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Jon Stewart and the end of ‘morally blind ethnic solidarity’

Tony Karon has a great piece on the state of the Situation in the National, out of Abu Dhabi, and he agrees with me, the next generation of American Jews is off the reservation on Israel:

Jewish communities in western countries have long been Israel’s
trump card against international pressure, because they mobilise
support for Israel and restrain critics by painting opposition to
Israel’s policies as motivated by hostility to Jews – a toxic
accusation in a world still sensitive to the horrors of the Holocaust.
But what was palpable during the Gaza conflict was the diminished
enthusiasm of young Jewish people abroad for Israeli militarism, and
the increasing willingness of many to openly challenge Israel.

This
change is personified by Jon Stewart, the Jewish-American comic whose
Daily Show is the premier vehicle of contemporary American political
satire. Stewart mercilessly mocked American politicians for their
slavish echoing of the Israeli narrative during the Gaza conflict.
“It’s the Möbius strip of issues,” he sarcastically enthused. “There’s
only one side!” Clearly, the younger, hipper Jewish liberal mainstream
exemplified by Stewart intends to judge Israel on the basis of its
actions, rather than express morally blind ethnic solidarity….

And that is
where the apartheid warning used by Mr Olmert and other Israeli
advocates of a two-state solution becomes an unintended confession. It
is not some demographic milestone that will tip Israel into the realm
of apartheid, because apartheid is a qualitative rather than a
quantitative term: it refers to a situation in which a whole category
of people were denied the rights of citizenship in the state that ruled
over them. South Africa’s apartheid would have been no more acceptable
to the world had black people comprised 45 per cent of the population
rather than 80 per cent. And since 1967, the Palestinian population of
the West Bank and Gaza have been living under the control of a state
that denies them citizenship.

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