'There are things we can't do'

 A Republican politician in Georgia made national news by calling the treatment of Palestinians a genocide.

If you think Marjorie Taylor Green has had a change of mind, you’re thinking wishfully. She’s merely reading the room. What’s changing in Georgia is the opinion of a lot of people who think Israel plays a role in divine plans but who have trouble seeing divine plans while looking at images of children being starved.

Sometimes, but not always, I like American culture. I hate the fact that this is the place that bred the Ku Klux Klan and Jim Crow. I love the fact that this is the place that gave the world baseball, ragtime, bebop and San Antonio squash.

On most days, I like American culture. But I tend to despair when I think of what the American nation stands for, particular in times when it falls into the hands of mobs led by despots.

I’m no expert on Isreal, but the late George Steiner knew something about the place, and he said this:

 

I’ve tried at personal and professional cost to warn against nationalism in Israel and the treatment of Palestinians; to say that because of what we are, there are things we can’t do.

 

I wish those of us who live in this country could grasp that idea.

• Maya Jaggi, “George and his dragons”; The Guardian, March 17, 2001. It’s here:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2001/mar/17/arts.highereducation