Ally: My Journey Across the American-Israeli Divide by Michael B. Oren

Author:Michael B. Oren [Oren, Michael B.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw
ISBN: 9780812996418
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2015-06-22T22:00:00+00:00

Wintry Spring

His name, Mohammed Bouazizi, would soon be forgotten, but not his act. Slapped, spat at in the face, and berated by a police officer on December 17, 2010, the twenty-six-year-old Tunisian fruit vendor poured gasoline over his body and set himself on fire. As Bouazizi expired, Tunisia erupted. Thousands of protesters, many of them mobilized by social media networks, rioted in the streets, burning shops and overturning vehicles. More than two hundred people were killed over the next two weeks as the rampage expanded into a popular revolt. Finally, his security forces overwhelmed, President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, Tunisia’s dictator for more than two decades, fled the country. For the first time in modern history, the citizens of an Arab state had risen up and toppled an autocratic ruler.

The success of Tunisia’s “jasmine revolution” sparked elation throughout the United States. Momentarily overcoming partisanship, both Democrats and Republicans jointly praised the insurrection. The media covered it obsessively, with reporters unabashedly rooting for the rebels. Though once dismissive of his predecessor’s democracy agenda in the Middle East, President Obama now embraced it. “I applaud the courage of the Tunisian people,” he declared. “The United States of America…supports the democratic aspirations of all people.”

But what Americans hailed as the start of a Middle Eastern march toward freedom, Israelis feared was a crack in the regional order. In contrast to Obama’s support for change, Netanyahu expressed his “hope that there will be quiet and security [and] that stability will be restored.” Americans perceived Bouazizi’s suicide as a protest against despotic rule and a desperate plea for freedom. Israelis, noting that the police officer who publicly assaulted the vendor was a woman, saw his fiery death as a means of purging humiliation. The violent tension between honor and shame, so central to Middle Eastern cultures and tragically familiar to Israel, was alien to most Americans. Interpreted in the United States as a revolutionary quest for liberty, Tunisia’s uprising looked to Israelis like a traditional demand for dignity.

—

The tremors radiating from Tunisia threatened further ruptures between the United States and Israel. In speaking before American audiences, Israeli ambassadors rarely receive a question they have never been asked repeatedly before—“Why does Israel build settlements?” for example, or “How come your PR’s so bad?” But after one campus speech, some precocious student surprised me by inquiring, “What’s more difficult for you, explaining Israel to Americans or America to Israelis?” I paused, pondering my answer, then confessed out loud what I had never fully admitted to myself. “Hands down, it’s much harder explaining America to Israelis.”

Apart from complex issues such as the territories and Jerusalem, Americans basically understand Israel. A people that returns to its homeland after two thousand years, establishes a Western-style democracy, and defends itself against genocidal enemies—that narrative is readily grasped throughout most of the United States. But Israelis have difficulty understanding America’s missionizing zeal and the belief—hardwired into the nation’s identity—that the United States was created not only for its own good but for all of humanity’s.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.