news’ to them. Ye once heard, they are speaking loudly and clearly, this is NOT what we want.

And then from that first link I’m sharing in this post …” in the words of Cramer, that "we, the Americans, don't want to be like them," and Israel is forced to stand alone and choose its course, we will witness Israel's finest or worst historical moment.”

Bush & Co want things such as this – but many, many, many Americans such as myself do not…

That’s where we’re at. This is it, that moment is NOW. It’s best it’s all out in the open, and not being swept under the rug of secrecy, and/or it keeps getting taking out from under that rug of secrecy.

Now, I’ve tried to give the best well-balanced articles I could find. But that’s not easy … because there is a lot of strong emotions involved on all sides and strong emotions create biased articles.

Plus, like what Rabbi Bruce Warshal says in 'Israel Lobby' bad for Israel, the U.S.

Beware of these self-appointed guardians of Israel and Jewish values. In the end they will destroy everything that makes Judaism a compassionate religion, and if in their zeal they do not destroy Israel, they certainly will not make it more secure.

Agreed! Along with those with those ‘self-appointed guardians of American and Christian values’ – in their “zeal” making things any easier or more secure for American, or this world.

And now, (thankfully) both (all) of these factions and their agendas can finally come to light … be examined and talked about.

The ‘taboo’ is broken.

Sorry for such a long, long post (again). I really am trying to KISS. (Keep It Simple Stupid) Apparently, on this subject, I'm not a good KISS'er.

[stilltrucking]

Can we move on now?