Obama’s meeting with 100 Cleveland Jews is taking on the same kind of resonance as Kennedy’s talk about the Pope to the Protestant ministers in Houston in 1960. Except Obama came to kiss a ring, not unkiss it! Now the Washington Post has picked up the meeting. Soon it will be on national television.
Note that The Post refers to a"recent book about the ‘Israel lobby’", as Newsweek also did this week, without giving credit to the authors, Walt and Mearsheimer.
And note when Obama talks about his controversial church:
It is true that my pastor, Jeremiah Wright… is somebody who on occasion can say controversial things…. He was very active in the South Africa divestment movement, and you will recall that there was a tension that arose between the African American and the Jewish communities during that period when we were dealing with apartheid in South Africa, because Israel and South Africa had a relationship at that time. And that cause — that was a source of tension. So there have been a couple of occasions where he made comments with relation, rooted in that. Not necessarily ones that I share. But that is the context within which he has made those comments.
This is a significant comment. It is reminding Jews of a time when Israel was flat wrong, when it sought to prop up apartheid South Africa. Obama’s being tactful as all get-out, but he knows his leftwing history. And you know what side he was on.
P.S. Oh and which way did history go on apartheid South Africa?
Related posts:
- At D.C. Event, Obama Groundswell Includes Post-Zionist Jews
- If you think I can’t stitch ‘Slumdog’ into my hopeful narrative of Israel/Palestine, you’re wrong
- Russia Reminds Me of Israel
- Obama Reminds AIPAC, Schwerner and Goodman Were ‘Willing to Die’ Alongside Chaney
- ‘Birthright’ Should Welcome Non-Jews (and Other Reflections on the Obama Effect on Identity)
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"Note that The Post refers to a"recent book about the 'Israel lobby'", as Newsweek also did this week, without giving credit to the authors, Walt and Mearsheimer."
All together now in conspirational whisper, a la Harry Potter movie scene:
"They….who must NOT…be…named".
More from Obama's important talk, from the Antiwar blog:
Barack Obama reportedly said something very important and long overdue to a group of some 100 Cleveland Jewish leaders on Sunday — that being pro-Likud and being “pro-Israel” are two different things.
“I think there is a strain within the pro-Israel community that says unless you adopt a unwavering pro-Likud approach to Israel that you’re anti-Israel and that can’t be the measure of our friendship with Israel. If we cannot have an honest dialogue about how do we achieve these goals, then we’re not going to make progress.”
Apparently in defense of his consultations with Zbigniew Brzezinski, who has been harshly critical of neo-conservative influence in the Bush administration, Obama said:
“Frankly some of the commentary that I’ve seen which suggests guilt by association or the notion that unless we are never ever going to ask any difficult questions about how we move peace forward or secure Israel that is non military or non belligerent or doesn’t talk about just crushing the opposition that that somehow is being soft or anti-Israel, I think we’re going to have problems moving forward.”
And he contrasted those constraints on the debate here with the breadth and vigor of the discussion of those same issues in Israel itself.
“There was a very honest, thoughtful debate taking place inside Israel. All of you, I’m sure, have experienced this when you travel there. Understandably, because of the pressure that Israel is under, I think the U.S. pro-Israel community is sometimes a little more protective or concerned about opening up that conversation. But all I’m saying though is that actually ultimately should be our goal, to have that same clear-eyed view about how we approach these issues.”
Pretty amazing, like watching glaciers melt in fast-forward.
Scrolling down, I see you've already written about this; sorry for the redundancy.
phil, israel has always been wrong when it comes to what it did to dispossess the palestinian arabs of their land.
that all nations have a history there can be no denying, but obfuscating this reality in the 20th and 21st century is jewish hutzpah extraordinaire.
Calling it a "relationship" with South Africa is hardly sufficient. Israel was brokering nuclear secrets to the apartheid regime in exchange for out-of-the-way spots in which to test its own nukes–because, you see, they didn't want us (the folks paying for the nukes) to know. Testing nukes and sharing secrets could have jeopardized U.S. foreign aid, although Israel should have known the fix was always in. But it is sickening, really, to see how our tax dollars are spent. On nuclear weapons for racist expansionists who then turn around and proliferate those weapons to their racist pals on the Horn of Africa.
Yep, that's our lovely little Israel!
It should also be added that the ADL was found guilty of spying on American Anti-Apartheid activists on behalf of the Apartheid government in South Africa. One of the people who was awarded in the ADL's conviction was Jeffrey Blankfort who did more than anyone in the US to collect the history of the Israel Lobby and fought the hard fight for over 30 years, practically alone, to make this an issue.
If Obama adopts any attitude of "I'm going to stick it to …"
he will lose.
His value is in bridging potentially conflicting communities, NOT in compelling their divide.
I know its frustrating that he hasn't "promised" to do x, y, z. And, blindly hoping is known to be just the flip-side of fearing.
I think he's on the right track. I didn't see the debate last night. From what I read, Hillary got irritatingly ugly, and without real traction. (The worst combination for her, and for the democratic party.)
On South Africa,
If the tone of the ANC efforts resulted in the emigration of all of the whites, if the ANC really regarded the whites (Boer and English) as unwelcome, then South Africa would be similar to Zimbabwe today, NOT a success by really any measure.
If you want to use the South Africa model, USE it.
"Get the fuck out" ISN'T the South Africa model.
Thanks, Oarwell for pointing out the pro-Israel doesn't equal pro-Likud passage. That's VERY important. Rosner just attacked Obama in Haaretz on that pt. claiming oddly that he was interfering in internal Israeli politics by opposing the Likud.
I've linked here to my own blog post on this subject.
Thanks, Oarwell for pointing out the pro-Israel doesn't equal pro-Likud passage. That's VERY important. Rosner just attacked Obama in Haaretz on that pt. claiming oddly that he was interfering in internal Israeli politics by opposing the Likud.
I've linked here to my own blog post on this subject.
Thanks, Oarwell for pointing out the pro-Israel doesn't equal pro-Likud passage. That's VERY important. Rosner just attacked Obama in Haaretz on that pt. claiming oddly that he was interfering in internal Israeli politics by opposing the Likud.
I've linked here to my own blog post on this subject.
Thanks, Oarwell for pointing out the pro-Israel doesn't equal pro-Likud passage. That's VERY important. Rosner just attacked Obama in Haaretz on that pt. claiming oddly that he was interfering in internal Israeli politics by opposing the Likud.
I've linked here to my own blog post on this subject.
Thanks, Oarwell for pointing out the pro-Israel doesn't equal pro-Likud passage. That's VERY important. Rosner just attacked Obama in Haaretz on that pt. claiming oddly that he was interfering in internal Israeli politics by opposing the Likud.
I've linked here to my own blog post on this subject.
"If you want to use the South Africa model, USE it. 'Get the fuck out' ISN'T the South Africa model."
Agreed. South Africa is an example of a former apartheid state with excluded territories (bantustans = West Bank and Gaza), in which the ruling class (Nationalist Party = Likud Party) eventually agreed to create a unified state. NOT a 'two-state solution,' which was and is the original definition of apartheid.
Fortunately when the African majority acceded to power, they did not seek to deport all the whites. One hopes that the Palestinian majority in unified Palestine will exert the same good sense and discretion, despite the horrors of the past.
But if Israel continues to pursue the 40-year-plus status quo of endless occupation, the eventual turning of the tables will most certainly resemble Zimbabwe, in which civil war is followed by expulsion of the former colonial rulers.
The link to the Washington Post in the fourth line of Phil's essay doesn't work for me. It's a blog by Alec MacGillis titled "Obama's Ohio Grilling," and you all need to read it:
http://tinyurl.com/yu73cz
After reading it, I'm appalled. I don't know whether Philip Weiss and Justin Raimondo, in their earlier blogs highlighting Obama's nuanced stance in regard to Likudnik orthodoxy, had access to the full text of his remarks. But what they gave us, wittingly or not, were selective quotations which made Obama look less doctrinaire on "Israel right or wrong" than Hillary. Quite a different picture emerges in the full scope of Obama's remarks, some so chilling that it sounds like Joe Lieberman talking. Consider:
"There's never been any of my advisers who questioned the need for us to provide Israel with security, with military aid, with economic aid. That there has to be a two-state solution, that Israel has to remain a Jewish state."
"With respect to Hamas, you can't have a conversation with somebody who doesn't think you should be on the other side of the table. At the point where they recognize Israel and its right to exist … then I think that will be a different circumstance."
"There is a hard core of jihadist fundamentalists who we can't negotiate with … maybe it's 30,000 people, maybe it's 40,000 people, maybe it's 50,000 people. But it is a finite number. And that is where military action and intelligence has to be directed. We have to hunt them down and knock them out. Incapacitate them. That's the military aspects of dealing with this phenomenon."
HORRIBLE. What good is it to withdraw from Iraq, while sanctioning the Israeli liquidationist policy of arranging the state murders of up to 50,000 people? They are labeled as "terrorists" by the all-powerful militarized leadership of USrael, but no court has made that determination. And some charged with terrorism have been acquitted.
I could never vote for an individual who made the openly fascist statements quoted above. Good-bye, Obama! You can pander to Israel, or you can pander to me, but can't do both.
As we've been over a dozen times, South Africa is NOT a parallel to Israel/Palestine, largely because of the demographics, but also because of the presence of exclusive nationalism on the part of the Palestinians.
In South Africa, 15% of the population ruled over 85%. A large majority (even with splits between different African affiliations), with strong and largely unified leadership.
Their goal was equality in a land in which they were the majority.
In Israel/Palestine, the demographics are different. The current population is close to 50/50 by ANY measure (Israeli/Palestinian, Jew/Muslim, religious/secular – Muslim+orthodox vs secular) and with both parties holding nationalistic approaches, that make oil and water.
In that setting, the forced unification would nearly inevitably result in a failed state, a state in civil war, likely very violent. As Israel is STRONG, likely resulting in either the same partition as currently, or more territory in the hands of the Israelis.
Every time there is war, there is more dispossession. Nothing cleans out an area like warfare.
NOT a good prospect for anyone.
The partition approach is the MORE DEMOCRATIC in that setting.
"I could never vote for an individual who made the openly fascist statements quoted above. Good-bye, Obama! You can pander to Israel, or you can pander to me, but can't do both."
Obama yesterday said that the relationship with Israel is sancrosanct.
He didn't mean that the form of it is, but that the US will NEVER leave Israel hanging in the breeze.
Maybe you should reject Obama, Jim. He's a democrat, a liberal, NOT a radical.
He is NOT the tip of the iceberg of a "progressive movement".
Edwards and Kucinich were that, and they didn't get much traction.
The policy changes that Obama and Clinton are espousing are moderate, sober, civil, reforms.
There is NO urging the the US renounce the UN, or isolate, or reallign.
I'm confident that torture and imprisonment without habeus corpus will be abandoned, and that human rights will be a more important concern in foreign policy, and that the tax law will restore to pre-Bush status, and that governance in the form of enforcement of laws will actually occur (EPA, OSHA, SEC, etc.)
But, the United States will remain a super-power, the global enforcer.
"I'm confident that torture and imprisonment without habeus corpus will be abandoned, and that human rights will be a more important concern in foreign policy."
If issuing hunting licenses for the extrajudicial killing of 50,000 people represents an upgrading of human rights, then you are surely right. That's human rights, Israeli style (one Jewish life is worth a hundred gentile lives). Shalom, bro …
I like Obama's position. I think it represents a sober and just position.
And definitely an improvement over the present and over the prospect.
I respect that he regards Israel as a justly sovereign state, and that he will assist Palestine in becoming a justly sovereign state.
A shift from suppression to a relationship of a good neighbor to a good neighbor.
Richard, are you sure 80%+ of historic Palestine will be enough for Jewish self-determination. After all, it seems the Jews actually living in Israel, as opposed to vicarious apologists like yourself, really want Judea and Samaria. And maybe more.
The "exclusionism" on both sides you try to equate with your typical dishonesty. A majority of Israelis do not want to share their country with the Arabs. A majority of Palestinians would be happy to be granted full human and civil rights within the territory that was once a blend of Muslims, Christians, and Jews, sans supremacist Zionism.
Hamas was heavily funded by Israel, Rich. Maybe with all your reading, you ought to know that?
Perhaps the model is The Taming Of The American West–on fast forward, with Prelude The Pilgrims.
Demograraphic trends do not favor Israelis. No smallpox blankets ever appeared. Palestinians get a rump state?
"Richard, are you sure 80%+ of historic Palestine will be enough for Jewish self-determination. "
The Palestinian mandate included Jordan, so you're 80% number is innaccurate. Nevertheless, the point is taken and accurate that Palestinians are cornered and compressed onto small amounts of land, inadequate amounts.
Their population has grown considerably since the Nakba. Mostly by birthrate relative to death rate, but still population growth, whereas land is finite.
I consistently advocate for the green line as border. And, I consistently argue for color blind equal due process under the law in both Israel and Palestine.
I separate issues of sovereignty from issues of title. Those that apply rhetoric as their definition of justice don't usually. They site "Zionists stole the land", therefore every settler, every Jew living on land taken militarily must leave.
By that logic, NO American, not you, not Phil, not I, would have a right to live where we do.
In reconciling legal disputes over land title, there are a variety of remedies possible, ranging from compensation to eviction. And, the remedies can go two ways.
Each CASE should be separately evaluated, within the context of accepted law that fulfills the principles of multiple jurisdictions.
I favor repeal of the Israeli laws in the early 50's that prohibited Palestinians from asserting legal claims for lands that they owned and vacated. Its obviously very late, and most individuals do not possess documentation to support claims.
But, I strongly oppose dispossessing residents within Israel, or even settlers.
If a claim can be proven as valid, then if there are settlers on land, I prefer strongly that there be a means to perfect their title, by compensation most likely (and paid by the Israeli state, if they initiated the development).
If Jews are dispossessed of homes, for land claims, I strongly favor compensation to them for their property (the houses built on the lands).
I know that will make ideologs mad as hell, but to evict cavalierly without due process is a repitition of evil, a second wrong that does NOT make a right.
It amounts to mob justice, rather than real justice.
"It is reminding Jews of a time when Israel was flat wrong"
and when is israel not wrong? israel is always wrong. israel's existence is flat wrong.
Chief Joseph:
"Perhaps you think the Creator sent you here to dispose of us as you see fit. If I thought you were sent by the Creator, I might be induced to think you had a right to dispose of me.
Whenever the white man treats the Indian as they treat each other then we shall have no more wars.
Too many misinterpretations have been made; too many misunderstandings have come up between the white men and the Indians. If the white man wants to live in peace with the Indian he can live in peace. There need be no trouble. Treat all men alike. Give them the same laws. Give them all an even chance to live and grow. All men were made by the same Great Spirit Chief.
In the treaty councils the commissioners have claimed that our country had been sold to the Government. Suppose a white man should come to me and say, 'Joseph, I like your horses, and I want to buy them.' I say to him, 'No, my horses suit me, I will not sell them.' Then he goes to my neighbor, and says to him: 'Joseph has some good horses. I want to buy them, but he refuses to sell.' My neighbor answers, 'Pay me the money, and I will sell you Joseph's horses.' The white man returns to me and says, 'Joseph, I have bought your horses, and you must let me have them.' If we sold our lands to the Government, this is the way they were bought.
I believe much trouble and blood would be saved if we opened our hearts more. I will tell you in my way how the Indian sees things. The white man has more words to tell you how they look to him, but it does not require many words to speak the truth."
RE (MM) "Richard, are you sure 80%+ of historic Palestine will be enough for Jewish self-determination. "
RE: (Richard Witty) The Palestinian mandate included Jordan, so you're 80% number is innaccurate.
Got an old map?
Approximately 90% of the British Mandate of Palestine was east of the Jordan river and was known as "Transjordan"
In 1921, the British gave semi-autonomous control of Transjordan to the future King Abdullah I of Jordan, of the Hashemite family.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordan#Beginnings
President Woodrow Wilson appointed an American panel, the King Crane Commission, to investigate the disposition of Ottoman territories and the assigning of mandates. After extensive surveys in Palestine and Syria, the commission reported intense opposition to the Balfour Declaration among the Arab majority in Palestine and advised against permitting unlimited Jewish immigration or the creation of a separate Jewish state. The commission's report in August 1919 was not officially considered by the conference, however, and was not made public until 1922.
Mandate allocations making Britain the mandatory power for Palestine (including the East Bank and all of present-day Jordan) and Iraq, and making France the mandatory power for the area of Syria and Lebanon, were confirmed in April 1920 at a meeting of the Supreme Allied Council at San Remo, Italy.
In March 1946, Transjordan and Britain concluded the Treaty of London, under which another major step was taken toward full sovereignty for the Arab state. Transjordan was proclaimed a kingdom, and a new constitution replaced the obsolete 1928 Organic Law.
http://philologos.org/bpr/files/Misc_Studies/ms043b.htm
"Approximately 90% of the British Mandate of Palestine was east of the Jordan river and was known as "Transjordan""
Isn't that exactly what I said?
The Chief Joseph quote applies to YOU, moreso than to Israel. We are all on land that some other community was previously, and have been the beneficiaries of some unlawful force, which we bought and "perfected".
It was all expropriated. North American, South America, Australia, Africa.
It will never be different. Even the Indians expropriated the land from communities that were there prior. (The Lakota were not always Lakota. They migrated, and expelled others. They formed into a tribe at some point from more disparate bands. Similarly for the Palestinians.)
There are no "original" settlers anywhere in the world.
The most compelling claim is of Australian aborigines and Africans, which are the only people to remain in some proximity over a glacial epoch. Native Americans, Europeans, all peoples resided where they are only over the last 15000 years at most.
And, following the glacial epochs, there were large migrations, and many conflicts for territory.
How far back do you want to extend title questions to?
For me, the only logical conception of land ownership that I can derive is that the land does NOT belong to a person, that it cannot be owned in that permanent and unconditional sense. We are all trustees for posterity and wilds.
The most that property can be is a temporary and limited permission among the parties involved.
And, that permission (law) occurs by a combination of agreement and force. Society is better off where it can be by agreement. But, ultimately all land is expropriated from the commons, posterity and wilds.
RE: "How far back do you want to extend title questions to?"
Among many historical land grabs, Hitler most proudly used the centuries of American spread from border to border to justify his violent and/or coerced land grab (as well as Aryan origin mythos) to the East. Nuremberg was an attempt by the civilized world to end all historical land grabs masked under whatever rubric. The Nuremberg court actually created new law in the name of all humanity towards this end. The standard Ex Post Facto law defense was overruled every time. Two million ethnic Germans died and fifteen million were driven from their lands by those opposed to anyone and anything German. German reparations continue to this day. So, I imagine a progressive would say let's start at 1945, when the new reformed land title
law was proclaimed. Or is it we have learned nothing unless it's might makes right and law is rhetoric? Goering would agree.
Richard, are you sure 80%+ of historic Palestine (after Jordan was given away by the Brits) will be enough for Jewish self-determination?
Speaking of rule of law: Under the law of adverse possession, the
Palestinians had legal title to the land they had lived on for centuries.
"The Palestinians" didn't own anything. They weren't an entity.
Individual Palestinians might have claims or not.
Do you understand my distinction between questions of sovereignty and questions of title?
"Obama yesterday said that the relationship with Israel is sancrosanct."
Sacrosanct nothing less.
SacroSanctus: consecrated with religious ceremonies.
Regarded as sacred and inviolable.
Witty: "The Palestinians" didn't own anything. They weren't an entity.
LeaNder: It all depends on how you define Palestinians. Only if you insist that a European type of national foundation myth or act is necessary for a group of people to hold collective rights to their land, then and only then your argument is valid. As you judge the right of the people according to European not according to their own laws. I somehow doubt they had none at all.
But, help me, I am puzzled. What is the relation of the "Palestinians as a non-entity" to the Palestinians as "exclusive nationalists" as you described them above.
Quote Witty: "but also because of the presence of exclusive nationalism on the part of the Palestinians."
Am I missing a time bar? Something like: The-collective-non-entity-of-Palestine confronted with the religious nationalist settlers by and by developed an "exclusionist nationalism" of their own? And than and only then the entered a state of existence or should I say: culture?
"It was all expropriated. North American, South America, Australia, Africa. How far back do you want to extend title questions to?"
To employ your nicely relativistic analysis, it's not a question of absolute justice, but of agreement and force. From this highly pragmatic perspective, one can observe that after World War II, a major trend of decolonisation began. Britain shed its colonial possessions in Asia; European colonies in Africa began gaining independence from the 1940s through the 1960s.
By moving in masses of primarily European Jews and claiming nationhood in 1948, Israel defied the worldwide anticolonialist tide. Completely aside from the perspectives of morality, law, or religion, in practical terms this was a very ill-judged move. It has taken vast amounts of U.S. support — in the hundreds of billions, plus more private funding — to keep this misbegotten colonial experiment afloat. All of the U.S. presidential candidates say that Israel will require a U.S. lifeline of economic and military aid for the foreseeable future. This is astonishing, when one considers that Israel enjoys a southern European standard of living and per capita GDP. Even at this level of wealth, it is not a sustainable nation.
Nor is it secure. The Palestinian territories have been under occupation for forty years. Israel is building a Wall, much larger and longer than the hated Berlin Wall. Gazans shoot rockets into Israel, and it's only a matter of time until the Palestinians and Lebanese get rockets with accurate guidance systems.
Bottom line, by any pragmatic and realistic standard, Israel is a horrendous colonial mistake. It's not sustainable, at least not in its current stance of occupation and hostility. As a smug believer in the U.S. as Israel's "superpower and enforcer," you fail to realize that Israeli intransigence won't continue too much longer. Like a ski slope in the desert which becomes uneconomic when oil and power are too costly, Israel is a deadweight drag on the U.S. economy which imposes only costs, not benefits. Mearsheimer and Walt have pointed out this fact, but were rewarded only with brickbats from zionists. Someday you'll realize that confronting a person with unpleasant but unavoidable facts can be an act of friendship, not hostility.
Either Israel makes peace with its neighbors, or it faces catastrophic collapse. The illusion of endless free money from the USA (which itself is unsustainable) has left Israel and its partisan supporters living in a presumptuous dream world. Wake up, Richard Witty.
Even assuming the Jewish people who came since Zionism was born are the offspring of ancient Jews who once lived in the target land, every person now known collectively as "Palestinians" has adverse title right to the property they lived on under the law of adverse posession. Any statute of limitations expired many, many centuries ago.
So, I take it that you don't understand the significance of the difference between issues of sovereignty and issues of title.
And, I take it that you have no interest in mutually acceptable reconciliation.
Even granted that there is a chain of expropriation, the remedy of "get the fuck out" is a uniquely reactionary one.
Say, if the Israeli residents of Sderot got so scared by the Hamas missiles that they all left, and that Gazan Palestinians took over their homes and under Palestinian law stayed there for 20 years, newly affirming their "squatters' rights", would that be a just outcome in your mind?
Would that represent the affirmation of law and justice, or the affirmation of "might makes right"?
I'm amazed when "progressives" define their progressivism by whether the US should be free to adopt its "interest" to pander to Arabian and American corporate oil.
Do you hear yourself?
Richard, I think I know what you're saying about the difference between sovereignty and questions of title–you're talking about individual Palestinian claims and the claim that Palestinians as a people have sovereignty over some portion of land.
But you gotta be careful about heads I win, tails you lose arguments here. If individual Israelis have the right to build on land not owned by individual Palestinians, then individual Palestinians should be able to reclaim their land from 1948 (and I don't think one or two generations makes a difference if the family has kept the knowledge alive of what they owned) and Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza should be able to move back into Israel proper. Your logic is that of a one state solution, but the reality so far is purely one-sided in favor of Israelis.
My impression is that in fact the one state solution is something you might favor in the long run, because both sides have deep attachments to all of Israel/Palestine. I favor it too, if there was some guarantee the two sides wouldn't fall into a Lebanese style civil war. In the near future, though, my impression is that there are large numbers on both sides who don't like the Other.
So if the realistic short term option is a two state solution, I think the West Bank settlers are probably going to be kicked out. That might not be fair in all cases, but the alternative is a one state solution and the Israelis, at least, don't want that. (I'm not sure what fraction of the Palestinians would favor it.)
"I favor repeal of the Israeli laws in the early 50's that prohibited Palestinians from asserting legal claims for lands that they owned and vacated. Its obviously very late, and most individuals do not possess documentation to support claims."
Richard, I find your position on title consistent. But surely if Palestinian pre-1948 claims to title were validated, Israel would lose its Jewish majority? Is this acceptable to you?
I support the principle that everybody deserves their day in court, the right to argue their case before an impartial judge and/or jury, based on color-blind laws applied consistently.
Those that are committed to law, in any state that seeks to be a democracy over time, VALUES and APPLIES the concept of equal due process under the law and consistency of law (by legislation and/or precedent, reconciled to each other).
The Israeli laws of the early 50's functionally prohibited Palestinian former residents of asserting their perfected or partial rights to land in court. They didn't get their day in court.
And, that definitely continues, and has been extended to the West Bank (not to Gaza, Israel is physically out of Gaza. Title conflict within Gaza are entirely Palestinian jurisdiction.)
There are MANY forms of remedy that a court may choose. Of its own merits, if title is imperfect, a state may compel a mediated settlement between contesting parties, in the form of compensation. While that wouldn't satisfy Chief Joseph or gullible mobs, it would have the authority to perfect title under law.
If the two states are attempting to put the past behind them, then that remedy would be the most likely remedy in cases where title is imperfect. In the cases where title was clearly still demonstrably held by Palestinians, then those should revert to Palestinian ownership, with some compensation to those Israeli individuals that improved the land and/or buildings.
With "squatter's rights" as the basis of claims, most of those would likely be considered imperfect claims, with multiple parties holding partial rights that would require reconciliation.
Many hate courts that decide land cases. Many don't like bad news.
In the US, most respect the courts more than they respect mobs. There is a corolation between a history of peaceful transfer of power, and respect for law and courts. In the US, we don't have a revolution every time there is a change in government.
In Israel, there is not a revolution every time there is a change in government.
In Palestine, to date, there HAS been a civil violent war each time there has been a change in government. That can change. The leaders of both Fatah and Hamas periodically appeal to civil and mature sentiment, valuing and enhancing the characteristics of law.
At other times, they whine (and kill) to get what they want in their turf fight.
"I favor [a one-state solution] too, if there was some guarantee the two sides wouldn't fall into a Lebanese style civil war. In the near future, though, my impression is that there are large numbers on both sides who don't like the Other." – Donald
You may be right. But why is this so? Before Israel was founded in 1948, Jewish communities had thrived throughout the Arab world for centuries. Look at how comfortable Maimonides was in 12th-century Egypt, for instance. This Jewish scholar and physician hardly felt threatened by his Arab-majority neighbors.
All of this changed in 1948. The use of terror to clear out Arab villages as the Israeli state was founded poisoned the well to this day. Subsequently, Jewish communities were expelled from Islamic states across the middle east. The great crime perpetrated by the founding myth of zionism ("a land without people for a people without land") was to create such hostility that Israel feels outnumbered 100-to-1 by its Islamic enemies — a perception which isn't entirely unfounded.
It isn't necessarily productive to cast blame as to "who started it," although the events from the Balfour Declaration through the founding of Israel strongly point to zionists as the instigators. A fair and equitable peace settlement would rapidly overcome these multigenerational grudges.
But by continuing to inflame the situation with harsh occupation, settlements, Wall building, and unreasonable preconditions to negotiations, Israel vastly overestimates its own bargaining position. Israel's belligerence is solely a function of U.S. aid. And if this American has any say in the matter, we're going to pull that plug one day, and let the presumptuous, ever-demanding Israelis shift for themselves. Insulting reasonable Americans exercising their privilege of free speech as "anti-semites," while murdering our citizens (Rachel Corrie, et al) without apology, was a serious mistake. And it will have consequences.
"Before Israel was founded in 1948, Jewish communities had thrived throughout the Arab world for centuries. "
Not exactly true. In sharia societies, Jews are an accepted minority, in which many professions are prohibited, they must reside in certain neighborhoods (ghettoized), they must pay a tax that Muslims don't pay, and they don't have equal voice in community affairs.
Liveable, but most often like living under occupation is "liveable", for those that consistently comply and compel others to do similarly.
Please, drop the romantic fantasy about how wonderful life was in the past.
A fair peace settlement is important, and Israel is currently dragging its feet.
The recent voices of the Arab League with the prospect that the offer of recognition will be rescinded, and of Abbas siting that sometime in the future it might be necessary for the Palestinian national movement to return to "armed struggle", is a warning.
Or, it may be a signal that now that it is clear that Israel IS negotiating, that they didn't mean it.
Hard to know. We all usually end up talking to ourselves.
Since Israel after 60 years is still not economically self-sufficient
and relies on foreign assistance and "borrowing" to maintain its economy, perhaps it's time for the USA to emerge as the most aggressive proponent of partition as it did in November of 1947 to coherce the UN to recommend the plan partitioning Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state?
he unique matrix of direct and indirect aid to Israel is a huge aggregate carrot, indeed "special."
Behind the 1947 scene the USA bent the arm of lots of small states to get in line with its own views, threatening loss of USA foreign aid. Without terrific pressure from the United States on governments which could not afford to risk American reprisals the resolution would never have passed. Except for Israel, the USA has never been shy to use sticks as well as carrots to make peace anywhere it wants.
As to Israel's sovereignty, in the economic sense it is not a sovereign nation state. It can't do what Likud power wills without
Uncle Sam (hence the thrust of W & M's overview in the interest of the USA and more moderate Israelis who are much more publicly vocal about fairness, about the Palestinian plight, than MOTs in the diaspora, especially in the USA).
Theoretically at least, no foreign power or law can can have control over a sovereign state except by convention. As to sovereignty under the umbrella of the UN (to the extent it is paramount in the view of its collective nation members), Israel was admitted to UN but then reneged on the conditions under which it was admitted and recognized as a sovereign state.
The Preamble of the UN's resolution of admission included a safeguarding clause as follows: "Recalling its resolution of 29 November 1947 (on partition) and 11 December 1948 (on reparation and compensation), and taking note of the declarations and explanations made by the representative of the Government of Israel before the ad hoc Political Committee in respect of the implementation of the said resolutions, the General Assembly…decides to admit Israel into membership in the United Nations."
During the Middle Ages, North Africa and the Arab Middle East became places of refuge and a haven for the persecuted Jews of Spain and elsewhere. They lived in the Holy Land with the locals together in relative harmony, a harmony only disrupted when the Zionists began to claim that Palestine was the "rightful" possession of the "Jewish people" to the exclusion of its Moslem and Christian inhabitants.
Accordingly, before the 20th Century, there was little if any conflict between the Yishuv, or Jewish community, and the Arab population in Palestine. Tensions began after the first Zionist settlers arrived in the 1880's and commenced to purchase purchase land from absentee Arab owners (Chief Joseph would understand) leading to dispossession of the peasants who had cultivated it.
The problem was compounded by the Jewish attitude upon reaching Palestine:
"Serfs they (the Jews) were in the lands of the Diaspora, and suddenly they find themselves in freedom [in Palestine]; and this change has awakened in them an inclination to despotism. They treat the Arabs with hostility and cruelty, deprive them of their rights, offend them without cause, and even boast of these deeds; and nobody among us opposes this despicable and dangerous inclination." –Zionist writer Ahad Ha'am, quoted in Sami Hadawi, "Bitter Harvest."
A democracy dedicated for a certain people will not endure as such for the elementary reason that the modern democratic state is defined by its claims of universality, the ideal that all humans are created equally free before the law.
The horrors that have marked the history of democratic nation states no longer have pevented them from offering full participation in the polity to those who had been discriminated against, enslaved, expelled, and or exterminated as the nation-state grew into full existence.
Isn't there a big difference between a state that fails to live up to its social contract because of a history saturated with racism, and one where the contract itself generates racism?
One state or two states?
I'll stand with you in urging that Israel reform.
I won't stand with you in describing "Zionism as racism".
I believe that Zionism is the affirmation of the Jewish people (a nation) to self-govern.
And, that stated alone, is a very positive historical development, even applied in crowded Israel.
The task is to transform the present, not to resent the past.
EVERY people, certainly every people in the middle east has experienced traumas, unwarranted violence done to them, done to civilians particularly.
Justice isn't constructed out of such catch phrases "inevitably racist".
Nothing is inevitable.
Richard, Charles and others – The stuff about Transjordan being 80% of the original mandate is in many books and sources, but it is not correct, and is basically an amazingly successful Revisionist Zionist fabrication. The original mandate was essentially Israel plus the occupied territories – the land west of the Jordan. What happened is that Abdullah and his followers arrived in Transjordan (supposedly on the way to Syria, to help his brother) in 1920. The British then recognized this existing rule and ADDED, (not split off) Transjordan to the mandate at the Cairo Conference in 1921, while excluding it from the Jewish National Home provisions of the Mandate. (Transjordan had been theretofore explicitly excluded provisionally in the documents and negotiations preliminary to the 1923 peace treaty, the Treaty of Lausanne – what the source above says about San Remo is simply false). Go to the wikipedia article on the British Mandate, and look at the discussion page – there's a very long discussion with a lot that hasn't gotten added to the main page. So the mandate was at first small, got larger with the addition of Transjordan in the early 20s, and then small again, with the independence of Transjordan. Bernard Wasserstein's book Israelis and Palestinians is the best place to get the story straight.
When Israel WAS wrong.
Israel IS wrong.
They have been killing near defenseless Palestinians on an almost daily basis for decades.
The slaughter of Palestinian children is 100% koser with many in that country.
And that is no blood libel.
Israeli strike kills four Gaza children at play
Palestinian children aged eight, nine, 11 and 12, killed by Israel fire while playing in field.
GAZA CITY – Four Palestinian children playing in a field were killed on Thursday in the latest Israeli air strike on the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, medics said.
The children, aged eight, nine, 11 and 12, were killed while they played in a field in the town of Jabaliya in the north of the territory, they said.
The Israeli army launched "several strikes that targeted and hit rocket-launching cells," an army spokeswoman said.
A separate raid shortly afterwards against a car in the northern town of Beit Hanun killed a Hamas militant, medics said.
Israel has launched a number of raids in and around the impoverished and isolated territory.
Thursday's deaths bring to at least 225 the number of Palestinians killed by Israelis since Israelis and Palestinians renewed their peace talks in late November.
Since the start of the second Palestinian uprising in September 2000, 6,187 people have died, the vast majority of them Palestinians.
So what percentage of the land comprising present day Israel
plus the "disputed" or "occupied" lands would the Palestinians
get for their state under Clinton's old road map and the BushCo's map?
"I won't stand with you in describing 'Zionism as racism'. I believe that Zionism is the affirmation of the Jewish people (a nation) to self-govern." – R. Witty
'Self-government,' which sounds so anodyne in principle, is the main reason why Israel declines to annex the West Bank and Gaza — it would dilute the all-important Jewish voting strength. As a result, Palestinians have spent forty years under harsh occupation, just so that high-minded Jews can practice their principled, exclusionary doctrine of self-government with an unassailable majority.
Here, let me substitute a different version of Witty's formula: "I believe that Aryanism is the affirmation of the White people (a nation) to self-govern."
Obviously racist, isn't it? Even menacing. Only the 'moral free pass' conferred by the Holocaust is supposed to make Witty's formulation acceptable when Jews are the beneficiaries — the logic being that victimhood justifies special treatment and privileges. Well, the moral free pass has expired. It's time for zionists to conform to the same humanitarian standards expected of others, or to be exposed as the racists they are.
Holocaust(TM) TRADEMARK VIOLATION ALERT — by an Israeli minister, no less! From the Guardian:
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An Israeli minister today warned of increasingly bitter conflict in the Gaza Strip, saying the Palestinians could bring on themselves what he called a "holocaust".
"The more Qassam [rocket] fire intensifies and the rockets reach a longer range, they will bring upon themselves a bigger shoah because we will use all our might to defend ourselves," Matan Vilnai, Israel's deputy defence minister, told army radio.
Shoah is the Hebrew word normally reserved to refer to the Jewish Holocaust. It is rarely used in Israel outside discussions of the Nazi extermination of Jews during the second world war, and many Israelis are loath to countenance its use to describe other events.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/feb/29/israelandthepalestinians1
http://tinyurl.com/2ajsft
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NOW can we say 'zionazi' without it being antisemitic? Or this latest Israeli outrage STILL not enough?
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