Zionism in the evening

We had a farewell dinner for a young French friend named Emmanuel who is going back home after seven years here.  He happens to be a Jewish guy who also chose to spend a significant part of his life in Israel and did a stint in the IDF, which disqualifies him for association with my politically-correct acquaintances.  I disagree with many of his views on Israel/Palestine, but he's fundamentally a good guy, a mensch, the kind of person you want to have standing next to you when trouble is brewing.  While it is true that no trouble of that particular kind is brewing around here, I always have to remind myself that as an outsider I don't have the complete picture of the situtation over there in the Middle East.

My critical views are very well considered and not easily shaken in argument, but normally I avoid political discussion with people like Emmanuel since I don't know how to break out of the sort of circular arguments and repetitive tautologies that always occur.  But on that evening another very intelligent and articulate Israeli named Haggai was present, as was my Jewish friend Bill who's an ardent liberal/left activist and as anti-Zionist as they come.  A political discussion about Israel was inevitable, so I got it rolling by asking Haggai what he thought about the wall.  What followed was a two-hour back-and-forth during which the entire array of standard bullet-proof apologetics was enumerated and repeated over and over, though calmly and without hysteria of voice or expression.  Bill and I did our best, but it was just as useless as always.  At one point Haggai even trotted out the old business about "blood libel" against Israel and Sharon for Sabra and Shatila in 1982, a topic I happen to know something about and was able to dispatch fairly easily.  I told him that I was afraid of going to Israel because if I went there I might begin to identify with his position.  I hope that would not be the case, but it happened to someone I know who went there in a naive condition and was subjected to unceasing propaganda, finding himself among friendly Israelis who denigrated the Palestinians as dangerous and dirty and full of hate, and he came back here with his head twisted all the way around.

I'm a non-denominational American mutt and the Israel/Palestine issue is not my fight, so the final refuge of zionist polemics is to accuse me of anti-semitism because I don't subject other countries to the same moral standard, and why do I care about the poor little Palestinians when there is an ongoing massacre in Darfur and on and on, etc.  There are many perfectly reasonable ways to respond to this accusation, but when the discussion reaches this point, I head for the door.  I react with some anger to the accusation of anti-semitism because it is the cloak and bludgeon of the Likud.  Holocaust-related guilt is by far the most powerful weapon in their arsenal, and they use it to great effect.  Since 9/11 we have witnessed the Likudization of our own government, and the accusation of anti-Semitism effectively silences all rational argument.  Especially on college campuses, where discussion is supposed to be unfettered and open, openly anti-zionist professors fail to get tenure and are attacked and villified and often fired for their views.  The question of Israel/Palestine has long been and continues to be radioactive here, glowing poisonously underneath the surface of acceptable discourse.  It is the third rail of American politics, and on the very day it rises above that dangerous subliminal level, the entire Middle East will be reduced to charred ash.  There will be no survivors, and with all due respect to Haggai and Emmanuel, both of whom I hold in high esteem, none of us will be excluded from that holocaust.