The Growing US-Israel Chasm

[cali]

12 Mar 2010 02:43 pm


Daniel Levy on Biden's visit to Israel


Of all the words Israeli officials have uttered in walking back this episode, one has been conspicuously missing - that it was "wrong". Netanyahu is reported to have said the following in yesterday's cabinet meeting, "Approving that plan when the vice president of the United States is visiting here is first-rate insensitivity... We will continue to build in Jerusalem." Aye, there's the rub...

Under the U.N. partition plan of 1947, a Jewish national home was to be accorded 55% of Mandatory Palestine. After its war of independence, Israel was in possession of 78% of that territory. Many in Israel apparently see no reason why 78% cannot become 80% or 85% or 100%. The pragmatic, state-building and solidifying variety of Zionism is now in a life or death struggle with its maximalist, expansionist and sometimes messianic twin brother, and the latter is winning almost without breaking sweat.

And don't forget the role of the Christianist right in all this. One of the key strategies of many neoconservatives was to create a majority in America for greater Israel. They couldn't do that with sympathetic goyim who wanted Israel's security but balked at permanent annexation of the West Bank or pre-emptive wars against Iran. They couldn't do that with American Jewish voters who kept voting Democrat and wanted peace. But if they allied themselves with evangelical End-Timers, they could have a massive voting bloc they could use to protect Israel while it seized the West Bank for ever. Any namby-pamby critics could be smeared as anti-Semites.

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http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/03/the-chasm.html