I Like The Inter-Blog Dialogue (Hopefully There Will Be More)

JNM and I have a good bit of dialogue going and I know this blog has benefited from having his commentary (you should certainly pay a visit his blog). So a sincere thanks to him for allowing me to post his responses here. I do have a few more questions for him and I'm hoping that he can draw upon his experience as a student of modern Israeli history (remember that class you took - was it the spring of our senior year?) as well as a Jew living in modern Europe.

I'm hoping he can confirm or deny an interesting trend that I have seen gaining in speed in recent years, one that I think plays heavily into what I have referenced in earlier posts. I'm interested in exploring what I see as an anti-Israeli sentiment (that often times manifests itself as a new, subtler anti-semitism) that seems to be on the rise in Europe and throughout the west. It stems from a relatively recently formed view of Israel as aggressor and repressor of the Palestinians, as well as regional bully. This view seems to also associate Israel the Middle East hegemon with the US the global hegemon (or as the Iranians would prefer, The Little Satan and The Great Satan respectively) and views the actions of both as aggressively neo-imperialist. This allows for the convenient but unfortunate amalgamation of those who seek to protest the global hegemony of the US with that of the plight of the Palestinians (experiment: count the number of keffiyehs you see at the next anti-globalization protests).

Some might say that taking these radical views seriously is unnecessary as they are often devoid of serious scholarship. Though I agree that serious scholarship is often lacking, I must respectively disagree; I went to a college where the Palestinian lobby was so incredibly well-organized and well-supported that it absolutely dominated the college-wide discourse on Israel, the Palestinian question and the Middle East. College students, renowned for their desire to challenge the status quo no matter the facts, are easily lured into a world of keffiyeh-wearing anti-Israeli sentiment it turns out.

My question to JNM is the following: is anti-Israeli sentiment becoming the status quo? In Europe and elsewhere (not quite in mainstream America yet, but certainly on college campuses) does Israel suffer from a PR deficit (undeserved, I think we both would agree) that is in turn creating a new, though youthful, anti-semitism? And if so, how do you trace the progression of this trend? Personally, I see the tactics of Yasser Arafat as being a watershed moment in the history of the Palestinian question. His mastery of PR helped to shape the global discourse on the Palestinian question around the view that Israel was inherently aggressive and repressive, something that had previously not been the case. But hopefully our alma mater didn't fail you in yet another regard and you will have some course materials to draw upon regarding this issue.

I went back to the archives of my college newspaper to find an opinion piece I had read a while back that left a sour taste in my mouth. It turns out that it doesn't exactly fit the mold of what I am trying to build here, but it shows some of the absolute ignorance that pervades college campuses (especially mine) when it comes to foreign policy. I don't need to get into dissecting this piece for obvious reasons but it brings to the fore some important questions. JNM, help us out.

And just quickly - what brought this issue to mind was this pretty good (though certainly biased) review of some of Benny Morris' books by Gershom Gorenberg. Morris' story is an interesting one, and I hope to read some of his excellent histories in the near future (when I might have one spare second).