Novelist couple Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman have written a letter for Peace Now urging American Jews to get behind the two-state solution. It begins with language I find offputting:
Where I was thinking it's the Jarmulovsky Bank Building on the Lower East Side... The letter reflects the usual non-progressiveness of liberal American Jews on Israel/Palestine: it nowhere refers to human-rights violations by the Israel Defense Forces, only by the settlers. And it prominently raises the demographic threat:
Last night at the Israel Policy Forum I heard several references to this demographic threat. Naomi Chazan of Meretz talked about the importance of creating a Palestinian state so as to maintain a "Jewish majority" in Israel.
The obvious question to all these people is: If it's so damned important that Jews stay a majority in Israel/Palestine, why don't you move there? (Even as you keep tens of thousands who were born there and want to live there from doing so...) Congressman Gary Ackerman made that point last night. "There are very few people in this room who can't change citizenship and move to Israel tomorrow. But we're not doing it."
No: Jews like living in America as a minority. As Michael Chabon wrote in the New York Review of Books earlier this year at the Democratic convention:
I have written elsewhere about how my having grown up during its utopian heyday in the planned city of Columbia, Maryland—in an integrated neighborhood, taught by black teachers to revere Dr. King, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Ida B. Wells, Benjamin Banneker—might help explain the appeal of Barack Obama to me. I knew, listening to [Obama] in Denver, that there had been a lot of speeches about equality and justice given since August 28, 1963 [MLK's dream speech] .... When Obama concluded his speech, we looked at each other, and then at him, and all stood up, wild with applause... Now it was time to go save the world.
It's hard for me to see how these views are consistent with saying that we must do everything to maintain a religious/ethnic majority in a country halfway around the world you don't want to live in. Ali Abunimah has said that the two-state solution is essentially apartheid for Palestine: you on your side, me on mine. I'm for the two-state solution, for the time being anyway, because I seek an end to the conflict, and because Israelis I trust are for it, and as Norm Finkelstein points out, there's broad international consensus. But as I say continually here, It's time that Israelis start looking at the U.S. so as to reimagine their own ideas of minority freedom. This is actually what Avraham Burg's book is all about.
Adam Horowitz had a similar response to mine:
There's a great line in Chabon's book The Yiddish Policeman's Union, near the end, when the main character says "My homeland's in my hat." I loved it, the perfect diasporic anthem and totally at odds with "Israel is a flower -- perhaps the greatest -- of the Jewish imagination."
I try as far as possible not to buy goods made in either Israel or the US. I went crook on my wife for bringing home some Israeli cookies the other week – what a pious killjoy I am.
In the same spirit I avoid art made by Zionists. John Malkovich is a hell of a talent but I can't look at his mug any more without being reminded of his dreadful remarks about Robert Fisk and George Galloway, two heroes of mine. I have enjoyed some Bellow books but his ugly tribalism has put me off any more. Sarandon – never again!
I gave one of my brothers a Chabon for Xmas a few years ago. He enjoyed it and I was going to borrow it. Call me old-fashioned, but that intention disappeared when I read this. There are plenty of other fish in the sea.
And maybe Phil ought to stop devoting his puny life to attacking a country he's never spent more than ten days where they speak a language he doesn't understand from the perspective of religious/philosophical system he doesn't understand and rejects!
How can anyone question Jews when they start talking demographics? Whatever makes them comfortable! Also, I seriously doubt that Israelis would ever tolerate the sort of minority rights that we put up with in the United States.
If you want to watch a Mormon version of the Joys Of Being Yiddish, watch the HBO series BIG LOVE. It's like watching a wooden version of orthodox-super orthodox jews in their own ghetto world amidst the larger alien nation.
On the other hand, there's proportionately a lot more mormons in the US military than American jews.
Take your pick Romney or Lieberman?
Mirror mirror on the wall…
" the sort of minority rights that we put up with in the United States."
@ Todd,
The tone of that statement shows how you feel about minority rights.
This is worth repeating:
Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.
What's up with the people on this blog! Ensuring the rights of your fellow citizens isn't something you "put up with." It's a patriotic duty as good citizens.
I don't remember who said that I was part of the problem in America but I think people that think that ensuring the rights of our fellow citizens, whether a minority or not, is something that people have to "put up with."
Perhaps a journalist who is only Jewish by some strange accident of birth could give it a rest for a day and stop being so obsessed with a country half way around the world that he hates and that is inhabited by people that he wants to see destroyed. Maybe Phil could take a break from counting the number of Jews in every venue and I don't know, watch a ball game or something. There is something strange about a guy who purports to be jewish but thinks Israel should be destroyed, We got into WW2 on the wrong side. Thinks that the Mumbai terrorists were justified in putting a bullet between the eyes of a rabbi's wife and feels that a "nakba" event is where he needs to be on Yom Kippur.
Oh, and caters to a guy like Glenn Condell. Trust me, Israel can get along without your pissant purchases. Not to mention the assorted other holocaust deniers and people obsessed with Jewish DNA.
@Sword,
amen brother, amen
It will do wonders.
_The Yiddish Policeman's Union_ also posits a non-Zionist Jewish state in Alaska, which becomes increasingly threatened by anti-Semitism, as well as the "give it back" sentiment that Alaska arouses as a peripheral part of the United States. Chabon understands the sentiment that wants the Jews nowhere, no matter how docile they may be–and look, at the colorful, docile policemen with their colorful ethnic union, and their future in doubt. "Homeland in my hat" is just a heartbeat away from Joseph Roth's "No homeland but graves in every cemetary."
Here is another flower of another Jewish imagination.
Phil Weiss wrote:
"The obvious question to all these people is: If it's so damned important that Jews stay a majority in Israel/Palestine, why don't you move there?"
Well that's one obvious question. Another might be "If it's so damned *justifiable* that Jews discriminate against others so as to maintain their majority in Israel/Palestine to the degree they are comfortable with, how can you object to non-jews in any other country expelling their jews or limiting jewish rights or etc. so that the non-jews there can keep the degree of majority that *they* are 'comfortable' with?"
I'm for the two-state solution, for the time being anyway, because I seek an end to the conflict, and because Israelis I trust are for it, and as Norm Finkelstein points out, there's broad international consensus.
– I think that you have been subjected to a little deception, Phil: I think that the 'two-state solution' is now officially and universally desired, precisely because the technical capacity to corral and control all Palestinians permanently in pseudo-'national' bantustans and ghettos has now been established and tested on the ground in the Occupied Territories. This will be a pseudo 'state' exactly like, say, Bophutswana.
What really pisses me off about the American Jewish 'Left' is that it isn't a real Left. It has devoted itself to utterly petit-bourgeois fripperies like gay marriage, so as to avoid class issues.
Like W C Fields, I never met a dyke I didn't like, and currently my fave rave is Sarah Posner, who writes the 'FundamentaList' column for the American Prospect, and she's typical : she's wonderful on the Christian Right and its idiocies, but hopeless on abortion as a domestic, US class issue, because it has never even occurred to her, or any of her gurus, to look at it as 'a domestic, US class issue.' This blindness encourages the Kevin MacDonald theory : that US Jewish 'Left' support for abortion rights is merely a tool of Jewish population warfare (despite the fact that Jewish women have at least their fair share of abortions!)
Even today I am willing to volunteer to do the dirty work for Israel, to Kill as many Arabs as necessary, to Deport them, to Expel and Burn them, to have everyone Hate us, to pull the rug from underneath the feet of the Diaspora Jews, so that they will be Forced to run to us crying. . . . . . . .Even if it means Blowing up One or Two Synagogues here and there, I don't care…..- Israeli PM Ariel Sharon, 1982 . . . . . . . Google it, before the 'fix' goes in.
Zionists, and I say Zionists, because the hysteria we see in the world today – whether it be playing the anti-semitism card or promoting Islamaphobia has nothing to do with Judaism.
Sword of Gideon or whatever the hell his name is, is a prime example of a nationalist. Orwell had it right with the difference between a patriot and a nationalist.
Zionism is a racist ideology. It's a nationalist ideology. Nothing to do with Judaism inherently. It could just so easily be a nationalist movement for Country X or people X.
Doesn't matter.
So these people will excuse whatever Israel does, say Arabs lie, scoff at any critique and deflect it by accusing the skeptic of being "obssessed" or an antisemite. Etc. etc. etc.
This sort of narcissism and delusion all fits the behavior model of a nationalist. There's no difference between Zionists and rapid neo-Cons who accuse anyone who criticize America of being traitors or ANTI-american.
This anti-this or anti-that rhetoric is a prime example. It's utter garbage.
Zionists are modern day Nazis at their core.
The difference is that they can't overtly murder every single Palestinian or overtly censor every critical opinion.
Just as Orwell never anticipated subtler forms of propaganda and more sophisticated forms of totalitarianism and fascism, Zionism is an improved version of Nazism. An adaptation to the current world we live in.
No different from the propaganda in the US and the behavior of the intellectual community and elite sectors/corporate sectors.
It's really sad that no one will be able to stand up to the US and I say that as an American. We can only do that from within but our fellow citizens are too apathetic and distracted.
Zionists will eventually expel the remaining Palestinians, all the while destroying Lebanon and starting new wars, all in the name of defense and 'right to exist' – just pure nonsense and propaganda.
the world would be better off without an israel
By the way, I love it when SoG describes Phil as "a journalist who is only Jewish by some strange accident of birth." This is, as opposed to someone who is a Jew because of a deliberate act of God, evidently.
morris: According to camera.org that quote of Sharon's you recite is absolutely and totally bogus and, to me at least, unless Camera is making things up out of whole cloth, they have clearly shown it to be such. Supposedly made to Amos Oz, Oz has affirmed that he never interviewed Sharon, and indeed it's clear that quote it taken from a work of fiction from Oz.
No different than the bogus quote ascribed to Sharon about "we, the jewish people [controlling] the United States."
Of course none of us can be certain that everything we say is true, but we can at least try to be careful that it is. Let's be fair here.
"…a democratic Jewish Israel and a viable Palestinian state, side by side, with security for Israel…"
Will the Palestinian state not be democratically elected? I guess not, after the last election.
By the way, we no longer respect the Boers as a nationality, in practical terms. I wonder whether this could be the fate of 'the Jews', one day.
And maybe they should face up to Israel's racist past, present and future.
Putting The "Nazi" Back In The Ashkenazim…Israel And The Sephardim Ring Worm Experiments
http://homo-sapien-underground.blogspot.com/2008/12/putting-nazi-back-in-ashkenazimisrael.html
I know your some sort of gin soaked communist Rowan. Inhabiting the nether world of English leftist circles but I do find it interesting that when it comes to Jews you would have fit in very well with Halifax and the rest of the Cliveden set. Bevin, Not to mention Lord Haw-Haw.
After all Herr Hitler might have been personally a disagreeable chap but when it comes to the Jews. Well, it's too bad he didn't finish things up, right Rowan.
Perhaps a journalist who is only Jewish by some strange accident of birth could give it a rest for a day and stop being so obsessed with a country half way around the world that he hates and that is inhabited by people that he wants to see destroyed.
love – religion – nation – the other / the Other
@ sin nombreIt is perfectly possible you are correct, I have no time to research it now. . . . .
Sin Nombre: Actually Zionism was the remedy when ALL EUROPE had pretty much adopted the measures you describe, except for France (citizenship 1789, ratified 1793 confirmed by Napoleon 1805-8) and Britain (Jewish right to be elected to office 1855). And Zionism was pretty much a reaction to the failure of Liberal Assimilation against social anti-Semitism in the German cultural sphere.
I think it telling that you consider "Wait, doesn't Zionism justify a return to the way Jews have always been treated, especially before Zionism?" some kind of objection to Zionism. I pray that you never have power over me or any other Jew.
Rowan: There are plenty of non-viable states in the Middle East, so Palestine would just be one more and all the merrier. Since the Palestinian elite will never sign just anything to get a state and would simply continue the war against Israel even if they did, viability presupposes a precondition which clashes with the raison d'être of Fateh/Hamas.
Glen Condell: Please be sure to stop using cell phones, IM chat, CAT scans, Teva pharmaceuticals, Intel chips, "pill" cameras as well.
Some strange accident of birth? Indeed. Your momma.
Just look at SOG'a fake name; it should tell you a lot about how he views the world–check out the bible on this character Gideon. Also
he may well be afflicted with one of the many DNA genetic diseases
of his propensity and sanctification:
Eurosabra, to you it seems that the Arabs don't want peace, and even that the Fatah-Hamas split is in some way evidence of the fact, whereas I see it exactly the other way round : for me, the Fatah-Hamas split is functioning precisely as Israeli policy intends it to do : to paralyse the Arabs, and especially to prevent them from being able to credibly propose and implement peace on fair terms, which would mean the end of zionist expansionism. And beyond that is a further wrinkle, smaller in scale but precisely isomorphic to the larger one : in order to prevent Hamas from credibly proposing and implementing peace on fair terms, you have various smaller rocket squads in Gaza ostensibly answerable to conveniently unaccountable third parties, so that not even Fatah and Hamas combined can force peace to break out.
And Zionism was pretty much a reaction to the failure of Liberal Assimilation against social anti-Semitism in the German cultural sphere.
As Paris correspondent for Neue Freie Presse, Herzl followed the Dreyfus Affair, a notorious anti-Semitic incident in France in which a French Jewish army captain was falsely convicted of spying for Germany. He witnessed mass rallies in Paris following the Dreyfus trial where many chanted "Death to the Jews!" Herzl came to reject his early ideas regarding Jewish emancipation and assimilation, and to believe that the Jews must remove themselves from Europe and create their own state.[2]
I may sound strange, or too complicated to you, but the Nazis racist ideas have a French origin not German.
France is the best example for showing that a strong antisemitism in society ultimately must not mean danger. A few upright in society can turn things around.
Why, Eurosabra, is it so difficult to get a few facts straight?
Theodor Herzl: Zionist leader
As Paris correspondent for Neue Freie Presse, Herzl followed the Dreyfus Affair, a notorious anti-Semitic incident in France in which a French Jewish army captain was falsely convicted of spying for Germany. He witnessed mass rallies in Paris following the Dreyfus trial where many chanted "Death to the Jews!" Herzl came to reject his early ideas regarding Jewish emancipation and assimilation, and to believe that the Jews must remove themselves from Europe and create their own state.[2]
In June, 1895, he wrote in his diary: "In Paris, as I have said, I achieved a freer attitude toward anti-Semitism… Above all, I recognized the emptiness and futility of trying to 'combat' anti-Semitism." In Der Judenstaat he writes:
"The Jewish question persists wherever Jews live in appreciable numbers. Wherever it does not exist, it is brought in together with Jewish immigrants. We are naturally drawn into those places where we are not persecuted, and our appearance there gives rise to persecution. This is the case, and will inevitably be so, everywhere, even in highly civilised countries—see, for instance, France—so long as the Jewish question is not solved on the political level. The unfortunate Jews are now carrying the seeds of anti-Semitism into England; they have already introduced it into America."[3]
"Not to mention the assorted other holocaust deniers and people obsessed with Jewish DNA."
Hey, when you come to America the deal is you agree to assimilate. If you don't want to assimilate, go someplace where your tribe runs the show and no one cares if you stone Palestinian schoolgirls, demolish their parents' houses and burn down their olive groves.
While the initiating event for Herzl may have been French, early pre-Herzlian Zionism (Hess, Pinsker) was overwhelmingly a product of the German cultural realm and a reaction to the failure of emancipation from the days of Heinrich Heine and Rahel Varnhagen. The rise of Schönerer and Lueger to political office in the days when France had no explicitly anti-Semitic party is also a sign of where the balance of anti-Semitism lay. Not oddly, Russia–with Plehve and Podbednostotsev and the rest–was the most officially exclusionary, oppressive, and violently anti-Semitic country of the time. If you read _The Jewish State_ you'll see that Herzl considers ALL "cultured" European countries on the edge of genocide, and considers their variations, not an unusual conclusion for someone who was barely active within/conversant with the Anglosphere.
Nice try.
Also those "upright" were pretty few and far between, outside Le Chambon, in 1940-42, and there's ample evidence that French Jews are fooling themselves about the Fifth Republic today.
In response to something I wrote Eurosabra responded:
"I think it telling that you consider 'Wait, doesn't Zionism justify a return to the way Jews have always been treated, especially before Zionism?' some kind of objection to Zionism.
Well, first of all your quotation marks make it seem as if that was my statement or sentiment when it most emphatically wasn't either.
All I said was that it seems a legitimate question to ask anyone who wishes to discriminate against others why then it isn't legitimate for others to discriminate against them?
Now I understand and indeed even agree with your essential point that context and history matter. Even though I think honesty does require us to admit that we are allowing a double standard, as you note to a significant degree Zionism *does* mostly seem to be a reaction to others' discrimination against jews first. And obviously the Holocaust only buttressed this so as I've said before when the world in '48 essentially recognized Israel as a jewish state and recognized the legitimacy of that double standard that was understandable and ought to be way good enough. The world ought to stand by that, and guarantee that. (As I think it does and would.)
But.
It seems to me that it's post-'67 Israel itself that is challenging the continued legitimacy of that double standard. After all it's one thing to say "we want a haven where we can discriminate against others so as to safeguard ourselves from the past." But it's absolutely another to say "we are so powerful now that we want to be able to conquer and take the lands of others and practice our discrimination there too, and indeed we refuse even to declare our own borders which of course means that we reserve the right to conquer and take and so administer even more such lands into the future."
After all, that doesn't just raise the question of these new occupied lands, it goes even to the question of whether Israel proper regards itself as a haven anymore. Whatever else havens do they don't go about aggressively starting wars and taking and absorbing others' lands, do they?
So again that's who and what my question was addressed to: The present. Those … post-'67 Zionists who not only want to be able to exercise that double standard vis a vis Israel proper, but also upon whatever additional lands and peoples that they may from time to time want to grab. Or, to restate my original question again, how in the world can these "post-'67 Zionists" justify this without seeming to legitimize any efforts in any other countries to discriminate against jews?
That not to say however that I think that any such discrimination against jews is either truly legitimate now or could ever be truly legitimate, since I most emphatically don't. No matter what Israel does or doesn't do.
Most Israelis read the Hamas Charter, and the PLO Charter, and assume that there will never be a non-hostile power to which to return Israeli-administered areas of the West Bank. They assume that any government discriminating against Jews abroad will be the business as usual of Gentile governments, and that the only remedy is massive immigration to Israel, if such can still be of aid to such Jews abroad.
At least with respect to the West Bank, such discrimination is considered a result of wartime conditions, of a war initiated by Jordan and carried on by different Palestinian organizations at different times, and answerable to the usual laws and customs of war and belligerent occupation, however capriciously enforced. The fact is that the WB has been a legal gray area since the lapse of the Mandate on May 14, 1948, with only Britain and Pakistan recognizing the Jordanian annexation of 1949-1967, and everyone recognizing the Jordanian abrogation of all claims in 1988. Israelis quibble about settlement and UN 242, feeling that any government willing to make a "tu quoque" argument with respect to the oppression of Jews abroad is simply The Enemy, as are Hamas/Fateh in the WB.
In the areas that Israel really HAS annexed, the Golan and East Jerusalem, Syrians and Palestinians are discriminated against with the rationale that they are 1)citizens of a belligerent state, and therefore anything better than internment is already good treatment (in the Golan) and 2)non-citizens who pose a continuing security risk (in E. Jerusalem.)
If you read _The Jewish State_ you'll see that Herzl considers ALL "cultured" European countries on the edge of genocide, and considers their variations, not an unusual conclusion for someone who was barely active within/conversant with the Anglosphere.
Nice try.
Let's return to your earlier statement:
And Zionism was pretty much a reaction to the failure of Liberal Assimilation against social anti-Semitism in the German cultural sphere.
There was no doubt antisemitism. Peaking at the turn of the century. Exactly the time when Herzl wrote The Jewish State (Address to the Rothschilds) up to his dead in 1904. I found many detail here in the "German cultural sphere", e.g. encyclopedia entries that suggest that antisemitism had pretty much turned mainstream at that time. But it disappears again.
But instead of your neat action – reaction scheme above, we have a really difficult melange: antisemitism – Zionism – ethnocide/assimilation.
In 1911 a German Jew, F.A. Theilhaber (more below)spoke of the demographic process as "decline" of the Jews.About two thirds of German Jews married non-Jewish Germans. A number that frightened Zionists. A real ethnocide. Comparable maybe to processes in the US, now?
The study mentioned above by Felix A. Theilhaber you can find it in a series of copies in the Israeli library net:
Der Untergang der deutschen Juden: eine Studie in nationaler Ökonomie./Translation: The decline of the German Jews: a study in national economy, Berlin 1911 (initially, many, many reprints)
Eurosabra wrote:
"At least with respect to the West Bank, such discrimination is considered a result of wartime conditions, of a war initiated by Jordan …"
But the war by which Israel took the West Bank wasn't initiated by Jordan, it was initiated by Israel attacking Egypt, with whom Jordan had a open mutual defense treaty, meaning that Israel accepted that by attacking same it was attacking Jordan too.
"and carried on by different Palestinian organizations at different times, and answerable to the usual laws and customs of war and belligerent occupation…."
But the usual laws and customs of war and belligerent occupation do not justify the settlements and the displacement of the indigenous population, as the world community and as the U.S. even has said. And I even just read somewhere that the top legal advisor to the Israelis back then has just said that he told the Israeli gov't that settling the occupied territories was in no way justified under International law or the laws of war.
So all this talk about how the Israeli's "feel" which I admit you articulate so well it's just this side of persuasive, still just doesn't cut it in the final, big-picture analysis. Again, so far as I know no one, not even the U.S. government, concedes that Israeli's settlement of the West Bank is legitimate.
And thus I think we ineluctably return again to what seems to me to be the absolute game-changing thing here; that continued occupation and settlement of the West Bank and East Jerusalem that were taken in the '67 war. Without that, everything would be different I think.
Much as I like Eurosabra, I sometimes get fed up with his (or her) decontextualisation of events and attempt to portray them as mere tit-for-tat phenomena, if not worse – unmerited, gratuitous psychopathic Arab aggression. The fact is that it was 'the Jews' who invaded 'Arab lands', and no amount of flim flam about the temple of Solomon and the kingdom of David can change or even obscure that fact, except in church.
Rowan Berkeley wrote:
"Much as I like Eurosabra, I sometimes get fed up with his (or her) decontextualisation of events and attempt to portray them as mere tit-for-tat phenomena, if not worse – unmerited, gratuitous psychopathic Arab aggression. The fact is that it was 'the Jews' who invaded…."
Well first of all Rowan as you know it wasn't really "the Jews" who invaded the West Bank or East Jerusalem it was the Israelis, and I think one thing that ought to always be distinguished is that no one can hold the actions of the Israeli government or the Israeli people against each and every jew everywhere. That's not to say that there aren't lots of non-Israeli jews who that *is* fair to given their words and actions, nor that the world jewish community shouldn't speak up more when Israel does things in its name, but I still think one has to be careful in talking about "jews" given how individual the term is. I note that you did use quotation marks in your comment which is why I know that you recognize this, but I'm just saying that I don't know that this goes far enough maintaining the distinction.
And I don't see how Eurosabra "decontextualized" things either, at least for me. In fact as I said I thought he was more persuasive than anyone I've ever seen contextualizing how—to a certain extent at least—in Israeli eyes the occupied territories really aren't being occupied as an expansionist venture but instead as a security measure. He also says of course that to some other degree Israel does just feel it has a right to now own the West Bank and Jerusalem, and I think that's a greater extent than he concedes. But if you or I were Israelis I don't think we'd be discounting his point about us feeling that we certainly ought not be returning those occupied territories to someone who is implacably hostile to us.
Even though that's a good point in terms of understanding Israeli feelings though I think the answer simply is that Israelis have no more right than anyone else to some sort of existential security. I don't know that anyone has ever had same all throughout history, and now with the advent of weapons of mass destruction it's clear that probably no-one will ever have it again if they ever did.
Plus of course it seems to me time has hollowed out whatever validity that argument ever had. Has hanging *on* to those territories enhanced Israeli's security or *lessened* the hostility to Israel? Well of course not, and in the bargain Israel has just earned the enmity and suspicion of much of the rest of the world too.
But I don't we ought to totally overlook Eurosabra's point either.
Indeed, it seems to me to just highlight why I think Abdullah's offer to Israel—now agreed to by the entire Arab League—will be regarded as such a huge event: "You go back to the '67 lines and we the entire arab world will recognize you and the validity of those borders." I.e., exactly what Israel always said at least was its sine qua non.
Clearly it seems to me the arabs can be hugely faulted for not having made that offer before (if indeed they didn't, though I don't think they ever did so clearly and unambiguously). But one can see in the heartening reaction of many Israelis to this that it strikes like a cleaver right at the heart of the matter there. Just as the '67 war was a game-changer, I think this Abdullah offer is too even if in a more subtle way.
Unfortunately I think that ultimately Israel will not accept it nor anything like it. The settlers are too numerous and strong now, and the situation is such that when they threaten civil war their Israeli opponents are going to be in the hopeless position of advocating such a war only to benefit the arabs, which argument they will never win I don't think.
So all this is just useless chatter on our part I fear, but it's interesting nonetheless. And, like you Rowan, Eurosabra has added much to the understanding and thinking about the issue here I think. At least mine. He's clearly in somewhat of a hostile environment in this blog which is not only commendable that he continues to slog on, but which also means that those hostile to his views ought to welcome him all the more for keeping them honest and sharp.
I would maintain that the zionist venture is the responsibility of 'the Jews' as a whole. I use inverted commas because I recognise that 'the Jews' are not a telepathic unity, as the nazis seem to have thought, but a highly undemocratic, clientilistic, diasporic archepelego of human islets in the general stream of life.
The sympathetic or sentimental bond uniting 'the Jews' is the product of their interlocking élites, both religious and non-religious, which combine to keep everyone who identifies as a Jew in a state of exacerbated paranoia. There are of course some who identify as Jews without being recognised as being Jews by any of these élites, but in general, despite the power of these élites to exclude people from 'consensus Jewry', I would say that
"Jewishness is just a state of mind."
The "hostile environment in this blog" is the direct result of frustration with the official narrative painted by the status quo
powers that be, and have been, for many decades. Samizdat anyone?
Rowan wrote:
"I would maintain that the zionist venture is the responsibility of 'the Jews' as a whole."
A.) Every jot, tittle and action of it? Including the decision to colonize the West Bank, including those many jews who objected to or are objecting to same today?
B.) Well then why isn't the Holocaust the responsibility of … "Christians as a whole"? Or at least Christian Europeans? Or Protestant Europeans given that Germany was so Protestant? Or aryans?
"I use inverted commas because I recognise that 'the Jews' are not a telepathic unity, as the nazis seem to have thought…."
I have never ever heard that phrase. Is it yours? Brilliant description.
yes to both questions. We aren't talking about legal responsibility, as in the bizarre and punitive notion of 'war guilt', but cultural responsibility, of the practical everyday sort, that makes things happen, continue to happen, or stop happening.
Rowan wrote:
"yes to both questions."
Well nobody can accuse you of inconsistency Rowan. (Which doesn't mean nothing today that's for sure.)
I just don't know what practical effect this might mean then to talk about it in the sense you do of "cultural responsibility" however. While you say it's not a "war guilt" kind of thing, why not? How's it different?
Very interesting issue.
Um, yeah, the defense pact thing: Israel asked Jordan not to invoke the pact, as while its security was threatened by Jordan the threat was not regarded as existential, and in fact did not move on the West Bank until the Jordanians began shelling, with (among other things) some damage to the Israel Museum and the outskirts of Tel Aviv. So either you split fronts diplomatically or you don't, but I can't deny that the cynics in Israel were glad to have Jerusalem.
One should be particularly wary of a Croatian solution, whereby the US (and its consultants, and retired officers, all non-Jewish) encourage Israel to "even out" the line of the West Bank as a "solution". Hopefully the WB Palestinians aren't going to play into that by turning Haifa into Dubrovnik, although Hezbollah-style long-range missiles ARE going to come into the WB in quantity after any withdrawal, if the natural development of Gazan weapons is any indicator.
For the rest, the Israelis who do argue for the legality of settlements claim that the transfer of Israeli population is voluntary, and that the GC articles apply only to involuntary population transfer. It's not going to end any time soon.
Eurosabra wrote:
"For the rest, the Israelis who do argue for the legality of settlements claim that the transfer of Israeli population is voluntary, and that the GC articles apply only to involuntary population transfer."
That's interesting. Do you believe it's legitimate?
Do I personally think it legitimate? No, but I'm one of the few Israelis with pre-'48 Jerusalemites in my family, so the "settlements" are a degradation of the landscape of the past. The experience of the Golan is that settlements are a security liability, while in Jerusalem, they are a plus. One argument is that the large hilltop settlements were on Jordanian state (waste, unbuilt) land and are therefore not an infringement on WB-ers rights, except as an erosion of potential sovereignty.
As I said, Israel–by which I mean the PMO–denied return to its own citizens in Bir'am and Iqrit for fear of "setting a precedent." This with a Supreme Court verdict calling for the re-settlement and labeling the destruction of the villages in '49-'50 illegal. There is a cynical, legal patchwork whereby some Arab villages are "illegal", some Jewish villages are "illegal", and others are "legal", based mainly on political vicissitudes of the moment. Right now the human rights push is against marginal Jewish settlements that have been labeled "illegal" by the Supreme Court.
Most people approach it with a "which came first, the chicken or the egg?" view, so while there IS a mobilized anti-settlement movement, it is viewed as a product of privileged, idealistic youth, or aging hippies– the same way the leading edge of the settlement movement is–or spoiled, callow bullies, from the opponents' perspective. "Chicken/egg" meaning that EVERY party pursues the maximum negative effect on the opponent, even at cost to itself, leading to an overall "disengagement" by Israelis w/respect to settlers. An Israel which was offered a credible peace in 1968 would not have settled the WB beginning with Hebron, while an Israel that had not settled the WB could possibly have made peace by giving it back to Jordan before the abrogation of Jordanian claims in '87-'88.
Palestinians have rarely managed to hold off the settlement drive, with legal challenges or otherwise. There has been a total failure of Palestinian policy bodies and NGOs, mainly due to the "armed conflict short of war" and the insane corruption of the PA, with some PA officials selling construction material to settlements– so mainly Israeli NGOs are responsible for the few successful legal challenges preventing/delaying settlement.
Eurosabra wrote:
"and the insane corruption of the PA….
Yes, that's something that never seems to have gotten the attention that it has deserved over all these years for some reason. When the Palestinian leadership has (infrequently) gotten its act together in the past it's always seemed to me to push things very much in the right direction. But then there'd be some spasm of violence or infighting, with that leadership being so vulnerable to being called illegitimate due to that corruption, and that would be that. Just like the settlers attack Palestinians to divert the attention of other Israelis, the Palestinian leadership can always divert the attention of its constituency from its own corruption and etc. by attacking the Israelis.
So anyway, having the rather rare perspective you have on all this, what do you think is the solution if there is any, and if things aren't headed that way where do you think all this will end up?
Damned hard to be optimistic seems to me, but you're obviously closer to the pulse of things.
I tend to think things will muddle along like this until the natural tendency towards interdependence asserts itself again. It's a cyclical conflict that tends to undergo strategic shifts that bring in outside actors ('48/''67) or shut them out again ('78/'88) without much changing on the ground.
If the conflict really was as apocalyptic as the rhetoric claims, people really would not be living together so well on the ground.