I know some people in my camp hate Israel. I don’t. I haven’t spent enough time there to be sure, and I love a couple people who live there (L’Israel lobby, c’est moi!). But a lot of people sure don’t like Israel these days, for very good reasons beginning with white phosphorus dropped on children. Sever Plocker writes at Ynet that he is thinking of turning down a chance to speak at Oxford because he fears the hectoring/rage that any Israeli gets in Europe these days. Notice the culprit Plocker finds: the Netanyahu gov’t. A sign that more and more pressure will come to bear on the Netanyahyu. Obama will be the last to join in, of course. But the collapse will come. Plocker:
An Israeli professor who quietly left a prestigious British university told me: “My academic and social life there was intolerable. Colleagues stayed away from me as if I was a leper. I was not invited to meetings, which were shifted from university buildings to private residences in order to keep me out. The fact I openly expressed leftist views was to no avail. My objection to the occupation and endorsement of a return to the 1967 borders made no difference. In practice, I became ostracized.”
“Today you are a welcome guest in the British and European academic world only if you reject the very existence of the colonialist and imperialistic creature that methodically commits war crimes, known as Israel,” he said. “Today it isn’t enough to condemn Bibi and Barak; in order to be accepted by academia outside of Israel one must condemn the Balfour Declaration.”
British academia’s radicalism highlights the accelerated deterioration in Israel’s status and image. We are in the midst of a freefall on the foreign affairs front..
Does everyone hate us? Possibly so, yet the fact is that up until six months ago Israel enjoyed an extraordinary boom on the foreign affairs front, both in terms of its foreign ties as well as in global public opinion. This fact points to one source for the deterioration we’re seeing: The new government in Jerusalem.
hat/tip Ilene Cohen
Tag error again. Should read as follows:
I think it’s slightly longer than six months, Sever. I’ll give you a hint. It starts with a ‘G’ (and it’s not “government”).
” The fact I openly expressed leftist views was to no avail. My objection to the occupation and endorsement of a return to the 1967 borders made no difference. In practice, I became ostracized.”
Poor bubele!Didn’t his Mom used to tell him, when he gave a whining excuse: ” Az di bobe volt gehat beytsim volt zi geven mayn zeyde!” (that actions speak louder than words and “facts on the ground” speak loudest of all?)
Mine did, (although why she was speaking to a Israeli professor is beyond me)
These sort of anecdotes suggest the power that a really concerted BDS campaign might have.
I don’t know why governments didn’t speak out and cut relations with Israel the moment BibiYahoo put Avigdor Lieberman into his government.
Yeah, and we have 48 hours while RW is out of town to press the idea without unrelated clauses, dangling non sequiturs, peace descriptions that defy rational thought, and related kumbiyah mumbo-jumbo, to discuss its simple power.
Well, in Europe it’s the regime’s and populace sense that the Pals are paying unjustly for our Holocaust on the jews, so we will pay with our tax currency, just not more, like offering the jews a chunk of our homeland for themselves. In the USA, it’s because
the USA political campaign funding depends on funds, and the AIPAC minions are focused like an arrow, a very wealthy arrow with a single purpose, not to mention that 2% of Jewish voters are in 6 tipping electoral states, and of course, the bias of the
MSM.
Hey Israel, welcome to the the world of your having elected your versions of BUSH (with a slight nod to Shmuel’s comment).
I’m not so sure that the Israeli government won’t be able to weather this out.
I only say that from a historical perspective.
Every rightwing, corporatist, militarist scheme or ideology that has been totally discredited by history and events has a way of muddling through and staying alive. Whoever thought after Vietnam and the Soviet experience in Afghanistan that the United States would be bogged down in . . . . . Afghanistan?
So much for the tides of history. And Israel can stick a few more fingers in the dike I suspect.
You are right, pineywoodslim, who’d have thought? What really astounds me is that
the manipulators, those like Karl Rove or Chaney (or all those jewish Weekly Standard type neocons), would
have such easy pickin’s; USA regimes come and go in the original propositional and democratic nation, the USA, so that when it comes to Israel, the USA just closes its eyes like a total retard.
All pretty much the way I see it working out, too. I would add on thing, if Israel decides to go for the big carne Masada (who’s got material to waste) and play it out to the end, it’ll be a small slice of the elite citizens with connections elsewhere ( “where’s my US passport, dear?”) who will be in the best position to escape the worst consequences. The biggest slice of Israeli people will be in for a very rough ride.
I have a feeling the Zionists will end up in 2nd place when it comes to eliminating Jews, but they try harder.
Is it really that bad? I highly doubt that he would have been treated as a leper even if he had hardline pro-Israel viewpoints.
But then again having Academia be pro-Palestinian human rights is nothing compared to having the media be “Israel can do no wrong.”
I know some people in my camp hate Israel. I don’t.
So you love it like a parent loves a child who’s addicted to drugs, spends weekends in jail and has 4 DUI convictions?
This fact points to one source for the deterioration we’re seeing: The new government in Jerusalem.
Yes. Let’s keep peddling the the lie that the deterioration is the responsibility of the Likud government and Netanyahu. Last I checked, it was Olmert and that witch of his, Livni, who slaughtered so many children.
It’s the same farce perpetrated on the American public, “Republicans are bad” “Democrats are good”, “Now that Bush is out of office, things will change dramatically, Obama might even stop global warming in its tracks.”
Some people desperately pretend that there is a difference for the alternative is just too bleak.
“So you love it like a parent loves a child who’s addicted to drugs, spends weekends in jail and has 4 DUI convictions?” Nolan
Nolan, my Mom always insisted she loved me , too. But where did you get my rap sheet?
If the academics and most of the general population of Britain and the EU are against Israel, most of the pols don’t seem to be.
That’s starting to seem like a hallmark of Western democracy, doesn’t it? Politicians who don’t respond to their electorate. To be fair, at least the minority of anti-occupation politicians in the EU isn’t small and marginalized by the media as thoroughly as here.
“Today you are a welcome guest in the British and European academic world only if you reject the very existence of the colonialist and imperialistic creature that methodically commits war crimes, known as Israel,” he said. “Today it isn’t enough to condemn Bibi and Barak; in order to be accepted by academia outside of Israel one must condemn the Balfour Declaration.”
Sounds like progress (and perspective) to me, considering the Balfour Declaration was the Israeli (then merely Zionist) lobby’s first victory at corrupting political processes and writing foreign policy for other countries. And like everything Israel demands of… well, everyone… it required the UK to break the promises to anyone else, specifically those made to the Palestinians in the midst of WWI.
Hey, I feel sort of sorry for the guy, but frankly, he’s living with the consequences of the actions of the country he is a citizen of. He’s not alone. Just like Israelis are perceived as rhetorical wolves in sheep’s clothing, Americans and American academics who go abroad nowadays are forced to bear the stigma of the US’ perceived (and, frankly, demonstrable) stupidity.
“at corrupting political processes and writing foreign policy for other countries.”
Oh, maybe it’s useless to point this out, but is “corrupting” even a relevant operator when you are talking about a King-ruled, aristocracy-privileged country, in which Church and State were intertwined? And a colonialist and imperialist one?
Look, what the Zionists wanted to do in some way served the purposes of the reigning colonial power. But given the absolutely insane political framework of the country, it’s really not relevant to talk about the Zionists “corrupting” anything, and it’s a classic anti-Semitic locution. They didn’t corrupt it, they just made its insanity serve them a bit.
I wish people would work those descriptors a bit. “Hate” is the preferred descriptor of the apologists, because it’s more easy to dismiss and to assign it to antisemitism (“I feel your hate”).
The attitude of someone -from the left let’s say- who judges Israel in cruel and venomous terms and is intolerant of the apologists, can cover a very wide range. Usually “hate” is a bad match and in the cases that it is a good match, antisemitism is usually a bad match. People should work on that vocabulary a bit.
Exactly, Tuyzenfloot! But hey, it’s a problem, because of that ol’ No.4 ! (The Whole World Sucks!) Look, you wanna talk about White Phosphorus? Well, wasn’t there some questions about white phorphorus at Fallujah? And hasn’t the US occupation of Iraq gone on for an unconscionably long time? And of course, you can go on and on. And while I can’t venture an opinion about how much Americans “like” these policies, the point is, no effective opposition has grwon up to stop them or change them? Then how likely is it that Americans will be effectively inscenced about Israeli intransigence? Well, there is one group which might be effective in some fashion, American Jews. But they are gonna be turned right off by any insistence on character decriptors about Jews, and always on the lookout for the classic American anti-Jewish smears (Jews invented socialism, Jews corrupting our culture, media). On the other hand, how far would they be willing to go? They certainly haven’t been effective againbst the pro-Israeli intransigence camp.
That leaves the rest of them, or as Ed used to call it, “the rest of us”. Will they be more open to being moved to an effective level of political pressure by anti-Jewish locutions and formulations? Could they be moved at all, without them?
Given the level on which all the other questions of, (what is after all) a “foreign policy” is debated, I really doubt it. I mean look at the level at which the debate about the “War on Terror” is conducted, or any other, for that matter.
I don’t think it will be, (like she said) “good for anybody”