American Jews Are Running Out Of Patience With Israel

[Purveyor]

While Israeli politicians flip the finger at the world to score points with right-wing voters at home, they are alienating Israel’s most important, loyal allies: Progressive U.S. Jews.

By Ori Nir | May 28, 2014

Lately, American friends are asking me whether Israeli leaders are thinking straight, whether they realize how unreasonable their statements sound here in Washington, and how odd some of their policies seem.

These are people who support Israel, who genuinely care about its wellbeing, who follow the news from Israel with genuine concern, and who cannot comprehend what seems to them like self-destructive behavior. Behavior such as stepping up settlement construction while President Obama and Secretary Kerry are trying to advance peace for Israel; or publicly bad-mouthing and humiliating America’s secretary of state. Not to mention discriminatory practices and vile statements against non-Orthodox Jews; government tolerance of Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox discriminatory practices against women; blatantly bigoted, racist and xenophobic statements by senior officials, and an endless flow of words and deeds that are inconsistent with liberal American values.

This frustration is not all new, and to a large extent it’s being tempered by all that is good and beautiful about Israeli society and culture, but there is a growing discontent with the news from Israel. It is particularly evident in Washington, where the policy community desperately wants to be reassured that Israel is still a dependable, sane and stable peace-seeking ally.

Recent weeks provides a wealth of examples. Israel’s Economy Minister, Naftali Bennett, told Haaretz that Kerry’s peace initiative is “suicide” for Israel and boasted, “We saved the country” by sabotaging Kerry. Later, in a Wall Street Journal article, Bennett laid out his plan for annexing almost two-thirds of the West Bank. He had the audacity to write that “annexing Area C would limit conflict by reducing the size of the territory in dispute, which would make it easier to one day reach a long-term peace agreement.”

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http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.595852

[Gothmog]

1. This post is very true

The current Israeli government is not negotiating in good faith and there are many US Jews who are not happy.

[geek tragedy]

2. as an article said a few years ago, they've gone from

"a light unto nations" to "at least we're better than Syria"

[starroute]

3. I ran out of patience with Israel back in the 1980s

That was at the time of the first Intifada, when they officially decided it was okay to torture people as long as you only tortured them a little. It was apparent at that point that a serious course correction was in order, but it never happened.

Ever since then, they've been not only an embarrassment to themselves but a really bad example to America. For example, here's Max Blumenthal writing about how the brutal crackdown on Occupy Wall Street can be linked to Israeli training of US police in counter-terrorism techniques.

http://exiledonline.com/max-blumenthal-how-israeli-occupation-forces-bahraini-monarchy-guards-trained-u-s-police-for-coordinated-crackdown-on-occupy-protests/

December 2, 2011

In October, the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department turned parts of the campus of the University of California in Berkeley into an urban battlefield. The occasion was Urban Shield 2011, an annual SWAT team exposition organized to promote “mutual response,” collaboration and competition between heavily militarized police strike forces representing law enforcement departments across the United States and foreign nations.

At the time, the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department was preparing for an imminent confrontation with the nascent “Occupy” movement that had set up camp in downtown Oakland, and would demonstrate the brunt of its repressive capacity against the demonstrators a month later when it attacked the encampment with teargas and rubber bullet rounds, leaving an Iraq war veteran in critical condition and dozens injured. According to Police Magazine, a law enforcement trade publication, “Law enforcement agencies responding to…Occupy protesters in northern California credit Urban Shield for their effective teamwork.” Training alongside the American police departments at Urban Shield was the Yamam, an Israeli Border Police unit that claims to specialize in “counter-terror” operations but is better known for its extra-judicial assassinations of Palestinian militant leaders and long record of repression and abuses in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. . . .

The Israelification of America’s security apparatus, recently unleashed in full force against the Occupy Wall Street Movement, has taken place at every level of law enforcement, and in areas that have yet to be exposed. The phenomenon has been documented in bits and pieces, through occasional news reports that typically highlight Israel’s national security prowess without examining the problematic nature of working with a country accused of grave human rights abuses. But it has never been the subject of a national discussion. And collaboration between American and Israeli cops is just the tip of the iceberg.

Having been schooled in Israeli tactics perfected during a 63 year experience of controlling, dispossessing, and occupying an indigenous population, local police forces have adapted them to monitor Muslim and immigrant neighborhoods in US cities. Meanwhile, former Israeli military officers have been hired to spearhead security operations at American airports and suburban shopping malls, leading to a wave of disturbing incidents of racial profiling, intimidation, and FBI interrogations of innocent, unsuspecting people. The New York Police Department’s disclosure that it deployed “counter-terror” measures against Occupy protesters encamped in downtown Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park is just the latest example of the so-called War on Terror creeping into every day life. Revelations like these have raised serious questions about the extent to which Israeli-inspired tactics are being used to suppress the Occupy movement.