Israel: Mini-Me?

There
is a deep affinity between the United States and Israel. I'm not
talking about the Israel Lobby, which concentrates its influence in
Washington. Or the connections between neoconservatives and the Israeli
right wing. Or the rhapsodizing of fundamentalist Christians, who
embrace Israel as part of their scenario for the Apocalypse.

The
affinity runs deeper: We are both settler states. The Puritans, who
escaped oppression in the Old World only to mete out oppression in the
New, unfolded their Zionist project in the 17th century with their
"city built upon a hill" as the New Jerusalem. Pity any settler -
Quaker, Anabaptist - who didn't embrace this vision. But the early
American Zionists and their successors were considerably harsher toward
the Native Americans, who were pushed further and further west, an
expulsion as tragic as the Palestinian nakba of 1948. America, like Israel, believed
in the "redemption of the land...by settling it." And today, after some
backsliding in the redemption department, the reservations of Indian
Country, with their limited sovereignty, represent our own two-state
solution.

The
settlers of North America got away with murder. If there had been a
United Nations in the 19th century or an international media catering
to an international audience, perhaps Native Americans could have
enlisted some allies in their struggle. They largely fought alone.

Not
so the Palestinians. The whole world is watching (and blogging). Israel
has been pounding away at the Gaza Strip for nearly two weeks. It began
a ground assault this past weekend. The UN has condemned the violence
and the resulting humanitarian disaster. International diplomats have
called for a ceasefire.

The
Bush administration and congressional leaders of both parties, on the
other hand, have taken Israel's side. "I think what the Israelis are
doing is very important," top Senate Democrat Harry Reid (D-NV) said.
"I think this terrorist organization, Hamas, has got to be put away.
They've got to come to their senses." In the press, Charles Krauthammer
has declared the Israel-Gaza war to possess "a moral clarity not only rare but excruciating." Michael Gerson concurred:
"This conflict is not a contest between shades of gray in mist and fog.
It is a matter of distinguishing between murderers and victims - and of
supporting an ally until a clear victory against terrorism is
achieved."

Yes,
Hamas has been firing rockets into Israeli territory since the last
ceasefire broke down following an Israeli incursion in November 2008.
Yes, it has supported suicide bombings against Israeli targets. Yes,
its charter supports an Islamist state and the destruction of Israel.

But let's introduce some complications into this apparent world of good and evil. According to
Israeli scholar Rueven Paz, Hamas devotes 90% of its work to providing
social, cultural, and educational services. It has a reputation for
honesty that distinguishes it from its main political rival, Fatah. It
isn't surprising that the Gaza voters supported Hamas in large numbers
in the 2006 elections. Instead of respecting this democratic outcome,
Israel and the United States refused to deal with Hamas and worked
overtime to isolate the party. It's not surprising that Hamas looks
askance at peace negotiations and thinks only in terms of power
dynamics.

When
Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip from its rival Fatah in 2007,
Israel imposed a blockade of all but staple goods, prompting an
international outcry. "A crime and atrocity," said
Jimmy Carter. When United Nations Special Rapporteur for Human Rights
in the Occupied Territories Richard Falk tried to visit Gaza, Israel
detained him at the Tel Aviv airport on December 13 and bundled him
onto a plane out of the country."

Denying
entry to the UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights is part of the same
occupation playbook as keeping Palestinian human rights defenders such
as Raji Sourani, director of the Palestine Center for Human Rights,
locked up in Gaza and denied the right to leave to speak to the outside
world," writes Foreign Policy In Focus contributor Phyllis Bennis in Detaining the United Nations.
"It's at one with the Israeli policy of blocking international
journalists who might report on the spiraling humanitarian crisis
(especially in Gaza)."

Israel's
actions in the current war also do a great deal to muddy the moral
clarity that Krauthammer claims. It has killed hundreds of civilians in
its disproportionate response to the Hamas rocket attacks. It's probably using
cluster bombs. "It is becoming increasingly clear that Israel's latest
attack on Gaza was a premeditated attempt to destabilize the Hamas
regime," writes FPIF contributor Mustafa Qadri in Gaza Attacks: Murder with Impunity. "The Israeli Ha'aretz newspaper
recently revealed that even while it was negotiating a ceasefire, the
Israeli government drew up a detailed plan to destroy Hamas in Gaza six
months ago."

The
United States has been Israel's firm backer throughout this sorry
affair, one element in the "lethal mix of arrogance and ignorance" that
characterized the
Bush administration's overall Middle East policy. In turn, no country
in the world has more resolutely embraced the Bush worldview than
Israel. To borrow the black-and-white language of Krauthammer and
Gerson, Israel has been Mini-Me to America's Dr. Evil. Israel's attack
on Gaza, like its previous attack on Lebanon, looks like the Iraq War
in miniature. The similarities go beyond the Palestinian issue. The two
countries have taken the same terrible stands at the United Nations
(for instance, teaming up with Palau as the only three countries in the
UN to vote against lifting the Cuba embargo). The two countries see
eye-to-eye on Iran and Iraq.

Of
course, it's not so black-and-white. There are important differences
between the two countries' foreign policy. Dissidents struggle to
transform Israeli policy just as we campaign here in the United States.
The two countries are not as evil as the characters Mike Myers and
Verne Troyer play in the Austin Powers movies.

Some
argue that it's just a matter of time before Israel, for reasons of
demography, economics, and pragmatic politics, supports a real
two-state solution. Writes New York Times
editorial board member David Unger, "Israel is no longer a land of
self-denying pioneers. It is a consumerist democracy. Its citizens are
increasingly rich, comfortable, and more interested in the individual
pursuit of happiness than the ideological pursuit of Arab-inhabited
territory. Under such conditions, live-and-let-live pragmatism can be
counted on to eventually trump traditional Zionist ideology."

Alas,
rich and comfortable consumerism didn't stop the United States from
pursuing empire in the 20th and 21st century. Zionist ideology - the
notion that redemption comes through the settlement of land - is
powerful. It's the heart of the settler state's mythology, in Israel as
in the United States.

Crisis Works Overtime

Crisis
didn't take a holiday over the last several weeks, not in Gaza, not in
Pakistan or Thailand, not in the global economy.In Pakistan, FPIF
contributors A.H. Nayyar and Zia Mian argue, a two-headed monster
threatens the population: Islamic militants within the country such as
Lashkar-e-Taiba, and those outside the country, such as the Afghan
Taliban. "To truly confront the threat, the first challenge is for
Pakistanis to agree that they want to live in a modern, democratic, and
plural society," they write in Pakistan and the Islamist Challenge.
"Pakistan's neighbors and the world will need to help rather than
compound the problem. The threat of use of military force by India, yet
more U.S. missile attacks or commando raids into Pakistan's tribal
areas, and deepening or widening the U.S. war in Afghanistan, as U.S.
military leaders and President-elect Obama have proposed, will only
make things worse."

In
Thailand, meanwhile, anti-government protests rocked the country in the
latter part of 2008. "The December 15 selection of Oxford-educated
politician Abhisit Vejjajiya - to many a thinly disguised variant of a coup d'etat -
hardly offers a breather from the simmering political tensions that
peaked this year," writes FPIF contributor Johanna Son in Thailand: The Certainty of Uncertainty.
"The current political balance of power is far from permanent, critics
say, because this government's legitimacy is tenuous at best."

And the news about the global economy remains gloomy, with declining
employment, capacity, sales, and hope. Progressives are calling for a
"new New Deal" in the United States. Beware, warns FPIF columnist
Walden Bello. For one thing, new and improved globalization will still
retain many of the features of the old model. The new "global social
democracy," Bello argues in The Coming Capitalist Consensus,
"assumes that people really want to be part of a functionally
integrated global economy where the barriers between the national and
the international have disappeared. But would they not in fact prefer
to be part of economies that are subject to local control and are
buffered from the vagaries of the international economy?"

A Change in Intelligence?

In
the category of old wine in new bottles, Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) will
be heading up the Senate Committee on Intelligence in the new Congress.
"Feinstein was among those who falsely claimed in 2002 - despite the
lack of any apparent credible evidence - that Saddam Hussein had
somehow reconstituted Iraq's arsenal of chemical and biological
weapons, as well as its nuclear weapons program," writes FPIF senior
analyst Stephen Zunes in Feinstein: Bad Choice for Intelligence.
"She used this supposed threat to justify her vote in October 2002 to
grant President George W. Bush the unprecedented authority to invade
Iraq. Most congressional Democrats voted against the resolution. So it
is particularly disturbing that Democrats would award the coveted
Intelligence Committee chair to someone from the party's right-wing
minority."

Similarly
in Africa, we've seen a lot of old paternalism in new humanitarian
bottles. But as FPIF contributor Mukoma Wa Ngugi writes in The Africa That Pushes Back,
quite a few new African civil movements are chipping away at the
continent's problems outside the limelight: "Meet Abahlali
baseMjondolo, the South African shack dwellers' movement that has been
at the forefront of organizing the residents against evictions. The
work of Abahlali baseMjondolo is all the more complex because the poor
from neighboring Zimbabwe and Mozambique also trickle into the poor
settlements to compete for already scarce resources. When South
Africans attacked other Africans in poor townships and settlements in
May 2008 killing over 50 immigrants, Abahlali baseMjondolo rose to the
defense of the African immigrants. They declared, 'A human being cannot
be illegal.'"

On the Lighter Side

If
you're looking to spend 257 minutes in a dark place, check out the new
biopic of Che Guevara, Cuba's most marketable revolutionary. FPIF
contributor Shaun Randol offers a review
of the film that praises the performance of Benicio del Toro and
laments the narrative's historical gaps. Finally, we couldn't miss an
opportunity to bid farewell to George W. Bush's foreign policy. FPIF
contributor William Hartung offers 10 reasons Why Bush Was Good for Foreign Policy (Satirists), including W's inimitable tendency to play cowboy.

"Much
as he enjoyed posturing as a cowboy, W's 'ranch' was more like a
suburban house with really big weeds in the back," Hartung writes.
"Foreign leaders who visited Crawford would report back that in Bush's
America the word horse is actually a synonym for 'riding lawn mower.'
No more quick-draw presidency, circling the wagons, or high noon
moments. It won't exactly be 'all quiet on the Western front' with
Obama, but we satirists will certainly miss the swagger."

Links

Shlomo Ben-Ami, "A War to Start All Wars," Foreign Affairs, September/October 2008; https://www.foreignaffairs.org/20080901fareviewessay87511/shlomo-ben-ami/a-war-to-start-all-wars.html

Ben Feller, "Cheney: Israel Not Seek US OK Before Invasion," Associated Press, January 4, 2009; https://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5g14_OgVc3KvfIE0q7FpUa4Ou69QQD95GGE8O0

Charles Krauthammer, "Moral Clarity in Gaza," The Washington Post, January 2, 2009; https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/01/AR2009010101780.html

Michael Gerson, "Defining Victory for Israel," The Washington Post, January 2, 2009; https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/01/AR2009010101782.html

"Hamas," Council on Foreign Relations; https://www.cfr.org/publication/8968/

"Carter Calls Gaza Blockade A "Crime and Atrocity," Reuters, April 17, 2008 https://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/976086.html

Phyllis Bennis, "Detaining the United Nations," Foreign Policy In Focus (https://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5762);
Richard Falk, the UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the
Occupied Territories, wasn't allowed into Israel on a recent trip. That
action fits a pattern of Israeli efforts to hide the human consequences
of the siege of Gaza and of the escalating settlement expansion in the
West Bank.

Siun, "Gaza Update: Cluster Bombs," Firedoglake, January 4, 2009; https://firedoglake.com/2009/01/04/gaza-update-cluster-bombs/

Mustafa Qadri, "Gaza Attacks: Murder with Impunity," Foreign Policy In Focus (https://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5769); Israel's bombardment of Gaza at the weekend has nothing to do with self-defense.

Hussein Agha and Robert Malley, "How Not to Make Peace in the Middle East," The New York Review of Books, January 15, 2009; https://www.nybooks.com/articles/22230

David Unger, "The Inevitable Two-State Solution," World Policy Journal, Fall 2008; https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/wopj.2008.25.3.59

A.H. Nayyar and Zia Mian, "Pakistan and the Islamist Challenge," Foreign Policy In Focus (https://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5772); Pakistan's failure to confront Islamic militants is a threat to itself, its neighbors, and the world.

Johanna Son, "Thailand: The Certainty of Uncertainty," Foreign Policy In Focus (https://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5766);
After a coup two years ago and multiple protests since, Thailand has a
new prime minister. But don't expect stability for the near future.

Walden Bello, "The Coming Capitalist Consensus," Foreign Policy In Focus (https://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5765);
Economic and political elites are converging on Global Social Democracy
as a solution to the current economic crisis. Here's a timely critique
of this new consensus.

Stephen Zunes, "Feinstein: Bad Choice for Intelligence," Foreign Policy In Focus (https://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5764);
Ignoring the pleas of those calling for a more credible figure, Senate
Democrats have instead chosen Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) to lead the
Senate Committee on Intelligence.

Mukoma Wa Ngugi, "The Africa That Pushes Back," Foreign Policy In Focus (https://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5767); Handouts and Hollywood celebrities obscure the real work being done in Africa today.

Shaun Randol, "Film Review: Che," Foreign Policy In Focus (https://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5763); This portrayal of revolutionary passion helps us see Ernesto "Che" Guevara as more than a logo.

William Hartung, "Why Bush Was Good for Foreign Policy (Satirists)," Foreign Policy In Focus (https://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5770); Say goodbye to eight years of rich material.