I'm reading Benny Morris's new book 1948. Pretty damn good, but flawed (but then what isn't?). Morris uses the word "pogrom" to describe Arab riots aimed at Jews in the Arab world following the U.N. partition vote in 1947. According to Wikipedia, pogrom is a Russian word for "violent outbreak." And it is an emotionally/politically-laden term for Jews. I grew up hearing about late-19th-century pogroms against my ancestors in Russia. It's completely legit of Morris to import the term to Arabia. Myself, I use the word "pogrom" to describe the possibility of violence against Jews in the U.S., which I regard as highly unlikely.
I bring this up, though, to point out that much of the objection to "apartheid," also a politically-laden term that has crossed boundaries, is persnickety casuistry, aimed at limiting criticism of Israel. Apartheid describes a system of legally-enforced racial separation. It is a fine word. Yes it originated in a particular time and place, but it too can cross borders when the situation arises, say the heinous separation that is now occurring in portions of the West Bank.
Benny Morris is an example of a candid, insightful, Zionist.
He concludes that the establishment of the state of Israel was worth the inevitable moral ambiguity of going to war and related excesses.
Its difficult reasoning for the much of the left that adopts the view that the presence of any injustice is equivalent to the absence of justice.
The settlements are big monkey wrenches. It is a wrong that they are there, and would be a wrong to remove them.
They were started as private facts on the ground, got adopted by the state during and after Likud and between the large settlement blocs and the East Jerusalem (and other) suburbs, became a state enterprise.
The title though has now largely been transferred to private individuals, some residing in homes for as long as 30+ years, some homes transferred by sale two and three times.
To remove the settlements at this point would be a forced relocation of individuals, NOT easily a reconciliation of the consequences of the state enterprise.
The Jewish exclusivity of title within the settlements themselves and exclusivity of road use, is at the most charitable interpretation equivalent to Jim Crow.
I don't see any viable short term solution.
The only long-term solution that I see as viable, is either the land swap concept, or to transfer the land to Palestinian jurisdiction, compensate prior land owners to perfect current title, and allow the settlers to then stay or relocate to Israel if they wish to remain Israeli citizens.
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PHIL, YOU WROTE:
"Myself, I use the word "pogrom" to describe the possibility of violence against Jews in the U.S., which I regard as highly unlikely."
I agree with you. There will not be violence.
If there is war with Iran, however, there will be hatred. Real hatred. Because it represents betrayal of Americans and taxpayers in our protection of Israel.
And how do I know? Bar talk. With Joe Six-pack types. Over the last 18 months. I live in a former fluorescent Red State where Bush is now, astonishingly, reviled, and the feeling at the bar is that if Bush is provoked into bombing Iran after American intel (who are rife in this area) issued the Dec '07 NIE saying 'no problem' by now siding with Israeli intel, then Israel, not Bush, is toast in their estimation for 'lying to our President'.
The sense, now, is that all is sabre-rattling. If that changes, and war results, Israel and, subsequently, American Jews, will be shocked by the reaction and revulsion. It will be covert and deep. It wont be anti-semitism. It will be the sense of betrayal Americans will feel. And betrayal begets a life-long dislike.
Livni (HaAretz) was reported to say in a private meeting that Iran is not a threat to Israel. If the idiots in power in both countries go ahead with this nuclear insanity for whatever insane reason — the USA did not engage in nuclear war with the USSR for three decades — then hatred and anti-semitism will be the least of our consequences.
No one is going to brook that our entire national security must be subsumed for the paranoid fears of 2.4% of the population, assuming that even 2.4% believe it.
Christian Evangelicals are running from the Christian Zionist position in droves, and that's where it was believed the national appetite for this Israel-Right-Or_Wrong position originated. See whht.org for one example. (Think that's the link.)
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One more point related to my post above. The bar folk I talk to are convinced, wrongly, that WWII was Americans fighting Nazism in the service of the Jews. The people I find most vociferous are absolutely convinced that US soldiers were sent to Europe to protect the Jews.
Hence, the betrayal issue should we bomb Iran today. Now, you must understand that I live in an area where US intel lives in greater concentration except DC, Virginia, or Colorado. I drink at the bar with MACV/C-SOG guys, Special Forces, plain Vets, and Intel personnel. Late night conversations are the most cryptic and the most interesting.
All of these guys are super-Israel supporters except when it comes to the issue of war with Iran. Then, the attitude is kick all Israelis off the reservation. And their term, NOT MINE, is BETRAYAL.
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Jewish Situational Ethics
Letter to the Boston Globe
Dear Editor:
White Jewish writer Anita Diamant reports in Art and politics, and a voice of reason (May 27, 2008) that white Jewish writer Nadine Gordimer asserted in a marquee discussion with white Jewish writer Amos Oz that Israel is not practicing apartheid against Palestinians
Does the rationalism for Israeli treatment of Palestinians really make a difference? Jim Crow was the obvious American counterpart of apartheid even though white Americans had no claim of greater historical rights than black Americans. Would the Boston Globe have provided op-ed space to a German racist to justify the Nuremberg Laws on historical claims that German Jews constituted an alien non-European immigrant population in German territories? Gordimer is hardly the first Jewish anti-Arab anti-Muslim racist expecting a pass for Zionist crimes because Jews have worked on behalf of black civil rights. Such hypocrisy and pandering have no place in the Globe, but readers would probably benefit from a op-ed by Tel Aviv University Professor Shlomo Sand, who recently published a book entitled When and How Was the Jewish People Invented.
Sand correctly points out that Judaism but not the people emigrated from ancient Palestine and that modern Palestinians are descendants of the ancient Judean and Galilian populations of Palestine while European Jewish Zionists had practically no ancestral connection to the country they stole from the native population.
Joachim Martillo
Boston, MA 02126-2813
Letter to the Boston Globe.
I fucked Joachim Martillo's wife!
Sword of Gideon