Andrew Sullivan is now taking on Jeffrey Goldberg, hammer and tongs, on the history of ethnic cleansing in Israel/Palestine, and Goldberg’s neo-blimp-neocolonialist insistence that there were no Palestinians because there was no country called Palestine. Sully:
The point of the illustration was to provide some background to the now-unavoidable fact that Israel has every intention of expanding its sovereignty to the Jordan river for ever, to segregate Palestinians into walled enclaves within, and to station large numbers of Israeli troops on the Eastern border.
Hey, let’s see, we got Sullivan, and we got Matthews. Which Irish American would you trust? Lemme hear from some Irish Americans.
To nitpick Sullivan – there was indeed a “country” called Palestine. A country is a unit of territory, not a nation-state, and it is entirely proper to call this territory by that name.
When he says that during the Mandate, there were 70% Muslims and 30% Jews, he is lumping the Christians in with the Muslims at a time when the Christians were a significant part of the population.
The more the Lobby smears people, the more it frees people who always knew the truth but were afraid to speak it. Now add Sullivan. It was always an amazing sight to see and hear people who should know better spouting lies. I feel like I’m seeing one a sand castles (AIPAC) built near the shore slowly falling apart (by the truth).
Sullivan is going to really tick off lot of people because 1. he has a big audience and 2. in his epiphany on Israel-Palestine he has cut right to the central issue: endless ethnic cleansing as the prerequisite of a Jewish state in Palestine.
We’re supposed to think that Zionism was/is essentially benign and the Palestinians would have done just fine if they hadn’t been so “irrational” about it all; Sullivan’s emphasis on the preexisting population of Palestine is going to lead readers to ask themselves whether it really is so irrational for Palestinians to reject an ideology that requires their own non-existence, and why exactly should Americans be supporting such a program.
The purpose of all the other diversionary crap about whether Palestine was an independent country, or the intricacies of “the Arab mind”, or how many times Jerusalem is mentioned in the Quran, or why the Mufti was photographed with Hitler, or who invented the cherry farking tomato etc etc, is simply to ensure we never get to the central issue which is what does it mean to create a state for one group of people in a land where another, majority people already lives. And Sullivan is declining to be diverted from it.
I agree, Diane Mason. Further, I wrote when Phil first mentioned Sullivan’s blog with the map that the map would galvanize people who knew nothing about the I/P situation. Every time Sullivan prints that map, it’s going to reach another few thousand people.
Hats off to Andrew Sullivan!
When a terrorist bomb goes off in Israel, the Times is careful to put in a map that makes it clear which side of the Green Line is under discussion. Then the Times loses the map so it is never available for stories about East Jerusalem, the wall, the West Bank, whatever.
Another factor is the reduction of terrorist attacks from the Palestinians to almost 0.
It used to be one of the standard mantras of the Zionist apologists that whatever the Palestinians suffered, it was all their own fault, and if they would only stop with the terrorism, Israel would turn around and tear down all the barriers. Well, Palestinians have stopped with the terrorism, and Israel is only increasing its ethnic cleansing, its seizure of land, its repression of legal protests. The siege of Gaza continues without letup. And Israel can no longer use terrorism as its excuse, despite the Julians of the world, who continue to harp on decade-old incidents.
Yes. The fact that the ethnic cleansing and the denial of Palestinian rights continue both when Israel faces violence from some Palestinians and when it doesn’t is a good indicator that the repression and ethnic cleansing are not tactical responses that arise out of anything the Palestinian might do, but are an inherent requirement of Zionism that will go on regardless.
This was supposed to be a reply to potsherd at 12:46. oh well
As I recall, the text of the Palestine Mandate applies the term “country” a half-dozen times and also mentions Jewish settlement on “state land”.
The Legal Secretary and Attorney General of Palestine, Norman Bentwich, explained that under the terms of the treaty of Lausanne ownership of the land a properties on the Ottoman Civil Lists had been ceded to the Government of Palestine as an allied successor state. see Professor N. Bentwich, “State Succession and Act of State in the Palestine Courts”, XXIII British Year Book Of International Law, 1946, pages 330-333 in the Internet Archive: link to archive.org
Geoffrey Watson and John Quigley both noted that the state of Palestine entered into a number of treaties with other countries, including the United States.
100% correct, Hostage. and also mentions Jewish settlement on “state land”
The Mandate assumes it will be a Jewish settlement on someone’s else land. It certainly did not say Jews were entitled to create a country obviating the other.
In 1919 the General Secretary of the Zionist Organization, Nahum Sokolow, represented the organization at the Paris Peace Conference. He also published a “History of Zionism (1600-1918)” which said:
The Mandate did not prejudice the rights of Jews in other countries. It merely facilitated the acquisition of Palestinian nationality by Jewish immigrants.
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How fascinating to watch Sullivan’s position evolve. How long before he understands the events of 1947/1948 as the seminal acts of ethnic cleansing, rather than as a 20th century “high point?”
When he’s unemployed.