Singling Out Israel

I’m just back from a trip to Israel, which is currently experiencing a tumultuous debate over Ariel Sharon’s disengagement plan from the Gaza Strip. I had supported construction of the security barrier before I went, but getting to see the fence in several places gave me a much better sense of its necessity; I didn’t speak to even one Israeli, regardless of their political opinion, that didn’t support completing the fence. I also was struck by the dramatically different perspective on the war in Iraq, in two respects. First, the conflict received much less media attention than in the US, with greater focus on the disengagement plan and on the general issue of international terror. Second, Israelis as a whole seemed to be more supportive of the war than not, attributing broader regional changes—Libya’s abandonment of WMB, Syria’s forced withdrawal from Lebanon—in part to the fall of Saddam.

Since coming back to the US, I’ve been catching up on the news, particularly broader comment on Israel and terrorism. The hostility to Israel in some quarters of the academy is, of course, well documented. Yet, as Martin Peretz points out, this blind hostility also has spread to the religious community. Several traditionally mainline or left-of-center denominations, led by the National Council of Churches, have engaged in what Peretz terms the “macabre spectacle” of singling Israel out for exercising self-defense. Recently, the Disciples of Christ joined the NCC in demanding that Israel dismantle the security fence—after their national meeting refused to hear from an Israeli survivor of a suicide murder attack.

The religious left isn’t alone in behaving oddly toward Israel in the last few days. The Israeli Foreign Ministry formally protested a statement by Pope Benedict condemning recent terrorist attacks in Egypt, Iraq, Turkey, and Britain—but excluding Israel, which experienced a terrorist attack that killed civilians on July 12.

And then there’s Ken Livingstone. After comparing the Likud Party to Hamas, the London mayor suggested that the suicide murder attacks, at least in the Middle East, represented an understandable response to Israeli policies. “Under foreign occupation and denied the right to vote, denied the right to run your own affairs, often denied the right to work for three generations, I suspect that if it had happened here in England, we would have produced a lot of suicide bombers ourselves.” The last time I looked, Palestinians were denied neither the right to vote nor the right to work, and Livingstone’s use of the “three generations” timeframe raised the question of whether he believes that we wouldn’t have to deal with Middle Eastern terrorism if only Israel never existed.