Total number of comments: 2588 (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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I'm in agreement with you, Sherilyn, or would go beyond you. To my mind compulsory partition was a breach of the duty of sovereigns, thus of moral law - the law of rational morality, the law (say some) of God - so serious that no international consensus in favour of living with its results could be valid.
To say that we should all comply with international consensus (which when formulated becomes international law) and that only the 2ss could embody this compliance is to say that both the Israelis and the Palestinians have an overriding duty to accept some form of it. I couldn't press this demand on the Palestinians, most especially not in the form of the 'classic' 2ss in which the division of territory and resources is so screamingly unfair, massively in favour of the dominant minority.
The Palestinians have never (no surprise here) ever asked for my advice, perhaps not even for Finkelstein's. It's not as if I/he/we were negotiating for them. We're giving them moral support. In that role, we might ask them to be flexible in negotiations, as perhaps everyone should be. But that is different from firm pressure to make certain huge and specific concessions, pressure we should not exert. We should confine ourselves to saying, in season and out of season, that they are in the right: a system based on discrimination by ancestry and on river to sea minority rule ought to end - and in taking such non-violent action as we think may help our cause in the West. Not that the dreadful situation will end or begin to end at any early moment.
Your persistent questioning of this strange idea of 'self-determination of peoples' has been very valuable, RoHa. No substantial reply - even in the form of a consistent definition around which some rational discussion could start - has been elicited, as far as I can see.
For my part, I can't see how the idea of group rights is consistent with the idea of individual rights.
When it comes to the Nakba it's not denial - saying it didn't really happen - that concerns me, but justification and claims that it was the right thing.
I can easily resist any desire to thank these Nakba justifiers.
The idea that the Palestinian people doesn't exist is a way of saying that the individuals who would make up that people have, according to the defining principle of Zionism, no right to be in Palestine unless by the generosity of the true heirs. So nothing can happen that makes it look as if they actually have the right that they falsely claim.
I'm not sure about a final frontier on the Jordan. The Herodian Kingdom extended beyond the Jordan and surely needs to be reclaimed in full.
I wish we could get the plonkers off our back but that is probably impossible anatomically.
A passport is inherently a request from your own government that you be granted free passage by other governments, ie that you be not deported, stopped from doing business, secluded from your family and friends, forced to waste a lot of money. This formal request makes no sense unless the representatives of your government are prepared to back it up with suitable words, even angry words, if you are unreasonably treated. Accordingly discretionary powers, such as the power to deport, are unjust unless they are used with some show of reasonableness: ie with, among other things, the minimum of pettiness, humiliation and mockery. Not like here.
Mind you, I don't think that this sort of behaviour will be extended in any near time to normal tourists coming on organised parties, church trips etc.. Their states of mind - membership of the all but unshaken pro-Israel consensus among normal and sensible people in the West - are their passports and visas.
The claim that Jewish debate, if repressed, will be driven into the shadows and become more extreme makes me ask what the shadows are. If it is envisaged that the discussion would become confined to highly marginal, 'shadowy' groups of solely Jewish membership then the Zionist censors would reply, I think, that that would be a highly satisfactory result. If 'the shadows' are areas where Jewish and non-Jewish people would discuss things on equal terms, then that would be a satisfactory result for the likes of me. But the idea discussion on these terms would be morally murky is worrying in itself.
I suppose that the Palestinians would have been among the first to stop being shocked. It's the illusion-prone, fickle Western conscience that gets shocked sometimes and then moves on.
The Israel of 48 was based on disfanchisement of those Palestinians who were denied the right to live in the country where they had been born. Disfranchisement is the opposite of democracy and the essence of oligarchy. Not that I can add to the incisiveness of American's comment, even though he's stolen my latte. (Not my country, though: credit where it's due.) That Mr.Beinart has some good phrases, I can't deny, but he sure is annoying, even despair-inducing.
The scientific achievements of Israel are no doubt very impressive, though I could wish they were differently directed.
I certainly think that the remarks quoted by Ira amount to 'claiming credit' without 'admitting responsibility' and it will probably be a long time before we have proof of the real nature of these events. I rather expect this sort of publicity to be created quite often, the Superiors sneering at the Inferiors and commenting loudly (but with that underlying insecurity that we can all hear through their professionally confident voices) that we know how to keep them in their place. There will be a succession of quietly dramatic names - Flame, Flood, Swarm (not Smarm) - to keep everyone amused and impressed. I'm inclined to think that the publicity is good news, bluster and sneers covering a quiet walking back from the threats of war. But I could be wrong, couldn't I?
Just to say how valuable Ira's contributions are.
If Mr. Beinart has characteristics that he shares with some other people (what are they? is he sure that these other people are so like him? if so, why does he wring his hands so publicly about what they do?) but he doesn't choose to live among them, other things must be significantly more important to him. How then can he justify setting up and maintaining at vast expense in human suffering and hard cash an institution that performs this expression, which after all is not so important?
I'm not sure that Arendt is right to say that in the early twentieth century the only way anyone could conceive of protecting minorities was transforming them into majorities somewhere or other. The old Czechoslovakia, for instance, may have failed but it was built on the idea that Czechs, Slovaks and Germans, not to mention Jewish people within these groups, could live together well enough. The idea or conception existed even if the likes of Hitler were determined that it should not succeed.
Well, I think that the right to speak implies a right to hear and that in normal circumstances an audience in a theatre has a right to hear the message of the performance. There is a right to free speech in that you should not be punished or coerced merely for the content of what you say, but there can't be a right to say anything in any circumstances whatever - 'Fire' in a crowded cinema and all that. (I accept that that example is a bit facile, but it's not to be ignored completely.) So normally disruption of a theatrical performance would be wrong and if were meant to end rather than briefly interrupt the performance it would breach the right to hear, thus the right to speak.
It could be justified in this case only if you thought that there is such a serious crisis caused by British indifference to Palestinian suffering that the normal rules have to be set aside, with appropriate deep regret. I think, being ashamed of my dear country in this matter, that there probably is a crisis of that magnitude.
If the protesters had had the opportunity to recite a Palestinian version of Shylock's speech in full, would they have included the final line, with its justification of revenge?
I'm writing on the understanding that the idea of human rights makes some sense, though I know some deny this.
'Narratives' seems to mean stories told so as to favour the narrator. Which cannot indeed have any impact on objective morality unless we can argue that 'I think it's true so it's true' or 'We think we're right so we're right'.
People have a right to leave their homes and to return to them for any reason that seems good to them. As far as I can see, no one denies this as a general principle. Could there be exceptions?
Not based on narratives! You don't change rights by telling stories, even fascinating stories which are popular with their readers.
Not based on imputed states of mind, as in 'Germans hate Slavs'. You can't make sense of human rights if you stipulate that they are conditional on someone else, in any circumstances, thinking that your inner thoughts make you worthy of them.
Some say that rights can be cancelled in some cases for the greater good of all, though proving what the greater good of all amouts to is never easy. (Locke discusses and rather discredits cancellation of rights based on the allegation that 'endless trouble will be avoided' in chapter 16 of his Second Treatise.) I can't see that anyone could take seriously an estimate of the gg based solely on the judgement of those who do the cancellation of rights and collect the benefit. And I can't in all seriousness see how the refusal to let the Palestinians who fled in 1948 return to their homes was a way of achieving the greater good of all.
I admit that in philosophy surprising conclusions, dispassionately stated, can turn out to be true.
Just to add that since we're not allowed denial of Holocaust or Nakba on this site it seems strange that something surely far worse, justification of the Nakba, crops up like weeds in spring.
It isn't wrong to start a war, only to start one with no sufficient reason or just cause. Even if you are the victim of an unjust war you do not have the right to destroy the rights of the population on the other side. There isn't a right to destroy rights. Nothing could have justified the refusal to let the Palestinians who had fled the war zone to return.
Thanks, very interesting. No Christian parallels that I can think of - unless there's an evangelical somewhere with a plan.
I suppose that people in the ME would remember the Mamluk warriors who somehow went from being slaves to being kings. Or less romantically and more recently how the Alawite minority turned out to compose a decisively high proportion of the Syrian officer class. A futuristic novel about the Evangelical coup in the United States might be fun. Someone must have written it already.
What does 'secular' mean here? Not quite the same as 'atheist', as far as I can see. Subject to correction by Hostage and others I'd thought that the word 'secular' gained currency to denote those who, while maybe not being atheists in philosophy, declined to live under halachic rules but still wished to be regarded as Jewish, whatever that meant to them.
An atheist can't consistently regard him/herself as chosen or rejected by God, since as far as (s)he's concerned there is no God to do the choosing or rejecting.
The feeling or sentiment of being chosen or exceptional is still possible, though, even for an atheist. It could appeal to Social Darwinist theories of race or simply to more modern and acceptable ideas of exceptional culture. You may think or hope that the inferiors will catch up some fine day but consider that that day is very far off and that you have to live, with a little hint of modest pride, in the consciousness that you are superior for now. This sentiment is pretty common in many cultures.
A secular Jewish person (as I understand 'secular') could hold to this sentiment and even think that the Jewish religion created a leap forward that no one could equal in ancient times, even if it is a bit antiquated now and its strictures on personal life somewhat odd. I don't mean to sneer at this opinion even though I would disagree with it as an interpretation of history. I don't think it's logically inconsistent.
I do think that Zionism has managed to be religious and 'secular' almost in the same breath. Ben-Gurion was not religious but was for ever interpreting the Bible. That's part of its power. For those of us who reject it, part of its destructiveness.
The story of Abraham does not have to be 'literally true' in order to be of historical value. It has that value at two levels. One level concerns the time when Genesis was being more or less finalised, presumably around 500 BCE. The Eerdmans Bible Commentary, p.57, says that the presence of the various other nations, which we would call Arab. in the Abraham story, indicates the degree of affinity that the Israelites felt with them at the time of writing - the text accepts or admits that there had been centuries of intermarriage and cultural influence. The other level concerns the more ancient times in which Abraham's story is set, the early second millennium BCE. What the story accepts must have been more or less true. The Israelite civilisation was a branch of the civilisation of Canaan and Syria.
I'm still a bit uncertain about what R.Brian means by 'Zionism': what proposition did he once affirm that he now denies?
He does explain what 'Liberal Zionism' is - ie belief that it is right that there should be a Jewish place where Jewish people can find refuge and express their culture. Almost everything about that definition would be satisfied by modern Western states, except that they're not Jewish in the sense of having a Jewish majority. Did he ever really think that there is such a thing as the right to be part of a majority? How did he justify it?
Lib Z, as defined, makes no mention at all of Palestine, not one syllable of mention. Yet even the most liberal form of Z has been dedicated in practice to creating a certain situation specifically in Palestine. We're all free to define words as we like but it may be misleading to produce a definition which says nothing about such an important aspect of its topic.
There's a certain degree of sheer power-worship here which is quite horrible. However the basic idea is a moral claim: in that part of the world, only Jewish people have a share in sovereignty which is theirs by right, though others may have a share by grace and generosity. So, though generosity may well be extended, nothing must happen that suggests that anyone else shares the birthright.
Would someone for one minute use the argument 'Some of the people who say that heavy drinking is morally wrong have a history of heavy drinking: so heavy drinking is OK'? Or the even less promising 'Some of their ancestors were heavy drinkers'?
The question 'Who are you to say this?' is really preposterous. Both those people who have some experience of doing wrong and of the costs it entails and those people who have kept themselves pure and free of the sin in question have a valid point of view from which to explain that the right path is better. If you're advised for good reason not to do something then it isn't of the greatest moment to enquire whether the person who advises you has always respected those reasons in his or her own life. The reasons are good ones either way.
It's a somewhat different matter if someone offers personal or family history not simply as an example of but as a justification for drinking or whatever it may be. We don't seem to be dealing with this argument here - no one's saying - at least no one's saying clearly - that the historical success of the British or American expansions justifies what Israel is doing. If someone does produce this argument we can deal with it.
We visited the United States recently and went to a shopping mall in Nashua, New Hampshire. Besides the shops there were some stalls of various kinds, at one of which I (lagging behind grandchildren) was approached with the question whether 'I had heard of the Dead Sea'. No time for an argument, but I noticed that while all the other stalls were trying to attract custom with colourful banners this one had no banner and no name. Presumably the Dead Sea exploiters do not care to advertise who they are, presumably because they would attract some hostile comment even in a non-Metropolitan area of the United States. In Reading, my nearest big town in the UK, I haven't seen the old Ahava stall for years: perhaps I've just missed something. But I think that all is not entirely well for the Dead Sea plunder industry.
And Jerusalem was founded by Canaanites, of course.
What you say is entirely valid, Talkback, but there is still at least some truth in what the Settler says. The 2ss in every form discussed is so unfair - wildly, grotesquely unfair - in its distribution of everything, territory, resources, political rights (armed to teeth vs. 'demilitarised') - that it would make the Treaty of Versailles look like a big treat for Germany. Just like the Weimar governments Palestinian governments would spend every waking hour thinking of ways to get out from under the burdens of the made at gunpoint Agreement.
How can Jewish (English) nationalism, a set of political beliefs, be equated with Judaism (Anglicanism), a set of religious beliefs? However much you revised the religious beliefs you'd surely have to say both that atheists could not hold the relevant form of nationalism and that the national claims are valid only if we believe in special divine commands, ie not valid under ordinary morality? These would not be welcome admissions.
I'd have joined you. I encounter some vocal Zionism even among friends, sadly.
The 'Masada solution' - suicide! - is basically unrealistic, don't you think? Mind you, I think that Josephus' account of the suicide is questionable - he wasn't there, he despised both the Masadists and the idea of suicide and there's so far no archaeological confirmation.
Not sure, for the good of my health, that I want to see humiliation close up - but I suspect that the institutions and rituals of humiliation are as bad a crime as the violence.
The presence of the Palestinians and their steady gains in the demographic battle are indeed a material threat. Also a kind of moral mockery. The whole idea of Zionism is that Jewish people have a natural right, birthright, to be there, others just don't. That the heart and the soul of the matter. If there is something here 'worse than apartheid' that's why it's worse.
Everything's unique and I don't think that SA 'apartheid' has been replicated exactly in the ME. But we do have a sovereign power ruling non-franchised people, treating people differently on grounds that relate to ancestry, talking of independent enclaves that would always be subordinate if they ever came into existence, inflicting intense humiliation on individuals, making the situation more painful by making it drag on and on. But 'apartheid' and 'separate development' somehow miss the point.
'Judenstaat' certainly seems to me (from memory) a very odd document, rather like a business prospectus for much of its length. (The number of people whom it persuaded must have been quite small.) There's no overt religion, but there's a provision for each Jewish group to be accompanied by a rabbi - no religion but abundant religious organisation. At the end, as I remember, the prospectusy style changes into rather clunky mysticism, with a passage about the supernatural element in the establishment of nations. Your perception of someone struggling against mental illness sounds convincing to me.
And I think he was having trouble forgiving himself, 'assimilated Jew' that he really was, for not having spotted from the first the anti-Semitism inherent in the Dreyfus case when it was staring him in the face as a journalist in Paris.
Still, I think there are deeper problems than those of Herzl's troubled mind. The whole relationship of Jewish nationalism to Jewish religion is destructively ambivalent, a radical attempt to have it both ways.
Not that Herzl was the real founder of Zionism. It developed over a long time with the help of questionable people like Scofield and progressive idealists like George Eliot. Not to mention the Reverend Alexander Keith of the Church of Scotland, effective inventor in 1843 of the Empty Land mantra. Many midwives with many motives at this slow birth of a false moral principle, ascribing special rights to some and not to others.
I think Zionism was born very slowly out of a desire to make modern sense of religious traditions, Christian and Jewish, beginning with Finch's 'Great Restoration' of 1621 and the proclamations of Sabatai Zvi in 1665. These things happened against a background of conflict and persecution, so the birth was much stimulated by fear. In all human beings fear and the desire for power are closely linked, as Hobbes demonstrated. The desire for power went with the belief that Jewish people have a special mission to do good to the whole human race: this belief in turn was easily able (like many of its Christian echoes and counterparts) to turn into the perilous idea that those who stand in the way, or simply have the ill fortune to be in the way, of the mission have no rights. One of the most tragic birth stories in all history.
Watching grass grow can be quite pleasant. This is more like watching hunters corner their prey, which is a grim spectacle.
The vast majority of western opinion still thinks (I think) that it's supporting a Jewish State with a Palestinian State as its opposite number. They're a long way from accepting either a formalised apartheid system or another round of population transfer and it won't be easy to sell the argument that 'it's in everyone's best interests'.
The argument that we cannot take risks in the pursuit of security, or must load all the risks and all the dangers on to the other side to the utmost that we are able, certainly cuts both ways, or all ways - which is why Hobbes argues that the only real solution is to find a way to end the conflict from which the security threat arises. I think you're right, Sherri, that militarism is self-destructive in the end. You and several Bible passages.
Mind you I think people are flaunting their military experience rather than flouting it. It's human rights that get flouted.
Perhaps the reluctance of President Johnson to pursue Congress-mandated Reconstruction policies, which were a kind of extension of war powers, and the resultant impeachment attempt - or cynical pretence at an impeachment attempt - supply a kind of precedent.
The question Phil raised was not over what Kennedy did without any outside impulse but what might have happened in the barely conceivable event of Congress's successfully mandating Kennedy not to negotiate. 'We Now Know' that there was a negotiated quid pro quo for the removal of Their missiles in Cuba in the form of removal of Our missiles from Turkey. My sense is that no President would accept that sort of Congressional intervention at the height of a crisis and that no impeachment attempt would succeed. Congress is doing things now for show rather than for real - hope I'm right.
I still don't think I hear the drums of war or the diplomatic thunder of ultimatums.
The Independent yesterday looked at the opinions of Mr. Mofaz, who seems to be the new number 2 in Israel, saying that he is of the opinion that the Palestinians are more of a problem than the Iranians and he thinks Obama can be trusted to deal with the Iranian problem. This may be news of mixed welcome, since I think Mofaz is has been one of the most outspoken transferists in the past.
The Congressional rhetoric could be a song of war or else it could be bluster covering a retreat.
What are your views of Snyder's figures, his interpretation of Generalplan Ost etc.?
How are the issues of Right of Return for the heirs of dispossessed Jewish people and restitution of property being dealt with at the moment?
Rebecca Solnit's Storming the Gates of Paradise deals with questions of American landscape and memorials to the departed peoples. She says they aren't as departed as we'd like to think. In England meanwhile we have managed to hide the worst episodes in the cupboard marked 'Dark Ages'.
Yes, I meant that I couldn't imagine any significant legal or technical obstacle. We know that Rupert Murdoch's henchpersons in the UK can find out all sorts of things. Perhaps some of us are Amalekite flies, directed no doubt by Beelzebub, but hardly worth the swatting. But you never know!
'They'd love to do this' - surely they've done it long since?
The rot from within will only become serious when many insiders begin to lose confidence in their cause, and that event, for all I can see, is not imminent. In the Western world we are still outclassed in almost every respect - all forms of organised opinion, most silent-majority orthodoxy, money, political and academic respectability. We are a rag-tag bunch, many of us eccentric. Our only advantage is in being right and non-racist, which I think means that we will not lose for ever but that we will suffer many bitter setbacks for the foreseeable future.
There is a difference between thinking something morally wrong and hating those who support it.
MRF is led by Mikey Weinstein, a Jewish protester against Christian 'Dominionism' in forms that are full of that old-style anti-Semitic brimstone.
I'd suggest that the reasons why we haven't got a 2ss are firstly that is contrary to the deepest, most mistaken, principles of Zionism, since it would concede that non-Jewish people can exist in the Holy Land by genuine right. Secondly, that the Palestinians could not possibly accept it with any sincerity, since it would be, on any non-Zionist principles, unjust to the uttermost degree and to some degree tangibly brutal in its principles, in its implications, in its daily implementation. Their acceptance could never be anything other than a barely concealed pretence, like the Weimar acceptance of the Versailles Treaty. Annie tells me that the darkest hour is before the dawn and I'm sure she's right but just for now I think we're all of us, Israelis too, in the position of the James Thurber characters for whom the night was dark and getting darker and the road long and getting longer.
Thanks for many interesting comments in reply to mine. I don't take issue with anything said. I would still regret any idea that belief in Palestinian rights follows in logic only from Marxist or way out political views and that those who take moderate views need not concern themselves with the matter.
There was, come to think of it, a time when Zionism had a leftist face. The supposed special rights of Jewish people in Palestine were justified because this was the chance for a socialist experiment that others would eventually follow. Some say that Chomsky still holds this view, being outraged basically because the chance for humane socialism has never been taken rather than because the special Jewish rights were so effectively claimed. I attended a talk by Mike Marqusee in which he spoke movingly of his grandfather, a dodgy New York lawyer, far-leftist and Palestinian-despising Zionist. If there's an understandable way of getting to think like that it maybe comes from the Marxist idea that the progressive force is militant workers plus middle class radicals (many Jewish people in pre-War Europe in both categories) and that the peasants could only be secondary helpers, needing to be purged of their superstitions and of their kulak leaders. And from the idea that the Palestinians were the peasantry of the Levant.
Zionism was once defended because it was a vital left-wing force, now defended because it is a bulwark against leftism. Ho hum.
I don't really see what leftism, radical or otherwise, has to do with this. In its normal meaning, leftism is about a comparatively important role for the state, somewhat at the expense of private enterprise, and about promoting equality in the economic sphere. You don't really have to be 'on the left' to accept universal suffrage or lack of racial discrimination.
I would hope that many people who are 'on the right' or believe in capitalism and private enterprise would accept that Zionism is unjust, not because it stands for a particular economic order but because it claims rights on a race-related basis, which is a moral mistake.
That's a very perceptive remark, seafoid. But the shared future in the short term is very dark.
We shall see how a shared history fares against a shared religious narrative.
This (eljay's) definition of religion is a very wide one. If we use it, we would almost all find that we had bonds of nationhood with many different people of many different kinds. I inhabit the same territory as many people of different religions and cultures, so they and I are all of one nation. At the same time I am linked with people who share approximately the same culture and language all round the world - this would include many Israelis, though I live far from Israeli territory. That's not an objection to eljay's definition, just an observation about it.
On some definitions, nationhood is all or nothing: I'm of this nation or I'm not, no two ways about it. On others, it might be a matter of degree: I belong to one country but something of my heart will always be in another, perhaps. On some definitions the same person can belong to two nations, on others not.
A religion can't be a nation, any more than it can be a dessert topping, as Tree says. They're in different categories. I suppose that religious teachings can claim to define the boundaries of a nation and its members. Though at that rate those who do not accept the religion have reason not to accept that definition, since they will not want to let their political opinions be controlled by a religion not their own.
A report in the Independent today interprets the New Coalition in Israel as sign of preparation for war, suggesting that minimising parliamentary opposition and possibly painful questions would be helpful in the event that an attack is made but fails. It could also be a precaution against painful questions should no attack, after all these years of threats, materialise and the threats start to look empty.
I suppose that the English language has built into it the idea that countries can be named after the inhabiting nation - EngLAND for one. 'Eretz Israel' is the Hebrew counterpart.
Margaret Macmillan's 'Peacemakers' records that the Zionists began immediately on the creation of the Mandate to call for the name to be changed to Eretz Israel. Also that Lloyd George, Christian Zionist that he was, used the phrase 'from Dan to Beersheba', which he had found in the Bible, to define the aims of British diplomacy - which bears on the question 'what is Eretz Israel supposed to be?'. It's what the Bible says God promised to the Israelites. The other important defining phrase is 'from the Euphrates to the River (or Brook) of Egypt'. Whether this means the Nile or some less significant stream on the other side of the Sinai Peninsula is debated.
The Mayor, 1897-1910, was Karl Lueger, of the Christian Social Party, who took no special action against Jews despite a lot of talk. It was his election, some say, that so spooked Herzl. I'm not a Mein Kampf reader but I understand the Lueger and Richard Wagner were the only two predecessors in anti-Semitism that Hitler really praises. The phrase 'I decide who is a Jew' seems often to be attributed to Lueger but someone may know better whether there's an authenticated record of a speech or conversation where he said it. Whether he said it or not it's still very true that being or not being Jewish is not an objective state that can be checked scientifically.
There is a difference between justifiable blame and resentment directed at an English person for what (s)he has done and the extension of these sentiments, without further reason, into Anglophobia, whereby everything English is suspected from the start. If you say to an English evildoer 'See! You have provoked Anglophobia', she may reply 'That just shows that there is an element of irrationality or worse in the people who respond that way. I am not to blame'. She is right to say that there is an irrational element in the response but wrong to say that no part is played by her misdeeds or that she is in no way at all to blame. A wrong action is a wrong action and it doesn't become right or blameless because those who are harmed by it use some words that are themselves not justified.
That's a very interesting question. Moses had an Egyptian name, so may not have been an Israelite by descent. Exodus 2 says that he married a Midianite, Numbers 12 that he married a Cushite, which in our terms would probably be an Arab and and an Ethiopian. In Numbers 25 the zealot Phinehas skewers a mixed-race couple - a literary passage whose sharp, terrifying effect is hard to match. Followers of the theories about Moses favoured by Freud and his theological mentor Ernst Sellin might suspect that this is a garbled tradition of the death of Moses at the hands of his followers, finally unable to tolerate the ideas of 'all children of the one God' for which Moses stood. Less controversially we can see a complex web of tradition and redaction, difficult to analyse, in which both humanism and nationalism, Beinart might say tribalism, weave that fascinating pattern, still being woven now both inside and outside Jewish culture.
What do you mean by 'anti-Semitism'? Anti-Semitism to me means unjustified suspicion of everything Jewish and is therefore always unsound. I think that Judaism was at very least a rational reaction to the circumstances in which it arose.
People are drawn to any available and efficient means to political power. If strong identification with a subgroup looks like an available and efficient means to power within the whole political group then people will be drawn to this kind of identification. We seem, for example - for an important example, to have a phenomenon of greater influence for religious groups without any real rise in religious beliefs. (In the UK, we have the topic of gay marriage, increasingly supported by public opinion, increasingly opposed by the Catholic and Evangelical minorities, who seem like to win.) The American Zionists have demonstrated the effectiveness of sub-group power and campaigning more effectively than anyone else anywhere, so they have proved a point of which others have taken notice. Are they doing anything wrong? They would argue that there can be no wrong in doing what the democratic system calls for.
Your gain is our loss but next year would be good. You may have made a good choice - I'm in the United States today, just about to fly home, where I hear the weather is miserable.
In the portion quoted Mr.Walsh does not explicitly say that he wants the non-Jewish population to be disfranchised in his one state. Perhaps he makes this clear elsewhere in his remarks. It would be hard to think that there could be all this peace, prosperity and absence of hatred if there were - that is to say, were still, just as there is now - minority rule and extensive disfranchisement.
Return to Jordan, the original Palestinian homeland, does not seem to be required for all but to be an option for those who wish to take it. That suggests that the new Israel will take responsibility for improving the welfare of all, Palestinians included, in situ. It would be hard to do this with even a semblance of fairness if only a minority has the vote. And where there is no semblance of fairness it is hard to achieve peace and no hatred.
I agree with Krauss about where liberal Zionism is going. That is because it is Zionism, ie the belief that rights of sovereignty in the Holy Land belong only to Jewish people and to such others as Jewish people may, by grace and generosity but never by obligation, choose.
The liberal element might indeed express itself in professed readiness to pay for a population transfer, though the traditional expression, endless talk and more talk of two states some day but not yet, plus a bit of weeping, seems to me to have bags of life in it yet.
I'd say to Edwin that the full Holy Land is defined at least approximately by the Bible's references to the Euphrates and the River of Egypt. As an act of grace, sovereignty over some of these areas may be conceded through treaties. This has indeed been done with Egypt and Jordan and the intention is surely to honour these treaties until 'Amalekite' forces on the other side break them.
We have to remember that Zionism, even in its least liberal form, has always been intended to include an element of generosity, at least of what looks like generosity given the fundamental truth, as Zionists see it, that Jewish people have rights which non-Jewish people cannot share. Everything centres and revolves around and returns to that point.
Mr. Walsh's words express what he thinks of as generosity to the Palestinians, don't you think?
As well as I remember, Pamela, you are about to visit the UK this month and talk about your book. Are there times and venues published somewhere?
It is said that Israel could make peace with Abbas any time. Perhaps A would sign anything put in front of him, at least so long as it resembled the much-canvassed 2ss, but that is not altogether an encouraging fact. It's not certain that his signature on a piece of paper could be converted into a really operative settlement in reality. Even if it could, the Israelis know that the standard 2ss, even with a few modifications, is so screamingly unfair that the mass of Palestinians could never accept it with long-term commitment and that once they were 'independent' they would set themselves to undo it.
Have read only the Piterberg book - would recommend it, particularly for the light shed on Christian Zionism.
Not that we should take the story of Israelite invasion at prosaic face value - see Oxford History of Biblical World and in a somewhat different vein Freud's Moses and Monotheism. It ((Joshua etc.) is a great theological essay but even in that respect it should be treated critically or at least reflectively. If the Israelites behaved as represented then they would in some ways have deserved to be hated. Some further act of understanding and reconciliation is called for - something that the poets who wrote the story meant to convey, I think.
Meanwhile it is generally thought that the first reference to 'Israel' is in the 1205 BCE Stela of Merneptah, the first reference to 'Palestinians' in the Egyptian record of the 'Sea Peoples', dated to around 1175. 30 years is not much of a gap.
The most famous poem about the Titanic, Thomas Hardy's 'Convergence of the Twain', does pay attention both to the ship and to the iceberg, the two very different things destined to meet.
I have never found that engagement with Zionists raises my IQ, but I suppose that's a lost cause anyway.
Rescuing the word 'tribalism' from its cloud of negative connotations might be a triumph of a kind. But it would be a limited triumph. How would they react to tribalism on the part of others, particularly were the tribe to be distinctly non-Jewish, as presumably some tribes are?
I agree with Eleanor that it's all a bit pathetic. Also terrifying.
The New Yorker, current edition, has an article (by Laura Secor) about a visit to Iran, saying, for what this may be worth, that the regime is ever more oppressive and that even the current level of sanctions is biting quite hard. Music to Obama's rather than to Netanyahu's ears, I suppose.
The reaction a couple of years ago from my own branch of Christendom, the Church of England, to the Kairos Palestine Document, was all but deafening silence. In comparison a 2:1 defeat amid considerable publicity, such as we see here, looks almost like progress. But I'm not sure about the turning of the tide. To me it seems rather more like swirls and eddies on a gloomy shore with no clear sign of long-term change.
It's rather a bad sign when the response to hecklers is simply to remove them. However, I'd be interested to know if Brennan was prepared to take questions and comments at the end of his remarks and whether anyone took the opportunity to express radical disagreement with him and, if that situation did arise, how he responded.
I don't know that Herzl actually offers a definition of 'Zionism'. He certainly attacks assimilation, on the grounds that non-Jews can never sincerely accept it. I don't understand how, at this rate, he expected the Palestinians to accept the Jewish State. In his novel Altneuland he suggests that they will accept it because it will bring them economic benefit, though this seems to be a contradiction of the idea that non-Jewish people never accept Jewish people. After all the Christians have never accepted the Jewish presence on the ground of Jewish contribution to national prosperity. He does not explain how any objection to a Jewish takeover of Palestine can rightfully be overridden.
I would like to think that Jewish people who were in influential positions in previous times, ie had power, thought and acted in the best interests of the groups to which they were affiliated. Thus I suppose that Sir Moses Montefiore worked for the best interests of the British nation and Albert Ballin, the Kaiser's good friend, for the best interests of the Germans - as well as they could interepret those interests. I assume that our recent UK Foreign Secretaries who are Jewish did their best for this kingdom in international affairs.
The idea that there is a Jewish Power which Jews actually do - or morally should - serve, regardless of their nationality or proclaimed loyalties, is actually an anti-Semitic idea of some destructive potential.
Hostage is right enough to say that there were ancient and medieval Jewish kingdoms whose people were presumably as patriotic as anyone else and whose level of morality was, as far as we can see, not too different from anyone else's. Jewish people are just like other people in morality and just like other people in the human rights that they can claim. So are the Palestinians. No difference at all. No innate superiorities. No innate sub-humanity.
Abraham actually found (taking the Biblical text fully at face value) the idea of God Most High, who seems to be one and unique, already alive and well in Canaan, represented by Melchizedek. If Abraham already believed in God MH he must have formed this idea in Syria or Iraq. Belief in God MH cannot at this rate convey any special rights deriving from Abraham but not from Melchizedek and from the Canaanites who shared his religion. If being descended from the people among whom this form of monotheism was conceived at an early time conveys a special status that status is possessed by Iraqis too.
I don't believe that people like Netanyahu or his Christian acolytes read the Bible very carefully.
The idea of different kinds or levels of soul, vegetative/nutritive, animal/perceptive, human/rational goes back to Aristotle's De Anima, Book II, whose influence on the Chabad exposition cited by Talkback is very marked, along with the 'Hippocratic' belief in the four elements. This theory was a development of Plato's belief about the structure of humanity, both at the individual and political level, which has often been used to justify 'aristocratic' forms of government - just as each of us should harken to what is best in us, so the best individuals should govern the state with utmost benevolence. Plato increasingly believed that God had given each individual a mission from before birth, though Plato has God act very indirectly, since he keeps his distance from the world. This idea too seems to be appropriated by Chabad mysticism. Developing Platonism in a Jewish direction would probably mean saying that the problem of Divine Remoteness is solved by having a subset of humanity, the Jews, with whom God partly abandons remoteness so that he can communicate through them with the rest of us and bring us all to the starry heavens in the end. This idea need not be shocking, though it surely could be dangerous.
Philo of Alexandria, the major Jewish intellectual of the first century CE, ingeniously disguised his Platonism by saying that Plato had studied the work of Moses, so was an acceptable philosopher from a Jewish point of view.
Yes, eluction does sound like a rather dodgy practice.
Sciri is right, I think. I've now read Gordis' review and found it colder and less emotional than Goldberg suggests. Judaism is ineluctably tribal, says Gordis. Beinart, Gordis continues, is mistakenly trying to export American liberalism to the ME, which is pointless, and to unite it with a kind of Jewish nationalism, which is self-contradictory. This is actually a reasoned critique of Beinart. Gordis adds that Israel is of and for the Jews, who accept the obligation to 'protect and honour' non-Jewish people but not an obligation to make a polity that is equally 'for' all concerned. The idea of human rights equal in all circumstances is rejected and Gordis is proud of the rejection.
The argument of Professor Leung seems to be that you cannot properly, in the course of teaching, mention a controversial document signed by yourself. I would have thought it was rather dishonest not to mention, in the course of teaching, any public commitment on a controversial matter that you've made. Students have a right to know where you stand, partly so that they can allow for any bias that may have crept into your brain.
Absolute refusal to put pressure on either side is in its way 'one-sided' too, since it amounts to letting the stronger side prevail without protest, and that amounts either to saying 'It's none of my business' or to saying 'It is my business and I want the side that is stronger at the moment to win'. Backhandedly, the 1200 rabbis give the reason why this is the business of Christian organisations. Israel and all its works, even the works of occupation where Caterpilar and the like are most involved, are strongly supported by the organisations of Judaism and attempts at finding common ground between Jewish and Christian belief are being made. The question of how much common ground exists is therefore a matter of Christian concern.
At that rate silence is encouragement of the stronger side, the Israelis, so is pretty one-sided in its own right.
Jewish organisations do not totally shrink from critique of Christianity, nor should they.
Beinart does see the problem of treating badly 'simply because they are not Jews' - I think we had this simple and pointed phrase quoted from him a few weeks ago. He worries about this in connection with the occupation. But he seems not for one moment to see that corralling the Palestinians into a sub-territory, the classic 2ss which he and many liberal Zionists seem to support, amounts to treating people badly 'simply because they are not Jews', only with different means.
'A God' - this is polytheism.
In the case of declared war between states and in the case of uprisings, acts enforcing existing authority and so on the questions are the same. Is there justice in the cause? Is the means used reasonably proportionate to the end sought? Are there reasonable efforts to limit damage to non-combatants?
It is sometimes said that it was pressure from Niels Bohr that played a crucial part, inducing the King of Sweden to announce over the radio that Danish refugees would be admitted. The Swedes had been less forthcoming, though not entirely unhelpful, to Jewish refugees from Norway.
Morris' quoted comment that 'of course Ben Gurion was a transferist' because of the necessities of his cause is of value, I think. Indeed he reminds that values, rather than facts, are at the heart of the problem. He doesn't bother to contest the anti-Zionist account of facts, indeed he almost revels in it, the more to insist on his radical existentialist proposition that it was all a matter of necessity: all other moral questions are excluded. We may not agree about that.
It's not surprising that there are Iranians who oppose the regime bitterly - how could there not be? - and perhaps some who would welcome Israeli help in overthrowing it, just as there were many French emigres in revolutionary times who fought with foreign armies. Whether it's the religious character of the regime that is objectionable I'm not sure. I expect many of the opponents would say that they were every bit as God-fearing as Khamenei.
Revelations 7 does not mention Dan among the tribes contributing 'servants of God to be sealed' - reasons not explained. That is quite likely the root of the story of the Danites' apostasy.
According to the Book of Daniel (6/28) that prophet did indeed 'prosper (katethune) during the reign of Cyrus'. It's worth noting that the portrait of the Iranian Empire in the scriptures, Hebrew or Greek, is quite favourable, a fact of historical importance in itself. The actual historical value of the portrait is another matter, of course.
Cyrus tends to get a good write-up from most sources, even Greeks who might well have disliked the Iranian royal house. A copy of the 'Cyrus Cylinder', a proclamation by Cyrus dated to around 540 saying what a good idea it is that everyone should worship at their own historic shrines and that he has put this idea into effect, is kept at the UN. Its liberalism has been rather exaggerated. Its presence at the UN reflects the influence of the Biblical portrait.
On Persian support for Temple/Israelites - it's interesting to look at Isaiah 45 and find that Cyrus, Iranian paragon, is God's 'Anointed' (in Greek or Latin, 'Christ' - always gives me a bit of a shock). Darius the Great in his autobio inscription refers to himself as an 'Aryan' (ie Iranian). Ezra says that the sums subscribed by the Iranian treasury to the Temple were vast - (some question this!)
Antichrist = rebel against anointed king, I suppose - was originally a Jewish character. He is often supposed to come from the apostate tribe of Dan. Wilhelm Bousset's 'Antichrist Legend' is quite a good read.
You don't refute an objection to (what is or what the objector says is) your breach of a moral law by saying that another breach of the same (0r another) moral law is going on somewhere else. Just no logic in that.
Very interesting! If a British writer were to say the same amid such immense publicity the reaction of the British leadership would be the same, I'm sure. It's a logical extension of the attitudes that are treated throughout the West as definitive of civilisation.
'Democracy' to me means that the mass of people should exercise or share sovereignty and therefore should, individual by individual, have reasonable access to conflicting ideas and be allowed to evaluate them. That means contact across frontiers and that in turn means that it is unreasonable and contrary to democracy to exclude foreigners simply because of their ideas or because they intend to express these ideas by speaking or by various symbolic acts which they hope will attract publicity. People may be excluded because they clearly plan to break the country's laws. But Israel claims to be a country where speaking out freely is protected, even when is widely unpopular, by law and moral principle.
So if this isn't anti-democratic petulance I don't know what would be.
GG says, in the specific words he writes in ink, that Israel claims the right to use nuclear weapons in a 'first strike', 'right' (rather than intention) being the important word. He creates an image of the sudden mass destruction of Iranians gathered, slave-style, to hear the orations of their deluded, big-talking leader.
I think that this is a tragic and moving image, rather in the same genre as Belshazzar's Feast. Is it created with sufficient care for facts?
No outsider knows whether Israel intends to attack Iran at all. It may be likely that any conceivable attack would be only on remote sites and only with sub-nuclear weapons. But I don't think that it's wrong for worst fears, as distinct from the analysed probabilities, to be voiced somewhere, perhaps in poetry, since poetry is about hopes and fears as well as about facts. I don't even think that these are quite the worst fears or quite unthinkable on the level of facts.
It may be that the level of destruction considered to be essential is the reason why Israel's hand has so far been stayed. But any array of nuclear weapons, at least if accompanied by threats, is a claim to the right to destroy people en masse. I don't think that Israelis consider, at the leadership level at least, that they have no right to a first but only to a second strike. That is not enough in itself, of course, to prove that they're in the wrong. The right to a first strike was claimed in the firmest terms by us in Nato in the Cold War years.
As far as I can see the Zohar, developing the idea of the sin of Moses in Numbers 20, says that an unnamed Israelite killed Moses. I presume that this was known to Ernst Sellin, whose 1922 History of Israel much influenced Freud, and who argued that Moses had been killed by his followers. The suggestion that King Manasseh, generally regarded as a bad guy, killed Isaiah, adviser to his father Hezekiah, is separate - something easily imagined, perhaps.
Rensanceman suggests, I think, that the Zohar and the mystical writings of later Judaism present an alternative or antidote to Zionism, a suggestion of which I'd like to hear more.
Confirmed by W.Carr's History of Germany, 4th edition, p.314 - and as far as I can recall by every standard work. And the famous Nazi HQ was 'the Brown House' in recognition of the SA colour. It is often said that the Nazis in their early days purchased a job lot of brown uniforms originally destined for soldiers in Africa, not needed when WW1 ended.
Your questions don't seem to be a comment on what I said, which is that there is a difference between subjective concern for someone - 'My Own' - and attribution to that person of objectively greater importance than others. I would say that that is true however 'My Own' may be defined, though of course different people envisage 'their own' in many different ways.
If we're agreed about that we could discuss other relevant things. If we're not agreed about that we could discuss it. I think it's only fair to catch the hare that's running before starting others.
I don't know how you define zones of war and of peace. If you say that people living in war zones gain the right to do things not permitted in peace zones that is probably true, for reasons given by Hobbes, though like most people today I would modify Hobbes' argument quite strictly, as I expect you would. But that is because they live in war zones, not because of their connection with me or with you.
Many people are more important to me than many others for many reasons. None of these reasons mean that those for whom I'm concerned are, even in my view, possessed of greater rights. My concerns don't provide a reason for me to support My Own in gaining unjust advantages over Your Lot.
Thanks for kind words, Stop, and for additional information. We Brits find it difficult to keep up with all these Councils, Foundations and Societies that vie for influence in Washington.
In reply to Dan - you make me think that I shouldn't have risen to the bait in the way I did. Alison Deger points out that in calling the NS movement a civil rights organisation the Foxists, whom we're generally against, showed ignorance and poor judgement. The reply about the other Alison and her Clayton Douglas interview would be relevant only if it showed comparable faults on our part, which it doesn't begin to do. It's not as if we've used any kind words of any sort about Douglas.
Douglas may not be a nice person. But we shouldn't permit the discussion to be organised so that it can't begin until everyone concerned has proved to the satisfaction of everyone else, which is impossible, that they aren't anti-Semitic personally or even (as here) by tenuous association.
I'm visiting your part of the world shortly, Dan, and am looking forward to the authentic Boston eating and drinking experience.
She spells it 'Alison' on her If Americans site. I agree that we have to be accountable for the company we keep, though everyone has to decide how far it is legitimate to seek to persuade people of very different background and belief. I read the transcript. I didn't think that A, on that record, seems intrigued by Duke's recorded harangue about menorahs in the White House, I think she clearly expresses scepticism about it. She does say something about Jewish influence on the American decision for war in 1917. This is a subject that calls for the utmost care in the use of words and I think she is trying to exercise that care. Whether she is careful enough when addressing that sort of (I think far-right) audience may be hard to say. But my smell test doesn't come up with any whiff of anti-Semitism.
Mind you, failing to exercise enough care in the use of words is less bad, a lot less bad, than failing to draw attention to injustice and suffering when you have encountered them.
There are some hereditary differences in appearance within the human race, though they're remarkably hard to define. Otherwise race is a concept with no scientific validity. There's no objective test for being or not being Jewish. There are tests based on religion and culture but there is no authority determining which tests of religion and culture should be used.
The manifest Americanism 'pants' should raise a red flag here. I don't think that there's any convincing source for Churchill's use of this phrase. There is a full text available on the net of a sermon by our great British Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon, from April 1855, saying that lie goes round the world while 'truth is pulling its boots on'. He attributes the image to an 'old proverb' but no proverb with a reference to boots or other items of clothing has been found.
Another spectre haunting Europe.
Not soon, I think.
'Both' = Romney and Montague?