Pulling the Plug on Israel

And there is a paticularized danger which stirs a thick chunk of self-interest into the universalism of enlightened Jewish concern. In terms of the fabled Jewish-interest litmus, it is proving decidedly not "good for the Jews" when Israel gets away with murder. The spillover is ubiquitous. After all, we have it on no lesser authority than New York Times heavyweight Thomas Friedman that, in the early days of the American occupation of Iraq, American soldiers in Iraq were being referred to on the Iraqi street as "the Jews".

The worst-case scenario was laid out with characteristic bluntness by dissident Israeli historian Ilan Pappe in a Zmag interview:

"I believe what Israel is doing will destroy the Jewish people in the near or distant future as well. Even with 250 nuclear weapons and the support of the world,s only superpower." Supporting scenario has been sketched in by veteran peace activist Uri Avnery:

"What would happen for example if the United States sank ever deeper into the bloody swamp of Iraq, into an atmosphere of national calamity? When the search for a scapegoat is on, the Jewish neo-cons will stick out. . . .One should not exaggerate these dangers. At present they are hardly specks on the horizon. But I would advise the leaders of the Jewish institutions in the United States to exercise some self-restraint. Intoxication with power can easily lead to dangerous excesses."

Sadly, this advice has not been taken. As a result, it is neither surrealistic or irresponsibly alarmist to worry about a multi-continental outburst of anti-Semitism-- especially when fuel for a new firestorm is being splashed about by those representing themselves as the quintessential defenders of Jewish interests. This present concern should not be confounded with the perennial wolf-crying (the flip side of wolf-baiting) by apologists like the Anti-Defamation League's Abraham Foxman. The current unease is a spontaneous phenomenon-- rippling across a broad range of independently minded Jews, stoking a visceral need to express (even if only in the privacy of their own minds) emphatic disavowal of the self-proclaimed Jewish State.

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