The Jerusalem Post has given me a new theme: Israel's delegitimization is reaching American culture in a whole new way. I first heard this pronouncement at AIPAC, from Howard Kohr, who gave a Shakespearean speech saying that a "Predicate for Abandonment" of Israel had taken hold every where but in the councils of power in Washington– so AIPAC members had to stop it there.
Now JPost is getting the news, interviewing U.S. professors who say Israel's image is changing rapidly and Israelis and the lobby are in denial.
From the JPost, here is Nina Tannenwald of Brown:
"I've been struck by the way the Israeli self-narrative of a besieged underdog, no longer resonates to outside observers," she said.
"That was a narrative that I think had a lot of truth earlier on in Israel's history, but I think there's a widespread perception that that self-narrative doesn't resonate with the outside world, given that Israel is now the world's 14th or 15th most powerful military country," she continued. "And so there's a disconnect between how Israelis see themselves in their situation, and how observers outside see it, and that is a disconnect that needs addressing."
…"I think there is a common theme among Israelis [that says], 'We're a small country, we're the only democracy in the Middle East, look at all these Islamic countries around us,' and we know that trope very well. I think there are more nuanced analyses among Israelis, but there is a dominant trope among the government leadership, among the traditional, very strong pro-Israel supporters in the United States, where this [underdog] narrative dominates, and I think it needs to be updated."
It would be nice if one person in the article had said simply to the Israelis, this is not some meta-, postmodern paradigm shift. It is based on real conditions. And when you slaughter 300 children, there are real consequences.
Now here's the latest evidence. ATime Magazine piece by Tim McGirk from Jerusalem on the mistreatment of children in Israeli prisons that may well violate UN conventions.
Walid's story is hardly unusual, judging from a report on the
Israeli military-justice system in the West Bank compiled by the
Palestine office of the Geneva-based Defense for Children International, which works closely with the U.N. and European states. Human-rights groups in Israel
and elsewhere have also condemned the punishment meted out to
Palestinian children by Israeli military justice. Most onerous, says
Sarit Michaeli of the Israeli human-rights group B'Tselem, is that
inside the territories, the Israeli military deems any Palestinian who
is 16 years and older as an adult, while inside Israel, the U.S. and
most other countries, adulthood is reached at age 18.
The
report states that "the ill-treatment and torture" of Palestinian child
prisoners "appears to be widespread, systematic and institutionalized,
suggesting complicity at all levels of the political and military chain of command."
The group's director, Rifaat Kassis, says the number of child arrests
rose sharply in the past six months, possibly because of a crackdown on
Palestinian protests in the West Bank in the aftermath of Israel's
military offensive in Gaza.
The
Geneva organization's report alleges that under Israeli military
justice, it is the norm for children to be interrogated by the Israeli
police and army without either a lawyer or a family member present and
that most of their convictions are due to confessions extracted during
interrogation sessions or from "secret evidence,"
usually tip-offs from unnamed Palestinian informers. If so, the
practice may violate the U.N. Convention Against Torture, which Israel
ratified in 1991. In response to TIME's queries, a lawyer for the Israel Defense Forces
(IDF) said that under "security legislation" and Israel's
interpretation of international law, no lawyer or relative need be
present during a child's interrogation.
