As I listened to Barak Obama's speech on Tuesday March 18th, I was struck by his forthright addressing of the issue of American racial tension. Beyond that, however, one aside comment he made has left me wondering.
But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren't simply controversial. They weren't simply a religious leader's effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country – a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.
I can agree that the conflicts in the Middle East are not primarily rooted in the actions of Israel. I can also agree that radical Islam forms a large basis for these conflicts. However, the phrases I call attention to in the above quote are in my view an oversimplification of the situation, and misleading.
The roots of Middle Eastern conflict are historical and economic, and they are broad and deep. These roots sprouted from the division within Islam itself, between the followers of Abu Bakr and the followers of Ali ibn Abi Talib. These roots are fed by the vast oil reserves of the region, oil reserves that hold the rest of the world in rapt attention. Intertwined within the roots are the displacement of the Palestinians, a result of the Zionist movement and the investiture of Israeli statehood.
The split between Sunni and Shi'a Islam has set the stage for the current Middle Eastern geography. Each of the theocratic dictatorships in the region espouses one or the other of these denominations as its state religion, either de facto or de jure. Sunni Muslims are by far the more numerous, and this denomination has adherents in the rulers of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Bahrain. Iran, Iraq and Syria are the only nations ruled by Shi'a Muslims. In several of these nations, the minority denomination experiences discrimination, and frequently outright persecution, under the aegis of the ruling denomination.
This conflict within Middle Eastern states should be familiar to Western historians. It is the same denominational strife Europe experienced after the rise of Protestantism, which led to such notable conflicts as the Schmalkaldic War, the Thirty Years' War, the Eighty Years' War, the Scottish Civil War, and the English Civil War. Although most international conflict in the Middle East has not had Shi'a-Sunni antipathy as its overt or primary cause (territorial disputes and oil being the most frequently acknowledged casi belli), this mutual dislike bubbled just beneath the surface in the Iran-Iraq War, and has erupted onto the face of the current Iraqi Civil War.
In these instances, I do observe that the ideologies of radical Islam play a role, perhaps a profound role, in Middle Eastern conflict. However, they are entirely separate from the question of Israel's role in Middle Eastern conflicts.
Israel entered the Middle Eastern scene in 1947, when the United Kingdom ceded its territory of Palestine to the Zionist movement. This was brought about in large part because of the atrocities and genocide committed by Nazi Germany during World War II. The Jews of Europe made an effective case that they required a homeland to prevent themselves from falling under the jackboots of despotic regimes that could once again arise in the countries they had inhabited since the onset of the Diaspora. The problem was that there were already people living in Palestine, and these people had nothing to do whatsoever with the disaster of the Holocaust. As the new Israelis moved into their restored homeland, they displaced the inhabitants, the Palestinians, who had been occupying that territory since 132 CE. The displacement of the Palestinians angered the Arab nations, because not only did the neighboring nations have to deal with a flood of refugees, but also because of sympathy for the plight of their ethnic close relatives. This anger was leveled at Israel as well as the UK, who ceded what they felt was Arab land to the usurping newcomers, and the rest of the Western powers, who supported it.
The Israeli treatment of Palestinians is comparable to the treatment Native Americans received during the westward expansion of America in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. Both the Native Americans and Palestinians were displaced from their homelands by the invasion of a colonizing force. The Native Americans were moved from their lands and pushed onto reservations; the Palestinians have been largely confined to the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem. Most Palestinians living in Israel (in contrast with those living in the Israel Occupied Territories of the West Bank and Golan Heights) have Israeli citizenship, and Native Americans have American citizenship, although both groups are socially and politically separate from their respective national governments.
There are significant differences between the two situations, of course. First, America is a lot bigger than Israel. There is far more space for everyone here. Second, the Native American population was decimated by a wave of disease that pushed ahead of the westward expansion of American settlers, leaving fewer Native Americans behind to offer resistance. The modern state of the medical art means that Palestinians in the West Bank, for example, are not being wiped out by smallpox as Israeli settlers move into that region. Third, the Palestinians are not at such a technological disadvantage. Their weaponry is comparable to that of the IDF, at least in terms of the weaponry that the IDF is willing to deploy near to or within its territory. Fourth, of course, is the international situation surrounding Israel. Syria, Jordan, and Egypt are all Arab nations having strong ethnic ties to the Palestinians, and these nations are sympathetic to the position of the Palestinians. All have gone to war with Israel in the past because of Israeli territorial annexations, and all of them are interested in establishing a Palestinian state either in Israel or the occupied territories. The U.S. had no such international pressure regarding its treatment of Native Americans.
The radical Islam view is that Israel has no right to exist, and that all its territory should be ceded back to the Palestinians. That view is not the majority view within the Arab community. While the radical view is behind many terrorist attacks on Israel, it does not drive international consensus about the nature of the Arab-Israeli conflict, which is centered on the treatment of the Palestinians. To ignore this aspect of Middle Eastern conflicts by saying that they are not rooted in the actions of Israel is to misrepresent the depth of those conflicts.
United States support for Israel is rooted in four aspects of American culture. First, the support of the underdog. Israel is a small country, surrounded by enemies. The spirit of defiance that permeates every breath of the Israeli people is inspiring to us. This tiny nation was founded because of heinous persecution of the people that live there. To Americans, Israelis have earned their place through generations of collective suffering, and the indomitable spirit required to hold onto what they have. Second, the second-largest population of Jews in the world is in America. This group of slightly under six million people is a small percentage of the American population as a whole, but their interest in the matter is not divided. The desire of this group (or at least most of this group) to stand behind Israel comports well with the bias of a sizable number of the rest of the American population to stand against Arab interests.
This bias, the third reason for American support for Israel, stems from two factors. First, the antipathy Americans feel toward OPEC. Those who were alive during the oil crisis of the 1970s view the increased price of oil as a byproduct of the greed of those who now control the supply of oil, at least until the last decade. Second, the increasing instances of Islamist terrorism that we have seen playing out on our television screens for the last thirty years has dimmed our view of all of Islamic culture. Islamist terrorism finally touched us directly and personally on 9/11. Too many Americans are convinced that all Muslims were behind that attack, cementing their distrust for an entire culture and causing them to get behind Israel because Israel is also (in such a simplistic worldview) despised by Muslim culture. "The enemy of my enemy is my friend" has become the touchstone of American foreign policy in the Middle East, regardless of that friend's unsavory deeds.
Fourth, American Christians are sympathetic to the story of the Israelites in their quest to regain the Holy Land. Since God is on Israel's side, who are Christians to quibble about how the Israelites go about fulfilling Biblical prophesy? From their perspective, Christians everywhere have a religious duty to support Israel.
Since at least part of Middle Eastern conflict is rooted in the actions of Israel, I think we need to get more precise views from Senator Obama about why we should so uncritically have Israel as a stalwart ally (disclaimer: I'm an Obama supporter).
Also, I am interested in getting other people's views on the situation. My whole life, the U.S. is an ally of Israel, period. There's never any discussion, at least not that I've heard. I'm generally in favor of such a strategic alignment, although the Palestinian situation troubles me greatly.