Here's an interesting if gag-producing piece by David Horovitz, the editor of the Jerusalem Post, on how the relationship between Israel and the U.S. has chilled. The piece seeks "bitterly, to underline" how the romance between the countries has ended. And how the U.S. and Israel are now somewhat adversarial.
But first the gag. Throughout the piece Horovitz says that Palestinians must be guided toward sovereignty by Israel and the U.S. And the arrogance and condescension of these statements are utterly unconscious on his part. Can you imagine India suspending Pakistan in statelessness for the last six decades (yes, after mutual murderous hostilities) and lecturing the Pakistanis about when they will be ready for sovereignty? What is the effect of holding out the idea of "land for peace," which Horovitz regards as a good faith effort on Israel's part, for 20 years and producing only more dispossession? How can you laud the peace process, as Horovitz does, when it has produced only an absence of rights for 4 million people?
Yes, Israel is losing the American elites, but it is because they are waking up to the effect of this sham on American foreign policy. Walt and Mearsheimer's paper was the first blow. There have been many since. Horovitz:
Much more troubling, however, is the growing sense in these past few weeks that the shared interests and values that constituted the basis for those earlier, heartfelt personal relationships is crumbling. As our two leaderships have haggled (and that, unfortunately, is the only word for it) over the terms of a new settlement freeze, our alliance seems to be shriveling into a cold, adversarial contest.
In the past, guiding the American-Israel approach to peacemaking with the Palestinians was a wealth of shared goodwill and historical precedent. We were partners, trying together to find the balance of carrots and sticks...At the risk of stating the blindingly obvious, what seems to have been overlooked here is that these were negotiations between Israel and the United States, not Israel and the Palestinians. These were negotiations, that is, between two parties that, until not very long ago, used to sit on the same side of the table - figuring out how best to entice the recalcitrant Palestinians toward peace. Now we are sitting across the table from each other. And the Palestinians, the people who used to be on the other side of the table, the people who walked out of the direct talks two months ago just as they have ultimately walked away from every serious Israeli peace offer are not even in the room. They are proceeding sedately toward statehood, with growing confidence that they can attain independence without the necessity of reconciliation.
This is what provokes my gag reflex — Horovitz:
Let’s talk about those ‘shared interests and values.’ On 14 May 1954, in Brown v. Topeka Board of Education, the U.S. Supreme Court started a process which largely demolished legal segregation by 1968, when the Fair Housing Act was enacted.
Israel took a profoundly different course: it has been and remains an ethnic supremacist society, enforced by a panoply of enabling laws.
It’s patently insulting for Israeli apologists, for self-serving reasons, to claim ‘shared values’ with the U.S., much less the absurd zionist fiction of a ‘romance’ which Phil echoes.
Israel’s values are equivalent to a counterfactual history in which George Wallace won the 1972 presidential election, and passed a federal law declaring the legal supremacy of white people nationwide.
Dissembling weasels like Horovitz need to be confronted on this point. We’ll be the arbiters of what values we share, thank you very much, not some tendentious foreign scribbler trying to sucker us for a few billion more in tribute.
say it again, and again and again and again:
We’ll be the arbiters of what values we share, thank you very much . . .
We’ll be the arbiters of what values we share, thank you very much . . .
WE’LL BE THE ARBITERS OF WHAT VALUES WE SHARE, THANK YOU VERY MUCH!
The sad irony is that while Jewish Americans participated in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, a movement that made such laws a reality, they are now cheering Israel on as it continues to institute discrimination and oppression.
yes. excellent point avi, and a reminder of how our status has changed our political values… (imho)
Yes, Phil. Indeed.
A friend of mine once ‘dragged’ me to an interfaith meeting in which Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Jewish and Muslim Americans participated. This was in the post 9/11 era. The debate got heated at some point as a man who identified himself as Jewish railed against Muslims and added that Jewish values were more compatible with American democracy and on and on. Then a man who identified himself as Christian, I think he was actually a priest, stood up and said that from a historical perspective it was unfortunate that Jews in the US used democracy to advance equality so long as it suited their interests/needs and when their interests were met, they abused that same democracy (Freedom of Speech) by vilifying Muslims.
Perhaps it’s an oversimplification to put it as follows, but it seems to me that moral clarity is absent from the discourse these days.
Ethan Bronner wrote an article for today’s NY Times.
link to nytimes.com
Why America Chases an Israeli-Palestinian Peace
Bronner’s theme is that neither Israel nor the PA seems particularly interested in achieving a peace agreement, that the US is the most motivated.
That Israel does not appear to be interested in peace is a common theme presented here.
The PA I’m not sure about. The article described the fear of confrontation with Hamas, and loss of elections in a unified Palestine, contrasted with the improved political status of Fatah and the PA relative to Hamas recently.
I equate the resistance’ rejection of pursuit of peace with the Israeli right’s rejection of the pursuit of peace, each claiming exagerated “rights”.
And, each harboring revolutionary sentiments and approaches fairly prominently under the appearance of peace-seeking.
Its why I agree with Bradley Burston, that what is needed is a determined effort at humanization of the other, civilly, including standing up for Palestinians’ legal and social rights (human rights) but NOT exagerations of what they means or entails, actual peace-seeking.
Palestinians are human beings. Israelis are human beings.
Live and let live.
“what is needed is a determined effort at humanization of the other, civilly”
humanize this
link to haaretz.com
please do not reference the PA as the resistance. and they are not rejecting the pursuit of peace, the are rejecting the notion such pursuit is possible while israel is expanding into their territory, thus futile.
“Bronner’s theme is that neither Israel nor the PA seems particularly interested in achieving a peace agreement, that the US is the most motivated.”
Bronner doing what Bronner does best. Lying and setting the narrative.
If I took the above paragraph out of context, it becomes completely true. The negotiations took place for the most part between Israel and the US and then when a consensus was reached, the final agreement was shoved in the Palestinian’s face and they were ordered to sign. When they refused to sign and became uppity, they were blamed for the failure to reach an agreement.
The audacity of propaganda. Horovitz would have the average reader believe that the Palestinians are the ones who must seek reconciliation. The colonies and the bribe that which the US offered Israel in return for a construction freeze are irrelevant in Horovitz’s view.
In a healthy American-Israeli relationship, our prime minister would volunteer an open-ended freeze on the expansion of settlements outside those areas we anticipate retaining under a permanent accord. This would underline to the Palestinians and the international community Israel’s genuine commitment to compromise and potentially ease the negotiating process. It would also demonstrate pragmatic self-interest.
no, a healthy relationship would only afford settlement expansion in areas agreed under a permanent accord.
It’s never, never, that neither side wants peace. As Chomsky once said, every world leader wants peace — on his own terms. Hitler and Stalin, America and Israel, all want peace. The problem is with wasting time on negotiations which cannot go anywhere due to imbalance of negotiating power.
USA has pressed for negotiations for so long that doing so is deemed to make sense (even though it doesn’t) in order not to embarrass past similar efforts. Doing the same thing over and over, when it doesn’t work, is insane. USA policy is insane.
Other policies are available, but AIPAC-etc. gets in the way. so we wait. Perhaps the $3B “deal” is so stupid, so obsequious, so miserable, as a strategy to force Americans to realize what APIAC and its Congressional stooges have done to American power. There are no statesmen.
Sure, the thrill is gone as 3 billion worth in military hardware changes hands, is this a joke? It is worth noting that sometimes singing the blues is the perfect way to cover business as usual, but that might be a bit too complicated to grasp