November 19, 2004

left, right, right, wrong ... not so simple

I have no idea who wrote this, but the anonymous second comment on a recent post of Ebony's is perfect: "Why can't the left understand that just as so many of us in the US both love America and want to change its behaviors, so too do many of us Jews and even many Israelis love Israel and want desperately to change its policies?"

There's a story told about one of the early founders of the modern state of Israel - Ben Gurion, Weitzman, someone like that. He was asked, "Why do the Jews need to settle in Israel, when there are so many other parts of the globe that are less bitterly contested?" He answered, "Why do you drive across town to visit your mother when there are plenty of old ladies right down the street?"

I don't entirely agree with the premise, being enough of a wanderer myself not to be tied to any particular acre and unreligious enough not to worry about whether those few square miles on the edge of Africa are specially destined for my people. But the State of Israel is a reality now, no matter how many Arab countries wish to ignore it, and I do think it may be important for Jews to have a tangible country like other peoples. I just wish the government of said country would realize that they can't claim any special holiness exempting them from the standards of humanitarian conduct by which other nations are judged. In fact, the opposite should apply; a people who collectively remember being alternately welcomed and abused in the strange lands of our Diaspora ought to have a special responsibility to our neighbors.

It does bother me, as the anonymous poster said, that support of Israel tends to reside with right-wing conservatives and that the left often verge on anti-Semitism in defense of Palestinians. It's especially annoying because both sides seem to have all the wrong reasons. The right too often support Israel, it seems, because they like the military stories where a tiny country showed unexpected strength against bigger neighbors, and they don't want to see any of the land gains from those wars abridged. Even weirder is the idea - and I have heard this said almost this baldly - that the Jews are God's chosen people and thus Christians ought to be nice to them or else God's gonna git'em. Or something like that.

On the other hand, the left tend to be against Israel for its abuse of those poor "innocent" Palestinians, forgetting that if you kill someone with a rock or a suicide bomb, it's not unfair for his buddies to hit back, even if their weapons are bigger.

Jews have a right to have a country. It wasn't right to get it by summarily kicking Palestinians off land where they had been for generations. On the other hand the land of Palestine was divided into a Jewish and an Arab state (Jordan) which, as no one ever seems to notice, doesn't exactly welcome Palestinians either. That division by fiat of the occupying British empire may not have been the best way to solve that issue (dividing India from Pakestan along religious lines hasn't been a total success either) but I can't think of a much better solution offhand. Similarly today, Jews expanding into areas formerly agreed to be Palestinian are wrong, raids into refugee camps are wrong, suicide bombers are wrong, groups dedicated to the total destruction of Israel are wrong, there is wrong-doing galore and no shortage of blame to be shared.

None of that invalidates the right of Israel to exist and of Israelis to be safe in their country or the rights of Palestinians to have homes that are safe and to be treated with the same dignity as any other humans.

Also, none of the issues involved are simple or binary enough to be addressed by a simple right/left split in American politics. And none of this is what I meant to write today, but that comment was so perfectly expressed that it set me off.

Posted by dichroic at November 19, 2004 09:04 AM
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