"Evil" vs. evil

Last January, in his first State of the Union address, President Bush described an "axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world." The speech was immediately highly controversial.

Critics claimed that the "axis" was a simplistic view of the world, blaming all that is wrong on three relatively unimportant states and ignoring the many factors that create insurgency, terrorism, and nuclear proliferation. "Axis" countries were in fact mostly irrelevant to 9/11 _ most of the 9/11 terrorists were Saudi.

Also, many states were left out of the "axis" merely because of their political relationships with the US. China and Pakistan, for instance, are totalitarian regimes that possess nuclear weapons. But China has a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, and Pakistan was an important ally in the war against al Qaeda in Afghanistan.

Lastly, the declaration of the "axis" discouraged negotiation by emphasizing divisions ("us" vs. "them") rather than focusing on opportunities for compromise. A defensive reaction was the only option left to states accused in the "axis of evil".

I agreed with many of these critics in their opposition to the "axis of evil" strategy. However, more recently, many of the same critics have come together to support the Israeli divestiture campaign. In my view, the divestiture campaign can be criticized on many of the same grounds on which the "axis of evil" was criticized in January.

It is surely the case that the divestiture campaign focuses criticism on one actor in a conflict that has many parties and many causes. It is not my intention to absolve Israel of any guilt in that conflict, but merely to show that not all of the blame can be laid on Israel.

Relevant UN Security Council resolutions cited by the divestiture petition, call on both sides to peacefully resolve the conflict and suggest measures towards that effect for both sides to follow. Neither side has implemented these measures. It is therefore making a special case out of Israel to single it out for a divestiture campaign.

As with "axis of evil" members, Israel is then left with a defensive reaction as its only option. Like any other state, Israel will not surrender its sovereignty. As it sees the world closing in around it, it will therefore react not with surrender but with defense.

Also as with the "axis of evil" analysis, the divestiture presents a simplistic view of the conflict that ignores circumstance. It is not valid to isolate Israel's actions from their context and judge them morally. The way towards resolution of the conflict will not be to close one's eyes as hard as one can and tell involved parties to just get along. Or worse, to tell one involved party to just get along while ignoring all other actors.

The way towards resolution of the conflict will be to realize that both sides have created and then aggravated the conflict. Intricate webs of blame will be disentangled only with further bloodshed. For a political solution to be achieved, spite and revenge must be off the table.

Finally, the petition singles out Israel for its "human rights violations." Let us leave aside for the moment the shaky position of "human rights" in international law. Singling out Israel, out of all states in the Middle East, for human rights violations, is selective morality indeed.

The human rights records of states such as Saudi Arabia, Syria, the "axis of evil" countries and even "progressive" countries like Egypt, Jordan, or even Turkey do not compare favorably with that of Israel. For all the Arab claims of a Zionist media in the United States, the American media's focus on the Israeli-Palestine conflict puts Israel in the spotlight, while other governments can do their dirty business with the lights off.

Bush's "axis of evil" campaign may have been wrongheaded and selective, but at least it had a point _ US security. Maybe it's hypocritical to define "evil" as "anything that harms US interests," but there are worse ways for a US politician to define it. Many would argue that there are no better ones.

The divestiture campaign has no such noble motive that I can see. I believe (I hope) that anti-Semitism cannot account for all the support for the petition.

It is notable that the campaign _ and American anti-Israel sentiment in general _ is focused among intellectual elites in private universities, mostly in fields like sociology, philosophy, linguistics, and literature. On the list that I found, of the 150 or so MIT and Harvard faculty members that signed, two were professors of something relating to political science or international relations. Likewise, on the list of faculty members signing the petition circulated throughout the University of California schools, there were two political science professors on a list of 196.

Students and professors of these fields generally think of international politics in terms of morality. Israel kills people; that is bad. In fact, international politics have little to do with morality and everything to do with security. The divestiture campaign will not change this.

Likewise, Bush's "axis" campaign will not rid the world of evil, in the absolute morality sense, but it may eliminate, or at least neutralize, some of the "evil" in the world, in the US interest sense.

Either way, the similarities between the "axis of evil" and divestiture campaigns are striking. Maybe Karl Rove is doing some side work for Noam Chomsky?