What does an open, healthy dialogue about Zionism look like?
Posted on April 24 2007 by Cecilie Surasky under Educational Institutions.We’re always talking about ways that dialogue about US-Israel policy gets shut down, and how critics of Israeli policies in particular get smeared or silenced, yadda yadda. Now it’s a pleasure to point readers to a blog that is doing just the opposite.
Dan Fleshler over at Realistic Dove has initiated a thoughtful, respectful, and interesting dialogue about Israeli policies and lately, Zionism, where people across the ideological spectrum can talk in a respectful and searching tone. Wow.
I personally find the whole Zionism/anti-Zionism litmus test both distasteful, often offensive, and certainly odd. It’s odd and to me artificial because the definitions are so slippery, the understandingof Zionisms so superficial.
In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever had a discussion about Zionism with someone in which it wasn’t apparent we were making completely different assumptions. Further, many of us who care about the topic of Zionism are in a relationship of engagement, exploration, questioning, and learning.
Instead, the McCarthyite tendencies– on both the left and right–force people to pick a fixed ideology as their identity, and pin it down like a moth on a display board. Clearly, both sides use it as a proxy test to check for anti-Semitism, or anti-Arabism. The test is a poor if not offensive and damaging substitute for those things, and has degraded the entire discourse around Zionism.
Speaking for myself, “my people” aren’t the Zionists, the anti-Zionists, the post-Zionists or any other ideological category or artificial identity. They’re anyone who agrees with Hillel, who said of the Torah, “what is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor: all the rest, is commentary.”
Indeed, if you and I agree on that fundamental principle, “what is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor,” then how we get there is the dialogue and journey we go on together. Kudos to any group of people who can create a respectful space in which to discuss and comment.
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April 24th, 2007 at 4:30 pm
Then how is it that this site is linked to “Electronic Intifada”? Thats clearly not a “love thy neighbor” site.
April 24th, 2007 at 4:40 pm
it’s a good question. frankly i’m not sure JVP is coming from a place where jewish people can trust them to be balanced. maybe that other site is better, i’ll check it out.
in my understanding, zionism just means support for a jewish state, today that means support for the existence of israel, and its continued existence as a jewish state.
in that sense, zionism is related to judaism, but even the EU says that failing to recognize israel’s right to exist qualifies as anti-semitism. i know that pushes some buttons for people but there you go.
do we agree on that definition? is there another that anyone would prefer?
April 24th, 2007 at 5:17 pm
I’m glad you posted this, Cecile. Dan has opened up (can it be…?) a respectful dialogue between progressive Zionism and anti-Zionism. Wow.
It’s an important question, whether progressive Jews at the two ends of this spectrum can find common ground. Up to now, the Jewish establishment has tried to marginalize JVP and what I’d call the more radical Jewish groups; while the progressive Zionist voice has been diluted within larger, more conservative Zionist coalitions.
This is one reason that the right-wing position has tended to predominate.
Does the possibility exist for organizational affiliation and joint advocacy involving groups like Meretz, Brit Tzedek and JVP? Are there ideas and goals that we share as progressives, that are more important than our stand on Zionism per se?
April 24th, 2007 at 5:33 pm
On open, healthy, dialogue about Zionism means that, whatever one’s personal feelings on the subject, that you respect the other person’s right to live their life in the way that they want to.
So one can be “anti-Zionist,” that’s fine.
It’s when those anti-Zionists start rejecting the decision of the 5.75 million Jews that have decided to live life as Zionists that we run into problems.
If you aren’t a Zionist, that’s fine. Don’t move to Israel.
April 24th, 2007 at 7:05 pm
here are some examples of the way that the “progressive” anti-Zionist community has handled respectful dialogue–one of these is serious, the other is both amusing and pathetic; keep in mind when reviewing this that there have not been lawsuits filed to shut down websites such as this, or other use of the legal system to suppress debate (the exception being Dershowitz-Finkelstein which is based on allegations of libel).
The serious one:
JVP has joined in the lawsuit filed by the Islamic Society of Boston against the David Project and local Boston media to suppress their reporting about conflicts of interest between officials of the City of Boston Redevelopment Authority and the ISB over the sale of taxpayer-owned land to the ISB at a fraction of its worth. also uncovered at the time were clear links between ISB board members and known terror groups including al Qaeda. The ISB’s response was to sue; JVP has joined in the lawsuit ON THE SIDE OF THE ISB. This is clearly designed to intimidate free speech and freedom of the press. And, despite comments about this on virtually every posting on this site in the past month, and despite a promise a few weeks back by JVP that there would be an explanation, none has been forthcoming.
There will continue to be comments about this on every post on this website until either such an explanation is provided or unless I am censored. Betcha that the latter happens first!
The pathetic one: On Saturday April 21, the Bay Area Women in Black (another “progressive” group that opposes Israel’s existence as a Jewish state) held a demonstration on a busy streetcorner in Oakland CA. They have the right to do that. A group of pro-Israel demonstrators set up on the other side of the street. Then, a group of about 50 from a local synagogue came down to join the pro-Israel group, led by a guitar-playing rabbi and featuring lots of kids as well as adults. The rabbi led the group in a few songs; they then proceeded across the street to the corner on which theanti-Israel group stood, waited there for the light to change, and proceeded around the rest of the intersection and back to the synagogue. The response from the Women in Black? The Oakland Police were called to the scene (and, of course, took one look and realized there was no reason to take any action).
I guess that it’s fine for one group to legally walk around in a public area, but if a rabbi with a guitar and a bunch of kids shoudl happen to cross the street– well, better take legal action!
Now, as far as Andrew’s point– as long as anti-Zionists line up with groups like al-Awda and ISM, it will continue to be very difficult to have a “respectful dialogue”; after all, if I support a Palestinian state alongside Israel and I’m answered back with refusal to accept the existence of the state of Israel at all, within any borders, that’s not very respectful, is it?
April 24th, 2007 at 7:42 pm
[…] Some wise words from Cecilie Surasky about this little experiment here: I personally find the whole Zionism/anti-Zionism litmus test both distasteful, often offensive, and certainly odd. It’s odd and to me artificial because the definitions are so slippery, the understanding of Zionisms so superficial. […]
April 24th, 2007 at 8:42 pm
Responding to Andrew’s point that it’s an important question whether progresive Jews on either of the spectrum can find common ground: I think it’s an interesting, tempting, almost irresistable question for fellow ideologues…but not an important question, if what is important is participating in finding a non-military solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. After decades of participating in such search for common ground (in New Jewish Agenda and pre-and post) (often respectful, and many times not) I have came to hold that the search for common ground between the majority of Jews and the majority of Palestinians is more “important.” Since the 1990s, clear and strong majorities of both people’s want to fulfil our national aspirations side by side….getting there is the problem. Discussions of Zionism absorb energy so needed in other ways….
I helped found Brit Tzedek v’Shalom because the majority of American Jews who support a two state solution and for whom Zionism is not the important question, needed an organization voice. This in not dilution: we’ve only just begun!
April 24th, 2007 at 8:58 pm
Oh, I don’t know. I don’t think it’s an ideological question at all. It’s a completely practical one. There are several groups starting to organize nationally - or already extant - to provide a progressive Jewish voice on the Mideast Conflict.
Brit Tzedek is certainly one of them, and it’s admirable work you’ve done.
But the question is whether groups like JVP, Brit Tzedek and Meretz can come together to create a larger and more effective coalition.
For this to happen, of course, one thing we need to do is to put aside ideological differences on Zionism, and find - yes - common values and goals.
April 24th, 2007 at 9:21 pm
I believe it is quite possible for groups like JVP, Brit Tzedek, Meretz, and APN to work together. But in order for this to happen JVP would have to endorse a two state solution to the conflict. Endorsing two states would not make JVP a Zionist group. After all, I go to college with a Palestinian from Gaza whose father promotes the Geneva Initiative. I assure you he is no Zionist. However, I find no sense in JVP engaging with the Zionist left if you will not endorse a two state solution. This is something Michael Lerner addressed recently;
http://files.tikkun.org/current/article.php?story=20070421224404113ace
“But united around what? It can’t be around the dissolution of the State of Israel envisioned by many who are currently planning a set of demonstrations against Israel June 10-12 coordinated by the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation and the United for Peace and Justice, two organizations to which Tikkun belongs and which oft en do valuable work. The reason we can’t join them is the same reason the Tikkun Community couldn’t join the Jewish Voices for JVP).
“the willingness of all these organizations to keep alive as an option the notion that the solution to Israel/Palestine peace lies in the dissolution of a Jewish state, using the language of “one state solution” as the way to signal to many who never thought the Jewish people never deserved a state at all.
April 25th, 2007 at 8:04 am
A Real Voice for Peace:
My understanding of Zionism, as support for Israel, has been the same as yours until fairly recently.
I do think the phrase “right to exist” is problemmatic. Israel exists. In practical terms, I would prefer that nations recognize its existence. Whether it has a “right to exist” leads into debates about how it came into existence, why it came into existence, and several other debates. It exists. That should be enough.
It would be helpful if Israel’s borders were established once and for all but I think that once its existence is affirmed, especially by those states that have refused to do so, the border issue will resolve more easily.
April 25th, 2007 at 9:36 am
As soon as I hit the submit button last night, I knew using the word “ideological” was a mistake. Sorry. Andrew, proposing that JVP and Brit Tzedek can work together to be more effective, misunderstands, I think, the missions of the organizations. I can’t speak for JVP, but Brit Tzedek’s mission is to organize American Jewish supporters of Israel into a vocal, activist movement for two-states. Trying to figure out how to work with Jews who want to question Israel’s legitimacy, etc., is outside the scope of Brit Tzedek’s mission.
April 25th, 2007 at 9:48 am
My own position - and I’m not speaking for JVP here, I am a member, in Massachusetts, but I’m not in any sort of leadership position with the group - is that we should work for a negotiated settlement between representatives of Israel and the Palestinian people, acceptable to both sides, that addresses the issues of borders, contiguity, settlements, refugees, and security.
My long-term hope for Israel would be a true multi-ethnic state where all residents have equal rights - which really is not the situation in Israel now. Maybe this is possible in the broad rubric of Zionism, maybe not, but this, to me, is more of an academic discussion and I would not put it ahead of an end to the current conflict. In fact, I think ending the conflict is a prerequisite for this.
Where my views (and many others on the Jewish left) may be more controversial is that I would not accept an analysis that says the only obstacle to peace is the Palestinians. I think it is up to American Jews to help create a climate in which Israel’s leaders have strong incentives (both positive and negative) to negotiate and to make what concessions are needed for peace. There needs to be countervailing pressure to the political forces in Israel which have tended to maintain the status quo.
The above is oversimplified I know. But what I’m getting at is that the discussion along the progressive spectrum may need to be more about what we are willing and able to do vis a vis activism and advocacy to bring about a fair, negotiated solution.
April 25th, 2007 at 11:58 am
Israel’s “right to exist”.
Why does no one speak of Palestine’s right to exist?
The Israelis have got the USA, the EU, Russia, the UN all starving the Palestinians to death because they will not roll over for this “right to exist”.
Uri Avnery admits :
‘ The aim of ethnic cleansing and the establishment of a Jewish State from the sea to the river is dear to the hearts of many Israelis, and perhaps Rabbi Meir Kahane was right when he asserted that this is everybody’s unspoken desire. ‘
Palestine has a right to exist.
Until the Israelis admit that Palestine has a right to exist, as long as “everybody’s unspoken desire” is “a Jewish State from the sea to the river”, as long as the Israelis insist on requiring of their neighbors what is hateful to them, for that long they will be looked upon as hypocrites.
All the worse for their assumption of the mantle of righteousness, for cheapening the horrors that Jews have suffered through by revisiting those on a people whose only crime is to assert their own right to exist in the face of Zionism.
April 25th, 2007 at 12:26 pm
clare,
i’d be happy to go along with that. in a sense talking about a right to exist is silly, you’re right, israel exists and is not going anywhere.
i think there’s still a bit of victim mentality that we Jews need to get over, from the holocaust. at this point, israel is not going anywhere, and we can be a little more secure.
(i know some people want israel to not exist, but i don’t think they have much credence anymore.)
April 25th, 2007 at 2:30 pm
The mechanism I use to promote a healthy dialog on any political subject is the accountant’s balance sheet, with credits, debits and standards. Using this metaphor, a political movement (like Zionism, Liberalism, Marxism, Arab Nationalism, Conservativism, etc.) or political entities (Israel, the France, the Soviet Union, Syria, the United States) have their virtues lined up on the “credit” side of the ledger and their failings lined up under “debits.” The trick is that such a balance sheet can never be looked at in a vacuum, but can only be compared to the balance sheet of other political movements, nations, etc.
This technique is not meant to turn every debate into a “but he’s worse” argument. Rather, it assumes that any political project or entity exists in the real world and thus can only be evaluated by comparing it to other real-world equivalents. This is a far fairer way of making political and moral judgments than creating different standards with which to judge one society vs. another, a kind of moral double bookkeeping that often forces people to tie themselves into intellectual pretzels trying to explain why one nation (such as Israel) must be judged by how far it strays from perfection while other nations must be judged solely by their peaceful rhetoric, or not subject to any judgment whatsoever.
April 25th, 2007 at 6:05 pm
Some people (both on this list and elsewhere) also seem to be twisting themselves into intellectual pretzels by claiming not to be Zionists when they do indeed support what has become known as the “two-state solution”: a Jewish state and an Arab state in the region betwen the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. (Now if you support the pseudo-solution of a “binational” state in one part fo the region and a Judenrein Arab state in the other part, that’s an entirely different story.)
Greg, thank you for posting Tikkun’s position; Rabbi Lerner, for all that I may disgree with him on how to get there, is indeed a Zionist who shares the same aspirations I do–a Jewish state of Israel living side by side in peace with an Arab state of Palestine. He also recognizes that there is really no other solution to the situation. And those who are progressive Zionists know that indeed, Zionism IS the important question.
April 25th, 2007 at 8:43 pm
Mike, personally I don’t think supporting a two-state solution necessarily makes one a Zionist. And it’s not necessary to be a Zionist to be pro-Israel.
As you can tell, I strongly support Israel. But, as an American Jew, I do not see Israel as my own destiny. I don’t see it necessary for recognizing my life, or my liberation, as a Jew.
I simply respect the decision of those who see it that way. It’s really just a question of tolerance and respect and belief in equality.
April 26th, 2007 at 1:36 pm
The whole issue is not over “thoughtful, respectful, and interesting dialogue” but over a rejectionist Israel and U.S. who refuse to negotiate on the basis of or accept the international consensus calling on a two-state solution to the conflict. This is not about talking over the issue, which really will get nowhere, but it is about raising awareness and putting pressure on these governments to change their policies. You are not going to convince anybody who continually apologizes for state violence or convince those who insist upon it. You might be able to call attention to or display such performances. I think that can be persuasive itself.
Those who massively assault those who dare criticize Israeli policy will only gain by reducing the debate to one of a “searching tone.” Sorry, there is no mystery here but a clear choice which is either you support reconciliation, justice, and a negotiated peace settlement based on the international consensus or you don’t. If that’s polarizing then so be it. These are serious matters and people are dying and suffering every day. By the way, this is not about Zionism, because everyone knows that Israel isn’t going anywhere, including most of the people who call for its destruction. These types of “debates” are what are “superficial” and distracting from the real issue.
Are people going to get offended when you call them on their apologetics or double standards? Of course they are! But that’s where we start to make the debate more about what we can handle than about the issue. If they can’t handle the facts or reality, then its their problem and certainly not any of ours. What should be recognized is that it’s a waste of time to convince small numbers of people, (with the great amount of effort each case takes) but it’s much more effective to appeal to the majority of those who know very little about the issue at all and will be much more open to understanding.
The entire world community understands the issues and potential solution. It’s not just about the attitudes on both sides, but about strategic economic and political considerations in the region. These are the main obstacles that need to be overcome and we need to keep that in mind.
Look, people have interests and agendas and many times reasoning with them is not a serious proposal. Do you think you can reason with Bush on the topic of Iraq? Of course not! That is why people protest him instead of trying to create a “dialogue.” If you debate with a fair minded and serious person, the “McCarthyite tendencies” will not be a factor in the discussion.
Surasky’s viewpoint seems to be about “many of us who care about the topic of Zionism” but there also exists people who care about Palestinian rights and their version of Nationalism. This is what has been prevented and should be of primary concern. What I am seeing more and more in the Jewish community, is a wonderful section which has found the ability to question their own community’s positions, but I also see an obsession with framing the issue around what is ultimately good for Israel. I am afraid I can’t respect that viewpoint for obvious reasons.
What Surasky cannot seem to comprehend, is that the very assumptions and convictions of many of those who enter the debate are what are “hateful” from the very beginning and unless one subscribes to some sort of moral relativism, one should not attempt to validate such a position with a dignified response. When someone who comes on to a discussion and says “All Arabs are a bunch of terrorist anti-Semites,” which is racist bigotry, you can’t possibly have a decent discussion, but you also shouldn’t allow them to get away with it because it only encourages their behavior.
To give an accurate description of what is encouraged by the type of converstation implied between those of radically different assumptions, you will find what philosopher Harry G. Frankfurt has described in his short work called “On Bullshit”:
“The contemporary proliferation of bullshit also has deeper sources, in various forms of scepticism which deny that we can have any reliable access to an objective reality, and which therefore reject the possibility of knowing how things truly are. These “antirealist” doctrines undermine confidence in the value of disinterested efforts to determine what is true and what is false, and even in the intelligibility of the notion of objective inquiry. One response to this loss of confidence has been a retreat from the discipline required by dedication to the ideal of correctness to a quite different sort of discipline, which is imposed by pursuit of an alternative ideal of sincerity. Rather than seeking primarily to arrive at accurate representations of a common world, the individual turns toward trying to provide honest representations of himself. Convinced that reality has no inherent nature, which he might hope to identify as the truth about things, he devotes himself to being true to his own nature. It is as though he decides that since it makes no sense to try to be true to the facts, he must therefore try instead to be true to himself.
But it is preposterous to imagine that we ourselves are determinate, and hence susceptible both to correct and to incorrect descriptions, while supposing that the ascription of determinacy to anything else has been exposed as a mistake. As conscious beings, we exist only in response to other things,and we cannot know ourselves at all without knowing them. Moreover, there is nothing in theory, and certainly nothing in experience, to support the extraordinary judgment that it is the truth about himself that is the easiest for a person to know. Facts about ourselves are not peculiarly solid and resistant to sceptical dissolution. Our natures are, indeed, elusively insubstantial - notoriously less stable and less inherent than the natures of other things. And insofar as this is the case, sincerity itself is bullshit.”
The attitude problem is that people are concerning themselves less and less with reality or being able to discuss it but more and more are trying to justify their previous convictions inside new frameworks. Getting at the factual reality seems secondary to most and therefore not valuable in even “convincing” them.
April 26th, 2007 at 1:45 pm
“As you can tell, I strongly support Israel.”
joshua, my understanding is that that is the definition of zionism. support for the jewish state of israel. do you find the word to have other connotations? if so i sincerely wish to understand what they are.
April 26th, 2007 at 2:24 pm
Here are two links to pieces that are relatively short and straight forward.
A challenge facing pro-Palestinian politics in the USA By Bill Fletcher
http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2007-04/19fletcher.cfm
Arab Peace Initiative By NC
http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2007-04/09chomsky.cfm
April 26th, 2007 at 4:53 pm
hmm. while i disagree with the premise of those articles, it is heartening to see the anti-israel crowd seeming to give up their hope of eliminating the state of israel. that is certainly a step in the right direction.
April 26th, 2007 at 6:18 pm
I agree, “real voice”. But I have yet to be convinced that Hamas (and the majority of Palestinians) have given up that hope– look at the refusal of Hamas leaders to accept any type of negotiation that involves acceptance of Israel.
Between us and those who say “I accept Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, but….” there’s lots of room for discussion, maybe even productive discussion. Between us and those who say “I don’t even accept that Israel’s existence as a Jewish state is something to be preserved” then the propects for any type of productive discussion don’t exist.
Note that supporting Israel as a Jewish state does not preclude support for a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza.
April 26th, 2007 at 8:40 pm
“a real voice for peace” may be kind enough to find one instance where Noam has called for “eliminating the state of Israel.” He was one of the original Zionist intellectuals earlier on in the movement but doesn’t seem to like what Israel is doing to the Palestinians.
To answer Mike, let me just post, for instance, something Noam recently said:
…You punish people severely if they vote the wrong way in a free election. There’s a pretext for that too, repeated every day: Hamas must agree to first recognize Israel, second to end all violence, third to accept past agreements. Try to find a mention of the fact that the United States and Israel reject all three of those. They obviously don’t recognize Palestine, they certainly don’t withdraw the use of violence or the threat of it — in fact they insist on it — and they don’t accept past agreements, including the road map.
I suspect one of the reasons why Jimmy Carter’s book has come under such fierce attack is because it’s the first time, I think, in the mainstream, that one can find the truth about the road map. I have never seen anything in the mainstream that discusses the fact that Israel instantly rejected the road map with U.S. support. They formally accepted it but added 14 reservations that totally eviscerated it. It was done instantly. It’s public knowledge, I’ve written about it, talked about it, so have others, but I’ve never seen it mentioned in the mainstream before. And obviously they don’t accept the Arab League proposal or any other serious proposal. In fact they’ve been blocking the international consensus on the two-state solution for decades. But Hamas has to accept them.
It really makes no sense. Hamas is a political party and political parties don’t recognize other countries. And Hamas itself has made it very clear, they actually carried out a truce for a year and a half, didn’t respond to Israeli attacks, and have called for a long-term truce, during which it’d be possible to negotiate a settlement along the lines of the international consensus and the Arab League proposal.
All of this is obvious, it’s right on the surface, and that’s just one example of the deep hatred of democracy on the part of western elites. It’s a striking example but you can add case after case.
http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/20070216.htm
And also let me post about the other issue I want you to consider, which is larger in scope:
McLeod: Turning to Israel, you have been very critical of Israeli policies. However, many observers, such as author Alan Dershorowitz, have said that Israel has been disproportionately criticised. Dershorowitz cited the fact that the UN has condemned Israel more than any other country and argued that Israel is far from being the world’s worst human rights abuser. How do you respond to that?
Chomsky: Well, remember that Alan Dershowitz is a fanatic supporter of Israeli violence and atrocities, so he is not a neutral observer – he is way out in the extreme. That’s like asking a communist party member in the 1950s ‘look how much Russia is condemned, it’s not the worst country in the world’.
But aside from that — there is a reason why Israel is condemned…
Plenty of other countries are much worse internally. But the occupation of Palestine is a harsh military occupation, which has a potential settlement — everyone knows what the settlement is – a two-state settlement based on the international border. But Israel and the US rejected.
However, in one respect I agree with Dershowitz.
It is wrong to condemn Israel – you should be condemning the US. Israel can do nothing without US authorisation. It’s a small country and it chose consciously to be dependent on the US. We can even date it – in 1971, Israel was offered a full peace treaty by Egypt…
Israel had a choice, either expansion or security. It chose expansion, and Henry Kissinger backed it, so it could do it.
Since then, Israel has lost its choices. If it wants a peace settlement, it can have it. The Arab league proposal of 2002, which is only one of many that go back to 1976, would grant Israel security normalisation of relations and integration into the region. But it would mean abandoning expansion, which it does not want to do.
Figure another country that is in that situation, actually, there is one — Morocco, which is occupying the Western Sahara, but that’s a US ally, so it’s ignored.
McLeod: Israel has no natural resources to speak of and is not economically significant. The US also pays a huge political cost for supporting Israel, so what does the US gain from its special relations with Israel?
Chomsky: We know that answer pretty well. The US-Israeli relationship in its current form began in 1967.
In 1967, Israel performed an enormous service for the US. It destroyed independent secular Arab nationalism, which was considered a major threat.
The oldest and most valued US ally is Saudi Arabia — that is where most of the oil is and Saudi is the probably most extreme fundamentalist Islamic tyranny in the world and the main US ally. In fact, most of the time the US is supporting radical Islamists against secular nationalists.
The major centre of Arab nationalism was Nasser’s Egypt – Saudi Arabia and Egypt were fighting a proxy war in Yemen. Israel destroyed Nasser’s secular nationalism, and that’s a tremendous boost to US power.
Nasser was considered a great threat and it was feared that Nasser might use the region’s resources for the benefit of its people, rather than to the benefit of the west, and at that point, the relationship was firmed up.
In 1970, something even more important happened. The Palestinians were becoming an organized, secular nationalist movement, which is frightening [to the US]. They were in confrontation with Jordan, a US- British ally.
In fact, the Jordanian army was slaughtering [the Palestinians]. It looked briefly as if Syria might intervene to protect Palestinians and that was considered a major threat to the Hashemite monarchy and also to the gulf tyranny in Saudi and the others. The US could not intervene at the time because it was tied up in Indochina.
Israel – at US request – mobilised its forces and Syria had to back off. At that point, US aid to Israel quadrupled. That was essentially the end of secular nationalism in the Arab world.
Since then Israel has become a major US strategic asset. It’s a western implant right at the periphery of the energy-producing region. The US’ second closest ally is Turkey, another part of NATO in this case, but another kind of US base for the control of the energy producing regions and to protect the monarchies against their own populations. Israel has been an important part of that, but it has also provided all kinds of secondary services to the US, which follows from its relationship of dependency.
For example, when the US and Britain wanted to evade sanctions against South Africa as they did, one of the ways they did that was through Israel, which was pleased to have open connections with the apartheid state – they regarded themselves as in a similar situations.
That even extends to Southeast Asia when Carter wanted to increase US support for Indonesian aggression in East Timor, which was slaughtering the population. There were congressional barriers, so the US couldn’t support Indonesia directly, so they got Israel to send US jets into Indonesia. In Central America, it’s all over the place. It’s a strategic alliance that has been very valuable to the US.
And when you say there is no economic interest [in Israel], its not quite true. Israel is kind of an offset of the US high technology industry. So the high tech industries in the US invests quite substantially in Israel- they have close relations in the military industries.
Intel has investment there, Warren Buffet just bought an arms manufacturer in Israel — it is sort of an offshoot of the US at this point. In that sense, it is almost like having an offshore military base and high tech centre right on the periphery of the major energy resources of the world.
http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/20070401.htm
April 27th, 2007 at 10:02 am
As Chairman of the Committee for Peace in Israel and Palestine I have received letters and phone calls from both Jews and Christians saying that they agree with our committee’s criticism of Israel but are afraid to speak out knowing that they will be attacked and vilified.
April 28th, 2007 at 1:18 am
so your side is filled with cowards, what’s your point?
April 28th, 2007 at 5:53 pm
Actually, I would say that the hypocrite “anon” does make a good point. Given the enormous amount of freedom we have in this country, and given the importance of the issues at stake, if you understand the reality you should speak out anyhow. These people will not be hunted down by death squads. Being vilified is a minor price to pay in my eyes. History will vindicate you if your fear is destruction of personal image.
This also reminds me of a book published by Richard Feynman which was entitled “What Do You Care What Other People Think?” That’s my philosophy for the most part.
April 30th, 2007 at 3:07 am
how am i a hypocrite?
May 2nd, 2007 at 3:17 pm
Well, I called “Realistic Dove’s” bluff apparently, though in a very polite and respectful way and Dan F. opted to quietly ban me without actually saying so, or why. However, in my response to his action, I do cite this MuzzleWatch posting: http://iablog.blogspot.com/2007/05/dan-fleshlers-realistic-dove-zionist.html
May 10th, 2007 at 1:52 am
Joshua writes: “If you aren’t a Zionist, that’s fine. Don’t move to Israel.”
Do non-Zionists, as American citizens, have any right to weigh in on their own government’s policies regarding the State of Israel?
Or is that off-limits for some reason?
Just askin’.
May 10th, 2007 at 1:05 pm
“Do non-Zionists, as American citizens, have any right to weigh in on their own government’s policies regarding the State of Israel?”
what’s a non-zionist? zionism just means support for israel, so are you saying you want us to ignore israel, or you want israel to not exist, or what?
of course you have free speech and can weigh in about any of your government’s policies. in the US and in israel, we have free speech. would that it were so all over the world…