Tony Karon on the Israel Lobby

There's been an interesting divide in my reality for some time: The social-justice circles I'm familiar with, especially the white folks, are usually pro-Palestine, the reason being that Israel, as a state actor, has dumped on Palestinians for years and continues to do so. Oh, and the U.S. has long supported Israel's highly immoral policies.

The mainstream media and intelligentsia, on the other hand, has been painfully pro-Israel. Lots of lefty commenters know this, but I've seen very little change in the mainstream position.

Tony Karon has a great essay up commenting on the attempts of a couple of authors to challenge the orthodox view of the Israel/Palestine conflict. I'm not going to rehash the incredibly complicated conflict here or even summarize his essay (go read it yourself), but I want to note a few things.

First, my own conclusion is that anything resembling a just and justifiable outcome has to acknowledge the essentially unjust creation of Israel. It was, as Karon notes, colonisation of the worst kind. That doesn't, of course, mean the abolition of the state of Israel. Why do I say this? Because as far as I can tell, that's the root cause of the conflict.

Anyway, Karon says some good stuff:

And, revealing the extent to which Washington is encased in a bubble when it comes to matters involving Israel in the Middle East, Senators Chuck Schumer, Harry Reid and Dick Durbin wrote Maliki a letter saying the following: “Your failure to condemn Hezbollah’s aggression and recognize Israel’s right to defend itself raise serious questions about whether Iraq under your leadership can play a constructive role in resolving the current crisis and bringing stability to the Middle East.”

To cut bluntly to the chase, there is scarcely a single politician in the Arab world willing to endorse Washington’s definitions of the problems or the solutions when it comes to Israel’s impact on the region — and that even among the autocrats with whom the U.S. prefers to work, much less that rare breed that Maliki represents, i.e. a democratically elected leader. It is the U.S. leadership that is in denial about what is needed to create security in the region.

Indeed, the grownups in Washington know this better than anyone. In response to the same crisis in Lebanon, former National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft wrote:

Hezbollah is not the source of the problem; it is a derivative of the cause, which is the tragic conflict over Palestine that began in 1948.

True, true, and true. But this is part of the Establishment's longtime problem of not even trying to look for root causes that can't be solved with guns. Deny so-called "terrorist groups" recruits and they'll go away. Killing civilians, I'm sorry to say, does not hinder recruitment as much as one might think.

More Karon:

Like the tech-bubble and real estate-bubble, Washington’s “Israel bubble” is unhealthy and dangerous — in fact, it not only jeopardizes U.S. interests throughout the region and beyond (by serving as Exhibit A for any anti-American element anywhere in the Islamic world to win the political contest with America’s friends), but it is also exceedingly bad for Israel: Particularly over the past decade, the U.S. has essentially enabled Israeli behavior so self-destructive that it may have already precluded any chance of it being able to live at peace with its neighbors.

Now we're getting somewhere, though it's sort of pathetic that arguments based on the rights and dignity of Palestinians have gotten nowhere while an argument based on Israel's self-interest is about the only thing that will get traction. In fact, it does not speak well of those who ignore the incredible injustice of the situation. Can someone hand this guy a megaphone? Please?

Go read.