Israel has shocked the world by apologizing for the death of three Egyptian officers from Israeli gunfire -- a stark reminder that Israeli leaders don't just do whatever they damn please. They calculate their own and their nation's interests like any other politicians. When it's in their interests they publicly accept blame for their actions. Better to apologize than risk losing good relations with a powerful country like Egypt, they figure.
Suppose they ran the risk of losing good relations with their most powerful ally, the one on whom they know their very existence depends -- the United States? The Israeli press generally assumes that if Washington truly demanded sincere Israeli negotiations for peace, no Israeli leader could refuse. Obama refrains from making those demands only because he fears the political price at home; he fears us, the people.
Why won't we let him force Israel to make a just peace and accept a viable Palestinian state? One road to the answer begins with an Israeli official's resentful comment on the apology to Egypt: "Now we have to take the heat, as if we were responsible for the attack."
"As if." Of course Israeli leaders won't actually feel any responsibility. That would violate their fundamental code, the myth of Israel's insecurity: Israel must always be presented as the victim, aggressed upon though never aggressing, constantly guarding itself against enemies who attack without provocation but simply out of an urge to destroy the Jewish state.
That story has not changed in Israel -- nor in the mass media here in the U.S. Apart from the Israeli apology, the whole incident was presented here with the same old script: Palestinian "terrorists" attack and kill Israelis, like a bolt out of the blue. Israel justifiably strikes back, as any nation would do when attacked, and kills some Arabs.
The vast majority of Americans are left, as always, assuming that the Israelis are merely defending themselves against cruel aggressors. And if the Israelis get a bit carried away? Well, the average American easily says, we've overdone it a bit ourselves in places like Dresden and My Lai. But hey, that's war. We never start it, do we?
So it never occurs to most Americans to ask why Gazans would risk their lives on military operations against Israelis. If anyone bothers to ask, the answers are obvious:
Years of Israeli occupation of Gaza and then, when the Israeli soldiers left, more years of Israel's strangulating economic control; the return of Israeli soldiers in the brutal attack of December, 2008, which destroyed so much of what the Gazans had rebuilt; the Israeli (and American) efforts to deny Hamas its rightful place as the elected leaders of the Palestinian parliament, provoking a deadly civil war; the persistent Israeli efforts to demonize Gaza and its Hamas rulers, focusing all the world's attention on the West Bank and its Fatah leaders as the only Palestinians worth negotiating with; the Israeli charades that ensure no really serious negotiations with any Palestinians will occur, meaning there will be no viable Palestinian state.
Attacks from Gaza don't come out of the blue. They come out of years of frustration, as the Israelis continue to prevent Palestinians from exercising the right of national self-determination, which the Israelis claim as the justification for their own Jewish state.
Yet that story remains unknown to the U.S. mass media and thus to nearly all Americans. Instead, the mass media eagerly purvey a tale that makes Israel seem like an extension of the United States itself: hardy settlers in the wilderness, forced to fight off darker-skinned savages who want to destroy them. Since the media depict those "savages" -- now known as "terrorists" -- as crazy fanatics, no explanation of their motives is asked for. And certainly none is given by the media.
The myth of Israel's insecurity has enormous political power in the U.S., as Obama found out the hard way when he first called on Israel to stop expanding its settlements. The outrage that forced him to back down did not come primarily from American Jews. Most of them support Obama putting pressure on Israel to compromise for peace. And most Jewish donors are as willing as ever to fill the president's campaign coffers.
No, the outrage came more from Republicans who still cherish the myth of the Old West frontiersman as the prototype of what a true American should be -- in the mountains of Afghanistan, on the U.S.-Mexico border, or wherever the "savages" threaten to overrun "civilization." With the moral questions around U.S. imperial policy so muddied, they are glad to have one ally whose moral credentials seemed untarnished: "poor little Israel," fighting for its life against Arab destroyers. Since most Americans hear the story that way, the pressure remains on the president to "stand with Israel" and condone its violence as "self-defense."
It's this U.S. policy, not Israeli policy, that really keeps the Palestinians stateless and oppressed. If that oppression drives a tiny number of Palestinians to violence, the ultimate responsibility lies with America's failure -- our failure -- to relieve their oppression. Far more Arabs than Israelis die in the violence, and we have that Arab blood on our hands.
Now there's clear evidence that the American people can make a difference. When Obama, last May, called for Israeli to negotiate a peace based on the 1967 borders -- with minor, mutually agreed adjustments and security guarantees -- it was a major victory for J Street, the upstart, moderate Jewish peace lobby. They had been advocating a peace plan using exactly those words for many months.
Yesterday was the last day of J Street's Two-State Summer campaign. They'll deliver the thousands of petitions they've gathered to Congress. Their track record shows that they can make a difference.
But neither J Street nor all the other peace groups have enough strength to let Obama turn his words into forceful policy demands on Israel, at least not yet. The myth of Israel's insecurity is still too strong (partly because J Street itself, despite its commendable success in changing the script, doesn't attack the myth head-on).
When enough of us work hard enough to replace that myth with the tragic story of Palestine's suffering and oppression, making clear that Israel is the true aggressor, we may finally be able to wash that blood off our hands.
Ira Chernus is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Read more of his writing on Israel, Palestine, and the U.S on his blog.
Mira Sucharov: I am a Zionist. And I am a Palestinian Nationalist.
You bring an excellent point, a point which I've attempted again and again to point out, there are so many documented cases of Arab aggression against indigenous Jewish population in the area, dating back to the 1700's way before Zionism was even a dream!
I never understood why people chose to forget history!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yi2AvbXXjrk
Israel has never denied, nor does it have any interest in denying Palestinian-Arabs "self determonation" over their own territories. Israel's intetest is in preventing them from gaining determonation over parts of Israel. in 1948, Shimon Perez begged the Grand Mufti to accept a so called "2-state solution". He refused. In reality, there is no possible chance that the Pal/Arabs can have "self determonation" because they have no functional democratic process, no free speech and no free press. This war is between Israel and the local and regional Arab leaders, with the Pal/Arab people as pawns for their own leader's whims. Israel rightly refuses to become pawns in this same power strruggle.
"darker skinned"
I am really surprized that this article was accepted by the publisher. Jews come in all colors. Jews from Iraq and Yemen (and elsewhere) are generally darker then Palestinian-Arabs.
Complete toilet-paper.
In fact thousands of years of ME history is written in blood.
Babylonians, Romans, Israelites, Islamic Imperialists, Crusaders, Ottoman, European colonialists, Arabs, both Palestinians and others; Jews both Palestinian and others fought and died for this tiny little piece of land.
And every new owner had to defeat the one who was there before.
Countless armies tramped thru' this bridge between Asia, Europe and Africa all writing their place in history by the strength of their arms.
This is reality. And those arm-chair navel gazers with a single minded myopic obsession with Jews need to study history and/or study deep breathing and meditation.
"And every new owner had to defeat the one who was there before."
I would assume in writing that you would be accepting that new owners existed in Palestine over the ages. That in 1948 the Zionist forces defeated the existing though unrecognised owners the Palestinians. At the very least in arguing about new owners you dispute the 4000 year heritage that some claim.
So lets settle ownership 1948. Who should own the Area of the Palestine mandate, the 600,000 odd Jews that immigrated to the area or the 1.2million non-Jews that were born there?
Before we decide we must look at developments like the United Nations. The adoption of its charter decided that as an international community we would adopt the right of self-determination as our principle guide.
This meant that military victories by minorities were unimportant as far as the national aspirations of the majority was concerned. Democracy would be the deciding factor. In 1948 there was 600,000 Jews living in Palestine and 1.2 million non-Jews. In accordance with the charter of the United Nations and the basic concepts of majority rule the will of the 1.2 million non-Jews should have prevailed in Palestine. You need 50% plus 1 in a democracy to govern and Palestinian Arabs comprised 65%.
It would therefore appear that the will of the majority was subverted.
The UN Charter also includes Article-80 which essentially "grandfathers" "arrangements" which the UN inhereted upon its formation. One of these arrangements was provisions for a JEWISH NATIONAL HOME, wherein Jews would be encouraged to immigrate to the exclusion of non-Jews. How do you have a "Jewish National Home" without Jews?
Occupied land? It would not be occupied, if the PALs would not have attacked.
It's this U.S. policy, not Israeli policy, that really keeps the Palestinians stateless and oppressed."
The Palestinians could have 97% of what hey wanted back but Arafat turned the Israelies down. Arab states have used the Palestinians f rot heir own anti-Israelie interests and that's something Chernus conveniently omits. They allowed these Palestinians to live in poverty in refugee camps for all these years, never coming to terms with Israel as a state that should even exist. With the exception of Egypt and Anwar Sadat, who had to make peace with Israel because of one failed war after another against Israel none of these arab countries cared enough about Palestinians to even consider Israel as a state that should exist.
If this country or anyone wants real peace in that region, all parties concerned should be locked in a room and not let out until they come to a consensus and an agreement that peace is of the utmost importance and come to terms with each other. Until then, there is no peace. Nothing will bring peace either until the Palestinians stop killing each other. If they can't live in peace among themselves, how can they possibly live in peace with anyone else?
That was tried at Camp David. Arafat turned down all offers and flew home to be met by celebrating crowds and flowers.
never missing an opportunity to miss an opportunity.
I hate to break it to you, but these days - attacks from Gaza do come out of the blue. Gazans have seen, first hand, how their violence has led to a worsening situation. There's a reason most Palestinians don't support the rockets and it's the same reason support for Hamas keeps dropping in each subsequent poll.
Why are Palestinians oppressed in Arab nations? Is that also because of Israel and the US? Why aren't their suicide attacks against Arab states who treat Palestinians far worse? There are many, many questions you don't care to cover. This could have been a nuanced piece and instead, it was just your typical hit-job against Israel.
Another Zionist myth is the attempt to paint the conflict in neutral symmetrical terms, as if there are "two sides" equally suffering.
But there is no symmetry between the taker of land and those from whom it is taken.
Nor is there any symmetry between the side that uses its overwhelming military superiority to inflict thousands of civilian casualties and the suicide bomber who kills a few dozen.
It’s the symmetry of heavily armed thieves complaining that the lightly or unarmed victim is fighting back.
But hey, “both sides" have used violence, right?
Despite the natural desire to be even-handed, it is difficult not to place greater blame on those who have taken the land, have engaged in a much greater level of violence, and have even stooped to denying the very existence of those it displaced.
I am sympathetic to Jews that were fleeing persecution, and it all really comes down to this:
“We took the land without your consent because we had no other choice, we were facing extermination in Europe.”
Okay, I get it.
But I insist that Zionists be intellectually honest enough to start with “we took the land without your consent,” rather than repeating these Zionist myths about how grateful the Palestinians should have been with the UN partition agreement, or how the nasty resistance to the Zionist project was why the land was really taken.
are ya seriously implying that the Ps are innocent vicitms? LOL.
Israel simply express regret for the fact that several Egyptian personnel were killed during the encounter with the Muslim-Arab terrorists who crossed Egyptian territory in order to reach Israel and attack civilian passengers in privately owned cars and in public buses on Israel's highways.
Also, Israel promised that it would investigate - which it always does - how the Egyptian personnel were killed: by Israel, by the terrorists, by their own fire are all possibilities. This time, however, Israel promised Egypt that it will conduct its investigation with the Egyptian authorities.
Now, to build a whole "narrative" and "analysis" in the form of this article on the basis of no-facts is a bit strange, or is it...??
Hamas Charter
"our struggle against the Jews is extremely wide-ranging and grave, so much so that it will need all the loyal efforts we can wield, to be followed by further steps and reinforced by successive battalions from the multifarious Arab and Islamic world, until the enemies are defeated and Allah’s victory prevails. "
...peaceful solutions, and the international conferences to resolve the Palestinian problem, are all contrary to the beliefs of the Islamic Resistance Movement.
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/hamas.asp
You PALS fight like women.
So answer this: If the angle Gabriel visited Mohamad why did the angle have to work him over to get him to do what he wanted. Seem to me the Angle (Demond) had to beat the crap out of him to get him to do his biding.
The kind Islamo liberal Mutual admiration sociaty pretends doesn't exist or excuse it on the basis of automatic nobility of Arab freedom fighters:
Hamas Charter.
"it has come to pass and no one objects, that Jews stood behind World War I, so as to wipe out the Islamic Caliphate. They collected material gains and took control of many sources of wealth.
They.... established the League of Nations in order to rule the world by means of that organization.
They [Jews}also stood behind World War II..."
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/hamas.asp
Hows that for blatant Judeophobia, racism and gross intolerance!!!