Moynihan and Norman Podhoretz eventually drifted apart, but I’m sure the senator never regretted the words he spoke on that night. Once, many years later, when he came to theNY Post editorial page offices, he told a story–I don’t recall the subject–in which he described a politician as “the most enthusiastic Zionist you could imagine, you’ve never seen such a Zionist” in tones which may, or may not, have exuded a whiff of mockery, you couldn’t be sure. In any case, in those days the idea that Zionism, the national liberation movement of the Jewish people, a phrase central to the speech, could be defined racist was about as absurd, and obscene, a thought as one could possibly imagine. At least so we thought.
I recalled that night while watching on streaming web TV yesterday’s vote to recognize Palestine as an observer state, which passed 138-9, over the votes of the U.S. and Canada and a handful of small island countries. Unlike the 1975 vote, this wasn’t close: then Israel had on its side the entire Western world, the Third World was split, only the Communist bloc and Arab countries and much of Africa was in favor; despite its passage with 70 votes, there was no question that the free and economically productive part of the world was on Israel’s side.
Yesterday’s vote on Palestine was a different matter: it certainly didn’t disavow Zionism or Israel the way the 1975 vote did. Every speaker I saw explicitly recognized Israel and wished for its well being, free and secure with a Palestinian state alongside it, a phrase repeated ad nauseam during the debate.
But of course, 37 years later, Israel is different. The very day of the vote, one reads debate about a new bus line on the West Bank, for Palestinians, because the Israeli settlers (whom Israel has illegally settled on Palestinian land) can’t bear to see Palestinians riding on the same buses they do. One reads recently of Israeli laws expressing a national angst that a small population of Arabs remained in 1948–so there are rabbinic admonitions to landlords proscribing renting to Arabs. Recently Israeli youth have gone on violent rampages in Jerusalem, targeting Palestinians or random immigrants. Videos of young Americans imbibing the atmosphere in Israel reveal a mindset evocative of Mississippi in the early 1960s. Rather eerily, it seems almost as if the notorious Zionism=Racism canard anticipated what Israel would become, once it had the freedom and security to grow into its true self.
And yet Israel has won. There is no state in the world unwilling to recognize it, provided it makes peace with the Palestinians. If you compared the international atmosphere now with that of 40 years ago, you would have to conclude the Israelis had achieved everything they wanted: a durable peace with Egypt; no hostile superpower to arm its enemies; an oft-repeated readiness in the Arab world to recognize it, trade ambassadors, give it a place in the region. It has an international legitimacy that its founders–and the Israeli diplomats of 1975–would have delighted in.
But of course Israel doesn’t feel that way at all. Like some sort of compulsive eater, it has been unable to keep itself from gobbling up and settling Arab territory, especially East Jerusalem and the West Bank. As a result, it now finds itself losing the votes not only of the Arab world, but of France and Spain and Norway and Sweden and Denmark, and no longer has the support of Britain and Germany. This isolation Israel has chosen freely for itself–as a democracy, Israelis can’t even blame their rulers. Of course, Israel has enough influence over the U.S. Congress to generate resolutions in the Senate about protecting “our ally”; it actually seems possible that body may soon vote to exclude the United States from the United Nations in order to preserve Israel’s control over “Judea” and “Samaria.”
One can’t compare last night’s vote with the one in 1975 without feeling sadness and an enormous sense of missed opportunity.
At least seventeen suspected militants were killed in a drone attack in Waziristan, on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, on Friday. The attack by four American unmanned aircraft is the first such operation in Pakistan since bin Laden’s capture and execution by US Special Forces a little over a week ago. The drone attacks have sparked severe anti-American sentiment against the Obama Administration. Meanwhile, the U.S. government has released home videos of bin Laden rehearsing for his video addresses. The material was obtained during the raid last week and was released in order to undermine bin Laden’s martydom. In the wake of the operation, Pakistanis have expressed concern that the US violated Pakistani sovereignty during its mission to capture bin Laden because it operated without the consent of the Pakistani government. Bin Laden was captured down the street from the country’s elite military academy, and the Pakistani military has already been ridiculed for being too inept to capture bin Laden. Pakistan, a growing nuclear power, has had a rocky relationship with the United States. Activist and professor Pervez Hoodbhoy wrote in the Pakistani newspaper, The Tribune, “Bin Laden was the ‘Golden Goose’ that the army had kept under its watch but which, to its chagrin, has now been stolen from under its nose. Until then, the thinking had been to trade in the Goose at the right time for the right price, either in the form of dollars or political concessions.” This year alone, Congress has appropriated $3 billion in non-military aid to Pakistan. However, a bill introduced to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs is calling for Pakistan to prove that it knew nothing about bin Laden’s whereabouts in order to continue receiving aid. Both Republican and Democratic lawmakers have criticized the co-sponsors of the bill of being too hasty to punish Pakistan. “I think people who have been married 30 years still have some problems, but they don’t get divorced,” says House Armed Services Chairman Buck McKeon about the bill.
