Tizzy Lizz

 

I just read an article on Slate by Ron Rosenbaum titled " The Israel Lobby and the Second Holocast Debate"  from Sept. 19, 2007 which discusses the book by Mearsheimer and Walt and the psychologically  impact of the continued call for the destruction of Israel by its neighbors. An concept which Rosenbaum argues that in the book they fail to  acknowledge the historical memory of another time and place where others were calling for the destruction of Jews.

 

an excerpt  from from this article  

And—here's the crux—it does not seem to occur to Mearsheimer and Walt that American Jews might be fearful not for themselves, but for their imperiled brethren in Israel. It apparently requires too much of a leap for them to make that connection. And that is what the moral imagination is about: the ability to make connections to the souls of other people, to imagine what it might be like for a people who had lost 6 million to be faced with daily threats to their existence—the threat of a second Holocaust—in the place where they sought refuge. Otherwise, without a moral imagination, one construes the Israel lobby as merely about power and self-aggrandizement.

It seems to me there are many Jews and Israelis who have the moral imagination to be distressed by the plight of the Palestinians. However, Mearsheimer and Walt neglect the fact that Israeli Jews and American supporters of Israel might be motivated by historical memory. By the way the world stood by and allowed the slaughter of 6 million Jews by Hitler. And by the way the current climate of demonizing Israel, and delegitimizing it by means of a double standard, sets the stage for the world to stand by once again, with a "well they sort of deserved it" shrug, when a second Holocaust looms 

Lebanon which at one time had the reputation of being civilized, Beirut was once called the the Paris of the MidEast,  has become degraded  by an ideology so vile that it gave a state welcome to a man who bashed in a child head with a rifle butt. Can you but wonder that to many it feels like 1936, when people make excuses and explanation for acts of brutality... 

We even have an Olympics  this year. 

Different people, different places, different rhetoric, but same motivation and once against the question is will Jews be caught in the crossfire?