Alison Weir's differences with me remind me of a meeting I had the other day with a Jewish Arabist. I'm disguising some facts about him to protect his identity, still I wanted to convey some of his thinking. He worked on Israel/Palestine for a while then left for another field of Arab life because it was too exhausting. He had "lost my analytical center of gravity." One day he would be with Palestinians who are arguing against Jews and he'd want to stand up for the Jews–yes, I got the feeling, maybe a little as a Jew. Another day he would be with Jews talking about Palestinians and have to stand up for the Palestinians. He lost his analytical center of gravity. Beautiful words. I said to him, I sometimes feel I've lost mine too. Of Israelis, he said: They are like a dog that has been beaten; they don't respond well to the slightest provocation, it gets ugly very fast. Then he said: he has talked to Jews on the left in Israel, who said, we can't get anywhere here because of the American Jewish community supporting the rightwing in Israel. My friend disputed them; said, you live in a democratic country, stand up. But still, they blamed American Jews. They believe in the Israel Lobby more than Walt and Mearsheimer.
My conclusion is that the discourse is completely broken in the U.S. There is no dialogue between the conversations about this issue, no consensus, no unity. Alan Dershowitz is in the cloakroom and Norman Finkelstein is in the street, and never the twain doth meet. Lies are put forward by the American government regularly: Joe Biden's suggestion last night that it was the Palestinians who somehow have to make the concessions. When actually, when you delve into this, you understand that the reality is different, that Israel has been expansionist for more than 60 years and yet has been portrayed as the victim throughout. You develop enormous sympathy for the Arabs, as Jimmy Carter has, and Alison Weir, David Bloom, myself.
I say again that it is necessary to heal the Jewish narrative of victimization, because it controls the American conversation about these issues. We've all lost our analytical center of gravity.
Related posts:
- ‘American Jewish Committee’ and ‘Southern Poverty Law Center’ endorsed anti-Arab image
- ‘We Have Lost Our Way When We Look at Dead Children and Feel So Little’
- Is AIPAC in Play? There’s a Vigil Outside Its Hotel!
- Arendt and the ‘Expulsion’ of the Arabs–at the Center for Jewish History
- NYU groups ‘take back’ student center in solidarity with the University of Gaza and the people of Palestine
{ 17 comments }
The Jewish narrative of victimization will never be abandoned because it is necessary
as a means of pathologizing discourse about
Jewish wealth, Jewish power and Jewish
influence. Zionist supremacy cannot exist
without the illusion that Jews are the eternal victims of the goyim.
Is there a subprime mortgage analogy here?
Perhaps the leveraging is getting out of hand?
From your title, I was hoping that you would discuss your own confusion, rather than again ridicule and condemn others'.
You were right when you described Allison's presentation as propagandistic.
You were wrong to describe the conflict as an "oppression" (there certainly are important elements of one-way harms). The reality is that it is a complex conflict with multiple scales, and to ignore that is to be intentionally obtuse.
US military and economic aid to Israel, combined with the nationalistic hostility of American immigrants to Israel, prevents Israelis from living peacefully with their neighbors within the legal borders established by the UN in 1947. Americans should insist military and economic aid to Israel be suspended until Israel removes itself from the occupied territories outside those borders. The US makes a big issue out of defending the state of Israel, but it should only help defend Israel's legal borders, and ought to provide the same amount of aid defending Palestine's borders.
"You were right when you described Allison's presentation as propagandistic."
Assuming it was, that's a tiny droplet deflected off the rim of the
giant propaganda bucket Americans have had poured on their heads
by our media and Hollywood since Exodus, which Goebbels would have been proud of.
Richard,
What you call "important elements of one-way harms" I call brutal and de-humanizing occupation.
Eva,
I call it wrong.
And, I also call the continued state of war between states that have not yet recognized Israel, as wrong.
And, I also call the continued arming of Hezbollah wrong.
And, I contest that Olmert or Livni negotiating with Abbas, is the quickest and most effective means to change the current state.
You want to change things, remind them that Palestinians are human beings, over and over again until it succeeds, NOT that Israelis are demons.
Yeah, keep reminding the light to the Gentiles that Palestinians are human beings The influentIal Jews must have lost their batteries.
America arms Israel, America should arm Hezbollah, in order to defend Lebanese Shiites from American arms given to Israel, and America should arm Hamas, to defend Palestinians from American arms given to Israel. It would be a lot cheaper and less bloody if America would just stop arming Israel, though.
"important elements of one-way harms"
Hahaha! A classic Wittycism.
We need to compile a dictionary of zio-schmooze.
"It is necessary to heal the Jewish narrative of victimization."
Without the narrative of victimization there can be no narrative of antisemitism. Without the narrative of antisemitism there can be no narrative of choseness. Without the narrative of choseness there can be no Jewishness.
613 Halachal laws is a tough sell these days.
An excellent Haaretz article by Claude Kandiyoti: A red line is needed between Jews, Israel
A discursive red line
By Claude Kandlyotl
BRUSSELS – Let me start with two Belgian stories – unfortunately, not funny ones……
…..These two tales are typical of the gap of understanding that divides Belgian Jews, indeed European Jews in general, and the national communities they belong to. The Jews often feel lonely, even abandoned, when they hear Israel subjected to public criticism, and they react angrily. Most politicians and commentators in turn fail to perceive anything but paranoia in their response. Michel and Flahaut genuinely do not see themselves as anti-Semitic, and believe they are sincere friends of Israel and the Jewish people. The Jews, on the other hand, are shocked by their attitudes toward Israel, and tend to see them both as enemies, who conceal their hatred of Jews under the cloak of opposition to Israel’s government……
ENTIRE ARTICLE- http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1026026.html
Richard has left out the cause-and-effect formula of occupation. It may be "wrong" to him, and it is in many respects, but he seems to detach "oppression" from the "wrongness" of occupation. Secondly, he nary says a word about the Palestinians who are citizens of Israel: they may attest to an "oppression", more than he might know because the object of empathy has been lost, possibly because of his own identified victimhood.
Olmert and Livni speaking with Abbas is great, but they've done that for close to five years now. Arafat has been gone for that long (pretty much). Also, Abbas is not the sole representative of the entire Palestinian population; he may in fact represent a minority because most Palestinians see, sometimes quite correctly, that both Hamas and Fatah are incapable of budging Israel's stance on the occupation.
Israelis are not demons, quite correct, but they inflict horrendous policies on the Palestinians. They're human to the extent that they have the same faults as others; they are willing accomplices to the occupation, they see no future with the Palestinians, they want "separation", they want their championed status as a Jew over non-Jew. They want their security as the cost of another's.
Is the continued arming of Israel wrong?
I hope everyone read Alison Weir's response to Phil, and has navigated to her site, which is straightforward and well-written. There is no propaganda about it.
http://alisonweir.org/
I again encourage Phil and Alison to put aside any differences, have that cup of coffee, and work together. We can only overcome Zionism if we work together, and don't allow them to fragment us, as is their intention.
'Joe Biden's suggestion last night that it was the Palestinians who somehow have to make the concessions'
God, that is disgraceful. Not entirely surprising, but disgraceful all the same. What do you think Richard?
'Americans should insist military and economic aid to Israel be suspended until Israel removes itself from the occupied territories'
That is the absolute nub of everything this blog covers. What is your response to that admirably sensible suggestion Richard?
'The reality is that it is a complex conflict with multiple scales, and to ignore that is to be intentionally obtuse.'
Something like that I suppose. Was the oppression of Jews by the Nazis ' a complex conflict with multiple scales'? Or was it one group standing on the throat of the other? Can the extreme anti-Nazism of a Simon Wiesenthal be regarded as perhaps 'intentionally obtuse'? (Something you are an authority on)
You cannot transcend the emotional pull that your blood ties to this issue engender, and therefore cannot think straight about it. I can understand the condition, and even sympathise with it up to a point, but I can't support it's continuing to poison our elites into actions which harm us (one way harms!) and the prospects of our children.
Richard, if you are serious about the 'multiple scales' and the 'complexities' and all those other efforts to assert an equivalence (that doesn't exist) between the two parties, I assume you too would be very disappointed in Biden's finger-wagging at the Palestinians and not the Israelis – yes? Was Joe being intentionally obtuse? Or just a coward?
"'Joe Biden's suggestion last night that it was the Palestinians who somehow have to make the concessions'"
That was a summary of an inference.
I think that Obama will apply a consensual logic, meaning that he will suggest and urge (not force) a solution that meets both peoples' needs.
He is committed to the two-state solution, stated as "two states for two peoples". He is rationally anathema to any one-state suggestions.
Two healthy and safe states.
I disagree with your demand about military aid, for the complexity of the arming of Hezbollah and Hamas and other groups that refuse to recognize Israel's existence at any borders.
That to me is the glue that makes the knot impossible to unwind.
If you want to unwind the knot, then that should be a major component of your efforts, if not primary.
It is the position that retains the region in a state of qualitative war, rather than qualitative oppression.
The issues of title and sovereignty are satisfactorily resolvable in an environment of recognition and acceptance.
Even the abuses by some of the settlers (some that have good title to the land that they reside on and some that don't), is controllable under the rule of law in a state of qualitative political acceptance of the other, whereas its at best confused in a state of deferred war.
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