Progressive Nation

August 16th, 2005

Re: From Gaza to Washington, DC

It is unfortunate that Asheesh and other progressives in his shoes must feel so restrained when discussing Israel. Their fear of arousing the ire of Jewish groups and progressive comrades-in-arms may help explain why Israel is such a frequent subject of articles in the traidtional media but so rarely appears as one in the liberal blogosphere. But the assumption by some Jewish organizations and individuals that criticism of Israel is somehow eqivalent to anti-Semitism is both ridiculous and harmful.

This does not mean that groups like AIPAC and the ADL are wrong to be wary. Centuries of virulent anti-Semitism (a problem that certainly continues today) combined with the lingering fear that the Holocaust might someday be repeated both legitimize the vigilance of these groups and explain why they may sometimes go too far.

Umlike many other progressive, my background as a Jew allows me to feel quite comfortable criticizing both Israel and the Palestinians for their actions (in case you were wondering about my Jewish credentials, I was bar mitzvah-ed, confirmed, and went to both Sunday school and Hebrew school for many years).

By virtue of my Jewishness, I will say both what I believe and what many progressives might want to say but can’t: The Israeli government has for years promoted settlements, both legally and illegally, in Palestinian areas. It is about time that the government did something about them. The religious fanatics among the Jews who refuse to leave the settlements are no better, in my eyes, than the fundamentalist Palestinians who they oppose. Both sides, and the various smaller factions that make up each, are to blame for the current situation. Each needs to do a better job of exercising restraint and exerting greater control over the radicals among them. I am not, to my knowledge, a self-hating Jew, so it seems to me that it might be difficult to construe my comments as somehow expressing a latent anti-Semitism.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 16th, 2005 at 2:31 am and is filed under Middle East. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

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