Innlegg fra en muslim og kommentar fra en jødisk skribent i Independent om Irak og Israel

Independents faste skribent Howard Jacobsen svarer 28. februar på et innlegg fra Yasmin Alibhai-Brown. Hun skriver at hun ser en en «parallell» mellom det å true/angripe Irak, og å ikke gjøre det samme mot Israel. Denne samstillingen holder nå på å ødelegge vennskapet i en gruppe bestående av muslimer, jøder, asiater og flere som forsøker nettopp å overvinne motsetninger, skriver hun.

I see a direct connection between what we are threatening to do to Iraq and what we tolerate in Israel. I am becoming aware that this connection worries the Jewish group members. To them, there are other evil regimes (if I am honest, the vast number are in Islamic countries), and these human rights abusers get off without a mention. They may have a point. But as one of those Muslims who does not deny the right of Israel to exist (to its pre-1967 borders) and who has always been openly critical of our own societies, it is telling that today the iniquitous actions of Israel are consuming me. They illustrate too blatantly the arrogance of leaders who expect immunity because of the horrors of the Holocaust, the memories of which they betray.

I am not at all sure that my Jewish friends can understand the depths of these feelings. I don’t bring them up because our relationships feel too vulnerable suddenly.

Jacobsen svarer at «parallellen», sammenligningen av Israel og Irak er helt feil. Det er det som er problemet:

«Many people in this country and around the world believe that to be anti-war you need to be anti-Israel. But they are wrong.»

«As a Jew I wish to say that I am made equally distraught by the inadvertent rhetoric of her distress. «Some 600 or so Israelis have been murdered by Palestinians,» she reminds us, wishing to be even-handed. «That is unequivocally condemned by me. But 2,000 or more Palestinians have been massacred by the overwhelming force of the Israeli army.» Note the «but», which if it does not exactly make her «unequivocally» equivocal again, points to qualitative, no less than quantitive, difference in the deaths. Not just 2,000 as against 600, but «massacred» as against «murdered», and massacred by an overwhelming force, as though there is nothing overwhelming about a bomb in a suicide bomber’s pocket, and as though it is not a massacre when it goes off on a crowded school bus.

Is that last phrase rhetoric of my own? No doubt it is. We are at war, here, as to who is the victim of whom. We would do well, on both sides, to drop the concept of victim altogether. We are in too deep for it now. But that is asking a lot in the eyes of those who «see connections», because Israel, as every schoolboy knows and is keen to demonstrate on Question Time, is armed to the teeth. «Why not disarm Israel as well then?» comes the question at more or less the same point of every public debate, as though there is exact or indeed any equivalence between Saddam’s deployment of arms and Israel’s. «Israel also flouts the wishes of the United Nations and has weapons of mass destruction.» Followed by applause. A little knowledge being a dangerous thing.

None of us can be absolutely sure what would have happened, had such and such not happened also, but there is no Jew of my acquaintance, let him be the staunchest opponent of Israel’s present policies, who doubts that without the appropriate deterrents Israel would long ago have been driven into the sea.»