Total number of comments: 2590 (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.
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Well, I think that for Kant and others the most important difference in the realm of thought is that between rational and not rational.
Prejudice, an opinion not based on reason and formed before a subject is addressed, is one of the things that damages rationality.
However, I fully agree that there is only a superficial appearance of rationality in claiming that someone is prejudiced and making no other reply to what (s)he says. If you're so sure that something is wrong in an argument you should be able to say what that wrong step is rather than merely make attacks on the person, rather than the argument. This looks increasingly like prejudice on the part of the critic.
As you suggest, states of mind, prejudices included, may change at different times of life. It's also true that a prejudiced person may actually be right. The arguments against Grass based on his supposed prejudices are light as a feather, all but trivial.
'Paradigm case' arguments which treat a particular case, political or other, as outside critical discussion have an affinity with appeals to prejudice, I agree.
Isn't the question whether his poem results from prejudice rather than from reason? If he had been a keen anti-Semite, rather than merely a cog in the German military machine, in his youth that might be a reason for attributing prejudice to him - though a very weak and unconvincing reason in any event. If he was never an anti-S then even this thin reason fades away.
I don't think that membership, even enthusiastic membership, of a political party whose leaders organise criminal acts is in itself a criminal act. You're responsible for what you know about and consent to.
Mario Vargas Llosa was reported in Haaretz 9 July 2006 as saying he 'was ashamed to be Israel's friend'. This was surely 'a comment on global affairs'. Vargas did not win the Nobel Prize until 2010, but that would hardly validate Segev's odd remarks. The suggestion that Grass suffers from an urge to be falsely accused of bad things, including anti-Semitism, might win the Nobel Prize for tortuousness, a sure sign that the overall argument is weak and insincere.
Egypt had, on the face of the biblical record, a remarkably generous policy of receiving refugees in the face of famine, in the time of Joseph, and in the face of political instability, in the time of Jeremiah. Relations with the Babylonian empire were tense already, no doubt, but taking in people whom the Babylonians would have regarded as terrorists might have been quite a risk.
The difference between wanting an unjust system to cease to exist and be replaced by a fair one, to the eventual benefit of all concerned, even the oppressors, and wanting those involved in the system to cease to exist is easily exploited.
You can't believe in equal rights for all to the extent permitted if you also believe in special rights for some, that extent being nil.
You can't believe in democracy to the extent permitting by accepting the disfranchisement of many people, since the whole basic idea of democracy is that no one should be disfranchised.
The N-word is merely a word for 'black', traditionally used with contempt. I suppose it can be reclaimed. But I don't think you can reclaim a stereotype that implies bad behaviour on your part. You surely have to disclaim it. The stereotype isn't a confession to particular crimes but it is - that's the whole point - a sardonic reference to being up to no good.
The picture dates to 06, apparently. Those concerned might be less indiscreet now. We see a rather sad appropriation of anti-Semitic stereotypes by Jewish people. Perhaps this is the real face of self-hatred, outwardly full of big self-congratulating smiles.
There is a deeper problem, I think. We in the West have rejected every form of government except capitalist democracy - maybe the Roman Republic got there before us to some degree. This option has many merits. The old rivals, absolutism, theocracy etc., may never have been very nice. However the fact about capitalist democracy is that everything but everything about it, political office included, is in some way for sale.
An interesting quote indeed. I think the author, Ronen Shoval, is right that Zionism is a claim to right over all of an undefined area extending from Jerusalem far and wide. Zionism does allow for the possibility that some subset of the land will be conceded by the grace, and entirely at the discretion, of the true heirs. But this amounts to nothing much, since the definition of the place of the fellaheen is always a task for another day and since Jewish interests are treated as so overwhelming that it is impossible that the fellaheen could ever have equal sovereignty.
The nerve of the argument is that wanting something badly enough entitles you to have it. That's wrong too.
'Deliberate speed' was quoted, consciously I'm sure, from the impressive and famous, perhaps only famous, poem 'The Hound of Heaven' by Francis Thompson, published in the 1890s. He was a committed Catholic and an opium addict, perhaps with strange visions. The Hound, seeking to catch, ie save, the soul keeps going at an even pace - divine constancy vs. human flightiness and evasiveness. If Obama could give the impression of overwhelming power, determination and benevolence that might be good. But will he?
Yes indeed. Denying people their rights and then throwing them a few scraps, saying 'These are yours! You can really express your very own culture in whatever you choose to do with them!' is adding yet another insult to a whole heap of injury. And the people who do it think they are being just and enlightened.
Scheuer's arguments are always interesting - thanks for the link. But I think his endorsement of national self-interest without any apparent moral restraint destroys much of the value of what he says. He seems to be reluctantly in favour of an imperial expedition to West Africa in order to secure oil and minerals, at least as an inevitable correction of past errors. As if we could easily separate idealistic interventions, always wrong according to him, from materialistic interventions for minerals and control of populations.
Does 'ethnic nationalism' mean 'the belief that members of a particular ethnic group should have a position of supremacy in the state'?
Maybe Newclench is making it a bit too easy for us not to infer b) from a), because a) as formulated makes no reference to Jewish people. To me the phrase 'ancient land of Israel' would in no way limit spiritual significance to any group, any more than would 'ancient land of Greece'.
The argument:
a1) Much cherished thoughts of authentically spiritual nature have power to validate political claims
a2) A political claim to control physically the ancient land of Israel is made on behalf of Jewish people partly in the light of deeply cherished thoughts of just this kind
a3) All purported rival thoughts lack spiritual authenticity
So b) Jewish people should physically take control...
is logically valid, I think.
I'm sure that most Zionists would vehemently assert a3) and would argue for it at length.
For my part I would think that both a1) and a3) are wrong.
I really don't know, Hostage, how you summon up the patience for all this.
Individual Zionist leaders may have formed different plans and intentions at different times. But I don't see how the basic idea of Zionism, that the Holy Land belongs by right to Jewish people, could have been or could now be put into effect by any arrangement which enfranchised everyone and did not provide for the Jewish element to be a substantial majority. In the 30s there was clearly a group within Jewish Palestine that talked, loud and clear, of 'non-exclusiveness'. But this could never have been more than self-deception. You can't claim a special right for yourselves and at the same time fully include others.
R. Hirsch's argument doesn't seem particularly religious in character, more an odd essay in philosophy. By 'liberalism' he seems to mean 'belief in equal human rights' and then seems to be astonished that any liberal should find fault with the inequality of rights that is basic to Zionism - only Jewish people having, according to Zionism, birthrights in the Holy Land, Palestinians lacking them despite it's being the place of their birth. Surely there is no consistent form of liberalism that would ever have taken any other view.
Beinart does seem to grasp this point, though he is notorious for introducing arbitrary limitations on liberalism so as to make exceptions in Israel's favour.
Hirsch goes on to suggest that liberals should agree to restrict human rights in the face of terrorism and atrocity. Locke long ago argued that emergency powers were essential in a liberal society and I don't think that Beinart would have a problem in agreeing with that. Not, of course, that there is any justification for creating a permanent emergency by suppressing genuine rights or establishing minority rule, such as we find from river to sea in the Holy Land. Not that minority rule and mass disfranchisement are justified, as Hirsch seems to suppose, by the fact that the political rights of the enfranchised subset are just fine.
None of the three murders was revenge in the sense of personal payback but they all (from the reports) involve the slightly wider idea of scores to settle with members of a certain race or grievances to address. They don't seem to me to differ very much in that respect, though as American says one of them may have a personal element. All the perpetrators could expect some support and approval from subsets of their societies. Mohammed Merah sought the maximum worldwide publicity, making him more like Breivik than like the two Americans. I don't think there are that many different degrees of racism on display.
By 'Zionism' I mean 'the belief that Jewish people and they only have a share in sovereignty over the Holy Land (or some subset of the HL, determined by them) by right, birthright; that they may offer a share to others, but only by grace and generosity, not obligation'. This is the belief on which Israel has been built. I consider it certain that this belief is mistaken and I do not see anything approaching a defensible reason for it. That makes me an anti-Zionist, fair and square, according to the normal way the term 'anti' is used. If I disagreed with the theory of evolution I would be an anti-evolutionist and so on with a long string of words. No point beating about the bush. I think Zionism is a mistaken moral principle, I think it's wrong. Thinking that something is wrong is not a matter of hating anyone. No one can with any reason say 'Disagreement with me amounts to hatred, and hatred is wrong, so I must be right' - anyone could say that in defence of anything and that would make all discussion absurd.
Someone who is wrong on a matter of morality need not be a bad person, just a mistaken one. It is possible for someone who makes a moral mistake to be fundamentally a nicer person than someone else who gets the same question right. I'm sure that there are Zionists much nicer than me, but on the question of Zionism I am sure that they are wrong.
People of conflicting moral views may make a working compromise, of course. The Palestinians have a right to give up some of their rights if they think an acceptable compromise is on offer, but they would be accepting the compromise not because they had come to accept that Zionism is right but for the sake of a better future.
I attended a lecture by Martin Goodman recently in which he remarked that Vespasian's candidacy was very short of supporting portents and prophecies from his own religion, so Josephus' announcement of Jewish religious validation was much better than nothing. The pagans couldn't avoid taking Judaism seriously to some degree: I thought that a very significant point. Goodman considers, I think, that on the Jewish side thinkers of the time did not treat the events of 70 as a holocaust or raise the cry of 'Never forget!', but that Trajan's march on Babylon, a Jewish centre, half a century later created tensions that exploded immediately in the Diaspora Revolt and were never resolved.
Wouldn't a crime be uniquely criminal, plumb new depths, if and only if it broke a moral law that everyone before had more or less respected?
This is the sort of thing that happens in ancient texts, of course - as with Luke's 'Father, forgive them' verse over which Christian scribes plainly had different feelings, and perhaps different ideas about who 'they' were. I suppose that there is evidence that Jewish thinkers, pondering their texts, found the question of the equal value of human lives, Jewish and other, problematic to some degree. Their having a theological problem isn't the same thing as their having a bad or inhumane disposition, of course. But I think weindeb is right to say or imply that ideas arising in studies and cloisters can be quite dangerous when they escape into the wider world.
Ideas can be two-edged, can't they? When I was growing up in the
deepest and calmest recesses of the Church of England, like and unlike your Bible Belt I suppose, the call for forgiveness because of ignorance seemed to show reasonableness and generosity even in terrible circumstances. But the attribution of ignorance can have, I now see, other and more worrying (even if unintended) aspects.
The idea that if I think it's mine it really is mine is preposterous, of course. To say that the Palestinians had and have a duty to move over or move out requires the argument that the Zionists (or the Jewish people for whom the Zionists claimed and claim to speak) actually had, not merely thought that they had, the only real right to sovereignty in the Holy Land. This is actually the defining belief of Zionism and always has been. It's wrong, though, isn't it?
There is a gap between wild talk and wild action, just as there is between humane talk and doing good. So in some sense the Breiviks and Merahs of this world are indeed by themselves, subject to judgements that are especially simple and unreserved.
I think some people would regard all complaints against the Lobby as anti-Semitic because the leading figures of the L are or are taken to be Jewish.
For me, anti-Semitism is unjustified suspicion directed against Jewish people. Others may use the term differently. But I'd say that to claim that some bad thing is being done does not qualify as a-S just because the people doing that thing are Jewish, only if there is no good reason for the claim and so the possibility that an unjustified suspicion is lurking in the words.
No one should be able to say 'no one is allowed to complain of me' - that would set me above the moral law.
'Hinting at tacit approval in the guise of opposition' - these twisted words may contain the truth but could also be manipulation of the domestic audience and a bit of bravado in the face of failure.
I've heard of perpetrating violence but not often of perpetuating it, ie making sure it never stops. I doubt if anyone in the ME conflict would admit to 'intentional perpetuation'. Some people think that they have a right to perpetrate it even if there is a very strong likelihood that the victims will be unarmed.
Is it not plain enough that both flight and fight are natural reactions to violence among most animals, depending on a mixture of instinct and situation - how could it not be?
In the light of this, I think annie's point is that you can't indefinitely and on a daily basis perpetrate violence (and inflict humiliation, I would add) without raising to very high levels the probability of violent reaction at least sometimes, even beyond moral limits. This wouldn't be a situation of no problem: it would be full of problems, both in respect of prediction of events 'spinning out of control' and in respect of morality. I think, for a start, that the daily perpetrator of violence in this kind of situation is bound to be acting unjustly, though I do not think that this proves that violent reactions against this person are permitted.
A 'sovereign' in most political theory is an individual or group (maybe an assembly of the whole people, as (some say) in ancient Athens, with the right to make laws that everyone concerned is called on to obey. The whole idea is that however many the citizens are they all look to one law: it's a many-to-one relationship.
'Honour thy father and thy mother'. If there is parental authority, all the children have to look up to the one unique person who is their father and the one unique person who is their mother. But the uniqueness doesn't work both ways, the parents being expected (not always succeeding, I accept) to be fair and to show the same concern for all the children, however many.
When I said 'upper and lower positions' that may indeed have sounded a bit stiff and snooty. However, I was using what I thought was realistic language. Human life is full of relationships of power and authority and can't altogether be otherwise.
Belonging in a place unconditionally and looking on that place as a possible refuge, where you might go on certain conditions, are not the same thing at all. Conditional and unconditional attitudes point different ways unless the crucial condition applies, which in this case - Florida! - it very obviously does not. Unconditional commitments have a kind of passion to them, conditional ones the opposite, a kind of reserve.
How could anyone with any moral insight argue that the Palestinians deserved to be put through a process making them into real refugees - here and now and indefinitely - so that other people who merely might be refugees at some unidentifiable time will have a precaution in place?
'No man can serve two masters' or be fully subject to two sovereigns - except that we do not insist on the point completely when there seems to be no divergence of interest between the two sovereigns anywhere in view. Some people think that it is inconceivable that there should ever be a divergence of interest between Israel and any western state, though the current tension between Obama and Netanyahu proves that there can be.
The reverse does not apply. One manager or controller can have many subordinates. But that's the whole difference between upper and lower status in human affairs.
The fact that many of us have the ability and inclination to love many people doesn't prove that we can accept bigamy. There are some sets of obligations that can exist only in a unique form. There are exceptions and special situations that we can accommodate up to a point, as with dual citizenship, but as Cliff says this is a rather superficial arrangement which could not really be the norm.
There surely can't be more than one place which is correctly described in the singular as my, or our, rightful place in the world? And at that rate I'm in the wrong place if I am, at least for significant periods, elsewhere.
Christian Palestinians are still Palestinians and have no objective reason to welcome the dominating position of Jewish Israelis, which is their subordination. Their religious leaders have said as much in the Kairos Palestine Document, which we in the Church of England (for example) rather blissfully ignored.
That said, I think that the position of Christians everywhere in the ME is very precarious and dangerous. Religious feelings are intensifying everywhere and in those circumstances religious minorities have to be at risk. The 'temptation' - that isn't the right word, I know - to emigrate to the Christian West must be quite powerful.
There could never have been a form of Zionism, which is a claim for special rights based on race, compatible with any idea of equal rights regardless of race.
There could have been a history that was more marked by inter-group cooperation in many degrees. It may have been that many Zionists wanted, even wanted passionately, to be generous, perhaps very substantially generous, to the Palestinians but they would still have based everything on their special rights. Telling people that what they regard as their inherent rights are really concessions, expressing the generosity of others, is implicitly an insult and a threat.
To see little problem in the basic Zionist claim and yet to be terribly concerned because religious influence is growing is to pull the wool hard over one's own eyes. And words like crises 'of democratic becoming' are mystical flannel.
The fact that something is a legitimate act of war (if it is) doesn't imply that there is no right for the other side to resist or negate it. I suppose the whole idea of fair, honourable or chivalrous combat is that it is possible for both sides to fight vigorously, to do much damage to each other and yet to do no wrong.
I understand (Hostage may correct me) that the famous San Remo manual calls on states practising blockade that in circumstances where it is clear that there are no contraband goods not to confiscate anything, let alone whole ships, but to permit free passage.
This does seem to be what happened in Heart of Darkness. I could imagine a soldier or group deciding that they utterly loathe this place in which, like Mr. Kurtz, they have languished for years, that they regard all the talk of democracy and freedoms as utter, blithering nonsense and that the time has come to take action that will cut matters short.
My suggestion would be that in its original conception the Messiah was the desire of all the nations, not just of the Israelites, and that on his arrival many nations - I think that means all - will be reconciled to the true God. Some biblical archetypes aren't all that bad.
That said, I think Gabriel Piterberg (Returns of Zionism) makes the point that the Zionists were determined to bypass rabbinic authority by returning to the direct authority of the Bible - selectively, of course, and with overwhelming emphasis on Joshua. Latterly on Esther, it seems.
Spinoza is an interesting example of someone to whom membership of his original gang, faith, tribe came to mean nothing. He thought that the only relationship with God is 'intellectual' and his friends were the advanced and left-wing thinkers of his time. His contemporary and fellow radical on Bible matters, Hobbes, couldn't quite bring himself to pull out of the Church of England in the same way.
I'm sure Haber hits the nail squarely on head when he says that Israel Firsters are not people who consciously think that Israeli interests should be set above those of the countries where they live but people who think that Israel is our first line of defence against the barbarian hordes, though he doesn't then really engage with what is strange in this idea. He assails those who claim to be liberal whilst showing no concern for the Palestinians' human rights but doesn't, any more than anyone else, explain how there can be a form of Zionism (special rights for Jewish people in the area) compatible with liberalism (equal rights for all everywhere).
It seems that Tonge lost a front bench post in the HoL Lib Dem caucus about 2 years ago because she called for an investigation into claims that Israelis had been involved in organ trafficking in Haiti. Nick Clegg, three months from the election that would make him Deputy, PM was utterly shocked and disconcerted. Indeed, indeed, the things that happen in this world, the dirty shocking things, after all the progress we thought we'd made! She remained on the Party list until now, sitting in the Last Chance Saloon just near the exit. I don't think she has until now held the office of Whip and now resigned it - she has 'resigned the Whip' - ie withdrawn from the Party - rather than apologise for saying that Israel won't last for ever.
Might last longer than the UK, though, if the Scot Nats have their way.
I don't really share the wish to widen the core discussion beyond issues raised by Zionism. The proposition I want to discuss (with reasonable people) is the Zionist proposition that Jewish people have special rights in Palestine. I consider this proposition false, unsupported by any good reason. This is a proposition that arose in the West and is mainly supported from the West, so a Westernising discussion like this is basically a good idea. One day Phil will be the subject of an opera.
I don't think that the arguments and propositions of Zionism form just one case among many of parallel arguments applied in other places, so I don't want to get drawn into discussions of parallels which I consider misleading.
Libyans and Syrians matter as much as any other human beings, of course. But I don't see that there is a powerful idea, specific to them as Zionism is to Palestine, affecting their situation.
I've written about my ideas and wishes - only for brevity, of course, not because my ideas deserve more respect than others'.
Meanwhile eee seems to have been replaced in the twinkling of an eye by others equally horrifying, Blankfort not.
Yay from me too, on balance. I was really good at ignoring eee. I accept Phil's right to make the rules and understand that he probably sees all the dangers more clearly than I could. Still, a Yay vote from sunny southern England.
'Entitlist', good word. Perhaps we have to forgive someone whose head was threatened with going ka-boom. I have a bad cold at the moment so have some sympathy.
I don't know about the Scottish 'McHughes', since I am quite a mongrel but not Scottish. The Welsh 'Martin bach' would suit me better.
What most attracts me to Mondoweiss is the humanity and genuine freedom from racism, even the courtesy under pressure, of most of the commenters. I'm proud to know you and hope that none of the old hands will leave. Next to that, the people who write the main posts are for the most part remarkably well informed with hearts in the right place.
Over the last few years support for Palestinian rights in the West has gone from negligible to noticeable - I don't think that even lobbyists would deny this - and I think that it has been a great achievement in which Phil has played a very big and creditable part. The next step, from noticeable to significant, will be very difficult. An effort was made to reach out to liberal Zionists, especially Professor Slater, and we all know that the result was to divide and distract us. That this should have chilled our Palestinian supporters, groaning under tyranny rather than engaging in polite arguments, isn't surprising. But I think that the battle of ideas on the western front is still worth fighting. We aren't at the centre of the story but we can help. Things that happen here, even things that are said here, have results there.
If people are going to come here and argue for a cleaner occupation, as Taxi puts it, I think we badly need people like Taxi who will point out the plain truth that there is no such thing as clean dirt.
I would add Freud to this list, since he thinks (Moses and Monotheism) that Jewish religion and culture involve both intense guilt and a sense of superiority.
I have a problem in not entirely knowing what a sense of superiority feels like or how it is expressed.
The standard view on Mondoweiss, I think, is that Zionism is a mistaken or inauthentic form of Jewish culture, that the propositions accepted with authentic Jewish culture do not imply the propositions of Zionism. GA, as I understand him, keeps clear of the religious side but is convinced that Zionism is a fully authentic and logical expression of that secular Jewish culture. To this extent he is fully in agreement with most Zionists, I would say. But since he thinks Zionism is a bad thing, he also thinks, as logic goes, that secular Jewish culture is also false and dangerous.
I think that authenticity claims are very difficult to prove. I'm not sure I want to get into discussions about it. I do want to say that true anti-racism is not really admiring people who are Jewish but admiring people who deserve it whether they are of this race or that race, Jewish or not.
I think that free speech is indivisible and I have defended that view with audiences that don't sympathise.
The Israeli critics seem to be attributing to their compatriots a kind of refusal to recognise the humanity and normality of the Iranians. Mind you, I'm not too surprised if a political science teacher can't get the politics out of his brain. I too, I must admit, sometimes look at works of art through my own political or religious prism. Blush.
Still, it's to the credit of the Oscar people that, in all the circumstances, they voted for an Iranian film. And the reactions of the Israeli critics at least seem essentially generous.
A regime was destroyed, one that was based on minority rule and had itself destroyed many people. At the end of the regime the members of the minority were neither destroyed nor expelled nor expropriated. Still none of this seems to alter the fact that the Israelis are determined to maintain the minority rule regime that they have set up. They can certainly do this in the short run. In the long run many things could happen, not all of them good.
If there was a fair solution - and am not predicting that there will be - it has to negate all (or all major) forms of unfairness. This does imply the destruction of the system of supremacy for the river-to-sea Jewish minority, which is by almost everyone's standard massively unfair. Not the destruction of any human being, of course.
The only fair outcome is one where there is no disfranchisement and where there is no partition amounting to disfranchisement in its effects.
Lysias makes absolutely the right point. The Palestinians are being subjected, river to sea, to rule by the Jewish minority, which is contrary to their rights.
We've had this talk for so long that the Iranians must be classifying it under 'empty threats'. It doesn't seem to be frightening them, but it is useful for keeping up - yes, by a kind of blackmail - the stream of deference and reassurance from the panicky, fickle West. Yet when there was a wonderful moment when the Battle of the Tree had given every opportunity to start a war with a bright pretext neither side took advantage.
I hope it will burn for as long as it takes, but I certainly hope that won't be for ever.
Well, we'll see. You're all very rational and persuasive people!
I'll still venture a peep of dissent. I think that if Netanyahu could send Obama to war with a snap of his fingers he'd have done it by now and thoroughly enjoyed it. If Obama had wanted to build up a mass of votes on the basis of Stand with Israel he would have started already, would not have made a show of resisting the Boycott Iran legislation (just the sort of thing that infuriates voters of that stamp) and would not be placing his reliance on a crazy surge of support at the last minute. There would be some signs of tension among the top people if Dempsey's remarks had been unauthorised.
Obama is, whatever else he is, no fool. He knows that Walid and others are right to say that support surges at the first minute of a conflict but he's read his Clausewitz and knows that military plans often lead to spectacular short term failures even if you win in the end. The people who cheer you on are just waiting to hang you from the lamp post when things take a turn for the worse. Even Lincoln, Father Abraham at first, had to endure people singing 'When this cruel war is over' before too long. Well, this was a medium term phenomenon, but a risky attack on Iran could turn sour pretty quickly.
Obama wants reelection and I don't believe he wants unpredictable things getting in the way. He's not an idiot, so he knows that wars are unpredictable things. So I don't believe he wants war with Iran. If he had wanted one he could have had one any time in the last few months. His propaganda has been about how his policy of means short of war is working just fine. We Euros and the Iranians seem to be playing a game of pretending to boycott each other, which may be foolish and dangerous but doesn't involve the threats and ultimatums which normally, as with Iraq, precede wars.
The Independent today mentions the link between economic recovery and rise in oil prices. Probably better to go for the former if there's a choice.
The Jewish soul and the human soul are just the same.
The scornful reviewer may have a point, in that Beinart's position seems very puzzling - he loves Israel but ascribes many hateful qualities to it. He doesn't like what's going on but is, as far as we know from his publications so far, fully ready to concede the vital point, that ethical considerations may have to be set aside for the greater purpose. He objects to the subordination of the Palestinians merely 'because they are not Jews', but this had to happen under the Zionist project, it was and is the whole idea. If B objects only because the subordination has gone so far and been so brutal he is open to many replies - the more the Palestinians regrettably refuse to accept the big project (which has to go ahead) the more they must be made to accept it, at whatever cost it takes.
These may not be insuperable objections but I think they're substantial ones.
My recollection from that time is that our government, with a wobbly sense of values and priorities, expressed indignation about the theft of passports but took the resort to political assassination rather in its stride.
It will be interesting to see if this does happen. He's surely being used to convey Obama's real views.
The BBC is reporting the same as the Israeli papers.
Gideon Levy makes some interesting points. I must admit that I'm 'partial in my own cause', at least to the extent of not fully sharing the pro-IRA sentiments that are generally supported here, not that my partiality proves anything. If it is indeed the Israelis who, as Levy says, display much deeper hatred and racism compared with the Palestinians it must be because at bottom it is they who are the more deeply afraid.
I share your confusion, lrb. 'Playing dead' means pretending to be less lively than you are, and I can't believe that the bds-ers will do that.
Yes, we should remember that we aren't negotiators for the Palestinians. Glad we're in agreement!
This was meant to be a reply to N49's remark, which has vanished, to the general effect that things have to be based on human rights for all.
If we can't say openly that minority rule, embodied in disfranchisement or in partition arrangements amounting to the same thing (large chunks of the majority aren't citizens of the polity that takes all the important decisions), is unjust then it is a poor lookout. Anything else means finding ways to help the minority maintain its supremacy or its exclusive rights. But the whole idea is that these minority privileges are wrong.
Absolutely! - Don't know why this basic fact gets so readily forgotten or ignored.
I'd say that 'patriotism' is wanting the best for one's country. Many claim to be patriotic but critical - the best service they can render their country is challenge the mistakes of its people.
'Nationalism' is the belief that nations, however defined, should be sovereign by themselves, ie not expected to pool their decision making with others. The definition can be cultural, religious, ethnic. Nationalism is often opposed to imperialism.
Anyone can define words as they like but I'd say that I'm covering most of the ways people use these words.
Tracing those connections will require some courage and some tact. Every statement made will outrage somebody, probably somebody quite powerful.
Another interesting point, Galen, thanks.
I hope that Ruth, that heroine of interracial marriage, is being remembered alongside Esther.
Thank you, how interesting!! I suppose 'Murdoch Holy Writ' is a contradiction in terms.
Vashti was merely divorced and sent away. On the other hand she was Iranian, not Jewish, and much more feminist in her behaviour - women-only parties - than Esther was. If people enjoy celebrating the slaughter at the end of Esther that is their problem. The New International Version does make of point of translating 8/11 so that it does not imply a slaughter of women and children, but that is questionable.
Thanks, annie - still not used to you in upper case. It would indeed be interesting to hear from Susan about this.
A friend of mine organised a showing of this or a similar exhibition in a respectable English cathedral city a couple of years ago. She had problems finding a venue or getting much publicity because some respectable people didn't want to touch the subject with the proverbial English bargepole.
Absolutely right. We'll have some further interesting and valid contributions from NF in time.
It is not true that by concerning ourselves with one topic we show lack of concern with others. We show lack of concentration on those other things, but no one can concentrate on everything or should be asked to do that.
To notice that something is wrong is quite enough reason, in any normal circumstance, to draw attention to it. If you stopped to consider everything else that is right or wrong you would never say anything about anything.
The claim that 'something's wrong here' is not weakened, indeed is confirmed, by the claim 'something's wrong there too'.
There is no special reason, none at all, why those who think the present situation wrong should hesitate to say so until they can all agree about what should replace it. The main waste of time is leaving the status quo unchallenged while we debate something else.
If you mistrust someone in the light of some evidence there is reason for your attitude, but it should be evidence related to their behaviour. If it is unrelated to their behaviour it is prejudice in the pure sense, judging before the facts appear. If you declare that because of past events you see no end to your mistrust of someone you give that other person reason to mistrust you in return, since (s)he can never be sure how you will react to anything, whether you will ever give credit where due.
Well, Mooser, room might have been found for that very true remark in the Book of Proverbs.
I'm aware that Mondoweiss is surrounded with unprincipled enemies (even some provocateurs, maybe) who are looking for anything that they can publicise, out of context of course, as anti-Semitism. And this is rather too easy, seeing that such vague and ambivalent definitions of - and rhetoric about - anti-Semitism are accepted in the western world. This puts Phil in a very difficult position, of course.
Still, it's fundamentally more important for the long term to assure the Palestinians that their proclaimed friends in the west will not desert them in the face of mere rhetoric.
Hear, hear! Shlomo Sand in 'On the Nation and the 'Jewish People' quotes (p.30) Marc Bloch in 1949 and Raymond Aron in 1983 writing very pungently to this effect. Race is an unscientific concept.
I think that Zionism (at least 1905 Zionism, the only living form) is the belief that political rights in the HL (or in such subset of HL as Jewish people think fit) belong to Jewish people by birthright, to others only by the generosity of the true heirs, at their discretion. This is not a misinterpreted truth but a falsehood.
I think we were all making some objection to empiricon's 'Zionism isn't racism because racism isn't Zionism' and I wrote in rather clumsy style - don't deserve another latte.
Just think there's something logically funny - I'm probably just trying to annoy American here; he'll probably withdraw my latte - about taking 'Zionism is racism' as if it meant 'Z and r are identical'. Surely not even the most raving Islamist, leftist idiot or painfully pc British philosopher has ever said that. They may have said that 'Z is a form of r', but that is not refuted by saying 'r is not a form of Z'.
If that doesn't get American choking over his americano I don't know what will.
'Both religion and race' does sound a bit like 'both chalk and cheese'.
Zionists would say, I think, that an exceptional claim on behalf of a race is not necessarily 'racist' if it is merely a claim that is morally normal but is pressed in exceptional circumstances. The exceptional circumstance arises because so many Jews were unjustly induced to leave the Holy Land in Roman times. Anyone to whom that happens has, under normal morality, an inalienable right of return to full citizenship in the relevant country that can be passed down the generations and can be claimed at any time.
But I don't think that this is normal morality. The right of return lapses once you have made a commitment to full and normal citizenship elsewhere - if it didn't your commitment to the other sovereign could not be full. And a right cannot reasonably be re-invoked at absolutely any time if you have not claimed it for so long that others might reasonably think that it was no longer of concern to you.
In that event I think that your rights become subject to negotiation.
So we don't have an application of normal morality, we have a moral claim pressed on grounds of suffering elsewhere, which does not convey rights in Palestine, and above all of the Bible.
'Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it'. Always worth recalling the things of which great Jewish thinkers have reminded us. Happy Valentine's Day!
I've mentioned Matt Taibbi's 'Great Derangement' here before. Part of it is a report on the CZs he joined up with as part of his analysis of the post-9/11 atmosphere. It's extremely funny but I don't think it guys, or fails to show any sympathy, with the characters he encounters, their search for meaning in life and the exploitation of their search by what is really a massive corporation with corporate messages. He makes 'the kind of things they say' sound banal rather than outrageous. People gather to find friendship and an escape (rather limited in its success) from the meanness and pettiness of the secular world. The group leaders say things like 'We must always pray for Israel' - dull but consistent drip-drip propaganda - as often as corporate policy requires.
I wish we could manage something like this in the UK.
I think that the principal idea of liberalism, ie belief in personal freedom compatible with equal liberty of others, is that everyone should be free to make what choices seem right for them given their circumstances with as little as possible in the way of social pressure. Liberals may be accused of making rather too blithe remarks, considering that 'circumstances' may include serious economic pressure - must do for many people in a world of scarce resources. But the point doesn't have to be blithe and unrealistic, and the fact that people are often under economic pressure does not by any means justify putting them under social pressure 'to conform' as well.
Breadwinning and homemaking are both means of increasing family resources and it should be a matter of individual circumstances which path is chosen. Breadwinning by women is often the best choice. It has obviously been a popular choice among female voters and part of the resonance (and relevance to the ME debate) is the fact, implicit in annie's remarks (still find it hard to use the upper case for her), that those voters are unlikely to welcome Santo's message.
This is not a site for debating every important issue, of course, but there are links between different manifestations of liberalism. The right of fathers, patria potestas, was a feature of Roman law that has been much reduced throughout the modern period and Locke's Treatises, the foundation of liberalism, can be used both to discredit Zionism and to see the first beginnings of a liberal theory of family.
Absolutely, and their power will grow.
He does indeed fit right in, and for the reason I mentioned - that it is in the long run, one way or another, intolerable for a state that is Jewish to have its most important monument in the hands of the followers of a non-Jewish religion, with all the implications about the rights of non-Jewish people to share in the Holy Land. That is why at least some Israeli journalists took the report of an immediate onslaught on the site seriously, even though it was fairly obviously near incredible. Someone was testing the water, even if not planning to take an immediate plunge. Others are working on breeding a red heifer for the purification of priests, though white flecks keep appearing.
Religions are always in their nature being reinterpreted and religious prohibitions on putting 'something Jewish' (seafoid's term) on the Temple Mount would not for ever stop attempts to 'force God's hand'. We see that the prohibition on going near the site for fear of setting foot on the Holy of Holies is already being eroded.
There's extremely little chance of an immediate Ayodha-style demolition, I agree. However, I would expect pressure for archaeological investigations on the Temple Mount, which if they happened would be highly disruptive, to build up over the next few years.
It doesn't seem that the Temple Mount crisis is upon us yet but I don't think that the Jewish State can for ever tolerate a situation where the most important monument, overshadowing all the others, belongs to a non-Jewish religion. I guess that the final flashpoint will concern archaeology. Currently one of the bridges leading to the Mount is being declared, for all I know with good reason, unsafe. Something may be patched up this time but there'll come a day when repairs under Israeli control start somewhere on the site. Any repair would lead to digging and every act of digging would call for another until, no doubt after long delays and complications, the whole site was transformed.
I don't deny that the treatment of the site by Muslim religious authorities has been problematic.
Most importantly 'because God hath commanded it' or 'because it's essential for progress'.
What the judge is pointing out, backhandedly of course, is that genuine respect for the human rights of all individuals, all and each, logically contradict claims based on the supposed rights of some individuals based on their being members of a national group. His support for the national claim is so unconditional, of course, that he intends to contradict any idea of human rights for all individuals.
Not often you get a good joke in this grim discussion, especially when Mooser is resting. Thanks, tree.
I'll take this opportunity to add my voice to the thanks to Hostage for so many good words in the righteous cause. I can well understand that it's weary work but so much good is done.
People who are Jewish have been in the place for 3,000 years. Well, depends what you mean by Jewish. On any definition people who are not Jewish have from time immemorial been in the same place.
Lobbyists and members of institutions that are all too happy to be lobbied, thinking that they gain security of career in exchange for a few fulsome words and throwing around a bit of public money, are two sides of one coin, I think. Coin may be the right word.
We might have sought to secure our oil either by merely having good relations with those sitting on top of it or else by controlling them and promoting those factions ready to help us. The reason for the first policy might have been what Nasser used to say - the Arabs cannot drink the oil. It's as essential to them to sell the stuff as it is for us to buy it.
Treating an intrusive and hostile power in the Arabs' midst as a strategic ally clearly tends to wreck that policy. But it isn't much more helpful when it comes to the second, since our increasing dedication to Israel has to some extent antagonised every faction that there is in the Arab and Islamic world. I can't think of any historical precedent that's even approximately close.
I think that the need of the empire for oil goes hardly anywhere in explaining the empire's ME policy.
I'm in two minds about this. You're quite right that human rights do not spring from ancient history. They spring at any time from how things are at that time.
On the other hand so much propaganda based on ancient history is around that, being interested in the subject, I think it can be constructive to prick the propaganda balloon here and there. I keep wanting to say that the non-Jewish link to Palestine is as historic and as valid as the Jewish one and that archaeology is seriously abused, at least rashly over-interpreted, for political purposes. If you say that all that is a distraction from the real subject I think you may have a point.
There's no doubt that Herod renovated the Temple and that the renovation, according to his design, was complete within his lifetime. So what did not exist within his lifetime was not part of his design.
You know as well as I do that you can't discuss these things on the sole basis of newspaper articles, particularly not one that chooses words so misleadingly - 'may well have built other walls' is merely changing the subject. Herod did have the inner temple built by priests and added buildings other than those - but that is not a very imp0rtant point.
I'd be glad to exchange ideas with you but I think you should read Josephus first. Perhaps you have - I've no right or wish to patronise you.
Antiquities XX has, I think, been copied/edited rather too lovingly by Christians.
I'm not sure that the sovereignty of individual states and the related idea of non-intervention have been abolished. If they have been, there are either no governments any longer - and surely there are - or else there is a world government, which I don't see functioning or existing.
I don't believe that there is a right of national self-determination. No such idea (nor even the idea of nation) has ever been defined, at least not with any coherence and plausibility.
If there is a right to form social contracts, and it is the basis of most western political philosophy that there is such a right, then there can be no right of self-determination for individuals or groups. The social contract involves all who live in a territory - that's the whole idea. All contracts are nonsense if those involved - any individual, any collective - can tear them up for their own sole good.
Self-determination by a group, ie withdrawal by them from a social contract, necessarily removes rights which the contract had given to others outside the group. If it's an ethnic matter and there are strong feelings then self-determination must (I take a different view from Chaos here) produce ethnic cleansing.