Yesterday’s Times printed a shockingly belligerent Op-Ed by the Israeli historian Benny Morris arguing for devastating strikes now against Iran so as to forestall an Israeli nuke strike, or better yet, nuclear war in the Middle East. Datelined Li-On, Israel, the fearful piece feels a little like being crammed inside a Cairo ministry in 1963 as Israel was weaponizing. Should the Times run such feverish stuff? Compare to Haaretz, which runs a truly-noble piece called “These Enemies Have Faces,” jointly bylined by an Iranian-American and an Israeli, and seeking to introduced Israelis to Iranians and vice versa. The Iranian-American is the estimable Trita Parsi. Why isn’t Parsi in the Times?
Morris’s mainstream legitimacy springs in part from the glowing reviews he got in The New Yorker and the Times this spring for his book 1948: The First Arab-Israeli War. I am halfway thru the book now and must report, sadly, that it is chiefly a military history. Political and social history interest Morris far less than nighttime raids and salients and mortars. The work is consumed, as Morris was even in his failed effort to debunk Walt and Mearsheimer, with talk of armies and guns. He is faintly reminiscent of one of the most comical characters in literature, Uncle Toby in Tristram Shandy: “hobbyhorsical” about fortifications and the like. I wonder if Morris had a huge toy soldier collection as a child.
1948 also commits a great error: it is written almost entirely from an Israeli point of view. It is guilty of the same hermeticism that pervades the piece in the Times. It is stunning to me that Yale University Press gave its imprimatur to a historical account that so completely is told from the winners’ standpoint and scarcely offers the victims’ accounts, even when the issue is rape.
But let me be precise. In recounting such key events of the Zionist-Palestinian war as the capture of Deir Yassin in early April 1948 and the capture of Jaffa later that month, Morris relies almost exclusively on Israeli sources. Documents from the Haganah Archive, the Israeli State archive, the Central Zionist Archive, and so on. The same pattern is evident when he describes the taking of Jerusalem,
or the capture of the most modern Arab city, Haifa, or the expulsion of
Arabs from the Lydda-Ramle area near what is now Tel Aviv airport. Almost all the works he cites about these events are authored by Israelis. I think I have encountered two books with Arab authors, and a few Brits. The “Primary Sources” list that opens Morris’s Bibliography lists 16 documentary archives. One is the U.N., one is American, two are Brit. The rest are Israeli. None Arab–though there are ample oral archives.
This is inexcusable because Deir Yassin and Jaffa are monuments of the Nakba–the Palestinian telling of 1948. At Deir Yassin 100 or more Palestinians were massacred, including 30 children, according to The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, by Israeli Ilan Pappe, which relies on Dan McGowan and Matthew Hogan’s Deir Yassin Remembered, comprising Palestinian narratives. Reports of the massacre caused wide flight from other Palestinian villages. As for Jaffa, this biblical city–Joppa–was the pride of Palestinian society pre-48 and was set aside by the United Nations as an Arab enclave under the Partition plan of 1947. Nonetheless, following hostilities between Arabs and Jews in Jaffa and Tel Aviv in early ‘48, Menachem Begin’s Irgun set about to destroy Arab Jaffa so as to obliterate the lines of Partition. And the maximalists succeeded. A city of 70,000 was emptied over a few days in April 1948; Partition was later overrun by the Israelis.
Both these landmarks of the Nakba are amply documented today by Arab voices. In fact this spring I did a lot of reporting on Arab memories of Jaffa, including Columbia anthropologist Leila Abu-Lughod’s 2007 book, her father the Arab-American intellectual Ibrahim Abu-Lughod’s 2003 book, and several on-line accounts of the destruction of Jaffa. I also quoted Rima Bordcosh on the camel-borne terrorist bomb that sent her family running from Jaffa. At the same party at which I met Bordcosh, I met a couple of Palestinian women who told me that accounts of rapes at Deir Yassin have only come to light in recent years because of shame surrounding the event.
Morris refers to allegations of rape at Deir Yassin. He quotes a Hebrew Intelligence Service commander reporting allegations that the Irgun raped “a number of girls and murdered them afterwards (we don’t know if this is true)”. End of discussion. When dealing with rape charges, shouldn’t Morris have quoted, and maybe even credited, the victims’ accounts? Would Yale University Press tolerate such a male-only rendering in any other situation involving violence against women?
Equally objectionable are Morris’s descriptions of Arab states of mind during the Nakba. Remember that the battle was one-sided. John Mearsheimer, a former Air Force officer and no slouch at military history, has said that the Arab resistance was on a scale of a mass riot. Lo the Zionists smote the Palestinians hip and thigh (as Menachem Begin used to say), and hundreds of thousands of Arabs were soon fleeing the country. From time to time, Morris treats us to characterizations of these Arabs’ feelings and thoughts. He tells us about their “morale,” their “fear,” their panic, their apprehension that they were being expelled, and so forth. And almost invariably, these descriptions come from Israeli or English writings of the time, chiefly the military documents whose ferreting out from archives Morris is so stoneheadedly proud, in a way that only a newspaper reporter turned scholar could be, of having done. He is document-proud. (I know; as a reporter turned quasi-scholar I’ve been guilty of same.) And so all these Arab experiences must be based on Israeli documents.
I am not saying that these documents are inaccurate. They may well be accurate. But it is impossible for a reader to reach that conclusion, especially when Morris simply ignores varying accounts of “sexual atrocites.” Morris has stubbornly relied upon only one half of the record, the winners’ half. And if the result is not inaccurate, it is certainly partial, and biased. Notably, Morris repeatedly excuses the “cleansing” operations by the Zionist fighters (and cleansing is their word) with the suggestion (maybe it’s an assertion, haven’t got that far) that they were militarily necessary, to empty the reservoir of support and supplies and so forth for the Arab armies that were about to invade Israel once it became a state on May 15, 1948. Or that the capture of Deir Yassin was essential to maintaining the road between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Or that in July 1948 the expulsion of all the residents from villages near Lydda is again a military necessity. Should we at least hear from the Arabs who were expelled? I believe I’ve quoted more Arab voices on this blog than he does in his entire fat book. For instance, I have quoted the haunting description by the late Ismail Shammout, a Palestinian artist, of his family’s expulsion from Lydda in July ‘48. His oral history was created with a grant from the Ford Foundation, a project now shared by Harvard, Oxford and Bir-Zeit University. Morris offers a dry military rendering of the expulsion that while consistent with Shammout’s conveys nothing of the terror and humiliation that it involved. As for the social history of 1948–for instance, the success of the Baha’i in hanging on in Haifa, or the mixed Jewish-Arab businesses in Haifa (both documented in Fay Afaf Kanafani’s fine memoir), or the apprehension that Arab women had of modern Israeli women as sexually available, a reputation that at times preoccupied Ibrahim Abu-Lughod’s thoughts as a boy hanging around the binational ice cream parlor in Jaffa (also documented in Kanafani’s work), Morris has nothing to say.
I know how he justifies this elision. His is a war book, it says so in the subtitle. War, not memory. There were no Arab archives available to him, evidently, and few Arab memoirs. In fairness, he has obviously relied on Walid Khalidi’s many books. The memoirs by Europeans who fought for the Palestinians he has made some use of. And he has that hogheaded insistence on using contemporary documents. At one point he goes out of his way to deride Arab oral histories of a massacre near Haifa as fabrication. The Nakba Archive that was funded by the Ford Foundation actually accepts Morris’s view that there is a different level of reliability in oral history many years after the fact compared to contemporary documentation. But contemporary sources can lie too: In his account of the Irgun published first 3 years after 1948, Menachem Begin denied there had been a massacre at Deir Yassin! It is the historian’s job to sort the facts out. Begin’s book is in Morris’s bibliography. Revealingly, Nur Masalha’s work on Zionist ideas of expulsion is not there, ignored too are Rashid Khalidi’s book on the period, Ilan Pappe’s book, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, and Tom Segev’s book, One Palestine Complete. Also left out is McGowan/Hogan. They are all obviously too far left for Morris, too pro-Palestinian; and he is dissing them by simply denying their significance. I don’t think a writer can maintain credibility if he completely ignores so much evidence while producing a history that purports (Yale Press I remind you, I’ll save you from the blurbs) to be definitive.
I lack the patience to go thru every instance of Morris’s one-sidedness, his use of Israeli documents to convey Arab experience that Arabs are perfectly capable of reprising themselves. Norman Finkelstein is the man for that job. If his mind opens up any in the next 150 pages, I’ll let you know. As it is, Morris’s insistence on Israeli accounts is, if not racist, then fiendishly narrowminded in an ethnocentric toy-soldierish way. Anyone tempted to heed his advice on Iran and nuclear war should keep that mindset in mind.
P.S. This spring Leila Abu-Lughod, who does not offer her Nakba book as a definitive history of ‘48 but as “a labor of love,” said that it had been all but completely ignored by the Establishment press then regretfully ascribed Nakba denial to “power politics.” I agree, and recommend her sincerity about her motivation as a model for literary historians.
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Witty likes Morris's approach, as he has said on this blog. On the other hand, he doesn't like W/M's approach, implying it is essentially propaganda–despite the fact that, unlike Morris, W/M sources are significantly Jewish….
Nothing like a reasonable person.
the nyt is israeli.
charles keating's post reminded me of witty and mr sword. i dont think witty believes the crap he posts. witty is simply a witting propagandist like the nyt (and wa post) – lie because that is what we are. sword on the other hand is too far gone. he believes. his parents and community were 100% effective.
Thanks, Phil. I noticed too that he doesn't dare to go near research others have done, e.g. Avi Shlaim, in what I read so far.
Maybe Richard would force us much less to raise our eyebrows if he had a different hero?
I hope your dog will be fine soon.
"witty is simply a witting propagandist"
No, Slomo, Richard is afraid, compared with Bill a moderate living in the shadows of the Holocaust.
On the upside, I just read the first 100 (of over 400) posted comments to Morris's article and over 95% totally opposed
Morris's expressed POV, many taking issue with his many easily deflatable assumptions stated as fact. Perhaps the MSM will eventually get a clue?
Here's a few of Morris's wild claims beating the drums for war
on Iran for all you Americans out there:
http://pbsmonitor.blogspot.com/2008/07/ny-times-op-ed-claims-israel-will.html
It looks like Morris borrowed Bush's crib sheet from Chaney-Wolfowitz-Pearl-Wurmser-Feith et al…
Will America awake too late? Over the next months we will find out.
I think Phil's statement "I am not saying that these documents are inaccurate."
is the most accurate statement in the "review".
As Phil resents the hatchet job's of Walt/Mearsheimer's work by people insufficiently informed to undertake a hatchet job, I wish that Phil would have the same humility that he demands of others.
I haven't read the book. I don't know Morris personally at all.
To not include Pappe or Segev in a bibliography is not a serious omission. They are self-avowed advocates, and secondarily historians.
Kimmerling is a better source.
In Righteous Victims, Morris did describe Deir Yassin as a massacre, and was one of the first credible (then not so credible) historians, to consider the Palestinian experience as important.
This work is most likely more his opinion, his conclusion, having studied the originating documentation now for three decades.
I can understand how it would gall an activist to hear that he has concluded that there was not ethnic cleansing as in intended permanent forced removal as a primary aim.
"Betrayal" (a very emotional term), is a word often quoted by leftists to describe Morris work (including Palestinian activists that have widely quoted Morris for decades until 2005).
They are hoping for an objective slam-dunk. "See, I knew it." "I was wrong in my earlier conclusions about the character of the original settlement and independance effort" is not what they want to hear.
And, Phil apparently does not want to hear that it was a war, and that military objectives superceded civil. It is truth that under the cover of military legitimacy, illegitimate means were employed.
For example, even if it were militarily legitimate to capture and control Deir Yassin, it was not necessary to conduct anything resembling mass killing.
Maybe after reading the book, I'll have the same reaction as Phil, that Morris folded on his conscience.
Or, maybe after reading the book, I'll have the oppossite reaction, that Phil folded on his journalistic standards and commitment to truth (in criticizing the way the truth was told).
In hearing a first-person account, say of the holocaust (which I have), or of the nakba (which Phil describes), I can trust "I statements".
"I was moved from x to y. A gun was pointed at my head at z. I felt…"
It is IMPOSSIBLE to rationally conclude "The IDF sought to do x…" That conclusion is outside of their experience, their possible experience. It is unknowable.
Pappe and others have added their conclusions that persons A, B, C each described similar, and x statement in the archives confirms that A,B,C's conclusion is possible.
The historical question is is their math conclusive, or is Phil and others being told and repeating an embellishment.
They've concluded that what THEY took in from "Exodus" was not the complete or accurate sentiment, and have REACTED against interpretations or interpreters that incorporate any element of the sentiment as truth, even if they derived that sentiment AFTER thorough investigation.
"How could Morris betray us?" "He should live by what we conclude."
So much for free speech.
Hitler's "final solution" never existed on paper either. Nor did The Great White Father in Washington ever order extermination of the natives. People were moved from point A to point B; it was a time of war, demographics were on minds, things were untidy
(a la Rummy), insecticides were in common use; they had none for the Indians' gvoernment rugs…
That said, Witty's response is coherent; it needs some context:
http://www.counterpunch.org/carey07192008.html
Another day without a comment from Phil Weiss on Samir Kuntar. I know that Kuntar is a hero to you guys so he probably doesn't want to antagonize his fan base. Of course the other explanation is that Kuntar is a Phil Weiss kind of guy. We can only wonder.
Kuntar tale suspicion inside this post by Robert Lindsay:
Wikipedia Jews Redux
Are you talking about Leon Uri's Exodus? Who mentioned it? Can't you have the positive survival myth and at the same time start to look at history from a both sides.
Richard, I am not in any way trying to minimize the emotional part of the story, the Russian pogroms, Antisemitism (which I have watched peeking in encyclopedia entries here in Germany around the turn of the century in really vicious ways), or the Holocaust.
The problem is, the Palestinians weren't the Germans, or on a minor level the Russians. They had nothing to do with the emotional part that fed into the Zionist enterprise.
And since you use the two terms above:
scholar vs activist. How would you term Morris article, scholarship or activism?
"I can understand how it would gall an activist to hear that he has concluded that there was not ethnic cleansing as in intended permanent forced removal as a primary aim."
Why do you always need to paint it in these colors? I never felt any gall anywhere about his conclusions, I simply noticed that there are points that make him hesitate, or stop, that he surely knows, but that he prefers to leave out, if they get close too Jewish power games. And I notice this without any gall or whatever else you would like me to feel.
My problem is, Richard, that the German people were not only guilty for the murder of millions of Jews, but also are in many ways responsible for the plight of the Palestians …
And I would like to see Israel to stop and reflect instead of pushing ahead against a whole scenario of "new Hitlers".
Here is one of my favorite Israeli's a German survivor:
Uri Avneri, Different Planets.
I by the way wasn't aware of Charles note when I sent mine. Coincidence.
Has Philip tried to speak to Benny Morris ever?
I tried and enjoyed our correspondence.
Weiss is totally wrong in his assessments, and he is now broadcasting exclusively the Iranian junta's propaganda.
Has Philip tried to speak to Benny Morris ever?
I tried and enjoyed our correspondence.
Weiss is totally wrong in his assessments, and he is now broadcasting exclusively the Iranian junta's propaganda.
"Sword" of Gideon, when are going to you condemn the Israeli slaughter of children? But of course to you and your Judeofascist brethren, they are Amalek not worth one fingernail of your kind.
the united states of america is the CASH COW the zionist israeli state uses and abuses…by keeping their american jews blindly supporting their state and using that tired old trick of demanding blind allegiance because jews need a SAFE PLACE to go…as if friggin israel is safe, it's a bitch for american jews…its either choose to be free thinking individuals and liberate yourself from the shtl mentality…OR continnue participating zionism by defending them as they commit war crimes which will one day be judged.
lets put it this way, if this was 1946 or whenever that war ended and the u.s and israel were the losers of a war…..the war crime tribunals would abound with criminals to be convicted.
who are the NEW eichmanns and goebels and the rest of that criminal nazi cabal who were only defending their fatherland from the communist threat menacing their land.
all nations find valid reasons to defend their territories…our reasons are only validated by the fact that we are still winning…once the tortilla flips and we become the losers then voila….we're the criminals.
yesteryears nazi national heroes became nuremberg criminals once the allies took over…..
todays zionist american leaders are considered national heroes by their sycophants and adulators, some tomorrow in a timetable not far away, maybe just maybe, if we dont change we will be seen as the new war tribunal criminals.
i know, i know, it can happen here and it cant happen to us because we're us.
and neither can the financial house of cards come down, and im from mars.
Charles Keating : the 'Final Solution' didn't exist on paper? You know the Germans kept meticulous records of people they killed in the camps, the loot taken etc. Perhaps you meant that a record of Hitler's order for it, or of his use of the phrase doesn't exist?
Also, something that for some reason isn't often mentioned (or dismissed as being 'too far in the past') – the violence between the Jews and Muslim in Israel/Palestine was started by Muslim's, and had been going on for over a decade when the nation of Israel was (re)created in 1948.
The Palestinians (and the Arab world) rejected the UN's offer in 1947 of a two-state solution, with land in proportion to the population of the two states. If they had accepted that offer or any of the subsequent offers, they would have their state now.
The Palestinians (and the Arab world) declared & carried out war on the newly-formed Israel in 1948, with the stated intention of killing/driving the Jews out of Israel and taking their land. They lost this war, and also lost their land.
If they hadn't started the war, the Palestinians refugees would still have their land.
It's true that a two-state solution would have always required forcible transfer of population in both directions. It's true that the Palestinians weren't consulted before the Balfour Declaration in 1917.
However, the Palestinians could have chosen a peaceful solution to the Jews and their predicament. Instead they chose war.
The industry of the Zionists had increased health and prosperity in Palestine (which had been a notably poor country in the 19th century ). The availability of jobs had increased (and with it immigration from neighboring countries), and land had increased in value.
The Palestinians could have fairly profited from a peaceful agreement with the Zionists. The Jews would have got their state, and those Palestinians displaced from Israel would make a profit on their land which they could have reinvested (in larger land) in Palestine if they'd wished..
And of course, many Palestinians did want peace, unfortunately their wishes were ignored by the Palestinian leadership.
Benny Morris's 'narrative' of Israel's founding was very distorted. At least he's admitted he was wrong.
Perhaps he's slightly loud in voicing his concern for Israel's safety because he's realised the very real damage he's caused with his dishonest 'history'.
Slightly irrelevant, or is it?
Sorry,anti-Semitic French language only.
Des militants anti-apartheid juifs sud-africains "choqués" par leur visite en Cisjordanie occupée
LE MONDE | 19.07.08
JÉRUSALEM CORRESPONDANT
Andrew Feinstein n'était jamais venu en Israël et dans les territoires palestiniens occupés. Sud-Africain et juif, il a perdu sa mère et ses dix frères et soeurs dans l'Holocauste. Il a été très impressionné par le mémorial de Yad Vashem et l'évocation d'Auschwitz, où a péri sa famille. Cet ancien député de l'ANC (African national Congress) a également été très marqué par ce qu'il a vu à Hébron : les colons qui insultent et jettent des pierres sur les Palestiniens, qui s'en prennent à cette délégation venue se rendre compte sur place de la réalité des choses. "Comment, au nom du judaïsme, peut-on se comporter de cette manière ? Comment peut-on transformer en ville fantôme un quartier commerçant arabe pour protéger quelques centaines de colons ?", s'interroge-t-il.
Avec un groupe de 22 Sud-Africains, défenseurs des droits de l'homme, membres de l'ANC, magistrats, journalistes, syndicalistes, écrivains, blancs, noirs, indiens, une dizaine de juifs, Andrew Feinstein a, pendant cinq jours, du 6 au 10 juillet, sillonné les territoires occupés de Hébron à Naplouse, en passant par Jérusalem et la "barrière de sécurité", rencontré des organisations de défense des droits de l'homme, visité Tel Aviv, tenté d'appréhender le conflit israélo-palestinien. Il ne s'agissait pas de trouver des solutions, ni de juger, encore moins de faire des comparaisons avec le régime de l'apartheid que tous ont connu et subi.
"Il n'est pas question de dénier à Israël le droit d'exister, mais je dois avouer que je suis choqué par ce que j'ai vu", déplore Geoff Budlender, lui aussi juif. Ce juriste a été frappé par l'extension de la colonisation, par "la façon de traiter un peuple comme s'il était de seconde classe, par les pesanteurs de l'occupation militaire et le contrôle de tous les aspects de la vie quotidienne des Palestiniens, par la séparation de plus en plus marquée de deux communautés".
Geoff Budlender se refuse à "faire l'analogie avec le système d'apartheid", estimant que ce n'est pas "approprié". Mais Barbara Hogan, qui a passé huit ans dans les prisons sud-africaines parce qu'elle protestait contre la ségrégation raciale, a été stupéfaite de constater qu'existaient en Cisjordanie des routes séparées pour les colons et pour les Palestiniens, que ces derniers devaient obtenir des permis de l'administration israélienne pour se déplacer, ce qui lui a rappelé le système des "pass" pour les Noirs en Afrique du Sud.
"Les non-Blancs vivaient dans des zones séparées, mais il n'y a jamais eu en Afrique du Sud de routes séparées, de "barrière de sécurité", de check-points, de plaques d'immatriculation différentes, de cantonnements dans des zones délimitées", s'étonne cette députée de l'ANC. "Tout cela est absurde et je me demande jusqu'où cela va aller, ce que ça va donner", s'interroge Barbara Hogan, qui se dit "choquée" par ce qu'elle a vu dans les rues de Hébron : "l'injustice, la haine, le désespoir". Elle se souvient de "la crainte dans les yeux des enfants", du silence régnant dans les rues du camp de Balata, à Naplouse. "Cette ville est assiégée. Les militaires contrôlent toutes les collines, tous les check-points. On ne peut pas entrer et sortir comme l'on veut. Cela n'a jamais existé en Afrique du Sud", ajoute Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge, ancienne vice-ministre de la santé et députée de l'ANC.
Ce qui a frappé ces vétérans de la lutte anti-apartheid est le poids de l'occupation, l'importance des restrictions et la volonté d'établir une séparation complète. "La présence de l'armée partout, ces files d'attente aux check-points, ces raids de soldats sont pour moi pire que l'apartheid. Cela ne fait aucun doute. C'est plus pernicieux, plus sophistiqué grâce aux ordinateurs, qui n'existaient pas à l'époque. Ce sont des méthodes déshumanisantes", insiste le juge Dennis Davis. Ce n'est pas son premier voyage et il trouve la situation "plus sombre qu'elle n'a jamais été". "J'ai l'impression que nous sommes en 1965 en Afrique du Sud, lorsque la répression s'est intensifiée après la condamnation de Nelson Mandela. Il a passé vingt-sept ans en prison. A Naplouse, Saïd Al-Atabeh (membre du Front populaire de libération de la Palestine, condamné à perpétuité pour des attentats perpétrés en 1977 et qui avaient fait un mort et des blessés) est incarcéré depuis trente et un ans. Après le jugement de Mandela, il a encore fallu vingt ans pour que des sanctions internationales soient imposées contre le régime de l'apartheid. Ici, je ne vois aucune solution en perspective", dit-il.
"Le bout du tunnel est plus noir que noir", renchérit Mondli Makhanya, rédacteur en chef du Sunday Times, l'hebdomadaire dominical le plus populaire d'Afrique du Sud, avant d'ajouter : "Nous, nous savions qu'un jour, cela allait se terminer, que les lois de l'apartheid allaient disparaître. Ici, ce n'est pas codifié, c'est l'occupation qui fait que le Palestinien est un être de seconde zone."
Le terme d'"apartheid", considéré comme un outrage en Israël, est utilisé avec précaution par ces hommes et ces femmes qui se souviennent qu'il n'y a pas si longtemps, ils étaient encore qualifiés de "terroristes" par le gouvernement blanc sud-africain, rappelle Barbara Hogan. Ils se refusent aussi à parler de "racisme", de "colonialisme", "car nous ne sommes pas là pour juger mais pour nous informer", se défend Geoff Budlender, qui se déclare surpris de constater que "les Palestiniens veulent encore croire à une solution". "Mais, ajoute-t-il, lorsque vous voyez ce chapelet de colonies sur la route de Naplouse et que vous vous heurtez partout au "mur de séparation", on se dit que cela ne va pas être simple."
Dans l'est de la Cisjordanie, la petite troupe de Sud-Africains s'est rendue à Biddo, à Bilin et à Budrus pour voir de près à quoi ressemble la "barrière de sécurité" dont Dorit Beinisch, président de la Cour suprême, leur avait dit qu'elle avait permis d'éliminer les attentats-suicides. A peine sur place, le groupe a été prié de reculer à bonne distance par des militaires israéliens arrivés immédiatement à bord de jeeps. "Si vous ne vous dispersez pas, cela sera considéré comme une manifestation et nous devrons agir en conséquence", a lancé au mégaphone le plus gradé. Les Sud-Africains sont repartis écouter les responsables des villages qui leur ont raconté de quelle manière ce qu'ils appellent le "mur de l'apartheid" avait "pourri" leur vie. "Je comprends parfaitement la peur des juifs, mais elle ne peut justifier ce qui se passe", conclut Andrew Feinstein avant d'ajouter : "Et je trouve très triste que cela se fasse au nom du judaïsme."
Michel Bôle-Richard
Philip, this is the first time I've encountered you. I got here by looking for comments on Benny Morris's recent crazy op-ed piece in the NYT.
What really, really frustrates me about your writing and the writing of so many other pro-Palestinian leftists is the way you focus exclusively on Palestinian suffering and seem to make little or no attempt to examine the larger issues of why the conflict is going on and what is driving it. The Israeli/Palestinian issue is a very complicated conflict, which cannot be reduced to simple rights and wrongs. I can't believe that you really think the whole story comes down to a moralistic tale of evil, aggressive colonialists vs. blameless, suffering natives, but it often comes across this way on the surface.
What bothers me the most this attitude is the way it ignores Palestinian complicity in creating the current mess they're in. Palestinians are undoubtedly suffering from the Israeli occupation and Israelis have certainly done many evil things, but Palestinian leaders of all stripes have over and over again made choices that have been disastrous to the long-term well-being of the Palestinian people and have directly contributed to their current misery.
Palestinian society unfortunately suffers from a serious lack of informed debate about the wisdom of using suicide bombing as a means of resistance, of supporting organizations like Hamas whose charter calls for obliterating Israel, of continuing to inflexibly demand an unconditional right of return, etc.
You point out a wonderful example of an Israeli and an Iranian who eloquently counter the paranoid and jingoist rhetoric of their societies and call for mutual peace and understanding. There are many more Iranians and Israelis willing to do the same, but the vacuum on the Palestinian side is nothing short of astonishing. I have only encountered one Palestinian willing to do so, Eid Bassem, and he seems to truly be a "voice crying out in the wilderness".
Why don't you and other activists work on fostering internal Palestinian discussion about these all-important issues, rather than uncritically supporting a simplistic "we're right, they're wrong" attitude on the part of Palestinians?
To Richard Witty: Sorry, you're wrong. There has been criticism of Morris well before his turn to the right after the 2nd Intifada. Read Nur Massalha's & Norman Finkelstein's critique of Morris thesis that the Palestinian refugee problems was "Born of War, not Design" in the Fall 1991 issue of Journal of Palestine Studies. Also, read Joel Beinin's discussion of Benny Morris for a critique of his historical approach. As Beinin points out, Morris excludes Palestinian oral evidence, except when it portrays Palestinians in a negative light.
http://www.merip.org/mer/mer230/230_beinin.html
Oral evidence is a gamble. Some gambles end up to be winning ones, but gamblers ALWAYS end up losing, net (even the scientific ones).
The anger at Morris is that he interpreted that Zionism was a good, whereas Pappe and others concluded that Zionism was an evil.
There's lots of support for the thesis that Zionism is an evil.
It just happens to add up .1 +.05 +.04 + .06 +.01 +.03 + .07 + .01 + .04 as approximately 1. "Its gotta be".
Whereas in fact, its closer to 0 than 1.
I really don't know what to propose on Iran.
I believe Morris is right when he says that "Every intelligence agency in the world believes the Iranian program is geared toward making weapons, not to the peaceful applications of nuclear power."
And, he is right that they have rejected every overture from Russia and France to supply them with nuclear fuel for power plants, and are engaging in what appears to be a delaying game.
And, that they do encourage their proxies to unleash terrorist (not strategic) assaults on their neighbors, with whatever force they can muster (not whatever force is morally justified).
What strategies are viable?
Richard, if your country were on some kind of axis-of-evil-list in a declared War on Terrorism / WWIII/IV, and your neighbor country, your former enemy, who was also on this list has just been "shocked into awe", what would you do? Sit and wait till the same happens to you?
Or is it more likely you would think about defense? Another another country on this list seems safe after having detonated supposedly its first atomic bomb.
NOW, what would you do?
"Charles Keating : the 'Final Solution' didn't exist on paper?"
Go back and read what Charles really wrote.
Yes, they both kept meticulous records, but also did their best to not make their intentions public. Probably to avoid panics.
Why do you think they invented: Final Solution? or a whole series of other euphemisms?
The Wannsee Conference and why we know about it
A shared history, a different conclussion
http://ilanpappe.com/?p=54#more-54
y Scott Wilson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, March 11, 2007; D07
HAIFA, Israel — Ilan Pappe, one of the revisionist scholars known in Israel as the “new historians,” began his career in some of the same wartime archives as Benny Morris. But his own ideological journey has taken him to the far shore of Israel’s political gulf and nearly complete isolation.
The two disagree not on the facts about Israel’s founding that they helped uncover but on what lessons they hold nearly six decades later. Morris maintains the rise of radical Islam is largely responsible for the region’s strife; Pappe is virtually alone among Jewish Israelis in blaming the Zionist project to create a Jewish state in the Arab Middle East for the lack of peace.
“Zionism is far more dangerous to the safety of the Middle East than Islam,” Pappe says.
The 52-year-old historian is a senior lecturer at the University of Haifa, which overlooks the thriving port where Pappe’s parents arrived from Germany seven decades ago. Many of the relatives who stayed behind perished in the Holocaust. Pappe’s family was apolitical. He served in the Golan Heights during the 1973 Arab-Israeli War.
What Pappe calls his “journey to the margins and beyond” began at Oxford University, where under the guidance of the renowned Arab historian Albert Hourani he wrote a doctoral thesis that became his first book, ” Britain and the Arab-Israeli Conflict.” He mixed with Palestinian intellectuals when the Palestine Liberation Organization was outlawed in Israel.
http://ilanpappe.com/?p=54#more-54
“My research debunked all of the lessons about Israel’s creation that I had been raised on,” Pappe says.
In his view, Israeli professors were not criticizing Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land with the same stridency in academic conferences abroad as they did in the op-ed pages back home. He increasingly believed that land included all of Israel, not just the territories Israel seized in the 1967 Middle East War.
"Or is it more likely you would think about defense? Another another country on this list seems safe after having detonated supposedly its first atomic bomb.
NOW, what would you do?"
A dilemma for Iran. Either kill or be killed, or find some other way out of the mess.
On the part of the US and the west, the worst that we could do is "self-deceive".
A skillful effort would result in putting Iran's fears at rest, while making sure they have a path for nuclear power (if they stupidly wish to go that route).
The only way I could see that happening relative to Israel, is for Iran to seek diplomatic relations with Israel, and to intentionally demilitarize Hezbollah and Hamas.
That would prove intent.
The current data that I see supports the contention of Iran's urge for regional dominance and unilateral aggression on Israel.
When I say "putting Iran's fears at rest", I mean their fears that they will be so isolated in the world that their state will be threatened.
The difference between appeasement and effective diplomacy is the difference between putting their fears at rest so that they feel emboldened to escalate aggressions, and putting their fears at rest, so that they don't need to escalate in "defense" and choose not to.
How does that get constructed in FACT?
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1003236.html
Essential things Israelis and Iranians should know about each other
By Trita Parsi and Roi Ben-Yehuda
1. Israel is a vibrant yet incomplete democracy
2. Iran is a vibrant quasi-democracy
3. Streets are named for poets
4. Iranians are lonely and distrustful
5. Zionism is not a dirty word
6. Sympathy with Palestinians, but no desire for conflict with Israel
…"
Ben: There are quite a few standards in this discourse. One is that the Palestinian leaders (most often historians speak of two dominent clans, one slightly more moderate) made the wrong choices while the Jewish acted wisely, e.g. by accepting 56% percent of the land "a slightly larger area to accommodate the increasing numbers of Jews who would immigrate there." [Wikipedia] while the Arabs denied to accept the 43% of Palestine, or the rest.
The problem I have with this argument is that it feels very biased. The Jewish community had a)democratic structures, so it is not quite the Jewish leaders only, who made decisions here. b) they could only win, while c) the Arabs could only loose, and had for decades been under foreign rule.
A series of other "power" argument connected with it, I don't quite like either. The Palestinian people were no nation, thus can't have any rights. Terra nullius
They flooded into the country to profit from the Jewish success.
The decisions were made by a world community majority utterly shocked by what was known by then about the Holocaust, but it strictly choose the easy way out of the dilemma: Let another people pay.
One of my "net friends", understand that he might very much object to me using that term–Slightly infantile?–sometimes uses "nice" headlines. This is my favorite:
The Asian smiles …
My association, and obviously not what is on his mind, is:
Change. Better bend with the storms than be broken by them.
One is the power position (the Iron Wall) the other the constant reevaluation and adjustment to change.
And now I switch to lurking mode again.
Real Issue of a Nuclear Iran
Alan Hart summarizes succinctly the real issue of an Iran with nuclear capabilities in his movie review "Farewell Israel": Myth and Reality:
"A skillful effort would result in putting Iran's fears at rest, while making sure they have a path for nuclear power (if they stupidly wish to go that route)."
Hmmm? Inconsistent again. My partner things they are crazy. Considering their susceptibility to earthquakes. I have close to zero knowledge in this field.
But I can see also that the whole world wants to push atom energy again: Peak oil issues …
Basically I agree, but then Israel's threat scenario is not really helpful for approachments, or do you think? Would you answer my mails if I constantly would attack you?
I think nukes are stupid for a few reasons:
1. Proliferation of nuclear weapons (as in Iran, the skip between nuclear power from enriched uranium and nuclear warheads is small)
2. Per kilowatt/hour expense
3. Waste disposal (highly toxic for thousands of centuries, not successfully adressed yet)
4. Target of terror
5. Highly capital intensive resulting in corporate dominance and potentially poor investment decisions that ratepayers or taxpayers must bear
6. Giant or none – combined with line losses on distribution of energy, and necessity to site at some distance from the demand, ends up structurally inefficient use of the energy
7. Potential for disaster (melt-down, its happened to some extent in 4 aggregious cases in 40 years)
LOTS of down-sides, while there are GOOD ALTERNATIVES.
"Oral evidence is a gamble. Some gambles end up to be winning ones, but gamblers ALWAYS end up losing, net (even the scientific ones)."
I disagree with that. I think categorically excluding oral evidence marginalizes important voices, especially, in this case. But if you're going to reject oral evidence, at least be consistent about it. As Joel Beinin says in his review, Morris is inconsistent in his use of Arab oral evidence – rejecting it, for the most part, but including very weak oral evidence when it makes Arabs look bad.
http://www.merip.org/mer/mer230/230_beinin.html
"The anger at Morris is that he interpreted that Zionism was a good, whereas Pappe and others concluded that Zionism was an evil."
You're completely oblivious of the historical debate. The criticism of Morris (from the pro-Palestinian side) dates well before his political views became prominent. Morris' thesis in the "The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem" was that the Palestinian refugee problem was "born of war, not design", whereas pro-Palestinian historians like Nur Massalha & Norman Finkelstein argued that Morris' own evidence pointed to the conclusion that the Palestinians were intentionally expelled.
And it's not just pro-Palestinian historians who have made that argument. Shlomo Ben-Ami, the former Israeli foreign minister, says in his book "Scars of War, Wounds of Peace" that Morris' "thesis about the birth of the refugee problem being not by design, but by the natural logic and evolution of the war is not always sustained by the very evidence he himself provides."
Amir: "Charles Keating : the 'Final Solution' didn't exist on paper? You know the Germans kept meticulous records of people they killed in the camps, the loot taken etc. Perhaps you meant that a record of Hitler's order for it, or of his use of the phrase doesn't exist?"
Thank you, Amir. Yes, the NAZI Germans did produce tons of administrative evidence in the form of records re "from Pt A to Pt B," etc. I did mean the larger vision regarding a record of Hitler's order to exterminate the Jews. I thought it salient regarding Morris's ideological/political conclusions.
"The current data that I see supports the contention of Iran's urge for regional dominance and unilateral aggression on Israel."–Richard Witty
The current data that I see supports the contention of Israel's
urge to maintain regional dominance and unilateral aggression.
By the way, Richard W, if you're interested in a solution to the Israeli-Iranian conflict, this is an op-ed by Parsi & Shlomo Ben-Ami:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0702/p09s01-coop.html
RE: "When I say "putting Iran's fears at rest", I mean their fears that they will be so isolated in the world that their state will be threatened.The difference between appeasement and effective diplomacy is the difference between putting their fears at rest so that they feel emboldened to escalate aggressions, and putting their fears at rest, so that they don't need to escalate in "defense" and choose not to."– Witty
Witty, why don't you simply look at the simple facts of USA's intervetion in Iran from the 1950's on, and look at a map now of where the USA's bases and actions are surrounding Iran? Are you blind?
And don't forget to inclue in your algebara the demise of the dollar value–the other prong, since both Iraq and Iran dissed petro-dollars. Look at the
Fed, a milk job of the goy since 1913.
Wikipedia is not a reliable source for information on the Wannsee Conference. This is a better source but by all means don't stop here, continue to research the topic.
The final details of the plan to exterminate Jews were supposed to have been made at a conference at Gross Wannsee in Berlin on 20th January, 1942, presided over by Heydrich (Poliakov, Das Dritte Reich und die Juden, p. 120 ff; Reitlinger, The Final Solution, p. 95 ff). Officials of all German Ministries were present, and Müller and Eichmann represented Gestapo Head Office. Reitlinger and Manvell and Frankl consider tile minutes of this conference to be their trump card in proving the existence of a genocide plan, but the truth is that no such plan was even mentioned, and what is more, they freely admit this. Manvell and Frankl explain it away rather lamely by saying that "The minutes are shrouded in the form of officialdom that cloaks the real significance of the words and terminolgoy that are used" (The Incomparable Crime, London, 1967, p. 46), which really means that they intend to interpret them in their own way. What Heydrich actually said was that, as in the memorandum quoted above, he had been commissioned by Göring to arrange a solution to the Jewish problem. He reviewed the history of Jewish emigration, stated that the war had rendered the Madagascar project impractical, and continued: "The emigration programme has been replaced now by the evacuation of Jews to the east as a further possible solution, in accordance with the previous authorisation of the Führer." Here, he explained, their labour was to be utilised. All this is supposed to be deeply sinister, and pregnant with the hidden meaning that the Jews were to be exterminated, though Prof. Paul Rassinier, a Frenchman interned at Buchenwald who has done sterling work in refuting the myth of the Six Million, explains that it means precisely what it says, i.e. the concentration of the Jews for labour in the immense eastern ghetto of the Polish Government-General. "There they were to wait until the end of the war, for the re-opening of international discussions which would decide their future. This decision was finally reached at the interministerial Berlin-Wannsee conference …" (Rassinier, Le Véritable Proces Eichmann, p. 20). Manvell and Frankl, however, remain undaunted by the complete lack of reference to extermination. At the Wannsee conference, they write, "Direct references to killing were avoided, Heydrich favouring the term "Arbeitseinsatz im Osten" (labour assignment in the East)" (Heinrich Himmler, p. 209). Why we should not accept labour assignment in the East to mean labour assignment in the East is not explained. According to Reitlinger and others, innumerable directives actually specifying extermination then passed between Himmler, Heydrich, Eichmann and commandant Höss in the subsequent months of 1942, but of course, "none have survived".
http://www.ihr.org/books/harwood/dsmrd03.html
http://www.jewsagainstzionism.com/antisemitism/holocaust/holocaustmillions.cfm
Many books have been published, read and forgotten. There is one book, however, which dare not be allowed to share this fate. This is the chronicles of Rabbi Michael Ber Weissmandl, ztl, of the war years, 1942 to 1945, so aptly named "Min Hametzar" (From the Depths). published in New York in 1961 in Hebrew. Not enough individuals have read this book. The ghastly facts uncovered in it are not sufficiently well known.
He had set there for many hours, when suddenly the door burst open and Hochberg hurried into the room. Speaking rapidly and with great excitement, he said, "the deal is done. My chief asked for $50,000 and no further transports will be sent; but he lays down the following terms: Wisliceny will show his goodwill: three transports — next Tuesday, next Friday, the following Tuesday — each of about 3000 souls, will be held up, but on Friday after that, the first Installment of $25,000 must be handed over. After that, there will be no further transports for seven weeks, to enable the second installment of $25,000 to be obtained and paid, after which there will be a final stopping of all transports. There is one further condition. You must be able to show that the money comes from abroad and not from Slovakian Jews themselves."
Benny Morris dissects a frog, inch by inch;then he faints, gets up, spouts general fantasy about the very frog he worked on so diligently–facing reality is hard. On the other hand, he knows Jews have survived as a people through hard core fantasy, while other nations have died, time and time again. There's a lesson here, no? I think Hitler learned it. So, who's next?
In a previous article, Mr Weiss mentioned a friend and former employer asking him whether he was a Holocaust-denier.
He must be aware that his articles on this blog, whilst not themselves denying the reality of the Holocaust (I've only read a few, I must admit), are attracting the Holocaust-deniers in the commentary.
A comment from him about this phenomenon would be very welcome.
There's a lesson here, no? Aaaah no. Germany is still very much around. The Third Reich is gone but then so is the Weimar Republic and as far as I'm aware the Jews were very well treated under that regime. Rome is gone, but the Italians are still around, like wise the Spanish and the Russians, the Poles even the Egyptians. Perhaps I misunderstood your comment Charles?
The questioning of any and all historical events is an exercise intelligent people engage in. Only dogmatic fanatics decline, in other words, those who fear.
Actually, I should revise my last sentence to say "Only dogmatic fanatics and cowards decline, in other words, those who fear."
Like a Harold Demure, Oneuniverse arrives at mondoweiss' battle of epping forest still not quite sure and firing acorns from out of his sling.
Scott Wilson: "Morris maintains the rise of radical Islam is largely responsible for the region’s strife; Pappe is virtually alone among Jewish Israelis in blaming the Zionist project to create a Jewish state in the Arab Middle East for the lack of peace."
these two views aren't incompatible. israel's presence in the region leads to strife because radical muslims can't tolerate jews living among them. both zionism and radical islam are direct causes of the lack of peace.
however, *cause* is not the same as *blame*.
in any case, trying to blame one or another country's past actions for the present mess is counterproductive at best. there's more than enough blame on all sides to go around. time moves in only one direction, and the only way to get peace is for all sides to accept the current situation on the ground and learn to live with it.
pappe is playing an *extremely* dangerous game with his assertion that "Israel's occupation of land … include[s] all of Israel". he's providing intellectual cover (and from the "other side" no less) for islamists who want to forcibly eject all israelis from the middle east.
Leander, i don't quite understand the arguments you're trying to make, maybe you could rephrase?
but as for "wrong" choices made by the palestinians, i'm not just referring to what happened in 1948. in fact, read my comments again and you'll see a bunch of "wrong" choices i mention, none of which refer to 1948. note, "wrong" is your word, i'm not morally judging the choices but asserting that they have negatively impacted their prosperity, security, and stability. these include:
– using suicide bombing, and terrorism more generally, as a resistance tactic
– insisting on a full "right of return" and similar attitudes that can't be satisfied without eliminating the status of israel as a jewish state
– creating and actively supporting groups whose stated purpose is to destroy the state of israel
– not allowing dissenters to speak out against the previously mentioned policies
– tolerating for decades a completely corrupt leadership
– not controlling extremists that try to scuttle any movements toward peace
– trying to overthrow the king of jordan in 1972
– supporting iraq in the 1991 guld war
– refusing the 2000 peace agreement
– launching the 2nd intifada
granted, this is a grab bag of choices made by different groups at different times — sometimes organizations such as the PLO or PA, sometimes the people as a whole. but all of them were in fact choices, and all have been detrimental to Palestinians' well being.
over at antiwar.com J. Raimondo does a write up on the article by the re-revisionist Morris…
"Morris neither knows nor cares about Iran's alleged nukes. Lurking behind his mundane laundry list of complaints is, I fear, a darker motive: sheer bloodlust. Morris simply wants to kill as many Muslims as possible, so why doesn't he just come out and say it? After all, it isn't like he hasn't said it before:
"There are circumstances in history that justify ethnic cleansing. I know that this term is completely negative in the discourse of the 21st century, but when the choice is between ethnic cleansing and genocide – the annihilation of your people – I prefer ethnic cleansing."
It isn't very often that we get to see pure, unmitigated evil, in all its Satanic darkness, expressed openly on the printed page. Morris and the Times have given us one of the rare modern examples of the genre."
Five years from today, Richard Witty will be on some forum explaining how he "vigorously opposed" a war with Iran. (And he'll actually believe it.)
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