I haven't been yelled at for, like, nine hours, and we seem to be running short on flame wars, so how about a little Israel blogging? Matt observes:
People often note that there appears to be a more vigorous debate over Israel's approach to the Israeli-Arab conflict in the mainstream Israeli press than there is in the mainstream American press. This is, however, the kind of judgment that it's hard for a casual American observer to make with much confidence. Writing in International Security, however, Jerome Slater takes a more systematic comparison of coverage of the conflict in The New York Times and in Haaretz and concludes that, indeed, Israelis debate this matter more freely.
If this is true, I wonder why it would be true. My tenative thoughts:
1) No one in Israel is worried about being called anti-semitic.2) Ethnic groups in safe exile tend to be more committed to territorial possession than the people back home who actually have to get shot at in order to obtain or retain the land. This is certainly true of the Irish.
3) Being correct about Israel/Palestine matters a lot more in Israel than it does in America. People expressing views here (or in Europe) are more often staking out ethnic or political solidarity with a cause. People in Israel have a certain level of solidarity assumed, and are in a high-stakes battle for the lowest cost solution, which permits and even demands a wider breadth of views.
4) Newspapers in Israel are just better than newspapers here.
Obviously, four is not the correct answer. I don't know how much to weight each of the other three.
1.) Number four may be correct.
2.) "1) No one in Israel is worried about being called anti-semitic." Here (in the MM) I thought it was a badge of honor.
Number 3 comes the closest. People in Israel know a lot more about the situation than people here. The papers over there are writing for an audience that is much more sophisticated on the subject matter. So they have to do a better job. It's like the difference in baseball writing in NY versus Green Bay.
I don't know, but maybe also something about 99% of Americans not knowing or caring all that much about it and the 1% tending to have much more similar backgrounds and worldviews, but somewhat limited information?
I don't discount 4 either.
Number 2 is wrong. A majority of American Jews dislike the settler movement in Israel and would be happy to see most of the land occupied by settlements returned to the Arabs if this could be done safely. I think the other points are valid.
You might read Ruth Wisse's book, Jews and Power.
Her point is that Jews have a traditional of blaming themselves for any wrong that befalls them. (Think of the prophets saying that losing to the Romans was due to Jews straying from God's ways.)
So it is quite natural for Jews to blame themselves for Arab hatred. On the other hand, there are many Jews (including Wisse) who see this self-blame as irrational.
If Wisse is correct, then non-Jews are less likely to engage in self-blame. America has a higher proportion of non-Jews than Israel, so American audiences on average may be less inclined to sympathize with a "blame the Jews" story for bad Arab-Jewish relations.
If Wisse is correct, then we should observe more criticism of Israeli policies in the Jewish Press in the U.S. than in the mainstream press. This may actually be the case. The Washington Jewish Week, for example, consistently describes peace gestures in optimistic terms while undertaking skeptical scrutiny of any hawkish Israeli policies.
The opposite of 2 may also be in play: Foreign observers (non-members of the relevant ethnic group) may be more committed to peace because they will not have to bear the potentially violent consequences of misjudging.
That's a problem all over the world.
While I'd say your 1 and 3 are the main reasons, note that Israel has European-style, openly ideological newspapers and Haaretz is the leftmost of the major papers. I can't follow the link to the original, but I'd guess that the author can't read the Hebrew-only papers.
I recently read a survey that compared the coverage of the immigration problem on the Mexican border in the New York Times and Haaretz. It seemed that the Americans were much more concerned with this subject that tne Israelis. I was wondering the reasons for this:
a: No one in Israel is concerned about being called anti-immigrant.
b: Jews in America care more about our border problems than Israelis.
c: The Israelis have their own border troubles and are concerned more with with them.
d: American newspapers are better at covering the subject than Israeli newspapers.
How silly is it to even question that Israelis debate their problems more than Americans debate Israeli problems. Right now most true blooded Americans are concerned about whether the Red Sox will get into the World Series and whether the Patriots in the NFL will go undefeated. Ask the average Israeli about these matters and you'll find many not be that concerned.
#4 obviously deserves careful consideration. Respect for our print journalism is increasingly eroded as revelation after revelation of lackadaisical sourcing, propagandizing and outright fabrication occur. Jayson Blair, Judy Miller, the 2000 election campaign, and countless other episodes all have had a corrosive effect on our mainstream media's credibility and therefore utility as a barometer and guidepost of our national discourse.
#3 is probably closest to the truth, in terms of common citizens. Most Americans are not as invested in the Israel/Palestine issue as the average Israeli would be; certainly their motivations are going to differ. I think that's only natural.
One thing to keep in mind is that for many American Jews, being very pro-Israel substitutes for actually practicing the faith. To them, it's a tribal identifier---as well as a way to quiet their guilt feelings about not practicing a religion they've mainly all but left behind, but don't have the courage to admit they've abandoned. You can eat tons of non-kosher food, marry a Gentile, and never darken a synagogue door, but as long as you're more pro-Israel than the Knesset, you're still in good standing.
wait... you want to be yelled at?
Assuming the original conclusion is correct, #3 is certainly tempting, but let me suggest three other potential reasons.
5) Jewish Israelis (and to some extent Europeans and many others) live among a lot more Muslims than Americans, and so are much more likely to hear and be affected by the Muslim take on this issue; also, some of this diversity of opinion may just be directly what Muslims are saying and writing (or are they not part of the mainstream Israeli press?).
6) America, for various reasons (mostly due to its location, power and history) often has a different view of the world than what many other Western countries share. The views of the people in Israel perhaps have more in common with the European/Internationalist outlook than America does.
6) This conflict is the central conflict in Israeli's lives, while it's only one of many, and hardly central, in American's lives (even if you take the New York Times to represent America). Of course you'll get fuller coverage and debate in Israel.
A more interesting and perhaps illuminating comparison would be the American coverage versus European, or Israel's versus its neighbors.
2) Ethnic groups in safe exile tend to be more committed to territorial possession than the people back home who actually have to get shot at in order to obtain or retain the land. This is certainly true of the Irish.
This is most certainly true for Taiwanese-Americans, who support independence with far greater enthusiasm than actual Taiwanese.
The charitable view is that they have been Americanized, and hold much stronger views on ethnic self-determination. The less charitable view is that they are over-compensating for their loss of cultural authenticity by becoming more nationalistic. As you say, the natives, who have to bear the consequences of expatriate agitation, are more ambivalent about the whole thing.
Many members of the so-called "Isreal Lobby" are American conservatives and/or evangelical christians whose interests in Israel are , well, lets be generous and say "idealistic". Their policy positions have little regard for the welfare of either Arabs or Jews, and are primarily concerned with bringing about apocalyptic ancient prophecies or maintaining US military hegemony in the region. As such they have no incentive to take a nuanced or informed view of the situation in the holy lands.
I think reasons 1 through 4 are all true. (4 is true because Israelis are almost universally politics junkies.)
But I also think that each of your explanations is a static, institutional description, rather than a historical description of actions which have been undertaken by the important players. To a great extent, there is little debate over Israel's approach to the Israel/Palestine issue in the American press because the more nationalist elements of the US Israel lobby have carried out a decades-long campaign to close this debate (partly, as you note, by responding to deviating arguments with cries of anti-semitism).
The situation is only partly a natural result of the way people are. It's also a contingent result of things people did.
Interesting thoughts, everyone.
I don't have much additional commentary to offer, but I do think the centrality of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict can be a strong clarifying aspect. When you actually have to deal with real problems, idealogically driven solutions tend to be discarded pretty quickly, because they don't actually help much.
For instance, in one of the Republican debates, several candidates started criticizing Rudy for declaring New York a sactuary city with regards to illegal immigrants. He responded, very appropriately in my opinion, by saying something like "Look, when you're actually running a city and trying to reduce crime, you need to lower to barriers that keep people from reporting those crimes. If we made every victim of a crime, whether a citizen, legal immigrant or illegal immigrant, afraid to do so, then ideology is just getting in the way of governing."
It wasn't a particularly popular response, but it was a very responsible response. So some jackass pundit in American calling on Israel to I either displace the Palestinians from their homes or kill them, is expressing an opinion from a position of not having to live with the consequences of such an action. Lovely.
I find it interesting that Israel seems to get a lot more criticism for their handling of the Israeli-Arab than the Arabs and Palestinians do. You don't see the same level of condemnation for terrorist attacks that you do for Israeli attacks. I guess most people assume that the Palestinians are just like that?
As to the direct point of this post, I think it's pretty obvious why the Israelis debate the Israeli-Arab conflict more openly than Americans... they're in Israel.
EI
I haven't been yelled at for, like, nine hours
Blockquoting your own new writing is pretty goddamned stupid.
People in Israel have a certain level of solidarity assumed, and are in a high-stakes battle for the lowest cost solution
Those lovable Jews and their money.
Unrighteous Bubba wrote: Blockquoting your own new writing is pretty goddamned stupid.
Point of unsolicited advice: zip lips, think carefully, and only then should you type -- and if you have any civility at all, you should at most use invective only in proportion to whatever was delivered.
Here, there was none delivered, and therefore none merited in your response. More specifically, she was creating a bulleted list, which for a simple HTML interface like this one is commonly achieved either through the LI command or manually-entered numbers for the bullets, and a BLOCKQUOTE command to separate the list from the main text body.
Point of unsolicited advice:
People who don't get simple jokes tend to write these.
I believe points 2 and 3 are most accurate, and particularly point 2 and how it relates to the enthusiasms of people who are a safe distance from the situation at hand.
Two commenters raise some good points.
Nelziq (11:47pm) suggests that there are groups here, like evangelicals, who have a rather fixed and some would say, unrealistic, view when it comes to Israel. I've grown up in rather conservative churches where in sermons and belief it was implied that Israel could do no wrong, thus ignoring the ideal that God's people are the people that do God's good. In other words (and in a ridiculously hypothetical example), Israel could render all Palestinians homeless, and many evangelicals would say, "Well, they are God's chosen after all, and in God's favor."
Which is an odd view for ChRISTIANS to have. The whole point of Christ was the idea that a direct relationship with God (and his purity) was demonstrably (via the Old Testament) impossible, so therefore, in the same way God formed Hebrews out of the masses based on their "belief", he thus opened up the same possibilities to all, based upon their "belief", and expressed through all people's desire to live righteously. Thus, purely theologically, one ought not to support Israel regardless of actions, but rather, give support to the extent the nation is just. The blessings from God following "believers", not biology. But no one ever said evangelicals are consistent.
Then Xixobrax (6:05) brings up another related point. To some degree Jewishness is best expressed as a religious identity, and based on covenants with God. A willingness to believe in One G-d.
So what happens when you largely reject the core of what makes you Jewish, the distinguishing characteristic?
Well, you either turn away completely and submerge your identity into other pursuits and "isms", devoting your intellect to other pursuits and endeavors. The idea of God is minimized and you reduce spiritual matters to doing justly in the here and now.
Or, and as pointed out by Xixobrax, you become a kind of hyper-Jew without foundation. You take on all the cultural trappings: you send the kids to Hebrew school and have elaborate bar and bat mitzvah's; you celebrate certain holidays and light the candles and head to the reform temple every now and then; you make sure the fiance converts (at least temporarily) to Judaism so you can crush the glass at the wedding. Oh, and you make sure you are economically and politically vocal regarding "the homeland".
Mind you, the existence of that homeland (and according to evangelical beliefs as well), is due to a grant from God, and essentially an "ever-grant".
So you end up with at least two enthusiastic and powerful groups of people here in the United States who have less than nuanced views of how Israel should resolve its deep problems.
And deep problems they are, given that the Arab population in Israel reproduces faster. Israel is coming to a reckoning point where they are going to have to make semi-racist (though perhaps justified?) policy decisions on who can be a citizen. Trust certain Americans to miss the complexity of what the average Israeli faces.
Arnold Kling comes the closest to saying it, but thus far nobody has outright, so I will. Jews have a disputatious culture, and as you may have heard, Israel is full of Jews. This is where I note that I'm one of them (well, Jewish, not Israeli), so spare me the condemnations.
Righteous Bubba wrote: People who don't get simple jokes tend to write these.
I see that the oversize shepherd's crook is being shoved out from the wings, so if you've got any other last-chance material, ya better fire it off now.
I'm surprised that none of the commenters have mentioned this yet:
It's hardly appropriate to define Jews in America as an "ethnic group in safe exile" from Israel. Are African Americans or Caribbeans ethnic groups in safe exile from Africa? It's called a diaspora. Exile matters -- but this ain't exile.
Oddly enough, there's far more coverage of New York's crime problems in the New York press than in the Atlanta local paper. I wonder why?
3 is the right answer.
"are primarily concerned with bringing about apocalyptic ancient prophecies"
The God of the New Testament is a really powerful deity. I don't believe He relies on conservative American Christians as his kitchen timer for the End of Days. The NT also doesn't have much to say about "here's how to bring Me back" and more about "here's what to do in the meantime."
There are plenty of reasons for the religious right to be sympathetic to Israelis other than trying to get God to hurry up.
The Israeli press reports more frequently on the numerous attempts made by Palestinians to commit indiscriminate mass murder against Israeli civilians too. Wonder why?
I would like to bring your attention to some Israeli circumstances one can easily miss.
Between three major Israeli newspapers, "Yediot Aharonot", "Maariv" and "Haaretz", the former two are tabloids with some vague center-left political orientaion, while the later is quality newspaper with radical left political orientation bordering on insanity. Fortunately for Israel, the position is quite marginal, In the las elections the political party representing the worldview of Haaretz board and authors, Meretz, got just 5 seats out of 120.
The two most likely explanations are:
(a): Killing all the Palestinians is not an option, which means that Israelis need to find a way to get the Palestinians to live peacefully alongside them. Americans don't need to do that, because the Palestinians are a zillion miles away. So even those Israelis who believe themselves to be 100% in the right need to find a solution to the current problem. Americans don't. This is basically your second point, only it applies to people with no connection to Jews or Israel too (e.g., me).
(b): The only Palestinians the average American gets exposed to are terrorists -- Arafat, Hamas, et al. On the other hand, we're knee-deep in positive Jewish personages. The average Israelis, on the other hand, actually knows a lot of Palestinian Arabs who are everyday ordinary men and women. It is a lot easier to support peace with a group when you personally know members of that group who *don't* want you dead.
One last point, regarding "vigorous debate" -- there is probably a more vigorous debate over women's rights in Afghanistan than there is in the United States. I would say that's because we've arrived at the correct answer already. I don't think that's necessarily the case with the Palestinian situation, but it is food for thought.
I'm told by a friend that Haaretz is a left-wing newspaper, with worthwhile reporting, but with an editorial position a wee bit to the right of The Nation, in US terms.
The premise that favoring the well-being of an allied democracy over that of those who would - given the chance - destroy it requires a convoluted explanation is misguided. The US misses out on the benefits of socialized medicine not because politicians are afraid to be called "socailists" (even if they will be called that) but because Americans don't trust government to run it well.
That most European sophisticates consider any Palestinian barbarity a vindication of Israel's guilt does not mean it takes something sinister for Americans to feel differently.
Megan leaves out another possibility:
5) Groups that perceive themselves to be vulnerable tend to be much more willing to be self-critical amongst themselves than amongst outsiders. (A black preacher may tell his congregation that black men need to take responsibility for their children -- but when he's speaking for a white audience, he's much more likely to express racial solidarity and blame the problem on racism.) So Jews in the U.S. want to avoid self-criticism in front of gentiles in the U.S., but don't need to censor themselves in Israel.
In any case, I think #4 needs to be changed to "Israel has a different philosophy towards newspapers than the U.S." Israel takes a European approach, in which newspapers openly advocate for a particular viewpoint. We have publications that do that, but they're the political magazines that may or may not compete with the Atlantic, such as the Nation, National Review, New Republic, etc. If you take the range of views in those publications, it's as wide as the range of views in the Israeli press.
A couple of the commenters above imply that Jews in Israel are more likely to support peace than Jews in the U.S. because the former have to live in the neighborhood and the latter don't. I think the reverse is true; Jews in the U.S. are more likely to support peace than Jews in Israel because the latter have to live in the neighborhood and the former don't. Jews in the U.S. have the luxury of supporting utopian schemes like Oslo even after those schemes have proven to be complete failures; Jews in Israel don't.
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