Israel

Here is a "nightmare scenario" as envisioned by many proudly pro-Israel Americans:

President Obama: Israel must accede to the demands of the UN Security Council and immediatley cease all military activity in Gaza.

Pro-Israel American: The UN has an anti-Israel bias.

President Obama: It is not in America's best interest to support Israel in their campaign. If they continue their current policies, we will cut aid to them.

Pro-Israel American: Israel is America's closest ally!

President Obama: How would America be hurt if Israel were not its ally?

Pro-Israel American: Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East!

President Obama: So what?

Pro-Israel American: Anti-semite!

Of course, Israel is a watchdog for America and our aid to Israel is cheaper than setting up our own military outpost in the territory. And since we depend on instability in the region to keep oil cheap, Israel offers further economic value in terms of her advanced infrastructure. In nearly every industry, Israel's manufacturing and distribution capabilities are superior to that of her neighbors. Were more of her border states to enter into open trade, Israel's products would dominate regional marketplaces and put thousands of Saudi, Yemenite, Libyan, Moroccan, Syrian and Lebanese companies out of business.

But what is any of that compared with the violent antipathy that Israel and her patron superpower evoke in the world?? Pro-Israel Americans use this very violence to justify America's need to stick with Israel. But why? What if America told Israel to go fuck herself? How would that hurt America?

To be more frank, how would it hurt America if Israel were to be wiped from the map- not with all of her citizens murdered, but with the nation militarily defeated to the point of political dissolution? How? Would I as a Jew no longer be able to worship or practice my faith? Would the sudden shift in the rights of former Israeli citizens somehow make America less free or secure?

The folks who stick up for Israel care about Israel. They never state exactly what America gains from this costly friendship. And just like in the Middle East, pro-Israel interets are able to dominate the free American press and convince Americans that the Palestinians are just a bunch of expendable extras in an Indiana Jones movie. Per the latest conflagration, we are asked to imagine how we would react to rocket fire from Mexico? The analogy is more apt than one might think, since a majority of Mexicans are indeed descendents of the indigenous folks the white man colonized not so very long ago. And though the acolytes of Benjamin Netanyahu believe that the solution indeed is to beat these primitive people into submission until the idea of attacking their rich and successful neighbor is as absurd as Mexico attacking Texas, I offer this analogy:

A man and his pregnant wife are seated on a bus. A man of greater means gets on the bus and pushes the pregnant woman out of her seat so that he can sit down. The woman's husband spits in the wealthier man's face. The rich man slits the spitting man's throat, claiming that the dead man started it, and that he is now entitled to push everybody to the floor while his friends, family and business associates take the seats. And if the people writhing on the floor complain, the rich man and his cohorts are justified in kicking them.

Maybe the man who spit was an uncouth asshole, but he and his wife were there first. But since the killer is more "important" to society, we seem inclined to side with him. And anyway, isn't it just dangerously naive to think that the value of the spitting man's life is equal to that of the captain of industry? Why, if we thought that, our infrastructure would be in shambles and we might go around spitting in each other's faces right? Well, actually hell fucking NO! Does the insult of spit negate the outrage of shoving people out of their seats.

For 60 years, Israel has paraded that spit on her face around as justification for wielding her ax. All questioners of this equation are referred to Europe in WWII. But the pregnant woman on the floor is omitted from American discussion of the issue. And now Israel is saying that her heartache is greater than that of the folks they drove off of their land, because those folks are too primitive to know the difference between their normal chaotic lives and the death and destruction wrought by a truly industrialized nation. And when the Palestinians complain of the injustice dealt to them, they are accused of aping their conqueror's heartache over every retaliatory act. My upbringing makes it hard for me to admit, but even harder for me to avoid that Israel's case is an insult to my sense of logic and compassion.