A few weeks after his friend Michael Walzer pronounced on the "awfulness" of Gaza, Leon Wieseltier has had a similar epiphany:
"I have a sickened feeling about the recent campaign in Gaza. No sovereign state can accept regular aggressions across its border, but Operation Cast Lead seems to have accomplished nothing. Hamas is again firing its rockets, Israel is again retaliating against them, and Israeli politicians are again making virile promises to finish the job. The suffering of the people of Gaza during the war was partly the responsibility of their own astoundingly callous leaders, but not entirely. Israel's choice of tactics and strategies was its own; and when it chose blunt instruments, it guaranteed harsh consequences..."
Good for him. "Harsh consequences" I assume means the delegitimization of Israel in international opinion (only read the clip on Sullivan). I just wish these people would stop using the tin-soldier pornography of "Cast Lead." Hundreds of women and children were destroyed. What is this Israel, Wieseltier?
(Via Voskamp)
Michael Walzer:
"A last note: it is critically important right now to address the suffering of the people of Gaza, and no one seems to have figured out a way of doing that—perhaps there is no way—without strengthening Hamas. So be it. But Hamas is obviously not “ready” for negotiations and not ready to get ready. Its refusal to recognize Israel and its commitment to terrorism are, for now at least, central features of its identity. So, I am afraid, is its rabid anti-Semitism: the Hamas Charter reiterates an ancient hatred that long predates the Zionist project and the wars of 1948 and 1967. It solemnly insists that the Jews as a people are responsible for the French and Russian revolutions and for the two World Wars. And that’s part of the message delivered every day and every week in Hamas schools and mosques—which is not a sign of readiness. Perhaps we need to think about a three state solution, with only two of those states—Israel and the PA’s West Bank—preparing themselves for peaceful co-existence."
Surprisingly enough, a friend of Phil makes sense.
where is the jew who can say 'israel has no right to exist'?
he aint the anguished halper. certainly not the two fish heads, wiesel and walzer.
"…The 40th anniversary of 1967 had to do with occupation. Had we dealt with that issue wisely and justly, Israel today could have been a Jewish state living at peace with its neighbors on 78% of the Land of Israel, a true cause for celebration. This year’s focus on 60 Years, on 1948, is a different matter entirely. If we want to salvage a national Jewish presence in Palestine/Israel, nothing remains but to courageously confront what we did in 1948 and the bi-national reality we have fostered since 1967. No longer can we blame the Palestinians for our dilemmas; they accepted the two-state solution way back in 1988. No, it is us, the triumphant, those who believed (and still believe) that military power combined with Jewish victimhood can defeat a people’s will to freedom, who carry the burden of responsibility for this most anti-Zionist, yet wholly predicable, situation.
Only a reconciling of our celebration with Palestinian loss will we finally begin to deal with the presence “in our country” of another people with equal claims and rights, paving the way to a just peace, reconciliation and the securing of a Jewish national presence in the Land of Israel – whatever political form that might take. Difficult as it may be, such a reassessment may in fact allow us to achieve Zionism’s original and ultimate aspiration: a genuine homecoming of the Jewish nation to the hearth of its civilization. Our dybbuks and the Palestinian poltergeist will be finally put to rest. Now that will be cause for genuine, unfettered celebration."
Jeff Halper, 2008
Julian, when you mix your religion up with an illegal occupation, you gotta expect things like that. Don't let it keep you up nights, you'll spoil your health.
Yeah, it's sort of nasty when you think that the exigencies of a colonial project will redound on an already persecuted faith, but on the other hand, think how hard fund-raising would have been if Israel was non-sectarian.
Relax, Julian, these declarations of eternal hatred come with the occupied territory.
But don't stop crying how any attempt to hold Israel to civilised behavior is an affront to your religion. On you it looks good.
Mr. Wieseltier conveniently pays lip service to Palestinian suffering, which may be an improvement for him, but he ignore the crucial context of the conflict without which it is impossible to make informed analysis. Israel has occupied Gaza from 1967 to the present, forty two years. It has had COLONIES in Gaza, on land from which the Palestinian inhabitants were ethnically cleansed (25% of total and 40% of arable). The colonists lorded it over the dispossessed until 2005, oppressing them with population control measures, Jewish-only roads, checkpoints, etc.
Israel has been willing to negotiate with Hamas once, and then it was only a lulling prelude to the latest terror bombing of Gaza, the preparation of which had already begun before the ceasefire was inked. This has been well-documented in the Israeli press. Hamas has shown willingness to negotiate with Israel. How do you think the ceasefire that Israel violated on 4 November before its terror bombing of Gaza came about? Hamas may be brutal religious lunatics, but they are far, far more honest than the Israel government and its colonial Zionist supporters in America. America no longer has any strategic interests in the Levant, and there is certainly no credible moral argument that can be made that we should politically and financially subsidize fascists (readers, check the composition of the latest Israeli government) who ethnically cleanse innocents and colonize their land.
The use of the name "Operation Cast Lead" for the Gaza operation characterizes the Israeli leadership as much as the use of the name "Reichkristallnacht" characterized the Nazis.
Plus, the name — if it was in the original plans — suggests that Israel long intended to mount the operation during Hanukkah — and thus in the interregnum between the U.S. election and the inauguration of the new U.S. president.
Oops, typo. "Reichskristallnacht", that should have been.
We're definitely going to see more "pro"-peace Zionists (like Witty).
They will not give you any sort of meaningful analysis of the conflict.
Rather focus on how the Gaza operation was a logistical and political disaster and how Hamas is stronger.
Then they'll engage in the standard claptrap that is so natural for the Jewish Establishment (Dershowitz again @Chomsky debate: watch it).
Colin Murray wrote:
"America no longer has any strategic interests in the Levant, and there is certainly no credible moral argument that can be made that we should politically and financially subsidize fascists (readers, check the composition of the latest Israeli government)…."
It seems to me that this in a nutshell kinda encapsulates lots of things.
In the first place one might ask why Colin felt he had to label the Israeli government, and of course there are those who would say it's anti-semitism or Israel hatred or whatever. And there can *seem* to be some logic to the idea that people who believe as Colin does (such as myself) that the U.S. has no strategic interest in what's going on over there really have no need to be concerned at all with the nature of Israel or it's government: After all if we think the U.S. has no vital interests over there and that it should just pull out, why do we even care? Why don't we "pick on" how the arabs and moslems rule themselves just as equally?
In short the Dershowitz argument about "singling out" Israel for criticism while not appearing to be all that upset about the uglinesses that the Palestinians or Hamas or other arab or moslem countries routinely practice. (And they do.)
The answer it seems to me is because unlike the arab and moslem countries Israel sets itself up for this by advertising itself as indeed having mainstream "Western" values and etc. E.g., we give the arab and moslem countries more of "a pass" as it were when, say, they treat women brutally or unfairly by our lights, but get upset when Israel treats Palestinians in a like manner. But of course one can ask what the difference is? One smells like sexism one smells like racism but per our "Western" values both are victims and we ought to be concerned with both equally, right?
Like I said though Israel, as formally as possible, and as often as possible from the lips of its diplomats and leaders who come to the West at least, affirm that they are indeed essentially "Westerners" in culture and values. And so really at least part of the valid response to a Dershowitz is that we are just holding Israel to its own proclaimed standards.
The question in my mind though is how Israel really sees itself. As "Western," really?
Of course it has a huge incentive to *advertise* itself as "Western" because its ability to get U.S. dough and whatever European support it finds is hugely if not totally dependent on same. (And of course the fact that the U.S. *does* give it so much dough is yet another entirely valid if not absolutely justifying reason why U.S. citizens ought to feel free to "pick on" Israel given that Israel continues to ask for so much of their money.)
But then you read stuff like these head settlement rabbis saying that non-jews aren't worth one jewish fingernail, and the head army rabbi and his office telling soldiers that mercy and etc. are not jewish values and you see those T-shirts and you wonder, how do Israelis really see themselves and their values? Does a clear majority really in fact identify with fundamental Western values deep down? Do they really see themselves as "Westerners" in this sense?
I don't know, but it seems to me a legitimate and important question to ask. And I think it's just glib to say "of course not otherwise they wouldn't be doing what they are," because of course many if not all undeniable "Western" countries with "Western" (Christian?) values have perpetrated terrible, prolonged things too that they have rationalized, with their only saving grace being that eventually they have often come to accept guilt for same. (Not that such grace really saves them from condemnation, but to admit great moral guilt is at least something.)
I'd be interested in anyone's insights but it would be especially interesting to hear from some Israelis on this directly: Does the clear majority of your country really see itself as fundamentally holding "Western" values, or is there a majority belief that "jewish" values are somehow fundamentally different? And forget right or wrong here; God knows there's consequences of "Western" values that have been and still are uglier than hell, so who can say what is "better" or "worse" in any ultimate sense. And God knows that many "Western" values have indeed come from jewish sources originally.
Another way of looking at it is to suspect that if the U.S. did not give any support to Israel, and Israel openly said it was doing things according to "jewish" values and expressly defending them as not being the same as "Western" ones or "Christian" ones, just as the arabs say that they govern themselves and do things according to "moslem" ones, that the interest in the U.S. in the conflict would be pretty minimal. Like the wars that go on between one tribe or country in Africa and another where we just kind of shrug our shoulders at the incomprehensibility of both sides' actions from our perspective.
So how do the Israelis really see themselves? I realize the question can only be answered in general terms, and even then in nuanced, conditional ways only. But nevertheless when talking about the most important truths and realities about humans and their affairs often those are still the most important issues that exist.
Why is 'Julian' still posting everything twice? Is it just to waste fractionally more of Phil's space and our time? is it egomania? or is it just stupidity?