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Like seventy million other people around the world, I watched the Joe Biden v. Sarah Palin vice presidential debate with some apprehension. I didn’t expect to learn anything new (about the issues or about each candidate), but the debate’s proximity to world events and an ever-expanding financial crisis gave it a sense of urgency that extended far beyond its importance. But I did learn something new.
Toward the middle of the debate Israel came up. One might have expected a short mention of Israel as America’s most important ally in a region invested with enormous energy and resources. But something quite different happened. In a debate where the candidates agreed about almost nothing, each fighting to distance themselves from Washington, Wall Street greed, oil companies, and corporate America, suddenly not only were they in agreement about their undying love of Israel, they were actually arguing over who was more in love!
The world markets are collapsing, Russia invades Georgia, the Taliban are back in power in Afghanistan, Pakistan is on the verge of imploding, we don’t even know if the dictator of a nuclear North Korea is alive (and, if not, who is running that country), Iran may be building a nuclear weapon, and they are crawling all over one another to pledge their allegiance to...Israel? What exactly is going on?!
Answers came from all sectors. “They’re pandering to the Jewish octogenarians in South Florida,” or “they’re pandering to the Christian Zionist evangelicals.” Each may be true but neither answers the question satisfactorily. As for the Jewish Floridians, many will not vote for Obama anyway, not because he doesn’t love Israel enough but because he is black. This is the dirty little secret of a certain generation of American Jews. American Jewry has spent so much energy fighting anti-Semitism that it has refused to see racism (including Islamophobia) in its own ranks. Regarding the evangelical Christian Zionists, they won’t vote for Obama as they are the Republican base. So why pander?
We should recall that the McCain/Palin ticket has said they would not sit down with the prime minister of Spain, a member in good standing of NATO. And yet, they go out of their way, as do the Democrats, to meet with Israel’s surrogates in Washington regularly (each candidate spoke at a zealously pro-Israel AIPAC meeting and of the five groups Palin met with on a recent trip to Washington, one was AIPAC) and to reflexively support billions of dollars in aid for Israel’s military infrastructure, some of which inadvertently ends up supporting the construction of settlements America opposes. We justifiably criticize our allies all the time (and vice versa), yet God forbid, God forbid, any candidate should say anything—and I mean anything—critical about Israel.
A friend recently drew an important distinction between America and Europe on this question. Many youth in Germany and Poland have taken a strong interest in Jewish culture, music, and religion in the past decade or so. Whether this is a product of guilt or, as she prefers, collective shame, what is interesting is that Europe’s renewed interest in (its) Jews and Judaism more generally does not translate into a reflexive support of Israel. This, I think, is a healthier attitude than America’s, which seems to have has less of an interest in Jews and Judaism per se, yet reflexively supports anything Israel does. It is true, I suppose, that some of this is a product of 9/11, “the War on Terror,” and Ahmadinejad’s anti-Israel rantings. But this reflexivity predates 9/11 or Ahmadinejad, so they may have raised the volume but they did not turn on the switch. It is more likely the result of American Jewry’s complex and long-standing campaign to link Jews to Israel so tightly that America can no longer separate the two. For much of the American political machine, there is no substantive distinction between supporting Jews and supporting Israel. This, I suggest, is not only weird but unhealthy.
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I am a citizen of both the United States and Israel and I have two grown children who live there. Israel is a wonderful country in many ways—one of the political miracles of the twentieth century. And yet it is also a country in turmoil and embodies certain practices and attitudes that are hardly worthy of praise. Its prime minister just resigned under criminal indictment for illegally taking money from an American Jewish businessman.
By its own standards, Israeli government corruption is extraordinary. It has the highest child poverty rate and the highest disparity between rich and poor of any democracy in the world. One out of every two Israeli Arab children and one out of every three Israeli Jewish children lives under the poverty line. In most ways it is a democracy (although an “ethnic” one that often discriminates between one ethnic group, the Jews, and all other citizens). Yet in matters of marriage, divorce, and conversion, it is not a democracy but a theocracy, ruled by the ultra-Orthodox Rabbinate whose members are appointed, not elected by the citizens of the state, and who are not under the normal jurisdiction of the Knesset or Supreme Court (on this, see the disturbing Israeli documentary Sentenced to Marriage).
Tags: anti-semitism, christian zionism, israel, jews, left behind, zionism
I am so glad that there is finally a forum where people can express thoughtful ideas about controversial ideas like this. It seems like everytime I brought up that Israel is less-than-perfect in classes, I would get angry looks from classmates or disapproving glances from teachers and professors. It seems to be such a taboo subject. Of course I support Israel; at the same time, I also realize that the Palestinians have a point. But simply to broach this topic in public is dangerous, since it seems we must blindly support Israel regardless of our own self-interests. I thought this author did a remarkable job of bringing this to light.
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