Obama on Israel

There is an interesting piece in the London Review of Books by Uri Avnery, leader of Gush Shalom, the Israeli Peace Bloc, that examines the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama's appearance at the Aipac conference. In Avnery's view, Obama's speech "broke all records for obsequiousness to the Israeli lobby. That is shocking enough. Even more shocking is the fat that nobody was shocked."

Interesting still is Avnery's analysis of what accounts for Aipac's influence in US politics:

What has caused the rapid ascent to power of the American Jewish establishment? The more I think about this phenomenon, the stronger my conviction becomes that what really matters is the similarity between the American enterprise and the Zionist one. The Mayflower passengers, much like the Zionists of the first and second aliya (immigration wave), fled from Europe, carrying with them a messianic vision, whether religious or utopian. (The early Zionists were mostly atheists, but religious traditions had a powerful influence on them.) The founders of American society were pilgrims, the Zionist immigrants called themselves olim – short for olim beregel, or ‘pilgrims’. Both sailed to a ‘promised land’, believing themselves to be God’s chosen people. Both suffered a great deal in their new country. Both saw themselves as ‘pioneers’ who would make the wilderness bloom, a ‘people without land in a land without people’. Both completely ignored the rights of indigenous people, considering them savages. Both saw the resistance of the local peoples as evidence of their innate murderous character, and felt that this justified even the worst atrocities. Both expelled the natives and took possession of their land, settling on every hill and under every tree, with one hand on the plough and the other on the Bible. True, Israel hasn’t committed anything approaching the genocide performed against the Native Americans, nor anything like slavery. But in the unconscious mind of both nations feelings of suppressed guilt make themselves evident in the denial of past misdeeds, in aggressiveness and the worship of power.