Criticize Israel and You are an anti-Semite!
Rosa Brooks wrote an interesting column in the Los Angeles Times on September 1st. Read the article and comment on what you think of her analysis that it is impossible to have an honest discussion about Israel in this country. While you are reading this remember I am not fishing this out from some archives from the past, this article was published after this course began. To read the article click here:
13 Comments:
It made me smile to think that respected and watched people in Israel can criticize their own government yet this is wrong in America. I would of guessed the other way around in any other situation.
I guess this just goes to show no matter how civilized or how much progress we think we are, there's always more progress needed. Most of the US elites in power currently prefer backing Israel. To allow open criticism may make the average civilian question our support of Israel thereby hurting the current politics. Does America truly want a peaceful Middle East, even at the cost of the US losing power or do they want a Middle East that cooperates and follows America's example/directives?
As long as people identify themselves as a member of a particular nation or group then there will be these tensions and conflicts. The US is predominately a Christian white nation which identifies closer with Jews than Muslims. Even the average middle class white person who can't locate Iran on a map would probably feel more comfortable next to a Jew than a Muslim, as sad as that is.
People get stuck on abstract labels which always leaves out a lot of truth. The Human Rights Watch (HRW) went beyond/outside the label most people probably thought them as. They expected Roth to criticize terrorists, dictator nations, and such. Instead, Roth's group saw human rights violations being done by our ally. The HRW broke the people's label of the group by sticking to truth and reality. So, the people gave them the opposite label automatically of being anti-semitic.
Can people shift their perspective from living with labels, ideas, and group identities to living in reality and truth? Because all nations aren't always correct so to label any of them as the right one or the wrong one is going to inherently cause conflicts with truth.
The US is only hurt now because of denouncing and ignoring HRW's report. Everyone in the world questioning the US's moral legitimacy will now trust us even less. Those who already hate the US and Israel will have more support. US/Israel supporters are in a bad position to defend themselves unless they resort to calling the report anti-semitic.
I agree with Brooks' position that it is very difficult, if not impossible, to have honest debate and discussion in America about Isreal. Oddly enough, it seems that, in America, the backlash one can experience from criticizing Israeli policy can be far worse than what one might recieve for criticizing our own government. Speak out against US foreign policy and you're simply "supporting terrorism"...but when you criticize Israel, not only are you a terrorist, but you're an anti-semite, too!
Also, in addition to the threat of being labeled as anti-semitic, there is another factor that is stifling discussion: the lack of unbiased US media coverage of the Arab/Israeli conflict. If the majority of US news publications (both right and left) fail to present boths sides of the story and accurately depict the conflict, how can intelligent discussion occur? Someone who only gets their news from American sources is likely to develop the opinion that "Israel can do no harm" and will have no real motivation to dig deeper into the issues.
I'm sure there are many reasons as to why people are so quick to attack those who criticize Israel. For one thing, Israel's current military action in Lebanon somewhat mirrors America's presence in Iraq. Those who disagree with Israel's actions are likely to disagree with America's, so naturally the US will want to make the military responses of both countries seem justified.
However, I'm still curious as to why people are so quick to use the term "anti-semitic" rather than something less harsh (but probably more accurate) like "anti-israel"...
The fact that we cannot criticize issues such as Israel speaks wonders about our American culture, and drearily foreshadows what will become of it. When I say that as a culture, we are ignorant, apathetic, lazy, stubborn, and unnecessarily egotistical, I am not attacking America or Americans. I am simply making observations about the current state of things. Any 7th grade science student could tell you that the first step to solving a problem is observing the world, and posing questions. The only way to make a situation, a product, or a perspective more prosperous, positive, or beneficial is to analyze and question—to tease fantasy and play the devil’s advocate, to try and err. Our stubbornness and our ignorance is the heartbeat of our hypocrisy and worldwide critique, and it will get us nowhere. In many ways we end up no better of an organization than Hezbollah, so blindly supporting something that we have too much pride to question.
Frances M
Ottoman Empire conquered Palestine in 1516; thus, it was under Ottoman control for roughly 400 years. The dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire occurred post WWI. The Arab involvement in the state of Palestine was, essentially, tantamount to that which the Turks held; the Arabs shared both civilian and military facets of the government. Arabs held high offices such as Prime Minister and Ministers, commanders of entire divisions and ambassadors. So it’s not like Arabs had no citizenship rights in Palestine before the quartering of the Ottoman Empire. Israel was established in 1948, not even half a generation after the demise of the Ottoman Empire. One of the fundamental hindrances in understanding the conflict is by not underscoring the long history of the area, particularly Palestinian involvement in self governance, which was terminated after the British Mandate. The Brits didn’t even have the territory for more than 50 years, so to me it seems pointless to substantiate statements based on only a modicum of British rule rather than the 400 years of Ottoman control.
Being called an anti-Semite for criticism reminds me greatly of the months after 9/11 and the lead up to the war in Iraq. If you went against what the government wanted to do every political pundit would rail on you for being un-American and unpatriotic. This same "with us or against us" mentality is being applied to Israel because it is the view of many people that we are fighting a common enemy, the terrorists. So, if you criticize Israel you are basically saying that you want the terrorists to win.
The inability to criticize Israel, or also the US government for that matter, puts many people in a precarious position. On one hand, you need the ability to criticize in order to point out what they are doing wrong. However, no one wants to be blasted in the media for being anti-Semitic so no one is willing to speak out. If no one criticizes someone doing something wrong, then the wrong doer is essentially given a pass to do whatever it wants since it appears to them and to everyone else that no one has a problem with it.
As Rosa Brooks states in her article, the ability to have a real conversation about Mideast peace has been severely curtailed by the social dogma of speaking out against Israel. Reflecting upon personal experience, the idea that Israel can do no wrong and that any who speak against Israel at the very least hold some kind of anti-Semetic belief is a strong current in American society. As Ted Prettyman pointed out in his response this is the same kind of current that began to flow after 9/11. Both citizens and congressmen became caught in this current and partially due to the lack of objective criticism the US was lead into a war that in retrospect was unjustified. Fortunately, that current has lost much of its force and now there seems to be a under current forming in the opposite direction where many people are once again criticizing the government and its past decisions.
What I find to be curious is why no such under current has ever formed over the Israel issue. How is it that Israel came to be viewed as an immaculate state that could do no wrong? Certainly it helps that the US media hardly mentions and downplays the negative factors of Israel but I believe that there is a deeper level to the US aversion to criticism of Israel. Given, Israel is one of the US’s staunchest allies, but this does not suffice as a reason for the simple objective observations of Israeli actions to be registered as anti-Semitic rhetoric.
My theory starts on the premise that the US school system has done an excellent job in educating the population of the Holocaust and the atrocities committed against the Jewish people during WWII. In my personal experience and through my own observations the US educational system engrained in the population the idea that the US saved the Jewish people from almost certain annihilation. In this regard, Israel has been turned into the image of a child of who without US protection can not survive in such a brutal world. It is this guardian or parent to child attitude which causes the nonsensical claims of anti-Semitism against objective criticism of Israel. I am sure everyone has had an experience with a parent who believes that their child can do no wrong and anyone who claims that their child has done wrong is obviously making unjustified and preposterous claims. These parents often tend to overlook the obvious nature of their child’s transgressions in a very annoying manner to any objective observer. Although I applaud the US’s accomplishment in education its people about the Holocaust, I fear that the resulting attitude towards Israel has had and will continue to have major ramifications upon US foreign policy and domestic attitude towards Israel.
Like many of the other posted comments I agree with Brooks in stating the difficulty of having a true debate about Israel in the US. Yet this seems normal to me because since George W. Bush has become president (also about the time I started following politics) it seems as though Americans have been blindly following their government. Immediately following 9/11 there was blind patriotism, when it was considered patriotic to hate Arabs and still is to a certain extent. The same thing applies now US citizens are just blindly following their government's policy towards Israel. I find this ironic because supposedly America is a country where people are supposed to question their government and are free to speak their minds without being slandered by political pundits and the very leaders they elected.
Additionally, it seems as though the world community especially the United States is still trying not to offend Israel because of the unthinkable tragedy endured by the Jewish people during World War II. While the Holocaust was horrible, unimaginable, and should have never occured people should not be afraid to offend the Jewish people by telling them when they make a mistake or have gone too far.
In response to peter-park's question of " Does America truly want a peaceful Middle East, even at the cost of the US losing power or do they want a Middle East that cooperates and follows America's example/directives?" I feel that the US wants a Middle East that is friendly to the US whether or not there is peace. Hence why the US unconditionally backs Israel, if there was a Palestinian state it most likely they would not support the United States.
The way I see it, the reason this sentiment is so common among Americans is the black and white manner in which the conflict is presented to them. The conservative talking heads, and as a result many regular citizens, adhere strictly to the idea that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. As red blooded, freedom-loving Americans, our enemy is the nebulous "terrorist." Naturally, because some Palestinians can be classified as such, Israel is our friend. With a world as black and white as this, there's little distinction between "Palestinian," "Arab," and "terrorist" in the mind of the average American.
Once Israel's status as our friend is secured and their tireless efforts to stamp out “terrorism” are chronicled, they can do no wrong. Our mutual enemy on the other hand (the Arabs/Palestinians/terrorists) can do only wrong. If an Israeli bomb kills 20 civilians, so be it. As a friend to America, they must have had their reasons, right? The amount blind faith put into Israeli judgment by Americans as a whole is truly staggering to me. Even the most jingoistic among us will at least tolerate criticism of our own government, but the mere examination of the actions of another country is considered dangerous and hateful? It is a strange world we live in.
The climate of discourse on this matter is such that any source that shows even a hint of neutrality cannot help but considered wildly pro-Palestine and by extension, anti-Israel. As Parks wrote, any strong criticism of Israel is met by excoriation at the hands of the neoconservative media. If any mainstream pundit were to do this, it would be nothing short of career suicide. Dr. Khan’s anecdote about how anti-Semitic these same conservatives can be after a couple of beers made me think: I can only imagine what they must say about Muslims.
Argumentum ad hominem. This phrase defines the type of assaults launched by political pundits against critics of Israel. Rather than attack the assertions of the critics, pro-Israel commentators often assail the character of the critics, in this particular case Ken Roth and Human Rights Watch. The attackers accuse the critics of Anti-Semitism to convince the general public that the criticism stems from person feelings about Judaism rather than actions by Israel. I believe it is important to recognize though that the utilization of this logical fallacy has not been restricted to Republicans and Neoconservatives. It is commonplace to assault the character of political opponents, with or without proper proof.
If critics of the current American policy toward Israel truly believe that unconditional support of Israel should be withdrawn, they should stand up and fight (with civil disobedience not violence) for their beliefs – like Martin Luther King Jr. and Abbie Hoffman. Our political system should be free from personal assaults, but since they do occur, those who disagree must weather them. Our republic is not perfect and we do not have to settle with its current form and structure, but in the absence of real change, we must live with what we have. At least, “W” cannot put Ken Roth or Rosa Brooks to death for opposing him (I am not cynical enough to put “yet” here).
Rosa Brooks' article very eloquently brought to light the bias that most all US media has in regards to the Arab-Israeli conflict. I believe this incessant pro-Israeli bias that had been engrained in all Americans by the media is not only the source of great hostility towards people defending the Palestinian side, as Brooks argued, but also creates a permanent perspective in which Americans are forced to view the situation.
Because the US is the most powerful nation in the world, and it is allied with Israel, it is the main player in this conflict. And because the American media is giving the news through an Israeli lens, the American people are forced to look at the conflict from an Israeli persective. What is the result of this? We are misinformed, as illustrated in the article. Top journalists and writers for news organizations and papers across the nation attacked Roth for his statement against the Israeli army, when clearly they had no idea what is really going on over there.
But what is really scary about all of this biased media is that we do not realize the damage it will cause. If we never see images of the destruction being done to the Palestinians we will always see the Muslims as the bad guys and instead of trying to come up with solutions to fix the situation, we will just be angry and the vicious cycle of attacks will not end. Our misinformation is fueling Israeli violence towards the Palestians. If the American public sees what is really going on, a peace and understanding could occur.
This post has been removed by the author.
If there is anything that can be learned from this current Administration, it is that open dialogue can be a rare commodity in American discourse. Although discussing Israel or American policy towards Israel has been taboo for longer than George W. Bush has been in the White House, this concept continues to strengthen under his Presidency. I do not express this opinion as an introduction to an overly disparaging critique of Israel or Israeli action, but rather as a concerned American citizen. The United States is at one of the most precarious times in its existence as its hegemonic status continues to cause a conflict between promoting its own national interests and its responsibilities as the world’s lone superpower. Nowhere is this concept more evident than in the Middle East today. The U.S. has a plethora of national interests in the region including the security of the flow of hydrocarbons, the stability of Iraq (and Afghanistan although that is not in the Middle East) and the possibility of Iran eventually developing nuclear weapons.
The interests listed are related to the general stability of the Middle East of which the Arab-Israeli conflict is a key issue. Additionally, the Arab-Israeli conflict is considered an arena in the War on Terror and the U.S. listing of Arab groups such as Hamas as terrorist organizations results in the U.S. having direct interests in a settlement to the decades old conflict. This fact is complicated by our unfaltering allegiance to Israel, our closest ally in the region. While it is always extremely important for a nation to support its stated allies, this should not be done unreasonably and at the expense of our own interests. Israel is not infallible, yet successive American administrations and politicians do not act as if this is the case. I am unaware of any other relationship that the U.S. is involved in where a country that has no strategic interests for the U.S. has determined so much of our foreign policy. (The only other case that could potentially rival the current situation is the possibility of going to war with China if it invades Taiwan, but this has not yet occurred and is therefore a moot point.) Israel does not possess oil reserves and is not blessed with any other unique economic endowment. In fact, the nation of roughly eight million people continues to be the largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid, ahead of only Egypt in the entire world. Egypt’s massive financial assistance from the U.S. is directly tied to its continued diplomatic recognition and peace with Israel. I am not anti-Semitic nor do I suggest breaking ties with Israel, I am only pro-U.S. and put U.S. interest first before any other nation, no matter who it may be. Therefore, the relationship between the U.S. and Israel should be open to dialogue and people who see flaws with the current position of one-sidedness towards Israel should not be automatically labeled anti-Semitic, because that is demagoguery, of which the Jews have suffered more throughout history than any other group. We do not count on any other nation for our security and by that logic should also not let our relationship with any nation threaten our security unreasonably.
Totalitarian phenomenon followed
Is being Anti-Semitic and not being a patriot the same thing? This article explains how biased the media can be. It is essential to realize the importance of how agenda setting can create a totalitarian environment. People today are quick to judge because the lack of education and the amount of garbage on television we call news. Since the phenomenon of television we are being told what to think. As an avid CNN viewer it is very difficult to assume that the news is not being biased or how many of the facts are incorrect.
This article show just that, the human right’s watch did just that stating facts can be detrimental to the current society. Free-thinking is dangerous, and the government is very subtle in letting us know this. The lack of proper education is hurting society only because that people who push themselves in getting an education are exploiting those who don't. Government wants to see there agenda being pursued and they pay the best in business to create there strategy. Today there are a limited amount of free-lance media outlets because we created a society that money pushes the agenda, not the voice.
Post a Comment
<< Home