At the start of a new week, I’d like to award the best and worst discussions of history in the past week in Israel.
The best take on the past came from Yoram Kaniuk, writing at Ynet (in Hebrew and English translation). Kaniuk writes about the government’s intent to legislate against commemorating the Nakba and Education Minister Gideon Sa’ar’s plan to revise a history textbook for Israel Arab children to erase a sentence about 1948 war saying, “The Arabs call the war the Nakba – a war of catastrophe, loss and humiliation – and the Jews call it the Independence War.”
Kaniuk, who fought in the War of Independence, writes,
I remember the Nakba. I saw it to a much greater extent than the education minister, who apparently only heard about it. It was a harsh, merciless campaign of young soldiers who spilled their blood while fighting a determined enemy that was eventually defeated. Yet the enemy that was defeated is not a geometrical unknown, but rather, a people that still exists. Its parents and grandparents fought well. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have suffered so many casualties.
I was wounded in battle, but I believe that the education minister must educate our young people to be heroes by teaching them that this war had losers too, and that they too have a narrative. They don’t have the country that was theirs but they have a history… The Nakba fighters fought heroically, but we fought better.
Kaniuk is not sorry that his side won in a terrible battle. The victory was creation of the state. It must not be the attempt to erase the history, and therefore the dignity, of the side that lost.
At the start of his poetic article, Kaniuk describes the fortress architecture of the Knesset. His description is accurate; the Knesset belongs to a period of Israeli design in which universities, synagogues, even a legislature were built, unconsciously, to look like fortifications. The Nakba law is an attempt to build fortifications against recognizing the past and the price that another people paid for our independence, he says. He concludes:
While inside the Knesset fortress I thought that maybe it is still possible, before my death, to turn this state into a Jewish State – not one populated by zealous masses called Jews, but rather, Jews like we used to be; a state where we respect those who fought against us and were defeated. When that will happen, we will see the establishment of an Arab state alongside us, and the city of Jerusalem, also known as al-Quds, will become the capital of two states, one Jewish and one Arab. And then peace will come to Israel. Amen.
To be Jews, Kaniuk suggests, we must be able to see history in more than one way, and to recognize the humanity of those who were our enemies, and to be able to look at truth without flinching. This is neither an ethnic nor a religious definition of being Jewish, thought it is rooted in our religious and national history. Were that we could adopt it as a common denominator, the highest common denominator, let us say, for Jewish identity here.
The most foolish take on history in the past week came from Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who ordered Israeli diplomats to circulate a photo of Hajj Amin al-Husseini meeting Hitler. The picture is meant to counter international criticism of plans to turn a hotel inside the Palestinian neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem into a housing project for Jewish settlers. According to various reported versions, the hotel or the land it is on was owned by al-Husseini – the best known Palestinian nationalist leader of the pre-1948 period – or his family.
Somehow the photo is supposed to convince foreign diplomats and leaders that the spot can only be redeemed from the stain of al-Husseini’s support for the Nazis by turning it into a Jewish housing development intended to prevent a political compromise in Jerusalem. An explanation of the connection has not been forthcoming from Lieberman. I won’t claim this is the most absurd exploitation of the Holocaust for political purposes – the competition is so intense – but it deserves dishonorable mention.
I was wounded in battle, but I believe that the education minister must educate our young people to be heroes by teaching them that this war had losers too, and that they too have a narrative. They don’t have the country that was theirs but they have a history, and no education minister can erase the defeated people from its powerful memory. The Nakba fighters fought heroically, but we fought better.
122 responses so far ↓
1 Ploni // Jul 26, 2009 at 5:24 pm
“Narrative” (נרטיב in Hebrew). Whenever you see that word instead of “story” or “history,” you know what’s coming.
That said, I agree with him, in spite of the tone of the article. The only thing I’d add: I see a lot more respect for the Arabs, who were defeated in 1948, on the Israeli right than on the left. Way more. What is the height of disrespect? To suggest, smiling, that if we do them a favor and give back half of the land we stole from them, then they should thank us and let us live in peace on the other half of the land we stole.
On Lieberman’s idea, also agreed – beyond stupidity. People have long since gotten tired of these Holocaust games.
2 Zak // Jul 26, 2009 at 7:52 pm
great piece.
Jeffrey Goldberg put it well – saying that in the “first person to mention the Nazis game”, Lieberman lost…
3 Y. Ben-David // Jul 26, 2009 at 8:02 pm
Amen to what Ploni says. Kaniuk is trying to shift the guilt he feels at winning the war (like many or most Labor Zionists, deep down he feels that Israel is an abberation born out of antisemitism and if only the goyim had let his ancestors assimilate, as he most likely sees it, he never would have had to fight in 1948). Sure, he can torment himself over the “narrative” of the other side, and he may consider himself a “progressive” for doing so, but I don’t see ANYBODY in Britain or the US or Russia today saying “gee, those Jerries in the Wehrmacht certainly were idealistic and we should have more sympathy for what they were trying to do in taking over Europe, after all they felt justified in doing so according to their national narrative”.
4 Phillips Brooks // Jul 26, 2009 at 11:41 pm
This was a war of extermination directed against the Palestinian people. The acts of the Haghanah, Stern and Ergunn maket he SS look like Boy scouts. Deir Yassin amde Auschwitz look like a shopping mall. I look forward to the day when Yad Vashem is cleansed of kitsch and converted to a memorial to the genocide of the Palestinian people. Same for the museum in Zionist occupied Washington DC
5 Charlotte // Jul 27, 2009 at 1:34 am
Phillips Brooks: “Deir Yassin amde Auschwitz look like a shopping mall”.
I’d like to award the worst discussion of history in the past weeks to Phillips Brooks. He obviously flunked.
6 Charlotte // Jul 27, 2009 at 2:17 am
“While inside the Knesset fortress I thought that maybe it is still possible, before my death, to turn this state into a Jewish State – not one populated by zealous masses called Jews, but rather, Jews like we used to be; a state where we respect those who fought against us and were defeated. When that will happen, we will see the establishment of an Arab state alongside us, and the city of Jerusalem, also known as al-Quds, will become the capital of two states, one Jewish and one Arab. And then peace will come to Israel. Amen.”
Instead of indulging in self-flagellation and poetic whimsy, the gentleman would do better to engage with reality.
I quote briefly from Palestinian Media Watch:
“The Palestinian Authority makes no attempt to educate its people towards peace and coexistence with Israel. On the contrary, from every possible platform it repeatedly rejects Israel’s right to exist, presents the conflict as a religious battle for Islam, depicts the establishment of Israel as an act of imperialism, and perpetuates a picture of the Middle East, both verbally and visually, in which Israel does not exist at all. Israel’s destruction is said to be both inevitable and a Palestinian obligation.”
“The PA promises its people that in the future, the State of Israel will be completely erased and replaced by a State of Palestine. A Fatah member of Palestinian parliament, Najat Abu Bakr, told PA TV in 2008 that the PA’s public position is the old “stages plan”: i.e., to proclaim that what the Palestinians seek is the West Bank and Gaza Strip, while in fact the goal is all of Israel:
“It doesn’t mean that we don’t want the 1948 borders, but in our current political program we say we want a state on the 1967 borders.”
The newest PA schoolbooks teach: “Palestine will be liberated by its men, its women, its young ones and its elderly.” [Arabic Language and the Science of Language, grade 12, p. 44]
A music video playing on PA TV (Fatah) from 2007 – 2009 promises the liberation of “Palestine”, specifying numerous Israeli cities:
“We will liberate the Land of the religions … Palestine is Arab in history and identity… From Jerusalem and Acre, from Haifa and Jericho and Gaza and Ramallah, from Bethlehem and Jaffa, Beer Sheba and Ramle, and from Nablus to the Galilee, from Tiberias to Hebron.” (2007 – 2009)
Najat Abu-Bakr, Fatah Member of Parliament:
“It doesn’t mean that we don’t want the 1948 borders… but our current political program is to say that we want the 1967 borders.” (Source: Palestinian TV (Fatah) 25 August 2008)
plenty more on PMW’s website:http://www.palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=449
7 Y. Ben-David // Jul 27, 2009 at 6:38 am
It is interesting to see how a “progressive” like Kaniuk is forced to flip-flop and continually update his beliefs in order to remain politically correct. Sixty years ago, he was told that Jewish nationalism was somehow compatable with universalist, socialist values. The Zionism he fought for stood for “progress”, the Arabs deep down, would welcome having the Jews come and develop the country for the Arabs and bring them advances such as indoor plumbing along with secularist values. Zionist Jews were “progressive” because they fought against Nazism and Fascism whereas the Arabs had been more or less sympathetic with them. This gave Kaniuk and his “progressive” Zionist friends the right to fight to establish the State of Israel. If you had told him about the “Palestinian Narrative” which denies the Jews have any link with the country, he wouldn’t know what you are talking about. Although I don’t know how Kaniuk felt after the Six-Day War but most of the “progressives” said they would never agree to redivide Jerusalem. This was the official policy of the Labor Party AND MERETZ up until 1999. Now, you see he and the rest of the them can’t wait to get rid of it.
However, as a good “progressive” Kaniuk has kept up with the times and the rewriting of history his camp enjoys doing (read Orwell’s books “1984″ or “Animal Farm” in order to see how it is done). He believes that in order to grant “dignity” to to the other side, he must now view their revisionist history as a legitimate “narrative”.
Still, Kaniuk has some distance to go. He still believes that Israel has a “right to exist” which the Palestinian narrative he is desparately trying to understand and show respect for flatly denies.
Maybe he still celebrates Yom Ha’atzmaut, but as a “progressive” sensitive to the dignity and narrative of the Palestinians he welcomes, at the same time, their commemoration of the Naqba. In enough time, it is inevitable that he will stop celebrating the Israeli’s Independence, and he will whole-heartedly join in the mourning of his Palestinian friends at the creation of the state of Israel. Other ex-Zionists have done it, he probably will as well.
This is why his ideological is dying. Time moves on.
8 Phillips Brooks // Jul 27, 2009 at 1:35 pm
I see Kaniuk as the equivalent of an Israeli SS veteran making a pathetic attempt to justify his atrocities. It is no different than Eichmann trying to justify his.
You all know that Palestine was stolen from the Palestinians by a people with no claim to it. Before you throw your favorite claim of antisemitism in an attempt to quash my right to speak, let me remind you that your own professor Shlomo Sand determined that you are a nonpeoploe. Ilan Pappe and Gilad Atzmon have recognized the futility of your theft and have left Israel. Nadia el Haj has conclusively proven that there was no such thing as ancient Israel, further demolishing the myths of your foundation.
So what have we here. A group of “progressives” that have acknowledged that Palestine was stolen, but are hiding behind international law that said that theft of land prior to 1967 was ok but theft after 1967 is not kosher? Either you abandon Israel or you prove to be a version of Avigdor Lieberman without balls, hiding behind the letter of the law
9 Charlotte // Jul 27, 2009 at 1:44 pm
Phillips Brooks – a history major you obviously ain’t.
10 Y. Ben-David // Jul 27, 2009 at 3:31 pm
I didn’t know Ilan Pappe left Israel, but it is certainly good news, if true. At least I got something out of PB’s comments.
11 Charlotte // Jul 27, 2009 at 3:58 pm
Y.Ben-David, Ilan Pappe is now a Professor at an English University. Bad news for the UK, who are also landed with Azmon. Read all about Azmon’s latest lunacy on Oliver Kamm’s blog at Times online.
12 Ploni // Jul 27, 2009 at 8:40 pm
A couple more comments on that “narrative” thing, which seems to be a favorite theme around here, and how it relates to another recent topic here: Michael Walzer’s theory of just war. The two views are in tension with each other, if not out-and-out contradiction.
The postmodern view is that “narratives” are incommensurable: there’s no objective vantage point from which to judge which of two competing narratives is “right” and which is “wrong.” Walzer’s relevant point on just war, endorsed by Mr. Gorenberg, is premodern (medieval). (Walzer’s theory is actually a bricolage of mutually contradictory theories of just war from different historical epochs.) Walzer says in his response to Kasher and Yadlin that the two sides in a war “logically…cannot both have just reasons for going to war.” Do people realize how pernicious this doctrine really is?
What do you get when you believe both in postmodern “narratives” and in Walzer’s premodern (and, alas, contemporary) view of justa causa belli? It follows that many times a political narrative cannot give a just cause for war: if the Palestinians’ narrative justifies war then the Zionists’ narrative does not, and vice versa. So what’s left after you subtract justa causa belli, including justa causa for existential wars, the most basic question of political-historical survival – what’s left when you subtract that from political narratives? Sentiment. And that’s exactly what Kaniuk and those who think like him give us.
The alternative is to accept Walzer’s just war doctrine, and to reject the validity of competing “narratives.” Our narrative is right, theirs is wrong.
The other option, which I endorse, is to accept the validity of the narratives and to throw Walzer/Gorenberg’s just-war doctrine in the trash. As I see it, the Arabs were justified, pre-1948 at the very least, in resisting the Zionist settlers violently, including by terrorism (how else are you going to fight settlers?). I don’t have any better foundation for my view than Walzer has for his, but many people would agree, analogously, that the American Indians were justified in their use of terrorism against the European settlers. Note that this says nothing about how justified, if at all, the settlers were.
It’s arguable, but less convincing, that the Palestinians are still justified in using terrorism against Israel even post-1948, or at least post-1967. In any case, the Palestinians’ narrative is valid, they are not evil, they are not criminals for fighting Israel – they are a legitimate enemy, a justus hostis. Same with Israelis: at least since 1948 Israelis also have just cause for fighting the war.
So that’s where accepting the Palestinian narrative takes me. Should we withdraw from the territories? It doesn’t answer that question. Dismantle the state of Israel? Nothing to say about it. Ethnically cleanse all Arabs from west of the Jordan? No answer one way or the other. Sloppy sentimentality aside, accepting the Palestinian narrative means granting Arabs the status of justus hostis, legitimate enemy, and that’s about all it implies.
13 Charlotte // Jul 27, 2009 at 11:20 pm
“In any case, the Palestinians’ narrative is valid, they are not evil…”
Mr Ploni, I should be interested to read your views on the Hamas charter.
14 Raghav // Jul 27, 2009 at 11:21 pm
Ploni, I don’t see how you make the leap from the incommensurability of competing narratives to the equal validity of such narratives. (For example, the fact that Kuhn believed that paradigms are incommensurable obviously didn’t mean he thought a given scientist wasn’t working within a specific paradigm, or that a scientist would accept the equal validity of other scientific paradigms.) In fact, affirming the equal validity of all narratives would itself presuppose a neutral vantage point, in direct contrast to the postmodernist/pragmatist view that holds that we are all adrift on Neurath’s boat.
15 Charlotte // Jul 27, 2009 at 11:29 pm
Raghav – and let’s hope it doesn’t sink.
16 fiddler // Jul 27, 2009 at 11:51 pm
I’d agree with Ploni here, but for the caveat that this:
implies that narratives are either hermetic entities or monads, which they clearly are not. They’re not only composed of a multitude of stories, but also subject to change as new stories emerge and old ones take a back seat or are even forgotten. In this they are like all traditions.
17 Charlotte // Jul 28, 2009 at 12:22 am
Never mind all the clever stuff, the intelligent thing to do is not to be a character in someone else’s play. The bullets may be live.
18 Charlotte // Jul 28, 2009 at 12:25 am
Hey all you philosophers out there, Wittgenstein spent every afternoon in the cinema watching Hollywood films.
19 Ploni // Jul 28, 2009 at 9:25 am
Raghav writes:
I don’t. I don’t believe that all historical “narratives” are valid, much less equally valid. I certainly reserve the right to judge and criticize the “Other” (as these “narrative” folks like to call him). I would have been clearer if I had written, above, “…and reject the possible validity of competing narratives.” I do believe that the Palestinian “narrative” in particular is essentially valid, though.
My previous comment was way longer than it needed to be, so I’ll repeat it in one sentence: Anyone who really believes both in these plural, incommensurable political “narratives” and in Walzer’s concept of just cause (“you can’t both be right”) has got some deep contradictions to resolve.
20 Ploni // Jul 28, 2009 at 9:30 am
Charlotte, I don’t think I’ve ever read the Hamas Charter, but I don’t like what I’ve heard of it. That said, I don’t see much use in whining about it.
When I said that the Palestinians are not evil, I meant as a group. I don’t see Palestinian terrorism per se as evil.
21 Joe // Jul 28, 2009 at 2:38 pm
Seems that Kaniuk and most of the commenters here are sort of conflating two different things. It’s my understanding that Israel’s war of independence was concomitant with, but not identical to, the Palestinian Nakba. The Nakba being of course the deliberate effort to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians from the land- not merely unintended “accidents of war.” And if I remember correctly, much of it was carried out after most of the fighting had petered out and the war was basically over.
22 Charlotte // Jul 28, 2009 at 3:52 pm
Ploni, To understand Islamist Hamas’s core values and objectives, it is necessary to read the Charter, available online.
Hamas takes its genocidal authority from the Koran, ie a belief in genocide of the Jews as divine dictat. As I do not on rational grounds believe in revealed religion. I cannot evaluate Hamas’s objectives as set out in their Charter as being any less evil in intent than the Nazi final solution.
23 Charlotte // Jul 28, 2009 at 4:27 pm
Joe, both your understanding and memory seem to have hijacked by anti-Israeli propaganda.
“The radio stations of the Arab regimes kept repeating to us: ‘Get away from the battle lines. It’s a matter of ten days or two weeks at the most, and we’ll bring you back to Ein-Kerem [near Jerusalem].’ And we said to ourselves, ‘That’s a very long time. What is this? Two weeks? That’s a lot!’ That’s what we thought [then]. And now 50 years have gone by.” [PATV, July 7, 2009]
With these words an ~Arab resident of a refugee camp recounts the reason why his family left Israel in 1948, in an interview on PA TV this month.
In recent years, Palestinian leaders, writers and refugees have spoken out in the Palestinian media, blaming the Arab leadership for the creation of the Palestinian refugee problem. According to these accounts, and contrary to the Palestinian myth that hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were deported by Israel in 1948, the vast majority of the Arab exodus from Israel was voluntary, and the result of orders by the Arab leadership.
Furthermore, the fact that this information has been openly discussed by public figures and refugees in the Palestinian Authority media itself suggests that awareness of this responsibility may be widespread – even though Palestinian leaders continue to blame Israel for “the expulsion” for propaganda purposes.
The following statements in the PA media shed significant light on the events of 1948 and counter the attempts by the Palestinian Authority to hide this part of history.
1. Arab resident of refugee camp:
“This picture was taken a week before we left Ein-Kerem [near Jerusalem] in June 1948, in front of our house. The radio stations of the Arab regimes kept repeating to us: ‘Get away from the battle lines. It’s a matter of ten days or two weeks at the most, and we’ll bring you back to Ein-Kerem.’ And we said to ourselves, ‘That’s a very long time. What is this? Two weeks? That’s a lot!’ That’s what we thought [then]. And now 50 years have gone by.”
[PATV, July 7, 2009]
2. Jawad Al-Bashiti, Palestinian journalist in Jordan:
“Remind me of one real cause from all the factors that have caused the ‘Palestinian Catastrophe’ [the establishment of Israel and the creation of the refugee problem], and I will remind you that it still exists… The reasons for the Palestinian Catastrophe are the same reasons that have produced and are still producing our Catastrophes today.
During the Little Catastrophe, meaning the Palestinian Catastrophe, the following happened: the first war between Arabs and Israel had started and the ‘Arab Salvation Army’ came and told the Palestinians: ‘We have come to you in order to liquidate the Zionists and their state. Leave your houses and villages, you will return to them in a few days safely. Leave them so we can fulfill our mission (destroy Israel) in the best way and so you won’t be hurt.’ It became clear already then, when it was too late, that the support of the Arab states (against Israel) was a big illusion. The Arabs fought as if intending to cause the ‘Palestinian Catastrophe’.”
[Al-Ayyam, May 13, 2008]
Read the rest of the statements and article at http://palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=157&doc_id=1102
24 fiddler // Jul 28, 2009 at 5:58 pm
Exactly, Joe. Unfortunately, most of the Western media contributes to the conflation by using phrases like “…the Israeli War of Independence (or worse even: the establishment of the state of Israel) – what Palestinians call the Naqba…”
Israeli independence or statehood is no such thing. The Naqba is the price the Palestinians were – are still being – made to pay for it.
25 Raghav // Jul 28, 2009 at 6:34 pm
Ploni, I don’t see the contradiction. To hold that competing narratives are incommensurable simply means believing in the proposition that there are no neutral, external values that can be appealed to in order to convince someone who adheres to a different narrative. That’s perfectly consistent with the belief that (at most) only one side can have just reasons for going to war.
26 Charlotte // Jul 29, 2009 at 2:02 am
Raghav,
“Justice” is determined according to a set of rules/principles/values. “Justice” is not value free; it is relative to its own framework of values.
If each side is in a competing narrative and there are no neutral, external values, then there are no common rules to determine what constitutes “just” reasons.
You seem to be rather conceptually confused.
27 Raghav // Jul 29, 2009 at 2:33 am
Yes, and? On a coherentist account, the fact that there are no common rules to determine what constitute “just” reasons has no bearing on either the justification or the truth of the belief that at most one side in a conflict has just reasons. Coherentists, pragmatists, and postmodernists all still have an account of truth and justification — it’s just that foundational beliefs don’t play a role in that account. Perhaps the confusion here stems from the conflation of “just” (as in justice) and “justified” (a technical term in epistemology).
Do try to be less insulting in the future.
28 Ploni // Jul 29, 2009 at 9:34 am
Raghav, you’re right of course that my “clarification” was incorrect as (mis)stated. I screwed up the “clarification” and misled everyone including myself. Incommensurability is not relevant; it’s a red herring. I appreciate your pointing out my error. I still think my original claim is correct, though. I’ll try one last time to formulate it precisely.
When Zionists ask us to accept the Palestinian narrative – if they mean it seriously and not as some condescending gesture – they’re asking us to adopt a perspective from which both the Palestinian and the Israeli narratives are valid. By that, I mean a perspective from which each conforms reasonably well to moral norms and historical fact (norms and fact as viewed from that perspective, of course). I think that my own perspective is one example of this.
Each narrative, if valid, justifies (in the sense of justa causa belli) its own side in wars, at least in the 1948 war. It would be a really lame narrative that didn’t justify a war for its own subject’s existence.
Walzer and Margalit assert that at most one side in a war can have just cause. Moreover, they explicitly declare that this is a logical necessity (see my quote above from their critique of Kasher and Yadlin). Therefore it holds in all perspectives, including the one we’ve adopted.
But that implies that at least one of the two narratives is invalid from our perspective, which contradicts the above.
I’m not very good at spelling out arguments precisely, and blog comments aren’t an ideal medium for that either. I’d appreciate further corrections. Even if my argument here is flawed, I still believe intuitively (and vaguely) that there’s a real contradiction in Gorenberg’s embracing both Walzer’s just war theory and these competing narratives.
29 Charlotte // Jul 29, 2009 at 3:15 pm
Raghav posted: Coherentists, pragmatists,. and postmodernists all still have an account of truth and justification – it’s just that foundational beliefs don’t play a role in that account.”
If what you say is correct, then coherentists, pragmatists, and postmodernists’ accounts of truth and justification are intellectually bankrupt. Leaving out foundational beliefs because they won’t make your theory stand up to scrutiny is the same as leaving out the foundations of a building. They collapse! Obviously you are not a scientist. If you were, you would know that by Popper’s universally applied convention, any theory is only valid up to the time it is falsified. So let us put foundational beliefs back into the pot and see if your assertions pass the test.
The foundational beliefs of Judaism and Islam are the crux of the Arab/Israeli dispute. Never the twain shall meet. they are inimical. They inhabit different moral universes. If you want to talk in “Kuhnian paradigms”, Israel and its egalitarian Basic Law, founded on the egalitarian foundational beliefs of Judaism that all people are created equal in the image of God, is in one paradigm; The Palestianian Authority’s Basic Law states that the national religion is Islam and the law of the land is discriminatory Shari’a.
In Jewish Israeli terms, their war is just. In Islamic/Arab terms, their war is just.
PS the comments posted here are littered with false premises. ie. Ploni’s statement “each conforms reasonably well to moral norms..” Jewish and Islamic moral norms differ from each other.
I don’t intend to insult, it’s just my sense of humour. Philosophical humbug is no substitute for common sense.
30 Charlotte // Jul 29, 2009 at 4:12 pm
Lots of theorizing and philosophical jargon bandied about here, but many of the arguments are philosophically weak. For example Ploni you wrote:
“In any case, the Palestinians’ narrative is valid, they are not evil, they are not criminals for fighting Israel..”When I said that the Palestinians are not evil, I meant as a group.”
“Palestinians” are not a single homogeneous group any more than Israelis are a single homogeneous group. Some Palestinians and some Israelis may be evil. There is no single “Palestinian” narrative as there is no single Jewish “narrative”.
You also wrote (ironically): “if we do them a favor and give back half of the land we stole from them, then they should thank us and let us live in peace on the other half of the land we stole.”
Assuming you are Jewish, your Jewish narrative is different from mine. Mine is based on empirical fact which conflicts with yours. My narrative also includes the fact that more than 850,000 Jewish refugees have had land stolen from them by Arabs since 1948, an area 4 times that of Israel. The world is silent.
You seem to have bought into the “Palestinian” narrative. Including the Arab propaganda trick of assuming the title “Palestinian” in 1964 under Arafat to fool history-challenged outsiders. As Michael Oren said:
“You don’t find the term Palestinian-Arab in any of the literature well into the 1950s. There’s a reason why the partition of 1947 calls for the creation of a Jewish state and an Arab state, not a Palestinian state. The term Palestinian, before 1948, referred almost exclusively to Jews. The Palestine exhibit at the 1930 World Fair in New York was a Zionist exhibit, not an Arab exhibit. You could have gotten great Palestinian schnitzel. A genuine Palestinian meal you could have had there – schnitzel. Falafel then was unknown.”
Yes, there may have been many Jewish Palestinians of European background, but Jews have clung tenaciously to, and lived in, the Land of Israel since biblical times, despite the attempts of conquering and cruel invaders and subjugators, to steal it from them. The Arabs conquered “Palestine” in holy jihad, and Hamas and their ilk are still at it. They do not plead the cause of their enemies, the Jews of Israel; they say they have a right to recover Israel in holy jihad as they originally conquered it for Allah in holy jihad 1400 years ago. That is their definition and claim to be fighting a “just” war. Unless my memory is wrong, Jews were in Israel before them – by a few thousand years.
The genocidal Mufti of Jerusalem, devotee of Hitler and the Final Solution, which he sought to implement in the Middle East, was Arafat’s mentor. Any Jew with a brain in his head knows that the Jews of 1948 were fighting a “just” war. Ask the dhimmis of Yemen. I recommend a little less philosophy and a lot more history.
31 george hilborn // Jul 29, 2009 at 4:25 pm
First let me commend the contributers to this blog for their cogent and well thought out comments. It is such a contrast to even the better blogs here in the US, even Salon .com who can’t seem to get a retort better than “Oh yeah and your mama wears army boots” or the like trash talk at times.
Having said the aforesaid I would like to take Y Ben David to task .I am one of your referenced “goyem” and I resent the term as being all inclusive and as repugnant as the terms used to insult Jews. Y you can perform the “Eighteen Position Kowtow ” for absolution.
32 Raghav // Jul 29, 2009 at 8:39 pm
Charlotte wrote:
My word, why haven’t philosophers taken note of this stunningly simple refutation? You’ve put whole departments out of jobs, you have.
Take a moment to re-read re-read section 5 of Two Dogmas of Empiricism. The basic motivation behind coherentism is the failure of several centuries of philosophers to reduce our beliefs to sense data and synthetic a priori.
And most philosophers of science don’t accept Popperian falsificationism as either a justification for scientific beliefs or as an accurate picture of how scientists actually operate. What counts as a falsifying evidence is a function of all the rest of your beliefs; any experimental result can be explained away by the equivalent of adding epicycles.
33 Suzanne // Jul 29, 2009 at 8:43 pm
Gershom Gorenberg: To be Jews, Kaniuk suggests, we must be able to see history in more than one way, and to recognize the humanity of those who were our enemies, and to be able to look at truth without flinching. This is neither an ethnic nor a religious definition of being Jewish, thought it is rooted in our religious and national history. Were that we could adopt it as a common denominator, the highest common denominator, let us say, for Jewish identity here.
The Kaniuk article on Ynet is heartening; also Chaim Gans recent article in Haaretz.
Chaim Gans’ piece appeared on Haaretz June 27th 2009 Palestinians were made to pay an unfair price
Gans: “One of the favorite tacks taken by Israeli spokesmen, in attempting to justify the price that the Palestinians paid for the realization of Zionism, is to place full responsibility for that price on the Palestinians themselves. Their refusal to accept the Partition Plan of 1947 is the main anchor for this argument. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could not, of course, resist reiterating it in his Bar-Ilan address.
But repeating this claim cannot promote peace, as it expresses a complete unwillingness by Israelis to recognize the heavy price paid by the Palestinians for the realization of Zionism.”
….“The constant reiteration of the fact of the Palestinians’ refusal to accept the Partition Plan, in an effort to make them responsible for the completely unfair costs we extract from them for the conflict, is to close our eyes to the great injustices that we are carrying out. Instead of understanding Zionism in a manner that includes recognition for the justice of the Palestinians’ opposition, even to its just elements, we deny the right of this opposition so as to create many unjust elements for Zionism.”
Denying the Nabka is another way to deny Palestinian’s their existence – to deny acceptance of their narrative while seeking acceptance makes no sense. How can you seek something from those whose identity you wish to deny? One can’t speak of the kind of justice that mostly all can agree upon if one only considers one’s own truth. Justice considers the whole truth.
34 Raghav // Jul 29, 2009 at 11:14 pm
Ploni wrote:
That’s now how I read the essay. To my mind, Kaniuk is (1) pointing out the futility (and undesirability) of attempting to inculcate the Jewish Israeli narrative among the Palestinians of Israel and (2) suggesting that the attempt is inconsistent with the respect owed to the Palestinians. As Gershom says, he’s not sorry his side won. Not to draw any comparison between the Palestinians and the CSA, but I’m sure many Northerners had deep respect for Southerners like Robert E. Lee and their narrative while believing, in the end, that secession was unjustifiable.
35 Benny // Jul 29, 2009 at 11:56 pm
Discussions of the theoretical concept of the narrative and reality miss the point here.
Kaniuk’s point is that to deny the Nakba is to deny a narrative that is completely compatible with reality. The reality is this: Jews won, Arabs lost. Jews won because they fought better. Arabs lost for the same reason.
The most anti-Kaniuk comments here seem to represent the same position that Kaniuk criticizes, which is the position that there was no Nakba because the Arabs did not lose and the Israelis did not win.
This odd Israeli concept of victory could fill many more articles on its own, and it has. Tom Friedman does an excellent job of describing it in From Beirut to Jerusalem, as does Gershom Gorenberg in The Accidental Empire, among many, many others.
What Kaniuk brings up here, but does not discuss in as much detail as others have, is Israel’s (and the Palestinians’) desire to see themselves as victims. The problem is that both sides see their own victories as David and Goliath stories- stories where the victory is some sort of miraculous defeat of a more-powerful enemy rather than the result of a battle between two respectable parties.
When I think of the Palestinian culture of victimhood, I think of a scene from the movie PARADISE NOW, which is about two suicide bombers. When the bombers receive their orders and their bombs, they enter a sketchy, abandoned building with an old, decrepit video camera, but subtle hints in the movie’s set design and in the recruiters’ costumes let us know that this “gritty,” “underground” location is a front for the large amounts of wealth that are poured into terrorism. Palestinian suicide bombers appear as poor, desperate people, but there are powerful men behind them.
When I think of the Israeli culture of victimhood, I think of a Yad Vashem tour guide who spent most of the tour talking about Ahmadinejad. Every few minutes, he interjected, “Who does this remind us of? Ahmadinejad,” or “This is what will happen if the world does not stop Ahmadinejad.” Never mind that Israel and its ally the USA could easily neutralize the Iranian army in a week. I saw the museum as a memorial to the dead and as a symbol of Israel’s current prosperity; he saw it as a museum of weakness, meant to justify Israel’s paranoia.
The culture of victimhood is a much greater subject than I can do justice to here. What I really want to do is to steer this conversation away from the abstract idea of “the narrative.” Kaniuk’s point is not just that “multiple narratives can be valid.” His point is that victors must respect the defeated and not treat them merely as unruly, whiny people who should disappear.
If we are to go back to the question of “narratives,” a simpler way to put it is this: In the narrative of many Israelis – Lieberman being one example – the Arabs should not have been there in the first place and Israel is doing the best it can to make them as invisible as possible. News flash: they’re having kids like rabbits and every one of those kids has a mind. They’re never going to disappear.
36 Charlotte // Jul 30, 2009 at 12:40 am
“My word, why haven’t philosophers taken note of this stunningly simple refutation? You’ve put whole departments out of jobs, you have.”
You’ve hit the nail on the head, Raghav, how else do you think philosophers are going to pay the rent? Tap dancing? I suggest you take a look at theoretical physicist Lee Smolin’s critique of the history/sociology of string theory in his book “The Trouble with Physics”.
I might add that, as a psychologist, I’m pretty clued up on how the mind works. My background is in psychology, philosophy of science/mind, psychodynamics, and the history of ideas.
Why on earth are you asking me to re-read logical positivism? It’s past its sell by date.
“What counts as a falsifying evidence is a function of all the rest of your beliefs” You betcha. That’s why they cling on to “Man made global warming”. Political, and tax generating.
37 Raghav // Jul 30, 2009 at 2:09 am
Charlotte thinks the paper that killed logical positivism is an example of logical positivism. I think we can safely say this thread is over.
38 Charlotte // Jul 30, 2009 at 3:30 am
“I think we can safely say this thread is over”. Crappy if/then sentence for a philospher. False logic.
39 Charlotte // Jul 30, 2009 at 4:04 am
Rhagav, your comment of 11.14pm was a lot more meaningful than all the other abstract theorizing.
40 Charlotte // Jul 30, 2009 at 12:40 pm
“Coherentists, pragamatists, and postmodernists all still have an account of truth and justification – it’s just that foundational beliefs don’t play a role in that account”
Ragahav, sorry to upset you old chap, but that assertion is falsified by your comment “I’m sure many Northerners had deep respect for Southerners like Robert E. Lee and their narrative while believing, in the end that secession was unjustifiable.”
The belief that secession was unjustifiable was a foundational belief.
41 Suzanne // Jul 30, 2009 at 1:20 pm
Benny thank you for your post. If something cannot be said simply and connect to the reader soon enough, all this “philosophese” becomes an exercise in self serving showing off ( perhaps interesting but nevertheless a jungle) to prove one is right at the expense of the discussion, (declared dead ) and where some newer or better notion is trying to arise.
The philosophese, beside being such a vehicle, is also another way of making something simple into something more complex and obscure than it need be or should be. The greatest minds we know have said simple things that touch a truth that seems more right perhaps than the ones we hold on to. The trick is to let go of what we hold on to.
42 Y. Ben-David // Jul 30, 2009 at 1:50 pm
George-
Unfortunately sarcasm doesn’t come across well in writing. I am going to let you in on how we Jews use the word “goy”. First, of all, in Biblical Hebrew the word means nothing more or less than “nation”. The Jewish people are themselves referred to as a “goy” in places in the Bible. Over time, the term has come to mean “non-Jew”, but most particularly as a non-Jew who doesn’t like Jews, as in the case where I used it above. That is obviously the meaning I was using above because many pro-assimilationist Jews claim that if only the antisemitic non-Jews had been willing to fully accept Jews who were willing to abandon their Jewish identity, the Jews would have disappeared long ago and there wouldn’t be any more “Jewish problem” or antisemitism. I was saying that many Leftist Zionists deep down believe that it would have been preferable if all the Jews had assimilated generations ago, but the existence of antisemitism forces the Jew to maintain his identity, and the only way to escape the persecution was to build a Zionist state. (I, of course, as a “right-wing Orthodox/religious pro-settler” Jew reject this assimilationist approach and really think that being Jewish and having Jewish values are a good thing).
A little joke:
A Jew finally decides he has had enough and goes to the office of the pastor of the local church. He tells him he wants to convert to Christianity. The pastor is thrilled, gives him instruction and then baptizes the Jew. After the baptism, the pastor asks the new convert if he could get up in church the next Sunday and say a few words about his experience to the congregation.
Sunday comes, the new convert is invited to the pulpit . He gets up, looks around at his fellow
Christians and opens his talk by saying:
“fellow goyim….”
43 Suzanne // Jul 30, 2009 at 3:56 pm
Y-BD: (If I may butt in):“Over time, the term has come to mean “non-Jew”, but most particularly as a non-Jew who doesn’t like Jews, as in the case where I used it above.
The way it is used here ( see Webster’s dictionary) it is disparaging towards the non-Jew; in other words it is used by Jews who do not like non-Jews. It’s not about how the non-Jew feels about Jews.
Also- you say : “many Leftist Zionists deep down believe that it would have been preferable if all the Jews had assimilated generations ago,…”
How many? Sorry- I don’t mean to be sarcastic but this is quite an assumption.
Building a Zionist state might very well have helped escape from one persecution, but the way it happened and is happening is not so far helpful to that goal.
44 Charlotte // Jul 30, 2009 at 4:10 pm
Raghav, just a thought. I am sure you have a foundational belief that you are not a brain-in-a-vat. Or, you would not get up in the morning.
Human beings like any other living creature depend on empirical evidence to live in the world. When people start to lose their sight, they are frightened and distressed to “see” nightmarish phenomena due to lack of sufficient incoming stimuli from the outside world.
We are all empiricists to some degree. .. Remember Galileo.
45 Charlotte // Jul 30, 2009 at 4:32 pm
Benny wrote of Yad Vashem ‘When I think of the Israel culture of victimhood, I think of a Yad Vashem tour guide who spent most of the tour talking about Ahmadinejad. Every few minutes he interjected, “Whoe does this remind us of? Ahmadinejad.” Never mind that Israel and it ally the USA could easily neutralize the Iranian army in a week.’
I wouldn’t count on the USA, least of all under Obarmy. This is an extract from Dominic Lawson’s article “No, we are not all Hamas now” in The Sunday Times, 11 January 2009:
A Briton entering Yad Vashem might do so in the hope that he would see a compliment to his own nation’s fight against the Nazis. He would be disappointed. Instead, there is footage of a long dead emissary to London recording how Britain’s wartime foreign secretary, Anthony Eden, told him the plight of the Jews was not an important consideration in the war effort. Later, he would see pictures of British soldiers dragging Jewish immigrants from ships on the shores of Tel Aviv and of Holocaust survivors behind the wire of British camps in Cyprus, prevented from reaching the promised land. The message here is equally clear. No one will protect the Jews except themselves…………
This is not exactly the classical doctrine of deterrence: it’s supposed to stop people attacking you in the first place. Yet the Israeli attack on Gaza is part of the same policy of delayed deterrence. Paradoxical though this might seem, it is also essential if the process towards an independent Palestinian state is to havea future. For until the people of Israel believe that such a state – including the heights of the West Bank, which overlook Tel Aviv – is not a threat to their own existence, they will never support a government which abandons those territories, won in an earlier war of self-defence.
If you believe otherwise, go to Yad Vashem. ”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/dominic_lawson/article5489436.ece
46 george hilborn // Jul 30, 2009 at 8:24 pm
Y you are absolved :no “Eighteen Position Kowtow” required. I have to watch it now that I have a Chinese daughter -in-law and a granddaughter who is half Chinese and I may be called to task on when,where, and how it is to be performed.
” Sign of The Times” I was standing behind an elderly white woman at Borders who was holding a plethora of anti- Obama books ,so say I;, “what are you reading?” and she sayeth” we have to get rid of this guy and get some real American of American stock” So I retort;” I didn’t know of any American Indian who let it be known that he or she wanted to be President” and she retorted” I don’t like you”
47 Ploni // Jul 30, 2009 at 9:12 pm
Raghav, maybe Kaniuk did mean what you say: “Our narrative is right and, with all due respect, your narrative is bullshit, but I hope we won’t be stupid and boorish enough to try to convince you of that.” If so, then I’m not arguing not against personally. I think I’m arguing against Gershom Gorenberg’s position, but maybe I misread him too. In any case I’m arguing against a stance that seems common nowadays among the “yefei nefesh” (beautiful souls) on the left. My complaint is that their stance is not pro-Palestinian enough for me, ha ha.
Sorry if my comments were too “philosophical,” but Kaniuk started it: he used the word “narrative” (נרטיב ).
48 Y. Ben-David // Jul 30, 2009 at 11:11 pm
Suzanne-
I stand by my definition of “goy” as referring to antisemitic non-Jews. Jews have no problem with and the greatest respect for non-Jews who relate to us in the same way. I am sure all ethnic groups have negative names for those of toher groups with whom there is a history of hostility
(e.g. blacks referring to “honkey” whites or the Irish-American who wrote once in the Los Angeles Times that it wasn’t until he was 20 years old that he discovered that “damned British” was two words).
49 Suzanne // Jul 31, 2009 at 12:52 am
Y-B-D.
My experience with the term is that it is used disparagingly from one Jew to another but maybe also it is true that in practice Jews relate to non-Jews giving benefit of doubt about their anti-Semitism. I am just telling you my experience, in my family ( in which there was no doubt about how it was used) but it is corroborated by the Webster’s definition. There is a bit of a “two-faced-ness” about the usage of the term. It may be that other Jews in different circles did not use the term this way, I don’t know. I would not be surprised as we have such variations.
50 Raghav // Jul 31, 2009 at 1:05 am
Meh. Is Tisha B’Av really the right time for jokes?
51 Y. Ben-David // Jul 31, 2009 at 7:57 am
Raghav-
Can’t think of a better time to talk about Jewish assimilation and antisemitism.
52 Y. Ben-David // Jul 31, 2009 at 10:44 am
Another comment on the psychological disease of guilt that has afflicted Kaniuk and the other Leftist Zionists-in order to lift the feelings of guilt that he has, he has adopted a revisionist history, and an revisionist present-in other words, the claim that the Palestinians were supposedly fighting in 1948 and are fighting todoay “in order to establish a state”, and so Kaniuk says that when that state is established, he says (or really rather, wants to believe) that there will be “peace ” and that the feelings of guilt he bears will be lifted.
Of course, this is all a myth. The Palestinians were not fighting to establish a state in 1948 , they were offered one on a silver platter and rejected it. They were fighting in order to carry out a genocide of the Jewish yishuv. They said so openly. They started the war and they lost it, thank G-d.
Sure there can be reconciliation with a defeated enemy. But this can happen only when the defeated enemy ackowledges the defeat. President Reagan visited graves of German war dead in the 1980′s (including Waffen SS men, but that is a different story), but this could only happen because Germany admitted they were defeated, they accepted the outcome of the war (i.e. they no longer claim Alsace-Lorraine, Silesia, East Prussia, Pomerania, Sudetenland, etc) and admitted the Allies represented the right cause. This can bring reconciliation. This is most definitely NOT the case with the Arabs. They do not accept their defeat, they still do not recognize Israel’s legitimacy (and this includes all those who have signed “peace treaties” with Israeli including the Jordan, Egypt, and the Palestinians, all of whom maintain Judeophobic propaganda campaigns against Israel AND Jews to this day), they do not admit they were wrong in trying to carry out a genocidal war. Thus, to expect us the “empathize with their Naqba” represents a sickness of the soul, not “sensitivity” to the other. I do not expectg Israeli Arabs to love Israel, I do not expect them to sing the national anthem, and I do not try to prevent them from remembering their Naqba because one man can’t control how another thinks. I DO expect them to live peacefully, to obey the law, to understand they are a minority here and their culture is NOT the dominant one and not to use public facilities for their self-pitying Naqba commemorations. Poor Kaniuk can’t understand this. He just wallows in guilt feelings.
53 Suzanne // Jul 31, 2009 at 1:34 pm
Y-B-D. You belong to the “roll-over” school of Jewish righteousness. Arabs were supposed to just roll over and send out the welcome wagon for the Jews especially the droves that came after the war. You don’t acknowledge, what is being acknowledged in the Kaniuk and the Gans ( please read) real fears on the part of the native population from the beginning that underpin the the hate and rejection. That is not to say that Jews don’t have a right to be there. But to Arabs Jews were Europeans, foreigners invading. Arab losses through war, loss of control, dispossession and humiliation is vivid to them as the Holocaust is to Jews. It could be ( has been and is ) asked why don’t Jews just get over the Holocaust?
Arabs no more accepted their defeat than Jews accepted theirs.
In general-I do expect that the “winner” would have some magnanimity and empathy for the loser… like we had after WW2, helping to rebuild. We did not want a broken world.
After 67 it got even worse. More humiliation, more pokes in the eye. ( Yes I know “it’s because”….- an excuse for “Greater Israel”) If Arabs did not keep resisting Israel would not have happily continued expansion.
That is why every outpost, every taking, is a poke in the eye that revives those feelings and prevents getting over it— IT is still happening… the humiliation. It’s not like Jews are simply saying “we are here get used to it” It’s more like “we are here we want ( more of) your land and we want to control you, push the last of you out”
The world expects both sides to obey the law- international law. Don’t expect public opinion and formal or further recognition of Israel’s legitimacy until then from either the Arab side or the part of the international community ( growing) that sees Israel as the lawless one.
Not empathizing with that means you don’t understand your situation and you allow righteousness to blind you while you make fun of empathy itself.
Some guilt should be felt. The sickness of the soul from this angle is exhibited by those who lack empathy, who can only see their side. That’s a loss of humanity, a loss of an important quality of being human.
54 Suzanne // Jul 31, 2009 at 1:36 pm
I meant to say- if Arabs did not resist,Israel would have happily kept on expanding.
55 Charlotte // Jul 31, 2009 at 2:48 pm
Suzanne wrote “That is not to say that Jews don’t have a right to be there. But to Arabs Jews were Europeans, foreigners invading. … Arabs no more accepted their defeat than Jews accepted theirs. In general – I do expect that the “winner” would have some magnanimity and empathy for the loser.”
Suzanne expects to have Jews to have magnanimity and empathy “the loser” – Nazi Germany???? !!!!!
Hi Ho, Hi Ho, it’s off to the gas chambers we go.
Suzanne is barking mad.
And another thing, Suzanne’s assertion “to Arabs Jews were Europeans, foreigners invading Arab losses through war” is an insufficient premise. Suzanne, like all Arab apologists denies the tenets of Islam. To the Arabs Jews were Jews. Europeans = Christians. In Islam, Jews and Christians are dhimmified, reduced to the status of a slave without equal rights to his Muslim overlord, spared death only by the payment of a tax, jizya, depicted as apes and pigs in the koran. The worst vilification and hatred reserved for Jews. The aberration of a Jewish flag flying over “Muslim” land previously conquered in jihad is the reason why Muslim states (including the PA whose national religion is Islam and whose Basic Law is Shari’a) do not recognise Israel.
Go and read Bat Ye’or, Suzanne, and stop spouting rubbish. I suggest you visit Saudi Arabia for a holiday, if they’ll let you in.
56 Charlotte // Jul 31, 2009 at 3:20 pm
And another thing, in Islam all of Israel is “stolen” land.
In Islam, land conquered in jihad belongs to Muslims in perpetuity. Israel, a state founded and governed on egalitarian Jewish values, stands on land previously conquered in holy jihad for Islam. Islamic states and their Useful Idiots cite international law to prosecute their jihad against Jews and Israel and ignores it when it suits them. International law is a political minefield. Dummies like Suzanne would expect people to respect Nuremberg laws because they are the “law”.
Suzanne, recommend a few more facts and a lot less empathy.
57 Charlotte // Jul 31, 2009 at 3:41 pm
For all those commenters who assert that all narratives are valid:
Antizionist Illan Pappe “My bias is apparent despite the desire of my peers that I stick to facts and the “truth” when reconstructing past realities. I view any such construction as vain and presumptuous. This book is written by one who admits compassion for the colonized not the colonizer; who sympathises with the occupied not the occupiers.”
A tenured Professor asserts that facts don’t matter in reconstructing past realities – all that matters to him is persuing his own agenda. I’m glad he’s not a trial judge.
58 Y. Ben-David // Jul 31, 2009 at 5:20 pm
Okay, Suzanne, let’s lay our cards on the table. You said:
——————————————————-
Y-B-D. You belong to the “roll-over” school of Jewish righteousness. Arabs were supposed to just roll over and send out the welcome wagon for the Jews especially the droves that came after the war
——————————————————–
Let’s say it is 1948 and you are a soldier in the IDF. You are aware of what you wrote here. Do you say, “hey, you know they are right, let’s have all the incoming refugees go back to where they came from…i.e. Poland. I am throwing away my uniform because the Arabs are right and it is immoral to force these foreigners on them”? Or will you fight, but with the thought that maybe it is not right to throw away your life for an immoral cause, as you pointed out. Or will you fight full stretch, in spite of all your misgivings?
59 C.K. Williams Dusts It Again // Jul 31, 2009 at 5:31 pm
[...] South Jerusalem History Awards [...]
60 fiddler // Jul 31, 2009 at 6:15 pm
Charlotte:
Suzanne meant the war of 1948, if that wasn’t bleedin’ obvious then I don’t know what is.
Even regarding Nazi Germany, there’s a difference, both practical and conceptual, between “the Nazis” and “the German people”, and it has nothing to do with the level of support the Nazis had domestically. But given your views of Islam, that distinction is perhaps too subtle for you.
Which is of course totally different from claiming that your God promised the land to your people, and then acting to fulfil the promise on His behalf. According to your logic, saying “next year in Jerusalem” is a declaration of “jihad”.
Do I really have to point out to you the fundamental difference between democratically enacted laws, including int’l law (most of which is more similar to treaties, to which Israel has acceded by choice), and the laws in a dictatorship, such as the Third Reich? With that come very different meanings and underpinnings of “respecting the law”, I would think.
Islam is this, Islam is that, invariably cherry-picking the most outlandishly extremist interpretations, shared by only a handful of the 1.5-2 billion Muslims in the world.
Sometimes I wonder if you’re competing for leadership of some fringe radical Islamist group.
61 dana // Jul 31, 2009 at 6:18 pm
Ploni and Raghav – a comment here, if I may, on Kuhn and incommensurate narratives:
Sometimes it’s best not to forget that Kuhn’s work took place in the realm of science, where competing paradigms may be a cause for much consternation and hand waving over the validity of the opposing camp’s views, but are rarely accompanied by blood shed (at least none that I know of). Furthermore, scientists do pride themselves on being rational and no matter what views of “reality” they may hold, they all agree on what scientific method is (even if they do quibble on details). Effectively this means that, right or wrong, they all effectively belong to the same “tribe”. My Exhibit A for this is Einstein himself, who despised the statistical nature of reality embodied in quantum theory, but proceed to try and work out an alternative while working “within” the community of scientists. That his unified field theory did not work out just meant that he did not hit upon a “working’ solution – something he himself admitted.
By contrast, when battles are waged over historical narratives, it is far more common that the combatants are of different tribes and generally agree on very little. Typically they don’t even have the same concepts of “justice”, much less “fairness”. As for the concept of “validity” as in historical validity, that tends to be the subject of gamesmanship, oneupmanship and strawmanship (I hereby bring charlotte as Exhibit B for the latter). In history, there’s rarely incontrovertible “proof” that you can expect the other side to accept. Ultimately, the only resolution is not through objective “findings” or ‘logical argumentation’ but through emotional evolution.
What I’m trying to say is that it requires an epiphany – an emotional waking-up process – to see the merits of a competing narrative. Interestingly – epiphany is kind of what happens to scientists too, when it suddenly hits them that a concept may have some merit after all. But scientists come to that point only after much work and consideration., whereas historical ‘combatants” can reconcile following a single encounter that leaves a strong enough impression.
My Exhibit C for reconciling narratives are the stories of the american indians and the australian aborigines. No doubt that one side was the big loser in the colonialist take over. Yet, the colonizers’ descendents after a few centuries came to see the validity of the natives’ nakba narrative – without necessarily giving up on the heroic elements of their own. Why the tale of israel’s founding is not heading towards a similar resolution will be the subject of another post (maybe..one post with three Exhibits may be more than enough for a while.).
62 fiddler // Jul 31, 2009 at 6:23 pm
YBD, if I was Suzanne (heck, even if I was myself
I wouldn’t have donned a uniform of any IDF predecessor in the first place. The legitimate fight had been fought here in Europe a few years earlier, and, as you know, was won.
63 Suzanne // Jul 31, 2009 at 6:56 pm
Y. B-D.
Do you say, “hey, you know they are right, let’s have all the incoming refugees go back to where they came from…i.e. Poland. I am throwing away my uniform because the Arabs are right and it is immoral to force these foreigners on them”? Or will you fight, but with the thought that maybe it is not right to throw away your life for an immoral cause, as you pointed out. Or will you fight full stretch, in spite of all your misgivings?
I am talking about empathy first of all. And we are here now after the fact- so this should not be so hard. Also I am not talking about right and wrong- nor is this what I think is being said in the article/s, or as Dana puts it, in this epiphany that may be happening amongst some that there was a time for fighting and there should be now a time for healing ( long overdue). For that healing to happen you need to understand, to stretch to see, what it seemed like on the other side and what it was for some and even why they are having as hard a time of letting go of their a real loss and dispossession. They ask why they should pay for the holocaust and centuries of Christian persecution of the Jews . They point to the fact that they too have lived on this land and .. and so on.
If I were a soldier in the Palmach- as our dear friend, a hero in that one, was. I would have, I like to think, have fought just as hard for the right to be there. Your hypothetical is irrelevant to me.
One of the first books I read that really touched me is Abram Sachar’s Redemption of the Unwanted. After you have a good cry and wonder why the world is without justice maybe you look for some and try to live fighting for it whatever way you can.
64 Charlotte // Jul 31, 2009 at 7:05 pm
Fidler, no time to respond fully now. Just to say you evidently know nothing about Islam, Sharia and dhimmitude. Democracy is a red herring. If you do a google search you will learn that Shar’ia law is not egalitarian. It is only “democratic” within the discrinatory Sharia laws. Islamic signatories to the Cairo Declaration of Rights In Islam repudiate the UN Charter on Human Rights..
If you knew anything about Islam, you would know exactly why Arab states refuse to recognise Israel and why Jews are vilified in Sermons on State Run Egyptian State TV.
Here’s a snippet on educating the young:
“In 2006, the Palestinian Authority Ministry of Higher Education introduced new 12 th grade schoolbooks written by Palestinian educators who were appointed by the Fatah leadership. PMW reviewed these books and found that they make no attempt to educate for peace or coexistence with Israel. Instead Israel’s right to exist is adamantly denied and the Palestinian war against Israel is presented as an eternal religious battle for Islam.
At a press conference releasing the PMW report in the US Senate building, then US Senator Hillary Clinton said:
“These textbooks do not give Palestinian children an education; they give them an indoctrination. When we viewed this [PMW] report in combination with other media [from other PMW reports] that these children are exposed to, we see a larger picture that is disturbing. It is disturbing on a human level, it is disturbing to me as a mother, it is disturbing to me as a United States Senator, because it basically, profoundly poisons the minds of these children.”
http://www.palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=122
65 Charlotte // Jul 31, 2009 at 7:20 pm
Suzanne wrote “They ask why they should pay for the holocaust and centuries of Christian persecution of the Jews. They point to the fact that they too have lived on this land..and so on”
They were not paying for the holocaust. They were “paying” for the Islamic hatred of the Jew, evidenced by centuries of slaughter, persecution and dhimmitude of Jews under Arab rule, and for the refusal of their Arab leadersren to peacefully cohabit with Jews on an equal basis as set down in Resolution 181.
It was the Arabs who declared War on the Jews, not the other way round.
For the historically challenged, read Resolution 181 on line.
66 Charlotte // Jul 31, 2009 at 8:22 pm
Just one point Dana, Memory, attitudes, narratives, and national myths are not static, they evolve. Scientific studies on eyewitness testimony using filmed sequences demonstrate the unreliablility of human memory and its susceptibility to suggestion. Did such and such an event take place, etc. can be established using documentation. Historians work using empirical data. Empirical data are relevant to establishing historical truth. Otherwise we’re into the realms of Holocaust denial and antisemites would be having a field day conning gullible people it didn’t happen, and using denial of factual reality to beat Jews with. Fortunately sensible people decided not to grass over Auschwitz.
You say “Ultimately the only resolution is not through objective “findings” or “logical argumentation” but through emotional evolution.” Emotional evolution also requires facing facts and integrating them into pre-existing schema. It’s what psychotherapists do – to do otherwise is to collude with the patient.
67 dana // Aug 1, 2009 at 12:04 am
Charlotte: you say:
“Memory, attitudes, narratives, and national myths are not static, they evolve”
Exactly. And the zionist memory, attitudes and national myth has been evolving to disclaim the obvious fact that israel was established as a response to the holocaust not as a result of some deep-seated yearning by european jews for some far off dusty land in the middle east. The europeans after WWII were all too glad to go along with this new enterprise – got them “off the hook” on their age old anti-semitism. before hitler went medieval on the jews of europe, very few of the well assimilated educated jews of western europe had any interest in going to palestine and the vast majority wouldn’t have (I am not counting here the socilaists of eastern europe. that’s another story entirely). it was strictly the destruction of their actual homelands in germany, poland, checkoslovakia, hungary etc by the nazis that brought the remnants over to what became israel -at least those who couldn’t make it safely to America.
I bring this up as an example of your point about the changing narrative. As I do hear that all of a sudden it’s about some “great return to the homeland”. Oh well – anything to put a good face on reality decades hence. Anything to avoid facing the truth that the refugee jews were off-loaded on the palestinians en mass.
Then you say:
“Emotional evolution also requires facing facts and integrating them into pre-existing schema. It’s what psychotherapists do – to do otherwise is to collude with the patient.”
I agree with this statement too and am anxiously awaiting the day when israelis start integrating into their conscious narrative what really happened to the palestinians and why. As diaries of people like ben gurion and sheret are starting to come out, we all are beginning to realize that in fact, plan dalet – and the like – were real, and the removal of the native israelis (the ones you refer to as palestinians) was, in part a deliberately and consciously implemented ethnic cleansing. For example, let’s not forget that many of the refugees now in gaza are descendents of the reisdents of Najd (which you call Ashdod) who were summarily rounded up, put on buses and carts and sent away with nothing but that which they could carry with them. Now the children of najd may fire a couple of rockets at the new residents of the town from which they were kicked out. That is one way to look at the situation. Another way is to accept that gaza has been turned into an internment camp of the native real israelis, so that a charlotte who has absolutely no connection with that part of the world – napart from some made-up fantasy – can defend it as if she had a valid estate claim. Sounds exasperating, doesn’t it? sort of like “must have the precious”?
The undisputed historical fact is that the nakba happened and israel was born in its wake, then spent the next 60 years trying to bury the original sin. the US was born in sin as well. many countries were. What is sad – and exasperating to the world – is that israel continues to deny that there ever was a sin. And for that reason it cannot move on.
Hope I’m not colluding with the “patient’ here. But then, I didn’t post my original comment as a psychotherapist but as a scientist.
68 fiddler // Aug 1, 2009 at 12:17 am
Charlotte, I mentioned laws in a democracy in response to your tarring int’l law and the Nuremberg laws with the same brush:
And btw, isn’t the definition of a Jew according to the Law of Return modelled after the Nuremberg laws?
The Cairo Declaration is an about as enlightened document as Leviticus. So do you expect Jews and Christians to be judged after the letter of that book, or after present-day crackpots like John Hagee or Rabbi Shmuel Eliahu?
69 Suzanne // Aug 1, 2009 at 1:49 am
In addition- it would be good to acknowledge that all the Arab countries in the region were against the Partition plan establishing two states and a corpus separatum, Jerusalem) and were amongst the 23 members that either voted against or abstained against the 39 that approved. For those immediately affected this seemed like it was being shoved down their throats and as consequence of European war/s and persecution. Further, they felt that this violated the rights of the majority (67% Arab) and that large numbers of Arabs would be trapped in a Jewish state. Since their objections were overruled, Arabs were angry and decided that this could only be settled by war. They lost, but they might have won. This loss was a further humiliation and aggravation… like Germany after WW 1. Still they did not give up until they lost more. And so on… to today
We still argue over these things spreading hate suffering,killing people- which has further consequence.
Did they have a right to their anger? Yes, Do we have a right to say they did not? No. Do we have a right to ours? Yes. What would a “professional psychotherapist” say? That both sides need validation. To a point.
Back then, as a consequence, they took revenge on their Jewish populations which begat strong in-migration to Israel of Jews from the East. That helped Israel didn’t it? Canyou have it both ways? ie complaining about the fact and benefiting from it? To spell it out:if Arab countries did not exile their Jewish populations, or cause them to leave, there would be less Jews in Israel today- the ones who would have made peace already most likely.
One thing follows another in this story and you cannot unwind it selectively.
And when international law is brought up also note how selectively as if it were a smorgasbord..
I am pro-emotional evolution.
70 Charlotte // Aug 1, 2009 at 4:04 am
Dana, funny sort of scientist you are. Your “obvious” fact “that Israel was created as a response to the holocaust…..” is false.
The Jews were promised a Jewish National Homeland in the Balfour Declaration of 1917 and the British Mandate was set up to carry out that promise. Jews were given the right to settle anywhere in the Mandate. See also the San Remo Resolution 1920. Before Hitler.
As for your other “facts” you omit the fact that nearly half the Jews in Israel are of Middle Eastern origin. Ever heard of the vilification and dhimmification of Jews under Muslim rule, only alleviated under European imperialism. Unfortunately the Jews of Yemen did not enjoy the release from persecution brought by the Europeans. Nothing to do with the creation of Israel. Everything to do with the institutionalised antisemitism of Islam.
As for all your other historically false twaddle, briefly the Egyptians penned the Arabs into Gaza, see Arafat’s authorized biography. The Egyptians can open their border with Gaza anytime they want and let all the Gazans into Egypt if they want. But they don’t want to be over run by Hamas Islamists. They’ve already got trouble with the Muslim Brotherhood and Hezbollah.
Why aren’t you speaking out on behalf of the 850,000+ Jewish refugees from Arab countries who lost land 4 times the size of Israel? Why aren’t you saying that was a sin?
Answer: Because you’re an Israel bashing hypocrite.
Someone who claims to be a scientist but who make an emotional polemical argument waffling on about sin and asserts that her ragbag of personal opinions and Arab propaganda is “undisputed historical fact” really needs to get her head examined.
71 Charlotte // Aug 1, 2009 at 4:18 am
To Factually challenged Dana who wrote “the removal of the native israelis (the ones you refer to as palestinians)”
The Jews of the Mandate were known as Palestinians. The Arabs refused to be called “Palestinians” until Arafat adopted the title as a propaganda tool in 1964 to fool idiots like you that only Arabs calling themselves “Palestinians” could have any relationship with the Mandate of Palestine.
I think Israelis are shooting themselves in the foot by going along with the deception.
72 Charlotte // Aug 1, 2009 at 4:30 am
Fiddler, You’re mighty confused. Or is that your intention to confuse – hence your pseudonymn “fiddler”
Sharia Law and the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam are the active legal frameworks of Islamic states.
The “democracy” in those states will be restricted by the dictates of Sharia and the Cairo Declaration.
73 Charlotte // Aug 1, 2009 at 5:01 am
For Suzanne who thinks facts don’t matter unless she is reporting false ones and writing her own fiction.
Accurate Facts are that Partition was advocated in the British 1937 Peel Report.
The 1947 UN Partition Plan was predicated not on the European war but as the only solution for the problem that the Arabs would not live peacably with the Jews.
In 1947 the British partitioned India because Muslims would not live peacably with Hindus. The Population transfer involved millions, Millions died.
Suzanne wrote “further, they felt that this violated the rights of the majority (67% Arab) and that large numbers of Arabs would be trapped in a Jewish state.”
The Partition Plan created a Jewish State and and Arab State, existing residents were given equal citizenship rights in either State. There was a window of one year to relocate to the other State if wished. ie Jew to Jewish state, Arabs to Arab state. The two states were to have an economic union and other shared services.
The reason the Arabs refused was because equality with Jews transgresses Sharia.
“This loss was a further humiliation and aggravation…like Germany after WW1. Still they did not given up until they lost more. And so on…to today.”
Germany did not give up after WW1 because their army returned in reasonable shape. They did not believe Germany had really been beaten. That is why Dresden was flattened. So that the Gemans would realise that they were beaten. It is a pity that Germany wasn’t properly “humiliated” in WW1. If it had been, the Holocaust would not have happened.
Japan became a modern democracy after it had been the recipient of two atomic bombs. Before you start crying for the Japanese war dead and blaming the allies instead of the Japanese leaders, I suggest you read up on the Japanese nazis. Facts I mean.
74 dana // Aug 1, 2009 at 6:22 am
Charlotte – your comment about arafat and the palestinian “label” is an example of a smear – or a blood libel – if you prefer. I won’t even bother to discuss facts with you since facts is clearly not what you are after.
I refer to the original inhabitants of the land now called Israel as the original Israelis to account for the high likrelihood – backed by strong DNA evidence – that the most are descendents of the jewish people who lived there – who over the centuries became christians and later, muslims. The ones you so belittle are the true sons and daughters of the kings, warriors, scholars and paesants of Israel, while you charlotte, are probably of such mixed heritage as to bear miniscule commonality with the jews of the bible. No wonder you feel so called to defend zealously an ownership of land in which neither you nor your ancestors partook in – either in b ody or in soul.
but that’s OK – it’s your right to proclaim an affinity with a jewish heritage – anyone can do that. It’s just that based on my reading of what it means to be jewish, it oftentimes seems that the worst place to be a good jew is in Israel. Not that one can’t be a bad jew anywhere, of course, but the critical mass of bad jewishness has been reached in Israel (maybe something to do with the concentration of hubris as a mysterious catalist?)
At least if you are palestinian – or one of the residual haredis who always lived in safed or hebron, there’s some ethnic heritage to claim. If the Israelis make the palestinians suffer long enough – why, I believe they’ll turn out to be the better jews in the long run.
75 Ploni // Aug 1, 2009 at 10:32 am
Dana, it doesn’t take an epiphany to see the merits of the other side’s narrative. Some things it might take (neither necessary nor sufficient): existential security, a tradition of Western open-mindedness, propaganda in the schools and media.
And of course political narratives involve bloodshed. What else would you expect?
When I say that I find both the Palestinian and the Zionist causes just (at this time in history), of course I mean justice from my perspective, not from theirs.
And, to clarify further regarding an earlier comment by Raghav about Kaniuk being glad that our side won: Although I find the Palestinian narrative valid and their cause in war just (as is ours), obviously I still want to defeat them. I’d want my side to win – to continue our sovereignty inside of “Palestine” – even if we weren’t just. It’s the Blue Team against the Green Team, and I was born on the Blue Team. Or as a fellow “settler” put it: I love justice, but I love my mother more. (Albert Camus on the pied-noir)
76 Charlotte // Aug 1, 2009 at 2:53 pm
@ Ploni, who finds the Palestinian narrative valid: only a dummy would want to be a dhimmi.
Have a nice day.
77 Charlotte // Aug 1, 2009 at 3:29 pm
Dana, who claims to be a scientist, wrote of Muslims “I believe they’ll turn out to the better Jews in the long run.”
Not unless they renounce the mantra of the supremacy of Muslims and Islam over all other human beings, the tenets of the Koran, Sharia law, jihad, and dhimmitude they won’t.
For someone who claims she’s a scientist, Dana is mighty short on logic.
Maybe she’s a Christian scientist, not a real scientist at all – epiphany?)
78 Charlotte // Aug 1, 2009 at 3:58 pm
Jews lived in the Kindoms of Israel before the invading Arabs conquered the Middle East in holy jihad. Under Islam the Jews of the Middle East have been slaughtered, persecuted and expelled for 1400 years. Nevertheless they clung tenaciously to the Land of Israel and inhabited it continuously. There was never a country called Palestine.
Arafat, an Egyptian, is recorded as saying to the UN Security Council on 31 May 1956: “It is common knowledge that Palestine is nothing but Southern Syria.”
Arafat was Chairman of the PLO formed in 1964: Article 24 of the PLO Charter:
“This Organization does not exercise any territorial sovereignty over the West Bank in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, (or) on the Gaza Strip….”
If the “occupation” of the West Bank and Gaza by Israel is the obstacle to peace, as is endlessly proclaimed by Arafat and others, what was the motivation to create the PLO to strike at Israel at a time when Israel had no role in those territories? Why did the PLO and other Arab terrorist groups continually attack Israel at that time? If Jerusalem is so important to the Arabs, why is it that the the Palestinian National Covenant of 1964, does not even once mention Jerusalem?
Answer: the global jihad for world domination of Islam. Want to be a dhimmi, dummy Dana?
79 Charlotte // Aug 1, 2009 at 4:05 pm
Mr Gorenberg, I’d like to nominated for a South Jerusalem History Award please.
Facts, not fiction, are the stuff of history.
80 Charlotte // Aug 1, 2009 at 4:19 pm
Narrative lovers, I suggest you stick to Harry Potter. Acknowledging other people’s fictions as valid resulted in being burnt at the stake. People like Dana are not interested in “truth” and “healing”, they are traditional antisemites. Trip their wires and they soon come out hysterically ranting with all guns blazing.
Plus ca change. Antisemitism modern style.
81 dana // Aug 1, 2009 at 8:42 pm
Got you riled up a bit charlotte, didn’t I?
PS this is my shortest comment ever. Thanks Charlotte for helping me to find the levity to breach the walls of brevity.
82 Charlotte // Aug 2, 2009 at 1:02 am
Thanks, Dana, for admitting you’re an antisemite, and for giving me the opportunity to expose to gullible Jews the folly of buying into other people’s versions of “history”.
83 Charlotte // Aug 2, 2009 at 1:13 pm
One last comment?
Suzanne wrote “Did they have a right to their anger? Yes…Back then, as a consequence, they took revenge on their Jewish populations which begat strong in-migration to Israel of Jews from the East. That helped Israel didn’t it.”
The historically challenged think that the persecution and expulsions of Jews in the 20th century from Arab countries was nothing but a reaction to the creation of Israel. They ignore the history of Jews living for 1400 years under Muslim rule. The expulsions of Jews after 1948 were a resumption of business as usual which coincided with the expulsion of (Christian) European “Imperialists”. For example after winning their war against the French in the 1960s Algeria brought in a law that only Muslims could be citizens and flung out the Europeans, confiscating all their property, as did the Egyptians.
The Jewish communities in the Middle East who had been fortunate to live in countries enjoying European “imperialism” were protected from their Muslim/Arab oppressors until the Arabs kicked out the Europeans and the Jews with them in the 1950′s and 60′s. The Yemenite Jews did not enjoy the protection of European imperialism. Until they were rescued by the newly created Jewish State of Israel in 1948 by Operation Magic Carpet, among other degradations predicated on being a dhimmi Jew, they were forbidden to ride on the back of animal so that their head should not be higher than that of a Muslim.
The word “dhimmitude” as a historical concept, was coined by Bat Ye’or in 1983 to describe the legal and social conditions of Jews and Christians subjected to Islamic rule…Although these populations differed, they were ruled by the same type of laws, based on the sharia..Dhimmitude encompasses the relationship of Muslims and non-Muslims at the theological, social, political and economical levels. I recommend Suzanne read Bat Ye’Or’s historical research on dhimmitude: the Islamic system of governing populations conquered by jihad wars, encompassing all of the demographic, ethnic, and religious aspects of the political system. “Dhimmitude is an entire integrated system, based on Islamic theology. It cannot be judged from the circumstantial position of any one community, at a given time and in a given place. Dhimmitude must be appraised according to its laws and customs, irrespectively of circumstances and political contingencies.” The dhimmi’s status was not the product of historical accident but was that which ought to be from the religious point of view, and according to the Muslim conception of the world.
These are Bat Ye’or’s words quoted from her book Islam and Dhimmitude:
“It would be superfluous here to describe in detail the wave of violence which swept through the whole Near East and Maghreb. Xenophobia revived the old traditions of the dhimma, camouflaged by terms such as Arab nationalism and socialism. The Arab dhimma replaced the Islamic dhimma. The Arab-Israeli conflict released a latent hatred, formerly held in check by the Western colonial administration. Sporadic, like a recurrent fever, it worsened in the 1950s and the 1960s awakening the tradition among the populace to plunder and kill the dhimmis with impunity. Some governments – in Tunisia and Morocco – strove to control popular fanaticism, but in Libya, Syria, Egypt, and Iraq it was the authorities who tolerated, even encouraged, the violence against innocent civilians by mobs inflamed with widespread calls to murder. The Arab nationalists who released these collective passions spoke the same language of hatred and contempt as in past centuries.”
“Dhimmitude is the direct consequence of jihad. It embodie[s] all the Islamic laws and customs applied over a millennium on the vanquished population, Jews and Christians, living in the countries conquered by jihad and therefore Islamized. [We can observe a] return of the jihad ideology since the 1960s, and of some dhimmitude practices in Muslim countries applying the sharia [Islamic] law, or inspired by it. I stress … the incompatibility between the concept of tolerance as expressed by the jihad-dhimmitude”
Though Bat Ye’or acknowledges that it is not the case that all Muslims subscribe to so-called “militant jihad theories of society,” she argues that the role of the sharia in the 1990 Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam demonstrates that what she calls a perpetual war against those who won’t submit to Islam is still an “operative paradigm” in Islamic countries.
84 Suzanne // Aug 2, 2009 at 2:17 pm
I’ll read Charlotte’s recommendations after she reads mine- the Grossman book “Death as a Way of Life”. Charlotte is obsessed with “dhimmitude” and ignores the periods when Jews did very well under Islamic rule in these same areas- in Spain ( Andalucia), Baghdad, Morroco and elsewhere… regardless of the label and concept of dhimmi. Only the worst of times are in Charlotte’s history.
I wonder what word we could for the second class status of Arabs under recent Jewish rule?
Anyway all that gets confused with Arab reaction to Western encroachments and their exacerbated fears.
Charlotte loves to insult while complaining she is insulted so this hopefully will end my discussion with her which can be no discussion at all but only her proving that only she has the right narrative in this conflict and no one else. Only Charlotte knows history.
What Charlotte is criticizing as inaccuracy is more properly her adversity to another point of view: Dana’s, mine or anyone else with different assessments or ideas. Again, for Charlotte there is only one narrative, one version of history: hers. This is a perfect example of what the thread is about: leaping beyond such adamant insistence away from this example of paranoia hatefulness and hubris.
My version: I think it’s accurate to say that increasing Jewish immigration into Palestine during the 1930′s was spurred by persecution in Europe. This threatened and triggered Arabs, already negative and fearful about encroachments from the West, to further uprising.
Regarding the idea of partition-Charlotte’s invocation of the Peel proposal was rejected by both sides but it was an early go-around; it included transfer of Arabs and gave only 15% of the land to Jews. But it was the increasing urgency of the Jews in Europe that led to illegal immigration, Jewish and Arab terrorism and an unmanageable situation for the British. When the British prevented Holocaust survivors immigration to Palestine despite their desperate situation, that begat further action, pressures placed in high places, but general appeals to humanity and decency. When the Americans and the British meet in 1946, they agree to allow 100,000 Jewish refugees into Palestine from Europe.
The clash between desperate Jews and fearful Arabs, was a decisive factor in ending the British Mandate and the question of Palestine was handed to the UN, which in turn produced the partition plan of 1947.
Tell the story any way you want these facts exist. That the idea of partition had it’s birth pangs in prior plans that were floated does not give those plans the moral urgency needed that the succeeding events in Europe did, nor legitimacy of the UN GA resolution approved by mostly Western countries. Who could skip over that it took enormous human suffering? Which continues.
By contrast- the history of the subcontinent, which in some discussions has been compared, that is, the land of India and Pakistan, is totally different and too long to get into here. Most Hindu’s lived in the south already, most Muslims lived in the North. And both lived on the land for a long long time in much greater numbers. This is not about immigration into these lands of foreigners feared to be and actually taking over and pushing them off their lands. When you clear away the debris, India Pakistan is more about self-determination
This won’t end anything but I’ll let Charlotte have the last word- which I am sure she will take.
85 Charlotte // Aug 2, 2009 at 3:22 pm
Suzanne posted: “What Charlotte is criticising as inaccuracy is more properly her adversity to another point of view: Dana’s, mine or anyone esle with different assessments or ideas”
Suzanne and Dana are unable to distinguish verifiable fact from personal opinion. Suzanne and Dana’s assessments are invalid as they are factually false and/or cherrypicking – as is Suzanne’s latest stab at history.
To be continued..
86 kato // Aug 2, 2009 at 6:42 pm
To go back to the Balfour Declaration, brought up earlier, it makes no sense to use someone’s promise of property that isn’t even theirs as claim to that property. What I mean is that the British and Balfour had no more claim to land in the Middle East than, say, Russian czars. Claiming that because they promised European Jews a homeland in the Middle East means that any Jewish homeland in the Middle East is valid and legal is absurd.
European powers carving up land isn’t unique to Israel. The borders of every single other Middle Eastern country were drawn by European imperialists.
And let me just add that “antisemitic” despite being an accepted and commonly used term, is quite inaccurate. Most Jews in the world probably aren’t Semites; only ethnic Hebrews would be Semites. In addition, Ethiopians, Arabs, Samaritans, and Arameans are all Semitic peoples. People know this but continue to reserve “semite” for Jews.
87 Charlotte // Aug 2, 2009 at 10:16 pm
Kato, the British made the rules because they won the War. It is the way of the world.
I refer you to the San Remo Resolution of 1920, available on line:
This resolution, consisting of the Balfour Declaration and Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, is the basic document upon which the Mandate for Palestine was constructed. The San Remo Resolution concerning Palestine and the Jewish National Home was adopted at the San Remo Peace Conference on April 25, 1920 by the four Principal Allied Powers of World War I who were represented by the Prime Ministers of Britain (David Lloyd George), France (Alexandre Millerand) and Italy (Francesco Nitti) and by the Ambassador of Japan (K. Matsui). The Resolution was a binding agreement between these Powers to reconstitute the ancient Jewish State within its historic borders “from Dan to Beersheba”, an agreement that was incorporated into the Treaty of Sevres and the Mandate for Palestine.
88 kato // Aug 2, 2009 at 11:32 pm
Yes, the British had a massive empire and the ability to control many things. Just because they “made the rules” as victors of a war does not, by itself, make those rules right or eternally valid. I would argue the opposite, as they were colonizers of the Middle East in the first place.
89 Charlotte // Aug 3, 2009 at 3:15 am
“right”? Depends who’s making the rules. It’s all relative you see. Eternally valid? Don’t see any other method of holding power, except by power, do you? Why do you think the US is king pin? I just hope it stays that way.
90 zak s // Aug 3, 2009 at 12:01 pm
kato, your point that what is legal is not necessarily the same thing as what is just, is not entirely complete. There is a strong case for the right of the Jews to have their own state in their original homeland.
91 Charlotte // Aug 3, 2009 at 2:54 pm
Kato: Going by your logic: what right have those colonizers in the US and Australia, etc. got to make the rules? The US should be governed by the Native Americans, ditto Australia. Also the Arabs who object to “colonizers” were colonizers from Arabia, and they’re mighty partial to colonizing themselves.
92 Suzanne // Aug 3, 2009 at 6:56 pm
After World War 2 and with the United Nations formed- the evolutionary idea that countries agree to abide by by joining the community of nations is that might does not make right any longer. This is an attempt at drawing a bright line- difficult though it may be at acquiring land through war.
All examples thrown into this discussion that are supposed to prove the contrary that go back in time to justify are backward looking -devolutionary.
There are plenty of reasons we have come to the conclusion that might does not make right or justice, speaking not only of the details of history, but the lessons.
Those who advocate for Israel, the “we won, they lost- tough luck” approach would be without recourse if the tables were turned in a world where there is no international law against acquiring territory through war.
93 dana // Aug 3, 2009 at 7:31 pm
Ploni – your point is a good one insofar that it’s better to win than to lose, narratives be damned. This is, after all, the way many early American settlers felt about their own venture – too bad someone had to be dispossessed but it’s the way of the world , ie, we live in a dog eat dog world.
That justice is even used as a criterion in assessing outcomes of bloody battles is a relatively recent, modern concept. That much I’ll have to agree with. History of any given people is replete with the inherent injustice of winner-take-all – we take it because we can, etc. Let’s call this the Viking narrative – justice is good, but being alive and rich is better.
But, though it may be a truism that humans expanded through unjust takeovers, there’s another truism taking shape now – things change. What was OK yesterday is no longer OK today. For example, I suspect that were an extermination war against Indians to take place in this day and age, there would be many allies for the Indians – just as many as for the Palestinians. Somehow, certain incidents and brutal actions – though common enough through history – look positively stomach churning when seen in the full light of day. Numbers become faces, and seeing the red color of blood has a gut wrenching effect.
It is possible that the planet is running out of room to hide the ugliness of exercising the laws of the jungle. Sure, one would rather be the lion than the antelope, but somehow we have entered a process where recognizing the antelope’s narrative is key to the lion’s survival. Maybe because in the end, they are both headed for the zoo, as room becomes scarcer for both under human encroachment, but the sadness we all feel about loss of habitat is real, and a sense of shared responsibility is definitely taking shape, as we seek to cordon off parks and habitats to preserve resources and lifestyles we deem too precious to lose for ever.
Ultimately, talk about “just” wars is so much navel gazing at this stage of the game. There was absolutely nothing just in evicting families from their homes in east jerusalem, just the raw exercise of power. Even if you don’t feel totally offended (better me than they), the world out there recoils in horror. not because the Israelis are worse than the chinese, but because so much more was expected of them. And to see ideals go down the drain is always a difficult spectacle.
So maybe, lending a hand to the cause of justice does have a survival value.
94 Charlotte // Aug 4, 2009 at 12:44 am
Suzanne, I couldn’t decipher your gobbledegook. But from what I could glean, I would say this. International law has no teeth. It’s a political minefield. What good do you think international law would have been against Hitler? Better hope Iran doesn’t get nuclear weapons.
I must return to your previous geographically challenged epistle. Maybe tomorrow
95 Charlotte // Aug 4, 2009 at 1:11 am
Dana, the BBC news report I am reading about the East Jerusalem evictions says that Israel’s Supreme Court ruled that Jewish families owned the property. Israel must be the only country in the world where the world focuses on its private property legal disputes. The only reason can be Judophobia.
I recall seeing a BBC news item a few weeks ago about a Jewish family trying to legally retrieve its family property in East Jerusalem. The Arab family living there were interviewed and said the Jordanian government had given it to their family in 1948. What wasn;t said was that the Jordanians evicted more than 1,000 Jews from the Old City after annexing it in 1948 and then barred Jews until the Jews of Israel liberated their Old City in 1967.
What was just in the Jordanians evicting more than 1,000 Jews from their homes in the Old City in 1948, where their families had lived for centuries? Just the raw exercise of power. The world didn’t care, turned a blind eye. As usual no-one cared. No-one except Jews.
Your mealy mouthed preaching is risible.
96 Suzanne // Aug 4, 2009 at 3:15 am
Regarding “Bat Ye’or ” – a search finds a controversial figure about whom opinion splits according to one’s general views on Islam. Here is an opinion (shared by others) from Matt Carr in the journal “Race & Class” ( Institute of Race Relations):
“In recent years, an increasingly influential intellectual consensus on both sides of the Atlantic has presented Europe as a doomed and decadent continent that is being transformed into an Islamic colony called ‘Eurabia’. The term was originally coined by the British-Swiss historian Bat Ye’or to describe what she identified as a secret project between European politicians and the Arab world for the ‘Islamicisation’ of Europe. What began as an outlandish conspiracy theory has become a dangerous Islamophobic fantasy that has moved ever closer towards mainstream respectability, as conservative historians and newspaper columnists, right-wing Zionists and European neofascists find common cause in the threat to ‘Judeo-Christian’ civilisation from Muslim immigrants with supposedly incompatible cultural values.”
Were it only gobbledy gook so that it might be harmless stuff to be brushed away.
97 Ploni // Aug 4, 2009 at 9:51 am
Dana writes:
Of course I totally disagree with that, starting with the whole metaphor of a lion and an antelope. (I see instead both a strong lion, and a weak lion who has lots of friends, fighting over control of the antelope-hunting territory.)
The next question, which has been echoing throughout this conversation and which I’d hope good journalists like Gorenberg would always be asking, is, What exactly does someone mean when they talk about “recognizing” some narrative? Recognizing that lots of people on the other side suffered? Recognizing that Palestinians see things differently than we do, and that they have a right not to be Zionists? Recognizing the justice (pre-1948) of the Arab claim to sovereignty over all of Palestine from the river to the sea? In 2009? Recognizing that claim as a just cause for war in 1948? In 2009?
As I’ve said before, I don’t see how “recognizing” the other side’s narrative, whether superficially or substantially, could be the key to much of anything at all. It might lead to a weakening of will on Israel’s side, but probably not even that. I know Israelis, supporters of the Whole Land of Israel ideology, who when told that Gaza was returned to its rightful owners, replied without irony that the Zionists had stolen all of the territory in Israel from the Palestinians, so there’s nothing special about Gaza and the West Bank. Logically, if not psychologically, accepting the Palestinian narrative undermines the sentimental-left’s illusion that giving back half of the stolen land will solve the problem.
A psychological diagnosis: seems to me that this emphasis on narratives by Zionist lefties like South Jerusalem indicates a confusion of cause and effect. They see that the “peace” camp is also the narrative-recognizing camp, and conclude that recognizing narratives inclines people towards “peace.” I think that’s wrong. Rather, the beautiful souls who are already inclined towards “peace” are for the same reasons more likely to go around superficially “recognizing” narratives.
98 Ploni // Aug 4, 2009 at 9:57 am
OK, I’m doing my part to hit the 100 comments mark.
Suzanne, the Bat Ye’or reference was to The Dhimmi (which I’ve read) rather than to Eurabia (which I haven’t). Dhimmi is a strongly polemical book, like lots of history books, but it seems to be good scholarship and a good antidote to the al-Andalus myth of Muslim-Jewish-Christian tolerance and harmony. One good thing about the book is that about half of it consists of original source documents. I recommend the book, to be read critically.
Charlotte, Bat Ye’or credits Bashir Gemayel for the word dhimmitude.
99 Suzanne // Aug 4, 2009 at 1:11 pm
Ploni- thank you- I note that you say that this author is “to be read critically” and a polemicist ( as other historians are) which corroborates other criticism I have read. I have read enough about Ms. Bat Ye’or to know that she veers towards the Islamophobic which may be a mild assessment. If the dhimmi book has merit along the lines you suggest ( historical) it seems to have lead to further polemics, projections and what others call conspiracy theories and to attract the most favorable comments from people whose such views I prefer to turn away from. We who argue should be aware of these views as well though so at least we know who and what we are arguing with/against, not that it does any good. Since I am neither one who believes in conspiracy theories nor fantasies about the past (nor especially cherry-picked narratives in that support the emotional stance such as on this thread) and since I have so much better reading in front of me, I’ll probably not indulge. Unless my curiosity wins out.
My hope for peaceful relations and outcomes because of those who think this way will suffer if this kind of thinking prevails though. Also I do not think that these comments here change anyone a smidgeon from their core beliefs which are revealed by what is picked from history and how the story is told looking backward and looking forward.
100 Charlotte // Aug 4, 2009 at 1:51 pm
Factually-challenged Suzanne, Bat Y’Or’s empirical factual work on dhimmitude is grounded in Islamic documents of the era + the diaries and records of European diplomats etc.
Bat Ye’Or’s bases her opinions on those facts. People who criticise her opinions are factually challenged, as you are or defenders and admirers of Islam with their own, usually left wing political agenda.
As I keep saying, you are unble to distinguish between fact and opinion.
101 Charlotte // Aug 4, 2009 at 1:53 pm
Apologies for the typos.
102 Charlotte // Aug 4, 2009 at 1:56 pm
Short excerpt from “Travels through the Empire of Morocco by John Buffa publish in 1812:
TETUAN 14 March 1806
When we reached the house of the Vice-Consul, I was presented with a gloss of aguardiente, for refreshment. After having passed the evening in the company of a numerous party of Barbary Jews, I retired to bed, and in the morning I waited on the Governor, to pay my respects to him. On our way thither, I was not a little surprised to see our Vice-Consul pull off his slippers as we passed the mosques, and walk bare-footed. I soon learned, that the Jews are compelled to pay this tribute of respect, from which Christians are exempt, although they do not escape very frequent insults when walking through the city.”
Tetuan, 1896
“There is little that is remarkable in this town, beside what I mentioned in my last. Its is twenty miles distant from Ceuta, a Spanish fortress, and twelve from the Mediterranean, and is nearly opposite to the rock of Gibraltar. It has a good trade, and contains about eighty thousand inhabitant, twenty thousand of which are Jews, said to very rich. The Jews are tolerably civilized in their manners, but are dreadfully oppressed by the Moors. Seldom a day passes but some gross contempt or violence is offered to the Jewish women, the generality of whom are very handsome, though their dress is by no means calculated to set off, but rather to detract from, their beauty.”
103 Charlotte // Aug 4, 2009 at 2:01 pm
Sorry, my for my typos again when copying (1806 not 1896). But the content of the quotation makes the point about dhimmitude.
104 Charlotte // Aug 4, 2009 at 2:31 pm
Re: Suzanne’s criticism of one of Bat Ye’Or’s books: “Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis:
” Leon Nemoy The Jewish Quarterly Review,New Ser.,Vol.76,No.2. (Oct.,1985),pp.162-164 Obviously the principal part of the book is the documentary section, which offers to the reader the original views of Muslim theologians and jurists on the general relationship between Muslims and non-Muslims, and on how non-Muslim minorities should be treated, as well as the testimony of both non-Muslim minority individuals and foreign observers as to what the Dhimmi’s life was actually like. One might conceivably disagree here and there with Mme. Bat Ye’or’s conclusions drawn from these documents, but one cannot challenge the original Muslim texts, or characterize all the factual accounts of both Dhimmis and foreign observers (some-if not most-of the latter were not exactly philosemites) as a pack of lies pikes justificatives are essentially highly reliable from beginning to end. These testimonies by eyewitnesses on the actual circumstances of non-Muslim life under Muslim rule throughout the medieval and modern periods of history.
“In 1980 Le Dhimmi: Profil de l’opprimé en Orient et en Afrique du Nord depuis la conquête Arabe (The Dhimmi: Profile of the oppressed in the Orient and in North Africa since the Arab conquest) was published. In this she provided a historical survey of the views of Islamic theologians and jurists on the treatment of non-Muslim populations in lands ruled by Islam from the 7th century onwards. The text was supplemented by voluminous primary source correspondence and testimonies of inside and outside observers over the centuries.”
Info courtesy of Wiki
History is littered with idealists like Suzanne who think swords can be turned into ploughshares, or somesuch tomfoolery, by turning the other cheek to one’s enemies. They all ended up in the cemetery.
Those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it.
Unfortunately
105 Suzanne // Aug 4, 2009 at 10:02 pm
I think I am getting through to Charlotte. We all end up in the cemetery Charlotte. I do believe we have to let go of hostilities- it’s a sickness- and that it is the only way. I do believe in evolution of the human soul- collective. And I believe that can only happen when people come to know each other.
Bat Ye’or looks upon Islam in Europe as an encroachment and at that by some malicious design. This mirrors those in the Arab/Muslim world that see the West ( and with some cause). That view of Muslims as a threat Bat Ye’or is appears to using this “dhimmitude” history with it’s documentation, which I have no doubt is true to bolster her theories. That is where the reader has to sort out fact from polemic. From the interview of Bat Ye’or and reviews I went so far as to read I get it that we are all supposedly in danger from jihad, especially now with our Muslim loving president Obama here in the US.
Where is the sense that the world is getting more and more crowded and mixed, with incredible inequities and mass media to transmit it all? Where is the sense that that everyone is not only encroaching on everyone else, but in the process mixing and influencing two ways. Where is the notion that as Muslims move to Europe they are getting westernized? And is there possibly anything at all that they contribute? Or is it all jihad.
106 Suzanne // Aug 4, 2009 at 10:12 pm
To Civility-Challenged Charlotte- I am tired of the name calling and insults. I will correct my above to read better and you can go on and on here.
———-
Bat Ye’or looks upon Islam in Europe as an encroachment and at that by some malicious design. This mirrors those in the Arab/Muslim world that see the West the same way ( and with some cause). To transmit her view of Muslims as a threat Bat Ye’or is appears to using her “dhimmitude” history, with it’s documentation that some call valuable, to bolster her theories. That is where the reader has to sort out fact from polemic- as Ploni and others suggest.
From the interview of Bat Ye’or and reviews I read I get it that we are all supposedly in danger from jihad, especially now with our Muslim loving president Obama here in the US.
Where is the sense that the world is getting more and more crowded and mixed, with incredible inequities and suffering and that there is mass media to transmit it all? Where is the sense that that everyone is not only encroaching on everyone else, but in the process they are mixing and influencing each other; it goes two ways.
Where is the notion that as Muslims move to Europe they are getting westernized? And is there possibly anything at all that they contribute? Or is it all jihad.
107 fiddler // Aug 5, 2009 at 12:09 am
Ploni, as I understand it, “narrative” means “story” or “account”. Evidently accounts of the same historical event differ according to the position or point of view of the teller of the story, just like a building looks differently from different directions. In practice it’s of course rather like in the story of the blind men describing an elephant.
Acknowledging the validity of a different narrative means not only that the “Others” have every right to view things from their POV, but also to recognise that their inability to see the elephant for what it is is matched by one’s own blindness.
And before you invoke Godwin’s law, let me say that I don’t see this extending beyond one level, i.e. blindness itself is not a “narrative”, much less a valid one.
Some right-wingers, possibly starting with Benny Morris a few years ago, like to invoke Albert Camus’ Chronique Algerienne to justify their brand of colonialism. In fact, Camus explicitly critically acknowledges the competing narratives, going so far at one point as to enumerate what is just and unjust in both the pieds noirs’ (not the same as the French) and the FLN’s claims. Even though Camus, a pied noir himself, was by no means a disinterested outsider, he had the moral fortitude to sincerely consider the justice of the other side’s position without falling into the trap of moral relativism. He was also well-prepared for this by his earlier journalistic work in famine-struck Kabylia.
I too can imagine the conundrum liberal Zionists find themselves in trying to accept the Palestinian narrative, but only if you adopt an either-or, all-or-nothing, Jews-or-goyim approach. In that case, once you’ve ethnically cleansed Jaffa and Lod and Ramle, everything is possible – or conversely, if the Palestinians can hold on to East Jerusalem, they can just as well push the Jews into the sea. I hope we agree these are both non-starters.
But while the Zionism of Jabotinsky and Ben-Gurion has come to dominate intra-Zionist discourse, that doesn’t mean it’s the only possible position (nor, it unfortunately doesn’t go without saying, is Zionism itself the only possible position for Jews).
So far the Jewish state hasn’t even deigned to recognise the barest minimum – that the Palestinians, collectively and individually, were wronged. Israel’s cause is just and it’s all their own fault anyway. Note the current attempts to even criminalise public commemoration of the Nakba.
108 Charlotte // Aug 5, 2009 at 2:23 am
fiddler, will “the other’s narrative “include the following at their commemoration of their “nakba” – catastrophe:
1943 Amin Al-Husseini creates the Hanzar Division of Nazi Muslim Soldiers in Bosnia. It becomes the largest division of Third Reich and participates actively in the genocide of Serbian, Gypsy, and Jewish populations. Over three hundred thousand men, women and children murdered. Amin Al-Husseini refers to them as the ‘Cream of Islam’. Amin Al-Husseini is made Prime Minister of Pan-Arab Government by Nazi regime. His headquarters are in Berlin.
He plans construction of concentration camp in Nablus (Palestine) to implement the “final solution” in Palestine to exterminate the Jews there, as an extension of Hitler’s plan.
Al Husseini is one of the founders of the Arab League
1948 Arab League (Amin Al Husseini) immediately declares Jihad (Holy War) against Israel. Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Jordan immediately declare war on the new Jewish state and invade Israel.
Secretary General of Arab League Azzam Pasha: “This will be a war of extermination and momentous massacre.”
Amin Al-Husseini: “I declare a Holy War, My Muslim Brothers! Murder the Jews! Murder them all!”
Yasser Arafat was interviewed by Al Sharq Al Awsat (London Arabic Daily) and reprinted in Palestinian daily Al Quds on August 2, 2002:
“We are not Afghanistan… We are the mighty people. Were they able to replace our hero Hajj Amin Al-Husseini?… There were a number of attempts to get rid of Hajj Amin, when they considered him an ally of the Nazis. But even so, he lived in Cairo, and participated in the 1948 War and I was one of his troops.”
1948. Yasser Arafat becomes member of the Muslim Brotherhood and devotes his life to fulfilling Husseini’s vision of ridding Palestine of its Jewish population.
Radical Islamic Jihad and pan-Arabism in its violent form find a common root in Amin Al Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. He is the vector of European fascism into the modern Islamic world, both religious and secular. One cannot understand today’s turbulent world without this information.
History buffs may want to read the complete unabridged article http://www.tellthechildrenthetruth.com/amin_en.html
109 Charlotte // Aug 5, 2009 at 3:16 am
Suzanne, of course some Muslims moving to Europe (and the other majority non-Muslim countries) become westernized or less religious, but that does not preclude their children wanting to return to the “old ways” just as many secularized Jews and born again Christians have. This resurgence of a Islam has occurred widely in the UK amongst previously secularised Muslims who have created no-go areas for non-Muslims, the introduction of Sharia law, curbs on free speech, and demanded their own schools to educate their children in Islam. Extracts from article “Music, Chess, and other Sins”:
“In the United States, Muslim communities and Islamist advocacy groups are demanding establishment and support of Arabic and Muslim schools. In New York City, controversy erupted over the charter Arabic-language Khalil Gibran International Academy after exposure of the radical associations and statements of its principal Deborah Almontaser,and over Minnesota’s Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy after an investigative reporter exposed Islamist indoctrination in the state-funded school. Expansion of the Islamic Saudi Academy in Virginia has also come under fire after exposure of textbooks preaching hate and intolerance. While Muslim schools in the United States are a relatively new phenomenon, in the United Kingdom they are better established. In February 2009, Civitas, a London-based think tank dedicated to the discussion of social problems and civic society, published a 154-page report, excerpted below, exploring the challenge to social cohesion presented by many Muslim schools in the United Kingdom. There are twenty-four Saudi schools in the United Kingdom alone; many of the other 132 registered Muslim schools have Saudi ties.
Civitas followed links on school websites that often led to the sites of radical preachers, locations where children could buy books and CDs by extremist writers and, in a couple of cases, sites that gave direct access to jihadi material. Some extremists founded schools, and others sat on school advisory boards. Many guest speakers preached extremism. Abu Yusuf Riyadh ul Haq, a known anti-Semite, anti-Christian, and inciter of pro-jihad violence, was a teacher of Hadith, Arabic, and Islamic studies at a school in Kidderminster. Murtaza Khan, a vicious anti-Semite, taught at Al-Noor school in Ilford. These figures and others inveighed against Western society, indoctrinated children to have nothing to do with non-Muslims, forbade participation in Christmas festivities, and described non-Muslims as the corrupt and decadent enemies of all Muslims. Already, the retardation of social integration caused by such schools is apparent in British society. Because Muslim schools in the United States share some of the same sponsors and have adopted similar curricula to their British counterparts, the Civitas survey may also highlight a growing problem in the U.S. education system that should be addressed directly”….
…..Here is another example of what pupils may expect to find:
“Islam has ordered us Muslims to fight against the enemies of Islam and not be like the Jew and make other nations fight their wars. We as Muslims may share in Hitlers hatered [sic] for the Jews but we cannot praise him for the manner in which he went about killing the Jews (if the history books are correct). You should understand that we as Muslims firmly believe that the person who doesn’t believe in Allah as he is required to, is a disbeliever who would be doomed to Hell eternally. Thus one of the primary responsibilities of the Muslim ruler is to spread Islam throughout the world, thus saving people from eternal damnation… if a country doesn’t allow the propagation of Islam to its inhabitants in a suitable manner or creates hindrances to this, then the Muslim ruler would be justifying (sic) in waging Jihad against this country.”
http://www.meforum.org/2415/music-chess-sins
110 Duncan Cookson // Aug 5, 2009 at 3:52 am
I’d like to nominate Charlotte for the South Jerusalem Verbal Diarrhea Award.
111 Charlotte // Aug 5, 2009 at 10:20 am
Ah,Duncan, as Corporal Jones said in Dad’s Army about the Germans, “they don’t like it up ‘em!”
Some people just can’t handle the truth, eh Duncan.
112 Phillips Brooks // Aug 6, 2009 at 5:10 am
I believe that Mr Kaniuk should be taken to the Hague for war crimes tribunals. It is important that we acknowledge the roles of not just the Eichmanns of the zionist movement but its willing followers as well. A simple apology does not satisfy anyone. His interview proves his guilt, and I hope the spends the rest of his life behind bars at the Hague
113 j // Aug 6, 2009 at 6:18 pm
You are all detached from reality. Jaffa ethnically cleansed? I wanted to go to Jaffa last night and my friends told me: That is Arab territory, dont go. Israeli police avoids Jaffa. There are 1.2 million Arabs living in Israel. No Jew enters their villages. One anecdote: I was involved in the building of Arara WWTP in the Negev. The beduins shot at us and the plant (built to serve the Beduins and paid by Israeli taxpayers) was delayed 2 years. Thankfully they are bad shooters. I say, let them live in their own sewage to the neck. I am not going to cleanse them, ethnically or otherwise. The Germans already gave up financing and building sewage plants in Hebron and Samaria – the plants are destroyed and sold as scrap iron as soon they leave.
114 Duncan Cookson // Aug 10, 2009 at 9:37 pm
Well at least you’re capable of humour Charlotte. I’m going to weigh in here as I’ve got a bit of time on my hands.
Understanding the narrative of ‘the other side’ is important to try and acheive a shared narrative for a peaceful future. It’s like unravelling any argument, you need to find out where you went wrong and where the other party went wrong and in order to do that you have to understand both sides. As long as you can strip away feelings of Biblical entitlement it should be possible to arrive at a common set of values with which to pick apart the injustices of this ghastly episode. That is if Israel leaves anyone alive to negotiate with.
The Palestinians of the 1940s were not responsible for the Jewish expulsion from their historic lands or the holocaust in WWII. Israel should not have declared independence and expected the Palestinians to accept it, but they had the right to defend themselves when attacked. Palestinians may well have left some homes, some were stolen, but none of those people relinquished the right to their land. Palestinians are not responsible for the expulsion of Jews from other Arab states.
If Israel, if I can just speak generally, refuses to engage in this process of reconciliation then it shouldn’t expect sympathy from the rest of the world. If Israel is to be a project of conquest, bloodshed, theft and persecution, then why should the rest of the world, where for the most part Jews live in peace and security, feel obligated to care if this project ends in disaster? Virtually no-one alive today took part in the holocaust and with every passing year the memory fades and the waving around of Nazi pictures and general flag-waving about that period has less impact and looks more ridiculous. In fact if it is a simply to be a fight, then let it be a fair fight could be the growing consensus in the world. Given that Israel is maintained by foreign aid this should be a concern for its citizens.
115 Charlotte // Aug 11, 2009 at 5:49 pm
Yes, Duncan, I am capable of humour, but I don’t suffer fools gladly.
“As long as you can strip away feelings of Biblical entitlement it should be possible to arrive at a common set of values…”
I don’t know who the “you” is that you postulate here – yourself perhaps? How are you going to “strip away feelings of Biblical entitlement” from Jews? How are you going to “strip away” feelings of Islamic ummah entitlement from Muslim Arabs?
Seems to me from this and your past comments that it’s always your own set of values and viewpoint that you think is the correct one and that must be imposed on others.Obviously they don’t agree with you and will fight you to the death, because their own principles are as important to them as yours are to you. That is human nature and the way of the world.
The Partition Plan of 29 November 1947 created an Arab state and a Jewish State, with Jerusalem as a corpus separatum under the UN. Arabs and Jews had a window of a year to relocate to their respective state if they wished, but had full and equal citizenship rights in the state where they resided if they chose to stay put. The two states were to have economic union and share other services.
The Jews accepted, the Arabs refused and declared war on the Jews.
“Israel should not have declared independence…”
Israel had no choice but to declare independence. The Partition Plan confirmed Britain’s withdrawal on 1 August 1948. The Jews had to organise themselves and defend themselves against the Arabs’ intention to slaughter them. This is recorded in British documents available to view online.
“The Palestinians of the 1940s were not responsible for the Jewish expulsion from their historic lands or the holocaust in WWII…”
There was no group of Arabs who identified themselves as “Palestinian” Arabs until 1964, one of Arafat’s propaganda ploys.
I suggest you read the genocidal exploits of the Mufti of Jerusalem and his Hanzers in Bosnia Herzogovina in WWII, and his plans to continue Hitler’s Final Solution by building an extermination camp in Nablus. Here are a few details:
1943 Amin Al-Husseini creates the Hanzar Division of Nazi Muslim Soldiers in Bosnia. It becomes the largest division of Third Reich and participates actively in the genocide of Serbian, Gypsy, and Jewish populations. Over three hundred thousand men, women and children murdered. Amin Al-Husseini refers to them as the ‘Cream of Islam’.
min Al-Husseini is made Prime Minister of Pan-Arab Government by Nazi regime. His headquarters are in Berlin.
He plans construction of concentration camp in Nablus (Palestine) to implement the “final solution” in Palestine to exterminate the Jews there, as an extension of Hitler’s plan.
Al Husseini is one of the founders of the Arab League
1948 Arab League (Amin Al Husseini) immediately declares Jihad (Holy War) against Israel. Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Jordan immediately declare war on the new Jewish state and invade Israel.
Secretary General of Arab League Azzam Pasha: “This will be a war of extermination and momentous massacre.”
Secretary General of Arab League Azzam Pasha: “This will be a war of extermination and momentous massacre.”
Radical Islamic Jihad and pan-Arabism in its violent form find a common root in Amin Al Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. He is the vector of European fascism into the modern Islamic world, both religious and secular. One cannot understand today’s turbulent world without this information.
“If Israel….refuses to engage in this process of reconciliation…”
I suggest you return from planet Zog where you appear to reside and read up on Fatah’s recent shindig in which they put in a claim for a Judenrein Jerusalem, both East and West and airbrush Jews from Jerusalem’s history. Try Palestinian Media Watch for info.
I also suggest that before pontificating on the causes and solutions of the Arab/Israeli conflict you study some historical facts.
116 Duncan Cookson // Aug 11, 2009 at 7:29 pm
I assume you were being ironic when you wrote “Seems to me from this and your past comments that it’s always your own set of values and viewpoint that you think is the correct one and that must be imposed on others“.
Digging up endless selected quotes from Arabs who’ve hated Jews has limited usefulness Charlotte, especially ones that are 50, 60 and especially over 200 years old. Churchill’s views on the Germans aren’t really relevant today and Wellington’s views on the French even less so. The Nazis had many allies and many Arabs fought against them (see here). Muslims in countries like Albania helped shelter Jews escaping the holocaust and several Arab states signed up with allies, including Saudi Arabia, albeit in 1945. There are people like you on both sides and there are people like Gershom Gorenberg on both sides. Historical perspective is important but you seem to see only one side of it. Clearly understanding the other side’s narrative is not for you.
Maybe I should have also said the UN shouldn’t have tried to disenfranchise the Palestinians (which I’m sure you’re aware is commonly used as a shorthand for the Arab population of Palestine) from their lands by imposing a partition. I was just giving a few examples. If the UN proposed a partition giving independence to an Arab community inside Israel would you support it? The were quite right to refuse to go along with the partition if that’s the way they felt. Who gave the occupying power the right to establish a Jewish State? Who gave the Jews the right to a homeland in Israel, God? I thought you didn’t believe in revealed religion. It follows therefore that you believe you deserve something if you can take it by force. Why should I respect that point of view or the person who espouses it?
The idea that no-one is entitled to a piece of land unless they legally own it is hardly a radical idea but one that seems to enjoy some kind of consensus in the world.
Given the persecution the Palestinian Arabs have suffered it is little wonder hostile statements are made towards the persecutor. But that’s the point isn’t it. Push people to the edge and when you get a reaction wave the red flag and use it to justify more persecution.
117 Charlotte // Aug 13, 2009 at 3:37 am
Duncan, the historical perspective I see in the Middle East, is the conquest by Muslim Arabs in holy jihad and their cruel domination of non-Muslims in the name of Islam for 1400 years. The Jews have suffered under Islam for 1400 years, an oppression alleviated only by European colonialism and the creation of Israel, their own State. A quote from Maimonides:
“..the Arabs have persecuted us severely, and passed baneful and discriminatory legislation against us…Never did a nation molest, degrade, debase, and hate us as much as they…”
Nothing has changed in the Arab world. Of course I know there have always been people of goodwill who seek peace, but they are powerless – especially in the Arab world. You mentioned Albanian Muslims, but their form of Europeanized Islam is different from that of Arabs – Wiki: “The country won its independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1912….. Islam underwent radical changes. In 1923, following the government program, the Albanian Muslim congress convened at Tirana decided to break with the Caliphate, established a new form of prayer (standing, instead of the traditional salah ritual), banished polygamy and the mandatory use of veil (hijab) by women in public, practices forced on the urban population by the Ottomans.”
As for your twaddle about “Palestinians” being “disenfranchised” by the creation of Israel. According to British statistics, more than 70 percent of the land in what would become Israel was not owned by Arab farmers, it belonged to the mandatory government. Those lands reverted to Israeli control after the departure of the British. Nearly 9 percent of the land was owned by Jews and about 3 percent by Arabs who became citizens of Israel. That means only about 18 percent belonged to Arabs who left the country before and after the Arab invasion of Israel.
The Arabs were never interested in creating a “Palestinian” state for themselves. They were only interested in destroying an infidel Jewish state:
Arafat, an Egyptian, is recorded as saying to the UN Security Council on 31 May 1956: “It is common knowledge that Palestine is nothing but Southern Syria. Article 24 of the 1964 PLO Charter: “This Organization does not exercise any territorial sovereignty over the West Bank in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, (or) on the Gaza Strip….”
“The idea that no-one is entitled to a piece of land unless they legally own it is hardly a radical idea..”
Your western idea legal of entitlement is not shared by Arabs who take ownership by force – as their religion instructs – they do not worry about who they steal from as it is “God’s” will. You accuse Jews of being theives, but you defend Arab theives:
Arab League Secretary Azzam Pasha on the Partition Plan (16 September 1947):
“The Arab world is not in a compromising mood. It’s likely, Mr. Horowitz, that your plan is rational and logical, but the fate of nations is not decided by rational logic. Nations never concede; they fight. You won’t get anything by peaceful means or compromise. You can, perhaps, get something, but only by the force of your arms. We shall try to defeat you. I am not sure we’ll succeed, but we’ll try. We were able to drive out the Crusaders, but on the other hand we lost Spain and Persia. It may be that we shall lose Palestine. But it’s too late to talk of peaceful solutions.”
Were the Arab conquerors “entitled” to Spain and Persia? Or the Middle East? Were the Arabs “entitled” to slaughter and oppress Jews (and Christians)? I think the Jews had every right to claim back their own territory from their oppressors. Because, contrary to popular misconception, nearly half the Jewish population of Israel are not European “colonisers” but “indigenous” Middle Eastern Jews who have “every right” to live in their own Middle Eastern State free of Muslim persecution and and dhimmification.
I find it strange that you, a Westerner, instead of championing the creation of a free state for Jews, instead support their Islamic oppressors. But then you know what they say about the last one the crocodile eats.
118 Duncan Cookson // Aug 14, 2009 at 1:14 am
Well Charlotte
Maimonides? You’re going to give me Maimonides? Again you trot off examples of arab antipathy through the ages. If you keep going back like that you reach the indigenous tribes of the region slaughtered by Jewish invaders. I mean it’s in the Book, there’s no getting away from it. So what’s the point? We’re talking about the justice of living memory, of the rights of occupying powers to impose settlements on the occupied. Trying to find a way forward so that people can live in security which means understanding things from another’s perspective. Not seeing them as relentless bloodthirsty monsters.
I find it strange that you, a Westerner, instead of championing the creation of a free state for Jews, instead support their Islamic oppressors
You do know that Israel are currently the oppressors right? Tell me that you realise at least that much. Again you accuse me of something without foundation, supporting arab thieves. It would be nice if the Islamic world had a more progressive European approach to religion but unfortunately that is hampered by the view that Europe (and the US) imposed the humiliation of Israel upon them. Resolving this issue would likely see some changes in the region as far as religion is concerned.
And this notion that the term ‘Palestinian’ is some kind of propaganda ploy. If everyone was Palestinian and then the Jews became Israel, aren’t the arabs Palestinian by default? Not that there’s any genetic difference between the people of the region.
So have the last word Charlotte, I’m done with this thread. I’m sure we’ll pick it up again elsewhere.
119 Suzanne // Aug 14, 2009 at 1:54 am
Nice try Duncan- you are a better man than I am. I believe Charlotte has her head stuck in the past and can’t see forward. That’s the nub of it.
120 Benny // Aug 18, 2009 at 8:13 am
I’ve been absent for some time. I should have checked this earlier.
Suzanne- I’m glad you read my comments. I think we agree on many points.
I know this is from many posts ago, but I’m going to address it anyway.
You say that Israelis and Jews have a right to fear that Obama will not support Israel if there happens to be a war with Iran.
This is propaganda. We have been taught to think this way but it is simply false. Just because an American president doesn’t support Israeli settlements in the territories does not mean he will deny Israel the billions of dollars in aid that make sure Israel will have such good weapons that America will never even NEED to intervene in a war on Israel’s behalf. Because of America, ISRAEL WILL NEVER BE DESTROYED. NEVER. Anyone who tells you otherwise is a reactionary who’s trying to scare you.
121 Suzanne // Aug 18, 2009 at 1:41 pm
Dear Benny,
Maybe it was a different Suzanne but I don’t recall what I said about Obama not supporting Israel if Israel attacks Iran. But I don’t think the US has to get involved if Israel acts unilaterally against our ( and Israel’s own , not to mention the region’s) interests.
It may be that the administration here in the US is using Israel as the “bad cop” to soften Iran, psychologically speaking, in a game of brinksmanship. In reality though, an attack on Iran by Israel would be a horrible thing for both countries and the region, from what I have read about the probabilities of what would ensue.
I think that the US should have a security treaty with Israel in case Israel is attacked. That would be a form of deterrence. Israel seems to be doing quite well militarily. I don’t think, though, that being armed to the teeth and being at war (or not having a formal peace) with Palestinians and surrounding neighbors are helping Israel’s security. Also pumping weapons into Israel has a point of diminishing returns. Israel becomes a fortress and does not feel such urgency to make peace. I think this is so now.
I don’t recall saying I have read your comments.
122 Yisrael Medad, Shiloh, Israel // Aug 24, 2009 at 10:53 pm
I’m amazed that Gershom/Haim permit their site to be used for Nazi propaganda promotion. One can argue on behalf of Arabs and their claims without degenerating into vile obscenities unless, of course, this blog supports the standards that Swedish newspaper holds to, protected (and paid for) by the Swedish government (see http://myrightword.blogspot.com/2009/08/gut-reaction.html). Why allow Nazi terminology?
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