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Israel’s real fear is BDS and ‘delegitimization,’ says Goldberg

 

Different tracks, in Ramallah
Different tracks, in Ramallah

One of the fascinating new trends inside US political culture is that the Israel lobby is dividing and reconstituting itself, slightly to the left, in order to take on its new enemy: the BDS movement. The lobby needs to reconstitute itself because it recognizes that the neoconservatives and Likudniks expose Israel and the lobby to grave political risk at a time when Europe is inching toward boycott of settlement goods and Americans say clearly they don’t want war with Iran. The lobby has to re-unify to deal with its greatest threat: the delegitimization movement, anti-Zionists who are questioning the fundamental character of the Jewish state and promoting democracy in Israel and Palestine.

This seems to me the takeaway from a piece by Jeffrey Goldberg at Bloomberg News praising John Kerry as the savior of Israel. Goldberg is trying to get American Zionists to support movement against the settlements.

Some excerpts. First, notice the over-the-top praise of Kerry’s speech last weekend and the challenge to Kerry’s Zionist critics:

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry gave a passionately pro-Israel speech this past weekend at the Saban Forum in Washington. On matters concerning Israel’s security, its international legitimacy and its demographic future, he showed himself to be a true friend. There are people in Israel — there were people at the Willard Hotel, where Kerry gave the speech, in fact — who did not consider this speech pro-Israel, but they are deluding themselves.

Kerry proved a couple of things… [H]e is also committed, in a bone-deep way, to Israel’s well-being. He is an exemplar of a slowly vanishing type of Democratic Party leader, someone with great, and uncomplicated, affection for the promise of Zionism.

Then at once, Goldberg brings in his greatest fear: Israel’s delegitimzation:

[Kerry’s] working for something that most Jews, in Israel and around the world, desperately want — a secure Israel with internationally recognized borders that becomes an honored member of the family of nations, rather than a target of never-ending opprobrium…

Goldberg then notes that Obama’s host at the Saban Forum– Haim Saban, the Democratic warchest who has appeared at AIPAC– is helping to rebuild the lobby. He is the “central figure trying to bridge the various divides between Israel and the U.S.”

Again, because of the major threat. Not Obama criticism of settlements, but the rising leftwing movement:

Much of the Saban meeting was off-the-record, so I am limited in what I can say, but many of the Israeli participants I spoke to seemed worried, in ways I hadn’t noticed before, about the international delegitimization campaign targeting their country — economic boycotts in Europe, the beginnings of an academic boycott in the U.S. The leaders of the movement to delegitimize Israel are committed to the country’s destruction; no West Bank compromise will spur advocates of an anti-Israel boycott to stop hating the idea of a Jewish national home. But this anti-Israel movement gains strength and support by focusing not on its real complaint — Israel’s existence itself — but on Israel’s behavior on the West Bank. End the occupation, and the delegitimization movement loses much of its energy.

So Israel has to compromise on West Bank territory, Goldberg says, lest the anti-Zionists use the occupation to make it an international pariah.

Goldberg is wired. He is the journalistic representative of the lobby, so he gets access everywhere. And I think Kerry is listening to him. Notice the secretary of state’s pandering to Zionist concerns about Palestinian births. Makes Goldberg happy.

Kerry also spoke strongly about a related issue: The demographic challenge to Israel’s existence as a haven for the Jewish people and as a democracy if it holds onto the West Bank and its Palestinians indefinitely. This demographic dynamic, he said, “makes it impossible for Israel to preserve its future as a democratic, Jewish state without resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in a two-state solution.”

Kerry went on, “Force cannot defeat or defuse the demographic time bomb.”

P.S. For an analysis of what Kerry is actually proposing re Palestinian freedom, read Allison Deger’s post saying the Obama administration has dropped talk of Palestinian state for promoting “state institutions.” Or read Kerry’s presser yesterday at which he spoke of “ultimately, a Palestinian state.” Ultimately, when? I don’t see how you can avoid delegitimization when Israel continues to back endless occupation on a Jim-Crow model. Such conduct has to be delegitimized.

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Of course. Israel is scared it will be shown to be the deceitful state it is, operating illegally in territories outside its internationally recognized boundaries. It might lose the precious US UNSC veto vote.

Its been so busy creating illegal facts on the ground over the last 65 years it can not now afford to adhere to the law without being sent bankrupt paying rightful compensation while it tries to relocate its illegal facts on the ground back into its own territory

It is in fact Israel who must negotiate (plea bargain) its way out of the illegal sh*t hole it has created for itself. Meanwhile the Palestinians have no legal obligation even in negotiations to forgo any of their legal rights under the Laws, UN Charter and relative conventions Israel obliged itself to uphold.

The Jewish state has stolen egg all over its face and a backlog of lies and deception going back to the day it was declared.

If what they were doing was normal and legitimate they couldn’t be afraid of anything. They know themselves they run an evil system. The hasbara shows it.

So, now that these Zionists have had their speaking time, how about the ongoing delegitimization of the Palestinians in which they all take part? I notice that this point is absent from the debate once again, and I wish that ‘our side’ would bring it up with more strenth.

Goldberg wrote:

and its demographic future, he showed himself to be a true friend

Sometimes a single phrase is more revealing than an entire essay, even if there are MANY nuggets like this.

What Goldberg is basically saying is that Kerry is a “true friend” on maintaining racial purity. This goes to the heart of Max Blumenthal’s argument, that Israel is fundamentally wedded to the engineering of a non-indigenous population as well as engineering a demographic majority; inevitably this means ethnic cleansing(the preferred method right now is to make life so unbearable as to make Palestinians leave).

This is interesting to contrast with a more recent Goldberg column where he writes about Megyn Kelly’s white Jesus flap. He says she is “fearful of change” in the face of a multicultural U.S.

Yet who is “fearful of change” on issues on demographics? Goldberg explicitly states his fear. Kelly, in her defence, frankly, is showing her own racial biases but that’s a leap to take from there to say Kelly doesn’t want a non-White majority U.S. Goldberg states his wish for an opposition to a non-Jewish majority Israel much more clearly, yet receives no significant pushback at all. Who is the privileged one of those two in America? The one who has to explain her racial biases, and rightly so, or the one who gets to fly under the radar of liberalism to promote ethnic nationalism that is at complete odds with genuine universalism?

This goes to my recent hobby horse; how many minorities in America are actually ethnic nationalists masquerading as liberals, just like Goldberg, and how the left has failed to police this issue because we’ve come to think all racists must be white Christians.

Most people who are going to have retrogressive views on race in America will be white Christians, but this is because of demographics; just so many of them
But because of of this myopia, policing the racism of a guy like Goldberg becomes very hard for the left, since the right in America hates muslims and agrees with the settlers, more or less.

Because, your liberalism must be measured when you’re in the majority population, and for Goldberg this means Israel, not when you know you’ll be in the minority for many decades if not centuries, where liberal democracy because your racial de-facto self-interest.

Of course, nobody caught Goldberg on his walking contradiction, just days apart. So he continues with his selective “liberalism”.

Well stated. Not only are the Palestinians delegitimized in virtually all phases of
Israeli rhetoric, with standard, wildly inaccurate stereotypes, but also Israel contrives to shut them out of virtually any dialogue – even those which have the effect to significantly affect their future. As regards the media -exclusion of crucial information is the rule, with virtually no exception. For example, during this once in a hundred years storm in Gaza, Israel opened the dams alongside Gaza severely
exacerbating an already critical situation – already existing flooding, no pumping
equipment on line due to lack of fuel, and freezing temperatures. In any other situation this would spark international outrage and immediate humanitarian response. The story in the NYT – by Ms. Rodoren – mentions the flooding as a wholly natural phenemonen of the storm, with abject silence regarding Israel’s taking advantage of already devestating situation (flooded homes, people without heat or light) to further destroy this embargoed community. Nor does she report of Hamas advance planning to mitigate the effects as much as could be expected in an
enclave wherein sewage floats freely down the streets, wherein potable water is virtually nonexistent and wherein many people are freezing and starving. Again –
I have yet to find one international agency which is sending humanitarian aide.
Or indication that Israel or Egypt would relax the blockage to admit international
aide teams.