Why Israel Matters to Americans final part
The 1960 film "Exodus"
The '1960, in
particular, are bookended by two critical moments that guaranteed Israel's
positioning in both an American consensus about its necessity and goodness, and
in the U.S.' foreign policy future the release of the 1960 film
"Exodus,"
which was supported
by the Israeli government and based on the novel by Leon Uris, and Israel’s
quick victory over its neighbors in the war of June 1967. I think the book
"Exodus" resonated differently with different audiences. I think for
non-Jewish people, the book, but especially the movie, tells the story of
Israel in an American register. It tells the story of Israel as the settling of
a frontier.
1967 is an
incredible turning point in Americans’ views of Israel. Almost every newspaper
or magazine has some joke or comment about how maybe we need to bring Moshe
Dayan over to end the Vietnam War. Israel takes on this new vision or new
version of a myth in the U.S. as an invincible and admired military power. So
that image that emerges after 1967, that the U.S. should be both with Israel
and like Israel in terms of foreign policy, I think is one of the structuring
realities to this day in how many people think about Israel.
Disappearing of Palestinians.
Palestinians during
these years more or less disappear from having any claim, only significantly
reappearing as so-called “terrorists,” with high-profile acts of violence like
the 1972 Munich massacre of 11 Israeli coaches and athletes, and then as
victims in 1982, with the Israeli-backed massacre of Palestinian refugees in
the Sabra and Shatila camps of Lebanon.
And in "Our
American Israel,” Dr. Amy Kaplan also and most emphatically notes that while the US
saw decades of Israel being Americanized for an American audience, following
9/11, we see an Israelization of the United States. We see a shift from the
long-held, “admiration of Israel as a mirror of America's idealized self-image,
to emulation of Israel as a model for fighting America's worst nightmares.”
Now, while there
have been moments of sympathetic visibility of Palestinians in U.S. news media,
there hasn't been a staking of the legitimacy of Palestinian claims. Israel, as
it exists, always requires that its legitimacy, existence, and moral authority
be upheld.
So a Palestinian
narrative about the Nakba, about apartheid, about the refugees and land theft, hasn't
even been allowed to be written in American cultural history. And that's been
for many reasons, like Israel as an arm of the American empire, anti-Muslim and
Arab sentiments as fundamental to Israel's case for legitimacy, evangelical
eschatology that's anti-Semitic, and, of course, the fact that the majority of
American Jews fall into the category of whiteness.
So how can
journalists in U.S. news media engage with Israel and its role in U.S. history in
a way that is honest and adheres to the basic principles of journalism, like
punching up and never down?
like punching up and
never down? Well, it involves a lot of reimagining of how we've embraced Israel
and the disappeared Palestinians for seven decades based on whose humanity we've
determined is worth more because of how it looks like ours.
I think there is a
question of why it has been so hard for Americans to imagine that Palestinians
have an absolute right to self-determination. That Palestinians, as much as
anybody else, have the right to represent themselves, and to have some kind of
sovereign control over their lives. It is a bit shocking to me that it's been
so hard for Americans to understand that. But I think it's a combination of
Islamophobia - even though many Palestinians are Christian, many are Muslim, and
that Islamophobia gets in the way.
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