Netanyahu and the Crisis in Liberal Zionism

By Isaac Butler

Simply put, the tenants of liberalism and the tenants of Zionism are not compatible. You can't believe simultaneously in fairness and equality ensured by Government institutions and also support the idea that Government institutions should be set up for the primary or sole benefit of one group of people defined by religion, race, ethnicity, or sexual preference. 

Or at least, you can't do it for long without a huge amount of cognitive dissonance needing to be resolved through some mixture of blaming the victims and willful ignorance. Luckily for liberal Zionists, the absolute shittiness of the PLO and the ways the Palestinians have prosecuted their cause have made this pretty easy to do, historically.

This is no longer the case. We are now at a point where we have our best chance for a serious partner for peace on the Palestinian side, a tenuous Hamas-Fatah alliance that could help eventually move Hamas in the direction the IRA went into during the 90s and an American President willing (it seems) to broker some sort of fair deal. And the response from the Israelis and the American Right has been the embrace of the very guy who helped fuck everything up after Rabin was assassinated. And so we now have the strange situation of a foreign leader dressing down our President and being applauded for it with 20 standing ovations in the halls of Congress. 

It seems that this is forcing some scales to come down from people's eyes.  Witness Kevin Drum, for example, whose previous expert opinion on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process is that everything is always the Palestinians fault but now feels that he needs to reexamine what's going on. Or Josh Marshall-- hardly an enemy of Israel-- telling everyone at least fifteen years after it was obvious to anyone paying attention that Netanyahu has absolutely no desire to work out a lasting peace. 

This seems to be the diplomatic equivalent of the assault on Gaza a few years back, a kind of insane overreach on Israel's part that seriously damages the (at least emotional and rhetorical) support it gets from historic allies. Only this time, there was no provocation to be used as a justificatory fig leaf.

Comments

[Derick]

I think the Israelis must do what South Africa did between 1990 and 1994. Come to an agreement with the Palistinians. They can then do what is done in South Africa. The majority can then systematically murder the minority without the world saying a damn thing.

[NFL Kids Jerseys]

In this 16-game losing streak among the ratio of success and failure Lion 268-517, some of them very close to score the game, such as the Vikings lost only six points, but more of a complete failure, such as in home loss to Titan lost to the Saints 37 points and 35 points.