Letter to America

In order to provide international perspective in the debate over US foreign policy, The Nation asked foreign intellectuals to share their reflections. This is the fifth in that series.
   --The Editors

Growing up in Nazareth, an Arab in a Jewish state, a secular Christian in a Muslim society, a leftist in a Baptist school, I learned firsthand how managing ideological, religious and national differences helps us evolve peacefully. Succumbing to them generates fundamentalism and antagonism. Applying brute force to overcome them--as Israel, my country, has done to my people, the Palestinian Arabs--fails utterly.

So it puzzles me as to why America now views the Middle East through Israel's eyes, and why, since 9/11, it has adopted an apocalyptic Israeli vision of an irredeemable world that "hates us." Such fatalism on the part of Bush and Sharon is rendering diplomacy a prelude to imminent war in Iraq and Palestine. Their justification--"If it doesn't get worse, it won't get better, and when force doesn't work, more force will"--threatens to globalize the violent impasse of Israel/Palestine. Judging from the January Israeli (and last fall's American) elections, more people are buying into this dangerous paranoia.

In order to confront this logic, I feel it is indispensable to debunk the myths behind America's misplaced identification/fascination with Israel, best captured in a post-9/11 headline: "We Are All Israelis Now." As seen in this light, Israel is a "peace-seeking" victim of Arab hostility, a "true democracy" that shares "our" values, an "ally" that serves "our" interests, whose "success" in a "hostile neighborhood" is inspirational in a Hobbesian world. In reality, Israel has consistently expanded its frontiers, embarked on a number of offensive wars and even contemplated the reconfiguration of Lebanon and Jordan, while rejecting UN resolutions and America's own initiatives. That hardly qualifies as peace-seeking.

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