| 30 December 2011, 7:25 am |
Matt, I haven’t got any further time to engage in discussion at this time, however,
1) Thanks for you summary of the argument against Peters.
2) WRT point 3, I did add the caveat that there is a difference between the right to self determination, i.e. the establishment of another Arab State in Greater Syria, and the right of enfranchisment for the Arabs living under Israeli political and administrative control. I agree that any solution must give these people those rights, without any forced population movements.
2) WRT point 3, I did add the caveat that there is a difference between the right to self determination, i.e. the establishment of another Arab State in Greater Syria, and the right of enfranchisment for the Arabs living under Israeli political and administrative control. I agree that any solution must give these people those rights, without any forced population movements.
3) It doesn’t oblige Israel to settle the territories or install a military dictatorship, with no rule of law or basic freedoms. yes but Israel created the PA, and imported the PLO to assume the adminastrative responsibilty. (Now my personal opinion of this was that this was the first mistake Israel made -importing the PLO- in trying to achieve peace.) Most (all?) Arab residents of the West Bank live under PA rule.
Also this point simply ignores the reality of why the military situation exist, and postulates that Israeli military rule simply exist to torture Arabs. This assumption alone marks you as misunderstanding or misrepresenting the situation as it stands.
4) It doesn’t oblige Israel to settle the territories or install a military dictatorship, with no rule of law or basic freedoms. That is what’s at issue here. Well no it is not, it is your holiday reading list (trying to inject some humor). But I assert, that the issue is Arab intransigence and everything else that happens is a consequence of that.
Let me ask you an honest question, what is the Palastinian incentive to end the conflict by affirmatively accepting an end of conflict and an end of claims?
5)Why inevitable? This is an excellent example of the claim that the Palestinians are forcing Israel to oppress them, which underpins all pro-Israeli polemic.
Let me help you here: Failure to disarm militant groups that assert their own foriegn policy. Ramping up civil unrest as a political tool (intifada 2 as an example). Failure to act punitively against terrorist in their midst (and to forstall your response, Israel should use every means to insure that terrorist from the Isaeli population are brought to heel and subjected to leagal punative punishment). Failure to renounce terrorism. Refusal to accept Israel as a “Jewish State”.
So yes, Israeli response to Palestinian policy is the rational and inevitable consequence of the Palestinian actions! Some people might even call it self defence.
6)but since then the Palestinian leadership has been the much more willing side to negotiate peace. True or false (and it is false), clearly the Palestinian leadership are also far less willing to impliment a negotiated peace. Where is the Palestinian “withdrawal from Gaza”? Where do we see the Palestinian leadership willing to battle its own people inorder to bring about the conditions necessary to peace? You yourself say that they speak dupliciously, so how can you know what the PA leadership is saying in honesty.
| 30 December 2011, 7:48 am |
Paul M,
I didn’t mean to suggest you think I’m contemptibly stupid – you’ve disagreed with me respectfully, which is all I ask.
And I won’t accuse you of comparing the Palestinians to dogs, because I understand your analogy perfectly well. (Personally I would avoid making the reverse analogy at this site, because it is a 100% certainty someone would claim I thought Israelis were dogs.)
I do disagree with your analogy for several reasons though. Again, the whole question of who is most to blame for the failure of the peace process is too big to get into here, so I’ll just say this. The argument that Israel cannot dare to release its stranglehold on the West Bank and Gaza because the Palestinians despise them so much and want to kill them has one plain advantage: it generates its own justification. In other words, every time Israel humiliates an old Palestinian man at a checkpoint, or kills another Palestinian child, the Palestinians hate them a little more. By your reasoning, this makes the occupation – which seems to entail the daily humiliation and near-daily killing of Palestinians – more necessary. It’s a bit like tying someone up – someone who attacked you first, let’s say for the sake of argument re. 1967 – giving them daily beatings, and then refusing to let them go because they hate you for doing it. And when they claim they’re ready to be reasonable and renounce revenge, you say: ‘Sorry, that’s not what you said yesterday; for the sake of the safety of me and my kids, I can’t let you go.’
‘I’ll kill you for this, you monster!’
‘See! See how he hates me! He’s an animal. How can I dare let him go? It would be irresponsible!’
Let me put it this way. I can imagine a scenario in which it was necessary for a country to keep millions of its neighbours under strict occupation for an extended period after a military defeat. But in that case it would still be incumbent on the occupier, for the sake of humanity and democracy, to do everything in its power to foster coexistence and to coax the other side into an agreement. I’m not sure that’s best achieved by settling hundreds of thousands of people on that people’s territory, ruling over them with measures like indefinite detention without charge or trial, military courts with no appeal, systematic and legalised torture (or let’s agree on ‘coercive interrogation methods that sometimes kill people’), exploitation of those territories’ natural resources – in short, a system that steals from millions of people control over their own lives. The debate over the two sides’ conduct in negotiations since 1993 (as I’ve said, I agree the Arabs were intransigent before then) is another one altogether, but I don’t think figures like Netanyahu and Sharon have been working hard to find peace, which is the minimum I’d expect from the leaders of a country ruling over another.
Anyway, have a good rest and thanks for engaging with me thoughtfully and respectfully.
| 30 December 2011, 8:01 am |
Matt, you say:
I’m afraid this won’t satisfy you, Joseph W, but I’m trying to be honest about how I see him.
Not about me or you, it’s about Norman Finkelstein.
I do think you’ve made some good points in your last post, thanks for clearing that up.
You also say:
However, there are complicating factors in the overall assessment. Finkelstein remains committed to the two-state solution, which makes his relatively moderate in the current pro-Palestinian movement.
If you can condemn Finkelstein for supporting Hezbollah, how can you also say he’s relatively moderate?
| 30 December 2011, 8:02 am |
Joe,
Thanks for your thoughtful and intelligent comments. I hope it’s clear I’d much rather engage in these kinds of discussions than talk about myself. The whole reason I post here is to have this type of debate. And even if you and others disagree strongly with me, I hope it’s also clear my views are sincere, that I’ve put at least some thought into them, and that they’re not hateful or bigoted. I’m going to answer your points now but I thought I’d say this before you left.
| 30 December 2011, 8:03 am |
Joseph W,
Sorry, I should have been clearer. I mean he’s relatively moderate when it comes to his views on the peace process.
| 30 December 2011, 8:05 am |
Matt, re:
Where I do disagree strongly with Finkelstein’s thesis is when he argues that the Holocaust only became a large part of Israeli life around 1967. The implication is obvious: that Israel began exploiting the memory of the Holocaust to underwrite its colonisation of the West Bank. But the scant evidence Finkelstein provides for this daring claim is deeply unpersuasive. There are several reasons why in the mid-60s the Holocaust started to play a bigger role in the national discourse: the Eichmann trial, the fear that Nasser was plotting another Shoah, the fact that many survivors were genuinely too traumatised to speak about their experiences for some time. The 1967 claim is bollocks, and quite offensive. And it is on this scanty basis that Finkelstein builds an unconvincing and slightly paranoid case that the Holocaust is being cynically and systematically manipulated.
Very nicely said Matt.
| 30 December 2011, 8:08 am |
The argument that Israel cannot dare to release its stranglehold on the West Bank and Gaza because the Palestinians despise them so much and want to kill them has one plain advantage: it generates its own justification.
Your argument is only true if you ignore the facts:
1) Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza, leaving behind infrastructure to guarantee its future viability.
1) Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza, leaving behind infrastructure to guarantee its future viability.
2) Palestinian controlled Gaza unilaterally lobed thousands of missiles into Israel.
3) Palestinian controlled Gaza held captive an Israeli soldier. This soldier was kidnapped from inside Israel and held without any access to international law for several years.
4) It ignores the cultrue that facilitated and nurtured Saeed Hotari, and assumes that Israeli action directly precipitated his murderous activities.
5) That Israeli checkpoints, the “Wall” etc are a consequence not a cause of Intifada 2 and the terrorism that came with it.
| 30 December 2011, 8:16 am |
Hill says,
I’ve seen readers here hang, draw and quarter PA officials for making stupid and uncharacteristic anti-Israeli remarks
Would you Adam and Eve it. He just won’t listen and learn, will he?
| 30 December 2011, 8:16 am |
Matt wrote: “…The argument that Palestine was relatively unpopulated – truly a ‘land without a people’ – before the Zionists arrived…”
By any objective standards this argument is true. In 1917 the population of the territory west of the Jordan river was around 700000, of whom 100000 were Jews. In 1947, it was 2000000, of whom 600000 were Jews; for every 5 Jewish immigrants there had been 3 Arab immigrants. Today it is around 11000000, of whom 6000000 are Jews.
One of the arguments used by the British to limit Jewish immigration into Palestine was that the territory could not absorb people economically in large numbers. They shut off Jewish immigration, just as the Germans were preparing to conquer Europe and wipe out its Jews. Millions of Jews perished who could have been saved, including Finklestein’s family. The Zionists were too weak to confront the British in 1939, and noone else cared a whit about the fate of Europe’s Jews.
| 30 December 2011, 8:18 am |
Joseph W,
I’ll repeat and amplify what I said before. I would write the Finkelstein piece differently now. I’m tempted to remove it, because I’m a little embarrassed at the praise I directed at him alongside the criticism. But I don’t want to be accused of removing evidence of my views. I suppose the best way to disown it would be to write a better, more considered and thoughtful piece. I may get around to it, but I’d feel the need to do some research first.
| 30 December 2011, 8:26 am |
Ben,
Do you have a source for those figures? I would have to check them myself, but I would point out that one of the cruxes of the case against Peters is that she misrepresents Arab population growth as a result of immigration, when the evidence suggests it was due to the high Arab birthrate.
| 30 December 2011, 8:36 am |
If my views are so simplistic, it should be easy for you and others to explain where I’ve gone wrong
We have been doing this for, what, 3 threads now? Or is it 4? You simply retreat into your complacent bunker, where you are ‘pushing 30′ (err, no, you are not: you are 27), and from where you flatly reject Joe’s arguments, and refuse to see the clear evidence presented to you, by which it’s the Palestinian leadership that’s been blocking progress by refusing to negotiate in good faith.
Incidentally: it’s been you who introduced Harrow into the discussion, along with your ’shit-hot academic qualifications’. So yes, it’s you who wants to talke about ‘me, me, look at me’.
| 30 December 2011, 8:45 am |
Thanks Matt, I think that would be constructive, and interesting to read.
Have a look here at Finkelstein saying it doesn’t really matter that he and others have a “queasy feeling about Jews”:
You need to watch to the end.
| 30 December 2011, 8:58 am |
@Matt Hill 30 December 2011, 12:35 am
Well, I credit you for turning and I credit several posters at HP in helping you see some new realities. May you continue on your path. Which doesn’t mean you will get an easier ride when you screw up!
Now say “Thank You for beating me Sir!” :)
(Tom Brown’s Schooldays)
| 30 December 2011, 8:59 am |
Matt – thanks for your long comments after your work break, and to everyone else who made the discussion which followed so interesting, informative and (tensely!) civil.
| 30 December 2011, 9:03 am |
Dcook,
Please, never say anything pleasant to me again. You’re completely fucking with my head!
| 30 December 2011, 9:06 am |
The more controversial claim, which is a small part of the book, is that the Holocaust has been, and is, used to mitigate or distract from Israel’s crimes. I don’t think many would disagree that the Holocaust HAS been misused in that way. Take the absurd comments of Israeli PM Menachem Begin before the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, where he constantly compared Arafat to Hitler and said the Jewish people had a chance to kill Hitler once and for all. In fairness, Begin was starting to lose his mind at this point, and was always deeply traumatised by the Holocaust which claimed much of his family. And the Israeli public was largely horrified by such language.
Hang On!!!!!
How dare YOU tell people who are in their 50’s to 90’s about the meaning and effect of The Holocaust? You can’t possibly understand the psyche of those people. You haven’t been in the same room as Holocaust survivors (as I have) and seen their hollow eyes, serial number stamped on their arm and still undernourished bodies. You have absolutely NO yardstick to judge and your opinions and/or conclusions don’t stack up against people who know and who have suffered.
| 30 December 2011, 9:10 am |
Phew… what a relief, to get back to being angrily attacked by Dcook!
| 30 December 2011, 9:11 am |
Here’s my biggest problem with Finkelstein’s book The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering(2003):
“The Zionists indeed learnt well from the Nazis. So well that it seems that their morally repugnant treatment of the Palestinians, and their attempts to destroy Palestinian society within Israel and the occupied territories, reveals them as basically Nazis with beards and black hats.”
| 30 December 2011, 9:16 am |
My response is to say: what does this change? Does it make the decades-long rule over 3.7 million people legitimate? If a people had to pass a virtue test before they gained statehood, there’d be few countries in the international community. The reasons the Palestinians deserve sovereignty and justice isn’t that they’re humans, it’s that they’re angels.
If the “Palestinians” (Arabs of Palestine) hadn’t been so war-like and attacked Israel so many times, including the time when they were granted a state in 1948 these self-harming Palestinians would have had independence by now.
Take two parallels:-
Germany attacks Europe (wants the World). Gets defeated. Agrees to be good boys. Gets their independence back after occupation by the Allies.
Japan attacks USA. Gets defeated. Gets partially occupied by USA and agrees to be good boys. Then become a major nation.
But, Palestinians (Arabs) attack Israel. Get defeated. Refuse to be good boys, maintains their beligerence, maintains their claim that all of Israel is theirs and you blame the victim, Israel.
| 30 December 2011, 9:19 am |
Dcook, you misunderstand me. I would never tell anyone how to feel about their experiences in the Holocaust. I have spoken with Holocaust survivors, and the experience is crushing. I won’t try and describe how upsetting it is for me to read books like If this is a Man, or watch films like Shoah, because it would be crass of me to try and advertise my sympathy. My point is not to dictate to people how they should relate to their own suffering. It is to say this: objectively, Arafat is not Hitler. Objectively, Israel was not facing another Holocaust in 1982. To use such language was not just a misleading analogy with potentially dangerous consequences for Israel. It was considered offensive – by Holocaust survivors, as well as by most of the Israeli public. I’m not criticising Begin for his subjective feelings about the death of much of his family. I’m criticising him for basing and justifying Israeli government policy on those grounds. In the same way, I would never criticise a rape victim for being deeply traumatised by her experiences. But if she happened to be in charge of the criminal justice system, and she advocated castrating all men accused of any sexual offences, I would strongly condemn it.
| 30 December 2011, 9:19 am |
Here’s the thing about Finkelstein. You get the sense, it’s more about his family than anything else.
After comparing Abe Foxman to Hitler, saying “at least Hitler didn’t do it for the money”, Israeli filmmaker Yoav Shamir suggests to Finkelstein off-camera, that he’s being a bit extreme.
Finkelstein then tells Shamir:
“You come from a society in which everyone calls everyone a Nazi, right? They call Rabin a Nazi, Ben Gurion called Jabotinsky a Nazi, Jabotinsky called Ben Gurion a Nazi, Begin called Ben Gurion a Nazi. Each of them said one is worse than Hitler, that’s the whole language of your society.It’s also the language I grew up with, you know, everything in my house. The food? Worse than Auschwitz! The clothes? Worse than Auschwitz! That’s the house you grow up in. And all of a sudden, you get so pious when I go like that. Your whole society is like that!”
| 30 December 2011, 9:21 am |
Joseph W,
Is that a quote from the Holocaust Industry? I don’t remember it, but I suppose it’s possible it’s there. I agree it’s an awful analogy, and an example of Finkelstein’s tendency to resort quickly to Nazi analogies, if it is indeed a Finkelstein quote. Do you have a reference? (I don’t have the book with me at the moment.)
| 30 December 2011, 9:26 am |
Dcook,
Please, never say anything pleasant to me again. You’re completely fucking with my head!
I only complimented you on turning. I realise your education isn’t complete. I guess HP posters realise that by constantly correcting you its possible that you will turn a little further. Leakage shows there is still work to do.
BTW, I’m not ATTACKING you. I think you’ll find the HP Banner explains the rules of engagement and since you put yourself up for a thread then you must expect some criticism and push-back.
Your idea about there being some truth in the concept of evoking The Holocaust unfairly is something, as a young person, you cannot be expected to have an affinity with. I am giving you a perspective you can’t possibly have. That means you can learn something you were unable to synthesise.
Also, Matt, as someone approaching thirty don’t you accept that people (maybe double your age) have some knowledge and experiences you don’t have. You can read about the pivotal 1967 War and Res 242 but some people here lived through it.
| 30 December 2011, 9:28 am |
I took the quote from Adam Garfinkle’s Jewcentricity, but unfortunately I don’t have a page reference to hand.
| 30 December 2011, 9:29 am |
Joseph W,
I can’t watch that video in the UK. Where is it from? Is it available elsewhere?
Yes, I remember that comment, from the film on Finkelstein, American Radical, I think it was. The obvious retort is that the way you talk to your family over dinner isn’t an appropriate or responsible guide on how to carry out public debate on sensitive issues.
You see, this is why it’s useful for us to engage with each other, rather than shouting each other down. I’m now making a note of that comment for a possible future article on Finkelstein. I can see why it enrages people and if I get around to writing about it, I’ll definitely make the point that such rhetoric quite understandably makes people deeply reluctant to engage with his other arguments. It is a stupid thing to say, no doubt about it.
| 30 December 2011, 9:31 am |
Finkelstein on the video, re. American Jews:
“The best that could ever happen to Israel, if they get rid of these American Jews who are war mongers from Martha’s Vinyard, and they’re war mongers from the Hamptons, and they’re war mongers from Beverely Hills, and they’re war mongers from Miami. It’s been a disaster for Israel. It’s the best thing if they can ever get rid of American Jewry. It’s a curse.”
| 30 December 2011, 9:33 am |
It’s from the documentary “Defamation” – itself pretty controversial.
This video might work:
Just type “finkelstein defamation” into Youtube.
| 30 December 2011, 9:38 am |
These quotes too, in “The Holocaust Industry”:
Not only does the ‘6 Million’ figure become more untenable but the numbers of the Holocaust industry are rapidly approaching those of Holocaust deniers.” …
“Indeed, the field of Holocaust studies is replete with nonsense, if not sheer fraud.” …
»Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg cast a plague on both sides, sneering that “it’s not about justice, it’s a fight for money.”« …
“In recent years, the Holocaust industry has become an outright extortion racket.” …
»In what has become a mantra of the Holocaust restitution racket, this constituted “the greatest robbery in the history of mankind.”« …
»”If everyone who claims to be a survivor actually is one,” my mother used to exclaim, “who did Hitler kill?”«
| 30 December 2011, 9:39 am |
Die Welt interviewer: You call the holocaust an ideology.
Norman Finkelstein: To be more precise, an ideological construction, that originally served the interests of the Jewish elite in America and has now degenerated into a money making instrument. It has become a extortion racket.
| 30 December 2011, 9:42 am |
I think I might write up my thoughts on Finkelstein too…
| 30 December 2011, 9:42 am |
‘I guess HP posters realise that by constantly correcting you its possible that you will turn a little further. [. . .] I am giving you a perspective you can’t possibly have. That means you can learn something you were unable to synthesise. [. . .] Also, Matt, as someone approaching thirty don’t you accept that people (maybe double your age) have some knowledge and experiences you don’t have.’
Sure. All this is fair enough. But I am much more likely to change my mind when people engage with me directly and explain why they oppose my views, rather than simply denouncing me.
‘I think you’ll find the HP Banner explains the rules of engagement and since you put yourself up for a thread then you must expect some criticism and push-back.’
Believe me, I’m under no illusions that I can expect plenty of criticism when I post here! Equally my detractors can expect push-back against the push-back.
‘You can read about the pivotal 1967 War and Res 242 but some people here lived through it.’
True. But people on both sides lived through it, and have very different views on it. That’s why we have history books, to synthesise first-person accounts and draw a narrative from them. You’ve said yourself that you’ve never been to Israel. If, as I’ve said, I ‘lived through’ the 2006 Israel-Lebanon war, will you agree to defer to my opinions about it? I doubt it. One’s first-person experiences can provide all kinds of insight, but they’re unlikely to be much good without proper study to set them in context.
| 30 December 2011, 9:44 am |
I’m not criticising Begin for his subjective feelings about the death of much of his family. I’m criticising him for basing and justifying Israeli government policy on those grounds
Israel is 100% correct to base its policies on the possibility of an existential threat as articulated by the Hamas charter, the statements by Hezbollah and the statements by Ahmadinejad and its nuclear ambitions to “wipe Zionism off the map”. “Never Again” is the only policy to protect Israel from the Jew-hatred that drives people to want to wipe them out.
| 30 December 2011, 9:51 am |
Joseph W,
How would you feel about the two of us having a kind of email exchange about Finkelstein, on the basis that we have differing views with some overlap, and we seem able at least to credit each other with sincerity? We could then edit it to a publishable size and post it, either here or somewhere else? Just an idea – not sure if it would work.
| 30 December 2011, 9:54 am |
I would need to go through Finkelstein’s books with a pencil and watch Defamation, which I’ve found on youtube (thanks)
| 30 December 2011, 10:01 am |
Perfectly willing to have email exchange, probably better to write separate pieces.
| 30 December 2011, 10:02 am |
Dcook,
‘Israel is 100% correct to base its policies on the possibility of an existential threat as articulated by the Hamas charter, the statements by Hezbollah and the statements by Ahmadinejad and its nuclear ambitions to “wipe Zionism off the map”. “Never Again” is the only policy to protect Israel from the Jew-hatred that drives people to want to wipe them out.’
Sure, it is 100% right to take all those things into account when it decides policy. But I’m reminded of some word Amos Oz wrote around the time of the Lebanon invasion:
“You [prime minister Begin] display an urge to resurrect Hitler from the dead so you may kill him over and over again each day… Like many Jews, I feel sorry I didn’t kill Hitler with my bare hands. But there is not, and there never will be, any healing for the open wound. Tens of thousands of dead Arabs will not heal that wound. Because, Mr Begin, Adolf Hitler is dead. He is not hiding in Nabatiyah, in Sidon, or in Beirut. He is dead and burned to ashes.”
| 30 December 2011, 10:06 am |
Joseph W,
Perhaps we could have a private exchange first, and then write up two pieces about Finkelstein in the light of it. It would certainly help me, because you’d be helping me do my research by bringing to my attention lots of his more objectionable statements.
| 30 December 2011, 10:45 am |
Abu Faris: I didn’t know that about the Papal Bun, thanks. However, I don’t see either Widmerpool or Matt Hill as enormously fat. It is not a perfect fit, of course, but Matt does reveal more Widmerpoolesque features with every comment. Eg This is childish and beneath you, Abu Faris. I’m pretty sure Widmerpool rebukes Jenkins for being childish during their schooldays.
Paul M: Matt’s worst sins mostly come down to naivety and youth… No, I’m afraid it’s worse than that and Matt is irredeemable. Oh well, I expect the lad will go far.
| 30 December 2011, 10:49 am |
“You [prime minister Begin] display an urge to resurrect Hitler from the dead so you may kill him over and over again each day… Like many Jews, I feel sorry I didn’t kill Hitler with my bare hands. But there is not, and there never will be, any healing for the open wound. Tens of thousands of dead Arabs will not heal that wound. Because, Mr Begin, Adolf Hitler is dead. He is not hiding in Nabatiyah, in Sidon, or in Beirut. He is dead and burned to ashes.”
Said in 1987 (according to your timeline above).
In 2011 we know that “Hitler” is NOT dead in the sense that Arabs still evoke the memory of Hitler in stating that he should have finished the job, that Mein Kampf is still sold in the Arab World and that the Genocide against Jews is still in the hearts and minds of Palestinians, Hama, Hezbollah and Iran. Its also in MB’s spiritual leader Qaradawi who evokes hatred towards the Jews and praises Hitler (see Youtube for speeches).
So, Hitler and The Holocaust rightly resurface TODAY when Arabs resurrect him.
He is not hiding in Nabatiyah, in Sidon, or in Beirut
No, but his memories and deeds are very much alive in the Arab world..
| 30 December 2011, 11:16 am |
Yes I do need to calm down and yes I am very stressed at the moment. I am presently without work and skint and I have just had to turn down a job because I cannot even afford to get to the fucking place of work. So I am a bit fucked at the moment… however, there is some light at the end of the tunnel…
Apologies.
| 30 December 2011, 11:41 am |
Abu Faris,
I’m definitely guilty of taking these kinds of debates far too seriously at times, and I’ve said all kinds of things I don’t like to recall.
And my girlfriend tells me I can be an insufferably arrogant shit sometimes, so I apologise for conducting myself less than admirably at times.
I really hope you manage to get yourself sorted soon. I’ve always thought you were one of the more intelligent and well-informed posters around here; someone with your talent is bound to get some luck sooner or later.
You live in Egypt, am I right? Have you ever thought of emigrating?
| 30 December 2011, 11:43 am |
Abu Faris,
Would you email me at matthewrowlandhill at gmail dot com? I have something I’d like to talk to you about briefly (don’t worry, it’s not Israel-Palestine and it’s not a proposition).
| 30 December 2011, 11:57 am |
[Joseph W - perhaps, if you are happy to correspond with Matt, you could also note his email?]
| 30 December 2011, 11:59 am |
Thanks Sarah, have done.
| 30 December 2011, 12:04 pm |
My earlier comment that Hill reminded me of Tigger in Winnie the Pooh was a brief throwaway and didn’t contribute to either the discussion or the book list. But now I’ve read the whole discussion (phew!), I think I can contribute to the book list and suggest Winnie-the-Pooh seriously. Hill clearly has the energy and sense of ‘involvement’ to blog about Israel/Palestine for many years to come. So even at the tender age of ‘27-going-on- 30′, he, and we, could benefit from his exploring his own psychopathology so exemplified by WtP’s Tigger.
| 30 December 2011, 12:18 pm |
Vivo,
re. my ‘energy’ – yep, I always win every debate I ever have, or at least have the last word, due to my absolutely insatiable appetite for debate. Unfortunately my unusual stamina is restricted to intellectual debate, as my girlfriend has often lamented.
| 30 December 2011, 12:21 pm |
“He is cheerful, outgoing, competitive in a friendly way, and has complete confidence in himself.” (Wiki entry on Tigger)
Matt is certainly demonstrating a Tigger-like refusal to be unbounced!
| 30 December 2011, 12:33 pm |
Would I be very mistaken to assume that Matt Hill would give more credence to Clayton Swisher’s, (a glorified security guard who was not privy to a single meeting between Israeli and Palestinian Arab negotiators), published account of supposed overwhelming Israeli intransigence during negotiations, than he would to then US envoy Dennis Ross’s published account?
Would I be very mistaken to assume that Matt Hill would find ex-President Jimmy Carter to hold reasonable, sincere and moderate views of the conflict?
| 30 December 2011, 1:48 pm |
Lbnaz,
I haven’t read carter’s book so I wouldn’t know if his views are reasonable. Though I would say he’s done more for peace in the Middle East than all other presidents put together, so I’d hesitate before condemning him as an enemy of Israel.
re. clayton Swisher. Well, now. His and Dennis Ross’s books are both histories of sorts. So I apply the usual standards of evaluating history to them both. Normally we don’t simply assume that players in historical dramas write the most reliable accounts afterwards. In fact, there may be reason to approach their accounts with skepticism, for obvious reasons, no? Both books are valuable, but they diverge seriously when it comes to explaining the failure of camp David. Whom are we to believe? Well, it’s too early to say for sure. But Swisher’s book is based on interviews with dozens of all the major figures as well as his own research – not his experiences as a ‘glorified security guard’ – so it has a great deal of value in bringing a lot of other views to light. Whether you find his overall thesis convincing depends on a lot of things. When he is able to quote several different top-level sources in the various delegations by name, all giving roughly similar accounts of the same events, I’m bound to find him persuasive. And it is Swisher’s book rather than Ross’s that, on some key points, is supported by the other serious accounts of camp david: Israeli minister and negotiator Shlomo Ben Ami’s in Scars of War, Wounds of Peace, and charles Enderlin’s in Shattered Dreams.
You’ve read both books I take it? What do you think of them?
| 30 December 2011, 1:56 pm |
“But I am much more likely to change my mind when people engage with me directly and explain why they oppose my views, rather than simply denouncing me”
Matt – the latter part of this statement is rather unfair.
Most people have set out to engage with your comments, to explain directly where they think you are in error and generally to offer up either interesting ideas or envidenced critique. However, it is sometimes the case that your responses do not engage with those ideas/evidence and you return to the same perspectives regardless – as if you had never read the evidence or considered the ideas.
Some – myself included – take yet more time and attempt to repeat the notions or evidence, but the same thing happens. As this is a written discussion there’s also the matter of time taken to type and open up other windows/documents in order to provide you with linked evidence. Thus, in my view, it is not that people denounce you or harangue you: they’re just so, so frustrated with this!
I say this not to add my number to the ‘denouncers’ but as positive criticism.
| 30 December 2011, 2:18 pm |
Penny, thanks for the ‘positive criticism’, but I don’t think anyone could read this thread and say I’ve failed to engage with criticisms. I’ve gone to great lengths, clearing time in my diary, to answer every comment, even remarks that were rather personal and insulting. could it be that if I ‘return to the same perspective’ it’s not that I haven’t have ‘never read the evidence or considered the ideas’ but that I don’t find it convincing? could you point me to some evidence or ideas that you think are so persuasive that only stubbornness can explain my failure to adapt my views? Either on this thread or some new evidence or argument you think I should pay attention to? I’ve mentioned some of the ways Harry’s Place has caused me to change my views or complicate them; I’m sorry if in other respects I’m yet to be persuaded after all of six posts over a few months.
| 30 December 2011, 2:29 pm |
And Penny, I didn’t claim EVERYONE simply denounces me – I said I have learnt from some valuable criticisms. But you can’t deny there have been some posters who have simply resorted to cheap attacks. It’s those I refer to. All I was saying is that I’m more likely to be persuaded by constructive criticisms. I find your comments articulate and reasonable in general, so I wasn’t including you amongst the denouncers.
| 30 December 2011, 2:41 pm |
I wonder what those who strongly support Israel do for history. Most of the more famous Israeli historians lean to the left. There’s Avi Shlaim and Tom Segev, both of whom I think are great. Not such a fan of Ilan Pappe, who I think fits his history to an agenda; the same goes for Ephraim Karsh on the other side, for me.
Benny Morris is an interesting case. The content of his history is similar to Shlaim’s and Segev’s, but his policy prescriptions and political views are hawkish. I admire that: he stares the reality of Israeli actions full in the face, rather than trying to turn history into advocacy. So he admits many Palestinians were basically forcibly ejected from the country in 1948 and describes the process in great detail; indeed he’s the authority on the subject of the ‘transfer’ of Palestinians. He dismisses the propagandistic claim that the Arabs all left because their leaders order them to. But he argues the process, while regrettable and inhumane, was necessary for the foundation of the state, and even argues Israel should have gone further and expelled all Arabs. It’s rather appalling and racist if you ask me, but it’s very honest.
Who else is there? There’s Van creveld, but he’s only written a little about Israel. colin Shindler? Martin Gilbert? Arno J. Mayer is very leftwing. Shlomo Ben Ami leans leftwards even though he was a cabinet minister. I haven’t read Baruch Kimmerling but I understand he’s extremely leftwing.
I’d actually like to read some more history from writers outside the New Historian mold, if anyone can recommend some.
| 30 December 2011, 2:52 pm |
Matt
This is my overall view and, judging by some comments here and in the course of debating your earlier articles, the ‘frustration’ element is not limited to me.
It isn’t a matter of ‘if in other respects I’m yet to be persuaded’ either. It isn’t that others keep thumping an insubstantial table, pushing points that. in your view, are without strength and merit. It’s rather more than that.
I’ve tried to point you towards what I perceive as the issue that takes us away from debate and into the unfortunate realms of the personal. If you can’t see it, Matt, then you can’t. As comments are removed after a fairly short period of time it’s not possible to trawl back over them and show you specific examples – and even if these comments were still there I would suggest that this is not my task to undertake, but yours.
Something keeps going awry, Matt. This personal element happens again and again and it really isn’t the case that every person who comments on HP is somehow at fault. I’m only positively – and with good intentions – giving you my view of why it happens.
| 30 December 2011, 3:04 pm |
“Do you have any favourite books on the Middle East, Penny?”
Some that have already been named, Matt. I’m currently making my way through the not-insubstantial ‘Oslo Syndrome’, written by historian and psychiatrist, Kenneth Levin. The mix of history with behaviour is, thus far, interesting and worthy of recommendation.
However, although I find books valuable insofar as they have provided me with the information and opinions required to understand and keep abreast of the issues, I don’t see them as the definitive tool in the box. They provide you with straight lines to read, but not necessarily the ability to see what’s between those lines.
| 30 December 2011, 3:07 pm |
I do have a problem with someone who considers the works of anti-Semites (like Finkelstein) not in toto but in pieces; who tries to explain away praise for groups like Hezbollah and Hamas (as just freedom fighters, but, sure, they do bad things too, right?) and then asks implicitly to be treated as a decent person. I don’t have to spent my precious time reading Finkelstein and others like them, in the hopes that they have something to tell me. I can stop at their love of Hezbollah and condemn the entirety of what they write because of that alone. It’s exactly the same as saying, sure the Nazis did bad things but they ran orphanages too, so we got to grant them that, right? No, we don’t. Who cares if the serial killer down the street helps old ladies with their groceries? It doesn’t mitigate anything.
| 30 December 2011, 3:12 pm |
“I wonder what those who strongly support Israel do for history. Most of the more famous Israeli historians lean to the left”
And introduce an immediate bias! As would any writer with a political bent be they left, right, centre or half-way round the corner. As I said before, Matt, I’ve spent too many years in this particular arena and find having to align ones opinions to any political party not only restrictive but dull, stupefying and leading to dangerous habitual responses and stagnation. To say nothing of occasionally challenging the integrity. That’s my inside and personal opinion – which I know is rather different from other considerations.
| 30 December 2011, 3:14 pm |
Matt Hill @ 30 December 2011, 6:09 am
‘So Khartoum quite clearly no longer applies. It’s true the Arab world has a history of rejectionism with regard to Israel, but I don’t think it makes sense to quote resolutions adopted 45 years ago as some kind of ‘gotcha’ proof that the Arab world rejects Israel’s existence’.
‘So Khartoum quite clearly no longer applies. It’s true the Arab world has a history of rejectionism with regard to Israel, but I don’t think it makes sense to quote resolutions adopted 45 years ago as some kind of ‘gotcha’ proof that the Arab world rejects Israel’s existence’.
Really, the Arab world does not reject Israel’s existence? Big news, I must let all of Israel know this! Matt, go away and read all the books you want, who knows, you may learn something but from your responses here, I have my doubts whether all that reading will truly bring about in you a deeper understanding.
And BTW, 45 years is not even a blip in the ongoing struggle.
| 30 December 2011, 3:16 pm |
Oh, I see. You’re one of the posters who’s tried to psychoanalyse me to understand how I could come to such eccentric views and express them in such a way. Forget what I said about your posts being intelligent – I must have been mistaking you for someone else. You wouldn’t pay any intention if I tried to teach you important truths about yourself that had so far escaped your grasp, and neither will I listen to you if you do the same. You can call this pig-headedness; I would simply say that, knowing very little of me indeed, you’re unlikely to be able to discover very much from a few hundred words every couple of weeks on Israel-Palestine. In fact, that you should presume to try and do so strikes me as rather hilarious. Not only that, but it quite frankly has fuck all to do with this subject. Attempts to infer some profound truths about me that myself and my friends and family have missed are not ‘rather more’ than a discussion about Israel, but a great deal less, Penny. I think the moment things go ‘awry’ is when you log onto the internet and somehow mistake yourself for my psychoanalyst or social worker. If you are truly able to psychoanalyse people on the basis of a few online comments, I would urge you to put this almost preternatural talent to good use, and take up analysis as a profession. Or perhaps horoscopes would be more suited to your skills. If you read my posts and think my psychology is the real issue at stake here, I respectfully suggest that you try and extend your imagination a little to conceive of how perfectly ordinary people can come to conclusions different to your own. Not everyone who is less than enthusiastic about a 45 year military occupation over 3.7 million people is necessarily a mental health case, incredible though it may be to you. And I say all this with all due respect, which is not very much, quite honestly.
Feel free to amuse me by psychoanalysing the preceding. Or you could try something really exotic and stick to the matter at hand.
I’m normally pretty civil round here, but give me a fucking break.
| 30 December 2011, 3:25 pm |
Think of England
‘I do have a problem with someone [. . .] who tries to explain away praise for groups like Hezbollah and Hamas (as just freedom fighters, but, sure, they do bad things too, right?)’
are you referring to me here or Finkelstein?
‘I don’t have to spent my precious time reading Finkelstein and others like them, in the hopes that they have something to tell me. I can stop at their love of Hezbollah and condemn the entirety of what they write because of that alone.’
I agree you don’t have to read him but I disagree you can condemn everything he has to write on that basis. If you choose not to read him, that’s absolutely fair enough, you will just have to restrict your comments to what you do know of him.
‘It’s exactly the same as saying, sure the Nazis did bad things but they ran orphanages too, so we got to grant them that, right?’
I’d say it’s more like saying that Nietzsche was anti-semitic but produced some work of value.
| 30 December 2011, 3:28 pm |
Penny,
‘although I find books valuable insofar as they have provided me with the information and opinions required to understand and keep abreast of the issues, I don’t see them as the definitive tool in the box. They provide you with straight lines to read, but not necessarily the ability to see what’s between those lines.’
Yes, instinct and blind prejudice are so much more useful than knowledge, aren’t they? It reminds me of what a taxi driver once said to Stewart Lee: ‘Well, you can prove anything with facts, can’t you?’
| 30 December 2011, 3:30 pm |
Unfortunately my unusual stamina is restricted to intellectual debate, as my girlfriend has often lamented.
If this is an example of a thread that isn’t about you, I shudder to think what it would be like if it were about you.
| 30 December 2011, 3:33 pm |
Penny,
Well said. You have put your finger on what’s wrong with Hill’s entire approach: he reads books, he has a little learning, but he hasn’t experienced any of it. That fact notwithstanding, he thinks he can lecture from the pulpit to those who have.
Well said. You have put your finger on what’s wrong with Hill’s entire approach: he reads books, he has a little learning, but he hasn’t experienced any of it. That fact notwithstanding, he thinks he can lecture from the pulpit to those who have.
| 30 December 2011, 3:33 pm |
‘And introduce an immediate bias! As would any writer with a political bent be they left, right, centre or half-way round the corner.’
So a political ‘bent’ undermines authors who write about politics? can you name me any writers on Israel-Palestine or any other political issue that AREN’T left, right, centre or half-way round the corner, as you put it?
I’m arguing with someone who thinks s/he knows all about me from reading a few blog posts, that books get in the way of learning, and that people who write about politics shouldn’t have any views on politics. I suddenly feel it’s a bit unfair to carry on.
| 30 December 2011, 3:33 pm |
Matt
An over-reaction I think.
Where have I tried to psychoanalyse you? Show me ONE – just ONE – instance.
This has NOTHING to do with psychoanalysis, Matt. You keep getting attacked on a personal level. Not something I like. I’ve tried to tell you why I think this is and I’ve named it. Look back at that first comment, Matt. I’ve NAMED the reasons and not a one of them is remotely psychological.
I can’t point out examples because they don’t exist anymore. And even if they did, do you not think it’s a little high-handed to expect ME to give up tons of time and trawl back over them to show you? Jesus, Matt. You’ve done this before and I’ve said this already but you and I are not Jeeves and bloody Wooster.
You’ve really over-reacted here and accused me of whatever is in your mind – but certainly was NEVER in mine.
| 30 December 2011, 3:36 pm |
I’ve had several people here try and tell me exactly what my problem is. I’ve been told I suffer from narcissistic personality syndrome in a previous thread, that I may be autistic, that I like diaspora Jewish culture because unconsciously I want Jews to be weak, and so on. I thought you were telling me you were responsible for some of those posts when you said you had strayed into the realm of the personal. Is that so?
| 30 December 2011, 3:37 pm |
A wise Proverb (ch.26, v4):
Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou also be like unto him.
Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own conceit.
Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own conceit.
Shabat Shalom everyone and all good wishes for a peaceful 2012 year
| 30 December 2011, 3:43 pm |
Abu,
Sorry to hear you’re down on your luck. I really hope it turns around soon.
(I hear there’s an opening for someone who can both think and write, over at Vanity Fair and Slate.com…. :-)
| 30 December 2011, 3:47 pm |
Penny, if I was mistaken and it wasn’t you who was responsible for diagnosing me with autism and NPS and anti-semitism, I apologise. I seem to have gone a bit batshit on the wrong person. Reading back over your post it seems you were saying that you’ve tried to tell me why things get personal here, whereas I misread you as saying you’ve personally tried to help me by going into the realms of the personal – which caused me to mistake you for someone else who is constantly trying to tell me I’m mentally ill. It seems it was a mistake and I apologise – also for the snarky and uncalled-for tone of my last few posts. I think I’m pretty civil round here normally but I do resent it when it gets personal. I made a mistake and directed some comments at you that were meant for someone else. Hope you accept my apology.
| 30 December 2011, 3:49 pm |
Matt – I don’t *think* Penny ever said anything like that – I know you have had some very unpleasant things said to you before both here and elsewhere, so some over reaction/sensitivity is quite understandable.
| 30 December 2011, 3:49 pm |
Nope. Nothing remotely personal, Matt. Nothing whatsoever.
Nothing psychoanalytical – I’m not that bloody pompous.
Some things were just obvious to me: you put out the question, you say you want feedback, you’re tired of the personal attacks. I offered up an opinion but it was NOT personal and has nothing to do with any trait you’ve mentioned in your comment of 3.36
| 30 December 2011, 3:50 pm |
Ah – comments crossed.
| 30 December 2011, 3:50 pm |
‘If this is an example of a thread that isn’t about you, I shudder to think what it would be like if it were about you.’
Well, I’d have preferred to keep to talking about books but it was derailed some time ago. Sorry you didn’t like my little joke. Do you have any books to recommend, Peter?
| 30 December 2011, 3:55 pm |
Actually I quite enjoyed both Matt’s joke and Peter’s reply.
| 30 December 2011, 3:55 pm |
Penny – sorry – I originally said I think you’re reasonable and thoughtful and then I thought you were identifying yourself as the other of some of the more loathsome things that have been said about me. I see now I was wrong so nothing I said a moment ago relates to you. My other posts were also unfairly snarky.
This thread became quite interesting for a while so it’d be good to get back to reasonable discussion.
| 30 December 2011, 4:04 pm |
One thing I would say: I also write quite regularly for Liberal conspiracy, which has a similarly large readership and feisty comments threads. And over there the comments are never personal. They’re often nasty and accusations of anti-semitism are thrown around like confetti. But nobody ever wants to talk about me over there. Which as an incurable narcissist obviously upsets me a great deal!
| 30 December 2011, 4:07 pm |
“My other posts were also unfairly snarky”
Yes, they were, Matt. And crammed with stuff I’ve never said nor, I believe, can be inferred from anything I’ve ever written. But let’s move on.
How about straightening out this rather unfair swipe “that books get in the way of learning, and that people who write about politics shouldn’t have any views on politics”?
Of course, I didn’t say that, but, as I said, let’s move on from the ‘he said, she said’ thing. Do you not think that books can only take you some of the way, Matt, and that other factors then come into play?
| 30 December 2011, 4:23 pm |
Yes, fair enough Penny. As I said, I was being snarky because I briefly mistook you for one of the worst trolls around here. It’s true, of course, like horses and water, you can lead a student to a reading list, but you can’t make him or her understand anything. There are some subjects, like physics or geography, say, where learning (from books or the lab or the field) is all you need. But in others, to varying degrees, you need to understand people and human affairs. Literature is a good example of a subject where you won’t get anywhere without some understanding of people. Politics and history to a large extent too: Finkelstein strikes me as a good example of someone who may lack understanding of human psychology. Then you need moral courage and, most importantly I think, the humility to accept you’re probably wrong about a lot and have plenty to learn, whoever you are, and that the guy who disagrees most strongly with you often has the most to teach you. You also need a certain amount of steely determination to cut through the crap and understand anything – as Orwell says, it takes a constant effort just to see what’s in front of your nose. So I agree: book-learnin’ ain’t everythin’. Then again, it helps a lot. It’s a necessary but not a sufficient condition of a real understanding of a given topic, if I can put it in terms that I read in a book not so long ago.
| 30 December 2011, 4:27 pm |
I think for most people, as I was saying to Sarah AB recently, opinions are like marriage: most people have a few wild, promiscuous years in their youth, but sooner or later settle down with the ideas that feel comfortable and reassuring, and then tend to stick faithfully to them, no matter what – barring the odd midlife fling, soon repented. It’s a real challenge to stay open to different ideas; loyalty may be good for spouses but bad for thinkers and writers.
| 30 December 2011, 4:30 pm |
Forget what I said about your posts being intelligent – I must have been mistaking you for someone else. You wouldn’t pay any intention if I tried to teach you important truths about yourself that had so far escaped your grasp, and neither will I listen to you if you do the same…….. Feel free to amuse me by psychoanalysing the preceding. Or you could try something really exotic and stick to the matter at hand.
I’m normally pretty civil round here, but give me a fucking break
Exceptional rude arrogance from a playground kid who, granted a priveliege of threads amongst the adults at HP then seeks to belittle anyone who dares argue with him. You lack manners and a disregard for your elders and betters (im metaphorical and actual senses).
There is no need for anyone to psychoanalyse you when you present us with such an explicit print-out.
| 30 December 2011, 4:35 pm |
” loyalty may be good for spouses but bad for thinkers and writers.”
And politicians.
I speak from personal experience of knocking on doors and being a) accused of every wrong committed by Maggie Thatcher, Tony Blair and Charles Kennedy. Which was….interesting. I’ve also knocked on the doors of people who haven’t got any interest in the current political climate but will vote nonetheless. I say without any exaggeration that I’ve had way too many instances of being told “I’m voting for X party – like my father and his father before him”
Even if X Party is about to run a motorway across the bottom of their garden, you can’t change their minds.
Even if X Party is about to run a motorway across the bottom of their garden, you can’t change their minds.
Taught me a lot about the need to audit perceptions on a regular basis!
| 30 December 2011, 4:39 pm |
it wasn’t you who was responsible for diagnosing me with autism
It wasn’t me either even though I have an interest in autism. If you had an autistic spectrum diagnosis its nothing to worry about. It has nothing to do with intelligence and ability. High functioning autism, for example, relates usually to personality and an inability to respond to nuance cues that most people would respond-to and in other cases respond and interpret where most other people wouldn’t.
I’d be fairly sure that some HP posters would diagnose as having an autistic spectrum. Being a “Spectrum” rather than an absolute most people will on the scale.
So, if you feel bad at carrying that tag or having the tag thrown at you then there is no need to. Its a “so what”?
| 30 December 2011, 4:42 pm |
Dcook,
I retracted that statement and it’s simply untrue that I belittle anyone who argues. I get annoyed when people make personal statements and irrelevant criticisms. But I relish serious debate and whenever I post here I take time out to answer every comment.
Penny,
What many of us who are into politics forget is that most people only think about politics about once every two years. In fact that’s sadly the most important lesson most politicians need to understand. It doesn’t matter what they do – most people will vote the way they do because they like their tie, or because they think the other guy looks suspicious.
| 30 December 2011, 4:44 pm |
Dcook,
I have an interest in autism too for reasons I won’t go into here. But let me say that it’s not so much I consider telling someone they’re autistic is the worst thing you can say to them. It’s more that I resent the attempt to analyse my personality from what I write – it’s insulting, irrelevant, patronising, pointless and bloody annoying.
| 30 December 2011, 4:49 pm |
Are people trying to make this thread a 1,000 comments one?
~alec
| 30 December 2011, 4:52 pm |
“I think this is a fair explanation of events up to 1993, but since then the Palestinian leadership has been the much more willing side to negotiate peace”
What?! Who walked away in 2000 and started a terror war instead of a counter offer? Who has never responded to Olmert’s offer? And who refuses to sit at the negotiating table to this very day? This statement alone shows your pattern of inability understand the basic facts. As for Sharon taking no steps toward peace, he is the one who despite a history of staunch support for the settlement enterprise, decided to unilaterally disengage from territories in Gaza and the West Bank. That is, when it was clear there was no one to negotiate with, he took a (clearly in retrospect) HUGE risk on his own! Also you claim that Israel rules over another country… what country is that? Next you say that Israel’s presence should be more benign. Implying (as you have before and still haven’t answered to) that rather than there being an actual terror threat that requires checkpoints and the like, this is simply a sinister system put in place to allow soldiers and settlers to act out their masochistic fantasies. What would this benign system entail? The removal of vast numbers of checkpoints within the constraints of security? Afraid Netanyahu has already done that, but being on the Israeli side it won’t gain him any credit from the likes of you. Instead you’ll continue to praise the Palestinian leadership for saying things that your magic decoder ring seems to imply a willingness to accept peace, while their words to their own people continue to make this an impossibility. If Abbas were to sign over the RoR for “peace”, and elections were then held, wouldn’t the desires of the Palestinian people required that they elect Hamas? And then what would that piece of paper be worth? Would you support a reoccupation for security purposes? What would have been gained through the use of this decoder ring that deprives the people of a voice and makes Palestine the inevitable next domino in the Islamist spring?
What?! Who walked away in 2000 and started a terror war instead of a counter offer? Who has never responded to Olmert’s offer? And who refuses to sit at the negotiating table to this very day? This statement alone shows your pattern of inability understand the basic facts. As for Sharon taking no steps toward peace, he is the one who despite a history of staunch support for the settlement enterprise, decided to unilaterally disengage from territories in Gaza and the West Bank. That is, when it was clear there was no one to negotiate with, he took a (clearly in retrospect) HUGE risk on his own! Also you claim that Israel rules over another country… what country is that? Next you say that Israel’s presence should be more benign. Implying (as you have before and still haven’t answered to) that rather than there being an actual terror threat that requires checkpoints and the like, this is simply a sinister system put in place to allow soldiers and settlers to act out their masochistic fantasies. What would this benign system entail? The removal of vast numbers of checkpoints within the constraints of security? Afraid Netanyahu has already done that, but being on the Israeli side it won’t gain him any credit from the likes of you. Instead you’ll continue to praise the Palestinian leadership for saying things that your magic decoder ring seems to imply a willingness to accept peace, while their words to their own people continue to make this an impossibility. If Abbas were to sign over the RoR for “peace”, and elections were then held, wouldn’t the desires of the Palestinian people required that they elect Hamas? And then what would that piece of paper be worth? Would you support a reoccupation for security purposes? What would have been gained through the use of this decoder ring that deprives the people of a voice and makes Palestine the inevitable next domino in the Islamist spring?
| 30 December 2011, 4:53 pm |
“It’s more that I resent the attempt to analyse my personality from what I write ”
I don’t think that’s really happened, Matt. Some may have thrown out the odd apparently-psychological term, but I don’t think it was with any serious notion of a diagnosis.
| 30 December 2011, 4:54 pm |
I’m sorry, I said masochistic fantasies when I meant sadistic. Masochistic would be my insistence on continuing to read your posts.
| 30 December 2011, 4:54 pm |
Alec, I have the day off work and this one turned into a meandering chat a long time ago, with its ups and downs, peaks and troughs, insults and apologies, angry fights and tearful reconciliations, all interrupted by short bursts of argument. I’m not going out – it’s NYE tomorrow. There are worse ways to waste an day.
~matt
| 30 December 2011, 4:56 pm |
Penny,
‘I don’t think that’s really happened, Matt.’
Elsewhere, not here.
| 30 December 2011, 4:59 pm |
To be honest I was really impressed by all the changes in positions that you said you’d made, though you were loathe to admit them at the time. But by insisting on conforming your preexisting beliefs to these new realizations (eg. yes I realize that the Palestinians are against giving up RoR, but I am somehow certain that their leaders are for it, so I can still say that this is the side that is pro-peace despite claiming to be for democracy and the will of the people) you have actually made no progress at all, clinging to these preconceived notions on new even more shaky foundations. If that’s a psychological diagnosis, I apologize, but I’m pretty sure it stands up.
| 30 December 2011, 5:02 pm |
I’ll add one more. If you admit that the border will not be the 1949 armistice line, why should Israelis not live there – especially in the settlements that any peace deal would most assuredly leave on the Israeli side? Regardless, why would Israel not settle there? If this land wasn’t considered Palestinian before the 1967 war, couldn’t it be said that they are trying to gain territory through a war? The only difference is that the land would be going to the losers of the war rather than the winners.
| 30 December 2011, 5:08 pm |
I’ve gone to great lengths, clearing time in my diary
That’s big of you. Actually, it’s more narcissism. You’ve asked for help, and now you want a pat on the back for deigning to reply to criticisms of your position.
And actually no, you have not replied to all points levelled at you.
And actually no, you have not replied to all points levelled at you.
| 30 December 2011, 5:21 pm |
I’d say it’s more like saying that Nietzsche was anti-semitic but produced some work of value.
Maybe you should read Nietzsche again; he wasn’t anti-Semitic at all. Used by anti-Semites, but not himself. In any event, in discussing philosophy, assuming that a person’s views concerning a particular group of people clearly has no relation to their views on other matters, say, physics, or Chinese history, or programming, then those racist type views would be irrelevant in judging the worth of that person’s writing. However the writings of someone like Finkelstein, who is clearly a Jew-hater, since they are in the area of mideast politics, can be wholly dismissed. You will never, assuming you want to, disentangle his statements from his Jew-hatred and, frankly, for a gas bag like him, why bother? I suppose in his matter, Chomsky is a better example as he, unlike Finkelstein, has actually made contributions, albeit in a different field. He’s a well regarded linguist but a rabid Jew hater; so I’d study is work on linguistics (but also there to ever mindful of his bias) but would not bother reading anything he has to say about Israel, Jews, Muslims, the mideast.
| 30 December 2011, 5:21 pm |
Do you have any books to recommend, Peter?
Archaeology books about the excavations at Qumran, Masada, Meggido, and of course Jerusalem – written by the excavators themselves. Yadin, obviously, and all the others. Unless you get to understand the continuity of Jewish history in Israel, which I don’t believe you do, I don’t think you can grasp why we feel such resentment at being told we have no business being in Jerusalem, Hebron, Bethlehem, Shchem, even Tiberias and Safed.
| 30 December 2011, 5:23 pm |
BTW, how does this quote jive with your peaceful leadership:
“If you [Arab states] want war, and if all of you will fight Israel, we are in favor. But the Palestinians will not fight alone because they don’t have the ability to do it.”
-Abbas
“If you [Arab states] want war, and if all of you will fight Israel, we are in favor. But the Palestinians will not fight alone because they don’t have the ability to do it.”
-Abbas
| 30 December 2011, 5:33 pm |
‘Who walked away in 2000 and started a terror war instead of a counter offer? Who has never responded to Olmert’s offer? And who refuses to sit at the negotiating table to this very day?’
I don’t agree with this representation of events. Have you read Ross, Swisher or Enderlin on camp david? And what do you mean by Olmert’s offer? There was the 2007 Annapolis conference where the two sides were quite close. There have been offers on both sides – see the Arab League peace plan – but frankly since 2007 the ‘peace process’ has turned into a propaganda war where both sides attempt to blame the other for the lack of progress.
‘This statement alone shows your pattern of inability understand the basic facts.’
I understand but don’t agree.
‘As for Sharon taking no steps toward peace, he is the one who despite a history of staunch support for the settlement enterprise, decided to unilaterally disengage from territories in Gaza and the West Bank. That is, when it was clear there was no one to negotiate with, he took a (clearly in retrospect) HUGE risk on his own!’
The Gaza withdrawal was simply part of a plan Sharon was unable to complete, with the aim of redeploying from the major population centres in the territories and therefore shoring up Israel’s rule over the rest. Sharon figured Israel would lose little by giving up a poor strip of land full of refugees. The idea was the give up Gaza and to keep most of the West Bank, leaving its residents in disconnected semi-autonomous little enclaves. The removal of the settlers was just theatre for the watching world – Sharon could have just told them they could no longer count on IDF protection from a certain date, and the lot of them would have ‘redeployed’ pretty quickly.
Anyway, the ‘withdrawal’ has hardly been a boon to Gazans. Unemployment and poverty are up due to the blockade. Israel continues to control borders, sea and air. It continues to enter and attack at will. It’s still an occupation.
And I’m not ignoring the role of Qassam rockets fired at Sderot and Ashkelon in all this. Targeting civilians is always wrong, and the fact that few casualties result compared to the casualties Israel inflicts is not due to Hamas’s superior virtue but its inferior weaponry. The rockets are a disgrace to Hamas and a defilement of the Palestinian cause. There is talk that Hamas are largely abandoning armed struggle – I hope that’s so, and that Israel responds positively if it turns out to be true.
‘Also you claim that Israel rules over another country… what country is that?’
Are you going to say the West Bank and Gaza aren’t a country because they’re not a state? Whatever: 3.7 million people and their land, which is 22% of mandate Palestine.
‘Next you say that Israel’s presence should be more benign. Implying (as you have before and still haven’t answered to) that rather than there being an actual terror threat that requires checkpoints and the like, this is simply a sinister system put in place to allow soldiers and settlers to act out their masochistic fantasies.’
No: I think the reasons for the occupation are complex, and have nothing to do with Israel being inherently nasty. I think the reasons are a complex mix of accident, thoughtlessness and messianic fervour post-1967; realpolitik on the part of governments faced with anti-democratic, expansionist parties following Jabotinsky or the Bible; security concerns, to a large extent understandable; and several other factors. Gershom Gorenberg’s book ‘The Accidental Empire’ is my Bible on how the settlement project came about.
‘What would this benign system entail?’
A Palestinian state. Or, failing that, the end of the settlement project whose overriding purpose is to make the relinquishment of the territories, and therefore peace, impossible.
‘The removal of vast numbers of checkpoints within the constraints of security? Afraid Netanyahu has already done that, but being on the Israeli side it won’t gain him any credit from the likes of you.’
No, you’re right, Netanyahu will have to do a bit more than that to get praise from me! What do you want, for the Palestinians to fall over and thank him for his merciful, enlightened rule?
‘Instead you’ll continue to praise the Palestinian leadership’
I criticise them all the time. When the last serious proposals were made, at Annapolis, neither side made an offer I thought was truly reasonable, but they were getting close.
’saying things that your magic decoder ring seems to imply a willingness to accept peace’
Just look at the Palestine Papers – it’s been said openly that the PA isn’t claiming a RoR, and this is in the public domain.
‘If Abbas were to sign over the RoR for “peace”, and elections were then held, wouldn’t the desires of the Palestinian people required that they elect Hamas?’
I don’t understand this question.
‘Would you support a reoccupation for security purposes?’
If Hamas were elected as government of a future Palestine? Well, I assume any peace deal would disarm all Palestinian militias and make adequate provisions for Israel’s security. But I support Israel’s right to defend itself like any other state. It would depend on what happened – I wouldn’t rule out a reoccupation if it was the only way for Israel to protect itself.
I don’t agree with your points but thanks for expressing them reasonably and for engaging substantively.
| 30 December 2011, 5:41 pm |
‘I’ll add one more. If you admit that the border will not be the 1949 armistice line, why should Israelis not live there – especially in the settlements that any peace deal would most assuredly leave on the Israeli side?’
Ok, if you think the 1967 line is meaningless, are you ok with Palestinians settling in ‘Israel’? Of course, they may have to impose some pretty draconian measures on surrounding Israelis for their own security, but that would be fine with you, right? Or is the border only porous one way, for you?
The reason the border will have to be changed is because some elements in Israel want to make it as hard as possible to achieve peace by handing back the land. It’s a shitty fact but we have to live with it; we can’t uproot all those people. If there’s a way to keep them in their homes, they should stay and the Palestinians should be compensated with equal land. Those deep in the West Bank will have to go, or there’ll be no peace – which is, of course, the whole reason they’re there.
| 30 December 2011, 5:42 pm |
Here’s an example of the poverty in Gaza. There are many more like this hotel; riding stables; amusement parks; cars, many cars. In many ways, it’s much better off than other parts of the Arab world.
| 30 December 2011, 5:50 pm |
Peter,
‘Unless you get to understand the continuity of Jewish history in Israel, which I don’t believe you do, I don’t think you can grasp why we feel such resentment at being told we have no business being in Jerusalem, Hebron, Bethlehem, Shchem, even Tiberias and Safed.’
I don’t say Jews have no right to live in those places. They do – there’s no reason to bar anyone from living anywhere on the basis of ethnicity, especially if they have a historical link to those places. But the towns you mention in the West Bank must form part of a future Palestine if you believe in one at all, and if you don’t, what are you going to do with 3.7 million Arabs and counting? I’m in favour of Jews being offered residency or citizenship in a future state of Palestine, with appropriate security guarantees. It may not be possible at first but it’s an important principle and I condemned the Palestinian movement for planning to exclude Jews in a post at Liberal conspiracy.
| 30 December 2011, 5:51 pm |
Anyway, the ‘withdrawal’ has hardly been a boon to Gazans. Unemployment and poverty are up due to the blockade. Israel continues to control borders, sea and air. It continues to enter and attack at will. It’s still an occupation.
The blockade didn’t occur until after Hamas took power (first by elections and then by throwing Fatah members from the roofs)
news bbc co uk /1/ hi/ world/ middle_east/ 7545636 stm
The strip was out under a heightened Israeli blockade since the militant group Hamas seized control in June 2007. Israel wants to weaken Hamas, end rocket attacks from Gaza and get back captured soldier Gilad Shalit.
then
And I’m not ignoring the role of Qassam rockets fired at Sderot and Ashkelon in all this. Targeting civilians is always wrong, and the fact that few casualties result compared to the casualties Israel inflicts is not due to Hamas’s superior virtue but its inferior weaponry. The rockets are a disgrace to Hamas and a defilement of the Palestinian cause. There is talk that Hamas are largely abandoning armed struggle – I hope that’s so, and that Israel responds positively if it turns out to be true.
The rockets are a disgrace to Hamas? Surely their Charter is a disgrace to Hamas. (specifically articles 7,17,20,22,28 – the Rotary Clubs one – and 32) Hamas are a disgrace, as they’re fascists. Their charter reads like something from a Combat 18 website. Simple really.
Either Hamas are abandoning armed struggle or not. Largely abandoning armed struggle makes no sense. Plus whatever this talk is, it sure isn’t emerging from Ismail Haniya.
Ismail Haniya: This is the message of Hamas. This is the identity of Hamas. This is the very being of Hamas. Today, Hamas marches along parallel tracks: the track of da’wa and education, the track of resistance and Jihad, and the track of rule and of politics. This is the best response to those who think to themselves, or imagine, that Hamas has withdrawn from the line of resistance, and has withdrawn from the confrontation with this enemy.Today, we say, in a clear and unambiguous fashion: The armed resistance and armed struggle are our strategic choice and our path to liberate the Palestinian land, from the [Mediterranean] Sea to the [Jordan] River, and to drive the usurping invaders out of the blessed land of Palestine.The Hamas movement, which was born in the first Intifada, and lived through the second Intifada, with the grace of Allah, and with the help of this people and all its free man, and with the strong-willed resistance factions of the people, will continue to lead one Intifada after the other, until we liberate Palestine in its entirety, Allah willing.Crowd: Allah Akbar. Allah be praised.Allah Akbar. Allah be praised.Allah Akbar. Allah be praised.Ismail Haniya: The rally bears the title: “Jerusalem, We Are Coming.” Indeed, we are coming. Everything that the enemy is doing in Jerusalem – Judacizing it, establishing settlements in it, destroying the Mughrabi Bridge, closing the Mughrabi Gate, expelling the Palestinian MPs and ministers from Jerusalem, and the excavations [under] the Al-Aqsa Mosque… All these things are futile, and cannot change a thing. Jerusalem belongs to us, not to the oppressors. Jerusalem is Palestinian, Arab, and Islamic. I don’t mean only East Jerusalem. Jerusalem in its entirety is the capital of the state of Palestine, Allah willing.Therefore, in an effort to strengthen the bond of the Islamic nation and the capitals of the Arab revolution to Jerusalem and to Al-Aqsa, we issue a call from this place, from the heart of glorious Gaza, from Jerusalem and its environs to establish the “Army of Jerusalem” in the Arab capitals and the capitals of the revolution, in order to take action to liberate Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa, Allah willing.[…]The principles [of Hamas] are definitive and non-negotiable: Palestine means Palestine in its entirety, from the River to the Sea. There will be no concession of a single inch of the land of Palestine. The fact that Hamas, at one stage or another, accepts the goal of gradual liberation – of Gaza, of the West Bank, or of Jerusalem – is not at the expense of our strategic vision with regard to the land of Palestine. We will work with our people with regard to the things upon which we agree politically, and we will exert all our efforts and our power of resistance to achieve this common goal. However, we maintain two conditions – as I am sure do many of our people, as well as the factions of the mujahideen and the resistance: first, that we will not concede a single inch of the land of Palestine, and second, that we will not recognize Israel.[…]
Here’s a simple rule for looking at what goes on in the ME.
What’s said in Arabic > What’s said in English.
Every single time.
| 30 December 2011, 5:56 pm |
Matt
You have just provided me with an example of what I meant in my first comment:
“There have been offers on both sides – see the Arab League peace plan..”
You have mentioned this before – I know because I replied, asking to what extent the AL was trustworthy and able to exert any influence anyway, given their extremely late response to events in Syria and – to date – the lack of outcomes in this country. How many thousands died before the AL were provoked into a comment? What good are they doing now?
If you were in a position of government in Israel and seeing this example of Arab League involvement play out in front of you, would you really be willing to put your trust in the AL to swiftly resolve any deviation from their peace plan? Bearing in mind that you are responsible for 7.5 million lives?
I believe Abu Faris added to my perspectives on the AL. We argued a point that is clearly current, valid and grounded in evidence but received no response. When you bring it back again but have ignored previous arguments, it becomes frustrating.
I hope you can see that example, Matt.
| 30 December 2011, 5:56 pm |
‘BTW, how does this quote jive with your peaceful leadership:
“If you [Arab states] want war, and if all of you will fight Israel, we are in favor. But the Palestinians will not fight alone because they don’t have the ability to do it.”
-Abbas’
“If you [Arab states] want war, and if all of you will fight Israel, we are in favor. But the Palestinians will not fight alone because they don’t have the ability to do it.”
-Abbas’
What a stupid thing to say. What’s your source (I’m not doubting you)? Obviously he said it because he knows it will never happen, but it was still stupid. Yes, I understand why many Israelis and their leaders distrust Palestinians when they say things like this. I may write something about it to post at a more lefty website. It’s stupid and irresponsible and it doesn’t help the peace process at all. Then again, Israel is occupying half the Palestinian territory, remember. It invaded the other half in 2008-9. What’s more aggressive – a threat to invade/occupy your neighnour, or actually invading/occupying your neighbour?
| 30 December 2011, 6:03 pm |
‘Hamas are a disgrace, as they’re fascists.’
Sure. I bow to no man in my loathing of Hamas.
‘Either Hamas are abandoning armed struggle or not. Largely abandoning armed struggle makes no sense.’
Well, presumably it means greatly reducing attacks on civilians. I hope so, anyway, though I’m not holding my breath.
‘Plus whatever this talk is, it sure isn’t emerging from Ismail Haniya.’
No, it’s coming from his boss, Khaled Meshal. See this from Haaretz:
‘The announcement of the new mode of struggle sparked a series of angry reactions by senior figures in Hamas’ political wing in Gaza; they, who had been considered more pragmatic, perhaps even moderate in their approach, endorsed a much tougher approach than Meshal’s. However, this was not a case of a conservative ideology flying in the face of the new line articulated by Meshal: What really irked the Gaza officials, including Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, Interior Minister Fathi Hamad, Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Zahar and others, was that they were not consulted before the announcement of the new policy was made.’
http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/week-s-end/is-israel-witnessing-the-rise-of-a-kinder-gentler-hamas-1.404543(informative article)
Before I’m misinterpreted, I’m not complimenting Hamas for announcing that it may be about to stop murdering people. I just hope it means something and that it’s positive, though I’m not holding my breath.
| 30 December 2011, 6:04 pm |
Not just that but Israel doesn’t control the Rafa border crossing. Egypt controls it.
Israel doesn’t enter Gaza at will, it responds to being attacked.
So if a blockade is the same as an occupation then by that logic the USA occupies Cuba, and the EU occupy Northern Cyprus.
Matt, you can’t play around with the definitions of words, expanding them and making them vague to move the goalposts at will. You have to be precise.
| 30 December 2011, 6:13 pm |
Penny,
‘If you were in a position of government in Israel and seeing this example of Arab League involvement play out in front of you, would you really be willing to put your trust in the AL to swiftly resolve any deviation from their peace plan? Bearing in mind that you are responsible for 7.5 million lives?’
Welcoming the Arab League peace plan and taking it as an encouraging basis for further negotiations, rather than ignoring it as Israel did, doesn’t require Israel to trust the League utterly. I’m not saying the Arab League should be given the code to Israel nuclear weapons. Someone said the Arabs have proposed nothing; I was merely pointing out this was untrue.
‘I believe Abu Faris added to my perspectives on the AL. We argued a point that is clearly current, valid and grounded in evidence but received no response.’
Sorry. I have responded this time. My point was simply to contradict somebody’s point that the Arabs have not made their own offers. That was my purpose in raising the Arab League plan on this occasion. I don’t say the plan was any kind of golden key to unlock the gates of peace; but it proves the Arab world has moved a long way from Karthoum.
Whether you like this reply or not, I hope it goes some way towards assuaging your frustration at my perceived failure to respond to reasonable criticisms. I’ll try and respond reasonably to any more while I’m here.
| 30 December 2011, 6:28 pm |
davem,
‘Not just that but Israel doesn’t control the Rafa border crossing. Egypt controls it.’
And until now, with rare exceptions, it has done so in such a way as to please Israel.
‘Matt, you can’t play around with the definitions of words, expanding them and making them vague to move the goalposts at will. You have to be precise.’
Fair point. It’s not an occupation anymore. But it is a stranglehold, and it’s just as bad or worse.
| 30 December 2011, 6:29 pm |
I realize I am swimming against the tide here but surely one fault of modern political discourse is that it obsesses too much on one theme, namely the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
What about other human-rights issues in the Middle-East?
What about Turkey’s treatment of the Kurds for instance?
Turkey waged a brutal campaign against , mostly in the 1980’s and 90s. The oppression seemed to be on such as scale over 30,000 Kurds had been killed, thousands of Kurdish villages destroyed and perhaps up to 1 million Kurds had been turned into refugees. These events were scandalously under-reported in the Western Media.
Can anyone recommend any good books on this subject?
Coptic Christians in Egypt are discriminated against. Al-Azhar University may be the only University which fully bars Copts from attending but it also seems that other Universities place a quota, allowing only 1-2% Copts to attend despite their actual number being about 15% of the population.
We know that Copts are often not allowed to build churches and that they are forced to live in what are basically ghetto-type areas of cities like Cairo. I have also read that they face huge discrimination in employment when they try to join state institutions such as the Army, Police or Civil Service. There is a widespread campaign of forced conversions aimed a Copts mostly women which involves kidnap, rape and forcing them to marry Muslim men. Egypt’s Parliament has just two Coptic elected representatives out of 444 total representatives. It ought to be remembered that in 1991 during Mubarak’s rule, Egypt signed the Cairo Declaration for Human Rights stating that their understanding of human rights was different to that conceived by the UN. The discrimination the Copts face may be get even worse now that regime change seems inevitable.
Can anyone recommend any good books on this subject?
What about Turkey’s illegal invasion and occupation of Cyprus?
There is, of course, Christopher Hitchen’s book on the subject of Cyprus which I intend to read one day.
There is, of course, Christopher Hitchen’s book on the subject of Cyprus which I intend to read one day.
| 30 December 2011, 6:43 pm |
And until now, with rare exceptions, it has done so in such a way as to please Israel.
That’s not what it says here http://bit.ly/w0oh0G
Haniya leaves Gaza for first time since 2007(AFP) – 5 days agoGAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories — Hamas premier Ismail Haniya left the Gaza Strip for a regional tour on Sunday for the first time since Israel and Egypt imposed a siege in 2007, his office said.Sources in Haniya’s office told AFP that he would visit Egypt and Sudan, after which he plans to go to Qatar, Turkey, Tunisia and Bahrain.The primary purpose of the trip was to obtain “help and aid” to rebuild Gaza City, but Haniya was also likely to address the issue of Palestinian reconciliation in talks, they said.Haniya entered Egypt through the Rafah crossing, recently opened after remaining largely shut since June 2006 when Israel imposed a blockade after militants snatched soldier Gilad Shalit, who was freed in October in a prisoner swap.The blockade was tightened a year later when the Islamist Hamas seized control of the territory, ousting forces loyal to the Western-backed Palestinian Authority.Egypt had largely complied with the restrictions, although it occasionally opened Rafah — the only Gaza crossing that bypasses Israel — to allow aid in and students and medical cases out.In May, Egypt officially reopened its Rafah border crossing with Gaza, more than three months after Egypt’s former president Hosni Mubarak resigned, allowing people to cross freely for the first time in four years.Haniya’s regional tour begins three days after Palestinian factions, including Hamas, met in Cairo to thrash out implementation of a surprise deal they signed in April.The two factions had previously been at loggerheads ever since Hamas seized Gaza in 2007, leaving the Palestinian territories with rival administrations.On Thursday, Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas and Syria-based Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal discussed reforming the the Palestine Liberation Organisation, in a bid to allow the Islamist movement and 13 other Palestinian factions to join.But cracks have emerged lately between the Damascus and Gaza branches of Hamas regarding future strategy.Last month, Meshaal voiced support for “popular peaceful resistance,” which presumes that Hamas would ultimately renounce armed struggle against Israel.He also said he was open to the creation of a Palestinian state in the territories occupied by Israel since 1967, including the West Bank and the Gaza strip with east Jerusalem as its capital.Such a strategy in effect calls for a Palestinian state next to, and not in place of, Israel, and would be a departure from the position held by Hamas since its founding 24 years ago.Copyright © 2011 AFP. All rights reserved
“Fair point. It’s not an occupation anymore. But it is a stranglehold, and it’s just as bad or worse.”
It can’t be a stranglehold if the border with Egypt is officially open.
This from Almasry alyoum from 22 Oct 2011
Rafah border crossing reopened after weekend closureThe Rafah border crossing, between Egypt and Gaza, was reopened on Saturday after the weekend closure.A security source told MENA that a number of people from each side flocked to the crossing and authorities are currently carrying out the required procedures so they can cross.The Rafah crossing was opened on 28 May this year. The number of people who entered Egypt since then through the Rafah crossing has reached 72,111, while those crossing into the Gaza Strip reached 68,221.The total number of people crossing therefore stands at 140,332.
| 30 December 2011, 6:58 pm |
@Matt Hill:
This will make excellent reading for you:
By all means contribute your thoughts here.
| 30 December 2011, 7:09 pm |
Matt
“Welcoming the Arab League peace plan and taking it as an encouraging basis for further negotiations, rather than ignoring it as Israel did, doesn’t require Israel to trust the League utterly.”
That’s not how politics works, though, Matt, especially in that region. If Israel saw from the get-go that this was not going to fly then what would be the point? Such a gesture could even cause more tensions, more animosity and more complications.
‘Encouraging’ is surely patronising and tends to give credence to the notion that the Palestinians, the AL, and ME politics, pronouncements and actions in general are to be treated as if coming from slightly wilful children who don’[t mean a thing they say.
| 30 December 2011, 7:22 pm |
Ok, if you think the 1967 line is meaningless, are you ok with Palestinians settling in ‘Israel’
They do! They are Israeli Arabs. Arabs live in Israel therefore Jews can live in West Bank. Obviously. Maybe you have some argument that Jews aren’t allowed to live in West Bank.
If Arabs are allowed to live in Israel then Jews are allowed to live in West Bank.
| 30 December 2011, 7:41 pm |
Matt,
I wish you well with your reading and your education, but I don’t have the patience to argue with you any more. Your thinking, for now at least, is stuck in a cul-de-sac of your own making. Every concession, every olive branch, every positive step Israel takes is waved away, or discounted as insufficient because elements of Israeli control still remain. Anything that indicates the Palestinians still cling to dreams of ultimate victory, any statement that the only permissible solution to the refugee problem will be a “return” to Israel, or that all the land “from the river to the sea” is Palestinian by right — all of that is merely a negotiating position, or pap for the masses, not meant to take in people who really understand realpolitik. Palestinian hate and violence is only to be expected in consequence of Israeli oppression (in other words, ultimately it’s just “resistance” as Hamas says). I don’t buy into any of that — none of the people arguing with you here do — but I don’t think I can talk you round and I can’t find the energy to try.
| 30 December 2011, 7:45 pm |
Dcook, I agree Jews should be able to live in the West Bank, but those who aren’t annexed to Israel in land swaps will have to choose whether to accept Palestinian residency or citizenship. It is their right to so choose and they should be protected.
The question is, though, would you be happy with the Palestinians occupying parts of Israel, under PA control, just as Israel occupies parts of the West Bank?
Penny, that seems a rather weak and confused justification for the fact that Israel ignored a plausible offer. But anyway, my point, again, wasn’t that Israel ought to have accepted it in full. It’s that you cannot claim the Arab world has made no peace moves, as was originally claimed and which prompted me to mention it.
| 30 December 2011, 7:48 pm |
Paul M,
Fair enough. But those are not my views. Especially the bit about terrorism as resistance or only to be expected! I endlessly condemn terror in the strongest terms!
| 30 December 2011, 8:27 pm |
” It’s that you cannot claim the Arab world has made no peace moves, as was originally claimed and which prompted me to mention it.”
Perhaps you’re confusing me with someone else, Matt. I never made any such claim: I simply said that judging by the AL’s current performance regarding Syria, I would not trust them to manage a peace plan. Thousands seem to die before they even raise the energy to voice a comment much less intervene.
“Penny, that seems a rather weak and confused justification for the fact that Israel ignored a plausible offer”
But it clearly wasn’t a plausible offer, Matt. You might think it was but believe me, in the political world negotiating or ‘encouraging’ something you know full well can never work is foolish – to say nothing of leaving the politician/party/government in question wide open to all manner of consequences.
You can consider it (or my comment, I’m not sure which) weak and confused, but that’s another argument for another time. Perhaps.
| 30 December 2011, 8:35 pm |
I agree entirely with Paul M.
It is no use trying to reason a person out of a position he was not reasoned into. Matt’s positions are not based on careful analysis any more than David Irving’s positions on the Holocaust are based on careful analysis, or a 9-11 Truther’s position is based on careful analysis. In all three instances, their positions are as faith-based as any religious believer, and they will merely accrete those facts that support their conclusions, while ignoring or belittling anything that contradicts their conclusions.
Maybe I will check back with Matt in five years when he is 32. Until then, might as well stop wasting my time.
| 30 December 2011, 8:49 pm |
One last point… I understand your frustration, Paul, and you’re not obliged to debate me. But surely you must see that some of the things you describe – like the fact that none of Israel’s concessions strike me as sufficient – are just an inevitable result of my whole pont of view, i.e. that the occupation is unjust and that it’s incumbent on the occupier to find a way to end it as soon as possible. Of course I don’t think limited concessions are enough – that’s my whole point. I don’t believe there’s any justification for ruling over 3.7 million foreign people unless you have no choice. The only conceivable way I could support it as a temporary measure would be if Israel were doing everything, day and night, o put an end to it. To put it another way, it’s largely Israel’s responsibility to put an end to it – it is the more powerful party and it is the occupier, not the other way round. I understand you can’t make peace with a people that doesn’t want it. But where we differ is that I believe by the late 80s, and certainly by 1993, the PLO was in a position to negotiate the end to the conflict. That’s not to say all the Palestinian people or factions were 100% cheerful about every compromise they’d have to make. But, again, they are the occupied people here. It isn’t their responsibility, primarily, to prove to Israel they have a diplomat’s flexibility on all the issues, that they no longer have any enmity for Israel, that extremists have no support among them. I believe it is a matter of public record that the PA is reasonable on every major issue, and prepared to go beyond its legal obligations, and that the Palestinian people are largely reasonable and want peace, except on the RoR issue – and, well, tough for them, they can learn to live without RoR and they will have to. I’m not saying all Palestinians are reasonable, that there are no extremists or racists or violent idiots among them. But I believe at the very minimum peace is a realistic possibility, and worth fighting for. And given the circu stances it is the occupier and not the occupied who should be making most of the running to put an end to this thing, and I’m afraid I cannot accept this argument that Israel is oppressing the Palestinians, expanding settlements and gradually reducing the land available for a Palestinian state, only with the greatest of reluctance and with a passionate desire to put an end to the situation, if only the Palestinians would stop rebuffing its peacemaking efforts at every turn. That is not a fair appraisal of the situation and, I repeat, that is the only hypothetical scenario in which I consider a military occupation of 3.7 million foreign people justified.
I realise this view goes contrary to the deeply held views of many people here who will call me stubborn, stupid, ignorant, bigoted, and so on, because it diametrically opposes the foundational beliefs of many people here, who have a strong need to see Israel as the innocent party. when you prod people’s most basic beliefs like this the response is often anger. I would only ask that people credit me with sincerity; understand I am hardly unique amongst people who strongly support Israel’s right to exist and have great admiration and affection for the country, but who think the occupation is a folly; and that I don’t support terrorism, that I don’t whitewash the Palestinians, their leaders or their Arab compatriots; that Im not claiming Israel is worse than other states; that I have no illusions about what the future Palestine will look like (a hardline semi-theocracy I fear); that I understand Israel has legitimate security concerns; that I don’t attribute Israel’s mistakes to evil or malice; that I reject association with many pro-Palestinians with their bigotry and inflexibility; and finally that, although I have arrived at this position using the limited intellectual means at my disposal, and may very well be mistaken, since none of us is infallible, I have at least tried my utmost to base it on facts, very wide reading of different views, and quite longstanding and sympathetic experience of Israeli life.
What I have just laid out is the mainstream anti-occupation, moderately pro-Palestinian position. I’ve expressed it forcefully, perhaps too forcefully for many people’s liking,and I expect to provoke pure outrage. But it’s what I think and if it’s wrong you should try and convince me otherwise, or give up on me if you think I’m too stubborn to listen. However please not I have not intended to insult anyone, so I would ask you to respond politely albeit as frankly as you wish. Also note this is a moderate position – there are those who are much more extreme than me and think I and Harry’s place readers are indistinguishable.
And, whatever you say, at least I have the guts to wade in here, express views I know will be unpopular and will provoke loathing, and tried to defend them while remaining civil. I don’t have to do this – there are other, more congenial places for me to post if I like. I do it because I want the discussion . At least hat deserves some credit, even if you dispute every word I’ve written?
| 30 December 2011, 8:51 pm |
Maybe I will check back with Matt in five years when he is 32. Until then, might as well stop wasting my time.
The opportunity to answer ignorance and naivety isn’t wated.
| 30 December 2011, 8:58 pm |
“Obviously he said it because he knows it will never happen, but it was still stupid.”
Once again, it is only Matt Hill that knows the truth that lies in the Palestinian soul. They can never mean what they say if it is incongruent with what Matt believes.
As for steps toward peace, you still haven’t shown how Arafat’s lack of counter offer and introduction of a terror war was somehow more indicative of peaceful intent than Barak’s offer. Nor how the current state where one side agrees to talk anywhere and anytime (having already conceded on the two state issue and a temporary freeze to get the ball rolling) while the other openly refuses talks shows the Palestinians making more progress toward peace since 1993. By what twisted logic can you look past this very basic reality. As for the disengagement it should be noted that even Rabin never wanted to leave Gaza entirely, but if someone’s Likud it gives you all the excuse to be anti-Israel in your assessment.
Next is your assessment of security needs by the Palestinians and talk of the Cast Lead invasion. This is where it really falls apart, because there has never been an unprovoked attack. Cast Lead followed years of rockets that no other country would have sustained, but in your view, despite small lip service to Hamas’s rockets and no lip-service to their repressive rule which provoked the blockade, this is equal morally to calling for all out war against Israel by all Arab countries. See how hard you try?
“Of course, they may have to impose some pretty draconian measures on surrounding Israelis for their own security” So the losers of several aggressive wars of obliteration should have equal claim to gaining land for security purposes? This is really paper thin, Matt. And if Israel can keep some land, why can’t it put its people on that land? Spite? Have you ever heard of the San Remo conference allowing Jews through out Palestine? Has that ever been revoked?
“I don’t agree with this representation of events.”
Oh… so Arafat didn’t leave without a counter offer and start an intifadah? Am I missing something?
“Anyway, the ‘withdrawal’ has hardly been a boon to Gazans.” Who’s fault are you saying this is? Who destroyed all the greenhouses? Who elected Hamas? Who fired thousands of rockets? The withdrawal could have been a huge boon and gone far to gain international support had it been used peacefully.
In the meantime, aside from the concessions that I’ve already pointed to, what would you require of Netanyahu? More concessions unilaterally? That really got your respect in Sharon’s case didn’t it? What should he do to get your respect that wouldn’t seriously harm Israel’s position, aside from trying to make daily Palestinian lives better and avoiding despite increasing rocket fire another Gaza offensive?
Also, still waiting on your explanation of your charicaturization of settlers and soldiers.
Once again, it is only Matt Hill that knows the truth that lies in the Palestinian soul. They can never mean what they say if it is incongruent with what Matt believes.
As for steps toward peace, you still haven’t shown how Arafat’s lack of counter offer and introduction of a terror war was somehow more indicative of peaceful intent than Barak’s offer. Nor how the current state where one side agrees to talk anywhere and anytime (having already conceded on the two state issue and a temporary freeze to get the ball rolling) while the other openly refuses talks shows the Palestinians making more progress toward peace since 1993. By what twisted logic can you look past this very basic reality. As for the disengagement it should be noted that even Rabin never wanted to leave Gaza entirely, but if someone’s Likud it gives you all the excuse to be anti-Israel in your assessment.
Next is your assessment of security needs by the Palestinians and talk of the Cast Lead invasion. This is where it really falls apart, because there has never been an unprovoked attack. Cast Lead followed years of rockets that no other country would have sustained, but in your view, despite small lip service to Hamas’s rockets and no lip-service to their repressive rule which provoked the blockade, this is equal morally to calling for all out war against Israel by all Arab countries. See how hard you try?
“Of course, they may have to impose some pretty draconian measures on surrounding Israelis for their own security” So the losers of several aggressive wars of obliteration should have equal claim to gaining land for security purposes? This is really paper thin, Matt. And if Israel can keep some land, why can’t it put its people on that land? Spite? Have you ever heard of the San Remo conference allowing Jews through out Palestine? Has that ever been revoked?
“I don’t agree with this representation of events.”
Oh… so Arafat didn’t leave without a counter offer and start an intifadah? Am I missing something?
“Anyway, the ‘withdrawal’ has hardly been a boon to Gazans.” Who’s fault are you saying this is? Who destroyed all the greenhouses? Who elected Hamas? Who fired thousands of rockets? The withdrawal could have been a huge boon and gone far to gain international support had it been used peacefully.
In the meantime, aside from the concessions that I’ve already pointed to, what would you require of Netanyahu? More concessions unilaterally? That really got your respect in Sharon’s case didn’t it? What should he do to get your respect that wouldn’t seriously harm Israel’s position, aside from trying to make daily Palestinian lives better and avoiding despite increasing rocket fire another Gaza offensive?
Also, still waiting on your explanation of your charicaturization of settlers and soldiers.
| 30 December 2011, 9:10 pm |
“…because it diametrically opposes the foundational beliefs of many people here, who have a strong need to see Israel as the innocent party..”
Oh, Matt. I really do feel like giving up sometimes. You’ve just had your four-for-the-price-of-one pop at me for supposedly analysing you – which I didn’t. Now you’re suggesting that many people who disagree with you do so not from a standpoint of reason, evidence, logic and argument, but because they have a ’strong need’ to see Israel as the innocent party.
You, on the other hand, seem to imply that Israel must be all wrong because it’s the bigger and stronger of the two parties?
Just because one man has a gun and the other a pea-shooter doesn’t mean the former lacks justice and morals and the latter has them in abundance.
| 30 December 2011, 9:21 pm |
Penny – I apologised for that. And I don’t deny people disagree for all kinds of perfectly legitimate reasons. I just know that when I state the core of my position like this, people tend to go pretty apeshit. You watch.
| 30 December 2011, 9:24 pm |
And no, not all wrong, at all. In a sense I agree Israel has the better morals. It’s a democracy and it has an admirable political system. The Palestinians don’t have a culture of democracy. But again, the Palestinians should have their own state and freedom not because they’re angels, but because they’re human. Everybody deserves that right. Nobody should be denied it. That’s what being a democrat means. So the only reason denying them that right could ever be justified is if Israel had no choice but to do so, despite doing everything it can to end the situation. Do you see my reasoning at least?
| 30 December 2011, 9:34 pm |
Why should the occupied – the aggressors in each war and the beligerents in wanted to entirely cleanse a region – be the ones to make concessions, at least on that cleansing mentality which would ensure that conflict would continuing regardless of the “occupier’s” actions? Who made these rules? What is it that makes the winner of a war automatically responsible for making dangerous concessions when every indication leads to more death in the event of such concessions? You say these things like they’re known to be self-evident, but that is simply untrue. It is Arab rejectionism that started the conflict and you have no reason to assume that the conflict could end before that rejectionism is abandoned. But instead you continue to ask the stronger party to subjugate itself and kneel (in a region where kneeling is a sign of weakness to be exploited) rather than demanding that the losers in an intollerant and anti-liberal fight change their views and earn the rights they ceded when they started the wars to begin with. Why should Israel give back all the land rather than show that there is a consequence for starting wars? For starting intifadas? For taking Israeli lives? And yet, the borders you propose (including swaps) would do just that. You also have a knack for ignoring the more inconvenient questions. We are up to several now. a) what has shown the Palestinian leadership to be more interesting in peace than the Israeli leadership (and where is this surrender of the RoR of which you speak)? eg. “you cannot claim the Arab world has made no peace moves” Really what concessions have you seen? Why are only Israeli concessions (67 lines, Jerusalem) spoken of explicitly by the entire world while the Arabs must be babied with “code” b) How do you enforce a treaty that doesn’t have the support of the people and how could and civilized westerner in this day and age not require the people’s support? and c) There’s still that depiction of settlers and soldiers despite quite a nuanced depiction of Palestinian society.
| 30 December 2011, 9:41 pm |
Nate,
I genuinely appreciate the fact that, though you obviously disagree with every word I say, you’re bothering to debate me substantively. Unfortunately I may not have time for a full response. Several points, briefly.
re. Camp David – the view Arafat turned down a great offer and made no counter offer is not, in my view, supported by the evidence. Your account is the standard self-serving one devised by Barak on the way out of the conference. Even shlomo Ben ami and others in the delegation have said it’s false, that the Israelis never offered anything Arafat could have accepted, and that in fact there was no real offer on the table at all – just ongoing and failed talks on each issue. Have you read Ross, Swisher, Enderlin or Ben Ami on Camp David? At the very least it’s not so simple. You’re just accepting one account, the account pushed by Barak, which is bound to portray him as generous and peace seeking.
| 30 December 2011, 10:12 pm |
re. Camp David – the view Arafat turned down a great offer and made no counter offer is not, in my view, supported by the evidence. Your account is the standard self-serving one devised by Barak on the way out of the conference. Even shlomo Ben ami and others in the delegation have said it’s false
Excuse me, but that’s bullshit.
| 30 December 2011, 10:43 pm |
Nate,
I wish I had time to reply fully because we’re really down to brass tacks now. I must be brief, but y our last post illustrated some big differences between our views. You seem to see statehood as a potential reward for good Palestinan behaviour, and occupation as some kind of comeuppance. I realise that’s not your whole argument, and I understand the instinctive appeal of that view: “these arabs have some chutzpah, trying to finish the job hitler started, and then when they finally see they’ve failed, they come and demand their rights! Plan A – genocide. Plan B – human fucking rights! Well, I’m all for human rights – but for humans! How dare they demand that we take a knife to our own flesh, carve out our beating heart and hold it out to those who came to kill us? Who met us in our homeland with war and hatred! Let them first of all prove that they desire not just their rights but what is right. Then perhaps we’ll search inside our hearts for the mercy they steadfastly denied us when we were fleeing for our lives in search of shelter. Like Joseph, confronted with the brothers who tried to kill him when he was weak and they strong, sparing them in his strength now they come to him in their weakness.’
It makes a compelling argument but statehood isn’t something you earn through good behaviour. It is every people’s irreducible right. And incidentally occupation may not be conducive the development of moral qualities.
Imagine if we could devise a test. We would separate two sets of Palestinians, identical in every other respect, in 1948. One group faces refugeehood, occupation, military defeat, dispossession, relative poverty, disenfranchisement, and the denial of rights. The other comes to live in relative peace and security in a democratic state that by and large protects their rights, fosters their material wellbeing, gives them respect and freedom.
The point of the test is to determine to what extent these two different histories have shaped the behaviour and attitudes of the Palestinians. We will discover to what extent they are unalterably a violent, hateful, conflict driven people, and to what extent such characteristics, insofar as they exist, are a consequence of the abject conditions of their lives.
Well, history helpfully conducted this experiment. The Arabs of Israel show what the Palestinians would be if they lived in an imperfect but in many ways admirable society. In other words, the occupation fosters extremism and violence. There is no inherent reason why the Palestinians must have the profile they have in the territories. This is grounds for hope, I think, and proof they can live in peace alongside Israelis in the right conditions.
| 30 December 2011, 11:07 pm |
Gene,
That is a fascinating document I had not seen, so thank you. There is a lo there to digest but in his book Ben Ami said Camp David was not an offer the Palestinians could have accepted. His views there are more compromising. Taba was more promising but Israel ended the conference because of the imminent election. There is much in that interview for me to consider. I agree it is challenging because I admire Ben Ami. I wish he were still in the cabinet in Israel. Of course this is not a definitive account but it is a powerful one which I will study further. In any case even if we discount Ben Ami, other participants have ontradicted Barak’s account, even US and Israeli negotiators.
Must go. Again, thanks for that one.
| 31 December 2011, 1:54 am |
Once again, you evade some really important questions that I laid out. But my argument isn’t simply one of punishment and reward. Statehood is not granted to any people who are unwilling to live in peace with their neighbors. This isn’t merely a punishment, or an incentive, but a way of ensuring that power is limited to those willing to live in peace. It is the Palestinians and the Arabs as a whole who must prosecute for peace because a)in history no victor has ever had to beg for peace, much less to give a “people” a state for the first time ever. The victor – especially in a defensive war – has leeway in dictating the rules in the peace treaty. To insist on coddling the Palestinians in this case is simply absurd. Because you are not merely asking that Israel doesn’t punish them, or have mercy, or remove its own heart, but rather that she endanger her own people as every concession does and that she give up valuable land to an enemy that has used all free land to attack her, simply to follow your invented rules of occupier/occupied while demanding nothing of the aggressors – as though by losing, suddenly they could have nothing asked of them, even peacability. And how is statehood earned, by your rules, and what makes it every people’s irreducible right, and what constitutes a people? These are all things that are said as though they are obvious, but they are not and they’re certainly vague. There are actually rules for statehood and there are people who are more or less deserving. What makes the Palestinians a “people” deserving of one, given that they were created (Gingrich was actually right about this) simply as a bulwark to another national movement? As one terrorist said, I went to sleep a Jordanian citizen and woke up a Palestinian refugee. The entire history of Palestinians shows them to be simply Arabs who were given a seperate peoplehood for the sake of destroying Israel. This doesn’t mean that they should remain under occupation indefinitely, but certain this doesn’t represent a kind of good faith that would have the occupation dismantled with much hope for peace. Sure they should be free, but you haven’t yet said why this require all of the West Bank or Jerusalem to be there’s, or why that freedom – lost as a result of their own war – should come at the price of a willingness to end said war. Why shouldn’t the Palestinians have a state in Jordan where they are already a majority? Then you can incorporate the major blocs where they live in the West Bank, without insisting that anything less than 100% of that land is necessary for a Palestinian state. But that wouldn’t happen, because no one cares about “Palestinians” living under Hashemite rule without full rights or Syrians living under Alawite rule without full rights. It’s only when the Jews are in charge that the Arabs simply will not endure the humiliation. Well, if you feel like the west must indulge this culture of humiliation and honor, then that’s up to you, but in no other situation has a winner of a war been forced to kneel down to the vanquished and to give them a mulligan. When, Matt, did that become Palestinian land anyway and why? Perhaps you should spend time writing about Kurds or Tibetans instead – much more legitimately distinct people whose rights and deaths go entirely ignored while the world obsesses over what those Jews are doing to protect themselves. As for your test, it conveniently forgets important facts – as you tend to do. Did this violence not exist before refugeehood, occupation, military defeat, dispossession, relative poverty, disenfranchisement, and the denial of rights? Is this how all other refugee populations have reacted? Or impoverished people? Do they all have a third of their populations supporting the near decaptation of a 3month old girl? Do all populations who have suffered military defeat then lynch people as was seen in Ramallah, with bloody glee? Is this how the denial of rights (until very recently) has been reacted to in the rest of the Arab world and world at large? You pay lip service to things like Hamas rockets and anti-semitism in the Muslim world, but refuse to extrapolate further and see that these represent the true underlying issues – that leaving Gaza proved that a lack of occupation did not make the people peaceful. This is a different culture than yours – one that saw the Israelis tucking tail and running, and decided to double down by destroying greenhouses, electing Hamas, and firing thousands of rockets. As usual you have no problem making excuses for them, instead of holding them accountable for creating their own circumstances, and expecting them to act with any semblance of humanity and compromise. This is part of Palestinian culture- it’s a culture built on little other than victimhood and the destruction of another people. The fact that Israeli Arabs enjoy the comforts of Israeli culture because it is an infinitely more civilized country than any of their own doesn’t mean that it is incumbent on Israel to create the same circumstances for all its enemies, much less to sacrifice itself in the attempt. This must be left to the Palestinians themselves and to the rest of the Arab world, who have continuously chosen the destruction of Israel over their children’s betterment and future, and over the resettling of refugees. I would love to know how you would blame any of these reactions on Israel or explain (without being patronizing to the “other”) why they must constantly be given excuses and every opportunity to kill again without having peace demanded of them. But more importantly, I would love answers to my other stated questions. Because, even if I concede (which I don’t) that Barak, Clinton and Ross’s accounts are wrong, and that Barak’s offer was not a great one (again for any other vanquished people in history it would certainly have been considered a great one) it doesn’t justify the terror war that ensued and certainly doesn’t justify your insistance that Palestinian leaders have somehow been more pro-peace than those of Israel. But I’ll add a new question. On what grounds do you suggest that the aggressors of continued wars of annhialation have similar security concerns to the victors of these defensive wars? And how dare you compare Abbas’s further threats to Israel at pan-Arab hands, to Israel reacting only after years of rocket fire? In fact you do worse, by saying that he only means what he says behind closed doors (although you still haven’t shown what you were referring to. I have seen no evidence at all of him conceding on the RoR even in the Palestine Papers. Care to share?), and that all the horrible things that the PA does and says are simply tactical insincerities, while insisting on the insincerity of Israel’s leaders at every turn, you show either a bigoted cynicism of one side, or a patronizing condescension to the other… or both. It is this equivalence, this insistence on trying so hard to stay right in the face of all evidence to the contrary that makes you so excruciating to every one here.
| 31 December 2011, 3:23 am |
Nate, I know I missed most of your points. As I said, I didn’t have time to answer. I’ll try and answer your latest now. I wish you would use paragraphs more though – just a thought…!
It’s late so sorry if this is too brief.
‘It is the Palestinians and the Arabs as a whole who must prosecute for peace because a)in history no victor has ever had to beg for peace, much less to give a “people” a state for the first time ever. The victor – especially in a defensive war – has leeway in dictating the rules in the peace treaty.’
Several quick points. This sounds dangerously close to might is right. 1967 was a little more complex than a self-defensive war, in several respects; at the very least, you can’t say Israel was forced to occupy all those lands – it had already won the war by the time it did so. I don’t think you can say that because Jordan fired some artillery at West Jerusalem and launched limited attacks there were no moral problems at all in Israel taking the whole West Bank, and insisting 45 years later that the people living on it must somehow make more concessions or allow Israel to dictate terms in a treaty establishing their state.
‘Because you are not merely asking that Israel doesn’t punish them, or have mercy, or remove its own heart, but rather that she endanger her own people’
Security arrangement will be at the heart of any deal. The Palestinian state will be essentially demilitarised. The sides will agree to let international forces guard key areas. Israel will have early warning systems in place in Gaza and the West Bank. But more importantly: it is precisely the absence of peace that threatens Israel in the long term. At the moment its actions are underwritten by a fading superpower. The US may not always be able to offer diplomatic, financial, political and other kids of support. A world dominated by the US as first among its equals china, Russia, the EU, Brazil, the UN, may be a very different one for Israel. Eventually there will be another intifada. Eventually Israel’s enemies will have longer-range rockets. They will be unable to destroy it but they may be able to make life there very difficult, especially with the international community keeping Israel on a shorter leash. These are vague, hypothetical but plausible claims, and I make them with no pleasure – I fear for Israel, a country I love and admire in many ways, if it cannot or will not make peace in the long term. In the long term, it’s refusing to make the concessions necessary for peace that endangers Israel.
‘your invented rules of occupier/occupied while demanding nothing of the aggressors – as though by losing, suddenly they could have nothing asked of them, even peacability.’
If you want to talk about rules that are more substantial, look at the rules invented by the International court of Justice in its decision on the I-P conflict. The PA has gone further than its obligations as defined by he court. See the Annapolis offer. Look up the Palestine Papers.
| 31 December 2011, 4:21 am |
Still haven’t answered the important ones. Your description of soldiers and settlers. Your insistence that the side that won’t talk, calls for war, and celebrates terror (while unifying with a terrorist entity) is the one more willing to make peace. Your glossing over the fact that Palestinians wouldn’t support the ignoring of RoR. You can look back as I’ve repeated these questions several times. You choose what to believe and what not to in a way that’s most convenient for your views, not in the way that is most practical,
precedented, or secure. You continue to suggest that Israel will not make peace without any proof or any consideration for how peace can be made with a duplicitous other side that is composed of people who won’t give up on RoR and celebrate the most heinous forms of terror and anti-Semetism.
So again, I’ll ask what it is that you are asking of Israel aside from doing something for the sake of doing something. As for might is right, that is not my point at all. My point is that a winner of a DEFENSIVE war of ANNHIALATION, will clearly have security concerns, and in the past, the winners (especially in defensive wars) have always been given some spoils not simply as reward, but in order to avoid a moral hazard.
I’m sure you know that the International Court is merely an extension of the UN and thus is equally influenced by an automatic pro-Palestine majority, but I wish you would clarify what obligations it has gone beyond (and how this goes further than Israel giving up the San Remo convention) and what in the Palestine Papers makes your case so clear. Citations please.
You also haven’t explained how the 67 lines have somehow come to represent Palestinian land and why all of that land (rather than just the parts inhabited by Palestinians) must be the basis of a Palestinian state, or why Jerusalem must be its capital. Because they say so is not a great argument. As for “you can’t say Israel was forced to occupy all those lands”, perhaps you don’t think a need for strategic depth is crucial after three wars, but several desparate situations, this was actually crucial in ensuring that wars wouldn’t have to be fought every few years.
More importantly, though, in your argument that Israel didn’t need to respond by taking the West Bank, you seem to be subscribing to a very fringe point of view that that land was legitimately under Jordanian control, while at the same time claiming that now it should be under Palestinian control… the conclusion: It should not be under Jewish control, but beyond that Palestinian peoplehood is secondary to Israeli illegitimacy. A bigger question: If Israel hadn’t taken the West Bank and Gaza, what would it now be asked to give up in order to finally achieve peace? Also, if everyone including the ICJ is so adamant about 1967 as the border, then hasn’t Israeli already lost it’s main bargaining chip, while no one will actually verbalize the Palestinians doing the same? But somehow this “code” is coddled by you and the rest of the world and we are supposed to expect that the Palestinians will read it in the same way as you and that some Palestinian leader will actually sign an end to the conflict despite having conditioned his population in such a way?
Back to the ones you keep evading a) what has shown the Palestinian leadership to be more interested in peace than the Israeli leadership (and where is this surrender of the RoR of which you speak)? And how do you square this with the words of Abbas, the incitement in all aspects of society and Arafat’s clear links to terror? “You cannot claim the Arab world has made no peace moves” Really? What actual concessions have you seen? b) How do you enforce a treaty that doesn’t have the support of the people and how could any civilized westerner in this day and age not require the people’s support? Don’t know if you’ve been following what’s happening in Egypt, but a piece of paper with no popular support doesn’t lead to real peace… unless a dictator is in charge. c) There’s still that ugly depiction of settlers and soldiers despite quite a nuanced depiction of Palestinian society. If you can answer these and the rest of my questions from the last post which take to task your assumptions about a social experiment and your blaming the circumstances on victimhood without recognizing that the Arab world created these victims, that would be appreciated. Instead you seem to answer what you deem to be the easy issues, but more with truisms than with actual truths -more with interpretations that assume one side to be somehow morally superior or more inherently honest than the other (or at least their “leaders”). If this doesn’t sound right, I’ll ask how you would compare Abbas and Arafat’s records to Olmert, Barak, Sharon, and Netanyahu’s and come to your conclusions (here’s a hint, what they say in secret talks that they must then deny when the details see the light of day, probably shouldn’t be the only things that count in terms of efforts for peace)
precedented, or secure. You continue to suggest that Israel will not make peace without any proof or any consideration for how peace can be made with a duplicitous other side that is composed of people who won’t give up on RoR and celebrate the most heinous forms of terror and anti-Semetism.
So again, I’ll ask what it is that you are asking of Israel aside from doing something for the sake of doing something. As for might is right, that is not my point at all. My point is that a winner of a DEFENSIVE war of ANNHIALATION, will clearly have security concerns, and in the past, the winners (especially in defensive wars) have always been given some spoils not simply as reward, but in order to avoid a moral hazard.
I’m sure you know that the International Court is merely an extension of the UN and thus is equally influenced by an automatic pro-Palestine majority, but I wish you would clarify what obligations it has gone beyond (and how this goes further than Israel giving up the San Remo convention) and what in the Palestine Papers makes your case so clear. Citations please.
You also haven’t explained how the 67 lines have somehow come to represent Palestinian land and why all of that land (rather than just the parts inhabited by Palestinians) must be the basis of a Palestinian state, or why Jerusalem must be its capital. Because they say so is not a great argument. As for “you can’t say Israel was forced to occupy all those lands”, perhaps you don’t think a need for strategic depth is crucial after three wars, but several desparate situations, this was actually crucial in ensuring that wars wouldn’t have to be fought every few years.
More importantly, though, in your argument that Israel didn’t need to respond by taking the West Bank, you seem to be subscribing to a very fringe point of view that that land was legitimately under Jordanian control, while at the same time claiming that now it should be under Palestinian control… the conclusion: It should not be under Jewish control, but beyond that Palestinian peoplehood is secondary to Israeli illegitimacy. A bigger question: If Israel hadn’t taken the West Bank and Gaza, what would it now be asked to give up in order to finally achieve peace? Also, if everyone including the ICJ is so adamant about 1967 as the border, then hasn’t Israeli already lost it’s main bargaining chip, while no one will actually verbalize the Palestinians doing the same? But somehow this “code” is coddled by you and the rest of the world and we are supposed to expect that the Palestinians will read it in the same way as you and that some Palestinian leader will actually sign an end to the conflict despite having conditioned his population in such a way?
Back to the ones you keep evading a) what has shown the Palestinian leadership to be more interested in peace than the Israeli leadership (and where is this surrender of the RoR of which you speak)? And how do you square this with the words of Abbas, the incitement in all aspects of society and Arafat’s clear links to terror? “You cannot claim the Arab world has made no peace moves” Really? What actual concessions have you seen? b) How do you enforce a treaty that doesn’t have the support of the people and how could any civilized westerner in this day and age not require the people’s support? Don’t know if you’ve been following what’s happening in Egypt, but a piece of paper with no popular support doesn’t lead to real peace… unless a dictator is in charge. c) There’s still that ugly depiction of settlers and soldiers despite quite a nuanced depiction of Palestinian society. If you can answer these and the rest of my questions from the last post which take to task your assumptions about a social experiment and your blaming the circumstances on victimhood without recognizing that the Arab world created these victims, that would be appreciated. Instead you seem to answer what you deem to be the easy issues, but more with truisms than with actual truths -more with interpretations that assume one side to be somehow morally superior or more inherently honest than the other (or at least their “leaders”). If this doesn’t sound right, I’ll ask how you would compare Abbas and Arafat’s records to Olmert, Barak, Sharon, and Netanyahu’s and come to your conclusions (here’s a hint, what they say in secret talks that they must then deny when the details see the light of day, probably shouldn’t be the only things that count in terms of efforts for peace)
| 31 December 2011, 4:33 am |
“and insisting 45 years later that the people living on it must somehow make more concessions or allow Israel to dictate terms in a treaty establishing their state”
What concessions am I asking? That they agree to live in peace? That they agree to settle elsewhere as every refugee population does? That they give up land that they don’t live on and that was never their state in all of history? What concessions am I really asking of these people that celebrate terror, call for another state’s destruction more than they do one of their own, and that have had some of the most vile POPULAR leaders in history from Husseini to Arafat? None that aren’t expected of civilized human beings the world over.
What concessions am I asking? That they agree to live in peace? That they agree to settle elsewhere as every refugee population does? That they give up land that they don’t live on and that was never their state in all of history? What concessions am I really asking of these people that celebrate terror, call for another state’s destruction more than they do one of their own, and that have had some of the most vile POPULAR leaders in history from Husseini to Arafat? None that aren’t expected of civilized human beings the world over.
| 31 December 2011, 4:56 am |
I fear for Israel, a country I love and admire in many ways, if it cannot or will not make peace in the long term. In the long term, it’s refusing to make the concessions necessary for peace that endangers Israel.
What an utter wanker. The people that cannot and will not agree to once and for all end the conflict, end the violence, and abandon the muqawama/resistance as long as there is even a sliver of non-Muslim sovereignty and especially Jewish sovereignty between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River certainly aren’t the Israelis.
ON the other hand, the coddling and ignoring of Palestinian Arab supremacist intransigence, combined with the spewing off a hackneyed sincerity that claims to “fear” for Israel’s future if it doesn’t just acquiesce to any and all PLO and Ikhwan demands ASAP (sorry Matt Hill, it is a hackneyed trope and are by no means the first to employ it – see JStreet and MJ Rosenberg), betrays a sick bigotry of lower expectations for Arab Palestinians and a willingness to pander to PLO and Ikhwani whose values are liberal and democratic not those
| 31 December 2011, 5:11 am |
I fear for Israel, a country I love and admire in many ways, if it cannot or will not make peace in the long term. In the long term, it’s refusing to make the concessions necessary for peace that endangers Israel.
The people that cannot and will not agree to once and for all end the conflict, end the violence, and abandon the muqawama/resistance as long as there is even a sliver of non-Muslim sovereignty and especially Jewish sovereignty between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River certainly aren’t the Israelis.
On the other hand, the coddling and ignoring of Palestinian Arab supremacist intransigence, combined with the spewing off a hackneyed sincerity that claims to “fear” for Israel’s future if it doesn’t just acquiesce to any and all PLO and Ikhwan demands ASAP because the US is supposedly on its way out and the next global superpower will be some non-democratic and autocratic regime like China, Russia or an Organization of Islamic States led UN, (sorry Matt Hill, it is a hackneyed trope and you are by no means the first to employ it – see JStreet and MJ Rosenberg), betrays nothing more than a sick bigotry of lower expectations that willingly panders to supremacist, PLO, Ikhwani, Salafist and supercessionist Christian Arabs, while tossing unarmed and disorganized secular, liberal and democratic Arabs and secular, liberal and democratic Jewish Israelis under the bus. Shame!
| 31 December 2011, 5:43 am |
‘And how is statehood earned, by your rules, and what makes it every people’s irreducible right, and what constitutes a people?’
This is, for me, a fascinating question I’ve been giving some thought to lately. I’ve decided to answer it with a new post on my blog.
‘There are actually rules for statehood and there are people who are more or less deserving.’
Really? What are these ‘rules for statehood’ exactly? Who decided them?
‘What makes the Palestinians a “people” deserving of one, given that they were created (Gingrich was actually right about this) simply as a bulwark to another national movement?’
The Palestinians are a relatively new national group but they most certainly are one now. Look, I’m surprised you contest this. It’s obvious there’s no objective definition of a people, a nation, an ethnic group, even a racial group. These are all constructs. The simplest way of saying it is that if a people see themselves as a cohesive, distinctive group, they are one. Nations are often forged in opposition to an enemy. The people I belong to – the Welsh – is a good analogy for the Palestinians (no, bear with me!). We were never an independent nation. We were always a group of barely connected kingdoms. But in our struggles against the English we began to identify with each other and consider ourselves Welsh. There’s no objective basis for this. But try telling an Englishman who just played a full game of rugby against us at the Millennium Stadium we don’t exist – he’ll beg to differ.
‘The entire history of Palestinians shows them to be simply Arabs who were given a seperate peoplehood for the sake of destroying Israel. This doesn’t mean that they should remain under occupation indefinitely, but certain this doesn’t represent a kind of good faith that would have the occupation dismantled with much hope for peace.’
I’m glad you’re generous enough to grant them freedom from occupation, but I can’t make much of the rest of this.
‘Sure they should be free, but you haven’t yet said why this require all of the West Bank or Jerusalem to be there’s,’
The 1967 lines are useful because, with some small swaps, they enclose two natural, democratic nation-states, one overwhelmingly Jewish, the other overwhelmingly Arab. If Israel starts eating into large chunks of the West Bank (I support some lands swaps of a few percent, as i’ve said before, to keep most Jewish settlers in Israel) it will end up with lots of Arab citizens, or non-citizens as the case may be. That is why Ben Gurion actually refused to conquer the West Bank at his generals’ urging in 1948.
‘Why shouldn’t the Palestinians have a state in Jordan where they are already a majority? Then you can incorporate the major blocs where they live in the West Bank, without insisting that anything less than 100% of that land is necessary for a Palestinian state.’
Yes, this is an ingenious way for Israel to get everything it wants. So you’re saying Israel should get EVERYTHING, except little islands of territory with lots of Arabs, which will be marooned in a sea of ‘Israel’ and absorbed by Jordan. Brilliant! Why this kind of idea isn’t supported by the Jordanians nor Palestinians, nor Americans nor Europeans, nor Israelis (even Arab-lover Avigdor Lieberman considers it too much, as he recently said), nor anyone else – is beyond me. Don’t they see it combines the best of plans where Israel gets all the land, all the water, minerals, fields, etc, and none of the responsibility, problems, etc? Well, the best for Israel anyway.
My only problem with this plan is that it’s too bleeding heart, too Meretz, too humane. After all, you’ve awarded Israel all the Arabs’ water, lands, crops, roads, etc. But why on earth do they require all the empty space on the pavements in Bethlehem and Jericho, and all the extra rooms in houses in Nablus and Jenin, and so on? I propose that each Arab should be allowed to spin around in his or her hometown, wearing a blindfold. Once they stop, an IDF officer will draw a circle in the ground beneath them, requiring them to stay inside that circle until they grow old and die. All the land in between could be designated ‘Israel’. After all, don’t you know Nasser closed the Straits of Tiran for shipping in 1967? Precisely.
‘But that wouldn’t happen, because no one cares about “Palestinians” living under Hashemite rule without full rights or Syrians living under Alawite rule without full rights.’
Somehow I don’t think your concern is for those people either, given what you’ve said. I do largely agree, as it happens. It’s a disgrace that these people are essentially being kept in poverty as a living reproach to Israel. If you’re concerned for them, start a charity and I’ll donate. But if your idea of helping them is to force 3.7 million other Palestinians to call themselves Jordanian while losing all their land, well, I’m slightly skeptical your true motive is humanitarianism and not… a desire to see Israel end up with absolutely everything it can get!
‘When, Matt, did that become Palestinian land anyway and why? Perhaps you should spend time writing about Kurds or Tibetans instead – much more legitimately distinct people whose rights and deaths go entirely ignored while the world obsesses over what those Jews are doing to protect themselves.’
It’s the land of the people who have lived on it forever. They now see themselves as Palestinians. It’s very simple. As is your resort to every single far-right, long-dead, Irgun fantasy that Menachem Begin dreamt up for five minutes before an aide politely cleared his throat and explained why the implications were so horrific or downright racist. (I don’t claim you’re personally racist but underpinning all your arguments seems to be the idea that the Palestinians have no real rights and no reason to exist but as an annoyance to Israelis.)
‘As for your test, it conveniently forgets important facts – as you tend to do. Did this violence not exist before refugeehood, occupation, military defeat, dispossession, relative poverty, disenfranchisement, and the denial of rights? Is this how all other refugee populations have reacted? Or impoverished people?’
You seem to have misunderstood how an experiment like this works. You have two groups – a test group and a control group. You want to limit all the variables possible, so that you can be sure what’s causing differences in outcome. So in this case the Palestinians who stayed in Israel and those who left, being pretty much identical, are a perfect comparison – every difference in how they behave now can be attributed to their different histories. And what do we find? The people that has been subjected to oppression, dispossession, defeat, etc, are much more violent, fanatic, extreme, illiberal, etc. Those who’ve lived under a democracy, despite beng exactly the same people in 1948, are basically peaceable, relatively liberal and secular
‘As usual you have no problem making excuses for them, instead of holding them accountable for creating their own circumstances, and expecting them to act with any semblance of humanity and compromise.’
Nonsense, I condemn them all the time.
‘they must constantly be given excuses and every opportunity to kill again without having peace demanded of them.’
Oh, nonsense.
‘But more importantly, I would love answers to my other stated questions. Because, even if I concede (which I don’t) that Barak, Clinton and Ross’s accounts are wrong, and that Barak’s offer was not a great one (again for any other vanquished people in history it would certainly have been considered a great one) it doesn’t justify the terror war that ensued’
I never claimed a poor offer at camp david justified the crazed bloodletting, the lunatic bloodletting, of the Second Intifada.
‘But I’ll add a new question. On what grounds do you suggest that the aggressors of continued wars of annhialation have similar security concerns to the victors of these defensive wars?’
I just don’t know what you’re talking about. It’s as though your understanding of history is derived from an IDF pamphlet for teenagers, with respect. Which wars of ‘annihilation’ are you talking about? The only example where you may have a case is 1948. That was a brutal, existential war, which ended up with up to 750,000 Arabs fleeing their homes. There was no Arab blueprint for the annihilation of Israel or the Jews. There were some massacres – Kfar Etzion on the Jewish side and Deir Yassin on the Arab. The Arab purpose was to prevent the establishment of Israel, but if you mean annihilation of the people – well, it’s unclear what an Arab victory would have meant. You’d probably have to extrapolate from what happened to the Jewish populations that did fall to Arab forces. There is no indication, so far as I am aware, that the Arabs engaged in systematic attempts to kill Jews off the battlefield. So while this war was intended to thwart the creation of Israel, its perpetrators didn’t plan to murder Jews.
As for the other wars. Israel cynically and rather shamefully attacked Egypt in 1956.
1967 is more complex; I would rather refer people to Tom Segev than get bogged down here over who was the aggressor (neither was, in short) and who was responsible (both were). In any case, no attempt to annihilate Israel was ever made; the extent of Nasser’s aggression was to deploy troops along the border and close the Straits of Tiran – he never got a chance to do anything else but flee the Israeli tide. Again, he would have liked to annihilate Israel, but he never exactly planed or tried to do so because he knew better than most how ludicrous an idea it was
1973 is the one unambiguous Arab attack on Israel but actually here the aim was to reconquer occupied territories. It was supposed to e a limited war at best, and all the fighting took place on occupied territories. No attempt, plan or hope of annihilation.
2006 Lebanon – Again, the problem in a nutshell. Is it possible to wage a war of annihilation with katyushas? Is it possible for a paraplegic man to be guilty of attempted murder against Mike Tyson with a foam cricket bat?
2008-9 Gaza – And again. Without discounting the psychological impact of Qassams, to speak in terms of annihilation is rather absurd because it was simply not possible. You could say that of all the wars – even 48, and certainly 73 – that the Arabs might have liked to annihilate Israel if possible (as in overthrow the regime), and some Arabs have made some nauseating remarks about murdering many or all of its Jews. (can it be a threat if both sides know it’s impossible?)
And how dare you compare Abbas’s further threats to Israel at pan-Arab hands, to Israel reacting only after years of rocket fire? In fact you do worse, by saying that he only means what he says behind closed doors (although you still haven’t shown what you were referring to. I have seen no evidence at all of him conceding on the RoR even in the Palestine Papers. Care to share?), and that all the horrible things that the PA does and says are simply tactical insincerities, while insisting on the insincerity of Israel’s leaders at every turn, you show either a bigoted cynicism of one side, or a patronizing condescension to the other… or both. It is this equivalence, this insistence on trying so hard to stay right in the face of all evidence to the contrary that makes you so excruciating to every one here.
| 31 December 2011, 5:59 am |
NOTE: LAST PARAGRAPH IN MY PREVIOUS POST WAS NATE’S, NOT MINE. I reply here.
(I actually forgot 1982 – the most egregious and unnecessary Israeli war – in my roster above. That’s an open and shut case. Unfortunately the occupation it precipitated wasn’t – it only ended after 18 years.)
I’m never persuaded when either side claims a particular aggressive act is simply a response to previous attacks from the other side – and therefore, of course, since the other side started this particular round of violence, it’s their fault. In a war like Israel-Palestine there will always be a previous incident to point to and claim the latest act of violence is merely a response. It’s bullshit when Hamas do it and when the IDF do it. So Hamas fires Qassams, not because of Israeli strikes but because of the whole conflict and everything it includes. And it is wrong because it is indiscriminate.
And it is wrong Operation cast Lead was a reprisal after years of attacks that provoked no response. Look at the casualty figures leading up to it. More Palestinians dying at Israeli hands than vice versa. As usual, very large numbers of women and children. The tit-for-tat was going on for years – Operation cast Lead was a major escalation. You may justify it on security grounds, but not in that way – by claiming it was just an exasperated action after years of patience.
So I’m sorry, I do think invading someone is worse than threatening to. It’s a rather topsy-turvy world if you think otherwise. But if Israeli invasions aren’t really invasions in your head, I suppose it makes some sense. The problem is, the victim of an Israeli bullet isn’t any less dead because it was an Israeli bullet.
If you say I’m excruciating to everyone here, I guess I’ll take your word for it. But self-evidently I’m not doing this for popularity. I guess I do it for the debate, for the opportunity to learn, to sharpen my responses, and who knows, maybe even get some people to complicate their views. In any case, Nate, I would hope some HP readers will read some of your mad ideas about Palestinians and their rights and be rather taken aback.
Thanks for engaging substantively, as ever.
| 31 December 2011, 6:05 am |
Nate, I’ve enjoyed this and I’ve tried really hard to be complete in my answers, but I’m going to have to let this discussion go now, and wait until another thread. Perhaps we tried to cover too much ground here. It became extremely wide ranging. It lacked specificity and detail at times. Anyway, still, enjoyable and I salute your energy. I must sleep and tomorrow I should socialise, and after that the blog will be on its way out. So I’ll read over the last few but I think this is me done! All best and good morning.
| 31 December 2011, 9:35 am |
when the conflict will resolved :(, really waiting for that day
| 31 December 2011, 10:18 am |
Matt Hill – please, for the love of Jesus, quit with the hackneyed and nausea inducing bullshite protestations of deep “concern” for Israel’s supposed doomed future, should it not acquiesce to any and every PLO and/or Ikhwani demand ASAP as a precondition to negotiations.
Just be the best Arab nationalist and anti-imperialism of idiots ideologue you can and want to be and you won’t come off so much as the two-faced, snake oil hawker and self righteous twat that you did on this and many, if not every single other HP thread you’ve turned up on.
I have no idea why anyone at HP (save Brownie) would imagine your speculations posing as facts and bullshite make for good posts at HP unless it’s for the wind-up factor where you fill a niche that could as easily been filled by others who used to comment here such as The Irie, Hasbara Buster and a really swell guy from Greece whose name thankfully escapes me at the moment that share many of your views, if not your style.
I would imagine that you’d fit in very well on a J Street blog, but I would strongly suggest instead that you take your self absorbed drive to “sharpen your responses” and “get people to complicate their views” to blogs such as Richard Silverstein’s Tikkun Olam, the Angry Arab and Mondoweiss and give HP readers a break from your all important ego for a while. Thanks in advance.
And never forget your credo Matt: the Israelis may be human but they are always far more at fault for the prolongation of the conflict than the Arabs who are poor victimized lambs who can’t really be faulted all that much for sometimes making little mistakes (like rampant corruption, tolerating honour killings, persecuting gays and lesbians, inculcating both Jew hatred and a desire to eradicate and supplant the neighbouring Jewish state with an Islamic one in each new generation, etcetera,) that supposedly damage their cause (in the eyes of some secular liberal democrats from the West), but which would all go away if only they weren’t under OCCUPATION.
| 31 December 2011, 10:31 am |
There was no Arab blueprint for the annihilation of Israel or the Jews
Matt Hill gem #5768: There were no moon landings either. But seriously, everyone knows that Haj Amin al Husseini and Gamel Abed Nasser were just kidding around, just like Mahmoud Achmadinejad and Ali Khameini are today.
| 31 December 2011, 11:47 am |
OK, I give up. Hill’s capacity for obfuscation, denial, evasion and playing fast and loose with the facts exceeds my stamina for trying to argue with him in good faith. So no more. What’s the point? He will forever be motivated by his shrill anti-Israel agenda. Better posters than me have tried and failed to make him see sense, look at the historical facts and blame the guilty party instead of the victim, on the laughable basis that the victim happens to be strong enough not to have died under the assault.
His response to my book recommendation is a classic: deliberate misunderstanding, deflection and a complete failure to look at the complete historical picture. His empathy and sympathy are firmly on the Arab side, for some sentimental reasons that we cannot fathom although we can make reasonable guesses at: utterly deluded Western ‘anti-Imperialism’, absurd feelings of guilt where ‘brown’ people are concerned, ignorance of Jewish history, ignorantly seeing Jews as ‘white European colonialists’, refusing to allow Arabs grown-up agency.
When you add to this his blatant distortion of the facts, e.g. that Nasser had no intention of attacking Israel with genocidal intentions, that closing the Tiran Straits was not an act of war, that Israel was the aggressor in Gaza and Lebanon, that evacuating Gaza was an underhand Zionist plot; you end up with a thoroughly toxic mix.
So, I’ve had enough. Hill is irredeemable.
And everything Lbnaz has said in his several posts above.
His response to my book recommendation is a classic: deliberate misunderstanding, deflection and a complete failure to look at the complete historical picture. His empathy and sympathy are firmly on the Arab side, for some sentimental reasons that we cannot fathom although we can make reasonable guesses at: utterly deluded Western ‘anti-Imperialism’, absurd feelings of guilt where ‘brown’ people are concerned, ignorance of Jewish history, ignorantly seeing Jews as ‘white European colonialists’, refusing to allow Arabs grown-up agency.
When you add to this his blatant distortion of the facts, e.g. that Nasser had no intention of attacking Israel with genocidal intentions, that closing the Tiran Straits was not an act of war, that Israel was the aggressor in Gaza and Lebanon, that evacuating Gaza was an underhand Zionist plot; you end up with a thoroughly toxic mix.
So, I’ve had enough. Hill is irredeemable.
And everything Lbnaz has said in his several posts above.
| 31 December 2011, 1:55 pm |
Ref: Arafat rejecting Camp David:
That is a fascinating document I had not seen, so thank you
My guess is that there are a large number of enlighetning documents you haven’t seen.
Then there is the position that Arafat had no offers he could accept. So what? Even if its true then you have to recognise that the Palestinian have nothing to offer anyway so making unreasonable demands is just a way of creating straw-man arguments.
| 31 December 2011, 2:36 pm |
That is a fascinating document I had not seen, so thank you. There is a lo there to digest but in his book Ben Ami said Camp David was not an offer the Palestinians could have accepted.
I once held Ben Ami in a great deal of respect, but if he has radically changed his version of what happened at Camp David, I’ll have to withdraw that. When the same person offers two totally different accounts of the same events, I tend to believe the first one.
| 31 December 2011, 3:45 pm |
I don’t even know where to begin. You take a hypothetical question that’s meant to raise the idea of where certain rights are derived from, and take it to it’s most fascist and absurd conclusion, but unfortunately you ignore a lot of area in between… A LOT.
As for Israel having no right to launch an offensive to prevent its people being constantly barraged by missiles and rockets, I’m afraid this is the kind of moral equivalence that truly puts Matt beyond the pale.
I just hope everyone got to read this little gem: It’s the land of the people who have lived on it forever. They now see themselves as Palestinians. It’s very simple.” Wow, a true student of history. Not only does this ignore when the Arab conquest actually took place, but it also ignores the great waves of immigration that took place around the same time as the Jewish ones beginning in the 19th century. But somehow an Egyptian who came in the mid-19th century has been there “forever” while Jews who legally purchased land through out the West Ban and Gaza around the same time, must be less legitimate. Perhaps Matt agrees with Areikat who recently wrote in the Post that “We lived under the rule of a plethora of empires: the Canaanites, Egyptians, Philistines, Israelites, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Crusaders, Mongols, Ottomans and, finally, the British”. Of course this is nonsense, but when you invent a people you can just as easily invent its history.
Or perhaps he agrees with Diliani’s statement that “The Palestinian people descended from the Canaanite tribe of the Jebusites that inhabited the ancient site of Jerusalem as early as 3200 B.C.E” This would certainly put them pretty close to “forever”, but unfortunately, being admitted Arabs, this one doesn’t stand up to basic facts either.
As for Israel having no right to launch an offensive to prevent its people being constantly barraged by missiles and rockets, I’m afraid this is the kind of moral equivalence that truly puts Matt beyond the pale.
I just hope everyone got to read this little gem: It’s the land of the people who have lived on it forever. They now see themselves as Palestinians. It’s very simple.” Wow, a true student of history. Not only does this ignore when the Arab conquest actually took place, but it also ignores the great waves of immigration that took place around the same time as the Jewish ones beginning in the 19th century. But somehow an Egyptian who came in the mid-19th century has been there “forever” while Jews who legally purchased land through out the West Ban and Gaza around the same time, must be less legitimate. Perhaps Matt agrees with Areikat who recently wrote in the Post that “We lived under the rule of a plethora of empires: the Canaanites, Egyptians, Philistines, Israelites, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Crusaders, Mongols, Ottomans and, finally, the British”. Of course this is nonsense, but when you invent a people you can just as easily invent its history.
Or perhaps he agrees with Diliani’s statement that “The Palestinian people descended from the Canaanite tribe of the Jebusites that inhabited the ancient site of Jerusalem as early as 3200 B.C.E” This would certainly put them pretty close to “forever”, but unfortunately, being admitted Arabs, this one doesn’t stand up to basic facts either.
“Nonsense, I condemn them all the time.” Really? Isn’t this what your social experiment was about? Completely ignoring the effects of a certain culture and instead placing the blame on the conflict? Or suggesting somehow that Israel is responsible for creating democracy in its neighborhood or else sitting on its hands while it’s attacked?
“They must constantly be given excuses and every opportunity to kill again without having peace demanded of them.’
Oh, nonsense.”
Is it nonsense? You suggested that since Israel is the occupier it had to make the concessions and it was uncouth to demand that the Palestinians at least agree to live in peace.
Oh, nonsense.”
Is it nonsense? You suggested that since Israel is the occupier it had to make the concessions and it was uncouth to demand that the Palestinians at least agree to live in peace.
What’s most amazing though, is that you clearly read my three questions that I have continued to ask, but have continued to ignore them, so I’ll ask them again so that people will see those questions that Matt can’t quite answer:
a) what has shown the Palestinian leadership to be more interested in peace than the Israeli leadership and how do you square this with the words of Abbas, the incitement in all aspects of society and Arafat’s clear links to terror and the second intifada which you admit couldn’t have been justified by Barak’s offer?
b) How do you enforce a treaty that doesn’t have the support of the people and how could any civilized westerner in this day and age not require the people’s support? And what would stop an incensed Palestinian population from then electing Hamas in order to recoup RoR, thus making any Israeli concessions from the treaty worthless?
a) what has shown the Palestinian leadership to be more interested in peace than the Israeli leadership and how do you square this with the words of Abbas, the incitement in all aspects of society and Arafat’s clear links to terror and the second intifada which you admit couldn’t have been justified by Barak’s offer?
b) How do you enforce a treaty that doesn’t have the support of the people and how could any civilized westerner in this day and age not require the people’s support? And what would stop an incensed Palestinian population from then electing Hamas in order to recoup RoR, thus making any Israeli concessions from the treaty worthless?
c) There’s still that ugly depiction of settlers and soldiers despite quite a nuanced depiction of Palestinian society. Matt told a story about a hypothetical boy in Hebron who wouldn’t drop the demand for RoR despite not being a refugee because of the harassment that he saw his sister go through at the hands of soldiers and because of the settlers that humiliated him. Now if this Hebron boy (might not be an altogether impoverished boy since Hebron produces a third of the West Bank’s GDP) is somehow representative of the typical Palestinian, as this example was meant to suggest, then for it to hold as an example, these mean and capricious soldiers and settlers must be equally representative. So… How does Matt defend this depiction of soldiers and Settlers?
Finally I’d love to go into this discussion of nationhood. Rather than the Welsh who saw themselves merely in more tribal identities until they banded together, Palestinians actually were part of something far greater, whether it be the entire Arab nation or the nation of Greater Syria. So it wasn’t a banding together to compete with an enemy, but rather the splintering off to invoke human rights to defeat said enemy. And how do we know this? Several ways,
Auni Bey Abdul-Hadi, the Syrian Arab leader told the British Peel Commission in 1937:
“There is no such country as Palestine. ‘Palestine’ is a term the Zionists invented. There is no Palestine in the Bible. Our country was for centuries part of Syria. ‘Palestine’ is alien to us. It is the Zionists who introduced it.”
or
Zuheir Muhsin, then military commander of the PLO and member of the PLO Executive Council, said helpfully:
“There are no differences between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. We are all part of one nation. It is only for political reasons that we carefully underline our Palestinian identity… yes, the existence of a separate Palestinian identity serves only tactical purposes. The founding of a Palestinian state is a new tool in the continuing battle against Israel.”
Auni Bey Abdul-Hadi, the Syrian Arab leader told the British Peel Commission in 1937:
“There is no such country as Palestine. ‘Palestine’ is a term the Zionists invented. There is no Palestine in the Bible. Our country was for centuries part of Syria. ‘Palestine’ is alien to us. It is the Zionists who introduced it.”
or
Zuheir Muhsin, then military commander of the PLO and member of the PLO Executive Council, said helpfully:
“There are no differences between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. We are all part of one nation. It is only for political reasons that we carefully underline our Palestinian identity… yes, the existence of a separate Palestinian identity serves only tactical purposes. The founding of a Palestinian state is a new tool in the continuing battle against Israel.”
Most importantly the 1964 founding charter of the PLO explicitly excluded the West Bank and Gaza (including East Jerusalem). So there was nothing Palestinian about these lands EVEN to the Palestinians, until Israel got a hold of them. So… why is this now unquestionably Palestinian land, Matt?
Also, I think you used the word “annihilation” as a cop out. As usual I believed what the Arab leaders were saying and you choose not to because it simply can’t be true, but the point gets ignored when you find a chance to go off on a tangent.
“What are these ‘rules for statehood’ exactly?”
Finally, statehood requirements are that said state have defined borders and population (Israel had this at the time of its establishment while Palestine certainly does not), that it have a government (Palestine’s has splintered into two seperate governments warring with each other, that can only function off hand outs and that cannot seem to hold scheduled elections) and finally that said state be “peace-loving”. Hmmm, that might be a tough one. Going into existence already in conflict and insisting on continuing said conflict certainly doesn’t sound “peace-loving”.
Finally, statehood requirements are that said state have defined borders and population (Israel had this at the time of its establishment while Palestine certainly does not), that it have a government (Palestine’s has splintered into two seperate governments warring with each other, that can only function off hand outs and that cannot seem to hold scheduled elections) and finally that said state be “peace-loving”. Hmmm, that might be a tough one. Going into existence already in conflict and insisting on continuing said conflict certainly doesn’t sound “peace-loving”.
| 31 December 2011, 4:01 pm |
And while the 67 lines are indeed convenient for some, they are certainly not the final word on what a state must look like that encompasses the Palestinian population. Why not, say, 90% of that land? Or 95%? Why land swaps when 242 didn’t call for them? What makes 100% of that land mass the bare minimum for a Palestinian state? That was why I brought up Jordan, but the idea isn’t tiny islands of Palestine… just less than 100% of the West Bank… which has somehow become sancrosanct.
| 31 December 2011, 4:34 pm |
Also I never said the Palestinians have any rights. They have the same human rights as anybody else.
| 31 December 2011, 4:51 pm |
Matt I note you keep referring admiringly and reverentially to Avi Shlaim in the chain if approbation which you argue reflects well on Finkelstein. Have you read my link to the post about Shlaim on Point of no return I posted way up thread. if so you have not acknowledged or commented on it.
| 31 December 2011, 6:15 pm |
amie,
In the article you link to, Shlaim downplays every Arab wrong and plays up every Israeli one. Overt, endemic bribery in Baghdad? That’s just an old Arab “culture of compromise”. But a bounced cheque in Ramat Gan? That’s an Israeli “badge of honour” and it killed his father’s business (not, apparently, the absence of that “culture of compromise”). There was no antisemitism in Iraq: The Farhud, Jewish flight and expulsions blossomed on previously sterile ground, caused by alien influences — the horrors of British rule and, especially, Zionism. Overall his attitude reminded me irresistibly of Matt, for whom Palestinian naughtiness is a distraction from the evils of a bafflingly irrational (because unnecessary) occupation.
| 31 December 2011, 7:18 pm |
Also I never said the Palestinians have any rights. They have the same human rights as anybody else.
I know that everyone who opposes Matt’s points of view also agree with that statement. I have no disagreement that the Palestinians should govern themselves but having human rights is not the same as a right to self-government and independence. They should have a state because I see no reason to oppose one and because they identify that they don’t want to be Israelis and Israelsi don’t want them to be either. Hence, the only option is self-government (or become a region of Jordan)
| 31 December 2011, 8:47 pm |
Good point. That should have been “I never said the Palestinians DON’T have rights”. But even if self-governance was an actual human right, it would in no way require the ceding of part of Jerusalem or ALL of the West Bank in order for that right to be fulfilled.
| 31 December 2011, 9:26 pm |
Hi folks. Before this thread disappears and I go out, sorry for not answering every point. Remember you’re all debating one person but I’m debating 20. There’ll be time for all these points to be raised again and again. Even though there’s a lot of frustration and antipathy here, I’m grateful that we’ve been arguing about substance at least.
Happy new year.
| 31 December 2011, 10:42 pm |
Happy New Year, Matt. Make 2012 the year you get your head on straight. (Yes, I know. Can’t help it.)
| 31 December 2011, 11:50 pm |
Paul M,
Thanks. I think my journey since my early 20s shows I’m prepared to change my mind. I’ve always been a humanist, a democrat, a liberal and a secularist. In my early 20s I believed these principles demanded uncritical anti-Zionism and pro-Palestinianism.
Since then I’ve moved to a position where I support two states for two people, an Arab state and a Jewish state. I’m very much opposed to the one-state solution, the comparison of Israel to apartheid South Africa, and attacks on Israeli democracy (whether from western anti-Zionists or ultra-nationalists in the Knesset). I strongly support Israel’s right to defend itself against loathsome, theocratic terrorists who are systematically defiling the Palestinian cause. I strongly oppose, and have condemned at sites like Liberal Conspiracy, the view that Jews should be excluded from the West Bank on principle, and therefore support a peace deal where most of the settlements can stay, and other Israelis can remain in their homes as residents of Palestine, their safety guaranteed. I support unequivocally Israel’s right to exist like any other state. I believe much of the historical blame for the conflict lies with native Arabs who responded to Jewish immigrants, many of them fleeing for their lives, with hostility, violence and war, and believe large-scale conflict could have been avoided if both sides had made efforts at coexistence (and I don’t exclude the British from blame). I condemn the long history of Arab rejectionism, from the 1937 Peel Report, the 1947 UN plan, through the 20th century until Oslo. I condemn the Arab tendency to resort to terror, war and violence in opposition to Israel, from Husseini through Nasser to Arafat. I recognise enormous problems with anti-semitism amongst Palestinians, the wider Arab world, and the pro-Palestinian movement, both in the past and today. I consider Hamas evil murderous necromaniacs. I believe the PLO and PA are deeply compromised by their links to violence, their incompetence, corruption and authoritarianism. I recognise huge problems with parochialism, racism, chauvinism and violence in the wider Arab world, and I have no time for western relativist who make excuses for it. I have huge admiration for the pioneering spirit, intellectualism and feminism of early Zionist culture.
I have huge affection and admiration for Israel – the land, people, society, the democracy, the freedom of its press, its intellectual culture. Israelis like Oz, Grossman and Segev are among my favourites from all over the world. Those who think my stated affection and concern for Israel is insincere should recall that my parents have lived there for some years, that I’ve been spending months at a time there since i was 14, that many of my best friends are Israelis and my first girlfriend was Israeli, that it’s only in recent years that I started making friends in the territories, that I have many cherished memories in Haifa, Jerusalem and Nazareth especially, that I knew and loved Israel as a second home for many years before I even became political.
All this is absolutely true. My views on the occupation no more impact on my view of Israel as a country, its people or its right to exist than my views on colonialism and the Iraq war impact on my love of Britain, my home.
And since I’m not Jewish or Arab, and my connection to Israel is close but not based on race or religion, I have no real emotional investment in either side, apart from my investment in what I believe to be right and good for the people of Israel and the territories. So I could change my mind about the occupation without any great emotional or psychological wrench.
So I’m flexible, sincere and prepared to change my mind. And my views are based on wide reading and hard study. That is very much why I started this thread – I want to read more of the other side of the debate. I’ll be posting a list of the orders I’ve made from Amazon soon.
What’s more, I’m the kind of person who sits upstairs enumerating his positive thoughts and feelings about Israel while all his friends and flatmates are downstairs getting drunk and celebrating the new year! I don’t know if this is worrying or encouraging… anyway, I really better be off! Happy new year all!
| 1 January 2012, 12:12 am |
Matt: I will continue to hold out hope for you.
| 1 January 2012, 1:17 am |
But Paul, in all sincerity, what do you hope for me? That I’ll come to support the continuing occupation of 3.7 million people? That would be tantamount to abdicating my support for Israeli democracy. Can’t you see why I think support for Israel, in the medium-to-long-term, actually entails support for the END of the occupation? As Amos Oz has said, ‘even an unavoidable occupation is a corrupting occupation’. Why does support for Israel need to entail support for rule over another people? Isn’t the debate here basically analogous to the traditional debate between Likud and Labour? Going back further, it’s the argument between Ben Gurion and Jabotinsky. Ben Gurion was urged by many of his top advisers to conquer the West Bank in 1948. He could easily have done so, but said it would place an intolerable burden on Israel to rule over so many Arabs. He said it would impose a choice between being a Jewish state and a democracy. That is basically the argument I’ve been making on this thread. When did it become radically anti-Israeli to oppose the Jabotinsky view?
I suppose your answer will be that a realistic assessment of the situation shows that, historically and for the foreseeable future, Israel’s security can only be guaranteed by maintaining the occupation. Perhaps the best way of reframing the debate would be like this: what is the best way of guaranteeing Israel’s future? Must it abandon its commitment to democracy to ensure its security? Can it still call itself democratic if the occupation is permanent? How liberal or benign can Israel afford to be towards its neighbours and its occupied subjects without compromising its security? What kind of future can supporters of Israel (amongst whom I count myself, but let’s leave that aside now) expect and hope for it? What should Israel aim for? Where can and should it hope to go, and how will it get there?
Would you consider that a legitimate and reasonable discussion to have?
Another question. Let’s say for the sake of argument that we all agree that, for Israel to guarantee its guarantee its security, it simply has no choice to impose a military occupation over the Palestinians in the territories. Let’s say this is the brutal reality of the situation: that with the very best will in the world, Israel has no choice whatsoever to live in this way. That every concession – as Nate said above – makes it more vulnerable. That history, Arab culture and Islamic belief render any attempt to foster peace naive and dangerous. That the answer to Levi Eshkol’s question – ‘Must we live by the sword forever?’ – is ‘yes’, through no fault of the Jews whatsoever. That seems to be the position of some people here.
Well, if that’s so, what can we conclude? Remember the point of Zionism was to give the Jews a country like any other country, where they could live ordinary lives rather than worrying about death and persecution. In short, to enable the Jews to wake up from the nightmare of their history. But if the Zionists went to the Holy Land simply in order to live in a sea of hatred on all sides, destined to kill or be killed, factoring the threat of annihilation into the every calculation – well, haven’t the Jews just swapped diaspora life for the world’s biggest ghetto? A pleasant, rich, in some ways very enviable ghetto, to be sure; but a ghetto all the same. In other words, if the occupation is necessary, if the Jews can only escape oppression by learning to be the oppressor – well, hasn’t Zionism failed?
The original Zionist may have been naive about the Arabs. Those that acknowledged their presence saw them largely as passive, unsophisticated rustics. They would resist at first, but economic growth and social advance would soon reconcile them to Jewish rule.
Jabotinsky, paradoxically respecting and understanding the Arabs a little better, saw that this would be impossible. That’s why he advocated the famous ‘Iron Wall’ of Jewish security against Arab violence. It’s Jabotinsky’s vision that has dominated Israel’s security calculations for some time now.
But even Jabotinsky saw the Iron Wall as a temporary measure, not an indefinite basis for Jewish life in Palestine. He argued that when Israel had made its existence inviolable, and defeated the Arabs unequivocally, it would be time to pull down the Iron Wall and make peace with them.
Surely that day arrived some time ago? Anyone who gets off the plane at Tel Aviv can look around them and see that Israel is going nowhere. It exists, it will exist forever, it is a phenomenal success beyond Theodore Herzl’s wildest dreams. It is the home of great artists and Nobel Prize winners. It now provides refuge to asylum seekers fleeing poverty and violence elsewhere. A million Arafats and Ahmadinejads couldn’t threaten its existence. It has one of the world’s most sophisticated armies – perhaps the most well-trained and battle-hardened army in existence. Its continued existence is guaranteed by the ultimate weapon. Only moral considerations on the part of itself and other countries limit the exercise of its omnipotence in the region.
Until the Iron Wall comes down, isn’t the Zionist project incomplete? Wouldn’t the early Zionists look at modern Israel and, while marvelling at its achievements, lament its wars, its occupation, its failure – even through no fault of its own – to make peace?
Have the Jews truly regathered to live amongst their holy places, to root themselves in the soil of the Middle East? Or have they simply imported the shtetl and the ghetto from the diaspora?
Again, it may be that none of this is the fault of the Zionists: that in their hope and idealism they miscalculated, they failed to see the true nature of the people they came to live amongst and the impact their arrival would have on them. To a large extent I believe that’s true. And yet…
This may sound like a rhetorical trick, but I mean it in a very real sense. Isn’t it time Israel returned to the hope that Jews could live like any other country? To look for a way to turn swords into ploughshares – if not today, then one day soon? Isn’t it time, in short, for Israel to rediscover Zionism?
| 1 January 2012, 8:46 am |
Jesus, Matt,
What’s the emoticon for “man weeping and banging head on wall”? What have your mother and I done to deserve this?
I’m going to make the supreme effort and reply to your latest, which has the emotional overload of Cartland and the length of Tolstoy. (I will take my tongue out of my cheek long enough to credit you with writing emotionally because you actually care.) The best I can muster, I’m afraid, is to go through it paragraph by paragraph or line by line. It’s not the most coherent way to respond, but it’s the easiest and all I have a hope of completing.
But Paul, in all sincerity, what do you hope for me? That I’ll come to support the continuing occupation of 3.7 million people? That would be tantamount to abdicating my support for Israeli democracy. Can’t you see why I think support for Israel, in the medium-to-long-term, actually entails support for the END of the occupation? As Amos Oz has said, ‘even an unavoidable occupation is a corrupting occupation’.
Let’s talk about what “support for occupation” means for a moment. I don’t support occupation as a desirable endpoint in which the Palestinians exist as some sort of permanent caste of untouchables, neither free nor equal. But then, contrary to what you seem to think, neither does anyone else I know outside of the political far-extremes. What I, and I think many like me, do support is occupation as a “least worst” measure, to be ended when the Palestinians commit to a peaceful existence alongside a Jewish state. If that can be achieved in the medium-to-long-term, terrific. If it can be achieved next week, even better. But if not, then we may have to wait as long as it takes, because even if we accept Amos Oz as the Embodiment of Truth, what’s the alternative to an unavoidable occupation? Is there some usage of “unavoidable” that I don’t understand?
Ben Gurion was urged by many of his top advisers to conquer the West Bank in 1948. He could easily have done so, but said it would place an intolerable burden on Israel to rule over so many Arabs. He said it would impose a choice between being a Jewish state and a democracy. That is basically the argument I’ve been making on this thread.
Deliberately or not, you’re eliding the difference between an occupation (of any length) and an unequal (and so undemocratic) citizenship. This may be a favourite rhetorical tool of the anti-Israel crowd (and no, I’m not accusing you of that), but it’s a falsehood nonetheless. It’s an attempt to convince Israelis that the occupation is more of a threat to them than unconstrained Palestinian rejectionism would be, because if they can be so persuaded then the Palestinians gain everything whilst giving up nothing.
I suppose your answer will be that a realistic assessment of the situation shows that, historically and for the foreseeable future, Israel’s security can only be guaranteed by maintaining the occupation. Perhaps the best way of reframing the debate would be like this: what is the best way of guaranteeing Israel’s future? Must it abandon its commitment to democracy to ensure its security? Can it still call itself democratic if the occupation is permanent? How liberal or benign can Israel afford to be towards its neighbours and its occupied subjects without compromising its security? What kind of future can supporters of Israel (amongst whom I count myself, but let’s leave that aside now) expect and hope for it? What should Israel aim for? Where can and should it hope to go, and how will it get there?
The short answer to that profusion of question marks is: You leap far too lightly from “foreseeable future” to “permanent”. Despite everything I remain mostly an optimist where Israel is concerned. I do not know how long the occupation will last, nor how the Palestinians will go about making it unnecessary, but I choose to believe it will happen. I also believe that the quickest way of getting there is to force the Palestinians to the conclusion that there’s no way around a real peace and a permanent end to the conflict. So long as they think that they can get free of the occupation while retaining options for trying to destroy Israel, that’s what they’ll hold out for. What should Israel hope for? It should hope for a Palestinian leader who can break out of the shackles forged for him by his (“her” would be OK too) predecessors. What should it aim for? It should strive to keep the mental flexibility to see possibilities for advance; it should make whatever small progress is possible in the meantime; it should explore any openings the Palestinians present; it should remain permanently willing to negotiate in good faith; and it should stand fast against anything that is not real peace.
Another question. Let’s say for the sake of argument that we all agree that, for Israel to guarantee its guarantee its security, it simply has no choice to impose a military occupation over the Palestinians in the territories. Let’s say this is the brutal reality of the situation: that with the very best will in the world, Israel has no choice whatsoever to live in this way. That every concession – as Nate said above – makes it more vulnerable. That history, Arab culture and Islamic belief render any attempt to foster peace naive and dangerous. That the answer to Levi Eshkol’s question – ‘Must we live by the sword forever?’ – is ‘yes’, through no fault of the Jews whatsoever. That seems to be the position of some people here.Well, if that’s so, what can we conclude? Remember the point of Zionism was to give the Jews a country like any other country, where they could live ordinary lives rather than worrying about death and persecution. In short, to enable the Jews to wake up from the nightmare of their history. But if the Zionists went to the Holy Land simply in order to live in a sea of hatred on all sides, destined to kill or be killed, factoring the threat of annihilation into the every calculation – well, haven’t the Jews just swapped diaspora life for the world’s biggest ghetto? A pleasant, rich, in some ways very enviable ghetto, to be sure; but a ghetto all the same. In other words, if the occupation is necessary, if the Jews can only escape oppression by learning to be the oppressor – well, hasn’t Zionism failed?
I thought for a moment there was going to be a glimmer of understanding here. It lasted for all of three sentence before I realised where we were heading. Yes, Israel has no choice — for now. But ”render any attempt to foster peace naïve and dangerous”? Where does that come from? There has been a century of attempts to foster peace. They continue. They may yet continue for another century, though I hope not. But as far as I’m concerned, the whole point of being a Zionist is to work for the day when the attempts succeed.
Bearing in mind, then, that you’re the one who postulates an everlasting rejection, not me, I have my own forest of question marks to plant. So, if Arab hate is eternal — what do you propose? That the situation be described as a failure of Zionism, apparently, rather than a failure of the Arabs. But then what? Invite Israeli Jews to kneel down in the sand and offer their throats to be cut? Tell them to see if any country wants to take in 6 million Jewish refugees, then trust to luck that murderous antisemitism ended for all time in 1945? Another conference in Evian, perhaps, though hopefully with better results? Take the cuffs off the Palestinians because the occupation’s not fair and after all, how much worse could things get anyway?
How about instead fighting to break out of “the world’s biggest ghetto” and in the meantime defending Israel’s corner in every way possible — occupation included? How about demanding that the world take its hands out of its pockets so that Jews have a choice other than to oppress or be oppressed? If, though, you insist that those are the only options, who are you to decide that being the oppressed is the better choice? It may be the choice you make for yourself — what right do you have to choose it for the rest of us?
And one more thing before I leave these paragraphs, Matt: Higher up this thread you’ve talked about the Palestinian response to the occupation in terms of Why wouldn’t they fight it and what choice do they have? And yet here you can contemplate the idea of an unquenchable Arab hate and all it would mean to you is that Zionism has failed, with the implication of “so what’s the point? Might as well pack it in.” Is that all we get?
The original Zionist may have been naive about the Arabs. Those that acknowledged their presence saw them largely as passive, unsophisticated rustics. They would resist at first, but economic growth and social advance would soon reconcile them to Jewish rule.
I’ll skip this bit, thank you. Between “those that acknowledged their presence” and the sweeping generalisations about Zionist views of “the Arabs”, there’s nothing to answer.
Jabotinsky, paradoxically respecting and understanding the Arabs a little better, saw that this would be impossible. That’s why he advocated the famous ‘Iron Wall’ of Jewish security against Arab violence. It’s Jabotinsky’s vision that has dominated Israel’s security calculations for some time now.But even Jabotinsky saw the Iron Wall as a temporary measure, not an indefinite basis for Jewish life in Palestine. He argued that when Israel had made its existence inviolable, and defeated the Arabs unequivocally, it would be time to pull down the Iron Wall and make peace with them.Surely that day arrived some time ago? Anyone who gets off the plane at Tel Aviv can look around them and see that Israel is going nowhere. It exists, it will exist forever, it is a phenomenal success beyond Theodore Herzl’s wildest dreams. It is the home of great artists and Nobel Prize winners. It now provides refuge to asylum seekers fleeing poverty and violence elsewhere. A million Arafats and Ahmadinejads couldn’t threaten its existence. It has one of the world’s most sophisticated armies – perhaps the most well-trained and battle-hardened army in existence. Its continued existence is guaranteed by the ultimate weapon. Only moral considerations on the part of itself and other countries limit the exercise of its omnipotence in the region.
Well here’s a real change. We’ve had hypothetical considerations of Israel’s security needs; Israel-as-ghetto was offered as a dystopian alternate reality, but now were firmly back in the real world: Israel has, of course, actually defeated the Arabs “unequivocally” and will exist forever. A million Arafats and Ahmedinejads, noch, couldn’t destroy it. How about one Ahmedinejad and a few-score serviceable nuclear warheads? How about, more probably, enough terrorists firing enough Grads across enough borders to keep every Israeli within 15 seconds of a bomb shelter? How about new regimes — I won’t say democracies — tearing up peace treaties in Egypt and Jordan? Or Turkey deciding to make it’s presence more definitively felt? Or all of the above. Is being the only country routinely expected to justify its right to exist, the only country not even theoretically eligible to sit on the UN Security Council, and the only country to be a permanent agenda item at the UN Human Rights Council an indication of a secure existence?
Do you really think moral considerations are the only things restraining Israel? It has been precisely externally-imposed constraints and the concomitant lack of a definitive victory in every war from 1948 to 2008 that has prolonged this struggle — to the detriment not just of Israelis but of Palestinians also. Don’t pretend to be a serious thinker about the conflict if you’re going to come out with this rubbish.
Until the Iron Wall comes down, isn’t the Zionist project incomplete? Wouldn’t the early Zionists look at modern Israel and, while marvelling at its achievements, lament its wars, its occupation, its failure – even through no fault of its own – to make peace?
Yes and yes. Shall we just give up, then? Or, if the fault is not ours, perhaps we could be permitted to persevere?
Have the Jews truly regathered to live amongst their holy places, to root themselves in the soil of the Middle East? Or have they simply imported the shtetl and the ghetto from the diaspora?
I’m tempted to say “Go to hell” here, Matt. The Jews have done their damnedest to leave the shtetl and the ghetto behind them, from the decision for self-determination to the discarding of Yiddish and even Ashkenazi pronunciation in favour of Sephardic Hebrew. If the ghetto has followed us to the Middle East it will be by the will of our enemies, not ourselves. Lay that charge at our feet and I’ll write you off for good.
Again, it may be that none of this is the fault of the Zionists: that in their hope and idealism they miscalculated, they failed to see the true nature of the people they came to live amongst and the impact their arrival would have on them. To a large extent I believe that’s true. And yet…This may sound like a rhetorical trick, but I mean it in a very real sense. Isn’t it time Israel returned to the hope that Jews could live like any other country? To look for a way to turn swords into ploughshares – if not today, then one day soon? Isn’t it time, in short, for Israel to rediscover Zionism?
These last paragraphs are in the same turgid and dishonest vein. Israel, to the best of my knowledge, has never lost the desire to live like any other country. If you truly want to contemplate the possibility that it’s not the fault of the Zionists, how about making demands of the Palestinians and other Arabs for a change? Your high-minded plea for “Israel to rediscover Zionism” is you at your most self-important worst and, frankly, nauseating.
| 1 January 2012, 9:24 am |
Matt – I am certain you are completely sincere in all you say in your 11.50 comment, and it seems to me pretty rare for anyone who might be termed ‘pro-Palestinian’ to be willing to say half so much, as I discussed here:
I don’t always agree with your critics on these threads – sometimes I agree with you and sometimes I don’t know. But I do agree with quite a bit of what Paul says (though I wouldn’t put it so strongly). One problem I had with your latest comment is that, because attempts to delegitimise Israel either completely and openly, or subtly, are so prevalent, I find anything which even brushes against that kind of discourse seriously unwelcome. I’m sure this is not your intention though!
| 1 January 2012, 10:17 am |
Paul,
Superb, and every single word is absolutely on the nail.
For someone as ignorant and new to the topic as Hill is, and not even Jewish, to demand that the state of the Jews “rediscover Zionism”, a term whose meaning he doesn’t begin to understand, is the very definition of chutzpah.
Superb, and every single word is absolutely on the nail.
For someone as ignorant and new to the topic as Hill is, and not even Jewish, to demand that the state of the Jews “rediscover Zionism”, a term whose meaning he doesn’t begin to understand, is the very definition of chutzpah.
| 1 January 2012, 10:19 am |
Sarah,
though I wouldn’t put it so strongly
Surprise us just once, and be unequivocal.
How far would you like to extend this principle, Peter? Shall we try and think of other cases, past and present, where membership of a racial or ethnic group constrains your behaviour or opinions?
- Stockholm Syndrome (right… and who is it that has captured Shlaim? Oxford University? Does the blogger have any intention of making sense at this stage?)
- or perhaps he’s been… brainwashed by the Guardian! of course! now it all makes sense!
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