It's getting more and more disgusting, America's seemingly unconditional support for Israel's blatant, murderous aggression against Palestinians.
Netanyahu responded to the possibility of Palestinian statehood by expanding Israeli claims to East Jerusalem and the West Bank. Israel wants that territory, and fuck every Arab occupant who happens to live there.
The fact that the state of Israel is now inextricably bound to the very worst elements of America's MIC, and that right-wing theocrats of both nations are working hand in glove to foment discord, and to avoid amicable settlements of ancient dispute, should give all Americans pause, Jewish or gentile.
Especially it should give American Jews pause. The state of Israel is not, and never has been synonymous with the international Jewish community. Intimately related yes -- synonymous no.
It's no wonder that Jewish people all around the world would want to have, to possess and control their own real estate, in what they consider to be their homeland. Well, now they've got it -- though they had to steal much of it from the people who were there before. The dispossessed have not forgotten who dispossessed them. Did Israelis think they would forget?
Israel as a geographically intact nation, as a state independent from its neighbors, or from the world at large, could not possibly exist without a massive influx of support from the West, primarily from the USA. So in that sense, the state of Israel is a kind of colonial outpost whose independent identity is questionable at best. As for the tactics that the state of Israel has been using, which have often approached "ethnic cleansing", the less said the better.
As a focal point for Jewish identity, the state of Israel is doing a piss-poor job indeed.. The American Jews I have known have been among the brightest, most creative, most compassionate and most ambitious people I've ever known. I happen to be an artist (my primary passion and focus) and I can say unequivocally -- there would be no important American art, without the input of American Jews. But I can't understand how any Jew could stand behind and support what Israel is doing to Palestinians.
To sum up this diary, I'd like to disengage the loyalty that Jews in America feel toward the state of Israel, from their own innate and time-honored sense of justice. There is a devilish conspiracy afoot that is using Jewish paranoia to excuse horrible acts against innocent Palestinians, for reasons that have nothing to do with what it means to follow the Jewish faith.
Or maybe I'm wrong. Volleyboy and CharlieHall might set me straight. I just don't see how it does any good for the Jewish people spread all over the world, from Madagaskar to Poughkeepsie, to identify themselves with right-wing authoritarians like Netanyahu and Lieberman, not to mention their American buddies in the MIC like Junior Bush, like Cheney, like the whole PNAC crowd, half of which were die-hard Zionists. I don't see the logic in it, from a Jewish perspective.
They say a man is known by the company he keeps. The same is true of nations. Is it merely a coincidence that Mitt Romney's entire staff had a history of kissing Israel's ass?