Tuesday 19 March 2013

Pressure on Israel – A Zionist Act?




Should Israelis and Diaspora Jews who believe that the occupation and the settlements are a barrier to peace lobby for US and European pressure on Israel?

When Obama announced his coming visit to Israel, many had hoped for some progress to be made on the peace agreement front. Such progress cannot be achieved without serious pressure on a government that wishes to hold on to and continue settling the West Bank. Some Israelis had put their hopes on Obama – who reportedly neither particularly likes nor trusts Netanyahu – to impose his will. He should, after all, have quite some leverage.

“When I was in Hebron, I was sure no one knew what was going on there. If the mothers knew what their children are doing – so I thought – we’d leave Hebron immediately. But I discovered that wasn’t how it was, because a lot of people don’t think that way. A lot of people, when you tell it to their faces, they just don’t give a shit. … I think international pressure is good. I’m happy about any kind of international pressure. If we are not capable of making the change, then let them lay on the pressure, let Obama lay on the pressure, let all the countries lay on the pressure. Let soldiers who go through stuff talk about it, expose it to Israelis and to the world. Unfortunately it’s of more interest to the world than to Israelis.”

These words of 22-year-old Roee, just out of the army, which appear as monologues together with voices of other young Israelis in A Land to Die For? *, seem not to have reached President Obama. Unless the White House is running a successful disinformation campaign and if we are to believe what various analysts and journalists are telling us, President Obama is coming to Israel without serious intention to sort out the current standstill in the Middle East.

Sentiments such as Roee’s and hopes in the Israeli left that Israel could be “saved” from itself through external pressure are not something new. Often, such voices are criticised by the right wing that sometimes even considers the call for external pressure to be tantamount to treason. Indeed, this has habitually also been the attitude of Diaspora Jews: It does not matter what you think and say at home  – you should not criticise Israel or it’s government in public.

Yet, if holding on to the Occupied Territories is in fact bad for Israel – a view that has recently been made quite clear in the Oscar nominated documentary, The Gatekeepers, and which is shared by many senior members and former members of the Israeli security establishment – then those Diaspora Jews who attempt to stifle any criticism of Israel may have instead of helping Israel actually harmed her.

An amazingly effective AIPAC, a generally strong pro-Israel public opinion in the United States together with the decline in the power of Arab oil means that those who have been hoping for Obama to put real pressure on Israel are likely to be disappointed. Will Europe deliver where the US is failing? It does not have the same leverage over Israel as Israel’s main financial, military and political supporter, the USA. Yet, public opinion in many European countries has in the last years turned anti-Israel. At some point European governments may decide to take notice of what their voters are saying. Europe may yet save Israel from the extreme right road it has been taking for too many years.

Diaspora Jews should ask themselves whether they should continue to automatically toe the Israeli government line rather than listen to what others such as Roee and some of his friends are saying. Pressuring Israel back to sanity may be the most pro-Israel act Jews in the Diaspora could undertake.


* David Ranan, “A Land to Die For? Soldier Talk and Moral Considerations of Young Israelis”, Theo Press, 2013.



Monday 4 March 2013

Lech Walesa

Talking of closets, someone should lock this Polish icon in one. The world’s Polish darling, Lech Walesa, has just come up with some amazing catholic right wing stuff: Homosexuals should “ know that they are a minority and must adjust to smaller things… not rise to the greatest heights ... spoiling things for the others and taking from the majority.” Asked, in an interview, where homosexuals should sit in the parliamentary chamber this primitive man added, "No minority should climb all over the majority. Homosexuals should even sit behind a wall, and not somewhere at the front.”

His Eminence and sexual conduct



Should archbishops and cardinals have sexual “conduct” at all?

The most senior Catholic cleric in the UK, Cardinal O’Brien, has just announced to a no longer surprised world, “there have been times that my sexual conduct has fallen below the standards expected of me as a priest, archbishop and cardinal.” Wow. But, what else could a catholic cardinal define what is said to be fondling and kissing seminarians? 

Somewhere I feel sorry for this 75 year-old gay man who chose priesthood as his vocation, at a time when homosexuality was still illegal in his country. That was probably his way of trying to control, deny and thereby perhaps kill his sex drive - one that society chose to punish.

O’Brien’s sex drive being what it is was stronger than his will and he is alleged to have abused his position to make advances to some men junior to him. This is undoubtedly wrong. It is wrong to take advantage of your position for sexual gratification. It is also wrong for a man of the church to live a lie. Nobody, by the way, suggested child abuse or pedophilia.

Perhaps, however, our eminent cardinal would not have found himself in this terrible position, had society - led by Catholic and other religious institutions and by lawmakers all over the world - not made homosexuality illegal? Had we not been brought up that gay sex is immoral and disgusting? Had society not pushed homosexuals into deep closets hoping that they might suffocate in them?