To begin with--and let me be clear--I'm no great fan of Israel. What it has done, at times, in its so-called self-defense strikes me as taking advantage of its endless, self-proclaimed victim's status. It has broken promises, it has double-dealed. Its expansionism is regrettable but, in a way, understandable if you accept Russian expansion that created the Iron Curtain and elsewhere (read Ukraine). The endless merry-go-round of attempted negotiation and compromise gets perpetually nowhere. It wants guarantees it cannot have. Its suspicions of its Arab neighbors cannot possibly extend good will anywhere. That suspicion is echoed back at it.
But so, too, it can be said of the Palestinians. They want, and many say deserve, a contiguous country of their own. They have tried everything, including bonding with some of those surrounding countries to provide support for their independence. That support has sometimes come to violence. Every time, Israel has endured and survived. Every time, the Palestinians have swallowed defeat and grown back its resentment and hatred.
You can use the Bible to justify both positions, so that won't do you any good. Islamic radicalism has taken hold, though. Regardless, this variable remains constant, not really a variable: The United States' backing of Israel has held steadfast. We keep trying to create a permanent solution, though. More than one president has personally intervened. The cameras have clicked, the smiles rampant, the handshakes exchanged, to eventually no avail.
But when it comes to existential issues, the U.S. hasn't budged. I said it to every single class I ever taught in which the issue of Israel has emerged and I'll say it again: Regardless of presidential administration, regardless of anything else that is happening at any given time, the United States will stand by and support Israel. "We will never abandon Israel," I would say. "Never."
That is not filled with wishful thinking. That is a stone fact, untinged by politics. After all, we supported Israel's creation in the United Nations in 1947, as an attempt to prevent another Holocaust by giving the Israelis the right to govern and thus protect themselves within a territory with which they were already familiar. We did not think Israel would have an atomic bomb, but it does. We did not think that Israel would take it upon itself to expand its borders more than once, but it has.
The United States has stood by and watched more than once. It even stood by as a gunboat, the U.S.S. Liberty, was attacked off Israeli shores in 1967 and about 40 U.S. seamen died. The mysteries surrounding that have never been completely unraveled.
Meanwhile, Israel has done some of the U.S.'s dirty work for it. I recall a book written by Arnaud DeBorchgrave, a foreign correspondent for Newsweek, back in the day in which it stood swinging in the ring with Time. It was called The Spike, trying to explain that truth gets delayed sometimes, if not cancelled out, by the exigencies of international politics. In that book the Mossad, the Israeli CIA, as it were, does America a favor and takes out a bad guy in a real quid pro quo. It's a novel, of course, so it can be explained away with plausible deniability. But still.
Is the commitment to Israel filled with internal American politics? Of course it is. But the bottom line has never moved. The rhetoric of ex-, filled with quasi-religious fervor (for he is not religious at all), and the ferociousness of President Biden's speech yesterday, have parallel emotional attachment. This, despite Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu's striving to create an authoritarian regime in which the courts are token and unimportant. He's finding that difficult, though, as well he should. Israeli democracy has existed now for 75 years, long enough for democratic institutions to take hold and people's trust to support it.
That, too, is why ex-, though he might in the end succeed in gaming our system to guarantee him power, found it and is finding it difficult to overcome. When people get used to something that delivers a modicum of justice and reflects, at least in part, a fulfillment of our Constitution (overall, with of course exceptions), they can't easily let it go. Most of us still respect the courts, which have come for him. Despite his bluster, lies and manipulation, he may yet go to jail, where he belongs. If he doesn't, if he manages to escape accountability, this will not be a good place to live. It will become a Republican, minority slaveocracy, and free speech, the watchword of American democracy, will be devastated, politicized, and made generally irrelevant.
With this vicious and barbaric invasion of Israel, Hamas has moved its chess piece into an untenable position, one which will be exposed when Israel gears up its military and goes counterassaulting building-to-building, which it it close to doing. It will only increase the depravity.
Meanwhile, it's going to be increasingly prohibitive for any American government to enter into reasonable talks with people who kidnap and kill children and behead soldiers, a la ISIS in Iraq. Civilians will now die in large numbers on both sides of Gaza. If nobody else enters the war, what can possibly be accomplished by this? (Note: 22 Americans are also dead. That's its own challenge to Biden.)
The only thing that will happen is that Israel's paranoia about being attacked and conquered will only double down. Its citizens, without guarantees of safety, cannot possibly return to any kind of domestic peace equalled in any democratic system. It must remain on edge, taking stronger security matters into its own hands, burying any hope of rapprochement with its neighbors.
What would you do? Destroy the invaders, then pretend it never happened? Rely on diplomatic safeguards? With those monsters?
We wait for effective journalism. Why? We have to know--have to--who's funding and supplying the invaders. Palestine can't do it alone. Who's backing this? And, upon discovery, what's next? (Note: save journalists are already dead, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.)
But rely on this: At any one, defining moment, at any existential threat, we stand foursquare behind Israel--despite the double-crossing they themselves have done, despite the promises they themselves have broken. Anything else remains unthinkable. Especially now.
Those talks concerning a Palestinian homeland, talks that I have always supported? Forget it. Who would put any credence in them now?
Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
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