Israel's 60-Year Test

[msmcghee]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121003365007069313.html
May 6, 2008; Page A21

Sixty years after its birth, Israel continues to test the proposition that reality counts for more than perception.

The Web site eyeontheun.org keeps a running tally of all United Nations resolutions, decisions and reports condemning this or that country for this or that human rights violation (real or alleged). Between January 2003 and March 2008, tiny Israel – its population not half that of metropolitan Cairo's – was condemned no fewer than 635 times. The runners-up were Sudan at 280, the Democratic Republic of the Congo at 209, and Burma at 183. North Korea was cited a mere 60 times, a third as many as the United States.


Is Israel the world's foremost abuser of human rights? A considerable segment of world opinion thinks that it is, while an equally considerable segment of elite opinion thinks that, even if it isn't, its behavior is nonetheless reprehensible by civilized standards.

I would argue the opposite: that no other country has been so circumspect in using force against the provocations of its enemies. Nor has any so consistently preserved the civil liberties of its own citizens. That goes double in a country so constantly beset by so many threats to its existence that its government would long ago have been justified in imposing a perpetual state of emergency.

For reasons both telling and mysterious, Israel has become unpopular among that segment of public opinion that calls itself progressive. This is the same progressive segment that believes in women's rights, gay rights, the rights to a fair trial and to appeal, freedom of speech and conscience, judicial checks on parliamentary authority. These are rights that exist in Israel and nowhere else in the Middle East. So why is it that the country that is most sympathetic to progressive values gets the least of progressive sympathies?

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[Name removed]

1. Deleted message

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[notfullofit]

2. This has always been a mystery

to me.

Gays being hanged, just because.....
Women being stoned, just because....
Most freedoms not free, just because.....

'For reasons both telling and mysterious, Israel has become unpopular among that segment of public opinion that calls itself progressive. This is the same progressive segment that believes in women's rights, gay rights, the rights to a fair trial and to appeal, freedom of speech and conscience, judicial checks on parliamentary authority. These are rights that exist in Israel and nowhere else in the Middle East. So why is it that the country that is most sympathetic to progressive values gets the least of progressive sympathies?'

I don't get it.

[msmcghee]

3. Good question. I have wondered about the same thing.

"So why is it that the country that is most sympathetic to progressive values gets the least of progressive sympathies?'"

It seems so counterintuitive. IMO the answer to all such questions lie in the psychology of the matter and not in the logic. That is, if you look for a reasonable answer you will not find it or if you think you have found a reasonable answer, it will be wrong. The answer to such enduring worldview oriented questions will always lie in the strong emotions of identity beliefs. Identity beliefs are the automatic emotions that we experience in response to our environment. They reflect the kind of person that we are (our identity) and they determine our behavior. The answer will not lie in the words people use to justify their behavior which is what we usually try to weigh. Those are only the conjured justifications for that behavior.

Unfortunately, that makes me a poor judge of the matter since I apparently don't experience the same identity emotions that cause some here, based on their comments in this forum, to see Israel as a vicious warrior society that relishes any excuse to kill Arabs, that covets their land and that sees Arabs as lesser people than Jews. I think the strongest emotions I experience regarding this conflict have to do with my sense of fairness and a strong distaste for bullying behavior. I clearly see the Arabs in the bullying role - not the Jews of Israel. It's possible that there are even stronger emotions at work inside me that distort my view of it but I haven't discovered them. (Not an easy task for anyone.)

I suspect (but I'm not sure) that some of my opposites here are guided by an emotional tendency that seems common to the far left - to see their own government as immoral, unjust and irredeemable, no matter what it does - and therefore whatever our government sees as noble, they will see as depraved - whatever allies our government finds in the world - like Israel, they will label as their own vile enemies and see them as equally immoral, unjust and irredeemable.

There is no rhyme or reason to it - because it's not reason at work - it's the emotions of identity beliefs. Of course, all this applies as a mirror image to the radical right. That's my theory anyway - which could be all or partially wrong.

It's notable that during the last few years there seems to have been a shift in political definitions. It used to be that the terms "left" and "radical left" were pretty much synonymous as were "progressive and liberal". "Progressive" now seems to have migrated over and joined the first group and "liberal" kind of means "moderate" but left of center. Or, maybe that's just a result of me spending too much time at DU. ;)

[LeftishBrit]

4. Terminology...

"liberal" kind of means "moderate" but left of center


This is the usual meaning in the UK; and would describe the Liberal Democratic Party. In some other countries, 'liberal' actually means (mainly economically) conservative.

In the UK, 'left' means anything significantly left of centre; and not necessarily 'radical left' - we would usually say 'far left' for the latter. 'Progressive' is rarely used in politics (the equivalent is indeed 'left-wing') though it is sometimes used in education.

[msmcghee]

5. I seldom pay much attention to politics . .

. . and therefore find all these labels somewhat confusing. I'm sure there are many DUers who could correct my impressions on this from an American perspective too. ;)

[msmcghee]

6. I found this last week by Nick Cohen.

It seems to discuss this shift in left /right ideology from a global perspective. Thought you might enjoy reading it.

FROM the 1880s to the 1980s, socialism defined what it meant to be left wing. European leftists argued about what socialism meant. Russian, Chinese and the poor world socialists murdered each other in disputes about what socialism meant. But on the basic point there was agreement. To be left wing meant believing that the common ownership of the means of production offered the best way forward for humanity.

There was a hierarchy or pyramid. Socialism in one of its many forms was at the top. The next most desirable form of society was what left-wingers foolishly called capitalist democracies: countries like yours and mine with mixed economies, universal suffrage, bills of rights and welfare states. At the bottom of the heap were the most detestable regimes imaginable: fascist, communalist or confessional societies, which used insane conspiracy theories and pseudo-science to divide people by ethnicity or creed. Nazi Germany was the clearest example of what the left used to hate.

Move forward into the 21st century and the left has changed beyond recognition. Socialism is dead, destroyed by the terrible crimes of the communists and the success of market economies, most notably in Asia. There are still people who call themselves socialists but no serious political movement anywhere in the world believes it can improve society by nationalizing the economy. This is a huge defeat because the case for socialism was economic as well as moral. Socialism was meant to bring a higher and more productive economy. According to Marx, its triumph was inevitable. Today it is its failure which seems predetermined.

People who say they are on the Left now favour higher rates of taxation and the provision of public services by state monopolies, and are justifiably wary of private corporations and financial markets. Yet when their politicians take power they often turn to the market for solutions to the practical problems of running modern societies. They bring in private businesses to run public services or create a market in education by giving school vouchers to parents.

<snip>

http://www.nickcohen.net/?p=315

Note: My spell checker says there's no "u" in favor but I'll leave it in for you. ;)

[LeftishBrit]

7. Yes, I know Nick Cohen's work...

He makes some good points. He rightly criticizes the phenomena that I call mirror-image-ism (assuming that everyone whom the baddies in power oppose must thereby be good guys; and accepting the RW division of the world into Good Countries vs. Evil Countries, but inverting the roles). He is right that some people on the left give right-wingers who oppose Bush, Blair and allies a free pass; and he is right that Islamism, like all theocratic movements, is fundamentally very right-wing and should be opposed by progressives on those grounds.

On the other hand, he gets some things very wrong. He supported the Iraq war, and argued that if it's wrong to remove a genocidal tyrant, then genocidal tyranny must be OK (surely it depends on how the genocidal tyrant is removed, and whether it leads to even worse genocide!) He also has the classic fings-aint-what-they-used-to-be attitude, which prevents him from seeing certain things clearly. There was just as much mirror-image-ism 30 years ago as now, but it took different forms. Mirror-image-ist lefties of the 70s rarely supported Islamists; but they did often support Maoists. (Support for Islamism at that time came mainly from right-wingers who had their own brand of mirror-image-ism: the Islamists are against those evil Soviets, so they must be good!)

Moreover, one key aspect of the left-wing in Britain and Europe and probably elsewhere, that Cohen seems to ignore, is its factionalism. The biggest weakness of the left is and has always been its disunity: its tendency to fight each other instead of fighting the right. Monty Python had it down more accurately than Cohen, IMO: the only thing that the Judean People's Front hates more than the Romans is the People's Front of Judea! This has greatly reduced the left's effectiveness in many situations, but it also makes it difficult to make the sort of generalizations that Cohen does. I know plenty of left-wingers who are deeply concerned about Darfur; who support Iranian feminists; etc.

Finally, he seems to accept the victory of the economic right far more than many others do. Most leftists nowadays do not want total state control of the economy - but then in Britain and Western Europe, few ever did. What economic leftists do want is, as he implies, greater taxation to fund public services, and a reversal of the drive toward privatization - and I don't believe that this is the view of an extreme minority. In fact, in some Europaean countries, this *is* still the case to a greater extent than in Britain, and much greater than in the USA.

[Vegasaurus]

8. You just have to look at it as a joke

that democratic Israel would be condemned from the UN more than the Sudan, the Congo or even North Korea.

So much of the world commits hideous crimes against their own people. horrid human rights abuses, etc, and tiny Israel, the only progressive country in the whole middle east, is seen by progressives as worse than all the Arab dictatorships, and brutal regimes of sub-saharan Africa, or North Korea or....

There can be no other reason than rampant anti-semitism.

[Shaktimaan]

9. I don't know about that.

There can be no other reason than rampant anti-semitism.

I think that may play a role in some places, but for the most part, especially when it comes to the western progressive anti-zionism movements, there are other forces at work.

Key among them is the fact that while those other regimes are undoubtedly worse in an objective comparison, Israel's demographic is much more like our own than, say, Sudan's. We judge Israel by a different standard because we identify with them as a western, first-world, predominantly "white" nation. We don't condemn Sudan as often because to some extent we don't expect as much from Sudan.

"But then why has Israel been criticized even more than the USSR was, which was both western and more reprehensible than Israel by far," you might ask. That, I think is due to the fact that Israel, alone among all of the world's nations, based its very legitimacy (during its arguments to the UN when petitioning for recognition and acceptance) on ethical grounds. And since then it has continued to do so, by pointing out its superior morality compared to its neighbors, by referencing the holocaust as a means to defuse political criticism, and by insisting to the world that it is not like Egypt but like Europe, it practically begs for us to use the same metrics we reserve for the liberal west when judging itself.

It was Tom Friedman who said that Israel should not find itself so confused when it is judged more harshly than everyone else on human rights and moral issues because, in a very real way they asked us to do just that. Not that this makes it fair. Far from it. But when the UN constantly hits little Israel with many times more Human Rights criticisms than it does Myanmar or Saudi Arabia, in the long run it has the effect of hurting the UN itself. It loses more and more of its credibility, impartiality and relevance... three things the UN would be all but meaningless without. (re: UNHRC) Which ultimately hurts everyone. But none more so than the small, numerous, authoritarian states who have been abusing the UN's structure to wage a vendetta against Israel whenever possible. Because without the UN there to amplify their influence they will be left with very little opportunity to affect any change at all, no matter how meager it might end up being.

[Vegasaurus]

10. Those small, numerous and authoritarian states

certainly do have a strong vendetta against Israel.

Sad they wage so much power in the UN, when they are hardly the models of anything moral, right or just themselves.

[Shaktimaan]

11. I agree.

It's a shame that coaltions like the UNHRC, which by all measures should have raised the bar for human rights work the world over, ended up becoming a virtual parody of itself. Once Libya was chosen to chair it I, and many others I'm sure, lost any remaining shred of respect I had for the organization.

The fact that its replacement might be even more biased (if that's possible) is so ridiculous and so tragic that I don't know whether to laugh or cry. I've settled on sardonic ridicule, which tends to work for me.

[notfullofit]

12. Well said. nt