Only in Haaretz. By Zeev Sternhell:
The real reason for the settlements…was occupying the land… [R]ight and left were partners to the act. The
nationalist-messianist fervor and the desire to end the War of
Independence merged into the momentum for occupation: The entire right
and most of the left – We have returned to the land of the Judges and
the kings of the Davidian dynasty, said defense minister Moshe Dayan
emotionally in the summer of 1967 – bear joint responsibility for the
gradual creation of the disaster in which Israeli society is wallowing.
Since it was impossible to take control of the lands legally, a
mafia-like culture of theft, lies and deception developed in the
territories, in which the various government authorities are still
wallowing, from ministers in tailored suits to the last of the
policemen sweating on the highways. Contrary to the rules of
international and Israeli law, contrary to elementary rules of justice,
contrary to all logic and every genuine Israeli interest, broad areas
were confiscated for the sake of the settlers and huge sums were poured
in….
Thus a minority took control of the fate of the entire society and
held it hostage, due both to the left's ideological impotence and a
lack of character, determination and leadership. If society does not
find the emotional strength to remove the noose of the settlements,
nothing but a sad memory will remain of the Jewish state as it still
exists.
Yes, this is the real subconscious story of The Golem and its offspring, e.g., Robot Dreams. Jews like Witty and SOG and their posse just don't see it. As Pogo said, "I have met the enemy, and it is me."
And they wonder to this day why the Polish farmer sniffed, looked up, and continued plowing, on the outskirts of Auschwitz.
The Good Samaritan is a Christian concept, no? I'm not talking about the calculated marketing device under the slogan "Am I my brother's keeper?' Especially when the term brother has a very specific meaning that does not include the human race.
What I find truly amusing about such stories is how they make it look like the Zionist project had always been a completely noble, moral and angelic enterprise until this unfortunate confluence of ignorance and hubris on the part of a few extremist settlers started undoing it.
Akiva Eldar takes this garbage to absurd lengths. I've asked him, and will continue to ask anyone who peddles this line: What exactly is different between what the settlers of Hebron and the Dead Sea valley are doing today and what the settlers of 1948 did in Haifa, Jaffa and Akka? And if you feel so utterly outraged by what is going on in Hebron today, why aren't you too bothered about what happened in Haifa 60 years ago?
I've yet to receive one marginally intelligent (even by Zionist standards) answer to this question.
keating, you are getting dangerously close to sog's level. it's getting toxic around here.
Zionism is dying? What an odd thing to say. What is going on in the West Bank today is Zionism thriving. This what Zionsim entails– the creation of new lands for a Jewish state in the Middle East. What is dying is the notion that Israel will be a democratic state.
I happen to support the State of Israel, a state for the Jewish people. What happened in the creation of that state leading up to 1948 were unfortunate for the Palestinian natives. They were truly undeserving victims. They and their descendents deserve reparations. But if Israel continues these Zionist ambitions into the the West Bank then it will be impossible for Israel to be anything else other than a colonial settler state with Jewish dominium over a majority of Arab natives. This will be irreconcilable with any notion of democracy.
Where Sternhell, as well as Phillip, are wrong is their belief that this move control the West Band is only being pushed by a minority of Jews. They cite polling data that shows that more than 50% of the population would trade the West Bank for peace. This question is so vague as to be meaningless. Here are some more relevant political facts.
A majority of career COs in the IDF support annexation.
A clear majority of the the officials and voters in the rightwing political parties support annexation.
A majority of officials in Mossad support current policies of suppressing West Band Palestinians.
A significant number of the left wing politicians support current West Bank policies. (Of course they are always open to negotiation, such as the Oslo process or Camp David that seem to end in failure).
Between 30 to 40 per cent of the Israeli electorate support the transfer option.
About 70% would never live in a neighborhood that included Arabs.
This is extremely weak support for any two-state solution. Then let us add that 8% of the Jewish Israeli population now live in the West Bank as settlers. These are people who are willing to put their lives on the line to stop any two state solution. Who on the other side are willing to stop them? The labor Party? The IDF (keep track, their officers are already on the other side)?
A reasonable person could conclude that the irreversible facts that Sharon dedicated his life to putting on the ground are now reality. And Sternhell and Phillip can wish all they will, it will not go away.
"What I find truly amusing about such stories is how they make it look like the Zionist project had always been a completely noble, moral and angelic enterprise until this unfortunate confluence of ignorance and hubris on the part of a few extremist settlers started undoing it."
Exactly. It's been Hebron again and again from start to finish.
"Exactly. It's been Hebron again and again from start to finish."
Jesus take a rain check on the hatred guys!
Haaretz says Zionism is dying! DYING!!Carters name and book are recovering, W&M are reverberating, Joe Klein is renouncing, Jon Stewart has ridiculed AIPAC and also just destroyed Neocon Ben Wattenburg:
http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=178079&title=ben-wattenberg
Yes, there is now a modest element of media criticism of both Israeli chauvinism and US policy towards Israel/Palestine, mostly still rather defensively stated, claiming to be Zionist, working for "Israel's best interests" etc. But Hebron remains Hebron, despite that nice Daily Show clip, and it's the hatred shown by the treatment of the arabs in Hebron which needs a raincheck, not criticism of the repeated crimes of jewish colonialism.
(BTW, Ben W. made a mockery of the neocon claims to 'seriousness' in that clip. He used it again and again as a shield, and Stewart just laughed.)
"And they wonder to this day why the Polish farmer sniffed, looked up, and continued plowing, on the outskirts of Auschwitz."
This is simply sick Charles. Auschwitz and/or the Holocaust in fact show that the "Good Samaritan" is a really rare species among Christians who put so much emphasis on the "brother theme".
On the other hand since matters are often complex on the ground. There was a large group of Polish priests who ended up in the camps. So theoretically yes, but practically very, very, very rarely the "Good Samaritan" tale mattered.
The Golem and/or Homunculus seem to have a just as long and complex history.
"And they wonder to this day why the Polish farmer sniffed, looked up, and continued plowing, on the outskirts of Auschwitz."
____________________
Charles has a point!
Hitler's extermination camps were in occupied Eastern Poland for a reason. He knew that Polish anti-Semitism was way more intense than in Germany. And this was so because of the historical role of the Jews in Polish society, a role that was not beneficial to the Polish farmer (as the role of the settlers is not beneficial to the Palestinian farmer – that's Charles' rough analogy).
By all accounts, as much as the Poles suffered under the German occupation they credited them for getting their country rid of the Jews. Schindler's List makes a point of that at the end of the movie when a Russian soldier tells the Schindler Jews "You can't go back to Poland, they hate you there". And they hated them there for a reason.
Er, they certainly didn't hate them for any justified reason.
Klaus Bloemker: By all accounts, as much as the Poles suffered under the German occupation they credited them for getting their country rid of the Jews.
Your argument no doubt will be supported by the Polish extreme right. But not by many historians. The main reasons behind the decisions to build the extermination camps in Poland are not so complicated. (…?…) How about: Poland was home to the largest Jewish community? There are more cynical reasons, like not wanting to pollute German ground. And Germans could dream on that nothing really bad happened, if they wanted.
I'm famous.
Whenever something is posted that stimulates rage at Israel, my name is invoked as an example of the enemy.
There is no justification for theft, annexation by military force, repression of Palestinians in the occupied territories or in Israel proper.
There never has been, and never will.
I take a strong stand that the practise of Judaism and the promise of Zionism is most accurately conveyed in the daily prayer and pivotal Torah quotation, "IF you keep my commandments, I will give you the rain in its time …"
I consistently oppose and expose the rationalizations that the settlement movements enlist to justify their annexation. I've heard hundreds of settlers representatives claim that they have just title to the land that they reside on by the legal basis of "it was formerly state land". In spite of that not being true in too many cases, it still leaves the title to the land imperfect, if there are potentially valid countering claims to the specific land in question.
Those are TITLE questions.
Land within Israel similarly that has been taken by Israelis has imperfect title if there are potentially valid counter-claims to the title in question.
Title questions are specific. They are NOT political.
And, they are most peacefully and most justly reconciled by actions that perfect the title, NOT by rhetoric, not by collective rage.
Well, we may or may not judge a reason 'justified'.
But the basic assumption among Jews – at least the official one – is that Jews are hated for irrational, God knows what reasons. Anti-Semitism is a mental illness of the goyim and their societies.
As David Harris of the American Jewish Commitee wrote in a letter to the editor of the International Herald Tribune: "Anti-Semitism is the world's oldest social pathology".
From the rise of Hitler, compounded by the FAILURE of the Western countries to respectfully absorb and assist European Jewish refugees, the Zionist project in general was necessary.
Russia and Georgia are fighting wars over posturing. There is NOTHING necessary about the war that they are fighting now. It sounds like pre-WW1 conflicts of royal alliances.
Zionism however was something VERY different than that. It was something REAL.
The current need of Palestinians for sovereignty, safe, healthy, is similarly real (even if the two main camps are at out and out civil war).
.
Sternhell calls zionism a "conquest enterprise," and later "the Jewish national movement." At no point does he call it a religious movement, although many of its adherents have strong religious affiliations and use Biblical terms to refer to the land.
One has to think the ambiguity is deliberate, to obscure causation. No religion espousing universal humanitarian principles wants to be identified with a bloody earthly crusade. Yet the overlap of Judaism the religion and the [secular?] "Jewish national movement" is overwhelming. Yeah, there are some Christian zionists, and some antizionist Jews on the fringes. But these groups provide only the thinnest of fig leaves.
Sternhell concludes that "if society does not find the emotional strength to remove the noose of the settlements, nothing but a sad memory will remain of the Jewish state as it still exists." True, but what of Judaism the religion? It's going to take a hell of a blow to its prestige if the majority of Jews and rabbis and synagogues continue to reflexively support Israel, as appears to be the case today.
Today's Dutch boy, grimly holding his finger in the dike to hold back the flood of stifled debate, is Richard Witty, arguing that "title questions are specific, not political." Who grants titles, Richard? Nation-states. Change the governing entity, and your old title might not be worth the paper it's printed on. Land wars are just title changes on an industrial scale.
The political and the religious
________________________________
The concept of the Jewish people/nation constituted by devine revelation – and its offshoot the Zionist movement – has always been at odds with the Enlightenment which sought to separate the political sphere from the religious.
A 'Jewish state' is simply not compatible with the social contract theory of Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and Jean Jaques Rousseau.
The U.S. is based on Locke's social contract theory – the Jewish people and its state are based on Moses' contract with God.
RE: "Russia and Georgia are fighting wars over posturing. There is NOTHING necessary about the war that they are fighting now. It sounds like pre-WW1 conflicts of royal alliances."–Witty
The immediate conflict has been sparked by the race for control over the pipelines carrying oil and gas out of the Caspian region.
DEBKAfile discloses Israel’s interest in the conflict from its exclusive military sources:
Jerusalem owns a strong interest in Caspian oil and gas pipelines reach the Turkish terminal port of Ceyhan, rather than the Russian network. Intense negotiations are afoot between Israel Turkey, Georgia, Turkmenistan and Azarbaijan for pipelines to reach Turkey and thence to Israel’s oil terminal at Ashkelon and on to its Red Sea port of Eilat. From there, supertankers can carry the gas and oil to the Far East through the Indian Ocean.
Aware of Moscow’s sensitivity on the oil question, Israel offered Russia a stake in the project but was rejected.
Last year, the Georgian president commissioned from private Israeli security firms several hundred military advisers, estimated at up to 1,000, to train the Georgian armed forces in commando, air, sea, armored and artillery combat tactics. They also offer instruction on military intelligence and security for the central regime. Tbilisi also purchased weapons, intelligence and electronic warfare systems from Israel.
These advisers were undoubtedly deeply involved in the Georgian army’s preparations to conquer the South Ossetian capital Friday.
In recent weeks, Moscow has repeatedly demanded that Jerusalem halt its military assistance to Georgia, finally threatening a crisis in bilateral relations. Israel responded by saying that the only assistance rendered Tbilisi was “defensive.”
This has not gone down well in the Kremlin. Therefore, as the military crisis intensifies in South Ossetia, Moscow may be expected to punish Israel for its intervention.
Richard Witty: Russia and Georgia are fighting wars over posturing. There is NOTHING necessary about the war that they are fighting now. It sounds like pre-WW1 conflicts of royal alliances.
Bad argument. On what basis would you regard a nation/ethnic group deserves the right to govern themselves? Some deserve some don't on what basis do we decide?
South Ossetian Autonomous Oblast
This story too has a much longer history.
The relations between Poles and ethnic Ashkenazim or Jewish Tatars is complex.
Polish literature is probably the most Judeophilic in the world, but there is a lot of resentment for Jewish actions as native collaborators for the Austrian and German governments as well as for the actions of Soviet ethnic Ashkenazim.
There really are enough positive and negative achievements for all the peoples of Eastern Europe and the territory of the former Czarist Empire to share.
We need to understand this history and its relationship to current problems.
There was an Israeli-American professor I saw on YouTube who gave a fabulous talk at an East Coast Univ.
He said If you want to understand Israelis, there is one word: Land.
Everything is permissible, and forgiven, in obtaining The Land: war, ethnic cleaning, deception, manipulation of the Holocaust story, the accumulation of monstrous donations, expulsion of detractors, anything. Anything and everything is permissible in pursuit of Land.
He said there were no moral issues, no high-minded principles in play. He said if there were, they are smoke screens to do one thing: get The Land, and convince others you are correct in your actions to do so.
I downloaded this vid, but it's stored elsewhere and can't give you a link.
Yet the overlap of Judaism the religion and the [secular?] "Jewish national movement" is overwhelming.
So much so that it frequently reminds me of the Iberian conquest of the Americas, done, of course, for the glory of Jesus. (If you asked the missionaries, all The Land and The Riches were merely coincidental by-products of the good Christian effort.)
Whenever something is posted that stimulates rage at Israel, my name is invoked as an example of the enemy.
Well you are Mondoweiss' foremost zionist apologist, after all.
I respect Soggypants more than you, Richard: he's more honest about his sociopathic hatred. You are in massive, and probably insurmountable, denial.
even if the two main camps are at out and out civil war
Touting this on a daily basis, one concludes Richard that you consider this one of zionism's finest achievements of late.
(In fact I and others have tried to present evidence to you that starting with the administration of Golda Meir, official state policy in Israel favored the creation of Hamas (then Muslim Brotherhood) as a counterweight to secular Arab nationalism. But alas the zionist fortress of your mind is truly impenetrable.)
Since it was impossible to take control of the lands legally, a mafia-like culture of theft, lies and deception developed in the territories, in which the various government authorities are still wallowing,
Sure, but the original declaration of Palestinian dispossession by Imperial fiat (in 1917) was completely on the up-and-up. Fair and square. No bribe involved, no lies and deception.
'Zionism Is Dying'
Please, zionism was DOA right out of Herzl's mouth. Empires are just terminal monuments to the chauvinism of nations.
The Covenant with Israel was conditional upon piety and righteousness. The Israelite kingdoms failed the test with the result in the destruction of the two kingdoms.
Acting as agents of God's mercy the Persians established provinces of Samaria and Yehud within a framework of 2nd Temple Judaism and Samaritanism.
When the Hasmoneans took over, they offered a radical reinterpretation of Judaism and started a religious evolution that resulted first in Christianity, then Islam and finally Medieval Karaite and Rabbinic Judaism.
Within all the religious currents that developed out of Persian period Judaism, the covenantal kingdom is defunct and Israelites or their spiritual descendants have no right whatsoever to establish a kingdom on the basis of the covenant with Israel unless a Messiah appears to act once again as an agent of God's mercy.
See Connecting Hanukkah, Christmas and `Idu-l-Adha.
Witty's beliefs have no connection to pre-twentieth century Rabbinic (or Karaite) Judaism.
Zionism fits the definition of a cult. A blend of both a secular and religious cult. The "land zionist are a nationality and secular cult backed by your run of the mill religious cultist who thinks God handed out Real Estate deeds in the bible to "special" people.
IDENTIFICATION MARKS OF A CULT
(a) The group will have an ELITIST view of itself in relation to others, and a UNIQUE CAUSE. e.i. THEY ARE THE ONLY ONES RIGHT – everyone else is wrong. THEY ARE THE ONLY INNOCENT AND ENLIGHTENED – everyone else is in apostasy.
(b) They will promote their cause actively, and in doing so, abuse others God-given personal rights and freedoms.
What strikes me most about the zionist and even non zionist jewish activist that you see so much of in discussions about Israel in the blogsphere is their insistence that Jews are the only innocents among all people of the universe since the begining of time.
Imagine that! One PARTICULAR race or religion or people that are hated for no reason, that never did anything wrong since the dawning of mankind.
EVERYONE IN THE UNIVERSE IN EVERY CENTURY HAS HATED THEM for NO REASON through NO FAULT OF THEIR OWN. They are the ONLY TOTALLY INNOCENT people in the universe since time began.
I call that totally insane. As well as totally impossible.
Now I can't wait for a SOG or Witty to show up and say that the Jews were hated for just that reason…because they alone have always been totally innocent of any wrongdoing.
LOL…you can't reason with a cult.
Perhaps it's just the toss of the coin on the table–one side, anti-semitism, the other side: Zionism?
Chicken or egg?
Zionism is very much alive, and remains entirely valid.
Expansionistic Zionism (both secular and religious flavors) lives in constant tension with itself.
All of the possible alternatives include considerable tension and contradictions.
The contrast between 1940's Zionism and Georgia/Russia is the contrast between a political/military/social movement that is necessary, and one that is solely for posture.
The Georgians in the questioned territories are not refugees, not homeless, as much as Russia seems czarist under Putin.
And certainly not victims of recent or current genocide.
Or is that Judiasm?
Sartre helps some.
So does Marx.
Anyone want to recommend another explanation for the persistence of anti-semitism through the centuries?
What about that guy who studied the fox community?
The Gentile Nations Are All nuts – to this day
_______________________________________________
Well yes, "Anti-Semitism is the world's oldest social pathology".
- David Harris of the AJ Commitee.
Of course, since biblical times the gentile nations have always been nuts.
"The world is sick and tired of Israel" said CNN's Jim Clany some time ago to an Israeli official.
What does that proof to David Harris?
It proofs that the goy world is still nuts.
Another point.
Could you folks that lambast me innaccurately please cease from lying about my expressed views?
"The Georgians in the questioned territories are not refugees, not homeless, as much as Russia seems czarist under Putin."–Witty
No, it's the Palestinians who are refugees, homeless, stuck in an open-air prison of Israel's making.