Criticism of Israel, Criticism in general

Here's a wacky phenomenon that Michael J. Totten, guest blogging for Andrew Sullivan, points out:

An even starker contrast is noticeable between Israel-supporters in Israel and Israel-supporters in America. Israel’s partisans in the U.S. often talk as though Israel rarely makes any mistakes, that because Israel is a democracy with a right to defend itself it can do no or little wrong. Israelis themselves rarely do this.

One of the things that frustrates me most about the American right-wing mind is that it conflates criticism of something with hatred of something. If you criticize Israel, you must hate it and want Hezbollah to win. If you don't like the way our occupation of Iraq is being conducted, you must hate our troops. If you point out something in America that you feel needs to be changed, you must despise your homeland. I don't know if they actually think this way, or just use this as a rhetorical device to score political points, or whether they can tell the difference. But they act as if they believe it, at least when it comes to criticism from the left: I don't hear right wingers accusing each other of hating Amercia when they criticise secularism, the judicial system, or Hollywood.

This definitely comes to the fore with Israel and its millitary conduct. I think Israel fought this war very poorly, so much so that at times it appeared difficult even to tell what they were trying to accomplish. As Totten points out, this opinion or those like it seemss common enough in Israel, and you'll read it on the editorial pages there. But uttering this kind of blaspemy here in the states will have the right-wing noise machine linking you to Al Qaeda in no time. (Never mind that Hezbollah and Al Qaeda are completely different organizations.)

Back on the subject of the false criticism=hatred idea, one thing right wingers are always complaining about is why those on the left spend more time criticising the United States and its allies than criticising terrorists and their allies. Because they believe (or pretend to believe) that criticism=hatred, they go around saying, "Those lefties criticize America more than they criticize terrorists, so they must hate America more than they hate terrorists. In fact, they are probably on the side of terrorists, blah, blah, blah..."

I don't suppose it's ever occurred to these folks that those of us on the left criticize the United States because we love it, and want it to be better, and because as citizens of the United States we have a right to participate in its policy making. I don't don't waste my words condemning Al Qaeda's fanatical murderous acts because I think they are past reasoning with. I don't spend a lot of time condemning homocidal anti-gay bigotry in the Middle East because I don't think I have any influence over it, and I don't think it's my responsibility. But I do feel our nation and its conduct is my responsibility, insofar as it is a democracy and I am a citizen of it. If I had to allocate my words of criticism in direct proportion to the evil committed by the target of that criticism I guess I'd have to do 538 posts on Stalin, Hitler, and Mao before I could say one word about any of the stuff that I currently talk about. Then maybe I'd have to do 173 post on Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge...but oh wait I need to do 244 posts on the civil war in Congo first.

So when I say "America is doing something wrong", that doesn't mean that I think it's more wrong than what some thug whom I'm not criticizing is doing. It means I feel closer to America than to Iraqi insurgents or to Hezbollah terrorists or to Sudanese janjaweed or to whoever, and therefore what America does is more in my name than what some other nation or entity does, and therefore I'm more likely to take issue when I feel America's actions are stupid or immoral.

Think of it this way: What is more upsetting: when a stranger does something you know in your heart is wrong, or when one of your own family members does something that you know in your heart is wrong, or when you realize that you, yourself, have done something wrong? The answer to that question is why those of us on the left criticize the our country and our allies more than we criticize our country's enemies. I guess folks in Israel have already figured this out.

I wish we Americans would catch up. Because then we can start arguing about what criticisms are valid, and what criticisms aren't valid, instead of having our patriotism or basic human decency impugned.

UPDATE: Glen Greenwald chimes in on a similar note:

I've contrasted several times the Isrealis' willingness to acknowledge so openly and quickly that their war in Lebanon was going so poorly with the absurd insistence by Bush supporters in the U.S., sustained over several years, that the disaster in Iraq was going well. As Totten notes, these supporters apply their same absolutist, reality-denying mindset to Israel as they apply to the conduct of George Bush and the U.S. occupation of Iraq.