DAVID SEGAL
DAVID SEGAL GUEST COLUMNIST Many Americans-especially young ones-now regard Israel as simply an obstacle to peace and an occupying force in a foreign land. Can Israel win the support of the next...
...condemnation of Israel in the UN for the Temple Mount killings, which may have been a political expediency but fit into this same pattern...
...Nor, as it turns out, is the Soviet threat...
...Then the real trouble begins...
...With the Soviet Union withdrawing support from its Middle East clients and edging toward the establishment of diplomatic ties with Israel, the geostrategic argument is rapidly becoming obsolete...
...It would be shortsighted to predicate the U.S.-Israel alliance on the threat posed by his regime...
...At the same time, Israel, for its part, must prove that it still is ready to go anywhere, anytime for peace...
...This erosion of support is only slightly more frightening than what is suggested by MTV's decision to run the name of Israel alongside China and Iran...
...The administration was harrumphing publicly about Israel...
...This collision of pop culture and politics suggests that the bruising Israel has taken since the intifada has indeed exacted its toll, at least as far as Israel's image is concerned...
...It might not work well as a sound bite, and it won't fit into the MTV format...
...Israel's story is a long one, filled with nuance and detail...
...The image of pioneering Jews fighting for survival is replaced with film footage of Israeli soldiers beating Palestinian rioters...
...For supporters of Israel, this challenge may be met only by reminding Americans why the U.S.-Israel alliance was created in the first place—the shared values and democratic structures that drew the two countries together...
...But Israel also has (or rather, had) the reflexive support of the vast majority of people not familiar with the infinite complexities of the Middle East...
...When the show got to international affairs, it flashed on the screen a list of pariah nations...
...Forward another 20 years and another generation...
...But Israel will be around a long time after Saddam Hussein has left us...
...Absent is any understanding of how Israel came to possess the West Bank and why it is reluctant to leave it...
...MTV (Music Television), that great barometer—and creator—of adolescent tastes, ran a year-in-review show last January that covered a range of political issues...
...And for obvious emotional and historical reasons, it has the reflexive support of the American Jewish community...
...Sandwiched amid such traditional nasties as China, Libya and Iran was a new name—Israel...
...That nostalgia may have something to do with the support Israel presently has, diminished though it is...
...Much recent writing about Israel has been a variation on the bring-back-the-old-Israel theme...
...Enough said...
...Traditionally, Israel has profited from that...
...Congress was questioning funds to the country and polls suggested Israel's wide base of support was shrinking...
...And since understanding Israel will now take more than a cursory knowledge of the Middle East, the second challenge facing that country's supporters in coming years will be getting its story across...
...American support for Israel has always been somewhat reflexive...
...The Economist, a London-based weekly magazine, for instance, ran a cover story about Israel in January 1988 entitled "When Israel was a Child, Then I Loved Him...
...More recently, there was the U.S...
...Iraq, perhaps...
...Many now regard the country-as an obstacle to peace and an occupying force in a foreign land...
...The area lends itself to oversimplification...
...In 1948, the event was the birth of Israel—Israel's victory over Arab nations with more combatants and better weapons seemed a modern day miracle...
...The oppressed Israelis suddenly look a lot like oppressors...
...Many Americans— especially young ones—are aware only of the latest scene in this long drama...
...Can Israel win the support of the next generation of Americans...
...The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait may change all that, but whether the heat is off Israel for the long term is questionable...
...But only by both conveying this story and sincerely searching for peace at every opportunity can Israel hope to win the hearts and minds of the next generation of American voters, 'fl> David Segal is the senior research analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy...
...reminding people that Israel is a vibrant democracy in a desert of autocracies, that it is a country trying to bring Jewish ethical imperatives to the context of modern statehood, that it is threatened by hostile and well-armed nations and that the issue of a neighboring Palestinian state is for Israel, barely the size of New Jersey, an existential question...
...What will happen when a generation raised on the intifada and glamost comes of age...
...the year is 1987 and the event is the intifada...
...Successive generations have had this good-guy notion reinforced by events in Israeli history...
...For geostrategic reasons, Israel has the reflexive support of those who see the country as an important military ally...
...What will keep them interested in the fate of this tiny country on the other side of the globe...
...Clearly, before the invasion, American patience with Israel was wearing thin...
...In five or ten years, the next generation, the MTV generation, will be making its political will felt—and it will have grown up knowing Israel only as it is now being portrayed...
...Today the American predilection for simple conclusions about this complex part of the world comes at Israel's expense...
...A generation later, the reinforcing event was the equally remarkable 1967 war...
...But nostalgia is not much on which to hang a foreign policy...
...Israelis were the good guys...
Vol. 15 • December 1990 • No. 6
