Councilman Lew Fidler has threatened funding to Brooklyn College over the hosting of a BDS event.(Photo via CSA-NYC.org)
The City Council member who threatened Brooklyn College’s funding over the school’s hosting of an event on the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement has called those scheduled to speak at the event anti-Semites.
In a conversation on Facebook, Lew Fidler, the Assistant Majority Leader of the New York City Council, called Omar Barghouti and Judith Butler “anti-Semitic fools.”
The comment came after Kaitlyn O’Hagan, a student at the City University of New York, told Fidler she was “very disappointed” that he was “threatening academic freedom.” Fidler responded by saying: “The anti-Semitic fools who want to speak at the Brooklyn College campus are free to do so….What I will not sanction, is the official impritaur of the college on what I consider to be hate speech. Not on my watch. Not with my tax money.”
After O’Hagan disputed Fidler’s claim that Barghouti and Butler were anti-Semites, Fidler shot back and said that “I define speakers who advocate for the annihilation of a nation because it is a Jewish state as hate speakers.” Here’s a screenshot of the whole conversation:
Fidler offered no evidence to back up his claim that the speakers were anti-Semitic. Both Barghouti and Butler have come out strongly against anti-Semitism and the insinuation that the BDS movement is against Jews.
“The accusation that BDS is anti-Semitic somehow is not just totally, categorically false–it itself is an anti-Semitic statement,” Barghouti told The Guardian in a video recently posted by blogger Andrew Sullivan. “Because it assumes any attack on Israel is an attack against world Jewry, and this equates Jewish communities in the world with Israel, making them all monolithic, as if they all have one mind, one ideology, and that’s a very anti-Semitic and dangerous statement to make…We are completely opposed to all forms of racism, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism–any form of racism, because we believe that all humans deserve equal rights.”
As for Butler, she wrote on this site why the charge that she is anti-Semitic–and the claim that critics of Israel are anti-Semitic–was “patently false.” Butler also addressed the charge in the London Review of Books.
Fidler’s comments came after he wrote a letter to the Brooklyn College president that threatened Brooklyn College’s funding over the holding of the BDS event this week. The letter, which this site first published in full, also claimed that the event would promote anti-Semitic views, though the Facebook comments were blunter.
“We do not believe this program is what the taxpayers of our City–many of who would feel targeted and demonized by this program–want their tax money to be spent on,” Fidler’s letter reads. “We believe in the principle of academic freedom. However, we also believe in the principle of not supporting schools whose programs we, and our constituents, find to be odious and wrong.”
Fidler has remained steadfast in holding the threat of funding cuts over Brooklyn College’s head. In an interview with the New York Times, Fidler said “that he had supported nearly $25 million worth of capital improvement projects for the college as a council member, but that he would be hard-pressed to do so now.”
The Guardian‘s Glenn Greenwald denounced Fidler’s letter in a column yesterday. “How can anyone not be seriously alarmed by this? These threats are infinitely more destructive than any single academic event could ever possibly be…Plainly, this entire controversy has only one ‘principle’ and one purpose: to threaten, intimidate and bully professors, school administrators and academic institutions out of any involvement in criticisms of Israel,” wrote Greenwald.
Fidler’s letter was signed by a number officials–including progressives like Letitia James and Gale Brewer. But James has now backed off from that letter, as Brooklyn College professor Corey Robin reports. In a statement, James said that she removed her name from the letter because it “would be inappropriate to even imply that the Council use their power over CUNY’s budget to influence what issues are discussed on campus.”
RE: “Official who threatened Brooklyn College funding calls BDS speakers ‘anti-Semitic fools’” ~ Alex Kane
PETITION: “Support Academic Freedom at CUNY”
● TO SIGN THE PETITION - link to ipetitions.com
You have to pay at least $2.00 through pay pal to sign, DICKERSON. I hesitated. Couldn’t find a way to sign without paying.
Never mind – if you click “sign” and avid clicking the subsequent pay buttons, your name appears anyway. At least mine did.
@ Philip Munger
You mean just sign and don’t hit the “continue” button, which leads U to paypal?
When you get the pitch for a voluntary contribution, just close the tab/page without making a contribution.
I signed the petition yesterday. I just checked my PayPal account and it does not show any charge.
I have signed many ipetitions. There is no charge for signing one of their petitions. Yes, after you “sign” the petition, they do make a pitch for a voluntary contribution (as do many sites), but it is strictly voluntary. Usually I decline to make a contribution, but every once in a while I do make a small contribution.
RE: “In a conversation on Facebook, Lew Fidler, the Assistant Majority Leader of the New York City Council, called Omar Barghouti and Judith Butler “anti-Semitic fools.”” ~ Alex Kane
THE OPINION OF A PERSON WHO, UNLIKE NEW YORK CITY
COUNCIL MEMBER LEW FIDLER, IS NOT AFRAID TO DISAGREE WITH WHAT IS “POLITICALLY CORRECT”:
“Why I Support BDS”, by Rabbi Margaret Holub, 2/21/13
I find the details of the occupation to be emotionally wrenching and morally challenging to me as a Jew and as a rabbi.
ENTIRE COMMENTARY – link to rabbisletter.org
RE: After O’Hagan disputed Fidler’s claim that Barghouti and Butler were anti-Semites, Fidler shot back and said that “I define speakers who advocate for the annihilation of a nation because it is a Jewish state as hate speakers.” ~ Alex Kane
THE OPINION OF A PERSON WHO, UNLIKE NEW YORK CITY COUNCIL MEMBER LEW FIDLER, IS NOT AFRAID TO DISAGREE WITH THE “POLITICALLY CORRECT” POSITION:
“Why I’m Boycotting SodaStream”, By Rabbi Brant Rosen, Shalom Rav, 1/25/13
ENTIRE COMMENTARY – link to rabbibrant.com
“I define speakers who advocate for the annihilation of a nation because it is a Jewish state as hate speakers.”
Funny, I define a**holes who start name-calling instead of coming up with real arguments and then defend that by coming up with lame-ass excuses and lies as hate speakers.
I would have described him as a ‘lone nut’ but these days you never know.
There’s plenty of crazy from where he came from. He fits all the right criteria:
1. Old
2. White
3. Male
It doesn’t matter if you’re Jewish or not. If you have those three criteria fulfilled, chances are pretty high you’re a piggish bigot. And a lot of the financial clout, both in the Gentile world as well as the Jewish world is sadly dominated by those exact people.
Also, this is slightly unrelated, but interesting in the Israeli context and the whole “this has been our land forever”:
link to ynetnews.com
Remember how Shlomo Sand was butchered over the Khazar theory? Well, it seems to be settled now. The vast majority of Ashkenazi Jews had their ancestral homeland near the Caucasus mountains near the eastern border of Turkey, and we’re not from Palestine, apparently.
@ Krauss
Are you an old, white, male?
If so, how old, what ethnic version of white, whole or part?
Is there less diversity among old white male voters’ voting patterns than old non-white males’ voting patterns? Or more?
That ynet article you cite is a keeper.
That ynet article you cite is a keeper.
One of the three major studies published in 2010 noted that the European Jews where not nearly as isolated (i.e. inbred) as everyone had previously supposed. The tests for identity by descent (IBD) showed that Iraqi and Iranian Jews had long distributions of IBD segments, but that European Jews did not.
You just can’t get from a relatively homogenous population of 50,000 in the 15th century to around eight million at the start of the 20th century through inbreeding alone and end-up with short IBD distributions of shared DNA segments.
The controversial report titled “Abraham’s Children” tossed out the Ashkenazi samples and ignored the actual results of their own simulations using the Sephardic and Middle Eastern Jewish samples. I’ve commented elsewhere that under the heading “Timing of the Middle Eastern-European Jewish Divergence” the report’s authors stated:
The fact that some of the evidence just doesn’t fit the simulations, pre-conceptions, or accepted historiography was glossed over in the press releases and the subsequent discussions contained in the report itself:
link to ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
So the simulations didn’t include the data set from the Ashkenazi’s and the results were used, despite the fact that they were inconsistent with the known observable data regarding inbreeding (IBD) between Middle-Eastern Jews and non-Jews. But hey, other than that, Mrs. Lincoln . . .
“You just can’t get from a relatively homogenous population of 50,000 in the 15th century to around eight million at the start of the 20th century through inbreeding alone and end-up with short IBD distributions of shared DNA segments.”
I never laid a finger on that girl! Besides, you know how they are.
Ashkenazi Jews Are Probably Not Descended From The Khazars.
link to blogs.discovermagazine.com
“Ashkenazi Jews Are Probably Not Descended From The Khazars.”
Yeah, Obsila, I never liked that Khazar idea, thought it was dumb. So with no Khazars, we’re back to being basically the descendants of Palestinians!! Works for me, and it should make the issues easier to solve. You know, tribal unity.
Ashkenazi Jews Are Probably Not Descended From The Khazars.
The guy has one good paragraph praising the study based upon its use of the results of IBD testing, and not just PCA. But the rest of the article is based upon personal opinions, not actual DNA testing. You really can’t explain away the obscure origins of the Ashkenazim using mere assumptions about the even more obscure origins of the Khazars.
If the guy thinks IBD testing is indispensable, then he should be asking why the other studies exclude it or can’t explain their own results. FYI, none of them really supply a workable hypothesis that matches this so-called “thick and sturdy historical framework” either.
Yeah.
His personal opinion is that the Caucasus component was mixed with an Assyrian component which would skew the results.
” In plainer language the Caucasian component that is being detected in this paper may simply be a indigenous Middle Eastern ancestral element which has now been somewhat displaced northward in its modal frequency due to the expansion of the Arabs,”
” In plainer language the Caucasian component that is being detected in this paper may simply be a indigenous Middle Eastern ancestral element which has now been somewhat displaced northward in its modal frequency due to the expansion of the Arabs,”
Genes aren’t really limited to certain mountains or religions. The Khazars could have been the result of northward displacement of ancient Israelites who acquired a Turkic language after they returned an ancestral element, symbolized by Noah, that had been carried southward by that immigrant fellow named Abram.
How does anyone know without testing ancient Khazar DNA?
Krauss, maybe these old white males are fighting now to outdo the late Ed Koch. Synagogues must be talking about who is the next rising political defender of Israel, since their patriarch has passed.
“1. Old
2. White
3. Male
It doesn’t matter if you’re Jewish or not. If you have those three criteria fulfilled, chances are pretty high you’re a piggish bigot.”
Oh crap, and I’m bald, too, and missing many teeth. Well, no avoiding responsibility. I’m going down and make a EEO complaint against myself today! I’ll probably be indicted for self-hate speech!
“It doesn’t matter if you’re Jewish or not.”
Hooray! Only in America!
>> The vast majority of Ashkenazi Jews had their ancestral homeland near the Caucasus mountains near the eastern border of Turkey, and we’re not from Palestine, apparently.
A small detail, and nothing that can’t be overcome with a little terrorism, ethnic cleansing, oppression, colonization, destruction and murder. Surely the “Jewish State” is worth the effort!
@ Krauss
1. Old
2. White
3. Male
It doesn’t matter if you’re Jewish or not. If you have those three criteria fulfilled, chances are pretty high you’re a piggish bigot.>>>>
That’s interesting. So what are the chances for older white males being bigots?…….like 90% or something?
This sorta reminds me of a commenter on MW last month, a “Elise Hendrick”. I was curious about her obsession with ‘whitebreads’ and ‘white supremacist’ and how she was connected to the issue of I/P and Israel to begin with so I did some googling of her remarks elsewhere. It appears she is connected to the Palestine movement…..the very same one that had the Berlin meltdown. Looks like to me some activist within that movement are obsessed with routing out the non Jewish white supremacist among then and all non Jewish or non Palestines in the movement are of course white supremacist who are in the movement for white supremacy goals of putting down ‘world Jewish domination’. You can’t get much more racist and paranoid then this woman.
I love the smell of hypocrisy burning in the morning.
Submitted by Élise Hendrick (not verified) on Wed, 10/10/2012 – 23:24
The people who call for a policy of tolerance towards white supremacism in the movement generally don’t acknowledge – and often do not realise – that that is what they are calling for, because white supremacism these days rarely announces itself as such. Instead, it is coded in terms of “Middle America”, “American core values”, “American interests”, or a concern with “foreign lobbies”. But when you sit down and actually look at the ideology of those propagating these ideas, you quickly find the white supremacism staring you in the face.
Estelle and the freedom of association
elise hendrick October 18, 2012 at 7:26 am
The white supremacists amongst us don’t see this as a movement to liberate Palestinians from racist oppression; to them, Palestine is just a beachhead in a struggle against the “world Jewish domination” that runs rampant in their imaginations, and so they don’t hesitate to throw even the most respected, credible, and dedicated Palestinian activists under the bus when their racism is challenged. Is that the kind of movement we want to be?”
I read an article that checked about 200 Y chromosomes of Ashkenazi Jews. It attributed 10-25% to Khazars.
Most interesting was that the Cohens were very uniformly “Palestinians” and “Levis” were most Khazarian, namely with the types of Y chromosome from Western Siberia. The non-priestly Y chromosomes had some “assorted” minority, but interpretation is less clear. Attributing “Caucasian” markers to Khazars is somewhat problematic.
The article also explained that ca. 1100 there were very few Ashkenazim, about 20,000, so a relatively small influx of families that descended from Khazar elite could make a large difference. Khazar state could be motivated to convert to Judaism to tap into a trading network that had equal access to both Caliphate and Byzantine Empire. Then the Khazar elite could retain their participation in the trading network after the fall of their state, i.e. their status changed from warlords who also traded to merchants, while their lower class retainers could be from Caucasus where Khazars had vassals and trading routes.
Over subsequent 800 years the population of Ashkenazi doubled roughly 8-9 times, clearly they were not as abjectly oppressed as some Jewish accounts would make us believe.
bds speakers?
not antisemitic fools?
they’re leaders?
justice for palestine?
en route to a just peaceful world?
Thank goodness for this ridiculous reaction – it gets nonsense out in the open and into the headlines. Someday, perhaps the story will be about the boy who cried anti-Semitism instead of wolf.
It reminds me an article in which someone asked a teacher from Minnesota if it is true that 95% of the students there fish. The reply was “Indeed. I do not understand what is wrong with the other 5%”.
What is wrong with Letitia James? A sane person in the City Council?
Letitia James is black, and represents Brooklyn. Chances are she received complaints from some of her constituents.
What is it with these fools like Fidler, and his dismal cohorts, that they have zero interest in the politics of the Middle East, but are more than happy, indeed they obviously feel it is required, that they spout incoherent slogans which are fed to them by lobbied interests? They know that a small clique of fundamentalist zios will applaud them, support them and keep funding them, but is that all they are really interested in? It would appear so. Their spectacular ignorance, utter lack of interest in human rights, democracy or freedom of speech is apparently trumped by their slavish obedience to what they consider politically correct. They know that standing up for diversity and debate will get them trashed by the clique – are they really so weak and unprincipled that they have to roll over and perform for their sponsors every time it is required, ignoring their constituents and the American public? Moral posturing like this shows the spineless, feeble, unprincipled willingness to adopt positions which are craven, childish repetitions of the propaganda they are handed. These people are caricatures of politicians, unable to grasp any fundamental principle of the office they purport to represent. They debase that office, revealing their eagerness to represent a tiny clique of people whose agenda is to smear, smother and prevent any open debate of the ugly reality of Israel’s occupation. They should be ashamed, if they had any sense of integrity. They are pathetic.
@ justicewillprevail
Red line haters and hate speech=”those who advocate for the annihilation of a nation because it is a jewish state.”
What is the meaning of “nation” in this context?
Of “it” in this context?
Logically, are nation and state the same, here?
Does he mean “all jews” are interchangeable with said state?
And, hence BDS speakers are advocating the annihilation of all the world’s jews?
Campus hate fest
By ANDREA PEYSER
Last Updated: 3:51 AM, February 4, 2013
Posted: 2:02 AM, February 4, 2013 (www.nypost.com)
Andrea Peyser
Jew-bashing grows in Brooklyn.
Brooklyn College, a once-esteemed campus in the City University system, this week joins a long list of enemies — from lefty denizens of the Park Slope Food Co-op to Iranian madman Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — who crave wiping the state of Israel from the map.
The Political Science Department is co-sponsoring a forum Thursday that leaves no doubt about the depravity lurking within Israel-haters’ hearts and souls.
……
…….
Students for Justice sounded suspiciously like Jimmy Carter, the ex-president who famously compared Israel’s government to South Africa’s former racist regime.
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Poor Jews of Brooklyn! Caught in a pincer action of Park Slope Food Coop and Pol-Sci Department in Brooklyn College, while Carter and Ahmedinejad threaten from distance.
If everything else fails — fear mongering, threats, distortions and lies, whining about hurt feelings — there is always name calling.
It is like foot soldiers, armor and air force — all weapons to be used in combination. Name calling very early went over Godwin law when BDS is concerned, check “Ruben Gur BDS”. Barghuti’s book was equated to “Mein Kampf” and Hannah Arendt to Stella Kuebler (a notorious Gestapo informer); the occasion was BDS meeting on UPenn campus and I have no idea why Arendt was smeared, but it nicely applies to Judith Buttler.
NYC tabloids are relatively moderate. However hostile to BDS, the commentators observed that some actual students study at Brooklyn College and cutting the money for building renovations etc. is kind of stupid. Perhaps it would make more sense to take the example of Orval Faubus and send the National Guard (check Little Rock Nine)… In any case, in my estimation this was calculated stupidity, allowing the politicians to exhibit “correct sentiments” and Alan Derschowitz to play a moderate (he was even against stopping private donation for BC, very liberal indeed).
How can elected politicians get away with spurious charges of anti-semitism, even putting the victim into a situation where they have to refute the lies as was done here, when is someone going to challenge these thugs in court or can anybody say anything they like no matter how untrue about a person in the USA and possibly wreck their careers without any comeback?
I understand Fidler. really. He is a stupid man, because he uncritically believes what the AIPAC folks tell him, lies and all. He has — I am quite sure — made no independent investigation.
But, and this is the point, he believes — I am sure of it — that BDS, as he seems to have said, advocates for the “annihilation of a nation because it is a Jewish state”.
The proper response to people like Fidler, and politics is full of enthusiastic fools, is [1] to say that BDS does not advocate for the annihilation of any state for any reason (and prove it as far as possible to prove a negative), and [2] to claim that Israel itself is not merely “advocating for” but actually carrying our the annihilation — by dispossession, scattering, exiling, imprisoning, torturing, and killing — of a nation (not yet a full state, but a nation), the Palestinian people.
IIRC, the BDS movement supports an unfettered RoR. Which to many, many people is equivalent to advocating the elimination of Israel, or at least the elimination of Israel as it now defines itself.
Which to many, many people is equivalent to advocating the elimination of Israel
why pander to what many many people think? ‘annihilation’ actually has a definition. the word is being employed for propaganda purposes, the implication being
the whole point of using this inflammatory language is to generate fear and infuse exactly the kind of reaction you’re talking about. and you know why they do that? because without these lies they don’t get what they want, which is the continued expansion, continued domination etc and this is exactly what omar barghouti talks about:
link to mondoweiss.net
so y’know what? i don’t really care what ‘many many’ claim we’re advocating. i care about the truth. and the truth is not ‘annihilation’ and one can either wake up and smell the roses or be a drama queen and throw a pity party for all the superior beings that require millions of people live like animals for the privilege of israel jews to carry on in this inhumane fashion.
Lock-n-load Annie. ;-)
so y’know what? i don’t really care what ‘many many’ claim we’re advocating. i care about the truth. and the truth is not ‘annihilation’ and one can either wake up and smell the roses or be a drama queen and throw a pity party for all the superior beings that require millions of people live like animals for the privilege of israel jews to carry on in this inhumane fashion.
Really? Your defense is to quibble over word choice? Have no fear, dear Israelis, we are not advocating your “annihilation”, we simply plan to make Israel no longer exist. Try to lay back and enjoy it.
defense? you’ve got to be kidding? i don’t need to defend myself. perhaps you have reading comprehension issues. this is your wake up call, we’re beyond defending our position.
we simply plan to make Israel no longer exist. Try to lay back and enjoy it.
looks like you’re opting for the drama queen response, your bloviation is noted. readers are no doubt moved by your ‘if rape is inevitable’ conjuring/not. you poor thing. you can’t retreat from your infatuation with hasbara such as “no longer exist” or is that just all you got? we don’t roll over for ‘many many’ and this is what you resort to?
but hey..if you prefer to characterize a democratic state with equal rights as ‘not existing’ because it doesn’t privilege jews be my guest. in fact why not conflate human rights with genocide while you’re at it.
@mondonut
Typical maudlin scare-mongering. When the Soviet Union ceased to exist, were all Soviet citizens annililated? When the apartheid RSA was abolished, were all Afrikaners lined up and shot? When the DDR ceased to exist, were all East Germans wiped out?
And so on and so forth. Nation states come and go, and many have done just that in my lifetime, and I’m hoping the racist state of Israel will go the same way in my lifetime too. Anyone who can’t see the difference between the ending of a racist regime and the murder of all its citizens is either stupid or deliberately obtuse.
“defense? you’ve got to be kidding? i don’t need to defend myself.”
Annie, please! Mondonut does have the right to be a little miffed. Why, from reading your comments, a person could think that you think that guys like Mondonut won’t be glad of a chance to live in a democratic, one-state Israel, with justice and reparations for the Palestinians. After all, when has Mondonut ever categorically said he won’t do that?
In fact, I’d like to give Monbdonut the chance right now, to tell us how eager he is to see the Zionist regime, (by negotiations in good faith, of course, under the administration of the UN, which made it) become a democratic state for all it’s residents, a state which will give justice and eqaual rule of law to all. So here you go, Mondonut, you have the floor. Sell ‘em a load of clams, brudda
@mondonut
This is not a quibble over word choice. To talk about a 1ss or support for Palestinian rights as annihilation for Israel is pure propaganda.
Apartheid Israel should go the way of the Soviet Union and apartheid SA.
‘Have no fear, dear Israelis, we are not advocating your “annihilation”, we simply plan to make Israel no longer exist. Try to lay back and enjoy it.”..mondonut
I would say it’s up to the Israelis whether they continue to exist or not.
Mooser says: In fact, I’d like to give Monbdonut the chance right now, to tell us how eager he is to see the Zionist regime, (by negotiations in good faith, of course, under the administration of the UN, which made it) become a democratic state for all it’s residents…
==========================================
Entirely off-topic again, but thanks Mooser. Yes, I would like to see Israel (and every other country) continue down the path to becoming a more democratic state. Justice and equal law should always be the goal. That said, Israel (and every other country) is primarily invested in, and has obligations towards, its own citizenry. So for example, extending the right to non-citizen Palestinians makes no sense at all.
And if and when the Palestinians have their own state, living peaceably side by side the Israelis, I hope that they too will strive for democracy and equality.
So for example, extending the right to non-citizen Palestinians makes no sense at all.
Wrong, “Israel” had no citizenship law until after the first sitting of the Knesset. There were only Palestinian Jews and Arabs when it declared its independence. It stripped people it had driven into exile of their citizenship retroactively, after it joined the UN. It had agreed to implement resolution 181(II) and 194(III) during its membership hearings. So it violated the terms of the minority protection plan in 181(II). There’s a fundamental principle of international law: that a country can’t cite its own municipal laws as an excuse for violating its international obligations.
Mooser says: “In fact, I’d like to give Monbdonut the chance right now, to tell us how eager he is to see the Zionist regime,…become a democratic state for all it’s residents”
To which ‘nut replies: “Yes”
Now every rational person would respond, “oh, so ‘nut wants israel to become a state for all its residents and not a ‘Jewish’ state. Very progressive.” But then, immediate after his “yes” he demonstrates that, no, he doesn’t want the state to be a state for all its residents, only its Jews.
“I would like to see Israel (and every other country) continue down the path to becoming a more democratic state. Justice and equal law should always be the goal.”
Come on, ‘nut, come right out and admit it, you’re a judeo-supremacist and you want (insert George Wallace [the bigot, not the comedian] voice here) “zionism now, zionism tomorrow, zionism forever.”
Woody Tanaka says: But then, immediate after his “yes” he demonstrates that, no, he doesn’t want the state to be a state for all its residents, only its Jews.
========================================
Nice straw man Woody, but I never said that. I very clearly stated that Israel should strive for equality under the law for all of its CITIZENS, not RESIDENTS. And I made no reference to the religion or ethnicity of its citizens.
“Justice and equal law should always be the goal. That said, Israel (and every other country) is primarily invested in, and has obligations towards, its own citizenry. So for example, extending the right to non-citizen Palestinians makes no sense at all.”
Right outa the 19th Century. And don’t thank me Mondonut. I put a big bucket of s–t in your path and invited everybody to watch and laugh when you stepped right in it and spread it all over yourself. And you never disappoint in that regard. I shoulda collected admission.
Hostage says: It had agreed to implement resolution 181(II) and 194(III) during its membership hearings. So it violated the terms of the minority protection plan in 181(II).
===============================================
I presume that you believe that upon independence anyone within the boundaries of Israel were automatically citizens, which is not the case. The Palestinians were not retroactively stripped of Israeli citizenship, they never had it in the first place.
And Israel never agreed to implement 181 and 194. UN Resolution 273, which actually contains no actionable language regarding 181 and 194 (which themselves have no legal force), makes note of Israeli declarations regarding those resolutions. Specifically…
Mooser says: Right outa the 19th Century. And don’t thank me Mondonut. I put a big bucket of s–t in your path and invited everybody to watch and laugh when you stepped right in it…
================================
Yes Mooser, you are legend in your own mind. How 19th century to restrict voting rights to actual citizens. I do not know were you reside but I do know that here in the US, voting rights are also restricted to citizens. And I would guess that is true for most of the world as well.
here in the US, voting rights are also restricted to citizens. And I would guess that is true for most of the world as well……I very clearly stated that Israel should strive for equality under the law for all of its CITIZENS….. The Palestinians were not retroactively stripped of Israeli citizenship, they never had it in the first place.
the operative words being ‘under the law’. for what other country, pray tell, doesn’t recognize half the population their rule applies to ‘under the law’ since its very inception (for decades leaving people rightless)??? what country splits it’s rulings between military rule for half the people denying them citizenship on their own land?
this is a framing/labeling issue. only then can one contort a justification based around citizenship…when it’s denied to half the people. we’re not idiots.
when you’re finished ‘guessing’ what’s true for ‘most of the world’ how bout listing some other countries whose ‘rule of law’ disenfranchises HALF of those their government rules over. this occupation is designed to act in perpetuity until such time as the land has been ethnically cleansed, unlike ‘most of the world’.
“Nice straw man Woody, but I never said that. I very clearly stated that Israel should strive for equality under the law for all of its CITIZENS, not RESIDENTS. And I made no reference to the religion or ethnicity of its citizens.”
Give it a rest, mondonut. Don’t quibble with words and false claims of strawmanning. Answer the question: do you believe that israeli should be a state for all its people or a state for the Jews?
Annie Robbins says: the operative words being ‘under the law’. for what other country, pray tell, doesn’t recognize half the population their rule applies to ‘under the law’ since its very inception (for decades leaving people rightless)???
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For openers, the US. Puerto Rico and other territories cannot vote in national elections. And this has nothing to do with framing or labeling, it is nearly universally true that citizens vote in their own national elections. I do not know how to explain that in simpler terms and I fail to understand why you cannot grasp the concept. Nowhere in the history of the world has the voting franchise been extended to people who have been occupied, the Germans did not vote in the elections of the Allies and the Japanese did not vote in US elections.
The Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza vote in their own elections (when their leaders see fit to allow it) and if and when they choose to live peaceably alongside the Israelis they can enjoy full voting rights and self determination.
fail. palestine is not puerto rico. this is not some kind of joke and you know perfectly well this occupation was designed to extend in perpetuity until all the land belongs to israel. so there is no comparison to japan here.
“fail. palestine is not puerto rico.”
Exactly, Annie. Puerto Ricans are US citizens with the full rights of US citizens (unlike the Palestinians, who the israelis keep in a Warsaw Ghetto to the West and a Aparthied Bantustan on the East), including the right to travel, move and live anywhere in the United States. That’s the difference that zios like mondonut ignore: the structural limitations on people in US territories are territorial. They apply to anyone who lives in that territory, no matter who they are (no matter their religion and ethnicity.) In occupied Palestine, the oppression of the zio applies to the people, based on their ethno-religous background, because zionism = racism and is nothing more.
fail. palestine is not puerto rico.
I’ll say. Statehood, independence, or continuation of the existing status has been up to the Puerto Ricans for decades and they just opted for statehood in a non-binding referendum on the question:
White House weighs in on Puerto Rican statehood vote
link to edition.cnn.com
Nowhere in the history of the world has the voting franchise been extended to people who have been occupied, the Germans did not vote in the elections of the Allies and the Japanese did not vote in US elections.
LOL! So you either 1) recognize the legitimacy of the political union between Transjordan and Arab Palestine which granted all of the inhabitants the right to vote in Jordanian elections; 2) don’t actually believe the Hashemite Kingdom ever “occupied” the West Bank; or 3) are so desperate to make false comparisons that you look anywhere else, except for the earlier practice of the former occupying power in the very same Palestinian territory.
In either case, the Allies didn’t claim that either German or Japan had ceased to exist. But according to the Security Council, Israel invaded the territory of another UN member state, Jordan, in November of 1966 and again in June of 1967. That’s when it started deploying all of the Zionist legal fictions and propaganda.
so there is no comparison to japan here.
Not to mention the rather obvious comparison to the so-called “Jordanian occupation” of the West Bank – in which the Palestinians were given the right to vote and hold national offices in the “occupying” power’s government;-)
“The Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza vote in their own elections”
But they are not allowed to vote for the government that rules them.
” if and when they choose to live peaceably alongside the Israelis”
Chance would be a fine thing. Israel refuses to allow them to live peaceably.
Mondonut said,
“and if and when they choose to live peaceably alongside the Israelis they can enjoy full voting rights and self determination.”
————–
As opposed to the Israelis, specifically the IDF and the settlers – who don’t choose to live ‘peaceably’ and still ‘enjoy’ voting rights and self-determination.
Annie Robbins says: fail. palestine is not puerto rico.
============================
Holy N.S. Annie., nobody claimed that it was. It is (as requested by yourself) a clear example of people who are “ruled over” yet nonetheless cannot vote in national elections.
And no, the occupation was not designed to extend into perpetuity, witness the several offers for statehood that the Palestinians have tuned down. They could have their state tomorrow if they were willing to compromise on their maximalist demands. And yes I know what you plan to say, Why should they compromise, Why should they give up.., What about justice, blah, blah, blah. The point that you will miss of course is that the Palestinians have the ability to end the occupation whenever they choose to – they instead choose to hold out for more than they have offered in the past.
And BTW Japan is comparable. Unless of course you plan to explain that the Japanese, while militarily occupied (ruled over), were allowed to vote in US elections.
Hostage says: So you either 1) recognize the legitimacy of the political union between Transjordan and Arab Palestine ….
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Are you deliberately trying to miss the point? I was not comparing Puerto Rico to Palestine – I was providing a clear example of people who are “ruled over” yet are nonetheless unable to participate in US national elections. Period.
As for Transjordan and Arab Palestine, what I recognize is irrelevant, Jordan recognized them as citizens of Jordan and chose to extend voting to them. Which actually supports my previous comments – Jordan considered them citizens and therefore they could vote.
Which actually brings up another point. When you brought up the imaginary citizenship that Israel supposedly retroactively stripped from Palestinians, why did you not include the ACTUAL citizenship they had from Jordan?
Woody Tanaka says: Give it a rest, mondonut. Don’t quibble with words and false claims of strawmanning. Answer the question: do you believe that israeli should be a state for all its people or a state for the Jews?
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Ah yes, caught in your lies so lets “give it a rest”. As for your question, I believe that Israel should be a state for all of its people. And by that I mean citizens of the State of Israel. Not to include the residents of Gaza, the West Bank and the Palestinian diaspora.
Hostage says: Not to mention the rather obvious comparison to the so-called “Jordanian occupation” of the West Bank – in which the Palestinians were given the right to vote and hold national offices in the “occupying” power’s government;-)
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The Palestinians were granted the right to vote by the country that considered them citizens – once again, supporting my argument.
The Palestinians were granted the right to vote by the country that considered them citizens – once again, supporting my argument.
Your argument was totally clueless, i.e. “Nowhere in the history of the world has the voting franchise been extended to people who have been occupied”. I’ve got news for you, the government of Transjordan agreed to extend the voting franchise to the Palestinians while its military was occupying the West Bank.
In the future, when you try to reframe the debate, engage in pilpul, or employ false equivalencies, you need to avoid making stupid mistakes which graphically illustrate that Israel is less democratic than the neighboring Oriental fiefdoms.
And no, the occupation was not designed to extend into perpetuity, witness the several offers for statehood that the Palestinians have tuned down.
witness? please link to copies of those offers. especially olmert’s! the copy of the map he wouldn’t let abbas take overnight or share w/advisors. wow, what an offer. and i presume you’ve read the offers israel turned down in the palestinian papers. fail.
The Palestinians have never been offered a fair an equitable solution.
All the Israeli proposals have been worthless. Simply talking points for hasbarists and politicians to use as an excuse to steal more of Historic Palestine.
Israel is holding all the chips. Israel is colonizing the Palestinian territories.
This conflict is a colonial conflict and the power dynamic demonstrates that every single day.
Yet, this is lost (purposefully) on charlatans and intellectual crooks like you, mondonut.
Continue your advocacy. You won’t find any catharsis. You’ll keep parroting Zionist memes into oblivion (biding your time). For other people (namely us [anti-Zionists, Jews of conscience who feel that Israel reflects poorly on 'Jewishness', Americans sick of this US-Israel relationship, Palestinians under Israeli oppression, etc.]) this is actually important.
Annie Robbins says: witness? please link to copies of those offers. especially olmert’s!
===========================
So it is your position that the Olmert offer never existed?
Hostage says:Your argument was totally clueless, I’ve got news for you, the government of Transjordan agreed to extend the voting franchise to the Palestinians while its military was occupying the West Bank.
=========================================
Transjordan did not consider them occupied, Transjordan made them citizens prior to granting them full rights including the right to vote. The people of the West Bank were not occupied in the eyes of the country that granted those rights. So, once again, no country has extended voting rights to people who have been occupied.
But as you as having trouble understanding this concept, I will amend the statement to make it more clear for you. No country has ever extended voting rights to people they believed to occupied and non-citizens.
Annie Robbins says: witness? please link to copies of those offers. especially olmert’s! the copy of the map…
==================================
BTW, Abbas confirmed the offer as well as the extents of the deal…
And you can see a copy of the map right here…
link to haaretz.com
“And no, the occupation was not designed to extend into perpetuity…”
The Zionist leadership does not agree with you. read Ben Gurion 1937, 47, 48 (all official, not personal, positions and statements) and the many others.
Didn’t your mother teach you not to lie when you are sure to be found out?
I believe that Israel should be a state for all of its people. And by that I mean citizens of the State of Israel. Not to include the residents of Gaza, the West Bank and the Palestinian diaspora.
Good, now go convince your elected governments that Judea and Samaria aren’t part of Israel and tell your ambassador to the UN to mind his own business when the people living in Gaza and the West Bank declare their own independent state in that country.
As for Transjordan and Arab Palestine, what I recognize is irrelevant, Jordan recognized them as citizens of Jordan and chose to extend voting to them. Which actually supports my previous comments – Jordan considered them citizens and therefore they could vote.
Your previous statement falsely claimed that “Nowhere in the history of the world has the voting franchise been extended to people who have been occupied”, but Transjordan certainly did exactly that. “Jordan” was the resulting state.
Your subsequent statement about Puerto Rico is also a false analogy, since it and the other territories ceded by the Kingdom of Spain aren’t under military occupation and haven’t been for generations.
The citizens living there have the option of freely declaring their political independence, like the Philippines; joining the union; or retaining their current status.
” Which actually supports my previous comments – Jordan considered them citizens and therefore they could vote.”
A privilege that the Palestinians repaid by trying to kill their Jordanian monarch.
And you can see a copy of the map right here…
link to haaretz.com
The article itself notes that “In an interview with Haaretz last Tuesday, Abbas said Olmert had presented several drafts of his map.”
FYI, Abbas didn’t turn down the offer either. Olmert went to war instead and Netanyahu refused to accept the Olmert plan as the basis for resuming the talks.
The article you cited notes “Abbas said a meeting had been scheduled to take place between negotiators Shalom Turgeman and Saeb Erekat, but that the start of Israel’s offensive in Gaza effectively ended negotiations.
If your newspapers in Israel don’t keep you informed about the situation, here’s what The Forward and Larry Derfner had to say:
link to forward.com
Its doubtful that either Barak or Olmert could have delivered on their proposed offers, since both men were unable to hold onto the leadership of their governments.
Let’s see if Transjordan didn’t consider Palestine occupied, then why did they appoint a military governor and extend their rule over that territory through the use military decrees instead of common statutes or ordinances?
If they weren’t observing the Hague rules regarding the occupation of the West Bank, then why not simply extend the municipal laws of Transjordan instead of retaining the laws that had previously been in effect in the territory of Palestine?
Here are the key laws on the subject:
*Military Proclamation Number 2 of 1948 provided for the application in the West Bank of laws that were applicable in Palestine on the eve of the termination of the Mandate.
*Military Proclamation Number 17 of 1949, Section 2, vested the King of “Jordan” with all the powers that were enjoyed by the King of England, his ministers and the High Commissioner of Palestine by the Palestine Order-in-Council, 1922. Section 5 of the law confirmed that all laws, regulations and orders that were applicable in Palestine until the termination of the Mandate would remain in force until repealed or amended.
– See From Occupation to Interim Accords, Raja Shehadeh, Kluwer Law International, 1997, pages 77-78; and Historical Overview, A. F. & R. Shehadeh Law Firm link to shehadehlaw.com
And of course the armed forces of Jordan signed an armistice agreement with the armed forces of Israel in line with the formal requirements of Chapter V of the Hague Convention of 1907 “dictated exclusively by military considerations”.
You are the one who compared the situation to the Allied occupations of Germany and Japan under the terms of similar armistice agreements. I would add that Israel itself extended the franchise to Palestinians in the territory it occupied under the armistice agreement. Abba Eban said “Israel holds no territory wrongfully, since her occupation of the areas now held has been sanctioned by the armistice agreements, as has the occupation of the territory in Palestine now held by the Arab states.” see “Effect on Armistice Agreements”, FRUS Volume VI 1949, 1149 link to digicoll.library.wisc.edu
Its illogical for Israel to deny Palestinians the right to vote in the territory it has occupied since 1967, since it has already extended the scope of its municipal laws regarding personal and criminal jurisdiction to those territories under the terms of the Oslo Accords. Those agreements only granted limited autonomy for a five year period and did not include Palestinian statehood as an issue to be addressed in the permanent status negotiations. The ICJ described the situation as one of illegal interference with and denial of fundamental human rights.
A privilege that the Palestinians repaid by trying to kill their Jordanian monarch.
Ungrateful constituencies were hardly a unique phenomenon that only plagued the Hashemites. The British, UN, and Zionist authorities were repaid by Jewish assassins too. See Nachman Ben-Yehuda, Political Assassinations by Jews: A Rhetorical Device for Justice link to amazon.com
Abba Eban noted that it was an unfortunate fact that nearly every Arab leader who had dealt with Israel in the Armistice negotiations had been assassinated – Nokrashy in Egypt, Zaim in Syria, Riad Solh in Lebanon, and Abdullah in Jordan. Eban said this striking coincidence, if it was a coincidence, would undoubtedly be a strong deterrent to any other Arab leader dealing with Israel. link to digicoll.library.wisc.edu
Sadat and Rabin were both assassinated by their own constituents for concluding agreements that weren’t universally popular.
>> Which to many, many people is equivalent to advocating the elimination of Israel, or at least the elimination of Israel as it now defines itself.
Israel now defines itself – and comports itself – as an oppressive, colonialist, expansionist and supremacist “Jewish State”. That must change, and BDS is right to work toward changing it.
What BDS should not do, IMO, is work to undermine a secular, democratic and egalitarian Israel – a “culturally Jewish” state of and for all its citizens, equally (and a state that could live in peace next to a secular, democratic and egalitarian Palestine – a “culturally Palestinian” state of and for all its citizens, equally).
mondonut
“IIRC, the BDS movement supports an unfettered RoR. Which to many, many people is equivalent to advocating the elimination of Israel, or at least the elimination of Israel as it now defines itself”
‘many, many people’ haven’t got a clue what they’re babbling about.
The Palestinians ask for RoR under UNGA res 194 which was adopted in 1948. It does not have anything to do with UNRWA or the UNRWA definition of a refugee or the millions of Palestinian refugees UNRWA assists. UNRWA didn’t exist in 1948!
There are only a few thousand Palestine refugees left, all over 64 minimum, all past the age of rampant procreation, who have a RoR to Israeli territory as it was recognized in 1948 “within frontiers approved by the General Assembly of the United Nations in its Resolution of November 29, 1947″
RoR under UNGA res 194 for other folk, is to territory Israel has acquired by war since being declared. Territory never legally annexed to Israel. I.e., Not Israeli. Likewise refugees from the ’67 war are not demanding RoR to Israel, but to “territories occupied” in the ’67 war, also not Israeli.
In short, there is no threat to Israel by any Palestinian RoR. The only threat is to territories OUTSIDE of Israel. Territories Israel has illegally acquired by war, never legally annexed, illegally settled and which Israel wants to keep.
” the elimination of Israel as it now defines itself.”
As Israel now defines itself is a illegal fantasy held together by brute force, the US veto vote in the UNSC and a diet of bullsh*t fed to and regurgitated by “many, many people”, because Israel cannot afford to adhere to the law. It would be sent bankrupt.
talknic says: UNRWA didn’t exist in 1948!
======================================
Who said anything about UNRWA!!!! And BTW, the Palestinians vehemently disagree with your characterization of the RoR, they assert the right millions of refugees and their descendants to the entirety of Israel, including what you would define as 1948 Israel.
mondonut “Who said anything about UNRWA” then “the Palestinians … they assert the right millions of refugees and their descendants…”
You are … Where did the ‘millions figure come from? Certainly not from UNGA res 194.
“… to the entirety of Israel”
Israel’s territories do not include ANY territory it has illegally acquired and never annexed since 00:01 May 15th 1948. There are only a few thousand old people who have RoR to actual Israeli territory.
Right. Because having to live with arabs is the same thing as annihilation.
I guess those Jews held in concentrati0n camps 70 years ago, given the choice between living in an Israel with a large Palestinian population and remaining in the camps would be torn between the two. After all, both mean annihilation
Boston says: Right. Because having to live with arabs is the same thing as annihilation.
==============================
First of all, annihilation was not a term that I chose. Secondly, they are living with Arabs right now. Approximately 20% of the Israeli population is Arab.
Mondonut,
Stop lying.
The issue isn’t living with Arabs, but living with more Arabs. The Arab minority is simply those Palestinians who weren’t ethnically cleansed in 48′ by Jewish terrorists.
Allowing the Palestinian RoR would undermine Jewish supremacy and the current status quo. It would encourage Palestinian group mobility and stabilize the Jewish ethnocentric institutionalized racism and discrimination.
That is the issue. Meaning, stabilizing Zionism – a destabilizing logic that took Arab Palestine and turned it into a Jewish Israel.
So a 1SS becomes a state for the citizens of that territory rather than a Jewish discriminatory and supremacist State with a token Arab minority that is disenfranchised.
Cliff says: Mondonut, Stop lying. The issue isn’t living with Arabs, but living with more Arabs.
=============================
Where is the lie Cliffy? Here is the exact comment that I replied to…
“Because having to live with arabs is the same thing as annihilation.”
Notice “living with Arabs”, not living with “more Arabs”. If you would like to amend your comment to call Boston out as a liar, feel free to do so.
mondonut “Approximately 20% of the Israeli population is Arab”
Uh? Jewish Arabs don’t exist? I wonder if they know.
Surely you mean 20% of the Israeli population is non-Jewish.
Cliff “Allowing the Palestinian RoR would undermine Jewish supremacy and the current status quo”
The Palestinian claim is under UNGA res 194 (11 DECEMBER 1948 ), before Israel claimed (on 31st Aug 1949) ANY territories it had acquired by war and before UNRWA existed (Dec 1949).
There for Only a few thousand Palestine refugees, all over the age of 64yrs minimum, who have a right to return to Israel’s actual Internationally recognized sovereign extent. (sans any territories Israel has acquired by war and has never legally annexed since declaring ).
RoR by Palestine refugees to Israel’s actual sovereign extent doesn’t threaten to undermine anything.
The ‘status quo’ however, includes territories Israel has illegally acquired by war (1948-1949 and 1967) and has never legally annexed. link to wp.me
talknic says: Uh? Jewish Arabs don’t exist? I wonder if they know.Surely you mean 20% of the Israeli population is non-Jewish.
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What are you trying to prove with the unnecessary nitpicking? 19.9% of the Israeli population is non-Jewish (mostly Arab). My previous statement was not incorrect.
Not really mondonut,
I think the point of Boston’s comment is that Zionist Jews do not want to relinquish their group power and to change the power dynamic.
The Arab minority are not immigrants. They are simply the Arabs that Jewish terrorism didn’t ethnically cleanse.
Israel wants to keep it’s Jewish majority. So it can tolerate a minority population of whatever. The point then is relinquishing the power dynamic.
That is likely what Boston meant, because the Palestinians outside Israel proper would change the ethno-religious-national character of the Jewish State.
It would become a state for it’s citizens rather than a Jewish State that is discriminatory towards non-Jews.
Settlements are the new war front for Israel as they slowly swallow more land with illegal housing. And settlements almost sounds harmless – moving these religious folk into lands to till the soil. Probably what Hagee preaches on Sunday.
Someone needs to ask Fidler if creating settlements is acceptable in his mind, when annihilation of an ethnic group is what is happening to the original inhabitants. Fidler has the bully pulpit, but there is never much debate from other politicians. They save their energy to fights they can win, although this is such an easy fight to win.
There is a stupid dispute out there, if Palestinians are “a people”. It is stupid because it does not matter. For example one can debate if Belorussians are “a people”, but whatever position you take, in no case one can start throwing them out of towns and villages, apply indefinite detention, kill their journalists and so on. Israel is oppressing millions of people, and a lot of it is patently gratuitous, and if that state cannot survive without using such atrocities permanently, well, one should seriously reconsider the concept of that state.
It is also amazing how easily people or concepts become “odious” when Israel is involved. Liberals (of a certain ilk) magnanimously allow certain thing to happen in the name of freedom “even if odious”, and examples include discussing BDS, Haneen Zoabi running for Knesset and renting bicycles in Tel Aviv during Yom Kippur (I kid you not). More simple minded people try to ban all that “odious” stuff.
This bruhaha is about “odiosity”, a university department basically saying that BDS is a legitimate subject of discussion, not like “man boy love” but more like “torture” (Prof. Dershowitz and Prof. Yoo get invitations to speak with no problem). In general, I do believe that some idea are beyond the pale and the public discussions advocating them should be restricted to obscure web site, and I would include application of torture here.
PS. “Unrestricted RoR” sounds like “abortion on demand”, some people like it, some people do not. Nothing odious in debating either. In both cases the opponents invoke the Holocaust …
As Thursday and the — as yet still scheduled — BDS event approaches, I have two questions that I hope the speakers will address.
First, what relationship do the speakers see or hope for between the BDS project and a possible peace between Israel and Palestine? Does BDS seek to promote peace? If so how? Will the BDS project stop when there is peace? A peace satisfactory to the BDS project (who is that?)? Israel has a history of ignoring both its truces and international laws of war, and might not honor a peace treaty even if it made one, perhaps — for example — in regard to water, return of the exiles of 1948 and their progeny. And also, of course, PLO might make a treaty that did NOT secure all the rights that the BDS project has sought to secure.
Second, do the speakers see the BDS project as seeking to put pressure on any country or government other than Israel? For instance, the PA if it acts (sufficiently) undemocratically? For another instance, a future government of Palestine, after a peace treaty, if it act (sufficiently) undemocratically?
surely someone must have come up with a good strategy to deal with the “anti-semitism” gibe. It’s such an obvious, manipulative diversion-into-defensiveness that it shouldn’t be treated at face value. Except everyone seems to do just that.
Something along the lines of “antisemitism is the wrong term – I just can’t bear thinking about seeing Israel self destruct “
“surely someone must have come up with a good strategy to deal with the “anti-semitism” gibe.”
I think a great number of suggestions for a good strategy can be acquired: 17-Point Guide To Anti-Semitism And Its Abuse using the latest Scarfe cartoons as a jumping-off place.
And a pretty good guide for recognising anti-Semitism (and dealing with it) when it comes from ostensibly ‘anti-Zionist’ sources.
Hope it helps.
“I define speakers who advocate for the annihilation of a nation because it is a Jewish state as hate speakers.”
I define anyone who ever called for the establishment or maintenance of a “Jewish state” or “Jewish sovereignty” in the middle of the Palestinian nation as a hate speaker who shouldn’t be allowed to hold a position of public trust.
The 1st and 14th amendments to our own constitution prohibit the government from establishing a Jewish state anywhere in our own country. The Palestinians always had the same moral right as every other nation to prohibit the US and its Allies from establishing one where they live too.
Anyone who does NOT insist on the replacement of the existing Zionist apartheid regime with a successor that respects the equal rights of all its citizens, Jews and non-Jews alike, is a racial supremacist.
Hostage, I had the impression you were still in favor of Partition resolution of 47. Am I wrong?Have you changed, evolved?
The problem surely is that the those on the receiving end of that resolution have proved unworthy of it and the consequence is all but out of hand.
Philip, Hostage was talking specifically about a “Jewish state” or “Jewish sovereignty”.
Israel itself has not been able to reconcile “Jewish state” or “Jewish sovereignty” with a democratic ‘Israel’ “that respects the equal rights of all its citizens, Jews and non-Jews alike”
In many instances, when I explain what the laws have to say on a particular subject, people mistakenly assume that represents my own position.
Another problem is that the debate about “effective control” by an occupying Power and the resulting viability of the two state “solution”, has almost nothing to do with the here and now question of the existence and rights of “a State of Palestine”, a unique “person” of international law.
The only thing that matters at the moment are the 4 million pairs of feet on the ground with domiciles in Palestine – and the fact that their nation engages in foreign relations, as a State, with the majority of other States in the international community. Solution or no solution, the Palestinians should obviously be insured equal human rights, including the same rights, privileges, and obligations of “stateyness” that Jews in Israel have enjoyed since 1949. Palestinians should be able to join the ICC, WTO, & etc. and pursue claims leading to the appropriate criminal, trade, and civil sanctions without having to ask Tel Aviv or Washington D.C. for permission.
30 years ago, the only legal alternative was to withhold international recognition of statehood from a Bantustan and to adopt BDS in hopes that governments would eventually cave-in and follow suit. But even then, we refused to deny the existence of “a Namibian state”. Nowadays, recognition of a Bantustan allows the victim to either join the ICC or accept its jurisdiction for the crime of apartheid, including the Bantustanization, committed on its territory and population.
Israel has established facts on the ground in a piecemeal fashion. Nothing prevents the Palestinians from reversing that trend through a series of piecemeal minor victories, while we are waiting around and working for a more just “final solution” to materialize.
@ talknic
Richard Witty, a self-defined “liberal Zionist” intent on mutual understanding between Jews and Palestinians, said on this blog, back in January of 2012, that being a jewish and democratic state meant that he valued both equally. He didn’t want revolution to change anything, just progress by way of reform. According to him, the two-state solution was the only practical, hence serious way towards achieving mutually consented peace between the Jewish Israelis and Palestinians. He said this blog did not give sufficient respect to folks with his POV. He especially thought the regular commenters here did not serve reaching said peace, but rather, they only served to turn off folks like himself and many more mainstream Jews of influence in the US media.
“The 1st and 14th amendments to our own constitution prohibit the government from establishing a Jewish state anywhere in our own country.”
Well, there is my house and yard, but we disguise it as a wild-animal preserve. Don’t tell.
@ Mooser
Mmmm, is your little Jewish state “Jewish and democratic” as Israel is? Who’s the wild animal being preserved therein?
“The 1st and 14th amendments to our own constitution prohibit the government from establishing a Jewish state anywhere in our own country.”
But what about that long, long time before America was ‘stated’ from coast to coast? We could have all moved to a territory, and every Jew arriving in the New World would be shipped there, and I bet the US would be forced, by facts on the ground, to recognise a Jewish state in this continent. Funny, we never even tried. I wonder why that was, given what drives us….
@ Mooser, well, that sort of happened with the Mormons, didn’t it? And what about NYC?
I’d accuse of Mr. Fidler of being a fool, but it’s clear that he is something much worse: A hateful and immoral Zio-supremacist.
Was it considered de rigueur to have someone present the Afrikaner government position every time South Africa was discussed in an on-campus venue in the ’70s and ’80s?
I get it now. You might be an anti-Semite if…
If you affirm multi-cultural co-habitation, you might be an anti-Semite.
If you believe all humans deserve equal rights, you might be an anti-Semite.
If you distinguish between Israel and Jewry, you might be an anti-Semite.
If you oppose state violence, you might be an anti-Semite.
If you think the Palestinian people’s right of self-determination is equal to Israel’s, you might be an anti-Semite.
If you think those forcibly dispossed of their land have a right to it, you might be an anti-Semite.
If you think Israel will end the occupation with external pressure, you might be an anti-Semite.
ckg, thanks for your comment. A gloss on your excellent comment (with pictures) is found here:
link to azvsas.blogspot.com
“If you distinguish between Israel and Jewry, you might be an anti-Semite.”
True. But if you can also be an anti-Semite if you fail to distinguish between Israel and Jewry.
RoHa, plenty of errata and mistypes in that article, just gotta read past ‘em. I think that was a mistype, and “fail” was left out.
I think he meant what he said.
So whatever you do, you end up being an anti-Semite.
Amusing how the (judeo) fascists are using the word ‘hate speech’ as part of their libel.
Amusing how the (judeo) fascists are using the word ‘hate speech’ as part of their libel.
Correction: They’ve gone to the Courts and gotten judgments on hate speech that they use in their propaganda campaigns. Economic Boycotts against settlement products and Israel’s institutionalized apartheid system are all fine and good, but I believe in meeting the opposition wherever they happen to be engaged. That means we have to include lawfare in our arsenal of tools to use against Zionists who publicly defend Israel’s war crimes and crimes humanity in jurisdictions where that’s considered a criminal offense.
” They’ve gone to the Courts and gotten judgments on hate speech that they use in their propaganda campaigns.”
What are you referring to, exactly?
What are you referring to, exactly?
In Twitter must reveal details of users posting anti-Semitism, French court rules”, January 24, 2013, JTA reports that:
–http://www.jta.org/news/article/2013/01/24/3117656/french-court-orders-twitter-to-reveal-details-of-users-posting-anti-Semitism
It’s no accident that CUFI is also going after Twitter for allegedly providing material support for Hamas. See the Weekly Standard report on “Christian Group Petitions Twitter to Ban Terrorist Group Hamas”:
–https://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/christian-group-petitions-twitter-ban-terrorist-group-hamas_663678.html
Amusing how the ADL was taken over in a right wing coup too. Just like the NRA.
Anti defamation now means pro bigotry. What a joke.
not to be forgotten by its sister organization the SPLC.
link to en.wikipedia.org
There is something particularly dismal as well as bitterly ironic about the wide gulf that now separates the ADL and the SPLC. One went off and sided with power while the other stuck to its mission . One is decent, the other is deserving only of contempt. The SPLC will survive long after the ADL is turned into a shell.
Thanks Abe Foxman for the downfall. Check out the film defamation if you haven’t seen it. You get to know what Abe is about.
Hostage, I had the impression you were still in favor of Partition resolution of 47. Am I wrong?Have you changed, evolved?
No, I was talking about Herzl or the Weizmann-Balfour conspiracy, not the UN Plan. I’ve never really changed my position in favor of democracy and government by local, state, and federal unions.
*I’ve always favored any internationally arbitrated provisional solution that can be adopted peacefully as an alternative to internecine slaughter, civil war, or humanitarian intervention, because the inhabitants are not “better off dead” or living in fear.
*The small Jewish communities that existed in Palestine before the first Aliyah were already functioning as limited autonomies. They were entitled to a degree of self-determination and self-government as part of the general march of progress and civilization, just like any other indigenous people. None of the communities should have been worse-off or surrendered any of their former rights after the so-called Allied “liberation”.
*The Jews living elsewhere were never a logical part of that political equation.
*The Balfour proposal was immoral from the outset and illegal in actual practice. Left on their own, the Oriental Jews and Palestinians would have been perfectly capable of governing themselves after the post-war withdrawal of the Allied forces.
*The territorial allocations and reallocations adopted in-turn by the UNSOP and General Assembly Ad Hoc Committee were grossly unfair and opposed by the majority of the indigenous people. But the other two parts of the three part plan which called for a transition to constitutional democracies, popularly elected governments, and a regional economic union were not unfair or unjust.
*The full implementation of the UN General Assembly “Plan for the Future Government of Palestine” would never have resulted in the election of Vaad Leumi and the Jewish Agency as the actors to serve as the government or constituent assembly of the estimated 500,000 Arab citizens of the so-called “Jewish State”. The Plan called for full regional economic integration, right of transit for all of the inhabitants, equal constitutional rights under the law in both of the new states, religious freedom, international protection of the Holy sites, and establishment of a formal governing body to administer an new economic union, meant to function like the European Union. So the resulting Jewish and Arab States would have been part of a union and independent in name only.
*The main problem has been the unwillingness from the outset of one side or the other to extend equal human rights to the other. X percent of Arabs or Jews living among the population has nothing at all to do with whether or not a resulting democratic State with equal rights can become viable, but that’s still the level of discourse on the subject after all these years.
Balfour is a conspiracy now? I’m sorry you don’t like Balfour. Lots of illegal things led to the current situation in Israel/Palestine, including the Holocaust.
“Left on their own, the Oriental Jews and Palestinians would have been perfectly capable of governing themselves after the post-war withdrawal of the Allied forces.”
This is laughable conjecture. Sure, the Arabs would have pleased with a Jewish population of a few thousand rather than few hundred thousand. The less Jews in the neighborhood, the better, right? Oh, by the way, “Oriental Jews?” That’s a little outdated.
There is more than one way to have a democracy, and in the vast majority of places, democracy works best when you do NOT throw warring peoples and/or ethnicities together in the same state. When you do, you often get internecine conflict, such as Yugoslavia, Rwanda, and Lebanon, or dissolution, like Czechoslovakia, or dissolution and war, like India/Pakistan. Thus, there should be two states, each a democracy, each with a minority of the other state’s peoples. The rest is international experimentation from another era, an era where the same sort of high-handed experimentation that led to messes elsewhere. And there should eventually be an economic union, a la Shimon Peres’s New Middle East and many other similar ideas.
“The territorial allocations and reallocations adopted in-turn by the UNSOP and General Assembly Ad Hoc Committee were grossly unfair”
Are you for the UN plan or not? It seems that you like the UN when it does something in your favor, and when it is not in your favor, it is “grossly unfair.”
>> There is more than one way to have a democracy, and in the vast majority of places, democracy works best when you do NOT throw warring peoples and/or ethnicities together in the same state.
Precisely why a Zio-supremacist “Jewish State” in Palestine would not have worked best as a democracy. But Zio-supremacists found a way to make it work as a supremacist “Jewish State”:
- use terrorism and ethnic cleansing to reduce the size of the non-Jewish population in “Jewish State”; and
– relegate the non-Jewish population in “Jewish State” to permanent second-class citizen status.
Voilà! This is the “democracy” hateful and immoral Zio-supremacists defend. But, sure, it’s better than Saudi Arabia.
Too funny…
Thanka-you Hophmi! I read this article, this morning, and I’ve been looking to place the link. You know, Hophmi, if you read it, you could actually acheive a bit of sophistry in your rants. Remember, Hophmi, people here expect you to excel at it.
I mean, using racism and atrocity to justify racism and atrocity, is so, well unsophisticated. Say, Hophila, old horse, why not use the we-aren’t-worse(than non-Jews)-just-well-different-and-we-need-our-own-place-and-it’ll-be-better-for-everyone. It’ll really give you a chance to get sophisticated, and you’ll find lot’s of allies.
“There is more than one way to have a democracy, and in the vast majority of places, democracy works best when you do NOT throw warring peoples and/or ethnicities together in the same state.”
Then why did the Zionists come there and start a war?
Balfour is a conspiracy now?
Of course. The memo written by the out-going Foreign Secretary (Balfour) to the new Foreign Secretary (Curzon) from the Paris Peace Conference has been universally recognized as the smoking gun which established the fact once and for all that there was a conspiracy on the part of the British government (and probably that of their French Allies). Both governments decided against sending delegations as part of the Inter-Allied Commission on Mandates in Turkey:
Anyone can read the entire memo here: –See Nº. 242. Memorandum by Mr. Balfour (Paris) respecting Syria, Palestine, and Mesopotamia’ [132187/2117/44A], August 11, 1919 link to scribd.com
Curzon had chaired a War Cabinet meeting of the Eastern Committee attended by Balfour and a great many others on 5 December 1918. The agenda was devoted to a discussion of another memorandum that was distributed by Balfour on the subjects of Syria and Palestine. During the morning session on Syria Curzon said:
E.C. 2201 contained two documents:
Former Reference: GT 6506A
Title: Maps illustrating the Settlement of Turkey and the Arabian Peninsula.
Author: Political Intelligence Department, Foreign Office
Date 21 November 1918
Catalogue reference CAB 24/72
link to nationalarchives.gov.uk
Former Reference: GT 6506
Title: The Settlement of Turkey and the Arabian Peninsula.
Author: Political Intelligence Department, Foreign Office
Date 21 November 1918
Catalogue reference CAB 24/72
link to nationalarchives.gov.uk
In 1939 the Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax admitted in writing as part of a memo prepared for a Royal Inquiry into the McMahon-Hussein Correspondence that the legal arguments his government had employed all along to deny Arab claims and independence in Palestine were an obvious and dishonest fabrication, but that there was no need to abandon the subterfuge just yet on that account:
– See the declassified Memo “Palestine: Legal Arguments Likely to be Advanced by Arab Representatives”, Memorandum by the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (Lord Halifax), January 1939, UK National Archives, CAB 24/282, CP 19 (39)
link to nationalarchives.gov.uk
Two years prior to the Royal Inquiry, we heard from Sir Henry himself, who said:
“I feel it my duty to state, and I do so definitely and emphatically, that it was not intended by me in giving this pledge to King Hussein to include Palestine in the area in which Arab independence was promised. I also had every reason to believe at the time that the fact that Palestine was not included in my pledge was well understood by King Hussein.”
–Sir Henry McMahon, High Commissioner of Egypt . London Times, (July 23, 1937).
Ohhhh….what did McMahon know anyway?
Two years prior to the Royal Inquiry, we heard from Sir Henry himself, . . . it was not intended by me in giving this pledge to King Hussein to include Palestine in the area in which Arab independence was promised.
Don’t bother, we know for certain that McMahon was just part of the British government cover-up. We have his original cable to the Foreign Secretary, Lord Grey, asking for instructions together with Grey’s reply to go ahead and give Hussein assurances regarding all of the territory he had requested, with the exception of the specific areas outlined by al Faroqi. Those areas did not include Palestine. I’ve already noted that the British intentionally lied and hid this correspondence for more than a decade after the Inquiry. See:
Reference: CAB 24/214/21
Former Reference: CP 271 (30)
Title: Palestine: McMahon Correspondence.
Author: Passfield
Date: 25 July 1930
link to discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk
During the Inquiry on the McMahon-Hussein correspondence, the Arabs were represented by Sir Michael McDonnell a former Chief Justice of Palestine. He pointed out that it didn’t matter what anyone intended, only what they actually said in the text of the agreements
link to unispal.un.org
In any event, McMahon had been forced to step-down in disgrace over his role in the negotiations, when the Bolsheviks published the details of the Sykes-Picot Agreement and the other secret treaties which proved that the war was being prolonged for imperialist reasons, not for the defense of democracy.
FYI, during the War Cabinet meeting of the Eastern Committee on 5 December 1918, Curzon pointed out that the position reserved for the French in Syria by McMahon and the Sykes-Picot Agreements violated the British and French legal obligations to the other members of the Concert of Europe under the Reglement Organique Agreements of June 1861 and September 1864.
The details of Sir Henry’s negotiations were finalized and concluded by Sykes and Picot themselves, when they were dispatched to Hedjaz to parlay with Hussein in person. I’ve already provided the citation to the Council of Four Meeting in which Lloyd George reminded the French that McMahon’s correspondence was a treaty obligation and that it had been the basis of the Sykes-Picot Agreement.
Ohhhh….what did McMahon know anyway?
That all of his shady dealings would be declassified eventually, even if the Russians or the French didn’t rat him out first?
@Hostage
“… by arrangement with the Foreign Office…the whole history of this correspondence and a reasoned account of its implications has been prepared by an expert (Mr. Childs) on the Foreign Office staff. I am prepared to say that at no time hitherto has so complete
and exhaustive a work on the subject been available.”
Okay. Than what were Childs conclusions?
Childs emphasized the inclusive and unqualified character of the reservation in favor of French interests. Overlooked by previous interpretations, he argued the when McMahon wrote his letter the French claim extended to Palestine, and that:
“the interests of France so reserved in Palestine must be taken as represented by the original French claim to possession of the whole of Palestine. And therefore, that the general reservation of French interests is sufficient to exclude Palestine from the Arab area.”
And Childs final conclusion:
“That from the examination of the history of Sir H. McMahon’s pledge of the 24 October, 1915, it is evident that he intended the exclusion of Palestine from the pledge; and therefore that His Majesty’s Government’s interpretation of the contested passage has been adopted on adequate grounds and in good faith.” –`Memorandum on the Exclusion of Palestine from the Area assigned for Arab Independence by McMahon-Hussein Correspondence of 1915-16′, dated 24 Oct. 1930
Childs emphasized the inclusive and unqualified character of the reservation in favor of French interests. Overlooked by previous interpretations, he argued the when McMahon wrote his letter the French claim extended to Palestine
LOL! With all due respect to Mr. Childs, his analysis contains a few historical glosses regarding the international settlement of claims to Palestine made by the Concert of Europe in the years following the Crimean War, Turkish-Egyptian War, and the Russo-Turkish Wars. The requirement to consult the Arabs regarding the administration of an international condominium in Palestine (contained in the Sykes-Picot agreement) reflected the realty that France could not legally assert any such unilateral claim there or in Syria itself. See for example the discussion in the Minutes of the Eastern Committee of the War Cabinet for 5 December 1918 in that connection and the conclusion that the British attempts to reserve a position for France violated the Regliment Organique Agreements with the other European powers.
The French government explicitly acknowledged that fact and renounced any such claims in the text of the San Remo resolution. — link to cfr.org
The cable from McMahon asking Lord Grey for instructions and the reply which instructed him to grant Hussein what he’d requested, except for the districts described by al Faroqi in Syria lying between Damascus and Alleppo, are in the public domain now. That means we no longer need Mr. Childs to summarize the (now declassified) documents for us. Even if we needed a summary, we could just use the memo that Balfour himself circulated to the War Cabinet on 5 December 1918 which stated explicitly that Palestine was part of the territory pledged to Hussein. There wasn’t a single member of the assembled British decision makers who took issue with that statement or questioned its accuracy.
@Hostage
Childs was not tasked with analyzing the legal basis for French claims in the Middle East, nor was Childs required to consider the War Cabinet’s decisions of 5 December 1918.
Childs WAS tasked to examine whether or not Palestine was included or excluded from the McMahon-Hussein correspondences of 1915.
That’s it.
Childs conclusion that McMahon intended the exclusion of Palestine from the pledge is based on one simple fact. That, in October I915 McMahon did not know, because HMG did not know, what the extent of the French claims on Palestine was going to be or how hard France was going to press them.
Childs conclusion that McMahon intended the exclusion of Palestine from the pledge is based on one simple fact.
Propaganda fail! I’ve already noted the testimony of the Justice of the Supreme Court of Palestine to the Royal Commission on that particular point of law. Neither McMahon nor Childs can “infer an exception” in the absence of an “express provision” that actually mentions Palestine. It doesn’t matter what McMahon intended to say, only what he actually put down on paper – and only as far as those terms can be strictly construed. If any doubt remains then the historical archives and any travail préparatoire must be consulted.
So it is not without relevance that McMahon was merely acting as an agent of Foreign Secretary Lord Grey and that he had been instructed to give Hussein assurances regarding all of the territory Hussein had requested, with the exception (i.e. the express provision) of the areas described by al Farouqi. McMahon himself had relayed those descriptions to Lord Grey in meticulous detail and never once mentioned Palestine. He only discussed lands in the vicinities west of the cities of Damascus, Homs, Hama, and Aleppo.
McMahon’s superiors cited his correspondence during the 5 December 1918 War Cabinet meeting. Unlike Childs, they understood the text to mean that Palestine was included in the territory they had intended to pledge to Hussein.
@Hostage
It is clear what McMahon’s superior, Lord Grey, intended.
‘In 1915, after the beginning of the British naval ,attack on the
Dardanelles forts, a Russian claim to the eventual possession of Constantinople and the Straits was sent to Great Britain and France, and in the middle of March the French Government informed His Majesty’s Government that, for their part, they claimed Cilicia and Syria ( ” S y r i a ” at that time including the whole of Palestine and Transjordan). This claim was recognised and recorded in the report which Sir M. de Bunsen’s Committee on Asiatic Turkey presented in June.
It is thus evident that already at that date, and equally in October of the
same year, His Majesty’s Government were in fact precluded from assigning
Palestine unreservedly to the Arabs”
–declassified Memo “Palestine: Legal Arguments Likely to be Advanced by Arab Representatives”, Memorandum by the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (Lord Halifax), January 1939, UK National Archives, CAB 24/282, CP 19 (39)
link to nationalarchives.gov.uk
‘In 1915, after the beginning of the British naval ,attack on the
Dardanelles forts, a Russian claim to the eventual possession of Constantinople and the Straits was sent to Great Britain and France, and in the middle of March the French Government informed His Majesty’s Government that, for their part, they claimed Cilicia and Syria ( ” S y r i a ” at that time including the whole of Palestine and Transjordan). This claim was recognised and recorded in the report which Sir M. de Bunsen’s Committee on Asiatic Turkey presented in June.
Your whole line of argument is absurd. There were no “British reservations” regarding Arab Independence. They had agreed to grant Hussein all of the territory so long as there was no detriment to the interests of France.
The French Protectorate of Jerusalem was an enemy entity which ceased to exist at the commencement of WWI. The government of France formally acknowledged in the San Remo resolution of April 1920 that their defunct Protectorate would not be revived in the post-war settlements. The same resolution granted Great Britain sole discretion in matters pertaining the administration of Palestine. So what, pray tell, was preventing the British government (or the French for that matter) from keeping their pledges from the 1919 Anglo-French Declaration regarding Arab independence and support for governments freely chosen by the indigenous populations?
The bottom line is that neither Mr. Childs nor the Royal Commission report on the McMahon-Hussein correspondence cited a shred of evidence for any legally recognized and continuing French interest in Palestine after April of 1920. But the British government continued to employ that as part of its ruse to avoid fulfilling its own obligations.
On the other hand, Palestine had been included in Proclamation (No.4) by the British Government of India, dated November 2, 1914. It contain specific pledges that all of the Moslem holy places, including the Mosque of Omar in Jerusalem and Abraham’s Tomb in Hebron, would remain under the control of a Muslim government after the war.
The “Palestine: Legal Arguments” memo obscures the actual facts when it claims that Palestine was part of Syria. The gloss was probably deliberate, since the British Foreign Office was certainly aware that the legal boundary between the Vilayet of Syria and the Mutasharrif of Jerusalem had been the Jordan River and that the Pasha reported directly to the Ottoman authorities in the Sublime Porte, not to the Valis of Syria or Beirut.
The Minutes of the War Cabinet Eastern Committee meeting for 5 December 1918 indicate that the British government did not consider Palestine to be part of Syria or an area encumbered by the pledges to the French. In fact, the meeting was split into two sessions: one on Syria in the morning and one on Palestine in the afternoon, precisely because they were considered separate matters for legal, political, and other purposes.
FYI, a simple review of the British literature of the era, including handbooks for travelers, reflects the Ottoman administrative division in the common nomenclature “Syria and Palestine”, e.g. link to archive.org
Article 3 of the Sykes-Picot agreement of May 1916 required the British and French to consult the Russians, the other Allies (Italy), and the Sharif of Mecca on the form of government that was to be adopted in Palestine. That stipulation reflected the obligations that were acknowledged in the text of the De Bunsen report itself and the existing status quo. See the Sykes-Picot Agreement.
link to wwi.lib.byu.edu
Under the regime of the Ottoman capitulations, the district of Jerusalem had been governed since the early 19th century as an international condominium comprised of the jurisdiction of the Muslim authorities and at least eight western consular jurisdictions, including a British one, and its British protégés. Sykes-Picot was aimed at restoring something roughly equivalent to the pre-war arrangement in league with the new Arab State or States.
FYI, the actual text of paragraph 4 of the De Bunsen Committee report noted that the Russian allies strongly objected to any plans for the French to annex Palestine or establish a protectorate or sphere of influence there after the war. Paragraph 5 noted that the Russians had stipulated that the Muslim Holy Places were to remain under Muslim rule only.
More importantly, paragraph 12(iii), (vii), and (ix) cited the need to fulfill the pledges given to “the Sheikhs of Kowiet and Mohammera, the Emir of Nejd (Bin Saud), the people of Basra (Persian Gulf region), Said Idress, Iman Yahya, and Sheikh Mavia (in Yemen), and generally maintenance of the assurances given to the Sharif of Mecca and the Arabs.”; to keep the Muslim Holy places under Muslim rule to placate Britain’s Indian subjects; and the need to obtain a settlement of the question of Palestine and the Christian Holy Places. The Sykes-Picot agreement was that settlement, and it specifically excluded Palestine from the French zones of interest in Syria.
Mark Sykes was a member of the De Bunsen Committee. He and Picot concluded the final negotiations with the Sharif of Mecca in the months after the preliminary negotiations with McMahon. The Sykes-Picot line never included Palestine in those portions of Syria where French interests predominated. Palestine was to remain an international condominium, governed in consultation with the Muslim authorities just as it had been under the regime of the Capitulations.
@Hostage
Let’s try to stay focused on those last 6 months of 1915.
What was the French desiderata as recorded in the De Bunsen Committee Report? I see a map with French claims extending from Aleppo down to Aqaba (that would include Palestine).
Am I wrong?
Did not De Bunsen say in his report of June 1915 that the matter of Palestine was to be left up to the Powers?
Isn’t that exactly what the Powers did later on in Sykes-Picot, 1916?
Soooo…..in October 1915(McMahon-Hussein), after the De Bunsen Report but before the Sykes-Picot Agreement, McMahon did not know what the extent of the French claims on Palestine were going to be.
Yes or no?
Soooo…..in October 1915(McMahon-Hussein), after the De Bunsen Report but before the Sykes-Picot Agreement, McMahon did not know what the extent of the French claims on Palestine were going to be. Yes or no?
I don’t see how that line of argument lends any support to your position.
a) The Sharif of Mecca was one of the “powers” that Henry McMahon contacted. He was acting on the instructions he had received from the Government of Great Britain, not on his own initiative. He requested that the Sharif lead an Arab revolt against the Ottomans. Hussein responded by demanding in return an independent Arab state stretching north-to-south from the Indian Ocean to Syria, and west-to-east from the Sinai to Persia.
b) The British Cabinet Paper you are discussing explained that the French territorial claim was undefined and that the reservation was only applicable to those areas where France’s title or claim could eventually be defined and perfected:
The fact that the French may have desired that Palestine or Transjordan be considered part of Syria was completely irrelevant. Even the British government decided that Transjordan was not part of the “Syria” for which France had received a mandate at San Remo. Great Britain most certainly did obtain a free hand under that settlement to honor the demands for Arab independence in Palestine without any detriment at all to any French interest. Full stop.
Let’s try to stay focused on those last 6 months of 1915. . . . Did not De Bunsen say in his report of June 1915 that the matter of Palestine was to be left up to the Powers? Isn’t that exactly what the Powers did later on in Sykes-Picot, 1916?
McMahon explicitly stated that he had been instructed and empowered by the British Government to provide assurances to Hussein, but that “as the interests of our ally, France, are involved, the question will require careful consideration and a further communication on the subject will be addressed to you in due course.” Meanwhile, the French government itself had almost immediately dispatched François Georges-Picot to the Hedjaz, together with Sir Mark Sykes representing the government of Great Britain. The two men were sent to negotiate the exact terms with the Sharif Hussein in person. So, the result of the McMahon-Hussein initiative, which only ended with a final letter in March of 1916, was the Sykes-Picot agreement of May 1916. Lloyd George admitted as much during the meeting of the Council of Four in Paris that I’ve cited here on many occasions:
* link to digicoll.library.wisc.edu
Neither Palestine nor Transjordan were included in the French spheres of influence under the terms of the Sykes-Picot Agreement. But all of the regions mentioned by McMahon in express provisions of his correspondence were included in the zones assigned to the French. The requirement to consult the Sharif of Mecca regarding the form of government adopted in Palestine was an explicit treaty obligation.
The British Cabinet papers regarding the commitments to Hussein note that the Sharif advised both Picot and Sykes that he would only agree to British or French advisors on the understanding that they would have no executive authority whatsoever.
* See pdf file page 9 of 21 in:
Former Reference: GT 6185
Title: British Commitments to King Husein.
Author: Political Intelligence Department, Foreign Office
Date November 1918
Catalogue reference CAB 24/68
link to nationalarchives.gov.uk
@Hostage
” Mark Sykes..and Picot concluded the final negotiations with the Sharif of Mecca in the months after the preliminary negotiations with McMahon”
‘Picot quickly became convinced that the British did indeed ‘merely intend to throw sand in the Arabs eyes: ‘They want to make the Arabs large offers, secure in the knowledge the the edice [of an Arab State] they are thus constructing will without a doubt barely survive the war if it survives at all…
‘Grey, like Picot, thought the Arab state ‘a castle in the air which would never materialize’. Assurance to the Sharif thus did not ‘matter much’.
Neither Picot nor the British deliberately set out to dupe the Sharif by concluding an agreement incompatible with McMahon’s assurances to him. But since neither expected that those assurances would ever have to be honored, it did not seem to matter that they were vague and ambiguous’.
– The Climax of French Imperial Expansion, 1914-1924, By Christopher Maurice Andrew, A. Alexander Sydney Kanya-Forstner, page 90-91
@Hostage
“Sykes-Picot was aimed at restoring something roughly equivalent to the pre-war arrangement in league with the new Arab State or States.”
Oh really?
“Both Picot and Sykes demanded the whole of it (with special arrangements for the custody of the Holy Places, and each flatly refused to concede the other’s claim. ‘Under these circumstances’, Picot concluded, ‘it seemed to me that prolonging the controversy indefinitely was pointless and risked embittering the issue without any result.’ Sykes agreed.”
“Palestine was a subject on which the French were ‘hardly normal’ :’Any reference seems to excite memories of all grievances from Joan of Arc to Fashoda.’”
“Picot, and probably Skykes as well, did not regard the ‘Brown Zone’ arrangement as a definitive settlement for Palestine”–The Climax of French Imperial Expansion, 1914-1924, Christopher Maurice Andrew, A. Alexander Sydney Kanya-Forstne
“Sykes-Picot was aimed at restoring something roughly equivalent to the pre-war arrangement in league with the new Arab State or States.”
Oh really?
Yes really. There were at least eight western countries with Consuls who help govern the inhabitants of Palestine. Under the regime of the capitulations, their citizens and protégés were subject to their consular jurisdiction which exercised executive, legislative, and judicial functions in exactly the same way that Israel extended its own criminal and civil jurisdiction to its citizens living beyond the Green Line in Palestine through the Oslo Accords.
It’s a matter of public record that the juridical boundaries of the Consular District of Palestine that were established by the German Consul General in Jerusalem included all six Ottoman administrative districts. The American Consul General in Jerusalem advised the State Department that he too considered all six of the districts of Palestine to be inside the juridical boundaries of his area of supervision. The jurisdiction of the British Consul General of Jerusalem only included five of the six. Prussia, Austria, and Spain had similar consular jurisdictions. The Holy See, Russia, and France had similar consular jurisdictions as well as protectorates for various confessions through out the Middle East. Under the terms of the capitulations those were official criminal and civil jurisdictions.
For example, In Reid v Covert the Supreme Court noted that Palestine had been an international condominium with mixed courts and jurisdictions since at least 1535, when the French concluded the first treaty in a series that became known as “The Capitulations”.
link to law.cornell.edu
American consular jurisdiction had existed since before the adoption of the US Constitution, it had been exercised for 170 years by the time it was described in Reid v Covert in 1956. At least one individual had been hanged pursuant to the sentence of an American consular court, but the President usually commuted sentences to life at hard labor. See In re Ross, 140 U.S. 453 (1891)
link to supreme.justia.com
The US treaty of 1830 with the Ottomans was codified by Congress in 8 Stat. 408. It gave the Consul all executive, legislative, and judicial powers and authorized funding for his marshals and the clerks of the Consular Courts. That statute was repealed by 70 Stat. 773 in the post-mandate era. The Consul General in Jerusalem, Palestine played a dual role. He was the Consul for the Ottoman district of Jerusalem, and at the same time, he was the superior of the consular offices in the other five Ottoman districts within the juridical boundaries of Palestine. That included everything from the region of Eilat to the territory north of Safed. Note that the Galilee panhandle was not yet considered part of the country, before the era of Trumpeldor and Tel Hai. Under the terms of the agreement on land ownership between the Ottomans and the USA, the local authorities could not enter the home of an American citizen living in a locality within 9 hours travel time from a consular residence without obtaining the assistance of a Consul. Americans in the two northern districts could call upon nearby consuls for the Syrian Pashalik for protection too. So the two Consul Generals had overlapping jurisdiction there. Here is a link to the official map of the juridical boundaries of Palestine as of 1910 and the National Archives and Records Administration accession number. The map shows the locations of the Consulate General, the US Consulates, and the Consular Agencies: See Ruth Kark, American Consuls in the Holy Land: 1832-1914, Wayne State University Press, 1994, link to books.google.com
So Palestine was already governed as a functioning international condominium in the 19th Century, long before the first Zionist Congress was convened or Sykes and Picot started quibbling over the post war arrangements.
Neither Picot nor the British deliberately set out to dupe the Sharif by concluding an agreement incompatible with McMahon’s assurances to him.
Obsidian it’s futile to quote tertiary sources of misinformation, when we can read Balfour’s memo No. 242 from the Paris Peace Conference and the Minutes of the Council of Four online for ourselves these days.
Anyone can see for themselves from the materials available for download in the UK Archives that the boundaries of the brown region on the map circulated by Balfour in preparation for the 5 December 1918 Cabinet meeting are NOT vague or ambiguous. The Privy Council President, Lord Curzon, said that Palestine, the brown area, had been pledged to Hussein as part of the territory where Great Britain could support Arab independence without detriment to French interests.
We know perfectly well that Lloyd George said that the McMahon-Hussein correspondence was a treaty obligation that could not be broken on account of the proposed mandates. We also know that Balfour said the Allies did intend to mislead the Arabs and break their pledges regarding independence and responsibility for the delineation of the new borders.
*http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/FRUS/FRUS-idx?type=goto&id=FRUS.FRUS1919Parisv05&isize=M&submit=Go+to+page&page=1
*http://www.scribd.com/fullscreen/60431057?access_key=key-136ulpy32ssl2l27p8nb
Here are the views on the French interests and British pledges expressed by William Ormsby Gore in May of 1917, when he served as the head of the Foreign Office Political Intelligence Section. Note that he never repeated these remarks when he served as the British representative on the League of Nations Permanent Mandates Commission or as Colonial Secretary with direct responsibility for Palestine:
— See UK National Archives CAB/24/143, Eastern Report, No. XVIII, May 31, 1917
link to discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk
@Hostage
“Sykes-Picot was aimed at restoring something roughly equivalent to the pre-war arrangement in league with the new Arab State or States.”
Oh really?
“Yes really.”
Not really.
“Picot had a quite a different stratagem in mind: to obtain Russian support for turning the ‘Brown Zone’ from an international regime into a French protectorate.”––The Climax of French Imperial Expansion, 1914-1924, Christopher Maurice Andrew, A. Alexander Sydney Kanya-Forstner, 95-96.
Thank you (once again, and again, etc.) Hostage for having the incredible patience to debate such dishonest Zionist trolls.
“Picot had a quite a different stratagem in mind: to obtain Russian support for turning the ‘Brown Zone’ from an international regime into a French protectorate.”––The Climax of French Imperial Expansion, 1914-1924, Christopher Maurice Andrew, A. Alexander Sydney Kanya-Forstner, 95-96.
The same source goes on to say that:
So deceiving the Sharif of Mecca and the other Islamic leaders about their real intentions was a key part of the British and French plans. They certainly intended to violate the pledges made by the British government of India on behalf of the Allies in its Proclamation No. 4 of 1914.
Picot’s alleged plan seems pretty far fetched. The Russians and the French had already cited control of the keys to the Church of the Nativity in Palestine as a casus belli for one war. Russian attempts to obtain unilateral advantages in that post-war settlement had been rejected by the Concert of Europe, which adopted its own multilateral agreement instead.
We know that the Russian Foreign Ministry under Sazanoff objected to a French Protectorate in Palestine from the De Bunsen report. Trotsky became Foreign Minister after the revolution. He published the full text of the Sykes-Picot Agreement in November of 1917. That happened within a matter of days after the Balfour Declaration was published. Both of those documents raised suspicions among Britain’s Arab allies while its Army was still fighting the Ottomans for control of Palestine. So Picot’s alleged scheme with the Russians was completely moot – long before the Allies had even secured control of Palestine.
The Manchester Guardian also published the text of the Sykes-Picot Agreement in November of 1917. The public was outraged to discover that the war, which had already cost countless lives, was being prolonged to obtain hegemony over Ottoman Asia. I’ve noted elsewhere that Sir Henry McMahon was forced to step down as British High Commissioner when the details of the duplicitous negotiations conducted under his watch were revealed.
@Hostage
“Anyone can see for themselves… that the boundaries of the brown region on the map circulated by Balfour in preparation for the 5 December 1918 Cabinet meeting are NOT vague or ambiguous.”
I didn’t say that. I said thatt McMahon’s pledge was vague and ambiguous.
“The Privy Council President, Lord Curzon, said that Palestine, the brown area, had been pledged to Hussein as part of the territory where Great Britain could support Arab independence without detriment to French interests. ”
And France, Sykes, McMahon and Grey felt otherwise.
I didn’t say that. I said thatt McMahon’s pledge was vague and ambiguous.
I’ve cited and quoted the verbatim minutes which prove that the entire Eastern Committee of the British War Cabinet, including Balfour himself, met twice on 5 December 1918 and agreed that His Majesty’s Government had intended to pledge the Brown area (i.e. Palestine) to the Arabs.
And France, Sykes, McMahon and Grey felt otherwise.
You haven’t produced a shred of evidence that France ever said that granting the Arabs of Palestine their independence would be detrimental to their interests. The fact is that they repeatedly renounced any interest in making Palestine a French protectorate after the war, including the formal Anglo-French declaration of 1919 and the San Remo resolution of April 1920. link to cfr.org
FYI, its ludicrous to suggest that the British Cabinet felt it was under any obligation to France regarding Palestine. After the Armistice of Moudros, the British told the French that the Sykes-Picot agreement was no longer to their liking and that if the French refused to renegotiate its terms, they would publicly announce that it had been rendered moot by the Anglo-French Declaration of 1918. In the mean time, the British Cabinet had decided to employ the establishment of a so-called “Occupied Enemy Territory Administration” in Palestine under a military governor, General Allenby. That was part of a deliberate subterfuge to use the Hague Convention of 1907 to prevent the French from establishing the international condominium envisioned for the Sanjak of Jerusalem and obtaining their share of political control in the civilian administration under the terms of Sykes-Picot. See Matthew Hughes, Allenby and British strategy in the Middle East, 1917-1919, Cass, 1999, page 93.
The US Special Agent at Cairo reported on the plan to internationalize Palestine and the pledges that were made to the Arabs throughout the war. His Report No. 17, on March 4th, 1918 contained the full text of a speech delivered to the Central Syrian Committee in Paris by M. Jean Gout, Minister Plenipotentiary, representing the French Minister of Foreign Affairs. He promised the assembled Arabs that the Allies had put aside “all idea of colonial domination”. He said “the two Allies are resolved, each in its sphere of action, to guide the population which speaks Arabic, and those who speak all other languages, who inhabit the region which extends from the Anatolian mountains to the Indian Ocean (the sea of the Indies) towards a regime of autonomy and civilized development, in a mutual respect of the religious beliefs and nationalities.”
At the same meeting Mark Sykes noted that the independence of the Hedjaz rendered it “almost impossible that an effective and real autonomy should be refused to Syria.” He advised the Arabs “Get together, unite, and you will become a powerful political force and if you desire a program, I would not know how to dictate it to you, it is the circumstances which will write it.” The Arabs remained suspicious about the Sykes-Picot Agreement and the Balfour Declaration, but neither Sykes nor Gout suggested that their governments would subdue the Syrian and Palestinian Arabs by force of arms and reject the demands of their General Congress regarding the right of self-government.
You likewise haven’t produced any evidence regarding Lord Grey. The 1939 Royal Commission noted that he had publicly disputed the Government’s interpretation of the McMahon-Hussein correspondence in a speech he delivered to the Parliament. He recommended that all of the related documents be declassified and published in the 1920s. But that didn’t happen until the 30 year scheduled declassification term lapsed in the 1950s. In his remarks to the Parliament he noted that a Jewish government in any district of Palestine would obviously be incompatible with the civil rights of the Arab majority:
“Lots of illegal things led to the current situation in Israel/Palestine,
including the Holocaust”
link to irishtimes.com
“No one can say where political violence meets everyday vulnerability to send an entire family hurtling to disaster”.
No one can say where the violence originally unleashed by the Nazis will end but Israel probably won’t be there to see it.
Hostage: “The territorial allocations and reallocations adopted in-turn by the UNSOP and General Assembly Ad Hoc Committee were grossly unfair”
Hophmi: Are you for the UN plan or not? It seems that you like the UN when it does something in your favor, and when it is not in your favor, it is “grossly unfair.”
LOL! Of course I’m Jewish. The final UNSCOP proposal allocated the Negev between Beersheba and Eilat to the Arab State and established Jerusalem as a Corpus Separatum. It’s a matter of public record that the Jewish Agency found both the UNSCOP majority and minority reports unacceptable to the Jewish people and that it would only recommend adoption (by Vaad Leumi) subject to it being granted immediate control over immigration and to further discussions of its constitutional and territorial reservations. In short, the we Jews rejected the UNSCOP majority plan just like the Arabs had, but we employed hasbara to conceal that fact.
So the General Assembly was forced to immediately reconvene as an “Ad Hoc Committee” of the whole membership and re-open negotiations over the territorial allocations and the details of the transition plan. Here is an extract from the Yearbook of the United Nations for 1947-48:
Here’s how the State Department noted that the Jewish Agency’s “acceptance” was really just a counter-offer of more discussions:
– link to digicoll.library.wisc.edu
Here is an extract of that majority recommendation that was considered unintelligible:
The Survey of Palestine in 1946 concluded that a third of the Jews living in the country were not naturalized citizens and that whole community only held title to about 6 percent of the land. So the division of the territory between roughly 400,000 citizens or 600,000 resident Jews and the 1.2 million Arab citizens was manifestly unfair and disproportionately favored the Jewish minority population. The Partition Plan set aside roughly 57 percent of Palestine for the proposed Jewish State and only 43 percent for the proposed Arab State.
What happened prior to May 15 1948 is irrelevant as of 00:01 May 15th 1948 (ME Time).
In a final act of acceptance by the Jewish People’s Council, UNGA res 181 was enshrined in the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel. link to mfa.gov.il (6 months after the resolution was rejected by the Arabs)
Israel was then recognized as it asked to be recognized, per UNGA res 181. link to wp.me
After admittance to the UN Israel attempted to claim territories outside (per UNGA 181) the State of Israel link to unispal.un.org
Israel has never legally annexed those territories or the ‘territories occupied’ in ’67.
Israel has dug itself into an illegal ‘facts on the ground’ hole, whereby it can no longer afford to adhere to the law without being sent bankrupt paying reparations and/or descending into civil war with the hundreds of thousands of illegal settlers it has assisted over the last 64 years if it tried to relocate them inside Israel’s actual sovereign extent.
Although few seem to realize or admit it, Israel must plea bargain with the Palestinians while the US still maintains the veto vote in the UNSC.
Thank you for your posts here Hostage. I thought of saying something similar but I don’t have the references at my fingertips, nor am I as eloquent as organised as you.
Thank you.
“Thank you for your posts here Hostage. I thought of saying something similar but I don’t have the references at my fingertips, nor am I as eloquent as organised as you.”
And he makes it look easy. And the writing goes down like butter. I try not to miss a one.
it is true Hostages posts are educational.
Hoppmi: At the end of all your BS, the Zionist entity rejected the Partition plan and never implemented it. That is one more UNGA resolution / proposal shat upon by the Zionists.
Actually, sarfelapasti, the Yishuv accepted the Partition Plan. It was the Arabs who rejected. link to en.wikipedia.org
What happened prior to May 15 1948 is irrelevant as of 00:01 May 15th 1948 (ME Time).
Not quite. The administrative boundaries that were in effect under the UN Plan prior to independence still matter according to the doctrine of uti possidetis. The Zionists used a number circumlocutions in their declaration to avoid explicitly accepting the general terms of the plan regarding boundaries.
We’ve all seen how Zionists can interpret a line of isolated population centers and the intervening spaces into a claim against a entire block of territory. They use the same tactic to establish buffer areas on the Palestinian side of their security fences. Prescott and Triggs, “International Frontiers and Boundaries”, Martinus Nijhoff, 2008 explains that “frontiers” are zones of varying widths that were common many centuries ago. By 1900 frontiers had almost disappeared and had been replaced by boundaries that are simply dividing lines. The UN Palestine Commission was responsible for establishing frontiers along the general lines of the recommendations and for modifying the actual boundaries after studying the situation on the ground, e.g.:
link to yale.edu
Epstein’s request for recognition contained two clauses which employed those same terms of art about “the State of Israel” – a republic “established within frontiers” approved by the General Assembly – and the establishment of a provisional government (a temporary ephemeral entity) for preserving law and order “within the boundaries of Israel”. Note that the Zionists put themselves in charge of interpreting what the General Assembly had “approved”.
Actually, sarfelapasti, the Yishuv accepted the Partition Plan. It was the Arabs who rejected. link to en.wikipedia.org
Here’s an exercise for you Hophmi: Write a summary about the actual discussion contained in the Minutes of the Peoples Council (see pages 279-284) regarding boundaries and the UN resolution and add that to the Wikipedia article you cited – or just restore one of the many earlier versions which contained that information. Then sit back and see how long it takes the usual Zionist posse members to revert your edits.
The Minutes of the People’s Council make it crystal clear that 1) Ben Gurion and the other members were not appointed by the UN Commission (which had ceased to exist); 2) They were not abiding by either the sequence of events or the timeline established for them to occur in the UN resolution; and 3) they did not feel bound by the UN borders, so they decided to leave the issue open to future developments (i.e. territorial aggrandizement).
1. The Partition Plan was unjust.
2. The Yishuv said they accepted it, with the avowed intention of using it as a starting point for conquest.
3. They then violated it.
Hostage
//talknic – What happened prior to May 15 1948 is irrelevant as of 00:01 May 15th 1948 (ME Time)//
“Not quite. The administrative boundaries that were in effect under the UN Plan prior to independence still matter according to the doctrine of uti possidetis
Surely contradicted by the:
“The Zionists used a number circumlocutions in their declaration to avoid explicitly accepting the general terms of the plan regarding boundaries”
Quite, however determining not to mention something in the declaration only means it wasn’t mentioned. Israel’s plea for recognition is reflected in recognitions of the USSR, Australia, contradicting the Hasbara argument that it was Epstein who erred. Seems the Jewish Agency’s representatives in Russia and Australia got it wrong too link to wp.me
“On its arrival in Palestine the Commission shall proceed to carry out measures for the establishment of the frontiers of the Arab and Jewish States and the City of Jerusalem in accordance with the general lines of the recommendations of the General Assembly on the partition of Palestine…”
“the establishment of” what had to a large degree been pre-determined. The exceptions are clear and minor.
However you’re right in respect to the Israeli M/O. They’ve kept the ball in the air as long as possible. When it eventually comes down, as it must, they could well find it deflated
//talknic – What happened prior to May 15 1948 is irrelevant as of 00:01 May 15th 1948 (ME Time)//
“Not quite. The administrative boundaries that were in effect under the UN Plan prior to independence still matter according to the doctrine of uti possidetis
Surely contradicted by the:
1933/34 – Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States
ARTICLE 11
a) The doctrine of uti possidetis is NOT contradicted by the Montevideo Convention. It simply holds that the administrative boundaries of non-self-governing territories, including mandated states, are transformed into international boundaries at the moment of independence.
b) The UN General Assembly established the frontiers of the new dependent states and started the transition period to their independence on 29 November 1947 in accordance with its powers and functions under Articles 10, 18, 80, and 85 of the Charter. So yes, things that happened prior to 15 May 1948 are still very relevant.
c) Israel subsequently claimed that the UN didn’t implement its resolution and that it was created by its own act of secession and a civil war. But that was due entirely to the use of force by the parties to the conflict in violation of the doctrine of uti possidetis.
The ICJ explained the principle in the “Frontier Dispute” case (Burkina Faso/Republic of Mali) in 1986:
link to icj-cij.org
” international experimentation from another era, an era where the same sort of high-handed experimentation that led to messes elsewhere”
Yep, that describes the creation of Israel alright. As the aim of BDS is to force Israel to come to its senses and acknowledge Palestinians’ rights to live peaceably in their own land, then I take it you are in agreement with its goals, which is to end the high-handed experimentation, and make a comprehensive and just settlement with the indigenous people of the land. Certainly I am sure you will welcome the debate at Brooklyn in this light. I mean what do you and all the other pontificators and thought police have to fear? You’re such a tease, hopper.
hophmi “Balfour is a conspiracy now?”
Indeed. The Balfour declaration wasn’t drafted by the British Government link to google.com.au
“Lots of illegal things led to the current situation in Israel/Palestine, including the Holocaust.”
Uh? The Holocaust was over by the time Israel was recognized “as defined in the Resolution of the General Assembly of the 29th November, 1947″. The illegality leading to the current situation has been on the part of Israel since, ignoring International Law, the UN charter and hundreds of UNSC resolutions
” Thus, there should be two states, each a democracy, each with a minority of the other state’s peoples. ”
Doesn’t make sense. If there are two states, neither would have ‘the other state’s peoples’ unless both had dual citizenship.
” Thus, there should be two states”
Indeed, however Israel has been preventing two states for 64 years. The ‘Jewish State’, “THE STATE OF ISRAEL … will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel;” link to mfa.gov.il Deuteronomy 20:14 – 15 “This is how you are to treat all the cities that are at a distance from you and do not belong to the nations nearby”
The argument permeates the Hasbara notion that because Palestine belonged to no other nation, Israel could simply do whatever it likes.
Hostage, there’s way, way to much common sense, decency, justice and good will in your comment.
You’re like a bad polo player.
“1. Old 2. White 3. Male It doesn’t matter if you’re Jewish or not. If you have those three criteria fulfilled, chances are pretty high you’re a piggish bigot”
HEY!!!!! Hey, I resent that! I’m 60, white, and male. And I’m just an over-tolerant and deeply open-minded jackass.
I don’t intend to reach piggish bigot status until I’m well into my eighties.
This is a somewhat specialist report and the opposition to it simply draws attention from a wider audience. Those into the subject who have presumably been awaiting Wexler’s findings will make up their own minds based on what is in the report. The fact that some people huff and puff, calling it biased and anti-Semitic is of no consequence since they do this all the time about almost everything, it’s unavoidable background noise.
Question. If everyone had simply ignored Lew Fidler’s preposterous outburst, would funding for Brooklyn College really have been threatened? Is there a danger of dignifying these mindless threats and challenges by taking them too seriously? A much more useful ‘victory’ might have been in the Courts had he attempted to make such a threat real. These accusations of anti-Semitism are based on a false syllogism and have no roots, they wither under scrutiny. Remember Stein’s Law (If something cannot go on forever, it will stop). Why not just let it.
Who really supports hate speech at Brooklyn College–You decide:
link to coreyrobin.com