Jeff writes: <\/p>\n
I used to work at a jazz club owned by three Israeli cousins. I once had to go to one of the owner’s retail shops to pick up some chairs from storage. The shop was a jeans-and-sneakers store that catered to the, uh, urban customer. A couple of employees were helping me carry chairs to the van when the owner came in and started yelling, “What are you doing?!? There are suckers on the floor!”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Strongly identifying in-groups tend to have contempt for out-groups. They tend to respect other strongly identifying in-groups (such as Asians, Armenians,) and to have particular contempt for out-groups with little group solidarity, such as WASPs. <\/p>\n
From Forward.com<\/a>:<\/p>\n
JERUSALEM \u2014 Though Israel is a famously fractious society, Israelis tend to agree on one thing: Their strongest supporters are an inherently dupable people.
\n\u201cMost Israelis think Americans are pro-Israel and we can sell them anything, especially mud from the Dead Sea,\u201d said David Lifshitz, the lead writer for the Israeli comedy show \u201cEretz Nehederet,\u201d or \u201cWonderful Land.\u201d
\n\u201cOr \u2014 just regular mud with a \u2018Dead Sea\u2019 sticker on it.\u201d
\nBut it\u2019s not just American tourists whom many Israelis see as guileless. American foreign policy is held up to similar scrutiny here, even as Israel receives billions of dollars in foreign aid from the United States each year.
\n\u201cAmericans are perceived to be naive, especially when it comes to the Middle East,\u201d said Uri Dromi, who served as a spokesman for the Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres governments. \u201cIt is a bad neighborhood and it seems like they just don\u2019t realize it.\u201d
\nThe naivete Israelis perceive in Americans is not just something they believe only Israel\u2019s adversaries exploit; Israelis believe they can do so, too \u2014 and do. In a secretly recorded video of a 2001 discussion with a group of terror victims in the Ofra settlement in the Israeli occupied West Bank, now-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu laid out this widely held perception.
\n\u201cI know what America is,\u201d Netanyahu, then on political hiatus after an election defeat, told the settlers when one asked whether his proposal for a \u201clarge scale\u201d attack on the Palestinians would be met with global condemnation. \u201cAmerica is a thing that can be easily moved, moved in the right direction. They will not bother us\u2026 Let\u2019s suppose they [the Bush administration] will say something. So they say it \u2014 so what? Eighty per cent of the Americans support us. It\u2019s absurd! We have such [great] support there! And we say\u2026 what shall we do with this [support]?\u201d
\nThe paradox that Israelis rely on \u2014 and expect \u2014 American support and yet don\u2019t trust American judgment on Middle Eastern affairs helps explain the recent U.S.-Israel dustup in Washington. On March 3, that clash reached its climax when Netanyahu appeared before a joint meeting of Congress to warn the assembled lawmakers against their own president\u2019s negotiations, together with other countries, with Iran ahead of a possible deal on that country\u2019s nuclear program.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jeff writes: I used to work at a jazz club owned by three Israeli cousins. I once had to go to one of the owner’s retail shops to pick up some chairs from storage. The shop was a jeans-and-sneakers store … Continue reading