Ira Chernus: Israel's "Pathology"
[Ira Chernus is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Read more of his writing on Israel, Palestine and American Jews on his blog.]
Nobody seems to know just what Barack Obama said to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when the two met recently at the White House. In fact, when it comes to Middle East policy, nobody seems to know much of anything about what goes on inside the White House. I've heard more than one Washington insider say that this administration is totally tight-lipped on the subject.
From the outside, it looks like Obama and his advisers are drifting without a rudder, unable to guide themselves, much less the Israelis and Palestinians, toward the peace the president says he's committed to. Pundits chalk it up to the administration's ineptitude or the power of the Israeli lobby or the chaotic state of Palestinian politics, or all of the above.
Perhaps, though, none of these factors ultimately make much difference. Perhaps it matters not a whit what the US or the Palestinians do, because the Israeli government and the bulk of Jewish Israeli voters are just too sick to move toward a just peace. At least that's one man's opinion.
The Jewish Israeli body politic is diseased, that one man writes, because it has not adjusted to the Jews' reentry into history with a state of their own. Too many Jews are still stuck in the ancient feeling of powerlessness and victimhood.
Former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin told Israelis that their country is militarily powerful, and neither friendless nor at risk. They should therefore stop thinking and acting like victims. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, on the other hand, says that the whole world is against Israel and that Israelis are at risk of another Holocaust. That message of Jewish weakness and victimhood appeals to enough voters to keep him in power...
... Just look at the front page of any Israeli newspaper on any given day, where a surprising percentage of the stories answer the same central question: Who is threatening / hating / vilifying Israel and the Jews today? Iran, with its supposedly terrifying nuclear threat, continues to make the front page nearly every day. And Israel remains obsessed with its fear of the Goldstone Report - written by an eminent Zionist jurist who has now been magically transformed into an "enemy of Israel" - when the rest of the world has long since forgotten it...
Read entire article at Truthout
Nobody seems to know just what Barack Obama said to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when the two met recently at the White House. In fact, when it comes to Middle East policy, nobody seems to know much of anything about what goes on inside the White House. I've heard more than one Washington insider say that this administration is totally tight-lipped on the subject.
From the outside, it looks like Obama and his advisers are drifting without a rudder, unable to guide themselves, much less the Israelis and Palestinians, toward the peace the president says he's committed to. Pundits chalk it up to the administration's ineptitude or the power of the Israeli lobby or the chaotic state of Palestinian politics, or all of the above.
Perhaps, though, none of these factors ultimately make much difference. Perhaps it matters not a whit what the US or the Palestinians do, because the Israeli government and the bulk of Jewish Israeli voters are just too sick to move toward a just peace. At least that's one man's opinion.
The Jewish Israeli body politic is diseased, that one man writes, because it has not adjusted to the Jews' reentry into history with a state of their own. Too many Jews are still stuck in the ancient feeling of powerlessness and victimhood.
Former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin told Israelis that their country is militarily powerful, and neither friendless nor at risk. They should therefore stop thinking and acting like victims. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, on the other hand, says that the whole world is against Israel and that Israelis are at risk of another Holocaust. That message of Jewish weakness and victimhood appeals to enough voters to keep him in power...
... Just look at the front page of any Israeli newspaper on any given day, where a surprising percentage of the stories answer the same central question: Who is threatening / hating / vilifying Israel and the Jews today? Iran, with its supposedly terrifying nuclear threat, continues to make the front page nearly every day. And Israel remains obsessed with its fear of the Goldstone Report - written by an eminent Zionist jurist who has now been magically transformed into an "enemy of Israel" - when the rest of the world has long since forgotten it...