My friend Steve F. has passed along a column by David Harris of the AJC which talks about Tzipi Livni's great challenge in steering the course between opposing ideological forces; and Steve then challenges me:
be interested in the American Jewish Committee's take on the issues of the day,
and expressly the view of David Harris, the Executive Director. The AJC
is clearly part of the "establishment" view of Israel. However, as
you can see, he acknowledges the utter legitimacy of many of the points you
and yours might make about the conflict. As this piece implies, it is
very difficult for thinking people to be sure of themselves regarding the
solutions to the conflict. However, what I am struck by fairly constantly
in reading your blog and the responses is (i) the utter certainly you and yours
have as to the protagonists and antagonists are in this conflict and (ii)
little expression of any understanding of the complexities and risks underlying
a resolution of this conflict for Israel.
In your writings you provide no
clue that you understand the arguments on the other side or that you consider
them at all when you draw your conclusions. How can you know how the
Palestinians will use the West Bank once they own it? Will they launch
rockets at Israel like they do from un-occupied Gaza? Is this not
relevant? How can this not be taken into account by Israeli
negotiators? This is just an example. There are hundreds of
others. I believe that to be taken seriously in any debating field, you
need to show you understand the issue from both sides. You need an
understanding of nuance. These things are missing. There are many of
us who despise this occupation because it is not humane but can't just take the
position that it must be unilaterally stopped because of all of the
complexities of the situation. Just railing against the lobby or
Israel will not bring too many of us along. Nuance please! Is
there really any argument against this???
Steve, my main comment is that Harris is writing in the Jerusalem Post for an Israeli and Jewish audience, including you in the U.S. His total field of reference is the choices that Livni faces. There is not one mention of the choices that the U.S. faces. This is my problem with the Israel lobby. It continually imposes on me, an American, Israel's quandaries and says, How are we to deal with this very difficult path? The field of reference is very narrow. The idea that, say, the U.S. and world community might feel a need to impose a solution on two parties who have not been able to get along for nearly 100 years is out of the question. No, we are to look to one of those parties as being somehow reasonable. It's like a cop showing up at a domestic and pulling the husband aside and asking him what the difficulties are. I think both populations are brutalized, and the Palestinians are oppressed, and the Israeli political system is so weak that it sharply limits Livni's field of choices.
I want Americans to start jawboning both parties. Right now we're only jawboning one. And as to your question of How can we give the West Bank to the Palestinians? This question was also asked by the Indians of the Pakistanis in 1947. How can we give these bloody angry violent Muslims a state right on our border. A very legitimate concern from a security standpoint. But that view was not valorized by the world community. In the Israel Palestine situation, that view has been valorized, continually, by the U.S., with the result that Palestinians have never had representation, self-determination. That is the real bottom line here. As Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on NPR today, the issue is democracy. You cannot deprive 4 or 5 million people of one ethnicity of full representation for such a long period without creating tremendous unrest. Unrest that has affected us in the U.S. and surely fed the anger of 9/11. So it is fine for Harris to talk about Livni's choices. I want to talk about the U.S. choices. And begin right now by honoring the humanity and suffering of the Palestinians and the horrors of their treatment on the West Bank. This is what I am certain of: that the Palestinians are oppressed and the occupation has created apartheid, an intolerable situation.The minute an American leader starts talking about that sort of thing, the Middle East will begin to moderate. That would be nuance!
Steve F has now responded to me. Here goes:
In your view, the points I have made (and which David
Harris makes) should be ignored because these are Israeli choices and not US
choices. However, you regularly malign Israel for inhuman policies,
which I suppose are also Israeli choices. You really can't have it both
ways. You can't argue for a greater US-centric view of the Middle
East (as opposed to an Israel-centric view) in the US political sphere
(i.e., a more nuanced foreign policy) but then go off the deep end and malign
Israeli policies without any balance whatsoever. If your focus
is on the US political system, focus on that and be ready to respond to
arguments that there are good reasons for the US to back Israel. If
your focus is instead on the policies of Israel, you can't duck a defense of
those policies and defend the right to be unbalanced by claiming that
you are US-centric. There is a contradiction in your view.
