UK budget, Israel

James Heartfield Jim at heartfield.demon.co.uk
Sun Apr 21 03:12:39 PDT 2002


The WEEK ending 21 April 2002

BROWN BANKS ON HEALTH

Britain's Labour Chancellor Gordon Brown broke a promise and raised taxes to pay for increased health spending. Public polls show that the tax raises are popular, inviting comment that 'Essex man' - the semi-mythical voter who will not vote for tax increases - has mellowed in middle age.

But opposition to tax-increases was only ever emblematic of the disaffection with government, which has plagued most western elites in recent times. The Chancellor's gamble is that the one value that stands higher than self-interest is anxiety about health. It is a morbid version of the general good that is predatory upon the fear of illness, and unlikely in the long run to provide the basis for any positive identification with the state.

THE STATE OF ISRAEL

The Israeli Defence Force attack on Jenin, and the likelihood that scores of Palestinians were killed in the fighting has led to charges of a massacre being laid against Israel. American support for a United Nations' fact-finding mission raises the possibility that the Sharon government will be deliberately de-stabilised by its most important sponsor - as have a succession of reactionary US client-regimes, from Indonesia to Iraq.

In Europe criticism of Israel has reached a crescendo with British MP Gerald Kaufman charging that Sharon had steeped the Star of David in blood. Attacking Israel is a proxy for criticising America in Europe: European leaders feel they are being railroaded into a confrontational policy in the Middle East. Catching America's most loyal ally in the act of killing Palestinians allows European leaders to challenge American President George Bush for the moral high ground.

America's identification with Israel has little to do with the strategic concerns that saw her sponsor a military contest with soviet-backed Arab states. Where once Israel was used to destabilise Arab nationalism, today it only serves to destabilise the region. But that does not mean that US identification with Israel is any less important.

Rather, American support for Israel is principally ideological. It is America's psychological investment in Israel that makes it an indispensable ally. The role of the holocaust as the defining historical event in modern political life makes support for Israel fundamental to America, and virtually unchallengeable for Europeans.

US-backed campaigns to exact restitution from European states and banks serves to underscore America's moral superiority to Europe. The Washington holocaust museum is a physical reminder that European nationalism is untrustworthy. The holocaust has, with the passing of time, not dimmed in memory, but become more important, as a touchstone of the moral absolute in an age when so many beliefs are merely relative. When Americans poll overwhelmingly for Israelis and against Palestinians, they do so whether they are Republican or Democrat, white or black.

Such a degree of identification ought to mean that Israel can count on US support. But Sharon has learned the hard way that his country no longer has the monopoly on the moral claim of the holocaust. Ironically, the greater importance of the holocaust in political and moral discourse today undermines Israel's monopoly.

With so many conflicts - wrongly - interpreted through the prism of the holocaust, from Rwanda to Bosnia, the holocaust has become a free-floating term, rather than a unique historical event. Palestinians, and European journalists will inevitably characterise the Jenin massacre in the language reminiscent of the holocaust - whether they talk of massacres, or 'ethnic cleansing'.

Palestinians' can be forgiven for jumping on any opportunity to challenge Israel's ideological monopoly on victimhood. But the United Nations/US' intervention will not lead to independence. Rather it will lead to an institutionalisation of the victim status of both peoples, with America and Europe still dominating the outcome.

-- James Heartfield The 'Death of the Subject' Explained is available at GBP11.00, plus GBP1.00 p&p from Publications, audacity.org, 8 College Close, Hackney, London, E9 6ER. Make cheques payable to 'Audacity Ltd'



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