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Why Glenn Beck Hurts Israel

by MJ Rosenberg


On Thursday, Fox News?? Glenn Beck devoted a segment of his television program to attacking me for condemning the Israeli raid on the Gaza-bound relief flotilla.

I have no problem with that. But I can??t help but feel a little sad that the Israeli government??s most vocal supporters are now on the extreme right. (My discomfort on that score was only heightened today when Beck endorsed a book by a notoriously anti-Semitic author.)

It??s no surprise that liberals are not too enamored with Israel these days??not with the Netanyahu government firmly choosing occupation and blockade over negotiations with the Palestinians.

Does that mean that the extreme right is more pro-Israel than progressives?

Actually, it means the opposite.

Progressives oppose Israeli policies that would almost inevitably lead to Israel??s dissolution. There is hardly a mainstream political figure in Israel, dead or living, (including current Defense Minister Ehud Barak and former Prime Ministers Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert) who hasn??t evinced the belief that Israel cannot survive if it maintains the occupation of the lands taken in 1967. Netanyahu??s choice of confrontation over negotiating the end of the occupation appears suicidal.

But that is the policy supported by right-wingers like Beck. They don??t admire Israel because of its intrinsic qualities but because they view it as fighting the good fight against the people they most despise: Arabs and Muslims. They will happily fight to the last Israeli in a struggle they view as part of the ??War on Terror.? If Israel is sacrificed in the name of that goal, so what? There are more important things to the right than the survival of one little Jewish country??like fighting Islam.

No doubt, the Israeli right welcomes this kind of support because beggars can??t be choosers. Nor do they much care that, when Israel finally chooses the path of peace with the Palestinians, which it will, these rightwing ??supporters? will disappear.

Israel is their proxy in the war against Islam. Once Israel stops fighting, you can count on Beck to denounce it for selling out to the socialists. (And that is appropriate. Pretty much every major institution in Israel??including the state itself, the agricultural and industrial sectors, and the military??was built by socialists.)

There is so much wrong with Beck??s response to me that I can??t respond to them all here although PoliticalCorrection.org (a project of Media Matters Action Network) does.

But there are a few points I do want to make.

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