Paul Berman's comments on Z-word about Israel/Palestine are so troubling that I need to visit them again. You know me, I'm like a dog with a bone. Well this is what he says about the occupation:
well, Israel ought to
dismantle its West Bank settlements and do a
thousand other things to allow their enemies to calm down. Me, I've never had
any patience for West Bank settlements, and I can picture a lot of ways that Israel could
improve.
I don't believe Berman is being honest about his own conduct. In 2003, he routinely dismissed the occupation as a source of Palestinian grievance in his book Terror and Liberalism, which paved the way for the Iraq war among liberal-hawk intellectuals, including the suggestible George Packer. In his belletristic manner, Berman said this about the settlements:
Ha ha. As if the settlements were a joke. As if six decades of statelessness and lack of self-government is not truly a desperate condition for a minority. This is something Jews should know. I bet that Berman actually thinks that Jews have a right to Palestine. He ought to stop talking about what "some people" or "a lot of people" think and tell us what he thinks.
Jews were stateless for 1920 years.
"He ought to stop talking about what "some people" or "a lot of people" think and tell us what he thinks."
A good recommendation for you as well.
"Jews were stateless for 1920 years"
What does Jews statelessness has to do with statelessness of Palestinians NOW?
How does somebody elses past suffering lessens/excuses/invalidates current suffering of somebody else?
Its like pharmacist saying that patient can do without morphine till later because said pharmacist had a toothache in July.
What is your point?
Richard, doesn't it bother you that your Zionism makes you need historical myths to justify your political positions in the present?
For instance, the statement "Jews were stateless for 1920 years" is pure bunk. First, the Jews are and were not one singular people–this is a Zionist nationalist construct. Second, historically the notion of separateness (or "statelessness" in Witty's latest rhetoric) was not something enforced on Jewish groups against their will–it was their desire. Third, Khazaria was a Jewish kingdom, and unlike the kingdom of David, it seems to have actually existed.
(Also consider the irony of Witty, who I assume is of Ashkenazi heritage, denying his own historical reality in service of something that never existed, in orderto justify the current-day existence of a place he would much rather defend online than live in.)
Great points, MM. Thank you.