America’s Dangerous “Exodus” Fantasy: What’s Lost In The Israel-Palestine Debate

[Purveyor]

Our government's unbending allegiance to Israel has blinded us to the horrors of its military occupation in Gaza

Sandy Tolan, TomDispatch.com

Now, his SUV bound for Sebastia is cutting through the West Bank, a land smaller than the state of Delaware but dotted with more than 600 checkpoints, earthen barriers, and other obstacles to normal travel. His detour and the incident that accompanied it are part of a system that hems Palestinians into ever more confined enclaves surrounded by Jewish settlements over which looms Israel’s military presence. Yet this kind of everyday humiliation and confinement remains unknown to most Americans. Despite the torrents of press coverage here about Israel and its relationship with the United States, the daily reality of half the people in a century-old conflict is essentially off the American radar screen.

The reasons for this are rooted in culture, politics, and money. Millions of Americans were raised on the Leon Uris version of Israeli history, as told in his novel Exodus. In that story, the focus was on the heroic birth of the Jewish state out of the ashes of the Holocaust. “Arabs” — that is, Palestinians — remained on the sidelines of the tale, pathetic, obstructionist, and violent. That long ago became the American media’s basic narrative of the struggle in the region: that Israel, surrounded by a sea of enemies, must be secure. But like the narrative that dominated media discourse before the U.S. invasion of Iraq — that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction – the facts on the ground are often ignored.

Money clouds the picture even more. Millions of dollars from billionaire casino magnate and Israeli settlement advocate Sheldon Adelson (who has also advocated using nuclear weapons against Iran) and billionaire Paul Singer, on the board of the Republican Jewish Coalition, as well as from the bankrollers of neocon William Kristol’s Emergency Committee for Israel,have further distorted the conversation. In the process, such funders have helped elevate war hawks like Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton to prominence.

The money and political leverage of backers of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has had a similar effect on some Democrats. It helps explain, for instance, the growing challenges from New York Senator Charles Schumer and New Jersey’s recently indicted Senator Robert Menendez to the Obama administration’s framework nuclear agreement with Iran. But the problem has been around for so much longer. For years, as journalist Connie Bruck revealed last September in the New Yorker, AIPAC has strong-armed elected officials, the recipients of the lavish campaign donations it facilitates, into drafting legislation favorable to Israel. Such bills are often written by AIPAC staff and then introduced under the name of some member of Congress.

All of this has had a ruinous effect on debate in this country about Israel and Palestine. Almost invariably left out of any discussion here is the devastating impact on Palestinian lives of Israel’s military occupation, which goes hand-in-hand with relentless settlement expansion that undermines any prospect of a just and lasting peace in the region.

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http://www.salon.com/2015/05/10/a_sliced_and_diced_occupied_land_americas_foolish_one_state_solution_in_the_middle_east_partner/

[swilton]

1. The movie Exodus

did not happen in a vacuum in 1960 - the same drama continues in major cinema resulting in Jews portrayed as victims. Such cinema exploits the memory of the Nazi Holocaust for political and economic profit and also to benefit the state of Israel.. (Finkelstein, 2000)