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Fear Of Standing Up To Israel
by Tangerine
lifted from a comment
Malooga had a long top post about the Zionist control of US policy here.
I wanted to add something.
Outside, or rather around, the actions and methods described in the
post, there is a potent fear of standing up to Israel, of offending
Jews, or even daring to imagine that one could treat ‘them’ like
everyone else, or argue against their demands, or tell them get over it already etc. Israeli / Jewish exceptionalism is accepted, it is part of the culture.
That is the reason why it is so important for Israel to maintain the
very particular status of the Holocaust, to render it holy and
other-worldly; to enforce a view of Jews as victims of continuing,
grave, overt or subterranean anti-semitism (this acts on Jews
themselves, particularly the expats who then may adhere to the ‘safe
haven’ idea, even if they don’t consider that relevant to themselves
personally.) Israel and its lobbies, clout, have accomplished this by
forcing others to adopt anti-racist, anti-anti-semitic,
anti-revisionist, anti-negationist, etc. laws, stances, opinions,
views, etc., and generally obliging others to treat Jews as special,
thus separate.
Israel fears attacks on this dimension perhaps more than anything else.
It also is apprehensive of any movement, any shift, in any direction
because it finds itself in the paradoxical position of having to
defend, uphold, exaggerate the existence of anti-semitism, while
ostensibly objecting to it and acting to eliminate it. Jews are at the
same time exceptional people with a unique past, but must be treated like
everyone else. A similar double image exists for Israel itself: an
extraordinary country with status or privileges like no other, yet, the
only normal ‘capitalist democracy’ in the Middle East.
Example. One occasion, public and typical: Saturday is traditionally
(and still by law) a working day in Switzerland. Schools and all educational
institutions ran activities on Saturday morning. In 1993 (iirc, my son was
7 I think) Saturday morning school, to 16 years, was dropped, but all
higher education, apprenticeship to doctoral level, continued, on
occasion, to run ‘obligatory’ activities on Saturday, for practical reasons.
In 1995, the anti-racist laws were voted in. A few years later, the
Jewish lobby woke up and …oh yes… tried to get Saturday school
banned. The Swiss law contains a provision that states refusing public service to someone because of their ethnicity, religion, provenance (etc.) is punishable by…
– the idea was that Jewish students were being refused the opportunity
to take exams (typically often scheduled on a Saturday) because they were
not allowed to accept the service offered.. that Saturday school was
racist, anti-semitic, that Jewish students required special treatment
(in fact forbidden by the same laws)…and on and on it went.
I was
amazed to see high officials, figures of authority, politicians, on the
ground teachers, students, secretaries, my neighbor, take this crackpot
proposal seriously and argue clumsily for a Jewish exception. Passions
ran high … finally the demand died mysteriously and was never
mentioned again. Everyone breathed a exhausted sigh of relief. All
through this nothing was heard from the Jewish students themselves.
(The very few orthodox ones were accommodated anyway.)
By the way, the Swiss Commission that votes on suspending military sales to
foreign countries voted during the Gaza invasion NOT to suspend
delivery to Israel, to my astonishment – they have done it often in the
past.
But because Bush and now Obama look the other way as Israel commits genocide against Palestinians, this clearly means that both of these presidents have a deep-rooted prejudice against Arab Muslims.
cynthia, frankly i think it is too soon to make this assumption. obama appointment of former Senator George Mitchell (arab america, grew up in lebanon) as Middle East Envoy, is a very good sign. here is what uri avnery thinks of this appointment
BETWEEN Israel and the United States a gap has opened this week, a narrow gap, almost invisible – but it may widen into an abyss.
The first signs are small. In his inaugural speech, Obama proclaimed that “We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus – and nonbelievers.” Since when? Since when do the Muslims precede the Jews? What has happened to the “Judeo-Christian Heritage”? (A completely false term to start with, since Judaism is much closer to Islam than to Christianity. For example: neither Judaism nor Islam supports the separation of religion and state.)
The very next morning, Obama phoned a number of Middle East leaders. He decided to make a quite unique gesture: placing the first call to Mahmoud Abbas, and only the next to Olmert. The Israeli media could not stomach that. Haaretz, for example, consciously falsified the record by writing – not once but twice in the same issue – that Obama had called “Olmert, Abbas, Mubarak and King Abdallah” (in that order).
Instead of the group of American Jews who had been in charge of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict during both the Clinton and Bush administrations, Obama, on his very first day in office, appointed an Arab-American, George Mitchell, whose mother had come to America from Lebanon at age 18, and who himself, orphaned from his Irish father, was brought up in a Maronite Christian Lebanese family.
These are not good tidings for the Israeli leaders. For the last 42 years, they have pursued a policy of expansion, occupation and settlements in close cooperation with Washington. They have relied on unlimited American support, from the massive supply of money and arms to the use of the veto in the Security Council. This support was essential to their policy. This support may now be reaching its limits.
It will happen, of course, gradually. The pro-Israel lobby in Washington will continue to put the fear of God into Congress. A huge ship like the United States can change course only very slowly, in a gentle curve. But the turn-around started already on the first day of the Obama administration.
i think it is too early to tell. more
Mitchell is no stranger to Middle East affairs, as he headed the 2001 US Administration committee tasked with probing the events leading up to the 2000 al-Aqsa Intifada.
According to the Washington Post, Mitchell’s nomination suggests Obama intends to push for fast progress on the Israeli-Palestinian track. The official announcement about the nomination is expected to be published later Tuesday, once the Senate confirms Hillary Clinton as the new secretary of state.
Mitchell, 75, is considered one of Washington’s prominent figures. A former House majority leader, he also served as former US President Bill Clinton’s Special Envoy to Northern Ireland.
In late 2000, Clinton tasked him with compiling a report about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but the Mitchell Report was turned in after George W. Bush took office.
The report called for an immediate halt to all violence, rebuilding confidence between Israel and the Palestinian Authority as a prerequisite to any other move; a full-scale effort by the PA to prevent terrorism; the freezing of Israeli settlement activity and lifting the financial constraints placed on the territories by Israel.
The report also urged Israel to limit its use of deadly force.
The report further stated that while then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s visit to Temple Mount was not the immediate catalyst for the violence, it did serve as a provocative agent.
hamburger, my mom was a little dumbfounded. she doesn’t like politics and doesn’t like to talk much about it or do much listening cuz i can really get wound up. she especially doesn’t like it during family holidays. she has moved alot over the last few years partly because my sister has been taking some college courses and she confirms much of what i say. plus, the economic meltdown i have been warning about (possibly as big as the depression!) took on a whole new life after the fall. before that i think she probably thought i was a little too conspiracy minded. so when i recently brought up gaza (she knows i have serious issues w/israel but we have lots of jewish friends so doesn’t think it extends past politics)_she said something about ‘all those tunnels/rockets’ bla bla bla and i said ‘mom’ please, and then gave her an earful to which she sort of demurred but probably thought gaza had lots of terrorists bombing israel all the time bla bla bla…so.. she said, yes, i saw it, horrible. and i said i just didn’t want you to think i had gone off the deep end or anything and she said no, i never think that anymore anne (because i’m always right!). so i imagine her and her friends will be chatting about this around the dominoes soon, which is one place she gets infected w/’moderate’ info. which i always debunk. but i’m usually right about 6 months before her dominoes group hears the news and comes around.
she’s 82 but we take 2 mile walks every week and she is very smart and agile, hasn’t lost any brain cells yet, knock on wood.
Posted by: annie | Jan 26 2009 22:09 utc | 56
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