Walt and Mearsheimer: the Reverberations Continue
Something else about this debate is the roster. On one side are the inevitable Dennis Ross and Martin Indyk. Joined now by Shlomo Ben-Ami, former Israeli foreign minister, who in his fine new book on the Arab-Israeli "tragedy" acknowledges the Zionists' "expulsions and atrocities" that resulted in ethnic cleansing of 700,000 Palestinians in 1948.
On the other side John Mearsheimer is joined now by the eloquent Rashid Khalidi and the redoubtable Tony Judt, who in a brilliant piece in Haaretz last spring described Israel as an indulged adolescent that refuses to grow up. (Though, witness Haaretz, the discourse on these issues in Israel is at a much higher level than ours). Expect the Walt-Mearsheimer thesis to be textured and expanded by the addition of an Arab and a Jew. To gain the psychological and geographical dimension that the authors, realist political scientists, were not able to supply. Their achievement in breaking the seal last March will only be magnified in this way. An event not to be missed!
fact vs. fiction:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=RN_LxmkTSX4
Unless I am very much mistaken, the text being read in snotty schoolboy style on the above video was written by Meir Kahane.
Talking of kahane, these quotations from him are remarkable:
From the furnaces and from the ashes, a Jewish state arose not because we had earned it but because the gentiles had; because God in His terrible anger had decided to mete out punishment to a world that had mocked and despised and degraded the Almighty God of Israel.
M. Kahane. Forty Years (Jerusalem. after 1978). p. 3 {in Hebrew).
The State of Israel is not a "political" creation. It is a religious creation. No force in the world could have prevented its establishment, nor is there a power that can destroy it. It is the commencement of divine wrath, His vengeance against the nations that had ignored His existence, despised and defamed Him, minimized His importance, "did not know" Him.
Idem. As Thorns in Your Eyes (Jerusalem 1980). p. 244 (in Hebrew).
"Expect the Walt-Mearsheimer thesis to be textured and expanded by the addition of an Arab and a Jew. To gain the psychological and geographical dimension that the authors, realist political scientists, were not able to supply."
I would have preferred that Walt and Mearsheimer had been joined by two other respected Christian intellectuals.
The Israeli-Palestinian crisis is not of interest only to Jews and Muslims. When thousands of Christian US citizens and soldiers have died as a result of the direct and indirect consequences of this conflict, it is critical that Christians have a strong, even dominant voice in the resolution of the conflict.
However, fear of being called anti-Semitic, and deference to those fellow citizens who are assumed to be the best informed (and to, nonetheless, have the best interests of all US citizens at heart) has minimized Christian involvement in the public debate.
The principal US voices, both on the left and right with respect to the settlements are Jewish. Their chief interlocutors are Muslim. Christians must get into the debate and defend their own interests, which are of existential dimensions when we think of nuclear bombs on US cities.