Weiss: Praise the lord, George Will is in Jerusalem opining for the Washington Post in the most reactionary manner possible about the Jews' ancient claim to the land based on a ring found near the western wall and other hokum. Max Blumenthal has a great response to Will that includes the statement: "To understand the sheer insanity of Netanyahu’s magical ring story, consider how I would be received if my grandfather, Hymie Blumenthal, changed his name to Hymie Quetzalcoatl, then I asserted a historical mandate to rule over Mexico because Quetzalcoatl was a deity of the inhabitants of the ancient Toltec city of Teotihuacan. I would have a hard time being taken as seriously as David Koresh or the Unabomber."
Meantime, Howard Kyle, a longtime student of the issue, sent us a letter he has sent to George Will. Here it is:
The following is a response to your August 19 column, Skip the lecture on Israel's 'risks for peace'.
I agree with your main point that it is “fatuous” or “obscene” to lecture Israel on taking risks for peace. Instead we should be lecturing Israel on their obligation to comply with international law in order to achieve peace.
In July 2004, the International Court of Justice in an advisory opinion ruled that both Israel’s separartion wall and its associated regime of check points, settlements, and by pass roads in the West Bank were illegal. The ICJ further stated that an occupying power cannot claim that the lawful inhabitants of the occupied territory constitute a "foreign" threat for the purposes of Article 51 of the UN Charter. The ICJ noted that Israeli settlements and the displacement of Palestinians is a violation of Article 49, paragraph 6, of the Fourth Geneva Convention.
The ICJ further cited Israel’s on going, oppressive policy of land confiscations, house demolitions, creation of Jewish only enclaves, restrictions on movement and access to water, food, education, health care and employment, as being in violation of its obligations under international law and the Palestinian right to self determination.
This is what anyone seriously interested in peace should be lecturing Israel about. All else, as they say, is just commentary. However, you completely ignore this most relevant point and go on to promulgate distorted history and and a completely Israelicentric point of view.
Let me start with this careless statement.
“On Nov. 29, 1947, the United Nations recommended a partition plan. Israel accepted the recommendation. On Nov. 30, Israel was attacked."
Israel didn’t come into existence until May 14/15,1948. It was the Jewish Agency that accepted the partition plan on behalf of the Jewish Community in Palestine. The plan was rejected by the Arab community and for good reason. The partition plan gave 57% of the land as well as 84% of the prime agricultural land to the Jews who constituted only 33% of the population and most of whom were recent immigrants. Jews comprised only 7% of the population in Palestine when the Balfour Declaration was issued in 1917.
Second, the recommended partition plan was just that - a recommendation. It did not have the force of law. That would have required a Security Council resolution. The partition plan also required certain preconditions be met. Among these were the establishment of both an Arab and a Jewish state as well an international zone to include Jerusalem for it to take effect. It was not a unilateral choice. The proposed states were required to adopt a constitution ensuring the civil and religious rights of all their citizens and to form an economic union. None of which ever happened. (Israel still has no formal constitution, generally considered a hallmark of a democratic state.)
You write sympathetically of Israeli parents, who ten years ago, during the intifada would put their school bound children “on separate buses to decrease the chance that neither would return for dinner.” Yet, you ignore the routine violence and harassment that Palestinian school children in the occupied areas experience today from ultra nationalist settlers.
Just this April, an Israeli settler deliberately drove his vehicle into a group of Palestinian school children as they walked to school in At-Tuwani. The children from this and the neighboring villages require a military escort to and from school because of repeated attacks by Israeli settlers from Ma’on settlement and Havat Ma’on outpost. You might find it enlightening to read The Closed Road to Education: Palestinian Students suffer under violent settlement expansion by a group called Christian Peacemakers Team (For your convenience http://www.cpt.org/about/mission)
You get in a dig about the late Yasser Arafat whom you describe as a “terrorist and Nobel Peace Prize winner.” Was it your intention to create the impression that this irony is unique to the Palestinians? You must be aware that former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1978. During the British Mandate era, Begin was head of the Irgun, which the British government declared a terrorist organization. Begin was responsible for the King David Hotel bombing in 1946 which killed more than 90 people and the massacre of 240 men, women and children on April 9, 1948 at Dier Yassin. Perhaps you buy into the discredited notion that he, unlike Arafat, was a “freedom fighter.”
You place responsibility for the intifada solely on Arafat, who you say “launched” it, even though a US fact-finding U.S. committee led by Senator George J. Mitchell reviewed such allegations and found “no basis on which to conclude that there was a deliberate plan by the PA to initiate a campaign of violence.” However, Mitchell did note one cause:
Palestinians are genuinely angry at the continued growth of settlements and at their daily experiences of humiliation and disruption as a result of Israel’s presence in the Palestinian territories. Palestinians see settlers and settlements in their midst not only as violating the spirit of the Oslo process, but also as application of force in the form of Israel’s overwhelming military superiority.
You resurrect the old canard of Ehud Barak’s so called “generous offer.” You write that during the July 2000 Camp David meeting, then Prime Minister Barak “offered to cede control of all of Gaza and more than 90 percent of the West Bank, with small swaps of land to accommodate the growth of Jerusalem suburbs just across the 1949 armistice line” and by rejecting Israeli generosity those silly Palestinians missed an opportunity to have a state.
Let’s look at that so called generous offer in more detail. According to an analysis by Seth Ackerman:
The annexations and security arrangements would divide the West Bank into three disconnected cantons. In exchange for taking fertile West Bank lands that happen to contain most of the region's scarce water aquifers, Israel offered to give up a piece of its own territory in the Negev Desert--about one-tenth the size of the land it would annex--including a former toxic waste dump.
Palestinians living in their new "independent state" would be forced to cross Israeli territory every time they traveled or shipped goods from one section of the West Bank to another, and Israel could close those routes at will. Israel would also retain a network of so-called "bypass roads" that would crisscross the Palestinian state.
Israel was also to have kept "security control" for an indefinite period of time over the Jordan Valley. Palestine would not have free access to its own international borders with Jordan and Egypt--putting Palestinian trade, and therefore its economy, at the mercy of the Israeli military.
The Palestinians would have permanently locked in place many of the worst aspects of the very occupation they were trying to bring to an end.
But don’t just take his word for it. Here’s what Shlomo Ben-Ami, Israel's Foreign Minister and key negotiator at Camp David had to say about the generous offer in a 2006 radio interview: "Camp David was not the missed opportunity for the Palestinians, and if I were a Palestinian I would have rejected Camp David, as well.”
You write: “The creation of Israel did not involve the destruction of a Palestinian state, there having been no such state since the Romans arrived.” Yes, but Palestine was a defined territory when under Ottoman rule, and more importantly, was recognized as such by both the League of Nations and the UN. An indigenous population had been living there more than there for more than 1,000 years.
Under the League of Nations, Palestine was classified as a Class A Mandate. As such it was considered advanced enough politically and economically that a provisional independence could be granted, "subject to the rendering of administrative advice and assistance." Upon termination of a mandate sovereignty was to be automatically vested in the people of that territory. Palestine was the only Class A Mandate under the League that was not granted independent statehood.
You write: “In the 62 years since this homeland was founded on one-sixth of 1 percent of the land of what is carelessly and inaccurately called "the Arab world," Israelis have never known an hour of real peace.” Yes and was that not to be expected? No one forced Israel to declare itself into existence when and where it did. It knew the neighborhood and the risks. It knew that none of the Arab nations that would be its neighbors voted in support of partition nor would the partition resolution have passed in the General Assembly were it not for extensive United States lobbying.
By early 1948 it was widely accepted that the partition plan would not work. That is why the UN started to back away from it and began work on a U.S. proposed UN Trusteeship Plan for Palestine. Unfortunately, President Truman, yielding to Zionist pressure, killed this effort when he blindsided his own delegation at the UN by recognizing the new state of Israel 11 minutes after it declared its existence.
The Trusteeship Plan was intended to provide for a peaceful transition from the British Mandate into a new governmental entity in Palestine capable of serving and protecting all of its citizens – Jew, Christian and Moslem. It would have prevented the misery and suffering caused by the forced displacement of 750,000 Palestinian refugees by Israel In its War for Independence that is the root cause of the problems there today.
US Secretary of State George Marshall and Defense Secretary James Forrestal both opposed Truman’s rapid recognition of the Jewish state. Their opposition was based in part on the regional instability that would inevitably result from establishing a colony of 800,000 recently arrived European Jewish immigrants in the midst of 22 million Muslims sympathetic to the Palestinians.
You mention the 1936 Peel Commission which originally proposed a partition plan for Palestine that was shot down by both Arabs and Zionists. It would have been more appropriate to reference the 1946 Joint Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry on Palestine whose report has more relevance to the current situation. Among the Committee’s key recommendations:
In order to dispose, once and for all, of the exclusive claims of Jews and Arabs to Palestine, we regard it as essential that a clear statement of the following principles should be made: That Jew shall not dominate Arab and Arab shall not dominate Jew in Palestine. That Palestine shall be neither a Jewish state nor an Arab state…We, therefore, emphatically declare that Palestine is a Holy Land, sacred-to Christian, to Jew and to Moslem alike; and because it is a Holy Land, Palestine is not, and can never become, a land which any race or religion can justly claim as its very own.
Truman rejected all of the Committee’s recommendations except one calling for a temporary increased Jewish immigration to Palestine.
Perhaps this “homeland” that, as you say, has “never known an hour of real peace” would have had a different fate if it had given the UN Trusteeship Plan a chance to achieve a peaceful resolution instead of undermining it.
If there is ever to be a resolution to the Palestinian Israeli issue, it will only be achieved by an open minded, thorough and honest understanding of the issues involved. A true peace, one that is just, sustainable and most importantly, grounded in international law, cannot be built upon myths and half truths. Your column does not help to achieve that type of peace. In fact, it does the opposite.
Did George ‘Dr. Death’ Will respond to the letter?
Great letter. Bravo, Howard.
My only suggestion would have been to include some of the numerous instances of Israeli violence against Palestinians in the decades prior to the second intifada. A mention of Kfar Kasem in 1956, when 47 peaceful Palestinian villagers were shot by the IDF when returning to their homes after an Israeli imposed curfew of which they were uninformed, would be a good example.
Too many Israeli apologists, like Will, either assume through ignorance, or willfully lie, that the violence “started” with the suicide bombers, and ignore the decades of Israeli violence against Palestinian civilians prior to those bombings.
But, still, that’s a small nitpick on my part. Overall, yours was a wonderful letter, much better than I could have done, and you are to be commended for taking the time and effort. And thanks, Phil, for posting it.
Will didn’t make this stuff up, he’s only repeating the conventional lies that have taken the place of truth.
“I agree with your main point that it is “fatuous” or “obscene” to lecture Israel on taking risks for peace. Instead we should be lecturing Israel on their obligation to comply with international law in order to achieve peace.”
Well, it is fatuous or useless to lecture Israel about anything. If words alone would work, there might have been progress over the last 43 years.
Nor should we “lecture” Israel about international law.
We (the civil societies of the world, acting on our craven governments to overcome USA imperial or AIPAC pressure) should lecture our own governments on their obligations (especially under Fourth Geneva Convention for which most of them have undertaken to “ensure respect” (i.e., compliance) “under all circumstances”). Not because we are sure it will bring peace but because it might help with peace and will aid the Palestinians as to their human rights and because it is the law and the law should be enforced so we can all live in an orderly world.
Israel and the USA have sought to destroy international law (in this regard) adn whether they succeed or not depends on us.
Israel does have the equivalent of a constitution entitled its Basic Laws, which include provisions for equal due process under the law. Great Britain doesn’t have a constitution either, or didn’t you know that.
I don’t know about Will’s point, but the reality is that the local Palestinians and later the Arab League calculated that there was a possibility that they would be able to be free of Jews, if they went to war. They had the option of remaining in the land, and comprising then a majority of residents.
It was only upon a state of war that there was any justification in reality or in world public opinion for any dispossession of Arabs. And, it was only upon the post 49 very frequent terror incidents directed at Israeli civilians (for the purpose of retaking the land EXCLUSIVELY), that the right of return was institutionally rejected.
Its important to read the actual history of the time, not just a single perspective.
The poor judgement of the Palestinian leadership, in not assertively orienting to co-existing, and the poor/opportunistic judgement of the Arab League, does not excuse the current Israeli policies.
But, even if the current problems originate in unresolved very long term conflicts (long before 1948 actually), the current problems are CURRENT problems, and should be dealt with as such.
It is an INJUSTICE to use 1940′s or 1948 as an excuse for current opportunism and institutionalization of rage, whether by Israel, Palestinians, or radical solidarity.
Israel does have the equivalent of a constitution entitled its Basic Laws, which include provisions for equal due process under the law.
Incorrect. As the name suggest s, the Basic laws do not amount to a constitution, and in any case, include only vague references to equality, when other forcefully asserted tenets establish favoritism and entitlement of rights to Jews alone.
Great Britain doesn’t have a constitution either, or didn’t you know that.
Great Britain does have a charter for equal rights, ratified in the UK-led European Convention on Human Rights. What is your point?
It is an INJUSTICE to use 1940’s or 1948 as an excuse for current opportunism and institutionalization of rage, whether by Israel, Palestinians, or radical solidarity.
So, using 1940′s or 1948 as an excuse is an injustice, but using “a state of war” to justify the dispossession of Arabs, is not an injustice?
Strange that you stress the current so much when Zionism is a regressive movement, imposing a Jewish state as the only reality in Israel-Palestine to the self-service of the Zionists, totally neglecting the historical and current inhabitants of the land who are not of the preferred ethnicity/religion.
Richard, more disingenuous arguments.
Britain doesn’t have a constitution, but the freedoms of its citizens are well defined in the form of landmark acts such as the Bill of Rights. More importantly, such acts have not been tampered with nor the freedoms they enshrine. If this second condition wasn’t the case, we as Britons would have pushed for a constitution a long time ago. It’s not necessary for us to have a constitution at this moment in time, because our freedoms and rights are well established. Can you say the same for Israel?
The Arabs knew they were getting a raw deal from the partition plan, and vowed to fight it. The early Zionists knew they were getting an excellent deal with the partition plan and accepted it. The Palestinians fled the land for fear for their lives – and you bash them for doing so?
Your next paragraph just highlights your bigotry – the Palestinians should have just accepted living in a state as a minority, governed by people who moved there a couple of decades. They should have counted themselves lucky for having a right to live there at all.
The current problems are also dealt with in the letter extensively – they all stem from the settlement, the continued occupation and the continued refusal by the Israelis to grant the Palestinians the state they have a right to form.
====
The letter is excellent, articulating all the points with eloquence I could only ever hope for.
“but the reality is that the local Palestinians and later the Arab League calculated that there was a possibility that they would be able to be free of Jews, if they went to war.”
This is utterly unsupported by historical facts. Local Palestinians mostly were NOT given the the option of remaining on the land, regardless of whether they resisted Zionist takeover. Many innocent Palestinians were ordered to leave at gunpoint, many left under shelling by Zionist forces, many left because the Zionists went around with megaphones threatening to rape the women or mass murder them. Many also left in panic, having heard of the mass murders and rapes by Zionists. It’s absolutely true that some Palestinian leadership attempted to mount a military defense after the U.N. partition, this was after Zionists had long set as a goal the ridding of Arabs from Palestine and after they had formed well organized militias that instigated much of the violence against otherwise peaceful civilians.
Mainstream Zionist leadership, never once in their long project to get rid of Palestinians, approached Palestinian leadership and said, look, the Jews are seeking shelter from horrors inflicted by the Nazis, lets all live together as equal citizens in this land. In fact it was Palestinian leadership that demanded equal rights regardless of creed, only very minor leftwing Israeli parties have also done so, you can’t even call them Zionist.
UK has ben developing its institution from 1200 AD (i.e Mgana Carta. Those Barons are the predecessors of the House of Lord without any breach into continuity )
In 1600 plus, it added Bill of Rights ,100 years before US.It has only added more and more to the existing traditions,charters,bills,institution for the betterment of the fate of its citizen. Israel has followed the opposite path from the of First Zionist Congress in ?Basel, always regressing .
lack of a constituition in UK is the natural devlopment of British history.Israel chose not to have for it has not defined its boundary for both religious and national reasons.One time US offered it alliance of military nature but that did not/could not go through precisely for this lack of borders.
Second Palestine in hindsight could have done many things. An example would be a man who lost his eye and wallet both when he faced a thug who had pulled a gun at his head.He could have given the wallet and walked away with both eyes.
Another exapmle would be the intruder coming to your house and demanding money .Following your futile resistance , he demanded an ownership of your house as a reward for him or a punishment for you since you had resisted. You mounted further resistance like second intifada and this time he broke the walls, scattered your belongings,hit you on the face,and placed you in your doghouse after claiming the 90% of your original property. Get Will to sing for you. He wont.
Richard:
You write: “Israel does have the equivalent of a constitution entitled its Basic Laws, which include provisions for equal due process under the law. Great Britain doesn’t have a constitution either, or didn’t you know that.”
Yes I do know that. But its a distinction with little significance. Israel came into being as a democracy in the post WWII era which places a greater emphasis on the protection of individual rights and liberties. A constitution was required in the UN Partition Plan which Irael cited as the justification for its statehood. Most important, it promised to do in its delcaration of independence by “not later than the 1st October 1948.” It did not meet this deadline first due to the war and later due to the oppostion of religious leaders.
As for your comment that: “..the reality is that the local Palestinians and later the Arab League calculated that there was a possibility that they would be able to be free of Jews, if they went to war. They had the option of remaining in the land, and comprising then a majority of residents.” My question to you is are you familiar with the Haganah’s “Plan Dalet”? That may give you a better understanding of the issue. Regardless whether the Palestinians chose to flee or remain, their continued exile appears to have no legal basis. As Victor Kattan points out, 15,000 Palestinian Jews fled to safer areas but they were allowed to return. Furthermore, UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Right proclaimed a “right of return” and reaffirm it annually.
I’m familiar with Plan Dalet, as reported by a large number of conflicting accounts.
Plan Dalet could ONLY occur during a state of war. The effort to ethnically cleanse during a setting of war, was mutual. To ignore that is to ignore the reality.
The expulsions of the Palestinians was institutionalized in three knesset laws passed in the early fifties, first prohibiting temporary return to assert title claims in court, then more permanently (institutionalization of the law), then the abandoned properties annexation acts that permanently transferred title to the state.
The conditions in which the fifties acts were passed included certainly a bias to annex, but confirmed by repeated acts of terror against Israeli civilians. (Mostly snipering, some more organized small assaults, some bombing, no suicide bombing).
The Israeli pioneering community was in conflict internally between emphasis on social justice questions (including towards Arabs, minority and external) and nationalist Zionist. In an environment of acceptance of the right of some Jewish self-governance, it is likely that the 1950′s laws would be watered down if not rejected entirely.
The Jews in what became Jordan were not allowed to return. Only the very few that never left remained, and were institutionally persecuted.
The fight for Jerusalem was mutually a land grab, between Jordan and Iraqis that insisted that it be Muslim, and particularly theirs, and Zionists.
The Basic Laws do function in Israel as a constitution. The Israeli Supreme Court does assess whether laws and applications of laws are consistent with the Basic Laws. The US Constitution is primarily a statement of procedures and institutional relationships. It wasn’t until amendments that principles of democracy were incorporated. (An amendment is part of the constitution, the amendments are not junior constitutional law).
The questions on the right of return are precedents. There is NO legal precedent for duration and extent of assertion of right of return. There is no confident statement of international law relative to three generations of descendants.
At some point the ambiguity of who is entitled to return becomes absurd, if stated vaguely.
The Palestinian solidarity movement has been very reticent to clarify what they mean by “right of return”, except a yes/no definition, which is functionally none. Because that remains ambiguous, it is then rejected by Israel and internationally in fact.
I’ve attempted to clarify what could be meant by “right of return” that could be acknowledged as a “right of return” satisfying the principle and hopefully sentiment, while still being administrable and not threatening revolution in Israel.
It is that important. Ambiguity leads to war. I hope you’ve seen that in your studies.
The assertions of Israel’s ambiguity of borders is that, that the ambiguity leads to war (suspicion applied in violence).
“It was only upon a state of war that there was any justification in reality or in world public opinion for any dispossession of Arabs.”
There was no justification in reality and certainly not in world public opinion. The “justification” was in Zionism–you couldn’t have a majority Jewish state with so many Arabs present. Forced transfer had been part of the thinking of Zionists (though not openly trumpeted) for a long time. It had to be–there was no possibility of a majority Jewish state in Palestine unless someone (originally the Zionists hoped the British would do it for them) removed a great number of Arabs.
” And, it was only upon the post 49 very frequent terror incidents directed at Israeli civilians (for the purpose of retaking the land EXCLUSIVELY), that the right of return was institutionally rejected.”
“Institutionally rejected” sounds like weasel words. Of course there’s no reason to believe Israel would allow a significant number of Palestinians back when they were so pleased with the new demographics, something they had worked to bring about with acts of deliberate ethnic cleansing during the war. And as you invariably do, you ignore the fact (Benny Morris goes into some detail on this in “Israel’s Border Wars”) that most of the civilian deaths in the period immediately following 1948 were Palestinians killed by Israelis. Palestinian “infiltrators” came across the border–according to Morris after looking at the records, only a minority were armed and most were not bent on violence. Many were peasants trying to sneak back to their land or work it. Between 2800 and 5000 were killed by Israel.
Though of course since they were mere Arabs this fact has never registered with you in all your supposedly vast reading or if it has registered, you just filtered it out, the way you always do when you stress violence against Israelis and NEVER ACKNOWLEDGE (yes, I’m shouting the point) Israeli killing of Arab civilians.
Incidentally, Richard, your emphasis on real Palestinian lives down below rings hollow given how little you pay attention to REAL ISRAELI KILLING of real Palestinians. Again I shout the point, because ordinary means of communication don’t seem to work with you when you don’t want to acknowledge it. You trivialize Israeli violence–you do it here and you do it at Dan Flescher’s blog, last time I checked. It’s a consistent pattern with you.
1. Only Israelis undertake violence against civilians. Its always been that way.
2. Only Arabs/Muslims undertake violence against civilians. Its always been that way.
3. Militant Arabs and militant Zionists dance together in a political death-waltz each seeking street cred and rationalization for their respective land and power lusts.
Which do you think represents my views?
You take perfectly stated facts drawn strictly from the record of the UN and you make a mockery of them with hearsay and ethnic stereotypes. Who are you man?
>> Second, the recommended partition plan was just that – a recommendation. It did not have the force of law. That would have required a Security Council resolution.
Funny how RW and others love to overlook that fact when “Israel’s ‘right to exist’” are involved, but are quick to denounce “international law(s)” as irrelevant when Israel’s compliance – or, more correctly, lack of compliance – with said law(s) are the issue.
Good point eljay.
Israel’s “right to exist” – Self-evident, undeniable, irrevocable.
Israel’s legal obligations, as resulting from its creation and provision to exist – Conditional, deniable, subjective.
I’m sure Max’s grandfather, had he chosen to become Aztec Emperor, would have called himself ‘Montezuma’ rather than ‘Hymie’ Quetzalcoatl – that would have silenced all the doubters. Unless there’s an Aztec ring with ‘Hymie’ on it, of course.
Artifacts found in Jerusalem should be subject to very careful and very sceptical checks, particularly if they are rather convenient for a powerful person. I don’t know anything about the particular object that tweaks Will’s hearstrings but there have been very serious suspicions of forgery in many cases.
I believe that Sewell, who was very much a moderate, did not by ‘irrepressible conflict’ mean ‘inevitable war’ but an inevitable resolution one way or the other, with slavery or non-slavery winning out. Maybe his words apply to IP more than Mr. Will might think.
Howard Kyle’s letter is superb! I’m saving it.
A few months ago, George Will piously declared on a TV program (probably ABC’s “This Week…”) that since the Congress has voted to move the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem and environs has been recognized by U.S. law and the Obama Administration has no right to object to new settlement construction there (lol). I wonder where he got his law degree, Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University?
A 63 year right of return has never been tested in a court of law, international or national courts.
To state “Israel is in violation of international law” regarding right of return, even resolution 242 (a very ambiguous resolution), is currently JUST an assertion.
The current condition of the Palestinians is however real, and to the extent that dissent puts its mental attention into some political remedy that is unlikely to result in improvement in Palestinians’ actual lives, is at best a poor use of time.
Real Palestinians lives!!!!
Regardless of the legalities, do you assert that the Zionists had a moral right to expel the Arabs from their homes, and a continuing moral right to maintain that situation?
Real Palestinians are unlikely to want you as their spokesman, Richard.
I think that the intention to ethnically cleanse was mutually held by the fanatics in each camp, and that that fanatacism became institutionalized in all camps.
As such, it is ignorant to seek to orient one’s politics towards blame only.
And, the only valid reference of current politics is current conditions and current needs.
The holocaust is past, and the nakba is past. And, both militancies claim that they each continue with elements of truth, and elements of intentional or gullible deception.
Richard, I understand you believe Palestinians should improve their actual lives by all moving out of Palestine/Israel, to somewhere where they won’t experience state-sponsored murder, occupation or official discrimination. But what I don’t understand is why you think this is a good thing.
You are actively misrepresenting my views.
Brilliant rebuttal from Howard.
George Will seems to want to challenge Tom Friedman for the award for useful idiot.
“You are actively misrepresenting my views.”
No he’s not Witty. That’s what your views read like when you strip off the phoney facade from your posts.
Awesome letter Howard. I just wrote a long report on the Palestinian right of return, which also included this history of the establishment of Israel and the UN stuff. I remember reading over the same committees you cited here, and it’s so good to see the simple facts of the historical record being stated.