[Fresh Ink] Excerpt: Norman Finkelstein's new book on Gaza

[Richard Menec]

http://www.counterpunch.org/finkelstein03032010.html

March 3, 2010

"This Time We Went Too Far"

Truth and Consequences in the Gaza Invasion

By NORMAN FINKELSTEIN

Editors' Note: This article is excerpted from Norman Finkelstein's important 
new book about the Gaza conflict, "This Time We Went Too Far" published this 
month by OR Books. To purchase a copy of the complete book please visit OR 
Books. This book is not available from bookstores or other online retailers.

Public outrage at the Gaza invasion did not come out of the blue but rather 
marked the nadir of a curve plotting a steady decline in support for Israel. 
As polling data of Americans and Europeans, both Gentiles and Jews, suggest, 
the public has become increasingly critical of Israeli policy over the past 
decade. The horrific images of death and destruction broadcast around the 
world during and after the invasion accelerated this development. "The 
increased and brutal frequency of war in this volatile region has shifted 
international opinion," the British Financial Times editorialized one year 
later, "reminding Israel it is not above the law. Israel can no longer 
dictate the terms of debate."

One poll registering the fallout from the Gaza attack in the United States 
found that American voters calling themselves supporters of Israel plummeted 
from 69 per cent  before the attack to 49 per cent  in June 2009, while 
voters believing that the U.S. should support Israel dropped from 69 per 
cent  to 44 per cent. Consumed by hate, emboldened by self-righteousness, 
and confident that it could control or intimidate public opinion, Israel 
carried on in Gaza as if it could get away with mass murder in broad 
daylight. But while official Western support for Israel held firm, the 
carnage set off an unprecedented wave of popular outrage throughout the 
world. Whether it was because the assault came on the heels of the 
devastation Israel wrought in Lebanon, or because of Israel's relentless 
persecution of the people of Gaza, or because of the sheer cowardice of the 
assault, the Gaza invasion appeared to mark a turning point in public 
opinion reminiscent of the international reaction to the 1960 Sharpeville 
massacre in apartheid South Africa.

In the Jewish diaspora official communal organizations with longstanding 
ties to Israel predictably lent blind support. But, at the same time, newly 
minted progressive Jewish organizations distanced themselves to a lesser or 
greater degree. Whereas in the past mainstream Jews actively supported 
Israeli wars, most registered ambivalence during the invasion, apart from a 
contracting older minority that came out swinging in Israel's defense, and 
an expanding younger minority that scathingly denounced it. Between the 
increasing estrangement of younger Jews from Israeli bellicosity and the 
increasing qualms of Jews generally about supporting it, the Gaza massacre 
signaled the break-up of hitherto blanket Jewish support for Israeli wars. 
In addition, whereas the antiwar demonstrations in most Western countries 
were ethnically heterogeneous (including significant numbers of Jews), the 
"pro"-Israeli demonstrations were composed almost exclusively of Jews.

The fact that active opposition to Israeli policy, say, on college campuses, 
has spread beyond the Arab-Muslim core towards the mainstream, whereas 
active support for Israel has shrunk to a fraction of the ethnic Jewish 
core, is a telling indicator of where things are headed. The era of the 
"beautiful" Israel has passed, it seems irrevocably, and the disfigured 
Israel that in recent years has replaced it in the public consciousness is a 
growing embarrassment. It is not so much that Israel's behavior is worse 
than it was before, but rather that the record of that behavior has, 
finally, caught up with it.

The truth can no longer be denied or dismissed. The documentation of the 
Arab-Israeli conflict set out by respected historians fundamentally 
conflicts with the version popularized in the likes of Leon Uris's Exodus. 
The evidence of Israeli human rights violations compiled by respected 
mainstream organizations cannot be reconciled with its vaunted commitment to 
"purity of arms." The deliberations of respected judicial and political 
bodies cast severe doubt on Israel's avowed commitment to a peaceful 
resolution of the conflict. For a long while Israel's "supporters" deflected 
the impact of this accumulating documentary record by wielding the twin 
swords of The Holocaust and the "new anti-Semitism."

It was proposed that Jews could not be held to conventional moral/legal 
standards after the unique suffering they endured during World War II, and 
that criticism of Israeli policy was motivated by an ever-resurgent hatred 
of Jews. However, apart from the inevitable dulling that comes of overuse, 
these weapons proved much less efficacious once criticism of Israel broke 
into the mainstream of public opinion. Unable to deflect criticism of 
Israel, apologists now conjure bizarre theories to account for its 
ostracism. Reaganomics guru George Gilder posits that a free-market system 
singularly unleashes human potential, and that under such a system Jews are 
and must be "represented disproportionately in the highest ranks" because 
they are the most gifted.

Inversely, if Jews do not rule the roost, it must be because a 
less-than-ideal economic system holds sway. Anti-Semitism springs from 
resentment of "Jewish superiority and excellence" and "the manifest 
supremacy of Jews over all other ethnic groups," while the hatred of Israel 
springs from the fact that it has evolved (under the inspired tutelage of 
Benjamin Netanyahu) into the perfect free-market system that "concentrates 
the genius of the Jews," making it "one of the world's leading capitalist 
powers" and the envy of the world: "Israel is hated above all for its 
virtues."

If Jews figure prominently among critics of Israel, it is because they 
"excel so readily in all intellectual fields that they outperform all rivals 
in the arena of anti-Semitism." The West in turn must preserve and protect 
Israelis from the "world of zero-sum chimeras and fantasies of jihadist 
revenge and death" and the "barbarian masses" because Jewish endowments have 
enabled humanity to "thrive and prosper": Jews are "crucial to the human 
race."

Indeed, "if Israel is destroyed, capitalist Europe will likely die as well, 
and America, as the epitome of productive and creative capitalism spurred by 
Jews, will be in jeopardy"; "Israel is at the forefront of the next 
generation of technology and on the front lines of a new racial war against 
capitalism and Jewish individuality and genius"; "Just as free economies are 
necessary for the survival of the human population of the planet, the 
survival of the Jews is vital to the triumph of free economies. If Israel is 
quelled or destroyed, we will be succumbing to forces targeting capitalism 
and freedom everywhere."

Across the Atlantic, Robin Shepherd, director of international affairs at 
the London-based Henry Jackson Society, asserts that Israel has come under 
strong criticism in the West not because of its human rights record but 
because it is a democratic, capitalist state fighting on the front lines 
alongside the U.S. against the "civilizational" threat posed by radical 
Islam: "Israel had become an enemy not because of anything it had done" but 
"because it was on the wrong side of the barricades." The "primary 
energizing platform in the West" for this "tidal wave of hysteria, deception 
and distortion against the Jewish state" consists of totalitarian Marxists 
and left-liberal fellow travelers who, disappointed by the Western 
proletariat and Third World liberation struggles, have made common cause 
with "militant Islam" to destroy the liberal-capitalist world order. 
Although these critics of Israel are not anti-Semitic in the traditional 
"subjective" sense of despising Jews per se, they are guilty of "objective" 
anti-Semitism because Israel is so central to Jewish identity in the 
contemporary world.

But opposition to Israel supposedly also emanates from ancien régime 
bluebloods who want to restore the old-world hierarchies before arriviste 
Jews disrupted them. This far-flung "neo-anti-Semitic" conspiracy embraces 
"most" of those who accuse Israel of committing war crimes and otherwise 
violating international law. Thus, it is to be understood that behind the 
condemnation of Israel by Amnesty International and the International Court 
of Justice, Nobel peace laureates Jimmy Carter and Mairead Corrigan Maguire, 
the Financial Times and the BBC, lurks the evil hand of the radical 
leftist-fanatic Islamic-landed aristocratic nexus. For those who want to 
learn more, Shepherd "highly" recommends Alan M. Dershowitz's The Case for 
Israel.

Although such explanations for Israel's isolation lack credibility, it 
cannot be doubted that Israel's stock has fallen precipitously. Whereas 
Israel won many adherents in the West after its lightning victory in June 
1967, in recent years it has been reduced almost to the status of a pariah 
state, especially in Europe. A 2003 poll of the European Union named Israel 
the biggest threat to world peace. A 2008 survey of global opinion named 
Israel the biggest obstacle to achieving peace in the Israel-Palestine 
conflict. In a BBC World Service poll taken on the eve of the Gaza invasion, 
fully 19 of the 21 countries surveyed held a predominantly negative view of 
Israel.

Meanwhile, under the title "Second Thoughts about the Promised Land," the 
Economist reported in 2007 that although "most diaspora Jews still support 
Israel strongly. . . their ambivalence has grown." Dissenting Jewish voices 
have begun to coalesce in Great Britain, Germany, and elsewhere, challenging 
the hegemony of official Jewish organizations that parrot Israeli 
propaganda. In the United States the overall picture and trends are perhaps 
not as pronounced but are no less noteworthy. Judging by poll data it can 
broadly be said that Americans have consistently viewed Israel favorably and 
have sympathized much more with Israel than with the Palestinians. But 
Americans also overwhelmingly support an evenhanded U.S. approach to the 
Israel-Palestine conflict, and most recently have expressed "equal levels of 
sympathy" for both sides, while a substantial minority believe that U.S. 
policy tilts (or tilts too much) in favor of Israel; a robust majority of 
Americans "think Israel is not doing its part well in making efforts to 
resolve the conflict"; and Americans have occasionally supported the use of 
sanctions to rein in Israel.

Significantly, a majority of Americans have also supported a two-state 
settlement on the June 1967 borders, meaning full Israeli withdrawal from 
the territories it occupied in the June war. "Yes, the polls show strong 
support for Israel," M. J. Rosenberg, director of policy analysis for the 
Israel Policy Forum observed in 2007 apropos of recent trends; however, 
"that support for Israel, such as there is, is broad but it is not very 
deep." This phenomenon can be seen almost every day in "Letters to the 
Editors" columns. Every time an op-ed about Israel appears, especially if it 
is critical, there are a slew of letters to the editor. Most support the 
Israeli position. And almost without exception, they are written by Jews. 
That vast majority [of non-Jewish Americans] out there which supposedly is 
so supportive of Israel virtually never chimes in. According to a 2007 poll 
by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) the favorable opinion of Americans 
towards Israel is markedly less than their favorable opinion toward Great 
Britain and Japan, while roughly equal to their favorable opinion of India 
and Mexico. Nearly half of the respondents believe that the U.S. should work 
with "moderate" Arab states "even at the expense of Israel."

Half or more of Americans polled held Israel and Hezbollah equally to blame 
for the summer 2006 Lebanon War and supported a (more) neutral U.S. stance. 
In addition, in recent years, influential religious constituencies such as 
the Presbyterian Church USA, the World Council of Churches, the United 
Church of Christ, and the United Methodist Church have all supported 
initiatives, including corporate divestment, to force an end to Israel's 
occupation. A 2005 survey by  Jewish pollster Steven M. Cohen found that 
"the attachment of American Jews to Israel has weakened measurably in the 
last two years . . . , continuing a long-term trend." Respondents were less 
likely than in comparable earlier surveys to say they care about Israel, 
talk about Israel with others or engage in a range of pro-Israel activities.

Strikingly, there was no parallel decline in other measures of Jewish 
identification, including religious observance and communal affiliation. The 
survey found 26 per cent who said they were "very" emotionally attached to 
Israel, compared with 31 per cent who said so in a similar survey conducted 
in 2002. Some two-thirds, 65 per cent, said they follow the news about 
Israel closely, down from 74 per cent  in 2002, while 39 per cent  said they 
talk about Israel frequently with Jewish friends, down from 53 per cent in 
2002.

Israel also declined as a component in the respondents' personal Jewish 
identity. When offered a selection of factors, including religion, community 
and social justice, as well as "caring about Israel," and asked, "For you 
personally, how much does being Jewish involve each?," 48 per cent  said 
Israel matters "a lot," compared with 58 per cent in 2002. Just 57 per cent 
affirmed that "caring about Israel is a very important part of my being 
Jewish," compared with 73 per cent  in a similar survey in 1989. A 2007 
American Jewish Committee poll found that 30 per cent  of Jews felt "fairly 
distant" or "very distant" from Israel. "In the long run," Cohen predicts "a 
polarization in American Jewry: a small group growing more pious and 
attached to Israel, while a larger one drifts away."

A 2006 poll found that, among American Jews under 40, fully one-third felt 
"fairly distant" or "very distant" from Israel, while a 2007 poll found that 
among Jews under 35 fully 40 per cent registered a "low attachment" to 
Israel (only 20 per cent registered a "high attachment"). Astonishingly, 
less than half responded affirmatively that "Israel's destruction would be a 
personal tragedy." The former chairman of the Jewish Agency recently sounded 
the alarm that "less than 24 per cent  of young Jews in North America belong 
to Jewish organizations. Less than 50 per cent  of North American Jews under 
the age of 35 feel a strong sense of belonging to the Jewish people. Less 
than 25 per cent  of North American Jews under age 35 define themselves as 
Zionists."

On the nation's campuses support for Israel is confined not only to Jewish 
students but also mostly to the Zionist faithful gathered in the Hillels. 
"Jewish college students are clearly less attached to Israel than in 
previous generations," a study commissioned by Jewish advocacy organizations 
reports. "Israel is losing the battle for the hearts and minds of this 
cohort." Indeed, of the nearly half million Jewish students attending 
institutions of higher education, "only about five per cent  have any 
connection to the Jewish community."

Ambivalence towards Israel verging on disaffection can also be discerned 
among influential sectors of American society, ever the bellwethers of U.S. 
intellectual life, and the reading public. A recent poll found that a 
majority of opinion leaders in the U.S. view support for Israel as a "major 
reason for discontent with the U.S." around the world.31 In a 2003 New York 
Review of Books essay, the Jewish historian Tony Judt asserted that "Israel 
today is bad for the Jews" and he doubted both the viability and 
desirability of a Jewish state. John J. Mearsheimer of the University of 
Chicago and Stephen M. Walt of the Harvard Kennedy School coauthored an 
influential paper in 2006 debunking the idealized image of Israel's history 
and asserting that Israel has become a "strategic liability" for the United 
States. A book by former U.S. president Jimmy Carter, provocatively titled 
Palestine Peace Not Apartheid, deplored Israeli policy in the Occupied 
Palestinian Territory and put the blame for the impasse in the peace process 
squarely on Israel.

Although the Israel lobby launched vitriolic counterattacks to these 
interventions, its usual smears alleging anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial 
did not stick. When in 2006 the lobby's pressures led to cancellation of one 
of Tony Judt's speaking engagements, he became an instant cause célèbre in 
American intellectual circles. His critics, such as Abraham H. Foxman of the 
ADL, were derided for "slinging the dread charge of anti-Semitism" and for 
being an "anachronism." Carter, meanwhile, was said to be a plagiarist, in 
the pay of Arab sheikhs, an anti-Semite, an apologist for terrorism, a Nazi 
sympathizer, and a borderline Holocaust denier.

Yet Carter's book landed on the New York Times bestseller list and remained 
there for months, selling an estimated 300,000 copies in hardback. Although 
snubbed by Brandeis University's president, Carter still received standing 
ovations from the student body when he came to speak at the historically 
Jewish institution. (Half the audience walked out when Harvard law professor 
Alan M. Dershowitz rose to answer Carter.Mearsheimer and Walt negotiated a 
book deal with the publishing house Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and their 
book, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, also went on to become a 
Times bestseller.

It is further testament to Israel's waning fortunes that, during Prime 
Minister Ehud Olmert's term of office, even Foxman and perennial Israel 
supporter Elie Wiesel took to publicly rebuking Israel for its failure to 
pursue peace.The simmering public discontent with Israeli policy in recent 
years reached a boiling point of indignation during the Gaza invasion. 
Despite Israel's carefully orchestrated propaganda blitz; despite the 
overwhelmingly "pro"-Israel bias of mainstream media coverage, especially 
during the first few days of the attack; and despite official support in the 
West for the assault-despite all this, large popular protests throughout 
Western Europe (Spain, Italy, Germany, France, and Great Britain) dwarfed in 
size demonstrations supporting Israel.

A wave of student occupations swept across Great Britain including Oxford, 
Cambridge, Manchester, Birmingham, London School of Economics, School of 
Oriental and Asian Studies, Warwick, King's, Sussex, and Cardiff. Even in 
traditional bastions of support for Israel such as Canada, where the 
 "pro"-Israel bias of the extreme right-wing political establishment and 
media is unusually intense, a plurality of public opinion disapproved of the 
assault and the Canadian Union of Public Employees passed a motion calling 
for an academic boycott of Israel.

Declaring after the ceasefire that "the events in Gaza have shocked us to 
the core," a 16-strong group of the world's most experienced investigators 
and judges-including Antonio Cassese (First President and Judge of the 
International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and Head of the 
U.N. Inquiry on Darfur) and Richard Goldstone (Chief Prosecutor of the 
International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda and 
Chairman of the U.N. Inquiry on Kosovo)-called for an "international 
investigation of gross violations of the laws of war, committed by all 
parties to the Gaza conflict."

Unsurprisingly, Israel's apologists attributed the widespread outrage at the 
Gaza invasion to anti-Semitism. It might be posited as a general rule that 
the lower the depths to which Israel's criminal conduct sinks the higher the 
decibel level of the shrieks of anti-Semitism. Jews are confronting "an 
epidemic, a pandemic of anti-Semitism," Abraham H. Foxman declared. "This is 
the worst, the most intense, the most global it's been in most of our recent 
memories." Such fear-mongering was nothing new from Foxman, who had 
portended back in 2003 that anti-Semitism was posing "as great a threat to 
the safety and security of the Jewish people as the one we faced in the 
1930s."

Just as in the past, poll data used to substantiate these exaggerations 
tallied "indicators" of "the most pernicious notions of anti-Semitism," such 
as the finding that "large portions of the European public continue to 
believe that Jews still talk too much about what happened to them in the 
Holocaust." According to Parisian media "philosopher" Bernard-Henri Lévy, 
anyone doubting that the Nazi holocaust was a "moral watershed in human 
history" should be reckoned an anti-Semite. Few of the alleged anti-Semitic 
incidents in Europe went beyond merely unpleasant manifestations, such as 
emails and graffiti, while European anti-Semitism, notwithstanding the hype, 
paled beside anti-Muslim bias. (A rise in animus towards Jews and Muslims-in 
recent years the two curves tend to correlate-appears partly due to a 
resurgence of ethnocentrism among older, less educated, and politically 
conservative Europeans.)

Nonetheless it is most probably true that the execution by a self-proclaimed 
Jewish state of consecutive murderous  rampages in Lebanon and Gaza, and the 
vocal support lent these rampages by official Jewish organizations around 
the world, caused a regrettable-if entirely predictable- "spillover" whereby 
Jews generally were in some quarters held culpable. If, as the Israeli 
Coordination Forum for Countering Anti-Semitism asserted, there was "a sharp 
rise in the number and intensity of anti-Semitic incidents" during the Gaza 
massacre; and if "with the ceasefire there has . . . been a marked decline 
in the number and intensity of anti-Semitic incidents"; and if "another 
flare-up in the region, similar to the Gaza operation, will probably lead to 
an even more severe outbreak of anti-Semitic activity against communities 
worldwide," then an efficacious method to fight anti-Semitism would appear 
to be for Israel to stop committing massacres.

It is also true that the growing gap between official support of Israeli war 
mongering and popular revulsion against it might feed anti-Semitic 
conspiracy theories. In Germany for example the political establishment and 
mainstream media do not brook any criticism of Israel because of the 
"special relationship" growing out of Germany's "historic responsibility." 
Chancellor Angela Merkel surpassed other European leaders in her embrace of 
Israel during the Gaza invasion. Yet recent polls have shown that 60 per 
cent  of Germans reject the notion of a special German obligation to Israel 
(70 per cent  of young people reject it), 50 per cent  believe that Israel 
is an aggressive country, and 60 per cent  believe that it pursues its 
interests ruthlessly.

More generally, Gideon Levy recalled "the surreal scene at the height of the 
brutal assault on Gaza when the heads of the European Union came to Israel 
and dined with the prime minister in a show of unilateral support for the 
side wreaking the killing and destruction." And although it was Israel that 
broke the ceasefire and launched the invasion European leaders parleyed with 
the U.S. (and Canada) on how to thwart rearmament not of the perpetrators 
but of the victims. It is only a matter of time before Europeans begin to 
wonder-if they haven't already-at whose behest their foreign policy is being 
made. The ascription of popular Gentile outrage over the Gaza massacre to 
anti-Semitism appeared all the more preposterous in the face of widespread 
and vocal Jewish dissent. Whereas established communal Jewish organizations 
issued statements supporting Israel, ad hoc Jewish organizations and 
petitions deploring the invasion proliferated.

Most significantly, Jews prominent in communal Jewish life criticized 
Israel, albeit generally in muted language. As Israel stood poised to launch 
the ground offensive after a week of aerial attacks, a group of Britain's 
most distinguished Jews, describing themselves as "profound and passionate 
supporters" of Israel, expressed "horror" at the "increasing loss of life on 
both sides" and called on Israel to cease its military operations in Gaza 
immediately. On a more acerbic note, British MP and former shadow foreign 
minister Gerald Kaufman declared during a House of Commons debate on Gaza, 
"My grandmother was ill in bed when the Nazis came to her home town of 
Staszow. A German soldier shot her dead in her bed. My grandmother did not 
die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers 
in Gaza." He went on to indict the Israeli government for having "ruthlessly 
and cynically exploit[ed] the continuing guilt among Gentiles over the 
slaughter of Jews in the holocaust as justification for their murder of 
Palestinians."

Meanwhile in France the popular Jewish writer Jean-Moïse Braitberg called on 
the Israeli president to remove his grandfather's name from the memorial at 
Yad Vashem dedicated to victims of the Nazi holocaust "so that it can no 
longer be used  to justify the horror which is visited on the Palestinians." 
In Germany Evelyn Hecht-Galinski, daughter of a former president of the 
Central Council of Jews in Germany, wrote, "Not the elected Hamas 
government, but the brutal occupier . . . belongs in the dock at the Hague," 
while the German section of European Jews for a Just Peace issued a 
statement headlined "German Jews Say NO to Israeli Army Killings."

In Canada eight Jewish women occupying the Israeli consulate called on "all 
Jews to speak out against this massacre," and celebrated Canadian pianist 
Anton Kuerti declared, "The unbelievable war crimes that Israel is 
committing in Gaza . . .make me ashamed to be a Jew."In Australia two 
award-winning novelists and a former federal cabinet minister signed a 
statement by Jews condemning Israel's "grossly disproportionate assault.

The Bush administration and the U.S. Congress lent unqualified support to 
Israel during the invasion. A resolution laying full culpability on Hamas 
for the resulting death and destruction passed unanimously in the Senate and 
390 to 5 in the House. Much of the mainstream media in the U.S. likewise 
shamelessly toed the Israeli party line. "By New Year's Day, Israel's 
cheering squad had turned the opinion pages of major American newspapers 
into their own personal romper room," the journalist Max Blumenthal 
observed. "Of all the editorial contributions published by the Washington 
Post, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times since the Israeli war 
on Gaza began, . . . only one offered a skeptical view of the assault."

The New York Times's conception of op-ed balance was achieved by juxtaposing 
Jeffrey Goldberg's reverie on the unregenerate evil of Hamas with Thomas 
Friedman's counsel to Israel that it inflict "heavy pain on the Gaza 
population." Its hometown rival the New York Daily News ran an op-ed by 
Rabbi Marvin Hier that urged world leaders "not . . . to rebuild Gaza again" 
even though "many civilians will suffer" because "terrorists and those who 
support them are not entitled to receive VIP booty for their inhumanity, 
misdeeds and silence." Hier is the founder and dean of the Simon Wiesenthal 
Center and its Museum of Tolerance. In the midst of this lynch-mob 
atmosphere even human rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch 
reserved their strongest condemnations for Hamas.

These venomous elite outpourings notwithstanding, public opinion polls 
showed that, although harshly critical of Hamas, only about 40 per cent  of 
Americans approved of the Israeli attack, while among those voting 
Democratic (the party affiliation of most Jews) approval dropped to 30 per 
cent . In a dramatic display of independence reminiscent of Jimmy Carter's 
authorship of Palestine Peace Not Apartheid, liberal icon Bill Moyers 
rebuked Israel on his popular public affairs program Bill Moyers Journal, 
albeit in a context that also took Hamas to task: "By killing 
indiscriminately the elderly, kids, entire families, by destroying schools 
and hospitals, Israel did exactly what terrorists do."

Like Carter, Moyers immediately came under fire from Abraham H. Foxman, who 
accused him of "racism, historical revisionism and indifference to 
terrorism," and Harvard law professor Alan M. Dershowitz who decried Moyers's 
"false moral equivalence" between Hamas terrorism and the Israeli army that 
"inadvertently kill[s] some Palestinian civilians who are used as human 
shields by Hamas." But again like Carter, Moyers managed to stand his ground 
and, as fellow liberals rose to his defense, to emerge unscathed after the 
fusillade of slanders.

As the Gaza invasion unfolded, and the shocking images of the carnage 
transmitted live by Al-Jazeera could no longer be ignored, cracks started 
appearing in the moderate mainstream. Under the ominous title "Time Running 
Out for a Two- State Solution?" the most-watched U.S. news broadcast 60 
Minutes aired a devastating segment on Jewish settlers in the West Bank, 
which included a harrowing scene of "Arabs [who] are occupied inside their 
own homes" by Israeli soldiers. The right-wing editorial page of the Wall 
Street Journal ran a piece by law professor George E. Bisharat under the 
headline "Israel Is Committing War Crimes." The normally staid New York 
Times columnist Roger Cohen confessed in a pair of columns to being "shamed 
by Israeli actions." In the second piece Cohen speculated that "Israel's 
continued expansion of settlements, Gaza blockade, West Bank walling-in and 
wanton recourse to high-tech force" was "designed precisely to bludgeon, 
undermine and humiliate the Palestinian people until their dreams of 
statehood and dignity evaporate."

Former editor of the New Republic and conservative writer Andrew Sullivan 
judged that the Israeli attack was "far from a close call morally. . . . 
This is an extremely one-sided war," and he labeled "thugs" the rightwing 
Jewish apologists for "the terrible human carnage now being inflicted by 
Israel (and paid for in part by Americans)." Philip Slater, author of the 
sociological study The Pursuit of Loneliness, declared, "The Gaza Strip is 
little more than a large Israeli concentration camp, in which Palestinians 
are attacked at will, starved of food, fuel, energy-even deprived of 
hospital supplies. . . . It would be difficult to have any respect for them 
if they didn't fire a few rockets back."

Meanwhile the City Council of Cambridge, Massachusetts, a liberal enclave 
and home to Harvard University, adopted a resolution "condemning the attacks 
[on] and invasion of Gaza by the Israeli military and the rocket attacks 
upon the people of Israel," and a group of American university professors 
launched a national campaign calling for an academic and cultural boycott of 
Israel. A poll of American Jews found that 47 per cent  strongly approved of 
the Israeli assault, but-in a sharp break with the usual wall-to-wall 
solidarity-53 per cent  were either ambivalent (44 per cent  "somewhat" 
approved or "somewhat" disapproved) or strongly disapproved (9 per cent ).

Experienced observers of the American Jewish community pointed to a 
"post-Gaza sea change." Apart from "the more conservative segment of the 
pro-Israel community," M. J. Rosenberg of the Israel Policy Forum noted, 
"there was little show of support for this war. In New York, a city where 
crowds of 250,000 have come out for 'solidarity' rallies in the past, only 
8,000 came to Manhattan for a community demonstration on a sunny Sunday." In 
a public clash with the traditional Jewish leadership, mainstream if 
less-established Jewish organizations such as J Street staked out a middle 
ground that "recognize[d] that neither Israelis nor Palestinians have a 
monopoly on right or wrong," and called for "shedding a narrow 
us-versus-them approach to the Middle East."

Founded in 2008, J Street projects itself as a liberal counterweight to the 
American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). It is too soon to predict 
whether J Street-which currently hews to a vaguely progressive political 
agenda, although it also defines itself as "closest" to Kadima, the Israeli 
political party headed by Tzipi Livni- will calcify into a "loyal 
 opposition" or escalate its criticism of Israeli policy as the gulf 
dividing American Jewry from Israel widens.

Meanwhile "American Jews for a Just Peace" circulated a petition calling on 
"Israeli Soldiers to Stop War Crimes," "Jews Say No" demonstrated outside 
the World Zionist Organization and Jewish Agency offices, and "Jews against 
the Occupation" dropped a banner over New York City's West Side Highway 
declaring "Jews Say: End Israel's War on Gaza NOW!" In the liberal Jewish 
intellectual milieu only perennial apologists for Israel, most of whom came 
on board right after the June 1967 war and are now in their 70s, ventured a 
full-throated defense of the invasion.

It was obvious to moral philosopher Michael Walzer that Israel had exhausted 
nonviolent options before it attacked and that Hamas bore responsibility for 
the ensuing civilian deaths. To Walzer the only "hard question" was whether 
Israel did all it possibly could to reduce these casualties.

It was obvious to Alan M. Dershowitz that Israel made "its best efforts to 
avoid killing civilians" and that it failed because Hamas pursued a "dead 
baby" strategy of forcing Israel to kill Palestinian children in order to 
garner international sympathy.

It was obvious to New Republic editor Martin Peretz from his scrutiny of the 
Palestinians' footwear that the Israeli blockade of Gaza was benign: "You 
have to look closely at the sneakers, seemingly new and, of course, costly."

It was obvious to writer Paul Berman that if a "possibility" exists that 
Hamas might threaten Israel someday in the future with genocide "if Hamas 
were allowed to prosper unimpeded, and if its allies and fellow-thinkers in 
Hezbollah and the Iranian government and its nuclear program likewise 
prospered," then Israel would have the right to launch an attack now.

On such an accumulation of hypotheticals stacked on conditionals, it is hard 
to conceive what country in the world would be safe from arbitrary attack, 
and what country would not be justified in arbitrarily launching an attack. 
If, apart from this coterie of  Israel defenders, Jewish liberals recognized 
that the Israeli onslaught was morally problematic, they could not yet abide 
their dirty laundry being aired in front of the goyim. Magazines and 
journals of opinion pitched to the upscale and urbane Jewish public such as 
the New Yorker and the New York Review of Books accordingly sat out the Gaza 
massacre.

However, one influential contingent of liberal Jewish public intellectuals 
did not stay silent: the new generation of liberal Jewish bloggers and 
regular contributors to liberal-Democratic web sites such as Salon.com and 
the Huffington Post. Less in thrall to establishment Jewish editors, 
advertisers, funders, and social networks, speaking as and for a generation 
that came of age when to a large degree Zionist mythology had been dispelled 
and displaced by sober historical research. The Israeli political 
establishment had grown squalid and reactionary. Israel's human rights 
record had been subjected to piercing scrutiny by the human rights 
community. Holocaust-induced paranoia and anti-Semitism-mongering palpably 
collided with the quotidian reality of triumphant Jewish assimilation 
everywhere from the Ivy League to Wall Street, from Hollywood to Washington, 
and from the country club to the marriage altar. Professionally, mentally, 
and emotionally emancipated from the shackles of the past, these Jewish 
habitués of the Internet went on the offensive denouncing the Gaza invasion 
from its inception.

The symbolism could scarcely be missed. Whereas diehard apologists for 
Israel such as Walzer, Dershowitz, and Peretz clambered aboard the Zionist 
ship while in their youth, the generation of youthful Jewish public 
intellectuals now making their names on the Internet has been jumping off 
it."I pity them their hatred of their inheritance," Peretz hissed. "They are 
pip-squeaks."

Here are the pip-squeaks in their own words. Ezra Klein (age 25; blogger for 
American Prospect) posted on Day 2 of the invasion, "The rocket attacks were 
undoubtedly 'deeply disturbing' to Israelis. But so too are the checkpoints, 
the road closures, the restricted movement, the terrible joblessness, the 
unflinching oppression, the daily humiliations, the illegal settlement- I'm 
sorry, 'outpost'-construction 'deeply disturbing' to the Palestinians, and 
far more injurious. And the 300 dead Palestinians should be disturbing to us 
all."

Adam Horowitz (age 35; blogger for Mondoweiss) posted  on Day 4 in response 
to Benny Morris's op-ed in the New York Times, "It is clear he can only see 
the reactions, but not the cause. He lists the responses to Israel and to 
Israel's ongoing Jewish colonization of historic Palestine, without 
mentioning the elephant in the room, that the walls closing in on Israel are 
all self-made." Matthew Yglesias (age 28; blogger for Think Progress) posted 
on Day 6, "While Israel has stated a desire to leave the Gaza Palestinians 
alone in their tiny, overcrowded, economically unviable enclave, the [2005] 
'disengagement' from Gaza has never entailed letting Palestinians control 
their borders or exercise meaningful sovereignty over the area. The proposal 
has basically been that if Palestinians cease violence against Israel, then 
the Gaza Strip will be treated like an Indian reservation."

Dana Goldstein (age 24; blogger for American Prospect) posted on Day 12, "I 
want to believe that the collective, historical experience of Jewishness and 
Zionism leads to something better-something more humane-than what we've 
witnessed in the Middle East this past week." Glenn Greenwald (age 42; 
blogger for Salon.com) posted on Day 13, "This is not so much of a war as it 
is a completely one-sided massacre," and on 30 January 2009, "It's just not 
possible to make real progress in the domestic aims of restoring the 
Constitution and reversing our military and intelligence expansions if we 
are simultaneously enabling and blindly supporting Israel's various wars 
(and therefore dragging ourselves into those wars)."

On 20 February 2009 Greenwald responded to an insinuation by Jeffrey 
Goldberg that he was a Jew-hating Israelbasher, "People like Jeffrey 
Goldberg . . . have so abused, overused, manipulated and exploited the 
'anti-Semitism' and 'anti-Israel' accusations for improper and nakedly 
political ends that those terms have become drained of their meaning, have 
almost entirely lost their sting, and have become trivialized virtually to 
the point of caricature. . . . Indeed, people like Goldberg are becoming 
extra rancid and reckless in their rhetoric precisely because they know that 
these rhetorical devices have ceased working." "There is a definite sea 
change when it comes to American policy debates toward Israel," Greenwald 
concluded. "They no longer possess the ability to stifle dissent through 
thuggish intimidation tactics and they know that, which is why they can now 
do nothing but turn up the volume on their name-calling attacks. The Israeli 
devastation of Gaza and its trapped, defenseless civilian population-using 
American bombs, arms, money and diplomatic cover-was so brutal and horrific 
to watch that it inevitably changed the way people view that Middle East 
conflict."

Soon after the Gaza invasion ended, the phalanx of liberal Jewish bloggers 
again went tit-for-tat with the Israel lobby when the lobby sought to block 
the Obama administration's appointment of Chas Freeman, an official critical 
of Israeli policy. Another very  hefty straw in the wind was a sketch titled 
"Strip Maul" that aired on the Comedy Channel's Daily Show on 5 January 
2009. The host of the program, comedian Jon Stewart, is Jewish and has a 
huge following among young people. To roars of approval from the studio 
audience, he ridiculed the numbingly unanimous and cliché-ridden support for 
Israel among politicians ("It's the Möbius strip of issues-there's only one 
side!"); adverted to "the soul-crushing segmentation and blockading of Gaza"; 
and likened a Palestinian's plight to forcing someone "to live in my hallway 
and make him go through checkpoints every time he has to take a s**t."

The generational metamorphosis regarding Israel was most evident on college 
campuses. "A shift toward more visible pro-Palestinian or anti-Israel 
sentiment has been profound on some campuses," Inside Higher Ed reported, 
"prompted, in part, by the winter war in Gaza." Large halls filled to 
overflow for lectures deploring the Gaza massacre. Whereas "pro"- Israel 
groups used to protest inside or outside such lectures, they were now barely 
seen.

Students at Cornell University lined pathways with 1,300 black flags 
commemorating the dead in Gaza. (The display was later vandalized.)

Students at University of Rochester, University of Massachusetts, New York 
University, Columbia University, Haverford College, Bryn Mawr College, and 
Hampshire College held petition drives, protests, and sit-ins demanding 
financial support for Palestinian students and divestment from arms 
companies and companies doing business with the illegal Jewish settlements. 
Hampshire College students successfully pressured the college's trustees to 
divest from American corporations that directly profit from the occupation.

Although "pro"-Israel organizations alleged that "college and university 
campuses . . . have become hotbeds of a virulent new strain of 
anti-Semitism," at many campuses Jewish students have played a leading role 
on the local "Students for Justice in Palestine" committees, and creative 
and dedicated young Jewish activists in Birthright Unplugged and Anarchists 
Against the Wall, alongside individuals such as Anna Baltzer, author of the 
memoir Witness in Palestine, have gone from school to school offering 
personal testimony on the daily horrors unfolding in Palestine.

The bonds of solidarity being forged between young Jews and Muslims opposing 
the occupation-the core group on many campuses consists of secular Jewish 
radicals and observant Muslim women-give reason for hope that a just and 
lasting peace may yet be achieved. After speaking on the Gaza massacre at a 
Canadian university, the sponsors presented me with a button reading "I ? 
GAZA." I pinned the button to my backpack and headed for the airport. As I 
stood on the queue to board the plane, a passenger behind me whispered in my 
ear "I like your button." Hmm, I thought, the times they are a-changing. A 
couple of hours later I asked the airline attendant for a cup of water. 
Handing me the cup he leaned over and whispered "I like your button." Hmm, I 
thought, there's something happening here.

Norman Finkelstein is author of five books, including Image and Reality of 
the Israel-Palestine Conflict, Beyond Chutzpah and The Holocaust Industry, 
which have been translated into more than 40 foreign editions. This article 
is a chapter from his new book "This Time We Went Too Far - Truth and 
Consequences of the Gaza Invasion."

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