My old fur-palmed friend Nim Chimpsky says I'm taking shots for quoting Israel Shahak. (I'm lousy with comments; I hide under my desk, also I'm unpaid). Here's an excerpt from Christopher Hitchens's eloquent if also slightly bloviatory obit in 2001:
Israel Shahak, who died on July 2. His home on Bartenura Street in
Jerusalem was a library of information about the human rights of the
oppressed. The families of prisoners, the staff of closed and censored
publications, the victims of eviction and confiscation – none were ever
turned away. I have met influential “civil society” Palestinians alive
today who were protected as students when Israel was a professor of
chemistry at the Hebrew University; from him they learned never to
generalize about Jews….
He had no heroes and no dogmas and no party allegiances. If he admitted
to any intellectual model, it would have been Spinoza. For Shahak, the
liberation of the Jewish people was an aspect of the Enlightenment, and
involved their own self-emancipation from ghetto life and from clerical
control, no less than from ancient “Gentile” prejudice. It therefore
naturally ensued that Jews should never traffic in superstitions or
racial myths; they stood to lose the most from the toleration of such
rubbish. And it went almost without saying that there could be no
defensible Jewish excuse for denying the human rights of others.
Oh and this just in: Nim Chimpsky has also dug up an appearance at MIT 14 years ago featuring Noam Chomsky and the late Shahak, who had the vision to see apartheid even then. I think Chimpsky was a lab animal at MIT, so that's how come he remembers this story lo these many years later:
Shahak described the situation of Palestinians as a "manifestation of
apartheid in the territories" of Israel. Although Palestinians account for
70 percent of Israeli citizens, they are regularly dealt with unjustly and
are denied resources such as land and water, Shahak said.
Palestinians are also subject to unfair legal treatment, Shahak said.
Israeli Jews who have killed or wounded Palestinians are freed, but
Palestinians are punished – often tortured – for committing the same acts
against Jews, he said.
"We are doing to Palestinians � what Christians � have done to [Jews],"
Shahak continued, tracing the history of the oppression of Jews throughout
European history. "It is quite common that a persecuted group becomes a
persecutor," he said.
Audience members had the opportunity to voice their questions and
comments after Chomsky and Shahak spoke. Some accused Chomsky and Shahak of
exaggerating and not speaking the truth. One audience member called Chomsky
a liar.
Another accused Chomsky of promoting "a cesspool of misinformation."
Echoing the words of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin about Baruch
Goldstein, the Jew who last February murdered 29 Palestinians in a mosque
in Israel, the audience member said to Chomsky, "We spit you out with every
bit of power we have."
Chomsky responded, "The feeling is mutual."
In reply to the audience's hostility, Shahak said that Jews who
perpetuate a "denial of common humanity" are "Jewish Nazis."
I think I did see that before, I knew that Hitchens was unsparing to the Jews unlike the second-fiddle atheists like Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins. Still, I despise Hitchens, and the best take down of all these folks for their warmongering and anti-Arab racism was by Michael Lerner a year or so back.
Both Chomsky and Shahak have been right about the situation all along, going back at least 40 years each.
Phil, you're a latecomer to the scene but welcome nonetheless. It looks like the Zionist ideology is losing it's hold over Jewish people.
Phil,
The "insights" that you inferred from Shahak are the 'Jews are not a people', that as 'not a people, the insistence on dominance is apartheid'.
In your quote, the population numbers are grossly innaccurate. In the land from the river to the sea, the population now is approximately 51% Jewish, not 70% Palestinian five years ago.
Some site that there is no reliable census data on Palestinians, and that they might comprise a majority currently.
But, NOT 70%.
Its NOT a necessary variable to conclude that a fair two-state solution is necessary.
A fair two-state solution is different than a likud one-state, or a Palestinian nationalist one-state, or a sharia one-state, or even a civilist one-state.
Contention makes journalistic career. Calm and mutual decency makes good real life.
Hitchens has been quoted elsewhere as saying that Walt and Mearsheimer's book is "a little bit fishy" (implying anti-Jewish sentiments), and Chomksy doesn't believe there is any definitive Israel Lobby. Didn't Hitchens recently discover some Jewish blood in his family lineage?
Richard Witty and all other two-state supporters: Given the facts on the ground, how on earth can you honestly envision a Palestinian state? It would be nothing more than a bantustan subject to Israeli control. One democratic state is the only realistic, just solution.
"… a bantustan subject to Israeli control."
But that's the best part. Jewish control is a GOOD. Tikum Olam.
Population is at a rough Israeli-Palestinian parity as it has been for years now, with an edge to the Palestinians. But a critical fact to remember is that as many as a million of the Israelis are exiles living abroad, so the 5/6 (million) ratio of Israelis to Palestinians is really more like 4/6.
The land is majority Israeli citizens.
Its a parity of Jews to non-Jews. I heard that there are slightly more Jews than non-Jews there.
Non-Jews include, Palestinian Muslims, Palestinian Christians, Bahais, Druze, European Christians, etc.
What apples to apples are you referring to Jack?
In Israel, 79+% of residents are Jewish.
Inside the greenline less than 10% are Jewish.
(I'm lousy with comments; I hide under my desk, also I'm unpaid).
No need, Phil. Weis doesn't seem to be fit to hold a candle to you. So why worry?
But thanks that was interesting.
No answer to the question of how a Palestinian "state" would be anything other than a bantustan controlled by Israel. I thought as much…
When it gets down to the reality and Zionists can no longer hide behind intellectual obfuscations, the question goes unanswered. And the Palestinians are left to burn, maintaining the status quo that the Zionists of all stripes are on board with.
To Jack Ross: Where is the Michael Lerner article you refer to? Thanks. James
Richard never answers anything. A week from now he'll still be posting that the population is majority Jewish and that Martin Luther King said anti-Zionism was anti-Semitism.
When your survival is at stake you can't be bothered with details like accuracy.
"The "insights" that you inferred from Shahak are the 'Jews are not a people', that as 'not a people, the insistence on dominance is apartheid'."–Witty
Where is the logic in this from what Phil said?
The morality of this context is blown away by Witty,
Witty, why don't you just concede that you are a pure tribalist?
Because you want to convince the animals otherwise?