Protest Against Trade with Israel Friday

...because it's not as though "the left" meets every Friday to decide on our collective position. And it would be silly to deny that there are indeed a very few conscious anti-semites among activist critics of Israel , plus a lot of gentiles who don't really grasp the significance of anti-semitism in the US and perpetuate anti-semitism without realizing it. Speaking as someone who is not Jewish, I found the series of essays posted at Ampersand (http://tinyurl.com/9xko5u), "What We Talk About When We Talk About Israel and Anti-Semitism" (parts 2, 3 and 4 are linked at the bottom of 1; they're all worth reading) to be really helpful on the lived experience of anti-semitism here and how it plays into criticism of Israel. (These essays are written from a radical standpoint by a Jewish essayist who is critical of Israeli policy.)

Things that inform my own concerns on this matter:

Israel receives a simply tremendous amount of support and funding from the US government; we materially aid them far more than we aid, say, Pakistan, so our responsibilities are greater--and so is our capacity to make change;

Israel has a lot more standing in the US than, say, Pakistan, which is widely perceived as an enemy state--it's not exactly difficult to get your average US citizen to criticize Pakistan;

As has been noted here before, the Palestinians in Gaza are physically trapped, for the most part. They can't get out. It would be disgusting not to prioritize the situation of people who live under heavy curfew, who are substantially deprived of medical care and who face overwhelming force. Even if every single home-made rocket fired by Fatah or Hamas somehow represented the will of all the Palestinians in Gaza, dropping white phosphorus on children would be grotesque.

I am against collective punishment. Dropping bombs on random Palestinians because some small number of Fatah or Hamas or other militants fire a rocket--that's ridiculous and immoral, plus against every kind of international standard. Show me a good government who uses collective punishment on its enemies.

And last, US support for Israel provides an endless excuse for the US to stir the pot in the Middle East, a part of the world where our interests are...er...not so disinterested.

(As a side note, I always wonder why Israel's supporters are so eager for that country to be in the pocket of the United States. If I lived in a small country in a volatile region, I wouldn't care to be totally dependent on a large nation on the other side of the world, a nation mostly hostile to the other countries in the region, a nation not known for being a generous and disinterested international actor. Seriously, what happens to Israel if the US ever can't supply as much aid, or if there's a big turn in public opinion here? A real peace and some kind of Palestinian state would increase regional stability and make Israel a lot safer. And a real peace would be one in the eye for US conservatives, because they wouldn't have nearly as much excuse to meddle in Middle Eastern affairs...heck, a real peace would be one in the eye for the Iranian government, because they couldn't use the plight of the Palestinians as a talking point for their own repressive regime.)

I do think it's helpful when activists carefully distinguish between the Israeli government and the Israeli people...there are a lot of parallels between the US and Israel, among them the fact that the people are usually better, more humane and more generous than their rulers. It's the Israeli government who has created this latest situation as an election strategy and a way to drum up nationalist sentiment, not ordinary Israelis.