It's Ralph Seliger's turn:
Jack Ross is mostly babbling here. The fact that MAPAM had pro-Soviet sympathies until the Khrushchev's 1956 revelations about Stalin simply illustrates how left-wing these Zionists were; this has no other relevance to our argument.
Obviously Nazi allies in colonized countries reasoned that "the
enemy of my enemy is my friend"; that Ross defends "the Mufti, Chandra
Bose, and the Free Iraqi Government [sic] [as having] legitimate
anti-imperialist aspirations which led them to collaborate with the
Axis," speaks volumes for his judgment and values. By way of contrast,
although the (right wing) Irgun did for a time have relations with
Mussolini, they never collaborated with the Nazis; the Irgun even suspended its war against the British until victory over the Axis was assured.
Meretz was formed mostly as the merger of RATZ (Shulamit Aloni's Citizen's Rights Movement) with MAPAM. Yossi Beilin and Yael Dayan left
Labor for Meretz three election cycles later. So much for Ross's much
vaunted knowledge of the Zionist movement. It is bizarre to believe, as
he contends, that two separate states is not practical while one common
state for two ethnic groups that have violently confronted each other
for close to a century somehow is.
I consider it more important to address the renewed attack by Saif
Ammous. I guess it would shock this gentleman to learn that-- unless
I've missed something in his long list-- that I (as well as most if not
all supporters of Meretz) oppose every policy and practice that he
indicts Zionism or Israel with. Meretz has even broken ground in appointing an Israeli Arab to the board of the Jewish National Fund
and has championed a successful court case to curtail discrimination
against non-Jewish citizens in their choice of housing. We support a
"Jewish state" primarily in one sense: that it be open to Jews seeking
refuge from antisemitism (and secondarily that it has a legitimate role
in sustaining Jewish culture), but not in privileging citizens who
are Jews over citizens who are not.
Finally,
for Ammous to ignore or deny the poisonous impact on the Arab-Jewish
conflict of the serious waves of attacks on random and largely
unarmed Jews in 1920, 1921, '29 and '36-'39, constitutes a moral
failing on his part.
Thanks for posting this.
My God Phil, there's no question that Seliger is right on this. Ross seems to be pretty well-informed for a college kid, but he is way out of his league when it comes to Zionist history. A hundred bucks says he can't even read a Hebrew newspaper!
I'd do be a little more careful in choosing gurus. Unless of course the point is not scholarship, but grandiosity. There seems to be a Hitlerian quality to Phil here–youth over age, argument over scholarship. When Phil hears the word negotiated two-state solution he reaches for his revolver! Except, phony liberal that he is, he probably opposes handgun ownership on principle.
My God Phil, there's no question that Seliger is right on this. Ross seems to be pretty well-informed for a college kid, but he is way out of his league when it comes to Zionist history. A hundred bucks says he can't even read a Hebrew newspaper!
I'd do be a little more careful in choosing gurus. Unless of course the point is not scholarship, but grandiosity. There seems to be a Hitlerian quality to Phil here–youth over age, argument over scholarship. When Phil hears the word negotiated two-state solution he reaches for his revolver! Except, phony liberal that he is, he probably opposes handgun ownership on principle.
The Irgun didn't collaborate with the Nazis, but the Stern Gang, including future Prime Minister of Israel Yitzhak Shamir, certainly tried, so maybe Seliger should hold off on awarding the moral prize to the Zionists.
Dear Mr. Burns:
The Lehi or Stern Gang did indeed try to make a desperate deal with the Nazis. The Stern Gang also literally waged war on the British in Palestine at the time that the Afrika Corps was advancing next door in North Africa.
The Stern Gang were quite shameless in this regard. But their ranks numbered something like 300; they were a fringe of the Revisionist fringe. The Irgun numbered about 3000. The mainstream Hagana numbered about 30,000 — to give you a perspective on their relative numbers.
All were "Zionists," but the group with 300 was one-tenth of all Revisionist activists and about one-hundredth the number in the Hagana.
And Shamir became Prime Minister of Israel, which doesn't sound terribly "fringy" to me.
"We support a "Jewish state" primarily in one sense: that it be open to Jews seeking refuge from antisemitism (and secondarily that it has a legitimate role in sustaining Jewish culture), but not in privileging citizens who are Jews over citizens who are not."
Not quite. There is plainly a difference between supporting a state that would be open to Jewish immigration and supporting a specifically Jewish state. This distinction is not trivial – the latter condition (but not the former) demands the continued prevention of those Palestinians who were expelled from 1947 onwards from returning to their homes. Such is the reality you try to gloss over by stating your opposition to "privileging citizens who are Jews over citizens who are not" – it's very easy to say that after a majority of those non-Jews who lived in what is now Israel have been expelled, isn't it? As far as I'm aware, Meretz does not argue for the right of Palestinians to return, and it does not view the forcible establishment of a specifically Jewish state in a land inhabited overwhelmingly by non-Jews as an injustice. This position – that of liberal Zionism – is predicated on the assumption that the right of Jews to self-determination in Palestine trumps that of the indigenous Palestinian population, and I'm afraid that's plain racist, no matter how you want to dress it up.
As for the question of why Palestinians opposed Zionism – the answer is rather obvious, Seliger's dissembling aside. We don't need to turn to the Mufti's anti-Semitism to explain why Palestinians viewed the Zionist movement with hostility. As Benny Morris put it in his standard study of the expulsion of the Palestinians, "fear of territorial displacement and dispossession was to be the chief motor of Arab antagonism to Zionism". Fears that turned out, we might add, to be entirely justified.
In any case, none of this really changes the facts about Meretz's position *today*. Even if we pretend that the Palestinians were somehow responsible for the triumph of the supremacist brand of Zionism within the Zionist movement, the fact is that Israel as a Jewish state (that is, a state populated overwhelmingly by Jews) could only have come into existence through ethnic cleansing, and can only remain in existence by preventing the Palestinian refugees from exercising their basic legal and human right to return to their homes. The liberal Zionist stance – one that, unless I'm quite mistaken, Meretz wholeheartedly subscribes to – views all of this as basically just. That's a racist position, as I say, and it marks the importance difference between the liberal Zionist support for a two-state settlement as a supposedly a "fair" solution, and non-Zionists who support a two-state settlement as the most just settlement that can realistically be achieved in the foreseeable future, while emphasising what a colossal injustice it would still amount to.
Dear Mr.Seliger,
I don't think trying to downplay the number of members from Lehi (Stern Gang) and the Irgun, and by calling them "fringe" or "activists", is any consolation to the many Palestinian victims of the terrorist acts perpetrated by these organizations.
Because the experiment with non-statist Zionism and non-statist quietist pietistic Jewish communities in Palestine worked so well, first as dhimmis in 1921, and 1929, with all of those massacres by Arabs, and the uprising from '36-39, and the barring to Jewish immigration by the British in '39.
Apparently any type of Jewish community sufficient to call a "national home" and ensure the physical and cultural survival of the Jews was "too much", and the Palestinians–who are not, at least officially–begrudged that sort of national home by the two-state solution–find that it is still too much.
One-staters expect Arab Palestine to grow a modern, pluralistic tolerant democracy of the sort that has yet to exist in the Arab world. And the only relatively modern, relatively pluralistic relatively tolerant dictatorship–Morocco–is at the wrong end of the Med and couldn't keep its Jews anyway.
"Obviously Nazi allies in colonized countries reasoned that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend"; that Ross defends "the Mufti, Chandra Bose, and the Free Iraqi Government [sic] [as having] legitimate anti-imperialist aspirations which led them to collaborate with the Axis," speaks volumes for his judgment and values."
Why?
Wha?
Huh?
This is exactly what this was.
The Arabs and Indians were looking to free themselves from the shackles of imperialism, from being 2nd class citizens in their own countries.
They grabbed every bit of help they could, if arms and money and training was the result.
To see how bad colonialism REALLY was, look up Steve Giliard's colonialism series:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/6/3/143541/2578
Well worth a read.
Here is another thought experiment for Ralph Seliger to engage in, since he seems so facile at taking the plain facts of piggishness and putting lipstick on them.
Imagine you, Ralph, have a wife. One day, some fellow comes along. According to him, the "United Nations" – some outside group you've never heard of – has decided that this fellow is now to be given 52% of your wife.
So for 16 or 17 days each month, this fellow takes your wife, treats her as his whore, and does exactly as he pleases with her.
If you, Ralph, dare complain about this treatment, or try to get your wife back, this fellow will launch an attack against you. Pretty soon, he has some 80% of your wife to himself, and for whatever time you have left, he imposes all kinds of restrictions and other torments. Perhaps he blocks your access with checkpoints. Perhaps he shoots your young daughter for sport. Perhaps he steals your bed, your house. Perhaps he rapes your wife in front of you, taunting you.
Would you, Ralph, abide these conditions? Would you submit, and say, oh, mighty United Nations, do as you please! Allocate my wife to this invader however you see fit! Don't let me have any say in it, as I'm completely uncivilized and unworthy.
I'm sure you can see the point of this analogy, although I doubt Ralph has the balls to respond honestly.
Isn't there a major difference here? Zionism colonised Palestine. It really puts into context why the revolts happened.
Isn't there a major difference here? The Zionists colonised Palestine with every intention of removing the Arabs either by "voluntary transfer" or by force. It would be best to contextualise this conflict fully.
Joshua but the revolts were also directed against long-settled indigenous Jews, in fact primarily in the case of the early ones.
By the way, having read your blog title, I'll take the hint regarding your final goals. And since Zionism is relatively empowered, I'll take it as a reminder of the need for active physical self-defense, ad infinitum.
Even if Ralph knows Zionist history better than any person on the planet by a wide margin, I still see no reason for the United States to support Israel in any way, or for Zionist ideology or idologues to have a place, or opinion, in American politics. Clearly, something is very wrong.
A couple of responses here to my critics: Stern Gang leader Shamir became a mainstream politician when he joined Likud, the successor party to Herut [Freedom}, which continued the Revisionist (right-wing) lineage from Jabotinsky.
Unfortunately, the right emerged as the only viable opposition to Labor when that movement faltered in the '70s after about 30 years in power; that's how Shamir became prime minister. None of this is a happy story for the Zionist left, but it is what happens in democracies — as we know very well in the US.
The Arabs of Palestine felt perfectly justified in attempting to destroy the Jewish community. No matter how one paints this, their decision to go to war in 1947-48 was the primary cause of the ethnic cleansing that they suffered.
If they had won the war, they would have done the same or worse to the Jews (and probably worse, given their recent history of pro-Nazi sentiments). Social scientists and historians call this a self-fulfilling prophecy.
JamieSW is correct that there is a difference between a country becoming a refuge for Jews and a "Jewish state." My Zionist lineage advocated the refuge part and wanted the state to be comfortable and fair to both Jews and Arabs. We achieved the first part and we are still struggling for the second, whether it's called a Jewish state or something else.
I see you don't dare respond to my analogy above, Ralph. Where is your courage?
Your dishonesty is evident in the phrase "their decision to go to war." That "decision" was in response to the Zionist attacks, terrorism, and ethnic cleansing. No matter how you spin it, the Nazi-style crimes that created your so-called state of "Israel" can never be justified. Israel can end like South Africa, with a true democracy; or it can end like Algeria, with all the colonial invaders going home. You're headed for the latter course, or worse.
Ralph's account of the ethnic cleansing, and the causes of it, is completely ahistorical, but I'm not going to enter into a discussion of it here. For anyone interested in the facts there is now a wealth of literature on the topic, and in any case, while important, the issue is somewhat removed from current political concerns.
More interesting is this statement:
"JamieSW is correct that there is a difference between a country becoming a refuge for Jews and a "Jewish state." My Zionist lineage advocated the refuge part and wanted the state to be comfortable and fair to both Jews and Arabs. We achieved the first part and we are still struggling for the second, whether it's called a Jewish state or something else. "
You're right that the name of the state isn't particularly important – what matters is its character. As I understand it, what Meretz advocates today is a two-state settlement as, crucially, a *fair* and *just* solution to the conflict. That is, Meretz views the existence of Israel as a specifically Jewish state – i.e. a state committed to retaining a substantial Jewish majority – as a basically good and just situation, despite the fact that it could only have come into existence through ethnic cleansing and can only remain in existence by preventing the refugees from exercising their inalienable right to return to their homes. This willingness to accept the destruction of Palestinian rights as just marks, as I say, the important distinction between the liberal Zionist and non-Zionist support for a two-state settlement.
Dear Matter,
This is my response to your analogy that has my wife cut into pieces: It's idiotic. Unlike people, land can be divided and often needs to be.
As for JamieSW, he or she denies simple historical fact. The Arabs did not reject the UN partition plan of 1947 and attack the Yishuv in order to impose a bi-national state. We cannot go back to what existed before the conflict took this fateful turn.
I believe that there is justice to the establishment of a Palestinian-Arab state alongside Israel (but only alongside Israel), and I believe that Israel can evolve over time (if there is peace) to a state that more justly accommodates the rights and reasonable aspirations of all its citizens.
Dear Ralph:
You're either stupid or dishonest. I never suggested "cutting" your wife; as I note that the division would occur in terms of time, as referenced by the phrase "16 or 17 days each month."
So, through deliberate misinterpretation, you avoid answering the question. As to the suggestion that land "often needs to be divided" you offer no justification. Are you saying that massive theft is perfectly acceptable? It sounds like it.
Why is it that Zionism reinforces all the worst stereotypes about greedy Jews? How unfortunate. The sooner this nazi-like state ends, the better.
Whatever Shamir's political journey, the fact remains that Israel made an unrepentant terrorist and a would-be collaborator with Hitler Prime Minister. Really, after that Zionists should shut up about the Mufti.