[North-NV-Greens] Fwd: [usgp-dx] Re: Israel is pressing the US for military action on Iran (Washington Times)

[Paul Etxeberri]

>
>
>
>The Washington Times headline read:
>>  Israel pushes U.S. on Iran nuke solution
>
>Historical analogies are always perilous, but I can't help seeing Israel's
>expansionism as a reprise of the early days of the U.S. Both are settler
>nations with a sense of unique, divinely ordained destiny. Both displace an
>indigenous population by alternating brute force with deceitful
>treaty-making. Both have political cultures that promote liberty and
>justice, but only for certain types of person, and never on the frontier.
>
>History never merely repeats itself. So Israel's expansion over its first
>half century has been far slower than ours, prob. because while the U.S. had
>a booming population that faced a declining and dispersed one, Israel has a
>declining "white" Jewish population that faces a rapidly increasing,
>overwhelmingly youthful, nationalistic Palestinian one. So Israel cannot
>overwhelm its "Indians" with sheer numbers; therefore it takes a page from
>the apartheid South African playbook: the bantustan tactic, segregating the
>large, undesirable ethnic group into small, poorly resourced, "independent"
>enclaves. Clearly this is Sharon's and Bush's scheme for an "independent"
>Palestine - an Arabic Bophutatswana - and as the subjugated population, in
>this case, is proportionally smaller than it was in South Africa, they have
>hopes of making the scheme work perpetually in Israel. In other words, they
>hope to match the U.S. level of "success" re indigenous peoples.
>
>Territorial expansion: Israel has seized land from Egypt, Syria, and
>Lebanon, but has eventually surrendered each of these claims. Now the Sharon
>govt. shows signs of withdrawing from Gaza. So how can Israel be considered
>expansionist? Returning to early U.S. history, our forebears tried to expand
>into British Canada (the War of 1812) and the Caribbean, and the first
>attempts on Spanish Florida were unsuccessful. Like Israel, the Yankees had
>only one way left to expand, and that could only be done by trampling on
>indigenous rights, an issue that divided the country's own citizens.
>(Americans were far from unanimous in asserting a right to expand at the
>expense of Indians.) In 1815, prob. very few outside observers would have
>predicted that the United States would one day span the continent and absorb
>much of Mexico, as well as Britain's Oregon claims on the Pacific coast.
>Only a few wild-eyed Yankee patriots entertained such visions in the early
>1800s. Over time, though, in an era when only generals could aspire to the
>White House (as today only generals can become prime minister in Israel),
>the wild-eyed vision became the political mainstream.
>
>Maybe this is one NON-biblical reason why Americans identify so strongly
>with Israel. To question Israel's "right" to expand is in a way to question
>our own boundaries. Everyone (almost) now regrets (now that it's perfectly
>safe to do so) our country's relentless persecution of those who were here
>before us. But one thing most of us haven't yet questioned is the assumption
>that U.S. expansion and Indian decline were _inevitable_. We regret this
>history, but we seldom imagine that it could have turned out differently. An
>English mestizo republic north of Rio Grande. A green light to the nations,
>instead of a blazing white one.
>
>So perhaps most of us also imagine (whether we like it or not) that Israeli
>history is on an inevitable course of, to put it starkly, white ascendancy
>over brown. Perhaps Israel's manifest destiny will send its young men east,
>over River Jordan, into Iraq, and Iran, the Wild East. They'll have a tough
>time there, because the brown people are so numerous and already have
>millennia of experience with Western invasion. But empires are so very
>lucrative, and "ye dare not stoop to less." And once the brown people are
>finally reduced and consigned to "democratic" enclaves, their diminished
>culture can be mourned and celebrated. White Israelis can then take pride in
>claiming descent from some Palestinian princess.
>
>I am not as pessimistic as this seems, because history never merely repeats
>itself. Besides, I think we are about to witness a shift of public opinion
>re Israel. I do have three questions that I hope Greens know the answer to:
>
>1) Does anyone know of people who've made the link between U.S. and Israeli
>history before? Where can I read them?
>
>2) What are the superpatriots in Israel dreaming about these days? Two other
>countries beginning with "I", maybe? Is this why "Israel pushes U.S. on Iran
>nuke solution"?
>
>3) What about the Green Party of Israel?
>
>- Rob
>   in Alabama, a state named for a displaced nation
>
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-- 
Paul Etxeberri

"Forests precede civilizations and deserts follow"   ---Chateaubriand