From: wolda002@umn.edu
Date: Thu Jan 08 2009 - 22:01:24 EST
Israel: Mini-Me?
There is a deep affinity between the United States and Israel. I'm not
talking about the Israel Lobby, which concentrates its influence in
Washington. Or the connections between neoconservatives and the Israeli
right wing. Or the rhapsodizing of fundamentalist Christians, who embrace
Israel as part of their scenario for the Apocalypse.
The affinity runs deeper: We are both settler states. The Puritans, who
escaped oppression in the Old World only to mete out oppression in the New,
unfolded their Zionist project in the 17th century with their "city built
upon a hill" as the New Jerusalem. Pity any settler — Quaker, Anabaptist
— who didn't embrace this vision. But the early American Zionists and
their successors were considerably harsher toward the Native Americans, who
were pushed further and further west, an expulsion as tragic as the
Palestinian nakba of 1948. America, like Israel, believed in the
"redemption of the land…by settling it." And today, after some
backsliding in the redemption department, the reservations of Indian
Country, with their limited sovereignty, represent our own two-state
solution.
The settlers of North America got away with murder. If there had been a
United Nations in the 19th century or an international media catering to an
international audience, perhaps Native Americans could have enlisted some
allies in their struggle. They largely fought alone.
Not so the Palestinians. The whole world is watching (and blogging). Israel
has been pounding away at the Gaza Strip for nearly two weeks. It began a
ground assault this past weekend. The UN has condemned the violence and the
resulting humanitarian disaster. International diplomats have called for a
ceasefire.
The Bush administration and congressional leaders of both parties, on the
other hand, have taken Israel's side. "I think what the Israelis are doing
is very important," top Senate Democrat Harry Reid (D-NV) said. "I think
this terrorist organization, Hamas, has got to be put away. They've got to
come to their senses." In the press, Charles Krauthammer has declared the
Israel-Gaza war to possess "a moral clarity not only rare but
excruciating." Michael Gerson concurred: "This conflict is not a contest
between shades of gray in mist and fog. It is a matter of distinguishing
between murderers and victims — and of supporting an ally until a clear
victory against terrorism is achieved."
Yes, Hamas has been firing rockets into Israeli territory since the last
ceasefire broke down following an Israeli incursion in November 2008. Yes,
it has supported suicide bombings against Israeli targets. Yes, its charter
supports an Islamist state and the destruction of Israel.
But let's introduce some complications into this apparent world of good and
evil. According to Israeli scholar Rueven Paz, Hamas devotes 90% of its
work to providing social, cultural, and educational services. It has a
reputation for honesty that distinguishes it from its main political rival,
Fatah. It isn't surprising that the Gaza voters supported Hamas in large
numbers in the 2006 elections. Instead of respecting this democratic
outcome, Israel and the United States refused to deal with Hamas and worked
overtime to isolate the party. It's not surprising that Hamas looks askance
at peace negotiations and thinks only in terms of power dynamics.
When Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip from its rival Fatah in 2007,
Israel imposed a blockade of all but staple goods, prompting an
international outcry. "A crime and atrocity," said Jimmy Carter. When
United Nations Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Occupied
Territories Richard Falk tried to visit Gaza, Israel detained him at the
Tel Aviv airport on December 13 and bundled him onto a plane out of the
country."
Denying entry to the UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights is part of the
same occupation playbook as keeping Palestinian human rights defenders such
as Raji Sourani, director of the Palestine Center for Human Rights, locked
up in Gaza and denied the right to leave to speak to the outside world,"
writes Foreign Policy In Focus contributor Phyllis Bennis in Detaining the
United Nations. "It's at one with the Israeli policy of blocking
international journalists who might report on the spiraling humanitarian
crisis (especially in Gaza)."
Israel's actions in the current war also do a great deal to muddy the moral
clarity that Krauthammer claims. It has killed hundreds of civilians in its
disproportionate response to the Hamas rocket attacks. It's probably using
cluster bombs. "It is becoming increasingly clear that Israel's latest
attack on Gaza was a premeditated attempt to destabilize the Hamas regime,"
writes FPIF contributor Mustafa Qadri in Gaza Attacks: Murder with
Impunity. "The Israeli Ha'aretz newspaper recently revealed that even while
it was negotiating a ceasefire, the Israeli government drew up a detailed
plan to destroy Hamas in Gaza six months ago."
The United States has been Israel's firm backer throughout this sorry
affair, one element in the "lethal mix of arrogance and ignorance" that
characterized the Bush administration's overall Middle East policy. In
turn, no country in the world has more resolutely embraced the Bush
worldview than Israel. To borrow the black-and-white language of
Krauthammer and Gerson, Israel has been Mini-Me to America's Dr. Evil.
Israel's attack on Gaza, like its previous attack on Lebanon, looks like
the Iraq War in miniature. The similarities go beyond the Palestinian
issue. The two countries have taken the same terrible stands at the United
Nations (for instance, teaming up with Palau as the only three countries in
the UN to vote against lifting the Cuba embargo). The two countries see
eye-to-eye on Iran and Iraq.
Of course, it's not so black-and-white. There are important differences
between the two countries' foreign policy. Dissidents struggle to transform
Israeli policy just as we campaign here in the United States. The two
countries are not as evil as the characters Mike Myers and Verne Troyer
play in the Austin Powers movies.
Some argue that it's just a matter of time before Israel, for reasons of
demography, economics, and pragmatic politics, supports a real two-state
solution. Writes New York Times editorial board member David Unger, "Israel
is no longer a land of self-denying pioneers. It is a consumerist
democracy. Its citizens are increasingly rich, comfortable, and more
interested in the individual pursuit of happiness than the ideological
pursuit of Arab-inhabited territory. Under such conditions,
live-and-let-live pragmatism can be counted on to eventually trump
traditional Zionist ideology."
Alas, rich and comfortable consumerism didn't stop the United States from
pursuing empire in the 20th and 21st century. Zionist ideology — the
notion that redemption comes through the settlement of land — is
powerful. It's the heart of the settler state's mythology, in Israel as in
the United States.
Crisis Works Overtime
Crisis didn't take a holiday over the last several weeks, not in Gaza, not
in Pakistan or Thailand, not in the global economy.In Pakistan, FPIF
contributors A.H. Nayyar and Zia Mian argue, a two-headed monster threatens
the population: Islamic militants within the country such as
Lashkar-e-Taiba, and those outside the country, such as the Afghan Taliban.
"To truly confront the threat, the first challenge is for Pakistanis to
agree that they want to live in a modern, democratic, and plural society,"
they write in Pakistan and the Islamist Challenge. "Pakistan's neighbors
and the world will need to help rather than compound the problem. The
threat of use of military force by India, yet more U.S. missile attacks or
commando raids into Pakistan's tribal areas, and deepening or widening the
U.S. war in Afghanistan, as U.S. military leaders and President-elect Obama
have proposed, will only make things worse."
In Thailand, meanwhile, anti-government protests rocked the country in the
latter part of 2008. "The December 15 selection of Oxford-educated
politician Abhisit Vejjajiya — to many a thinly disguised variant of a
coup d'etat — hardly offers a breather from the simmering political
tensions that peaked this year," writes FPIF contributor Johanna Son in
Thailand: The Certainty of Uncertainty. "The current political balance of
power is far from permanent, critics say, because this government's
legitimacy is tenuous at best."
And the news about the global economy remains gloomy, with declining
employment, capacity, sales, and hope. Progressives are calling for a "new
New Deal" in the United States. Beware, warns FPIF columnist Walden Bello.
For one thing, new and improved globalization will still retain many of the
features of the old model. The new "global social democracy," Bello argues
in The Coming Capitalist Consensus, "assumes that people really want to be
part of a functionally integrated global economy where the barriers between
the national and the international have disappeared. But would they not in
fact prefer to be part of economies that are subject to local control and
are buffered from the vagaries of the international economy?"
A Change in Intelligence?
In the category of old wine in new bottles, Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) will be
heading up the Senate Committee on Intelligence in the new Congress.
"Feinstein was among those who falsely claimed in 2002 — despite the lack
of any apparent credible evidence — that Saddam Hussein had somehow
reconstituted Iraq's arsenal of chemical and biological weapons, as well as
its nuclear weapons program," writes FPIF senior analyst Stephen Zunes in
Feinstein: Bad Choice for Intelligence. "She used this supposed threat to
justify her vote in October 2002 to grant President George W. Bush the
unprecedented authority to invade Iraq. Most congressional Democrats voted
against the resolution. So it is particularly disturbing that Democrats
would award the coveted Intelligence Committee chair to someone from the
party's right-wing minority."
Similarly in Africa, we've seen a lot of old paternalism in new
humanitarian bottles. But as FPIF contributor Mukoma Wa Ngugi writes in The
Africa That Pushes Back, quite a few new African civil movements are
chipping away at the continent's problems outside the limelight: "Meet
Abahlali baseMjondolo, the South African shack dwellers' movement that has
been at the forefront of organizing the residents against evictions. The
work of Abahlali baseMjondolo is all the more complex because the poor from
neighboring Zimbabwe and Mozambique also trickle into the poor settlements
to compete for already scarce resources. When South Africans attacked other
Africans in poor townships and settlements in May 2008 killing over 50
immigrants, Abahlali baseMjondolo rose to the defense of the African
immigrants. They declared, 'A human being cannot be illegal.'"
On the Lighter Side
If you're looking to spend 257 minutes in a dark place, check out the new
biopic of Che Guevara, Cuba's most marketable revolutionary. FPIF
contributor Shaun Randol offers a review of the film that praises the
performance of Benicio del Toro and laments the narrative's historical
gaps. Finally, we couldn't miss an opportunity to bid farewell to George W.
Bush's foreign policy. FPIF contributor William Hartung offers 10 reasons
Why Bush Was Good for Foreign Policy (Satirists), including W's inimitable
tendency to play cowboy.
"Much as he enjoyed posturing as a cowboy, W's 'ranch' was more like a
suburban house with really big weeds in the back," Hartung writes. "Foreign
leaders who visited Crawford would report back that in Bush's America the
word horse is actually a synonym for 'riding lawn mower.' No more
quick-draw presidency, circling the wagons, or high noon moments. It won't
exactly be 'all quiet on the Western front' with Obama, but we satirists
will certainly miss the swagger."
Links
Shlomo Ben-Ami, "A War to Start All Wars," Foreign Affairs,
September/October 2008;
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20080901fareviewessay87511/shlomo-ben-ami/a-war-to-start-all-wars.html
Ben Feller, "Cheney: Israel Not Seek US OK Before Invasion," Associated
Press, January 4, 2009;
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5g14_OgVc3KvfIE0q7FpUa4Ou69QQD95GGE8O0
Charles Krauthammer, "Moral Clarity in Gaza," The Washington Post, January
2, 2009;
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/01/AR2009010101780.html
Michael Gerson, "Defining Victory for Israel," The Washington Post, January
2, 2009;
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/01/AR2009010101782.html
"Hamas," Council on Foreign Relations; http://www.cfr.org/publication/8968/
"Carter Calls Gaza Blockade A "Crime and Atrocity," Reuters, April 17, 2008
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/976086.html
Phyllis Bennis, "Detaining the United Nations," Foreign Policy In Focus
(http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5762); Richard Falk, the UN Special Rapporteur
for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, wasn't allowed into Israel on
a recent trip. That action fits a pattern of Israeli efforts to hide the
human consequences of the siege of Gaza and of the escalating settlement
expansion in the West Bank.
Siun, "Gaza Update: Cluster Bombs," Firedoglake, January 4, 2009;
http://firedoglake.com/2009/01/04/gaza-update-cluster-bombs/
Mustafa Qadri, "Gaza Attacks: Murder with Impunity," Foreign Policy In
Focus (http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5769); Israel's bombardment of Gaza at
the weekend has nothing to do with self-defense.
Hussein Agha and Robert Malley, "How Not to Make Peace in the Middle East,"
The New York Review of Books, January 15, 2009;
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22230
David Unger, "The Inevitable Two-State Solution," World Policy Journal,
Fall 2008;
http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/wopj.2008.25.3.59
A.H. Nayyar and Zia Mian, "Pakistan and the Islamist Challenge," Foreign
Policy In Focus (http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5772); Pakistan's failure to
confront Islamic militants is a threat to itself, its neighbors, and the
world.
Johanna Son, "Thailand: The Certainty of Uncertainty," Foreign Policy In
Focus (http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5766); After a coup two years ago and
multiple protests since, Thailand has a new prime minister. But don't
expect stability for the near future.
Walden Bello, "The Coming Capitalist Consensus," Foreign Policy In Focus
(http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5765); Economic and political elites are
converging on Global Social Democracy as a solution to the current economic
crisis. Here's a timely critique of this new consensus.
Stephen Zunes, "Feinstein: Bad Choice for Intelligence," Foreign Policy In
Focus (http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5764); Ignoring the pleas of those
calling for a more credible figure, Senate Democrats have instead chosen
Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) to lead the Senate Committee on Intelligence.
Mukoma Wa Ngugi, "The Africa That Pushes Back," Foreign Policy In Focus
(http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5767); Handouts and Hollywood celebrities
obscure the real work being done in Africa today.
Shaun Randol, "Film Review: Che," Foreign Policy In Focus
(http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5763); This portrayal of revolutionary passion
helps us see Ernesto "Che" Guevara as more than a logo.
William Hartung, "Why Bush Was Good for Foreign Policy (Satirists),"
Foreign Policy In Focus (http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5770); Say goodbye to
eight years of rich material.
. . .
Published by Foreign Policy In Focus (FPIF), a project of the Institute for
Policy Studies (IPS)
fpif.org: a think tank without walls