I don’t think I got it right about what is happening in Australia; I’m going to take another crack at it. And I thank the commenters who corrected me.
Last Wednesday, a group called Al-Nakba ran a large newspaper ad in The Australian, attacking a Parliamentary motion to celebrate Israel’s birth 60 years ago. The ad insisted that 1948 must more properly be remembered for the Nakba, or catastrophe of the Palestinian people. The language was unstinting:
Such a motion, which honours a foreign country’s independence while it is violating the rights of the indigenous people, occupying their land and breaching international law, is unprecedented in our Parliament’s history. It completely ignores the now well-documented historical record of Israel’s ethnic cleansing that began with the 1948 al-Nakba – the Palestinian catastrophe of dispossession and displacement – and which is continuing to this day. For sixty years, the Palestinians have been denied their rights, their freedom and their nationality…
The progressive group Independent Australian Jewish Voices called the ad a "Palestinian statement" and circulated it to its members in advance of publication. Sol Salbe has commented below that the ad got about 10 percent of the progressive Jewish group’s 400+ members as signatories. Not a "huge" amount of support, as I suggested. Apparently, many were disturbed by the ad’s strong language.
The ad deeply upset the established Jewish community. Here is a letter reportedly sent out by the leading organization of Sydney Jewry, the New South Wales Jewish Board of Deputies, in advance of the ad’s publication:
We believe that a letter harshly critical of Israel will be published in The Australian as a paid advertisement on Wednesday. Please encourage your friends – from the wider community, even more importantly than from within the Jewish community – to write letters to the editor of The Australian before 12 noon the day this letter appears (Wednesday), rebutting some of the outrageous statements. The address is…
The ongoing furor in Australia involves the fact that the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies reportedly suggested that the entire progressive group of Independent Australian Jewish Voices was behind the ad, when it was not.
I think my earlier headline, saying that Anti-Zionism has been rehabilitated in Australia, is an overstatement.
Richard Witty asks sternly whether I am now an Anti-Zionist, as opposed to a Post-Zionist. It is a very good question, and one I admit I’m confused on. A few months back the playwright David Zellnik said he was a Post-Zionist because being anti-Zionist meant you were denying the achievement/existence of the Israeli people. Zellnik is intelligent and kind; and I thought his an emulable position. I am not very knowledgeable in this area (Israeli history) and my mood tends to harden depending on what I’ve read. The last couple of days I have been reading The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, by Ilan Pappe, and am shocked by the extent to which the founders of Israel planned to create a "cradle" for Jewish nationalism in Palestine by expelling Palestinian Arabs, and then went about doing so. At that time, 1947, Arabs composed 2/3 of the population and U.N. Partition granted the Jewish settlers about half of Mandatory Palestine for a state. But this half was not enough in the eyes of the founders of Israel.
Pappe reproduces a New York Times article from April 1948 covering the Deir Yassin massacre, in a village outside Jerusalem, where more than 100 Palestinians were killed, mostly women and children and elderly. Deir Yassin was not part of the portion of the land granted by the U.N. to the Jews. But the town’s destruction was necessary for security, and for the possession of Jerusalem. The Times quotes a spokesman for the Irgun/Stern Gang forces saying that the village had become a concentration point for Iraqi and Syrian Arabs planning to attack Jews in west Jerusalem; "he regretted the casualties among the women and children at Deir Yasin but asserted that they were inevitable because almost every house had to be reduced by force…" [emphasis mine]
I find this article chilling because we see the very same rationalizations for violence, on both sides, today. My chief response is that the U.S. should not be taking taking sides in this horrific cycle of violence but should take a strong, evenhanded and international approach to seeking peace. It must be remembered that Even the U.N. Partition plan called for an open international city in Jerusalem. Israel, the more powerful side in this struggle, has not permitted this; and so violence will go on forever.
I apologize for my swings in tone/program. The one thing I do feel sure of is: Zionism is not the answer to peace in the Holy Land, and neither is Palestinian terror.
Related posts:
{ 27 comments }
I haven't read "Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine". I have read other books by Pappe.
I've heard it both severely criticized for its editorial selection, but also praised for candor and insights, by other new historians.
I've been confronted with quotes from the book, mostly the interpretations derived from his studies, and selections of events and data used.
Phil,
Have you read other histories of the period as well?
I recently read two histories of the modern history of Palestine, "A History of the Palestinian People" by Pappe, and "Palestinians, the Making of a People", by Baruch Kimmerling.
They are both dissenting historians, both very critical of Israeli policies, Pappe critical of Zionism at all, Kimmerling supportive of liberal Zionism.
They, and Bennie Morris, included some of the same selections of evidence, but also very different.
The pre-67 history in the three books was similar, identifying qualitatively destabalizing events effecting Palestinians from the late 19th century, profound destabalizations that culminated in modern Zionism, but did not originate in modern Zionism.
Moreso, modernity and western institutions associated with modernity, of which Zionism is a flavor.
I don't know if Deir Yassin was necessary. I doubt it. Interestingly, Bennie Morris reported that the massacre was functionally stopped by the intervention of orthodox neighbors.
To my mind, the more compelling Israeli actions are the series of laws passed in the early fifties:
1. prohibiting physical return from the prior war zone
2. granting title to abandoned land to the state of Israel, applicable over a very short statute of limitations
Immediately following the war, those actions seem understandable as a temporary measure. Now though, they should be repealed, and even this late, those that had even relative title should be able to assert their title rights, and seek amenable remedy.
An agreement on sovereignty though is a prerequisite to addressing those specific title claims.
The United States should be taking sides, both sides. It should stand behind Israel's defense as promised. And, it should stand behind Palestine's and Palestinians' rights.
The renunciation of responsibility there is the worst that it could do.
The FACT that Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia have not yet recognized the state of Israel even at 67 borders (they promise to conditionally, but have not yet) makes the current status still a state of deferred war.
The shift to recognition would remove a large obstacle in the process of unraveling the oppressive elements of the construction.
Its as if they still think that Zionism is temporary, that Israel is temporary, and will soon disappear as a state, and as a residence of 6 million Jews now (same approximate number as estimated killed on racial grounds in the holocaust).
I think they should call Israel's bluff, and move on.
One modest contribution to peace in the area would be to stop calling it "the Holy Land."
Today marks the fifth anniversary of the death of Rachel Corrie, near Rafah. Phil Weiss wrote about that and the play written about the young woman, "My Name is Rachel Corrie," for the magazine "The Nation," a while back.
In that article, Weiss mentions that in 2004, I had attempted to have a musical work about Corrie performed, only to have it cancelled twice in the United States. We performed it in London, finally, on November 1, 2005.
Today, I have finally posted the entire London performance on the web for the first time. Additionally, I've posted the speech about the work, which I gave at the University of Alaska Anchorage on April 8, 2004.
If you click on my name or the url link, it will take you to the links.
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"… whether I am now an Anti-Zionist, as opposed to a Post-Zionist … is a very good question, and one I admit I'm confused on."
I would humbly suggest that the post-zionist era will begin when the West Bank Wall is gone, just as Germany's post-communist era commenced when the Berlin Wall fell.
Phil's honesty about his doubts and confusion and changing attitudes is disarming and remarkable. Everyone else has an armor-protected, packaged position. Phil exhibits his thought process to all. Truly refreshing, in our jaded world of bombastic bullshit.
I remember a Rachel Levy getting vaporized in a jerusalem market. But what the hell right, only another dead Jew. Rachel Corrie wen t into a war zone and got killed, happens all the time. It's only too bas that she can't be dug up and run over again.
Richard, I have to ask you, What if Zionism ended tomorrow and no one else died? Would that be worth it? For me, a lot of these issues come down to, What is an ideology worth, in human blood? Jim Haygood's point re The Wall reminds me that Communism stopped making sense after a while.
Leaving aside for a moment the political issues here, on an ideological level, do you ever think,as I do: Well Zionism made a lot of sense after the Holocaust, but it doesn't make much sense now when We really are safe in western societies. And Zionism has had a 60 year period in which to try to be more inclusive. Even Michael Walzer has siad, Jews aren't that good at governing others.
But again, is an idea worth a life? If you could wave a wand and no one would die from now on from violence, but there would be a binational state, would that be a bad deal?
For me the legitimacy of Israel is questionable right from the start. Professor Francis Boyle has argued that the UN acted 'ultra vires' in 1947 when it partitioned Palestine and Israel was allocated more than half of the remaining mandated territory.
The further expansion to the 1967 borders (78% of the mandated territory) was also contrary to international law (the Stimson doctrine, later adopted by the League of Nations, implies non-recognition of the extension of a state's borders effected by force).
Neighboring states thus only follow this (US originated) doctrine when they do not recognise these 1967 borders.
Yet they, as anybody else, can see that Israel is now a 'fact on the ground'.
What about the matter of recognition: Witty argues that the lack of this by neighboring states implies the continuation of a state of deferred war with these countries.
I don't see why.
In the following piece Uri Avnery comes up with some sensible statements as far as recognition by Hamas is concerned. They apply, mutatis mutandis, also to the neighboring states:
"But how can one reach a settlement with an organization that declares that it will never recognize Israel and whose charter calls for the destruction of the Jewish state?
All this matter of "recognition" is nonsense, a pretext for avoiding a dialogue. We do not need "recognition" from anybody. When the United States started a dialogue with Vietnam, it did not demand to be recognized as an Anglo-Saxon, Christian, and capitalist state.
If A signs an agreement with B, it means that A recognizes B. All the rest is hogwash.
And in the same matter: The fuss over the Hamas charter is reminiscent of the ruckus about the PLO charter, in its time. That was a quite unimportant document, which was used by our representatives for years as an excuse to refuse to talk with the PLO. Heaven and earth were moved to compel the PLO to annul it. Who remembers that today?".
Arie Brand
"Well Zionism made a lot of sense after the Holocaust, but it doesn't make much sense now when We really are safe in western societies."
A good question.
Have you read my questions to you on clarifying what you mean by "post-Zionism"?
There are two parts of Zionism:
1. A haven from persecution
2. Self-governance of the Jewish people (the nation)
Are either needed, are either worthy of fighting for?
For me, I've only experienced incidental anti-semitism, nothing threatening that I remember. But, I grew up in a Jewish "ghetto" in suburban New York.
My mother-in-law's experienced slave labor camps (her nuclear family survived). Her husband's family didn't. She was abused when she returned to her family's home town. Some other family had occupied their house, and they weren't giving it up, and threatening those Jews that did return.
Israel was a haven for her. But, after my wife was born in 1956 in Jaffa, they left at their first opportunity. Constant war and poverty.
She tells us of repeated incidents of "petty" anti-semitism in London. A small software executive that I know told me similarly about France.
Other survivors that I've met told me of the status of Jews in the 50's and 60's in Europe and the US, still experiencing quotas. They stated that they attribute their modern status as equals TO the presence of Israel, not just the guilt or sympathy from holocaust, and not just as the evolution of the host countries' political attitudes. (The US has progressed. There are not lynchings now and voting and civil rights of minorities are protected by law, women are nearly full participants in public affairs. There are no quotas excluding Jews from professions.)
Its hard to know the cause of Jews' acceptance in the west.
The bad signs are in the left/right, that I see. There is now a lot of contempt hurled at Jews in many of the old repeated paranoias. You yourself repeat many of the conspiracy elements (but don't go so far as to accuse, but pretty damn close), dominance of finance, dominance of media, dual-loyalty. They are the elements of fascist page design.
There is no way that the elements even get mentioned except by the selected interpretation of the inferences. Who cares what percentage of Jews are in Wall Street investment firms, unless there is collusion to exclude others, which I doubt.
Even the inference of stating your observation of successful Jews in the meritocracy (as a pejorative), and then implying that in the "democracy" of the blogosphere, that someone rise to defend it against imagined inferences, is very McCarthyesque.
Self-governance is very related to issue of need for haven.
People desire self-governance rather than to be governed by others. For those that don't prominently self-identify as a Jew, its not an issue.
Most of the Jewish residents of Israel have experienced persecution in their lives. European survivors, exiles from Arab countries, exiles from Soviet Russia, exiles from communist Ethiopia. Sabras have experienced four all-out wars (1948, 56, 67, 73) and recently two intifadas, and MANY terror incidents.
There is little confidence that individual Jews and communities will be permitted liberty in an Arab dominated millieu.
I prefer post-Zionism. But, it is not a fantasy. It only occurs if Zionism is not necessary. To the extent that the seeds of persecution are fed, and then acted on, it becomes necessary.
Have you read Pappe really? One of his contentions is that he is NOT a realist historian. He is NOT attempting to discover what really happened, all in all, but to present a perspective.
If you acknowledge that Zionism was likely necessary after WW2, then the events of 1948 are a quandry. An internal psychological drama of the scale of the Mahabharata or Shakespeare, NOT trivializable by the simplistic "Zionism is racism".
I don't think justice can be arrived at by excluding the Palestinian perspective, nor do I believe that it can be arrived at by simply adopting it.
One impression struck me at a recent presentation that I attended by Gershon Baskin and Hanna Sinioria of Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information (IPCRI).
That was that Hanna (a Palestinian) was amazingly compromising in a very positive sense, existentially so. At the same time, Gershon expressed about the same as I, appreciating the Palestinian experience (more enlightened than the xenophobic), but somewhat vainly assuming that Zionism was a given.
Although I disagree with objective parallels between Palestine and the holocaust, for Palestinians, the all-encompassing character of Israeli domination of occupation is similar qualitatively.
What is bitterly ironic in comtemporary society is the fact that Herzl's vision for Zionism (ie the Jewish safe haven) is a place where they are less likely to be safe than in the Diaspora of Western nations. To the European elites, Zionism may have solved problems of assimilation and identity crises but with today's world that has many Jewish members in prominent posts and geniune anti-Semitism on the wane, the "need" for a Jewish state is becoming less of a sanctuary replacing it with a (misconceived) spiritual connection to ancient texts. I find more responses for Israel's existence related to the ancient kingdom rather than the belief that the Jewish state is one of necessity for a safe haven for Jews. Hence the need to overstate anti-Semitism when it does not occur and the inflated coverage of terrorism and "existential threats" from Arab neighbours when every one of them simply wants the land that was taken from them back.
The pro-Zionist contingent here doesn't seem to deal with the settlements. They don't seem to deal with the ongoing expansion of the settlements and American money going to fund that building. They don't seem to deal with the fact that settlers build on land owned by Palestinians, which is theft, of course. In other words , the viewpoint of the Zionists seems to be narcissistic, that is, their safety, their mandate, their spiritual claims being paramount.
what is anti-semitism, by michael neuman
http://www.counterpunch.org/neumann0604.html
Richard Witty:
'Other survivors that I've met told me of the status of Jews in the 50's and 60's in Europe and the US, still experiencing quotas.'
What quotas, in which countries? Do you include Britain in Europe? If so, as a Brit, I would be most interested to know of quotas on Jewish entry to education, the professions, or anything else that existed in the Fifties and Sixties.
There are two parts of Zionism:
1. A haven from persecution
2. Self-governance of the Jewish people (the nation)
Are either needed, are either worthy of fighting for?
———
Even if they were needed, ethnic Ashkenazim would have had no right to steal Palestine from the native population.
Witty simply believes a false self-serving history to justify ethnic Ashkenazi crimes.
I doubt nothing irritates non-Jews more about Jews than the refusal to the common Jewish refusal to apply the same ethical standards to themselves that they apply to everyone else.
Witty's misuse of history was typical of German Nazis, and Witty is himself an ethnic Ashkenazi Nazi.
Because Zionists like Witty have no problem with calling their critics anti-Semites and Nazis, progressive Jews need to be really explicit
1. that Jewish Zionists are Nazis in every way, shape and form and
2. that identifying Zionists as Nazis is completely legitimate and historically accurate.
I realized about 11 years that studying people like Witty are the best way to gain insight into the German Nazi mentality, and the applicability of The Nazi Conscience by Koonz to understanding the State of Israel is impressive.
There was no persecution of Jews in either Central and Eastern Europe. Murderous hatred against Jews arose in Central and Eastern Europe after ethnic Ashkenazim were up to their eyeballs in mass murder, ethnic cleansing as the quintessential Soviet Class.
For Jews to claim the right to steal Palestine because they were hated in Europe is like the guy that demanded mercy from the court for being an orphan when he was being tried for murdering his parents.
To get a sense of the disconnect between Jewish beliefs and reality read Tsar Nicholas I and the Jews, The Transformation of Jewish Society in Russia 1825-1855, by the eminent Columbia Professor Michael Stanislawski.
****
The Legal Context (pp. 5 – 8)
The basic premise of all analyses of the legal history of the Jews in Russia in the nineteenth century was formulated most succinctly by the first authority on the subject, I.G. Orshanskii. In the opening pages of his Russian Legislation on the Jews, published in 1877, Orshanskii identified a fundamental juridical distinction between the Jews and all other citizens of the Russian state: the latter possess inherent and inalienable rights restricted by the government only in the interests of other individuals of of society at large, while the Jews enjoy only those limited rights specificaly granted them by law. All other Russians enjoy the fundamental right of unrestricted residence, while the Jews are forbidden to live in all but a few regions of the country. Treated sometimes as foreigners, most of the time worse, the Jews constitute "a special class of semi citizens, or better put, citizens of a specific art of the state — a phenomenal, one might say, unparallelled circumstance."
…..
Until 1905 there were no citizens in Russia, only subjects. These subjects had no innate right to live or work in any particular manner; they possessed only those rights granted them as privileges by the emperor. Limitations on residence, economic activity, or intellectual pursuits were therefore the results no necessarily of deliberate restriction but rather of the lack of positive legislative permission. To use Orshanskii's first example, but to formulate it in the objective — if objectionable — language of the tsarist legal system, the jews were granted the privilege of living wherever they chose ina determined area of the empire; the overwhelming majority of the population was not granted the privilege of any voluntary mobility until 1861, and then just barely so. The Jews were permitted to reside in Moscow only under special conditions, with police approval; to this day, residence in this city is possible only under special conditions, with police approval.
…
The legal status of the Jews in Russia was in many ways the reverse of Orshanskii's formulations: they were clearly differentiated from foreigners and recognized as native subjects of the empire, liable to the general laws of the state in all cases for which there was no special legislation in their regard.
To be sure, this special legislation was discriminatory, in the sense that it both distinguished Jews from other categories of subjects and exhibited a clear anti-Jewsih bias. However, in a patrimonial state such as Imperial Russia, discriminination was the rule rather than the exemption and hense entirely relative. Any analysis of the legal status of Russian jews therefore must be made within the context of the entire Russian legal corpus.
***
There was and is no Jewish people. There was an Ashkenazi ethnic group, which has no ancestral connection whatsoever to Palestine, but the vast majority of ethnic Ashkenazim had no interest in national self-determination in E. Europe or elsewhere.
(See http://eaazi.blogspot.com/2008/02/attacking-shohat-falsifying-jewish.html including the comments for a discussion of Jewish ethnography in the context of Jewish Arabs.)
To believe that ethnic Ashkenazim have legitimate claim to Palestine on the basis of the slicing and dicing of scripture as well as a complete misinterpretation of Jewish history is so extreme that it is psychotic and delusional, and as long as the USA supports murderous genocidal racist Zionist thieves, interlopers and invaders in Palestine, no US politician has any legitimate grounds to call any anti-American group extreme.
At this point a very dangerous group of Jewish racists have manipulated the USA into incinerating Iraq as well undermining any chance at stability in Somalia.
This same group of Jewish racists are working on manipulating the USA into incinerating the Sudan and Iran.
Genuine progressives have an obligation to call these Jewish racists what they are — a criminal subversive conspiracy of genocidal terrorism supporters.
They belong in jail (and that includes Richard Witty) and all their assets should be seized and put to undoing the damage that Zionism has either done directly or manipulated the USA into doing. Many should be on trial for capital crimes.
Now that the USA has destroyed Iraq, the USA can only reestablish its credibility by abolishing the State of Israel and eradicating Zionism as a criminal ideology at least as bad as German Nazism.
This prescription is harsh, but it necessary as a matter of US national salvation and not simply a matter of sympathy for Palestinians or anger at Zionist criminals and their contemptible supporters in the USA.
"…Jews that would disdain a political program if the Bronfmans, the Krafts, Wexner, or Adelson proposed it fall over themselves in obedience if "profession Jewish leaders" from the organized Jewish community advocate the selfsame program as necessary to the survival of the Jewish state." from http://eaazi.blogspot.com/2008/03/is-wealth-jewish-value.html .
http://eaazi.blogspot.com/2008/03/subjugating-american-muslims-to-israel.html discusses some particularly disturbing behavior from the Israeli consulate.
And just take a look at the articles that http://eaazi.blogspot.com/search?q=%22thought+control%22 brings up.
An "impressive" post Joachim.
Joachim,
Is Ilan Pappe a Zionazi. He's not a Zionist, but he is a Jewish communist, who continues to live in Israel under the protection of Israeli laws.
Is Phil Weiss a ZioNazi?
He's not sure whether he's an anti-Zionist, a post-Zionist, or a liberal Zionist.
I should be put in jail?
"There was no persecution of Central or European Jews"?
Shame on you, Phil! Shame! Oz is the country, Aussie is the people.
Master Race – Chosen people
Fatherland – Promised land
Ayran purity – Jewish tribalism
These are all the same thing.
Anyone who doesn't get this is sick..please report to your nearest mental hospital.
Ilan Pappe lives in the UK as far as I know.
Last time he was at Harvard, the administration of the University of Haifa was trying to fire him, I circulated a petition on the Harvard and my mailing lists on his behalf, but I asked him why he was torturing himself when he could probably get a position elsewhere. He seems to have taken my suggestion.
I see no evidence that Phil is giving material assistance to (Zionist) terrorism.
In contrast, Richard Witty seems to fall within the scope of US anti-terrorism laws.
I don't like the laws that the Bush administration has implemented in the War on Terror, but as long as they are on the books, Jews must be just as subject to them as non-Jews.
Therefore, the entire organized Jewish community should be shut down and all assets seized just like HLF, CARE and many components of the organized Muslim community.
Dershowitz, Wisse, Lassner, Gelernter, Levin, and Zionist throughout Academic must receive precisely the same treatment as Sami al-Arian.
All assets of Saban, Spielberg, Bronfman, Wexner, Belfer, Murdoch, the Asters, the Krafts, Adelson, and similar Mega donors to Zionist causes should be seized.
The donors themselves should all be arrested and sent to Guantanamo where they can be interrogated according to Dershowitzian principles to determine the extent of their terrorist and anti-American conspiracy.
Well let's recongize that Jews have been kicked out of country after country since time immemorial.
Christians and others have also been persecuted and run out but let's leave that aside for the moment.
The question is why this has happened to the Jews? Jews like Witty would have us believe that in every instance of presecution the Jews were totally innocent of any behavior in a country's society or government that caused their explusion.
Is it possible that the Jews have been the only group on earth who have always been totally right and totally innocent since the begining of time and all their enemies totally wrong and totally evil since the begining of time?
I don't think this is humanly or logically possible or probable.
Even in the holocaust they leave out the all the other victims of the nazis, the homosexuals, the disabled, the enemies of the state that were also wiped out for the good of the Fatherland.
Why is it that what the zionist call anti-semitism on the rise? Why do they try to call criticism of Israel the new anti-semitism? Is this a ploy by the zionistas to link all the jews behind them and use them for cover? Obviously a lot of jews like Witty buy into this.
This whole thing about hating jews just because they are jewish is exactly like the Orwellian Americanism…"they hate us for our freedom" reasoning after 911.
Every thinking reasonable person on earth knows it's not "who" are, it's what you "do".
What are the Jews doing with AIPAC and Israel and Palestine that leads others to be disgusted with them?…that's what they need to own up to.
But if the Jews like Witty haven't learned this thruout the centuries it's unlikely their mentality is ever going to change. They help create the never ending cycle of what they call anti-semitism.
So much for the myth of jewish intelligence.
You two are proving the point that Zionism may still be necessary, that post-Zionism is an impossibility.
Yeah, right. The German Nazis used to claim that Germans were victims, too.
Witty, you are an ethnic Ashkenazi Nazi and almost not even worth contempt.
Jews will be hated until stolen and occupied Palestine is returned to its native population, and Zionists are punished for their crimes.
Jews, who are not Zionists, should probably start speaking out against Zionism as a criminal Nazi genocidal terrorist ideology, with which they refuse to be associated
Didn't Jews want non-Nazi Germans to do that in the 30s?
Phil, maybe you are a pre-revisionist. Jabotinskism is the bane of liberal zionism. It is the thread that brings Meir Kahane to the table.
You demonstrate the need for haven, for the necessity for strong defense.
And Richard you demonstrate the querulous egoism that makes "your people" (isn't Judaism a religion?), that is to say, the murderous ideology that has attempted to speak for "your people", ever more rogue and untrustworthy in the eyes of Americans.
Maybe it's as Grand Rabbi Joel Teitelbaum predicted, "haven" Zionism has become a self-fulfilling prophecy?
In any case, this much is obvious: Zionists like you, who show no ability to reckon with the true extent of the crimes committed, stand in the way of any just resolution to the conflict in Palestine.
Richard,
You say that Israel is a "haven for persecution." Yet you also say that "Its as if they still think that Zionism is temporary, that Israel is temporary, and will soon disappear as a state, and as a residence of 6 million Jews now" While we can argue about that last point (what about the Arab Peace Initiative?), you don't seem to realize how the 2 quotes undermine each other: If Israel really is so vulnerable, then what kind of haven is it? You may not like the Arab/Muslim view of Israel as a colonial-settler state, but it is a fact, as much as the historic European persecution of Jews is a fact.
I agree with Joshua that the rationale for Israel has more to do with the connection to the Holy Land than with creating a haven from perseuction. What does aliyah have to do with creating a haven from persecution? A couple of years ago, Israel rebuked Germany for taking in Russian Jews instead of sending them to Israel. What does sending Jews to Israel instead of Germany have to do with persecution?
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