Shared Values

In a recent Washington Post op ed piece, "No, It's Not Anti-Semitic", columnist Richard Cohen comments on the controversy surrounding the paper on the Israel lobby by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt. Much of the criticism of Walt and Mearsheimer by such people as Eliot Cohen, professor at Johns Hopkins and Alan Dershowitz of Harvard argues that the paper reflects the anti-Semitism of the authors. In this piece Richard Cohen disagrees with this point of view. Instead he maintains that Mearsheimer and Walt’s argument that the Jewish community has a large influence on US policy is accurate. He states that “Israel’s special place is deserved, in my view, and not entirely the product of lobbying. Israel has earned it, and isn’t there something special about a relationship that is not based on oil or markets or strategic location but on shared values.” This got me to think that perhaps it is shared values that accounts for the US’s uncritical support for Israel and it’s policies. What might these shared values be? The first one that is usually cited is that we are both democracies, however flawed. This cannot be the only explanation as the Palestinian Territories and Iran are also democracies, however flawed. Another value that is frequently cited is that Israel is a strong ally of the US in the “war on terror”. In both countries this war effort defines “terror” very loosely including everyone from al Quada, ETA, Palestinians, the IRA, etc. in the same category. If your only tool is a hammer every problem looks like a nail. In both countries the war on terror is the number one foreign policy issue and justifies indefinite detentions of “militants” both citizens and non citizens. It also justifies surveillance, wire tapping and perhaps torture. Both countries also seem to believe that 40 ft walls will protect them from those who are different. We certainly do have shared values, but what kind of values are they? Are these the values that we want to teach our children? As I recall, there was a guy wandering around the Middle East 2000 years ago who had a different idea about what we should teach our children. It seems to me that Pastor Gary Arnold had it right. “Teach them to how to care about persons. Teach them to feel free enough to cry with others when they hurt. Teach them to offer helpful directions. Teach them to reach out and love, touch, and hold other persons when it feels like that is what you need to do. Teach them to be in touch with abiding values.” It seems that the values of our citizens and our governments are different. Our Arab friends when questioned about their feelings about Americans have often said “we know how to separate individuals from their government.” Why does that need to be?