Opinion: The American Left Can Learn A Lesson From Israel

 Opinion: The American Left Can Learn A Lesson From Israel

 

The late US diplomat George Ball once said that Israel needed to be saved from its suicide policies "in spite of itself." In a 1977 Foreign Affairs article, he demanded an impartial effort by the United States in favor of an Arab-Israeli peace agreement. But while Ball's realistic stance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not unusual among State Department officials, it remains a taboo for the US political establishment, which has long been championing an almost sacred consensus on Israel. Until now.

I t is clear that, to a certain extent, Ball's posture still represents a clamor in the desert. After all, the US has not wavered in its commitment to maintain Israel's "qualitative military advantage". In fact, the administration of US President Barack Obama has surpassed all historical records in his military aid to Israel, even if Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has not expressed any willingness to use that military advantage financed by American taxpayers. to take risks calculated by peace. In this sense, the USA continues to endorse Israel's challenging annexation policies.

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But something definitely changed. The issues concerning Palestine today are highly polarized in American politics. The younger generations are much more affected by the images of an intolerant Israel tyrannizing a Palestinian nation deprived of rights than by the increasingly weak memory of the original Zionist epic. For them, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict has become a human rights issue. And in itself, very controversial. Defenders of Israel today face pro-Palestinian activism on university grounds at a level never before seen in the United States since students demonstrated in protest of the Vietnam War. 

American politicians are paying attention. In recent months, Democratic lawmakers, led by Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, have called for an investigation into Israel's "serious human rights violations," including torture and extrajudicial killings, against Palestinians. And Dan Shapiro, the US ambassador to Israel, lit the Israeli establishment last January when he suggested in a speech that Israel was essentially imposing apartheid in the West Bank.









Sen. Bernie Sanders, in his campaign in the US presidential primary, broke the mold when he demanded to review the Democratic Party's position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In highlighting the plight of the Palestinians, Sanders highlighted not only his view of the world centered on morality -which can undoubtedly mark idealism-, but also that he understands the mood of an important electorate.

The Republican Party

The Republican Party is also threatening to turn against Israel, but in a much more damaging way. Donald Trump, the party's candidate for the presidential election, has indicated in the pre-campaign that he would not back the United States' automatic support for Israel, suggesting that he thinks Israel has more responsibility for the failure of the two-state solution. On the contrary, he says, it would be "a sort of neutral kind" in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.