Thank you for this article.

I have sought for years to understand "the blind hatred Israel evokes." I think you put your finger on a good deal of it.

Another piece may be simple cowardice on the part of some in the West. If only Israel wouldn't call attention to itself, the attitude goes, if only it sought peace at any price, life would be so much easier for us in Europe or, for some, North America. The Arabs are many, they have oil, and some of them are willing to kill westerners. The Israelis present none of these threats.

It is completely fair and accurate to make comments such as "Israel is better than its neighbors, and the region would be a lot better, safer, happer, and more productive if its neighbors were even half as committed to law, justice and democracy as Israel." But I think that misses a fundamental issue - Israel is not, and does not want to be, like its neighbors. Israel asserts itself as a progressive, Western democracy - and that's the standard by which it can reasonably be judged. Of course, Olmert stands head and shoulders (and then some) above Hafez al-Assad, as did Sharon. But who wants to be measured by that standard?

You say, "What is often lost sight of under the incessant anti-Israeli barrages is that most Israelis would give their right arm and then some to have a real peace with their neighboring countries". The easy retort is, why then won't it give back the land of its neighbors in return for peace? It returned the Sinai to Egypt - peace, cold though it may be. It resolved its border disputes with Joran - more cold peace. It wishes to annex East Jerusalem and huge portions of the West Bank from the Palestinians as part of any peace deal - no peace. It does not wish to return the Golan Heights or Shebaa Farms to Syria - no peace. The price for this lack of peace isn't the allegorical loss of limbs and then some - the price is paid in actual flesh and bone, Israeli and Arab.

I don't wish to suggest that if only Israel gave up its claims on occupied lands peace would break out all over - the reality is much more complicated. And any peace that could be achieved would likely remain icy cold well into the future. But let's not ignore the reality that such a peace proposal by an Israeli Prime Minister - even if it involved retaining all of metropolitan East Jerusalem as Israeli territory, simply ceding any claim to the remainder of the West Bank - would almost certainly result in the collapse of his government, and would have absolutely no chance of being approved by the Knesset.

For the record, given your statements on Israel as the region's only democracy, do you believe that Turkey is in the Middle East? Its location sometimes seems to magically shift from Europe to the Middle East and back again, depending upon whether it is convenient to the argument being made.

  I regret when Israel is treated as co-equivalent with the policies of its current government (which, by the way, are by no means all off the mark). Nor can I ignore that many of those who are most vociferous in their denouncement of "Israel" are also anti-Semites, a despicable lot.

Hmmm, aren't all countries identified with their governments policies?  America certainly is. Our support Israel causes hatred of America and 'westernization'...so why should it be any different for Israel? Is it despicable when America is vociferously denounced by Korea, China and Russia?

I believe, in the Jewish tradition, that if one saves a single soul, it is as if he has saved a whole world. And I hate; to see innocent people on both sides killed.

If you truly belive this...Why cannot all the Israeli's who want peace and to live in security with their families simply emigrate to America, where they can do precisely that.

That would be a nice way for Israel to repay her debt to America in terms of the billions of dollars in foreign aid as well as the countless American lives lost since WWII and almost 6 decades of support for what clearly has not been in America's interest. When does America's untold suffering in support of Israel come to an end?

How does Israel repay America for that tremendous debt?

Start now. Emigrate to America and leave the ME ...live in America in peace and prosperity.

I've always felt that Turkey is European myself, though I'm not sure what the author would make of it.

"I pay special mind here about Israel as the only democracy in the Middle East."
Well, Lebanon was on its way to becoming the second one....but....well...
I think it's great you love your country so much and certainly Israel's best interests should be your first priority.
I, however, am AMERICAN, and so AMERICA's interests are MY first priority. What I want is for my government to PUT AMERICAN INTERESTS FIRST, before the interests of any foreign nation, no matter who they are, including Israel.
The growing perception is that the US Govt puts Israels interests before American interests and that for me is the big beef.
It seems we've been lead to believe that what is in Israels best interest is always in the best interest of America and this is simply not so. I want my government to understand the difference between the two when it does occur. When a friend does something that I consider morally wrong I do not go along with it. I set my boundaries. The US government needs to set boundaries here. That's what I want.
PS Mel Gibson's remarks, like those of any bigot, are deplorable...any sane person can see that.

Amitai,

I agree with everything you say, but I do not approve of the way the Israeli government responded to Hezbollah's raid into Israel that resulted in Israeli military deaths and the kidnapping of the two soldiers. I feel it is counterproductive.

Tom

Traditionally, U.S. support of Israel has had a sort of two-pronged justification. The stated reason, the one which politicians cite in speeches and the one which Israel accepts with pride, is that this Jewish nation is the beacon of Democratic hope in a sea of corrupt Theocracies.

The second reason, from an American perspective, is that it ensures access to Middle Eastern oil in case of some unforseen disaster which could put Western supply in jeopardy.

The difference now, however, is that President Bush has seemingly created a third prong to the relationship; one which POTENTIALLY benefits only the United States and does more harm than good for Israel.

The Iraq War, and the subsequent military stagnation there, has caused the Americn president to use Israel, a sort of Ace in the Hole, to serve as a deflection for the situation in Iraq and as a means of continuing his discourse of fear with the American public.

From a media standpoint the strategy has worked. 70 were killed today in Iraq and it barely makes headlines even in the most anti-Bush publications (CNN, New York Times, etc). Yet it has done nothing to actually IMPROVE the situation in Iraq.

What the Israeli war does, with U.S. implication, is create once again the sense at home that anyone not supporting Israel is "weak on defense." It is an election year ruse, perhaps the final notable act of this unpopular president who will find himself in Lame Duck status in three short (or long) months.

Bush's contingency plan, it seems, is the ability to broker a peace deal at any time. Indeed, international outrage at the United States is fueled more so by this fact than its persisently controversial support of Israel.

Bush can do three things with the current situation in Lebanon.

1)Use the war as a means of once again employing his Bush Doctrine theme in an election year: you are either with the effort or you are an enemy (in this domestic case substitute "enemy" for "weak on defense").

2)When the time is deemed opportune by the administration a peace deal can and will be brokered thus painting the President Bush in a glowing light. This will be used by Rove and others as a means of demonstrating that Bush is indeed the peace-loving man he claimed to be in 2000.

3)It will take the attention away from the one thing that will certainly hurt the GOP in November: Iraq.

A sound if not deplorable strategy from a president that knows his party could (and probably should) be dealt serious blows in November.

artappraiser,

If any righties are anti-semitic, they hide it, often going to irrational extremes in support of Israel, Israel right or wrong....

And "pro-Israel" for the wrong reasons.  All across the political spectrum there are many who reduce Jewish identity solely to its religious component, and at the expense of its cultural, political and national components (ie, at the expense of its core humanity).  To these people Israel is Israel because the Bible says so, and the history is an inconvenience at best.

On the right, "supporters" of Israel will passionately oppose any peace process that relinquishes any part of "Biblical Israel," even to the point of subverting the will of the Israeli electorate.  I put it to everyone here that those people cannot ever be Zionists in the truest sense of the term, since Zionism was and remains the movement for Jewish national self-determination.  Meanwhile, on the left, we often hear that the Bible is not a land deed.  Fair enough.  But there is simply no other spot on the planet to which the Jewish people is native but what we know today as Israel.  Every other place, country or region, Jews have been first and foremost alien.

Of course, none of this will begin to make any sense until even us Jews break the habit of limiting our identity strictly to its relgious component; and broadly accept that we contain all the elements of a legitimate polity -- a language of our own, a culture of our own, a shared history marked by a calendar of our own -- as well as, but not necessarily in spite of, certain dynamic religious traditions.  And to the extent that any of these national components may be rooted in it is by now beside the point.  Further, Arab peoples are not the only peoples native to the Middle East region, and it's time to accept it.

I agree with a substantial portion of this. It is certainly true that there is some very open and nasty anti-semitism on the Left. Following discussions about the Israel/Palestinian conflict at sites like indymedia can be a real eye-opener. If one limits the comparison to the blogosphere, I think your characterization holds pretty well.

With very rare exceptions, though, the anti-semitism I've seen on the Left is political in nature, and it is explicitly grounded in post-1948 (or post-1967) opposition to Israel and the Israel lobby. Anti-semitism that takes the form of religious and/or racially-motivated paranoia about Jews still seems to lurk primarily on the Right, as Mel Gibson recently was kind enough to remind us. If you follow the links I put into my previous post, I pointed to the persistent problem of neo-Nazism in Europe and the neverending problem of discrimination against all non-Christians in rural public schools. The money quote from a PTA member in Georgetown, Delaware was particularly enlightening:

"If you want people to stop calling him 'Jew boy,' you tell him to give his heart to Jesus."

None of this bigotry is really "hidden," so much as it generally remains outside the spotlight, so long as European countries continue to censor their neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers, and so long as the main issue at hand is Israel's prerogative to wage war against its neighbors (as opposed to the right of the Jewish people to pay taxes to their local school board without seeing those funds used to discriminate against the Jewish faith.)

My intent in responding was not to defend Chomsky and his followers, whom I strongly oppose, but to challenge the recent mainstream respectability of the talking point that the American Right is a far better friend to American Jews than the liberals whose opposition to Israel's military policies has increasingly been conflated with anti-semitism or Jewish self-loathing. See, for example, this, or pretty much anything Mona Charen has ever written. The Jewish people have many more hardened and dedicated enemies, but it would be a tragic mistake for Jews to conclude that everyone who speaks on behalf of Israel is their friend.

The problem is that the blogosphere, much as we love it, is not representative of American political and cultural opinion. I don't mean to excuse anti-Semitism on the left when I say that there is even more on the right, but you won't find it in righty blogs as much as in suburban high schools, evangelical churches, PTA meetings, the sidelines of the soccer field. Furthermore, whatever hatred of jews you find there you will find an equal or greater hatred of arabs.

I found Mr. Etzioni's statement to be overwhelmingly positive and I am very glad to read it here. The part that bothered me, however, was this:
"However, it is a dangerous delusion to believe that the fundamentalist Muslims will cease to believe-correctly, by the way-that the West is undermining all that is dear to them: treating women as third-class citizens; severely punishing people for minor transgressions; dealing with all nonbelievers as if they were dog meat; putting their rigid interpretation of Islam above any decisions arrived by elected representatives; and using the sword to impose their worldview on others."

I know he is talking specifically about fundamentalists, but he holds that vision of the arab world up against the vision of individual Israelis as those who "would give their right arm and then some to have a real peace with their neighboring countries, to play a key role in promoting mutually beneficial economic ties by sharing the technical knowledge and higher education that make for high-tech economics and expected trade, and to work with progressive groups to advance democratic and human rights in the region and elsewhere." Is it really that black and white? I think even Mr. Etzioni is unable to see the world as clearly through others' eyes.

In her reply, Zionista refers to two different components of jewish identity, one which is religious and one which is cultural. I would hazard a guess that it is the religious component which serves as the focal point of the hatred -- I think many in the arab world are unable to see Israel as anything other than a theocracy akin to so many Islamic states. But to the extent that lefties share the arabs' position on Israel, it stems from sympathy for the Palestinians' plight, and a prediliction for supporting the underdog against a regional military superpower armed by the US. Neither source of anti-Semitism is excusable, but it's still important to understand the difference.

The fact that Mr. Etzioni contributes to a volume edited by Prof. Derschowitz indicates that he supports or condones theories of the professor, to wit, how to ethicaly and lawfully torture captive persons, and how to massacre civilians with clear conciousness.

Egyptians, unlike Palestinians, are not subjected to the innumerable petty inconveniences and humiliations, receive visits of tourists and experts, and yet do not reciprocate with friendship. Verily, they hate Israel for its freedom.

When I read Derschowitz and Etzioni, I am getting impression that the essence of Israel is to let Jews free themselves from the narrow confinces of universal ethics and enjoy the satisfactions of the tribal perspective. When Chechen terrorist action against a theatre in Moscow lead to hundreds of fatalities, Jerusalem Post had a commentary "Israel is Number One!", in which the author was exultant how much better Israeli security is than Russian. The unseemly glee was truly revolting. Apparently, seeing non-Israeli victims of terrorism leads only to satisfactory feeling "that's not us".

In the same vein, Holocaust deniers can be feted as good friends of Israel -- if they deny Armenian Holocaust.

This tribal vision is truly liberating and reduces the number of worries and scruples.

Luckily, I know many Israelis, so I know that generalizing this impression is wrong. But it is there.

By the way, Lebanon is also a democracy.

break the habit of limiting our identity strictly to its relgious component; and broadly accept that we contain all the elements of a legitimate polity -- a language of our own, a culture of our own, a shared history marked by a calendar of our own -- as well as, but not necessarily in spite of, certain dynamic religious traditions.

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

Perhaps I just have too much imagination but "I certainly do not see how, in the wake of the Holocaust, the international community could have done anything other than what it did do." The world recognized that they had very badly failed in their duty to mankind, and to Jews in particular, by allowing the holocaust to go on. The world needed to make amends, so they gave someone else's land to the Jews. What they should have done is give an unlimited immigration quota to Jews to come to the land they did possess, our country, for example. That could have resulted in a state, such as Nebraska, for example, being heavily settled by Jewish immigrants, and Nebraska would have been their homeland instead of Israel.

This would have separated Jews from some of their most cherished religious sites, a bad thing, but remember that most of the world's Moslems are separated from Mecca, and they do just fine.

Hoppy in Sacramento

 Are people actually thinking that Mel Gibson is a lefty?  Mel Gibson is as far right as you can get, and a certifiable member of the religious right.  I'm totally at a loss to understand the belief that liberals are the group that is anti-semitic.  Liberals, as a group, as far as I can see, want Israel and Jews treated as well as Palestine and Moslems.  They want to see equal treatment for the world's people without regard for their religion.  They will criticize America when our country is on the wrong path and they will criticize Israel when it is on the wrong path.  But, they also criticize Moslem countries for the same reasons.

Recognizing just how counter productive the current Israel military adventure is is hardly anti-semitic or even anti-Israel.  It is based on reality. 

Hoppy in Sacramento

We would live in a much better and safer place if more nations of the world, and especially in the region, were half as democratic as Israel is

For a century after the civil war the US South democratically suppressed-and lynched- Blacks. And the Northern Ireland Prods oppressed Catholics for 3 centures. How about the succession in post colonial Africa of "one man , one vote, one time"regimes. And BTW how did Hitler happen to become Chancellor ? .,And , and . Add your own examples.

Democracy results in the will of the majority being implemented . Which can be noble or horrible. Would a democratic Egypt warm up the cold peace ?

As a well wisher of Isreal's I thank God every day for the undemocratic regimes in Egypt and Jordan .

Democracy is a possible means to a goal , not a goal in itself.

Dear Sir, Forgive me if this type of “framing” and rhetoric makes me recoil with both Fear and Loathing.

“Neocons often dream about turning the Middle East (and the rest of the world) into "shining, prosperous democracies."”

Believe me when I say, this is not what most critics of Neocon’s fear most about their movement. Personally they terrify me because they are ideologues that are more closely aligned to the likes of Arial Sharon than they are to US National Security, and they’ve gained traction by using this ridiculous “Democracy Building” rhetoric to start an ever expanding war in the Middle East.

“Critics are quick to point out that the Israeli democracy is not without blemishes. And they find some real, and often imagined, violations of human rights.”

Israeli Human Rights Violations… Blemishes… Dozens if children dead in the past week. To the intellectually rigorous, this might seem a little disingenuous.

“I am stunned at the blind hatred Israel evokes, not only by the same dark forces that mean to do in all of Western civilization, the United States first, …”

Do you mean Al Qaeda? Or do you mean the entire Muslim world and every enemy of Israel? I ask this because it almost seems like you’re trying to make the entire Muslim World a Dire Threat to America with this silly turn of phrase.

“Israel has sent literally hundreds of delegations of physicians, nurses, scientists, educators, agricultural experts, and members of many other professions and occupations to Egypt to try to build bridges and mutually beneficial arrangements.”

Israel is good. Stay tuned... Because in the next paragraph…

“However, it is a dangerous delusion to believe that the fundamentalist Muslims will cease to believe-correctly, by the way-that the West is undermining all that is dear to them: treating women as third-class citizens; severely punishing people for minor transgressions; dealing with all nonbelievers as if they were dog meat; putting their rigid interpretation of Islam above any decisions arrived by elected representatives; and using the sword to impose their worldview on others.”

Rag heads are bad…

Sir, I can relate to your sentiments regarding Israel, for personal and familial reasons, but this sort of “Editorial” sends shivers down my spine.

Framing this conflict with the four chambers of your heart is totally dishonest in any useable political sense. Especially when it’s packaged in a pseudo fair minded Xenophobia.

Bulldozing Israel’s atrocities underground, while hyping all that is wrong with the Muslim world in some non specific Muslim threat that wants to destroy the civilization starting with the United States is not exactly, well how shall I say it. The truth???

Perhaps that’s why Europe has a different opinion about the Israeli / Palestinian conflict. Because it’s got more perspective on the conflict than you do.

You who obviously has a dog in this race…