I already said this, perhaps a little more politely. I honestly don’t like to be the person to say it, but it is kind of predictable. There used to be a bit of a generational divide about how American Jews feel about Israel. But, increasingly, the divide is going to be simply between American and European Jews on the one hand and Israeli Jews on the other. Ironically, Israel’s status as a European colony made it is easier to identify with and like, even if that colonial flavor and colonialist temperament made it abrasive. But, as a Middle Eastern country like any other, the sense of shared values is just going to slip away.
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BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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I feel that divide. There is little connection for me anymore. It’s not just about Netanyahu, it’s also about the foolish people that reelected him and the policies they allow. I grew up thinking a certain way about Israel. That has been turned around over the last few years.
And for a non-Jew like myself, more over who because I live in smaller cities in the Midwest have known few Jews, the divide occurred well over a decade ago. I can’t help but think chunks of the non-Jewish Democratic party base would feel similarly. Maybe if we had the relationship of patron-to-client, but that’s not how Israel acts these days.
Was it simply Netanyahu’s extremely overt racism, which was overwhelmingly rewarded by the voters, as opposed to the usual “soft” racism that has pushed this divide out in the open in the MSM? I mean, the steady influx of right-wing, Orthodox settlers was always going to make this happen eventually as the state becomes less and less secular, I suppose, but what difference is there between ZU and Likud on the P-question? Window dressing, near as I can tell.
Remember, on the eve of Barack Obama’s inauguration, Kadima ended their bombing campaign of Gaza to pad their poll numbers in the February election, to no avail as Livni went down in defeat anyway. People in the real world know why Kadima started the Gaza War…and why it ended right on January 18th when Obama was inaugurated on January 20th…it couldn’t have been a coincidence, surely not.
So while this divide has been creeping for a while, I do not think it’d be this open if ZU was able to secure a victory. Liberal Zionists have been deluding themselves for decades. Sam Fleischacker had his own awakening after this election, but I still don’t see what was so special about this. Maybe it’s like with Bush and Republicans; each new crisis turned “old Republicans” into Democratic voters because of how crazy, insane, and inept Republicans responded. Each person has their breaking point, I suppose. JStreet still vows to fight against BDS, however.
Of course, as per usual, Bill Maher’s racism comes seething to the top where the hordes of barbarian Muslims are involved. To the point of defending Netanyahu’s comments. Disgusting.
I did a bit on Maher at my place. That was really awful.
Who does he think that’s going to convince lol? “Oh sure, it was racist, but we did some shitty stuff in the past that’s either equivalent or worse. Therefore, it’s legitimate and ok.”
Talk about non-sequitur. Is Maher admitting that Jefferson and many other white supremacists had a point that black and native Americans should not be given political and civil rights because they might then “vote” for enslavement of their old masters? Some liberal.
I mean, the steady influx of right-wing, Orthodox settlers was always going to make this happen eventually as the state becomes less and less secular, I suppose, but what difference is there between ZU and Likud on the P-question? Window dressing, near as I can tell.
Window dressing, yes. ZU wasn’t going to halt Settlement construction one bit.
They’ll feel bad about dropping the bombs, but gosh darn it, they just have to defend themselves. They don’t want to drop the bombs and build settlements, but it’s a security measure. Likud delights in dropping bombs and building settlements.
That’s the difference.
The only Zionist Party that is remotely defensible in voting for is Meretz, but even they hedge on the bombing when it’s around election season.
Menachem Begin and the original leaders of Likud would spit on this Netanyahu administration.
I’d turned against Zionism a while ago, but after this I’m going to be checking my country-of-origin data to avoid Israeli products. To me, the issue is that Bibi was rewarded, and on a large scale, for his racism and terrorism. Clearly we can’t count of the basic goodness of the Israeli Jews to make things right or even substantially better. We’re going to have to apply serious pressure to make things better.
On a side note, the existence of the Zionist state seems to be turning many if not most Israeli Jews evil. Increasingly it looks like this will end up as a cautionary tale in the history books for centuries, or even millenia. I’m not particularly confident of the magic of democracy here either. Basically democratic regimes can make monstrous decisions, at least back to the Sicilian Expedition in the Peloponnesian War.
I’m young comparatively to the rest of the commentators, so I wouldn’t say I turned against it a while ago, even. It was a rather quick process for me rather than anything gradual. The biggest shift was caused when I started questioning the things a lot of people just inherently assume by default as a result of living in the US. You could probably put me in the JStreet crowd in 2008 where I supported two-states because it was just, to those who still supported two-states but only because it was what was deemed “possible” (even if one state was preferable) in 2009, to outright rejecting two-states in 2010…and then in 2011-2012 rejecting the entire premise of “Zionism” altogether. But then we’re coming back to “what does Zionism even mean” territory. I feel like it’s just a meaningless term anymore, like terrorist, or socialist, or even conservative/liberal. It can be invoked in disgusting antisemitic terms, or be used in a way that proves the “Zionism is racism” crowd correct.
The more I read, especially from those on the ground and the historical founding of the state itself, the more I found I could no longer reconcile my political ideology with Israel at all. The fact that it has embraced a fascist along the lines of Mussolini who utilizes rhetoric that echoes that of George Wallace only reinforces my belief that I made the correct decision in rejecting “Zionism” altogether.
On a side note, priscianus jr has frequently cited him here, but I cannot recommend Jerry Haber enough. Not that I agree with his ideology 100%, but his writing had a huge influence on my evolution over the years when I first found him some years ago.
“A land with no people for a people with no land.” As a kid how could I not accept that as just? Along with what many teens read for a decade or two — “Diary of Anne Frank,” “Mila 18,” “Exodus.” And saw “Judgment at Nuremberg” and the movie versions of Anne Frank and Exodus. Not until a few years later when I read “The Alexandria Quartet” did I begin to have doubts about Israel. But held out hope that the Israelis and Palestinians would find a way to make peace.
Clinton’s Camp David Summit disabused me of any notion that Israel would negotiate in good faith and the US in an honest broker. The ’67 borders made a two-state solution possible. That is long gone. Some day it will get resolved. The how is unknown but getting there isn’t going to be quick, easy, or pretty.
thanks for the link booman, that’s a fine article.
if you think that’s impolite you need to read this
Yes, the mystique of Ari ben-Canann is now gone. Just as the mystique of Christopher Columbus, John Smith, and John Winthrop have withered before the reality of the history of settler colonialism.
I’m sure that American Jews and European Jews are tired of the illegal settler movement needlessly putting targets on their backs as well. And reducing the “Never again” to “Just for us.”
Are Max Blumenthal and Philip Weiss suddenly welcome home again? David Gershon-Harris seems to think so.
It’s tough for me. I have friends in Israel. They are aggravated by this recent turn of events. Things will not get better for them. But the connection is lost for me, too.
Yeah, true that. 40% of Israelis are like the readership of this blog were under Bush & Cheney. I get that, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s stupid and immoral to spend one dime or one UN veto to support that apartheid monstrosity of a country.
I don’t see it as European vs. Middle Eastern, but I have never been attracted by the Zionist version of “the new Jew”. I identify with Judaism through my family, I love Judaism, I love my family, I don’t love the Jewish State, and for a long time now I’ve been increasingly angered and frustrated by it. It looks as though a lot more people are starting to wake up to what I’ve been seeing for the last forty years. So the main change for me is, I’m starting to feel less isolated.
The explicitly racist Election Day appeals.
The destruction of Palestinian infrastructure and police forces.
The theft of money from Palestine which is rightly theirs.
The settlements.
The refusal to engage in peace talks with Palestinian leaders who refuse to repudiate Hamas even though Bibi negotiated with Hamas a few years ago in order to stop the rocket attacks in to Israel, and even though many Hamas leaders hold official government positions as a result of being voted into office by the Palestinian people.
The definitive walk away from a two-state solution, and the disgusting charade that Bibi is engaging in by claiming he never said that thing he said.
Despite all of these things and more, the center of the offense I hold toward Netanyahu’s repeatedly stated view of what would be required of Palestine BEFORE peace negotiations could begin is the complete demilitarization of Palestine.
That’s crazy.
Journalist after journalist allows Bibi to issue this nihilistic demand without responding to him by pointing out that this demand is, indeed, CRAZY.
So, one side has nuclear weapons and the most substantial military on a per-capita basis in recent world history. That side demands that the other side must allow itself to be stripped of even its current, pathetic weaponry, permanently.
Why do so many journalists not call this what it is: a clear Israeli demand to place citizens of Palestine in an even deeper place of physical and economic enslavement?
… is that they’re doing it on our dime. Why can’t we just end-around these neo-con racist jerks and redirect the billions we send to apartheid Israel toward turning Palestine into a modern 1st world country, with or without the settlement territories, hopefully with? Why are we paying this smug, corrupt, short-sighted bastard to destroy our moral credibility in the world? 9/11 was Israel’s fault. No way that would have happened had Clinton’s attempt – Jesus, CARTER’s attempt – for a 2-state solution not been vetoed. The Muslim world hates us for what Netanyahu & Co. have done to Palestinians. We’re paying a high power publicist to make everyone want to kill us.
Look, I know the US has done plenty on its own to make the world hate us, but Israel’s criminal behavior is by far at the top of the list of indictments against us.
Don’t allow Bin Laden and his band of antisemitic cronies to blame 9/11 on our support for Israel. Yes, it helps to “listen” to what they say. And Israel is somewhat of a rallying point which may allow these groups to attract followers. But al Qaeda and Bin Laden do not care a shit about the Palestinian people. The main reason for
9/11 was our military pretense in Saudi Arabia. That’s what he cared about. And of course to drag our dumb asses into endless war.
I have been an optimist all my life, on the I-P issue this has turned into a worst case scenario of ultimate doom for the people of the ME, Israel included. Violence begets more violence. Bush and his war on terror did not end with the election of president Obama, it was transformed with another version of ugly violence and more propaganda. Using the R2P principle, regime change has continued in violation of a nation’s sovereignty. Drone attacks across the globe … did it help the Yemeni people, or Libya, Syria and Iraq. The western states are more divided than a decade ago except for moving towards the right, extremism and more violence in the world. Diplomacy is an obsolete word, see US Congress, Sunni Arab states and Israel on the attempt by Obama to solve the nuclear issue with Iran. Ugly racism was also advocated in the wake of 9/11 through state supported Islamophobia and the Israel lobby in the US. What you sow, you will harvest. I’m quite pessimistic on a whole range of liberal rights which leftist groups achieved in the last 50 years.
BTW During the cold war, the nuclear stand-off of deterrence was possible because it was between continents: USA, some European states and the Soviet Union. With intercontinental ballistic missiles, even the nuclear sub launched version offered this stand-off. For Israel and the Middle-East with close proximity of all its people, nuclear deterrence is just madness. Netanyahu fits well in the region of absolute monarchs and dictators with WMDs. I do hope he gets his ass indicted by the ICC before long.
I hate to be a contrarian, but your statement that Israel has become less tolerant because it is more non-European (not Ashkenazi) is itself racist.
The greatest demographic change in Israel in recent decades is the influx of Jews from Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Between 1989 and 2006, 980,000 Russian Jews immigrated to Israel. Since the Jewish population is about 6.1 million, this means that well over 15% of the Jewish population is composed of Russian immigrants and their children, who are both European and Ashkenazi.
As voters, they tend to vote hard right wing on issues of security and Jewish-Arab relations.
See, e.g.,
http://forward.com/articles/139097/israel-s-soviet-political-party/
From the linked article:
Does that sound like poor white people in the US, or what?
I still support Israel as a country, but I also support Palestine. Between the two, I don’t favor one over the other, but I can see that Israel as a state is currently in the process of genocide against Palestinians, at a really, really slow pace.
I assume that the slower they take it, the less outrage they will garner from their own citizens who are ultimately the only people who can actually stop it, barring some other country stepping in, which ultimately, won’t happen because they are a US Client state.
Israel peace and Climate Change are two different areas where you can see how US Conservatism is holding up the entire process. What happens if the US decides to take action on Climate Change? What happens if the US decides to stop supporting Israel’s slow genocide of the Palestinians?