The tables are turning on Israel as a result of the meandering of its right-wing government vis-a-vis the crippled Palestinian-Israeli peace process — losing significant support among Israelis, especially the younger generation, and similarly among the American-Jewish youth. Many in Israel are said to have left the country and a large number of American Jews have reportedly walked out on Zionism.
Allan C. Brownfeld, a nationally syndicated columnist and editor of Issues of The American Council for Judaism, maintained in a recent speech that “we all know that Zionism has distorted American policy in the Middle East”. He continued: “At the same time, it had a terribly negative impact upon Jewish life in the United States and the whole world.”
A surprise critique of the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, appeared this week in Politico, an influential Washington-based publication, where six prominent Americans called on US Secretary of State John Kerry, according to the headline of a press release, to “halt peace talks until Israel complies with international law”.
A “refreshing break”, Mondoweiss.net reported, came from a prominent group, all former senior government officials and at present advisers to the US/Middle East Project, namely Zbigniew Brzezinski, a former national security adviser; Frank Carlucci, a former US secretary of defence; Lee Hamilton, a former chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee; Carla A. Hills, former US trade representative; Thomas Pickering, a former under-secretary of state for political affairs, and Henry Siegman, president of the US-Middle East Project. Although they heaped praise on US President Barack Obama and Kerry for their Mideast peace efforts, they suggested that the “confidentiality” of the negotiations, facing an April 29 deadline, “should not preclude a far more forceful and public expression of certain fundamental US positions”. The statement contained one condemnation after another of Netanyahu and the Israelis for “morally unacceptable” positions. US disapproval of continued Israeli colonies in the Occupied Territories, the statement explained, “does not begin to define destructiveness of this activity”.
They underlined that “halting the diplomatic process on a date until Israel complies with international law and previous agreements would help stop this activity and clearly place the onus for the interruption where it belongs”. Turning to Israeli claims about the “incitement” of Palestinian rhetoric, the former senior officials said this “hardly compares to the incitement of Israel’s actual confiscations of Palestinian Territory”. Although this unprecedented statement was regretfully not published in the country’s leading newspapers, it underlined the frustration among prominent former government officials and probably those still in office.
Another indication that the American media, often yielding to Israel and pro-Israeli groups, appeared in Tuesday’s editorial of the New York Times, which said “it is time for the (Obama) administration to lay down the principles it believes must undergird a two-state solution...” The paper outlined these principles: “A Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza with borders based on the 1967 lines; mutually agreed upon land swaps that allow Israel to retain some settlements [colonies] while compensating the Palestinians with land that is comparable in quantity and quality; and agreement that [occupied] Jerusalem will be the capital of the two states”.
For a start, well and good. But last week, the same paper made a fool of itself in the way it handled Kerry’s criticism of Israel for virtually torpedoing the eight-month-old peace talks when it announced plans to build 700 apartments for Israeli colonists in occupied East Jerusalem. On its website, the New York Times correctly carried the following direct headline: ‘Israeli settlement plan derails talks, Kerry Says’. But the following morning, the paper avoided this headline, which reportedly was resented by the Israelis. Its unknown “self-censors” had this colourless headline instead: ‘Mideast frustration, the sequel’.
The Admission, a surprisingly successful play about a massacre of Palestinian civilians that had just finished a short, sold-out run at Theatre J in downtown Washington, reported the Washington Post on Tuesday, “will have an afterlife” at a theatre next door. The producer of the play is Andy Shallal, a Baghdad-born Iraqi American who recently lost a bid for the Democratic nomination for a mayor. The play reportedly relates the story of an Israeli father and son, former soldiers at odds over the son’s suspicions of a dark event in Israel’s past. The author of the play, Motti Lerner, writes about a wounded Israeli veteran of a military action in Lebanon who tries to discover the circumstances surrounding the murder of Palestinian villagers by a unit commandeered by his father during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. The play was unsuccessfully protested by a group from the Jewish community.
“I think we’ve started a journey that is really significant, Lerner told Washington Post, “to look at our history with open eyes, without fear of opening up ourselves.”
A new dark chapter is in the offing!
George S. Hishmeh is a Washington-based columnist. He can be contacted at ghishmeh@gulfnews.com
