Tonight on Hardball, Chris Matthews interviewed a Kennedy cousin about Caroline Kennedy's positions on various issues. (I didn't get cuz's name, because I was laying tile in the other room.) The cousin wasn't sure where Caroline was on abortion or the Second Amendment, and Matthews let go a little about how we have no idea where she is on these very divisive issues. I think I also heard the word "culture wars" in there.
I was struck by the fact that the issue I care the most about is never discussed in any of these shows in a divisive manner. It's not allowed to be divisive: No, as Stephen Spiegel of Israel Policy Forum said some time ago in a debate with John Mearsheimer, Americans love Israel like they like ice cream. So we get to have angry debates over gay marriage and violent lyrics and abortion and gun control, with this side contending against the other, but on this issue there's absolutely no public discussion, because everyone agrees. Even as 1.5 million Palestinians live in an open air prison in Gaza and Jewish neoconservatives help destroy Iraq so as to solve Israel's problems.
I keep saying This hypocrisy can't last. But I guess that's why I have a blog...
The experience of such countries as India shows that, when the political and social going gets really tough, even the most forward-looking liberal democrats will eventually succumb to the desire for a party led by a 'dynasty,' because it is psychologically soothing to the masses, and takes much of the popular emotional pressure off the professionals.
It's an extraordinary thing that the Israel lobby has done — in one issue-area, it's done away with American pluralism.
Most Americans don't give a shit about Israel, one way or the other, but enough rich, powerful Americans do, and so if you are an ambitious politician, policy intellectual, writer, there are huge career benefits in supporting Israel blindly and few in critisising it.
Nonetheless, I am optimistic. Things that cannot last forever don't and supporting Israel (evern leaving aside all moral considerations) is so obviously againt US interests that at some point, we will stop.
One day it may stop but it will be too late for the Palestinians.
Either a bi-national state or another Nakba.
It's a depressing conflict. Just goes to show you how money is all that matters and not truth/justice/right and wrong.
Tom has it exactly right. Most Americans don't give a hoot about Israel.
I live in very middle class America, and came out of working class America. "Most Americans" here can very quickly be sympathetic to the Palestinian POV, and can quickly identify them as the underdog in the conflict.
Too bad there is no national discussion.
i once was an american zionist israel supporter….then one day the scales came off my eyes and i came out of the matrix…..
its a farce….and that realization will come to a large portion of christian zionist.
Why can't we talk about Israel? Here's a debate that's been going on online on this issue for the last three years:
http://chronicle.com/forums/index.php/topic,30765.0.html
Also, my experience and sense is the same as Judy's.
I can't remember the last time we (Americans), changed our country's foreign policy.
What will happen is either a bi-national state or continued apartheid until the Palestinians have been expelled once again.
Decades from now the reigning intellectuals will lament the past mistakes of our current scholars and academics and politicians. They will do this while cheerleading the latest atrocity being committed by the State.
This will breed genuine hatred (source: Israeli colonization of Palestine and inherent racism to Zionism) for Jews and Americans (imperialist policies with total disregard for popular movements and self-determination, apathy and ignorance of the American public) all over the world and I don't think any of the 'terrorism' will ever end.
Actually I'd be a little curious about her feelings concerning Sirhan Sirhan. You know, the PALESTINIAN that blew her uncles head off.
Hey, that was Sirhan Sirhan's King David Hotel, not a head. Ever hear of kharma? It just takes awhile.
The notion that "Americans love Israel" is a hoot. Most Americans don't love Israel any more than they do Iceland or New Zealand, which is to say they wish them well but otherwise go weeks or months without giving them a second thought.
This is exactly what AIPAC and MSM propaganda marketers count on–the power of moneybags combined with single-issue politics.
Most Americans, if you button-holed them at an appropriate time, e.g., when they are half-drunk at the bar, would say they are either for an even-handed policy, treat both the same, or give them zippo and give it instead to me and mine as we are really hurting–a pox on both their houses.
Nobody cements the big lie more than poll question makers and
our entire press corps–none of whom want to be black-balled.