American Parochialism: Armenia, the Dalai Lama and the Jewish Question

John Mearsheimer and Steven Walt, the authors of the ever controversial Israeli Lobby, continue to insist that the U.S. government is in the pocket of the American Jewish lobby. No, they are not anti-Semites. But yes, they are wrong - not because the Israeli lobby isn't powerful, but because Middle Eastern policy is only one among a legion of others that are made on the basis of a stunted American parochialism that filters all foreign policy through a self-indulgent domestic lens.

Two new controversies from today's headlines make this ever so clear: the Israeli-leaning U.S. Congress turns out to be the Armenian-leaning and the Tibet-leaning U.S. Congress, even when these "for domestic consumption only" inclinations reflect a disastrously parochial disdain for realism and jeopardize relations with Turkey and China. One hundred years ago, a predecessor regime to the modern Turkish regime (the Ottoman Empire), committed genocide. The Congress has decided that precisely now - as we depend more than ever on Turkish assistance in the war in Iraq and are trying to dissuade the Turkish government from incursions in Kurdish Iraq - is the perfect time to condemn a regime five generations away from the original events for this horrendous but ancient tragedy.

Likewise, the Congress has decided that this is the ideal moment - as we try to win Chinese cooperation on keeping Iran nuclear free and ask the Chinese government to show more tolerance on human rights - to honor the Dalai Lama with its highest medal, though the exercise is bound to infuriate China. Tibet and Taiwan are China's two great bugaboos, holding out the specter of national disintegration, China's most ancient and profound anxiety.

So, no Professors Mearsheimer and Walt, the United States is not in hoc to Israel, it is in hoc to parochialism. It doesn't make foreign policy according to the Jewish lobby's wishes, it makes foreign policy to indulge a host of domestic concerns and self-celebratory varieties of hide-bound insularity. The United States remains a hegemonic global superpower sporting the narrow outlook of mini-states like Monaco and Lichtenstein.

It is not just Middle Eastern policy that is skewed, it is American relations with China, Turkey, France (remember "freedom fries?") and many other states vital to the pursuit of U.S. interests in an interdependent world.

The bad news is that when it comes to international affairs, America remains trapped in self-righteous and self-defeating provincialism. The good news is that this means the power of the Israeli lobby is merely a subordinate clause in the greater story of endless American parochialism. It is the latter and not the former we need to overcome.

Comments

[BlueGregInRedFlorida]

FYI...

"Who now remembers the Armenians?" Hitler asked, just before he embarked on the destruction of European Jewry. Precious few, it seems.

[mouselion]

Double wow.

[maddogbitesback]

Before he took out the Jews he took out the people who protested. And he took out the Gypsies and tried to take out the Slavs. The mentally incapacitated took a hit too. And the Jehovah's Witnesses. You were for him or against him. And he was the decider guy. But the Jews were compensated. Gypsies - nothing. Slavs - still nothing. Mentally incapcitated - could never in a million years form a lobby group. Jehovah's Witnesses - nothing.

Abolish lobby groups.

[HermioneGranger]

This is not true. The first victims of Hitler — already in 1933 — were the Communists, the Socialists, the Social Democrats and the Trade Unions. Of course, the U.S., scrapped this part of history from the books with McCarthy.

The handicapped had a lobby which did, in fact, manage to stop the killing: the Catholic Church. This is why the Pope was so heavily criticized for not helping the Jews because the Church had shown previously that it could have been done.

[avergejoe]

Where have I heard something like that before? hmmm

"There is no such thing as a Palestinian people... It is not as if we came and threw them out and took their country. They didn't exist."
-- Golda Meir, statement to The Sunday Times, 15 June, 1969.

"How can we return the occupied territories? There is nobody to return them to."
-- Golda Meir, March 8, 1969.

"This country exists as the fulfillment of a promise made by God Himself. It would be ridiculous to ask it to account for its legitimacy."
-- Golda Meir, Le Monde, 15 October 1971

"Israel may have the right to put others on trial, but certainly no one has the right to put the Jewish people and the State of Israel on trial."
-- Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, 25 March, 2001 quoted in BBC News Online

[pkafin]

Don't forget these:

"There are no differences between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. We are all part of one nation. It is only for political reasons that we carefully underline our Palestinian identity.... yes, the existence of a separate Palestinian identity serves only tactical purposes. The founding of a Palestinian state is a new tool in the continuing battle against Israel."
- Zuheir Muhsin, late Military Department head of the PLO and member of its Executive Council (Dutch daily Trouw, March 1977)

"There is no such country [as Palestine]! 'Palestine' is a term the Zionists invented! There is no Palestine in the Bible. Our country was for centuries part of Syria."
- Auni Bey Abdul-Hadi, a local Arab leader, to the Peel Commission, 1937

"You do not represent Palestine as much as we do. Never forget this one point: There is no such thing as a Palestinian People, there is no Palestinian entity, there is only Syria. You are an integral part of the Syrian people, Palestine is an integral part of Syria. Therefore it is we, the Syrian authorities, who are the true representatives of the Palestinian people."
- Syrian President Hafez Assad to PLO leader Yassir Arafat.

Perhaps it is more complicated than people like to admit.

[FlowerGirl]

It wasn't too long ago that a HuffPo Blogger posted an article claiming that there was no such lobby. Now this blogger denies that we do its wishes.
What are we always talking about it for if it either doesn't exist or has negligible influence?
And in either case, why are we on the slim side of so many 198-2 votes like plutorage said? And why do we veto so many SC Resolutions?
And why did we cover up the Liberty Assault? And ...

But Franz Werfel's "The Forty Days of Musa Dagh" was a favorite of mine when I was young. More recently the Turkish author Orhan Pamuk has addressed the Armenian massacres in his writing. It is a sad part of our human history like the Rape of Nanking. We need to understand these things because they tell us something about ourselves that we must recognize if we want to prevent more such.
I liked several books on Tibet, notably "Seven Years in Tibet" by Heinrich Harrer. The Chinese have acted badly there, but they also acted badly in the Uigur (Muslim) region when oil was found there. The Uigurs were pushed aside for Chinese interests. (Who would have thought it?)

Man does not treat other men very nicely sometimes. One mustn't think that these are isolated things. Palestinians have been the most persecuted people in the world, by Israel, by Jordan, and by others for much too long, but we aren't crying for them here, I suppose. We haven't learned much. Victims of one horror sometimes put others through another one.

Perhaps the questions are: what does America know? and what does America care?

[MrLiberal53]

The Palestinians are not the most persecuted. In fact, those Arabs living within eretz Israel did not refer to themselves as Palestinian until 1964 when it became politically expedient to do so.
It would be nice, and very unusual, to find an anti-Israel posting that displayed even the most rudimentary understanding of the history of the Middle East.

[Overd0g]

Bravo

[maddogbitesback]

Mr. Liberal53 - why don't you accept the fact that somebody owned land in what is now called Israel and that those people - many of them - were forced to flee from an invading people who were largely from Europe and largely believed there was one God and he had chosen them to own the land they were invading after being expelled from it by the Romans. The Romans had for centuries favored the Jews within and outside of Judea etc. However they changed their mind some decades after the Common Era. However, as you know the common toast at celebritory dinners of Jews was; "next year Jerusalem." In fact, an organized return to that land began in the 1800's. Prior to that migration and subsequent invasion, Jews had lived beside Moslems and Christians for many hundreds of years. Why don't you just accept the fact that the State of Israel learned a lot from the Nazis and that it uses the same beliefs and methods as the Nazis.

[unitron]

"...those Arabs living within eretz Israel..."

Would that be the land that the Jews kept letting themselves be dragged or run out of by various foreign empires, including the Romans almost two millenia ago?

"...did not refer to themselves as Palestinian until 1964..."

But weren't the British referring to the area as Palestine back during World War One when they promised the "been there since the 700s" Arab residents independence in exchange for help in assisting in the defeat of the Ottoman Empire (about the same time that, unknown to those Arabs, another part of the British government was promising the area to some Jews)?

[HermioneGranger]

I believe the previous post was talking about the Palestinians an the West Bank and Gaza. There is not other military occupation going on for so long in modern history.

Also, there are about three million Palestinians, 50.000 of which have been killed by the Israelis. This is the equivalent of Bosnia in slow motion - seven million Bosnians, 90.000 of which have been killed by the Serbs.

[avergejoe]

Oh really mrl - here is some history!
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/757768.html

Gaza's darkness
Gaza has been reoccupied. idf forces have been rampaging through Gaza - there's no other word to describe it - killing and demolishing, bombing and shelling, indiscriminately.

there is no electricity. Israel bombed the only power station in Gaza, and more than half the electricity supply will be cut off for at least another year. There's hardly any water. Since there is no electricity, supplying homes with water is nearly impossible. Gaza is filthier and smellier than ever

Gaza is also poorer and hungrier than ever before. There is nearly no merchandise moving in and out, fishing is banned, the tens of thousands of PA workers receive no salaries, and the possibility of working in Israel is out of the question.

the death, destruction and horror. In the last two months, Israel killed 224 Palestinians, 62 of them children and 25 of them women. It bombed and assassinated, destroyed and shelled, and no one stopped it. No Qassam cell or smuggling tunnel justifies such wide-scale killing. A day doesn't go by without deaths, most of them innocent civilians.

Israel drops innumerable missiles, shells and bombs on houses and kills entire families on its way to another assassination. Hospitals are collapsing with more than 900 people undergoing treatment. At Shifa Hospital, the only such facility in Gaza that might be worthy of being called a hospital, I saw heartrending scenes last week. Children who lost limbs, on respirators, paralyzed, crippled for the rest of their lives.

Families have been killed in their sleep, while riding on donkeys or working in fields. Frightened children, traumatized by what they have seen, huddle in their homes with a horror in their eyes that is difficult to describe in words. A journalist from Spain who spent time in Gaza recently, a veteran of war and disaster zones around the world, said he had never been exposed to scenes as horrific as the ones he saw and documented over the last two months.

[Iownpeterbilt]

Very rarely on newscasts will you see armoured bulldozers operated by palestinians pushing down Israeli homes.

[Overd0g]

Was that statement supposed to convey a meaning?

[HermioneGranger]

Yes, and everyone who is not an idiot understands it

[pkafin]

Yes, the world is obsessed with Israel. Or, more specifically, with shaming Israel.

A few years ago, the Zimbabwe's cleared out 70,000 homes in an urban slum for an airport project. Did anybody see those homes being destroyed on the news?

China has relocated literally millions of people to build dam projects. Anybody see those homes destroyed?

I am not a fan of home destructions. I thik generally when Israel engages in it, it is wrong. But, again, to act like it's something that happens nowhere else, thus making it a unique and noteworthy abomination, is to single Israel out for condemnation. Granted, some folks think that it is important to single Israel out. But, that bias should be seen for what it is.

[geobushono]

Yes....it might remind you to remember Rachel Corrie.....It wasn't on TV...but it did happen.

[Peatbog]

My 99 year old Armenian uncle would appreciate the world and Turkey acknowledging the mistakes of the past while he still lives. He also understands how humans have never learned from history and are bound to repeat it again and again so he doesn't think an acknowledgement of the genocide of the Armenians will teach much to the younger people who have not lived through a genocide. He must be right as we have had a few genocides underway in the last 50 years and they have been mostly ignored. He and his buddies have been seeking a simple acknowledgement for about 90 years. That the U.S. Congress is ham-fisted is not so important to him, but Hey, greatest good for greatest number, right?
And those Tibetans... thinking they should be able to live in peace in Tibet.. haha, what an idea. Oh, don't tread on China's little toes... go to the Olympics and treat them nicely. Let them take all they need from Sudan and Burma. Commerce is king after all.

[mouselion]

Yep. Political expediency --so you can have a McMansion and a couple of hybrid cars --maybe a trip to the Riviera, ski holidays in Aspen.

Don't make China mad about some sense of morality. They're too important for the cause of...

[Overd0g]

People do learn from history. They just don't learn the lesson you wish they'd learn.

[HermioneGranger]

Does you uncle recognize the genocide in Iraq and Vietnam?

[MagisterLudi]

Very old but highly relevant joke:

An old Armenian gentleman is dying in his bed.
His entire family is crowing around. The old gent beckons to his eldest son to come closer and whispers:" Preserve the Jews."
The son is surprised:" Why you say that dear father?"
The old man:" Because when they finish all the Jews, it'll be our turn."

[strifeknot]

To make your joke even more relevant and up-to-date, "Jews" will have to be replaced with "Palestinians."

[maddogbitesback]

Touche!

[plutorage]

When an anti Israeli resolution is passed in the United Nations by a vote of 198 to 2 and the two votes against the resolution are Israel and the USA, then I think you have the picture of what is going on.

The Arab/Israeli problem is in its sixth decade and another American president is readying himself for another sham negotiation with the parties in the mid east dispute.

With the Cold war over, and with everybody but the US and Israel on board for a comprehensive peace agreement, all we see from this side is reactionary politicking, resolutions passed by compliant, venal US congressmen making problems for countries that are not cooperating with Israel, with no regard for the effect on the USA, and certainly no sense of the leadership in world affairs that you would expect from the USA. Small minded Israelis have taught US officials how to think small too.

[MagisterLudi]

Plutorage conveniently forgets that Israel VOLUNTARILY at GREAT PERIL to itself let Arafat and his posse into Palestinian territories when he was down and out kicked out of Middle East and scorned after his idiotic support of S.Hussein.
This was done with only one goal in mind to achieve some kind of two-state solution.This is an UNDISPUTABLE FACT.
Arafat played footsie with Isralies and Clinton for awhile and then stabbed the Israeli doves in the back by going back to his old terrorist ways.
This was the end of peacenik movement in Israel and the beginning of current empasse. You want to blame Israelis for everything. Go ahead. But Arab leaders, while feeding virulent Anti-Semitism to the street know what happened and universally despise the kufr Arafat.

[Overd0g]

Surely you aren't dissing Al Gore's comrade in peace?

[lodger]

Zionists voluntarily interjected themselves into the Middle East in a violent way after WW2.
And it was not all about the Holocaust. Zionism had been a matter of great controversy among Jews for decades before WW2. To this day, many Orthodox Jews, and others, believe Judaism is greater than attachment to certain geographical areas.
This is the problem: most Americans will not allow American lives and money to be spent indefinitely for the sake of right-wing Israelis and American oil baron families and corporations. Change is coming. Iraq is a turning point- the neocons forced the issue, and they have been disgraced. Hillary will be the next president, and she seems to be willing to continue the status quo. But that won't last forever. Israel needs new leaders with a viable 10-yr. plan.

[maddogbitesback]

MagisterLudi - why don't you examine what Arafat refused to endorse. It was untenable and only an idiot would have accepted it. Why won't Israel let the refugees return? Just answer that one small question.

Try to understand that when Hitler invaded various countries those countries did not become ipso facto Germany. They may have been conquered but they remained Belgium or Poland or Holland or Denmark etc. They fought back and the US helped them to fight back. You assume that defeating those people who lived in the land Israel now occupies are without rights - subhuman you might say.

[NewsNag]

Your "undisputable fact" is no such thing. Arafat and his government in exile was legally entitled to live in its own land, and Israel finally did the right thing for once. And it wasn't altruism. They did it for their own domestic reasons, as does every government.

You can fantasize that Arafat wasn't liked by his fellow Arabs, but that's all it is - a fantasy. You have to create your own "history" because reality speaks the truth against every thing you say.

Israel has become an abomination (hopefully temporary) among the nations, along with certain other imperialist, colonizing, cluster-bomb sowing powers. It doesn't have to stay this way. It's your kind of paranoid and illogical rationalizing that helps sustain the evil that the Israeli occupation and brutalization of Palestinians has created.

Your mindset had to kill a Rabin to stop the actual productive curve of history.

[unitron]

"The Arab/Israeli problem is in its sixth decade..."

For sufficiently large values of 6, like say 10 or 12 or so.

Of course that's just for the most recent Arab/Israeli problem.

[MagisterLudi]

Note the discussion is on Tibet,Jews, Armenia, China, Turkey, France.
Note: the majority of the comments as usual preoccupied with tiresome anti-Jew, anti-Israel and anti-Zionism truisms, as usual. And these only the mildest comments by those who were let in by the moderators.
The most filthy and despicable propaganda against "fifth column" Jews is reserved for "open forum discussion.

This is PRECISELY is why there's a need for a Jewish lobby, Anti-Defamation league, Simon Wiesenthal Center and AIPAC.
What non-Jews don't want to understand is that as long as there are Jews haters, a Jewish lobbies will exist in the countries where Jews live.
You don't like it? Tough.
Feel free to give your money to Saudi lobby and vote out the politicians who are in pay of evil fifth column Jews.
Just go to the David Duke website, they're all listed there.
Oh, when USA is in the pinch in the Middle East just ask the freedom fighting Palestinians for help.

[maddogbitesback]

MagisterLudi; why on earth would the Palestinians help the people who help their persecutors. Besides they are too busy dodging missiles, tanks and walls marching through their backyards to help themselves much less anyone else. Do you think the Jews should have helped during the war when their property was taken and they were removed with guns at their heads. Jews have demanded the return of their property and that the perpetrators pay annually to the Jews fopr the atrocity. Israel can't support itself or arm iitself without the help of America. Israel is America's arm in its fight to control the middle east and the oil which it has. Nobody, including Israel, gave a tinkers damn about Libya until Libya seized control of its oil and gave the money from the profits to Libyans. In 1949 Americans were anti black and antisemitic. AIPAC delivers money and votes and it has 200 nuclear warheads which it can deliver to Iran or Iraq. Palestine has tiny weapons - small rockets which if they could be aimed properly (they can't) would hurt a few. Add it up. Israel and America work to-gether for the benefit of both. It is truly a parasitic relationship but at this time America is weakened by its relationship to Israel and will ultimately lose because it refuses to force Israel to allow Palestinians to return as per the world agreement on the return of refugees.

[maddogbitesback]

Sorry - that should have been "symbiotic relationship" not parasitic relationship.

[unitron]

"...anti-Jew, anti-Israel and anti-Zionism..."

The above are three separate and different things and being any one of them does not automatically mean being either or both of the other two.

There appear to be those who would have you believe otherwise and have you believe that if you aren't blindly pro-all three of the above then you must be anti-all three of the above and therefore a despicable excuse for a human being.

As a couple of most excellently and exceptionally (for any race) talented persons of Jewish ancestry (the Gershwin brothers) once put it, "it ain't necessarily so".

[Ericfromny]

I am stunned at how easily criticism for Israel has given people the opportunity to lash out at "The Jewish Lobby." There are plenty of Jews who want Israel to make peace and even more who want nothing to do with the current adminstrations in both the United States and Israel. Should we criticize Britain's occupation of Iraq by lashing out at the WASP army?

Israel=Nation
Judaism=Religion

please note the difference.

[mouselion]

Yes, very good point.

[maddogbitesback]

If only Israel did. The thing is I cannot just hop on a pane and live in Israel and vote. I am not a Jew. Israel is a theocracy. A small minority manage to set the political agenda in Israel and that minority is those radical Jews who don't serve in the army and who live apart. Most Israels want to withdraw to the borders of 1967. Why can't this democracy ever listen to the majority?

[Ericfromny]

A theocracy is a state in which a book of religion is used to make laws. Last I checked, such a thing cannot be the case in Israel. If that was the case, the currency would be a cubit, divorce would be illegal and the leaders would be referred to as "high priests" as stated in the Old Testament. You yourself admit that it is a democracy. Learn your slurs before you use them.

[MrLiberal53]

It is wrong to say that most Israeli citizens want to withdraw to the pre-1967 borders. No one who fought in the 1973 Yom Kippur War wants that, we understand that without the strategic buffer created by the territories Israel would have been destroyed. Of course most posting here seem to believe that would be the best solution to the problems in the Middle East. But if the pre-1967 borders were acceptable why were there attacks on Israel from 1948 to 1967? Simply because the Arab nations want to destroy Israel, to end its existence.

[lodger]

I appreciate what you're saying, and how you differentiate between Judaism and Israel.
One of my best friends (a Jew) stopped talking to me because we disagreed about the Iraq War. Well, I support Israel, but not to the point of putting America in financial/military/ international relations danger.
Israel is in the middle of a hornet's nest- I tried to tell my Jewish friend- the Muslim world will eat itself in 15 years-be patient- but no, he follows the neocons, he wants foolish ACTION NOW!
The situation is so complex. I wish reasonable Jews would speak out more against neocon extremists.

[strifeknot]

But Judaism is the problem; the terrorist Zionists are.

[Incredulous]

Isn't Israel the #1 recipient of American foreign aid?
Doesn't that aid, often in the form of arms and munitions, kill the Palestinians? The Lebanese?
Isn't THAT what has the Arab world at war with America?
America has taken a CLEAR side in the conflicts of the Middle East. Israel's side.
Human rights abuses be damned!
World opinion be damned!
Now, there's no oil interests in Israel, or other resources to rape and pillage, so you explain to us again how without any other visible interests to protect, America continues to do Israel's bidding, at any cost. Really, it's not powerful lobbyists? Then what is it?

[cognate]

Armenia and Tibet are merely blips on the radar screens of American stealth bombers hovering over Iran at Likud's bidding. Likud paranoia is the only reason America is contemplating bombing Iran.

And no, Ahmadinejad did not deny the Holocaust. Only that it justifies the killing, imprisonment and ethnic cleansing of Arabs.

Other than that I agree that parochialism is quintessentially American. After all, what other country participates in the World Series?

[MagisterLudi]

Inability to cognate is the greatest sin.
Did you know, or care that Likud is not in power in Israel? Probably not.
Yes the Jews confess: the evil Jew is controlling the puppet Cheney and Bush.
Just like the evil Jew caused the defeat of Germany in WW1 and WW2 and murder of Kennedy and the Fall of Russian Empire and the Crusades.... keep on reading your copy of Protocols, non-cognate.

[Elliott32]

Canada.

[Plowboy]

If you admit that the Israel Lobby dominates our foreign policy, then I only have one question about the article: what is "the Jewish question"?

[Plowboy]

If we bring up Tibet then people won't talk about Iraq so much, or Palestine, or Iran. "We" don't want people talking about some places. That might lead them to start thinking about them. better to taqlk about the Dalai Lama. Or "we" could talk about the Armenian slaughter in Turkey a century ago, when "we" had just completed our genocide of the native American people.

[Peabodies]

Wow. Amen.

[TimtheDemocrat]

"Parochialism" is used often as an epithet but what you you really mean by that is that we are essentially idiots? Ill informed and ill served we get what we want with the absolute worst leaders possible.



What this has to do with AIPAC is unclear. Are you saying they are a scapegoat? The issue for me with Aipac is undue foreign influence. What other COUNTRY has a LOBBY?

[fightorleave2]

Hey, Timmy, please look over here. Are you ready: Every other country has a lobby!

[TimtheDemocrat]

Well they should all be banned. Its wrong from foreign countries to use money to purchase influence.


I want my country back!

[midtown]

Good question. And I dont know the answer. Is there an England lobby, one that does to have to register as a foreign agent?

Is there an Italy lobby that doesn't to have to register as a foreign agent?

Is there a Canada lobby that doesn't to have to register as a foreign agent?

Is there a France lobby that doesn't to have to register as a foreign agent?

How about Spain? Is there a Spain lobby that doesn't to have to register as a foreign agent? Since Spain is poorer in terms of GDP than Israel, this would be a good question to answer.

[Sisyphuss]

"Since Spain is poorer in terms of GDP than Israel...."

What? The GDP of Spain is about TEN TIMES the GDP of Israel.

[pkafin]

At last count, there were 22 countries that had American groups lobbying for their interests.

[maddogbitesback]

pkafin - The question is whether they get what Israel gets and if they are asking for weapons and the right to do whatever they want without fear of censure. Maybe they are lobbying for family counselling clinics or trade. We all know what Israel gets. What do the other twenty two countries get. Will AIPAC advise them on how to be a super lobbyist.

[jeffepops]

Israel has no more flaws than any other nation -- and less than most. It is a democracy, which means more than electing its rulers by popular vote. As(or more)importantly, Israel's government consists of three separate co-equal branches that assure democracy survives past the election, through checks and balances. Israel champions a free press and recognizes individual human rights, including religious freedom, gender equality and gay rights. Education, medical care and income economic policy in Israel are all based on socialistic models.

It's shocking that so-called progressives support reactionary, theocratic regimes and political organizations in the Middle East such as Hizbullah and Hamas, based on some romantic idealization of exotic dark-skinned cultures somehow being more pure and innocent than any nation that's tainted by "Western" influences. (never mind that many, if not most, of Israel's Jews have their ethnic roots in Yemen, Morroco, Iran, etc.). In addition, Israel's scientific, medical and educational communities develop ideas, products and services that benefit all of humanity (think stem cell research, sustainable agriculture, solar cells, etc.)

Barber's wrong to equate Israel's relationship with the United States as based on parochial interests. It's based in deeply shared progressive humanitarian and political values that will endure well beyond the current disastrous policies of the Bush regime.

[JJWFromME]

"It's shocking that so-called progressives support reactionary, theocratic regimes and political organizations in the Middle East such as Hizbullah and Hamas..."

Uh-uh. I don't know any Hamas supporters. Progressives support human rights (that includes Palestinian *and* Israeli rights). We support non-militaristic solutions to problems. We support not repeating the mistakes of colonialism. I don't think any of that is "romantic." It's realistic.

And I agree we have shared values. But as with any population, I would be sympathetic to some policies of the Israeli government, and not to others. And I would expect my representatives in government to be the same way. We shouldn't be loyal to every single Israeli government policy. And we definitely shouldn't embrace the basically militarist vision of, say, former undersecretary of defense Doug Feith: http://tinyurl.com/h7bp (what was it that some of those "defense intellectuals" thought? That we were going to remake the middle east? How did that crap get by without someone blowing the whistle?)

Too much of this stuff has operated under the radar for the past 6 years. I think M & W's exposing this stuff to some sunshine and open air is a good thing.

[jeffepops]

JJWFromME -- I don't think I implied that all or even most progressives support Hamas (and/or Hizbullah). However, the pages of this web site are riddled with those who adopt the progressive moniker expressing support for both organizations and their philosophies, while expressing the most vile antipathy toward Israel.

As for W&M, I hardly take them seriously. All of the dealings of AIPAC and other pro-Israel groups are public knowledge. The only dangerous aspect of their piece of pop "research" is their charge that Jews are somehow too powerful and have some nefarious stranglehold over the poor Christian American people. It wasn't that long ago in this country that the right wing was making the same charges about Jews driving the Communist movement in America. And of course, the same thesis has been posited by anti-semites throughout history. W&M may not be conscious anti-semites, but the appear to me to be selling the same snake oil.

Nothing has been operating under the radar. Doug Feith, a mid-level civilian Defense Department theoretician, was used by the current Bush administration, and his sentiments toward Israel have always been open and well known. I strongly oppose his point of view, as polls show most (pro-Israel) Jews in this country. Does this make him part of some vast secret Zionist conspiracy?

[jeffepops]

Correction of typos:

1. End of 2nd paragraph should read "THEY appear to me to be selling the same snake oil".

2. Bottom of last paragraph should have stated that most U.S. Jews also oppose Feith's point of view. My syntax made the point unclear.

[Overd0g]

If you're not a "progressive" does that mean you're a "regressive"?

[maddogbitesback]

How is it progressive and humanitarian to bulldoze the homes of innocents. Collective punishment is verbotten these days and practiced only by thuggish regimes. Collective punishment has been practiced by Israel long before either of the Bushes or Nixon. To date Americans are not willing to make that crime acceptable. And what is this with the ideas developed in Israel? How about medicine - developed and doing well by Moslems long before the Crusades. Or Al Gebra. Something you need to know before you can do research. Or - wait - maybe you should sit down - universities.

Better learn that the Nazis invented a lot opf things while Hitler was in power. Look it up.
There is no romantic illusion about dark skinned people And I have no illusions about Jews and Israel.

[unitron]

Never mind Al Gebra, I thank them for Al-Cohol :-)

(seriously though, that's from where the word comes)

[Elliott32]

From wiki:

"Israel can be regarded as somewhat theocratic given the state promotion of Jewish institutions for the purposes of the country's integrity as the 'Jewish Homeland'. Israel's Law of Return grants any Jew the right to become a citizen of the country with the aim of facilitating their immigration to what the State of Israel views as their ancestral homeland."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theocracy#Israel

[pkafin]

Sounds more "ethnocentric" than theocratic. In the US Christmas is a national holiday. That doesn't make the US a theocracy.

Without getting into a debate about what is written on wikipedia, I think that statement is referring to things like national holidays based on the Jewish year.

Many US Jews who work have to take a personal day to get even Yom Kippur off. In Israel, if you're Jewish, you feel more at "home" if you don't have to expend your bargained for workers rights in that way.

In some states in the US you can't by alcohol on Sunday. In Israel, Saturday is the day that many businesses are closed.

In addition to English and Arabic, street signs in Israel are written in Hebrew. Again, that doesn't make it a theocracy, but it does, in ways that no other country does, treat Jews as if their culture is worthy of consideration.

[Javani]

"No, they are not anti-Semites."

Did you read the book?

[maddogbitesback]

I oppose Monsanto all the time. I am not against chemistry. Does that help you understand how it is possible to be distressed by American support of Israel inspite of the atrocities Israel has committed.