semitism.net

Thanks (or not) to Dave Nadig for sending me this link to Charles Krauthammer’s column in today’s Washington Post. As we all know, Kerry proposes to engage our European allies in stablizing Iraq. Today, Krauthammer explains to us what Kerry’s diplomacy would really mean. I don’t agree with him, mind you, but I’m citing him to make a point.

Think about it: What do the Europeans and the Arab states endlessly rail about in the Middle East? What (outside of Iraq) is the area of most friction with U.S. policy? What single issue most isolates America from the overwhelming majority of countries at the United Nations?

The answer is obvious: Israel.

In what currency, therefore, would we pay the rest of the world in exchange for their support in places such as Iraq? The answer is obvious: giving in to them on Israel.

Gosh, when you think of it, what else could the United States offer that might interest those Europeans? Lucrative rebuilding contracts? Trade agreements? Participation in global warming initiatives? Don’t be silly. In the neoconservative mind, when all is said and done, multilateralism boils down to one thing: Israel policy. And what would the wishy-washy Europeans ask us to do with regard to Israel? Don’t be fooled by misleading terms like “peace process”, Krauthammer warns:

We know what “peace process” meant during the eight years Berger served in the Clinton White House — a White House to which Yasser Arafat was invited more often than any other leader on the planet. It meant believing Arafat’s deceptions about peace while letting him get away with the most virulent incitement to and unrelenting support of terrorism. It meant constant pressure on Israel to make one territorial concession after another — in return for nothing. Worse than nothing: Arafat ultimately launched a vicious terror war that killed a thousand Israeli innocents.

So, to summarize: 1.Multilateralism is just a code word for giving ground on Israel, and, 2. The European position - that the future of the occupied territories should be settled by negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority - is tantamount to sacrificing Israel to powerful enemies determined to destroy it.

This is a classic example of right-wing Jewish paranoia. This one-dimensional view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict points in one direction: the escalation of force until the other side is crushed. We have caused enough harm already, and solved nothing. We need to move beyond ethnocentric oversimplifications if we want to find a just solution to the conflict, and recapture our own humanity as a people.