The Person I Haven’t Found
May 30th, 2008 by Micah Tillman | 9 Comments |
I’ve never met anyone with a balanced view of Israel. I’m not even that person. I listen to progressives for a while and I’m convinced Israel is an evil aggressor. I listen to my fellow conservatives for a while and I’m convinced Israel is an innocent victim.
We conservatives find it easy to understand why Israelis would feel attacked, and in need of defending themselves. Progressives find it easy to understand why Palestinians would feel attacked, and in need of defending themselves.
What I have yet to figure out is how we choose whom to try to understand.
Here is how it appears to me (and please correct me if I’m wrong):
Progressives try to understand workers, but not CEOs. They try to understand fundamentalist Muslims, but not fundamentalist Christians. They try to understand young criminals, but not old cops. They try to understand Palestinians who blow up Israelis, but not Israelis who blow up Palestinians.
For us conservatives, it tends to be the other way around on each point. (Again, please correct me if I’m wrong.)
There’s a logic to both approaches. And I’m pretty sure it’s exactly the same logic. I just can’t quite articulate it.
It has to do with: (a) with whom we identify, and correlatively (b) whom we fear. It has to do with whom/what we see as being “our own.”
But I still haven’t figured out exactly what “it” is.
And I still haven’t found a person who isn’t ultimately more sympathetic to (or, perhaps, “a member of”) either the Israel-Can-Do-No-Wrong crowd or the Israel-Can-Do-No-Right crowd.
Nicely balanced and open-minded, Mr. Tillman. I share your ambivalence and quest for understanding.
I’m in the middle of a book called “The much too promised land” it’s written by a guy whose been a mid-level part of American delegations to peace talks between Palestine and Israel for a hundred million years. (Or maybe it was more like 30. I forgot which.) I find it amazingly even handed.
Though it wasn’t nonfiction or perscriptive, I also found the film “Munich” to be incredibly well done.
As for the origins of progressive/conservative bias…
I’d add that we progressives tend to have an irrational connection to the under dog, and an over-the-top distrust of American foriegn policy. We emergents compound this with an instinctive distrust of the Christian Right.
Conservatives, on the other hand, I think, have been impacted negatively by the strength of the Christian Right, which has a pro-Israeli agenda which isn’t rooted so much in secular politics as it is in a wacky interpretation of Revelations.
The best I can do for stepping beyond these preconceptions is this, (and like Mr. Tillman, I’m open to correction.)
The world’s failure to protect the Jews in World War II and before, compounded with the numerous and conflicting promises that have been made by people who had no right to make these promises around who “owns” Israel have created a situation in which there’s really no easy answer… There is no solution that I would consider wholly just to everybody. We’ve created, I think, a lose-lose.
(uhhm, did I just commit a WEed?)
*laugh*
*nominates comment for next weeks WEedies*
Thanks for the book reference! I shall have to look into that.
Munich was an admirable film. I enjoyed it (or rather, had my heart ripped out). (The scene with the daughter of the guy and the phone and the bomb is . . . one of the most intense/suspenseful bits of cinema I have ever seen.)
(And it was a good preparation for me to handle Daniel Craig as Bond. I love Craig as Bond, but before seeing him in Munich I was much more skeptical of his ability to pull it off.)
I think you’ve described the progressive/emergent tendencies (so long as we remember that “irrational” isn’t always bad) and the connection of the book of Revelation to conservative Christian views on Israel well.
One interesting book I found—don’t remember the title offhand but I’m sure I can find it if you’d like—looked through the roots of Dispensationalism’s “wacky” theology of Rev and how its timing impacted policies towards Israel. It also argued that the far-right Christians were Israel’s worst enemy because a) they didn’t want to see it as a flourishing state, they wanted to see it in ruins and have the Jews either convert or be massacred by the anti-Christ and b) they didn’t call Israel on anything. A bad analogy for the latter would be like a parent who never disciplines a child. And given all the military support the US gives Israel, maybe it’s not such a bad analogy.
Or like a friend who makes absolutely no comment as a woman slowly drinks and sleeps and dopes her way onto the street. And even enables her by paying for some of it. And (relating to “a”) thinks this is actually a good thing because it’ll accomplish what she wants.
A sane Israel that is tolerated the world community isn’t an Israel that’ll bring about their plans for Revelation, after all. And I think that if Israel made some changes in their treatment of Palestinians, they could be respected by the non-Arab world, at any rate. They’d probably even look like the good guys! *cough*decenthumanconditionsinsteadofgenocidemaybe*cough*
Oops, gave away my position. ;)
Wife–
Thanks! But since I don’t think any present politicians in Israel or America are of the conservative Dispensationalist bent, I’m not sure it would help me understand Israel any better.
It’s interesting that you think Israel could be tolerated.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with Israel per se and that they could have made it work. It’s just that both they and the Palestinians need to accept the existence of one another and divide up the land in such a way that everyone has somewhere to live. And people aren’t ghettoized within their own land…so a farmer can’t go to his field without spending hours at a checkpoint.
Anyway, the book argues that the support for various politicians and policies came from a Dispensationalist grassroots.
The book sounds like it could be helpful, but it also sounds like its author would have a dog in the fight. (”It’s a right-wing fundamentalist Christian conspiracy!” is always a fun narrative, and is usually used by people of a certain bent — even when it’s true.)
But I’ll pass for the moment, since I don’t need any more lectures about how America and Israel are evil, or on how America and Israel are good. I get both of those all the time.
Thanks for getting that other book for me from the library though! That one shouldn’t stress me out too much.
Rather a poor argument for why far-right Christians are Israel’s worst enemy. Since their theories concerning Revelation are rather obviously false, there’s no actual fear that Jews will be converted or massacred by the anti-Christ. And, of course, Israel doesn’t think of itself as a wayward child who needs a bunch of far-right American Christians to exert the proper discipline and control over them.
Plus, of course, wacky theories about Revelations have virtually nothing to do with American support for Israel. (For one thing, Christians who have any serious interest in Dispensationalist theology are a pretty small minority even of conservative Christians.) America started supporting Israel after the 1973 Yom Kippur War and they did so as part of a Cold War strategy to counter the Arab client-states of the Soviet Union. Israel was the only country in the region even remotely pro-Western and willing to work with the United States to counter the greatest threats to American interests in the region. I have to question the scholarship of anyone who claims that Dispensationalist theology has more to do with U.S. support of Israel than simple realpolitik.
It seems to me that there is a small group of people who have clearly articulated (if wacky) theologies such as dispensationalism. I’d further suggest that these folks have a disproportionate ammount of influence.
I’d say that there is a much wider group with a less clearly articulated theology with an equally strong agenda. It might be a red herring that I introduced by connecting the wackiness to revelations specifically. Overall, Israel in the hands of Jews conforms with some vague notions of “the way things are supposed to be.”
I’m not sure how to compare the nuts and bolts logistical concerns with the more theological ones… I’m open to the possibility that realpolitik is more significant then a certain group of Christian theologies… But these also seem inter-related:
It seems to me that starting off with the favoring of Israel might easily lead to a situation where they end up our only ally in the region.