It's too bad that Huffington Post runs bellicose articles like this one by Amitai Etzioni, in which he rationalizes the Israeli occupation and dismisses the idea of separation between church and state as high-falutin' western values. I thought Huffpo was more enlightened than this.
I just heard Ehud Olmert speaking about democracy on television, introducing George Bush. I was in the barber shop, and had brought Righteous Victims, Benny Morris's book, with me to read while I was waiting. I came on the following episode, in Chapter 14:
Following elections in 1999, Ehud Barak, the Labor leader, wanted to create a new coalition to replace Netanyahu. Barak had 50 votes from Labor and four other centrist and left-wing factions, short of a majority in the 120-seat Knesset. "Another 10 votes, held by three Arab parties, could be expected to go along with Barak on the peace process, but the new prime minister was loath to induct them into his coalition and make it dependent on Arab consent," Morris writes. So Barak ended up making a coalition with the religious right, Shas. I.e., a center-left guy built his coalition with religious right Jews so as to escape the Arab grasp.
This is interesting for a few reasons. Barak failed at Camp David the following year to make a peace with Arafat. I generally blame Israeli intransigence (insistence on an undivided Jerusalem, on a security force on the Jordan river, and unjust appropriation of West Bank colonies) but Arafat surely also deserves some blame. Whatever-- If Barak had had Arabs in his coalition, would he have behaved differently? Would Arafat and the Arab world Arafat had to represent, visavis the holy sites in Jerusalem, have behaved differently?
Also, if Israel is a true democracy, why is there an objection to giving power to Arabs in a coalition dependent on them? After all, that is the character of a representative democracy: one man, one vote, and some day, some way, your vote may be the determinative one. Arabs were denied that opportunity by the Israeli left, in favor of Jewish parties. The same Jewish parties that are now forcing Olmert to build more illegal colonies. Imagine for a moment an American group being left out in the cold politically on a racial basis--it's unimaginable, especially in post-Obamaland. This just shows: Israeli-Arabs are second-class citizens.
Finally, I would note that Benny Morris is garlanded by the pro-Israel mainstream American press as a balanced sage. He is the darling of the New Republic, the New Yorker has lately written that he flatters no one's prejudices, least of all his own. Can you imagine an American historian, or an Arab one, passing along this disturbing information in such a matter-of-fact manner, without comment?
Israel is not a democracy but is an Eastern European ethnocracy transplanted to the Middle East. With its history how could the State of Israel be otherwise?
Real Democracy scale: 1-100 referendum, under the circumscribing Bill of Rights.
USA: 30%
Europe: 25%
Russia & border friends: 15%
Asia: 10%
Israel: 3%
Arab lands: 1%
No one has to force the Israeli government to build settlements.
See link to eaazi.blogspot.com
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I think Barak did not want Arabs in the coalition because he did not want a perception that the agreement did not have Jewish majority, not because he could not bear the thought of having Arabs in his government. I agree that this indicates a certain level of racism but not necessarily of Barak himself but rather of the Israeli public.
I doubt that Arab presence in the coalition would have changed the outcome. What with the fact that even without it there wasn't a consensus in Israel about the agreement, so, Barak did not necessarily have the goods he promised Arafat.
Re: Morris and "can you imagine an American historian, or an Arab one, passing along this disturbing information in such a casual, matter-of-fact manner, without comment?" I actually disagree. A historian should rather keep his opinions to himself and present only the relevant historical information to the reader, otherwise he'd blur the line between a historical work and an opinion piece (not that this principle can really be followed to the letter). So, I think Morris was right not to comment on the issue. That is not to say that Morris is not a bigot, which he is.
Just look at the USA congressional and Executive transfer of money from hardworking Americans to the Zionist elite and upper middle class or wealthy American Jews. Of course the gentile wing of BushCo ride & partially drive the gravy train.
While bush Jenna has a great wedding, Private Jenna & James die–over there, over there. Or they are back here now, begging for help. If we took the money we give to Israel (& Egypt, just to make peace with Israel), we could pay for a new thorough GI Bill of Rights, to thank our own "ragmen" and women, that 1% and their families.
It will not happen.
This nation is a joke in terms of the best colors of its own flag.
Actually, many Americans feel this deep in their bones.
They don't have easy access to the problem, and are subject daily to MSM diversion and misinformation.
One day the slaves will revolt.
It will be a coalition.
Out of the 3, only Obama offers even a faint hope.
He should consult Ron Paul.
The historical narrative that Remnick summarizes in link to newyorker.com
is quite tendentious and has been challenged in key points by historians like Stanislawski and Kornberg.
It also misses the most important point which is the link-up of Western European wealth and influence with Central and Eastern European Zionist intelligentsia to send Eastern European Proletarians to Palestine.
This event, which I date to the addressing of the Balfour Declaration to Lord Rothschild, represents the initial materialization of the Zionist Virtual Colonial Motherland (ZVCM), whose public face today is the Israel Lobby.
I call the ZVCM Judonia, and I estimate that it's GDP (insofar as one can speak of a GDP for a virtual imperial state) is $2 trillion.
See link to members.aol.com
or link to members.aol.com
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The history and politics of the State of Israel constitute a distraction or sideshow from the real power center which is Judonia.
This notion that Israeli Arabs are second class citizens is hotly contested when I bring this up. I do not have sufficient details to answer these criticisms often. So I have a question and request for a reference to something I have heard but have not been able to document.
That is the Natl Jewish Fund, when it sells land in Israel puts a covenant on the title that the property can be owned only by Jews. This covenant covers 22% of the land. Is this described somewhere?
Judonia is a poor name because it sounds like a region in a role playing game.
"A historian should rather keep his opinions to himself and present only the relevant historical information to the reader, otherwise he'd blur the line between a historical work and an opinion piece (not that this principle can really be followed to the letter)."
I agree and I disagree. Since I think that objectivity is ultimately an illusion. Even the historian makes choices and decides how to present them. He does a good job, but he does not go as far as e.g. Avi Shlaim. Is Avi Shlaim prejudiced and Morris is not? How shaped is Shlaim's perception by the route of his studies? The Jordanian connection. Maybe even the fact that Shlaim lives in the UK and Morris in Israel?
As a historian Morris is confronted with the ultimate dilemma that are on its peak visible in Richard Witty's arguments. The right based on a sacred book. That is a unprecedented position in human history. The core of all the other rationalizations, the people that were not a nation, thus had no rights, terra nullius, …
The neocon's offer one way to get Israel out of this dilemma: Change the ME, democratize Israels surroundings. Use power, bomb them into surrender. Shock and Awe.
Unfortunately that brings reality close to the old myth; and I think that is the most dangerous scenario and the Jewish diaspora.
I have also worried about the term Judonia, but alternate terms like the Israel Lobby or Zionist Power Configuration seem inadequate to me.
On the other hand Polonia has meaning in the context of partitioned Poland when the Polish intelligentsia (Inteligencja Polska) kept alive the spirit of Poland in exile after the collapse of Commonwealth Poland (Rzeczpospolita Polska).
In some sense Judonia is an evolved counterpart to Polonia, and the Neocons as Zionist Intelligentsia have hybrid characteristics of the Polish Inteligencja and the Russian Intelligentsia.
[Note that today Polonia just refers to the Polish Diaspora even though in the past it had more revolutionary and conspiratorial connotation.]
Unfortunately, also this terminology probably only has meaning for those conversant with Eastern European history.
BTW, "Fire in the Minds of Men" by Billington is worth reading to get a sense of the conspiratorial aspect of Eastern European, Russian and (by analogy) Zionist politics. (Billington does discuss Zionism in passing, but I do not have the impression of much familiarity with the primary Zionist literature.)
shit happens/correction:
and I think that is the most dangerous scenario for *both Israel* and the Jewish diaspora.
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Besides I am reading that things are getting worse in Israel's south:
"The Negev has become an official site of Russian Roulette.
No tickets/purchase necessary.
Come as you are.
Hopefully, you will make it back home safely, and your home will be safe."
BTW, issues of Israeli land law are complex, and there are multiple organizations that serve in the process of alienating property from the native Palestinian population.
The most important historically are the Jewish National Fund, the Custodian of Absentee Properties, and the Israel Land Authority.
Nowadays, the ILA is probably the most important agent of theft from Palestinians, and the whole process has the flavor of German Nazi Aryanization Laws.
By creating a legal framework for stealing from Jews, the German Nazis gave the appearance of legitimacy to actions that amounted to theft.
The German Nazis may have borrowed the idea from the Zionists because publications and articles associated with the First Zionist Congress in Basle stressed the necessity of creating a legal framework to take Palestine away from the native population because otherwise non-Jews might object.
The MSM is desperate for sages and historians that they can put forward as a fig leaf. Poor Remnick. I think people are catching on that the New Yorker is a Jewish entertainment. He only bestirs himself to write something himself when the zionist zeitgest is in danger of being altered. Witness his response to M&W in Talk of the Town( can't remember the date). The cartoon on p.114 of the May12 issue is as open an acknowledgement as you can get that the Jews are our overlords.
"This notion that Israeli Arabs are second class citizens is hotly contested when I bring this up."
If I remember correctly it is indirect. Arabs have equal right, but certain things, like cheap credits for building a house, depend on having been in the Army.
It might get difficult if you dig closer into the history of these matters. What motivated early Israeli's to not demand of Arab citizen to fight in the army? Not necessarily only sinister thoughts. Image: they would have to fight their own. So there might have been a complex discussion.
But, I think, I once read, that certain cheap credits depend on having been in the army. Maybe that is only one thing I remember in this context. Obviously whatever it is, rules, regulations, laws, they sideline the equality on the surface.
But I forgot were I read it. Maybe in the books of Sumaya Farhat Naser a Palestinian or in books of Israeli dissenters e.g. Amira Haas.
Yep.
So, will this change anything, even slightly? (drum roll):
John Edwards endorsed Barack Obama for president today.
Joachim,
At least the concept of racial purity is the same. Nazi-Zionist. The same. No difference.
I don't know if we can characterize this as Jewish.
Gilad Atzmon makes the point the the Jews who were major contributors to Western culture were outsiders in the Jewish tribe. That they in fact were spurned by the tribe. The contributions did not come from inside the ghetto. He also makes the interesting point that Israel is a recreation of the ghetto.
"By creating a legal framework for stealing from Jews, the German Nazis gave the appearance of legitimacy to actions that amounted to theft."
I don't object. They made their own rules, the even made Jews pay the train fees in stock cars, with not much space and without water …
"The German Nazis may have borrowed the idea from the Zionists because publications and articles associated with the First Zionist Congress in Basle stressed the necessity of creating a legal framework to take Palestine away from the native population because otherwise non-Jews might object."
You have to be careful, Joachim, "may" is the important word here. Also, please forgive, but the allusion to the Zionist Congress especially the one in Basle, makes all my lights blink in a really high cadence. You know why?
But tell me on what writing of Buber you rely concerning his heightened Nationalism in WWI. You are aware of the war fever of the European male then, are you? A really amazing matter, but that joy did not survive too long in the trenches. Read the English war time poets, they bear witness.
The guys all over Europe went to war in a joyous fever, not that it survived the trenches for very long though.
But tell me what writings of Buber you have in mind?
I like Gilad's writing, but the ghetto was not really characteristic of Eastern Europe where Jews more typically lived in derflakh or shtetlakh. (English tends to use shtetl were derfl is really meant.)
The break between Westernizing or modernizing Jews and the Jewish community is generally not so large as commonly assumed.
Isaac Deutscher refers to the non-Jewish Jew. I prefer secular Ashkenazi or secular Yiddish.
Yes, Remarque pretty much captured that fever–not that anyone learned from his book, or the excellent film. It was the same during the American Civil War. Both sides, the cannon fodder that was, figured it would be over in three months. In the early battles, their families came to watch with picnic baskets.
From link to david.juden.at
Martin Buber (1878-1965) politisierte Chanukka 1914 in seiner Rede „Die Tempelweihe“ sogar so weit, indem er den 1. Weltkrieg mit dem Krieg der Makkabäer verglich. In dieser Rede, die er bei einer zionistischen Chanukka-Feier gehalten hatte, bezeichnete Buber die Teilnahme am Weltkrieg als eine befreiende national-jüdische Erfahrung. Diese Rede rief bei Zeitgenossen und Freunden wie Gustav Landauer (1870-1919) oder Gershom Scholem (1897-1982) tiefes Entsetzen hervor.
„Wegen der geringeren Bedeutung des Feiertages war seine Umdeutung leichter als die eines der großen religiösen Feste. Die Makkabäer boten sich geradezu an für die Schaffung einer heroischen nationalen Tradition. Das göttliche Wunder des Lichts als zentrales Element der Chanukka-Geschichte trat in den Hintergrund, dagegen betonte die zionistische Lesart das Vorbild für Aufstand und Selbstbefreiung, den Kampf der Nationalisten gegen Assimilation und das großartige Ziel: eine unabhängige jüdische Nation.“ (Michael S. Friedlander, Makkabai – Das Branding eines jüdischen Helden, in: Weihnukka, Geschichten von Weihnachten und Chanukka, Berlin 2005, S.61)
I remember reading this particular speech and thinking that Buber made far more offensive blood-oriented racial comments that did not offend Landauer or Scholem.
I will check my library when I get home to see if I can find any juicy quotes.
In truth I found the much later essays from Ein Land und Zwei Voelker to be quite offensive in their assumption that Jewish Germans and Eastern European ethnic Ashkenazi had the right to relocate to Palestine despite the wishes of the native Palestinian population.
'I thought Huffpo was more enlightened than this.'
Hardly. It sat on it's collective hands, just like the MSM, while Israel went on it's ill-fated Lebanese rampage two years ago, while running pices by Haim Saban's wife.
They are insiders, not boat-rockers.
Ok, Joachim, I can see what you mean.
But two points.
The Zeitgeist the fervor to go to war. (Thanks Charles, for pointing out the parallel in the US)
You can't get more equal than fighting side by side. In fact many German Jews thought they could never be harmed after having fought in WWI, it would all pass. And I do not find it very strange that somebody that is well verse in the bible uses biblical parallels.
I can't follow the link now. I'll send you my mail address don't post more here. I might miss it in the next couple of days.
"In fact many German Jews thought they could never be harmed after having fought in WWI, it would all pass."– LeaNder
Yes, and this in at least one sense, is what I take to be Witty's concern, that this could happen again, even in the USA. It's not to be sneezed at, despite all Witty's deceptive rationalizations, and despite the the very different principled history of the USA under its evolved Constitution and Amendments thereto.
The neocon American Jews and AIPAC don't see that, in the interest of preserving a safe haven for world wide Jews, using American Gentile blood and treasure while overlooking justice for the Palestinians in the name of America, are actually changing and increasing the long term dynamics a la Phil Roth's worse paranoid fears.
The post-WWI situation in Germany and Austria was very complex because of
1. the "repatriation" of Ostdeutschen,
2. increasing fear of the Soviet Union (viewed with some justification — we now know — as dominated by Judeo-Bolsheviks), and
3. the aftermath of the Bavarian Communist Coup (also viewed with some justification as an attempted Jewish Putsch).
Ostdeutschen, who were much more hostile to Jews than other German non-Jews, were disproportionately represented in the NSDAP.
Yet, the Nazi leadership realized that anti-Semitism would be a loser in the 1932 elections and studiously avoided running as an anti-Semitic party.
The Nazi campaign emphasized a sort of return to the national communal spirit of 1914 and a can-do approach on the economic front.
One could almost argue that Hitler ran as a sort of proto-Reagan. They were both in many ways pop-media creatures or creations.
Joachim, all you say is historically accurate from what I've read.
I am trying to point out that the Jews in power in the USA are the worst enemies of the rest of America's Jews, and of America & Israel's best long term interests, not to mention they don't give a fig about Palestinians, which in the long run, the World notices.