I’ll be the first in line to comment on the policies of the Israeli government, and the first in line to criticize those policies, be they negotiations or the stronghold that the religious right holds on social policies in Israel. I’ve openly stated that I believe that the Netanyahu government’s policies are working against the very notion of a two-state solution that many Jews champion.
Which is why I’m appalled at the comments by people who, following Jeffrey Goldberg’s article that popularized an insult I’d never heard of before (but will happily use in the future now that I know it’s an option) quoting members of the Obama administration referring to Netanyahu as a “chickenshit” and, even less appropriate, “Aspergery.”
I’m not going to go into why it’s nothing short of abhorrent to use Asperger’s Syndrome as an insult, and the broader implications that it has for how our society perceives those who deal with mental illness that we feel it somehow excusable to use a mental illness as an insult. To be sure, the fact that this was used as an insult is symptomatic of a much larger problem in our country that is less related to Israel as it is to our perceptions on mental health. Instead, I’m going to talk about who we really should be insulting here.
It isn’t Netanyahu.
Or, it is, but it’s not just Netanyahu. To be sure, Netanyahu comes across as incredibly difficult to work with, but it seems the closest we are going to get to actually discussing the problems we have right now is an equally abhorrent comic strip in Haaretz that likens Netanyahu’s policies to 9/11. And, in truth, when we begin to comment on how a person comports him- or herself, we lose sight of what we actually trying to criticize and work against: the policies they represent.
This doesn’t represent the “gloves-off” manner, as Goldberg puts it, of U.S.-Israel relations. If anything, the attention the comments have received from the pro-Israel community here in America shows us something else entirely: the fact that we’ve traded an honest, open debate about policies for smear campaigns against individuals that, ultimately, lead us nowhere and do nothing to bring us closer to finding any sort of solution. Instead, attacking someone else on a personal level sets a very different tone: an unwillingness to get at the root of a problem by dismissing someone as impossible to deal with. Instead of discussing policies, we simply dismiss a person.
What is happening here is also happening in the broader pro-Israel Jewish community. Instead of trying to work toward policies that we (whomever the “we” is) find favorable, we dismiss those whom we find unfavorable out-of-hand.
Hearing a senior member of the Obama administration refer to Netanyahu with the terms that he did is symptomatic of exactly this problem. While, politically, the United States government cannot go above Netanyahu’s head, and while there is a widening gulf between what pro-Israel Americans (and the American government) see as good for Israel in the long run — and we realize that probably includes a government not run by Netanyahu — what is emerging is not a feeling against Netanyahu’s policies, but a feeling against Netanyahu.
If we want to foster peace and an ultimate end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, we need to stop harping on Netanyahu, and we need to do it now. Yes, Netanyahu might be nearly impossible to work with, and that is not an insult. That is an opinion (one that I think would be hard to disprove), but one that does not deter me from still believing that peace might, one day, be possible.
Calling Netanyahu a “chickenshit” and “Aspergery,” on the other hand, does the exact opposite. It places the blame not on Netanyahu’s policies, which have allowed for the continued construction of settlements to the detriment of the peace process and places the U.S.-Israel relationship in jeopardy, but on Netanyahu himself by attacking his personality, not his policies.
When we advocate, we must be clear for whom and for what we are advocating. I am advocating against (and for) policies, and this means that I am ready to lay “chickenshitgate” to rest and return to actually advocating for something, not against someone. Are you?
Amram Altzman is a student at List College.
