Here are two responses with my emphases:
Zionist apologists often come up with an argument on selective indignation. Why pick on Israel, they argue, whereas there are worse things happening elsewhere. In Darfur, in Congo, in Sri Lanka.
Michael Neumann has come up with some excellent arguments against this type of defense, mainly having to do with the fact that high trees catch a lot of wind. Israel has set itself up as the only democracy in the Middle East and as belonging to the pinnacle of human civilisation. The discrepancy between these pretences and the actual reality of the place is just too flagrant.
But I believe that something else is coming in here. And perhaps I can illustrate that with the French writer Julien Benda’s account of his main reason for becoming an active “Dreyfusard”. It was not, he says, because Dreyfus’ personal fate touched him very much. It was rather because he couldn’t stomach the fact that General Mercier tried to impose the “truth” “with his big sabre”.
Something similar explains a lot of anti-Israel activism, I believe. What happens in Darfur is terrible and so is the mess in Congo. The Singhalese army is poised to eradicate the last of the Tamil Tigers. But neither the Sudanese nor the Sri lankan government, or one of the warlords of Congo, has set up a string of PR offices around the world and has thousands of pens at their command to ‘explain’ to the world that what they are doing is entirely justified and that, in fact, black is white.
People get angry about human rights violations but they get even more angry about being systematically lied to. Human rights violations generally happen to other people and unless one personally witnesses one of these one’s concern remains a bit academic. But being lied to happens to (pre)activists personally and that arouses their rage and keeps it going. Mendacious propaganda, and being submitted to it, constitutes an assault on one’s personal dignity.
That is why I believe Israeli propaganda to be in the long run quite self defeating. Those who have been lied to for years wake up one day and are enraged about having been fooled for so long. It happened to me and I don’t believe that my experience was unique.
So let those hasbara warriors come. I have only one request: let them have a minimum of sophistication pullease because there is no satisfaction in rebutting the ‘arguments’ of the inept clods who seem to prevail in that camp. – Link
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That’s it exactly. I said something similar in a comment section elsewhere. Israel’s violations are bad, but not as bad as some, numerically speaking at least. But in the US we fund many of their violations and we are constantly being told that they are wonderful, just like us (which might be true in a way not intended), democratic, and fight their war against terror cleanly, taking as much care as possible not to hurt civilians. And for decades we were fed lies about the origins of the Palestinian refugees. (The lies, btw, never made any ethical sense. Even if the Palestinians had all left voluntarily, people have a right to return to their own homes when a war is over. But we weren’t supposed to think of that.)
There’s an interesting twist lately that I’ve seen, but only in leftwing blog comment sections – the argument is that it is wrong to criticize Israel because America stole its land from the Indians. That’s an admission of guilt – it also ignores the fact that bad as US treatment of Indians has been and still is, nobody claims that it was just or that Indians should be confined to reservations. – Link
[via Mondoweiss]
See also:
April 2, 2009 at 7:37 pm
This is where I think the reasoning gets all mangled up. It is precisely right to criticize Israel b/c America (Canada) stole its land from Indians. In Canada, for example, the gov’t recently officially apologized to the First Nations for past transgressions. But what does that mean exactly, when Stephen Harper then says absolutely nothing about ongoing Israeli war crimes and instead implies that Israel is the nation besieged, that antisemitism is the great evil of our times? When precisely that kind of action is going on NOW, that can be STOPPED, and instead of insisting on this point, genuflecting …
Same goes for the Holocaust. What does the Holocaust mean when it is so readily defiled by its primary victims?
April 2, 2009 at 8:13 pm
I should clarify that last sentence. One of the things that might emerge from the Chas Freeman fallout is a more focused criticism of the Israel Lobby – namely, recognizing that it is more a Likud Lobby of even a Lieberman Lobby. In other words a U.S. lobby that lobbies for the hard right amongst Israelis, Jews, and gentiles. These are the folks that defile the Holocaust, often in the name of the Holocaust. Perhaps driving home that distinction will open up a space for criticism of Israel that people will readily embrace – namely a criticism of the fascists and racists currently driving US/Israeli policy and relations.
April 2, 2009 at 8:19 pm
I don’t think Harper loses sleep over his own contradictions.
And the Holocaust. I’ve always considered the Shoah to be a tragedy for Humanity as a whole, as is the Palestinian Nakba (past and present), in terms of what the Palestinians are being subjected to, and in terms of the atrocities perpetrated by Fundamentalist Zionists in the Occupied Territories. Both the Shoah and the Nakba speak to Humanity’s failure at co-existence. Ultimately we are all victims of those two human catastrophes. Still, one does what one can to try to alleviate the sufferings “by constantly trying to DO things, and knowing that I am doing my best, although my best will never be good enough,” to paraphrase someone I know. But I digress … or am I? Thanks for commenting!
April 2, 2009 at 8:34 pm
I agreee that the “Israel Lobby” is a misnomer. I have read about calling it a ‘Likud’ or ‘Lieberman’ lobby but someone, I can’t remember where I read that, said that would be a misnomer as well since it would give the impression that only the right and the far-right are for such policies when in fact the colonialist mentality crosses the boundaries of left and right. Personally, I prefer the term, which I am now using, of ‘Fundamentalist Zionist Lobby’. I use ‘fundamentalist’ to differentiate from other forms of zionism such as that of Jerry Haber.
April 3, 2009 at 6:01 am
I think also the fact that it is the longest (modern) sustained attack on a population, Its been over 60 years.
Also I think that MSF (Medicins Sans Frontier) said that what happened in Gaza is the worst humanitarian disaster caused by mankind that they had witnessed… and they work in Darfur, Congo, Sri Lanka etc.
April 3, 2009 at 10:07 am
So very true, loolt!