TAP'S POST-COLONIALIST BURDEN

While Ariel Sharon is merely annoyed by Bibi's latest indulgence of his demagogic side, it has completely unnerved the American Prospect. Today's TAPped responds to the Likud resolution with the claim that "no one in this country can ignore any longer that the Israeli hard right stands for colonialism, plain and simple." It's not so plain, and its not so simple.

First, the resolution merely opposed the creation of a Palestinian state, it did not support the permanent annexation of the territories. Transferring the territories back to Jordan and Egypt -placing Arabs under Arab rule, is clearly not advocacy of colonialism. Second, the real Israeli hard right, to the right of the Likud have an agenda that should meet with opposition from Americans, but it is not colonialism. The Israel hard right does not wish to rule the Palestinians in the West Bank, it wants to expel them. Justified? Of course not. Forced transfer is forced transfer and it is no more justified in the Jewish sacred ground of Judea and Samaria than it was in the Serb sacred ground of Kosovo. Still, clarity is required - opposing Israeli hawks will no more atone for the sins of European colonialism than opposing the creation of Greater Serbia did.

Which brings us back to the not-so-clever title. It implies first and foremost that what is going on in Israel is a racial conflict - the domination of native, brown peoples by colonial whites. If TAP can't understand that, perhaps they should send a reporter to the premiere of Attack of the Clones so Natalie Portman can explain it to them. There is a deeper problem to the throwaway line, one that gets at the heart of how the Left's obsession with race gets in the way of a truly progressive foreign policy. For there to be peace for the Palestinians and all Arabs in the Middle East, the United States and the West has to seriously engage in nation-building. Critics will call such efforts neo-colonial, and invoke the tired refrain of "white man's burden," of Americans "imposing" their values onto "brown" people. But if America's own experience tells us anything, the rule of law, freedom of expression and democracy is desired and enjoyed equally by people of all races. It's time to drop the shackles of post-colonial guilt, built off our advances in racial and gender equality and take up the Free Human's Burden - to export liberty to all.