We should continue to write academic articles with Shanghai professors and participate in conferences
___in Moscow, Alaska or a law school near Al-aqsa___.

Palin should be happy with that. J

Hideous spectre of censorship

15 August 2003

Ghil’ad Zuckermann

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storyCode=178655&sectioncode=26

My point was Israel’s dependence on the US gives the US influence to exert pressure on Israel, if need to be – hence my examples with Carter in relation to the Israel/Egyption deal and Bush Snr in relation to loan guarantees. More often than not, US pressure actually turns out to be a good thing for Israel in the long term.

The diverging interests between the US and Israel you talk about are particularly noticeable at current: when you have a liberal democrat with Obama and a right wing PM with Netanyahu. You didn’t have to be smart to realise a conflict was going to arise. Could you really see Netanyahu agreeing to a real settlement freeze, or enter into serious final status negotiations with his current coalition, or given his own ideological beliefs?

I suspect that whilst Netanyahu may have had a “victory” of sorts in NY recently with Obama, that it will be short-lived, and the next confrontation with the Obama administration will be in the offing shortly.

The difficulty I think Obama faces is that despite the fact that he believes that his course is actually in Israel’s interests (and seems more consistent with that of the traditional Israeli left – I don’t include Barak in that), he has failed to convince the overwhelming majority of Israelis, who have broadly supported Netanyahu in his confrontation with Washington. This is where the situation say differs from Shamir’s confrontation with Bush Snr, whose confrontation hurt him and ultimately led to Rabin being elected.

I don’t read at all what you suggest in the letter from the academics above, that the Obama agenda is supported –I’d like something far more explicit. However, even endorsing Obama strongly will draw a lot of flack, and that is maybe why it is not even mentioned. I think it is time to stand up and be counted, but regrettably, I suggest it is hard for some academics to put forward such views because it is too politically sensitive for them to do so. However, I would like the academics who signed the letter above to address it themselves, but then, we are not all political analysts, but rather, cultural specialists, historians etc. The BDS is offensive to Jewish freedom of discourse and research, between Israel and the rest of the world, and that is why it gets such a strong response.

In terms of BDS as a symbolic campaign for anti-imperialist circles, the Israel-US relationship is in a similar category to relationships in Latin American and elsewhere in which the US has a long and inglorious history of supporting the brutal suppression of the locals (while lots of Jews who don’t know much about US history might scoff at the parallel, it’s not lost in many other countries, e.g. Greece). Israel is an easy surrogate for the sometimes quite understandable hostility to the US, and this has certainly been picked up in Europe and elsewhere Coupled with some crude anti-Zionism or anti-semitism…we know the problem.

But nor should it be assumed that it is a one-way street for Israel with the US. Israel doesn’t have an open cheque book with the US, and US strategic interests (and economic interests) do not necessarily dovetail with Israeli interests. Israel and Palestinians have demonstrated that they can’t make peace without intervention and thus, the US will increasingly call the shots in its own self interest, particularly if money is in short supply. Israeli and Zionist lobby tactics will increasingly fall on deaf ears. The Mearsheimer-Walt thesis is probably dating very quickly.

But why have Zionists not been able to think more deeply about this problem of increased dependency rather than autonomy (which I understand only began in earnest in the late 1960s and after the Yom Kippur War?

A couple of reasons for this political myopia a) the large number of American religious Jews in Israel who simply don’t think of the US other than as an automatic link, culturally and politically that will always support a religious-national agenda in Israel, with Israel as a branch suburb of the mainland US, and this ‘Americanism’ has been assumed by the rest of the population b) playing up the strengths, rather than potential weaknesses of the relationship (dependency on aid and intelligences) has been in the interests of the Israeli political establishment c) A+B have resulted in a pretty crude approach to the ‘special relationship’ which has probably read too much into its long-term health, despite the noise from the Israel Lobby (Jews and Christian Zionists-an even weirder, dangerous species).

So, to conclude: deconstructing BDS is not just about being anti-Israel, but it is strongly linked into struggles against oppression in many countries, and because Israel is so close to the US, Israel is a good surrogate.

For the benefit of the blog, Loewenstein comments on his blog in part that the solution proposed by those above [being the academics"] is “essentially to do nothing and hope and pray that Israel will come to its senses” and concludes by saying “for them, Zionism remains a romantic ideal … they refuse to acknowledge what Israel has become with their backing and blind support”.

From my reading, its not saying that: its essentially endorsing the Obama approach, which Israel has strongly tried to resist, namely stop construction of settlements and return to final status negotiations.

It seems to me that all this talk about BDS seems to be promoted from a fringe minority of activists, who reject a two state solution in any event (in which case final status negotiations over a 2 state solution is a waste of time) and is not endorsed by even those on the Israeli far left such as Uri Avnery.

It should be noted that where “pressure” has been most successful as against Israel, is actually when the US applies pressure – the two examples which Aaron Miller in his book points to: Carter’s efforts in securing the Israeli/Egyptian deal and Bush Snr in linking loan guarantees to settlement activity. Jewish liberal organisations in the US, such as J-Street have been pushing exactly this approach: that is a more engaged and involved US in the I/P conflict.

http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery/1251547904