[Peace-discuss] ideology etc.

[C. G. Estabrook]

These are such inane statements (on important issues) that I can't 
imagine anyone taking them seriously.  But the issues themselves -- 
America's relation to Israel, the goals of US/Israeli policy, the 
situation of the Palestinians, the nature of the American political 
parties, and the political economy of the United States -- are 
inescapable if one wants to understand the war and oppose it.  I thought 
that was what AWARE was trying to do.

It's not enough simply to say that Bush and Cheney (or Clinton and 
Osama) are morally responsible for the war and leave it at that.  We 
have to say why they are wrong, why the war is immoral, and what should 
be done about it.  Nor can we possibly say that a group -- the American 
electorate -- is not morally responsible for the war.  Why, that would 
be to contend that capitalists have completely subverted democratic 
government...


Bob Illyes wrote:
> ...
> 1) Israel is simply America's proxy.
> 2) America is simply Israel's proxy.
> 3) American and/or Israeli governments are consistently on the side of 
> evil.
> 4) Palestinians are not as responsible for the chaos in Gaza and the 
> West Bank as are Israelis, but are rather as pure as wind-driven snow.
> 5) Democrats are to the right of Republicans.
> 6) Capitalists have completely subverted democratic government.
> 
> These all are blanket statements about groups, and are no more 
> appropriate than racism or anti-semitism. It is not the group that is 
> morally responsible, but the individual. As Mort might put it, this sort 
> of talk leads to more heat and less light.
> 
> If we are to reach both sides of the isle, and Jews as well as Gentiles, 
> this sort of over-generalization should not be in our literature. If 
> there is substantial evidence that there is something to any of these 
> claims (which I doubt), we should give our readers the evidence and let 
> them draw the conclusion, rather than looking down our noses at them and 
> assuming that they aren't smart enough to understand where the evidence 
> leads.
> ...