Israel has long since given up on Europe as a rampart of automatic support for its existence, its policies and its excesses. Public opinion there, and to a large extent EU officialdom as well, have long since shifted dramatically in favor of Palestine and its tormented people.
But is Israel beginning to lose support in the US, a country whose economic, diplomatic and military largess has historically underwritten the Zionist entity’s survival?
Earlier this week, Daniel Shapiro, the US ambassador to Tel Aviv, sharply criticized Israel in a speech at a security think tank in Jerusalem, effectively identifying it as an apartheid state — though clearly without using the term — when he stated that the law in the occupied territories is applied differently to Palestinians and Israelis. He said: “Too many attacks on Palestinians lack a vigorous investigation or response by Israeli authorities, too much vigilantism goes unchecked, and at times there seem to be two standards of adherence to the rule of law: One for Israelis and another for Palestinians.”
This, predictably, angered Israeli leaders no end, who called his comments “unacceptable” and demanded a “retraction.”
You would’ve thought the American diplomat (who, incidentally, is of Jewish descent) was simply giving a “statement of evidentiary fact,” clear even to someone with a cursory knowledge of the realities on the ground: Palestinians in the West Bank are an occupied people, face military tribunals, are incarcerated for months, at times years, without charge, and those youngsters among them caught in acts of resistance are treated harshly.
Nevertheless, the ambassador’s comments caused brouhaha, as if Americans, in particular American officials, have to support Israel come what may — right or wrong. Yet, incrementally, imperceptibly, that support is eroding, a process propelled by historical imperatives or perhaps, on a more pedestrian level, by President Abraham Lincoln’s pithy observation about how you can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but not all the people all the time.
Europe’s retrenchment on its support for Israel may have begun years ago, perhaps as far back as the June 1967 War, when Israel became an occupying power subjecting another people to the rule of the gun, but certainly it became starkly evident at the 2001 UN World Conference Against Racism, in Durham, South Africa, which brought together hundreds of governmental and non-governmental delegations, and which at its conclusion issued a draft declaration condemning Zionism as a form of racism.
That European alienation from Israel widened considerably in 2012 when Israel launched its lethal war on Gazans — for it was indeed a war waged against civilians where, among other atrocities, the Israeli military destroyed roughly 5,000 homes with families inside. It was a war, lest we forget, that came close on the heels of that earlier, equally vicious assault on the Strip in 2008-2009.
The European peoples’ revulsion was expressed in massive demonstrations in cities all the way from London to Athens, where protesters hollered slogans like “1,2,3,4, occupation no more” and “5,6,7,8, Israel is a terror state.” As the Economist reported at the time: “Clearly, Europe’s antipathy toward Israel is more than just loud protest. Many Israelis think they can no longer count on public opinion in Europe — and to a much lesser extent America — and that where public sentiment leads, democratic politicians will sooner or later follow.”
Of course Israel, along with its now progressively dwindling supporters in the US, continues to attribute all that to old-fashioned anti-Semitism. The Anti-Defamation League in Washington, for example, recently released a “survey” — of questionable veracity — claiming that 34 percent of Eastern Europeans and 24 percent of Western Europeans harbored anti-Semitic views. Now, let’s see: That would imply that the continent has, in all, 105 million “Jew haters”!
Nothing has happened in the US, yet, that compares to that sea change in attitude by Europeans, who have long since stopped seeing Israel as a victim, but simply as an occupying power. But change of a sort has nevertheless come.
Developments in Palestine over the years, and certainly since the 1988 Intifada, have produced change in popular, though clearly not in official, perceptions of Palestinians. These transformed perceptions, of Palestinians as the injured party in this dispute, have in turn produced a shift in the balance of public sympathy, reducing the automatic support for Israel that Americans had traditionally evinced as a conditioned reflex. Though still highly supportive of Israel’s right to exist within its internationally recognized borders, they are becoming more and more sympathetic to the Palestinians than ever before, more inclined to fault Israel for its excesses.
Perhaps Americans, including Americans like Daniel Shapiro, are beginning to weigh the liabilities and pluses of the so-called “special relationship,” not only in terms of massive treasure and diplomatic fallout, but also in terms of moral responsibility. And sooner or later Israel will begin to feel the pinch, because at the end of the day American support is not a constant in the historical equation but a variable. It is doubtful that Israeli leaders like Benjamin Netanyahu will take heed.
“The man who is swimming against the stream,” Woodrow Wilson once mused, “should know the strength of it.” Israeli leaders should, but don’t. Perhaps when they do come to their senses, it will be too late, for they will already have sunk like a stone.
