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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