Jim Sleeper at TPM doesn’t like what I wrote earlier about Looking for Gandhi in Palestine:
The blogger Phil Weiss, for
example, has barricaded himself into an intellectual Masada that leaves
no option I can find short of massive dispossession of Israelis for the
sake of his own tortured ethno-moral equilibrium….Weiss accuses advocates of coercive non-violence of drawing facile
analogies between what it took to remove the British in India and what
it will take to remove Israelis from….. where? I’m not sure if he
means all of the Palestine…
Sleeper sees a lot else wrong with me, and drops some big names and concepts along the way. The point is simple, Jim (we were friends a long time ago): If you think that what Israel is doing to the Palestinians is wrong, then before lecturing the Palestinians what to do about it–go, find your Mahatma– the first thing we should do is look at our own complicity in that wrongness. And it is substantial.
I have some support here from scholar Jerry Slater:
What needs emphasizing is that (a) the Israelis
have repeatedly crushed nonviolent Palestinian protests and marches
(often supported by Israelis); (b) have invariably responded to periods
of relative Palestinian nonviolence by expanding the settlements and
other components of occupation, and (c) have often abandoned previous
intransigent positions (occupation of Sinai,southern Lebanon) ONLY when they are, literally, under the gun. Remarkably, Shlomo Ben-Ami, the Israeli foreign minister under Barak, admitted as much.>I find it particularly depressing when people on the Israeli “left,” like Gorenberg, Oz, Meretz at the outset of the Gaza war, even David Grossman, also seem to have such a hard time remembering that their country occupies and represses the Palestinians.
They always personalise everything, Phil, this time it's "your tortured ethno-moral equilibrium" (i.e., translated back from his own tortured jargon into the standard cod Freud speak, your guilt complex).
Phil, I have read quite a few of your posts, but I have a strong sense that you've not read mine at TPM on Israel in Gaza. That's understandable, since much of my work is about "domestic" American politics, but before you characterize what I'm lecturing whom about, please take a look at just the first three columns collected at link to jimsleeper.com
You write, "If you think that what Israel is doing to the Palestinians is wrong, then before lecturing the Palestinians what to do about it–go, find your Mahatma– the first thing we should do is look at our own complicity in that wrongness." Please read my first two or three columns at the link just cited.
You have said elsewhere that you want to try to correct or heal and/or redeem the American Jewish community from which you come, and some of your posts do try to do that. But others do not, because you don't seem to me to know quite what to make of the fact that while the Israel Lobby is the heinous thing it is, 78% of Jews voted against it by voting for Obama last year and, even in 2004, 75% voted for Kerry against Bush/Cheney.
Now, I know very well what these percentages do and don't reflect, and that's a subject for some other time, but it's really important not to dismiss or downplay what these tallies do offer and not to condemn too-sweepingly the complicated feelings of protectiveness toward Israel that often do figure in these tallies. I won't say "tout comprendre, c'est tout pardonner," but I do wonder how much you and your enthusiasts expect to change people you think you know so intimately yet comprehend so simplistically. I think that anger and guilt close people to clarity about the truths they want to work from, and the first lesson of coercive non-violence is to be disciplined against resentment. It's a very hard discipline, indeed and one that none of us lives up to all the time.
Jim Sleeper,
I don't know how you can possibly conclude that the Jews who voted for Obama and Kerry were voting against the Israeli lobby. That certainly is not the case with any of the Obama voters in my Jewish family.
Obama pandered more to the Jewish community than any other interest group. Except for an early swipe at the Likudniks, Obama was unswerving in towing the line on Lobby issues. His speech, written by Dennis Ross, before AIPAC was to the right of George Bush. Any advisor to which the Lobby raised objections was thrown under the bus during the campaign. I stopped canvassing for Obama when he let the Lobby attack Robert Malley and then accepted his resignation.
I've been practicing coercive non-violence within the American Jewish community I know for eight years and to no effect. Please let me know what I am doing wrong, as I have given up on trying to move them. Those that still support Israel at this point are not going to change.
I'd feel a great deal more positive about those looking for the Palestinian Mahatma if they were out there on the front lines with the ISM and other groups challenging Israel every day with non-violent tactics. Or even if they spent some serious time defending Rachel Corrie, who died practicing what you are preaching. For whatever reason, Gorenberg cannot bring himself to do that.
i agree with Bruce, Mr Sleeper: if you seriously believe that a Jewish vote for Obama was a Jewish vote against the lobby, then you are an idiot, and if (as seems more probable), you do not in reality believe this, then you are a liar.
Is it possible they voted for Obama and still sent their checks in to AIPAC, the Anti Defamation League, and the Zionist Organization of America?
Jim Sleeper said: 'the fact that while the Israel Lobby is the heinous thing it is, 78% of Jews voted against it by voting for Obama last year and, even in 2004, 75% voted for Kerry against Bush/Cheney.'
It's no wonder you're analysis is so flawed when you believe non-sequiturs like this. First, in what way was a vote for Obama a vote against the Lobby? Evidence for this? Second, it's more obvious daily that (in common with virtually everything else they thought they were voting for, excepting nice manners and good diction) they didn't bloody well get it, did they? ('It' being a long-awaited and richly deserved comeuppance for the Lobby)
'The blogger Phil Weiss, for example, has barricaded himself into an intellectual Masada that leaves no option I can find short of massive dispossession of Israelis for the sake of his own tortured ethno-moral equilibrium'
The settlements must be disbanded, no? The roadmap and official US policy dictate this. Are these policies the result of their framers' 'tortured ethno-moral equilibrium' too? Jeez, there seems to be a lot of that about over there. Maybe, just maybe, they framed that policy as a result of deliberations about (a) the US national interest, and perhaps even (b) the right thing to do.
If you can go that far with me, perhaps you might also allow that Phil W too is operating out of an apprehension of the problem which, so far from the personal bias you ascribe, reaches out to consider the best alternative approaches from a moral as well as practical perspective, worrying it's true about the Jews, but only in the larger context of his American citizenship. He feels, as I do, that since the possessions of Israel that we're talking about are illegally held, 'massive dispossession of Israelis' is in fact simply the correct thing to do, practically and morally. Why does this dispossession of an illegal occupation bother you more than the dispossession of the original inhabitants in 1948 and 1967?
'I do wonder how much you and your enthusiasts expect to change people you think you know so intimately yet comprehend so simplistically.'
I can't speak for Phil but really, it's got five-eighths of fuck-all to do with changing or even 'comprehending' the US Jewish community. Gaza took it past the point where that navel-gazing is a good enough response. It should be done sure, and Phil sometimes does it (it matters more to him than most of us for obvious reasons), but that's not the primary focus now.
In a nutshell, Israel is a war criminal state illegally occupying a native people and we back it to the hilt due largely to the highly organised efforts of American Jews. This exposes us to the contempt of the world generally and to grave danger from less than gruntled Arabs in particular. The situation has to change, and so we have, heading down a road paved by Carter and M/W, the Hampshire brouhaha and the growing BDS movement, the Freeman affair's blowback, the public disquiet about Lieberman, J-Street's rising profile, etc… all good.
Point being – the idea that it's necessary first to have a cup of tea with the Jewish community and gently explain the facts of life to them in the fraught hope that they might stop supporting the murderousness of Israel, before anything can be accomplished, is balls with a capital B. Things will change whether they are on board or not. It's up to them whether they climb on with the rest of their fellow US citizens, but if they have any sense, they will.
'I think that anger and guilt close people to clarity about the truths they want to work from'
I think that anger at times is not only appropriate but necessary. Sometimes anger is the only thing that will force the change you are after. It is not only difficult but to me wrong to sit down with people who have just murdered half your family and destroyed your home and business and try to be friends with them. Some of those people, if they think you'll be submissive, will just do it again. And again. For decades in fact.
How ironic that the poor old Palestinians have their land stolen and their people brutalised for generations, and are on the one hand condemned for any violence they may commit in response, and on the other scolded for not producing a non-violent exemplar such as Gandhi! It's lose-lose for them, but it's win-win for someone.
Perhaps what they need is not so much a Gandhi or Mandela (both of whom are on record condemning Israel) but a Sharon or a Dayan, backed by a superpower whose foreign policy and defence establishments are in thrall to the power of the Palestinian Lobby. If we could then shoe-horn a Gandhi-type into the Israeli leadership, all our troubles would disappear! Not likely though, is it? First, if a Gandhi arrived on the scene in the WBank, the Israelis would kill him pronto. As for the coin's obverse, Dayan once said 'I don't mind the lamb lying down with the lion, so long as I'm the Lion' and things haven't changed one iota since then. It takes two to tango, and this carry-on about the most acceptable Palestinian response deliberately evades consideration of the more important part of the equation, that of the stronger party. Pretending to wring your hands about the poor articulation of grievances made by the little bloke whose throat you're standing on is not a good look.
'I've been practicing coercive non-violence within the American Jewish community I know for eight years and to no effect.'
Bruce, force is the only language those people understand (!)
(This line has been added because I can't post otherwise, for some reason)
Sleeper's entire post on this blog entry depends on the premise that American Jews are against the Jewish Establishment by their advocacy for Barack Obama.
What a load of crap.
Obama himself is a Zionist. Did you not hear any of his Israel-related speeches, Sleeper?
Remember when he said Jerusalem should remained undivided?
Remember when he compared his kids being attacked to the kids in Southern Israel but NOT anywhere in Gaza or the West Bank?
You are a clown. I like how you end your speech by saying Phil and his constituency should try to understand the opposition (you) – but from your comment, what's there that's so difficult to understand?
The opposition has zero credibility. We spend lots of time here going through the record and their arguments.
Sleeper is right. He is addressing the militant approach.
And the militant logic has the advantage with the Netanyahu/Lieberman regime and policy, of saying "I told you so", and "I'm angry".
Yesterday, Lieberman (as foreign minister now) stated that Israel is not going to exchange the Golan for peace, that all they are offering is peace for peace.
To which Assad stated, "if Israel rejects the peace approach, then we can as well."
Things are in the process of falling apart. Indiscipline reigns over self-discipline. Anger reigns over clarity.
Israelis and Americans don't really understand Arab sensibility. We genuinely don't understand IF Arab angers are conditional or unconditional.
The response to a conditional anger that can change to co-existence or friendship, is compromise. The response to an unconditional anger that cannot be changed is either separation (a form of grudging co-existance), or war in some form.
Its a crowded room. Dogs in a crowded room will fight to the death. Is that the limit of our skill?
Dogs in a crowded room will fight to the death. Is that the limit of our skill? Posted by: Richard Witty | April 02, 2009 at 05:48 AM
It sounds like it's the limit of yours, Richard, except that your only weapon is liberal waffle, so valid that even the white house would be ashamed to put it into a press release.
Yet again Witty ignores the obvious: the great disproportion in power, the decades-long daily occupation layered over the original dispossession. It's a crowded room all right, and the big
dogs are in ultimate control–they are favored by the man with the key to the door, Uncle Sam.
Arab anger is easy to understand, regardless of Witty's claiming we don't in our names.
If the little dog has an iron boot on its neck, how can it compromise when it's already so compromised? It either struggles to free itself best it can–or just goes limp in surrender
to its fate. The first common sense condition must be taken by the owner of the iron boot–the owner must lift up the boot.
Witty only has one message: everybody except the Jews should shut up and take it, like little Christian saints.
Citizen,
So is your motivation to remove the boot, or to change the position of the players?
Arab anger is easy to understand, as is Israeli anger. Arabs as Arabs are NOT the smaller dog relative to Israel. How many millions of Arabs are there?
Palestinians specifically certainly are suppressed.
HOW does the suppression stop?
If you look at history, the times that Palestinians adopted violence as means, were the times that they got more distrusted and more suppressed, NOT the times that they achieved really anything.
The same is true for Israeli saber-rattling. They risk 20 year treaties currently, with Egypt and Jordan, by not reforming.
But, it STILL is an unknown if there is a path towards peace at all, if Hamas and Hezbollah both assert that they will never recognize Israel, and if really any are accepted within Palestine that support permanent armed struggle against Israel, if they accepted 67 borders.
"So is your motivation to remove the boot, or to change the position of the players?"
Witty, precisely how is that an either/or situation? The metaphor speaks for itself–and obvious to anyone with an IQ of 70. Why do you so disrespect people commenting on this blog? Simply because they do not view themselves as being chosen by God? You really believe you are slumming with animals here?
"Arab anger is easy to understand, as is Israeli anger. Arabs as Arabs are NOT the smaller dog relative to Israel. How many millions of Arabs are there?"
You are are the one who stated Americans don't understand Arab anger, Witty. Did you forget already? Why do you view all Arabs the same–do they all look alike to you? The Palestinian dog is obviously much smaller than the Israeli dog, especially as the latter is fed by Uncle Sam, while the little dog is starved by both Uncle Sam and Uncle Moshe. You recognize the diversity among
Israelis in a single state, why not do the same with the Arabs in the many Arab states? Further,
Delaware's stance on many issues, e.g., credit card reform, differs from the stance of many other states–relatively speaking, Delaware is a small state, and only one–does this answer the question What IS To Be Done About Abounded Usury?
"Palestinians specifically certainly are suppressed."
We agree.
"HOW does the suppression stop?"
First, we can let the American public in on a broader version of the I-P conflict via the MSM–has yet to happen significantly–this blog has been tracking the tiny victories, as you well know.
"If you look at history, the times that Palestinians adopted violence as means, were the times that they got more distrusted and more suppressed, NOT the times that they achieved really anything."
It's true that if you study history you can see the results of both the Palestinian passive resistance plus diplomatic efforts and the results of the Palestinian violent resistance were the same. You totally ignore the long history of passive resistance by the Palestinians.
"The same is true for Israeli saber-rattling. They risk 20 year treaties currently, with Egypt and Jordan, by not reforming."
Israel has been the power as compared to the Palestinians. Why do you equate their respective
leverage? A tank is not a stone, and only Israel is on the massive USA dole. I won't even mention
who stole from whom.
"But, it STILL is an unknown if there is a path towards peace at all, if Hamas and Hezbollah both assert that they will never recognize Israel, and if really any are accepted within Palestine that support permanent armed struggle against Israel, if they accepted 67 borders."
Has Israel ever recognized Palestinian basic rights? In '47, the Jews didn't even de facto recognize the partition allocation, the official recognition was itself discriminatory against the Palestinians by population criteria, and by 48, how many Palestinians were booted out? And which Israel is to be recognized by the Palestinians? Where are its borders? Where is its constitution affording equal rights to all of its citizens? If the Jews assume land rights based
on the biblical era, can't Palestinians at least claim land rights based at least on the last few centuries
of adverse possession?
Arab anger is easy to understand, as is Israeli anger. Arabs as Arabs are NOT the smaller dog relative to Israel. How many millions of Arabs are there?
Arabs: 325 million
Israel: 7 million backed by: US 306 million Canada 33 million European Union: 499 million (maybe not quite as some wish, but backed anyway.)
How about comparing military budgets combined? Will NATO combined against the rest of the world do?
World Total: 1,470,000,000,000 vs NATO combined: 1,049,875,309,000 of which 651,163,000,000 US.
If you look at history, the times that Palestinians adopted violence as means, were the times that they got more distrusted and more suppressed, NOT the times that they achieved really anything.
How about the Yishuv? How about Israel?
Good for one side, not good for the other?