Anti-Semitism in Today's World

Sunday, January 14, 2007

The article in today's New York Times Magazine, "Does Abe Foxman Have an Anti-Anti-Semite Problem?", illuminates the confusion about persistent, world wide anti-semitism; the influence of the powerful Israeli lobby, AIPAC; the Middle East Problem; the actions of Israel as a nation-state; and the anti-semitic attitudes and behaviors of Syrian, Iran, Egypt, Palestinians, Hezbollah, and Hamas.

Abe Foxman and the Anti-Defamation League are dedicated to finding and outing anti-Semitic attidues and behaviors. Their political position and organizational goals come out of the Holocaust and the dedication to "never again". Foxman sees any opposition to Israel and its behavior as anti-Semitic and wrong. It doesn't matter that Israel doesn't always do the right thing. What matters is the preservation of a Jewish State. All negative attitudes and behavior toward Israel, including cross-border wars and violence by others, are viewed as a potential "holocaust". Foxman has spent time squashing the writing and lecturing of anyone that takes another and dissident line. This is Cheney-like behavior, that is, a designed campaign to quash dissident voices and to destroy reputations.

AIPAC goes beyond this and funds lobbying the Israeli position in Congress. They have also been exposed as sponsoring domestic spying on Israeli's behalf, to the point of "treasonous" acts in the name of protecting Israeli from US negative Israeli policies. Their behavior and self-denial of what is really going on in Israel and the rest of the Middle East promote continuing violence and war. This is Cheney like behavior, too.

To lump the Arab world unfairly, much of the Middle East refuses to recognize Israel, because they are not Muslims and have founded their country by grabbing what Muslims claim to be "their land". My perception, however superficial, is that in their minds, the Israelis are viewed by the so-called Arab world as no different than all of the occupiers that preceded them: the Brits, the Turks, the French, and so on. And now, the US has become regarded in the same light by the two Iraqi wars and the continuing expansion of oil interests and other commercial/political activities. It was they who divided the Middle East into countries by lines in the sand to protect their various interests, mostly oil and trading. That Israel's land claims are also based on real and biblical history only casts their objections into the extreme. Theirs is also Cheney-like behavior, that is, the refusal to recognize the impact of their policies and behavior, because their claims are the truth.

The real problem is that these participants have a complicated stake in keeping things very much the same. The US, the oil companies, members of Congress and all of the Middle East countries mentioned here, at bottom, prefer the way things are. That is because it allows them to act out their goals, whether they are long-standing tribal and religious grievances; the quest for political hegemony; the profits from nuclear proliferation and arms sales; and the control of oil. This is overlaid by the political history of these nation states, and that is the maintenance of corruption and political dominance of the ruling powers that benefit the few and enslave and engrage the many to suicidal violence. Nothing will change in the Middle East under these conditions and political stasis.

What equalizes all of the Middle East are the various acts of violence and wars on the part of Eqypt, Israel, the Palestinians, the Hamas, the Hezbollah, and the interference of Syria and Iran. Israel claims that their brand of violence is self-defensive, and in the practical sense it is when attacked. But its revenge acts of violence against the Palestinians, its illegal occupancy of their land, and its most recent war with the Hezbollah considered by most of its citizens as defensive (until it failed), nevertheless, contribute to the unending round of revenge, violence, and war. Further, the long-standing efforts to create a two nation state of the Israelis and the Palestinian are persistent failures, because of political policy, attitudes based on long-standing tribal grievances, and, on the part of the Palestinian Authority, outright corruption that indeed splits the country into victims and beneficiaries. It is this split that has enabled the Hamas to become politically viable.

History provides the lesson that the present refuses to acknowledge, and that is that political corruption, the absence of viable economies, violence, war, and the settling of long-standing grievances between countries, religions, and tribes always lead to more violence and continuing wars. Any nation that continues to repeat history in these ways, regardless of the temporary advantages - even that period is centuries - they provide is in self denial. And this is regardless of their claims to want peace and promote democracy but is still in the political hegemony mode. As the US has discovered but fails to acknowledge is the impact of the second Iraqi War and what that has contributed to distrust and the enlistment of more retrobutive violience. Condi Rice's recent peace-reviving trip to Israel was naive and a denial of things as they are that will probably never change without the willingness, mostly by the most powerful US, to engage in long-standing, failure accepting, incremental deal-making (quid pro quo of course), and unremitting international diplomacy.

Unremitting international diplomacy in my terms is not a series of dangerous quid pro quos, but the careful working out of positions that provide mutual benefit in the short term to match temporary conditions. In the long term, it also requires the surrender of acts of political hegemony in favor of mutually beneficial contributions to the creation of real economies in all nation states, eventually resulting in the sharing of wealth by all citizens. It appears to be impossible in the face of things as they are. But what is the long term benefit of continuing violence, revenge management, and fear?

Yes, Abe Foxman's fight against anti-semitism should continue because there is still much world-wide anti-semitism. Yes, Abe Foxman's squashing of any opposition to his and the US's unflinching support of Israel is both wrong and undemocratic. By its ignoring of world-wide competing interests, it contributes to violence and war in the Middle East.

The Arab-Muslim refusal to recognize and its desire to eliminate Israel are unrealistic and maintain war and violence there. Israel is a political reality and good sense and a desire for peace and prosperity would logically lead to its recognition by its enemies. But Israel is going to give up some important stuff in order to gain that recognition. The violent behavior and outright racist oppression of the Palestinians is contrary to the highest democratic goals of that Israeli nation-state. And Israel's nation-state status does not automatically give them the right to repeat history's lesson of the futility of violence and war, and, in the end, outright racism.

Anti-semitism is alive and well and it should be fought against, just as racism of all kinds should be eliminated. The power and sustaining of Judaism and the political and economic dominance of Jews world-wide has always been a threat to the dominant Christian and Muslim ruling classes. "They don't belong! And this analysis does not ignore the power of the claim by Christians and Muslims, too, that Jews are Christ killers. But anti-semtism, as defined by Abe Foxman, the American Jewish Community and other true believers, that is thought of as a precursor to a new holocaust is less real than the genocide that is going on in Africa, as one example. And what is more an issue in the Middle East than anti-semitism is the political and economic investment in keeping things the way they are, or adjusting them in such a way that the oil extractive industries, as one prominent set of actors, can proceed without serious security threats.

The China example, the creation of a capitalist state that continues to labor under the illusion of being communist, is a way for the Middle East to get around dealing directly with the complexities and violence I have described. What would happen if all of these waring nation states built real economies and trading relationships with each other and the rest of the commercial world? Would the sharing of wealth by everyone and supplanting of goals for revenge with economic ones eventually wash out current and past history and result in a sort of stability? Who knows? We might just gain the illusive peace if we tried it.