Geopolitical Assisted Suicide

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As the rancid response to the movie “Miral” and the rancorous reception for J Street at the Knesset indicate, Israel’s right wing and their supporters are circling the wagons to protect the settlers in Indian country against the marauding savages.  J Street is the liberal alternative to AIPAC, and the new Israel lobby for America’s predominately liberal Jewish community, should they wish to have their views reflected in our foreign policy towards Israel.

But from its inception, the Netanyahu government has snubbed J Street and last week a Committee of the Knesset met to investigate them in a manner reminiscent of the House of Un-American Activities.  Jeremy Ben Ami, the head of J Street (who I will be interviewing today) valiantly defended his organization, producing thousands of letters of support from American Jews who support both peace and Israel.  But their entreaties were lost on the hard-liners who dominate Israeli politics and nobody is about to give peace a chance.

Just as the entire landscape in the Middle East is shifting towards a more hopeful and democratic future, and young Arabs are bravely putting their lives on the line for freedom, in the region’s only democracy, Israel’s right wing are saying no to freedom of speech, thought and opinion.  There is only one narrative they and their supporters in America insist.  We are right and they are wrong, and if you agree with them, you’re either a traitor or an anti-Semite. 

The same argument is being made against “Miral”, the brave new film by Julian Schnabel, based on an autobiography by his girlfriend Rula Jebrael who also wrote the screenplay.  How dare a Jew make a film that tells the Palestinian side of the long and tortured story of the twice-promised land beset by too much history and not enough geography?

The criticism of “Miral” from both American Jewish organizations and film critics ranges from the hysterical to the absurd.  The main argument that the enforcers of AIPAC have drummed into Capitol Hill is that there is no other side to the story but ours.  This was recently displayed when the Obama Administration dutifully vetoed a U.N. resolution opposing West Bank settlements, that was identical to American policy and was supported by J Street.

There is no mystery why Obama and the Democrats in Congress repudiated their own policy and squandered what is left of their leverage and credibility in the so-called “peace process”.  With Wall Street already arrayed against them in 2012, they are not about to support J Street against AIPAC and commit campaign finance suicide.

In terms of the film critic’s specious carping about a very moving and powerful film’s alleged deficiencies, you have to blame Sid Fields, whose bible on how to write screenplays has not only got every screenwriter with a laptop at Starbucks faithfully following the script, but now the film critics are complaining that “Miral” does not stick to Field’s approved cinematic formula.

The reason the film does not start out with the “inciting incident” is that it is a true story that is following the protagonist’s actual experiences and historical influences.  It makes sense and gains its emotional momentum precisely because it is true.  Now there’s the rub.  Because there is only one truth, the approved one, and if you deviate from that, you are a heretic.  And that sounds more like an argument coming from Bin Laden than Ben Gurion.

Defense Secretary Gates was recently in Israel where he warned that as the Middle East becomes more democratic, a new political landscape will provide both a challenge and an opportunity to Israel.  As these decrepit kleptocratic regimes of colonels, princes and potentates who use hostility towards Israel to distract their restive populations from their plunder, topple one by one, the big lie is exposed.  But if Israel still does not deal with the Palestinians justly and honestly, then the other big lie will be exposed.  Israel is not really serious about peace.

Unfortunately intrangigence and inflexibility appear to be the Likud coalition policy and strategy.  Their only endgame seems to be to shrink the Palestinians down to a concentration camp size and hope they give up and migrate to Jordan.  And as the Palestinian papers leaked to Al Jazeera reveal, young Palestinians need to throw off the yoke of their failed leadership just as their brothers have done in Tunisia and Egypt. 

Will this lead to a flourishing democracy or a reactionary theocracy?  Who can say?  But will it be worse than the old status quo of recycled historical pain and competing victimhood that hardliners here and throughout the Middle East are clinging to?