[Peace-discuss] "To Help Palestine, Be Pro-Israel Too", from Ira Chernus

[Stuart Levy]

Wanted to point out four notable articles that appeared this week.
Here's the first:

   To Help Palestine, Be Pro-Israel Too
    by Ira Chernus [Prof. of Religious Studies, UC Boulder]
   http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/01/06-13

   Three viewpoints on the Gaza war fill the U.S. mass media: pro-Israel,
   anti-Israel, and neutral or even-handed.  All three are harmful to
   the suffering people of Gaza. The one view that can help them is
   the one that barely gets a hearing. It's pro-Palestine, pro-peace,
   AND pro-Israel.

   [...]
    Yet a neutral, even-handed approach in the U.S. news media is dangerous
    for the people of Gaza too.  It treats Israel's massive high-tech
    firepower, which has killed over 500, as somehow equivalent to Hamas'
    aimless, largely ineffectual rockets that have killed five. That gives
    Americans the impression there's a fair fight going on between two
    equally violent and equally suffering sides. Most people conclude that
    if neither side is the good guy, it's none of our business and we should
    just ignore it. At least they themselves ignore the conflict. That gives
    the "pro-Israel" lobby and the U.S. government a freer hand to follow
    a one-sided course.

   [...]
    That might seem to leave only one fruitful approach: Stand up for
    the Palestinians, condemn Israel as the aggressor, and demand that
    it stop its attack immediately. It's understandable that Americans
    of good moral conscience might take such an approach. But from a
    practical point of view, it will not do the Palestinians of Gaza
    any good. It might even harm them more.

    Political action that is merely "pro-Palestinian" allows the
    mass media to portray the engaged public divided into two neat
    camps-pro-Israel and anti-Israel-as if those were the only two
    options. Of course the mass media like simplistic pictures of
    two protest groups, diametrically opposed, on opposite sides of
    the street.  It boosts their ratings. But it also lets supporters
    of Israeli policy feel even more justified, saying that "everyone
    who's not for us is against us."

    It also encourages the average American to assume that there is no
    way out of this mess except to choose sides. In that case, since
    most know only what the political leaders and mass media tell them,
    they will choose the Israeli side.
   [...]

and more.  Well worth a full reading.  I recommended this article to
some at the Mosque who were wondering how to talk about the Gaza crisis
and Palestinian issues with their non-Muslim coworkers, neighbors, etc.
We need ways to break out of rhetorical cages.