The De-Zionization of the American Mind
2006-08-20
By Jean Bricmont
Americans are constantly told that they have to defend themselves
against people who "hate them", but without understanding why they are
hated. Is the cause our secular democracy? Our appetite for oil? There
are lots of democracies in the world that are far more secular than
the United States (Sweden, France...) and lots of places that want to
buy oil at the best possible price (China) without arousing any
noticeable hatred in the Middle East.
Of course, it is true that, throughout the Third World, Americans and
Europeans are often considered arrogant and are not particularly
liked. But the level of hatred that leads a large number of people to
applaud an event like September 11 is peculiar to the Middle East.
Indeed, the main political significance of September 11 did not derive
from the number of people killed or even the spectacular achievement
of the attackers, but from the fact that the attack was popular in
large parts of the Middle East. That much was understood by Americans
leaders and infuriated them. Such a level of hatred calls for
explanation.
And there can be only one explanation: United States sup****t for
Israel. It is indeed Israel that is the main object of hatred, for
reasons we shall describe, but since the United States uncritically
sup****ts Israel on almost every issue, constantly praises it as "the
only democracy in the Middle East" and provides its main financial
backing, the result is a "transfer" of hatred.
Why is Israel so hated? The constant stalling of "peace plans" in
favor of more settlements and more war aggravates that hatred, but the
basic cause lies in the very principles on which that state is built.
There are basically two arguments that have justified establi****ng the
State of Israel in Palestine: one is that "God" gave that land to the
Jews, and the other is the Holocaust. The first one is deeply
insulting to people who are profoundly religious, like most Arabs, but
of another creed. And, for the second, it amounts to making people pay
for a crime that they did not commit.
Both arguments claim that it is right for Jews, and only Jews, to set
up a state in a land that would obviously be Arab, like Jordan or
Lebanon, if not for the slow Zionist invasion. This is illustrated by
the "law of return": any Jew, anywhere, having no connection with
Palestine whatsoever, and not suffering from the slightest
persecution, can, if he so wishes, emigrate to Israel and easily
become a citizen, while the inhabitants who fled in 1948, or their
children, cannot. Add to that the fact that a city claimed to be holy
by three religions has become the "eternal capital of the Jewish
people" (and only them) and one should start to understand the rage
that all this provokes throughout the Arab and Muslim world.
It is precisely this [Jewish supremacist] aspect that infuriates most
Arabs, even if they do not have any personal connection to Palestine.
This situation delegitimizes the Arab regimes that are impotent in the
face of the Zionist enemy and, after the defeat of the region's two
main secular leaders, Nasser and Saddam Hussein (the latter thanks to
the U.S.), leads to the rise of religious fundamentalism.
The conflict over Palestine goes beyond the second class status of
Israeli Arabs or even the treatment of the Occupied Territories. Even
if a Palestinian state were established on the latter, and even if
full equality were granted to Israeli Arabs, the wounds of 1948 would
not heal quickly. Arab leaders, even religious ones, can of course
sign peace agreements with Israel, but they are fragile so long as the
Arab population considers them unjust and does not accept them
wholeheartedly. Palestine is the Alsace-Lorraine or the Taiwan of the
Arab world and the fact that it is impossible to take it back does not
mean that it can be forgotten . (I am not arguing here in favor of
"wiping Israel off the map", or in favor of a "one state solution" but
simply underlining what seems to me to be the root and the depth of
the problem. In fact, I am not arguing for any solution partly because
none seems to me to be attainable in the short term, but, more
fundamentally, because I do not think that outsiders to the Middle
East should propose such solutions.)
There is no sign that any of this is understood in Israel by more than
a few individuals; if Arabs hate them, this is just another instance
of the fact that everybody hates Jews and it only proves that they
have to "defend themselves" (i.e. attack others pre-emptively) by any
means necessary. That is bad enough, but why isn't this understood in
the United States either? There are traditionally two answers to that:
one is that the population is manipulated into sup****ting Israel by
the government, the arms merchants or the oil industry, because Israel
is a strategic U.S. ally; the other answer is that the United States
is manipulated by the Israel lobby. The idea that Israel is a
strategic ally, if by that one means a useful ally (useful to, say,
the oil interests, broadly understood), although widely accepted,
specially in the Left, does not survive a critical examination. That
may have been the case in 1967 or even during the Cold War period,
although one could argue that, even then, the Arab states were
attracted by the Soviet Union only because it might sup****t them in
their struggle against Israel, albeit ineffectively. But both in 1991
and in 2003, the United States attacked Iraq without any help from
Israel, even begging Israel not to intervene in 1991, in order for its
Arab coalition not to collapse. Or consider the post-2003 occupation
of Iraq, and suppose that the goal of that occupation is control over
oil. In what sense does Israel help in that respect? Everything it
does (the currents attacks on Gaza and Lebanon for example) further
alienates the Arabs, and U.S. sup****t for Israel makes the control of
oil harder, not easier. Even the Iraqi parliament, Malaki and Sistani,
who are the closest to allies that the United States can find there,
condemn Israel's actions.
Finally, just imagine that the United States would make a 180 [degree]
turn and suddenly side with the Palestinians, as they did with the
Kosovars against the Serbs. Such a change of policies is by no means
impossible: when Indonesia invaded East Timor in 1975, the US
sup****ted the invasion by providing most of Indonesia's weapons. Yet,
25 years later, the U.S. sup****ted, or at least did not oppose, East
Timor's accession to independence.
What effect would that have? Can anyone doubt that such a change of
policy would facilitate U.S. access to oil fields and help it gain
strategic allies (if any were still needed) throughout the Muslim
world? In the Middle East, the main charge against the United States
is that it is pro-Israel, because it lets itself be "manipulated by
the Jews". Therefore, if Wa****ngton switched sides, there would be no
more basis for hostility to U.S. presence, including its control over
oil. Thus the notion of Israel as "strategic ally" makes no sense.
This leads us to the "Israel lobby" answer, which is closer to the
truth, but not the whole truth. To get a complete picture, one has to
understand why the lobby works as effectively as it does, and that
depends on factors lying outside the actions of the lobby itself.
After all, the militant Zionists constituting the lobby are a minority
among Jews, who themselves form a small minority of the American
population. The Israel lobby does not work like other lobbies, for
example, the arms and the oil industry lobbies (which is one of the
reasons why it is easy to dismiss it as irrelevant, as long as one
does not understand how it really exerts its influence).
Of course, like the latter, the Israel lobby does fund electoral
campaigns and its power derives in part from its ability to target
people in Congress who deviate from its "line". But if that were all,
it could be easily defeated -indeed. There are other sources of
electoral funding, the big industrial lobbies for example, and if the
pro-Israel candidates could be shown to be paid to serve the interests
of another state, their opponents could denounce the people who
receive money from the lobby as some sort of agents of a foreign
power. Just imagine a pro-French, pro-Chinese or pro-Japanese lobby
that would try to significantly influence the U.S. Congress.
Certainly, money alone cannot suffice.
What protects the Israel lobby is the fact that anyone who would
denounce an opponent funded by the Lobby as a quasi-agent of a foreign
power would immediately be accused of anti-Semitism. In fact, imagine
that big business is unhappy with the current U.S. policies (as it
well may be) and wants to change them-how could they do it? Any
criticism of lobby influence on U.S. policy would immediately trigger
the anti-Zionism-is-anti-Semitism accusation.
So the strength of the Israel lobby resides in part in this second
line of defense, which itself is linked to its influence on the media.
But even that could easily be defeated-not all the media are under the
lobby's influence, and, more im****tantly, the media are not
all-powerful: in Venezuela, they are anti-Chavez, but Chavez regularly
wins elections. In France, the media were overwhelmingly in favor of
the "yes" vote to the referendum on the European Constitution, yet the
"no" won. The problem-and this is why the Israel lobby is so
effective, is that it expresses a world view that is accepted too
easily by too many Americans. After all, nothing could be more
ridiculous than accusing someone of anti-Semitism because he wants or
claims to put America's interests above those of Israel. Yet, the
accusation is likely to be effective, but only because years of
ideological brainwa****ng have predisposed people to consider U.S. and
Israeli interests as identical-although instead of "interests" one
speaks of "values".
Associated with this identification comes a systematically hostile
view of the Arab and Muslim world, which both increases the lobby's
effectiveness and is in part the result of its propaganda. There is an
almost total lack of understanding of the Arab viewpoint on Palestine,
and, in particular, of the [Jewish supremacist] nature of the problem.
It is this triple layer of control (selective funding, the
anti-Semitism card, or rather canard, and interiorization) that gives
the lobby its peculiar strength. (And that is also why it is easy to
dismiss its strength by saying, for instance, that, obviously, Jews
don't control America. Sure, but direct control is not the way it
works.)
People who think that it is the arms or the oil industry that are
running the show in Wa****ngton as far as foreign policy is concerned
should at least answer the following question: how does it work? There
is no evidence whatsoever that the oil industry, for example, pushed
for the Iraq war, the threats against Iran, or the attack on Lebanon .
(There is a lot of evidence that the Israel lobby pushed for the Iraq
war; see Jeff Blankfort, A War for Israel). They are supposed to act
secretly, of course, but where is the evidence that they do? And if
there is no evidence, even no indirect evidence, how does one know?
Profits from the war, at least for major cor****ations, haven't
materialized yet, and there are many indications that the U.S. economy
will suffer a lot from war-related expenses and the associated
deficits. On the other hand, it is enough to open any mainstream U.S.
newspaper or TV and read or hear opinions expressed by Zionists
calling for more war. War needs war propaganda and a sup****ting
ideology, and the Zionists provide it, while none of this is offered
by big business in general or the oil industry in particular…
When people in the antiwar movement divert attention from Israel by
blaming big oil or big business for the wars (specially the one in
Lebanon, or the threats against Iran) one should demand that they
provide some evidence for their claims. Challenge all the apologists
or excuse makers for Israel or its lobby within progressive circles.
When politicians and journalists claim that Israel and the United
States have common interests, ask what services exactly has Israel
rendered to the United States recently. Of course one can always point
to some (minor) services; but, then, ask them what a cold-blooded
cost-benefits analysis would reveal and why such an analysis is
impossible to undertake publicly. If they speak of common values (the
fallback position), provide a list of discriminatory Israeli laws for
non-Jews.
It is true that a change in the U.S. policy with respect to the
Israel-Palestine conflict would change nothing about traditional
imperialism-the United States would still sup****t traditional elites
everywhere, and press countries to provide a "favorable investment
climate". But the conflict in the Middle East, involving Iraq, Iran,
Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine, has all the aspects of a religious
war-with Islam on one side and Zionism as a secular "Western" religion
on the other. And wars of religion tend to be the most brutal and
uncontrollable of all wars. What is at stake in the de-Zionization of
the American mind is not only the fate of the unfortunate inhabitants
of Palestine but also unspeakable miseries for the people of that
region and maybe of the rest of the world. The ultimate irony in all
this is that the fate of much of the world depends on the American
people exercizing their right to self-determination, which, of course,
they should.
http://www.ihr.org/
http://www.natvan.com
http://www.thebirdman.org
http://www.nsm88.com/
http://wsi.matriots.com/jews.html
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