MidEast confusions...

Another blog I recently came across here was talking a bit about the belief among some that Israel "calls the shots" in American Mid East politics. I think that's more perception than fact (as did she), but it has for some time made a nuanced debate over policy in that part of the world difficult. Such difiiculty is only fueled by the fact that this administration seems constitutionally incapable of recognizing that there are nuances beyond black and white.

Israel certainly has a strong lobby in the big US Jewish population -- one that's greater than Israel's own and has numerous family bonds to Israeli Jews. Those legitimate connections, unfortunately, feed a long-standing confusion between people, country, and faith.

Judaism, unlike the other major faiths, is essentially the world's largest tribal religion. It discourages conversion & missionizing and encourages solidarity, sense of "homeland," & marriage within the community to a greater degree than many faiths. Combine those features with a lengthy history of being segregated from and often oppressed by others and you've got a situation tailor-made for people to see country = religion = Jewish people, and demagogues both among Jews and outside their community play on that connection, both pro- and con-.

That connection has existed for a long time, but became an especially complicating issue with the birth of independent modern Israel in 1949. The Republic of Israel as a country clearly has its own interests & practices that may not in fact always be shared by American Jews, any more than those of us who claim British descent will always support the United Kingdom's policies. To imagine some kind of monolithic Jewish policy -- especially when taken to the "patriot" movement's delusional extreme -- is to greatly muddy the waters of an already complicated MidEastern situation.

Our policy needs to make it clear that how we react to what the Republic of Israel does has nothing to do with how we treat Jews as fellow people, or with issues that affect Jews here in our country. We need clarity that Jews are only ONE of the world's Semitic peoples, so that supporting Arab countries on some issues & promoting freedom or at least true democratic representation within Israel for the Palestinians is not racially-motivated "anti-Semitism," nor is it "supporting terrorism."

On the flip side, we need to be equally clear that supporting Israel on some issues is not "anti-Muslim," because some of the same confusion exists there. Too many people see Arab = Muslim, when in fact the religion of Islam has 1 billion-plus followers around the world. Only some of them are Arabs. Iran, for example, is definitely NOT Arab -- its people speak Farsi and are actually more closely related to most Europeans than to Arabs -- yet too many Americans do not understand the distinction. For another example, most Americans don't realize that the largest Muslim countries aren't in the MidEast -- they are Indonesia and Nigeria, both with large non-Muslim minorities and formed from numerous non-Arab ethnic groups.

In both examples, too many of our countrymen are too easily led to believe the idea that there's some kind of Muslim vs. American vendetta sprawling across the third world. There are problems between the two societies -- nobody rational can deny that, but any vendetta is being brewed by and exists only in the minds of fringe elements on both sides. (In our country, unfortunately, the fringe element sits in the White House.) The vast majority of mainstream people in Muslim countries are like us in the fact that they want to raise their families in peace and prosperity without interference by someone who doesn't understand their way of life.

Edited 3/17/05 to add: I came across this editorial and think he's saying some important things. In brief, he argues, "An American-Muslim alliance for peace is crucial. Most American clergy and Muslim scholars would be happy with such an alliance, though the preachers of Armageddon and terrorism might not." Have to agree with that; everyone loses if the wackjobs on either side win, including the wackjobs.

Also note this link: The Islamic world is not nearly as monolithic as some of us think.