''Palestine: It's All Over''

This is Alexander Cockburn's conclusion on the state of a hypothetical Palestinian State. Cockburn argues that there was a plan laid out by Israel from the beginning (1948) to reach the stage of the impossibility of a Palestinian State and that the plan was greatly helped by the active self censorship of western media in their unreporting about the illegal means Israel undertook to reach this stage, specially after 1974.

What happened after 1974 ?
Israel had won two wars against Arab countries and had established itself as the great mighty superpower in the middle east with another powerful ally, the United States. The active self censorship of western media didn't come only as a result of pressure from Israel and its allies in the west. It came, and very few would actually aknowledge this matter of fact, from public sympathy towards Israel across Europe and the US. This sympathy, as my European husband puts it, derived from the fact that Europeans felt that they were reoccupying, through Israel's victories, the countries (and the 'savages' which inhabit them) they had colonised and left not a long ago.
Europeans, as Americans, had also little faith in Arabs to trust them with the biggest oil reserves in the world for their increasing energy needs. Arabs were the Other. They were different, they were Muslims for a big majority of them and when they weren't Muslims, they had sympathies with the communists. My husband recounted to me the state of panic Europeans were in back in 1973 during the second Israeli-Arab war as this second war against Arabs didn't look as easy to win by Israel as the 1967 war, also called the six days war because of Israel's overwhelming and rapid victory.

Other factors contributed to a greater identification between the West and Israel. Among them:

1. The west's left kept his sympathies for Israel as a model for a successful socialist enterprise and still do so with such a nostalgia, even now when nothing of the kibboutzim state is left and when neoliberalism is rampant leaving many Isareli citizens on the fringes of society. In fact, socialist ideology contributed greatly to the foundation of Israel and socialists of the world are grateful that Israel was a 'living' proof of the effectiveness of their ideology. As Jean-Luc Godard says in his movie 'Our Music', with nostalgia : ''Communism existed only twice in history and only 45 minutes each time when the British football players lost at Wembley to the Hungarians because they were playing individually and the Hungarians were playing collectively''. And so socialism existes really and it existed in Israel, at the beginning. The nostalgia towards what was at the heart of the foundation of Israel still obscure many leftists judgements about this state.

2. The fall of Israel's ideal for egalitarianism among its citizens followed closely the demise of the social contract in the West and Europe in particular and the rise of neoliberalism. In that, Israel was mirrorring the economic and social evolution of the West and that made the identification more likely. Neoliberalist values, which were gaining ground among American and Eurpean political and intellectual elites from the right to the 'new' left, were introduced in Israel at the same time. And with these values came a shift in the western perspective on the Self as individualistic, egoistic, politically correct, focused without restraint on the pursuit of sexual pleasures (not only sexual liberation) and personal wealth. On the other side, Arab countries, either economically underdevelopped and socially conservative or rich but also socially conservative, offered to the western world a social façade which was increasingly at odds with its own.
I don't think that the Israeli society mirrors actually the western one, there is a lot of conservatism and political uncorrectness (racism and préjugés) in this society, however these features do not show because they are hidden under the umbrella of 'secular' judaism and zionism which supposedly defines Israel. Indeed this perception of Israel is actually more influenced by the jewish diaspora outside Israel than by Israeli society itself, as this diaspora had plenty of time to melt in western cultural values and even become secularised at this contact. The jewish french philosopher, Emmanuel Levinas*, complained in 1976 about the loss of spirituality among the jewish diaspora, a consequence, he says, of its secularisation under the influence and the contact of secular christianity in Europe.
However, when you look at the Muslim diaspora, you can hardly compare it to the jewish one: these are people who immigrated recently to Europe from previous colonised countries. The relations between these immigrants and European citizens are different in many aspects and there are great misunderstandings of the Muslim and Arab cultures produced by colonial history, wider economic and cultural gaps between countries of origin and host countries, as well as previously planned and recent spin from pro-Zionist zealots against these populations which started early on and was already full blown in the nineties.

3. What is important also is that Israel, its zionist defenders and its jewish diaspora worldwide, often act as one homogenous bloc when it comes to protect the state from international sanctions. Facing this matter of fact, and contrary to the West's perception, Palestinians, Muslims and Arabs are a mosaic of diverse opinions, interests and political agenda. So the perception of Israel facing a united Arab, palestinian and Muslim front in its struggle for 'existence' is utterly false.

4. Even if there was a western awakening to the problems facing the palestinians in their struggle for existence, Israel made sure that all the misunderstandings between the West's culture and values and those of Arabs and Muslims in general were exploited in forging the West's view of Arabs, Muslims and Palestinians which were assimilated to these two categories. This strategy proved effective. The recent terrorist threat the West attributes to Islam came to seal the fate of the Palestinians because Israel has forcefully argued for an equation between the two even if the difference between Islamist terror as advocated by OBL and Palestinian resistance is evident and can be found in European history. Indeed, it is the same difference that exists between armed resistance to facism in Spain, to the occupation of Ireland by the British or to the Nazis in France on one hand and the waves of social terror inflicted on European populations between the seventies and the nineties in Belgium, France, Italy and Germany, on the other hand.

No wonder why, in 2006, after the collapse of the Oslo agreements and the affirmation of unilateral policies by Israel, with International benediction, as well as the destruction, not only of the Palestinian hopes to a state and a decent life but of the palestinian society, culture and geographical demography, there aren't many courageous voices in the West's mainstream media outlets, governments offices and political parties, rising to condemn Israel. There are only voices of few concerned citizens and scholars which are kept outside the mainstream and marginalised as to make sure that the chorus of support given to Israel's peace damaging policies in the Middle East will stay undisputed and without restraint.

*Lévinas Emmanuel. 1976. Difficile liberté, in 'Essai sur le judaisme', Albin Michel, Paris. p.13-23