Israel-US: Ayalon vs. Livni on Future of the "Special Relationship"

Earlier this week Israel's Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon declared that Israel's relations with the United States have "never been better", adding that the ties between the allies go well beyond dealing with the Middle East conflict:

What makes the U.S. special is the fact that it has maintained its good relations with Israel over the years. Its support is not based on the financial pockets of the Arab states.

Everyone is waiting for the Palestinians to come to the negotiating table.

Palestine Special: All Along Israel’s West Bank Watchtower

Not so fast, replied opposition leader Tzipi Livni. She warned the Israeli leadership that the US support should not be taken as granted and then launched into criticism of the Netanyahu Government:

Israel is a state that is threatened in its very neighborhood. Every blow to our relationship with the U.S. can create wide-ranging strategic problems.

The Israeli leadership doesn't understand Israeli interests. We cannot expect the U.S. to defend our interests where this lack of understanding exists. Israel can't request help from the U.S. without giving it the proper tools to do this while facing the international community.

Comments

[Dave]

Quoting -- "What makes the U.S. special is the fact that it has maintained its good relations with Israel over the years."

**********

I think the above quote sums it up. But a cultural affinity with the West is in itself signifcant. Israel is the product of the Western cultural tradition. The Jews lived under the Roman sword, but were hugely influenced by the Greek mind. Israel is the West's kindred spirit in the Middle East.

Strategically, the special relationship has less meaning today and is not as necessary as it was 20+ years ago. In those days, Israel was staunchly anti-communist and, unlike its Arab neighbors, largely immune to Soviet influence. The Six Day War was a watershed event and showed the Americans that Israel could be a valuable Cold War ally in the region. Israel was also very much dependent on the United States ('73 Yom Kippur War). This is no longer the case today. Israel has an economy and infrastructure that rivals many Western powers, is at the cutting edge of information technology, produces sophisticated military equipment (albeit on a small scale), and can find other partners for its military hardware needs -- China and Russia come to mind.

[THE FLYING CARPET INSTITUTE]

http://theflyingcarpetinstitute.wordpress.com/2010/02/03/american-detained-for-interfering-with-israeli-military/

[Outsider]

The time of the Romans and of Hellenistic Greece has passed a long time ago.
You are right though that “Israel is the product of the Western cultural tradition,” but the reason might be something else. Here is an account:
“My parents were born in Baghdad. They immigrated to Israel in 1951, without great enthusiasm. As a sabra – a native-born Israeli Jew – in the Israeli-Zionist educational system, I had been taught that Arabness and Jewishness were mutually exclusive. Trying to conform to the dominant Ashkenazi-Zionist norm as a child, like most if not all children of the same background, I felt ashamed of the Arabness of my parents. For them, I was an agent of repression sent by the Israeli-Zionist establishment, after excellent training, into the territory of the enemy – my family – and I completed the mission in a way that only children can do with their loving parents: I forbade them to speak Arabic in public or to listen to Arabic music in their own house. (…) The Arab Jews who immigrated to Israel after its establishment were exposed to a hegemonic Hebrew-Zionist establishment, which imposed its interpretive norms on all cultural communities under the umbrella of leftist liberalism, and at the same time despised and feared the Orient and its culture. (…) Advocates of Western-oriented cultural identity also bewailed the 'danger' of the 'Orientalisation' and 'Levantinisation' of Israeli society. The journalist Arye Gelblum wrote in Ha'aretz on 22nd April 1949: 'We are dealing with a people whose primitivism is at a peak, whose level of knowledge is one of virtually absolute ignorance, and worse, who have little talent for understanding anything intellectual.'”
The author (Reuven Snir) then cites Nissim Rejwan:
“It is the ruling political-cultural [Zionist] establishment, whose leaders and cultural leading lights hailed predominantly from the shtetls and ghettos of Russia and Russian Poland – and who masqueraded as accomplished 'Westerners' – who subjected the Oriental immigrants to a systematic process of acculturation and cultural cleansing that caused them to abandon their culture, language, and way of life. This was how Israel managed to miss what was a singular chance to integrate into the area and accept, and be accepted, by the neighbouring world – instead of being looked upon as an alien creation in the heart of the area in which it was established.”
You can read the whole article here:
http://www.qantara.de/webcom/show_article.php/_c-310/_nr-712/i.html

[Catherine]

Outsider,
RE the suppression of 'Arabness' in Israel, I had a different experiience as a visitor there. Maybe you can explain this.

I spent some time in Israel in 1995 and noticed there was considerable special cultural, religious, musical and culinary (yum!) space made for Yemeni and Sephardic Jews to express the Arab and Berber sides of their identity, which they also seemed to take great pride in. I was under the impression that these were very Arab-looking, sounding and tasting expressions. For example, I'd pass a Sephardic prayer house or school in Jerusalem and see all these men in long white tunics sitting in a circle playing what easily could have passed for Moroccan music. Some of the most popular restaurants in Tel Aviv at the time were Yemeni. Yemeni women were wearing khol en very Arab-looking clothes and jewelry without any compunction. This is just to name a few examples. Some of Israel's greatest musician are of Arab or north African origin - and Israel even has an 'Andalusi' Orchestra. Aren't these examples of Arabness and Jewishness joined together? Is this attitude something that only developed later - or perhaps it only exists in my imagination because I was misinterpreting what I saw?

PS - I also witnessed extremely humiliating forms of discrimination against Palestinians - but that's another topic.

[sh]

You weren't misinterpreting what you saw, Catherine. And it testifies to your openness and powers of observation that you noticed both the good and the bad.

That description of how the children kill the background of the parents is typical of all immigrant families anywhere. The embarrassment every time a parent opens his or her mouth to speak and in a child's eyes turns them into a laughing stock. The only thing wrong with the account was viewing it as a specifically Zionist thing and thus some kind of plot. And, of course, it happened to the offspring of Ashkenazi families in Israel too. Speaking Yiddish was worse than speaking Arabic for at least twenty years into Israeli statehood. People really didn't dare speak it out of doors. Furthermore, unlike Yiddish, Arabic was, and still is, an official language in Israel.

[Catherine]

Sh,
Wow - speaking Yiddish was a stigma in Israel? Maybe because it sounds like German? In the US it's considered an integral part of the (Ashkenazy) Jewish identity and many Yiddish words have crossed over into English. I now live in the Netherlands, where the same is true (Yiddish words used in Dutch, like 'schlemiel'). My mother, who is of a long line of traditionalist Roman Catholics, always said 'shekels' when she meant money in a familiar way, like 'Don't spend all your shekels right away'. Israel *was* a Tower of Babel when I was there in 1995 - a shame that was too late for the Yiddish speakers.

[Dave]

"In the US it’s considered an integral part of the (Ashkenazy) Jewish identity and many Yiddish words have crossed over into English."

*****

New Yorkers use many Yiddish words in everyday conversation.