The narratives surrounding Israel and their genocidal campaign against the Palestinians took decades to create and embed into the West’s psyche. The Holocaust, decades after its end, became a central part of the Jewish and Israeli identity. Enemies of the Israeli state were conflated with Nazis. The physical location of Israel became essential to Christian evangelicals who believe the second coming of Jesus Christ was to take place there.
The late Amy Kaplan, in her book, Our American Israel: The Story of an Entangled Alliance, explored how these narratives developed through popular culture and the media’s reporting on the Israeli government’s actions throughout the 20th century, particularly in the United States. Professor Joan Scott, professor emerita in the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton and adjunct professor of history at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report to discuss Kaplan’s book and how prevalent it is in the face of Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians.
“Part of the invincible victim story is that Jews have to always be alert about defending themselves against any sign that the Holocaust is about to reappear and then attribute it to Palestinians, the possibility that they will bring another Holocaust,” Scott says. “So the whole defense industry of Israel, the whole occupation of Gaza and the West Bank become a way of arguing against the possibility of another Holocaust.”
When it comes to Christian Zionism, Scott explains that cynicism in the Israeli government tolerates the antisemites within these groups “because they're bringing a large sector of the American population, a powerfully politically influential sector of the American population, certainly now with Trump, to support the activities that Israel is engaging in.”
