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By Ira Sharkansky
 JERUSALEM—The United States is not the only country with extremist elements that express themselves from time to time. France has had Jean Marie Le Pen, Austria Joerg Haider, and Israel Meir Kahane.
The American variety has appeared as a suspicion of "others," and those thought to be threatening individual freedoms in the guise of socialism or communism. Nativist parties emerged along with Catholic immigration during the 19th century, and in the 1920s managed to strengthen barriers against Italians, Poles, Jews, and others thought to threaten the WASP homeland. Opposition to socialists and communists peaked in the immediate aftermath of World War I and even more so in the wake of the Wisconsin alcoholic, liar, and rabble rouser who for a brief time sent shivers through the State Department, military, and White House. Racism never was far from the surface. The inability of Congress to legislate against lynching stands as one of the greatest marks against the American claim to justice.
Now there is an African-American couple living in the White House, but the controversy about the president's health care initiative indicates that extremism still thrives. Claims about socialism and a deprivation of freedom reflect the roots that have shown themselves against hostile and foreign threats. Concerns about the support of abortion would keep religion in the political arena. Charges of death committees is playing to fears with the most extreme language available.
And what is it about? An effort to make the western world's most backward health provisions somewhat similar to what every other democratic society provides to its population.
The extreme language used against Obama's health initiative hints at residual racism, or an effort to tweak racism for the purpose of opposing domestic reform. Even more suggestive of racism, and its relative xenophobia, are allegations that he is a Muslim, and not fit to be president due to foreign birth. Claims that he is anti-Semitic suggest that his opponents are shopping around for support in the tensions between American blacks and Jews.
There is no doubt in my mind that President Obama is over his
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head in efforts to jump start a peace between Israel and Palestine, and at points further to the east. He has made enough missteps to justify criticism on substance, without
hauling out the nonsense that continues to echo through the internet and other media.
Israel's own madness has surfaced in something called "Samson Blinded: A Machiavellian Perspective on the Middle East Conflict." The author is relying on a political classic he or she has not read, or does not understand. Machiavelli was a political realist, and urged maneuver for strength, not blustering through the most obvious lines of opposition. This madness going by the name of Samson would maximize territorial aspirations, and employ all out war. The author asserts that "Israel must use chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons."
The Jewish people have not prospered by challenging head on prevailing international norms. The most prominent occasions when they did, by not paying tribute to Babylon in the sixth century BCE, and by rebelling against Rome in the first century CE, ended in catastrophe.
The Jews have also done well by promoting the moral values articulated by the Biblical prophets. Those norms do not include anything that would be advanced by all out war, or weapons of mass destruction.
The United States will not disappear if it gives in to extremists and continues with its maldistribution of health care. Most likely it can also afford national failure, as well as the death and injury of numerous military personnel in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Israel is not so fortunate. Lacking great power status, except in the fantasies of the mad, it must play the essential political game of getting along by going along.
This does not mean that Israel must absorb all threats and violence from internal or external adversaries. In the course of six decades it has shown itself capable of marshalling power and using it wisely. The progression from Lebanon I through Lebanon II to Gaza indicate that it is learning to do it better, despite the madness of the Goldstone report.
Political wisdom involves knowing limits as well as possibilities. That is part of Machiavelli's lessons, and should be a theme for this little country. It must ignore those who claim to know what is good for it, and whose extremism threatens yet another catastrophe.
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