fatman17
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The Chosen People?
Posted by Michael Cohen
Over at Foreign Policy, I have a new piece up on the toxic manner in which Republican presidential candidates have been talking about the Middle East recently - with unquestioned support for Israel and harsh even racist epithets for the Palestinians:
At times during Saturday, Dec. 10's Republican presidential debate, it was hard to figure out whether the GOP aspirants were running for president of the United States or prime minister of Israel. With the notable exception of Ron Paul, each of the major GOP candidates practically fell over themselves to express solidarity with a country that, in their narrative, appears to not only be the most important U.S. ally in the world, but a country that simply can do no wrong.
. . . But this is basically par for the course in GOP debates: Any enemy of Israel is an enemy of the United States, and any threat to Israel is a supremely magnified threat to the United States . . . There was a great deal of controversy in Washington last week about the way that some foreign-policy commentators describe the U.S. relationship to Israel -- with some intimating in the pages ofPolitico that those who don't walk in lock step with the current Israeli government are either anti-Israeli or "borderline anti-Semitic."
This is an old game in U.S. foreign-policy debates -- and one that was on full display Saturday night. But perhaps the greater area of inquiry would be to look at how Americans have reached a point in their political discourse where the behavior of Israel can go virtually unquestioned and the national characteristics of the Palestinian people can be described in the most odious -- and borderline racist -- terms imaginable without it raising even a hint of controversy.
Posted by Michael Cohen
Over at Foreign Policy, I have a new piece up on the toxic manner in which Republican presidential candidates have been talking about the Middle East recently - with unquestioned support for Israel and harsh even racist epithets for the Palestinians:
At times during Saturday, Dec. 10's Republican presidential debate, it was hard to figure out whether the GOP aspirants were running for president of the United States or prime minister of Israel. With the notable exception of Ron Paul, each of the major GOP candidates practically fell over themselves to express solidarity with a country that, in their narrative, appears to not only be the most important U.S. ally in the world, but a country that simply can do no wrong.
. . . But this is basically par for the course in GOP debates: Any enemy of Israel is an enemy of the United States, and any threat to Israel is a supremely magnified threat to the United States . . . There was a great deal of controversy in Washington last week about the way that some foreign-policy commentators describe the U.S. relationship to Israel -- with some intimating in the pages ofPolitico that those who don't walk in lock step with the current Israeli government are either anti-Israeli or "borderline anti-Semitic."
This is an old game in U.S. foreign-policy debates -- and one that was on full display Saturday night. But perhaps the greater area of inquiry would be to look at how Americans have reached a point in their political discourse where the behavior of Israel can go virtually unquestioned and the national characteristics of the Palestinian people can be described in the most odious -- and borderline racist -- terms imaginable without it raising even a hint of controversy.
Thy shall not pollute nor corrupt their holy blood.
