Of God, Guns, and Isreal..Modern Progressives

[broncofan]

I understand. I agree with everything you said except about the concept of a Jewish state. It doesn't require everyone to be religiously (or ethnically) Jewish anymore than someone from Britain has to be Anglo-Saxon. The significance of the Jewish character would operate only with respect to the return of refugees in the case it were necessary. That seems a highly unnecessary insurance policy but that would jibe with the purpose of having a "Jewish state" in that sense. But as far as expelling Muslims and Christians, that's obviously a no-go and I don't think a requirement for having a Jewish state.

Every state is going to have both origins and traditions that are held with different degrees of reverence by its constituents. If Israel is going to be able to have a state with a Jewish character, they are going to have to do their best to ensure that minority rights are protected and that those who are not religiously Jewish have a stake in the future of the state. It's not an easy task but I don't think it's entirely incompatible with having a state entity that is Jewish according to its general traditions and law of return. Of course, that state entity should not span from the river to the sea.

But I am aware there are very good reasons for public sentiment to be against Israel. Neutrality doesn't have a very well-defined meaning. Some people think it means reaching no conclusions and my post did seem to embrace that fallacy. One can be neutral and Pro-Palestinian if the balance of facts weighs in that direction. And you provide very good reasons for the change in the tide of public opinion, but I was just saying it occasionally seemed like the way the facts were presented was not neutral. This is strongly the case in the U.S with respect to the media adopting a very pro-Israel stance which often means underreporting the humanitarian crises in Gaza.

The man I was thinking of was Senior Diplomat Rowan Laxton. I do know about Ken Livingstone and think he just has foot in the mouth disease. I understand the imputation of what he said (and has said previously), but I think he is just a faster talker than he is a thinker. What he said about wealth and voting patterns does not have the empirical support he would want but is an understandable train of thought; I think he's probably a reckless speaker.

But yes, Israel is used as a wedge issue. The issue of Jerusalem being considered the capital of Israel is being exploited by Republicans when it should have zero significance in our political process. The occupation and the continued lack of peace negotiations should have a role in any country's foreign policy conversation but there is very little serious discussion about it here and it is used much more cynically as a reactionary attempt to divide the populace.^^^^^^^^^^

[flabbybody]

Here's a dirty little secret about American Jews: Israel is a distant 7 or 8 on a list of issues that most of us care about. I worry about my orthopedic surgeon being in my insurance book of approved providers. I worry about the cost of a NYC subway ride going up, and I worry about Mexican families in my neighborhood being deported because they don't have papers.
To the extent that Israel is an important strategic American ally in a hostile part of the world, we support her and advocate for her security. If the people in charge there become war mongers, this support will erode.

and for the last 80 years, we always vote Democrat. So Romney can go get a circumcision and it won't matter. we'll be voting for Obama by a huge majority. IMHO

[broncofan]

Here's a dirty little secret about American Jews: Israel is a distant 7 or 8 on a list of issues that most of us care about. I worry about my orthopedic surgeon being in my insurance book of approved providers. I worry about the cost of a NYC subway ride going up, and I worry about Mexican families in my neighborhood being deported because they don't have papers.
To the extent that Israel is an important strategic American ally in a hostile part of the world, we support her and advocate for her security. If the people in charge there become war mongers, this support will erode.

and for the last 80 years, we always vote Democrat. So Romney can go get a circumcision and it won't matter. we'll be voting for Obama by a huge majority. IMHO

There's almost no way the Democrats could take a position on Israel that would lose my vote. Even if they demanded Israel immediately remove all settlements, the Israelis balked, and the Democrats decided to cut foreign aid to Israel to zero. They would not lose my vote, but the ADL would go crazy, Alan Dershowitz would threaten to sue everybody, and AIPAC would lose its shit.

Now I'm not saying that's a policy I would agree with; I would explicitly disagree with it, but Israel is not that high on the list of my political priorities. Democrats would have to literally do an about face on every major issue for me to change my vote.

Here's what I worry about and it's not to lend credence to the cretins who claim Democrats don't care about Israel enough and this implies they don't like Jews. For instance, when this Diplomat (Rowan Laxton) lost his cool and starting spewing hatred in the gym and was not just talking about Israel but explicitly Jews, there were some articles about this in the American press.

Now, I am not in favor of criminalizing racist statements but this is standard practice in many European countries. If you look at the comments section of Huffington Post (a left-wing American site) you will see that it was literally 80% or so of the comments that were saying the man did nothing wrong and that it must have been some sort of ultra-Zionist snitch who ratted him out. There were an extraordinary number that were implying that such a law would only be enforced with respect to racist comments made about Jews, who are essentially a protected minority (purportedly as a result of the power we wield). Now, I honestly do not care if someone thinks that Israel's policies are heinous and they have nothing good to say about them; but when they look directly in the face of a "f'ing Jews" rant and imply that Jewish people are ardent foes of free speech and will do anything to suppress criticism of Israel it is exasperating. So is my quarrel with the anonymous Huffington Post or BBC commenter?

I think it must be with a certain percent of people on the left part of the political spectrum, a region I otherwise feel very comfortable with. It's just I'm not sure who or why.

[Stavros]

Thanks for those insights, flabbybody and Broncofan. I suspect that what some of the more ferocious protectors of Israel would note is how in moments of stress when people lose their self-control, a residual almost a 'natural' anti-semitism emerges -from people like Laxton (who I have never heard of, thankfully) and also Mel Gibson which is meant to suggest many people are raised with a fear or phobia of Jews and that is why Jews will never be secure outside Israel. Some Black people would also argue that it doesn't take that much to provoke a White person into using dirty words about Black people and we all know what they are. Crude response, or inherited prejudice?

It is one of the tactics that shuts down debate, just as there are people -not just on the left as it was but also, amazingly in the 'human rights' penumbra who get upset if you draw attention to the violence Palestinians mete out out to each other in Gaza and on the West Bank where corrupt political practices are as natural as sunlight. Corruption exists in most political systems, it has been a major problem in the Arab states but also in Israel where as I see it the best minds go into science and technology, business and the arts, rather than politics.

The polarisation that has taken place in Israeli politics since Menachem Begin's victory in the 1977 elections has increasingly diluted the centre ground of its moderates. There was a time when Jabotinsky and Avraham Stern were viewed as fringe lunatics, yet they and there supporters never went away. There were warnings of what could happen to moderates with the demolition of Moshe Sharett's career in the 1950s (via the 'Lavon Affair') but it goes further because it wasn't just about dealing fairly with the Arabs, but the internal debate in Israel where the initial Labour Party project was to create a socialist state based on collective agriculture, somewhere between the Moshav and the Kibbutz. That debate now seems to have been eclipsed by the decline of the collective movement, the success of capitalism, and the growth of an entirely new problem, the settlers on the West Bank and the Orthodox communities. Israel did not just acquire almost a million hostile Arabs in 1967, it generated the growth of a Jewish settler community that poses severe security issues inside Israel itself.

When the first Israeli government granted exemptions military service to scholars, it was to keep alive a scholarly tradition that the Ben-Gurion government thought might be lost. I don't think he expected the Orthodox community to grow so large, and would be horrified to know that in the West Bank today women have to sit at the back of the bus. Throw in the loathing the Orthodox communities have for the queers and the godless bums who spend their days cruising the beaches of the Mediterranean, and you can see how the meaning of a 'Jewish state' can as Broncofan suggests, have no real religious meaning at all, but also how that can be seen as either the problem or the solution.

The greater pity is that there is such an hysterical lock-down on rational debate or creative, imaginative debate about Israel -not least because it is so energetic inside the country. Trying to debate the direction the Arab world is heading in doesn't generate much light either...