Eric Alterman writes: It is becoming increasingly obvious that a break between Israel and Diaspora Jewry, particularly its American variety, is fast approaching. The reason for this is that Israel is slowly but inexorably turning into a conservative theocracy while the Diaspora is largely dedicated to liberal democracy.
The strategy of the “pro-Israel” camp among American Jewish organizations and neoconservative pundits has been, so far, one of avoidance of unpleasant facts coupled with unpleasant insinuations about the loyalties of those who insist on taking them seriously. But denial can work in only the short term, and only with an American Jewish population that identifies closely with Israel and relates all threats back to the Holocaust. These conditions, like the generation that sustained them, are not long for this world. Once this aging constituency is gone, the truth will prove unavoidable and it will be too late to deny it any longer.
Israel is no democracy, and it never has been with regard to the 4 million Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza. It has always been a decidedly imperfect democracy concerning its own Arab citizens.
Lately, however, it has become less and less democratic with regard to the rights of its Jewish population. For reasons of demography, the Israeli body politic is increasingly dominated by Haredi Jews on the one hand, and secular nationalists, many of whose families emigrated from Russia, on the other. Neither group demonstrates any intrinsic interest in liberal political niceties like free speech, minority political rights or civil liberties.
One thing is beginning to take shape, that being, they destroy any & all who don’t go along with them. Look at the U.S. Congress, as well as now the West as well as the M.E., Israel is trying to blow Iran off the map, may even try with or without the U.S./West help that’s needed. I just wonder if the Military, both U.S./West/Israeli, will go along with the “KAMIKAZE” tactics that they will have to take to fulfill the present leaderships “Mad Hatter” attitude?
Israel is its own worst enemy.. Dam them to hell & gone.
Zionism is like an old prostitute trying to find some garment and make-up that will make it attractive. 70% of Jews wouldn’t live there and every educated Israeli migrates to the West to start a career. Left to drift this way it will disappear and, if Israel is led then by a bunch of psychotics, they are more likely to nuke the Middle East than anyone else as a grand finale.
Israel’s only export now is weapons whose blueprints it stole from the US and some of the brilliant Israeli minds corrupt enough to sell-out to the war-toys-industry, will turn into cheaper but better mass-casualties killing machines. Otherwise it is a den of thieves stealing the guilt-gilt of Diaspora Jews and American “foreign aid.” Nevertheless, many brilliant and very moral Israelis have not yet given up on Israel, the only homeland they ever knew. Unless they take-over and devote themselves to modernizing the entire Middle East, Israel will shrivel and die because few Jews and Western states will be willing to support the Soviet-like ideologic regime which the Russian Haredis are trying to impose. Afterall, many did not leave the USSR because they were persecuted but because they thought they could do better in a US funded state than they could as managers in a corrupt Communist one. Soviet-Jewry Inc., was the fraud that may become the septicemic Sovietoid infection that kills the real Israel of the Sabras.