Israel…

I have to say a feel a lot like Bridgit over at GrodsCorp.

I feel I should say something, but I really don’t want to. I’m sick of the violence.

Heck, I’m angry about it. What part of reprisals against civilians, or reprisals dressed up as genuine military strategy am I supposed to just sit back and say to myself,  “oh, that’s okay then”?

It’s not okay.

Hamas is a disaster for the people living in the Palestinian territories. An understandable mistake but really as an organisation it’s an unacceptable solution because it’s not going to solve a damn thing.

The state of Israeli politics really isn’t that much better. The dominant factions, while not as rabid as Hamas, wear the veneer of being the stuff of a fair-minded, democratic nation.

I suspect that veneer would wear off if they had the same history as Hamas, and I suppose, maybe Hamas would be worse still if it had the means to destroy possessed by Israel. Or maybe not. Israelis didn’t get to where they are overnight and their industry carries a history with it that would challenge anyone caught up in it.

A lot of problematic history and no easy answers. It’s enough to make you despair.

We in the west have been neutered in the past eight years as well – not that our own nations never took sides before, we are more polarised towards Israel than its neighbours than ever before. What ever solution we may have to offer it’s going to require cooperation from those neighbours and after the bad faith we’ve sown, that’s far from guaranteed.

How can we regain (or rather gain for the first time) a standing of good faith with Israel’s neighbours so as to be able to help out?

Well, it won’t be easy obviously. There is a lot of bad faith and it hasn’t all accrued from the foreign policy of Israel’s allies post-formation, but the very act of the creation of Israel itself has generated animus (the partition wasn’t a universally accepted plan after all). This is an understatement.

Even if we do what we should by Israel’s neighbours, that still doesn’t guarantee they are going to do the right thing by us or by Israel. In terms of civics, the neighbours aren’t exactly operating on all cylinders and not just because of their conflict with Israel.

Cutting off as an entirely neutral party isn’t going to work.

I said before that the politics of Israel isn’t that much better than the politics of Hamas. That’s still better than Hamas.

Just as Palestinian politics wasn’t as compromised as it is under Hamas, Israel has seen better days as well. It’s those better days of Israeli politics that I think is the west’s best chance to help out.

And let’s just face facts: Israeli politics is our closest port of call in this conflict.

It’s our relationship with Israel that we should be focusing on primarily.

We, the west, have been enablers Israel. Some of whatever it does in terms of foreign policy, sticks to us.

Whatever you say about the help Israel has received from its allies, you can’t say that it’s unsolicited. The formation of modern Israel itself required friends in the United Nations.

I think there is room here for a range of delusions. “We made you, we can break you!”, and other paternal delusions of ownership come to mind.

Modern Israel isn’t property of the West and while young, has passed adolescence and moved out of home. Israel is all grown up and responsible for its own actions.

For the most part, I think it fair to say that in its relationship with Israel, the West has done more for Israel than the other way around. Although to be fair, not always for altruistic reasons. Even cultural reasons for some of the political support are suspect. Dispensationalism and its rather creepy special role for Jewry come to mind (I once knew a dispensationalist who said “…when every Jew alive accepts Jesus Christ…”). So to with matters more mundane.

And what of Israel’s contribution to its relationship with the West, particularly the US?

Well, again there is room here for delusion like “Jews controlling the media!”, and so forth, so let’s just reject the conspiracy theories out of hand.

All the same, I don’t think that Israel has been pulling its weight. It’s dragged its allies into too many geopolitical shit-storms, despite warnings and condemnations. The current mess being an example.

How about Israel’s nuclear ambitions? I know that condemning Iran while going soft on Israel is a political foible of our politicians that we are responsible for, but still, the nuclear ambitions remain both an unacceptable proliferation and a violation of Israel’s trust with the rest of the world.

Then there are the human rights violations. Particularly Israel’s fixation with ethnicity.

The first rule of the Knesset Elections Law says that no candidate can argue for the “negation of the existence of the State of Israel as the state of the Jewish people.” If you do, you get disqualified.

Now so far, there have been two parties banned under this law, one a right-wing ultra-Zionist group of nut-jobs who were banned under another clause barring “incitement to racism” (and subsequently being banned as a terrorist organisation), and the other Balad, an Israeli-Arab party claiming that Israel should be a nation for people of all ethnic backgrounds – later the ban being overturned and the leader escaping to Egypt under allegation of assisting Lebanon’s military.

All the same, Balad could have been, and eventually was stopped by means other than the Knesset Elections Law. The motivation for the invocation of the first of the said clauses is usually a just little less pragmatic. There was (a likely still is) after all sufficient political will to exploit the Knesset Elections Law to ban parties trying to stamp out ethnic discrimination.

The Progressive List for Peace, a mix of Arab and Jewish citizens who most notable association with anything criminal was for its spokesperson to go AWOL and spray-paint some tanks with peacenik graffiti, was nearly shut down in 1988 thanks to the elections law. Specifically, the part prohibiting “negation of the existence of the State of Israel as the state of the Jewish people” part. The Progressive List was all multicultural! Oh noes!

Get this into your head: The political mainstream tried to ban a party for wanting ethnic equality.

Fortunately, there is a clause in the elections law also prohibiting parties that promote policies that argue for the “negation of the democratic character of the State.” The Progressive List didn’t dispute the Jewish nature of the state, just that it (obviously) had to be democratic and this not discriminate against minorities. The Progressive List one the Supreme Court battle.

Of course, that just speaks well of the Supreme Court and the way the Election Law was drafted.

The fact remains that there was sufficient political will to suppress opposition to ethnic discrimination, and if that political urge has dried up and gone then I’m Martha Stewart.

Israel is a political basketcase. It’s a rogue state. Its government isn’t dealing with the rest of the world (and a good deal of its own citizens) in good faith.

If you had a mate who suffered from a meth addiction and was subsequently was a menace to their neighbours (even if their neighbours were no angels either), would you tell them they had a problem straight up, try to alleviate some of the symptoms and maybe intervene? Or would your idea of support be to watch out for the cops while they get their next hit, or rob the neighbours DVD player to pawn off?

What kind of mate is the west being to Israel?

I don’t have a Middle East peace plan. I’m sorry if you got this far and you thought I had, although it has to be said that it’s kind of obvious.

What I do think though is that whatever the solution, whatever the plan is that will most likely work, it’s not going to happen without us getting things straight with Israel first.

~ Bruce