On 11/13/06, Yoshie Furuhashi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Commitment to Israel's security cuts across the party and ethnic lines within the US power elite as well as the US ruling class, and they are committed to it not for the sake of Israel but for the sake of the American power elite fantasy about the Middle East. If there is any difference among the power elite, it is between maximalists and minimalists, between surrealists and realists, etc., and that difference is a minor one, not a major one.
there's a cultural reason for elite solidarity with Israel that's seldom if ever noticed. The Israeli leaders have broadcast a major message of macho swagger (legitimated in larger circles by the role of Golda Meir). The Bush League, for example, has resonated positively with this: if the Israelis can treat the Palestinians like excrement, always making impossible demands, then refusing to negotiate with the Ps, then destroying their infrastructure and the like, and killing them indiscriminately, we Amurricans can do the same with those wogs in Iraq, Iran, etc. Of course, this links up with the US cult of toughness of the Cold War era (seen, e.g., during the Kennedy administration). That cult persisted in people like Cheney and Rumsfeld. BTW Israeli macho swagger has recently hit upon hard times. The President was indicted for rape, while Organized Machismo (the IDF) ran into Hezbollah. The first time I really understood Israeli machismo was when I read a fascist novel back in the 1980s (I wish I remember its name or author). There was a long admiring passage about a character based on Moshe Dayan. (The book advocated working-class fascism, BTW.) -- Jim Devine / "In economics, the majority is always wrong." -- John Kenneth Galbraith
