My life as a writer frequently involves my sense of time spooling around itself in interesting ways. After arriving back in the US after my recent trip to the Middle East it took a bit of time to catch up with the stack of periodicals that had arrived in my absence. Only yesterday did I get around to reading Amira Hass’s searing essay “Return to Gaza” (subscription required) in the February 26 edition of the London Review of Books. I was on a train, coming to New York to see my grandbaby, Matilda.
More time spooling around on itself involved in this grandparenting business, too.
Only later on during the train-ride (around Wilmington) did I get around to reading Gabriel Piterberg’s extremely important review, in the same issue, of three books by the recently deceased Israeli author S. Yizhar that have recently been translated and made available to English-language readers.
Yizhar was born in 1916 in the Zionist settlement of Rehovot. Piterberg demonstrates in the review why these books of his are extremely important texts for anyone seeking to understand Jewish-Israeli life and culture– and why it is also really excellent that finally, just in the past couple of years, they have been published in English.
My starting point here is the statement that then-prime minister Golda Meir made in 1969 to the effect that, “There never was a Palestinian people. It’s not as if there used to be people here who were Palestinian Arabs and we came and chased them away.” (I’ll pinpoint the the exact quote later; it’s in my 1984 book on the PLO and many other places too.)
That was a classic and politically weighty statement of flat-out Nakba denial. Made in English to the London Sunday Times.
But did Mrs. Meir believe what she stated? And did most Jewish Israelis at that time, in the late 1960s, believe it too?
Now, I think it’s clear that she did not… And that mendacity in her statement raises the nature of what she was engaged from the already worrying level of Nakba denial to the even more serious level of outright Nakba deception.
I never really gave much thought to the question of Mrs. Meir’s “truthfulness”– and that of the rest of her generation– on this question until recently. I guess I just assumed it was possible that somewhere in the tumultuous and busy 21 years that intervened between 1948 and 1969 a lot of Jewish Israelis had– whether through deliberate suppression of their own memories or other mechanisms– kind of “forgotten” what had happened in 1948.
Piterberg’s review makes it quite clear that that had not happened; but that instead, within the “safe” and generally hidden confines of their own Hebrew-language discourse, throughout the mid- and late-1960s Israelis were grappling at significant national levels with how to deal with the true story of the mass ethnic cleansings of 1948. This, because one of the Yizhar books Piterberg reviews, Khirbet Khizeh was itself a poignant account, fictionalized but recognizably partly autobiographical, of the ethnic cleansing of a fictional Palestinian village of that name. Piterberg tells us, the book had been written in the 1948 war’s immediate aftermath. And, even more significantly,
- Khirbet Khizeh became a set book in Israeli secondary schools in 1964… The story, which deals with the cleansing of rural Arab Palestine as Yizhar experienced it, goes to the heart of the Zionist-Palestinian conflict and has given rise to great unease, even evasiveness, among liberal commentators in Israel…
… Yizhar [is] perhaps the greatest poet of Palestinian landscape in modern Hebrew. He is also a historian of destruction and expulsion. In the closing pages of the story, watching the humiliated Palestinians [who have previously been described as “most of them elderly or women or children”] huddling in Israeli lorries, Yizhar’s narrator has an epiphany:
- Something struck me like lightning. All at once everything seemed to mean something different, more precisely: exile. This was exile. This was what exile was like. This was what exile looked like… I had never been in the Diaspora– I said to myself– I had never known what it was like… but people had spoken to me, told me, taught me, and repeatedly recited to me, from every direction, in books and newspapers, everywhere: exile. They had played on all my nerves. Our nation’s protest to the world: exile! It had entered me, apparently, with my mother’s milk. What in fact had we perpetrated here today?
This text, remember, was being taught in Israeli secondary schools from 1964 on. Then, in the 1970s, it was made into a play. Jewish-Israelis from that generation– and from today’s generation, too– have no justification whatsoever for saying “We never knew!” about what happened in 1948.
Piterberg’s whole review is well worth reading, as too seem to be the three Yizhar books he writes about.
One is a largely autobiographical novel, Preliminaries, that Yizhar completed only in 1991, when he was 75. It recounts many details of his youth growing up on a number of moshava rural settlements and also in the ever-growing suburbs north of Tel Aviv. As a boy– and into his adulthood– Yizhar seems to have had a great fondness for the landscape of rural Palestine and an understanding, as Piterberg notes, that what made it look so appealing and so “Biblical” was precisely the labor expended there over generations by its Palestinian Arab landowners and farmers: The people who had planted and tended all those “Biblical” accoutrements of the landscape like olive-trees and grape-vines; who tended the sheep, made the wine and olive oil, and did all those other “Biblical” things that made the land so attractive for the Zionist settlers.
Piterberg cites an interview Yizhar gave to Ha’aretz in 2005, shortly before his death. In it, the interviewer asked, “Why were you the only member of your generation who saw the catastrophe that befell the Arabs?” Yizhar replied:
- The others were attentive only to relationships with other people, among themselves. I looked at the landscape, the landscape was a central part of my personality, and that’s why I saw the Arabs. The landscape was the paper on which everything was written, and afterwards it gets torn and nobody looks at the paper.
Actually, that answer is interesting at a number of different levels. There is a clear implication, especially in the first sentence– even from Yizhar– that the only people who are really people in their own right are the Jews; whereas the Arabs became recognizable to him only by virtue of the role he saw them playing with respect to the land, rather than in their own right.
But at least he did recognize that they had an essential and important relationship to the land. Unlike all the hasbaristas in the 1960s and since who continued to perpetrate deliberate deception about what had happened in the Nakba of 1948.
Piterberg writes that at the end of Preliminaries,
- Yizhar delivers his final verdict on the Zionist project. The child is haunted less by the possibility that Zionism in the shape of a powerful, durable settler nation-state might not succeed than by the certainty that its realisation would erase the landscape of pre-1948 rural Palestine. In the final scene the boy is sent to collect baskets of grapes from a nearby vineyard and realises that ‘soon … none of this will remain, neither this vineyard nor this sandy path… ‘ … He thinks of the extinction of the villages and the fate of their inhabitants: “These Arabs will not remain… Zarnuga will not remain and Qubeibeh will not remain and Yibneh will not remain, they will go away and start to live in Gaza.’
And then, in a master-stroke of editorial judgment, the very next piece, placed in a box right under that sentence, is Amira Hass’s description of some of what happened to residents of Gaza during the recent war.
In case anyone reading this doesn’t understand this, some three-fourths of Gaza’s current residents are refugees from what became Israel in 1948.
Hi Helena:
Did you see the latest offering from the Martin Marty Center? Alain Epp Weaver’s “Theological Cartography and the Arboreal Imagination in Israel-Palestine” is posted with comments:
http://divinity.uchicago.edu/martycenter/publications/webforum/
It relates quite directly to your comments on Palestinian farming in Yizhar’s work…
Helena,
Making the mistake of posting first – if I am -, the issue is one of interpretation. If I understand you, there was basically a one way war and exodus. That is a type of writing I call advocacy.
Missing, e.g., therefrom is that the UN, decided, even if wrongly, that the partition was appropriate. The most politically attuned and connected elements on the Arab side thought partition is an abomination. Such led to immediate fighting initiated, as Benny Morris notes, by the Arab side. Religion, says Morris, was a major motivation on the Arab side.
The Jews fought back but, in these early stages, were on the defensive, losing territory. Fortunes eventually reversed and, when Israel declared independence, Arab armies invaded.
One of the terrible things that happen in wars is that people are displaced – often permanently. So, yes, there was a tragedy for the Arab side, with large numbers of Arabs displaced – if Benny Morris is correct in his latest book, ethnic cleansing is probably the wrong term but it was a terrible tragedy nonetheless.
Jews were also displaced en masse – some 900,000. Sometimes immediately due to fighting; sometimes in revenge; sometimes by instilling hatred making it impossible to remain. While Israelis may have worked to have as many Jews to come to Israel as possible, the fact is that Arabs made it basically impossible for Jews to remain in Arab countries. In many cases, Jewish were forced out of their homes due to pogroms, anti-Jewish laws, etc.
As for Meir’s comment, are you sure your interpretation of it is correct? I am not. I think you may be reading your biases into it.
“if Benny Morris is correct in his latest book, ethnic cleansing is probably the wrong term but it was a terrible tragedy”
Terrible atrocity, you mean. Fair minded people have no trouble condemning Palestinian acts of mass murder as terrorism, so let’s try and be consistent–the Zionists in 1948 committed massacres and forcibly drove Palestinians from their homes and didn’t let them go home after the war was over. That’s ethnic cleansing whether Benny Morris wants to use that term or not.
Benny Morris has consistently refused to draw the only possible conclusion from his own work – that 1948 was a war of ethnic cleansing. Ironically, he denies the obvious while at the same time lamenting that they did not finish the job he insists they did not do.
Helena never ceases to amaze me. There is no nakba deception, nor is there denial as to the magnitude of the nakba by a majority of the Israeli population. You didn’t have to wait for Piterberg’s review of Yizhar’s books to know this. There was an entire episode of T’kuma devoted to the nakba 11 years ago on state TV that was seen by over 90% of the population. There are discussions on radio and TV and in the press on the nakba on a regular basis.
As to Golda’s remarks (and I am suspect about the second part of the quotation), for her and her generation the Arabs of Palestine were not “Palestinians” – they were part of the Arab nation. That is not a statement of nakba denial; perhaps it is a statement of national denial, but not nakba denial.
Finally, a correction to your final sentence. To be accurate, it should read:
In case anyone reading this doesn’t understand this, some three-fourths of Gaza’s current residents are refugees or their descendents from what became Israel in 1948.
“nor is there denial as to the magnitude of the nakba by a majority of the Israeli population”
Hogwash!
JES, N, never cease to dumbfound. A majority of Israelis are definitely in denial about the nakba.
Only if it were true that 1990s era productions, like the “T’kuma” series, offered an accurate portrayal of Israel’s officially sanctioned atrocities against the Palestinian population. Or that the revised high school history books were actually put to use in Israeli schools, instead of being locked away in book storage by the war criminal Sharon.
Most young Israelis graduate today from their schools not knowing that the Jewish population of the land was a small minority at the time of Israel’s formation in 1948. Israel’s schools are turning out students who are ignorant of the Muslim and Christian legacy of Palestine.
It is a whitewashing of history which denies the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, just as the governments of Olmert and Netanyahu, and whoever else is yet to come, are trying to perpetuate the ethnic cleansing on the land today.
There is no possible way to stop the crimes and injustices against the Palestinian people until Israelis stop denying their long time denial of the nakba.
I will grant to you, JES, the possibility that most Israelis may– just may– know all about the Nakba already. (But if so, why the extreme difficulty that Benny Morris had finding a job when he was still only a revisionist historian, i.e., before he became a rightwing apologist for the ethnic cleansing? Why all the vitriol directed against Ilan Pappe, Tanya Reinhardt, the friends from Zochrot, etc?)
But if the Israelis, in the confines of their Hebrew-language-only discussions “know” all about it, then how come so very few of them have ever dared to share that important knowledge with all their cheerleaders and hasbaristas who operate outside the Hebrew-language world?
That, I would say, is where the deception lies.
Also, I just note that it’s a longtime favored tactic of the hasbaristas when some discquieting new revelation about Israel is placed in the public eye, to pooh-pooh the “new” nature of the item disclosed and act as if, hey, that’s old news, so why bother even writing about it?
That was exactly how my friend Ze’ev Schiff and many other Israeli apologists reacted, for example, to Mordehachi Vananu’s important revelations about the nuclear weapons program.
I fear that my position is being misrepresented.
I do not deny that the Arabs suffered a catastrophe – i.e. naqba – in Israel’s founding. I do not deny that large numbers of Arabs were permanently displaced.
What I assert – because it is what the evidence shows – is that there was no premeditated plan to cleanse the region of Arabs. In that regard, Israel’s founding involved displacements that became permanent due to the war that was started by the Arab side and in the way the war was ended.
The alternative view, which involves misrepresenting documents out of Israel’s archive, holds that there was a pre-meditated plan. The pre-meditated plan is simply not supported by the facts.
So, I certain admit a naqba. I just do not admit that there was a pre-meditated plan to ethnically cleanse the country of Arabs. And, I assert that the Arab side had choices after the war, including to be resettled. That would not have been such a tragedy – Jews have done it repeatedly in history.
So, whatever fault Israel bears for the situation, it is not the only party with fault and, even more importantly, the Arab side bears fault for failing to resettle their kin – a pretty nasty piece of politics, IMHO.
N.,
Just as an FYI, will no ill will intended, the word is Nakba, not naqba. It’s a mistake a lot of people make.
Also, just FYI, saying that the Palestinians suffered “a nakba” in 1948 is kind of like saying the Jews suffered “a Holocaust” in the sense that both are considered singular events that should be preceded by the definite article.
Ah, the old Zionist canard about “why didn’t the Arab states just resettle the Palestinians”, for the 2,000th time….
#1, the vast majority of the Palestinians didn’t WANT to be resettled elsewhere. They are people with agency and rights in their own right, not pawns to be pushed around on someone else’s chessboard; and not rootless cosmopolitans either, but rather, people with a deep and lengthy attachment to their own foreparents’ land. Those rights and attachments can’t summarily be erased by anyone else’s preferences and plans.
#2, the Palestinian refugees’ rights are enshrined both in UN resolution 194 re their right of Return and in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 13-2 which states that “Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.” Funny how during the campaign to “free” Soviet Jews from the land of their birth the campaigners stressed the first half of that clause while conveniently ‘forgetting’ the equally weighty second half and its relevance to the rights and claims of the Palestinians.
A policy of ethnic cleansing was in practice during Operation Hiram in the Galilee in 1948, as even Benny Morris admits. The following is David Ben Gurion in 1947. Sure sounds like a premediated ethnic cleansing to me:
“Regarding the Galilee, Mr. [Moshe] Sharett already told you that about 100,000 Arabs still now live in the pocket of Galilee. Let us assume that a war breaks out. Then we will be able to cleanse the entire area of Central Galilee, including all its refugees, in one stroke. In this context let me mention some mediators who offered to give us the Galilee without war. What they meant was the populated Galilee. They didn’t offer us the empty Galilee, which we could have only by means of a war. Therefore if a war is extended to cover the whole of Palestine, our greatest gain will be the Galilee. It is because without any special military effort which might imperil other fronts, only by using the troops already assigned for the task, we could accomplish our aim of cleansing the Galilee.”
The quote is drawn from this 1999 article: http://www.mideastfacts.com/reese_isrl_myths.html
As Jerome Slater has written in his 2001 article “What went wrong: the collapse of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process”, there was for 30 years prior to the 1948, private discussions among Zionists on the necessity of ‘transferring’ the Palestian population when the opportunity arose.
“there was no premeditated plan to cleanse the region of Arabs”
Read Nur Masalha’s book. Read Ilan Pappe’s book.
Norman Finkelstein says that Israelis did not have a master plan written down on paper which was distributed to lieutenants who carried out the plan. Instead Israelis had, for decades, been talking about the need to expel the original Palestinian population, called “transfer” in the official terminology. Thus when the moment of crisis came in late 1947 and early 1948, everyone knew what “needed to be done,” and there were Jewish military, police, and terrorist groups all over the country which simply began implementing what everyone had talked about.
Ilan Pappe says it is important to understand that Israel’s top leadership was aware of the sensitive nature of this “transfer” policy, so they were careful not to print it on paper or speak “officially” about it in public meetings in order to avoid creating a historical record. Nur Masalha shows that Israeli leaders began discussing the policy of “transfer” as early as the 1920s. So they had two decades to develop their general intention to “transfer” Palestinians while bearing in mind the “senstivities.”
This is what Finkelstein means when he says that the people who carried out the ethnic cleansing had their duties in specific regions of the country, they knew what they needed to do, and they did it. Thus it is senseless to expect to find documents in the official Israeli archives which spell out the details of this plan. If one seeks facts to document this transfer plan, then one only has to look at the facts of what happened on the ground.
Too many Israeli and Palestinian historians have confirmed the responsibility of Israel’s first leaders for the “Nakba” that it is obscene to suggest otherwise.
But if so, why the extreme difficulty that Benny Morris had finding a job when he was still only a revisionist historian, i.e., before he became a rightwing apologist for the ethnic cleansing? Why all the vitriol directed against Ilan Pappe, Tanya Reinhardt, the friends from Zochrot, etc?)
How naive you are Helena! What unusual difficulty did Benny Morris (or for that matter Neve Gordon) have that was out of the ordinary in a country that produces far more PhDs than it has positions? And what “vitriol” did Ilan Pappe or Tanya Reinhardt face? The criticism of the likes of Anita Shapira or Meir Pa’il? Come on!
But if the Israelis, in the confines of their Hebrew-language-only discussions “know” all about it, then how come so very few of them have ever dared to share that important knowledge with all their cheerleaders and hasbaristas who operate outside the Hebrew-language world?
It’s all there for you to see translated into many languages. Uri Milstein, upon whom Benny Morris based much of his work, has been translated since the mid 1980s. So has T’kuma. And there are a variety of Israelis, including Uri Avnery, who publish in English all the time. You just apparently don’t want to see it.
Also, I just note that it’s a longtime favored tactic of the hasbaristas when some discquieting new revelation about Israel is placed in the public eye, to pooh-pooh the “new” nature of the item disclosed and act as if, hey, that’s old news, so why bother even writing about it?
How can I say this? Steer manure! Helena, don’t you think that it’s time that you grow up and stop calling people names and ascribing “tactics” to those people?
Patrick,
Could you please provide another link to that quote, as the one you provided leads to an ad.
As an uninvolved observer of this blog spot it appears the Israeli apologists are losing the argument rather rapidly due to the articulate and factual responses to their continued attempts to distort the facts and history in regard to Israel.
JES the only one who appears to be resorting to character attack or childish insults is yourself. Helena has argued her case both meticulously and maturely. You on the other hand have resorted to ad-hominem.
Why don’t you just call her an anti-Semite or a Nazi and do what Hasbaristas always do when they can no longer support their argument with facts. You’re on the verge anyhow it appears. Perhaps you should follow your own advice and grow the f#$% up you raving idiot.
I unlike the others here am happy to resort to ad hominem in the case of individuals like yourself.
Helena,
Arabs asked the COE to support a right of return but were refused because it would set a terrible and disruptive precedent in Europe, where the number of displaced people from WWII substantially dwarfs those of Palestinian Arabs.
More than 10 millions of Sudetenland and other ethnic Germans generally cannot return to their places of birth. They all were resettled in Germany.
Hindu Indians cannot return to Pakistan. Displaced Muslim Indians cannot generally return to India. Their stories are far worse (e.g. up to a million of the 14 million refugees died fleeing) than that of Palestinian Arabs – except that they were resettled.
Most displaced souls – including displaced Jews of Arab and European countries – were resettled. My wife, a refugee from the former USSR, lives in America. On this topic, I speak from the heart and think that the position of Palestinian Arabs is outrageous, especially given the 20 million refugees who want to be resettled anywhere refuge is available. Palestinian Arabs can do the same.
The Palestinian Arabs allied with the Nazis. As recent scholarship has shown, the alliance included an agreement to exterminate Palestine’s Jews and such plan was organized by Germans and Arabs, including the leader of Palestine’s Arabs, (who remains a hero among Palestinian Arabs). Fortunately, the German army – which had officers in place to carry out the plan with Arab allies – was stopped.
Notwithstanding Arab hatred that preceded the naqba and their murderous plans, I still have sympathy. But it has limits. Like my wife and millions of Jews who have been displaced at the whims of Arabs and Europeans, Palestinian Arabs can move on; siding with the Nazis takes them out of the saint category and places them in the same category as the world’s 20 million refugees.
Ah….”tucking”, I’m glad to see that Sd is back, and that you’re still taking it personally. Helena must be very proud of you, her knight in shining armor. BTW, I have become a Quaker – tuck thee!
If the argument that Palestinians don’t have the right of return to the land that they were born in, that their ancestors lived in for hundreds of years and that they either fled or were ethnically cleansed from holds any water: how less valid is the argument that Jews who have even less attachment, other than religious beliefs, are automatically given the right to live there?
Let’s not forget that most of these Jewish immigrants have the citizenship of other countries while the Palestinian refugees are stateless.
You must really think people are cretins to buy that BS.
Friedman..”I’m still taking it personally”? This is the first time I’ve ever posted on this blog site.
The fact that you spend an inordinate amount of your time here trying to win a losing battle would suggest you have me not only confused with somebody else but that the obsessive compulsive disorder sufferer would be yourself. Perhaps you need to get out more!
I’ve never ever spoken to Helena nor even met her, furthermore as a woman I’m hardly her knight in shining armour.
Have a nice day!
If the argument that Palestinians don’t have the right of return to the land that they were born in, that their ancestors lived in for hundreds of years and that they either fled or were ethnically cleansed from holds any water: how less valid is the argument that Jews who have even less attachment, other than religious beliefs, are automatically given the right to live there?
Well Sd, first of all, I didn’t say that they don’t have rights. I just don’t think that they have a right of return, and that is consistent with every other group of refugees – whether they fled or were “cleansed”. After 60 years there are no villages left and, even if there were, there would certainly not be enough arable land for them to return to agrarian life that they currently idealize.
I think that you are wrong on two counts. First, is your implied assumption that the majority of Jewish Israelis were not born here. This is a false assumption, and some are third, fourth and fifth generation.
Second is your assertion that “most of these Jewish immigrants have the citizenship of other countries while the Palestinian refugees are stateless,” which is not supported by facts. The majority of Jews arrived here as refugees, i.e. as stateless persons. The fact that some of these may now apply for passports from the EU countries from which they or their parents were previously stripped of their citizenship is irrelevant.
Do I think that you are a cretin, Sd? Well, I’ll let you answer that for yourself.
And I’m not Friedman!!
Sorry, I copied an old link. The article can also be found here:
http://www.washington-report.org/backissues/0999/9909042.html
Benny Morris is also quoted in the article:
“Till then everyone in Israel spoke about Arabs who had just run away in 1948, but there existed no real historical research on it. There were two conflicting propaganda versions, one Arab and another Jewish. As one who received his education in Israel, I thought I knew that the Arabs had ‘run away.’ But I knew nothing else. The Jewish generations of 1948, however, knew the truth and deliberately misrepresented it. They knew there were plenty of mass deportations, massacres and rapes…The soldiers and the officials knew, but they suppressed what they knew and were deliberately disseminating lies.”
JES I’m not sure who Sd is, I’m TF but whatever.
First of all I’m referring specifically to the Jewish right of return which states that ANY Jew anywhere in the world has the right to live in Israel if just one grandparent is Jewish. This is irrespective of whether they have ever seen the country or even had an ancestor who set foot there.
Thirty-five percent of Israel’s current population was born overseas. A fifth of the Israeli population is Russian speaking, most of them Russian born. Not to mention the thousands of other Jewish immigrants who are absorbed every year who already have the citizenship of another country.
While many Israelis are today first and second generation Israelis this was not the case in 1948 when the majority of Jews in Israel were foreign-born, non-native imports.
Conversely the majority of Palestinians who were dispersed were native to the area. There are today over 4 million stateless Palestinian refugees who have far less rights than a Jew from anywhere in the world who already holds a foreign passport.
This is an illogical and absurd scenario. Why should Palestinians, who are indigenous to the land for many hundreds of years and who were forcibly drvien out, have less rights to live in their ancestral homeland than somebody who hails from Brooklyn and converted to Judaism to marry a Jewish man?
There is no moral justification for this denoument unless you either believe that God loves Jews more than anybody else or alternatively in Jewish supremism.
As for who I think the cretin is, well obviously the sarcasm went right over your head. I actually think the person who I’ve been communicating with in depth in the last few hours is the cretin. Perhaps that is more specific and you can piece together the missing bit.
JES, it’s a pretty well known fact that Morris was considered to be a hot potato. Back then Israel did not produce so many Ph.D’s At one point in the 70s Iraq, say had a better educated population (percentage of PH. D.’s/ B. A.s) than Israel Morris couldn’t get a job until he was pronounced kosher after an interview with the then president of Israel. Concerning the vitriol against Pappe or Reinhardt, a “come on!” directed the other way is appropriate. What Helena is calling a hasbarista tactic is a universal propaganda tactic. For another example, cf Chomsky’s critique of reviews of a book about American terrorism against Cuba,. The Fish Is Red.
“It’s a well known fact…” is not an argument. I live here, and I was in graduate school in the 1970s. The prospects for a PhD getting a job in a university – particularly in the social sciences – were pretty grim at that time. Since then, Israel has continued to produce a large number of PhDs. Even Efraim Karsh – not a leftwinger by any stretch – had to seek employment in London!
Is to having been pronounced “kosher” after an interview with Israel’s president, I’m not sure what you mean. He came under quite legitimate academic criticism, and still does even following his famous Ha’aretz interview.
The “vitriol” as you and Helena call it was, for the most part, legitimate academic criticism. This was directed primarily at Pappe, mainly by empiricists, who felt it was wrong to base such sweeping accusations on oral histories from one side. Pappe didn’t help himself any with his public admissions that he was more interested in creating a narrative that was aligned with his ideology than in historical facts.
First of all I’m referring specifically to the Jewish right of return which states that ANY Jew anywhere in the world has the right to live in Israel if just one grandparent is Jewish.
TF,
You need to add this to the above
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/08/nyregion/08batmitzvah.html?_r=1&sq=chines%20adpted%20girl&st=cse&scp=3&pagewanted=print
JES states in response to JK’s post “It’s a well known fact…” is not an argument.
However, when one of God’s chosen chooses to himself use the same debate tactic in a previous post responding to me then it is ok..TF: Palestinian refugees are stateless, JES: “which is not supported by facts.”
This despite that it is indeed a fact that over 4 million Palestinian refugees are stateless.
JES you are a joke and not an amusing one either. Hypocrisy is neither cute nor becoming.
Is a global rebranding what Israel needs?
Some Israeli officials believe what their country needs is to “rebrand” itself. They say Israel spends far too much time defending actions against its enemies. By doing so, they say, the narrative is always about conflict.
Even worse than the time wasted fruitlessly defending its actions against its “enemies”, is its taking those actions… against its victims… to begin with.
There is something “unholy” about committing not to stop sinning but to justifying more effectively instead.
With the collapse of US hegemony around the world and in the Middle East in particular the audience for Israel’s “public relations campaign” is no longer going to be the US and EU, it is going to become their neighbors and there it will be worse than worthless, and they will have to reap what they have sown.
Yet it appears that they are going to proceed with their knives in their teeth until the very end.
TF, “most of these Jewish immigrants have the citizenship of other countries ” is what JES claimed is unsupported by facts. You might have figured this out by reading the rest of the paragraph, which clearly concerns Israeli refugees, not Palestinians.
Just a few points.
JES or someone argued that resettlement in third countries is the preferred and most commonly used way of dealing with refugee populations. This is completely not the case. The UN convention on refugees states explicitly that repatriation, in safety, to their original countries, homes, and properties is the preferred option. Since it’s adoption in the early 1950s the UN and its organs including the UNHCR have expended considerable energies on making this happen; hence the return of some 3 million refugees to post-civil-war Mozambique, a million to Cambodia, etc etc.
Bosnian refugees, Iraqi refugees, Afghan refugees, etc… all have been considerable help in returning to their original homes and– equally importantly– included in any voting or other political process concerning their own (original) country’s political decisionmaking.
If the UN supported “resettlement” as the first option for refugees then of course the incentives would be for countries to expel, expel, expel minority or dissident populations in massive numbers. As it is the incentive is rightly placed on finding durable negotiated resolutions to the problems that caused the dispersion in the first place.
On Benny Morris he is a good family friend and i certainly know about the troubles he faced for many years when was still treated as a dangerous dissident. As it happened Ben Gurion U did finally give him a job– this was shortly before his change of heart so kudos to them. But prior to getting that job he had many years in the academic wilderness.
As for the idea that “the Palestinian Arabs supported Hitler in the 1940s” and therefore they & their progeny should all be punished in perpetuity”… the original premise is there is unsupported by any evidence beyond tHajj Amin al-Husseini having met with Hitler once or twice… But even if he and Hitler did have a close alliance (unproven), how would that justify extending collective punishment to all Palestinians forever?
Oh, collective punishment is what Israel does, of course, especially in Gaza. If it were applied evenhandedly all Israelis should be punished for the sins of Sharon. I don’t think it’s a sustainable argument, N. You seem to be grabbing at straws at this point.
Twit,
First of all I’m referring specifically to the Jewish right of return which states that ANY Jew anywhere in the world has the right to live in Israel if just one grandparent is Jewish. This is irrespective of whether they have ever seen the country or even had an ancestor who set foot there.
As do the “rights of return” of many other states including Germany, Ireland and Greece.
Thirty-five percent of Israel’s current population was born overseas. A fifth of the Israeli population is Russian speaking, most of them Russian born. Not to mention the thousands of other Jewish immigrants who are absorbed every year who already have the citizenship of another country.
Yes. And many of those had their citizenship stripped from them before they left for Israel, conferring on them refugee status.
Conversely the majority of Palestinians who were dispersed were native to the area. There are today over 4 million stateless Palestinian refugees who have far less rights than a Jew from anywhere in the world who already holds a foreign passport.
It depends on how you define your key phrase “native to the area”. For example, several thousand accompanied Ibrahim Pasha from Egypt in the late 1820s when he conquered Syria and Palestine, founding such towns and villages as Um al-Fahm, ‘ara and Jisr az-Zarqa. Others arrived during the late 19th century, at the same time the “non-native imports”, from North Africa and Bosnia – and these Muslims were not Arabs.
And why should someone who was born and grew up in Dearborn have more rights than someone who was born in Israel as the third generation to grandparents who were driven out of Iraq or Yemen?
As for who I think the cretin is, well obviously the sarcasm went right over your head.
LOL. You’re a clever one, aren’t you.
JES or someone argued that resettlement in third countries is the preferred and most commonly used way of dealing with refugee populations.
I never said any such thing. What I said was that, in practice, the minority of refugees have made it back to their home countries and, further, that a minority of these have gone back to their former towns and villages.
And perhaps, Helena, you can give us a few examples of the “vitriol” that the New Historians were subject to.
Helena,
Your comment regarding the Palestinian Arabs association is simply contrary to fact. Read Klaus-Michael Mallmann and Martin Cüppers’s book, Halbmond und Hakenkreuz. Das “Dritte Reich”, die Araber und Palästina (“Crescent Moon and Swastika: The Third Reich, the Arabs, and Palestine”), published in 2006. Here is a summary – and I apologize for the length -, written by my friend Professor Art Eckstein:
Hilarious NF!
This nonsense about Arab-Nazi co-operation is really the lowest form of special pleading. All enemies of the British Empire, during the Second World War naturally considered the possibility od co-operating with the German, Italian and other states fighting against it.
This included Irish nationalists, Indians, Palestinians, Malays, Iranians and many others including Zionists. There is nothing surprising about this: England’s danger is Ireland’s opportunity is an old formula.
Even the Soviet Union in 1939 signed a pact with the Germans.
In most cases these talks, feelers, thoughts invoved only odd individuals or factions within the broader movement. And in every case many fought on the side of the Empire (or the Red Army). My father fought alongside Jewish Palestinian forces, and so did the Arab Legion as well as dozens of Indian Army units recruited from muslims. We all understand these things which are part of the rich fabric of historical context.
But Mr Friedman is obviously so intent on persecuting the people of Palestine that he rips these thoroughly routine and mundane ideas out of context and sets out to suggest that they indicate an alliance, ideological and military between Nazis and Palestinian patriots.
This is completely untrue as he is well aware. But lies of this sort, drip fed into the veins of young men and women drafted into the IDF and sent into Gaza, can be deadly. I suspect that the appalling incidents of brutality, currently being documented and disgraceful to all humanity, which led to the deaths of so many children and obvuious non-combatants can be traced back to the propagation of these ‘blood libels.’
Let it be clearly understood that the Palestininan national movement has had, historically, no more truck with international fascism than the general Zionist movement. In point of fact all three leading factions in Israeli politics today can trace their origins back to the openly fascist Revisionist Zionists.
Mr Friedmann’s cavalier treatment of historical facts is reminiscent of the sort of cynicism and amorality generally associated with fascist movements. It ought in fairness to be noted that, by contrast, Hamas are almost painfully scrupulous in their carefully worded puvblic statements.
JES Cretin.
JES: As do the “rights of return” of many other states including Germany, Ireland and Greece.
TF: Except most Jews were not from Israel, unlike the above who were originally natives of the above countries. These Jews were foreigners with a variety of different nationalities who had only a tenuous claim that a fraction of co-religionists once resided in ancient Israel.
Who today can claim residency and citizenship of a country that their ancestors lived in 2000 years ago? And again most of their Jewish ancestors didn’t.
There were massive conversions thoughout the world to Judaism by people who had nothing to do with the original Israelites. You are being deliberately mendacious and the point might be going over your head but not over anybody else’s.
JES: Yes. And many of those had their citizenship stripped from them before they left for Israel, conferring on them refugee status.
TF: Most Jewish immigrants to Israel were not stipped of their citizenship. And many Israelis are now able to claim the foreign citizenships of their parents and grandparents fromn abroad. A luxury Israel does not allow Palestinian refugees living outside of Palestine.
JES: It depends on how you define your key phrase “native to the area”.
TF: I’d say living there for continually for hundreds of years at the very least would be a superior claim to having some people of the same religion who lived there over 2000 years ago. But then I’m not a supporter of Jewish supremism.
JES: And why should someone who was born and grew up in Dearborn have more rights than someone who was born in Israel as the third generation to grandparents who were driven out of Iraq or Yemen?
TF: I presume you mean somebody born in Dearborn whose parents, or grandparents were Palestinian. Again you’re being deliberately obtuse (must be a deliberate Hasbara tactic). Nobody argued that Jews born in Israel are not natives and don’t have the right to live there.
You have been told repetitively that it concerned Jews who originally had no relation whatsoever to Israel other than a religious belief vs the far superior claim of Palestinians who were native to the area being driven out at a time when most Jews in Israel were imports.
To put the Palestinians on an equal footing would be to allow any Palestinian who may have a common religious belief with Arabs who lived in the area over 2000 years ago to immigrate to Israel. Never mind the millions who languish in refugee camps in surrounding countries whose parents and grandparents were native to the area.
Furthermore, Jews were never persecuted in the Mideast before the Israelis drove the indigenous Palestinian population out of their ancestral homeland Palestine. In fact many Jews found refuge in the Ottoman Empire when they were persecuted in Europe. Payback can be a b^%$&.
And if Israelis of Arab orgigin wish to return to their native Arab countries, then this is something that should be addressed. As far as I know it isn’t an issue and if they are allowed to return Israel would have to accept all Palestinian refugees in return. Something it refuses to do.
Let’s not forget either that early Zionist groups actively encouraged Jews from the Arab world to immigrate to Israel by staging terror attacks and then claiming it was Arabs that perpetrated them.
JES: LOL. You’re a clever one, aren’t you.
TF: JES, I could accuse you of many things, intelligence wouldn’t be one of them as that would be extremely dishonest on my part. LMFAO
bevin,
No one claims that Palestinian Arabs were all fascists or Nazis. That was not my point at all. So, your comment is an aside that does not address my point. For the record, Mallmann and Cüppers’ book is meticulously researched.
My point is best explained by the well known French writer Bernard-Henri Lévy, with reference to Mallmann and Cüppers’ book, in Lévy’s new book, Left in Dark Times:
That says it all!!!
Vadim, I’m aware that JES is referring to Jewish immigrants, perhaps you are the one that is confused.
His claim that most Jewish immigrants to Israel do not have other citizenships is BS. While this might have been true that some of them didn’t when they were displaced after WW2, this is certainly not the case today and that is partly what we are discussing in regard to Israel’s current immigration policy.
He has provided absolutely no evidence to back that claim up other than to say “the facts don’t support this”.
The right of anybody who claims to have even one Jewish grandparent to automatically immigrate to Israel and live there when they have no other connection to the country vs the Palestinian natives who don’t have this right.
Perhaps you should focus and comprehend more efficiently or mind your own beeswax.
tucking_fwit,
Those Jews from Arab lands generally do not have foreign passports.
The same for most Jews from the former USSR, particularly those who left when the USSR still existed. As my wife, a political refugee from the USSR, explained it to me: upon receiving permission to leave, Jews were required to travel to Moscow and to return their national passport. They then had three days to leave the territory of the USSR.
So, that accounts for most of Israel’s population that arrived after independence. As for those before that time, most certainly do not have foreign passports.
Friedman, you are ignoring the hundreds of thousands of Jews who immigrated to Israel from other countries in Europe through the decades after the war finished. As well as the hundreds of thousands who continue to immigrate today from Europe, the Americas, Russia etc.
You instead focus on the minority who immigrated directly after the war. In fact many Russian Jews not only have their passports today but many are returning to live and work in Russia.
I notice too in your comments about Haj Amin, you make no reference to the attempts by Yitzhak Shamir (a former Israeli premier)and his Stern Gang of terrorists to do a deal with the Nazis.
According to the pro-Israeli historian Martin Gilbert:
“Avraham Stern who had formed a breakaway ‘Irgun in Israel’ movement (also known as the Stern Gang), tried to make contact with Fascist Italy in the hope that, if Mussolini were to conquer the Middle East, he would allow a Jewish State to be set up in Palestine. When Mussolini’s troops were defeated in North Africa, Stern tried to make contacts with Nazi Germany, hoping to sign a pact with Hitler which would lead to a Jewish State once Hitler had defeated Britain.”
You cherry pick your information and facts Mr Friedman.
tucking_fwit,
How do efforts by Avraham Stern alter what the national leadership of the Palestinian Arabs – not a “breakaway” movement of Palestinian Arabs – did with the Nazis?
The fact is that your accusation could be true but it does not impact on anything I asserted. It is irrelevant to my point and is, so far as formal logic is concerned, a fallacious argument called tu quoque.
Moreover, you will note what is not said by Gilbert. The Stern gang did not seek help to exterminate the Arab population. The Arab leadership reached an agreement with the Nazis to exterminate Palestine’s Jews. So, your comparison is a nonsense one.
Well Tucking-Fwit, first of all let’s examine the case of the Jews expelled from the Arab countries and their descendants. They were almost all stripped of their citizenship as well as their property (some, in cases such as Iraq, on over a period of months). These comprise roughly half the current population of Israel.
Next, let’s look at those who immigrated from the USSR up to it’s dissolution in 1991. My wife, too, falls into this category, and I can attest to the fact that she was stripped of her citizenship upon gaining an exit visa. They make up what? Maybe 20% of the population? Those Jews who still have passports emigrated from Russian; not the USSR.
Finally, as I pointed out nearly all of the Holocaust survivors who arrived during 1948-49 were stateless refugees. The fact that some 50 years later they or their descendants can apply for citizenship in their former countries is laudable but irrelevant.
The canonical texts, like Yitzhak Orpaz’s “At the Bullet’s Tip”, Binyamin Tammuz’s “Swim Meet”, and Dan Ben-Amotz’s “Story of the Camel and Victory”, and Yizhar’s “The Prisoner” have not been translated because they are overwhelmingly masculine war stories of a small, non-Western, Mediterranean literature which speak to a certain generation, which had a singular experience at a specific historical moment that has passed from the scene. The texts are anthologized and read and re-read, and far from hidden, tend to be put out by the Ministry of Defense Press in anthologies, to inculcate a certain patriotic understanding.
From a literary perspective, Yizhar is the most interesting because his dense prose style seems to fit the ideal of the “world-class” author, and he goes back further into the past to dig at the roots of the disappearance of Palestine in Eretz Israel, being a generation older than the 1948 veterans themselves, and he avoids the conflict of “right vs. right” that is the optic of Amos Oz and those authors who were children during the war. Anita Shapira’s _Hirbet Hiza_ essay is quite clear that a dynamic of continual repression-and-return exists as a generational phenomenon, but not necessarily as institutional or geographical memory. Israeli society remembers more or less what the army was FORCED TO DO to preserve the society in the face of war waged by overwhelming foes, and only a few really dissident 1948-authors like Avot Yeshurun (also mainly untranslated) play around with Holocaust remembrance vs. nakba denial. And very, very few indeed (Aaron Zisling, in the Knesset) called out for the operations to stop when they were taking place, knowing the risk that posed for the survival of the state.
Given that the West Bank, Old Jerusalem, Gaza, and the Syrian bridgehead in the Galilee were emptied of Jews at the same time, it is hard to see what the flash-in-the-pan contemplation (and Yizhar’s stories WERE written in May ’48-January ’49) was intended to accomplish. Perhaps with a little more awareness, “friendly” villages like Sheikh Munis might have been spared wildcat harassment by Revisionist Zionist undergrounds, and a little less enmity might have arisen, but pinning the practical results of mutual ethnic cleansing solely on Israel seems a bit simplistic. You might do well to read Ghassan Kanafani, who has been translated, who is perfectly willing (as a Palestinian) to mention en passant in his work the destruction of the Jewish ritual baths of the al-Manshiyya quarter of Old Jaffa. Authors hint at, let slip these things all the time, and it doesn’t compromise or negate their patriotism or activism.
The determination of some people to attack Palestinian nationalism via the figure of Amin al-Husseini is quite interesting. Through a rather convenient and disingenuous conflation, he is the ‘Palestinian leadership’, apparently representing all Palestinians and the face of Palestinian nationalism.
It betrays an extreme zero-sum-game mindset.
Eurosabra,
Thanks for pointing out, in your last paragraph, that the war of 1948-49 was indeed a mutual war of ethnic cleansing (a term coined only some 45 years later). Whatever else one can argue, the Arabs did show a lot more consistency than did the Jews. They ethnically cleansed every single populated area that they were able to conquer in battle, and had they been a bit less feckless, they might have made the entire region Judenrein.
Michael,
I think that viewing Haj Amin al-Husseini as the leader of the Arab nationalist movement within Palestine is quite justified. He pretty much eliminated all opposition to his leadership during the 1936-39 uprising. (His men managed to kill or execute more Arabs than Jews and British combined.) And he was titular head of the Arab Higher Committee.
To view al-Husseini as the leader of the nationalist movement is no more convenient “conflation” (whatever you mean by that term) than to do the same for Ben-Gurion, and certainly no more disingenuous that to attribute to Avraham Stern, who led perhaps a few dozen “militants”, any sort of leadership role in the Yishuv.
The difference with al-Husseini was that he was appointed by the British. The whole process was quite interesting. The idea of a grand mufti, in that form, was revieved by the British. There was an earlier vote by Palestinian notables for a local Muslim leader, in which al-Husseini came last. Soon after, for obvious reasons, the Brtish appointed him ‘Grand Mufti’.
I’d imagine that if the Brits had appointed Stern as leader of the Yishuv the legitimacy of that may have been somewhat dubious.
And as for “Judenein” potential of Palestine, the silly Arabs seemed to restrict most of their (rather limited) ethnic cleansing to aeas which where designated for the potential Arab state. Jewish forces seemed to eschew such niceties.
I’d imagine that if the Brits had appointed Stern as leader of the Yishuv the legitimacy of that may have been somewhat dubious.
What are you suggesting, that Stern was the leader of the Yishuv? I think that’s a case of covenient and disingenuous conflation.
And as for “Judenein” potential of Palestine, the silly Arabs seemed to restrict most of their (rather limited) ethnic cleansing to aeas which where designated for the potential Arab state.
Silly Michael. The “Syrian bridgehead” that Eurosabra mentioned was, I believe, not part of the proposed Arab state.
Could the reason that the Arabs “seemed to restrict” their ethnic cleansing be due to the fact that they performed so miserably on the battlefield? And could this also be due to the fact that almost the entire Palestinian elite fled (many before the UN even got around to voting on Partition) leaving the Palestinian Arabs leaderless?
“What are you suggesting, that Stern was the leader of the Yishuv? I think that’s a case of covenient and disingenuous conflation.” – JES
Yes, it would be. That was exactly my point.
Well Michael, then all you’ll need to do is to show that Stern was able to convince the majority of the population of the Yishuv to commit to a general strike. LOL.
Michael,
You write: “The determination of some people to attack Palestinian nationalism via the figure of Amin al-Husseini is quite interesting.”
My point, at least, was not directed to attacking, per se, Palestinian Arab nationalism with reference to al-Husseini’s political party. My point was directed to showing that treating Palestinian Arabs as mere innocents in the dispute is nonsense. They bear a substantial amount of blame and moral responsibility.
Note, in particular, Helena’s position that al-Husseini’s role was merely to meet a few times with Hitler, such that the Arab connection with Nazism was, presumably, merely self-defense – i.e., siding with my enemy’s enemy. Perhaps she has not investigated the matter carefully, but it is beyond doubt that she is wrong.
Again, Arabs – including but not limited to al-Husseini, played an important role in writing and broadcasting propaganda directed to stirring up religious hatred directed towards the argument that Jews should all be exterminated. And, al-Husseini sealed an agreement with the Nazis – and worked with his party in Palestine – to assist in the extermination of Jews in Palestine. [Note: the Nazis thought he was the leader of Palestinian Arabs.] And, the Nazis had the instrumentality in place to work with such Arabs to exterminate Jews – so, this was not just idol talk. It was military defeats that stopped the extermination from occurring.
Now, I brought this up with reference to the Naqba. The propaganda surely did much to make any peaceful relations between Arabs and Jews all but impossible. The Nazis helped fund – in fact, provided substantial funding for -the Arab uprising in the 1930’s. And, his party’s aim was extermination, not merely to stop the creation of Israel. And, this history certainly bears on the innocence of the Arab side with relationship to resettling those displaced in the civil, and then regular, war initiated by the Arab side to prevent the establishment of Israel.
“Now, I brought this up with reference to the Naqba. The propaganda surely did much to make any peaceful relations between Arabs and Jews all but impossible” – NF
Hmm quite.
If it wasn’t for all that evil Nazi funded propaganda the Palestinians would not have even noticed the immigration of European Jews into their country, facilitated by a third party, with the objective of setting up an ethnic enclave in their midst.
There’s quite a little cottage industry where the participants try to out-do each other in their accusations. Out with the fringe-dwellers, it’s that al-Husseini was one of the instigators of the holocaust.
Michael,
You confuse what I am arguing.
I do not claim that there would have been no objection to Jewish nationalism but for its appeal to Nazism. My argument relates instead to the specific content of that objection, namely, it adoption and active support for the Nazi plan to exterminate all Jews.
Do you see the difference? Consider it in a European setting. It is reasonable to assume that there would be objection by Germany to the harshness of the Versailles Treaty. But, that is not justification at all for the specific politics that came to the forefront in opposing that treaty – namely, Nazism. Or, in a word, the fact that the Versailles Treaty was objectionable does not make Nazism acceptable.
In the case of Palestinian Arabs, it is the specific politics adopted by the Palestinian Arab national movement – which al-Husseini led and which his party supported – that is in issue. His movement, which was the dominant party, partnered with the Nazis not only to counter Jewish nationalism but also to exterminate all Jews. That is a critical point that you are eliding from your analysis.
JES-
You have gone stark raving mad with paranoia, ol’ man. I have no association with any of those commenters whom you castigate, but coming from you I take it as a complement.
I see you are still wearing those deep scars from the saber lashings I gave you in earlier duels. Honestly, you are a sad and sorry push over in these online dialogues. This is testament to the unstable ground on which you make your stand.
Everyone can see just how pitiful Hasbara Apologists like you have become. The way you recklessly lash out at the integrity of individuals in this comment section is highly revealing about your losing cause.
The winning cause is one which stands on sound analysis of the historical facts and present dynamics on the ground.
Give it up, mate! The temperatures are hot out there, and the sea levels are rising!!
Sd: Ouch, mate!!!
Wasnt Hebron ethnically cleansed of Jews in 1929, before the occupation? And which occupation are you referring to, that of 1967, or 1948?
“I do not claim that there would have been no objection to Jewish nationalism but for its appeal to Nazism” – NF
No, just that,”The propaganda surely did much to make any peaceful relations between Arabs and Jews all but impossible“.
Uh-huh. It’s not the actual fact of large scale immigration opposed by the majority that precluded “peaceful relations” , just how some talked about that fact.
“His movement, which was the dominant party, partnered with the Nazis not only to counter Jewish nationalism but also to exterminate all Jews.“- NF
Oh, I see that you are one of the fringe dwellers. Which ‘dominent party’ are you babbling on about?
Michael,
I am speaking of al-Husseini’s party. See my comments above of March 19, 2009 09:22 AM, noting Professor Eckstein’s description of Mallmann and Cüppers’ important book, and of March 19, 2009 10:43 AM, quoting Bernard-Henri Lévy’s book. I re-post Lévy’s assertions below:
Again, the issue is not, as you claim, whether immigration aroused opposition or whether that opposition was justified. The issue is the specific character of that opposition, even if justified. That character included a plan to commit genocide, which had the backing of the Nazis who allied with al-Husseini’s party.
So what was “al-Husseini’s party” that you refer to as “the dominant party”???
And again it’s obvious that this is nothing more than a smear when you refer to the activities of one man as being the “specific character of that opposition” which, of course, is “a plan to commit genocide“.
You’re on the fringe of the fringe.
Michael,
Have you any better argument to make than an ad hominem one? Again, read what I wrote. I spoke of the political party al-Husseini led.
Again, the plan for genocide was more than just talk. There was an agreement reached between al-husseini’s party and the Nazi party. There was a military force set up to commit the massacres. It consisted of Arabs and Germans.
If that point is fringe, then so be it. However, my view has the backing of some heavy weight scholars.
Friedman the basically problem is your hypocrisy and double standards and selective cherry-picking of facts. You are outraged by Haj Amin attempting to deal with the Nazis yet you dismiss Zionists who tried to do the same even while the Nazis were slaughtering their brethren. This is the issue.
Palestinians dealing with Nazis = bad people.
Jews trying to deal with Nazis = ?. what?, nevermind etc.
JES: Yes the Jews living in Arab countries were persecuted AFTER the Israelis had engaged in ethnic cleansing and persecution of Palestinians in their own land. Having a taste of one’s own medicine is never pleasant, payback is a b^&*@ etc. I don’t know what part of this logic escapes you.
And yes the continual immigration of hundreds of thousands of Jews to Israel, who have no connection to the country other than a religious belief, while millions of Palestinians languising in surrounding countries have no right of return is both relevant and pertinent.
*snore* *yawn*
“I spoke of the political party al-Husseini led.” – NF.
Spoke of. Hmmm. Care to name it??
Well Twit (marvelous choice of name), then how do you explain the farhud in Iraq in 1941 (which, BTW, was apparently instigated by the ex-Mufti Haj Amin al-Husayni)? And what about the ethnic cleansing of Kfar Silwan and Hebron 1929 – both of whose Jewish communities were certainly not new arrivals?
In all of these cases, the victims were not only unarmed, they were also firmly anti-Zionist – although for most the pogroms and ethnic cleansing quickly turned them into Zionists.
BTW, I don’t think that N. Friedman ever said “nevermind” in response to Avraham Stern’s attempts at dealing with Nazis.
Cretin (yes you can thank me later for the very apt choice of name).
You can look into the White Papers of 1929 (and later of 1936) and the early racist and discriminatory practises of the early Zionists for an answer re Hebron 1929. And amazingly you ignore the massacre of Arabs that were taking place in Palestine around the same time by Jews. Is there no end to the hypocrisy of you Habaristas? (Again rhetorical question).
And Friedman just amazingly, coincidentally forgot to mention how Jews had tried to make a deal with the Nazis while they slaughtered their brethren. Selective moral outrage indeed!
I find it somewhat logical that Haj Amin would seek a deal with the Nazis to fight a common enemy, even if morally reprehensible. What I find illogical and even more morally disgusting is Jews who would do the same when the Nazis were slaughtering their own people! But then you Jewish supremists and Hasbaristas have the moral fibre of your average war-crimes enthusiast.
And then when challenged on the, once again, very relevant fact that he left out (amazingly and coincidentally once again), he basically dismissed it. Physician heal thyself!
You can look into the White Papers of 1929 (and later of 1936) and the early racist and discriminatory practises of the early Zionists for an answer re Hebron 1929. And amazingly you ignore the massacre of Arabs that were taking place in Palestine around the same time by Jews.
Sorry to wake you again, Fucking Twit, but what “discriminatory practises[sic]”; what “massacre” are you talking about?
Just as a rider to the discussions. I am aware that the need to remove the existing Palestinian inhabitants was foreseen at the inception of the Zionist project, although events like the initial report of the research group sent to Palestine by the First Zionist Congress seems to have been whitewashed from the internet as far as I can gather. (Apparently they reported that Palestine was unsuitable as a homeland because it was already inhabited….by Palestinians. So another research group was sent out to give a more ‘correct’ conclusion).
Now the difficulty for all of this is that especially post-Holocaust (although Jews have suffered appalling treatment pogroms etc by Western Christians ever since Pauline Christianity under the Roman Empire rewrote the history to blame the Jews for Jesus’ execution and not the notoriously draconian Roman Governor of the time) Jews have vivid memories of the indelible and irreversible effect of brute and savage military power. So it is increasingly disturbing and ironical to many including many enlightened Jews to see many of the tactics of the Nazis cynically being used against the Palestinians. Sure there are no gas chambers, but the sheer scale of the ethnic cleansing and ruthlessly disproportionate response over a so much longer time period bears consideration.
I think part of the answer lies in parallels with what happens to individuals who have been tortured or similarly victimised in conflict. The impact on their children is increasingly intruding into society since more often than not as parents those victims will take on the behaviours of their abusers, particularly in stress.
There is a large population of children of holocaust survivors who are in approaching retirement and have similar life history patterns: mainly solitary, unable to form and sustain relationships or hold down jobs and develop careers. Enough for the the German government to be the subject of legal suit to establish funds for their therapy for that is all they really want. Note I am not claiming that all Holocaust victims end up visiting cruel behaviours on their children but rather that the impact of the experience did have that effect on significantly large percentages.
Due to the large numbers involved professionals are now more aware of the impact on the second generation of related episodes e.g children of torture victims.
I cannot help wondering whether the sheer extent of the trauma suffered in the Holocaust is what has led to Israel employing so many of the Nazi tactics (ethnic cleansing, ghettos etc etc) while at the same time cynically exploiting Western guilt of the Holocaust (to quote a current senior Jewish member of the British parliament who has also expressed the horror and revulsion of what has been going on for so long on behalf of other ‘survivors’).
Has the impact what has happened to so many on an individual basis been transposed to the domain of national policy? Is this how the nation has become in so many, though not all, ways like its greatest recent abuser? If so, then for peace we need to find a way of therapy for a whole nation/government.
Michael
Edward Said wrote in Blaming the Victims:
Among other things, he, at times, led the Arab Higher Committee and led or worked with a number of clandestine groups.
tucking_fwit,
I already addressed your point regarding contacts by the Stern gang with the Nazis. (A), The Stern gang was a fringe group and, (B), any such contact did not include working to commit genocide of Arabs. Hence, it is not important to my contention.
This is not a difficult matter to understand. There was substantial contact between the leadership of the Palestinian Arabs and the Nazis that included an agreement to work with the Nazis to commit genocide. There was nothing of the sort with respect to any contact by any Zionists with any Nazis.
Weren’t a number of Israeli PM’s like Begin or Shamir self-avowedly members of Stern if not leaders of it? In some cases imprisoned by the British as terrorists during their mandate.
A number of the ‘Jewish terrorists’ who bombed the King David Hotel were later commended and were founding members of Mossad. Now of course there is an Israeli State to implement terror on an unimaginable scale with one of the most fiercesome war machines on the planet. Its forces can with relative impunity launch fast attack jets, assault helicopters and tanks, not to mention the widespread deployment of an array of phosphorous and cluster munitions to terrorise and maim mostly children.
At least a few of the former Jewish terrorists who became Mossad’s first recruits are honest enough to call the current wave of Palestinian ‘terrorists’ as Resistance fighters just as they see themselves to have been during the British mandate.
Which is worse? Having supposedly talked to a Nazi or behaving like one with much of their associated ruthlessness and cruelty? I think the latter surely is immeasurably more tragic in its savagery.
By the way it should not be forgotten that the Jewish bombers of the King David Hotel were of course disguised as Palestinian Arabs to avoid being identified as a potential terrorist threat. That says a lot about who the authorities of the time feared as ‘terrorists’.
Time for Israelis to wake up and realize how much like the Nazis they have already become. As is evident to increasing numbers of the world’s population even if many of the perpetrators are themselves still blind or unwilling to see.
“Among other things, he, at times, led the Arab Higher Committee and led or worked with a number of clandestine groups.
Yes, he lead a committee – one he established and put himself, un-elected, at the head of, using his authority as the British appointed ‘Grand Mufti’ to do so.
It lasted little more than a year before the Brits revoked what little authority they had granted him.
al-Husseini led no policital party in Palestine, had no real popular support in Palestine and never returned. The rest of his life was little more than the efforts of an individual which constituted a speck within the Palestinian nationalist movement. But of course he is very signifcant for those who would like to smear Palestinian nationalism with a “plan to commit genocide”.
Weren’t a number of Israeli PM’s like Begin or Shamir self-avowedly members of Stern if not leaders of it? In some cases imprisoned by the British as terrorists during their mandate.
The “number” is exactly “one” – Shamir. He was leader of the Stern Gang (LEHI) and assumed office after Begin – former leader of IZL – resigned. That was some 35 years after both groups were disbanded.
A number of the ‘Jewish terrorists’ who bombed the King David Hotel were later commended and were founding members of Mossad.
Completely untrue. The King David Hotel bombing was carried out by IZL, or the Irgun. All of the founders of the Mossad, including its first director – Reuven Shiloah – came out of the Haganah Intelligence Unit.
So, Michael, now that you’ve thrown Edward Said under the bus, perhaps you can tell us exactly who were the leaders of the Palestinian national movement during the 1930s and 1940s.
Or maybe there were no leaders and no national movement to speak of?
There is recorded video testimony from at least one of the founder members of Mossad that he was one of the ‘jewish terrorists’ who bombed the King David Hotel dressed as Arabs so as to avoid suspicion of terrorism.
Begin was interned as a terrorist by the UN Mandated authority of the period.
I would ask you to produce the video testimony you mention, but I know that you can’t produce it (or if you can, it’s false). The Mossad was not (and is not) an “organization”. It was founded as a government agence reporting directly to the Prime Minister’s Office. The original senior bureaucrats were all former Haganah men, as Ben Gurion would not have trusted men from either IZL or LEHI.
As far as dressing as Arabs so as to avoid suspicion, that’s highly speculative spin at best. In any case, the IZL members who bombed the Hotel called first to warn the British to evacuate. They did not.
Begin, although I will agree that he was a terrorist, was never interned.
I never said the founding Mossad guy (self avowed terrorist bomber) was a ‘senior bureaucrat’. He was one of their senior operatives/managers. His interview and their may be others from colleagues is included on the regular repeats on the History Channel. As for the ‘phone call’ that’s pretty lame…
But lets not get sidetracked in detail. I can see that Zionist types and their apologists are basically aiming to keep running out the clock so as to legitimize the ethnic cleansing and disposession of the Palestinians. (By the way, Israel was one of the few countries to support Apartheid South Africa. The main racist group there had as their flag 3 armed swastika, which was a thinly disguised copy of Hitlers Nazi one).
The issue is really quite simple. Jews mostly dispersed from Palestine nearly 2000 years ago. Jews persecuted by Western Europeans for nearly 2000 years until in the late C19th the Zionist project is born to find a Jewish homeland. The Zionist architects decide to go ahead with taking over Palestine and ethnically cleansing the Palestinians some of whom smell a rat and start to oppose what is happening foreseeing the ethnic cleansing that will result.
The Zionist project is given urgency by the Nazi Holocaust, and the the Zionists and indeed the whole Jewish peoples are traumatized into sanctioning Nazi behaviour towards Palestinians to achieve and secure a cleansed Palestinian state – with Palestinians paying the price..
Israeli political leaders consciously have adopted Nazi ruthless values and tactics of oppression. Underlying this is a secular Nazi philosophy of Social Darwinism that the world is a hostile place of competing warring factions where the strong survive and might is right. This underlying Nazi philosophy seeps out from Zionist apologists from under their own radar so to speak. They are unaware of how they have adopted and echo Hitler.
For the many of Jews this realisation would be too horrible to contemplate, so they remain focused on the notion of ‘terror’. The awareness that Israel’s army and killer squads deal out terror on an unimaginably larger scale than any puny response the desparate Palestinians can pose is repressed and rationalised away in a not too dissimilar way to how the Nazis rationalised away their opression of the Jews..
The longer Israel’s leaders can try to run out the clock the more this furthers their end of burying the alternative of Palestinian Rights under International Law. Hence phrases applied to their rightful legal claims like “unrealistic” etc
I know that to many Jews the finality and irreversibility of the Holocaust makes the defeat of the Nazis somewhat irrelevant. Only military power and the ability of the State to project and even ‘legitimize’ State Terror ultimately seems to counts for them in a post-Nazi (post-Holocaust) world. The unspoken rules behind Israel’s policy have tragically become those of the very architect of their horror namely those of Mein Kampf…
In the long term this is in my view unsustainable and Jews will awake from this Hitlerite Nazi madness they are perpetuating….
And the sooner the better. The longer the clock runs as they have found in South Africa then the larger the problems of clearing up the racist fascist mess become.
Jews (especially Jews one might be entitled to think) cannot keep behaving like Nazis forever.
(The Jews for Justice for Palestinians link to ‘Israel and International Law’ may be broken. Looks like some hacker has destroyed many of their links to Factsheets, or maybe just some technical hitch. The International Law factsheet in particular is very informative for non-Nazi types).
Well iain, looks like your grasp of history has as much depth as that of phsycholgy.
Israel was one of the few countries to support Apartheid South Africa.
Actually, after its immediate neighbors in Southern Africa, I believe that Apartheid South Africa’s largest trading partners were Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States.
Bye now, and have a good life.
JES you seem to have an infinite capacity for weaseling your way out of the facts. I didn’t say Israel was the only supporter of Apartheid South Africa.
Anyway Israel’s relationship went well beyond sanctions avoiding trade relations and included extensive arms cooperation.
The psychology of Torture and related episodes is well documented and pretty standard I think. What is additional is my suggestion that this be extended to the Jewish state as a whole to explain how it is behaving in such a Nazi fashion. Afer all one would have thought they would be the last to want to behave like Nazis wouldn’t one?
For me a good life and Nazi type behaviour or the support of it are mutually contradictory.
I think you will eventually have to find that out for yourself, one hopes at any rate….
Good luck!
“I believe that Apartheid South Africa’s largest trading partners were Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States.”
And that’s the kind of company Israel chose to keep. Nice.
“Zionist settlement of Rehovot”
Rehovot was built on the site of Doron, a Jewish community that existed in the time of the Mishna.
It was not a “zionist settlement”-it’s a city. Just like London or NYC are cities- not settlements.
“three-fourths of Gaza’s current residents are refugees from what became Israel in 1948”
Where did you get these figures from??
FYI, the real “Palestinians” were Jews with British Palestine Mandate Passports.