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.
Raghav-
Can’t think of a better time to talk about Jewish assimilation and antisemitism.
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.
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.
I meant to say- if Arabs did not resist,Israel would have happily kept on expanding.
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.
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.
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.
Okay, Suzanne, let’s lay our cards on the table. You said:
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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
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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?
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.
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.).
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
@ Ploni, who finds the Palestinian narrative valid: only a dummy would want to be a dhimmi.
Have a nice day.
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?)
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?
Mr Gorenberg, I’d like to nominated for a South Jerusalem History Award please.
Facts, not fiction, are the stuff of history.
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.
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.
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”.
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.
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.
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..
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.
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.
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.
“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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.