ISRAEL’S LEFT NEEDS TO WISE UP TO MIDDLE EAST REALITY
Ari Shavit
Haaretz, April 7, 2011
It is not hard to imagine what would have happened had Juliano Mer-Khamis [a well-known Arab-Israeli actor, and peace activist, who was recently shot dead in Jenin] been murdered by Jews. The murder would receive a huge headline in Haaretz. Under the headline, five furious analyses would appear—one of them mine.
The writers would harshly denounce the Jewish murderousness and urge a culture war against Jewish fanaticism. Others would demand not to repeat the mistake made after Baruch Goldstein’s murderous rampage and to evacuate the settlements immediately. Others would demand to look into the goings on in the Hesder yeshivas, which offer Torah studies alongside military service, and the state-run religious education system.
Selected racist quotes would be pulled out of primitive rabbis’ writings, historic comparisons would be made to Emil Gruenzweig’s murder and Yitzhak Rabin’s murder and Martin Luther King’s murder.
Within a day Mer-Khamis would become an icon. On Saturday night thousands would gather holding torches to mourn the peace hero and rise up against the powers of darkness. Mer-Khamis’ murder at the hands of Jews would rebuild the left, reunite it and send it to a new battle against murderous Jewish fascism.
But Juliano Mer-Khamis was not murdered by Jews. So instead of a huge headline he got a story below the fold. Instead of five angry essays, he received only one (beautiful ) eulogy.
Nobody talked about racism, fanaticism and fascism. Nobody spoke of education systems spreading hatred and about primitive clergy. Mer-Khamis did not become an icon and thousands of people did not demonstrate. Mer’s murder raised neither protest nor outrage nor holy rage. The Israeli left, which knows exactly what to do with a murder by Jews, does not know what to do with murder by Palestinians.
The murder of a peace hero by Palestinians has no place on the left’s emotional and ideological map. The murder of a freedom hero by Palestinians is a dogma-undermining, paradigm-subverting event for the left. Mer-Khamis’ murder by Palestinians is a murder doomed for repression.
This is a deep, broad issue that goes beyond just the Israeli left. One of the outstanding characteristics of Western enlightenment in the 21st century is its inability to denounce forces of evil in the Arab-Muslim world. Western enlightenment likes to criticize the West. It especially likes to criticize the West’s allies in the East. But when it runs into evil originating in the East, it falls silent.
It does not know how to deal with it. It is easy to come out against pro-Western Hosni Mubarak, but hard to come out against the Muslim Brotherhood. It is easy to come out against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but hard to come out against Bashar Assad. The enlightened West is incapable of fighting Iran’s Ahmadinejad as it fought against…South Africa’s Botha or Serbia’s Milosevic.
The result is a long line of distortions. The blood of the Marmara flotilla fatalities is thicker than the blood of those who were murdered and hung in Iran. The blood of the people killed in Gaza is thicker than the blood of those killed in Damascus and Dara’a.
A post-colonial complex makes Western enlightenment systematically ignore injustices caused by anti-Western forces. Thus it loses the ability to see historic reality as a whole, in all its complexity. It also makes it act unfairly and unjustly. It discriminates between different kinds of evil, different kinds of blood and different kinds of victims.…
It is not yet clear yet who murdered Mer-Khamis. The motive could have been financial, personal, religious or cultural. But it is clear he was not murdered for being an occupier, or an oppressor or a settler. Mer was murdered because he was a free man, who spread freedom in a [Palestinian] society that is not free.
This is the hard truth we must deal with. This is the hard truth we must look at straight in the eye. The Western enlightenment and the Israeli left cannot continue to ignore the dark side of Middle Eastern reality.
ISRAEL IS TOO JEWISH: BLAME THE LEFTY ‘ZIONISTS’
Susan L. M. Goldberg
NewsRealBlog, April 6, 2011
Groucho Marx once quipped, “I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member.” For hardcore Jewish leftists that statement is more fact than funny, especially when it comes to the Jewishness of Israel.
Leftists are at their most amusing when they are accusing other leftists of not being left-wing enough, especially when it comes to Israel. According to Jewish-Australian-Citizen of the World Mira Adler-Gilles (soon to be certified to teach at a university near you) the “failure of Israeli democracy” (a paradox in and of itself) is the fault of the “academics and intellectuals of the Left” who just aren’t willing to “condemn the ideological structure of the state.”
For Adler-Gilles, the inherent fault of Israel is the state’s Jewish nature. According to her, left-wing Zionists like Peter Beinart, who feel free to criticize the IDF and the Israeli government while still proudly waving the Magen-David and stripes, are doing a disservice to the international community by sending a mixed message. According to the ultra-Left, “Zionist democracy” is a contradiction in terms. Therefore, the problem isn’t with Israel’s politics; it is with Israel’s Jewish identity.
The author argues that the existence of Israel is based in two claims: “A tenuous historical claim dependent on a biblical connection to the land” and the claim of victimization made after the Holocaust. In other words, the Bible is too old to fit into this Ph.D. scholar’s cannon, and as far as the “claim” of being the collective victim of roughly 2,000 years of on-and-off world persecution ending in gas chambers goes, well, Israel’s just using that as an excuse to pick on the Palestinians.
It is as if, to Adler-Gilles, the world is a classroom and the Jews are the bullies. The “defensive” mentality of the Diaspora toward Israel and her critics is evidence of the Zionist inability “to acknowledge itself as an active participant in the world against which it protests.” Naughty, naughty Jews, defending their right to exist in the face of endless threats. The International Community gave you a state; what more do you want? If you want to live in peace, you have to play by our rules. After all, we’re the ones in charge.
The ultra-Left is not against Jews living in peace—as long as they do it like everyone else. Zionism, the ideology of a Jewish State—is the evil plaguing the dialogue. Relying on the usual leftist verbiage, Adler-Gilles has no problem rattling off Zionism’s faults, including, but not limited to: undemocratic, inherently violent, and racist. Keep in mind this is the viewpoint of the wing of political thought that sees no contradiction in LGBTQ rallies for Palestine and has yet to openly criticize the gross maltreatment and abuse, including honor killings, of women in the Muslim world.
“Israel should be, like all other nations, a place in which Jews, like all others are able to live in safety and security, and in which no people are unwelcome.” Now, re-read that sentence without the carefully placed commas and the underlying point becomes overwhelmingly clear: “Israel should be like all other nations.” This is how leftist organizations like J Street can claim to be pro-Israel while doing everything in their power to stab the Jewish State in the back. They have no problem with Israel’s existence, as long as Israel follows the rules. When Israel becomes the exception, they’re out of lock-step with the rest of the world, and that simply cannot be.
For all of her accusations of Zionism’s fear-laden victimhood, Adler-Gilles’s view is through the very lens of fear worn by leftist Jews: If we are too different from the rest of the world, if we are too Jewish, we won’t fit in. That is why Zionism is such a threat to the ultra-Left: Not because it is undemocratic (which it is not), not because it is violent (which it is not), and not because it is racist (which it is not), but because it is Jewish Exceptionalism in the form of a national identity.
And for a politic that views Jewish as the exception, the last thing you want to do as a Jew is be a stand out in the crowd.
INCITEMENT BY PALESTINIAN ARABS: THE ROLE OF J STREET
Lawrence W. White, MD
American Thinker, April 1, 2011
Incitement of Palestinian Arabs is a major reason for the absence of peace between Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs. Raising children to hate Israelis, and glorifying the killers of Jews as “martyrs”, has largely prevented any progress on peace between the two sides. Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, who blames Israel for the failure of “peace” talks, has done nothing to stop these messages, and indeed is part of the problem.
Following the tragic and brutal murder of the Fogel family, Reps. Steve Rothman (D-N.J.) and Steve Austria (R-Ohio), recognizing the malignant role of incitement is such tragedies, are circulating a letter in the House calling on President Obama to urge PA President Abbas to return to peace negotiations and to end anti-Israel incitement.
The letter reads, in part: “The continued intransigence of the Palestinian leadership is both hurtful to the prospect for a two-state solution and to a final resolution of the conflict that still plagues the Israeli and Palestinian people.… We are sure that you share our disappointment in President Mahmoud Abbas’s decision to withdraw from peace talks in October of last year and his stubborn refusal to reengage as a willing partner for peace with Israel.… Unfortunately, we live in a time when the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades will rush to take credit for the horrific, inhuman, and brutal attack in Itamar against the Fogel family, including three of their children, an 11-year-old, 4-year-old, and 3-month-old. This must serve as a wakeup call that the current state of affairs is dangerous and unacceptable.…”
The letter goes on to urge Obama to pressure Abbas to “fully renounce any and all Palestinian incitement against Israel and the Jewish people.… We respectfully request that you do everything possible to urge President Abbas to root out terrorism, return to negotiations without preconditions, earnestly work toward peace with Israel, and slam the door on any effort to deal with final status issues at the United Nations.”
Enter J Street, the three year old left leaning organization claiming to be pro-Israel, but in reality a stalking horse for Obama’s attempt to put inordinate pressure on Israel.… J Street’s major role is to convince American Jews that they are practicing “tough love” in pressuring Israel to take “risks for peace”, risks which almost all Israelis consider to be suicidal. J Street continually labels existing pro-Israel groups such as AIPAC and the ADL as right wing, hoping to capitalize on the fact that American Jews are overwhelmingly liberal. And in fact, J Street, heavily funded by anti-Zionists, pro-Palestinian and pro-Iranian groups, has consistently taken positions that are anti-Israel.
With respect to the Rothman-Austria letter, J Street is urging House members to stay away from the letter. It claims that the letter has “significant omissions and misrepresentations of material fact that render this letter beneath reasonable standards of accuracy and objectivity.” J Street’s major objections relate to what they claim the letter leaves out. According to J Street, the letter “Ignores other significant impediments to the peace process.… It ignores Palestinian willingness to make concessions for peace”. It further criticizes the use of the Fogel murders as “misleading”, and it further claims there is no proof that Palestinian terrorists were responsible for the murders.…
In response to the J Street criticism, Rothman spoke about the recent renaming of a town square in Al-Bireh, near Ramallah, for Dalal Mughrabi. The square was named and a plaque dedicated in memory of Mughrabi, who directed the hijacking of two buses that resulted in the murders of 37 Israelis, including 13 children. Members of Abbas’ Fatah faction were on hand. “In my opinion that’s just the latest in dozens of examples over past several years of the PA not taking sufficient action to publicly condemn or prevent the glorification and celebration of the murderers of Israeli men, women, and children,” Rothman said.
In a telephone interview, Rothman pointed out that “The thrust of our letter…is to not only point out how libelous and vile we find the PA’s failures to confront incitement to violence against Jews and Israelis by members of the PA and their sympathizers, but also to condemn the PA’s refusal to come to the negotiating table to work out the terms for a two-state solution,” he said. Regarding J Street’s statement, Rothman added, “Curiously, J Street makes no mention of the PA’s failure to return to the negotiating table. I find that shocking and inexcusable, especially since J Street speaks of a two-state resolution to the conflict.…”
There are several interesting aspects to this episode. Most importantly, it once again puts the lie to the J Street claim that it is pro-Israel. Secondly, such trivialization of the importance of attacking incitement may convince our leadership that American Jews are split on the issue, and so they need not treat is a high priority item in Middle East negotiations. Finally, it is a demonstration of why J Street is failing to influence Congress. To attack Steve Rothman is a dumb political move. Rothman was one of the first Jewish Democrats to endorse Obama during his contested primary against Hillary Clinton, and has been a strong supporter of the Obama administration. He is also a major defender of Israel. For J Street to attack him raises the question as to whether J Street, at this time, has any influence with anyone in Congress who is considered pro-Israel.
J Street President Jeremy Ben Ami, in response to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refusal to meet with J Street, has complained that Israel “is redefining who is a Jew, redefining who is a citizen and now redefining who is a friend.” Some friend.
THEY MISSED THE STORY
Nick Cohen
Jerusalem Post, April 6, 2011
Former US ambassador to the UN Daniel Patrick Moynihan composed an aphorism as he watched dictatorships pile opprobrium on democracies: “The amount of violations of human rights in a country is always an inverse function of the amount of complaints about human rights violations heard from there.”
Journalists, lawyers, academics and opposition politicians can investigate the injustices of democracies, and because they can investigate, injustice is kept in check. They can’t expose the greater atrocities of dictatorships because there is no freedom to report, and hence those greater crimes pass unnoticed.
I have my doubts about the universal jurisdiction of Moynihan’s Law—America was responsible for many great crimes while he was its good and faithful servant. But his insight explains why Jeremy Bowen is blinking at his cameraman in Tripoli like some startled, uncomprehending mammal who has been shaken by the convulsions around him from a hibernation that has lasted for most of his career. The BBC’s Middle East editor is not the only expert whose expertise now looks spurious. The Arab uprising is annihilating the assumptions of foreign ministries, academia and human-rights groups with true revolutionary élan.
In journalistic language, it is showing they had committed the greatest blunder a reporter can commit: They missed the story. They thought the problems of the Middle East were at root the fault of democratic Israel, or more broadly the democratic West. They did not see, and did not want to see, that while Israelis are certainly the Palestinians’ problem—and vice versa—the problem of the Arab world was the tyranny, cruelty, corruption and inequality Arab dictators enforced.
Put starkly, it sounds as if the charges of double standards and anti-Semitism habitually directed at liberal Westerners are justified. But liberal prejudice—“antiliberal prejudice” is a more accurate description—is a process as well as an ideology. Dictatorial states and movements shepherded liberal opinion into a one-way street by exploiting the logistics of news gathering.…
No news organization in the West could base its main Middle Eastern bureau anywhere other than Israel, for the simple reason that Israel is the only country with a free press and an independent judiciary.… [Journalists] can report from Jerusalem but not from Damascus or Riyadh.
Even if the Ba’athists or Wahhabis let journalists in, they would keep them under constant surveillance. Meanwhile any local invited to go on air to criticize his or her rulers would refuse because he knows he would be running a terrible risk. Moynihan’s Law explains why you never hear a BBC or Sky anchor announce: “We are going live to hear our Saudi Arabian editor in Mecca on the oppression of women there.…”
At some level Westerners ought to have registered that millions of people must bite their tongues in the Middle East. They mistook silence for compliance for a reason the late Fred Halliday, who never shrank from confronting the ugliness of the region, identified when he tried to stop his asinine colleagues at the London School of Economics endorsing the Libyan tyranny.
Naturally, Saif Gaddafi could appear suave and at ease in Western circles after having unlimited amounts of stolen money lavished on his education. But, said Halliday, Westerners must realize that the function of plausible and well-groomed men from Libya, Egypt and Saudi Arabia is to impress foreigners by making “compromises with internal hardliners that serve to lessen external pressure.” Keep executions and police interrogations off YouTube and the prudent tyrant will be delighted by the readiness of Westerners to dismiss informed criticism of his regime as neocon propaganda.
Instead of listening to Halliday, Anthony Giddens flew to meet Gaddafi and uttered the only remark anyone is likely to remember him for. Libya’s future was as a “Norway of North Africa: prosperous, democratic and free.…”
Gaddafi was hardly an exception. From the moment he took power in Syria on the sole ground that he was his father’s son, Bashar Assad has heard politicians insist he is a Ba’athist they can do business with. Only last month, Anna Wintour, a fashion editor who could be a tenured LSE professor, allowed her Vogue staff to simper that Bashar’s wife is “the most magnetic of first ladies.”
For all the Western fawning, the denial of Syrian liberty continued undiminished, but it could only be brought to the world by talking to exiles or explaining the totalitarian nature of the Ba’ath Party—neither of which would have made good television.
Muhammad al-Jahmi, brother of tortured Libyan dissident Fathi al-Jahmi, offered further explanation after Human Rights Watch unctuously declared that Libya was advancing toward liberty under Muammar Gaddafi. Foreigners want access, he said, but the regime makes them wait for months. When Human Rights Watch did gain entry, its emissaries were honored guests visiting an exotic country other journalists and campaigners could not enter. They were grateful, and psychologically dependent on their hosts. Everyone they met reinforced the regime’s message that life was good and getting better. “Somewhere along the way,” Muhammad said, “a fundamental truth gets lost: These dictators don’t change overnight.”
Logistics as much as infantile leftism produced the ideology of Middle Eastern commentary. Israel was the only story in the region journalists could cover daily. Rather than stop pretending to be omniscient and admit their limitations to the viewer, rather than show common human feeling and thinking of the silenced millions, journalists pretended Israel was the region’s only story.
The effect was anti-Semitic because ‘the Jew’ was once again depicted as a supernatural figure with the diabolic power to create suffering on an epic scale. That narrow, prejudiced world of Middle Eastern commentary went up in flames when the Arab revolutionaries threw their first Molotov. Whatever happens next, its loss will be no loss at all.
(Nick Cohen is a columnist for The Observer.)
