[Mb-civic] A nation like ours - Jeff Jacoby - Boston Globe Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

  A nation like ours

<>
By Jeff Jacoby  |  March 29, 2006  |  The Boston Globe
Second of two columns

AMERICA'S LONGSTANDING solidarity with Israel suits most Americans just 
fine, but it sets some people's teeth on edge. Two of those people are 
Stephen Walt, the academic dean of Harvard's Kennedy School of 
Government, and political scientist John Mearsheimer of the University 
of Chicago, co-authors of a sour new polemic about the insidious 
''Israel Lobby" that manipulates US policy in the Middle East and 
dragged the Bush administration into war.

Walt and Mearsheimer are not the first to wade into these swamps. In 
March 2003, US Representative James Moran inveighed against Jews at an 
antiwar rally: ''If it was not for the strong support of the Jewish 
community for this war with Iraq," the Virginian Democrat fumed, ''we 
would not be doing this." It was at about the same time that Professor 
Edward Said of Columbia University was writing, ''Wherever you look in 
the Congress there are the tell-tale signs either of the Zionist lobby, 
the right-wing Christians, or the military-industrial complex, three 
inordinately influential minority groups who share . . . unbridled 
support for extremist Zionism." A year earlier it had been South African 
Archbishop Desmond Tutu, lamenting that ''the Israeli government is 
placed on a pedestal" in the United States; no one dares oppose Israel 
''because the Jewish lobby is powerful -- very powerful."

But the truth is precisely the reverse. America's loyalty to Israel 
isn't engineered by a Zionist cabal that dupes American citizens and 
hijacks their government. US policy tends to align closely with Israel's 
because Americans like Israel. They instinctively sympathize with 
Israel's fight for survival in one of the world's most dangerous 
neighborhoods. If public opinion weren't robustly pro-Israel in the 
first place, the White House and Congress would be far less inclined to 
give Israel's advocates the time of day. There's a name for that 
phenomenon. It's called democracy.

The American consensus in support of Israel is deep-rooted and durable. 
Polls show that it cuts across all ages and both sexes. The dread power 
of some ''Israel Lobby" doesn't explain it. So what does?

Four answers:

First, Americans recognize in Israeli society a modern liberal democracy 
-- a country like their own, with vigorously contested elections, a free 
press, an independent judiciary, and a commitment to civil liberties and 
human rights that hasn't flagged despite six decades of terrorism and 
war. With all its flaws, Israel has the freest and fairest political 
system in the Middle East. Israel's Arab citizens are full-fledged 
voters -- women as well as men -- and are routinely elected to 
parliament. The region's lone Jewish state is the only one that 
guarantees complete freedom of worship to Christians and Muslims. To 
American eyes, Israel's democratic pluralism could hardly be more familiar.

Second, Israel is an invaluable American ally -- a stable and dependable 
base in a most unstable part of the globe. From military R&D to 
world-class intelligence services, from a deepwater port to 
sophisticated air facilities, from counterterrorist expertise to a solid 
democratic culture, Israel brings assets to its strategic relationship 
with the United States that few countries can match. And Americans don't 
have to be national-security mavens to appreciate the ally that 
destroyed Saddam Hussein's nuclear reactor in 1981, and that pulled off 
Operation Entebbe -- the rescue of 100 hostages from Idi Amin's Uganda 
-- on July 4, 1976.

Third, American history is deeply rooted in Judeo-Christian soil, 
nourishing a special kinship between America's Christians and the Jewish 
people. The founders of the American republic were deeply influenced by 
the Hebrew scriptures and believed that they, like the Jews of old, had 
been taken out of bondage by God and led by Him to a Promised Land. Long 
before there was a modern state of Israel, American leaders expressed 
''Zionist" leanings: ''I really wish the Jews again in Judea an 
independent nation," former President John Adams wrote in 1819. Nearly 
two centuries later, millions of American Christians are passionate 
supporters of the Jewish state.

Finally, Americans sympathize so strongly with the Israelis because both 
face a common enemy. Unlike Walt and Mearsheimer, who can find ''no 
moral basis" for taking Israel's side, most Americans make a clear moral 
distinction between suicide bombers and their victims. If Israeli 
terrorists were deliberately blowing up Palestinian school buses, if 
rabbis were blasting Arabs as ''the sons of monkeys and pigs," American 
sympathies might not be so clear-cut. Most Americans are not confused, 
because most Americans understand what's at stake.

''The US has a special relationship with Israel in the Middle East," 
President John F. Kennedy said in 1962, ''really comparable only to that 
which it has with Britain." Today, Kennedy's words are truer than ever 
-- even if the Kennedy School dean has yet to figure it out.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/03/29/a_nation_like_ours/
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.islandlists.com/pipermail/mb-civic/attachments/20060329/8e86f7de/attachment.htm