[Mb-civic] NYTimes.com Article: Op-Ed Columnist: Jews, Israel and America

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Op-Ed Columnist: Jews, Israel and America

October 24, 2004
 By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN 



 

I was speaking the other day with Scott Pelley of CBS
News's "60 Minutes" about the mood in Iraq. He had just
returned from filming a piece there and he told me
something disturbing. Scott had gone around and asked
Iraqis on the streets what they called American troops -
wondering if they had nicknames for us in the way we used
to call the Nazis "Krauts" or the Vietcong "Charlie." And
what did he find? "Many Iraqis have so much distrust for
U.S. forces we found they've come up with a nickname for
our troops," Scott said. "They call American soldiers 'The
Jews,' as in, 'Don't go down that street, the Jews set up a
roadblock.' " 

I have no idea how widespread this perception is, but it
does not surprise me that some Iraqis would talk that way.
Our communications in Iraq have been so inept since we
arrived, many Iraqis still don't know who America is or why
it came. But such talk is also indicative of a trend in the
Arab media, after a century of Arab-Jewish strife, where if
you want to brand someone as illegitimate, just call him a
"Jew." Indeed, this trend has widened since 9/11. Now you
find a steadily rising perception across the Arab-Muslim
world that the great enemy of Islam is JIA - "Jews, Israel
and America," all lumped together in a single threat. 

This wider trend has been fanned by Arab satellite TV
stations, which deliberately show split-screen images of
Israelis bashing Palestinians and U.S. forces bashing the
Iraqi insurgents. The trend has also been encouraged by
some mosque preachers looking to explain away all the Arab
world's ills by wrapping all the Satans together into JIA.
This trend has been helped by the Bush team's failed
approach to the Arab-Israel problem, which is to tell the
truth only to Yasir Arafat, while embracing Ariel Sharon so
tightly that it's impossible to know anymore where U.S.
policy stops and Mr. Sharon's begins. 

This trend of JIA is now metastasizing from the core of the
Arab-Israel conflict, across the Muslim world and into
Europe. There is no quick fix. One thing that Israel can do
is push harder to defuse the conflict with the Palestinians
in order to deprive the Arab media of the raw images that
help to feed this phenomenon, not because the continuing
conflict is all Israel's fault - it is not - but because
Israel has such an overriding interest in forging a
partnership with a legitimate Palestinian Authority, and
getting this poisonous show off the air. A generation of
Muslims raised on these images on the Internet is
enormously dangerous for Jews, Israel and America. 

This brings us to this week's vote in the Israeli
Parliament about whether to proceed with Mr. Sharon's plan
for a unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. Mr.
Sharon, a man of the right, has finally realized the
demographic threat posed by Gaza to Israel and wants to get
out. He is being opposed by the Israeli far right - the
Jewish Hezbollah. This includes settler rabbis who have
urged soldiers to disobey orders and, with winks and nods,
have let it be known that if someone were to eliminate
Ariel Sharon he would be acting out God's will. In this
struggle between Jewish fanatics and Ariel Sharon, we must
stand with Mr. Sharon. These settler rabbis are a blot on
the Jewish people. 

But in the struggle between Mr. Sharon and common sense,
America should be with common sense. The late Yitzhak Rabin
wanted to get out of Gaza to make peace with the
Palestinians, because he understood the danger of "Jews,
Israel and America" all getting melded together in the
nuclear age. Mr. Rabin knew that no peace deal would
resonate in the Arab-Muslim world if it did not have a
legitimate Palestinian partner. Mr. Sharon seems to want to
get out of Gaza to make peace with the Jews. His aides have
made clear that he is getting out of Gaza in order to
entrench Israel even more deeply in the West Bank and the
Jewish settlements there. 

In the face of this plan, the Bush team is silent. This is
partly because the Palestinians continue to stick with
Arafat as their leader, even though this bum has led them
to ruin - so the U.S. has nothing to offer Israel. And it's
partly because the Bush team, which is so inept at
diplomacy, has never had the energy or creativity to shape
a better Palestinian alternative to Arafat. As a result,
the Sharon vision of getting out of Gaza in order to take
over the West Bank will probably win by default. If that
happens, "Jews, Israel and America" will be bound together
more tightly than ever as the enemies of Arabs and Muslims.


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/24/opinion/24friedman.html?ex=1099633529&ei=1&en=4576cf3d9126e65f


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