I’m sure I’ve mischaracterized Steve Walt somewhat in earlier posts. The other night at Columbia, I noticed that he’s a leftwinger at heart. When Mearsheimer said that we would not have invaded Iraq if Al Gore had been elected president, Walt corrected him puckishly: "If he had become president." I.e., he was elected.
Later Walt said perhaps the smartest thing that was said all night. Look at some of the reporters in the English and Israeli press. Bradley Burston, Akiva Eldar, Gideon Levy, Amira Hass, Patrick Seale, Robert Fiske. All have been employed by mainstream media. Here we have a "much narrower range of views expressed." Something is terribly wrong with America.
This is a leftist critique, and completely damning at a time when our country has so lost its way in the Middle East. Our press has been instrumentalized; it’s very hard to make a living if you’re on the left. (I speak here from my own experience. I am a highly-experienced journalist, I used to make lots of money working for mainstream outfits. Those editors all still like me, but I’m not allowed to go near these issues, I’m simply off the reservation.) Of course it speaks to the political realignment that is afoot: leftwingers and realists, merging camp against the revolutionary neocons, evangelists, and global interventionists…
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Based on the Bloomberg "interview" conducted by Mike Schneider (it was really more of an attempted inquisition) –
http://www.bloomberg.com/avp/avp.htm?clipSRC=mms://media2.bloomberg.com/cache/vm_h9lUtg.HM.asf
– I have to say that between Walt and Mearsheimer, Mearsheimer is the more forceful and formidable of the two. If Phil is correct that Walt is a Leftist, that would explain his (at times) hand-wringing and apologetic answers to Schneider's nasty line of questioning, which is exactly the wrong way to confront a Judeofascist.
Don't get me wrong — Walt has more balls than the average 25 Left-liberals combined (male or female) but he shouldn't be so worried about giving offense to a Judeofascist. Again, if he is a Leftist, his pulling punches is probably the result of politically correct conditioning to which all Leftists have been subjected and to which they have subjected themselves. This hamstrings and dibilitates them in the fight against Judeofascists, who are ruthless and can smell weakness, and will repeatedly try to bait opponents into saying something politically incorrect to A)test whether they have any balls; and B)play the victim "oh, you're just an anti-Semite" card if they rise to the bait.
Watch how Shneider's eyes seem to grow wide (he's nearly licking his chops) when Walt starts stammering and insisting "we're not saying…"
On the other hand, the way Mearsheimer handled the interview was much more effective, which was to pull no punches, make no apologies, and answer Schneiders repeated inturruptions and rude line of iquiry patiently and firmly, the way you might address a difficult, immature teenager who thinks he is smarter than every adult in the room. Schneider slowly seems to whither the longer this goes on.
Schneider's immaturity and adolescent-like line of questioning raises an important point about the Judeofascists: They are morally and emotionally stunted, and they don't have a refined understanding of right and wrong; they're all about knee-jerk "survival," even thought it's their own atrocious behavior that puts them in constant jeopardy.
One does not get anywhere with spoiled, self-indulgent teenagers by pandering to their wickedness. Walt seems to understand that.
Typical of politically correct left-liberals, they over-indulge the Judeofascists and then can't understand why they interpret this as a license to kill. (And yes, mentally ill Christian Zionists indulge the Judeofascists too, but this is because they know that left unrestrained, the Judeofascists will hasten us down the road toward Armageddon.)
It would all be amusing if the Judeofascists weren't so deadly, but giving them any sort of license is like handing a loaded gun to a teenager in the midst of an emotional meltdown.
Most teenagers can ultimately be reasoned with once they have matured a bit and gained some perspective. But some have to be thrown out of the house before they will grow up. I'm afraid the Judeofascists fall into the latter camp. Take away their guns and throw them out of the house. (In other words, cut off all US aid to Israel). If the crazed Judeofascists want money, let the crazed diaspora Judeofascists provide it. That will put a quick end to their indulgent rampage.
"I'm sure I've mischaracterized Steve Walt somewhat in earlier posts. "
Didn't you do so to preserve his credibility? That he was in fact a "realist" and not in fact an ideologue.
Phil,
People react to your choice of subjects to write about. You used to write about a much more varied, and less partisan, set of subjects.
Aren't there other issues that you are similarly interested in? These one is off the ground already.
It's part of his obsessive nature.
Phil,
You should peddle yourself around The Independent and The Guardian over London way, you'd go over like a house a fire and the Pound is higher than a cat's back. With the new technology it's easy. You could get syndicated all over Europe. Illigitimati non carborundum! Don't let the bastards get you down.
Even revolutions need a moral.
The Jewish presence in Palestine was small. Starting around 1880, a lasting immigration movement broke the balance.
Revolutions fail if they slip into a terror.
The Israeli revolution has not failed because really decent people took the rein.
Sadly the Palestinian reply was terrible, on the level of the native Americans, and the good people of Palestine failed because the leadership was immoral, unfair, and the decent voices were shouted down.
Even WM will slip into oblivion, if the Palestinian people can not build a morally respectable stand. Hamas is the latest blunder.
The choice can not be Islamic or Socialist, it has to be enlightened.
Just like the Hungarians, who achieved respectability when Deak 1803-1876 reined in on the bad Hungarians.
He was the Hungarian Gandhi, just a little better than Gandhi.
We need the Palestinian Deak not today, yesterday.
His name will not be Arafat, Mufti.
Yes Phil – bashing jews in a clumsy fashion 24/7 sells big in Europe. Better still if it's coming from a Jew. Think of all the money you'll make. The pound is higher than a cat's back
Oi! Oi! Oi!
(Little British humor thrown in there)
You are wrong on that, the support of Gore does not mean you are a liberal, and it does not mean we will not have gone to war with Iraq. Gore, being a islamophobe, also have tried neocon Lieberman for veep. Who do you think they would have selected for the cabinet? Israel apologists that were in Clinton's administration or neocon democrats not unlike the ones hanging out in New Republic?
One thing for sure, given the partisan nature, you would have all the republicans howling of democratic playing wild and loose with hegemonic power.
St. Thomas just announced that they will host Archbishop Tutu. No link – sorry…
announcement follows:
Dear members of the St. Thomas community,
One of the strengths of a university is the opportunity that it provides to speak freely and to be open to other points of view on a wide variety of issues. And, I might add, to change our minds.
Therefore, I feel both humbled and proud to extend an invitation to Archbishop Desmond Tutu to speak at the University of St. Thomas.
I have wrestled with what is the right thing to do in this situation, and I have concluded that I made the wrong decision earlier this year not to invite the archbishop. Although well-intentioned, I did not have all of the facts and points of view, but now I do.
PeaceJam International may well choose to keep the alternative arrangements that it has made for its April 2008 conference, but I want the organization and Archbishop Tutu to know that we would be honored to hold the conference at St. Thomas.
In any event, St. Thomas will extend an invitation to Archbishop Tutu to participate in a forum to foster constructive dialogue on the issues that have been raised. I hope he accepts my invitation. The Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas has agreed to serve as a co-sponsor of the forum, and I expect other organizations also to join as co-sponsors.
Details about issues to be addressed will be determined later, but I would look forward to a candid discussion about how a civil and democratic society can pursue reasoned debate on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and other emotionally charged issues.
I also want to encourage a thoughtful examination of St. Thomas’ policies regarding controversial speech and controversial speakers. In the past, we have been criticized externally and internally when we have invited controversial speakers to campus – as well as when we have not. Rather than just move from controversy to controversy, might there be a positive role that this university could play in fostering thoughtful conversation around difficult and highly charged issues? We also might explore how to more clearly express in our policies and practices our commitment to civility when discussing such issues.
I have asked Dr. Nancy Zingale, professor of political science and my former executive adviser, to oversee the planning for the forum. If you have suggestions regarding either the topic or other participants, please contact her at nhzingale@stthomas.edu.
I sincerely hope Archbishop Tutu will accept our invitation. I continue to have nothing but the utmost respect for his witness of faith, for his humanitarian accomplishments and especially for his leadership in helping to end apartheid in South Africa.
Sincerely,
Father Dennis Dease
President
Phil,
You are not a "highly-experienced journalist." You are an obsessive hack, incredibly partisan, who is both a boring writer and a muddled thinker. The Observer became a better paper the day you left.
You're self-pity is incredible.
Go peddle your conspiracy theories in Europe. It's fertile ground for Jew-hatred.
Phil,
You are not a "highly-experienced journalist." You are an obsessive hack, incredibly partisan, who is both a boring writer and a muddled thinker. The Observer became a better paper the day you left.
You're self-pity is incredible.
Go peddle your conspiracy theories in Europe. It's fertile ground for Jew-hatred.
Phil is an experienced journalist. Read his list of published articles. They are not insignificant.
Big A – It is true that Phil is a bit obsessive. Many great writers tend to be that way. Phil is not a great writer, however. He is just OK. Mediocre. It is not fair to call him a hack. He is better than that. The Observer, btw, is not a particularly good paper so Phil's leaving there didn't have much of an effect either way.
Phil will tell you that ever since he was a little boy he has had a lot of anger and he can be cruel. Not unlike a lot of people, not overly cruel, but when he has found a target for his anger, even he is surprised at how intense it can be. Like many reasonable and rationale jews he is angry at the members of his "tribe" who have been behaving arrogantly, defensively, and rather stupidly when it comes to Israel. This includes the jews in Israel and in America. As he is inclined to overstatement we get Mondoweiss and all of its partially correct analyses. There are far better writers actually covering these issues, just not all the time like Phil is. Phil is planning on turning many of these entries into a book, so we are partially along for the ride as he works out what he wants to say. Some of his anger towards his fellow Jews comes out in his postings. What is most disappointing about Phil is in his inability or unwillingness to truly clarify the problems with contemporary Jewry, explain it in the context of the problems in contemporary society in general, and critique the often inaccurate screeds against Jews that populate his comments section.
But alas, Phil knows his audience, and it is not you Big A. You are but a reactionary emotional stereotype. Pull it together Big A. What society needs know is cool calm conversation, self-reflection, and courage. Phil may be imperfect, but he is at least trying. If people rise to the occasion the world will be a better place for all this mishegas. If they don't rise, well, welcome to beginning of the end of Western Civ.
That's good news, Ed*ard.
But labeling a Catholic archibishop who led the fight against apartheid and is also a Nobel prize winner "controversial" just shows how much damage the lobby has already done to our society.
'Aren't there other issues that you are similarly interested in? These one is off the ground already.'
Move on, nothing to see here, eh Richard?
At least you manage to be polite. Some of the sayanim in here let the side down somewhat.
Good news about St Thomas and Tutu.
Richard,
I don't know what you read in the toilet but if I have Phil's articles in there they are purely to wipe my behind.
His stuff on Drudge and columbia students in NY mag is infantile at best. really poorly thought out and insignificant.
his book was not well received.
he's a crappy writer with no record. some of us work for a living but if i spent 1/20 the time he does writing i could produce something far better.
and dr freud — spade a spade, you're an idiot.
Steve,
You bring up "native Americans". There was one native American per square mile in the Midwest here in 1850 — down from 20 per square mile a century earlier following exposure to Spanish brought diseases — and they were hunter-gatherers who mostly did not cultivate or settle any individual plot of land.
Where the conflict exists today in the West Bank there are exactly a thousand times as many Palestinians per square miles, with cultivated farms and orchards, roads and towns — before Israel madly moved in on them.
Ever hear of "Israeli Angioplasty, Steve?" That took place in 1949 when Israel which was supposed to take 55% of Palestine took 78% — and now they have the nerve to move in on the super-crowded 22%?
Going back to the origins of the renewed Israel. I am convinced that if there had never been a holocaust, Jews who wanted to reconstitute Israel in 1949 would simply have moved in and schmoozed everybody and used their advantages of better education and world-wide funding to take over peacefully — they certainly would have tried (the Irish always succeed in taking over without even such advantages :-]).
Who says you have to have a Jewish state — did you ever live in Brooklyn? This super-control freak insanity (the compulsion to sanitize non-Jews from the landscape) brought on by the holocaust is going to lead to another (nuclear?) holocaust or at least another diaspora if Israelis don't learn to get it under control — and get out of Palestinian territory (where they already had a nicely functioning state — in case that is your requirement for their independence — before you know who showed up).
"We need the Palestinian Deak…" You mean a Palestinian Quisling don't you?
When Barak offered 98% of the West Bank and Gaza, replete with provisions of medical and financial aid, to Arafat in August of 2000, Arafat without blinking an eye, without so much as a counter-offer, walked away.
He returned from whence he came, to the wasteland he'd created out of raw Hitleric rhetoric, by turning the eyes of his loyal masses away from his embezzlement of the billions in international aids to the Swiss bank accounts of his friends, family, and Parisian wife, away from his wanton refusal to crack down on the baby killers who blew up school buses in Jerusalem and restaurants in Tel Aviv, away from the rampant crime in Ramallah, away from the nepotistic appointments he made to corrupt governmental offices.
He returned, and reported that Barak had offered him … nothing. A world of checkpoints, new settlements, and discontinuous roads.
Hence the question, if the offer was so bad, then why did Arafat have to lie? …
"replete with provisions of medical and financial aid"
hehe, those Zionists–always so considerate.
"When Barak offered 98% of the West Bank and Gaza, replete with provisions of medical and financial aid, to Arafat in August of 2000, Arafat without blinking an eye, without so much as a counter-offer, walked away."
Oh, the zionist myths. One gets tired of having to knock them down. Here is Wikipedia's take on the matter:
"The Palestinian negotiators indicated they wanted full Palestinian sovereignty over all the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, although they would consider a one-to-one land swap with Israel. They maintained that Resolution 242 calls for full Israeli withdrawal from these territories, which were captured in the Six-Day War, as part of a final peace settlement, although Israel disputes this interpretation. In the 1993 Oslo Accords the Palestinian negotiators accepted the Green Line borders for the West Bank.
Barak offered to form a Palestinian State initially on 73% of the West Bank (that is 27% less than the Green Line borders) and 100% of the Gaza Strip. In 10 to 25 years the West Bank area would expand to 90-91% (94% excluding greater Jerusalem).[1][2][3] As a result, "Israel would have withdrawn from 63 settlements."[4] The West Bank would be separated by a road from Jerusalem to the Dead Sea, with free passage for Palestinians although Israel reserved the right to close the road for passage in case of emergency. The Palestinian position was that the annexations would block existing road networks between major Palestinian populations. In return, the Israelis would cede 1% of their territory in the Negev Desert to Palestine. The Palestinians rejected this proposal."
"The Palestinians rejected a proposal for "custodianship," though not sovereignty, over the Temple Mount. They demanded complete sovereignty over East Jerusalem's Islamic holy sites, in particular, the Al-Aqsa Mosque."
And what is this business about the Palestinians not having made a counter offer? Is it not enough that they accepted that their territory had been reduced to 22 % of the mandated territory of Palestine – about half of what the UN allocated to them in 1947 – which then already was an unfair offer? What more do you want?
The Palestinian position on Resolution 242 (a resolution which was accepted by both the US and Israel) is correct. The Israeli position is totally at variance with the international understanding of the resolution at the time it was accepted. In fact from some notes of Eban it can be concluded that Israel had initially the same understanding but later concocted a different story about it.
I will elaborate on this in some further posts.
"Who says you have to have a Jewish state…?"
Denis, obviously the international jewish elite is interested in having a nation state under its control. Better still they have a nuclear-armed nation state, a holocaust-based excuse, an assortment of diaspora jews to serve as hostages and enough media control to produce their own version of reality. All this ready at hand in order to produce threats to every other nation in this world whenever convenient. They can do all this whithout ever setting foot on the zioland.
I wrote about Resolution 242 before but it remains an evergreen.
The most informative article I know about the international law aspects of Resolution 242 is that published five years ago in the International and Comparative Law Quarterly (Oct 2002 Vol.51, 4) by John McHugo, then Visiting Fellow at the Scottish Center for International Law at Edinburgh University.
In what follows I will mainly base myself on this article and then, in another letter, attempt to gauge to what extent McHugo’s account, particularly where he deals with the Security Council debate on 242, is sustained by other sources.
McHugo discusses fully the two main Israeli arguments for their interpretation of 242.
These are:
(a) of a semantic nature: ‘withdrawal from territories occupied in the recent conflict’ can or should be construed to mean that Israel is only obliged to withdraw from ‘some’ of the territories, not ‘all’ of the territories and,
(b). ‘historical’: the ‘intention of the drafters of the Resolution in the Security Council was that Israel might retain some of the territories’.
Before McHugo deals with these arguments he first clears up a misunderstanding that has bedeviled the interpretation of 242, namely that it makes a difference here whether the Six Day War was a war of aggression on the side of Israel or, rather, waged in self-defence. McHugo claims that this question is irrelevant:
"It used to be permissible for a state to acquire sovereignty over territory by right of conquest on the termination of a state of war. The right was abolished when the League of Nations was established in the aftermath of the First World War. The abolition of conquest extends to a prohibition of the acquisition of any territory by a state in actions of self defence."
There is only one class of territory which may be annexed unilaterally by a state. This is called terra nullius, and is territory, which is uninhabited or, only, inhabited by peoples, which have no social or political organisation.
"Although the status of the different occupied territories (East Jerusalem, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights) varies, none of them can be classed as terra nullius by any stretch of the imagination, and so they are not open to unilateral acquisition by Israel."
Then McHugo looks at the semantic arguments. The absence of the words ‘all’ or ‘the’ before the word ‘territories’ does not necessarily mean that ‘some’ is intended. He gives here examples of legal or quasi-legal prescriptions in which similar wording clearly does not have this meaning. If, for instance, we find at the entrance to a park a sign ‘Dogs must be kept on the lead near ponds in the park’ the commonsense interpretation is: all dogs – all ponds.
Moreover the definite article or the word ‘all’ is lacking in other phrases in Resolution 242, but it is there too clear from the context that ‘all’ is meant: see par. 2 (a) which confirms the necessity of guaranteeing freedom of navigation ‘through international waterways in the area’.
There are, as McHugo points out, a number of international waterways in the area: the Suez Canal, the Straits of Tiran at the entrance to the Gulf of Aqaba, and the Bab al-mandab at the entrance to the Red Sea. Israel would have been unpleasantly surprised if Egypt had deduced from the absence of the words ‘the’ and ‘all’ here that it could thus choose to continue the blockade of the Straits of Tiran.
The same argument applies to the phrase ‘the right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries’. Here, surely, all the boundaries are meant.
It is true that there were various proposals, from inter alia Latin American, Indian and Russian delegates, to include the words ‘all’ or ‘the’ in the resolution and that partly through Israeli pressure these words did not survive in the final draft (the French version of the resolution does contain the definite article (‘des’ instead of ‘de’) but the French representative deemed it similar in meaning to the English text).
That these delegations finally consented to this final draft and that there was a unanimous vote in the Security Council was very much due to the fact that the main architect of the final draft, Lord Caradon, convinced them that, when the resolution was taken as a whole, it didn’t make any substantial difference whether the words ‘the’ or ‘all’ were included or not, because the Withdrawal-phrase was balanced by the preambular phrase ‘Emphasizing the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war’.
Israel, that is Abba Eban, has argued that this is merely a preambular phrase which doesn’t have the same weight as an operative one, but McHugo reasons that in view of the history of the evolution of the draft this preambular phrase has here, in fact, great weight.
Israel, has quoted a few statements by Lord Caradon, for instance on websites inspired by its Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which seem to suggest that he was in favour of its interpretation of the Resolution. This view is not born out by the facts. Lord Caradon did indeed come to regard the absence of the word ‘the’ as a bonus because in this way the resolution allowed for minor border corrections on the basis of reciprocity. The armistice lines of 1949 were, after all, based on the fortuitous positions of the various armies at the time.
Many years after,as Finkelstein has described, Abba Eban and Lord Caradon came again face to face (McHugo has not mentioned this) at a symposium devoted to resolution 242. Caradon remarked then that the overriding principle in the drafting of the resolution had been "the ‘inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war’ and that meant that there could be no justification for annexation of territory on the Arab side of the 1967 line merely because it had been conquered in the 1967 war".
Eban’s retort to this was that Lord Caradon’s recollection had "been dimmed by the passage of time", a rather insulting suggestion which Caradon rejected out of hand.
This phrase ‘inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war’ contained an old bugbear for Eban. According to McHugo he had fought to keep it out of the resolution because he understood that it would make the (future) Israeli interpretation untenable.
Eban suffered a defeat regarding the insertion of another phrase as well. This referred to the words following 'territories’ viz ‘occupied in the recent conflict’. He protested in a diplomatic note: "The words ‘in the recent conflict’ convert the principle of eliminating occupation into a mathematically precise formula for restoring the June 4 map."
In view of all this it is rather outrageous that the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs keeps providing isolated sentences from Caradon to suggest that he fully supported the Israeli interpretation of the Resolution. It is worth noting in this context that, when the article by McHugo appeared, the son of Lord Caradon made a point of giving it his acclaim in The Guardian. He mentioned that his late father had regarded the drafting of this resolution, and the whole diplomatic process around it, as the highlight of his career. I think it is not too far fetched to assume that Foot jr was well acquainted with his father’s interpretation of it.
McHugo deals with one more Israeli argument, namely that the phrase "the right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries" implies the necessity of border corrections. For McHugo the suggestion that there should be border corrections before a negotiated peace deal comes about is turning the process on its head. If peace comes the boundaries should be automatically secure and recognized. In the absence of peace no boundary would ever be secure.
Also, says McHugo, this provision does not only apply to Israel but to every state in the area. Only the Withdrawal Provision applies directly to one party and the 1967 war. All the other ones apply to all parties. If Arab states have exactly the same right as Israel to live in peace and security, common sense dictates that this also applies to future states in the area.
I would like to add that Israel’s argument that its small size makes it especially vulnerable and that therefore it has to widen its borders applies to other small states as well. On that basis Holland could have demanded a border correction after the Second World War because the defence line of rivers, on which it relied until 1940, was easily bypassed by German paratroopers (and German rubber boats). Only the very biggest states have ‘strategic space’.
After having reviewed the various stages of the evolution of the draft resolution and the debate in the Security Council, McHugo comes up with the following summary:
"It can thus be seen that the representatives of ten of the fifteen voting members made a point of stating on the record that they considered that the Resolution provided that Israel had no right to acquire any of the territories occupied in the Six Days War, and that it followed from this that the requirement to withdraw extended to all these territories.
They can be divided into those who expressly stated that the Withdrawal Phrase was clear in requiring a total withdrawal: India, Mali, Nigeria, Bulgaria, the USSR, and France, and those who implied it was clear in the context of the Resolution as a whole: Britain, Ethiopia, Argentina, and Brazil. Britain would seem to straddle the two categories since, as we have seen, Caradon stated that the Withdrawal Phrase was clear and implied that it meant a total withdrawal.
"None of the representatives of the five remaining members made a statement on the meaning of the Withdrawal Phrase or stated that it supported the Right-wing (that is Israeli. A.B.) interpretation. Gerson and others are thus wrong in asserting that the debate in the Security Council reveals that the intention of the drafters of the Resolution did not envisage total withdrawal."
And he adds:
"Through the application of Schwebel’s proposition that good faith requires that extrinsic evidence, in this case the records of the Security Council debate and the discarded Latin American, Non-aligned, Soviet and US drafts, should be invoked in order to confirm or correct the meaning which the drafters intended the wording to carry, any possibility of a gap between the wording and the intention disappears. It is impossible to see how an independent scholar can examine the records of the Security Council debate and claim that they support a contention that Israel had the right to retain areas of the territories occupied in 1967 save through a freely negotiated agreement."
To be continued.
Resolution 242 Part II
The American Secretary of State during the Six Day War and its aftermath was Dean Rusk. The present generation might hardly know his name but once he was with his rubicund, amiable face a very visible presence on the international scene. He served as Secretary under Kennedy during the Cuban missile crisis. During the Vietnam War, which he fully supported, he was, with Johnson and McNamara, the centre of controversy.
Resolution 242 must have interested him, not only because of its political implications but also because of its status in international law, a subject he taught at the University of Georgia after his retirement as Secretary of State.
At the age of about eighty Rusk came to write his memoirs, which were published in 1990 under the title As I Saw It. Here he had this to say about the aftermath of the Six Day War and Resolution 242:
"For twenty years, since the creation of Israel, the United States had tried to persuade the Arabs that they needn’t fear Israeli territorial expansion. Throughout the sixties the Arabs talked continuously about their fear of Israeli expansion. With the full knowledge of successive governments in Israel, we did our utmost to persuade the Arabs that their anxieties were illusory.
"And then following the Six Day War, Israel decided to keep the Golan heights, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and the Sinai, despite the fact that Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol on the first day of the war went on Israeli radio and said that Israel had no territorial ambitions. Later in the summer I reminded Abba Eban of this, and he simply shrugged his shoulders and said, 'We’ve changed our minds'. With that remark a contentious and even bitter point with the Americans, he turned the United States into a twenty-year liar."
And about the famous 'the’ and ‘all’ question regarding resolution 242 he says:
"There was much bickering over whether that resolution should say from 'the' territories or from 'all' territories. In the French version, which is equally authentic, it says withdrawal de territory, with de meaning ‘the’ (here the distinguished author is a bit confused. A.B.)
"We wanted that to be left a little vague and subject to future negotiation because we thought the Israeli border along the West Bank could be 'rationalized'; certain anomalies could be easily straightened out with some exchanges of territory, making a more sensible border for all parties. We also wanted to leave open demilitarisation measures in the Sinai and the Golan Heights and take a fresh look at the old city of Jerusalem. But we never contemplated any significant grant of territory to Israel as a result of the June 1967 war. On that point we and the Israelis to this day remain sharply divided."
Rusk adds:
"This situation could lead to real trouble in the future. Although every president since Harry Truman has committed the United States to the security and independence of Israel, I’m not aware of any commitment the United States has made to assist Israel in retaining territories seized in the Six-Day War. If another war breaks out over the territories, Washington will face a hard decision."
It seems to me that Rusk’s position (leaving out the words ‘the’ and ‘all’ would allow for minor mutually beneficial border corrections but was never meant to enable a ‘significant grant of territory’) is quite similar to that of Lord Caradon.
I should mention that Rusk adds an interesting rider here. He says:
"But the Arabs have not been blameless with respect to Resolution 242 when they insist upon an Arab state of Palestine in the West Bank. Resolution 242 did not imply this. It anticipated that the West Bank would be returned to Jordan." (As I Saw It, pp. 388 – 389).
This is absolutely correct – and this was also the reason why the PLO didn’t accept resolution 242 until 1988, the same year that Jordan gave up its claim to the West Bank in favour of the Palestinians. Rusk must have written his book at around the same time (as every author knows there is generally a considerable time lag between writing and publishing a book) as this transfer of claim took place and it is not clear whether he was then aware of it. At any case he doesn’t comment on it.
Neither does he comment on the fact that even though the US had only envisaged minor border corrections it did preciously little about the matter when it turned out that Israel had other plans. The matter of Jordan is a case in point.
When American UN Ambassador Arthur Goldberg met the Jordanian Deputy-Foreign Minister Rifai and Ambassador Sharaf on Oct 17, 1967, he said, according to the relevant State Dept. document (online), inter alia:
"U.S. believes in territorial integrity, withdrawal, and recognition of secure boundaries. Principle of territorial integrity has two important sub-principles, there must be a withdrawal to recognized and secure frontiers for all countries, not the old armistice lines, and there must be mutuality in adjustments. If Jordan makes an adjustment along the Latrun salient there ought to be some compensatory adjustment for it."
Subsequently, King Hussein met with President Johnson and Dean Rusk on 8 November but according to the relevant State Department document on that meeting which contains Rusk’s report on it (on line), it mainly consisted of the exchange of pleasantries (the President presented the King with a cigarette lighter) and some very non-committal and vague statements by Johnson.
Parker comments in his review of the compilation of relevant US State Department documents:
"He was not prepared to confront Israel on Jordan’s behalf. When it was all over, Husayn did not get back a single inch of territory as a result of accepting Resolution 242, and we did nothing effective about it. No wonder the Jordanians thought they had been led down the garden path by Goldberg and his crew as well as by Rusk. Husayn might have gotten better results had he told us all to go to Hell…It was evident to those of us on the ground that the Israelis had gotten to Johnson and, in spite of their early assurances that they did not want any territory, that they persuaded him not to press them on the issue."
This American policy of ‘softly, softly’, also allowed Israel to get away with its re-interpretation of Resolution 242. When in 1968 Hussein negotiated with Israel regarding the return of the West Bank he proposed either a complete return or border modifications on the basis of reciprocity – in complete accordance with the policy suggested by Ambassador Goldberg. But Israel did not want to hear of that. It was only prepared to return a heavily truncated West Bank and, as Parker says, the U.S. "did nothing effective about it".
Yet, as Rusk has stated, officially American policy did not change.
On 9 December 1969 William Rogers, Nixon’s Secretary of State, openly restated it. Donald Neff quotes him in his book on U.S. policy towards Palestine and Israel (Fallen Pillars, 1995) as follows:
"Resolution 242 ‘calls for withdrawal from occupied territories, the non-acquisition of territory by war, and recognized boundaries'. We believe that while recognized political boundaries must be established, and agreed upon by the parties, any changes in the preexisting lines should be confined to insubstantial alternations (sic) required for mutual security. We do not support expansionism." (quoted in Neff. P.102)
And Roger’s successor, Henry Kissinger, wrote in his memoirs:
"Jordan’s acquiescence in Resolution 242 had been obtained in 1967 by the promise of our United Nations Ambassador Arthur Goldberg that under its terms we would work for the return of the West Bank of Jordan with minor boundary rectifications and that we were prepared to use our influence to obtain a role for Jordan in Jerusalem." (quoted in Neff, p.103).
Yet, ten years later, the lack of US assertiveness in this area led President Carter to ask for a State Department report "to determine if there was any justice to the Israeli position that the resolution did not include all the occupied territories". Though this report was secret it was apparently leaked to Neff who quotes copiously from it. It says among other things:
"Support for the concept of total withdrawal was widespread in the Security Council, and it was only through intensive American efforts that a resolution was adopted which employed indefinite language in the withdrawal clause. In the process of obtaining this result, the United States made clear to the Arab states and several other members of the Security Council that the United States envisioned only insubstantial revisions of the 1949 armistice lines. Israel did not protest the approach." (Neff, p.101)
Carter discussed the matter with Menachem Begin and the Israeli PM "asked the president to stop talking in public about resolution 242 meaning minor adjustments to the frontiers". Neff draws on publications by William B.Quandt, a key member of the National Security Council Staff under Presidents Gerald Ford and Carter, and Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter’s security adviser, to report what happened next. In a note on his meeting with Begin, Carter wrote:
Begin "asks that we not use phrase ‘minor adjustments’ without prior notice to him – I agreed. He will try to accommodate us on settlements."
Less than one week later, writes Neff, "Begin’s government conferred legal status on three Jewish settlements in the occupied territories." Carter kept mum on the ‘minor adjustments.’ (Neff, p.104)
To the extent that the Zionist lobby has successfully stifled debate about Israel and the U.S.'s relationship with it, despite the enormous effects this has on Middle East policy, where 170,000+ U.S. troops and nearly a trillion U.S. dollars have been sent in the last 5 years, the topic has naturally emerged in an alternative conversation, which is taking place sporadically in overseas magazines, more consistently on the internet, and only now in some mainstream U.S. publications due to the W&M book.
Philip happens to be at the forefront of that discussion, simply because he is insightful, honest, and a decent journalist.
Historians will surely be discussing these discussions as the United States and Zionism enter the crucible. One can only speculate how much longer the indebted U.S.'s creditors will sign off on $300 billion annual gifts to Israel and $600 billion wars against the Likud's bogeymen.
And yet,
Philip's writing is a topic Dr. Freud seems to like discussing more than Zionism.
Philip's style is much more important to Big A than the topic of Zionism.
Philip's "tone" is a topic more interesting to Richard Witty than the topic of Zionism.
Philip's insufficiently exclusionary Jewishness in choosing his partner was apparently more relevant to the meta-conversation than Zionism, from what one gleans of Phil's old NYO editor.
Alas, everything and anything BUT Zionism at it sits right now in the 21st century.
Well, since tedious Zionists want to hoist Phil up on to some totem of errant "values", we can do the examination of conscience both ways.
Which of these just doesn't really belong in the 21st century:
a) technology
b) progress
c) democracy
d) human rights
e) ethno-nationalist colonialism and piracy
"…Israel’s argument that its small size makes it especially vulnerable and that therefore it has to widen its borders…"
A specious argument when Israel is armed and trained to NATO standards — meaning Israel's army (even w/o its overwhelming air support) could reduce the Syrian army (the only threat on the "thin" side of Israel) to scrap metal within hours.
In 1973, the Arabs made the first mass use of anti-tank and anti-air missiles in warfare, catching Israel by surprise from three sides, and Israel still won. Now Syria is the only remaining potential threat and it is so outclassed militarily that during the recent Lebanon situation Israeli fighter planes felt free to buzz the Syrian presidential residence as a warning.
The mood is getting very aggressive.
Are you advocating uprooting Israel?
Is this a humane proposal?
The Palestinian problem will no be sold.
In the moment, the current leaders, Hamas or Fatah have control over Palestine, the army of the Ayatollah of Iran will move in.
The opportunist Al-Qaeda group will also come.
They will compete in targeting everybody to create an Iraq style chaos, to erase all civilizations.
The Palestinians individually, are ready for good relationship with Israelis, and a fruitful cooperation can develop, if the terror dies down.
After two intifada, the lesson is clear. Compromise on the territory, and start working on local services.
It is even more important, to reject all infiltration of the revolutionary guards.
Steve, are you completely oblivious to the state terror your own country has sponsored and continues to?
If you think uprooting Israel is so terrible, why don't you think the same about uprooting Palestine?
Speaking of terror, which do you think is more "terrorizing," a bomb on a bus every once in a while, or (to use a phrase currently en vogue) wiping entire towns and villages off the map to the tune of 711,000 people?
Steve, do you even know what the Naqba is? Can you tell me?
[I say "is" because it has been continuing all these years, and continues indefinitely, until dollars aren't worth enough to sustain it. However the ethnic cleansing and genocide is creeping to a slow, painstaking step now that the whole world is watching.]
As far as I can tell Zionist American policy-makers do not think twice about making millions of Arabs refugees, have no problem with bombing Muslim civilians, and are ready to force regime change all over the ME.
If such treatment of Arabs and Muslims is legitimate according to Zionists and a large part of the American Jewish community, then it is even more legitimate to consider applying such policies and tactics to the State of Israel and to Zionists themselves, for they are entirely in the wrong and are causing trillions of dollars of damage to the USA.
Yes Joachim – We know nothing would make you happier than to carpet bomb all those evil ethnic ashkenazis in Haifa and Tel Aviv. You've been sharing your wet dreams with everyone for so long now that they frankly get a bit boring.
The pain and suffering of the Arab people has been immense. The West has been responsible for some of this, the Arabs themselves responsible for much as well. Perhaps you are at least partially projecting your fantasies of killing Jews on to everyone else. I am a Jew and I value Arab life just as much as Jewish life and I am equally pained when I see an Arab child and a Jewish child hurt or killed.
I am ashamed of the way in which some Israelis treat Palestinians so callously. I am similarly disturbed by the way in which many Palestinians treat Israelis and other Palestinians. Lets be honest. As bad as the Israelis have been to the Palestinians – and the Israelis have much to atone for, I have no delusions here – if the balance of power were reversed we would likely have far greater death and destruction.
Just as there is a reason why some people develop anti-semitic feelings, there are reasons why there exists some indifference in the West towards the death of Muslims. I don't think this is right, I'm just making observations. If you haven't already familiarized yourself with the preachings of some of the more extreme Imams, who have followings in the many millions (while still a small portion of the Muslim world is still a very large number), you would do well to review them and understand that their comments are tracked closely and carefully by Westerners. The steps necessary to dehumanize a group that considers you inferior (I'm talking about Islamists right now and not Jewish extremists) are not large.
Hopefully we will see a greater sophistication in discriminating who and what deserves our sympathy and support. It is not Likud. It is not Hamas. It is not Hezbollah. It is not Gush Emunim. It is not John Hagee. It is not Joachim Martillo Ajami. It is people like Richard Silverstein, Michael Lerner, Sari Nussbieh, Joseph Massad, Stephen Walt, and Phil Weiss, Peace Now, Meretz, King Hussein, and large portions of the Palestinian population that would be content with sharing the land in viable 2-state solution. The sooner we can marginalize those forces within both the Muslim and Western world that are the equivalent of fire eaters, the sooner we will be on the path out of this mess.
Lets be honest. As bad as the Israelis have been to the Palestinians – and the Israelis have much to atone for, I have no delusions here – if the balance of power were reversed we would likely have far greater death and destruction.
Posted by: Dayan | October 11, 2007 at 11:40 AM
And therein the Islamophobia/Arabophobia is laid bare for all to see.
Muslims/Arabs are just more violent. That's just how they are. Like Jews are smarter, more compassionate, more evolved. Muslims and Arabs are backwards, smell bad, and always resort to violence to settle everything from the Nargila rotation to territorial disputes.
(And would you just look at all the death and destruction these Muslim imperialists have been inflicting on innocent sovereign nations these past years…)
MM. Me thinks Dayan has a point.
When I observe what the Shiites have done to the Sunnis and vice versa for the last few years and what Syria did at Hama, and what the Phalangist did at Sabra Shatilla, what Hussein did to the Kurds and to the Shiites, I see a greater propensity for brutality than I've seen the Israelis exhibit. The Israelis may have done some of the same. They are rumored to have executed Egyptians in the Sinai in '67, and there are a few famous stories of Igrun terrorists slaughtering civillians, but while the Israelis are clearly capable of being utterly brutal, they have yet to achieve the levels of their Middles Eastern neighbors. My Druze friends will tell you that the Israelis are really a bunch of pussies and that if it were left up to the Druze there wouldn't be a problem because they would have "lowered the hammer" on the Palestinians. While I admire my Druze friends' toughness, I am scared of the ease with which they can become brutal. Seriously – these guys are bullies. Ask Palestinians who they would prefer to be stopped by – a Druze IDF soldier or a non-Druze IDF soldier. And I'm not saying the non-Druze IDF soldier isn't capable and likely to be brutal. It's a matter of degree. Most Arabs that I've spoken to don't really find this argument racist or false. Many of them take pride in being brutal. They want you to fear them. It's definitely not true of all Arabs, but there is a pretty fierce warrior culture imbedded in Arab culture. Europeans are capable of being equally if not more brutal, and have killed many more people than Arabs have, but compared to the Israelis, who, don't get me wrong, are tough and mean SOBs, the Arabs all in all tend to be more brutal in warfare.
So carry on about how it's racist and Arabaphobic for someone to say what Dayan said, but it doesn't make it untrue. It also doesn't really change the fundamental arguments.
Oh – I hadn't been aware that Arabs are supposed to smell bad. That's not true of my Arab friends. A little heavy on the cologne perhaps.
Do you actually know any Arabs MM?
What kind of an argument is that? The Israelis are mean but the Arabs would be even meaner if they had the chance.
The point is that nobody should have that chance.
And the onus is on the Israelis to bring that situation about because virtually all the cards are in their hands.
That human beings can be beastly to each other we should all know by now. It is firm institutional arrangements that should prevent them from being so. As Jean Monnet, the architect of a united Europe, used to say: "Institutions are wiser than men".
That's what I meant when I said it doesn't change the fundamental arguments Arie. I thought MM was being insincere about his claims that Dayan was Islamophobic for pointing out Arabs have been pretty brutal towards one another. While it doesn't change the moral or legal arguments, it does impact on the willingness of the Israelis to cede control of land they consider strategic. I want them to give up this land, but if you truly believe that soon after you do so you're going to be attacked again, and this time lack the desired strategic depth, than you're going to get resistance.
Dude,
"…if you truly believe that soon after you do so you're going to be attacked again, and this time lack the desired strategic depth,…"
A non-worry when Israel is armed and trained to NATO standards — meaning Israel's army (even w/o its overwhelming air support) could reduce the Syrian army (the only threat on the "low-depth" side of Israel) to scrap metal within hours.
In 1973, three Arab armies introduced the mass use of anti-tank and anti-air missiles in warfare, catching Israel by surprise on all sides, and Israel still won. Now Syria is the only potential threat and it is so outclassed militarily that during the recent Lebanon situation Israeli fighter planes felt free to buzz the Syrian presidential residence as intimidation.
To fill that out a little further: Israel keeps as many tanks on short notice as the US, England, France and Germany have on active duty (about 3000) and is reputed to have enough nukes to obliterate most of the downtowns of the above named NATO nations if they had the delivery capability (about 200).
To elaborate even further, it takes three to one advantage in tanks to invade, so the above named NATO nations all together could not invade Israel on the basis of ground forces alone (we would have to eliminate their air force first). Only Russia and China have the superiority in numbers but they have inferior weapons and training.
Still worried about Syria, dude?
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