There has been something bizarre about the turn in Israeli/Zionist rhetoric in recent months, particularly following Obama’s speech in Cairo. The Zionists have become positively hysterical on the point that Obama– just like big bad Ahmadinejad–apparently suggested that Israel exists as compensation for the Final Solution. How dare they not acknowledge the enduring tie of "the Jewish people" to their "ancient homeland"!!
But honestly, where do they think Israel would be without its Holocaust cloak?
The most recent illustration of this return to first principles comes from David Harris, the head of the American Jewish Committee who not infrequently can lurch even farther into the fever swamps than his organization’s bastard child Commentary. In an impromptu speech to a group of Senators, Harris plunged right into John Hagee-Michael Oren territory:
"Israel was born out of an ancient vision unique in the annals of history. In the words of its Declaration of Independence, Israel ‘was the birthplace of the Jewish people. Here their spiritual, religious, and political identity was shaped.‘ This was understood by President Harry Truman, who defied the advice of his State Department to recognize the re-establishment of Israel in 1948. His favorite Psalm, according to presidential historian Michael Beschloss, was number 137 – ‘By the rivers of Babylon, we wept when we remembered Zion.’"
First of all, there is nothing at all unique about a blood-and-soil myth of an ancient and glorious past as a basis for nation building. If memory serves, it prompted a world war just a few years before the "re-establishment of Israel". Never mind also that by far the bulk of the development of Rabbinic Judaism took place not in Zion but by the rivers of Babylon.
This has been steadily building for some time – it began with the narrative about "America and the Middle East since 1776" spun by Michael Oren, which was accompanied by the always caustic Marty Peretz thundering in protest of Walt and Mearsheimer that "American support for the Jewish restoration goes all the way back to the Puritans." [And David Frum made the same argument re the Bible, last week in the Economist.]
But Obama clearly hit a nerve in Cairo, whatever he intended to say precisely. Netanyahu’s response, bordering on violent, was to invoke the unchallengeable rights of "the Jewish people". Could it be, perhaps, that what drives the Israelis mad is the implications of the "Holocaust" narrative: that they were once as pathetic as the Palestinians who have been for so long under their boot?
If, then, we can bring it back to 1948, there is something else about the Harris remarks that cries out for attention. You don’t hear it so often nowadays, but time was the easy fallback argument of the Zionists was "we accepted partition, the Arabs did not." And perhaps you don’t hear it very often for the reason that the answer to this argument is so obvious: Are you really going to tell me with a straight face that Israel would be willing to withdraw to the lines of the original UN partition?
But Harris has the balls to to state both sides of the coin at once. No sooner does Harris demand that "Israel will never return to the armistice lines of 1967" than does he manage to repeat that "the UN embraced the idea of two states as early as 1947".
Oh my darling party line, oh I never will desert you for I love this life of mine!
So let there be no question about the Israeli hysteria about Obama in the White House. Already, we’ve seen their desperation to put war with Iran back on the table; for Israel will be nothing without that handy scapegoat for all their problems. And now, we have the resort to bible-thumping of the leader of an organization which in the 1940s was courageous enough to take the stand that an exclusively-Jewish state was inherently undemocratic.
Related posts:
- Head of AJC issues religion-tinged attack on Obama
- Holocaust testimony by David Harris might have included AJC’s ’scant’ concern at the time
- End of Holocaust Means End of Israel Lobby
- Why was I silent about my politics in the Holocaust survivor’s house?
- The American Establishment realizes Israel is wrong but is afraid to say so
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‘But Obama clearly hit a nerve in Cairo, whatever he intended to say precisely. Netanyahu’s response, bordering on violent, was to invoke the unchallengeable rights of “the Jewish people”. ‘
I think Obama said exactly what he intended to say — indeed, I thought at the time that he was sort of calling the Lobby’s bluff, i.e., “Ok, you’ve been blackmailing us for decades with the Holocaust. Here it is, right back atcha.” I think he sensed (on being advised by Rham E and others) that this would cause a scrambling back to the biblical theme — and that is exactly where all but the fundies are gonna wash their hands of Lobby & Zionist spin.
RE: ” …by far the bulk of the development of Rabbinic Judaism took place not in Zion but by the rivers of Babylon…”
MY COMMENT: Look out Iran! “Security settlements” might just be on the way.
I want a settlement in a garden of Eden, between Tigris and Euphrates with a view of the river because Bible states clearly this is where my ancestors came from. Could Army occupying Iraq provide me with security? – locals are unreasonable bastards and don’t look kindly at my claim.
Yes, we will. Please come as soon as you can. Unless you were lying again.
Palestinians did not reject negotiations in 1947-8: Second Great Zionist Fraud.
I’ve read Harris for quite some time after one of his articles drew my attention. … But I definitively are not a part of his target audience. Phil’s brother? Richard? Maybe?
He is highly “decorated”, including here in Germany for creating a “unique” partnership between the German military and the American Jewish Committee it seems. Somehow curious, I think.
Of all the vile qualities these people exhibit, pity-seeking could be the worst.
The key question is what are the rules or principles that Israel wishes to be the basis of its interaction with other countries.
Is it a combination of might is right / there were people here a long time ago with the same religion as us / god gave it to us (as currently seems to be the case) or is it a combination of international law and human rights based upon equality of all peoples?
If it is the later the Israel has the protection of the UN’s recognition within a framework of international law – but must also note that international law makes it clear that the WB, East Jerusalem, etc are occupied territory on which no change of population or construction such as the wall is permitted.
Israel should also note that the original UN partition of 50/50 would be a reasonable basis of an agreement using principle that all people are equal and so should have access to equal area, now that the population is roughly 50% Jewish and 50% non-Jewish.
Alternatively there is the one state, which is getting ever more likely, and as it does so expect the tone from Israel-firsters to get shriller and shriller.
Israel has as much protection by International law as do the sudanese in Darfur.
Try another tact. Your’s just fell flat.
If the existence of Israel as a Jewish state is compensation for the Holocaust, presumably there will come a time when that debt will have been paid in full, and justice will require that Israel treat non-Jews equally.
Like affirmative action is supposed to become obsolete eventually.
On the other hand, if Israel exists because it is the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people, then Palestinians — whose ancestral connection to the land is at least as great — should, again, have equal rights.
The Arabs who can rightfully call themselves Palestinians showed up 2000 years after the Jews. however a large number are recent economic immigrants from Syria and other parts of Arabia.
2000 years? If Thomas Thompson’s The Mythic Past: Biblical Archaeology And The Myth Of Israel is to be believed, you don’t have Jewish exclusive monotheism until the time of the Persian Empire.
Of course, there was a population speaking one or more West Semitic languages in Palestine before then, but arguably they weren’t yet Jewish. Many of them never became Jewish. We know that many of those who considered themselves Jewish became Christians in the first century A.D. Christianity is as much a descendant of pre-rabbinic Judaism as is rabbinic Judaism. The great bulk of Palestinian Christians in the 20th century were presumably indigenous. After the Arab conquest, there wasn’t much reason for people to convert to Christianity.
And, after the Arab conquest, we have every reason to believe many of the Jews left in Palestine would have converted to Islam. After all, Islam is also a legalistic Abrahamic religion. It is heavily derivative from Judaism and Christianity. DNA studies seem to show great continuity in the population of Palestine.
To the extent that Arabs from elsewhere migrated to Palestine in the decades before 1948, is that significantly different from migration into Palestine/Israel of Jews and people claiming to be Jews?
I don’t think there is a more intellectually dishonest group on the face of the earth than Jewish nationalist and their collaborators. In short, they lie through their teeth, and their tall tales are constantly evolving:
‘Israel is essential per biblical mandate!’
Later: ‘No, that’s superstitious nonsense! Israel is essential per the Holocaust. Jews are the most righteous of victims!’
Later: ‘How dare you suggest the Jews are meek victims? We took back what was ours from the days of David and Solomon! Blood and soil, baby!’
Later: ‘The UN gave Israel to the Jews in ‘47!’
Later: ‘The UN is worthless! It’s anti-Israel resolutions mean nothing because it is filled with anti-Semites!’
Of course, none of this would matter if America weren’t filled with Jewish nationalists loyal to Israel, and their collaborators, who have hog tied us to these shysters, and dragged America into the moral and ethical sewers in which they dwell. Actually, I think I blame the shabat goy collaborators more than the Jews, including ongoing in the Democratic and Republican parties, because they betrayed their own nation for a few pieces of silver, whereas an argument can be made that the Jewish nationalists were merely pursuing their own national interests, albeit at America’s expense.
Excellent summary of what has transpired. If there’s a new Judas, it’s the American Congress. With the exceptions you can count on a hand, they all deserve to go straight
to Dante’s 9th Circle.
Jack Ross wrote:
“There has been something bizarre about the turn in Israeli/Zionist rhetoric in recent months….”
I don’t know that I’d call it bizarre. After all even putting aside as mere rhetoric the Israeli claim to love the occupied territories (”Judea and Samaria”) due to once living there 2000 years ago, I think it’s only natural that after essentially possessing the land now for some forty years that the Israeli identification with that land changed from the merely political (due to having captured it in war), to the emotional.
Not that this changes anything; after all the Palestinians can say they love it even more as they had never been absent from it. But as love of land is such a common if not universal human phenomenon I think one has to regard the Israeli emotion we now see as a common, genuine one.
In his excellent post JP writes “The key question is what are the rules or principles that Israel wishes to be the basis of its interaction with other countries.” But yet another key one might ask what principles Israel wants to be the basis of its *own* existence.
In any event this switch from the political to the emotional shows the depth of the conflict here, and supports my belief that the U.S. and Obama are on a fool’s errand being involved in this issue. Maybe it was solvable in some less than cataclysmic way 40 years ago, or even 25 years ago, but that’s much less possible now I think.
Jack,
I think you missed the relevant message of what Zionism is, and of what Jewish history is.
Jews lived in Israel/Palestine for 1400 years, and its roots and most of its clarifications existed there, during that time. The Talmudic descriptions of temple service and support existed prior to exile. After multiple exiles, the community determined that even lacking a land base, the mission of what is important in the Jewish covenant, remained important, including adjustments for living in diaspora, and including documenting the specific priestly tasks during periods when they weren’t actively directly conveyed.
There was a strong assimilating desire of the rest of the world, similar to the assimilationist impulses of Phil relative to cultural assimilation and inter-marriage. There is an element to Phil’s confusions, that includes the desire to dissolve Jewish deep culture.
But, in MULTIPLE communities throughout the world, the social groups (without a land base), kept their traditions and their identity.
In all cases, where difference became a threat, Jews were persecuted, harrassed, expelled, murdered.
Following the holocaust (the last straw), and the growing urge to reestablish in a land base, the discussions of identity have been alternately neglected and intensely inquiring.
Politically, enough is sufficient, and expansionist Zionists risk betraying the nut of the commandments, for an opportunistic interpretation of a temporal command to one person/army at one time. It amounts to a land-lust.
Jewish “deep culture” as Witty describes is simply, as a practical matter, ethnic chauvinism and/or racism. The notion of keeping the blood-line flowing forever, deemed heaven on earth. Tribal immortality is the goal. Jews over history were not persecuted, harrassed, expelled, murdered over world history merely because they were a threat, but because they were the privileged hires of despot elite goys. Both the elite goys and their hired helpers, the jews given special protection and privileges, always eventually suffered when the goy masses eventually threw off this joint venture
yoke.
It’s Zionist hypocrisy at its worst. Israel invokes the Biblical connection or the Holocaust angle at will, according to political expedience.
Thus the Right of Return (for Jews) is ‘justified’ by the Biblical narrative (did it state that pushing the natives out of the way as A-OKay too?)
And the Holocaust is the blanket excuse for much of modern Israel’s actions. See e.g. the last AIPAC conference and the number of times the Holocaust was mentioned. Or the obsessive attempts at linking any opposition to Hitler and the Nazis: see Jerkowitz on Hamas, Begin on Arafat, Seaman on the BBC, everyone on Ahmadinejad, the 1967 borders as ‘Auschwitz borders’ etc etc etc.
It occurs to me that the Zionist Left tends toward the victim card (Holocaust, ‘UN said we could’), whereas the Zionist Right tends toward the blood and soil card. I have no idea what card American shabbat goy collaborators are playing…perhaps the Judas card.
“….the Judas card”.
Sounds right to me.
Never forget. Never surrender. Never give in to the demands of Hamastan.
Oops. He said the secret word, “Hamas.” I am speechless now. All of a sudden the old, present, and planned ethnic cleansing of an indigenous population has been blacked out and I am up in arms to sacrifice my soul for Israel in their quest for “security” from scary irrational crazies. Good luck sweet Israel. You surprise us with your willingness to fight for our cause on the other side of the world and to uphold our American values wherever you choose to settle.
Sorry, but we don’t uphold American values. We uphold Israeli values.
You sacrifice your soul for your own misbegotten immorality.
I know you are being ironical; but Zionists do not subscribe to the irony card. They
are ethnic chauvinists and/or racists, pure and simple. There’s no standup comedians in their ranks. The joke is ALWAYS on the Other. And it’s played for keeps. Same as with Hitler. They do a little dance of joy when they win. The rest is maudlin shmaltz.
Zionists never hold up American values, except when it helps them disguise their
collective ego and hatred in a place like the USA. Divide and conquer is the game,
and in the USA they won.
Weren’t the Jews expelled from Egypt earlier to their arrival in Palestine? Shouldn’t the population of Egypt start packing and go live with the “Arabs.”
What did the Jews do to get themselves expelled?
The expulsion from Egypt is a hoax.
Like everything the Israelis claim.
If an israeli opens his mouth, a lie comes out.
They need to be exterminated.
What did the Palestinians do to get themselves expelled in 1947?
If you believe the fairy tales in the Old Testament, the Jews’ connection to Palestine started with their genocide of the Canaanites and the other indigenous inhabitants of the area.
“Observe what I command you this day. Behold, I am driving out from before you the Amorite and the Canaanite and the Hittite and the Perizzite and the Hivite and the Jebusite. Take heed to yourself, lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land where you are going, lest it be a snare in your midst. But you shall destroy their altars, break their sacred pillars, and cut down their wooden images (For you shall worship no other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.)”
Exodus, Chapter 34, verses 11-14.
Good post IP but if it’s directed at saxon, it’s a bit like trying to explain Riemann invariant manifolds to a flatworm.
Any definition of morality that applies the concept less than universally is just a mask
for exploitation of those fitting the Other catagory.
Saxon –
Sorry, but we don’t uphold American values. We uphold Israeli values. Thanks for clarifying where you are based. Do you get paid by the number of comments?
You sacrifice your soul for your own misbegotten immorality.
There is a definition of morality that applies the concept only to those within one’s own group. Because of the basic distortion of meaning this requires, interaction with money seems somehow to be placed beyond morality. Thus, it seems, one can sell one’s soul without sacrificing it. Undoubtedly, there a multiple lines of text, from multiple thinkers, regarding this.
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