Talking About Israel
March 18, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Democrats are railing at just about everything President Bush does, with one prominent exception: Mr. Bush’s crushing embrace of Israel.
There is no serious political debate among either Democrats or Republicans about our policy toward Israelis and Palestinians. And that silence harms America, Middle East peace prospects and Israel itself.
Within Israel, you hear vitriolic debates in politics and the news media about the use of force and the occupation of Palestinian territories. Yet no major American candidate is willing today to be half as critical of hard-line Israeli government policies as, say, Haaretz, the Israeli newspaper.
Three years ago, Israel’s minister of justice spoke publicly of photos of an elderly Palestinian woman beside the ruins of her home, after it had been destroyed by the Israeli army. He said that they reminded him of his own grandmother, who had been dispossessed by the Nazis. Can you imagine an American cabinet secretary ever saying such a thing?
One reason for the void is that American politicians have learned to muzzle themselves. In the run-up to the 2004 Democratic primaries, Howard Dean said he favored an “even-handed role” for the U.S. — and was blasted for being hostile to Israel. Likewise, Barack Obama has been scolded for daring to say: “Nobody is suffering more than the Palestinian people.” In contrast, Hillary Rodham Clinton has safely refused to show an inch of daylight between herself and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
A second reason may be that American politicians just don’t get it. King Abdullah of Jordan spoke to Congress this month and observed: “The wellspring of regional division, the source of resentment and frustration far beyond, is the denial of justice and peace in Palestine.” Though widely criticized, King Abdullah was exactly right: from Morocco to Yemen to Sudan, the Palestinian cause arouses ordinary people in coffee shops more than almost anything else.
You can argue that Arabs pursue a double standard, focusing on repression by Israelis while ignoring greater human rights violations by fellow Arabs. But the suffering in Palestinian territories, while not remotely at the scale of brutality in Sudan or Iraq, is still tragically real.
B’Tselem, a respected Israeli human rights organization, reports that last year Palestinians killed 17 Israeli civilians (including one minor) and six Israeli soldiers. In the same period, B’Tselem said, Israeli forces killed 660 Palestinians, triple the number killed in 2005. Of the Palestinians killed in 2006, half were not taking part in hostilities at the time they were killed, and 141 were minors.
For more than half a century, the U.S. was an honest broker in the Middle East. Presidents Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson and Ronald Reagan were warmer to Israel and Dwight Eisenhower, Jimmy Carter and George H. W. Bush a bit cooler, but all sought a balance. George W. Bush has abandoned that tradition of balance.
Hard-line Israeli policies have profoundly harmed that country’s long-term security by adding vulnerable settlements, radicalizing young Palestinians, empowering Hamas and Hezbollah, isolating Israel in the world and nurturing another generation of terrorists in Lebanon. The Israeli right’s aggressive approach has only hurt Israeli security, just as President Bush’s invasion of Iraq ended up harming U.S. interests.
The best hope for Israel in the long run isn’t a better fence or more weaponry; they can provide a measure of security in the short run but will be of little help if terrorists turn, as they eventually will if the present trajectory continues, to chemical, biological or radiological weapons. Ultimately, security for Israel will emerge only from a peace agreement with Palestinians. We even know what that peace deal will look like: the Geneva accord, reached in 2003 by private Israeli and Palestinian negotiators.
M. J. Rosenberg of the Israel Policy Forum headlined a recent column, “Pandering Not Required.” He wisely called on American presidential candidates instead to prove their support for Israel by pledging: “If I am elected president, I will do everything in my power to bring about negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians with the goal of achieving peace and security for Israel and a secure state for the Palestinians.”
Last summer, after Hezbollah killed three Israeli soldiers and kidnapped two others, Prime Minister Olmert invaded Lebanon and thus transformed Hezbollah into a heroic force in much of the Arab world. President Bush would have been a much better friend to Israel if he had tried to rein in Mr. Olmert. So let’s be better friends — and stop biting our tongues.
You’re invited to post your comments about this column on Mr. Kristof’s blog, www.nytimes.com/ontheground
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When a reporter from the Zionist paper of record (All the news Zionists see fit to print) writes an article like this you know the Zionists are running scared. There is finally a tsunami of anti-Zionist anti-Israel rage building in America that could lead to Zionist Pogroms. Zionists have made their treasonous bed and now they should sleep in it.
American politicians can’t say anything against israel - because of AIPAC and ADL, and they can’t win elections without AIPAC and ADL.
Something has got to give. This has been going on for too many decades now.
When I was a young fellow I saw the movie Exodus. I bought the whole story, hook, line and sinker. A few years before that they showed horrible black and white news reels at the local YMCA of what the Nazis had done to people in those camps, though it seemed at the time it was all about killing Jewish people. Then there were the wars and the amazing successes of the Israelis.
I went through decades of adult life still believe the basic line of the Israelis, and only in the last decade has it been that events gradually made me realize that small as they are in population, about 7 million, the Israelis have been having a wholly unreasonable effect on the politics of the west and they have become, if they were not always, imperialists. They have no intention at all of ever allowing the Arab people they domninate from ever having any real control of
their own affairs. The Isrealis have practiced war, opprestions, murder, theft and outright banditry against their neighbours. They have only got away with this because the governments of some of the Arab countries are corrupt, willing to finance terrorism to avoid challenging the Americans, and because most of the western populations still have a residual belief in the one time unjust and murderous oppression that the Jewish people experienced. And the governments of the west, have also corruptly avoided going a different way than the Americans, because they all realize this is about oil. It is all about oil, one fears.
Now I read that Israel is the most ill regarded country or nation on the planet. Who could have expected this only a decade ago. They have travelled far into crimes against humanity behind the cover of US support and their nearly used up legacy of popular support. It is surely time for the Americans to smarten up, cut off the military aid, and encourage the Israelis to make peace, or go it alone..
It is time this fraud against decency and humanity that calls itself Israel was disbanded. These filthy, vile, immoral, disgusting criminals should be held accountable and all their murderous, sick evil essence rejected by the decent people of the world.
Long live truth, justice, excellence, love, beauty, and compassion. Never live an essence of lies, injustice, depravity, indifference, ugliness, and cruelty called Israel. America, stop funding this abomination called Israel.
Nicholas D. Kristof’s suggestion that the United States press Israel to be more forthcoming in negotiating with the Palestinians reminds me of the story of the rabbi who gave a sermon about charity and deemed it 50 percent effective: he persuaded the poor to accept.
When has Israel been the impediment to establishing a Palestinian state?
From 1948 to 1967, the West Bank was administered by Jordan, not Israel, and a Palestinian state could have been established at the stroke of a pen. After the Six-Day War, Israel offered to return the newly acquired territories to the Arabs in exchange for recognition and peace; the response was a thunderous no.
More recently, Yasir Arafat was offered a state in almost all the West Bank, Gaza and parts of Jerusalem by Ehud Barak and then more generously by Bill Clinton, and turned it down because the offer did not include the destruction of Israel by flooding it with returning refugees.
Currently, the Palestinians are ruled by a government that is dedicated to the destruction of Israel. What would the agenda be in the dialogue that Mr. Kristof urges on Israel, a timetable for Israel’s committing suicide?
Fair-minded observers know where the roadblock to peace in the Middle East is to be found, and it is not Israel.
Nicholas D. Kristof implies that Hillary Rodham Clinton and other candidates mindlessly back the Israeli government not out of principle but fear — an insidious assertion and one at odds with reality.
After all, Senator Clinton had a front row seat through the 1990s as Israel tried to negotiate in good faith with an interlocutor who never even offered unequivocal recognition of Israel’s legitimacy. Today, the Palestinian leadership does not even hide its desire to destroy the Jewish state.
Though Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has consistently endorsed a two-state solution, the recent experiences in leaving Lebanon and Gaza have sobered many Israelis and others deeply committed to peace against making concessions unreciprocated by a partner credibly committed to peace. Clearly, Senator Clinton is wise enough to be among them.
It is good to see there are some rational individuals posting facts and thoughtful insights to counter the hateful screeds of the person calling themselves “jim”.
Iranian born journalist Amir Taheri wrote an article recently that absolutely floored me. It was titled “IS ISRAEL THE PROBLEM?” He uses this question as a vehicle to examine the “realist” foreign policy assumptions of James Baker III that solving the Israeli-Palestinian problem would magically bring peace to the Mideast. Baker could have made the effort to learn about the region and discover the actual causes behind its atrophy and discontent. Baker decided to blame it all on Israel, not once but twice.
Here’s Taheri’s summary of conflicts that Baker ignored: “All told, in the past six decades, this region has witnessed no fewer than 22 full-scale wars over territory and resources, not one of them having anything to do with Israel and the Palestinians. And these international disputes, as I mentioned at the outset, are quite apart from the uninterrupted string of domestic clashes, military coups, acts of sectarian and ethnic vengeance, factional terrorism, and other internal conflicts that have characterized the greater Middle East, not infrequently attaining impressive heights of cruelty and despoliation. Nor is that the end of it. Underlying all of this are the unmoving facts, documented at length in the annual volumes of the Arab Human Development Report, of chronic instability, severe economic underachievement, social atrophy, and cultural backwardness. The greater Middle East is the only part of the world still largely untouched by the wave of positive change that followed the end of the cold war.
The notion that all of these problems can be waved away by “solving” the Arab-Israeli conflict is thus at best a delusion, at worst a recipe for maintaining today’s wider political, diplomatic, and social paralysis.”
http://www.spme.net/cgi-bin/articles.cgi?ID=1757
(Looks like the hasbara alert has gone out.)
Sarah, is that the same Amir Taheri who told us that Iran was making their Jews wear yellow stars? The one who is represented by Benador Associates? That one?
It’s The Jews Stupid!
http://pcapostate.blogspot.com/2006/06/its-jews-stupid.html
I welcomed Nicholas Kristoff’s article in pointing the absence on the part of candidates seeking the presidency in 2008 of any discussion or taking of positions on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Better late than never!
But is anyone still oblivious to the reason why? For the candidates, there seems nothing to discuss and nothing new to take a position on. The overwhelming majority of the House and Senate of the United States, the White House and the State Department, and most of all the Defense Department have all endorsed Israeli policies of unilateral action in the Occupied Territories. They have kept a blind eye to the following: 40 years of occupation of the West Bank and Gaza; building of illegal settlements; building of large settlement blocks surrounding Jerusalem on confiscated Arab Lands such as Jabal Abu Ghnaim; building of the wall that confiscates more land, water aquifers and cuts through Palestinian towns and villages(the wall when finished, will encircle the Palestinian in an Israeli sea); house demolitions to restrict the growth of cities and towns; targeted assassinations from the air; border closures and crossings; installing and keeping 754 road blocks in the West Bank alone to control the movement of the Palestinian population; destruction of Palestinian infrastructure; nightly raids on towns and villages and taking of prisoners for whom there is no hope of trial or release; refusing to negotiate with a legitimately elected Palestinian Government and now with a Saudi brokered unity government.
American Administrations ( except possibly the Carter Administration) have failed to have the will to confront the Israeli occupation (like they did with Saddam’s occupation of Kuwait with a swift coalition). They have supported Israeli violations of International law and protected Israel via more than 35 vetoes in the Security Council in favor of Israel. They have long made the decision quietly to allow Israel to take over the Occupied Territories. They have never taken seriously the Saudi Plan of March of 2003 when 22 Arab Nations pledged to make peace with Israel, normalize relations and open borders and trade on condition of Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 border.
This is a cruel and grave injustice constantly being perpetrated against the Palestinian People. The consequences of silent inaction and laissez faire policies are now becoming crystal clear. To use Condoleezza Rice’s metaphor of human reproduction, American foreign policy on Palestine has only been thus far a miscarriage.
http://www.democracynow.org/finkelstein-benami.shtml
Derek and anyone else who is so convinced that Israel has made an effort to a sttlement with the Palestinians needs to read the transcript of the discussion between former Israeli foreign minister Shlomo Ben-Ami and Prof. Norman Finklestein . I beleive that 99.9% of Americans do not have a grasp of the facts relating to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Please refer to the link.
First, who is the idiot that stated that Clinton and the other do not kiss the AIPAC hand that feeds them? Are you an idiot? Do you watch/read the news and the endless articles of her and all the others at AIPAC events and fundraisers promising support for Israel? She is a politician and will end up her knees for anyone that promises money and support. When she thought it would win elections in the 80’s and 90’s, she supported 2 states; now that the jews have a stranglehold on the media and government, her tune has changed. Why should a people that make up 3% of our society have any bearing on our policies? Money and guilt! The zionist jews heep guilt trip after guilt trip on western society then backstab us on American issues like immigration. Wall for Israel but open borders for America they cry. What about the jews around Bush? Why are they there influencing our policies when they do not represent our interests? Leave Iraq, pull support from Israel, and disengage from the entanglments of the mideast. Iran does not threaten us just like Iraq did not. Israel on the other hand, has spies all over America, influences our media and government in a harmful way, and had mosssad agents caught cheering on 9/11 in a van loaded with incriminating items. Let the vampires of Israel feed on themselves!
Published on Sunday, March 11, 2007 by the Los Angeles Times
Why Does The Times Recognize Israel’s ‘Right to Exist’?
by Saree Makdisi
‘AS SOON AS certain topics are raised,” George Orwell once wrote, “the concrete melts into the abstract and no one seems able to think of turns of speech that are not hackneyed: Prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated henhouse.” Such a combination of vagueness and sheer incompetence in language, Orwell warned, leads to political conformity.
No issue better illustrates Orwell’s point than coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the United States. Consider, for example, the editorial in The Times on Feb. 9 demanding that the Palestinians “recognize Israel” and its “right to exist.” This is a common enough sentiment — even a cliche. Yet many observers (most recently the international lawyer John Whitbeck) have pointed out that this proposition, assiduously propagated by Israel’s advocates and uncritically reiterated by American politicians and journalists, is — at best — utterly nonsensical.
First, the formal diplomatic language of “recognition” is traditionally used by one state with respect to another state. It is literally meaningless for a non-state to “recognize” a state. Moreover, in diplomacy, such recognition is supposed to be mutual. In order to earn its own recognition, Israel would have to simultaneously recognize the state of Palestine. This it steadfastly refuses to do (and for some reason, there are no high-minded newspaper editorials demanding that it do so).
Second, which Israel, precisely, are the Palestinians being asked to “recognize?” Israel has stubbornly refused to declare its own borders. So, territorially speaking, “Israel” is an open-ended concept. Are the Palestinians to recognize the Israel that ends at the lines proposed by the 1947 U.N. Partition Plan? Or the one that extends to the 1949 Armistice Line (the de facto border that resulted from the 1948 war)? Or does Israel include the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which it has occupied in violation of international law for 40 years — and which maps in its school textbooks show as part of “Israel”?
For that matter, why should the Palestinians recognize an Israel that refuses to accept international law, submit to U.N. resolutions or readmit the Palestinians wrongfully expelled from their homes in 1948 and barred from returning ever since?
If none of these questions are easy to answer, why are such demands being made of the Palestinians? And why is nothing demanded of Israel in turn?
Orwell was right. It is much easier to recycle meaningless phrases than to ask — let alone to answer — difficult questions. But recycling these empty phrases serves a purpose. Endlessly repeating the mantra that the Palestinians don’t recognize Israel helps paint Israel as an innocent victim, politely asking to be recognized but being rebuffed by its cruel enemies.
Actually, it asks even more. Israel wants the Palestinians, half of whom were driven from their homeland so that a Jewish state could be created in 1948, to recognize not merely that it exists (which is undeniable) but that it is “right” that it exists — that it was right for them to have been dispossessed of their homes, their property and their livelihoods so that a Jewish state could be created on their land. The Palestinians are not the world’s first dispossessed people, but they are the first to be asked to legitimize what happened to them.
A just peace will require Israelis and Palestinians to reconcile and recognize each other’s rights. It will not require that Palestinians give their moral seal of approval to the catastrophe that befell them. Meaningless at best, cynical and manipulative at worst, such a demand may suit Israel’s purposes, but it does not serve The Times or its readers.
And yet The Times consistently adopts Israel’s language and, hence, its point of view. For example, a recent article on Israel’s Palestinian minority referred to that minority not as “Palestinian” but as generically “Arab,” Israel’s official term for a population whose full political and human rights it refuses to recognize. To fail to acknowledge the living Palestinian presence inside Israel (and its enduring continuity with the rest of the Palestinian people) is to elide the history at the heart of the conflict — and to deny the legitimacy of Palestinian claims and rights.
This is exactly what Israel wants. Indeed, its demand that its “right to exist” be recognized reflects its own anxiety, not about its existence but about its failure to successfully eliminate the Palestinians’ presence inside their homeland — a failure for which verbal recognition would serve merely a palliative and therapeutic function.
In uncritically adopting Israel’s own fraught terminology — a form of verbal erasure designed to extend the physical destruction of Palestine — The Times is taking sides.
If the paper wants its readers to understand the nature of this conflict, however, it should not go on acting as though only one side has a story to tell.
Saree Makdisi, a professor of English and comparative literature at UCLA, writes frequently about the Middle East.
Copyright 2007 Los Angeles Times