Opinions of Peter Belmont
Speaking Truth to Power
| Questioning Mearsheimer’s Prediction |
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by Peter A. Belmont / 2010-05-02
This essay comments on John Mearsheimer’s recent article The Future of Palestine: Righteous Jews vs. the New Afrikaners. Then there are the Christian Zionists, who are a powerful political force in the United States, especially on Capitol Hill. They are adamantly opposed to a two-state solution because they want Israel to control every square millimeter of Palestine, a situation they believe heralds the “Second Coming” of Christ. He poses the following scenario for some time in the not far distant future, I would guess 20 to 50 years out. Israel has somehow managed to transform its current Israeli Single State solution (“ISS”), undemocratic and apartheid-style as it is today (2010), into something more immediately and unpleasantly recognizable to American Jews as a depraved political system which denies Palestinian human and national rights even more clearly than the present system does. This means that the Palestinians are going to end up living in Greater Israel, which will be an apartheid state. Again, one might even argue that they have already reached that point. How would this happen? In other words, what would US Jews need to see and appreciate in order to really grasp the horror of the occupation? What would it take to make “the dime drop”? A central point of Mearsheimer’s article is that the cloak of invisibility which the NYT and WP have draped over the I/P conflict for decades is beginning to be brushed aside by the internet. I don’t know whether the internet is likely to change things because readers read what they want to read and cannot be forced to read the unpalatable truth. He uses this scenario as a hook on which to hang the spectral garment of a revolt by the younger generation of USA Jews who would, he suggests, push aside The Lobby and force the USA government to do what it has not done for 40 years during the reign of The Lobby, that is, actually oppose Israeli policy. (I’d add: never underestimate the power of the settlers and the Israeli right-wing government to take a nearly impossible situation and make it a good deal worse. We’ve had creeping and incremental horror for years now, even if you only count from the beginning of the Gaza blockade. Maybe something worse than the Gaza debacle can be imagined, and if so, Israel seems likely to imagine it and do it. However, Israel has perfected the art of boiling the frog by slow degrees, and hiding abominations during news blackouts and during the US’s almost endless Congressional and Presidential election campaigns. I doubt many Americans, including American Jews, are aware of Israel’s mini-expulsion now under way or of its recent anti-democratic and anti-NGO activities.) I don’t buy Mearsheimer’s idea that US Jews will bring about a change in US policy. I believe, to the contrary, that the ISS that we have today and whatever it becomes (in the more-of-the-same and worse-of-the-same direction) will be just as acceptable to Americans in 20 or 50 years as it is today, whatever the now-young Jews may believe now and come to believe then, indeed, even if American Jews are 100% opposed to the continuing occupation. (But I do admit that a massive turn-around of US Jewish opinion would, among other things, make possible a turn-around of liberal European and liberal American opinion among those who already (today) know about the occupation but hold their peace out of fear of offending Jewish feeling—or fear of being branded anti-Semitic. Imagine US Berkeley Hillel joining instead of opposing the BDS fight!) FOLLOWING THE MONEY Whatever the truth of the preceding, Mearsheimer’s analysis ignores money. America is run by the BIGs, of which BIG ISRAEL (The Lobby) is only one. BIG OIL, BIG ARMAMENTS, BIG BANKS, and the like run America and have run America for a long time. The USA’s I/P policy (a policy of faintly damning human rights violations by Israel but doing nothing concrete about them) has been perfectly acceptable to the BIGs if not, indeed, demanded by them. Petraeus’s mumble about Israel’s activities making life tough for American military efforts has been completely ignored. If he decides to run for president, as some think possible, it will be even more completely forgotten (like some of Hillary Clinton’s early words about Palestine). It may be fun for The Lobby (and the anti-Semites now waiting their opportunity to speak out) to suppose that “the Jews” run the USA’s I/P policy, but (as voters, apart perhaps from New York, Florida, and California) they do not. “Jewish money” (which is to say a very, very great amount of “political money” controlled or paid out by a very, very few Jews) is doubtless a very, very big part of USA politics. This money will still be controlled by the very, very same very, very few Jews in 20 or 50 years time—or their children or other imperial successors. To the extent it is a controlling factor as to USA politics today, it will be so still in 20 or 50 years. If several of the BIGs (and not The Lobby alone, after all that’s been said) actually control USA I/P policy—and who is to say they do not?—then they will continue to do so in 20 to 50 years. Even the predicted horrors of global warming have not moved the USA’s BIGs off their dime. Why imagine that a small human rights problem in a (for the moment) oil-rich region of the world, even if it gets a bit worse, will bestir them? Remember that America is a country where 50% of the people can still be comfortable believing that “natural selection” is an irreligious (and false) “theory.” It is also a country which has known about and ignored Palestinian suffering for 60 years without evident dyspepsia. If a concern for global warming (or a failure of sufficient supplies of cheap oil) cause the world (and the USA) to turn away from oil and thus away from concern for the Middle East, the BIGs might release their vise-like grip on USA I/P policy, but that day is not yet and may not come within the 20 to 50 years I have been speaking of. And if such a day does come, who can predict that the USA would suddenly “find” a human-rights concern that it has not “found” in 40 or 60 years? Why should the USA suddenly be energized with a concern for Palestinians? Why would anyone “rock the boat?” Champions of Palestinian human and national rights may like to think of our feelings as being like a coiled spring just waiting the appropriate moment to be “let go” to useful effect, but really! If the BIGs can ignore vastly important matters (global warming) against their own interest, they can surely ignore a matter which does not appear on their radar screen at all. And trade between Israel and USA/EU/China will doubtless continue to be important enough to constitute a reason not to allow anyone to “rock the boat”. ON THE OTHER HAND, IF ISRAEL WISHES TO REMAIN SECULAR AND DEMOCRATIC * * * A MODEST PROPOSAL Mearsheimer mentions that the population of Israel is becoming orthodox rather than secular, as secular Israeli Jews emigrate and orthodox Jews immigrate to Israel and reproduce with a fierce (7.8 babies per family) birth rate. This means that the pressure toward some vast change in Israel is already on-going. Some speak of a civil war. (Makes one wonder who will control the army and the “nukes”.) As things get bad, perhaps all or most secular Jews will leave. In that case, one wonders how long the world (and the USA with it) will support yet another fundamentalist country in the Middle East. Although, oil being oil, we seem to tolerate Saudi Arabia, an oil producer deemed friendly just fine. And, oil being oil, we seem to tolerate Iran, an oil producer deemed unfriendly, very badly. But Israel is not an oil producer. A (rather unlikely) possibility is that the secular Israelis, acting while they still have a democratic majority, will use their democracy to transform their “law of return” from a law which invites Jews to “return” to a law which invites Palestinian refugees and their families of 60-years to (actually) return. This is a pipe-dream of course, my pipe-dream. But it offers a way, perhaps the only way, for Jews in Israel to maintain a secular and democratic state against the build-up of orthodox and nationalist-zealot population increase. This could be a path toward bi-nationalism based on the needs and desires of the (present) majority of Israel’s secular Jews. Talk it up, folks! The TERRORISM DOUBLE-WILD-CARD There are likely to be more terrorist attacks within the USA and some of them (if not clearly attributable elsewhere) will be deemed Middle East related, as “911” was, correctly. The first wild-card is the number and severity of such attacks. Last night (May 2, 2010) there was a fizzled attack in Times Square, New York City. I don’t expect that it will sway USA policy in any way. But more (or more successful) attacks might sway US policy either toward ever greater military excess or, if a different sensibility sets in, toward cutting back US support for Israel and for the (then) wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, etc. The second wild-card is the US response to the attacks. General Petraeus has warned that US support for Israel harms US military (and perhaps diplomatic, if there are any) efforts in the Arab/Muslim world. (He failed to mention the damaging effects on the US’s image of the US’s wars and military presence there.) If the US experiences further terrorist attacks, as it surely will, the second wild-card is whether the idea that the US is calling these attacks down upon itself (as blowback)—and should stop doing so—will supersede the idea that we are being attacked and must fight back. A widespread idea in the USA that US support for Israel is the cause of the attacks might bring about a change of policy (against continuing support for Israel) far faster than the internet and worsening Israeli atrocities will convince US Jews to attempt to change US policy. If future attacks persuade the BIGs to change their policy, we might notice this first in the treatment of I/P in NYT and WP. As to these possibilities, I am not hopeful. The knee-jerk response in the USA is to meet attack with attack, whether we know what we are doing or not. (That is why “false flag” attacks are so useful to those who perpetrate them.) We didn’t give in to “911” and I don’t see us “coming home” from the wars (and throwing Israel out of the life-boat) any time soon—at least not while China continues to bank-roll us. |
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