Do I single out Israel's human rights abuses in a sea of man's inhumanity to man, as Dershowitz charges? You betcha. Steve Walt offers this realist justification for the focus on Israel/Palestine:
about U.S. Middle East policy is not because we have some weird
obsession with Israel, Jewish-Americans, Christian Zionists, or
whatever. It is rather because the Middle East is an important
strategic area, the United States is in deep trouble there, our recent
policies have been mostly failures, and the various problems we face
there soak up an enormous amount of time, attention, and resources. If
we can get our policy straightened out for the good of all concerned,
I'd be happy to turn to other topics.
Ali Abunimah says he singles out Israel/Palestine because it's a last remnant of colonialist attitude in the Third World.
James North says he singles out Israel/Palestine because unlike the 5000 miners who die every year in China, the human-rights abuses of the West Bank are something he can actually affect, as an American.
Myself I do because the Israeli army is shooting
Tristan Anderson in my name, and all my life my community pushed me to
sing in the Black-Is-White chorus and suddenly at 50 the self-hatred
thing didn't scare me anymore.
P.S. I started this post meaning to pick up Walt's link to this piece by Gary Kamiya saying that Obama has run out of all options except to put heavy pressure on Netanyahu to return to the '67 borders.
