The Israeli-Palestinian issue, and the perception of Israel in Europe

[PeterGustafsson]

Hi!

Now that the "Israeli fencers in Aquaba" thread has long left fencing behind, and also branced out into several topics running beside each other, I think that it may be easier to follow one subtopic if it put in a thread of its own.

As a dual Swedish-US citizen, I have gotten the question(differently worded from time to time, here I try to capture the gist of it): "What is it with you Europeans? (exasperated look on face) Why don´t you see the true facts about the Israelis defending themselves? Read New York Times or (insert name of US. paper here) or look at (insert name of US. TV network here) and you will see that justice is on the Israeli side! Why can´t you get it???"

My response has been that just as Americans rarely consume European media, Europeans don´t look at US. media as a mainstay. Furthermore, European politicians are like US. politicians in at least one way - neither will further an issue which will help them with a small minority of the voters, but make them lose points with many more, unless there is some really special reason. Politicians have self-preservation instincts everywhere.

Furthermore, the perfect proportional parliaments with multiple-seat constituencies so common in Europe make for a quite different political game than the first-past-the-post parliament with single-seat constituencies, as is the case in USA and a few other (mostly English-speaking) countries. The PP parliamentary system tends so produce quite a few viable parties, often 5-10 (Poland has had more than 20 simultaneously in its Sejm), while the FPTP system usually leads to a pure 2-party system, sometimes spiced up with a few very small parties which are strong in very concentrated areas (GB, for example).

The difference in party numbers is of vital importance for any group trying to influence politics above and beyond voting as a bloc. In a 2-party system, it is a viable strategy to try to influence representatives of both major parties to be friends of your cause. If sucessful, the very high entry difficulty for a new party virtually ensures that the voters have no real choice but to support your cause. Even if the strategy does not work everywhere, it is still useful if it works here and there. Each voter has two viable parliamentary canidates to choose from, and a well-organized group can overcome the problem of their own small numbers by working on these two persons. In a multiparty, multiseat constituency this approach does not work, or becomes much more difficult. Where I live, there are 7 parties in the parliament, and each party presents a list of 35 canidates to the voters. These 245 canidates compete for 11 seats. Multiply that with 29 constituencies, and you see that the effort of "vetting" canidates for a individual group becomes quite large. There is another effect also: Even if a group manages to identify canidates positive to its cause, and forward such within the party structures, it is virtually impossible to get a 100% fixed list for any party. Therefore, a voter leaning to that party always has the option to vote for the few remaining canidates who are not positive to a pressure group. Should a pressure group manage to get a 100% sanitized list in one party, the fact that there are so many parties leaves voters the option to change party, since there usally is another party reasonably close to his 1st-hand choice.

In short: the US system gives any political pressure group 2 bases to cover in any election, and it becomes possible to force voters not sympathetic to its cause to have no option but to stay home. In the system common in Europe, a political pressure group has to cover literally hundreds of bases, and if they don´t get all of them, non-sympathetic voters will spill over to the uncovered bases.

Another difference is that in the PP parliamentary system, every vote counts, and counts equally, for the final balance of power. This is not the case in USA. Democrats in Utah, and republicans in Washington DC (and 3rd party voters all over the states) already now know that their vote will not affect the 2004 presidential election, since they will not be represented by any members in the electoral college. Voters in Swing states (and to some degree, voters in early primary/caucus states) mean much more, and the politicians will concentrate their efforts there. This also gives political pressure groups somewhere to concentrate their efforts on. In a PP parliamentary system, OTOH, every vote counts for the total number of paliamentary seats, so a politician should both try to "get out the vote" in traditionally strong areas for his party, and try to get new converts in traditionally weak areas. (contrast this to USA: if Gore had campaigned more in Utah, he may have gotten an additional 10,000 votes there, but it would not have done him any good. 1000 votes in Florida, OTOH, would have meant a lot.) This gives a more complex game plan for a politician in a PP parliamentary system. It also gives less relative clout for a voter group living in swing areas.

One final difference due to the parliamentary systems: Gerrymandering. This is an integral part of the US political system, recently brought to even higher levels of refinement in Texas. With the recent advances in gerrymandering software, the party in control of the districting can leverage that to a proportion of seats far exceeding its proportion of popular votes. Also, an small voter group which has a proportion of the political power in excess of its own proportion of the population can sometimes leverage that extra power to create districts conducive to its own canidates. In most PP parliamentary systems, OTOH, gerrymandering is impossible. Here is how it works in Sweden: there are 349 seats in the unicameral parliament, but only 310 are alloted directly from the constituencies. Each party (provided it gets at least 4% of the popular vote) gets a number of seats directly proportional to its vote tally, compared to all those of parties clearing the 4% hurdle. Within each constituency, each party gets seats in proportion to its vote tally there. This leaves 39 seats unfilled, they are then alloted to the parties in the constituencies where they almost got another seat (say, if a party got votes enough for 13.9 seats in one constituency, they would get 13 seats directly, and 1 more of the 39 evening-out seats) This works perfectly, and is not all that mathematically complex to figure out. However, I will leave out the details for the convenience of a certain fencing101-er who distinctly dislikes math. The consequence of this is that gerrymandering is pointless - change a border, and the total number of seats for any party is the same, the only thing that can change is *where* they get their seats.

In short: the US parliamentary system is much more conducive for a numbers-small, but well organized, group to get political clout in excess of its numbers compared to most European parliamentrary systems.

From differences in political systems, to differences in demographics between USA and Europe. When I went to Jr High (late 70ies) I was taught that of the 13 million jews in the world, 6 million lived in USA, 3 million each in Israel and Soviet Union, and the remaining 1 million was spread out over the world. The Israel/USSR proportion has changed since then, but it seems reasonable to me that the USA/rest of world proportion is reasonably similar now. Once you start to spread out those 1 million over many countries, you see how small a proportion of the total population they become.

There are other demographics of interest also. When it comes to the Israel/Palestine issue, the voters can be divided into the following groups:
1. Jews
2. Muslims
3. Christians, will vote for Israel for "biblical" reasons
4. Others, will vote for Israel for other reasons
5. Others, neutral on the issue
6. Others, will vote for the palestinian side

Obviously, group #5 is by far the largest (all politics is local, and local issues is what wins elections in most cases) but the relations between the other groups are what tips the balance. Let´s look at some numbers: In USA, the jews are about 2% of the population - IIAIC. In Sweden, they are 15,000 out of a population of 9 million - one in 600. In USA, the jews outnumber the muslims (but that will change, given demographic trends). In Sweden, the muslims outnumber the jews 50 to 1. In USA, the fundamentalists a major political force, numbering 10´s of millions strong. In Sweden, they are much fewer. Being atheist is a potential vote-getter, and even the watered-down version of fundamentalists that we have have trouble clearing the 4% bar. I don´t know the corresponding figures for other European countries, but I would suspect that they are similar. (Gav, Zelda, Veeco, fill me in here!) The number of group#4 is highly dependent on media, which is considerably more pro-Israel in USA compared with most of Europe.

It is obvious from the above that forwarding a pro-Israel stance is a politically prudent thing in USA, and many politicians do just that. OTOH, politicians in Sweden who are Israel-friendly generally do not press that during election time (this goes for our few jewish politicians too), but those that describe themselves as "friends of the Palestinian people" advertise that openly during election time, and it seems to help them. Darwinian selection weeds out the suicidal politicians, on both sides of the Atlantic.

I intended to round of this post with a great deal on media, but my arms are acting up, so that will have to wait.

Have a nice time!

Peter Gustafsson

[faito anto]

Let me preface this by saying I am not a citizen or resident of Europe nor America.

Gees, what a massive post. You'll have your doctorate in no time

Peter, I think you did very well going over the superficial detail but didn't go into the route causes.

Yes, Jews are more prominent in numbers and influence in the USA than Europe. But this didn't happen by randomness or magic.

Scadanavia not so much included here (With the noble people of Denmark and the Swede Raoul Wallenberg etc), but in prior to WWII, Jews were far more numerous in Europe than they are today. I think for example, Poland was at least 10% Jewish prior to WWII.

Even after the genocide of 2/3 of European Jews, it seems there are far too few Jews in Europe, unless Jews have chosen to leave Europe.
And of course they have, but not for economic reasons.

Jews have left Europe to either return to the land of Israel (this trend started in the early 1880s) or America, as well as other nominal christian countries such as canada and australia and brasil?

Why? Why do Jews prefer to live in USA, Canada, or Australia etc?

The reason is far less historical and current anti-semitism.

In Europe (and now in Muslim countries with exceptions such as Turkey), politicians had a history of using Jews as scapegoats in times of economic downturn. Worse than this was done by the Tsar.

There just isn't this history in USA, Canada, Brasil, or Australia of jews being used as scapegoats.

Even now, we see European (and Arab) politicians and elites pushing the idea that if we could just finally solve "the Jewish question" (as was published by the BBC), the world's troubles would be over.

besides historical attitudes alone, there is another interactive factor. i truly believe that many europeans want to believe jews are bad so that they can feel better about their own past of persecuting jews.

Again, this is far from all Europeans. I am only saying there are more people like this in europe than in america, australia etc.
ONCE MORE, I am not saying most europeans are like this, only that there are more of them than in other western countries.

Final factor is that Europe (more than other Werstern countries) love jews only when they are weak or victims. that is their nostalgia.

On the other hand, most americans prefer Jews who stand up for themselves. This is more consistent with the American ideal.

[Soldier]

Appearances are everything, faito anto. Try cleaning up your posts a bit - proper punctuation, capitalization, etc. It doesn't change your statements one bit, but a neater looking post will immediately gain a bit more respect from readers.

[The0ne]

yeah, i'd do that except capitilizing takes too much time, and is SO 90's!!! I think America supports Israel so much because it was the main proponent of the Jewish state in the first place, and for a while we funded it because we didn't want it to look like we were bailing.

Then it was because we had been funding it for a while, and when a bunch of nations attacked it in the Yom Kippur offensive (the one where Syria and a bunch of countries attacked Israel on the big holiday, I'm doing this without any research, so my facts aren't golden) and we gave them money like we would with any state that was attacked by another, when the USA isn't doing the attacking that is. . .

Now I think it's kinda just habit. . . I don't know if Israel needs the money to continue to exist, I read somewhere that it has become one of the economic leaders in the area, but we still do, and will continue to do so forever methinks, unless Israel does something really stupid, like bomb a bunch of mosques or something.

[PeterGustafsson]

Hi!

Originally posted by faito anto
Let me preface this by saying I am not a citizen or resident of Europe nor America.

Gees, what a massive post. You'll have your doctorate in no time

Peter, I think you did very well going over the superficial detail but didn't go into the route causes.

Well, what do you know. Have a look at this document:

http://epubl.luth.se/1402-1544/1998/index.shtml



I did purposely not try to cover *why* the proportion of jews in the population varies between countries, I concentrated on how different political systems interact with different demographical proportions.

BTW: can you give more up-to-date numbers than the 13=6+3+3+1 that I was taught 25 years ago? Should be interesting.

Soldier: He is living in a country where English is not the national language, I guess that can explain a lot.

Peter Gustafsson

[Soldier]

So am I.

[jeff]

Some people claim the same about Brooklyn, where I grew up

[Inquartata]

Originally posted by The0ne
yeah, i'd do that except capitilizing takes too much time, and is SO 90's!!!

Good English is timeless. And anything worth doing is worth doing well.

[nahouw]

Peter has a balanced position and valid questions on this situation, which is one that causes so much world-wide instability.

I remember that shortly after 9/11, there were many billboards erected with a Jewish language character that was emblazoned with the American flag. Shortly thereafter, these billboards came down.

I also attended a bar mitzvah within this time frame, and was very suprised that within the readings in the book were references about America and the war that was going on. In addition, I found it very suprising that the American flag was prominent in the temple -- I had thought that America was founded upon the principle that any religion was able to be practiced, and that the seperation between church and state was crucial. I was very shocked.

After all of these observances, it raises questions for me as to what really happened.

[Tireur]

I found it very suprising that the American flag was prominent in the temple -- I had thought that America was founded upon the principle that any religion was able to be practiced, and that the seperation between church and state was crucial. I was very shocked.

I don't see how this is the state "establishing religion".

[faito anto]

Sorry if my capitalisation doesn't meet your standards...wait a second...no I'm not sorry
Ok, I'll make a LITTLE bit more effort, but only a little.
How is your Hebrew?

Peter, I must ask you, and I would like an honest answer, why the fascination with this issue (for both yourself, and Europe)? You said yourself that jews make up a minute proportion of the Swedish population. Why for example isn't Tibet or Taiwan an issue? Kashmir? Chechnya?

Peter, you'll have to be more precise on what those numbers mean. Presumably they are population figures, but for which countries/regions?

To all,

As to US financial aid to Israel, I believe a context i needed.
But first let's introduce some facts and correct common misperceptions of history.

Initially, the USA was not a big supporter of Israel. Truman had to be heavily lobbied just to vote in favour of partition. The US govt at the time were worried that the socialist Israel govt would become a communist satellite. The truth is, the zionists at the time blackmailed the hell out of Rockefeller (who through his South American empire had provided massive support to the Nazis). This delivered many votes from the Americas for partition (Loftus & Aarons, 1994)

Initially, the main US support Israel received was from private citizen (Jewish) organisations, not the US govt.

Indeed, the weapons in Israel's early years required for fighting off the invading Arab armies came not from the USA, but Czechoslovakia.
Eventually Israel learnt to make some very good weapons itself. Famous Israelis weapons include the Uzi submachine gun, and the Merkava tank. Today we are developing (with funding from the US) the defensive (anti-missile) Arrow missile.

In 1973, Nixon and Kissinger sold Israel out. Yes Kissinger was nominally a jew, but he didn't care about the jewish people. he was not a zionist, he was not a practicing jew, and he had no involvement with the jewish community. kissinger was for himself. he didnt see himself as a jew so to speak.

In short, the American hero of 1973 was US chief of staff Alexander Haig. A man of true moral character, unlikle the reprehensible nixon and kissinger. Haig took it upon himself to ensure that Israel received TOW anti-tank missiles, which had an enormous influence in the 1973 war.

Now for the context i spoke about earlier.

It is true today that the US govt gives Israel enormous financial aid. However, the US in return gets a democratic reliable and trust worthy ally in the region - and believe me - in this region, Israel is the only democratic state, and the only trust worthy state, and the only friendly state to the US.

Israel provides the US with enormous Intelligence in this region and beyond. Israel provides the US with a tremendous knowledge base for its military as well. Since we always have to defend ourselves from agressors, we know what works and what doesn't.

Essentially, the US and Israel is a symbiosis.

Also, if Israel wasn't living in such a hostile region, there would be no need for US aid.

Also, the enemies of Israel like to exaggerate how much aid we get.
For example, when the Israeli airforce easily defeated the Egyptian airforce in 1967, at first the dictator Nasser told the Arab world that Egypt had defeated Israel. After some time passed, he admitted Egypt lost, but said to his population that it was the US/UK airforces that defeated Egypt, not Israel. Facts and truth have little meaning in the Arab world. Saving face is far more important.

Thus, to feel better about not being able to defeat us, they like to pretend that it is America that stands in their way, not Israel. The truth is they receive the same financial aid we do.

The US also gives billions to Egypt. Lets look at what Egypt gives the US. They are undemocratic. They are untrustworthy. They deliberately scuttled Clinton's peace plan (Mubarak told Arafat not to sign it!). And essentially, despite the massive amount of aid, they remain a despotic state who amazingly hates America!!

Sounds like a 'rip off' to me. And yet I don't hear many people saying that the US should cease aid to Egypt. Instead I hear people (mostly NOT people in America!) often saying the US should cease aid to Israel.

[faito anto]

Nahouw, I had trouble understanding what you said. Perhaps it is my english, perhaps yours - i don't know, can u rephrase the bit about jewish/hebrew charcters etc? Thank you.

As to flags in shuls (temples), there is a tradition in jewish culture to respect the rule of law in the country where u live, and respect the govt if it allows u the freedom to worship and live in peace.

I used to live in JAPAN, and i can tell that in the shul (temple/jewish community centre) I attended in JAPAN, there was a Japanese Flag. All this means is that the community respects the Japanese for allowing Jews to freedom to be Jews.

In a shul i've been to in Australia, they say a prayer for the govt of australia. this is not a partisan thing. they say this prayer regardless of whether the left-of-centre or right-of-centre party is in power. this is simply jewish tradition to repect the rule of law where u live.

Originally posted by nahouw
Peter has a balanced position and valid questions on this situation, which is one that causes so much world-wide instability.

I remember that shortly after 9/11, there were many billboards erected with a Jewish language character that was emblazoned with the American flag. Shortly thereafter, these billboards came down.

I also attended a bar mitzvah within this time frame, and was very suprised that within the readings in the book were references about America and the war that was going on. In addition, I found it very suprising that the American flag was prominent in the temple -- I had thought that America was founded upon the principle that any religion was able to be practiced, and that the seperation between church and state was crucial. I was very shocked.

After all of these observances, it raises questions for me as to what really happened.

[Inquartata]

In any event, the "separation of church and state", like most Constitutionally-derived concepts, is a limitation only on the state, not on the church. Thus a flag in a religious temple is OK, but a religious symbol in a state building is not...or at least that's the theory ( often honored more in the breach than the observance ).

[Inquartata]

Originally posted by faito anto
Sorry if my capitalisation doesn't meet your standards...wait a second...no I'm not sorry
Ok, I'll make a LITTLE bit more effort, but only a little.

And we thank you sincerely!

[PeterGustafsson]

Hi!

Originally posted by faito anto
Sorry if my capitalisation doesn't meet your standards...wait a second...no I'm not sorry
Ok, I'll make a LITTLE bit more effort, but only a little.
How is your Hebrew?

Peter, I must ask you, and I would like an honest answer, why the fascination with this issue (for both yourself, and Europe)? You said yourself that jews make up a minute proportion of the Swedish population. Why for example isn't Tibet or Taiwan an issue? Kashmir? Chechnya?

Peter, you'll have to be more precise on what those numbers mean. Presumably they are population figures, but for which countries/regions?

<massive snip>

The US also gives billions to Egypt. Lets look at what Egypt gives the US. They are undemocratic. They are untrustworthy. They deliberately scuttled Clinton's peace plan (Mubarak told Arafat not to sign it!). And essentially, despite the massive amount of aid, they remain a despotic state who amazingly hates America!!

Sounds like a 'rip off' to me. And yet I don't hear many people saying that the US should cease aid to Egypt. Instead I hear people (mostly NOT people in America!) often saying the US should cease aid to Israel.

My Hebrew is non-existent, so I don´t try to post on messageboards where it is the default language.

On my "fascination". I explained th reason for posting this thread in the beginning of the 1st post. For your convenience, I restate:

[quote]
Now that the "Israeli fencers in Aquaba" thread has long left fencing behind, and also branced out into several topics running beside each other, I think that it may be easier to follow one subtopic if it put in a thread of its own.
[/QUOUTE]

The Israel-Palestinian issue pops up up here in fencing101 from time to time, and since the previous thread had started to split, thought it better to have a fresh start. The other ethnic group/land issues that you listed provoke far less ink - combined - than the Is/Pal one, so there was nothing for me to comment on.

In Sweden, there are very few Kasmiris, Chechens, and Tibetans. There is a fair number of ethnic Chinese, but not many Taiwanese. Furthermore, the political power of the people belonging to those ethnic groups (here in Sweden) is negligble. The papers have limited space, and not every issue can be front-page. I will not attempt to try to answer for other Europeans.

Now for another self-quote:

From differences in political systems, to differences in demographics between USA and Europe. When I went to Jr High (late 70ies) I was taught that of the 13 million jews in the world, 6 million lived in USA, 3 million each in Israel and Soviet Union, and the remaining 1 million was spread out over the world.

How one can request more clarification to these figure is beyond me. They are population figures - what else?

On to the topic of USA giving money to Egypt. According to Newsweek, the egyptian secret police provides information to the americans, and - for a price - does some dirty stuff that the american secret services are by law prohibited to do. Furthermore, there was once a war over the control of the Suez canal. Now USA pays money, and my uninformed guess is that it is cheaper that way. Would not be surprised if there is some lobbying on Egypts behalf also.

Peter Gustafsson

[corinna2u]

Peter,

I am curious how this is possible...

As a dual Swedish-US citizen,

It was my understanding that by 16 or 18, don't remember which, you loose your US citizenship option. In other words, you would have to choose.

[Sabresque]

I believe that (I'm not sure if this is true), it depends on the country. Some require that you choose at some point, but others let you continue your dual citizenship. Maybe you're talking specifically about Sweden?

[corinna2u]

Actually, I was talking about the US. My understanding was that at 18, the US made you choose US and renounce the other country, or you lost your US citizenship. I have done a little research since then, and I find that things have changed since my information. You do not have to choose but you do have to be careful...for example, if Peter applies for a Swedish passport and it asks if he is a citizen of another country and he said 'no', then the courts will rule that he is, in fact, not a dual citizen by his actions.

Another interesting fact, which Peter might be interested in...it seems that Peter, as a dual citizen, can actually vote in the US Federal Elections. He may never have set foot in the US, but by the fact that he has dual citizenship, he can vote.

Sorry to have snagged the thread. My son is a dual citizen by birth. And, Peter's comment caught my attention.

[faito anto]

Pete