broken star, more

Since yesterday's post, I've been thinking a lot about the evolution of my attitude towards Israel, and this morning I'm wondering what I would write that would interest a random visitor to the blog.

The place I've come to is not unusual for an American Jew, progressive in politics, born in the 1950s. I abhor what Israel is doing to a subject Palestinian population, and I resent that affiliations in religion, culture, and history would make anybody, Jew or Gentile, assume I support its actions.

My argument with friends on the Left for many years was twofold: that the actions of Israel were wrong, but wasn't it peculiar that Israel was always first on the list of offenders? When you compared apples with apples, the apple full of Jews was always first on the sinners' list.

My second argument was with the simpleminded conclusion that if the Israelis were bad, the Palestinians had to be good. This is the same dopiness that had some in the 60s making heroes of the Vietcong. Just because South Vietnam was corrupt and America had no biz being there didn't make the VC angels with guns. Ditto the Palestinians. You could support Palestinian independence without wrapping yourself in a keffiyeh.

You don't have to think somebody is a nice person to allow them their rights, their liberty, their freedom. They possess these things no matter what you think of them.

My assessment and my feelings began to change with the Shatila and Sabra massacre, in 1982. Most of the history following is of overt violence, territorial seizure, and viciousness of bureaucracy. Gradually, grinding, going almost always in the wrong direction, the policies and actions of the Israeli government have seemed determined to prove the beliefs of every last anti-Semite in the world, and then create some new ones.

I don't think that the Israelis have to be nice people to deserve their safety, their liberty, their freedom. But I do believe that they have to stop bullying the Palestinians if they want my support.

Israel is the largest recipient of American foreign aid. This is no secret. Let's start cutting that by 10% a year, until the Israeli government stops pushing itself to the forefront of the sinners. Egypt is the second-largest recipient of American foreign aid. Let's cut them back in tandem, and see whether the 30-year rule of Hosni Mubarak (expected to be succeeded by his son) manages to become a little more mellow and democratic, and whether it needs to be bribed not to attack its neighbor.

Because of a residual mistrust of Left and Right anti-Semitism, I usually believe mainstream American reporting on Israeli/Palestinian matters when the story is critical of Israel, and lefty sources when the Israeli peace movement is the topic. I try to check my understanding from Israeli sources, the daily newspaper Haaretz, for example. Al Jazeera English picks up stories from them, too. The book I most depend on is Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-1999, by Israeli historian Benny Morris.


The good little secular Jewish boy I was regrets that Israeli is not a better place. But as a friend of mine says, forget Israel, America is the Jewish homeland. And she's right. But America, what's happening here, it's such a shondeh....