11/11/2022 0 Comments Ireal pro disappeared![]() Since World War II, no state has suffered so cruel a reversal of fortunes as Israel. Anatol Lieven of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace argues that what is happening between Israelis and Palestinians is a "tremendous obstacle to democratization because it inflames all the worst, most regressive aspects of Arab nationalism and Arab culture." In other words, the conflict drives the pathology, and not the other way around - which is like the streetfighter explaining to the police: "It all started when this guy hit back." And so there are ever more creative addenda to the well-wrought root-cause theory. Yet, as Sigmund Freud reminded us, obsessions tend to spread. "Put pressure on Israel" "cut economic and military aid" "serve them notice that we will not condone their brutalities" - these have been the boilerplate homilies, indeed the obsessions, of the chattering classes and the foreign-office establishment for decades. Because the "obstinate" and "recalcitrant" Israelis are the main culprits, they must be punished and pushed back for the sake of peace. In other words, the democratic melee has never stopped at the water's edge.Īnother soft version is the "root-cause" theory in its many variations. In previous years, Poles militated in favor of Solidarity, African Americans against Apartheid South Africa, and Latvians against the Soviet Union. But let us count the ways in which subnational entities battle over the national interest: unions and corporations clamor for tariffs and tax loopholes nongovernmental organizations agitate for humanitarian intervention and Cuban Americans keep us from smoking cheroots from the Vuelta Abajo. And behind this charge lurks a more general one - that it is somehow antidemocratic for subnational groups to throw themselves into the hurly-burly of politics when it comes to foreign policy. This view attributes, as has happened so often in history, too much clout to the Jews. Thus, in the United States, the "Jewish lobby" and a cabal of neoconservatives have bamboozled the Bush administration into a mindless pro-Israel policy inimical to the national interest. One motif is the "wagging the dog" theory. Hence the "statocidal" conclusion that Israel's birth, midwifed by both the United States and the Soviet Union in 1948, was a grievous mistake, grandiose and worthy as it may have been at the time. According to this dispensation, it is Israel as such, and not its behavior, that lies at the root of troubles in the Middle East. The more recent hard version zeroes in on Israel's very existence. ![]() It is the standard fare of editorials around the world, not to mention the sheer venom oozing from the pages of the Arab-Islamic press. The first, the soft version, blames Israel first and most for whatever ails the Middle East, and for having corrupted U.S. Admired all the way into the 1970s as the state of "those plucky Jews" who survived against all odds and made democracy and the desert bloom in a climate hostile to both liberty and greenery, Israel has become the target of creeping delegitimization. ![]()
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