Letters to the Editor
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Thank You Karthik
Karthik, thanks again for your letters. It should be mentioned that Alan Dershowitz's name is mentioned in the Walt and Mearsheimer paper, so that partly explains his vociferous response to it.
It should also be mentioned that the very complexity of the problems in the Middle East silences the moderate voice. That is, although the root cause of most of the problems--man's inhumanity to man--is very simple, it is not simple to identify a course of action to address it. Part of this is because there is fault, and unrighteous bloodshed and dispossession, on both sides. The Jews were throughout history dispossessed of their rightful property and land, most pertinently by the Nazis, just before the creation of Israel. The Israeli Jews then dispossessed many of the Palestinians of their land (not all Palestinians were so dispossessed, I think, but most were). Since then, each side has killed people on the other. I think it's indisputable that there's been criminal violence and killing on both sides.
If there has been crime on both sides, then, this confuses the voices trying to resolve the issue. Those who can't stand grey areas are the ones who pipe up the most loudly and immediately: they are sure that all the fault rests on the other side. Those who are comfortable with grey areas are muted, partly because with both the insurgency (the Palestinians) and the government, viz. the administrators of the justice system (the Israelis) guilty, there is no authority that might redress the grievances. How do you address an injustice if both sides have been wrong sometimes, and if the wrongs are so grave? How can we live together, if every peace will be shattered on the one hand by Palestinian suicide bombers, and on the other, by an unduly violent response, that punishes many that have nothing to do with the violence?
The answer is that we must address the injustice in other ways than by identifying one group as the guilty, and the other as the innocent wronged. It's time to acknowledge the truth: that there are millions of Jews who have lost, not just in the past, but at the hands of a minority among today's Arab and Muslim community, and who have done no harm to anyone, nor desired anything but to raise a family and work. And, that there are millions of Muslims for whom the same is true, except that they have suffered, lost their property, and even their lives, at the hands of Israeli Jews. Those who wish that the fault only lay with one side will always get angry at the suggestion that their own side has any fault at all, or that the other has any virtue at all, but the simple fact is that yes, there is a violent minority within each race and religion, but also millions of people who are not violent, nor spiteful, nor bigoted, but wish to live peacefully. That is a simple fact. And as to the question of how to address the injustices, well: it has been called a catastrophe, the current state of affairs. The small, violent and spiteful minority seems to control our world, whenever there's a suicide bombing, or whenever a Palestinian home is razed. But the peaceful majority still lives. We don't have much power, but we each have the power to say what we think about it, and not to contribute to it. It may be time to stop looking for a group to blame, and think of solutions that go deeper. Maybe the answer is that we can never stop the violent people. But maybe they can't stop us either.
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The real Israel lobby
We have family in Israel. After six of my grandfather's eight brothers and sisters died in the holocaust, one moved to Los Angeles and the other to Tel Aviv. Growing up, we visited our cousins and got a little understanding of the modern, European-style life Israelis have carved out for themselves on this strip of desert, surrounded by hostile nations.
Hell, a quick glance at Google Earth will show you the difference between Israel and its neighbors; turn off the borders and you can tell where Israel ends; there's a line where the earth turns from green to desert brown.
As a liberal, an atheist, a peacenik -- in short, as a typical diaspora fringe-Jew with leanings toward assimilation -- I've long been distraught by Likud's policies and their reflection on us as a people, and on me personally, mostly because non-Jews rarely seem to distinguish when it comes to criticizing Israel.
But as much as I'm disturbed by their blindness toward realities on the ground, I think I understand the generation of Jewish boomers' unwavering support for Israel in spite of obvious signs not only of Israel's failure to negotiate peaceful solutions but also of the threat this ultimately poses to American Jewry (a threat of backlash that's long been taken far too lightly.)
When my grandfather immigrated to the States, it was common wisdom in the family that "it could not happen here." Likewise, my father was raised on a potent mixture of shtetl folklore and "Exodus"-style Israeli ultra-nationalism. The result is a centering of the personal politic on historical semi-fiction and group identification -- but let's point out that we've all got a bit of this, not least the non-Arab Muslims in Iran who daily make a case for the murder of every Jew on the planet on behalf of their Palestinian co-religionists. While the family in Israel leans liberal, my American family has moved to the right, a knee-jerk reaction to feeling threatened. After all, we went from 12 millions to 6 after the war. If Israel were wiped out by Iran, who would remember us? Jews are in constant fear of their own annihilation, and for good reason. There have even been studies that have shown we're genetically predisposed to anxiety and paranoia. It's a feature of our ethnic personality.
Ultimately, the non-Jewish debate over whether it's anti-semitic to criticise Israel, and whether it's proof of Zionist ill-will that critics are attacked for being anti-semitic, misses the real point. Jews in America, on a personal level, are afraid for their families. Not living with the realities on the ground, it's harder for them to see that life in Israel goes on amid the suicide bombings and the rocket attacks. Entrenched in a post-holocaust culture of vigilance, they will brook no slander against their brethren. But in their defense, they are also, in every other realm imaginable, the most progressive people in this country today. Living in Israel is a lot like living in America, and nothing at all like living in an Islamic country.
Amid all the extremists, I don't like any of the conclusions we've been presented with. But if it comes down to choosing between a liberal/American/Jewish way of life -- yes, even with all the atrocities built into this culture -- and a fundamentalist Islam that won't stop until everyone on Earth "submits," I guess it's not much of a choice. And I don't think anyone in power thinks it is, either. Would that it hadn't come to this war; some decent PR would have put an end to this 20 years ago. But everyone's played their part, from fundamentalist Christian crusader nuts to the Soviet atheists and the Mujahedeen. In the middle of it all, this little country is waiting for the one bomb that could destroy it, and its entire culture and history, or the one peace that could save it. Jews here, and there, want peace. On what terms is debatable. But no one's talking about taking over the whole middle east. No one's redrawing the map on the Israeli side.
And I for one can't help hearing, in calls for the elimination of the Jewish state either by force or by neglect, a certain degree of the old motivating Jew-hatred that's been rolling along for centuries.