Read Modern Islamist Movements: History, Religion, and Politics Online
Authors: Jon Armajani
may have resulted in the death of as many as 6,000 Iraqis, and Israel’s use of several military actions against Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza, and Lebanon, which resulted in large numbers of Palestinian deaths.158
These similarities and others are elements of what some scholars have termed the Israelization of certain aspects of the United States’ domestic and foreign policies.159 This process of Israelization has involved, among other components, the United States adopting a set of approaches, particularly in its foreign policy, that are similar to Israel’s, and members of the United States government, other Americans, and the United States’ allies holding to the belief that the United States’ and Israel’s interests are virtually identical. One aspect of this approach is the idea that any threat to or attack on Israel is tantamount to a threat to or attack on the United States. Consistent with this line of thinking, the United States government has a tendency to treat any nation or group that seems to be an enemy of Israel as its own enemy.
Thus, the United States has viewed such groups and nations as Hamas, Hezbollah (a Shiite Islamist group which operates largely in Lebanon), Syria (during periods when it appears particularly anti-Israeli), Iraq under Saddam Hussein, and Iran as its own enemies even when in some of these cases it has been conceivable that some of these nations’ and groups’ interests could have coincided with those of the United States.160 This tendency to support Israel has carried certain risks for the United States, such as an increased level of hostility against the United States on the part of certain Muslims and governments in the majority-Muslim world. Critics of the United States’ policy have articulated its potential dangers, which include the United States having pursued Israel’s foreign policy interests in ways that have been damaging in some cases to the United States’ own.161 In any case, as the United States moves forward with its policies with respect to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Middle East more broadly, and various majority-Muslim countries, it is confronted with a variety of peaceful diplomatic methods and approaches (including cooperative non-governmental efforts between private individuals and organizations in the West and their counterparts in the majority-Muslim world) which could be helpful as the United States and other Western countries attempt to bring political stability to various parts of those regions.162 At the same time, some observers have noted that there is a linkage between a peaceful resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.163 While for some Muslims and non- Muslims the circumstances which the Palestinians face epitomize other liberation struggles in some respects, on the practical level of the United States’ foreign policy, the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian struggle is inextricably linked to other wars and tensions inside and outside of the Middle East.164
Notes
W. Montgomery Watt and M.V. McDonald (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988), 78–80.
(Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994), 13–14.
(Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1972), 177–205.
37 Ibid., 262–3.
(London: Kegan Paul International, 1982), 64, 86.
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), 84.
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 343.
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), 6.