It must have been hell to be a leading southern editor during segregation. You would have known that it was profoundly wrong, but it was your people whose ox was being gored, your friends, your tribe. Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen has a piece about Budrus, a new documentary on the occupation, where he doesn’t really know what he thinks. He uses Steve Walt as the old punching bag, but notice the flipflopping at the end of this excerpt. We should support Israel because of shared values– and those shared values are, what, ripping up a different race’s olive trees? No thank you. I’d urge Cohen to speak genuinely about his own values and interests, not "America"’s. Why doesn’t he say why Jews of his generation think a Jewish state is necessary? (And yes, the one thing he’s unmuddled about is how goodlooking the soldier is who, shades of Golda Meir, is forced by the situation to whack Palestinians…)
One of the Israeli soldiers is an attractive woman. She has a job to do and it is clear she does it without much relish. At least on one occasion, she uses force — whacking a Palestinian woman with her baton — but she takes no glee in it and expresses appreciation — although not sympathy — for the plight of the Palestinians. Everyone in the region knows the importance of olive trees.
As for the Palestinians, they, too, are humanized….
Stephen M. Walt, a professor at Harvard and co-author along with John Mearsheimer of the extremely controversial book "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy," has for some time been carrying on a running dialogue with almost anyone to make the point that supporting Israel is not in America’s best interest. In the sense that America’s best interest has to do with oil and Muslim nations and fighting Islamic radicalism, he is right. But if America’s interest is enlarged to encompass shared values, he is wrong. It is in America’s interest to support Israel.
But "Budrus" the film and Budrus the village are emblematic of why America’s support for Israel is being questioned. The pretty Israeli soldier aside, those appealing peace activists aside, the eventual compromise aside — the awful sight of cranes yanking olive trees into the air sinks the heart.
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