Israeli Diplomats: Israel De-Legitimizing Itself

Israel's own Reut Institute, a think tank arm of the Israeli government, recently wrote a study on the international BDS movement (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) targeting Israeli occupation and apartheid. The study recognized the potency of BDS and concluded that such an effort poses a serious threat to Israel due to the potential to further isolate the Jewish state.

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It concluded, albeit in passing, that an end to Israeli occupation would improve Israel's image and make irrelevant BDS. And that's the Israeli dilemma. Israel's increasingly pariah status (in a recent BBC global opinion survey Israel was one of the four most unpopular nations along with North Korea, with 49% expressing a negative opinion and only 21% favorable toward the nation) is due to Israel's indefensible, atrocious and criminal 1967 occupation of Palestinians, the longest military occupation in modern history, and its apartheid policies. But instead of seeking a peace deal which would recognize Palestinian national rights and end the occupation, Israeli governments after another further entrench themselves in the occupied West Bank through illegal settlements, wage merciless wars against Arabs which kill hundreds of civilians, and rebuff even the demand of their faithful ally America to cease settlement construction. All this and more has turned most of the world against Israel and even the idea of Zionism. Germany, long restrained in criticizing the Jewish state, has become a vocal opponent of Israeli actions and even in America Israel is solely losing support. In short, Israel's own conduct is its greatest ammunition against it in the long-run as no state can survive forever as an isolated and militarized island.

But that's not the way Israelis tell it. So convinced of their righteousness, even as they are the brutal occupiers, they casually dismiss any and all criticism as age-old antisemitism and resign to an attitude of indifference to what the world thinks "because they hate us no matter what" and thus Israel should do whatever it wants no matter the affront to international law and civilian life, but then cry foul as they see an Israel being treated like the defunct apartheid state in South Africa. In short, they want their cake and eat it too.

Here's an illustration of this schizophrenic mindset:

About two weeks ago, a plane landed at Ben Gurion airport, and out of it came Sen'or Ivan Prado, the most famous professional clown in Spain, accompanied by a female Spanish national of Arab descent. The two were on their way to Ramallah, "capital" of the "autonomous" Paltustanian Authority, where Prado was invited to perform and help organize a clown festival. Six hours later, after a lengthy and humiliating interrogation during which his passport was taken from him, he was placed on a plane back to Madrid. The reason: Prado was declared a "security risk" due to unspecified "suspicious contacts". Thus, instead of coming and going with no-one noticing, our men in black deftly created a very motivated spokesman with millions of fans who can't speak up enough against Israel and its treatment of the Palestinians. Israel's embassy in Spain was aghast and demanded a detailed explanation of the reason for this treatment from Jerusalem, so that it could have any chance at all of fielding all the demands for comment from the irate Spanish media. No such detailed explanation was forthcoming. But the next time the Spanish people display an unfriendly opinion of "The Only Democracy in the Middle East [TM]" - we all know why, right? All together now: Because they're antisemites!

The above, of course, was a satire by an Israeli liberal lampooning Israel's inability to recognize that its own self-destructive behavior is the cause of people disliking it and not the convenient excuse of antisemitism.

Fortunately there are at least one group of Israelis who get this:

Former Foreign Ministry director-general Alon Liel told Army Radio last week that at this point, "more than half" of Israel's career diplomats believe that the government's policies are leading to unprecedented isolation and de-legitimization of Israel.

But that ministry is now under the control of a neo-fascist fanatic named Lieberman, so their influence to shape policy or even force a reevaluation debate is null.

The isolation of Israel continues, and the diplomats are jumping ship. Kind of like the diplomats of Libya's Gaddafi shipping off of that sinking ship.