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Well, since I can’t seem to sleep…
Something’s been on my mind since the Chait/Yglesias panel at the J Street convention. During the panel, a guy who identified himself as a former AIPAC official said that he remembered when, in 1993, there was a lot of garment-tearing on the Jewish right when the Rabin government decided to make peace with the PLO. The Jewish left, he continued, responded by pointing out that Rabin led a democratically-elected government; and so the Shtetl considered the argument settled. (He neglected to add that soon afterward, an element of the Jewish right murdered Rabin.) So, he concluded, now that Netanyahu has been democratically elected and takes positions that piss off the Jewish left, shouldn’t we have to fall back, on pains of inconsistency?
I’m of two minds here. First, the U.S. doesn’t ever really consider the democratic process a trump for its policy aims. In 2006, the Palestinians voted for Hamas, for instance, in an election urged by the Bush administration, and yet the U.S. didn’t respond by, say, recognizing Hamas; it responded with intensified hostility. Perhaps more to the point, support for the NATO alliance has been a central and bipartisan aspect of U.S. foreign policy since NATO’s founding. And yet, in 2003, the democratically elected French and German governments opposed the U.S. invasion of Iraq. (Yes, France was outside NATO’s military command at the time, but it was a part of the political NATO entity.) No one called Bush anti-NATO for invading. Indeed, when Bush was asked about the millions of people protesting the imminent invasion in the streets of Europe and the U.S., he dismissed their concerns by saying taking them into account would be like governing by poll data.
Now, I’m not saying it’s right to behave like Bush. I’m just saying there’s a double standard in when we’re supposed to support a government’s unpalatable decisions by saying, “Well, that’s democracy for you…” Normatively speaking, it’s rather uncontroversial to conclude that the democratic process in foreign countries needs to be respected, but it’s hardly a trump against advancing one’s own interest. Maybe the most judicious way of putting it is that there ought to be a high bar to clear before telling a democracy, Thanks for voting, but we’re not really that impressed with the way you went on this one, and it ought to be taken case by case.
That said, something my side — the progressive neighborhood in the Shtetl — hasn’t really faced up to is the fact that our positions carry with them a certain parochialism toward Israel. I’m not the sort of person who considers parochialism such a terrible thing, as I believe you have an obligation to take away a friend’s car keys when he’s pounding beers. But I can see how it’s more than a little obnoxious for our side to be telling elected Israeli officials that we know what’s best for them; and why can’t they just see it? I mean, the Israeli political process is so fucked up and broken down that perhaps the top racist Israeli politician is now foreign minister. But still. We in the Shtetl ought to take stock of the way we tend to hector our Israeli cousins.
That doesn’t mean we should shut up about what’s right. But we ought to reflect on the difference between diplomacy and telling someone the way shit is going to go down. And we typically like diplomacy.
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“We in the Shtetl ought to take stock of the way we tend to hector our Israeli cousins.”
Sure. But as Americans we’re under no obligation to look out for anything other than, as you point out, our self-interest. I think my self-interest as both an American, leftist and Jew is best-served by promoting the continuance and further development of liberal democratic norms around the world. The current Israeli government actively undermines these goals in numerous ways, from its maintenance of Gaza as an open-air prison, refusal to engage in any way with the elected government there, denial of full citizenship rights to more than a million of its own citizens, etc.
That isn’t the kind of government I want my country supporting, especially not with our largest foreign aid disbursements, especially for an explicit subsidization of those military efforts.
Of course when we tell our own government (D or R) these same things, see what good it does. But still.
I get your point and don’t think you’re wrong: for one thing, IDF service doesn’t await us or our children/cousins/brothers/sisters, and the reality of personal vulnerability has a way of changing things. But beyond lecturing our sabra cousins what’s good for them, we really should think more clearly and explicitly about what’s good for us.
But it’s also fair to note that we have EXPERIENCE with these things. Right – wing government maintains power by identifying external enemies, fear mongering and demonizing, with the narrative that no one else can keep you safe, especially not those pansy lefties, hell, they can’t WAIT to start appeasing. Bush/Cheney won re-election in 2004 doing exactly the same thing.
So given that we know how the end of the story turns out, we actually DO have an obligation to say to the Israeli people “listen, some of this is lies being told to you for political purposes, and we think you need to set aside the rhetoric and think about what the long term consequences of these policies are for you as a people”.
mikey