In May and June I traveled to Israel and the West Bank with an interfaith peace group to see for myself the “reality on the ground” for both Israelis and Palestinians. Toward the end of our visit, President Obama delivered his speech to the Arab world in Cairo, calling for an end of illegal settlements in the West Bank. On the day before we left Israel, some of us photographed an anti-American demonstration in Jerusalem.
No, these were not angry Palestinians, but shouting Jewish settlers and religious Zionists in West Jerusalem, pronouncing President Obama a Muslim and mixing both religious and racial insult with protestations that Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) will never be shared with Arabs. This is a widely-held view by most of the coalition parties that comprise the current government – Likud, Beitenu, Kadima, Shas – though not necessarily the average Israeli – and it underscores a growing rift between American democratic values and an increasingly xenophobic and nationalist Israeli government. If there were any doubts before, our democracy is not like theirs and our values are not their values.
The July 19th Jerusalem Post illustrates this rift in an article, “Obama’s Real Agenda,” by Anne Bayefsky, which complained that Obama had for the first time invited moderate American Jews, including JStreet, to talk with him about Israel, and was being too even-handed: “President Barack Obama last Monday met for the first time with leaders of selected Jewish organizations and leaks from the meeting now make one thing very clear. The only free country in the Middle East no longer has a friend in the leader of the free world. Obama is the most hostile sitting American president in the history of the state of Israel.”
But while President Obama and Secretary Clinton insist on an end to the illegal settlements, Israel keeps building them anyway, pushing settlement blocks deep into the West Bank and clearly trying to create a “reality on the ground” which will forever block the possibility of a Palestinian state – in defiance of American foreign policy goals over many presidencies.
And Israel’s government has also gone on a xenophobic offensive as well. Efforts by Transportation Minister Katz to “Judaize” street signs in even Arab towns and cities in Israel – or the revised “Nakba” bill which punishes Israelis who talk about or commemorate the Nakba (the 1948 Palestinian “disaster”) – have even mainstream Israelis concerned about civil liberties. A bill in the Knesset proposing a national biometric identity card is likewise raising a lot of eyebrows. Coalition parties like Shas and Beteinu openly call for the forced deportation of Israeli Arabs to Jordan and Egypt.
But while the United States is now heading in the direction of increased tolerance and compliance with international law, Israel is racing in the opposite direction. Jewish Israelis can no longer speak of their country, which governs an Arab population almost the same size as its own by martial law, as a Western democracy. Israel, for all its cultural links and trade with Europe and the U.S., is giving up hope of ever being accepted as a “normal” Western nation. Although the reason some ascribe to this is “anti-Semitism” it is also true that “normal” nations in the 21st Century no longer build colonies and habitually thumb their noses at international law. Now, with the U.S. sounding more like Europe, Americans have drawn Israel’s ire as well.
Last year the Bush administration initialed a 10-year $30 billion military aid package for Israel. Israel’s per-capita military expenses are the highest in the world and Americans have been paying for roughly 15-20% of these expenses -things like last December’s war on Gaza’s civilian population, guarding settlements in war zones like Hebron, building the 500 kilometer “security wall,” the ubiquitous checkpoints, or the recent jailing of a former U.S. congresswoman trying to deliver aid to Gaza.
Nations and empires with an addiction to wielding military power usually have to give it up when they start running out of money. If Israel resents U.S. “meddling” or – worse! – even-handedness, perhaps it’s time to take a step back – starting with the American military aid Israel uses in violation of international laws and in opposition to our own foreign policy. Only when Israeli taxpayers shoulder the full costs of their military occupation will a fair and peaceful settlement with Palestinians occur to them.
This was published in the Standard Times on July 23, 2009
http://www.southcoasttoday.com/20090723/opinion/907230329
(link may be broken)
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