> [A racist state is one in which one group defined by descent is
privileged in law and practice.]
The main problem with the "Israel is a racist state argument" IMHO is that it's politically and theoretically counterproductive. If you make the same arguments without the racial language they will be much more effective.
I think the main goal of American critics of Israel, modest but very important if it could ever be reached, should be to convince a large majority of Americans that Israel bears a lot of blame for the current impasse, and that it is directly causing a lot of suffering. That would provide the background needed for cutting off military aid and applying real pressure. That would be a very important thing to accomplish, and nobody but American critics can accomplish it.
Objectively, it doesn't seem like this should be so hard. For one thing, it's true. And in the second place, American citizens do not profit by aid to Israel, they lose.
But the biggest obstacle to getting Americans to accept that everything the media and government tell them about Israel is wrong -- besides the dizzying break that implies, which is no small thing, and the intellectual effort it demands, which ditto -- is that they are afraid they will be making common cause with nutcases and anti-semites. They want to have a secure reply to the charge that they are being anti-semitic themselves. And because of that the first thing they want to reassure themselves of is that the dominant mass in the coalition criticizing Israel is made up of concerned and reasonable people with a developed sense of justice like themselves. And of course this all goes double for the scribbling classes that are your pivot point in changing opinion.
Calling Israel a racist state is exactly the way not to do this. Instead it's exactly the way to do the opposite: to convince most Americans that you do represent the racist nutcase view, just like they feared. And to convince those of us who know you're not one that you have a very tin ear.
Rather than arguments which proclaim that everyone who defends Israel is defending racism -- which rather puts off anyone who accepts common wisdom from listening to another word (because accusations of racism are dead conversation stoppers) -- I think we need to brandish arguments that engage and unveil the complexity and confusion that shroud Israel's policy. That explain why so many people of good intentions and average education are so completely wrong about policies that are truly appalling once you understand them. And that could explain how they could be so completely wrong other than that they are a racist or a fool or a victim of a conspiracy. I think arguments like those contain the memes of propagation.
I have marginally more patience for this Israel is a racist state argument when it's put forth by Israelis arguing with Israelis or American Jews arguing with American Jews because that at least if done right it implies a claim of joint self-reproach. But if you want to convince Americans, 97% of whom are not Jews, I think this is exactly the wrong tack. It's only a good tack if you love being a lonely Jeremiah, making people hate you more the more you're convinced you're right.
I sympathize with what I think are the underlying motivations of this argument: the desire to express enormous, almost unbearable outrage, not only at how people are being made to suffer, but at all the lies and distortions and complete reversals of reality that justify that suffering and make it seem not only invisible but even righteous to many people. I can understanding the desire to simplify all this complexity into a black and white reality where we would be obviously right and our opponents obviously wrong.
But politically it backfires badly.
I also think intellectually that it doesn't work -- that in the interest of imaginary sound bites (which would be telling in an alternate universe) *it actually obscures the things that are most wrong with Israel law and policy*.
Lastly I think its use of comparative citizenship law is risibly selective and tendentious. Between Israel and Nazi Germany there are hundreds of other states whose citizenship laws and level of racist discourse are more comparable. These things are not rare. Blood right is the rule in citizenship law, not the exception. To mention only these poles as if they stood out from all the rest as equals is just absurd.
But the political objection is probably sufficient in itself. You can make any objections you want against Israel, including the strongest ones, without ever using the word race, and they will be more effective.
Michael