Contradicciones: Trying to understand the current Israel-Palestine confrontation

Wednesday, May 12, 2021

Trying to understand the current Israel-Palestine confrontation

I'm not bold enough to make big predictions about the situation in Israel or the international politics of it. It does seem to me that the current crisis could very well be a turning point at which the publics in the US and Europe will start to see the "two-state solution" that has been a stable feature of official policy for decades is no longer viable.

I've seen a few helpful in-depth discussions the last few days on the topic. The Majority Report segment linked below talks about how the Democratic Party's position on Israel is very likely to evolve from the current posture of largely uncritcal public support of Israeli government actions to one that takes a more realistic and policy and one that takes a broader regard for international law and human rights issues.

The Republican Party is in such a bizarre state of fanaticism that it's hard to predict which way they will go. Their white evangelical base has largely adopted an explicitly theological position of backing basically anything a rightwing government in Israel does. And Israeli politics has evolved in a way that there is hardly a left presence in Israeli politics capable of forming a government in the currently foreseeable future.

It's important to recognize that the Christian fundamentalist view of Israel promoted by groups like John Hagee's Citizens United For Israel (CUFI) group is based on very modern, very imaginative, and distinctly anti-Semitic reading of the Christian Bible. This view is broadly called Christian Zionism. See, for instance: Joshua Shanes, John Hagee Is a Muslim-hating, Antisemitic, Annexationist Extremist. He’s No Friend of Israel Haaretz 06/22/2020: "Hagee’s editorial cannot be understood outside of his long-pursued apocalyptic and deeply antisemitic worldview."

It's also the case that some rightwing groups in the US and Europe still hold traditional anti-Semitic views and attitudes without bothering with the superficial philo-Semitic act that Christian Zionists put on. There was the notorious, murderous Charlottesville "United the Right" march in 2017, in which neonazis carrying tiki torches chanted "Jews Will Not Replace Us." Then there is the current posture that some far-right parties in Europe use to incorporate their Islamophobic emphasis in which they argue essentially, Muslims hate Jews and we hate Muslims so that makes us totally not anti-Semitic.

There is always the complication that criticism of Israel can stand in for hostility to Jews. And Israel international politics does make pragmatic use of the memory of the Holocaust to discredit criticism of Israeli policies today.

Nobody should assume that the politics of Israel and the Palestinians is always simple and straightforward.

Israel's Colonialist Project in Sheikh Jarrah & Palestinian Rights w/ Noura Erakat The Majority Report with Sam Seder 05/11/2021 (the discussion on Israel is in the first half of the video):

What the U.S. Can Do to Put Pressure on Israel & Stop Bloodshed The Mehdi Hasan Show 05/12/2021

This interview with Norman Finkelstein by Katie Halper is particularly interesting for the discussion of recent reports by the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem (A regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: This is apartheid 01/12/2021) and Human Rights Watch (A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution 04/27/2021) which provide blunt assessments of Israel's current occupation policy. Finkelstein argues that both of these are particularly notable because of their established credibility. Norman Finkelstein on Israel & What's happening Here 05/11/2021)

Cale Brooks interviews the historian Leena Dallasheh of Humboldt State University Humboldt State University in Sheikh Jarrah Evictions and Palestinian Rights w/ Leena Dallasheh Jacobin 05/11/2021. It includes a discussion of the state of the political left in Israel.: