Yesterday I analogized Israel's treatment of Palestinians to the subjugation of urban blacks in the U.S. in the 70s. Of course the other apt historical analogy is to American Indians. During the Israeli invasion of Lebanon 2 and 1/2 years ago, Kurt Andersen wrote in New York magazine that Indians were our "inconvenient truth":
Clinton offered a Gingrichian analogy: 'If extremist terrorists were
launching rocket attacks across the Mexican or Canadian border, would
we stand by or would we defend America against these attacks?'â Sure,
weâd send the F-18s to blast Toronto and Nuevo Laredo, and rightly so; maybe the most salient analogy, however, is not fantasy attacks on America in 2006 but our Indian Wars of 1876 â and is there any Hillaryesque Democrat who would cheer retroactively about our Christian nation and its Army of the West defending white settlers by exterminating Native Americans?
Which doesnât mean that we shouldnât support Israel; itâs simply
another inconvenient truth weâre obliged to acknowledge."
This is an important analogy because a, I've heard it from Israelis; b, it works in the hearts and minds of Americans. They say, Who are we to speak out against ethnic cleansing and dispossession in Israel/Palestine; we're just
lucky there was no cable news in the 19th century, and that the people whose land we took didn't have rockets to fire at us from the reservations.
It's a false analogy because a, Palestinians don't have casinos, and b, it's so ahistorical. Human beings operate in real historical time frames. The Indian wars/genocide/ethnic cleansing took place long before Samantha Power and Algeria and Gandhi educated the west. One reason I'm not a rigid leftist is that I think the era of imperialism is somewhat over. And that an era of globalism/human rights really is upon us, and we should seize the model. History always changes. In fact, Gaza is demonstrating that. It's Lebanon 2, and this time the world is having a sharper reaction. Even U.S. Jewry is having a sharper reaction (J Street).
Israel's great error here is merely anachronistic. It's doing this stuff at the wrong time. 100 years out of date. Which is why Richard Cohen called Israel's birth a "mistake." It got into settler state/apartheid business when European powers were getting out.
Of course it's a useful analogy, too: The U.S. should come to terms with its ethnic cleansing past.
