My friend Steve F. has passed along a column by David Harris of the AJC which talks about Tzipi Livni's great challenge in steering the course between opposing ideological forces; and Steve then challenges me:
be interested in the American Jewish Committee's take on the issues of the day,
and expressly the view of David Harris, the Executive Director. The AJC
is clearly part of the "establishment" view of Israel. However, as
you can see, he acknowledges the utter legitimacy of many of the points you
and yours might make about the conflict. As this piece implies, it is
very difficult for thinking people to be sure of themselves regarding the
solutions to the conflict. However, what I am struck by fairly constantly
in reading your blog and the responses is (i) the utter certainly you and yours
have as to the protagonists and antagonists are in this conflict and (ii)
little expression of any understanding of the complexities and risks underlying
a resolution of this conflict for Israel.
In your writings you provide no
clue that you understand the arguments on the other side or that you consider
them at all when you draw your conclusions. How can you know how the
Palestinians will use the West Bank once they own it? Will they launch
rockets at Israel like they do from un-occupied Gaza? Is this not
relevant? How can this not be taken into account by Israeli
negotiators? This is just an example. There are hundreds of
others. I believe that to be taken seriously in any debating field, you
need to show you understand the issue from both sides. You need an
understanding of nuance. These things are missing. There are many of
us who despise this occupation because it is not humane but can't just take the
position that it must be unilaterally stopped because of all of the
complexities of the situation. Just railing against the lobby or
Israel will not bring too many of us along. Nuance please! Is
there really any argument against this???
Steve, my main comment is that Harris is writing in the Jerusalem Post for an Israeli and Jewish audience, including you in the U.S. His total field of reference is the choices that Livni faces. There is not one mention of the choices that the U.S. faces. This is my problem with the Israel lobby. It continually imposes on me, an American, Israel's quandaries and says, How are we to deal with this very difficult path? The field of reference is very narrow. The idea that, say, the U.S. and world community might feel a need to impose a solution on two parties who have not been able to get along for nearly 100 years is out of the question. No, we are to look to one of those parties as being somehow reasonable. It's like a cop showing up at a domestic and pulling the husband aside and asking him what the difficulties are. I think both populations are brutalized, and the Palestinians are oppressed, and the Israeli political system is so weak that it sharply limits Livni's field of choices.
I want Americans to start jawboning both parties. Right now we're only jawboning one. And as to your question of How can we give the West Bank to the Palestinians? This question was also asked by the Indians of the Pakistanis in 1947. How can we give these bloody angry violent Muslims a state right on our border. A very legitimate concern from a security standpoint. But that view was not valorized by the world community. In the Israel Palestine situation, that view has been valorized, continually, by the U.S., with the result that Palestinians have never had representation, self-determination. That is the real bottom line here. As Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on NPR today, the issue is democracy. You cannot deprive 4 or 5 million people of one ethnicity of full representation for such a long period without creating tremendous unrest. Unrest that has affected us in the U.S. and surely fed the anger of 9/11. So it is fine for Harris to talk about Livni's choices. I want to talk about the U.S. choices. And begin right now by honoring the humanity and suffering of the Palestinians and the horrors of their treatment on the West Bank. This is what I am certain of: that the Palestinians are oppressed and the occupation has created apartheid, an intolerable situation.The minute an American leader starts talking about that sort of thing, the Middle East will begin to moderate. That would be nuance!
Steve F has now responded to me. Here goes:
In your view, the points I have made (and which David
Harris makes) should be ignored because these are Israeli choices and not US
choices. However, you regularly malign Israel for inhuman policies,
which I suppose are also Israeli choices. You really can't have it both
ways. You can't argue for a greater US-centric view of the Middle
East (as opposed to an Israel-centric view) in the US political sphere
(i.e., a more nuanced foreign policy) but then go off the deep end and malign
Israeli policies without any balance whatsoever. If your focus
is on the US political system, focus on that and be ready to respond to
arguments that there are good reasons for the US to back Israel. If
your focus is instead on the policies of Israel, you can't duck a defense of
those policies and defend the right to be unbalanced by claiming that
you are US-centric. There is a contradiction in your view.
That's a really excellent answer, Mr.Weiss.
Perhaps we don't understand the risks,
because some of us don't understand why a Jewish State is necessary for the safety of Jewish people in the world…
Mr Harris, please enlighten us.
I want arguement with logic and facts that can be checked. No mantras please.
…
Its a bullshit answer. It entirely ignored Steve's points.
He stated overtly that he (and I) and the majority of other American, Israeli and European Jews favor reconciling with the Palestinians, establishing diplomatic relations with a good neighbor that is willing to be a good neighbor in return.
Your response to that is "more of the same" condemnation.
The reasoning that the US is supportive of Israel is valid and important.
Israel has asked the US to step in more forcefully, more compellingly.
Your argument cannot be with Israel but ONLY with the US administration, and that will change shortly. And, even the US administration has asserted its willingness to help (too little, and too late, but thats what we get from Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/oil)
From an American standpoint it might make more sense just to remove the Zionist interlopers from Stolen and Occupied Palestine and then return the country to the native population. Millions of Palestinians have been exiled from their homeland for far too long. If Zionists resist, we can simply cut off all funding to the Zionist state. Within four months it would fall apart as international loans come due, and the Zionist economy dissolved. If the state did not collapse fast enough, then a coalition of the more than willing could start giving racist Jews-only cities like Netanya the Falluja-treatment.
If the Zionists threatened to use nukes, we have a lot of daisy-cutters.
If the USA wants to encourage respect for human rights, support for democracy, and opposition to racism throughout the world, we have to start treating Jews and Arabs equally throughout the world. Dismantling the State of Israel would be a good start in that direction.
Once the State of Israel and its nukes are removed from the international gameboard, the US might achieve sufficient bona fides in the eyes of the Iranian government to work out some sort nuclear weapons. It will still be tough because the Iranians have to be nervous about the propinquity of 4 nuclear powers (India, Pakistan, the Russian Federation, and the US in occupied Iraq), but conditions in the region have some similarity to those when Nixon recognized China. Eliminating Israel and allying with Iran makes a lot of sense from a realist standpoint.
Here is the discussion from Ethnic Ashkenazim Against Zionist Israel.
Neocons Made 5 Million Refugees
by Joachim Martillo
According to the International Herald Tribune, World refugee population jumps to 11.4 million in terms of UNHCR responsibility. The article explains that approximately 5 million refugees result from US Iraq and Afghanistan policy, which has been crafted by Neocons acting as a Jewish special interest group. The article does not mention how many have become refugees because of Jewish Zionist Neocon manipulation of US policy in Somalia and the Sudan.
The IHT refugee numbers do not include Palestinian refugees, who number at least five million under the aegis of UNWRA and whose existence results from Jewish Zionist racist aggression and rapaciousness.
If so many people have become refugees as a result of Zionist expansion in the Middle East and as a result of the efforts of a racist Zionist intelligentsia in the USA, shouldn't we be considering the removal of the criminal genocidal Zionist population of thieves, interlopers, and invaders from Stolen and Occupied Palestine as part of the program to stabilize the ME and restore US credibility and moral high ground?
The lack of any such open national discussion in the USA indicates how much Zionism has eaten away American liberties and how much 4-500 Zionist oligarchs have come to dominate US politics both
Merely creating a discourse that treats Jews and Arabs equally in Palestine is not sufficient. We have to start talking about the bigger picture.
The economic crisis that we now face results almost entirely from Zionist manipulation of the US economy that goes back to the 50s.
We have an intriguing situation.
Anti-Semites made a really big deal of the Jewish aspect of the Long Depression that started in 1873 and of the Great Depression that started with the Great Crash even though the Jewish component was relatively minor albeit definitely present — even Galbraith is willing to concede that Goldman Sachs triggered the Great Crash.
Yet, today when it is so easy to show the tie-in (see One Economic Crisis or Two? and Israel's Cost to the World, none of the major pundits are saying anything.
The false partitioning of problem of the economic crisis and the conflict over Palestine makes solving the problems much more difficult.
I point out the following in Holy Land Foundation (Re)trial: A Decent Respect, Part III.
By any objective standard the IDF is much more a terrorist organization than the IRG. If Iran is a terrorist state, Israel is much more so, and anti-terrorism laws are being enforced unequally between Jews and non-Jews.
The defendants' attorneys should be able to make a case either for striking down the anti-terrorism laws entirely or for forcing the US government to prosecute Israel-supporters, Israel advocacy organizations, and pro-Israel groups within the organized Jewish community for giving material aid to terrorism.
If a prosecutor refrains from prosecuting Jewish terrorism supporters because of his own support for Zionism or for Jewish tribalism, he may himself be guilty of a prosecutable infraction like obstruction of justice. Such a government prosecutor should at the very least be dismissed from government service.
Under the laws that the Bush administration has carefully crafted, the 500 wealthiest Jewish Zionist political economic oligarchs are certainly guilty of providing material aid to Zionist terrorism. They should all be arrested, tried, and convicted. If their seized assets are put into a US sovereign wealth fund, they can be used to clear up the economic crisis.
I know it would be much more satisfying to do the forensic accounting to find the actual criminal financial acts of the Zionist oligarchs, but not only are such prosecutions difficult and lengthy, but so many of the computers containing critical data are about to go to seed in bankruptcies like that of Lehman Brothers that piecing together the economic crimes will be difficult.
My wife often compares Zionism to an international criminal conspiracy. The Feds put Al Capone away on the basis of tax evasion. Putting the Zionist oligarchs away on the basis of providing material aid to terrorism is a similar legal strategy that would benefit all Americans except for American Zionists, who have been responsible for so much mayhem over the last 60 years that they deserve far worse than they are likely to receive once discussion of finance, economic, and the question of Palestine opens up.
Once the leadership and the economic power of Zionism is broken, abolishing the State of Israel will be a piece of cake.
Why else do you think Zionists are so shrill and irrational in their arguments?
They are beginning to realize that they have created the tools necessary to bury Zionism.
Fascist pig.
The basic arguments confidently supporting the formation of Israel remains.
That the now majority of its adjacent neighbors recognize the state of Israel, as Israel, indicates that the prevailing wisdom is accurate, and will soon be consented.
While individuals may argue rationally on the degree of emphasis on ethnic cleansing on the part of both Zionists and Arabs at the period of Israel's formation, there is NO DISAGREEMENT among the peoples residing there that they will remain.
And, if they remain it is most just, most democratic, to do so in two-state partition, that enhances each community to be safe, viable, healthy.
Joachim,
If you are going to post such long comments, do it on your own blog. Keep it short please.
Thanks,
M. Weis(not related to Phil, though I am from B-more)
Mr. Martillo – I dare say Mr. Witty is correct in his characterization of you, though I'm confident it doesn't bother you one bit.
Extremists are such a bore. With extremist positions such as yours, I find the paranoid zionists to be not so paranoid afterall. Are you sure you're not a some sort of Likkudnik plant meant to try to increase immigration to Israel?
I'm going to assume Mr. Philip Weiss supports your position unless I read otherwise.
11:48 AM
Best. Witty. Comment. Ever.
Why does Steve F use the Gaza format as a basis for Palestinian aspirations? I doubt they consented to a territory totally controlled by Israel. Unless that is really what the two-state solution is proposed for the Palestinians.