Total number of comments: 2599 (since 2009-11-18 22:41:33)
MHughes976
I'm retired after teaching philosophy for some decades. I am a secular Christian, very interested in biblical scholarship, with decent Greek but must learn some Hebrew. Rather obsessed with ancient multiculturalism and belief that Palestine was always multicultural and multiracial, while Jewish cultural influence in the wider ancient world was greater than is supposed.
To me 'clandestine' would cover secret police operations in general and things like the French Revolutionary Committees, the first actually to be called 'terrorist', I think. How would you use that word?
But it's still value-neutral in that it doesn't specify that what is terrorism, on the part of those Committees or of the Tsarist Okrana or revolutionary cells or of anyone, is justified or unjustified. That's the nature of a value-neutral definition. If you build in that specification you have a value-laden definition.
But no one owns words. Our only obligation with words is to make clear what we mean by them. Sin with words includes the trick of sliding between different meanings in the same discourse.
I would define 'terrorism' as 'lethal or very serious violence by a clandestine political organisation, spreading fear throughout society'. This is factual or value-neutral, in that some violence of this sort might be justifiable in some terrible situations. The observed violence then quickly validates use of the word but use of the word doesn't foreclose, rather opens up, the question of justification. Some might prefer to build 'no justification' into the definition but in that case there's no quick validation. You can't validate use the word until you've discussed justification and shown it's not there.
The rhetorical trick is to switch swiftly between definitions, taking quick validation - 'violence at these levels is terrorism' from the first and 'no justification' from the second.
Glad to see that Mondoweiss is regarded by Ben Cohen as an active influence on this report, muted as it is. Whether Zionism is an authentic expression of Judaism is open to much debate. But critical examination of religious beliefs, whether from within or from outside the relevant faith group, is legitimate and unavoidable, not some sort of scandal as Cohen seems to suppose. If authentic Judaism does imply Zionism then I must recognise that I disagree with Judaism in that respect and that believers in authentic Judaism will attribute serious error to me. If authentic Christianity also implies Zionism (which is what the CofS is denying, while the CofE hides under the pulpit) I have to face a crisis of faith.
The bolded words seem to make an interesting, slightly idiosyncratic maybe, comment on the fate of Jerusalem at Babylonian and Roman hands. As a bit of an ancient history fanatic would like to hear more.
'Early humane vision' - I know that the early Zionists were heirs to many humane traditions and were probably of humane disposition - moreover that some of their writings, notably Altneuland, express benevolent intentions all round. (Judenstaat doesn't mention the non-Jewish Palestinians, which is a little disturbing.) But I don't see that the vision of a territory belonging by special and exclusive right to people of one race can ever be genuinely humane. The problem is not that the original vision was abandoned but that it was carried out with rigour and an absolute sense of entitlement though it was in fact a moral mistake.
Can't think of a caption that would half do justice to the misery on Kerry's face, the contemptuous boredom of Peres and the ineffability of Netanyahu. - Martin
From Margaret Macmillan's 'Peacemakers' p. 433 - (that nerdish urge to give references again!) -
'The American government had quietly approved the Balfour Declaration and President Wilson himself was sympathetic to Zionism. 'To think' he told a leading NY rabbi, 'that I the son of the manse should be able restore the Holy Land to its people'. ..On the other hand there was the sacred tenet of self-determination. Why should the wishes of a minority of Jews (and not all in Palestine were Zionists) prevail over those of a much larger number of Arabs? Balfour and Louis Brandeis, a Supreme Court justice and leading American Zionist, came up with an ingenious solution. It was wrong to use mere 'numerical s-determination'; a great many potential inhabitants of the Jewish home in Palestine still lived outside its borders. 'And Zionism' said Balfour, 'be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long traditions, in present needs, in future hopes of far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 'Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land'. O mi God.
My comments, as our friend Dickerson would say, would be that no one has ever come up with a coherent and plausible definition of self-determination and that I don't agree with Messad that Balfour was anti-Semitic, though he was a near-fanatical Christian Zionist, as was Lloyd George. Wilson's comment is pretty horrifying, though it doesn't have that fanatical edge - it's more an indication of how a form of Zionism, at that stage more an assumption or background thought than a conviction, had entered the thinking of many American and British Christians. The point that not all Palestinian Jewish people were Zionists is worth noting.
It's been suggested that Messad defines anti-Semitism in an interesting way. In fact I think that like so many others he fails to define it, thus creating some confusion.
But the influence of Jewish people on science, making important discoveries and so on, is surely not the same as an influence on science from Jewish religion or culture? I don't mean that there's no such thing as an influence of that kind - Newton's fundamentalist Christianity perhaps had its influence here and there but on the whole his work flows from observations and calculations that belong to all of us (not that I can do them). Freud, when writing directly about religion, is expressing a decided preference for Jewish over Christian theology, though he's drawing on Christian sources - but that sort of thing is rather the exception in the realm of science, just because religion is its subject.
I do think that Jewish people played a special part in intellectual history because as an outside group they were more ready to challenge accepted ideas. I would hope that the need for an outside group to fulfill this role has morphed into a new situation where all individuals feel more free to question things.
My real faith is that there's only one human race and that over the whole range of moral and intellectual abilities the human race is one.
Still hoping you're going to extend your promotional tour to this side of the ocean.
Anti-S to me is irrational dislike of at least some things Jewish: at which rate no rational sentiment, even if it is in opposition to some things that enjoy strong Jewish support, is anti-S.
In some moods Paul's Epistles assert that as a result of Jesus' work there is no Jew or non-Jew - an early version or glimpse of anti-racism, perhaps. At any rate deserving a mention in Christian thought.
It's very true that human rights don't come from ancient history. On the other hand Historical Connections have been made into an extraordinarily important element of the argument by all sorts of people, Obama included.
Part of normal human rights in connection with a home or a homeland is that you can leave it when you see fit without explaining yourself to anyone. That's part of the difference between a home and a prison, freedom and serfdom. Leaving home because it has become part of a war zone is acting with reasonably good reason, wouldn't you say? A lot of people did that during WW2 and it wasn't regarded as giving the Nazis a greater right to their conquests. Ben Gurion's propaganda was no doubt brilliant but then he told people in the West what they wanted to hear.
There's a lot of retaliation in all kinds of wars. I remember reading Churchill's account of the Blitz on London and his reference to the subsequent bombing of Germany, visiting on the Germans what they had visited on us in 'full measure, pressed down and running over' - suitably biblical-sounding language about retaliation in deeply brutal form. I suppose most acts of terrorism and many of counter-terrorism are in retaliation for something bitterly resented by those the terrorists claim to represent. But then retaliation isn't a moral category: it isn't necessarily justified or unjustified. That depends on the full circumstances and on how the principles of justice apply to them.
To say that Palestinian claims have no basis in standard morality is far from denying the Nakba but it is justifying it, which always seems to me rather worse. I wish it didn't happen so often around here.
Isn't it the deep purpose of all Turkish governments to reverse the verdict of WW1?
He may be completely mistaken about Tutu or lying through his teeth. However, if Tutu had in fact concentrated always on only one target for all his objections and criticisms, whether or not that target was Israel, China or Paraguay or bad housing conditions in Guatemala that would not make his critique wrong or show that he was a morally flawed person. In reality, Tutu came to prominence as a critique of apartheid SA - would anyone, even Dershowitz, say that someone who concentrated (as some did, I think) on a critique of the apartheid regime was, simply for that reason, a wicked person or that, simply for that reason, apartheid could not be as bad as it was painted?
Yet there are always some in Israel who will not bow the knee to Baal, aren't there?
The argument from successful exploitation of territory has been around in imperial history though generally as an argument for benevolent rule over less advanced populations (Locke on the native Americans) rather than claiming exclusive rights to the territory in question.
But doesn't the development of Zionism, at least since 1905, when it was decided that nothing but Palestine would do - this when there were plenty of other under-exploited territories around - mean that there was always a biblical drumbeat behind the song of development and blooming deserts? Not to mention Ben Gurion's determined study of Joshua.
The fleeing of the theatre of war by Palestinians in 48 has been incredibly portrayed as a kind of crime. This outrageous nonsense has not only been believed here and there, it is a kind of orthodoxy of the West.
Well it's good that the Kairos P document is making a bit of an impact somewhere even if it so cravenly disowned so quickly. The Church of England has ignored it heroically.
There can't be a moral duty for everyone to maintain all political borders even if the existing ones are a source of great trouble, though there must be a duty to avoid unjust means in altering them. There is also a duty, how could there not be, to promote by any legitimate means (these may be restricted by the principle, if we acknowledge it, of non-intervention) the reconstitution of a tyrannous or oppressive state. Thus there is no right for an oppressive state to maintain its oppressive form. If a change bringing justice instead of oppression would mean a change of name or of borders that change would still be justified, since justice is of greater moral importance than names and borders.
Sorry to see the CofS crumble - interesting to see if there is any comeback at the main meeting beginning on the 18th. Things are even crumblier in the CofE. I have a relevant meeting in a few weeks and will let you know how I get on.
Tutu is not currently a primate of the South African Church - he's retired Archbishop of Cape Town. Mike Leigh OBE is, not that it matters too much, Jewish - I've been to see '2000 Years', which he calls 'his Jewish play', though there he keeps the political questions in the background as a family drama proceeds.
I come to this discussion too late, I think, but would be interested to know how people would react to the following argument -
1. If an identifiable large group of people are deprived by clearly wrongful force of sovereignty over a territory, the legitimate heirs to that group have a special, absolute and overriding right to be restored - this is a universal human right - to sovereignty in that place -
- 2. provided there are no other identifiable and comparable groups with an even older claim
- 3. where by 'legitimate heirs' we mean (at least) those who a) claim membership of the same group and b) have that claim generally accepted
- 4. where by 'clearly wrongful force' we mean (at least) force in the service of an evil ideology or religion: anti-Semitism being one such
5. Considering that the removal from Jewish hands of political power in ancient Judaea and in medieval Khazaria - deprivation of sovereignty; in both cases affecting fairly large groups - represented antique but still recognisable forms of pagan and Christian anti-Semitism -
6. And considering that the dominant group in Khazaria claimed, even as converts, to belong to the Jewish section of humanity and that there are others these days who (seeing but limited difference between born and converted Jewish people) make the same claim, thus qualifying as legitimate heirs -
7. And considering that the sole known or foreseen means of the restoration of sovereignty where the true heirs are Jewish is a Jewish State and that the sole Jewish State is Israel
8. We conclude that the former Khazaria should, to apply universal human rights and to negate an evil ideology that triumphed in medieval times, become - even in the absence of any religious claim - an overseas department of Israel or at least be placed under effective Israeli control.
Where, if anywhere, is the flaw in this argument?
And making protest into punishment is just ridiculous. Calling an action by one person with no capacity to use violence punitive treatment of a whole mass is preposterous.
My reaction would be that his analogy with sanctions that hurt the innocent, not the political class, is (even if true in some cases; another matter) wildly inept in this case, when it is clear enough that the political class is highly troubled and offended. The conference is associated with a politician, the Israeli President, and it is absurd to say that some kind of reprimand or snub addressed to a politician, of all classes of person, is an illogical generalisation of blame to the innocent masses. If there are Israelis who are innocent in the sense of not to blame for what is happening to the Palestinians it would surely be those who have made their disapproval of Israeli policies plain - and I would think that they will, if they are at all logical, rejoice in the fact that an important outsider has endorsed the views which they, a minority in their own context, advance. If they say that the policies which they denounce should not be opposed in any way that hurts their careers or even their feelings I would say that they are not innocent at all, but something rather worse.
Zionism is not a form of theocracy, ie belief in rule by priests or presbyters: rather the reverse. But it is a form of belief in a contested moral proposition concerning the unique rights of people who are Jewish, a term now describing a group of people linked by religion and/or blood. This belief is, plainly as a whole row of pikestaffs, a significant cause of problems in the ME and everywhere. If it were not believed a whole mass of problems would be resolved. The Marxists say that the situation would not actually improve, since Western imperialism would find another way to be just as bitterly oppressive: though this is an untested counterfactual proposition. To my mind it is still worth, whatever we suppose counterfactually, making clear the actual, real-world truth that the basic belief of Zionism is mistaken. If you want something that will put a crimp in Western imperialism there you have it: moreover, it's making a true statement against a false one. My feeling is that the Marxists, indignant as they are over the Palestine situation, cannot bring themselves to say that Zionism is a moral mistake, since Zionism has many Marxist credentials.
That always has been the plan, I suppose, and I agree that the recent Egyptian business has been a triumph for the planners. Not so much difference between Saudi potentates and Egyptian religious enthusiasts after all. But the whole plan and idea is still crazy, isn't it?
The IJAZN statement correctly says that no motive has been vouchsafed and that Falk's critics should not assume too much. However, I'd say that Falk himself takes the view that it must all have something to do with ME or ME plus Afghanistan. The point of his remarks must be to classify the Boston crime in a dual way - he considers it to be wrong against personal innocence but also wrong against government wrong. Whereas we like to think that we are in the right in every respect. I share his view but with a stab of pain.
I'm not so concerned about the Palestinian people as about people who are Palestinians. They exist, I think.
In the form of unrestricted submarine warfare, indeed.
As I recall Lord Palmerston, noting that there were some who favoured British intervention, recited a verse going something like 'He who seeks to interpose often gets a bloody nose' - which, doggerel or not, is quite sensible and applies to many other situations.
I suspect that an ironical history could be written of American disapproval of British blockade policy in Napoleon's time, British dislike of American blockade policy in the Civil War and the concurrence of both in the harsh blockade of Germany in WW1.
In 1861 there were those in Britain who said 'We can't tolerate disruption of Atlantic trade, so we should intervene on the side of those being blockaded' and in 1914 those who said 'America can't tolerate disruption of Atlantic trade, so they should intervene to help us impose our blockade'. Lots of arguments cut lots of ways, don't they?
He can't accept that Jewish and non-Jewish people should have the same rights in Palestine, because that negates Zionism: that Jewish people and they only have a natural right to a share of sovereignty in Palestine is the basic claim of Zionism.
Mind you, if Netanyahu is actually preparing to put something on the negotiating table, really means it, that would, even for me who thinks that the 2ss is monumentally unfair, be a step forward. Genuine negotiations rather than a negotiation pantomime would be something useful.
'There exist people who would stop at nothing in order to make Islam the sole and universal religion' - probably a true proposition. 'There exist people who would like to make Islam part of, rather than a force antagonistic towards, Western culture' - probably true also, and probably true of a great many more people. How to make fewer enemies and more friends? Step one would be to eliminate any idea that we will never treat people justly if they are Muslims and the basic means to that is to end those activities that make injustice towards Muslims systematic on our side. Step zero would be restrain ourselves when tempted to indulge in hate propaganda.
And that they have control of their borders and the ability to defend themselves. Not happening soon.
The definition of a Palestinian Jew should follow the definition of a Palestinian, which should be the same regardless of race and should mirror the definition of, say, a Belgian. You are an X-ian if you live in country X rightfully, ie your family has lived there peaceably for a generation or two, not owing its presence to identifiable acts of violence or illegality, or else you have arrived by a legitimate immigration process or else you are there as the result, at least in part, of a peaceful agreement between formerly contending parties.
If there is no exclusive Jewish claim of any kind then there is no right to maintain a specifically Jewish State in any area at all, since the Jewish nature of any state would reflect an claim that was exclusive, ie attributed rights to Jewish people not shared with others. This applies just as much to the 48 and to the 67 territories, as taxi perceives. Maybe the CofS is reluctant to draw out the logical conclusions from what it says. They're still way ahead of the CofE, my lot, whose position is wretched, marked mainly by silence.
If you visit Leeds Castle in Kent, which rather justifiably calls itself the most beautiful castle in England, you will see the very room where Katherine, Henry V's alluring French widow, was seduced by the sexy Welsh harpist Owain Tudor, producing a son who married a very determined woman from a family supposedly excluded from the royal succession, who, keeping ingeniously away from King Richard's secret police, persuaded the shattered Lancastrian faction to support her son's claim to the throne. The highly improbable happened. Wouldn't have done without that 1ss with the Welsh!
Leeds Castle was the scene of some ME peace talks in the 70s, with no less a person than Moshe Dyan included, as I recall. The medieval moat was considered to be a good anti-terrorist barrier. There's irrelevant information for you.
A 1ss can bring rather unpredictable cultural change. Look what happened to England when a sort of medieval 1ss was created with Wales. We went in a few decades from squabbling over control of Wales with a charismatic rebel, Owain Glyn Dwr, to having a Welsh king of disreputable ancestry, Henry VII, who overthrew the senior descendant of William the Conqueror and whose son changed our religion out of all, or much, recognition.
Vineyards, Naboth, Ahab!
I absolutely would ask that of any Jewish family in the UK. I think that the idea of a right of return to another country after generations of peaceful citizenship in the UK - the idea that produced the dreaded Declaration in 1917 - was and is preposterous. At the time majority Jewish opinion in the UK probably thought so too.
People who are expelled or induced by a terrorist campaign, true flag or false flag, to leave their homes, do, Jewish or English or Lunar, have a right to return - ie to the restoration of the old social contract - and so do their descendants unless and until they, original refugees or descendants, enter a new social contract elsewhere, ie accept a new loyalty. There can accommodations for dual citizens etc., but not so generous as to make the new country seem not to acquire the genuine loyalty of the new citizen. How else can the idea of mutual social obligation be interpreted?
I would ask the members of a UK family of Palestinian descent to be as committed to this Kingdom as I am and thus to accept that their connection with Palestine must be eroded over time. I would say, consistently I think, that the descendants of Jewish Iraqis forced out in 1948 cannot claim Iraqi citizenship by right if they have made their social contract in Israel. But they retain their right to property that was stolen or arbitrarily seized, so Iraqi governments would have to give them some protection. Again, how else can the idea of mutual obligation be interpreted without racism?
The basic duty of every sovereign power (common sense; well formulated by Locke) is to enfranchise all those subject to its sovereignty, with some exceptions. Israel is a system where the sovereign, reigning from river to sea, restricts the franchise in order to concentrate power in the hands of the Jewish minority. How can this be defended, asks Levy. The appeal is to one of the recognised exceptions: resident aliens need not be enfranchised. The Palestinians are resident aliens, since this is land where only Jewish people have a birthright, so if Palestinians are actually enfranchised it is a favour, not an obligation. The same principle of Jewish birthright stands in the way of partition, or 2ss: the idea that non-Jewish people have a right even to some of the land in question is a negation of Zionism - well, there could be some flexibility about the definition of 'the land', but not much. The main reason why the 2ss doesn't happen is that it negates Zionism and that once Zionism is negated there is no reason - is there? - to support privilege for Jewish people in any form, such as exclusive rights over a portion of the territory. Some people think that partition amounts to rough justice, whereas for the likes of taxi and me it's rough and tough but not just.
Which is not to say that it won't happen. I think all this talk of real possibilities in the past that don't exist in the present is metaphysical and very dubious. But to me any semblance of 2ss would only be a semblance or a pretence, a step either to the golden future of human rights for all - Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Antartican - or to the division of the territory into enclaves which will be cleared slowly of non-birthrighters.
Blah chick's remarks are very interesting but I don't feel encouraged by them! Israel seems to be like Sparta, with the various middle - on her analysis non-Ashkenazi - groups regard the helots as detestable foreigners and cling to the arrogant overlords in the grip of that old existential fear.
O mi God, mi God, how can this terrible situation continue?
A substantial resettlement fund will be created, of course, and generosity will be much mentioned, though the bill will be attached to the foot of a carrier pigeon instructed to fly westward. When (no, I'll say if) the Palestinians have gone - or reduced to a sort of museum piece remnant, there will be a beautifully designed Museum of Palestinian Life and Art, suffused with a gentle mourning over the fact, so sad, that rather unpleasant things have to be done sometimes and a gentle reproach to the Islamic religion for restricting life and art so much. It will win awards by the bucket load.
I would think that if a strike on Iran would have had some good and no bad consequences for whoever delivered the strike it would have happened years ago.
I thought that the most encouraging item here was about Adi Koll's recognition of humiliation and ill-treatment when she sees it face to face and the least encouraging about the behaviour of the newish Egyptian government over the Gaza siege - Mubarak might just as well still be there.
'Don't exceptionalise Israel' is, apart from inventing a new word, very much a familiar Zionist and anti-Palestinian demand. 'Why pick on Israel when there is so much wrong in...?' is something we have all heard often, quite often from the Zionist contributors on Mondoweiss.
These Marxist pro-Palestinian ideas, which say that the oppressors are really in the West, not in Israel except when Israel is acting as an imperialist ally, don't really exclude Zionism, only call on the Zionists to break their alliance with Western imperialism - Zionism partly grew up in Marxist circles, after all. I must say I think that this Marxist approach constitutes 'abstract idealism' and that Zionism is an exceptional, indeed unique force putting a serious and damaging mistake into effect. There should be more discussion about this.
Our cause not only faces a nearly overwhelming counterforce from public opinion, mainstream journalism and academia, political structures and all that but this very deep split between pro-Palestinians who are approximately Marxist and those who find Marxist analysis often unhelpful. So often in so many contexts progressive forces have been unable to win either with the Marxists or without them. Frustrating, don't you think?
I think the same as these Jacobins, that this is question of justice, but differently in other ways.
We face the proposition that Jewish people, and they only, have a share in sovereignty (over what some call the Holy Land, some Palestine) by pure right - now called birthright or heritage - others only by grace and generosity of the true heirs. (I've often offered approximately that definition of Zionism here. Others may use the term in other senses but it seems to me that if we are looking for an ideology justifying what has been done it cannot be defined too differently.)
I say that this proposition is mistaken. Being so mistaken, its result is injustice and cruelty.
I think it is rather obviously mistaken and that there is very little to be said for it. The mistake is not something that dawns on you only when you ascribe more general injustice of a capitalist or American-dominated world. It is not a mistake whose unjust results would scarcely matter were they not connected to injustice on a wider scale.
My idea of seeking justice begins with saying where I think injustice exists and saying clearly that injustice is what it is, ie that it's wrong. It's wrong in itself, that's why it deserves to be called injustice.
It's not ambivalent in itself and wrong only because of its association with something else, for instance American imperialism. We should not hesitate about denouncing an injustice until we can ascertain its place among all other injustices of the world.
I don't want to mute advocacy of liberation for Palestine until it can be subsumed into a wider campaign for the ideals of the Left.
Still, different streams of analysis surely converge to show that for whatever reason a shift needs, from our point of view, to take place within American politics, one of the hearts of the problem. The other Western societies are worth some attention too. The question of the Real Interests of the West - where do they lie? - is worth more discussion than it gets.
'Philosophers try to understand the world; the point is to change it'. But nobody knows a really practical way to effect change or bring about justice at the moment. Let's go for understanding. The only glimmer of light, as I think the Jacobins themselves effectively admit, is argument and more argument within the Western world until there is no donkey from Berlin to Seattle with its hind leg still in place. And I don't see how that argument can get anywhere without concentration on the point that the Zionist moral proposition, however it came to be believed by so many, is in truth mistaken.
Obama's memoirs will be interesting - or maybe not. But I share the sentiment that we face such massive odds in political support, in mass opinion, in power of all sorts, that the prospect is very bleak. Except that Israel is every day losing the demographic battle a bit more. Except that our sole advantage, that we're right and that we're the real anti-racists, will one day be worth more than all the other things piled up against us.
Thanks for saying that. The 2ss is - at least as we meet it in its 'classic', oft-repeated form - one of the most screamingly unfair allocations of lands, resources and (especially) rights that ever was heard of. But I think it will never really be on the table for negotiation since however modified it cannot erase the idea that somehow the Palestinians have a right to be there absolutely, not only by the grace and generosity of others. So it negates Zionism, so it won't happen until there is more justice and humanity in the world.
Very eloquent, pabelmont! But I would say we forgot and misrepresented many things after 48, not only after 67. We were mesmerised then, I speak for myself, by a kind of fatalism about inevitable fall-out from WW2 and by a kind of semi-religious propaganda that washed over us.
'We have two years to bring on the 2SS' may rank beside 'Iran will have nukes in 12 months' as a thing to be said every so often, somewhere between every two years and every two weeks, as a way of indicating that the speaker really means business. Honestly, you know, he's going to do something.
But I think it's to the credit of Boston-area residents that Phil's talk went ahead in the atmosphere of crisis and seems to have been well received.
I think that these terrible events, if they work out as if it now looks that they will, will stoke the fires of Islamophobia but probably not stir them into a blaze, since the total detachment of most Boston Muslims from the whole business will be pretty obvious except to the most paranoid and since Chechnya is part of the Middle East only in a very wide cultural sense. Wouldn't be surprised if lysias is right that the specific link is with Afghanistan and all its works. Piotr mentions states executing violent fantasies, but this time I don't think anyone will call for an invasion of Russia, even of Kyrgyzstan.
Deepest sympathy to victims, as ever.
He visited what he called 'Jerusalem, Jordan' - a choice of words that indicates non-Zionism discreetly but quite clearly. He never mentioned the rhetoric of fulfilled prophecies or blooming deserts, scripturally based as both these are and steeped in the scriptures as he was. He was an intelligent and independent-minded observer and couldn't have failed to notice what was going on. He carefully avoided, as you rightly say, annie, visiting the Israel of his time, but how can we interpret that but as part of his marked discretion about a topic that was so dangerous to the political alliances he was making and indeed to the consensus of enlightened Christians back then? After 59 the visit to the Holy Land was not mentioned much, as far as I can see.
I think back to that Christian consensus. It was determined voices in the Church of England that most misled another Martin (me) back then.
Yet King practised in respect of Zionism, an injustice somewhere threatening justice everywhere, all the reserve and discretion that he castigated so eloquently in other contexts. Ever since I read his 1959 Easter sermon it's seemed clear to me that he was not a Zionist and that he was aware of the ME problem, being one of the very few distinguished Americans of those days who had visited the place. His alleged explicit support for Zionism seems to be based on false evidence but it does seem that he never explicitly challenged the consciences of the many Zionists who were strong supporters of his movement in the United States. No one can fight every battle, I suppose.
Yes, indeed. I must admit that her question 'What would Israel do without the expelled and subjugated?' makes me shudder afresh at the horror of the situation, even though it's one I think of often - the oddness of the choice of words sharpens them somehow. But on the whole she seems to soften all the impact by using too many words in too complex forms.
I don't think I'm influenced by the clowns you mentioned but I would be really surprised if an attack with this symbolism did not have roots in the ME, though I've no idea how the plant has grown or through what compost of conspirators and provocateurs. The domestic terrorists would surely target something connected with their bugbear, The Federal Government, not the American - and wider Western - world celebrating health, fun and family.
This is a time to feel sorrow for victims. We who argue for the mistakeness of Zionism and for the legitimacy of Palestine shouldn't give ourselves the airs of victims but we should prepare ourselves for dark days and for rhetorical thunderstorms breaking over our heads. It will be in part the thunder and lightning of clowns but it will be severe.
This does seem to be some sort of vicious anniversary present to the western world as the Iraq imbroglio comes to be 10 years old, don't you think?
The influence of Heidegger, a future Nazi, on Arendt, indicates (some say she loved him) how streams of thought converge and diverge. Both were worried about the way public opinion can consecrate itself so that any question becomes instant proof of the questioner's wickedness, he to the point of favouring a tyrant who challenged the old German liberal consensus, she to the point of deeply fearing leader figures who claim to stand for national tradition. As the streams of thought wind around and through each other how far can we identify currents that are Christian, Jewish, pagan?
Well, I'm not sure that being battered offers an easy road to ethical enlightenment. I was mentioning the other day Xenophon's remark that the helots would have liked to eat the Spartans raw.
There are certainly Jewish ethical thinkers who have attracted admiration - Hannah Arendt comes to mind. But she owed a great deal to the wider tradition, Plato especially.
Was there really a Jewish ethical tradition rather than contributions by Jeeish people to the common ethical tradition? Were there - are there - important moral principles that non-Jewish thinkers tend to reject?
You'd think that a victory for humanity would benefit everyone, wouldn't you?Mind you some people arent that human. Can anyone make sense of the idea that humanity won, land didn't?
He's a character whose historical existence deserves at least as much questioning as that of Jesus of Nazareth.
I've often mentioned that I (English, Protestant, not impartial) don't share the pro-IRA views often expressed here, though I've not wanted to get involved in that argument, also thinking that what British politicians said about the IRA campaign was often facile. Whatever the truth of that particular matter I would ask what are the principles on which territory should be assigned to one sovereign or another? I've also said perhaps too often that I've never seen even a reasonably coherent statement of the right of 'self-determination'. To me the first principle is that territory should be assigned in the way that causes least war and violence, thus that stability is highly important, thus that only in the clearest cases of tyranny or chaos - or at least unsustainability - should boundaries be changed and territories re-assigned. The standard remedy for injustice within a territory should be justice, not partition.
My objection to Zionism is not that Palestine is Muslim or Christian, not Jewish (or Arab, not Jewish) land but that Zionism ascribes unique right, now commonly called birthright, to Jewish people, leading to a system of river-to-sea minority rule and disfranchisement of many of the majority race/religion. I think that justice requires people to live together without discrimination on grounds of religion or race. I hope that that is the future of Catholic, Protestant, Muslim and Jew.
I've just heard CNN report on the location of bombs in trash cans, treating it not as a casualty-minimising tactic but as a way of creating deadly shrapnel. I don't have the technical expertise to evaluate that! It is now denied that there were ball bearings included in the bombs to cut people up or that there were further bombs beyond the two immediately reported.
They also report that a Saudi student, presumably the one in trouble, was hospitalised and cooperative. His apartment has been searched but yielded nothing. He is no longer a suspect. No other searches have been undertaken so far.
You're quite right of course American. There is something strange about terrorism when no statement claiming responsibility emerges anywhere in the worlds length breadth and circumference. Still I think its ro.ots have got to be in the ME
Your audience in Cambridge will be very aware of what an angry and violent place the world now is and how central the conflicts of the ME now are. The bombs have got to be a 10th anniversary event for Iraq. I know you'll remind them that wrongs don't make rights and that anger against anger isn't enough.
Well it would suit me better if Phil were to repeat his remarks in Oxford, not the one in Mississippi.
Not sure I know who - Hitler or Stalin or both?
I've often disagreed with your remarks, Marc, but I think you're right on target this time. Let me praise Eva's contribution as well.
Zionism has always had an extraordinary ability to be progressive and reactionary at the same time.
They might try all the perfumes of Arabia, I suppose.
Quite so. People say 'forget absolute justice' but let's remember it always.
I agree that it would make nonsense of the idea of rights if you could gain them by force which you had no right to use, ie illegitimate force, as used by invaders and marauders. By contrast, force used to regain things wrongfully taken is sometimes legitimate. Also, there are some rights which you don't lose by wrongdoing, in particular the right to be treated as humanely as possible - ie we don't have the right to disregard the humanity of people who have done wrong. That is because 'to err is human', as the cliche says, and the humanity of people who have done wrong is still there.
On the level of self-interest people who have emerged, as I'd like to think that the Palestinians will emerge, from a period of conflict have an objective interest in cooperating with former rivals, even with former oppressors, to avoid endless trouble. That seemed to be the majority view in South Africa.
On the other hand we could recall Xenophon's character who remarks that the helots would willingly have eaten the Spartans raw. Water doesn't flow uphill. Oppression doesn't fail to generate mutual fear and hatred, the more the more it continues, though how these emotions will work out and whether they will be dissipated in some new dawn we can't know while the dark night continues. This is anything but an argument justifying the longer continuation of oppression, of course.
I made the same mistake. I suppose I too could claim good faith but I'm not sure it was all that good. I could see, who couldn't, that Colin Powell's speech was both utter rubbish and utterly insincere. My nearest thing to an excuse was that I heard reports of some Iraqi students in our area (reports: I never met any of them face to face) who were saying that 'nothing could be worse than Saddam'. It wasn't enough, of course. It was much worse than not enough.
Now things have come to such a pass that we're making allies of al-Q anti-Assadists in Syria. I say 'we' with some feeling because it seems to be the UK government that is most vocal in this folly.
Thanks for reference. Well, Carter does seem to be interpreting Mark 7 and related texts both rather uncritically and in a fashion as unfriendly as possible towards 'Second Temple' Judaism. The Corban tradition is genuine enough but there's no other evidence that it was used as form of evading responsibilities. Jesus' testing of the Syrophoenician woman by reference to her race as 'dogs' seems to be glossed as behaviour that would seem to her to be typically Jewish, rather than shockingly different from what she might have expected from a benevolent healer. However, there's no rule even of sensitivity or politeness that says that all negative attitudes towards the religions of others is excluded. And there's a million miles, wouldn't you think, between being occasionally critical towards Anglicanism and being unable to assess British actions fairly? I might wince, I suppose, if my religion was accused of favouring moral evasiveness or racism but an insistence that you've just got to be nice all the time about everyone's religion is misleading in itself.
Being so afraid of death that you accept madness is not wisdom.
But surely it is inescapable that the more you ill treat and humiliate, without eliminating, some others the more you must fear them?
Yes, I was like piotr slightly disturbed by the fact that our (I a retired UCU member) lawyer often pressed the other side's witnesses to acknowledge that there are many anti-Zionist Jewish people in this world. I can't say I blame him for making this true and obvious point but there is a slight hint, no more, that if there is an idea around which everyone of a certain racial or religious group is united there is a limit to the degree to which that idea can be denounced.
Another worrying feature is the enormous cost inflicted on UCU even when it has done nothing wrong. Where there are unlimited funds on one side of litigation the other side can sometimes be browbeaten into submission even by attacks that have no chance of succeeding.
Mikeo is right to say that the Haaretz article misinforms Israeli readers, making them think that British law has been changed to give more scope to anti-Semitism. In fact it has been changed to tighten the noose - you can be clobbered for activity that is not intentionally 'on the grounds of' your group affiliation but is merely 'related to' it.
It was Tony Blair and his acolytes who did, or were overwhelmingly conspicuous in, the 03 British lobbying. I well remember it. I didn't oppose it as I should have.
I would like, vinyl record stuck in a groove that I am, to ask Mr. Rosenberg what definition of anti-Semitism he has in mind. My definition is 'unreasonable dislike or worse of at least some things Jewish'; his may be different. Would he think this an anti-Semitic question?
A bunch of Quislings? We don't get banned for saying that, do we? Mind you, I think the PA shows occasional flashes of spirit.
If either description, occupation or conquest, applied to Northern Ireland the consequences would be the same, I'd say. I'd like to think that the current status of NI is something different again, in that it's the scene of a legitimate agreement between formerly contending parties.
The rights of governments arise, as I think Hobbes (sort of!) showed, from social contracts, arrangements which create mutual trust, in their various forms. The dreadful alternative of ever-spreading mistrust is to avoided wherever possible. There is surely an operative social contract in the United States, the example MKU mentions. There was once a social contract making this part of the world, now England, a province of the Roman Empire, along with Judaea.
The situation was reversed briefly during WW2 when there was an Allied Military Government in occupation of Italy. I think that this was legitimate and that Italian civilians had no right to cut the throats of British or American soldiers or even to obstruct their movements. I'd say in reply to talkback that if you can't make an 'occupation contract' (silly as the phrase sounds) then there is no alternative for armies on foreign soil (and these must sometimes exist) than to behave like conquerors, with all the homicide and plunder that that entails. In the ME, it's important to me to say that there is no true occupation anywhere in Palestine, only an attempted conquest of all of it (with death and plunder a plenty) and a consequent right to certain forms of resistance.
What is meant by 'self-determination'? I ask with all due respect, since the phrase is indeed widely used and honoured. But I'm not sure that I've ever seen even a coherent definition of it.
To my mind, occupation governments are legitimate in their genuine form - that is, they work on the principle that the territory is not theirs, that it will be returned to traditional or native government after the end of formal hostilities, that there will be no seizure of property. In that case, there is no right to resist them. To depart from these principles is to move from occupation to conquest and a right to resist conquest does exist.
But security officers are human beings. They are agents of fear - they respond to it and instill it - but fear is very human.
Well, I'm very English in culture and all that, knowing only a few words of Welsh, but I have Welsh ancestry and often reflect on how some of my different ancestors must have loathed and feared each other and found having common descendants inconceivable. We are both Oxford classics graduates, I think. I was at Balliol - the Scottish college! - in the 60s. I was indeed glad to see the news about Ms. Yaghi.
I have other comments here I must reply to another time. Rushing off to celebrate my mother's 100th birthday.
More important, I would say, than any of these, so far at least, has been the failure of Israeli pressure to produce an attack on Iran. So there are limits to what this pressure can produce, especially when the real fear of the West, ie totally losing control of the oil price, is in play. The ostentatious cultivation of non-ME oil sources is not a real way of eliminating this fear. I made this point at rather greater length yesterday but that comment seems not to have survived moderation, can't think why.
I cannot see how any degree of acceptance or concession will make any difference to the Zionist determination to make good their claim to effective sovereignty over the whole territory.
I can see that the Western world regards cheap oil as an absolute necessity and therefore likes to deal with despotic regimes in the Arab world, the principal source of oil. These are unpopular at home so they have a choice, the normal choice of regimes with a weak base, between trying to rally their people by militarism and conquest or concentrating on repression and letting the wider world go by, hoping for the protection of a powerful patron. War and conquest are not an attractive option when everything depends on uninterrupted trade, so the second path is chosen. We thus have regimes that are weak internationally, pumping the oil and utterly dependent on our goodwill.
As a warning to anyone in that part of the world who might be getting self-willed alternative sources of oil, West Africa and all that, are ostentatiously cultivated. And the point is made that the United States, the heart of western power, draws a lot of its oil from these sources. This means, or we hope it means, that anyone plotting a coup in Saudi, presumably our worst nightmare, could not hope to deliver a paralysing blow to the West by cutting off oil supplies in short order and therefore could not hope to establish power before there was deadly Western retaliation. But this point is uncertain and the protection afforded by the alternative sources would operate only in the very short term. The fact that the United States uses non-ME sources would not protect it against a huge rise in price should the ME be destabililised, and that's the important thing.
The West in general, and the United States in particular, seems to have decided that it is best to rub the noses of the Arabs and of the Muslim world in their weakness and ineffectuality by supporting and applauding the profoundly humiliating outrages that Israel inflicts every day. This policy of dividing and deriding them, keeping them at sixes and sevens, sneering at their uselessness, demonising their religion, has to a degree worked so far, it must be admitted.
It could be argued that the policy is wicked and crazy, bound to fail in the long run and to make us pay a terrible price. I think Mr. Hagel has entertained that thought at times. The function of lobbying and propaganda is to keep that argument below the surface.
Mind you, lobbying never works unless it either makes a valid point or unless people rather want, Othello-style, to be deceived or at least not to face the truth. I remember one of my lecturers saying that politicians take bribes to do what they would have done anyone anyway and I've always thought there was truth in that. The moral influence of the Zionist idea, that Jewish people only have a birthright in Palestine, is still enormous and dissent from it seems rather worse than odd. Khalidi is surely right to say that it is this idea which is being ruthlessly put into effect. It is linked with the imperial cheap oil policy but it has great strength in itself: people believe it implicitly. Moreover, it is not wrong because it is linked with imperial policy but wrong in itself.
Well, this action by Ms. Adaya qualifies as anti-Semitism as that term is understood by public opinion in New York, if the jury's views represented public opinion. One to set against the UCU verdict in the UK.
If there is to be freedom of religion it will never be 'too late to be Jewish' in the sense of embracing the Jewish religion or identifying with some aspects of its influence.
What I find is not so much that I mistrust people I meet who turn out to be Jewish but that I expect that they would totally and angrily reject conversation with me if my sympathy with the Palestinians were revealed, even in the mildest terms - or at very least the conversation would freeze. (This has happened.) I don't so much worry about Jewish culture as about Western culture, which gives Zionism such unquestioning freedom from questioning that Palestinian sympathies seem outlandish.
The status quo and the 2ss are simply different (in some respects quite similar) versions of minority rule from river to sea, don't you think?
Fear is indeed used, as kalithea says, to excite public opinion but the heart of Zionism is surely, contra Moor, not fear of future calamities but an unshakable sense of entitlement based on unique birthright to sovereignty in the Holy Land.
The paradox of being the man who would sign anything is that no one gives you anything to sign.
First I'd heard of this and I'm grateful as a retired UCU member for the news. I look forward to reading the full judgement and checking out what definition of 'anti-Semitism' applies in UK law at the moment. Mind you, if it is at all possible there will be an appeal.
But the clowns are in charge, aren't they? The audience applauds their show. Their red noses fall off and the audience applauds some more. Except for us bunch of misfits sitting outside mainstream morality.
So if the two of us, GL, are involved in any discussion of anti-Semitism we just have to remember that we start from somewhat different definitions. No significant anti-Semitic sentiments exist anywhere in the Western world on your definition, I would say.
On mine, they probably do exist, which is worrying, since they are unpleasant and discord-sowing. That's me speaking as an anti-anti-Semite under my own def..
On Zionist definitions, anti-Semitic sentiments, in the form of attacks on the moral ideas of Zionism, are rife. Since I participate in these attacks, the term 'anti-Semite', normally considered opprobrious, applies fair and square to me under (I think only under) Zionist defs. No point in my getting angry about that. No one is sovereign over words.
So where should we fix the goalposts? I usually define anti-Semitism as 'irrational dislike of at least some things Jewish' . I don't apply the term 'anti-Semitic' to myself because I disagree as strongly as I do with the ideas of Zionism, since I consider my disagreement to be rational. But I would be anti-Semitic by my own definition were a) Zionism a genuinely Jewish thing and b) were disagreement with Zionism basically irrational.
But anyone may use words as (s)he thinks fit. If someone defines anti-Semitism as '(among other things) strong disagreement with ideas that are equally strongly supported by a significant majority of Jewish people' then it follows as night from day, in the current state of opinion, that in that person's usage, all who disagree with Zionism are anti-Semitic. Nothing I can do about it: I can't deny Zionists the right to use words in the meaning they choose, provided they make what they mean clear. It's no use my saying 'Please don't call me that, it's an opprobrious term and I hate it' - they mean me to hate it.
I/we are allowed to protest anywhere where logic is valued against inconsistent use of the same word with different meanings in the same discourse or with meanings so unspecified that confusion arises and dust is thrown in everyone's eyes.
Of course there is an equal right to take a term generally considered opprobrious (even 'anti-Semitic') and define it so that it applies to Zionists.
What definition of 'anti-Semitism' is under discussion here?