BBC News released its annual poll of citizens of 28 countries' attitudes towards other nations two days ago, and the news isn't good for Israel. Israel can count Iran, Pakistan and North Korea as company--only these countries are less favorably viewed around the world than Israel.
Out of the countries surveyed, "Twenty-four countries give an unfavourable evaluation, while only two evaluate Israel positively, and two are divided. In the 28-country average, 50 per cent rate Israel‘s influence negatively and 19 per cent rate it positively."
The poll does state this caveat, though: "Even so, the average of countries polled in both 2009 and 2010 became slightly less negative; unfavourable ratings [of Israel] have dropped by four points."
Most significantly, United States citizens' attitudes toward Israel dropped from 47% "mainly positive" in the 2009 poll to 40% in this year's poll. About a third of the people surveyed in the U.S. have a "mostly negative" view of Israel.
Israelis are fretting about this trend, yet many of them probably don't have any interest in looking into and solving the problems that have caused it: the occupation, Israeli apartheid, and the Gaza massacre. The Jerusalem Post had an editorial on Israeli Independence Day that highlighted this blindness, in which it said, "Israel at 62 suffers growing pariah status, singled out for demonization in diplomatic forums, in legal arenas and in the media – its historic legitimacy undermined, its defensive measures assailed, its very right to survive questioned. Iran is central to this assault, bolstered by the bizarre partnership of the radical Left and the fascist Right in much of Western Europe and beyond."
Earth to Israel: it's not too hard to figure out why you are an increasingly isolated, pariah state. It's certainly not because of some imagined alliance that ties Iran, Islamic extremists, European fascists and the left together.
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It is a result of Israeli excess, disunity, inability to reconcile with the Palestinians, continued settlement expansion, widespread background of political malaise (looking for a scapegoat), and non-conspiratorial opportunism and anti-semitism.
You’d be referring to the fact that Israel breaks every single agreement they make with the Palestinians, right?
“Israeli excess” — The civilized portion of humanity doesn’t look on the slaughter of Palestinian innocents (or Lebanese in 2006) or any of the many Israeli massacres as “excess”. The apologists for war crimes — Elie Wiesel, Alan Dershowitz, etc. — come up with euphemisms like “excess” or “not very nice things”.
Anybody who blames the Israelis for the suffering of the Palestinians is hardly scapegoating — they are attributing blame where blame is due.
But Israel’s idolaters — like the idolaters in their times of the English or the French or, today, the Americans and the Chinese — are genuinely too delusional, or intellectually feeble, to be capable of grasping that others see an atrocity as an atrocity.
Certainly, some portion of critical condemnation of Israel is based in anti-Semitism. But the casual flinging of that term by people like Richard Witty is actionable libel.
“intellectually feeble” nails it, hughsansom. Are the Chinese Israel idolaters? The Chinese call the Israelis Tai Ren. If they only knew….
“It is a result of Israeli excess, disunity, inability to reconcile with the Palestinians, continued settlement expansion, widespread background of political malaise (looking for a scapegoat), and non-conspiratorial opportunism and anti-semitism.”
Gosh, what a statement! Too bad there’s nothing further you can do about it, but having said this, you have done all that a man can do, and doing anything else verges on the, the, well, you know, it might be maximalist!
Got to agree with you about the last one, too, Richard. Why the Jews in Israel despise Judaism and Jews so much is a mystery to me, but there it is.
“It is a result of Israeli excess, disunity….(etc.)”
I don’t think you can blame it on disunity. If I remember right, 80% of the Israeli population was polled as being united behind the Gaza offensive while it was taking place. If you consider the fact that Palestinians make up 20% of the population of Israel, you can only conclude that close to 100% of Israeli Jews were united behind the IDF’s assault on Gaza. Is it anti-semitic of me to point this out?
That’s as delusional as they come.
False linkage. To invert the zionist argument: Even if Ahmadinejad blew up all Iran’s nuclear plants with his own two hairy hands, the rest of the world would still hate Israel. Because the problem isn’t what Iran does, it’s what Israel does.
Heh. This article is basically eee in a nutshell.
Pretty much.
Ironically, it’s the fascist right in Europe, certainly in the UK, that has formed an alliance with pro-Israeli Zionist lobbies as they seem to believe they have much in common against Muslims.
That’s not really ironic. Zionism is an opportunistic parasite. There are examples of Zionists collaborating with Nazis, after all, because that regime’s desire to “export” Jews suited people like David Ben-Gurion quite nicely.
Avi, i think this is a very good news though. Thats good for the image of Zionism and Israel.
Actually,
The oppossite is described as occurring as well, that some Arabs and the far-right have joined in hatred of Jews.
“Israel’s global standing continues downward spiral, but many don’t grasp why”
Which is why, inspite of a campaign to “educate” th eworld about Israel, the campaign is a massive failure.
And this is only going to get worse, with or without a war with Heabollah and Iran.
Israel is indeed a pariah state.
What’s unfortunate is the citizens of the United States have not been very well informed of the bill they’ve been left footing as a result of this.
Alex Kane was in college (in New York State?) and at 19 (?) went on the trip to Gaza, either the same trip or very close to the time that Phil went.
He wrote about it, and has been writing about the issue since. I think he deserves every encouragement, and our thanks.
Alex knows what he’s doing and he’s certainly on the right path. I like his articles. By the way, I didn’t know he was a budding – if you will – journalist. Could have fooled me. He’s certainly talented, has good intuition and is a great writer.
Thanks for the encouragement.
To clarify: I am currently a junior, soon to be senior, in college. I am 21, and when I went to Gaza as part of the Gaza Freedom March, I was 20, and turned 21 while in Gaza.
You keep kicking this can, Alex. You’ve written some great stuff so far, and if you falter, you can count on a few of us here to sharpen your chops before a larger audience does.
Dont forget to pick up David Shasha’s piece on HuffPo today. And read up on that history. The United States of America is intimately entwined with the history of the cultured, educated Sephardic Jews who helped produce everything great about this country in the last 400 years. The persecution complex, and claiming 2,000 years of it, comes from Ashkenazim peasantry, who twisted real and vile local persecution into a national mythology.
Jews have a lot more to be proud of than regional politics remade as cosmic truth.
did i miss out on some sort of sephardim/ashkenazim blood feud? i think this may be an oversimplistic view of things, considering the role of mizrahim as the political base to much of the current Israeli cabinet…
sorry, i’m an idiot. didn’t realize that the mizrahim/sephardim distinction was as significant as it apparently is. color it up to my twisted ashkenazi background…
ayatollah, there’s nothing twisted about your Ashkenazi background, but there is something lacking in many Ashkenzim I meet who think that they, and they alone, are the be all and end all of Jewish experience…..and definition.
The Sephardic Jewish contribution to the world is immense. Their science, literature, philosophy, art, and commerce, was a staggering contribution. Truly staggering. This history has been wiped out, removed, and denigrated in the service of 200 years of Ashkenazi history remade for western consumption remade for Herzl’s Viennese cafe aspirations.
But Sephardic Jews have been in what is now the USA since 1514. They created the NY Stock Exchange, co-founded the great universities and museums like the Met in NYC. The oldest synagogues in the US are Sephardic. Four hundred years old. Every person of means in the Caribbean was Jewish at one time, until the Spanish Inquisition officials landed there to claim the trade. This was religious war that Queen Isabella — think: nasty First Lady — wanted to win because she desperately wanted the Pope to move from Italy to Spain.
The United States was discovered by Juan Ponce de Leon (1514). The de Leons were Jewish Spanish nobility from Northwest Spain.
The Sephardic Jews, starting in 1514, colonized (for lack of a better word) every major port and city from Recife, Brazil to Montreal. Every single Sephardic Jew is a descendant of 12 families that landed in Curacao from Amsterdam, after lastly Portugal (less than a year), and before that, Spain (centuries).
You can go here to get a CD of your descendants to present day:
link to demarchena.org
In the first section of Le monde moderne et la question juive (very interesting book – I think I’ve mentioned it before), Edgar Morin discusses the contribution of Sephardic Jews to the creation of modernity itself – for good and for ill.
Shmuel,
How good? How ill?
BTW, I noticed as I was leaving town that I JUST received my copy of the book you recommended months ago and that I ordered immediately. It’s been months. I will read when I get back.
I wish I could upload a copy here of a video history of the USA that few know. Americans dont even know their own history. It was created for them by a poet and a novelist in the mid-1850s. They believe this crap. And since few read, write, or speak, a second language, they have no means of comparison.
Shmuel, interesting in the comments is this: “L’état d’Israël étant le paroxysme de la violence qui conduira à encore plus de préjudices et de malcompréhensions à l’égard des juifs, qui dans l’ensemble sont pacifiques, autant que la plupart des êtres humains.”
Which roughly translated, at least for me, means that — and this is roughly — that Israel creates more suffering for Jews when it promulgates violence against this distinctive Jewish mindset. and fails to understand — or fully embrace — the peaceful history of essential Jewish opposition to oppression.
MRW: How good? How ill?
I meant the good and ill of modernity, of the social, cultural, ethical and economic systems these men helped shape. I think you would enjoy Morin (an important French thinker – and anti-Zionist Sephardic Jew). I don’t think he’s been translated into English, but that’s not a problem for you. In the meantime, have a good trip, and enjoy Eldar and Zertal when you get back (I’m sure you will).
Shmuel,
I fucking hate it when you add to my reading list. Goddam you.
Okay.
Morin it is. I’ll be ordering it. [Yes, I read French.] And it was Avika Eldar and ??? Zertak who authored what I saw as I left town in my mail basket.
Shmuel,
I fucking hate it when you add to my reading list. Goddam you.
Okay.
Morin it is. I’ll be ordering it. [Yes, I read French.] And it was Avika Eldar and ??? Zertak who authored what I saw as I left town in my mail basket.
How did this double post happen? I didn’t hit the keys twice?
MRW,
I’m not sure about your rough translation. To me it means that Jews are essentially decent folk, just like everybody else, and Israel makes it really hard to see that. These Sephardic empire-builders we’re talking about, for example, were as guilty of oppression and exploitation as their non-Jewish associates in the colonial enterprise. The once-oppressed became oppressors when given half a chance (without getting too anachronistic in terms of human rights, indigenous populations, slavery, etc.) – at least partly as a result of their oppression, which forced them to become cosmopolitan and innovative.
I fucking hate it when you add to my reading list. Goddam you.
You’re welcome :-)
Shmuel, you win. I mean the same thing. My wife is currently meaning another. I’m not paying attention. And considering what I’m looking at, neither would you. This is a sayonara moment. Get my drift?
“L’état d’Israël étant le paroxysme de la violence qui conduira à encore plus de préjudices et de malcompréhensions à l’égard des juifs, qui dans l’ensemble sont pacifiques, autant que la plupart des êtres humains.”
—————
“The state of Israel being the paroxysm of violence which is going to lead to more prejudice towards and misunderstanding of the Jews who, mostly, are as peaceful as ll human beings.”
Maybe not the best English possible but maybe the most loyal to the spirit and letter of the statement.
TGIA,
Merde! And we were having so much fun paraphrasing ;-)
“Sephardic Jews have been in what is now the USA since 1514. They created the NY Stock Exchange..”
The NY Stock Exchange might not be the best thing to mention when you are praising the Sephardic Jews.
I’m familiar with the diminution of the Sephardic tradition in North America (and Israel). But I feel somewhat obliged to point out the contributions of Ashkenazi Jews to North American society- we’re talking Emma Goldman, Fiorello LaGuardia, Victor Berger, etc.
Maybe our (Ashkenazi) heyday has passed, especially considering the fact that most Zionists I know are Ashkenazim (probably because I don’t think I actually know any Sephardim), but I still look at people like Russ Feingold and think that Ashkenazim still make up a fair amount of the moral/intellectual backbone of the United States.
But maybe I should really be big-upping my other half, the German Catholics of the Midwest. Talk about under-appreciated…
I guess my real point is that it’s probably not too constructive to generalize about Ashkenazim and Sephardim- I had the great fortune of being brought up by anti-Zionist Ashkenazim (the German Catholics, needless to say, don’t really care). Given our contributions to European international socialism, the Bund, and other truly Left (as opposed to “Zionist Left”) movements that have often stood against Zionism, marched in C.O.R.E., and served with distinction in all levels of intellectual, scientific, and political thought- there’s no need to rip on us as a whole.
I can sympathize with that. :) But at any rate, both aspects of your heritage are under appreciated.
One notes that the university library in the city of Milwaukee is named not after noted American reformer Victor Berger, but after Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir (and very specifically the Israeli. She was named Golda Meyerson while she lived in Milwaukee, after all.)
I grew up two blocks from Golda Meir library and almost went to the Milwaukee Public School named for her. Instead, I ended up at Milwaukee Jewish Day School on the North Shore, where I got a great education and some intensely Zionist education, which necessitated a fair amount of soul-searching/deprogramming later on but also really helped me understand the issues and empathize (which I think is somewhat crucial).
Point is, doesn’t matter the background. Just as there has been a dominant Ashkenazi narrative over Sephardism, there too has been a dominance of internal Zionist Ashkenazi narratives over the Bundist and socialist ones.
I’m always amazed how little Americans know about the huge German-American contribution to their country, especially considering how large it is as a sub-group of white ethnics. I include in this ignorance, most German Americans I’ve met over my life. I image it’s because we fought Germany twice in the last century and the usual war propaganda demonization was never erased. Fancy that. TV and Hollywood entertainment keeps up
the negative stereotype.
I suppose that the wave of German immigration followed Bismarck’s creation of a militarist, reactionary and Protestant empire and that the immigrants tended to be people with anti-Bis views. I read the story of the Haymarket Incident in 1886 noting that the radical newspaper allegedly involved was not ‘Workers’ Times’ but ‘Arbeiter-Zeitung’. If the immigrants of that time had little affection for Germany their children would probably, as left-wing ideas died out, have wanted rapidly to forget not only German but even German-American culture. It was good, perhaps crucial, for Britain in WW1 that there was little pro-Germanism in United States public opinion.
I can speak with some authority on this, being a descendant of the very same wave of immigrants you speak. I think one thing people forget is that Germany as a single nation was a new phenomenon, after a fact, to those immigrants. While certainly it makes sense to characterize Germany as a singular nationality now, there are subtle cultural difference between German-speaking peoples who originated what was once known as Prussia, versus those from Bavaria or elsewhere.
Certainly the territories had been united, after a fact, under various empires in the past but the nature of feudalism versus that of modern nationalism meant that the imperial identity was always something distant, previously.
I will say it is interesting to be in the position I am, looking back. My grandmother does not speak German, but I can pick out in her speech pattern distinct grammatical choices and a particular sort of accent that is German, certainly, even if her generation didn’t strongly identify as such by that point.
A lot of comments have been doubling or even tripling lately.
I don’t know why.
The 48′ers and later were not necessarily anti-German or even anti-Bismarck. Bismarck’s co-opting of the social democratic platform in the early 1880s and his reliance on the Liberal party in his coalition were not as antithetical to the German left in both America and Europe as other aspects of Prussian unification.
There was actually a fair amount of pro-neutralism in WWI German communities, particularly in the Midwest, which those who emphasize Anglo-American ties see as “pro-German.” But I think it was a combination of attachment to German culture and language and disapproval of participation in such a reactionary and imperial war on all sides that motivated these populations, rather than a devotion to Imperial Germany.
The JP article referenced by the excellent Alex Kane says, “we depend on the US’s upright moral compass and the fundamental ethics of its citizens to counterbalance the United Nations and other skewed forums.”
If average Americans knew the historical and current reality of the I-P conflict, their fundamental ethics would kick in, and the poll shows those ethics are slowly kicking in, despite the best efforts of the MSM to keep them ignorant of the facts. The JP also blames Obama, Beiden, and General Petraeus for not realizing how much Israel has done in behalf of real peace. What a crock, talk about delusion. Would the American moral compass pay attention to its owner, not it’s zionist holder.
I agree that Jews do not know of the reality of the issue.
My views recently turned more critical of Israel after meeting with an acquaintence who runs an Israeli/Palestinian ultimate frisbee league during the summers, and she told me of the extent of enforced isolation between the communities, much worse than I had known.
At the same time, I am constantly reminded here of the vitriolic contempt expressed by solidarity activists over years and years, that similarly allows for no contact, only isolation.
Again, the BDS movement seems to me like it collaborates with likud and Israel in enforcing the communities’ isolation.
Literally, thats how I think of the well-intended (by some) effort, as collaboration with isolation.
That, and the implication of anger, anger, ridicule, ridicule, as over the line to the point of NOT seeking to co-exist, but only position for advantage.
It ought to occur to you Richard that you and people like you are partly responsible for the vitriol. There are people on the pro-Palestinian side who go too far with their rhetoric, but if you see yourself as some sort of reconciler your first responsibility is to find out as much of the ugly truth about the crimes of your own side as you can and not act like an apologist who condemns the atrocities of one side and rationalizes some of the worst crimes of your own. And this has nothing to do with the advocacy of punishment. It’s just common sense–you don’t reach people on the other side when you act this way.
This is a common problem with liberal Zionists. Many (not all) seem to think they’ve taken some enormous step in even acknowledging that the Palestinians have legitimate grievances. Typically, like you, they acknowledge that the settlements are bad, but then they talk about Palestinian terrorism and never acknowledge that Israeli violence against innocents is on a greater scale and clearly much of it is deliberate, not accidental. Speaking for myself, that’s the cause of the anger. You’d find out how much of the anger you receive is just and how much is unjust if you’d clean up your act.
Where is the source of information to gather that in actual perspective?
Here, I don’t hear consideration of the context, only accusation, so I regard it as propaganda.
I need more information to put it into the persective that you suggest is necessary.
Others do as well. We are aware of the moral risk of gullibility, and are wary of careless condemnation.
I personally have been burned before by adopting politically critical assumptions stated by the left, that turned out later to be false.
That would be pretty much all the articles on Mondoweiss that you skip over, Witty. You know, the ones that are actually talking about what Palestinians have to suffer through?
“I personally have been burned before by adopting politically critical assumptions stated by the left, that turned out later to be false.”
Witty, anybody with the slightest bit of sense knew that “free love” and “open marriage” was a crock. Don’t blame the left.
Nothing to say about the other 97%? I was talking about average Americans after all, Richard.
“That, and the implication of anger, anger, ridicule, ridicule, as over the line to the point of NOT seeking to co-exist, but only position for advantage”
Yeah, yeah Witty, harsh words are the equivalent of a 60 year occupation when they are directed at Israel, every ill-considered word a bullet.