Singling out Israel

Robert KC Johnson at Cliopatria comments on his recent trip to Israel and on the continutation of a disconcerting trend (among American academics and "spiritually progressive" churches) of singling out Israel for censure.

I'd prefer to think that the tendency to single out Israel among some academics and "progressives" doesn't reflect a troubling undercurrent of ancient prejudice, but sometimes I just don't know anymore. On one hand, jumping on the anti-Israeli bandwagon becomes, to a certain extent, a matter of trendiness and a mark of one's inclusion in a particular group. I think, for instance, of a highly educated friend who mentioned that his city (a bastion of liberals in the D.C. area) had a policy of divestment in Israel. When I asked why Israel was singled out, my friend seemed not to have considered it; he then said, "That's an interesting question, but I suppose if you think of it like South Africa . . ." Why "think of it" like South Africa? I didn't bother to ask, because it became fairly clear to me that it wasn't a matter which my friend had given much thought, and the selective condemnation of Israel functioned, for him, like a secret handshake or a tattoo, a signal of belonging. On the other hand, an obsessive concern with Israel seems to inhabit sometimes a shadowy borderland between legitimate criticism of Israeli policies and a rather less legitimate preoccupation with Israel as a trope of "fascistic" or other unsavory general characteristics. Here I am reminded of another highly educated friend (a professor from the Midwest) who, during a visit to Southern California, had expressed disdain for the Getty Museum and its high white walls, since it reminded him of Israel, with its emphasis on money, power and exclusion. Gag me. I dont' know . . . maybe he was just trying to figure out whether I "belonged to the club," but it struck me as kind of creepy nevertheless. If I wanted to, I could speculate about whether he was unwittingly replicating, in his present academic and social interactions, all of the rituals of WASP initiation that he had showily repudiated during graduate school. I could use the tools of his trade against him, but that way madness lies . . .