THE ISRAEL LOBBY
By Michael Lind, Prospect, April 2002
America's unconditional support for Israel runs counter to the interests of the
US and its allies. We need an open, unprejudiced debate about it
prospectmagazine.co.uk
It is not in the news stories, but in the opinion pages and the journals of
opinion-which ought to provide the missing context-that propaganda for Israel
has free reign. There are several widely-syndicated columnists and television
pundits who are apologists for the Israeli right, like Safire, Cal Thomas,
George Will and Charles Krauthammer. Others like Anthony Lewis, Flora Lewis and
Thomas Friedman do criticise right-wing Israeli governments, but anything more
than the mildest criticism of Israel is taboo in the mainstream media.
The taboo against anti-Arab bigotry, however, is weak. One of the saddest
consequences of Israel's colonialism has been the moral coarsening of elements
of the Jewish-American community. I grew up admiring Jewish civil rights
activists for their sometimes heroic role in the fight to dismantle segregation
in the US. But today I frequently hear Jewish acquaintances discuss Arabs in
general, and Palestinians in particular, in terms as racist as those once used
by southerners in public when discussing blacks… |
