Tony Judt talks some sense.

I wholeheartedly disagree with some of the points in this article. While the author claims to be “objectively” discussing the issue of Israel and Palestine “without the usual cliches,” he actually unknowingly repeats some cliche points of Israeli propaganda. Israel is not a democracy that doesn’t quite treat some of it’s citizens right; IT IS AN APARTHEID SYSTEM. Apartheid systems and democracy have nothing in common. The problem is not just that non-Jewish citizen’s within Israel’s borders are treated poorly; but also that Israel is occupying Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza and making people’s lives worse than miserable. (Although I agree that being a democracy is no guarantee of good behavior.)
Also, linguistically, anti-semitism means criticism of Semitic peoples, which include both Arabs and Jews.
While some of the rest of what he says contains a lot of truth and good points, I think many of what he calls “cliches” about Israel are simply truths–that Israel is to blame, is not a democracy, and should be delegitimized.

Israel is an illegitimate usurper state founded on the basis of ethnic cleansing. Though this could also be said of other settler-colonial states such as the United States, so long as Palestinians demand the right of return and Israel refuses it Israel can never be seen as legitimate.

According to Ha’aretz, Mahmoud Abbas “told U.S. Jewish leaders on Wednesday that he would never deny Jews their right to the land of Israel.” As a U.S. Jew let me say this: we have no right to the stolen land of Palestine. Hundreds of Jews from the U.S. have renounced this illegitimate “right” in the Breaking the Law of Return campaign. And many other Jews in the U.S. and elsewhere organize specifically for the decolonization of Palestine in the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, whose charter calls for “the dismantling of Israeli apartheid, the return of Palestinian refugees, and the ending of the Israeli colonization of historic Palestine.”

Jill says:

June 10, 2010 at 11:43 am

Well, DB, good luck with that. Those of us who live in the real world realize that Israel is not going to cease to exist anytime soon, and it doesn’t really make any sense to call for its demise.

Shira, most people know that linguistically “Semitic” refers to Semitic people generally, including Arabs and Jews. “Bitch” also refers to female dogs, but I think we all understand that it’s used differently in general conversation.

I’m not sure what you mean be “demise.” Decolonizing doesn’t mean that the Jews leave Israel. South Africa was decolonized after apartheid fell when it became a democratic state. When the Palestinian right of return is respected and all people who live under the same sovereign power in Israel/Palestine have the same rights, that state will be legitimate, whatever it’s called.

Jill says:

June 10, 2010 at 11:55 am

DB, are there other countries in the world that you believe are illegitimate?

Also, linguistically, anti-semitism means criticism of Semitic peoples, which include both Arabs and Jews.

I think that’s one of those pointlessly-distracting quibbles. Like people arguing that they’re not homophobic because “phobia” means “fear” and they’re not AFRAID of gay people. We know the literal meaning of semite/semitic, and we also know what anti-semitic MEANS, get over it.

Israel is not a democracy that doesn’t quite treat some of it’s citizens right; IT IS AN APARTHEID SYSTEM.

Actually, Israel IS a democracy – it’s just that approximately 4.1M of the people who live there, out of its 11.45M population, aren’t citizens and don’t have the vote. South Africa was counted as a democracy even in the days when only 9.6% of the population had the vote.

I largely agree with this article, although I would place the beginning of Israel’s never missing opportunities to miss opportunities a little later than 1967 (although Israel did miss a big opportunity in 1967 — instead of trying to use the territories it found itself occupying as bargaining chips with the Arab world, it should have spun off those territories into a Palestinian State. I’d place Israel’s never failing to miss opportunities to begin some time in the 1980s.

Also, while many of Israel’s actions lately are highly questionable — in their legality in international law, in their morality and in their strategic value for Israel for that matter — Israel’s invasion of Gaza was not: Israel was under constant attack by rocket fire from Gaza. Who cares if those rockets were innaccurate or whatever — when a nation is under rocket attack, it’s pretty basic that such a nation has a right to defend itself, including invading the location from which those attacks originate!

One thing Judt does do is underestimate the degree to which, while maybe not anti-Semitic, the degree to which anti-Zionists tend to be the sorts of people who are big into the power of narrative and the imporance of listening to narratives even as they tend to completely and out of hand dismiss the Zionist narrative. In general the double standards of anti-Zionists (“Israel is bad … country X which does the same things Israel is accused of doesn’t merit special criticism”) rankle many Jews who detect anti-Semitism as the motivation for these double standards.

The other thing Judt underestimates is the cultural importance to Israel of “being strong”. Remember that for centuries we Jews have been a weak persecuted group. While to many “never again” means that we should make sure no genocide happens again, to many Jews “never again” means that we should fight back, and fight hard, against anybody who tries to kill us — starting at the first hints of possible genocide. That is why negotiation with Hamas is so unthinkable: (vide infra) they don’t merely want to establish a Palestinian state or even have a “one-state” solution where Jews are a minority (even in our own “homeland”) in a binational state, but they want to “drive us into the sea” — i.e. drown Israeli Jews in a massive genocide. So of course, the Jewish reaction to such talk is “well, we heard it from Hitler and ignored it until it was too late — never again!”

Also, in re the definition of anti-Semitism — while the etymology of the word would seem to include Arabs, the word was specifically invented (by someone who himself was anti-Semitic, IIRC) to refer to hatred of Jews.

As to Israel being an apartheid state, alas many states do not give religious/ethnic minorities first class citizenship but they are not branded apartheid states — btw, it isn’t just non-Jews against whom Israel discriminates: if you are not “traditional Orthodox” in Israel, your Judaism is not considered to be “real Judaism” — hence most Israelis are actually secularists who reject Judaism as a religion entirely. What distinguishes an apartheid state (e.g. South Africa or the Jim-Crow Era American South) is a complete separation of accomodations for the races with only one race even having a meaningful say in governance. Non-Jewish Israeli Arabs may face deplorable discrimination but they are still citizens with rights to seek redress, a right to vote, etc.

As to the status of Palestinians in the occupied territories, they are inhabitants of occupied territories and no-one would expect that they have the same rights and standing as Israeli citizens. Unless Israel were to annex the occupied territories, why should the inhabitants of those territories by given the same status as citizens.

Of course the way to normalize the status of Palestinians in the occupied territories is to either integrate them into an existing state or to establish a state for them (with Israel withdrawing from occupied territories — perhaps with some land swaps so Israel can keep historically Jewish areas such as parts of Hebron, the Old City of Jerusalem and some Jerusalem suburbs). Unfortunately, the Palestinians have never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity and now Israel is going to be very inclined to miss opportunities — wouldn’t you be inclined not to “give up land for peace” if the last time you gave up land, you didn’t get any peace in return?

The one problem with this very understandable attitude is that it gives Hamas (btw, Judt is a bit off about Hamas — a terrorist national liberation organization is one thing — but Hamas is not the ANC — it doesn’t want to create a Palestinian state or even establish a binational “one-state solution” along what the ANC aimed for in South Africa — it wants a genocide in which Jewish Israelis are driven into the sea. That is beyond even what racist nuts like A. Lieberman — who doesn’t want to kill all Palestinians just to deport them somewhere else — want … so how can Israel negotiate with Hamas? Hamas doesn’t even just want the Israeli state as we know it to cease to exist … it wants genocide) all the cards: if Israel will stop initiating actions working toward peace because of Hamas’ responses to those actions, then Israel is doing Hamas’ bidding on many levels. How is this a smart thing for Israel to do?

OK Jill, you caught me–I am in favor of smashing the state and usually against nationalism. Guilty!

But for the time being, I think we can single out states whose existence in a particular form (i.e., a “Jewish State” in Palestine) means that an indigenous population is displaced and denied legal and political rights.

Jill says:

June 10, 2010 at 12:10 pm

DB, I’m not saying you are against nationalism. I am asking if your argument that Israel lacks legitimacy because of its displacement of an indigenous population and its denial of rights applies to any other country.

I believe that language has power, and therefore changing how we use language can be important to changing power relations.

It was my understanding that (at least some of) the feminist movement has some interest in eradicating the usage of “bitch” to describe women. By the same token, I’m interested in doing away with using the term anti-Semite to refer exclusively to anti-Jewish sentiment. As a Jew, I think using it to mean Jews only encourages an exclusionary victimization/persecution complex that contributes toward justifications of Israeli colonialism. Jews are not the only people that face discrimination; it is more specific and accurate to refer to that as anti-Jewish sentiment.

Personally, I don’t call women bitches and I only use the term anti-Semitism if it’s really what I mean.

Shira, this argument has been had a million times before. If your definition of anti-Semitism is different from other Jews’, that’s your choice. But you don’t have the authority to tell other Jews how we may or may not use it. You see “an exclusionary victimization/persecution complex;” I see a system of oppression that functions very specifically toward one ethno-religious group in ways that it doesn’t function toward others. Here’s a good resource, if you’re interested.

I am asking if your argument that Israel lacks legitimacy because of its displacement of an indigenous population and its denial of rights applies to any other country.

Yes. In my first post I named the United States. Other obvious examples include Canada, Australia, and South Africa before the fall of apartheid. There are many other examples of settler colonialism. I don’t think these states are legitimate! But history can’t always be undone. When it can’t I think we should consider reparations and other forms of addressing historical injustice, depending on what the indigenous populations involved call for.

Especially as the citizen of a state that exists on account of destroying an indigenous population, I feel that it’s important to support indigenous struggles everywhere. Some examples of places where there have been recent indigenous struggles against colonialism include Tibet, East Timor, and Hawai’i.

In the case of Palestine, my tax dollars help fund the Israeli State and my government has obstructed attempts by the international community to allow the Palestinian refugees to return to their stolen land. My Jewishness is further used as an excuse for this colonialism. That’s why I devote a lot of time and energy to decolonizing Palestine.

RE: DAS:

although Israel did miss a big opportunity in 1967 — instead of trying to use the territories it found itself occupying as bargaining chips with the Arab world, it should have spun off those territories into a Palestinian State.

Agreed. The Sinai Peninsula as part of the final Palestinian state would have made for a significantly more viable two-state solution.

You know, the Egyptians could give the Sinai Peninsula to the Palestinians. Nobody is asking Egypt or Jordan to make any concessions on behalf of the Palestinians.

Jordan could have annexed the West Bank, after the 1948 extermination war against Israel failed. But it didn’t want to absorb the refugees. So it put them into camps.

Egypt didn’t want Gaza back in the 1973 peace negotiations and back-channel negotiations to return the West Bank to Jordan broke down several times. Israel’s occupation of the Palestinians was sort of a consequence of the various wars and subsequent peace negotiations Israel had with its neighbors.

To the extent Israel should have, at some point in the past, supported or pressed for the creation of a Palestinian state, a formal peace agreement is a reasonable precondition of such an arrangement. There has never been any leadership among the Palestinians that was empowered to offer peace to Israel.

DB,

Your historical perspective is completely ill-informed. Israel’s borders were originally drawn by a UN partition, which divided the land into a Jewish state and an Arab state.

As soon as Israel declared itself independent, Egypt, Jordan and Syria attacked with the intention of conquering the territory. Israel mounted a successful defense. Thus, the 1948 borders of the Israeli state were ultimately determined by the armistice lines of the 1948 war, rather than the UN partition.

At the end of the 1948 war, the West Bank was occupied by Jordan and the Gaza Strip was occupied by Egypt.

The Arabs were not “indigenous.” They were descendants of previous settler-colonialists who conquered the region from the Romans, or who migrated to the region when it was under the dominion of the Ottoman empire. Jews consider themselves an indigenous population to this land.

Your entire narrative about this is based on misinformation.

DB and Shira — I am curious … how far removed are you from the “classical diaspora Jewish experience” (e.g. the experience of Jews in pre-WWII/during WWII Europe or the Middle East outside of Israel)? For example many of my feelings about Zionism reflect the ambivalence of someone who is 3 generations removed from the shtetl (i.e. you’d have to go back to my great-grandparents to find any immigrants in my heritage) but as a Jew active within the Jewish community, I have known quite well immigrants from the Middle East and Europe.

The reason why I ask is that those who have lived through a half-way successful attempt to kill (not deport, but kill) your entire people are not very likely to view the feelings of persecution that some Jews have as being a “complex” even if, in a clinical sense, it is a complex. Similarly Jews whose experience of living in the diaspora (even, for example, in some of the more “Christian” areas of the US — for example in my youth I was very definitely made to feel that I was not a “real American” because of my religion* — and I was never physically harmed or even really teased for my religion) has been that of “you are merely a guest here — you are not a real member of our society” would hardly consider themselves to be “colonists” when/if they immigrate to Israel. You can hardly understand Zionism for what it is if you can only view Zionism as a “colonialist” movement — Zionism, remember, arose in a cultural millieu in which Jews were considered as not belonging in the diaspora and going to Israel was, for many Jews, really “going home”. One certainly can argue that the desire for Jews to “go home” did not justify the displacement of Palestinians that resulted from the Zionist project (how this displacement happened is, itself, a matter of debate — but certainly this displacement was, while a humanitarian tragedy, no worse than many other displacements, including that of the Mizrachi Jews, that happened in that era), but to dismiss Zionism as a form of colonialism is to minimize the experience of many Jews who were treated, no matter where they lived, as outsiders. Even Jews, who for religious/ideological reasons might not be inclined to agree with the secular/nationalistic ideology of Zionism, are often alienated by the dismissal of Zionism as a form of colonialism — because that dismissal ignores the very real persecution of Jews as outsiders wherever we lived in the diaspora. Indeed, the degree to which this dismissal ignores Jewish suffering is part of why many Jews tend to assume anti-Zionists are anti-Semitic: “you say Jews are colonists in Israel? but we are also outsiders in Europe/the Arab World? if our home is not in Israel — and it certainly isn’t in the diaspora — then where should we Jews live? Antartica?”

OTOH, I imagine to many American Jews, insulated from real anti-Semitism and exclusion, America is a home. Thus, we are increasingly sympathetic with Palestinians who were displaced from their homes as a consequence of Zionism and increasinly less sympathetic with Zionism (which is a “solution” to Jewish “national homelessness”). Of course, those of us Jews who are involved in communal Jewish life are “closer” (via our friendships and the re-enforcement of the Zionist narrative that occurs within many Jewish communal contexts) to the generations that did not feel at home in the diaspora and hence we still tend to embrace Zionism.

However, those within the Jewish community who think that increasing the involvement of young Jews within that community will increase support for Zionism are slightly misguided — I bet at some point for young Jews not already embedded within the organized Jewish community, the emphasis of that community on Zionism further alienates those Jews from the Jewish community — is this the case?

After all, the residual Judaism possessed by many young, relatively secular Jews are the core tenets of Judaism such as “do not do to others what you would not have done to yourself”. We Jews have sufferred greatly at the hands of nationalists and at the hands of those who held loyalty to ethnos greater than loyalty to humanity. So the reasoning that infuses the Zionist component of so much Jewish communal life — that we should, as Jews, support a Jewish National State even if its survival as such requires it defend itself vigorously no matter what the cost to other peoples — must extremely alienate many young Jews from Jewish communal life, does it not?

* a perusal of David Brooks’ columns, trying explicate these “real Americans” one of whom he so wishes he was, shows the pathologies this can engender 🙂

DAS: this isn’t really important, but was there a reason for the bolding of the first few letters of “Hebron”? It’s not derived from “Hebrew.”

Dan:

The Arabs were not “indigenous.” They were descendants of previous settler-colonialists who conquered the region from the Romans, or who migrated to the region when it was under the dominion of the Ottoman empire. Jews consider themselves an indigenous population to this land.

I’m sure you also agree that Europeans had as much right to the Americas as the Native Americans did, since some of those Native Americans had come to live there through conquest.

Seriously, cut it out. You have a group of people who haven’t lived in the land for millennia, and a group who have lived there for at least centuries. Which of these can more appropriately be called indigenous?

DB,

Your historical perspective is completely ill-informed. Israel’s borders were originally drawn by a UN partition, which divided the land into a Jewish state and an Arab state.

At the time of the partition vote Jews were still, substantially, the minority in Palestine. The indigenous population was asked to agree to give up half their land, including Palestinian population centers such as Safad and Akka. It seems surprising that you (and others) would expect the Palestinian leadership to give up half of the country to a settler-colonial movement that had made explicitly clear that they wanted the entire land, and intended to “transfer” the Palestinians. (Herzl’s writings supported transfer and even if these weren’t available then, there were also public statements by Zionist leaders in the 1930s.)

As soon as Israel declared itself independent, Egypt, Jordan and Syria attacked with the intention of conquering the territory. Israel mounted a successful defense. Thus, the 1948 borders of the Israeli state were ultimately determined by the armistice lines of the 1948 war, rather than the UN partition.

This is ill-informed. Before the declaration of independence, over 200 Palestinian villages had already been ethnically cleansed. I encourage you to read The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine by historian Ilan Pappe (an Israeli Jew). The Arab armies were attempting to stop the ethnic cleansing but it was too late. The Arab armies did not pose a serious threat to the nascent Israeli State anyway. If you don’t like Ilan Pappe I encourage you to read any other Israeli “new historian” on the events of 1948–some of whom are definitely pro-Zionist (e.g. Benny Morris, who said that Ben-Gurion should have “finished the job,” i.e. killed or expelled all the Palestinians).

At the end of the 1948 war, the West Bank was occupied by Jordan and the Gaza Strip was occupied by Egypt.

Yes: as a result of the Israeli ethnic cleansing these territories, flooded with refugees from the parts of Palestine usurped by the 1948 State of Israel, came under Jordanian and Egyptian control. Then Israel occupied these parts of Palestine in 1967 (this week is the 43rd anniversary of that tragedy), which was its plan all along.

The Arabs were not “indigenous.” They were descendants of previous settler-colonialists who conquered the region from the Romans, or who migrated to the region when it was under the dominion of the Ottoman empire. Jews consider themselves an indigenous population to this land.

This is bizarre and offensive. Before the Zionist movement began in 1870, the population of Palestine was 98% Arab, 2% Jewish. In 1946 after decades of Jewish colonies being built in Palestine, it was still 65% Arab, 35% Jewish. Most of these Palestinian Arabs lived as farmers in rural communities, relatively unmolested while the land passed from Ottoman to British control. Jews may have historic interest in Palestine but they were not an indigenous population at the dawn of the Zionist movement. I guess centuries of presence does not make a people indigenous to a land, in your eyes? Were the Native Americans indigenous people? They migrated from somewhere.

To the extent Israel should have, at some point in the past, supported or pressed for the creation of a Palestinian state, a formal peace agreement is a reasonable precondition of such an arrangement. – Dan

Not necessarily. After the 1967 war, Israel found itself occupying the territories that were supposed to have been turned into a Palestinian state according to the UN resolution of 1947. In the absense of a treaty, it would have been borderline as far as international law is concerned to have done so, but since there was no party with whom to make a treaty (anyway the previous country that legally possessed the land per se, rather than merely occupied it, was Great Britain, which may have gone along with things), Israel could very well have annexed the Old City of Jerusalem and certain other key sites of historical interest to Jews and turned the rest of the “occupied territories” into a Palestinian state.

Of course it would have been easier for Israel to do so if the Palestinians had a government in waiting (like the Congress movement in India or the ANC in South Africa) to which to turn over government of the territories in question, but Israel is a “can do nation” — they would have found a way if they wanted to do so.

The reason why Israel didn’t want to do so is that, at that time, the conflict was not the “Israeli/Palestinian conflict” but the “Arab/Israeli conflict”. Shortsightedly, the leadership of Israel did not envision an era where the world would demonize Israel as an “occupier of Palestinian lands” (the people who thus demonized Israel at the time demonized Israel for its very existence) but rather they wanted peace with the Arab nations surrounding Israel — so they held onto the occupied territories to use for “land for peace” exchanges with neighboring Arab states, not fully getting the fact that the Arab states in question did not want the territories occupied by Israel (except for Egypt wanting the Sinai peninsula), so why should they make peace with Israel in exchange for those territories.

Of course, hard-core anti-Zionists would not have accepted a two-state solution whose terms were dictated by Israel (and not exactly in accordance with the 1947 partition or even the 1948 armistice) but likely they would not have accepted any two-state solution anyway. But, pace the “everyone hates Israel no matter what Israel does” crowd, there are many people who are now alienated by Israel and cannot support Israel due to Israeli treatment of Palestinians, but whose support Israel would now have if there was a viable Palestinian state alongside with Israel in accordance with (if not exactly within the boundaries of) the 1947 UN partition.

Can we please please please please stop disappearing a substantial number of Israelis from this conversation? Like, the ones of Middle Eastern descent? Israeli Jews aren’t all white Europeans.

Rebecca — my mistake (partially) … I thought Hebron was HeBR as in Hebrew/Ever. Evidently it’s as in the Kenite tribe of Heber. Although given the mixing between Kenites and Western Semites (I have always wondered — was Simeon really a Kenite tribe?), I would suspect that Heber and Ever might refer to two different branches of the same tribe.

But here —

You have a group of people who haven’t lived in the land for millennia

You are not exactly correct. In spite of the best efforts of many groups (e.g. the Romans) to purge the land of Israel of Jews (the Romans even renamed the land after the Philistines who were neither Hebrews nor Arabs … unlike today’s Palestinians who are Arabs), the land of Israel has been continuously occupied by Jews for those millennia. True, before the “First Aliya” the numbers of those Jews were small (*), but they were there.

* interestingly, many of Jews whose families immigrated to “Palestine” from Europe prior to the First Aliya were/are militantly anti-Zionist, ostensibly for religious/theological reasons. However, one must wonder how much the rise of communal tensions between Jews and Arabs, whose immigration to Palestine also increased with the immigration of Jews to Palestine, influenced the anti-Zionism of such groups as Neturei Karta. After all, “things were pretty good for us until those Zionists came and messed things up” must have gone through at least some of their heads. It’s an understandable one but not a very liberal one — I’m sure, for example, the wave of anti-Black violence that occurred as a reaction to the civil rights movement was met by some African-Americans with “things were good enough for us until our uppity brethren started to try and make trouble”.

Shoshie – you’re right, that was wrong of me. I should have made clear that by a people who hadn’t lived there for millennia, I was referring specifically to Europeans.

Regarding Shoshie’s comment–
….Yes, can we please stop doing that? Especially considering that 1) racism/discrimination against Sephardim is a big problem in modern day Israel and 2) many Sephardim left their countries of origin in the hope of FINALLY no longer being second class citizens. Yes, for much of Jewish history the Middle East was a better place to live than say, Russia. Doesn’t mean you had equal rights.

Regardless of the underlying reasons for it, the disapperance of traditional Jewish communities and cultures across the Middle East in the last 50 years is a travesty–and every time we overwrite “Jewish” with “Ashkenaz” we help perpetuate the forgetting of those cultures.

To be clear, I’m using “Sephardim” as shorthand for “of Middle Eastern descent,” in my comment above, which isn’t entirely correct, but the point stands (Mizrahi, Iraqui, Indian, Iranian, etc)

At the time of the partition vote Jews were still, substantially, the minority in Palestine – DB

In the part of the land allocated for a Jewish state at the time of partition (as well as in Jerusalem), Jews were a majority. East Timorese were a minority in Indonesia (IIRC, even in Timor itself) … should the whole of Indonesia (or even Timor) had a vote in whether East Timor should be independent?

As to the issue of Palestinians being “ethnically cleansed”, it seems there is much debate about this. Most likely some villages were ethnically cleansed, some people evacuated out of fear of ethnic cleansing and some people left in a more truly voluntary manner. But how was the displacement of Palestinians any different than any other mass displacement of that era? The key difference is that other displaced groups (including Mizrachi Jews) were resettled in the countries in which they found themselves. Palestinian refugees, OTOH, were herded into refugee camps to be used as bargaining chips with Israel.

BTW — Israel has not (rightly or wrongly) offered these refugees (and certainly not their descendents) a right to return to Israel (which right has also not been offered to many other refugee groups from the era). OTOH, Israel has indicated that, as part of a general peace agreement, it will compensate Palestinians for lost property. Meanwhile, the Arab world still refuses any form of compensation to Mizrachi Jews.

As to the idea that Jews “stole” Palestinian land, generally Jews tried to settle on land where there were no current inhabitants or absentee landlords. Even Zionists, at first, possessed the “sha! shtil!” attitude of the diaspora.

dan: And of course, Jews were the very first human beings to ever live in the land that is now Israel, and didn’t migrate there from somewhere else. Any archeological evidence to the contrary was planted there for nefarious purposes. Likewise the genetic evidence that many modern Palestinians have significant Jewish ancestry. All lies.

I had just assumed Rebecca was referring to the Jewish presence in Palestine/Israel itself … not to the presence of Jews in the Middle East as a whole. Certainly, a good percentage of Jews in Israel are of very recent Middle Eastern state of origin.

Meanwhile, Israel has long been populated by a small number of Jews, of Sephardic, Ashkenazic, Italian, Mizrachi, etc. “national” origin. BTW, it was only, AFAIK, the (ultra-orthodox as well as the Reform among the) Ashkenazic Jews who had serious theological issues with Zionism (which itself was largely an Ashkenazic movement, at least at first).

Ah, the tissue of lies.

dan: Also, Jordan DID annex the west Bank after the 1948 war, and offer citizenship to the residents. Of course, they lost it again later.

DAS – no worries. I’m just an etymology pedant.

As for the rest of the comment, yes, of course there were Jews living there – but not European Jews (or American Jews), who are asserting an ancient claim to Israel. As Chava points out, Jews are not a homogeneous culture.

That’s not a bad article. Some of it I don’t agree with, most especially #4: Judt seems to be glossing over a lot of the lost opportunities for a solution, many of which have been raised since 1967 and almost all of which involved Palestinians to a large degree.

Israel has made a lot of failed demands, and has failed to offer up some things which Palestine really needs. But Palestine has rejected a lot of offers, too, and has made a lot of demands which they fully know Israel won’t be able to meet.

Therefore, to phrase the last three decades as “israel’s basic fault” is more than a bit odd. Does Israel bear some blame for failing to offer something which would fully satisfy the Palestinians’ demands? Sure–but the Palestinians’ refusal to make concessions has hugely damaged their cause and their standing as well. It takes two to deal.

And this:

If [Palestinians] pre-concede every Israeli demand — abjurance of violence, acceptance of Israel, acknowledgment of all their losses — what do they bring to the negotiating table? Israel has the initiative: it should exercise it.

seems like a deliberate misstatement of the facts.

First of all, it’s not complete pre-concessions that are required. Some are, to be sure: a component of any serious negotiation whose end goal is peace is probably have both nations agree that slaughtering the other nations’s inhabitants is no longer government policy. (The degree to which people are willing to ignore or push aside the Hamas charter is very, very, odd.)

And, of course, those demands for pre-concessions are (as with the post-67 landscape) mutual problems, not Israeli problems. Have the Palestinians arrived at every negotiation with open arms and with no agenda demands, only to be deterred by cruel and unjustified Israeli demands for concessions? Of course not. But Judt sure as shit doesn’t see fit to mention it.

Of course, one serious problem with the negotiations is that the Palestinians haven’t had a powerhouse–since Arafat–who could actually provide what s/he promised. Israelis can sit at the table and offer a “complete military pullout” and “cessation of hostilities” and their army, and other government bodies, will do as they are told. Palestinians can’t actually exercise that sort of control over their population, which makes the negotiations harder, because they can promise less. (I’m not talking about deliberate government circumvention of a deal–every country does that, Israel and Palestinine included. I’m talking about the ability of a government to actually control its citizens, which Palestine doesn’t really have.)

That failure of control also provides an problematic reason for Israel to demand pre-concessions. To use an example: if Israel thinks Palestine doesn’t have the ability to stop missile attacks, then Israel won’t bargain things away in exchange for a stop of missile attacks. But of course, Palestine might not have that ability unless the negotiations work.

The end result is unfortunate: Israel (logically) refuses to negotiate until attacks stop. Palestine (logically) refuses to blow any political capital on stopping attacks, unless it is going to get something out of it.

As with a lot of the other stuff: yep, it’s a problem. But it’s a JOINT problem, not an ISRAELI problem.

In summary: Judt’s article isn’t as bad as some, insofar as it’s at least mostly accurate. But it suffers from the same sins of omission and balance that we see in a lot of biased articles, whether for or against. And his most pointed conclusions don’t seem accurate at all.

I also recommend ‘Israel’s Strategic Failure,’ by Walter Mead: http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2010/06/03/israels-strategic-failure/

It’s got bias, too, of course. but it’s a good read.

oy–can a mod fix my blockquote?

The degree to which people are willing to ignore or push aside the Hamas charter is very, very, odd. – Sailorman

In general, many self-proclaimed anti-Zionists seem very willing to ignore or push aside any concerns of Israeli Jews or those who support/have friends/relatives who are Israeli Jews (full disclosure, a distant cousin of mine was the head of Meretz for a while). More generally, anti-Zionists don’t just dispute specifics of the Zionist narrative but deny key aspects of the diaspora Jewish experience (that led to the development of Zionism in the first place) and minimize the very real history of persecution of Jews in order to fit the story of Israel/Palestine into their own narrative of Israel=colonialist aggressor/Palestine=colonized nation. This is one reason why many in the Jewish community tend to view anti-Zionists with skepticism as to whether beneath their anti-Zionism lurks anti-Semitism.

Something else pernicious about Judt’s article is that it maintains the fiction that the situation in Israel/Palestine is a “conflict” with “two sides” that each need to make “concessions” for a peaceful solution.

In some situations it’s wrong to be balanced. When one side is fighting occupation, colonization, and apartheid, and has been subject to brutal oppression for decades, it’s callous to their suffering to ask that they make “concessions.” Palestinians are fighting back against their dispossession and the occupation of their land–they’ve already lost a great deal. What more should they be asked to give up? What more concessions can the world in good conscience demand of the people of Gaza?

Furthermore even Western liberals are typically willing to accept armed resistance (what’s sometimes called “terrorism,” when you disagree with it) by the side that’s fighting against the colonial power.

The prevailing demand for “balance” and “concessions on both sides” is evidence of the strength of pro-Zionist discourse that has turned a situation with a deep imbalance of power, and an obvious imbalance of claims to justice, into a “conflict.”

Israelis can sit at the table and offer a “complete military pullout” and “cessation of hostilities” and their army, and other government bodies, will do as they are told. Palestinians can’t actually exercise that sort of control over their population, which makes the negotiations harder, because they can promise less.

This is kind of an elision of the fact that Israel has an army, while the Palestinians who are committing aggressions against Israel are irregulars. Israel has its own irregulars, and it’s been completely unable or unwilling to control them.

Obviously the Hamas government isn’t unassociated with these “irregulars,” but, as you said, there’s not the same control.

The degree to which people are willing to ignore or push aside the Hamas charter is very, very, odd

Not noticeably more so than the degree to which people are not even aware of the contents of the charters of some Israeli parties. I find it more worthwhile to look at politicians’ actions.

The end result is unfortunate: Israel (logically) refuses to negotiate until attacks stop. Palestine (logically) refuses to blow any political capital on stopping attacks, unless it is going to get something out of it. – Sailorman

Indeed — the reason why the Israel/Palestine conflict is so intractable is not that one or the other side is being unreasonable but that both sides are being quite reasonable. It’s hard enough to convince people to stop being irrational in order to pursue a reasonable solution to a vexing problem. It’s even harder to convince people to stop being rational to fix a vexing problem!

Peace will come to Israel/Palestine when a reasonable person on the Palestinian side can say “you know what, even if the Israelis get most of what they want at the negotiating table, things won’t be that bad” and a reasonable person on the Israeli side can say “you know what, even if the Palestinians get most of what they want at the negotiating table, things won’t be that bad”.

The odd thing about certain anti-Zionists is that they just refuse to see how the Israeli side has a certain logic to it (the same point could be made about certain Zionists vis-a-vis the logic of the Palestinian side): recently, on another blog in the comments section, a self-proclaimed moderate (albeit anti-Zionist in inclination) claimed that an Israeli, concerned about his personal safety should Israel be subsumed into an Arab-Palestinian majority binational state, has to show why he has concerns about such an outcome as to her, that this hypothetical Israeli’s concerns were valid was not obvious. Given what Israelis have experienced, whether you think Israel is right or wrong in its actions, how can one deny the validity of the security concerns of individual Israelis?

When one side is fighting occupation, colonization, and apartheid, and has been subject to brutal oppression for decades, it’s callous to their suffering to ask that they make “concessions.” – Daniel

You could turn this around, though. When one side is fighting a constant threat of invasion and attack and that side has been subject to a brutal reign of terror coming in the form of regular rocket attacks, etc., it’s callous to their suffering to ask that they make “concessions.”

I think Sailorman’s point holds — it’s not logical for either side to even go to the negotiating table at this point. It really is callous to ask either side to make concessions — so can there be any negotiation when it is callous for either side to even be asked to make concessions. And yet without negotiation or concessions how does one have a peaceful resolution that will benefit both sides?

a constant threat of invasion and attack and that side has been subject to a brutal reign of terror coming in the form of regular rocket attacks

“Brutal reign of terror”?! 13 Israelis died during Operation Cast Lead, of which 3 were civilians, while over 1,400 Palestinians were massacred (over 900 of which were civilians).

Israel is a nuclear power supported by the most powerful military in the world. Israel started all but one of its wars. Israel has shown a predilection for invading and occupying countries–here I mean Egypt in 1956 and 1967, Syria in the case of the Golan Heights, and Lebanon three times including an 18-year occupation. Palestinian armed resistance has the goal of winning back their legal, political, and human rights.

I could bring up the huge disparity in civilian casualties between both sides over the decades, but even that aside, there is a dramatic structural difference between the position of Israel and the position of Palestine, and therefore a difference in the nature (and justice) of violence perpetrated by each side.

When one side is fighting occupation, colonization, and apartheid, and has been subject to brutal oppression for decades, it’s callous to their suffering to ask that they make “concessions.” – Daniel

What on earth are you talking about? It entirely depends on what those concessions are.

You can VERY VERY roughly put the concessions into four categories:

1) Giving up claims to things which the Palestinians don’t currently possess;

2) Giving up things which the Palestinians currently possess;

3) Agreeing to stop doing something the Palestinians are currently doing; and

4) Agreeing to start doing something they’re not currently doing.

Even from a “but the Palestinians have nothing to give!” perspective, the only claim which should be forbidden is #2. And in fact it pretty much already works that way: basically every Israeli offer gives Palestine more than it has right now (as would be expected, of course, since Palestine has very little.)

But if you want to ban negotiations on #1, 3, and 4 because they’re “concessions,” then you’re taking the functional position that Palestinians should not have to negotiate and Israel should just concede. Which is your right, of course, but doesn’t make you someone worth talking to.

Daniel,

What should a sovereign nation state do when rockets are raining down from the sky from right next door? Even if the rockets are not necessarily hitting anyone, what should a sovereign state do? Just sit there?

Yes, a lot of people die in wars. And in a densely populated area where armed terrorists (who are the target of the military action) hide amongst civilian populations, large numbers of civilians will die. Perhaps for that reason, Israel should have been a lot more careful and restrained in its response. But, given the Israeli experience with a brutal terror campaign against it following decades of constant wars waged against it with its neighbors, whether Israel’s position is ultimately more or less correct than the Palestinian position, it is in fact callous to ask Israel to make concessions when Israel’s previous concessions have not really helped Israel’s security situation.

As to the structural differences between the Israeli and Palestinian side … yes they exist, but considering the origin of those structural differences (it wasn’t as if the Brits, who largely actually had a pro-Arab tilt, Balfour declaration aside, were helping the Zionists set up a state — the Zionists, many of whom were refugees themselves — had pretty similar levels of resources to the Palestinians who were prevented from establishing a state — and not by the Zionists) in the Zionist acceptance of the partition (which would have given the Palestinians a state with equal footing to Israel) and the Arab rejection of it, it’s kind of odd to say that the Israeli side is unjust because Israel has a state and the Palestinians don’t.

One thing that strikes me about much anti-Zionist rhetoric is the way it seeks to pin the blame on a series of wars on the aggression of one particular player in a complex arena with many players and shifting alliances. What strikes me is the similarity of this narrative to the narrative that held that pretty much every war in Europe through WWI was Germany’s fault. Of course, the reaction to this narrative was one of the sources of strength for the Nazi movement.

I know some anti-Zionists are wont to compare the current Israeli government to Nazis, but what happens if Israel does get taken over by a real group of genocidal maniacs (A. Lieberman may be a racist thug who wants to deport Palestinians who knows where, but there is a difference between even that and supporting outright genocide) — hopefully at least then the “Israel right or wrong crowd” would stop “supporting” Israel.

But to what degree is the isolation and collective punishment of Germany after WWI responsible for the Nazis? To what degree would the isolation by the international community of Israel be responsible for an increasingly nasty Israeli body politic?

BTW — I missed the references to 1956, 1967 and the Golan heights in Daniel’s last comment: in all those cases (and even in the first Israeli occupation of Lebanon), Israel was acting in response to actions which are recognized as acts of war.

As to the proportionality issue — if we judge the proportionality of a repsonse by numbers of people dead, if there is to be an inquiry concerning Israel’s recent attack on the infamous flotilla (9 people dead?) shouldn’t there be an inquiry about the role of big oil (this isn’t the first time BP’s actions have caused huge damage — and this time there were > 9 people dead when the oil rig exploded) in damaging our planet?

basically every Israeli offer gives Palestine more than it has right now (as would be expected, of course, since Palestine has very little.) – Sailorman

That’s debatable. AFAIK, the Israeli offers tend to say “we’ll take Jerusalem and areas in which we have concentrated settlements and in exchange we’ll give you even more land area than we took”. The issue is that the land proposed to be given to the nascent Palestinian state is of lower quality (and results in that state having irregular and hard to secure boundaries — hence the “Bantustans” claim) even if of greater quantity than the land Israel is “taking” (assuming a starting point of the 1948 armistace lines).

The other key issue (the elephant in the room) is, of course, water.

Rebecca 6.10.2010 at 3:07 pm
This is kind of an elision of the fact that Israel has an army, while the Palestinians who are committing aggressions against Israel are irregulars. Israel has its own irregulars, and it’s been completely unable or unwilling to control them.

I’d say “unwilling” over “unable.”

Obviously the Hamas government isn’t unassociated with these “irregulars,” but, as you said, there’s not the same control.

Sure. But that affects the bargaining table. If what Israel wants is security, and if the one thing that Israel can’t get is security, then there is, unsurprisingly, a problem.

Also, while Israel certainly has some people who act outside government control, the number (and percentage) are far fewer, and the ability of the government to control them is far greater.

Rebecca 6.10.2010 at 3:08 pm
[people are not aware of the Hamas charter] Not noticeably more so than the degree to which people are not even aware of the contents of the charters of some Israeli parties.

Which Israeli charters are you referring to, precisely? Do you have a link?

Also: Israel’s governmental system means that some political parties can be technically involved in the government but have no functional power. Hamas is a significant branch of the main government (democratically elected, we all hear, by a majority of the population.)

That’s not an idle distinction. There’s a difference if the Democratic Party puts something on its platform, versus if the Minutemen Party puts something on its platform.

It doesn’t make the Israeli charters good or acceptable, but it affects the degree to which they are relevant.

And this:

I find it more worthwhile to look at politicians’ actions.

I don’t get. because of all the things politicians WOULD tend to have control over, the charter of their own party is usually pretty high up. Hamas leaders may not be able to rein in every terrorist. But they can certainly control their own charter. Even Daniel can’t blame Israel for that one.

And that charter has certainly affected negotiations in the past. So, um, yeah: it’s relevant, don’t you think?

DAS 6.10.2010 at 4:08 pm

basically every Israeli offer gives Palestine more than it has right now (as would be expected, of course, since Palestine has very little.) – Sailorman

That’s debatable. AFAIK, the Israeli offers tend to say “we’ll take Jerusalem and areas in which we have concentrated settlements and in exchange we’ll give you even more land area than we took”.

I think we’re just using different ways of defining what Palestinians “actually already have,” versus what Palestinians want or have a claim to. Obviously Palestinians want Jerusalem, for example, but I wouldn’t really say that they currently have it. I don’t think we’re really disagreeing as to the real structure of things.

The issue is that the land proposed to be given to the nascent Palestinian state is of lower quality (and results in that state having irregular and hard to secure boundaries — hence the “Bantustans” claim) even if of greater quantity than the land Israel is “taking” (assuming a starting point of the 1948 armistace lines). The other key issue (the elephant in the room) is, of course, water.

Yup. that’s a problem.

What should a sovereign nation state do when rockets are raining down from the sky from right next door? Even if the rockets are not necessarily hitting anyone, what should a sovereign state do? Just sit there?

Sadly, again, this applies to both the Israelis and the Palestinians. The difference is that the attacks raining down from the sky from right next door on to the Palestinians tend to kill lots and lots of people – while the attacks raining down from the sky from right next door on to the Israelis tend to break windows.

What we tend to hear from pro-Israelis is that the side which mostly suffers broken windows (the entire series of rocket assaults from Gaza has, in almost a decade, killed fewer than 20 people) is justified in killing, brutalizing, and starving the civilian population by the thousands.

As I noted in a previous thread, and on my blog, for every Israeli civilian killed, child, woman, or man, there is at least one Palestinian child killed: if we balance like for like, thousands of Palestinian civilians have been killed, against hundreds of Israelis.

What should a people do when it is quite literally normal for them to hear, every month, almost every week, that another child of their people has been killed by soldiers? Where boys playing football can be killed by gunfire from a tank, and the soldiers in the tank will not suffer any consequences for killing the boys?

Until the walls between Israeli settlements and Palestinian villages in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip grew so extreme the settlers themselves could not see or cross them, it was relatively common for Palestinians to be shot by settlers – and the settlers rarely if ever were penalized for doing so.

“Whoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world. And whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world.”

There have been so many souls destroyed in building the modern state of Israel. There have been so many worlds destroyed.

“Shoshie – you’re right, that was wrong of me. I should have made clear that by a people who hadn’t lived there for millennia, I was referring specifically to Europeans.”
But what gives non-Palestinian middle eastern Jews a right to Palestinian land? Iranian Jews for example have lived in Iran for about three millenia, sure they are not white Europeans, but what exactly makes them entitles to Palestinian land?

“Israel has been continuously occupied by Jews for those millennia.” So? The fact that Palestinian Jews have always lived in Palestine, gievs ALL Jews a right to “return” there?

“As to the issue of Palestinians being “ethnically cleansed”, it seems there is much debate about this. Most likely some villages were ethnically cleansed, some people evacuated out of fear of ethnic cleansing and some people left in a more truly voluntary manner. But how was the displacement of Palestinians any different than any other mass displacement of that era?”
Um, really? You are kidding right? I have family members who became refugees in 1948. They DO NOT want compensation for their lost property. They want to be able to return to their homeland. Ethnic cleansing absolutely happened in 1948, there is no debate on this subject except in that created by Israeli propagandist. HUNDREDS of villages were destroyed. See Benny Morris or Shlomo Ben Ami (both Zionist historians)

Someone here or on another thread claimed that Palestine was sparsely populated. Sure compared to today’s standards yes, not compared to the population density of most of the middle east back then. Also, for god’s sake! What does that even mean? Alaska is sparsely populated. Should Chinese be allowed to start a colony there and gradually expel whoever is currently living there and declare independence?

” The key difference is that other displaced groups (including Mizrachi Jews) were resettled in the countries in which they found themselves. Palestinian refugees, OTOH, were herded into refugee camps to be used as bargaining chips with Israel.”

“He cuts through most of the usual platitudes (“It’s Israel’s fault” / “It’s Palestine’s fault”) in favor of a more nuanced and tough take.”
You know what? I haven’t read the article. But the whole little dance that western “progressives” do with “Oh it is both side’s fault and there is nuance blah blah gets nauseating. It is very much like saying yeah sure white Europeans committed genocide in the America’s but those native Americans they were violent too, they weren’t all angels and stuff. Oh and in case it bothers you that I am comparing Jews to Europeans in the Americas, for the sake of argument assume that those Europeans were also fleeing horrendous persecution (some of them in fact were), it just does not change anything.

@ DAS and others
The whole story about the large scale expulsion of Mizrahi Jews is entirely manufactured.
http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/articles/article0048400.html

RE: Chava:

Regarding Shoshie’s comment–
….Yes, can we please stop doing that? Especially considering that 1) racism/discrimination against Sephardim is a big problem in modern day Israel and 2) many Sephardim left their countries of origin in the hope of FINALLY no longer being second class citizens. Yes, for much of Jewish history the Middle East was a better place to live than say, Russia. Doesn’t mean you had equal rights.,

As an American Sephard with an immigrant father, I can assure you that being Sephardi in the US is pretty shit, too. In the US, the Sephardi experience is highly intersectional. You experience the cultural marginalization which comes with being Jewish. You get the overt discrimination that comes with being either Hispanic or Arabic, depending on your name and country of origin. Your Jewish identity marginalizes you within American Hispanic or Arabic communities. And then, on top of all of that, you are significantly marginalized by both the Gentile and Jewish conceptions of the authenticity of the Ashkenazi identity as the sole measure of Jewish identity.

RE: Sojourner:

The whole story about the large scale expulsion of Mizrahi Jews is entirely manufactured.

Uh no. Outrage concerning Mizrahim and Sephardim has been recently mobilized for political purposes, but the reason why it largely has not been brought up is because Jews generally don’t expect the world to care about Jewish refugees and the Jewish community essentially figured that they could deal with the Sephardi and Mizrahi refugees within a Zionist context (i.e. Jews should look out for other Jews and not bother looking to Gentile institutions to deal with the problem), rather than making a huge international issue about it.

Jewish communities in North Africa and the Middle East were destroyed and displaced by the rise of Arab Nationalism (especially Baathism and Nasserism) as well as European divide-and-conquer methods in Algeria, Morocco, and Libya, and straight-up antisemitic fascism under colonial Vichy France and fascist Italy.

You can criticize the fact that Sephardi and Mizrahi issues are only being brought up by the Ashkenazi elite because it is politically expedient to do so, but to claim that the Sephardi and Mizrahi experience is fabricated is goddamned disgusting.

@ JDP–
I’m not Sephardi, but I have a Hispanic-sounding name and “read” as Sephardi to most Jews (convert) so I have had a very mild taste of what you are referencing. After the first six times I got told I was “trying to be Arab” for not cooking Ashkenaz food or using their pronunciations I thought my head was going to explode.

Sojourner–
No. Seriously, no. Back the heck off of the Mizrahi thing.

As for what gives other Sephardi Jews the right to Palestinian land–nothing did, originally. We’d been systematically persecuted and denied equal citizenship the world over, so we took a country largely by force of arms and then proceeded to abuse the former inhabitants that we kicked out to form an ethnic majority. Wrong? Yes. All nation-building arguably is. Do I hope we will do better? Also yes.

If it makes you feel better, no one ever manages to hold Jerusalem for more than a few hundred years anyway.

Terrorism is the weapon of the weak

I have long thought this, and am glad that Judt pointed it out.

The “legitimacy” question is a funny one. I think historically there can be a discussion about the “legitimacy” of the creation of Israel. You can claim that a government is illegitimate, or that a government’s control over certain territories is illegitimate. But there is no such thing as an illegitimate state. Statehood depends on the factual existence of a populated territory effectively under the control of a government, and international recognition. It either has these things, or it does not.

Another thing that I think could have been mentioned is that religious difference is not really the issue in the conflict, although many seem to assume it is.

I don’t see why people are surprised that Palestinians haven’t produced any particularly diplomatic and reasonable leaders. One part of the population has lived in refugee camps for a generation, and the other part routinely has their homes bulldozed. I think that would tend to radicalize most people.

The ongoing settelment of Palestinian territories is the thing that to me, belies the claim that Israel has made every effort at peaceful negotiation and it’s up to the Palestinians to reciprocate. It suggests that Israel does not want a solution to the conflict with Palestinians, but to get rid of them and take their land (because that’s what they are doing) and the occupation gives them the opportunity to do that. Israel needs some non-Zionist leadership before peace can be a possibility.

I’m sure many of you are familiar with it, but if you’re not I highly recommend Occupation 101, an award-winning, thoroughly researched and supported documentary which challenges the way the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is popularly understood.

Sojourner, comment #49 is factually inaccurate and extremely offensive. Cut it out or I’ll ban you from this thread myself.

Whenever some one says “entirely manufactured”, you know they come from the Moon of Denial. I don’t know why so many people like living there.

Gerry Adams was able to get the IRA to renounce violence when enough of the Northern Irish Catholics felt they had other options. With the changes to the housing laws, entitlement to vote, and social movement from poverty to the middle class, violence was detrimental not protective. People had the political status to challenge the corrupt and criminal in the organisation. The armed struggle lost its hold on the imagination. There were many people who felt that giving up resistance was surrender and very galling. But people did not want any more death over an idea, once real life held hope and stability.

Armed resistance is the last ploy of the politically neutered. When all you can gain is to hurt the person who has driven a bulldozer across your olive grove, or sent a helicopter to blow up cars in your street; you are pretty low on options.
When Hamas etc rant about blowing up Israel, we know they can’t. Their 10 000+ rocket attacks have killed 15? people. It’s the roar of the helplessly cornered. Their rhetoric speaks to the anger many Palestinian people feel over their personal losses, and who have nowhere to take it to for redress.

Israel needs to allow the Palestinians to have a life that isn’t about suffering and hunger and hatred. Israel is strong, and will remain strong: “never again” resonates in our world.
Palestinians need a reason to stop hating Israel – only Israel can give it to them.

The piece is annoyingly vague at just the crucial parts. (E.g., “cut the umbilical cord” at the end–what does this mean?) And it is relatively stupid at other parts. For example, about Hamas he says:

If they pre-concede every Israeli demand — abjurance of violence, acceptance of Israel, acknowledgment of all their losses — what do they bring to the negotiating table?

It’s obvious that Israel has more than these demands. E.g., there are all sorts of things to argue about with respect to Jerusalem, the settlements in the west bank, right of return (or compensation for displaced families), and on and on and on. The suggestion that Hamas would be giving up the whole game by stopping the rocket attacks and recognizing Israel is just stupid. Similar things could be said about almost every point he makes.

Rather than just complaining, I thought I’d link to what I take to be a better discussion:

http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/75287/operation-make-the-world-hate-us?page=0,0

@chad: I like Tony Judt’s better. The author of the article you prefer equates criticism with anti-semitism, implies Noam Chomsky is a Hezbollah activist, and describes a man who disagrees with Zionism as virulently anti-Israeli.
Exactly the kinds of things Judt suggested were not helpful to the debate.

@Sailorman:

Which Israeli charters are you referring to, precisely? Do you have a link?

Offhand, I’m referring to the charter of Likud, currently the leading party in the Israeli government. It doesn’t advocate killing all the Palestinians, but it is directly opposed to the formation of a Palestinian state. Obviously not as bad, but it does rather undermine some people’s points.

@Sojourner:

But what gives non-Palestinian middle eastern Jews a right to Palestinian land? Iranian Jews for example have lived in Iran for about three millenia, sure they are not white Europeans, but what exactly makes them entitles to Palestinian land?

Yeah, I’m not making myself very clear, sorry.

@chad:

“cut the umbilical cord” at the end–what does this mean?

For the United States to stop providing arms money, perhaps?

I don’t agree with everything in the article. But I don’t think these are fair criticisms.

The author of the article you prefer equates criticism with anti-semitism

Since he criticizes Israel in the piece, I guess that makes him an anti-semite by his own lights? Maybe you’re referring to the part where he says that some governments talk about Israel in anti-semitic terms. That’s indisputable.

implies Noam Chomsky is a Hezbollah activist

I don’t think it “implies Noam Chomsky is a Hezbollah activist. It just implies that he isn’t a serious activist for peace, since he was meeting at with a Hezbollah leader at the man’s home. Do you think that’s equally unfair?

describes a man who disagrees with Zionism as virulently anti-Israeli

If you’re an anti-Zionist, you think Israel should not exist. Now I’m not saying that is the same as anti-semitism. But it does seem reasonable to describe it as anti-Israeli, in some sense. Perhaps he should have said “virulently anti-Israel” instead. I think that’s probably what he meant.

Eek. I might have to stop following this blog. Didn’t realize its bloggers were pro-Zionist. Very disappointing.

Rebecca 6.11.2010 at 7:14 am
Offhand, I’m referring to the charter of Likud, currently the leading party in the Israeli government. It doesn’t advocate killing all the Palestinians, but it is directly opposed to the formation of a Palestinian state. Obviously not as bad, but it does rather undermine some people’s points.

Seriously? Israel gets tagged as murderers, etc., but comparing the statements “kill the Jews” to “The Palestinians can run their lives freely in the framework of self-rule, but not as an independent and sovereign state” gets summed up as “not as bad?” WTF?

What points exactly do you think it’s undermining?

Unlike Hamas, Likud isn’t a majority party. It’s a coalition party. It’s not even the biggest party–Kadima is.

Christ, can you even look in the mirror and see how hypocritical you sound? You’re comparing a “peace, but no state” statement by a coalition party, to a “kill Jews” statement by a majority government. And you think that’s even roughly equivalent?

Chad:

If you’re an anti-Zionist, you think Israel should not exist.

This is patently untrue and unnecessarily inflammatory.

Sorry, not trying to inflame. I thought that’s what ‘Zionism’ means. Certainly one common use of the word is as short for the view that there should be a state of Israel in Palestine. That’s how I was using it, and that’s how I think Wieseltier was using it in the piece I linked.

Israel needs to allow the Palestinians to have a life that isn’t about suffering and hunger and hatred. Israel is strong, and will remain strong – eilish

At some level many people in Israel don’t realize how strong they are, which is why the constant need to project strength (*). Actually, the constant chest pumping from Israel seeking to demonstrate its strength has the opposite effect — it only shows Israel’s “enemies” how weak Israel thinks itself to be, which encourages those enemies. If only somehow more Israelis would realize that their projections of strength were sending the opposite message that they think they are sending.

Anyway, as to your point, though, there are strong limits to what Israel can do to change the status of the Palestinians, and this was true for much of Israel’s history (and how do you have responsibility for that which you cannot change?). From 1948-1967 Israel wasn’t even in control of the occupied territories … then there was a window when Israel could have done something (but thought it could exchange land for peace not realizing that other countries didn’t want the land in question) … and now Israel barely controls the territories it supposedly occupies: the PA has control of the West Bank (and it’s finally gotten its act together and the West Bank is actually doing quite well) and in Gaza, Israel’s weakening of the blockade has been met with Hamas saying they won’t let in any of the stuff Israel’s now letting in until the blockade ends entirely (i.e. Hamas is able to smuggle in weapons).

So at this point, even if Israel allows more stuff into Palestinian territories (in a controlled way that doesn’t allow weapons to get smuggled in — and why should Israel allow weapons to reach terrorists who will use those weapons against Israel?), it will have a limitted effect on what happens to Palestinians depending on what the nascent Palestinian governments do with that stuff. So how really can Israel directly improve Palestinian standards of living at this point?

I do agree with your larger point though — I have been shot down for saying this, but I find it very interesting that the Northern Irish conflict resolved itself when things came to a point where it was reasonable for either side to resolve the conflict on the terms of the other side: e.g., given reforms in Britain, even if Northern Ireland were to be fully integrated into the UK, would that really be so bad for Northern Irish Catholics? OTOH, even if Northern Ireland were to become part of the Irish Republic, how bad would that be for the Protestants?

*remember Israel has been under siege in some or other form since its inception when it was largely populated by immigrants descended from generations of people living under siege in the diaspora — thus there is a huge siege mentality in Israel and this desparate psychological need to seem strong

**

If you’re an anti-Zionist, you think Israel should not exist. – Chad

Many anti-Zionists are ok with an entity called “Israel” existing provided it is a binational “secular” state, which would be de facto a Palestinian state that happens to be called Israel (and who would enforce the secularity of that state?). Anti-Zionists don’t believe that Israel should not be a Jewish State with special immigration preferences to Jews (but with special immigration preferences to those descended from Palestinian refugees).

So anti-Zionists are not “anti-Israeli”. They just want to the state of Israel as we know it to be succeeded by a state, perhaps still called “Israel”, in which Israeli-Jews may not do so well.

But anti-Zionists have no issue with the word “Israel”. See the difference? 😉

I don’t think any mainstream Israeli political party seriously opposes a Palestinian state at this time. While some orthodox Jews believe they have a God-given right to the territories, there is no practical way to annex five million Arabs and remain a Jewish state.

And the final status will involve Israel remaining a Jewish state. There will be no Arab right of return to Israel and there will be no merged state. These things are not on the table. Israel will not agree to stop existing.

Like Jordan and Egypt, at some point the Palestinians will have to move from wishing Israel would go away to dealing with it.

Dan: While some orthodox Jews believe they have a God-given right to the territories, there is no practical way to annex five million Arabs and remain a Jewish state.

Fine, so we’ll see all the illegal settlements cleared out of the West Bank, and the illegal barriers go down from around the Gaza Strip, and a land bridge connecting the two created, and the resulting Palestinian state given the right to sovereignity over their own borders and to elect their own government without a military response from Israel, any… year now?

Israel has already annexed the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Which is why Israel is now an apartheid state: the 4.1 million inhabitants of those territories are non-citizens inside Israel.

Dan,

Likud (which is, obviously, quite mainstream) has a charter which specifically opposes the creation of a Palestinian state, among other things.

Obviously a party isn’t precluded from acting outside their charter (Likud can agree to a Palestinian state, just as Hamas can agree to peace with Israel) but it’s certainly the case that Likud’s papers formally oppose the creation of a Palestinian state.

Jesurgislac

Israel has not annexed the West Bank and Gaza. Israel has occupied them. The West Bank and Gaza are not part of Israel. They have their own leaders and political apparatus.

The settlements near the border are about determining where that border will be in final status negotiations. Israel dismantled settlements and forcibly removed settlers both from Sinai, when it returned that territory to Egypt, and from Gaza when it withdrew its occupying force in 2007.

The Israeli right wants to move the border and keep as much of the land as they can without annexing the people. I’m not defending that, but I suspect that, if the Palestinians can offer a negotiating partner in the relatively near future, then the settlements will definitely be negotiable, and something very similar to the 1967 border will be on the table.

The ability to travel freely between West Bank and Gaza is necessary for a Palestinian state, and some solution to that problem will also be negotiable.

The Palestinians have to be able to offer formal recognition and a peace treaty, and they have to be able to enforce it.

RE: Chava:

As for what gives other Sephardi Jews the right to Palestinian land–nothing did, originally.

Well, it puts the lie to the claim that the entire problem is Western colonialism. The fact is, a majority of the Jews in Israel as displaced peoples within the Muslim world. To call these people “colonists” twists the meaning of the word; if Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews in Israel are “colonists,” then literally anyone who moves from one place to another and in doing so changes character of a region is a “colonist.” If that’s the case, any community that came from somewhere else and that deviates significantly from the character, real or imagined, of the area surrounding it is guilty of “colonialism” and can be slated for violence. In the US alone, this could include Northern enclaves in the South (e.g. Atlanta, Austin), liberal enclaves in the West (Mesa, Boulder), queer neighborhoods, immigrant neighborhoods, etc.

It also puts the lie to the claim that Jews were just fine in Muslim nations until a few uppity Jews decided to steal a bunch of land. The vast majority of Muslim nationalist movements have been overtly hostile to Jewish presence in those nations, and explicitly exclude all Jews from those national identities. In many cases, this was much more because of imported Nazi-type fascism than it was a direct response to Zionism. The displacement of the Sephardi and Mizrahi was the result of “secular” Muslim nationalist movements and Islamism, not the result of Jewish nationalism.

Sailorman,

I didn’t say Likud and its religious-nationalist coalition is prepared right now to enter final status negotiations. The hawks are in power because there is nobody on the Palestinian side to negotiate for peace, Iran is making apocalyptic threats and Hamas rules Gaza.

Unlike Hamas, Likud and other right-wing parties also aren’t going to disobey, reneg or reverse decisions of other governments. Ariel Sharon and his centrist faction broke from Likud and formed a different unity faction to push the unilateral withdrawal of troops from the territories. When Likud came back into power, they did not reoccupy the territories.

If there is a serious and willing partner for peace on the other side, it is unlikely that a right-wing government will continue to hold sway. Israel has a parliamentary system, so no party holds a majority. Governments are built on coalitions, and when the coalition falls apart, there are often special elections.

The Israelis don’t necessarily like having their children conscripted, and would prefer to have peace with their neighbors. The secular majority doesn’t care about the territorial aspects of the far-right religious parties, and people in Tel Aviv don’t care much about settlers. If the Palestinians can empower somebody to negotiate, it probably won’t be Likud sitting across the table.

Sailorman, remember how my original comment was about how people don’t know the contents of Israeli parties’ charters? I did not say, nor do I think, that the two things are on the same level. Yet it is ridiculous to suggest that people who whine “But Likud want peace and equality!” and at the same time cite Hamas’s charter as evidence that Palestinians don’t, are saying something worth listening to.

Also, the statement that Likud is just a “coalition party” is absurd. They are the leading party in the Israeli government. The prime minister belongs to Likud. Moreover, though I haven’t looked at the charters of the parties to the right of Likud, are you suggesting that they don’t oppose Palestinian self-determination?

Sigh. My responses to JDP and Julie are evidently not going to be published and that’s just a shame. That’s one really bizarre criteria for what is and is not offensive. Disputing whether ethnic cleansing of Arabs occurred in 1948? That is evidently totally acceptable. Oh well.

RE: Soujourner:

Disputing whether ethnic cleansing of Arabs occurred in 1948? That is evidently totally acceptable.

I never disputed this. Ethnic cleansing in Mandatory Palestine occurred in both directions as early as 1929.

I am objecting to the erasure of the Sephardi and Mizrahi experience, something that you are complicit in.

Dan: Israel has not annexed the West Bank and Gaza. Israel has occupied them.

When I was a teenager, and the occupation of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank was less than two decades old, that worked: it seemed sensible enough to simply point out that Israel was illegally building settlements in the occupied territories, and that any peace process must include the removal of those settlements.

But it’s now clear that Israel will not remove the illegal settlements from the West Bank, nor cease the illegal destruction of private property belonging to the Palestinians (both of which are banned by the Fourth Geneva Convention). As occupiers, Israel has legal obligations towards the Palestinians, which they have not fulfilled – not for forty-three years, which is two-thirds of the time the state of Israel has existed.

When Israel claimed to have “withdrawn” from the Gaza Strip in 2005, while still denying Gazans sovereignity over their borders or the right to raise a military to resist Israeli military “incursions”, and above all the mass collective punishment of the Gazans for voting in Hamas in the elections, that was the end of any presumption Israel could cling to that the Gaza Strip and the West Bank were “occupied territories”.

The West Bank and the Gaza Strip both lie within Israel’s sovereign borders. Israel conquered them and added them to Israel’s territory 43 years ago. Until the 4.1 million people who live there all have their rights as Israeli citizens recognized, including the right to vote and return MKs to Knesset to represent their interests, Israel is an apartheid state.

Are you then also in favor of Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, Iraq, and Iran being held responsible for their illegal displacement of Jews, theft of land and property owned by Jews, and so on? How about land and property stolen by the French, Germans, Swiss, Italians, Polish, Russians, Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Norwegians, Hungarians, Czechs, Slovaks, Ukranians, Serbs, Croats, and Greeks?

Complaining about “justice” concerning displacement has reached a point where it is counterproductive. In the vast majority of cases, it’s impossible to go back to the way things were before these conflicts. Solutions are reached by looking at where people live now and figuring out how best to serve the needs and desires of those people. In the case of the Israel-Palestine situation, the solution is to form two states, and draw borders as best as possible along the lines of which state people want to belong in. It is not ideal, and it may involve some sense of injustice for some people, but it really is the only way to move forward. The biggest issue here is not the settlements (which mostly require redrawing borders and land exchange) but rather the Palestinian diaspora, which will become a huge burden on the Palestinian government as soon as statehood is declared and Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon close their refugee camps and deport their Palestinian nationals.

JDP:Are you then also in favor of Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, Iraq, and Iran being held responsible for their illegal displacement of Jews, theft of land and property owned by Jews, and so on?

If that’s addressed to me: yes, I am. But we’re not talking about illegal displacement and theft that happened 63 years ago: we’re discussing actions by Israel today, towards people living within Israel’s borders.

In the case of the Israel-Palestine situation, the solution is to form two states, and draw borders as best as possible along the lines of which state people want to belong in.

Twenty years ago I’d have agreed with you. Today, the notion that Israel will ever allow two states to be formed out of t he territory which Israel controls, is absurdly unrealistic. Not least because if a separate Palestinian state is formed with sovereignity over its own borders, yes: the right of return will become a significant problem.

The best solution is for Israel to stop being an apartheid state and recognize all the inhabitants of Israel as citizens.

RE: Jesurgisac:

If that’s addressed to me: yes, I am. But we’re not talking about illegal displacement and theft that happened 63 years ago: we’re discussing actions by Israel today, towards people living within Israel’s borders.

And we’re talking about theft of Jewish property in North Africa and Iraq that occurred in the 60s and 70s, theft of Jewish property in Yemen that is still ongoing, and so on and so forth. You can’t say “well, it’s a pity that Jews were displaced by Arab nationalism in the 60s and 70s but that’s in the past” and then turn around and say “it’s a crime against humanity that Arabs were displaced in the 40s and again in the 60s and this needs to be rectified right now.” Once again, I’m going to have to object to the fact that you’re basically eliminating the Sephardi and Mizrahi experience from the discussion because it is more convenient to you to portray the conflict as between Ashkenazim and the Palestinians.

Sorry about the tagfail. That second paragraph in the blockquote is my response, not Jesurgislac’s comment.

“I never disputed this. Ethnic cleansing in Mandatory Palestine occurred in both directions as early as 1929.”
That was not directed at you, DAS made that comment.
Can you please go and read the link I posted? That article is by an Israeli sociologist, himself a Mizrahi. Is he trying to erase the Mizrahi experience?

“Are you then also in favor of Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, Iraq, and Iran being held responsible for their illegal displacement of Jews, theft of land and property owned by Jews, and so on?”

Dear god! You know what? I am Iranian so I will specifically comment on Iranian Jews. Nope it did not happen. There is no evidence of it. I mean do you even know any Iranian Jews? B/c I know many. Go read Journey from the Land of No. Turkey? Absolutely not. Turkey has historically been sort of protector of Jews which is one reason for the historically good relationship between Israel and Turkey.

@ JDP–
Agreed on the history of the general migration & reasons for such of Sephardi Jews to Israel. I’m more getting at the idea that despite those reasons, they did not have an intrinsic “right” to land in Palestine.

However, as you were saying, it does change the context & base of discussion significantly when looked at as a migration of refugees from across the region in question rather than from “the West.”

(On that subject, Ronit Matalon has a wonderful book on Mizrahi migration/exile called The One Facing Us, good English translation if anyone is interested)

Turkey: Yes, “sort of protector,” where you assimilate to such a degree that few people can tell you are Jewish, and being too religious is somewhat dangerous. After the flotilla the president had to publicly declare that he would defend the 30,000 Jews left in Turkey.

Iran: Are you kidding? I mean, no, there isn’t a lot of active abuse going on right now, and there is some representation in government, etc. But I know plenty of Iranian Jews too, thanks, and usually there are REASONS why a community shrinks that drastically. Yes, some are economic, true. But the virulant hatred of Israel & Holocaust denying leaders might have a teensy tiny part to do with it?

RE: Chava:

Agreed on the history of the general migration & reasons for such of Sephardi Jews to Israel. I’m more getting at the idea that despite those reasons, they did not have an intrinsic “right” to land in Palestine.

If not Palestine, where? IMO, there is something profoundly wrong with a worldview that encourages people to pat each other on the back about how bad they feel for refugees, but would prefer that refugees live in displacement camps rather than settle somewhere else and get on with their lives. This extends far beyond the Israel-Palestine issue. This goes for the Western Europeans who are currently deporting Romani refugees from the Balkans, this goes for various Western countries who are deporting LGBTQ Muslims who are seeking asylum, etc.

RE: Sojourner:

Can you please go and read the link I posted? That article is by an Israeli sociologist, himself a Mizrahi. Is he trying to erase the Mizrahi experience?

Did you read the article? He was objecting to the fact that outrage about the Sephardi and Mizrahi ethnic cleansings in the Middle East and North Africa has only been mobilized by the government within the context of political expediency. Which is true, and deplorable.

This is very similar to articles I’ve read in the Armenian press as of late that are frustrated with the fact that the Israeli government and press are finally beginning to recognize the Armenian genocide and continued Turkish blockade of Armenia, but only because it is politically expedient to score a few points against Turkey in the arena of international opinion. And that shit is frustrating, and it damned well should be frustrating.

This isn’t limited to Israel; that sort of hypocrisy exists worldwide. Turkey criticizes the Gaza blockade while maintaining an illegal blockade of Armenia. The US used the Kurdish genocide as a point of contention against the Baathist regime in Iraq while overlooking similar atrocities against the Kurds in Turkey. France complains about hijab while allowing the Catholic Church and its repressive antifeminism to operate freely. The US complains loudly about illegal immigration while sitting atop stolen land. And so on and so on and so on.

That doesn’t mean the destruction of these Jewish communities didn’t happen. It simply means that the Ashkenazim have remained largely silent on the issue and have traditionally considered reparations for Sephardi and Mizrahi refugees to be of limited importance.

Dear god! You know what? I am Iranian so I will specifically comment on Iranian Jews. Nope it did not happen. There is no evidence of it. I mean do you even know any Iranian Jews?

I do, actually.

And you still have to explain why only 10-15% of Iranian Jews today live in Iran.

Turkey? Absolutely not. Turkey has historically been sort of protector of Jews

With the exception of some very striking pogroms and increased hostilities, especially during the WWI era. This was, incidentally, a time when my grandmother’s family lived in Turkey, and when they left. Like Iran, the majority of Turkish Jews live outside of Turkey, primarily in Israel and the US.

which is one reason for the historically good relationship between Israel and Turkey.

Israel has a pretty good relationship with Morocco at the moment, too, but that doesn’t mean that Moroccan Jews weren’t largely driven out by antisemitic violence. Same goes for Egypt and Jordan.

Over 80% of the Jews who were living in Turkey 100 years ago now live in Israel and the US. Over 80% of the Jews who were living in Iran 100 years ago now live in Israel and the US. That may not be as bad as the situation in Algeria, Egypt, or Iraq, but it’s still pretty damned bad. These people didn’t leave because they were evil Zionists who wanted to oppress Palestinians. These people left because they were afraid for their lives and were living with severe discrimination. The fact that you sit here and say “well, I know some Jews in Iran who didn’t leave” basically means nothing with respect to the tens of thousands who did.

@chad:
Here’s what the man described as virulently anti-Israeli said:
– “there is a straight line between Soweto, Sharpeville, and what recently happened in Gaza.”
-“Is it strange that some [Palestinians] in pure desperation, when they cannot see any other way out, decide to become suicide bombers? Not really. Maybe it is strange that there are not more of them.”
– “The state of Israel in its current form has no future. Moreover, those who advocate a two-state solution have not got it right. … The question is whether it will be possible to talk sense into the Israelis in order for them to willingly accept the end of their own apartheid state.”
Yes, I understand why people reject the term apartheid, etc. Yes, he is empathisizing with Palestinian bombers. He is criticising Israel. He doesn’t support a Jewish state. But it’s hardly the kind of stuff we get from President Muhamoonypyjamas. Dismissing him as anti-semitic is a silencing tactic, and people are onto this.

I’m guessing Noam Chomsky went to talk to a Hezbollah activist precisely because he’s a peace activist. Somebody has to talk to them. Might as well be him. Maybe he’ll be able to contribute helpfully down the track.

DAS speaks with the Jewish pessimism your author describes.
-“and how do you have responsibility for that which you cannot change?”
-“and now Israel barely controls the territories it supposedly occupies”
-“So how really can Israel directly improve Palestinian standards of living at this point?”
Jesurgislac addressed these issues. I just want to say, ARE YOU KIDDING ME??? It’s out of your hands? You can’t do anything?
Get off the pot. How about re-building the houses, electricity and pipe systems in Gaza that were destroyed when the settlers withdrew (because Jewish homes can’t be defiled by goyim)? That’d be a good will gesture that would eradicate the source of many Gazan’s anger against Israel.

Israel as a Jewish nation has huge support throughout the world. This “everybody hates us” meme is an excuse for not changing course. I suspect someone came up with it because “you’re anti-semitic!!!!!11!!” doesn’t fly anymore.
We really need for Israel to change course. Palestinians who view Israel as the enemy have reasons for that. Remove the reasons.
We can do it.

“If not Palestine, where? IMO, there is something profoundly wrong with a worldview that encourages people to pat each other on the back about how bad they feel for refugees, but would prefer that refugees live in displacement camps rather than settle somewhere else and get on with their lives.”

This actually goes in the other direction, towards the Palestinian refugee camps as well–where many of the Arab governments have refused to let them resettle and make a home in their countries out of fear/not wanting to lose them as a source of leverage, etc. Anyway–I’ve got nothing against resettlement. And yeah, I do sort of shrug my shoulders and go well, where *were* we supposed to go, then, hmmm? But I also think the idea of a sacred “right” to land is downright silly. And while resettlement is one thing, kicking people out of their homes to make refugees out of *them* is another. And while I know the reality of how that happened is fairly complex, and the blame for it not entirely held by Israel by a long shot, it did end up happening.

Best solution–governments resettle refugees in a integrative and peaceful fashion. Failing that—and it *rarely* seems to happen, Tehrangeles excluded–I’m not sure that I see an alternative to taking what you need to survive.

I think there are perhaps two questions here: one, does a group of people have the right to the full protections of a nation in a world that operates primarily through nation-states, and two, what is justified to obtain that protection?

I’ve known people who’ve gone their whole lives without passports or citizenship because they were Jewish, so yeah, I think Israel was needed. And I’m not sure Israel could have been created with less violence than it was, although I’m no historian.

Still, I can acknowledge all that and still feel the moral weight of the violence that was carried out and want to do better in the future, nu?

@ JDP

Did YOU read the article? Are we even talking about the same article? The article by Yehouda Shenhav contains the following sentences:

“I would like to argue that the idea of drawing this analogy constitutes a mistaken reading of history, imprudent politics, and moral injustice; and that any analogy between Palestinian refugees and Jewish immigrants from Arab lands is folly in historical and political terms”

“Any reasonable person, Zionist or non-Zionist, must acknowledge that the analogy drawn between Palestinians and Arab Jews is unfounded. Palestinian refugees did not want to leave Palestine. Many Palestinian communities were destroyed in 1948, and some 700,000 Palestinians were expelled, or fled, from the borders of historic Palestine. Those who left did not do so of their own volition. In contrast, Arab Jews arrived to Israel under the initiative of the State of Israel and Jewish organizations.”

How do you interpret those? If you are arguing in good faith I can dig up some more sources from Mizrahi Jews and post here later (Er, that is, if the good moderators don’t delete them!).

Sojourner-

I’m not entirely sure why you are SO bent on proving that things were always 100% fine and dandy for Mizrahi Jews in their native states. Because, as much as there were times of peace and quit between Jews and Muslims in Arab nations, there were also times of hatred and fear and violence. Plus, these are a lot of different nations we’re talking about here. Can’t you imagine that things may not have been the same everywhere?

The history of anti-Semitism isn’t one, long, sustained wave of violence. It comes in fits and starts, punctuated by periods of assimilation and peace. That’s true pretty much everywhere that Jews have ever lived, including Eastern Europe, including the Middle East.

There’s no monolithic Mizrahi story, just as there isn’t a monolithic Palestinian story. It is offensive for you to pretend that there is and cite your one source as the be all and end all. Again, please stop telling Jews that you understand Jewish oppression better than we do.

“I’m not entirely sure why you are SO bent on proving that things were always 100% fine and dandy for Mizrahi Jews in their native states.”
Can you please show me where I said things were always 100% fine and dandy for Mizrahi Jews?

“Again, please stop telling Jews that you understand Jewish oppression better than we do.”
Nope I didn’t do that either.

“The history of anti-Semitism isn’t one, long, sustained wave of violence. It comes in fits and starts, punctuated by periods of assimilation and peace. ”
Ok, so? I don’t have an argument with that statement.

The dispute is about whether, Jewish populations of Iraq, Iran, Turkey, etc. where forcibly removed by the governments of these countries and moved to Israel. This is about historical facts. The question is whether deportation occurred on a large scale and this is an important question b/c of reasons outlined in the article I linked to, and I am not going to repeat those.
The question is not whether those people where treated well in those countries. I don’t know why this is so hard to understand.

For those interested here is another source. This is an Interview with Avi Shlaim by Meron Rapoport:
http://www.fromoccupiedpalestine.org/node/1566

I quote “We won the War of Independence and founded a state, but the number of inhabitants was very small, fewer than 1 million. For Ben-Gurion, the top priority was aliyah (immigration), and the large reservoir of Jews was no longer in Europe, but in the Arab countries. We are not refugees, nobody expelled us from Iraq, nobody told us that we were unwanted. But we are the victims of the Israeli-Arab conflict.”

“Sojourner–
No. Seriously, no. Back the heck off of the Mizrahi thing. ”

Um, wow! I hadn’t seen that one. Back the heck off the Mizrahi thing? Why? Why do I get the sense from the comments on this post (and really any post about Israel/Palestine) that people are saying “How dare you question the official Israeli version of History?” Seriosuly what is up with that?I think “Israel Repuclicanism” is what is going on here http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2009/02/06/justice-justice-you-shall-pursue/.
I am gonna try to avoid coming back here just to save my own sanity.

DAS: you’re seriously understating the reasons why the proposed Palestinian state is being called a “Bantustan” – not only will the borders be hard to control, but Israel will have control over them, and the airspace, and the water supplies, and have the right to come into Palestine with armed force, and the ability to divide the West Bank up into 3 sections with armed guards between them if necessary. Plus, a condition of Israel agreeing to the deal is that the Palestinian government gives up the right to ever challenge any of these restrictions.

One of the myths the New York Times piece fails to mention is that the Israeli government offered the Palestinian one a state and it was the Palestinian government that refused. It’s a myth that’s very popular with supporters of Israel, but in fact what was offered wasn’t a state at all. (Some of the other myths it missed, such as the myth that the Jewish immigrants were the real native population and the Christian and Muslim Arabs were just invaders, and the myth that Israel’s actions can’t be compared to apartheid because Palestine is an occupied territory that isn’t part of Israel have been tackled by other comments here.)

JDP: as it happens, the reason why so many Jews were displaced from the Muslim world into Israel has far more to do with Western colonialism than it does Islam. The very idea of ethnically-based nation states is a Western colonialist import! If you weren’t living in a Western-style nation state, you didn’t exist as far as the colonialist powers were concerned, and this is used to dismiss Palestinian nationalism even now.

Sojourner.

I would be more than happy for you to leave this thread for whatever reason you want, just as long as you are not here to erase the experiences of Mizrahi Jews and for us Mizrahi Jews to have to read your bile.

Picking and choosing the vanishingly miniscule number of ANTI-Zionist Mizrahi Jewish historians who claim that there were no expulsions doesn’t mean you are right. It means you are trying to find the 1 in a 100,000 Mizrahi Jews who are prepared to ignore the overwhelming evidence to push their political ideologies. That is not history, that is propaganda. Just the same as Trotksyites ignore the actual and massive practical failures of implementing Permanent Revolution in favour of continuing to espouse their ideology, these tiny numbers of anti-Zionist Mizrahi Jews, do the same. Just the same as you can find African-American Republicans who claim that the US is post-racial. And the fact that you ignore ALL the other sources and voices says so much more about you than you can possibly imagine.

I am not Israeli, I am British, and YOU ARE ERASING MY FAMILY’S HISTORY with your insistence that the expulsion of Jews from the Middle East and North African is some type of nefarious instrumental Zionist lie. Members of my father’s family was tortured and hounded in Aleppo before they were expelled, them going to the UK, US and Israel in varying proportions.

You are not protesting Israeli injustice or “questioning the official Israeli version of History” , you are calling me and other Mizrahi Jew’s liars for recounting their experience. So, just as Chava said and with more gusto, back the fuck off.

The blind spot in so-called progressive spaces about Jews never ceases to amaze me. Seriously, can anyone else imagine
another minority group that would be so venomously disbelieved and have their opression and persecution binned off to mere lies and political point scoring as evidenced by the posts here and in other progressive/feminist/leftist blogs..?

And yet, just 60 years after the Holocaust, when millenia-old hatreds were mobilised for the systematic industrial annihilation of Jews, no-one here can possibly *conceive* that their opinions might be tainted by ideas of Jewish Power, control, mendacity, greed or otherwise. Yep, right ALL c.900,000 Mizrahi Jews just upped and left their millenia-old homes leaving all their money, land and assets behind because of “Zionist lies” and “schemes”. Yeah right. Farhud much? Sickening.

“The blind spot in so-called progressive spaces about Jews never ceases to amaze me. Seriously, can anyone else imagine
another minority group that would be so venomously disbelieved and have their opression and persecution binned off to mere lies and political point scoring as evidenced by the posts here and in other progressive/feminist/leftist blogs..?”

WestEndGirl, I 100% agree with the rest of what you said, but, as a fat, bisexual, Jewish woman, I have to tell you that, yes, there are others. And it’s really, really, really a shame.

Shoshie, I can definitely think of other groups who have their oppression and related experiences ignored and belittled. The conversations here re: trans people show how that is, sadly, more than easy to happen in a progressive space.

For me though, the extra added spice (stench?) is the active agency. Jews are not just mistaken with sensing bigotry or relating their experiences, they are *deliberately* lying for political ends, to achieve an alternative, nefarious *real* and hidden agenda. It raises questions of dual loyalty, of being always foreign, always being duplicitous. These are millenia-old tropes. And that is the added kicker to me. That despite this, despite the massacres and the pogroms and the genocides of which the Holocaust was just one of the biggest ones, that people are still carrying on these tropes with all the moral high-handedness of the *truly* progressive. And it makes me sick.

Mmm, unfortunately, I can’t disagree with you there.

But you know, all us Jews are in cahoots anyways. 😉

“just as long as you are not here to erase the experiences of Mizrahi Jews and for us Mizrahi Jews to have to read your bile.”
So quotes from renowned Israeli scholars are bile? And whoever disagrees with your version of history is ANTI-ZIONIST and their scholarship propaganda? Hmmm… why is it they live in Israel (in the case of Avi Shlaim, he used to live there and was an early Zionist), and are respected there?
I don’t question that what your family experienced was horrific, the question was whether it was large-scale, and whether that was the cause of the large Mizrahi migration.
Miniscule, eh? Here is another article with lots of sources: http://www.palestinechronicle.com/view_article_details.php?id=15627 You are welcome. If you dig a little you will find more. But it is obvious you are not arguing in good faith.

“when millenia-old hatreds were mobilised for the systematic industrial annihilation of Jews, no-one here can possibly *conceive* that their opinions might be tainted by ideas of Jewish Power, control, mendacity, greed or otherwise.” and “But you know, all us Jews are in cahoots anyways. ;)”
Mwhahahahahahahahaha! You two have really got me figured out!!!

“Yep, right ALL c.900,000 Mizrahi Jews just upped and left their millenia-old homes leaving all their money, land and assets behind because of “Zionist lies” and “schemes”.
As to the reasons of mass migration they’ve been extensively discussed in the articles as well as the interview I linked to. So I do not see why I should have to repeat them.

You and Shoshie et al, seem to think that you are entitled to your own set of historic facts. I provided several sources, you provided none. Al l you do is set up straw men, stick your fingers in your ears and scream “OMG!! Anti-Semitism!! This is The Protocols of the Elders of Zion all over again!!11!1!!”
Bile is what YOU are spreading and it is pretty disgusting!

Sojourner, I don’t really feel the need to prove Jewish oppression to you. For you to expect that I would is disgusting, especially on a blog that claims to be fighting oppression. Plus, it seems like you’ve read a decent amount about it and just came away with more anti-Semitism. FAIL. You seriously need to read up on activism 101. Just because Jews oppress other Jews doesn’t mean either (both?) group hadn’t been oppressed in the first place.

I don’t have a problem with most of your sources. I have a big problem with the way you’re interpreting them, without nuance or consideration for the people you’re speaking about. If someone came in here demanding PROOF for Palestinian oppression, they would be shouted off the thread, and rightly so.

So just stop. All of your tropes have been a throwback to the anti-Semitic bullcrap that I’ve been hearing my entire fucking life. We’re all out to twist history, boogly BOOGLY! We control the media! We’re EVERYWHERE! With our ZIONIST CONSPIRACY! To RUIN HISTORY FOR THE WORLD!!! MWAHAHAHAHAH!

Um, or I’m just a tired graduate student taking quals in two weeks. And I’m sick of having choose between my liberal values and my Judaism. I shouldn’t have to.

So please, just stop.

Re:One of the myths the New York Times piece fails to mention is that the Israeli government offered the Palestinian one a state and it was the Palestinian government that refused. It’s a myth that’s very popular with supporters of Israel, but in fact what was offered wasn’t a state at all.
Makomk, would you mind expounding on this? And adding some sources? Goodness knows most of the history we learn in school isn’t exactly accurate, but that myth you mention is what I learned, and read from other sources (no idea where right now, was a while ago).
Shoshie:
You have a right to your disgust and outrage, but most people aren’t as well or personally informed as you are. For others’ edification, would you mind directing us toward links/sites that would refute Sojourner, so that we could read and analyze first hand?

yelena: Makomk, would you mind expounding on this? And adding some sources?

Part of the complication about this particular area is that I’m not sure anyone knows exactly what was offered Arafat at Camp David. Various different maps were published both before and after the summit. Barak went back and forth on whether he actually had offered East Jerusalem back to the Palestinians. There was a second round of negotiations at Taba, and there’s even less public record of that than of Camp David.

But, I don’t think anyone disputes that what Arafat might have settled for, assuming the Israelis had fulfilled their side of the deal, was a set of Palestinian Territories, islands inside Israel, with no land bridge between them. All of these territories already had Israeli settlements and settler-only roads dividing them still further, and no concrete proposal to remove the settlements/the settlers was offered at Camp David (at Taba, the settler-only roads were negotiated, but the settlements remained…)

I don’t know of any completely neutral source. There’s a reference here which seems to correspond roughly with what I remember myself from contemporary news sources.

99 thoughts on Tony Judt talks some sense.