On March 3, I had an intriguing discussion in Jerusalem with Benjamin Pogrund, a bluff Jewish guy in his late sixties who “represents”, in the way he thinks and argues, the way a lot of other left Zionists think and argue. Indeed, I think he represents it very well since his argumentation veers almost minute by minute between, on the one hand, some sharp analysis of the vileness and extreme dangers posed by the Israeli right and anguished calls for the US to intervene to “save the two-state dream” in Israel/Palestine, and then on the other, angry and self-justifying outbursts against Hamas, as well as against anyone who dares to question the actions and thought processes of the Zionist “left” or to pose any alternative to their worldview.
And yes, like the vast majority of other “Left” Zionists including Amos Oz, David Grossman, Amos Elon, etc, Pogrund was a clear– though oh-so-terribly-“anguished”– supporter of the early days of Israel’s recent war on Gaza.
And even after some of the other Left Zionist war supporters had started, four or five days into the 22-day war, to start arguing that “hey, perhaps that is enough!”, Pogrund continued flacking for the war in the western media. In this January 9 (equals Day 14) contribution to The Daily Beast, he wrote:
- In the third week of December, more than 200 [Gaza-origined] missiles struck [Israel]. They were 200 too many. Barak and Olmert accepted they could no longer hold back. The army was ordered to put into effect plans that had already been prepared.
Why did the world keep silent for so many years? Could anyone really expect Israel to do nothing forever?
No mention anywhere in Pogrund’s narrative there of the facts– easily discernible from the right sidebar in this listing from Btselem— that between January 1 and December 26, 2008 the violent actions of the Israeli military had killed 413 Palestinians in Gaza, among them numerous civilians.
And then, if you scan quickly down the listings on this page from Btselem, you’ll see that of the 18 Israeli civilians killed by Palestinians in that same period, only seven were killed anywhere near the periphery of Gaza, of whom five were described as killed by “gunfire”, one as a result of a suicide bombing, and only one, 73-year-old Lyubov Razdolskaya, was killed by “an explosion”— that is, presumably, the impact of a Gaza-launched rocket or “missile”.
So how could a government stand by and just let that happen, Pogrund was asking? (That was Barack Obama’s justification for Israel’s war, too.)
But if having one civilian– and no soldiers– killed by those primitive rockets from Gaza in the whole period of 2008 prior to Israel’s launching of its war was “too much”, then how much more “unbearable” or unacceptable” must the situation of Hamas’s de-facto rulers have been, given the harm and suffering that Israel’s exponentially more lethal military had inflicted on them during those same months?
Pogrund did not say.
When we were sitting together in the lobby of the American Colony Hotel and talking, he rehearsed his justification for the war yet again: “When rockets are hitting cities like Beersheba and Ashqelon! And 1.5 million people are under threat! We’ve been bloody lucky not to have suffered worse casualties.”
“But Benjamin, there was another way Israel could have used to renew the 6-month ceasefire. How about negotiations? The massive application of violence was never, as you’re arguing, ‘the only way’!”
“I agree,” he said. “But how on earth do you deal with someone who won’t accept the three conditions, who won’t even recognize Israel?”
I could have pointed out– though the conversation moved in yet another direction at this point– that when Olmert had negotiated the ceasefire with Hamas that lasted, generally successfully, from June 19 through November 4 last year, Hamas had not “recognized Israel” at that point… But the ceasefire generally worked, from Israel’s point of view; and that, even though Olmert’s government never even implemented what the Hamas people had understood to be his firm commitment to lift the siege on Gaza early on in the ceasefire period.
So “recognizing Israel” really is a red herring. It was one for prime minister Olmert back in June last year when he was negotiating the ceasefire, and it is today, even though the US government is once again stressing that Hamas (and Hizbullah) have to do this even before it will agree to open any kinds of contact with these organizations.
But it is not, apparently, a red herring for Benjamin Pogrund or for many other Left Zionists.
Indeed, for Benjamin Pogrund, who spent most of his life in South Africa and then immigrated to Israel just 12 years ago, gaining other people’s “recognition” of Israel seems almost like an article of faith. Toward the end of our discussion, just before we expressed our cordial goodbyes to each other and he went on his way, he was leaning forward out of his chair and berating me saying,
- The difference between us, Helena is that I believe in Israel! I believe in a Jewish state! My family lost so many members in the Holocaust. Of course we have to have a state!
I tried to point out mildly that my family, too, had lost members during World War 2, doing its bit to fight Nazism in Europe. But he carried on, jabbing one finger in the air, vaguely in my direction: “You don’t believe in a Jewish state. I do! I believe in Israel!”
Okay, Benjamin, I understand. It’s an article of faith for you. You’ve made your point.
“Believing” in Israel as a Jewish state is not just an article of faith, however. It is also integrally linked to the stark refusal with which the vast majority of Zionists, “Left” as well as Right, respond to any suggestion that the claims of the Palestinians expelled in 1948 from their homes in what became Israel that year should be given any serious consideration– or even, any fair hearing– at all.
The principal claim that these refugees and their descendants have hung onto over the past 61 years has been their claim to have a “Right of Return” to the places of their family’s origin, such as is guaranteed to all persons in Article 13, Clause 2 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Pogrund was emphatic on this point: “I don’t know why people talk about the Right of Return,” he said, very loudly, earlier in our discussion. “It won’t work! It’s a non-starter!”
But back to this concept of “believing in” the State of Israel. The concept of belief is, of course, one used primarily within the concept of religion. There and in other contexts (“Yes, I believe the Number 30 bus should be here in a minute or two… “) it is used to express adherence to a fact or a set of propositions that can’t be empirically proven.
But the State of Israel very evidently– as I have directly experienced it on occasions too numerous to mention– does exist. I pass by its border posts; I see its military; I pay taxes and exit fees to it… And I imagine Benjamin Pogrund has had all these experiences of it and more.
So what is this business about “belief” all about?
Does it have to do with a fear that in the future it might not exist? Is that, perhaps, what the power (and the uncertainty) of belief is being harnessed to?
Or does it have to do with an attempt to persuade, or browbeat, other people around the world to recognize not only that Israel exists (which surely we can all agree on), but also that it has the right to exist… and beyond that, that it has the right to exist as an explicitly and permanently Jewish state?
Well, I have Scottish ancestors. Hebridean ancestors, too. Does Scotland have a right to exist as an independent nation-state? Do the Hebrides? Interesting questions, both of these, in the days of the continuing devolution of UK power…
I imagine that if you looked hard enough, you might find people who desperately “believe” in the idea of a Hebridean state. They would need to re-experience and re-express that belief, to each other and to anyone else who will listen, I imagine; and to do so with all the greater fervor precisely because no such state now exists and it is highly unlikely that it will exist any time in the foreseeable future…
Meanwhile, as an informational footnote here and in the context of he “recognition of Israel requirement” that the US-led west is continuing to seek to impose on Hamas and Hizbullah before Washington will deign to speak to these two politically powerful movements, I thought it would be a good idea to go back to the actual language that was used back when the PLO first gained its “kashrut certificates” from, respectively, the US and Israel, back in 1988 and 1993.
In December 1988, in the context of the PLO’s endorsement of its “Declaration of Independence”– independence, that is, of a still completely notional Palestinian state that would exist alongside Israel– and of a carefully orchestrated move to open a dialogue with Washington, Yasser Arafat made this statement (PDF) in Geneva:
- Yesterday in my speech, I made a reference to the United Nations resolution 181 [on the partition of Palestine] as the basis for Palestinian independence. I also made a reference to our acceptance of resolutions 242 and 338 as the basis for negotiations with Israel within the framework of an international conference. These three resolutions were endorsed at our Palestinian National Council session in Algiers.
In my speech also yesterday it was clear that we mean our peoples’ right to freedom and national independence according to resolution 181 and the right of all parties concerned in the Middle East conflict to exist in peace and security and, as I have mentioned, including the state of Palestine and Israel and other neighbors according to the resolution 242 and 338.
As for terrorism, I renounced it yesterday in no uncertain terms, and yet I repeat for the record that we totally and absolutely renounce all forms of terrorism, including individual, group and state terrorism…
And secretary of State George Shultz responded:
- The Palestine Liberation Organization today issued a statement in which it accepted U.N. Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, recognized Israel’s right to exist in peace and security and renounced terrorism. As a result, the United States is prepared for a substantive dialogue with PLO representatives…
As it happened, the dialogue that was thereby opened proved to be short-lived. But it is interesting to see the wording of what was judged to be “enough” recognition of Israel back then to open the dialogue. certainly, Arafat was not required to express any recognition of any Israeli right to exist “as a Jewish state.”
After that dialogue fell apart, the PLO won no new opportunity to talk directly to Washington until after it had concluded the 1993 Oslo Agreement with Israel. In the context of the Oslo Agreement, which was concluded directly between Israel and the PLO, the two parties exchanged “mutual recognition statements” (PDF).
Arafat’s letter to prime minister Yitzhak Rabin stated this:
- The signing of the Declaration of Principles marks a new era in the history of the Middle East. In firm conviction thereof, I would like to confirm the following PLO commitments:
The PLO recognizes the right of the State of Israel to exist in peace and security.
The PLO accepts United Nations Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338.
The PLO commits itself to the Middle East peace process, and to a peaceful resolution of the conflict between the two sides and declares that all outstanding issues relating to permanent status will be resolved through negotiations.
In a short side-letter to Norwegian foreign minister Johan-Jorgen Holst, Arafat promised that,
- the PLO encourages and calls upon the Palestinian people in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to take part in the steps leading to the normalization of life, rejecting violence and terrorism, contributing to peace and stability and participating actively in shaping reconstruction, economic development and cooperation.
For his part, Rabin sent only a single-sentence message back, directly to Arafat:
- Mr. Chairman,
In response to your letter of September 9, 1993, I wish to confirm to you that, in light of the PLO commitments included in your letter, the Government of Israel has decided to recognize the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people and commence negotiations with the PLO within the Middle East peace process.
So Rabin was not promising any recognition of a Palestinian state (as we know), and he was not promising not to use violence against the Palestinians; and nor was he promising not to continue building “facts on the ground” (settlements) that might prejudice the outcome of the negotiations.
Well, a pretty raw deal for the Palestinians all round, I’d say. Or rather, some extremely shoddy negotiating by that sad and vainglorious man, Yasser Arafat.
But it is still interesting to note the wording of what was deemed by Israel, at that point, to be sufficient to include the PLO in negotiations: a simple statement of the right of Israel to exist in peace and security. Nothing about the right of Israel to exist “as a Jewish state”…
Hamas does not ever have to recognize the legitimacy of Israel, as long as it recognizes the de facto existence of Israel, which it has said it is willing to do.
Do First Peoples in America have to acknowledge the genocide and ethnic cleansing of their ancestors as legitmate? No. But they do have to recognize the de facto existence of the USA.
I believe two states is impossible is at this point. Israel ceding enough territory and Palestinian sovereign prerogatives to create a state that the Palestinians would vote to accept is an impossibility.
The Israelis have a point, an independent Palestinian state would be a critical strategic liability for Israel because many Palestinians do not believe there should be a Jewish state. Many Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims do not believe the events of 1947 and 1948 were an expression of justice that should not be undone.
A two state solution that actually produces two independent (or even almost independent) states would lead to the end of Israel as a Jewish state just as surely as going directly to a one state solution.
So we’re left now with a choice of what kind of one state solution we’ll end up with. One is the status quo, which is what friends of Israel prefer to maintain indefinitely. This is a miserable situation for everyone but the approximately 6 million Jews of Israel who don’t have to worry about the affront of living in a country whose president or prime minister is of a different ethnicity.
The other choice is one state in which descendents of refugees can return even if they are not Jewish, in which everybody under the state’s control has political vote and that should have strong protections of individual rights.
It is very difficult to reconcile being liberal and supporting the Israel/Palestine status quo over a one state equalitarian solution. Liberal zionists really just are not liberals.
Calling for two states after it should be clear to all that two states structurally cannot work is really advocating an indefinite extension the status quo, along with the misery that entails.
Misery not just for the Palestinians, currently being starved as a punishment for not accepting a Jewish state in Gaza, but also in Egypt and Jordan where authoritarian dictatorships enjoy the support of the worlds hyperpower because of their relative support for a Jewish state. Also in Iran, whose economy is being sabotaged and hindered to the fullest degree possible with the aim of minimizing the threat an independent Iran would pose to Israel, and throughout the region.
It is very difficult to reconcile support for anything but a single equal-rights, non-ethnic state with liberalism.
Helena,
How do you come by the logic that the number of casualties determines the justness of a cause? I do not get that at all. Your sounds like a repeat of other people’s all too typical and ill-conceived propaganda.
On my thinking, either the Israelis are correct that their cause was right and that they did their best to minimize civilian casualties or, alternatively, the cause was wrong, in which case the number of casualties, whether one or a thousand or ten thousand, are all unjustified. I should add on the latter point, numerous military analysts in the US and Britain have stated that Israel’s efforts to minimize casualties in the Gaza war are greater than any war in modern history – which means that it is greater than any war in history.
So far as I know, the Gaza war is the first war where anyone claimed that the ratio of deaths between each side that was actually fighting had any remote relevancy. In that this is surely a new argument, rather than writing your usual self-righteous propaganda – which, frankly, is what you have clearly produced here -, demonstrate, with an actual argument, that the ratio is relevant to determining the justice or injustice of Israel’s (or, since this could come up again, any country’s) cause. That would be the start of an honest, rather than the typical propaganda, discussion of the dispute.
Of course, you will never do that because you have a propaganda cause. And, it is to demonize the Israelis. Perhaps, you will surprise me with an honest argument, proving my skepticism wrong.
Noah, your logic is completely awry.
Are all human persons equal, or not? If they are, then every loss counts equally.
I was not writing about the “justice” of a cause. I was writing about the faulty “justification” adduced by Pogrund, Obama, and others for the claimed justice of Israel’s war on Gaza.
But if each human life is equal, or even if we just say that each civilian life is equal, then the Gazans would have had considerably more “justification” for their continued war on Israel than Israel, on them.
Note that none of the apologists for Israel’s war on Gaza can afford, when trying to justify it, even to mention the human losses Gaza suffered in the lead-up to the war. Their justification for the war depends totally on suppressing the memory of all those human losses.
The rest of us, non-apologists, cannot ignore those losses for to do so would be to betray the key principle of the equal worth of all human persons.
As for your claim that numerous military analysts in the US and Britain have stated that Israel’s efforts to minimize casualties in the Gaza war are greater than any war in modern history this is untrue and totally obscene. On the contrary! Just about all the objective military analysis I have seen notes that the reason for the high casualties among Palestinian civilians in the war was precisely the strong imperative Israeli commanders had to avoid casualties amongst their men at all costs.
Hence the extremely lethal trigger-happiness of many of the Israeli units operating in Gaza. The IHL injunctions whereby commanders are obliged to try to avoid casualties among civilians even at the cost of some additional risk to their own men was widely violated. Hence the fear many Israeli commanders now have that courts in Europe and elsewhere may try them for war crimes. those fears are far from baseless.
I’ll mention the human losses, because if you bother to look at the very numbers that you cite, you’ll see that, of the 22 Palestinians killed during the tahidiyya, all were clearly combatants.
I’m not going to get into the “objectivity” of the military experts you choose to listen to. Suffice it to say that when the IDF kills a civilian, it is a mistake. On the other hand, it is clearly considered a mistake when Hamas or Islamic Jihad do not kill civilians.
BTW Helena, I find it quite telling that you had to meet with Pogrund – an unknown “leftist”. What’s the matter? Did Amos Oz and David Grossman both refuse to meet with you?
I met both Helena and Benjamin Pogrund in Amman a couple of years ago, in another conference on Non Violence.
I share with Benjamin the Zionist conviction, accordingly Jews have a right for self dtermination, desirably here in what we call Eretz Israel, but as a convinced Pscifist as well, unlike him I suppose, ONLY if it was possible without harming the individual and collective rights of the Non Jews here, exactly according to one of the conditions in the famous Balfour Declaration, which was broken by the Zionist administration.
I completely disagree therefore with him and with too many others in the Zionist left, in their justification of the last war, as as of the previous ones, and in this respect, fully agree with Helena.
However, as an Israeli religious Jew who was born here and lives together with his whole family, , my problem is, as for I believe all people with good will in the Jewish side, what are the best chances for a Jewish Liberal and Humanistic State to continue to exist here in the ME, in peace and justice for the Palestinians in and out of Israel?
Two neighbouring states, united maybe also with Jordan in a sort of confederation, would be ideal, where each of the two states will be open for immigration, mainly of Jews and Palestinians, but it seems to me that the extremes in both sides will not enable it at the foreseeable future.
the only alternative is therefore one state, in total equality among all its citizens. Sounds wonderful, but it is the end of both Zionist and Palestinian dreams for independent life. But at least, presumably and hopefully the end of occupation and indiscrimination, if indeed that would be the case. Is this possible?
I suggest to all who have interest in the ME situation, here and abroad, to start discussing the possible scenarios in the seemingly more and more real possibility of one state solution. The present situation is impossible, and if not two states, what then?
“when the IDF kills a civilian, it is a mistake.”
I see. So perhaps you can tell us, JES, which part of what the IDF did to the Samouni family was a mistake? Was it a mistake that they herded around 100 of them into the same house? Was it a mistake when they held them in that house for hours? Or was it a mistake when, after herding them into the house and forcing them to stay there for hours they shelled the house for some minutes, killing tens of them and wounding tens more?
And JES, if it is a mistake when the IDF kills a civilian, how is it that 70% of the people they killed in Gaza were mistakes? And since, presumably killing a child is a really BIG mistake, how is it that 30% of the people they killed were REALLY BIG mistakes? Does the IDF need better training so they will not make so many mistakes? Is that it?
Helena,
I am not Noah.
While all human beings are of equal worth, such does not justify revenge, as your argument incorrectly suggests.
The Israelis have asserted a perfectly reasonable justification for the war. You just do not accept it because you do not have to live with rockets being shot into your town and, unlike the Israelis, you believe that rockets would cease if only Israel lifted its embargo.
You claim that no respected military person has said that the Israelis ran an extraordinarily humane war. Richard Kemp, who was the former commander of British Troops in Afghanistan and is a senior military adviser to the British government, stated: “I don’t think there has ever been a time in the history of warfare where any army has made more efforts to reduce civilian casualties and deaths of civilians than the IDF is doing today in Gaza.” I cannot say he is or is not correct. But, that he knows more about the matter than either of us is beyond all doubt.
If the Israelis are so trigger happy, why did they agree to allow a break in the fighting during the day to assist Palestinian Arabs? Why did the Israeli not kill a whole lot more Palestinian Arabs, if they are so trigger happy? Why not wipe out whole towns? After all, they clearly could have.
The truth is that there are a great many dishonest people who are trigger happy about accusing the Israelis of ghastly crimes. Remember the massacre at the UN building that the UN and “human rights” groups were so very sure of? Later, – like the al-Dura fraud – it was shown it to be made up. Eventually, even the UN admitted that there had been no such massacre.
Noah, do you make this astonishing rubbish up all by yourself, or does someone provide you with talking points?
Benjie Pogrund is well known as one of two South African journalists of the former Rand Daily Mail who were tried by the old regime for exposing prison conditions. Although later a Madiba-ist like nearly everybody, he was never a supporter of the ANC but was devoted to a now-defunct anti-communist offshoot of the ANC, the PAC, and its founding leader, Robert Sobukwe. He helped Sobukwe’s children and wrote at least one book about him. I met Pogrund once for a few minutes in London in the company of the late Ethel de Keyser if I am not mistaken. Hi Benjie.
Benjie Pogrund left for Israel with a great fanfare as the man who was going to export the rainbow spirit to that country. He started organising joint Israeli-Palestinian focus groups and the like. This gave him an instant but bogus standing as an expert, pundit or “analyst” of a country he hardly knew. It soon became apparent that he was no different from any other Israeli apologist. Obviously he now introduces himself as an Israeli. I think you have got him about right in your interview, Helena. You may have shaved a few years off him, but I would not begrudge him that.
Any South African should rather agree with Arnold Evans’ comment above. Even if Evans does not know or refer to South Africa, he gets it down in a way that any South African, other than a few oddballs like Benjie Pogrund, would have to agree with – finish and klaar!
Otherwise, for heavens sake, why do you keep feeding the trolls?
Concerning the Hebrides, when I returned to SA in the early 1990s there were still annual concerts of “Jewish classical music” advertised in the suburb where I settled.
These included works of Mendelssohn, the composer of the lovely “Fingal’s cave”. “Fingal” is a reference to the bogus 18th-century Hebridean and Highland epic “Ossian”.
This banal literary fraud, Ossian, of which “Fingal” is the hero, achieved huge international celebrity for decades as the “Celtic Homer” and it was part of the phoney post-Culloden reinvention of “tartanry” in the country of our colonised joint ancestors, as I’m sure you know, Helena.
I mention this train of thought to point out how much Ossian-like BS there is in Israel, and to support your general drift that this kind of abuse of the past in the present is something we should always protest about and probably not shrink from ridiculing, as Dr Johnson immediately did with the Ossian scam, to Johnson’s eternal credit.
Shyryn/Shirin,
What was rubbish? What was made up?
Dominic,
You write that the rainbow spirit in Mr. Pogrund changed in Israel. That is something to explore. Rather than consider the reasons for his change of heart, you seem to accuse him of insincerity. That seems a bit unfair.
Notwithstanding your view, a great many decent people see considerable justice in Zionism. A great many decent people think that the effort to demonize the Israelis and call Israeli concerns and arguments BS are ill-considered. A great many decent people think that prejudice, not justice or morality, drives a great many in the Anti-Israel movement.
If the Israelis are so trigger happy, why did they agree to allow a break in the fighting during the day to assist Palestinian Arabs? Why did the Israeli not kill a whole lot more Palestinian Arabs, if they are so trigger happy? Why not wipe out whole towns? After all, they clearly could have.
I’m quoting Noah here, not to argue with him, since he’s a lost cause anyway, but because his arguments are a perfect illustration of the analysis made by Israeli political scientist Neve Gordon about the Israeli self-image, as manufactured by Israeli propaganda, which, during the massacre in Gaza, continuously emphasized “Israel’s restraint by underscoring the gap between what the military forces could do to the Palestinians and what they actually do”. Here is an excerpt from Gordon’s article:
“The message Israel conveys through these refrains has two different meanings depending on the target audience.
To the Palestinians, the message is one that carries a clear threat: Israel’s restraint could end and there is always the possibility of further escalation. Regardless of how lethal Israel’s military attacks are now, the idea is to intimidate the Palestinian population by underscoring that the violence can always become more deadly and brutal. This guarantees that violence, both when it is and when it is not deployed, remains an ever-looming threat.
The message to the Israelis is a moral one. The subtext is that the Israeli military could indiscriminately unleash its vast arsenal of violence, but chooses not to, because its forces, unlike Hamas, respect human life.
This latter claim appears to have considerable resonance among Israelis, and, yet, it is based on a moral fallacy. The fact that one could be more brutal but chooses to use restraint does not in any way entail that one is moral. The fact that the Israeli military could have razed the entire Gaza Strip, but instead destroyed only 15% of the buildings does not make its actions moral. The fact that the Israeli military could have killed thousands of Palestinian children during this campaign, and, due to restraint, killed “only” 300, does not make Operation Cast Lead ethical.
Ultimately, the moral claims the Israeli government uses to support its actions during this war are empty. They actually reveal Israel’s unwillingness to confront the original source of the current violence, which is not Hamas, but rather the occupation of the Gaza Strip, West Bank and East Jerusalem.”
Neve Gordon: how to sell “ethical warfare”
It is very difficult to reconcile support for anything but a single equal-rights, non-ethnic state with liberalism.
Hmm. Mr. Poster does not say ‘impossible’!
Could we see the a peformance of the feat pronounced difficult, please? Few things are more fun than watching some clever señorito at Wingnut City prove how empty and shallow Enlightenment and Liberalism have been for the past century or three.
Happy days.
Perhaps, Shirin, it’s due to efforts such as the following:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00B3o0gBKJo&feature=related
menno hert,
If Professor Gordon were correct, then the Israelis could not be as trigger happy as Helena alleges.
The Israelis are either trigger happy or they make are not. Which is it?
Mr. McCloskey,
The world has many ethnic, liberal democratic states. To name one, Germany. To name another, the UK.
N Friedman,
You are trying to rewrite history. Both the president of the ICRC, Jakob Kellenberger) and the UN General Secretary Ban Kee Moon(spelling?) have condemned the Israelians for what they did during the Gaza war. Just a few examples :
You name the fact that the Israelians allowed the evacuation of the wounded during two hours a day as a proof of their restraint. Yet second the Geneva Conventions (of which Israel is a signatory if my memory serves well) the evacuation of the wounded should be allowed 24hours on 24hours and this doesn’t concern only the civilians, but also the military personnals fighters included. Yet these two hours a day for the evacuation of the wounded were painfully negotiated after two or three warning of the ICRC. So if you want to proove your case, you’ll have to look for better examples. You have breached the Humanitarian laws on this count. Then the Israelians have dropped phosphor bombs in civilian environment. Yet the use of that kind of weapons is only allowed on clear military targets (aka military infrastructures) and provided that they are not near of civilians infrastructures. Yet the Israelians didn’t hesitate to use them in a densely populated area. This was condemned by the ICRC as well. As for the bombing of UN Schools, they were very real, no body pretended that they made thousands of deads. But they were clearly UN buildings, identified as such and should never have been bombed. So said the General Secretary, when he was on visited the spot after the war; I saw him on our channel news and he was sincerely indigned and shocked by what he saw.
I’m sorry, but you are trying to rewrite history, constantly minimizing the Israelians misdeeds. This is pure propaganda and people around there are well aware of your agenda.
Personnally, I think that people trying to rewrite history like you, should not be allowed free speech, because they are not of good faith. Here in Europe, the “negationists”, those who pretend that the Holocaust never took place, are condemned by anti-racist laws and those talks are banned from the official media and rightly so IMO. You are now trying to present the Israelians misdeeds in Gaza and the POT as “bonte d’ame” so you should not be allowed to disseminate false facts.
And Frankly, I’m more interested by the discusion of whether the two states solutions is still possible and if not, then what other solution is possible. I’d be curious to hear what other commenters on this blog think of the opinion of Gilbert Achkar on the two state solution :
http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/20287
(this will link you to an interview of Gilbert Achkar which took place on the 17th January, while the war was still going on; scroll down to the two last questions.. this is a rather pessimist position, but I don’t see many reasons to be optimists).
Noah, you can’t be serious in suggesting that there is a comparison between The Jewish State and Germany and the UK as ethnic states or that UKian and German are ethnicities.
On the other hand, this is not the only outlandish thing you have suggested, or even the most outlandish.
I ask again, do you make this crazy rubbish up all by yourself, or does someone send you talking points every day?
Christiane,
There were condemnations regarding a building of the UN. Later, the UN indicated that it was mistaken. That is a fact.
Shyryn/Shirin,
Stop calling me Noah.
And, yes, I do claim that there is a reasonable comparison. I think Israel treats its Arab citizens better than France or Germany treats it Muslim subjects. Note how many French or German Muslims are in the government. The answer is far fewer than in Israel. There are Arabs on Israel’s High Court. There are Arabs in Israel’s foreign service. There are Arabs in the Knesset.
In France and all over Europe, there have been riots that have been going on and off for years. Why? In part because Muslims are not treated well in such countries. In fact, they are treated a lot worse than in Israel. In France, there are ghettos where Muslims live. The same all over Europe.
It is prejudice against Israel that makes you overlook how Muslims live under European law.
“In France, there are ghettos where Muslims live.”
Yes, boy. You get it. Racism strikes here too.
Congratulations!
One more thing: “dans la téci” (French Muslim-and other-discriminated-populations ghettos), people are seek and tired with that.
Heard about Guadeloupe? “Kont toute pwofitasyon” as they said.
United!
Christiane,
I misread what you wrote. Here is a question, how could quoting an expert who spoke at the time of the event amount to re-writing history? It could not be so your point is incorrect.
The officials you mention quote an ideal. It is not observed by most countries. Israel, more than an other country thus far examined, made considerable effort to follow such laws. Nothing you quoted shows my point to be wrong or a re-write of anything. And, that is what Mr. Kemp meant.
Please, don’t sick!
Have a look,
A picture is worth a thousand words (well, not always, but here yes).. and then tell us, where is the difference between now and then ?
http://pulsemedia.org/2009/03/15/8673/#comments
Christiane,
Comparing a war of a few weeks’ duration in which about, if sources are accurate, 1,300 people – including mostly combatants – were killed with something like the Holocaust, wherein the entire point was to wipe out entirely a civilian population and make it so that there was no memory or sign that they had ever existed, is not only inaccurate, it is hateful and obscene propaganda.
Brutes lack the ability to make basic distinctions, because they do not care about truth. They yoke together things that are different and then, without a moment’s thought, claims they are the same.
“If the Israelis are so trigger happy, why did they agree to allow a break in the fighting during the day to assist Palestinian Arabs? Why did the Israeli not kill a whole lot more Palestinian Arabs, if they are so trigger happy? Why not wipe out whole towns? After all, they clearly could have.”
PR campaign. If the whole world was not watching what was going on, and basically the whole word keeps a hard eye on this conflict and this region for various reasons, then Israel would do what it would want without the fleeting condemnations of the international bodies who have NO effect on this.
Also, there are many factors that could lead many to question the results of such a consequential action such as the Gaza war, after forty years of occupation and sixty years of hostility with its immediate neighbours, many are seeing the futility of such aggression even in the spurious means of “defensive” actions. A man of Ehud Barak’s stature was criticised by Olmert and Livni for wanting to put an end to the bombing so soon, and that to me points to a realisation for Barak, who is a veteran, that maybe all of this is counterproductive and that there might be another way to do this.
The situation with the UN building was not a rebuking of a “massacre” since they did not dispute that the deaths happened by Israeli shelling, but that it occured within the school’s vicinity and not the building itself. What is missing about your story is that even Ehud Olmert issued a formal apology and that other “accounts given to The Associated Press and an Israeli human rights group provided lower casualty figures, but all agreed that shells hit the large, unfinished warehouse-like building a day after Israeli troops told them to get inside it for their safety.”
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1054217.html
As if attacking near a school where the IDF had the co-ordinates for the UN school made it better than the previous story, but the admittance by IDF soldiers that there were NO gunfire from the school makes it all the more inscrupulous.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1054009.html
And I gather that most, if not all of Israel’s apologists were foaming at the mouth when Abraham Rabinovich retracted that story of the UN bombing, Christopher Gunness addressed that problem in a letter found here.
“From the outset UNRWA reported that the attack happened outside the school, while the Israeli authorities initially claimed they were returning fire against militants operating inside the school. But when these Israeli reports were discredited later that same day, they corrected their reporting to state that they were firing at militants operating in the vicinity of the school. The UNRWA statements were accurately reported in many major international media outlets and are a matter of public record.”
http://www.un.org/unrwa/news/articles/2009/australian_6feb09.html
N., (?Noah?)
one child killed or behaeded – no matter what reason, if you call it holocaust or Shoah (as one israeli officer warned it will happen in Gaza)or ‘collateral damage’ is one child too many – how can you not see that simple truth? After all – life is life, holocaust or killing is semantics if it comes to the individual who is the victim, for that person who loses his or her life it was a total destruction and holocaust is it is for that person.
bysta,
I have no brief in favor of anyone dying. I want the dispute to be resolved, if it can be.
In reply to your question, if we do not attempt in earnest to identify what events are like and unlike, we do not – in fact, we cannot – understand them. Those with hatred in their hearts neither understand events and they simply do not to care. They are blinded by their hatred.
Hatred is readily on display where individuals or communities deliberately tie unlike things together. Such is what brutes do, enjoying a violent frisson that comes from blurring necessary distinctions – distinctions necessary to being able to understand the world in which we live.
So, when I speak of Christiane’s comment as being hateful and brutish, I speak factually. Tying the Holocaust to a mere war is an obscene, hateful comparison and it is done in order to enjoy a violent frisson.
N., I do not understand you, “tying Holocaust to a mere war” … that is what the the Nazi’ could have said when they “did” Lidice. I think that Israeli “did” Gaza… Your arguments are not persuasive
“1,300 people – including mostly combatants – were killed”
That is a demonstrably false statement – unless, of course, you consider women and children as combatants. By all counts from credible sources around 70% of those killed were non-combatants, the majority were women and children, and one third of the total killed were children.
Shyryn,
That is a lie. By all accounts by honest people, most of those killed were part of Hamas and were on lists of people involved in the war against Israel.
Noah, no, it is not a lie. By all credible accounts around 70% of those killed by Israel in 22 days were confirmed to be non-combatants, the majority women and children, and 1/3 of the total killed were children.
The problem is, Noah, that if you ever got your facts straight, and used proper logic you would never be able to make the astonishing claims you make. I wonder whether you actually know that. I suspect at some level you do, but maybe not consciously.
Noah, you can’t be serious in suggesting that there is a comparison between The Jewish State and Germany and the UK as ethnic states or that UKian and German are ethnicities.
Whether Noah is serious or not this is indeed the case. Ethnic citizenship is the norm throughout Europe, and in fact the Arab Middle East, as you should know, having supposedly lived there during some period in your life you’ve never bothered to detail. Almost all Arab League states declare their ‘Arabness’ in their constitutions, so why are you singling out Israel on this basis? And indeed non-Arab an non-Muslim minorities in many Arab states are treated worse than Israel’s non-Jewish minority (eg Kurds in Syria, many of whom were stripped of citizenship in the 60’s and who continue to be harassed and illegally detained by that government… maybe you met a few while apartment shopping there recently?)
That is a demonstrably false statement
Demonstrably false things should be demonstrated as false via links or other supporting evidence rather than blunt contradiction.
Vadim, no, in Europe citizenship is not based on ethnicity in even remotely the way it is in Israel.
And how interesting that “not worse than the Arab states” is the standard to which you think Israel should be held.
“Demonstrably false things should be demonstrated as false via links or other supporting evidence rather than blunt contradiction.”
Noah made a claim, as usual utterly without supporting evidence, that the majority of the Palestinian human lives snuffed out by Israel in “operation cast lead” were combatants. Oddly, you did not suggest that he should provide links or any other supporting evidence for his claim, and yet you insist that I must provide links or other supporting evidence when I contradict his utterly unsupported claim.
Double standard, Vadim? No, not you, never.
Shyryn,
The majority of those killed were on pre-existing lists of known Hamas operatives, such fact being published in newspapers including those in the US. That many were “children” and “women” tells me nothing. The question is what your “children” and “women” do, not whether they are technically below the age of majority and not whether they happen to be women.
“The question is what your “children” (…) do”
I just hope you don’t have children.
Hate, lie and stupidity: that’s how you must understand education.
Shame on you, once again!
Practice the exercise I’ve already suggested: breath and smile to others, you won’t be so ugly (mentally I mean)and meet good people.
In my precedent post, I wrote “in the téci”. It means “in the French ghettos”. You just shut up because you don’t know what you were talking about…
I have no hate for you. Just compassion.
N Freidman says:
>> Comparing a war of a few weeks’ duration in which about, if sources are accurate, 1,300 people – including mostly combatants – were killed with something like the Holocaust, wherein the entire point was to wipe out entirely a civilian population and make it so that there was no memory or sign that they had ever existed, is not only inaccurate, it is hateful and obscene propaganda. N Freidman says:
>> Comparing a war of a few weeks’ duration in which about, if sources are accurate, 1,300 people – including mostly combatants – were killed with something like the Holocaust, wherein the entire point was to wipe out entirely a civilian population and make it so that there was no memory or sign that they had ever existed, is not only inaccurate, it is hateful and obscene propaganda. < This goes beyond a war of a few weeks. Those images depict more than that. More like years of oppression under Israeli occupation. I don't think this YouTube is a response to what happened a couple months ago. I think there is an argument to be made about Palestinians living under similar conditions since 1948. Also, N Friedman.... there is no "The" Holocaust. That's not fair to Armenians who suffered at the hands of Turks, Tutsis who suffered at the hands of Hutus, or indigenous Americans at the hands of American colonists. With all due respect, there really is no monopoly on that term.
ctrenta,
The war between Arabs and Jews has, as you say, gone on for more than a few weeks. That does not make it like the Holocaust or, for that matter, a genocide.
There has not ever been any effort by Israel to wipe out the Arabs of Palestine, to kill them all and make it as if they never existed. There are no industrial type killing camps. There are no killing fields, with hundreds of thousands of dead shot at point blank range into pits. There have been no death marches – ala the Armenians – where thousands died in marches intended to kill them. Arab women are not, as with the Armenians, being raped en masse and tossed up into the air onto halberds. Arabs are not being intentionally drowned to death en masse.
There is, instead, a nasty dispute in which both sides have suffered horrendous losses.
It is, as you say, true that many peoples have faced genocide. It would be obscene to compare what has occurred to Palestinian Arabs with any genocide or the Holocaust.
For the record, though, the Nazi genocide of Jews and Roma was unique in many ways that distinguishes it. If you would like me to address the point, I can. However, for now I note that what is occurring to Palestinian Arabs has nothing in common with any genocide or the Holocaust.
As for what occurred to those displaced in the Arab Israeli wars, Arabs have no obligation to keep such people in slum-like camps. That is a political decision, not a humanitarian one. In fact, you will note that Israelis attempted in the 1970’s to build permanent homes for such people and Arabs objected and brought the objection to the UN to prevent providing people with real homes.
>> There has not ever been any effort by Israel to wipe out the Arabs of Palestine
Go read Ilan Pappe’s “The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.” It’s meticulously researched, footnoted, and factually accurate.
>>There is, instead, a nasty dispute in which both sides have suffered horrendous losses. http://www.ifamericansknew.org/ for more information.
>> It would be obscene to compare what has occurred to Palestinian Arabs with any genocide or the Holocaust.
Go and say that to Palestinians living under oppression in Gaza or the West Bank. I’m sure there will be several people who will disagree with your observations. Especially since they are the recipients of a disproportionate amount of institutional, political, and ideological violence. Americans DO NOT see this. It’s our job to shed the light on this accurate portrayal of the Mideast conflict. I think recent events showed the reality of the situation. Israel is clearly the aggressors and the oppressors. Now the world knows.
“By all accounts by honest people, most of those killed were part of Hamas and were on lists of people involved in the war against Israel.”
That is yet another blatant lie from you, Noah, and as usual, you cannot support it.
The latest report from the PHRC for the 22 days of Israeli attacks puts the number of Palestinians killed at 1,434 including 235 combatants, 239 police , and 960 civilians. More than one third of the total killed were children.
The number of children killed and injured on the first day of bombing was particularly high because the Israeli military scheduled the attack for exactly the time that school was letting out for the morning and hundreds of thousands of children were in the streets on their way home. But Israel never targets children, of course.
ctrenta,
According to Benny Morris, Pappe’s history is not factual in its details. Facts are elided and misstated and, as he himself notes, he is not all that interested in facts. Morris quotes from Pappe’s writing:
A subjective approach that does not worry too much about facts is no history and no basis for an opinion. So, it is difficult to take Pappe seriously.
Moreover, writes Morris:
I don’t care what Benny Morris says. That’s his opinion. Spouting off what he thinks does nothing to bolster your argument. Go read the book, look at the evidence, line by line, and then prove the evidence he writes is invalid. It’s called putting the horse before the apple cart.
ctrenta,
Do you care that Pappe – what Pappe, not Morris – in his writing claims not to care much about facts? Does that not give you any pause at all about his understanding of the dispute? And, is the fact that he does not dwell on Arab motivations not phase you either?
I find people who think one writer knows the truth to be troubling. Pappe claims to be an historian, not the writer of scripture. The more views of different experts on a topic, the more you can learn – including whether an historian is hoeing the line of fidelity to fact.
Morris is a major historian of the dispute. To say you do not care what he writes – or that many, if not most, other historians of the dispute question Pappe’s methodological refusal to be limited by the facts – is to be consciously ignorant – to view your interpretation of events as a religion, not as events to be understood. Is that really what you want? And, what if Pappe has made things up – which is pretty much what Morris asserts – ? Then, your religion turns out to be a false one.
For what it is worth, there are more factual accounts than Pappe’s account. And, so far as I know, history is about what happened, not about what someone can project onto an event while ignoring facts that do not fit. So, you are welcome to be ignorant but do not expect me to follow you down that primrose path.
Vadim, no, in Europe citizenship is not based on ethnicity in even remotely the way it is in Israel.
How much do you think you know about European citizenship laws, Shirin? Because in 100% of the EU, citizenship is conferred automatically through blood, just like Israel, and jus soli is most definitely NOT observed at all! Actually, it seems obvious that Israel’s ‘right of return’ is even a more inclusive policy than European blood rights since religion (unlike race) is elective.
Maybe you can explain why you find a more flexible tradition that observes both ethnic AND religious criteria more odious than the european model where bloodline is the chief determinant of national identity? (and yes I’d venture that Arabs face more discrimination in Germany than they do in Israel!)
You might take a look at Jonathan’s incomplete survey of the various rights of return and bloodright citizenship laws throughout the world:
http://web.archive.org/web/20060617213102/http://headheeb.blogmosis.com/archives/032122.html
I can’t think of a single characteristic unique to zionism.
i>And how interesting that “not worse than the Arab states” is the standard to which you think Israel should be held.
I admit that’s not a very high standard, and in fact I hold Israel to a higher standard than the 19 countries of the self-styled “Arab league.” But its surprising to hear YOU admit it, who spends all her time here denouncing Israel in between apartment shopping in Damascus. That looks to me like special pleading. Do you really hold Arab countries to a lower standard than Israel? Interesting! This explains much.
Oddly, you did not suggest that he should provide links or any other supporting evidence for his claim
consider it suggested … but you might have asked him this directly before lapsing into the personal insults, no?
Ummmmm – no, Vadim, in Europe citizenship is not conferred at all the way it is in Israel. Israel is, in fact, unique in the way it confers citizenship.
Wow Shirin, that was impressive! In the seven minutes between our posts, you read that entire essay? Or is your computer set to autoreply?
>>> So, you are welcome to be ignorant but do not expect me to follow you down that primrose path. < You just discredited yourself right there. Next?
ctrenta,
Other than the fact that Pappe asserts what you think, why should I believe his account over the accounts by Benny Morris? In what way, other than agreement with your conclusions, is Pappe’s account better informed?
Why does Morris think that Pappe’s accounts are bad scholarship?
My bet: You just like what Pappe says so you take his word for things.
N., have you actually read Benny Morris’s books on 1948? It seems not, because exactly what Benny describes in excruciating and meticulously documented detail is systematic ethnic cleansing. The fact that he is unable to bring himself to openly call it that does not change reality. And of course, Benny confirms that he really does know it was ethnic cleansing when he declares openly that his only problem with what the Israelis did in 1948 is that they did not finish the job.
And I am quite sure you have not read Ilan Pappe’s work because if you had you would realize that Pappe merely draws the conclusions from Benny’s work that Benny was unwilling to face.
According to Benny Morris, Pappe’s history is not factual in its details. Facts are elided and misstated and, as he himself notes, he is not all that interested in facts.
According to Pappe, Pappe’s history is not factual. He doesn’t care about facts as such. He cares only about those “facts” that support his “narrative” based on his own ideological bent. I’ve seen him say as much.
Benny Morris is unwilling to face the only reasonable conclusion his well-documented facts must lead to, and yet while he cannot bring himself to say that what he has described was ethnic cleansing, he CAN bring himself to say he wishes they had finished the job.
I find it interesting that what Helena leaves out here about the sad state of downtown Nazareth is the role of Muslim fundamentalism in intimidating and threatening their Christian neighbors.
The Israeli government’s “compromise solution”–which allows the building of a mosque, though smaller than the one envisioned by Islamic militants and separated from the Church of the Annunciation by a wall–is a surrender to political extortion. The mosque campaign has been accompanied by violent assaults on Christians, including Muslim attacks during the past year against Christian stores in Nazareth on two sacred Christian holidays, Christmas and Easter. The Israeli government knows that Nazareth’s Christians, who have been reduced to a terrified minority, won’t riot. In Nazareth, the threat of violence comes from only one direction.
http://articles.latimes.com/1999/oct/27/local/me-26920
Vadim, I know how citizenship works in Germany, France, the UK, etc. I do not need to read your article to know that it is not the same as for Israel.
Vadim, I know how citizenship works in Germany, France, the UK, etc. I do not need to read your article to know that it is not the same as for Israel.
Spoken like a true demagogue.
Demagogue? What on earth has demagoguery to do with knowing the difference between the citizenship laws of European countries and Israel? do you even know what a demagogue IS, JES?
And do you know the differences between Israel an European countries such as France, Germany, Spain, the UK in matters of citizenship? I do.
Well, why don’t you educate us on the differences. And while you’re at it, you might want to throw in Greece and Ireland. So, let’s say that I don’t know the differences between Israel’s citizenship laws and these countries’. Okay. But you claim that you do. Further, Vadim has offered you, in addition to his own explanation, an article by a legal expert. But you have simply waved this off, just as you wave off recognized scholars (without, BTW, giving us any information on your background or qualifications for doing so, other than displaying your familiarity with the difference in a transliterated gh from a kh.
So, by all means, do go ahead and expound on those differences for my benefit, because I’m too dull and unworldly to have learned them myself.
Vadim,
The article you are quoting only considers the right of return, which is a special case, or at least not the most frequently occuring situation in the EU.
As for the system of acquisition of nationality in the EU, it is wrong to generalise as you do and to pretend that in the EU we have jus sanguinis.
1) France put the jus soli in place at the time of the French revolution and she is the first to have ever recognized the jus soli, more she invented it.
2) Germany is an example however of the jus sanguinis. There it was the result of the former Central EU empires, following which several disporas had emigrated a long way from their home country. At the end of the empires, different treaties took measures to allow the citizen of these diaspora to return to their country.
3) Nowadays and since international and long distance migrations are taking place, most of the EU countries have a mix of jus soli and jus sanguinis and the most frequent cases of acquisition of the nationality of the country you are living in is no more the result of a right to return, but the result of having decided to make your life in this new country.
4) How minorities are treated in their own land or in the land from which they were expelled (aka the case of Palestinians in Israel) is still a completely other story and has nothing to do with the current EU situation. I don’t see why you are trying to compare Israel with the EU countries, this only obscures the situation.
Shirin,
In fact, I have read Benny Morris’ book, 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War and I have read many other books about the Arab Israeli conflict. Morris indicates clearly that the Israelis followed plan Dalet, which he goes to great pains to explain was a plan to move people out of the way of fighting. He describes in detail how that plan was implemented and he indicates that there was no plan to ethnically cleanse Palestinian Arabs. By and large, most of the displaced people who were actively moved – and this does not address those who fled, who did not want to live under non-Muslim rule, who wanted to fight Jews, etc. – were moved so that they would be away from the fighting.
He also notes that a driving force on the Arab side for fighting was religion and that it even drove the more Western educated ruler of Jordan.
Be that as it may, I think the most important book at the moment on the dispute is Army of Shadows: Palestinian Collaboration with Zionism, 1917-1948, by Hillel Cohen. It shows that it was a political choice by Palestinian Arabs to adopt confrontation instead of negotiation. His book provides context for showing that the dispute was avoidable – the result of specific decisions and tactics employed by Arabs and Jews, not an attempt by Arabs to prevent colonialism or anything of the sort.
Christiane,
Jus Sanguinis is a more restrictive “law of return.”
And you have it backwards – jus soli is a relic of feudalism and existed throughout europe for centuries before the French revolution at which point (1804) the French under Bonaparte revived jus sanguinis. (cf http://www.cliohres.net/books/7/12.pdf )
Even today if I had a child in France or any other EU country, she would not be considered a citizen of that country for many years. The conditions she would have to meet are practically the same as ordinary naturalization by residence. Whereas a child born to French parents in the US would immediately be French, no questions asked.
Israel’s naturalization criteria (both for Jews and non-Jews) are as liberal ie accommodating as any European state’s. And despite Shirin’s blank denials, there is nothing unique about zionism as an complementary route to citizenship, as more restrictive homeland laws are also in place in Greece, Germany, Ireland etc which draw on very similar ‘ethnic’ criteria. Zionism is more accomodating because religion -unlike race- is chosen.
I don’t see why you are trying to compare Israel with the EU countries
The question I am addressing is whether Zionism is unique or in some way especially racist means of conferring citizenship as Shirin has claimed. all apropos of someone upthread arguing that “ethnic states” can’t be democratic.
Christiane,
You write: “I don’t see why you are trying to compare Israel with the EU countries, this only obscures the situation.”
No. To understand something, you need to examine what it is like and what it is not like. The alternative is to employ essentialist that, in reality, state simple prejudices.
Israel is rather similar to most EU countries in defining citizenship, at least in part, by ethnicity. As Vadim notes, Israel also includes religion in its ethnic description but the gist is that innumerable countries have a dominant ethnic group and provide this or that advantage to the dominant group. As noted, Israel provides the advantage of allowing any Jews to migrate and become an Israeli, just as France does for those of “French blood.”
At some point, please note, France became what it is today. It was not always the home of the French. In fact, there were wars of annihilation in which the current people known as “French” survived. In the case of Germany, it is the home to various German peoples including many million who were displaced from the countries that surround Germany – e.g. but not only the millions displaced from their traditional homes at the end of WWII.
So, if we look at countries as they are and not project, as your approach does, original sin onto Israel’s founding, you will find that Israel fares rather well compared to most European countries. Certainly, Arab Israelis are not in a state of fairly constant rioting, as is the case in France with its Muslim population. And, Israel has better schooling for its Arab population than France is providing. And, there are more Arabs in Israel’s government than France has. Etc., etc. And, the discrimination is likely less than in France – although such does exist.