Tidningen Fria Tider

As one of the right-wing critics of Israel excoriated by Dr. Gottfried, I feel compelled to respond to this piece. I must confess that I do not recognize the unnamed anti-Israel conservative who is set up as a straw man to permit Dr. Gottfried to make his points. I know of no serious conservative who “gushes” over the Palestinians. On the contrary, I suspect that most would agree that the Palestinians have a corrupt government that often borders on the dysfunctional and that they are often their own worst enemy in terms of ability to make their own case. Perhaps Dr. Gottfried is confusing occasional expressions of sympathy for the humanitarian plight of the Palestinians with “selective indignation” on their behalf. His point that Jim Crow segregation was somehow worse than present day Israeli apartheid is, of course, a very subjective conclusion, particularly given the hundreds of Palestinians who have been killed in Israel’s so-called security operations. Perhaps Dr. Gottfried is himself being selective as he appears to be referring to those Arabs who are Israeli citizens “that are treated far better” rather than to the inhabitants of the West Bank who are subject to systematic abuse by both security officials and settlers.

Dr. Gottfried’s theory that criticism of Israel is a surrogate method of going after the left wing and presumably largely Jewish academic-journalistic establishment is an entertaining conspiracy theory but difficult to take seriously. Deflating “the bubble of Jewish moral pretensions” by attacking Israel, presumably as a tactic to make Hollywood behave, would seem to be a convoluted explanation of something much simpler: that many in the US are beginning to realize that the Israeli relationship is very much a liability.

I could rebut nearly everything else claimed in “Don’t Scapegoat Israel” point by point, including the odd observation about Arabs and Jews eating together in restaurants and the comment that the occupation of the West Bank is little more than a “territorial problem,” but to do so would be to ignore the central issue, which Dr. Gottfried adroitly sidesteps. Conservatives and many progressives alike criticize Israel not because of how it behaves towards its Arab citizens and neighbors but because of what the relationship has done and continues to do to the United States. Israel and its lobby have corrupted congress, the White House, and the media and have certainly brought about one unnecessary war and are agitating for another. The relationship with Israel has made the United States a target for terrorism and has cost the US taxpayer some hundreds of billions of dollars even while Israel continues to steal our defense and industrial secrets. It really is as simple as that – the Israel connection has been very bad for the United States. If Dr. Gottfried believes that calling attention to that fact is somehow unfair and “scapegoating,” I would have to disagree.