Arizona-Israel bill raises some unsettling questions

On its surface, the recent bill "Supporting the Nation of Israel" that unanimously passed in the Arizona House raised no eyebrows.

A bipartisan consensus supporting Israel is nothing new. However, upon closer inspection of the bill, it is unclear to whom the proposed legislation is appealing based on its language regarding Arizona and U.S. border policies.

The Arizona-Israel support bill, House Resolution 2008, is essentially a solidarity statement. It begins by recognizing "the Jewish people in their homeland." It later hails Arizona and Israel as eclectic "trade partners, a relationship we seek to enhance," according to the bill's authors.

So one might presume the largely Republican bill speaks to Israel supporters. A sound assumption, since the chief issue of agreement among liberal and conservative groups (whether Jewish or not) surrounds Israel's 45-year military occupation of Palestinian Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Here, Israel's border-security language is approximately that of the U.S. Border Patrol, whose "priority mission" is "preventing terrorists and terrorists' weapons, including weapons of mass destruction, from entering the United States."

In regard to maintaining Israel's ethnic Jewish majority, American bipartisan support likely also resounds in agreement, like most of Israeli society, around Israeli immigration policies that prompted the government's current construction of a $1.5 billion "border fence" across Israel's own southern desert borderlands to keep out "illegal" migrants, mostly from North Africa. After all, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warns, the invading "flood" represents "a concrete threat to the Jewish and democratic character of Israel."

Generally, the Democratic and Republican parties and their constituents are in uninterrupted harmony on the issue of Israeli border security and preserving Israel's predominant Jewish character. But when it comes to American liberals of various stripes, many are firmly rooted in the immigrant-rights movement.

The vast majority of Jewish-American groups, especially in Arizona, for example, passionately support migrant rights and immigration reform, defend outlawed Mexican-American studies programs and rail at the thousands of migrant deaths in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands resulting from the 20-year U.S. militarization of its southern border.

Meanwhile, the Republican-led Arizona-Israel bill gloats that "Israel receives vital military and security assistance from the United States, much of which, in turn, is spent here in Arizona with its defense contractors" -- no doubt along the border, where a big military-style "defense" business booms.

So whom is this bill written for? Whom are the authors fooling? If anything, the bill is a political liability for a prominent array of Israel's American supporters whose unshakable support for Israeli policies -- in light of the Arizona-Israel bill -- now appears irreconcilably right wing to their cherished Latino allies, particularly in Arizona.

According to the House spokesperson, the Arizona-Israel bill was remitted to the U.S. secretary of State the same day (Feb. 27) of its unanimous adoption on the House floor.

American liberals now face uneasy questions. The challenge now will be to apply standards equally across the board -- across borders and states where situations may be different in the details but fundamental human-rights issues remain stubborn and constant.

Gabriel Matthew Schivone writes a column in the "Latino Voices" section of Huffington Post.

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