Time for Abe Foxman to Apologize to Jimmy Carter

Back in 2006, when both Jimmy Carter's Palestine: Peace not Apartheid and Walt & Mearsheimer's The Israel Lobby were published, ADL head Abe Foxman led the charge to have Carter excluded - as far as might be possible - from the public discourse. It was a craven attack. Since then, events have more and more proven Carter right, Foxman wrong. Carter never had to make excuses. Perhaps a statement by Foxman last week on a distantly related issue, over which Foxman begs to be excused, is the closest he will come to apologizing to Carter:

Survivors of the Holocaust are entitled to feelings that are irrational. Their anguish entitles them to positions that others would categorize as irrational or bigoted.

Author, journalist and blogger Max Blumenthal was able to be one of those documenting the forcible removal of all the residents of a longstanding community of Bedouins in the Negev Desert of Israel late last week. There have been several stories about this, mostly in the blogosphere. A google search New York Times Bedouin village of al-Arakib yields no NYT

results. Yet.

The problem that is so evident in the coverage of this removal isn't merely that it is such overt apartheid, but that the heavy-handedness of its implementation is so blatantly and hatefully racist:

Is the racist way this apartheid action of ethnic cleansing was implemented sanitized by Foxman's excuse?

Here's part of Max Blumenthal's description of the participation of Israeli school kids in the ethnic cleansing operation:

After interviewing more than a half dozen elders of the village, I was able to finally identify the civilians in question. What I discovered was more disturbing than I had imagined.

Arab Negev News publisher Ata Abu Madyam supplied me with a series of photos he took of the civilians in action. They depicted Israeli high school students who appeared to have volunteered as members of the Israeli police civilian guard (I am working on identifying some participants by name). Prior to the demolitions, the student volunteers were sent into the villagers’ homes to extract their furniture and belongings. A number of villagers including Abu Madyam told me the volunteers smashed windows and mirrors in their homes and defaced family photographs with crude drawings. Then they lounged around on the furniture of al-Arakib residents in plain site of the owners. Finally, according to Abu Matyam, the volunteers celebrated while bulldozers destroyed the homes.

“What we learned from the summer camp of destruction,” Abu Madyam remarked, “is that Israeli youth are not being educated on democracy, they are being raised on racism.”

Perhaps. But let's get back to Abe Foxman's statement, "Survivors of the Holocaust are entitled to feelings that are irrational. Their anguish entitles them to positions that others would categorize as irrational or bigoted."

I'm going to be pilloried for this by some, but it may be worth the ensuing discussion:

1920: A spokeswoman for Armenian survivors of Turkish atrocities was heard saying, "Survivors of the Turks are entitled to feelings that are irrational. Their anguish entitles them to positions that others would categorize as irrational or bigoted

1925: Gen. Ludendorff was quoted as saying, "Survivors of the Versailles treaty's indignities are entitled to feelings that are irrational. Their anguish entitles them to positions that others would categorize as irrational or bigoted."

1935: Gen. Franco was quoted as saying, "Survivors of the Communist Madrid government are entitled to feelings that are irrational. Their anguish entitles them to positions that others would categorize as irrational or bigoted."

1937: A woman in Nanking, who was raped 150 times by Japanese soldiers last week, was screaming, almost incoherently, "Survivors of Nanking are entitled to feelings that are irrational. Their anguish entitles them to positions that others would categorize as irrational or bigoted."

1942: A Lone Polish officer, who survived the rumored mass murder at Katyn, was heard muttering, "Survivors of Katyn are entitled to feelings that are irrational. Their anguish entitles them to positions that others would categorize as irrational or bigoted."

1946: A man whose entire immediate and distant family were incinerated in the atomic bomb blast in Nagasaki, has stated, "Survivors of this horrific blast are entitled to feelings that are irrational. Their anguish entitles them to positions that others would categorize as irrational or bigoted."

1960: Alabama Democratic National Committeeman, Bull Conner, responding to his renewed pleas for racial segregation, stated: "White Alabamians are entitled to feelings that are irrational. Their anguish entitles them to positions that others would categorize as irrational or bigoted."

1963: Standing in front of the Foster Auditorium at the University of Alabama, Gov. George Wallace cried to the white crowd: "Our white students are entitled to feelings that are irrational. Their anguish entitles them to positions that others would categorize as irrational or bigoted."

Let's step forward a few years:

1994: Rwandan radio announcers are broadcasting: "Survivors of Tutsi insults are entitled to feelings that are irrational. Their anguish entitles them to positions that others would categorize as irrational or bigoted."

1995: Bosnian Serb leader, Ratko Mladić, was overherard, telling a Belgrade newspaper reporter, "Our Christian Serbs are entitled to feelings that are irrational. Their anguish entitles them to positions that others would categorize as irrational or bigoted."

.... and so on.

Foxman's statement wasn't just lame. It was indefensible unless one willingly accepts his viewpoint to be from an acceptably exceptionalist arena that somehow trumps normal morality.

My personal experiences with young Cambodians who survived Pol Pot's genocide have demonstrated to me that multi-generational PTSD is real and can be heavily debilitating. That is what Foxman seems to be describing. Nothing more. But I find very little difference in having read Foxman's personal experiences from 1940 to 1945, from what I have heard many, many times from Cambodian friends and relatives.

It is likely that Foxman will jump even more sharks before he comes to his senses and seeks forgiveness from Jimmy Carter. Were that unlikely event to occur, though, one suspects Jimmy Carter would fully, warmly and sincerely embrace Abraham Foxman.

image - via Max Blumenthal