Lebanon liberation, conflict and crisis by Barry Rubin
Golda Meir, Israel’s prime minister, once memorably said, “Better a bad press than a good epitaph.” In the Western world, where a cushioned elite increasingly mistakes headlines or academic studies for the real world, the difference between the material world and words is often lost.
At the same time, we are getting something along these lines: “Joe
is a stupid, lazy, dishonest, lying, no-good criminal who
deserves to be punished. And you know what his main problem is? People
saying stuff like that about him.”
Let me give two examples and then point out why this tells us a great
deal about the Western world’s malaise and why Israel should ignore
such advice. Keep reading because the last point is the most important
of all.
One can always depend on Roger Cohen for a good quote since he never
seems able to open his mouth without saying something stupid that he
thinks his wisdom. Here’s how he begins his latest column:
“I took a short break for my daughter’s bat mitzvah, Israel killed
nine activists on a Gaza-bound ship in international waters, and its
bungled raid prompted international uproar and Jewish
soul-searching.”
He couldn’t be more obvious. First, he lets us know that he’s a
Jew (bat mitzvah) and then he let’s forth with no less than five
anti-Israel points in 21 words:
Killed nine (no mention of the attack on the soldiers) activists (no
mention of lots of evidence that they were radical Islamist Jihadists
seeking martyrdom), international waters (implication this is some
kind of piratical aggressive act and no mention that this is how
blockades are conducted, international law experts point out it was
legal, see Cuban Missile Crisis, British operation in the Falklands,
etc.), bungled raid (it is Israel’s fault that it went in without
lethal force and faced greater violence than expected), Jewish
soul-searching (Oy! Where have we gone wrong! We used to let people
beat us up and murder us and now Israel-gasp!-defends itself).
There is an Arab proverb to the effect that the guy hits me and then
runs off screaming that he was assaulted.
And so after purveying anti-Israel propaganda that delegitimizes
Israel, Cohen then goes on to say that the main threat to Israel
is…anti-Israel propaganda
Cohen goes on to say that “Israel is a liberal democracy stuck in
the blind alley of a morally corrupting 43-year-old occupation that
has made force its reflexive mode of operation.” Yet Israel’s main
problems today are caused by the fact that it withdrew the
“occupation” from the Gaza Strip and most of the West Bank. I’m
not saying this was a bad thing overall but obviously Hamas wouldn’t
be in power in the Gaza Strip smuggling in weapons, lobbing in
rockets, mortars, with cross-border terror attacks, etc., if Israeli
forces were still all over the place.
If anyone can’t start from that point they aren’t worth listening
to at all. But here we come to Cohen’s conclusion and it is this:
“What Israel in turn must realize-before it is too late-is that the
real threat it faces today is not one of destruction but of
de-legitimization.”
This sentence deserves the greatest attention. Delegitimization is a
real problem for Israel today but actually the threat of
destruction–or at least, loss of life in terrorist and rocket
attacks, nuclear attack from Iran, assaults that shut down normal
life–are the real threat. Having people call you names and an
obscure boycott here and there doesn’t compare to being destroyed or
dead.
Where does Cohen’s thinking, and a very similar approach by Bernard
Kouchner, Franco Frattini, and Miguel Angel Moratinos come from?
–Two of the four authors are Jews, and their view expresses the
traditional Jewish Diaspora (or Galut, if you prefer) attitude: What
our neighbors think of us is the most important issue. Why? Because
lacking their own country, economy, and means of defense, Jews were
helpless. The response was that we had to make people like us, we had
to prove we were the best citizens of all, and that we didn’t have
(as the antisemites charged) our own selfish agenda.
And that’s why so many Jewish intellectuals criticize Israel. On the
one hand, they are dedicated to a universalist agenda which involves
the dissolution of any Jewish peoplehood. On the other hand, Israel
goes against the Diaspora (Galut) strategy of trying to prove that
Jews are as close to being perfect as possible. They want the conflict
ended not because it is Israel’s interest but because it interferes
with the image they hold of themselves and want to project. For such
people, Israel’s interests are secondary and they won’t hesitate
to betray them.
Of course, like Cohen, they are generally ignorant of the facts any
way and don’t want to know more. And while Cohen pretends to
“defend” Israel (he has to throw in one point for pretended
balance), like most such people he picks a “Jewish” not
“Israeli” point on which to do so, specifically that the “Star
of David” should not be equated with the “swastika.”
–Once you admit the fact that the Gaza flotilla and other problems
(including the continuation of the Israel-Palestinian and Israel-Syria
conflicts) are caused by actions of the other side, you remove the
ability to solve them from Israel’s hands. You might have to blame
the Arab or Palestinian or Islamist side. This type of article never
ever does so. What if they said that there are deliberate campaigns to
undermine Israel’s legitimacy as part of the broader strategy of
destroying Israel? Then they would have to take Israel’s side, which
is what they most want to avoid.
And so while there are a few safe targets–bin Ladin,
Ahmadinejad–these people can criticize they will never criticize the
Palestinian Authority for, as examples, rejecting the two-state peace
offers of 2000 or refusing to negotiate at all from January 2009 to
May 2010. BUT if you only blame Israel for the problems and never its
enemies you are–ta-da!–delegitimizing Israel!
–And thus those complaining that Israel is, in effect,
delegitimizing itself are energetically involved in the process of
delegitimizing Israel. What if they were to say: Israel is being
delegitimized! This is a big lie and must be fought against so we are
going to give you the facts about what really happened. Instead of
Cohen’s defamatory 21 words they would be quoting things like the
testimony of the ship’s captain about how the Jihadists prepared to
attack the Israelis and he tried to stop them. Then, the
delegitimization campaign would falter and–guess what?–the threat
would be dismantled. Instead, they are the single main cause of
delegitimation in the West!
–But now we come to the most important point, because it goes far
beyond Israel: the confusion of image and reality. Even in the world
of 2010, power still matters. Violence settled quarrels. Individual
men are greedy for power. Revolutionaries seek state power in order to
transform fundamentally their societies. Regimes aggress against their
neighbors. Power is respected.
And yet the idea has taken hold in most Western governments that what
is most important is image. If we are nice to our enemies we will win
them over. If we are popular we will avoid trouble. If we apologize we
will be forgiven. If we tell everyone we are weak we will be pitied.
If we sympathize with the underdog, even one that wants to be the
overdog and maul us to death, we will be noble and thus succeed.
It is a world in which Senator Barbara Boxer can say, “Our national
security experts…tell us that carbon pollution leading to climate
change will be, over the next 20 years, the leading cause of conflict,
putting our troops in harm’s way….” Now even if you believe that
“carbon pollution” is an important global problem that needs to be
addressed, is this the way to think about it? Forget about the
ambitions of Iran, China, Russia, Venezuela, North Korea, and
revolutionary Islamists and terrorists, the real cause of war is going
to be carbon pollution?
Well, she is from California after all, but Boxer is expressing the
zeitgeist (spirit of the age) also, though even “national security
experts” don’t talk like that. (Theory: She is reflecting
Obama’s national security doctrine and the White House-influenced
Department of Defense Quadrennial Report which barely mentioned
real-world threats.)
In short, what we are seeing is the abandonment of realpolitik and in
a real sense of the real world itself. No! If a Canadian labor union
or a British teacher’s union (dominated by leftists) want to boycott
Israel, or if newspapers write nasty articles about Israel, or if
college professors want to teach slanted anti-Israel courses that is
not the principal threat to Israel.
Of course, the concern is that eventually Western governments, staffed
by people so indoctrinated, will turn against Israel. Yet after all
the op-eds are written, governments make decisions based a bit more on
the real world. After a half-century in which the threat of pressure
on Israel has been discussed every day it has in fact amounted to
little. Or as Professor Frédéric Encel put it in Le Monde:
“L’émotion et la compassion sont une chose, la diplomatie en est
une autre.” Emotion and compassion is one thing, diplomacy is
something else entirely.
The real threat to Israel is not being unpopular in certain circles
(and check out U.S. public opinion polls for a corrective there) but
Iran, Syria, Hamas, Hizballah, the Muslim Brotherhoods, and others of
that ilk. And guess what? They are also the real threat to the West,
too.
But you know what? In the end, it doesn’t matter what people say,
what matters is how the real world hits them upside the head. In 2001
an article ridiculed me for warning about a threat of revolutionary
Islamist terrorism against the United States. It came out in early
September, just before the eleventh day of that month. A few conks on
the noggin coupled with elections will force more realistic policies.
The only problem is who is going to do the bleeding, but it won’t be
from delegitimization but rather from being blown up.
So what’s the bigger threat to Israel: Hamas becoming established
permanently as the government of the Gaza Strip, training thousands of
terrorists and importing arms or Western politicians and media
criticizing Israel for stopping that from happening? It’s no
contest.
Golda Meir was right. Policy may be adjusted to reduce criticism but
interests should not and will not be sacrificed.
[Note: The article by Kouchner and the other two foreign ministers
called on Israel to drop the blockade of the Gaza Strip and the UN not
to have an investigation that is designed to attack Israel, as
happened with the Goldstone report. It also urged Israel not to use
violence. What you do when your soldiers are attacked, beaten, and
held hostages by radical Jihadists is not precisely clear. But these
points lie outside the subject of this article.]
*Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International
Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of
International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The
Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), with Walter Laqueur
(Viking-Penguin); the paperback edition of The Truth About Syria
(Palgrave-Macmillan); A Chronological History of Terrorism, with Judy
Colp Rubin, (Sharpe); and The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle
for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley). To read and subscribe to
MERIA, GLORIA articles, or to order books, go to
http://www.gloria-center.org. You can read and subscribe to his blog
at http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com.
