This is exciting. It's a video from a jammed event on Gaza at the Capitol last Thursday sponsored by the New America Foundation and featuring Congressmen Brian Baird, Rush Holt (pictured above), and Keith Ellison, all of whom have visited the war torn strip. The hall was overflow for this event, people clustered at the doors, and congressional staffers were sitting on the floor. A couple other congressmen showed up. Sally Quinn of the Washington Post was there. So was Dan Levy (whose speech is here but inaudible).
Some highlights:
Ellison (Minnesota): "I personally was expecting to see bare shelves [in a grocery store in the Jabaliya camp]… But what you'll hear is that were it not for the tunnels being open, they would have nothing on the shelves… We're not advocating for the tunnels to be open. We're advocating for the crossings to be open… I have only one message to you today, the crossings must open!"
Holt (New Jersey): "I talked to the Prime Minister of Israel, he said there is no limitation on supplies." But the UN has had an X-ray machine sitting outside the border for a year. "There clearly is a role for outside help… The United States is not helping enough."
Olmert also told Holt, "If we let them rebuild, the sacks of concrete and rebar will only go to make launching pads for rockets." But they're getting the material anyway, thru tunnels, Holt said, so it's not about materials, it's about hearts and minds.
At the destroyed American school, Holt, a scientist, said: "I found a science textbook, shredded. Shredded, blown apart." He noted that the school has taken down the American flag because it was subject to attack by Muslim extremists.
At the same school, Baird found a baseball book with a teacher's notes in it. There was a section about Jackie Robinson. The teacher wrote, "What about this paragraph tells you about the meaning of the word prejudice?"
Baird: "How quintessentially American can you get, than to try to use baseball to teach tolerance and compassion?"
Good question. What's the answer, congressmen?
Ellison spoke of the Israel lobby. "Where you find a devoted constituency" in a democracy, you will find action. There is a "strong, active group willing to lobby for Israeli security… In my opinion what we lack, is a constituency for peace." That, he said, is what we have to develop.
Then Baird said that many of his colleagues privately complain about how imbalanced the legislation they sign is. And Ellison said: "Let's just say this, folks, in Israel it's OK to talk about this stuff. Only here does a politician have to fear derision and attack from speaking what is obvious."
Typically, I detest those who seek to limit speech in the effort to defeat those who prove them to be idiots. Weiss is no exception in this regard. For some reason, possibly because his neo-nazi friends are upset with him, he has been banning my posts.
I, of course, will continue to defeat his feeble attempts at terrorism through censorship.
Ellison, by the way, diodn't say much. What was he afraid of?
Incredibly important. Let's contact these representatives and thank them for speaking out, and urge them not to become complacent on this issue.
One thing that needs to change is this:
"Ellison spoke of the Israel lobby. "Where you find a devoted constituency" in a democracy, you will find action. There is a "strong, active group willing to lobby for Israeli security… In my opinion what we lack, is a constituency for peace." That, he said, is what we have to develop."
As most of us here at Mondoweiss know, Israel's actions have nothing whatsoever to do with "security". "Security" is the safehaven they hide behind in order to carry out their naked aggresson and occupation.
So, in speaking of "Israeli security", even if not giving it much credence (Ellison doesn't expand upon it at all here, or mention "rocket attacks" or other talking points), the representatives are nevertheless reinforcing Israeli propaganda that is obviously not indicative of the true situation in Palestine.
Until the issue is persistently framed correctly, i.e. ISRAEL IS THE AGGRESSOR, and the indigenous population is resisting the aggression, then Israel and apologists for the violence it carries out will still have the upper hand in the conversation.
Chris B, Ellison is one of the few elected officials who's not afraid of facing the high-pitched squeals of AIPAC and Israel Project pantywaists smearing him as a "neo-Nazi" simply because he speaks truth to power — in the same way you call those of us "neo-Nazis" who disagree with your "Israel-only" posture. Many of us don't believe there's much difference between A. Lieberman and David Duke, or even fascism and Zionism, even though you smashmouth us in an intellectually dishonest way with the anti-Semite canard.
There's an uprising in the air, a backlash against AIPAC-WINEP-JPPPI's decades-long manipulation of our foreign policy, and YOU stay awake at night fretting about it. How do we know you're losing sleep? Because everyday you come back to Philip's blog obsessively and whimper about "neo-Nazis" in every post.
As for me, I would debate you and your Hasbara crowd anytime, anywhere on how the IDF's Operation Kill Kids was a high-tech "final solution" style ethnic cleansing. And it used MY TAX DOLLARS to decimate these innocents. The overflow crowd for Ellison/Baird's presentation represents the body of oppressed elected officials attempting to break free of AIPAC's iron-fist political control.
Game over, Chris B, game over.
'Baird found a baseball book with a teacher's notes in it. There was a section about Jackie Robinson. The teacher wrote, "What about this paragraph tells you about the meaning of the word prejudice?" '
To paraphrase a mot juste from a long-ago U.S. political debate — 'I knew Jackie Robinson, Mr. President. You're no Jackie Robinson.'
'Ellison said: "Let's just say this, folks, in Israel it's OK to talk about this stuff. Only here does a politician have to fear derision and attack from speaking what is obvious." '
Former Rep. Paul Findley said the same 25 years ago, in his book They Dare to Speak Out. In one sense, nothing has changed. The 'anti-semite' catcalls and brickbats from the zionist peanut gallery still materialize with numbing predictability.
But Findley wrote his book after being ambushed and defeated by the Israel lobby. Holt and Ellison, by contrast, are speaking on Capital Hill while serving.
Glasnost, comrades! Glasnost, at long last, is penetrating the world's most hermetic zionist redoubt — the Pyongyang of zionism, as it were — Washington D.C. Let freedom ring!
Chris B. manages a toothy smile, laughing off Phil's dastardly attempts to ban his witty, erudite observations.
As for those of us in the emergency rooms of Israel/Palestine, we shudder and await the day a triumphalist Hamas misreads that "backlash" as an opening for its game of Last Man Standing.
One-state only works with mainstream parties like Hadash, Balad, and a to lesser extent, Ra'am-Ta'al. Since Barghouti's National Initiative is not the Palestinian mainstream, all disempowerment of Israel will do is lead to Hamas/Jihad's all-out war giving Israel Beitenu a chance to rid Palestine of Palestinians. Israel might not survive a political challenge by Israeli Islamists, but their dithering on Sharia makes them anathema to the Hamasniks who want to engineer the apocalypse.
You have fantasies of Israel as French Algeria. Do you know what happened to the indigenous Mozabite Algerian Jews in 1962? Those who were never French, at all, in language, culture, or citizenship? They went from dhimmis to exiles without stopping at "Algerians" because their brother Algerian Muslim Arabs wouldn't have them, because they were indigenous M'zab Jews, neither Muslim nor Arab.
Israeli Jews whose ancestors come from the Maghreb know this history, even if you don't, and they are as attached to their homeland Israel as any Palestinian. And they have read the Hamas Charter.
Chris,
You can debate on the substantive issues within the Mondoweiss comments policy. The "censorship" is not about issues it is about the vulgarities and personal attacks. Clean up your language and attack the issues not people and we will all engage in discussion with you on what are clearly issues of tremendous importance to all of us, and you will not have problems with moderators.
Here are some photos taken by Dr. Mouneer Deeb during a medical mission to Gaza in January 2009.
http://www.kawther.info/ga2/v/Maslakh/
Warning — 'Israeli values' on display — stark and bloody.
Andrew Sullivan and Walt/Measheimer:
link to andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com
Test
"it's about hearts and minds."
Israel couldn't possibly care less about hearts and minds (rather sickening cliche anyway).
Jonathan Cook has a new book out that is, in my opinion, a must-read. It deals with something I have been examining for years now, that is summed up beautifully in this quote from Moshe Yaalon "'The Palestinians must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people.'"
The book is Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair. DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK FROM AMAZON OR ANY OTHER U.S. SOURCE. It is outrageously overpriced in the U.S. at $99 ($78 from Amazon), and you can get it from a U.K. source for about 1/3 the price, including the shipping cost. I have linked to a site that offers that option.
Over many decades, Israel has developed and refined policies to disperse, imprison and impoverish the Palestinian people, in a relentless effort to destroy them as a nation. It has industrialized Palestinian despair through ever more sophisticated systems of curfews, checkpoints, walls, permits and land grabs. Cook analyzes how Israel has transformed the West Bank and Gaza into laboratories for testing the infrastructure of confinement, creating a lucrative "defense" industry by pioneering the technologies needed for urban warfare, crowd control and collective punishment."
The theory is that an arab population that still believes it can achieve it's stated goal of genocide is a people who will never give up terrroism.
They spoke of PEACE, not of contempt.
They spoke of the hope to get on with life, to moderate.
They consistently spoke of the shelling of civilians from Gaza.
Do you get that? That is the basis of hope in the region, peace, NOT agitation in solidarity.
Shirin, thank you for the recommendation. I have added it to my "to read" list (which is becoming much too lengthy – I have not kept up with my reading of late).
Incidentally, I checked the price at Amazon, and it was $18.45
They consistently spoke of the shelling of civilians from Gaza.
I didn't watch the video, I only read the excerpts from Phil.
If they spoke of "the shelling of civilians from Gaza" without putting it in the proper context, then that it is a major problem that must be addressed, as I wrote above.
The Israeli military is on record as saying that the "rocket attacks" are essentially a joke. That is probably why they never hit anyone or anything, except periodically, essentially on accident.
If the "rockets" are not explained in the context in which they occur – the RESPONSE of a desperate people under vicious, illegal occupation who are daily subjected to much worse conditions than the "Israeli civilians" could ever imagine (it's not even comparable, and to talk about the two situations in the same vein is frankly criminal) – if the "rockets" are not talked about in this context, then the entire "conversation" is without merit.
The rocket attacks are not a joke, nor only a response.
The are an effect and affect.
All actions are that. The important thing is to realize it.
Complaint that ends there, never gets to urging reconciliation and then helping, keeps it stuck.
Peace as a SMOKESCREEN, Witty.
Who is occupying WHO? Who is killing WHO disproportionately? Who is stealing WHOSE land, Witty?
ETC ETC ETC
God, you're dense.
Your approval is not based on virtue. It's based on the fact that "they" are not the Palestinians. They are not people who REFLECT the reality of your group's actions.
So by all means, go to a thousand "PRO-PEACE" rallies.
It's just like the word, 'collateral damage' – designed to make the perpetrator feel better.
You go to those sham "PRO-PEACE" rallies to make yourself feel better.
You bend over backward for those poor poor residents of S'Derot who have been "shelled." You no doubt, weep for the 20 dead in eight years.
But when it comes to the protest by the Palestinian camp. The protest that is trying to CONVEY one aspect of the conflict – the checkpoints – you turn your nose up at them.
I wonder, would you do so at the ACTUAL event? The ACTUAL checkpoints? The Israeli soldiers who abuse/humiliate Palestinians at said checkpoints?
No, you'll do it for the protesters though.
Keep gratifying yourself, Witty.
"I checked the price at Amazon, and it was $18.45."
Nope. You didn't check the price at Amazon. The price at Amazon is an unspeakable $78. You have to buy this book from a UK bookseller to get a decent price. The lowest price I have found was $18.85. The site I linked to lists several UK booksellers who have good prices and reasonable shipping.
"I, of course, will continue to defeat his feeble attempts at terrorism through censorship."
Hahahaha :-)
Is this a parody?
If Phil (and, I dare say, Mrs. Weiss, and Adam, etc.) are taking the time necessary to actually read all the comments and delete the obscene ones, then I am extremely glad to hear it.
After all, those of us who actually write the comments spend exactly that same amount of time reading the comments already up, before doing so.
Except for C Berel, who just goes two or three times a day from each thread to the next, not even reading the posts,merely reading the last two or three comments and posting beneath them the first insult that comes into his head.
Eurosabra wrote:
"As for those of us in the emergency rooms of Israel/Palestine, we shudder and await the day a triumphalist Hamas misreads that "backlash" as an opening for its game of Last Man Standing."
But Euro, Hamas didn't always exist, and for a good while after it formed it was so small as to be meaningless. So why do you think it *did* get started and then gained popularity?
In short the problem I've got with your post (which surprises me coming from you) is that as seems so common with so many other Israeli comments it just seems to miraculously believe that nothing Israel has ever done has contributed to its problems.
Indeed, it assumes a kind of an immaculate existence for Israel, affecting even its calculations of what it can do in the future as well as why it suffers its troubles now: Since it's never responsible for anything that is bad today, it is unrestrained in what it can do tomorrow too since that can never be held responsible for any bad results either.
Even putting aside those stories that one hears about how Israel actively invented or facilitated the invention of Hamas as an attempt to diminish the power of Fatah, it seems to me to a significant if not overwhelming extent the reason Hamas has gained its power is because of the Palestinians' perceptions of Israeli intransigence, brutality and etc.
Look even at when Hamas was on the brink of gaining power in Gaza: Of course it would have been smart of Israel to have done things well prior to then to deprive Hamas of any popular support or credibility and to have "strangled it in its cradle," so to speak. But let's forget even that too: Look just at when Hamas was really threatening to become so popular and that threat was so blindingly clear: What did Israel under Sharon do?
Did it give the PA/Abu Mazen anything to let them show their people progress? To give the PA/Mazen popularity with their own people and undercut Hamas? Even relatively easy things such as getting rid of lots of checkpoints, or putting a hold on the building of the dividing wall?
What a laugh; instead Sharon devoted himself to playing games with Dov Weisglass and George Bush so as to crow about putting the peace process "in formaldehyde," remember?
So who in the hell is supposed to be surprised when the moderates over there are eventually discredited in favor of Hamas? And then, despite this example of Sharon essentially destroying Hamas' opponent for them, what has Olmert or Livni given the *present* PA to undercut Hamas? Again, nothing. Bupkis.
And yet the Israelis are shocked, shocked when the world doesn't fall down in horror at the idea of a popular Hamas. Must be anti-semitism!
This isn't thinking, it's pathology. It's almost as if there's a stronger desire to be a righteous victim of monsters (and indeed everyone else too) rather than to avoid creating those monsters in the first place.
I still sympathize with your "shuddering" and don't for a moment doubt the existence of some monsters out there out for your blood. But tell me why it is you don't seem to blame your settlers and your political leaders for your need to shudder given that they have so signally helped create those monsters?
"Hamas didn't always exist, and for a good while after it formed it was so small as to be meaningless."
Hamas did not start out as an opposition group at all. It spent its early years as a religious/social services group only. The opposition aspect of Hamas only came about over time.
Also, some of your arguments are based on a faulty understanding of Israel's goal regarding the Palestinians, which is to constantly tear them down and demoralize them – make them believe "in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people." (Moshe Yaalon, 2002). Therefore, they cannot allow progress, and any progress that does take place, they must brutally destroy. Just looke at the pattern and it becomes obvious.
Sin Nombre,
When Israel was playing with "supporting" Hamas (really just holding off on shutting it down) it was viewed as something akin to the Village Leagues, local social self-help with a smidgen of Islamic authenticity. Much as the Israeli Islamic Movement actually IS, today. By '93-'96, Hamas and Fateh were using the weapons Oslo brought into the Territories to kill Israelis whenever possible, leaving Israelis the choice of the sauce with which to be eaten.
When Palestinian militants were part of the dominant majority, they used disorganized armed force against civilians to cow and intimidate the Jewish minority, now that they are an occupied people, they use disorganized armed force against civilians to resist. When they had the capacity for genocide, they attempted it, and now that they do not, they crow that they will acquire it and do so in the future.
The difference between the two of us is that I have SEEN how every concession to Fateh was undermined by the use of Oslo as a Trojan Horse, so I think that your post is besides the point. Short of a MAJOR realignment of Palestinian politics around Sari Nusseibeh (who might have grudgingly accepted a de-facto 1949-Israel) in 1993, everything was always simply a prelude to more war. A parallel is the crushing of the Israeli Black Panther Party, a really anti-State Jewish group, in the 70s by the PFLP/DFLP decision to attack (as in gun down) the IBPP's constituency. The Palestinians have been misreading the Israelis far worse, and with far greater consequence, because of the disparity in power.
The Israeli Islamic Movement has been handled with kid gloves, and because of the marginality of terrorism in its philosophy and praxis, has wound up in control of a lot of Waqf property in Israel. For whatever reason, it can "go along to get along" in a way that the heirs of Izzedine al-Qassam cannot, because the IM just has to rule Umm al-Fahm to keep its constituency. Every day that Hamas does not rule all of Israel is an insult to Islam. And yet both the IM and Hamas are Islamic Islamists who are into Islam. One is a self-defined revolutionary movement, and the other is an umbrella group for a democratic political party. Different goals, different means.
The other thing is that MOST Israelis feel that "The World" shares Hamas's goal of a world without Jews, and it's interesting that the major rightward turns in Israeli voting ('77/'89/'09) always came just after the wake-up call of a heap of Israeli corpses. (You can consider this a delayed reaction to '06-'09 which pried the government from the cold, dead hands of the temporary safety produced by the Security Fence. Israel without the fence would probably have ceased to exist as a viable society in '03-'04 if '01-'02 rates of violence had continued.)
Again, the wars were always "someplace else" for the post-'48 generations, until the 90s. Israelis felt basically untouched, and they associate mass death in their streets with Oslo, Hamas, and Fateh, and the rockets creeping closer to Tel Aviv with Hamas and Hezbollah.
I hope Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee learned something good from this. She co-sponsored the resolution that said we support Israeli killing with all our hearts.
And even after that the Houston Jewish community isn't too happy with her. They think she's too pro-Palestinian.
In response to my post Shirin wrote:
(A) "The opposition aspect of Hamas only came about over time."
and
(B) "Also, some of your arguments are based on a faulty understanding of Israel's goal regarding the Palestinians, which is to constantly tear them down and demoralize them."
As to (A), right, my starting point exactly; its present popularity and strength didn't spring into existence ab initio.
And as to (B), I wasn't really making any arguments about Israel's goals, so your point just seems to be to state your view of same which is fine. (Although as to same I'd just say that I think it's way too general and polemical; *all* Israelis throughout *all* time have only just wanted to crush the Palestinians? How do you explain Oslo then, to take just one example? I just don't think one can talk about the mindset of entire countries or nations that way; such things change, have nuances, subtleties, swing from pole to pole even on occasion. No need to demonize.)
And Eurosabra wrote:
"The other thing is that MOST Israelis feel that "The World" shares Hamas's goal of a world without Jews…."
Wow, talk about the exact mirror image of what Shirin wrote essentially. Indeed, almost as if you're seeking to confirm him.
Moreover, that's something that I wouldn't have even thought, but precisely in line with what I did say about what can seem a certain pathology in Israeli thinking. No wonder there can seem a strain in that thinking that seems to say that Israelis don't want friends; after all, if they really do believe as you say, what's the use of trying? There's only two classes of non-jews out there then, the enemies you can deal with without violence, and those you can't. (Acknowledging that you said this is the view of "MOST" Israelis and so presumably is not yours.)
And this (and the rest of your posts too) supports my further argument as well; If everyone really just wants a world without jews, well then of course nothing Israel has ever done (or ever can do) can ever be responsible for any bad consequences for Israel; if all Palestinians (and indeed the entire world) are just implacably hostile to it, then nothing Israel ever has done or ever could do could really ease its plight because everyone has and always will be out to get it.
It is pathological then, don't you agree? Not just in being so self-centered (who believes the world wakes up every morning thinking "what about those damned jews?…"), but in regarding everyone else in the world as being so uniformly malevolent—and so different from Israelis or jews. People just don't think that way. Not even the Palestinians. People are people; some are haters, most aren't.
And, crucially, if most are only somewhat susceptible to reason, they are certainly susceptible to self-interest. Offer them something real and they'll respond. Give them real reasons not to hate you and they'll respond.
After all the alternative is what? A belief that everyone else is essentially insane? Beyond reason and self-interest even? What a hopeless (if also monumentally self-regarding) eschatology.
And how ironic too: If anyone were to say that X or Y is essentially and ineradicably "in the blood" of all jews they'd be justly shamed in a New York minute as an anti-semite. And yet in your own words you say most Israelis feel that jew hatred is similarly in the blood of all non-jews.
Given the pathologies of some of the Palestinians and arabs (which for sure includes some good dollops of genuine anti-semitism); what a recipe. As a Christian all I can think to say is "sweet Jesus have mercy on all these poor people."
Sin Nombre,
Come on! "Israel" clearly does not translate to "all Israelis throughout all time". In this context it refers to a state, not each and every individual citizen of that state.
Sin Nombre, as to Oslo, it was clear from the beginning and proved to be so over time that Oslo was mainly a way to buy time for Israel to tighten its grip on the OPT. Rabin actually escalated the confiscation of land and the building of colonies and infrastructure DURING THE OSLO NEGOTIATIONS, and the rate of colonization escalated further after Oslo was signed. How much more cynical does it get than that?
One reason why Shirin can nor be trusted to accept facts and relies on racism he learned in his youth:
The book is Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair. DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK FROM AMAZON OR ANY OTHER U.S. SOURCE. It is outrageously overpriced in the U.S. at $99 ($78 from Amazon),
Shirin | March 09, 2009 at 07:56 PM
Incidentally, I checked the price at Amazon, and it was $18.45
Posted by: Dan Kelly | March 09, 2009 at 08:56 PM
Nope. You didn't check the price at Amazon. The price at Amazon is an unspeakable $78.
Shirin | March 09, 2009 at 10:18 PM
Yet I checked the price at Amazon and it is $18.45
Not that this is an endorsement for Kelly, but proves that in the face of bare facts, Shirin steadfastly holds to a lie as if his honor is challenged.
Nope. You didn't check the price at Amazon. The price at Amazon is an unspeakable $78. You have to buy this book from a UK bookseller to get a decent price. The lowest price I have found was $18.85. The site I linked to lists several UK booksellers who have good prices and reasonable shipping.
Shirin, the price at Amazon that I found is $18.45. I am more than capable of researching prices on the internet, and I don't need to be told "Nope, you didn't check the price at Amazon."
I believe the discrepancy is in the hardcover vs. softcover versions of the book.
Amazon paperback version
Here is the link that Shirin provided earlier. AbeBooks is a good source, especially for certain rarer titles:
AbeBooks
Shirin:
You're right, I misread you. My apologies. I still think you were being overbroad in what you did write, but that's no excuse for thinking you were being even broader. My apologies again.
Shirin, while we're on the subject of books, I have been unable (despite my enormous research capabilities :) to find books by Aref al-Aref. I am particularly interested in History of Gaza, and Al-Nakba wa al-Firdaous al-Mafqoud (Nakba and the Lost Paradise). I don't know if either of these has even been translated to English.
Well, SN, when the French hold up boats that they're contracted to provide to Israel while the Syrians take delivery of new Russian boats, and everyone knows the next war is on the way, and the Germans hold up tank parts they've contracted to provide, when everyone knows the next war is on the way, the writing on the wall is fairly clear. And certainly French policy towards Israel post '67 has required the clandestine removal of paid-for weaponry from French ports in the 1970s, and the destruction of an Iraqi nuclear core in transit in Southern France in 1980. And German policy required the hunting-down of those responsible for the Munich Olympic athletes' massacre, freed by the Germans after the Lufthansa hijacking of 1972. Because you don't know the history, you think the division between "people who want to kill you and people who want to see you die" is some kind of paranoid pathology. It's not. It is a lucid appraisal of history and of European state policy towards Israel, besides the UK and sometimes Germany, since 1967. (It is true Germany blows hot and cold, providing submarines but withholding tank parts. At least the Jews driven into the sea will have something in which to escape to the next Exile.)
The people who actually make policy are fairly capable of nuance, by the way, but the rhetoric of those who would destroy Israel if only they could is what people hear. The actual threat of Hamas is minimal, but I can assure you my street on Jerusalem was a rubble-strewn wasteland for several months of 2001, and that makes an impression on people.
Eurosabra wrote:
"It [the idea that the world wishes it were shed of jews] is a lucid appraisal of history and of European state policy towards Israel, besides the UK and sometimes Germany, since 1967."
Euro, you state the case for it being a lucid appraisal as opposed to a pathology as well as anyone can I think. (And indeed better than anyone I've seen.) But look at those last words of that sentence of yours, which encapsulates the entirety of the rest of your post: "*[S]ince*" 1967…."
I.e., once again it's as if nothing Israel did in '67 could have any bearing or effect or whatever on what's happened since. Again, an immaculate existence of a sort: Israel acts (seizes and colonizes the West Bank), but then denies that this can cause any adverse consequences for it whatsoever.
Indeed it can seem so extreme that it's not even understandable as an example of people feeling that because they only act out of the highest of motives that therefore nothing they do can be said to be wrong. Instead it almost seems like a belief in some kind of entirely different system of logic, physics or metaphysics: "No, not only can nothing that we have ever done be rightfully adjudged as a mistake that hurt us, but in fact for some reason of logic or physics or whatever nothing we ever do can ever *possibly* cause us any bad results."
I realize that such thinking can't possibly be that advanced amongst too many Israelis. (And that you have only been doing your best to present their thinking and not necessarily your own which is much appreciated.) But, nevertheless, it still exists to some degree and seems pathological to me.
On the other hand I acknowledge too that pathologies have their causes as well, both unforgiveable ones such as self-interest and also the more understandable ones such as the Holocaust. So to the degree (if any) you agree with me that this pathology exists, to what extent do you think that the Holocaust is indeed at the root of it? Or maybe better put, to what degree do you think a non-opportunistic view of the Holocaust is responsible for it?
I'd have to suspect a lot, but I don't know. I've never even visited Israel and so would have to bow to your perceptions.
SN,
Even if Israel were merely in belligerent occupation of the West Bank, as it is allowed to do by international law, pending a peace settlement and a resolution of the problem posed by the "missing sovereign theory" wrt Jordan, it would still be fighting an insurgency there with the means it currently uses and the Europeans and the World who think that the survival of Israel in '49 was a historical injustice would be pursuing the same policies. Had Oslo not brought the armed PLO back from Tunis, it would probably have run at about the level of Northern Ireland from 1987-present, but the usual political movement towards Palestinian radicalization would have taken place, as it did in Egypt, which received all of its land back, leading to an ineffective but equally absolutist Hamas and even MORE pressure on Israel to negotiate a Palestinian state with the harmless little Islamists, who would "only" have killed 100 Israelis instead of 1000+, wounding tens of thousands. Any state gained would be a springboard for more war.
There hasn't been a political actor on the Palestinian stage with any acceptance of Zionism as an extant community in Palestine, even a putatively non-sovereign one, except for a few of the early village leagues in the 30s, and even they couldn't get the Islamists to agree even to a temporizing, grudging passivity rather than all-out war, and they were wiped out by the Islamists long before '49.
I agree that Israel replaced the West Bank Mayors with the PLO, enabling a wider war, and then the measures against the Second Intifada radicalized the Palestinian population still further, but every concession and co-optation attempt has been read as a sign of weakness prompting more terror.
Again, since '49, most people have argued that this is a political dispute about borders but Israel has looked at the rhetoric and the actual use of WMDs (Egypt, 1973, Iraq, 1991) and has been disinclined to make concessions to suicidal genocidal nihilists. Once again, Israeli firmness post-'93 was a reaction to a transformation of the wars from something EXTERNAL to Israel to a daily war in the streets, a reaction to the Palestinians' finally moving towards their final goals in a real, thousand-dead-bodies-in-the-streets kind of way.
In short, Hamas is a victim of its own success in reaching out towards the goals it enumerates in the Charter.
Euro, you argue a lot of interesting contentions as to this or that specific event or etc., with of course the overarching argument therefrom being that no, Israel taking and holding and occupying the land that it has just has not changed its situation in any major way from what it would have been otherwise. And I just think that this either ignores or flies in the face not only of too many specific facts and events, but also of common sense generally.
In '49 Israel reached an armistice with Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon. Jerusalem gets divided between Jordanian and Israeli rule. And the big picture for the next seven whole years until '56 is essentially a reasonable quietude until Israel and the French and the Brits get a wild hair about stealing Gaza and the Sinai and the Suez. And after the U.S. put the kibosh on same once again the big picture at least for the next eleven whole years is essential quietude once again until Israel launched its war taking the territories, and since then quietude has been the last adjective to come to mind to describe things. And yet you say someone is still arguing that taking those territories hasn't really fundamentally altered the tectonics of the situation?
Coming even from the most disinterested person or body imaginable such an argument would seem strained. Coming from Israelis who sure as hell do have an interest in arguing that their continued occupation of those territories never before and not now means anything it looks like a deluded rationalization at best and the most cynical bit of pretense at worst.
As one of your previous posts itself noted what might be seen as the major incidents reflecting a generalized European hostility to Israel all happened after '67, and then there's the fact again that in '56 the French and the Brits were delighted to be Israel's ally.
It's those territories, Euro. If Israel would just give 'em back the world would turn cartwheels defending damn near anything else Israel wanted to do, not to mention what the U.S. would do. And since the U.S.'s friendship and alliance has been good enough until now to allow Israel to prosper and indeed become the overwhelmingly dominant power in the whole region, doesn't giving those territories up and so getting *any* appreciation from the rest of the world mean that Israel still gets rewarded in spades?
The only explanation is that Israel doesn't really care much about the world's opinion and support and the benefits it would receive therefrom, or at least it doesn't care about same to anywhere near the degree it says it does and simply cares much more about hanging onto those territories. It's damn near a mathematical proof in fact. And so it is a delusion to believe that taking those territories and hanging onto them has meant nothing.
And as regards your talk about WMD's, it seems to me something of the same is at work there too with Israel either believing or pretending to believe that its own possession of nukes had absolutely nothing to do with Saddam wanting to get them, and has nothing to do with Syria and/or Iran perhaps wanting them now too.
Hooey of that same old variety we were just talking about, it seems to me. A rationalization wrapped in a pathology. What Israel most obviously wants is to be the *only* nuke state in the region. Because otherwise it wouldn't refuse—as it has resolutely done so time after time—to agree to give up its bombs and agree to a nuke-free Middle East.
And just as with its rationalized delusion over the occupied territories, it's just a matter of time before the consequences of its nuclear delusions come pinching around it.
SN,
As usual, we differ on all the details of the fundamentals, as well as the conclusion. '56 was considered a Second War of Independence because it forced the Egyptian and Jordanian states out of the business of a continuous terror war of attrition against Israel and made it the province of irregular organizations from '56-'67. The British and French were willing to use Israel as a cat's paw for the 90 days that Suez benefited them, with the French supplying arms for cash as well as a few nuclear considerations until '67, before turning on a dime and producing the above history. And, really, Israel's capacity to keep the Sinai and Gaza as a buffer zone has been limited, and today they buffer everything in the case of the Sinai and nothing in the case of Gaza, since thanks to technology the Sinai is as impassible to an Egyptian army as if it were still occupied by Israel and because of technology's limits Gaza is a threat no matter what.
The calculus is that the world's goodwill from the Gaza withdrawal has been worse than useless, and that a withdrawal from the West Bank will produce a State of Israel that could be undone by Grads, quite easily. There will be no peace treaty, because no Palestinian faction can recognize Israel–or Fateh would have ironed out the details of 2000. After seeing Jerusalem shut down in 2001, I can guarantee you that Tel Aviv would be untenable if Hamas could wage a Gaza-scale campaign from the West Bank. Getting out of the territories turns Israel into Goa, without peace and without benefits from the world. There is no wall high enough to keep the rockets out. Micro-divisions that produced the convolutions of '49 were possible because the artillery was in the hands of the Jordanian state.
Again, there is no one to whom to return the Territories who will recognize Israel, or Fateh would have squeezed and negotiated and finally compromised in 2000, and withdrawal to a secure border is impossible. It may be that Israel has chosen to fight for all the land, but that was not a choice it made in '67 but one made for it by the summit of Khartoum in '68.
Again, you underestimate the sheer consistency of the Arab-Palestinian position since '49 among the holier-than-thou rejectionists, and the fact that the Lebanon-Syria-Iran-Palestine axis undoes the peace with Egypt and jordan. Territories without peace, or no Territories and no peace. Why does Lebanon, which could only gain from peace, continue its war of '49? Why did a supposedly non-Shia state "adopt" Hezbollah and its rockets? Arab states moderated at the prospect of receiving "their" land, and when revolutionary movements moderate they produce something like the Good Friday agreement. The Second Intifada revealed that the prospective deal was land for war.
Euro:
Amazing how people looking at the same history and facts even can come to such different conclusions.
I wonder if the proof of the pudding of whose are more accurate won't be at some distant point in the future when the answer is clearer as to (my view) whether Israel would have been better off giving back the territories and cultivating the world's support, or (yours somewhat) whether hanging on to them was better for it. Suppose we'll never be able to tell for sure since (alas!) you can't rewind history and run a different version, but I'm still betting on my guess to be closer.
Nevertheless your perspective is both interesting and informative and it's been a pleasure to hear it.
But they were not looking at the same history. One read a short piece designed to prove Arabs right and the other read the actual history.
That the exchange was polite belays the fact that one was deliberately obscurring the truth.
I confess to being mystified by the idea that the immediate, drastic strategic disadvantage produced by a withdrawal from the Territories in exchange for continued war by a Fateh/Hamas/Jihad/DFLP coalition could in some way be compensated by wider support for Israel in the world. Gaza 2005 should have provided a telling example.