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I don't fully understand the Israel conundrum.
The ideological stake over the issue hasn't been divided merely between the left and right, but within each aisle too. In recent years, it seems as though liberals have fallen out of love with them and many of them believe that (on principle) Israel shouldn't exist. While others believe in the two state solution. The mainstream media has been louder about the IDF's excesses in occupied territories (like this one, a cursory search). Tankies over at GrayZone and related websites are convinced that western mainstream media is still defending Israel. I don't get this position, are they arguing that western media isn't criticising Israel enough or that the media is silent altogether? The right seems to be divided too, many of them enthusiastically support them while others don't like that billions of dollars of taxpayer money is sent to Israel every year and they're convinced that their lobby in the US is most supportive of liberalism and progressivism and the war machine.
My questions are what drove the evolution of these views into what they are, exactly how influential is the Israel lobby in the US, why do tankies believe that Israel doesn't get criticised in the media, are the liberals starting to decouple from Israel, are there any other reasons besides the treatment of Palestinians that the Israel question takes up so much oxygen in the foreign policy room?
The criticisms of Israel are dual-pronged. The right-wing critique of Israel is more rooted in what could be regarded as anti-Semitism in the European tradition:
Accusations of dual loyalty among Jews.
Accusations of being stabbed in the back, like the USS Liberty attack, the theft of US nuclear secrets, and highly suspicious espionage.
Zionist influence in the neo-conservative movement and wars in the Middle East brought about by fabricated intelligence.
Duplicitousness. Jewish nationalism is pursued militaristically and violently while Jewish influence vehemently opposes European nationalistic tendencies, and uses considerable influence to promote diversity and immigration in other countries.
Jewish influence in media and culture has engineered a Holocaust Industry to defraud the West of billions of dollars and pacify would-be criticism.
As Zionists will point out, these criticisms of Israel do play the same beats as classical anti-Semitism, as it were. Those who would make this criticism would plausibly be called anti-Semitic, so the only people who are publicly willing to make these ciriticsms are those brave enough to face credible accusations of anti-Semitism (not many).
The left wing critique of Israel is not really rooted in this tradition, and it's more along the lines of:
Israel is a violent, ethnonationalist state.
As such, it is far closer to fascist that it is to the left-wing ideal of a state.
Israel is oppressing indigenous people, murdering them, and driving them out of their homes.
Illegal Israeli settlements are ethnic cleansing.
Billions of dollars for Military Industrial Complex and warmongering to steal Arab oil.
Jewish influence has had a harder time fighting the left-wing criticism because it really isn't anti-Semitic, as much as they are trying to redefine that word to incorporate those criticisms. These criticisms also follow from anti-racist ideology. Accusations of anti-Semitism are not really credible here and don't seem to be working very well in shaming them out of their positions.
The real concern is bridging the gap between these perspectives, as the left-wing criticisms of Israel could be a gateway to genuine anti-Semitism. Finkelstein for example is a leftist Jewish professor, so his critique in the Holocaust Industry is much more powerful than it would have been coming from a right-winger. Another example is Grayzone, a left-wing publication that danced into the Dancing Israeli Question, although it ultimately provided weak cover for it, talking about it is 95% of the way there.
I'm curious as to whence the American Left sided with Palestine. What is the history behind that?
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