Today, Israeli journalist, Gideon Levy, published an article on his hopes for the Obama presidency. Levy expresses the wish that Obama will not be the kind of president, who is usually considered a ‘great friend of Israel’, i.e. “someone who will give Israel a carte blanche for any violent adventure it desires, for rejecting peace and for building in the territories.”
In stead of this ‘friend of Israel’ who, in Levy’s opinion, is an enemy of Israel, he hopes for an Obamian “change” in the friendship of the US. As so many of his predecessors, Bush is the enemy type ‘friend of Israel’, but now Obama could be a ‘true friend of Israel’: One who “will put his whole weight behind a deep American involvement in the Middle East” and who “will try to solve the Iranian issue through negotiation – the only effective means.” One who “will help end the siege on Gaza and the boycott of Hamas,” “push Israel and Syria to make peace,” and “spur Israel and the Palestinians to reach a settlement.”
Quite a decent aspiration, methinks! What is interesting, though, is not the statement itself. The hope for peace through negotiation should be a more or less obvious attitude toward the world. Why kill the guy next to you if you can just tell him to bugger off and mind his own business? The whole killing thing is a right kafuffle… Whether the guy will listen or not, keep his promises or not is another thing. But if absolutely necessary, try getting him to behave by putting a gun to his head and yelling in a loud and menacing fashion before you pull the trigger.
No, the fascinating thing about this whole debacle is not the message but the number of angry retorts, Levy’s pious hope has inspired. An American by the name of Christian dubs his comment “Shame on you” and continues: “How can this hate-filled article be published by an Israeli paper? I am shocked you israelis allow your own press to encourage national suicide. You people believe it`s a good idea to be weak? The people of israel are now guilty of crimes because they defend themselves? What is this I`m reading. What has happened to your great nation.” Someone called “soldier” says: “Mr Gideon Levy …you a stupid or a Palestinian [sic!]“. Genuine Tosefta notes: “Levy is the enemy from within pretending to be a friend. We have no use for you or the likes of you”. There is Margie whose post is called “Gideon Levy`s plea for Obama to rape Israel”. And of course we find the confirmation of Godwin’s law (Godwin’s rule of nazi analogies) in the remark by Ze-ev: “Hitler also promised land for peace.”
It should be mentioned that there are plenty of positive comments. They might even be the majority. And why not? Call it naive, call it foolish, but to imply that the mere hope for peaceful coexistence with your neighbors is national suicide, and that the perception of your enemy as something like a human being is shameful or constitutes full blown rape, is just downright silly. I know, we all hate the “Give peace a chance” chant (at least I do), and the call for good will toward men is, indeed, hopelessly tiring, but in an exceedingly depressed world, let’s at least appreciate the few people who still hope for the best. If we don’t agree with the naivetĂ© and we feel that it more or less corresponds to a campfire performance of Kumbaya and all the dirty rest of it, we can always try to let the nice people down gently by indicating the complexities of the real world and then see if we can’t, between us, hammer together some modus operandi or other in an orderly fashion.
Levy’s article and the many comments can be found here: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1035415.html
