I woke up this morning and looked at the news. You know what? I don’t want to write about Israel. I’ve already said what needs to be said. Whether you oppose Israel’s policies or you support them, you need to step out of the American conversation and look at things clearly. Try looking at things this way for just a moment:
Indeed, the parallels between Israel and — gulp — North Korea are becoming pretty eerie. True, Israel’s economy is thriving and North Korea’s is not. That said, both countries are diplomatically isolated except for their ties to a great power benefactor. Both countries are pursuing autarkic policies that immiserate millions of people. The majority of the populaion in both countries seem blithely unaware of what the rest of the world thinks. Both countries face hostile regional environments. Both countries keep getting referred to the United Nations. And, in the past month, the great power benefactor is finding it more and more difficult to defend their behavior to the rest of the world.
The American conversation doesn’t see this. It is almost totally blind to it. Israel is not North Korea. There is nothing in North Korea worth preserving or fighting for. Its regime and its ideology are irredeemable. But, as far as world opinion goes, Israel is not far removed from North Korea. Even Israel’s refusal to sign the non-proliferation treaty puts them in a small club that includes North Korea. Israel is getting a lot of good advice from people who want the best for them. But it’s up to the American government (and its people) to demand that Israel begins taking that advice, because it is quite evident that they will not do so willingly.
” Even Israel’s refusal to sign the non-proliferation treaty puts them in a small club that includes North Korea.”
and India and Pakistan. The analogy to North Korea is ridiculous.
but you don’t bother to explain why it is ridiculous. In some ways, the analogy doesn’t hold up, but my point here is not to argue for the analogy but to warn of the resonance it has.
I don’t know what “resonance” means in this context, but it sounds like a fancy term for “what everyone wants to believe”.
I believe that the international critique of Israel is significantly weakened by the counter-factual argument that it is somehow out-of-step with the “civilized” nations of the world – as if the USA and NATO were not regularly machine gunning civilians in a nation close to both Israel and Turkey or as if Turkish government had any interest in human rights itself
http://www.payvand.com/news/10/may/1154.html
What Israel is doing in Gaza and WestBank is evil, leave it at that.
The ‘everybody does it’ defense has never once been convincing in the history of the world.
But, that’s irrelevant. In a war of perceptions, Israel is getting soundly defeated. But this is very predictable. And, it’s basically deserved.
Anytime an analogy is used, there are always ways to argue it. This analogy is not to prove that Israel IS North Korea but rather how it is like North Korea. And as a country that is politically isolated in the world community Israel is like North Korea. And it uses its isolation to motivate its population, and acts aggressively beyond its borders to quell dissent within.
But Israel has hardly any Koreans living there as opposed to North Korea, which has mostly Koreans. And North Korea makes no religious claims on its sovereignty. And Korea has better May Day parades. So no claims here that Israel produces good kim chee.
The everybody does it defense is one of the lame efforts of the Netanyahu government, but that’s not my point at all. I’m not defending Israel – in fact, if it turned out that the entire riot on the boat was staged it would not surprise me at all. What I’m objecting to are the pious homilies of, for example, European powers who are strip mining African fish resources because they can, lining up to trade with Chinese and Russian firms despite ongoing genocides, and so on. These remind me of all the principled attempts to arrest US officials for war crimes in Europe, while the active participation of European government officials in the same crimes seems to have fallen into the memory hole.
It’s also clear that if the European governments wanted to break the Gaza blockade, they would be easily able to do so. They choose not to, really because talk is cheap.
you have a strange way of not defending them.
I hope we don’t get to see if Turkey can ‘easily’ break the blockade.
The Turks cannot “easily” break the blockade. But if the EU or France or Germany or even Sweden wanted to break the blockade, they have navies and cargo boats and an open sea and Israel would not dare attack them.
But they watch Palestinians starve on the Med just as they watched Serbia turn into a gangster state and Bosnia get attacked. Walking away from massacres and tsk-tsking is a European speciality.
I’m with you, rootless. The analogy to North Korea is just ridiculous. For starters, does North Korea have democratic elections? A free press? The equivalent of a Haaretz that publishes scathing criticisms of its own government when it fucks things up like this?
Is Israel a brutal dictatorship whose entire population lives on the brink of starvation and complete isolation from contact with the outside world? And yes, I know what the response will be about Gaza — but the starving and isolated North Koreans didn’t choose to be ruled by a terrorist organization whose mission is to destroy another nation.
Interesting that fomenting this particularly disingenuous and useless brand of Israel-bashing is what Booman regards as “changing the subject.” I guess the Nazi comparisons will be coming up next.
Let me go over this again. I linked to Daniel W. Drezner.
And, by the way, he has a follow-up. He’s hardly a left-winger or anti-Israel. It’s his analogy.
My point is that he’s right that Israel is increasingly facing the same degree of isolation and pariah-status as the North Koreans. I said that Israel is not North Korea. That’s not the point.
The “Israel is a pariah” argument is hardly left-wing. A “left-wing” argument would start from the premise that “international law” is a PR flavoring for the exercise of power by imperial states and their associated capitalists. Certainly, the flotilla, which thanks Tun Mahathir Mohamad for his support doesn’t seem too left wing to me.
The analogy to North Korea is not at all ridiculous. Both are pariah states in the world community. Unfortunately Americans have a biased perspective on Israel because of the strong Israel lobby within the US and the perception that Israel is a ‘friend’. Israel is nobody’s friend. It does what it wants and a lot of what it does is achieved by blackmailing US Presidents.
It’s hard for me to decide whether the cliched and meaningless “pariah” shows more naivete than the tedious explanation of Israel as a “friend”, but both depend on clearly bogus theories about what motivates state acts.
You don’t have go beyond the “most every country hates North Korea and most every country hates Israel”. That analogy works. You can to offer theories as to why, but denying the obvious doesn’t make it untrue.
would you rather try to travel on an Israeli or a Tanzanian passport? From all reports, “pariah” Israelis have more effusive welcomes than friendly Tanzanians. Perhaps money and power are actually more important than is generally admitted.
Do you mean ‘Zimbabwe’?
No, I mean Tanzania. Their crime is being poor. Nobody says anything mean about them, but the couple of people I know who traveled on those passports all became familiar with the question rooms at major airports.
” Based on the number of e-mails I got from the flotilla organizers in the last 72 hours, they were dying for a confrontaion with Israeli forces.”
rootless2,
Where can I read those emails?
I’m quoting the article Booman links to.
I see.
Interesting that there is no sample of quotes or link to them. You get the impression that this was a throwaway statement to argue impartiality. My reading of it is rhetorical. I have no way of arguing the reality of it.
The facts are still that Gaza’s territorial waters are not Israel’s territorial waters. The flotilla was making its turn toward Gaza’s territorial water while still in international waters. Israel used live fire because their boarding was met with resistance. Between 10 and 20 persons on that one ship of the flotilla were killed (why is there no accurate count or list of names?).
What the flotilla was seeking is delivery of the items on the ships to Gaza. The most controversial parts of the shipment appear to be the items that would permit Gazans to have shelter — tents and construction materials. Israel has been using destruction of houses as a punitive measure for about a decade.
“Israel has been using destruction of houses as a punitive measure for about a decade.“
TarHeelDem, Israel has been using destruction of houses as a punitive measure in the Occupied Territories pretty much throughout the occupation.
Is intensely irritating. If people could limit themselves to condemning Israel’s immoral blockade of Gaza or hysterical cowboy reaction to this flotilla, it would be nice.
But to pretend that, e.g. the Russians or French or Canadians or English would never board a vessel on the high seas by force is really absurd. The French government got away with putting limpet mines on an actually peaceful Greenpeace boat and killing people, the Japanese just rammed a Sea Shepherds boat in the Antarctic seas. NATO slaughters civilians in Afghanistan on a daily basis. The absurd pretense that Israel is somehow violating a moral principle upheld by the rest of the world is pretty sickening.
The condemnations are not coming because of morality but because of the violation of international law. Israel is in the spotlight more than France or Japan because in the case of France and Japan, it was just one incident. In the case of Israel, the policy of the blockade requires them to provoke one incident after another.
Israel has a fundamental decision on its hands. Is it going to be a Jewish state and return to its pre-1967 borders (or negotiated borders)– a two-state solution. Or is it going for a one-state solution and permit full citizenship and voting rights to all Palestinians within its borders — a solution that would result in a Palestinian government. The world will not continue to allow Israel to build an apartheid state any more than it allowed that of South Africa.
If you want to talk about hypocritical BS, nothing is as galling as the failure of the US to close Guantanamo and begin the legal steps to try George Bush and Dick Cheney for war crimes. And then to maintain that Israel is more likely to make peace if it feels secure. Israel has already decided this if the choice is land or peace, it chooses land. Security is incidental, and actually hinders the peace process as it emboldens the Likud government.
Israel’s signing the Non-Proliferation Treaty is diplomatically essential to Pakistan’s signing it, which is essential to India’s signing it. And Israel should have no reluctance unless they are enabling other countries to obtain nuclear weapons.
The comparison in BooMan’s post is only that Israel is becoming more and more internationally isolated to the extent that its isolation is approaching that of North Korea. And that the US is in the same fix with regard to Israel that China is with regard to North Korea. Nothing moral at all about that argument; just a statement of the political position of these countries geopolitically.
There are two different issues.
Issue one: to me it’s quite clear that the Netanyahu government is W-in-Hebrew and whether its policies are more suicidal than immoral is difficult to judge. The moral collapse of Israeli society is truly appalling. As a former Zionist, I’m particularly horrified.
Issue two: All the pious babble about International Law, as if the USA was abiding by that law when it invaded Iraq or the Russians gave a shit about it when they murdered captured pirates or as they continue to brutalize Chechnya and so on. NATA is an occupying power in Afghanistan and I believe that international law frowns on air bombardment civilians, but there’s precious little uproar. If Israel had a significant supply of oil or was a much larger power, there is no doubt in my mind that the volume of condemnation of it as outside the civilized consensus would be significantly lower.
Many of us objected to and protested US policy in Iraq and elsewhere. So there are people who are being consistent in their point of view, even if they are an extreme minority.
On Issue 1: It is both, but in the case of international politics suicidal outweighs immoral.
On Issue 2: International law is limited by the power or willingness of sovereign governments to enforce it, just as national law is limited by the power or willingness of domestic authorities to enforce it. (See derivatives fraud, SEC, and DOJ). Your hypothetical is correct (See Saudi Arabia).
Actually, not so much. Indiscriminate bombing of civilians, yes. Collateral damage caused by a proportionate use of force against a legitimate military target, no. The argument is over whether (a) the target was legitimate, and (b) the force used was proportional.
If a military convoy takes fire from a house, the house is a legitimate target for an airstrike. If there are civilians in the house, the legal onus for endangering their lives is on the persons firing from the house, not on the convoy or the aircraft.
Yeah, it is horrible. And nasty, and brutish, and inhumane, etc. It is war, and that is why war should be a last resort, not the first, like it was for the drugstore cowboy chicken hawks that got us into Iraq to begin with.
Yeah, the US, China, Russia, and EU get away with shit because they’re too big to tangle with, or have their fingers on too many military, economic, and political buttons. While places like Somalia or Israel or Iraq get slammed because they can be. What’s your point?
Israel is hardly in the same category is Somalia or Iraq, nor does it get “slammed” nearly as much as it deserves.
“The moral collapse of Israeli society…“
Those who have suffered the devastating consequences of Zionism (including a not-that-small number of Jews) do not see a whole lot of change in morality from the pre-state period to the present. The nostalgic notion that somehow Israel was a moral state until the occupation is part of the national mythology that goes along with the Most Moral Army in the World/Only Democracy in the Middle East bs. No state that is founded by ethnically cleansing a million or so indigenous people from its territory can credibly consider itself moral.
As usual, you assume, incorrectly, that I have a political point of view that fits in your scheme.
“No state that is founded by ethnically cleansing a million or so indigenous people from its territory can credibly consider itself moral.”
I endorse your condemnation of Brazil and Turkey, China, Pakistan, India, both sides of Cyprus, Argentina, Sweden, France (Hugenots), Germany, Russia, Britain (Ulster just to start), and Israel and demand that they and all other similar nations be expelled from the civilized community of nations toute-suite.
As usual, you have to put words into my mouth, and thoughts and assumptions into my mind that I have never expressed. I have made no assumptions whatsoever about your political point of view. You made a remark about the moral collapse of Israeli society, and I pointed out that the notion that Israel was once moral, upstanding nation is nothing more than part of the standard, pathetic national mythology that people cling to in order to deny certain ugly realities. I DID make the completely reasonable inference that by referring to a moral collapse you were indicating a belief that Israeli society was once more moral than it is today.
And please don’t keep trying that childish red herring about other countries’ unfortunate histories. It doesn’t get Israel off the hook any more than “all the other kids did it too” gets little Johnny off the hook for his misdeeds, particularly since Israel has committed, and gotten off scot free with its various ethnic cleansings and other horrors in the post-WW II period when the world was supposedly more enlightened about such things than in previous times.
um….hello? What was this “great country” of ours founded by?
Um – hello? When have I ever called your country great?
Hypocrisy is not complaining loud enough at all things at the same time?
It seems to me that Americans have been relatively quiet about the vise that Israel has had on Gaza until this latest incident. (And by writing this I expect rootless2 to immediately throw out Egypt’s part in this blockade.) Was it hypocritical for Americans who complained about the lack of prosecution of Bush and his administration for war crimes to not have complained about Israel’s blockade at that time?
France’s and Japan’s attacking anti-whaling ships is a violation of international law. And Russia’s behavior in Chechnya is detestable (as is the random blowing up of trains and public spaces by Chechens in Russia).
So? There are not enough letters in the English alphabet to string together a sentence that includes all hypocrisy of all nations and all the hypocrisy that the observers of that hypocrisy lament about while being hypocritical.
I find rootless2’s outrage over the (relative) lack of outrage of the rest of the world over what is outrageous beyond the topic of discussion is a little hypocritical. rootless2 has presented a string of strawmen who could be better put to use soaking up the hypocrisy in the Gulf of Mexico.
It’s actually pretty simple: critiques of Israeli policy don’t bother me, in fact, I agree.
What irritates me is pious bullshit about “international law” and “pariah nation” and so on. Because these are not critiques of Israel, they are assertions of something that is grotesquely false.
example: “Israel’s policy in Gaza is obscenely immoral and a violation of both basic standards of morality and simple common sense”. – no problem
example: “Israel’s policy in Gaza violates international standards and marks their status as a pariah nation” – bogus.
These bother me the same way as Glenn Greenwald’s dipwit arguments about “restoring constitutional standards” bother me – they are purported critiques that are really propaganda for things that are patently false.
again, spot on, rootless. Pious, hypocritical bullshit is exactly what it is.
It’s lonely not being an Israel hater in the left blogosphere. I’ve given up on trying to make these arguments because you just get hit back with the same old sound bites you’re getting here.
For instance, any minute now you’re gonna be accused of being an “Israel right or wrong” neocon Likud-nic, because reasonable criticism of Israel is never enough for these people. It always has to devolve into hysterical accusations of Nazism, “genocide” and tripe like this North Korea comparison — or else it doesn’t go far enough.
And then there’s my personal favorite — the insufferably smug “Didn’t the Jews LEARN anything from the Holocaust?”
The Jews did learn something from the Holocaust. They learned that the good-will of the civilized world is a highly valueless commodity.
The Palestinians would be a lot better off with less good will and a stronger army.
My personal, and perennial, favorite is when Israel’s defenders accuse the entire “left blogosphere” of being “Israel haters” and then proceed to whine about what they’re about to be accused of.
That is different from Israel’s, er, thoughtful critics on the left who whine that EVERYBODY who criticizes Israel is ALWAYS being accused of anti-Semitism, how exactly?
Because as everyone known, anti-Semitism has no existence outside the minds of crazed neocon Likudnics.
Nobody denies that antisemitism exists — please produce a single claim to the contrary from the “left blogosphere”. Its existence is no evidence that criticism of Israel is antisemitic.
I’ve been called a raging antisemite on this issue especially. Normally I’m called both a Zionist and an antisemite when Israel acts up, but I’ve only been called a Zionist once this time.
No honest observer can deny that AIPAC and its allies connect criticism of Israel with antisemitism as uts default propaganda strategy. Even more explicit is their drumbeat that “antiZionism” = antisemitism. And, just to cover all the bases, that Jews who refuse to promote Zionist truisms are automatically “self-hating”. The technique is old and effective, as their Christianist counterparts learned long ago.
Who here has defended the AIPAC point of view?
Who here has suggested that anyone here has defended the AIPAC point of view? (I am glad to see that I am not the only one who is subjected to your tendency to hear things that were never said).
Israel’s policy in Gaza violates international law, and in some cases may rise to the level of crimes against humanity. That is a true statement whether or not one also in the same breath lists all the international crimes committed by the U.S., Russia, China, and everyone else. When it is time to discuss the immorality and illegality of U.S. foreign policy I do not feel compelled to also bring in Israel’s history of violations. Likewise, when it is time to discuss Israel’s violations I do not find that a failure to bring U.S. foreign policy into the conversation in any way diminishes the argument that Israel is a scoff-law nation.
You have an excellent ability to refute arguments that nobody has made.
Didn’t you say that you wanted to change the subject?
yeah, I do. I really do.
I entirely miss the point of the Korea analogy. It does nothing to clarify or to suggest a viewpoint that could help shape policy. The most damning stretch in the quote is “The majority of the populaion in both countries seem blithely unaware of what the rest of the world thinks.” From every poll, from every survey of Israel’s press coverage, the population there is far more aware of world opinion than is the US’s, and its mainstream press appears strikingly more free to wrestle with agonizing issues than the US’s.
The analogy I’ve been thinking about would be to the suicide bomber. Suicide bombers, at least some of them, probably really think they’re ending conflict, oppression, blablabla, by blowing themselves up, when to anyone else it’s obvious that they’re accomplishing the opposite. Like them, Israel seems to operate under a compulsion to blow up any prospects for peace, even though it has to know that by doing so it is destroying its sole chance of survival. It is now forcing its US sponsor to either accede to its extralegal aggression or cut its support. It is going all in on a game it clearly can’t win. One wonders, sometimes, whether Israel itself believes in its right to exist.