I have a column in the Christian Science Monitor today on the imminent pullback of Israel’s troops and settlers from Gaza.
It was a hard column to write, for a number of reasons… Not least of which was that the calendar for doing it kind of snuck up on me this month. (I have a “regular” slot on the second Thursday of each month, plus can suggest as many additional pieces– most of which also run on Thursdays– to my editors there as I want.)
One of the basic underlying theses of this piece is that pure surface area is not, in itself, what determines the “viability” (or otherwise) of a state in modern times. Rather, it is the presence or absence of extrenally imposed constraints on the ability of that state to build economic relations with other states around the world. The two paradigms I was looking at were (1) Singapore and (2) South Africa’s Bantustans.
Singapore has a very restricted surface area (693 square kilometers). Gaza’s is even more restricted (360 sq. km.) Gaza is certainly heavily peopled, but its population density is not as high as Singapore’s. Singapore’s GDP per capita is $27,800; Gaza’s is c. $600; and Israel’s is $20,800.
The South African Bantustans were all located on economically marginal chunks of the RSA’s land… But South Africa is a huge country; so even those Bantustans had considerably more territory than Gaza’s– plus, I think, a lower general population density. But what hampered them most from registering significant social, economic, and political development was the chokehold that South Africa maintained on their borders (and also on the functioning of their security services.)
It was those South African restrictions on the Bantustans’ ability to conduct independent relations, including economic relations, with the outside world that led just about every other government in the world– with the exception of Israel!— to completely reject SA’s claims that those ten territories qualified as “independent states.”
Nowadays, Israel still seeks to maintain controls over all of Gaza’s borders. Along the short border with Egypt, it will subcontract some of the routine patrolling tasks to the Egyptian Army. But it still crucially seeks to maintain its own hand over the crossing-point between Gaza and Egypt, just as it seeks to maintain control over Gaza’s airport (once it has been rebuilt– Sharon’s armies having destroyed its EU-built runways back in 2002) as well as over the Gaza seaport, once rebuilt (ditto) and all other access along Gaza’s lengthy coastline onto the Mediterranean.
Israel also seeks to exert control over all of Gaza’s border with itself. That is its right. If Gaza had real independence none of its other borders with the outside world would be any of Israel’s damn’ business.
So why are European and other western governments lining up to laud Sharon’s “courageous” move to create a small, tightly controlled Bantustan in Gaza? Beats me. Especially since it has always been quite clear to everyone that Sharon has agreed to undertake this pullback from Gaza in place of doing anything positive to respond to those portions of the EU-US-UN-Russian-sponsored “road map” that require Israel to make non-trivial troop withdrawals in the West Bank.
It has also been quite clear to everyone who has followed Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy in any depth that an Israeli “concession” regarding the territory of Gaza will never satisfy the Palestinians’ quite legitimate demands to exercize their national independence over the whole of the Palestinian territory that was occupied in 1967— that is, Gaza plus the West Bank, including East Jerusalem– with or without minor and mutually agreed territorial adjustments with Israel.
Remember, the whole land of the WB plus Gaza still only constitutes around 23 percent of the land of historic (British mandate-era) Palestine– and considerably less, too, than the area of the Palestinian Arab state envisaged in the Partition Plan adopted by the UN back in 1947. So to the Palestinians– some millions of whom are refugees from inside the Israeli lines of 1948-49– ceding their claim to exercize political control over the other 78 percent of their ancesrtal homeland was already a big deal. It was a move that was hotly contested within the Palestinian arena when it was first proposed by the PLO leadership 30-plus years ago; and has periodically been contested since then, too.
Therefore, to expect that the Palestinians will at any point be “satisfied” with just Gaza alone– which contains just 1.3% of the land of Mandate-era Palestine– has always been a completely unrealistic proposition.
Add to that the fact that some 80 percent of Gaza’s population are refugees from inside 1948 Israel, whose demand for some satisfaction of their claims to ancestral properties that they and their forebears left behind during their conflict-driven flight from them in 1948 is currently completely ignored by Israel, and you’ll see that Sharon’s Gaza pullback is not destined to provide anything like a situation of longterm or even medium term stability.
Indeed, there is a distinct possibility that the pullout of Israeli soldiers and settlers might prove to be only a prelude to the establishment of an ugly free-fire zone inside Gaza, in which the IDF can escalate its bombings and incursions as much as it wants– without, at that point, any fear of the Palestinians making life a little hard for the settlers and Israeli troops stationed until now throughout the Strip.
I hope to heck that that is not the outcome (or one hidden intention) of the imminent pullback… But it is certainly a distinct possibility.
I guess one of the other important things I refer to in my column is the degree to which the western MSM has concerned itself with the settler-driven narrative of giving huge exposure to the “battle” inside Israeli society over the fate of some 8,500 Jewish Israelis whose residence inside occupied Gaza has anyhow all along been illegal under international law— while it has given little play at all to the effects of this pullout on what I called the “fates and dashed hopes” of the eight million or so Palestinians worldwide… By that, I meant their hopes for a viable and robust independent national state.
So there you have it… The western MSM thinks that 8,500 Jewish Israelis somehow count for more than eight million Palestinians??? To me, that really is an important part of what has been going on here– and of what Sharon and his friends in the Israeli settler movement have really “achieved”.
To which, all I can say is: “Human equality now!”
42 thoughts on “CSM column on Gaza”
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Sad state of affairs. My understanding was that the relocation also serves to distract from a big military buildup in Rafah. Also a deeply buried NYT article that got little notice reports that the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. is calling for sanctions against Israel, much like the effective SA sanctions you refer to above. Let’s hope that their effort gets more attention.
It was my understanding that Judea and Samaria are “disputed” territories and not “occupied”, since those areas were controlled by Jordan prior to 1967. Jordan has relinquished claims over that area. Isn’t Israel entitled to keep those disputed lands until peace is achieved pursuant to UN Res 242, which, in any case, does not require Israel to withdraw from ALL lands conquered in 1967?
Also, can someone please tell me when there has ever been a “Palestinian” state? As far as I can tell, history shows that there has never been one. If there has been, tell me where the “Palestinian” capital was. “Palestinian” claims to lands in which they never had a state appear pretty weak.
Didn’t the Arabs reject the 1948 partition plan and instead launch a war of aggression which they lost?
Also, isn’t it true that 70% of mandatory Palestine was given to Jordan by the British. In other words, 70% of mandatory Palestine is already Arab controlled.
Finally, can someone please tell me why Helena Cobban is so obsessed with Israel, a teeny tiny sliver of land about the size of new jersey? My guess is she wishes she was a Jew, or she is afraid of Jews. Note how, like the Germans and Arabs, she tries to blame Israel for every ill in the world, including for the Iraq blunder. Ms. Cobban should look inward to see if she harbors a fear of Jews. Why the special emphasis on the Jewish state, Helena? Why do you turn a blind eye to Arab terrorism, and seek to justify the murder of civilians?
Jihad- Should Bush also do the same reflecting that you recommend for Helena? Does he also wish he were a Jew? He certainly seem obsessed with that tiny sliver of land, as you call it, and he puts our money where his mouth is.
Well oh dear, Mr “Jihad” (a rather insensitive nom-de-plume, btw)– when you say It was my understanding that Judea and Samaria are “disputed” territories and not “occupied”, you just show how wrong your understanding is…
No-one in the world except Israel and its lackeys and acolytes in the west refuses to describe the territories as “occupied”, which is what they are under international law. Israel’s presence in the West Bank and Gaza is a result ONLY of its military conquest of them in 1967… but successive UN resolutions since 1945, on any number of issues, have repeatedly stressed “the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by force.” (Would you want a world system in which such acquisition were indeed admissible?)
The last time the UN ruled on the sovereignty situation of the West Bank and Gaza– and also, come to that, areas now “inside” Israel like the Little Triangle and the Big Triangle– was in the Partition resolution of 1947, when those lands were determined to be part of the Palestinian Arab state. The whole of an expanded Jerusalem was determined to be an internationally-ruled “corpus separatum”: Both Israel and the Palestinians currently challenge that aspect of the Partition Plan.
You wonder why I worry so much about the Israeli-Palestinian situation? For three main reasons: (1) I seek the equality of all of God’s children in all situations– something the Palestinians are currently denied. (Funny how you didn’t respond to my call for “human equality now”, huh?)
(2) My tax dollars are poured quite disproportionately into supporting the Israeli government and all its doings. And (3) The colonial-expansionist policies followed by successive Israeli governments– with the passive or active support of Washington– have helped poison relations between my country and much of the rest of the world, and have thereby significantly undercut the wellbeing and security of US citizens everywhere.
I really don’t know what you mean by accusing me of “turning a blind eye to Arab terrorism” oir “seeking to justify the murder of civilians.” I never have. If you continue expressing such slanders on my blog I shall ban you or perhaps sue you.
Helena, I could say quite a lot about this post, but the bottom line is that the battle now taking place in Israel is about much more than 8500 settlers in Gaza. It’s about the future and the souls of 6.4 million Israelis, as well as whether the Palestinians will ever get a fair chance to realize their hopes. As such, I don’t think the math in your last three paragraphs adds up.
Jonathan– I agree with you that the contest is actually about the fates of all Israelis and all Palestinians… What I was criticizing was the intense focus in the western MSM on the “human drama” of the relatively small # of to-be-evacuated Israeli persons at the cost of looking at the life situations, dreams, and prospects of the chronically beleaguered and extremely vulnerable Palestinians. I would add to that, that the life situations, dreams, and prospects of all Israelis, and how they will be affected by the evacuation, should be looked at too. Certainly.
How do you read the various warnings about the probability of an internal Jewish-Israeli civil war over the evacuations? I have tended to find them overdrawn…
There have been quite a few NYT features about the Palestinians of Gaza, their preparations for the withdrawal, and their hopes and dreams. There’s also been pretty good coverage of the political issues like the Gaza-WB link and the ongoing negotiations over control of the Rafah crossing. I’ve noticed similar stories in the W. Post, LA Times and other big-city dailies, although this depth of coverage probably isn’t uniform across the country.
I also don’t put much credence in the warnings of civil war. Yesha can pull big crowds at demonstrations, but the hard core that will actually act is much smaller. There are enough of them to cause disruption and (as we saw last week) perform acts of terrorism, but nowhere near enough to threaten the state.
quite a few NYT features about the Palestinians of Gaza H’mm, I would say that’s a bit of an exaggeration if we’re looking at, say, the past month of coverage… Anyway, the number of those pieces has still been far from proportional, numbers-wise, to the pieces about the angst of the 8,5000 settlers.
I keep going back to Bentham: “Each should count for one and none for more than one.” Good in this situation as in just about all others, I would say.
Have we seen interviews with Gaza-Palestinian opinion leaders like Iyad Sarraj, Raji Sourani, or Ziad Abu Amr? Have we seen reference to the many existing studies of the effect of the prolonged occupation and conflict on the lives and psyches of young Palestinians and their hopes for the future? I really don’t recall seeing much of that in the MSM in the past few months…
I just did a Google news search on “Sarraj” (the esteemed head of the Gaza Community Mental health Program) and “Sourani” (the ditto of the Gaza-based Palestinian Human Rights Center) which confirmed my judgment that neither had been quoted in US MSM recently.
Sourani was in the Sydney Morning Herald (July 29), the National Post of Canada (Aug 8) and the Melbourne Age (Aug 3)… But for the US MSM it really seems that the assessments and feelings of wonderful, inspirational people like these don’t count at all…
Different reasons explain why the MSM are so focalized on the Jewish colons of Gaza right now.
1) Compared to other conflicts, the Israelo/Palestinian conflicts has always received a disproportionate attention.
2) Most of the time, reports on the Israelo/Palestinian conflicts are showing Palestinians throwing stones and Israelian brutal military answers. Or they show Palestinian bombs and Israeli wounded, Israel destroying Ramalah, etc.. With the potential disorders attached to the withdrawal of Gaza, the news agencies hold a new subject on a long time favorite theme, so they aren’t going to miss that.
3) Whatever we think of the Israelo/Palestinian conflict, the coming days are an important test. They will show how the Israeli are able to deal with a withdrawal of occupied territories. It is also an important test for the Palestinian authorities and other Palestinian factions. Not all the colons will fight by violent means against their expulsion. Here in the EU media, there were reports showing relieved colons who told they preferred to live in the smaller house/caravans prepared for them, than live with insecurity in their actual bigger houses. There were also many reports showing how the Palestinians were preparing for the Israeli withdrawal.
4) EU leaders are much more comitted to the Roadmap than their US partners. But for the moment they are waiting to see how things goes in Gaza. They want the Isreali to proceed with the withdrawal of all the occupied territories and to engage in real negotiations. But as long as the US doesn’t support that move as well, they are powerless.
Christiane, colons is a good word!
As to the question of whether the “Israelo/Palestinian” conflict has received disproportionate attention, though, I am not sure that it has.
Let me explain that as a child of three I was taken with my family to Kenya from Britain. My father was in the Royal Navy. I grew up in that settler colony. Of course I was unaware that a new settler colony was starting in Israel in 1948, but even as a child I could not be unaware that settler colonialism was under pressure and on the way out, and this culminated in the famous Uhuru of Kenya fifteen years later in 1963.
I discovered, of course, that this independence was part of a world-wide movement involving the greater part of the world’s population, including India and China and more than 50 countries in Africa. This is the historical grand narrative of my lifetime, and I dare say, yours too.
So for me it is not surprising that Israel continues to get attention, and I don’t think it is disproportionate. It is because Israel is going against the tide of history. Israel is an anachronism, a settler colony started when all the others were on their way out. In that sense Israel’s story is bound up with the world’s story of repudiation of colonial rule and so the attention on Israel is not disproportionate in that sense.
As with South Africa, where I now live, Israel must try to reverse history in a violent way. It can’t just live in peace like other countries. It is at loggerheads with history. I believe the lunatic revival of colonialism in Iraq by the United States and Britain has a lot to do with this. It’s like Suez all over again. The 1956 Suez crisis was an attempt to buy time for colonialism, involving Israel, but opposed by the USA. This time round the USA is on side, but it won’t make it better. Colonialism is still doomed. When it is altogether gone, and the Holy Land is peaceful again, there won’t be this focus on Palestine as at present.
You’re absolutely right, Helena. The focus on the human trauma of the settlers being forced to move is enough to turn your stomach. Considering that those people settled on stolen land from which Palestinians were displaced, and that for decades Israel ran Gaza basically for their convenience, they should be glad to be getting out safely. The whole thing just shows how upside down the US media are on this issue.
By the way, when was the last time anyone in the MSM noticed that the Golan is occupied, and that Israel evicted 100,000 Syrians from their homes there? Linda Gradstein of NPR recently did a long profile of the delightful Israeli wine industry on the Golan Heights without once mentioning that that territory is not in Israel at all.
No-one in the world except Israel and its lackeys and acolytes in the west refuses to describe the territories as “occupied”
I agree. In that context was depressing to see Steven Erlanger of the New York Times recently say that this was a question on which there was serious legal dispute. I thought of emailing him to ask if he could name a single scholar of international law without ties to Israel who describes these lands as “disputed”, but decided to let it go.
The US could not have maintained its one-sided support of Israel over the decades without the sustained support of the MSM.
Dominic, I know you’re aware that the roots of the modern Israeli state go back well before 1948, with the yishuv settlement beginning in the 1880s. Indeed, if not for the two prior generations of settlement, there would have been no chance of a successful Israeli war of independence! But that isn’t really the point.
The point is that, although political attitudes toward settler colonialism have changed, the rules of the game haven’t really. Settler colonies, after WW2 as before, are durable wherever the settlers can establish a firm majority. Kaliningrad will never be German again regardless of what one might think of the Soviet settler colonialism that took place there in the late 1940s. Armenia will never get Nakhichevan back, Western Sahara will be Moroccan forever and few Greeks will return to northern Cyprus; in all cases, the ethnic cleansing was too thorough and the influx of settlers too large. At a certain point, a settler colony is no longer a colony, and is instead a state with settler roots. The United States made that transition long ago, South Africa and Kenya never did, and Israel has done so within the Green Line but not without.
This means that there is indeed a way for Israel to “live in peace like other countries” as you put it. (How I wish that other countries in fact lived in peace!) That is to leave the occupied territories and live within firm borders that are internationally recognized and where Israelis form a stable majority. Israel is only fighting history outside the Green Line – within the line, the examples above show that history is on its side.
But at the same time, as long as Israel remains in the occupied territories, the conflicts that result will inevitably affect the stability of the entire state. This means in turn that, for those like me who believe that Israel is necessary and worth preserving, there is no goal more important than ending the occupation, and nothing more urgent than Palestinian freedom. Even aside from Levinas’ view that a Zionist state must affirm Jewish values including the moral rights of non-Jews, sheer practical considerations mandate that Palestinian statehood – real, free, prosperous and contiguous Palestinian statehood – is the most important Zionist cause of the 21st century.
Christiane: Yes, “colon” is a good word. It calls to mind Algeria, which is precisely what is replicated by Israel’s continued presence in the WB and Gaza.
I sometimes wonder if this term is part of the reason that Europeans tend to view the I-P conflict differently from Americans or Australians. English-language media usually use the term “settler” to describe Israelis living in the WB and Gaza, while French-language media use “colon” and most other European papers use a word meaning “colonist.” The term “settler” isn’t pejorative in the US, Australia and similar New World states; to an American, “settler” calls to mind the founders of his own country. A Frenchman, however, can’t read about the WB and Gaza without being reminded of Algeria. I’ve discussed this with a French-speaking Moroccan friend and she believes that this causes a very real difference of perception.
So you’re saying, Jonathan, that it all depends on how thorough the ethnic cleansing has been.
Well, that’s not very nice, but I understand what you are saying. I think the trouble with Israeli colonialism as such is that this matter actually cannot be finished with. So there is this continual juggling of immigration, bantustanisation, expulsion, et cetera, and also the pushing of the frontier to protect the frontier, which is what the West Bank, Gaza and Golan settlements are about.
The external settlements are like the redundant wood that chars in the fire, protecting the structural wood underneath.
The whole thing is a hotch-potch of expediency. Israel has no future as part of a concrete, organic, peaceful Holy Land. It is only a counter-natural mutant of the post-colonial Imperialist world, kept pumped up by tensions that are much greater than the place itself. It’s a freak.
There’s not much wrong with settlers staying on after the end of colonialism, but full scale settler states are anachronisms.
You can’t talk about the USA, Australia &c. They can’t maintain the settler ideology with colour bar &c and they can’t prevent immigration. They have simply become bourgeois.
Let me note here for the record that we do not concede Western Sahara. Others can speak for the other places you mention.
Dominic:
So you’re saying, Jonathan, that it all depends on how thorough the ethnic cleansing has been. Well, that’s not very nice, but I understand what you are saying.
I’m not talking about the morality of settler states but about their durability, which has little to do with what’s nice. Most states were formed in a way that isn’t nice.
Well, that’s not very nice, but I understand what you are saying. I think the trouble with Israeli colonialism as such is that this matter actually cannot be finished with.
I’m not entirely sure what you mean by “finished,” but if colonialism is finished at the point where it becomes self-sustaining, then Israel within the Green Line has long since reached that point. Israel is capable of maintaining its existence within the Green Line without any extraordinary measures, and has been so since soon after 1948. Israel outside the Green Line can only be maintained by extraordinary (and oppressive) measures, so colonialism there is most definitely not finished and never will be.
Well, that’s not very nice, but I understand what you are saying. I think the trouble with Israeli colonialism as such is that this matter actually cannot be finished with.
That was the idea in the 1970s, when the Israeli government believed that it was necessary to have a cushion against conventional invasion. I don’t think that was true even then, and it certainly isn’t so now, given that there is no longer a credible conventional threat. The best way for Israel to protect its frontier at this point is to have a frontier, which means getting the hell out of the WB.
Israel has no future as part of a concrete, organic, peaceful Holy Land.
I don’t know if you’ve been to Israel or have personal acquaintance with Israelis, but Israel is quite organic and has been so for a long time. It’s diverse, certainly, and has internal divisions like any other nation, but Israelis have melded together to become something self-sustaining and found in no other place. The foundation of the state may initially have been a matter of expediency but the nation is now stronger than its divisions. If nothing else, the current battle over the evacuation is proving that, and so did the period of relative peace in the 1990s; neither the tensions nor their temporary relaxation resulted in the state being torn apart.
The thing about settlers is that, after a few generations, they become indigenous. Israel within the Green Line has passed that point.
Let me note here for the record that we do not concede Western Sahara.
I don’t either, but it’s a pretty forlorn hope at this point; the Moroccan settlers are a majority and there isn’t any serious pressure on them to get out.
No Pref:
The focus on the human trauma of the settlers being forced to move is enough to turn your stomach.
Whatever one might think of the settlers politically (and I suspect my opinion of them isn’t much different from yours), they are human beings, and many of them are second-generation. You and I both live on stolen land, but it would still be painful if we were evicted. The settlers’ behavior is atrocious, their human rights arguments are ridiculous and compassion certainly isn’t a reason to refrain from evicting them, but I don’t think the compassion itself is misplaced.
Also, the “human drama” is politically significant in at least two ways. In the immediate term, it plays a part in shaping the perceptions of the settlers’ friends and relatives in Israel, and thus affects overall Israeli politics. And in the long term, the character of the “human drama” will affect the settlers’ reintegration into Israeli society. As the Algerian and Angolan examples show, returning colons either melt back into society or form unassimilable fascist lumps, depending on how they’re treated during and after evacuation. The core of the National Front in Toulon was formed by disgruntled pieds noirs.
That’s one reason why, as the Israeli Democracy Institute has argued, it might be important to provide “ideological compensation” to the settlers by recognizing their pain rather than leaving it to fester. Such recognition obviously should not involve giving in to their political agenda, but if acknowledging their pain and allowing them to tell their story will help prevent Nitzanim from turning into another Toulon, then why not?
Needless to say, the same goes for the Palestinians; recognition of their suffering during the nakba and after will be an important part of resolving their conflict with the Israelis.
The US could not have maintained its one-sided support of Israel over the decades without the sustained support of the MSM.
I’ve seen this argument made before by people sympathetic to the Palestinian cause. I’ve also heard the pro-Israel side argue that European support of Palestine is the fault of Europe’s mainstream media. I suspect that both are sometimes right but far more often wrong.
The media can sometimes shape perceptions (as, possibly, in the “settler/colon” dichotomy I discussed above), but media portrayals and biases tend to be more effect than cause. After all, reporters and editors are themselves members of the public and are not immune to the currents of public opinion! European public opinion of the I-P conflict is influenced in large part by Europe’s recent experience with colonialism, American opinion is influenced in part by the United States’ settler heritage etc., and I suspect that these perceptions shape the media more than they are shaped by it.
I think that we Europeans bear two different guilt feelings which are at play in our relation with the rest of the world.
1) On one side, there is the guilt for what was done to the Jewish population between 1930 and 1945. This guilt feeling explains why the EU states were not adament in preventing the first important flow of Jewish settlement in Israel after WWII (the Brittish tried to stop them and there is that story of Exodus which struck the minds for quite a long time in EU and where sympathies sided with the future settlers). I think that untill the war of 1967, the EU opinion was mostly favorable to Israel. The left was speaking of the creation of Kibbutzim in a very faborable way, because they liked the idea of collective farms.
EU opinion changed after the 1967 war and the violent occupation of further land by Israel. After that conquest, the emerging popularity of Arafat as the leader of the Palestinian Liberation Organization won the sympathy of the left; he was another hero to put along with Che Guevarra and the Vietnamese, the hero of a liberation movement. Untill the six days war, Israel wasn’t perceived as a colonizer or a conqueror. It’s only then that the sad situation of the Palestinians refugees begun to interest and to move the EU opinion.
2) On the other side, there is the feeling of guilt for what was done during colonization and for all the prejudices and racism underlying colonization. Because of 1) I don’t think that the EU opinion ever thought of the Israelians as colonisator in the sense of the former EU colonial states. However there were strong reactions when the Israeli tried to annexe further land.
3) Language alone IMO don’t explain the EU opinion, although it may confort them in their understanding : it is mainly a question of legality, the Israeli occupation of the Westbank is illegal and contradicts the UN chart (to which we attach a great importance); it contradicts the fundamental rights of the Palestinians.
4) I think that these two guilts we bear (that of the extermination of the Jews and that of numerous colonial wars and invasions) explain why the EU opinion is now against the law of the strongest, why we are so opposed the Iraq invasion and why we now sides with the Palestinians rather than with the Israelians. After being the oppressed, they have turned into the oppressors.
5) During all the second half of the XXth century the EU has tried to mend fences, in Europe itself with the constitution of the European Union and with former colonies who got/took their independence. So the blunt and hawkish discourses of both the US and Israel sounds like that of alien. We don’t share the same values anymore. We thought that the globalization of the economy and the big corporations were the “enemy” and the cause of the world problems. Yet with the Iraq war, we are brought back to the times of imperial military power and wars. I bet that in this case, the other countries feel that way as well.
6) It would be interesting to investigate why EU opinion bought the US anti-communist arguments during the coldwar, but not now for the so-called ” global war on terrorism”.
Ooops sorry for being so long.. the fault to a noyous friday afternoon in office.
Jonathan, I agree that all human beings are worthy of compassion. What turns my stomach about this is the fact that the departing settlers are getting far, far more attention and, by implication, compassion from the media than the Palestinians whose land they stole.
I’ve also heard the pro-Israel side argue that European support of Palestine is the fault of Europe’s mainstream media.
I chuckled when I saw the explanation that the reason why the French oppose the settlements was because of the word colon. Well, that let’s suppose that that explains France. Why is the entire rest of the world against the settlements?
Israel’s Jewish settlements are not an issue where there are two roughly equal sides with roughly, or even remotely equal moral claims. US support for those settlements sticks out like a sore thumb. At least to the rest of the world it does. The American public is not aware of it because the media haven’t told them.
Christiane: We pretty much agree on the basic reasons why the I-P conflict is perceived differently on opposite sides of the Atlantic. I may disagree with some of the things you said – for instance, I believe all parties must bear some share of fault for the conflict and that it can’t be stated as simply as “the oppressed becoming the oppressor” – but such disagreements are of course about the perceptions themselves and not the reasons for them.
As far as why Europeans were more accepting of American arguments during the cold war, I suspect this was because Western Europe’s safety was at issue.
No Pref: As I mentioned above, the media in a number of other European languages also use a term meaning “colonist.” I agree, though, that terminology and language use are pretty minor factors in affecting perceptions of the conflict; the historical factors Christiane cited are much greater ones. But this only goes to show that the differences in media treatment between the US and Europe are mainly the result of differing public perceptions rather than the cause.
As for the settlers: maybe one reason they’re getting so much attention now is that they’re the ones currently being done unto. When the Palestinians are the ones being evicted, the media focus more on them and less (or not at all) on the settlers.
differences in media treatment between the US and Europe are mainly the result of differing public perceptions
This is not a difference between the US and Europe. It’s a difference between the US and the rest of the world. Your argument is the similar to when the pro-war camp tried to make the world-wide opposition to the invasion of Iraq into a problem between the US and France.
As for the settlers: maybe one reason they’re getting so much attention now is that they’re the ones currently being done unto. When the Palestinians are the ones being evicted, the media focus more on them and less (or not at all) on the settlers.
As for the settlers, they’re getting far more attention and sympathy in proportion to their numbers than the Palestinians ever have gotten here. Particularly in light of the fact that the Palestinians were evicted from their own land, while the settlers are being evicted from someone else’s.
No one answered my questions:
1. When has there ever been a Palestinian state?
2. Where was its capital?
3. Until a peace treaty is signed, why is Israel under any LEGAL obligation to give back land won in a defensive war?
4. Why should Israel be the only country in history to have to give back land it won in war, absent a peace treaty, especially to a so called people who never had a state there before?
5. Why is Helena Cobban, a supposed liberal, so full of burning hatred when it comes to the Jewish state? Does she hate people based on their national origin?
6. Does Helena Cobban, a supposed liberal and progressive, show a lack of empathy for Jewish victims of Arab terrorism and Jewish suffering in general?
7. Would there have been a need for Israel’s security barrier absent Arab suicide bombers?
8. Why does Helena and most of the posters on this board oppose a Jewish state in its historic homeland, while favoring independent states for other oppressed peoples elsewhere? Apparantly its wrong to have an nation state for Jews, but, for example, an ethnically cleansed Palestinian state for Arabs is a necessity?
9. Aren’t many people opposed to a Jewish State simply Judeophobic?
Thank you for answering.
This is not a difference between the US and Europe. It’s a difference between the US and the rest of the world.
The “rest of the world” doesn’t exactly have uniform public perceptions of the I-P conflict. There’s quite a bit of public support for Israel in Australia, Canada and for that matter India; the last of these is mainly an “enemy of my enemy” sort of support, but it’s real. If I looked, I’m sure I could come up with other countries where this is the case for various reasons. You’re right that it isn’t only Europe where perceptions run the other way, but I’d be wary of speaking for the world.
The “rest of the world” doesn’t exactly have uniform public perceptions of the I-P conflict.
We were talking of Israel’s settlement policies. India strongly opposes Israel’s settlements in the occupied territories. Canada does as well. I don’t know about Australia. In terms of the rest of the world, one doesn’t have to look further than those innumerable 158-3 UN General Assembly votes, with the US and Guam standing alone with Israel.
BTW, have you ever noticed how the MSM always buries the report on those votes at the end of a story on page 18? When is the last time you ever saw an analysis of how isolated the US is on this issue, and how that has affected our standing in the world? I don’t think I have ever seen one.
Jihad, I won’t address your propaganda laundry list. I will simply point out that I think that most of us here got involved in this issue out of sympathy for the Arabs rather than dislike of the Jews.
We were talking of Israel’s settlement policies.
Oh, all right, I thought you were talking about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in general. Of course, strictly speaking, the United States’ position is also that the settlements are illegal.
BTW, Australia and Canada usually abstain on those GA votes. See, e.g., this one.
Jonathan, the US is the only country in the world besides Israel that gives practical support to the settlements. We do this through our massive aid to Israel and by protecting Israel diplomatically in the UN via those 158-3 General Assembly votes and chronic use of the veto or the threat of the veto in the Security Council.
We really do stick out like a sore thumb. Unfortunately you seem to be unable to admit this in public, and perhaps in private as well.
I like you and respect your sense of decorum. But this denial of obvious truths has gotten the US into a bad place. Even the best supporters of Israel, such as yourself, have contributed to this.
We wouldn’t have called the old regime in South Africa “The Afrikaner State”. We called it “colonialism of a special type”. I would say that Israel is colonialism of a special type and it won’t be a proper state until it becomes bourgeois and therefore not united, Jonathan, but divided by class.
A proper bourgeois state cannot keep its proletariat in the position of foreigners. South Africa couldn’t, and Israel won’t be able to. Sooner or later the make-shift lash-ups that pass for Israeli statecraft will fall before the inexorable logic of capitalism. “All that is solid” in Israel “will melt into air”, as Marx put it in the Manifesto, referring to the effect of capitalism on pre-capitalist institutions.
Settlers don’t become indigenous, Jonathan, they become bourgeois (or proletarian). By the time Marx published “Capital” the USA was bourgeois, but Australia was not, and there is a chapter in “Capital” where Marx uses the Australian example to show how hopeless it is to try to be a proper bourgeois in settler conditions. The workforce just walks away.
Conversely, when the settlers become bourgeois, with a properly subordinated and socialised proletariat, settlerism is gone for all practical purposes. If Israel becomes fully bourgeois it will not exist as “Israel” any more. The artificial props will have to be shed in favour of the market, and the racial discrimination will have to go, incuding the right of return and the non-right of return, for different types of people.
There are plenty of Israelis who know this politics. They think they can beat the rap and buck the trend. That’s why they hate Fatah so much, because it is bourgeois. They prefer Hamas, so long as it remains an anachronism like themselves.
It’s also why the Israelis have sabotaged the 2-state solution. One bourgeois and one settler state cannot coexist. The bourgeois one might start out weak but it will eat the settler one like a cancer. The Israelis know this.
“Jihad”, you are persisting in your deliberate misreadings of what is written here. For example: Why does Helena and most of the posters on this board oppose a Jewish state in its historic homeland…
This is not true of me and imagine it is not true of most of the posters here.
Either you are paranoid– psychologically incapable of drawing out anything but the most malevolent inferences from what you read here. Or you are just malevolent– intent on stirring up trouble here.
The rest of us, meanwhile, are having a good conversation, probing serious differences in a friendly and respectful way. I think we’ll get on with it.
The foundation myth of the settler state is its strongest attribute. The Pieds Noir of Algeria or the Kenya Cowboys were as passionate about their identity as the Jewish settlers of Israel are about theirs. It makes no difference whether a myth has a historical basis or not. Functionally it is a myth. As such it belongs to the mystical, pre-capitalist world.
We know that the other states are bourgeois states, unless they are proletarian. In any case they are secular, polyglot and non-racial, except Israel, which is the Jewish State, and Bhutan, which is still entirely feudal.
I suppose most people would look kindly upon the sentiments of a Jew who wants to live in the Holy Land, but the Jewish state, as a settler state, is an embarrassment. It requires the adoption of a double standard. What is good for South Africa should be good for Israel, but the Israelis mostly don’t agree. Some of them do, but most don’t.
I think that will change.
Dominic, the majority of the Israeli working class consists of Mizrahi and Russian Jews. Class conflict combined with nationalism played a huge role in the rise of the Likud, and in the formation of Mizrahi-based parties such as Shas. For that matter, a number of the Arab nationalist parties in Israel – Balad, for instance – are strictly bourgeois. The conception of Israel as having Jewish settlers and a Palestinian proletariat was never really accurate and has become even less so since the outbreak of the second intifada.
Israel is also quite a bit different from Australia in Marx’ time. In Australia, the working class could walk away because there was a vast amount of new land for them to settle. This is not true in Israel and hasn’t been since soon after independence. There are no frontiers in Israel – not even the Negev any more – and therefore no place for the working class to go. If this is what separates the settler phase of a state from the bourgeois phase (and as you know, I don’t entirely agree with Marxist analysis), then Israel is well into the latter.
Likewise, whatever one might think of discrimination, it’s common in bourgeois states. Even ethnonationalism can coexist with bourgeois democracy, often for a long time. If the Law of Return disqualifies Israel as a bourgeois state, then Greece and Germany are also disqualified, and I’d say that both are pretty firm bourgeois democracies.
No Pref: You may be right, although I’d argue three things. First, although the United States is the most frequent diplomatic protector of Israel, it isn’t the only one. This is evidenced, among other things, by the seventy-odd countries that argued against ICJ jurisdiction over the wall (which surrounds some settlements and therefore directly benefits the settlement enterprise). Second, most non-Islamic countries don’t have an Israel-centric world view and therefore don’t base their judgment of the United States on its position toward Israel. Third, our aid to Israel gives us leverage that we wouldn’t otherwise have, and may well have prevented a full-scale invasion of Gaza in the wake of last month’s Netanya suicide bombing. There are costs to the alliance – I’d be the last to deny that – but whether they outweigh the benefits is a matter for debate.
I like and respect you as well, and I don’t think we’ll ever agree on this, so I’ll move on.
We know that the other states are bourgeois states, unless they are proletarian. In any case they are secular, polyglot and non-racial, except Israel, which is the Jewish State, and Bhutan, which is still entirely feudal.
Iran, secular? Japan, polyglot? Lebanon, Fiji and Malaysia (which is pretty bourgeois) non-racial? The United States, a nation without persistent foundation myths?
BTW, there are quite a few possible meanings to “Jewish state.” It can be defined in terms of culture or as a values as well as ethnonationalism, and even the ethnonationalist concept can be defined in terms of sanctuary rather than exclusivity.
Dominic, the use of jargon like “bourgeous” and “proletariat” and the reliance on Marxist dogma make you seem like the real anachronism.
Jonathan, Dominic, et al. – Great discussion! I’m learning a lot from you guys. And thanks to Helena, as always, for providing this forum. This is a rare and precious thing.
Just a quick one.
The exception proves the rule. The exception is not the rule. As a rule, the bourgeois nation-state sweeps away all previous institutions (“All that is solid melts into air”). In practice, the bourgeoisie always retains some of the forms taken by previous relations. An example is the British monarchy. But the content is bourgeois.
The USA rehearses its foundation myths. But these have no power to compare with the legacy of the Civil War, which impose capitalism on the whole country. The Civil War is not celebrated, it is born like a cross, but of course it is by far the most determinant event to date. It made the USA bourgeois.
The USA cannot dictate its immigration, but only regulate it, with green cards and so forth. The sight of volunteers sitting in the desert by the Mexican border with rifles across their knees is only an ugly farce, and not the main story.
Iran is bourgeois. The reason that Israel and the USA want to smash down Iran is not because it is theocratic but because it is bourgeois. The same was true of Iraq. Iraq was not detested becasue it was “Ba’athist”. Bourgeois Imperialism hates an independent bourgeoisie more than it hates a dictatorship of the proletariat. It makes plans and acts to destroy such independence.
These are the dynamics of our world. It is not a matter of choosing how we define things, like novelists of the fantastic genre. When the “Jewish State” is fully bourgeois it will not be Zionist. Of course there are class differences in Israel. It is these differences that will mature Israel into a non-Zionist plain vanilla bourgeois entity, a process which will equalise the pressure on its frontiers and became a basis for peace, with any luck.
Inkan,
Karl Marx, as you may know, denied being a “Marxist”. He had a lot more work in progress at the end of his working life than at the beginning. The idea of a finite body of work called Marxism was not Marx’s and is not mine, either. It is not dogma when one quotes Marx, because Marx had no dogma.
“Bourgeois” and “Proletarian” are fully part of the English language and not jargon in any narrow sense. “Bourgeois and Proletarians” also happens to be the title of the first part of the “Communist Manifesto” of 1848, beginning: “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.”
This follows the short preamble which begins: “A spectre is haunting Europe – the spectre of communism.”
I quote these words to remind you just how familiar is Marx and just how much he is part of us all. The “Manifesto” is a classic and still a popular best-seller, available from all good booksellers everywhere.
On anachronism, there is no writer you can go to who is better equipped than Karl Marx. The first couple of pages of “Bourgeois and Proletarians is an extroardinary tour-de-force of historical compression. It lays out the whole of human history in front of your eyse in vivid and dramatic terms, in a few short paragraphs, in such a way that you can see clearly what follows from what, and therefore what is or is not anachronism.
If you read it (and it’s free on the Internet at http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/index.htm ) you may find yourself remarking, like the tourist after a Shakespeare play, “I never knew he used so many cliches”. In other words you will find it familiar, because it is constantly quoted by people who are unaware of what they are quoting.
Here is the passage on bourgeois development that I was quoting earlier, here continued without a break to include the currently much-quoted words predicting what was recently know as globalisation, and which I call Imperialism:
“All fixed, fast frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real condition of life and his relations with his kind.
“The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere.
“The bourgeoisie has, through its exploitation of the world market, given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country. To the great chagrin of reactionaries, it has drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood.”
People, especially Jonathan, I have missed you. Why have you forsaken this thread? Is my argument too strong? Or is it a social faux pas to entertain any such argument in your circles, even for the purpose of opposing it?
In one of the Johannesburg papers, the Sunday Independent, there is a review by Milton Shain of a book called “A history of modern Palestine: one land, two peoples” by Ilan Pappe. It reminded me of this thread because the argument is very similar if you take me in the role of Pappe, with Shain on the opposite side.
So at least one can still have it out in Johannesburgon this subject. I the USA, once called the land of the free, there seems to be inhibition. I have noticed it before.
Milton Shain’s review is on the Sunday Independent web site but only available to subscribers, unfortunately. For what it is worth the URL is: http://www.sundayindependent.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=2836038&fSectionId=1085&fSetId=
Don’t worry, Dominic. I haven’t been scared away, I just have people over this weekend. I’ll answer you soon, probably tomorrow.
All right, the guests are in bed.
Dominic, you say that the exception proves the rule, and this is quite true. But as I’m sure you’re aware, the word “prove,” as used in this saying, means “test,” and when a rule is tested, it can either pass or fail. A few exceptions will not vitiate a rule if it can be shown that they are outliers or that there is some other consistent reason for their exceptionalism. However, if there are too many exceptions, if the exceptions are too central or if they cannot be explained by any reason consistent with the rule, then they swallow the rule.
You have proposed a number of rules in this thread to support your argument that Israel is not a bourgeois state and/or is a historical anachronism. These rules are fourfold: that bourgeois states cannot treat their proletariat as foreigners, that they cannot control immigration, that they are “secular, polyglot and non-racial,” and that they outperform settler states economically. I find the rationale behind these rules somewhat elusive, given that they are predicated on Marxist concepts of historical inevitability and a conception of “settler” and “bourgeois” as mutually exclusive, neither of which I believe are borne out by the historical record. You also now appear to be retreating from at least one of these proposed rules: by characterizing Iran as bourgeois, you acknowledge that bourgeois states need not be secular. Iran might be an outlier for various reasons, but you haven’t explained why this is so or why the Iranian exception is consistent with the overall rule.
In any event, these rules don’t survive the proving given to them by the most central exception of all: Europe. I think you’d agree that any definition of “bourgeois democracy” that excludes Europe is, in practical terms, meaningless. So let’s go back to the very first rule you proposed (and the one that seems to underlie the others): that bourgeois states cannot treat their proletariat as foreigners. I would argue that the European Union, to a very great extent, has a foreign proletariat in the form of guest workers from Africa, Turkey, the Balkans and the Arab world. Moreover, it is often very difficult for these guest workers and their descendants to obtain citizenship.
In Switzerland, for instance – meaning no disrespect to Christiane or her country – some 18 percent of the population consists of non-citizens, some of them second or third-generation immigrants. In order to obtain citizenship, their applications must first be approved at the municipal level, which often means being put to a referendum at which no reasons need be given for a negative vote. These referenda have, by statistical evidence, been shown to favor European applicants for citizenship and disfavor non-Europeans; in other words, they are racially discriminatory in effect if not in theory. Thus, Switzerland has a foreign proletariat which is kept that way through restrictive citizenship procedures – and yet, it is not only numbered among the bourgeois democracies but is widely considered the epitome of bourgeois democracy.
The same is true, to a lesser extent, in many other European countries, especially those on the Medterranean periphery that are the first stop for incoming guest workers. Cyprus, in particular, has a large illegal guest worker population. The United States’ ius soli conception of citizenship isn’t duplicated in many other places. So in much of Europe – which is central to nearly all conceptions of bourgeois democracy – there is a foreign proletariat subject to arbitrary treatment, excluded from citizenship (or subjected to a high bar) along de facto racial lines, and often runs up against ethnonationalist politics when it attempts to regularize its situation.
Moreover, Israel exists well within European parameters in all the areas just discussed. Israeli immigration and citizenship law with respect to non-Jews is similar to – and indeed modeled after – central European law. It is often forgotten that the Law of Return isn’t the only way of obtaining Israeli citizenship; well over 100,000 non-Jews have become naturalized Israelis through marriage, military service or other means, and a recent ministerial decision will confer citizenship on guest workers’ children. The Law of Return itself, as a form of “positive discrimination” in favor of a particular ethnic group, has counterparts in Germany, Greece, Spain, Poland, Bulgaria and other European countries. The number of guest workers in Israel – somewhere around 5 percent of the total population – is mid-range for Europe, and the regime by which guest workers might become naturalized is similar to Belgium. So if these are the standards by which bourgeois status is to be judged, then either Israel is a bourgeois democracy or most of Europe isn’t – and if Europe is out, then what’s left?
The bottom line is that the politics, law and society of Israel are very similar to east-central Europe or possibly the Balkans, with the exception that Israel exists outside European soil and is largely composed of recent immigrants. As such, Israel is a neo-Europe rather than an integrally European country, but the fact that it is the result of a recent folk migration rather than a long-ago one doesn’t fundamentally change its makeup. The political economy of Israel is essentially central or southern European – in other words, bourgeois and relatively stable, if not without injustices that must be corrected.
And as for your final argument – that Israel is afraid of Palestinian statehood because bourgeois states outperform secular states economically – I don’t think that’s borne out by statistics either within the region or elsewhere. Even if we assume that Israel within the Green Line is still a settler state – which, as set forth above, I don’t assume – these figures show it outperforming bourgeois Turkey, Greece and Tunisia, none of which have had their development retarded in the slightest by Israeli action. The Israeli economy shows creativity and dynamism in the high-tech sector, agriculture, medicine and other fields, and in fact one of the chief reasons why the EU has integrated Israel into many of its institutions is that it finds Israeli research and development valuable. The Palestinians are certainly capable of economic dynamism, and might one day surpass Israel depending on the developmental choices they make, but I don’t see any basis other than Marxist dogma to suggest that they would inevitably surpass Israel. Not to mention that Israeli policy-makers, by and large, don’t make their decisions based on Marxist analysis, so there’s no reason to doubt that they’re actually motivated by security considerations.
So in closing, I don’t buy your argument that when the “Jewish State” is fully bourgeois it will not be Zionist. What will happen is that Zionism will evolve and change into a nationalism based primarily on values, as indeed was happening during the Oslo period until the process was aborted by the second intifada. But just as American exceptionalism still exists 140 years after the Civil War (which, you have argued, is the event that turned the United States into a bourgeois country), the basis for Zionism, which lies in the 1900 years of Jewish history since the end of the Second Commonwealth, will remain. Keep in mind that Zionism is a national liberation movement as well as a settlement movement, and the ideology of the former will continue to be relevant as Israel liberates itself (from the occupation, among other things). I don’t see that as mutually exclusive with bourgeois democracy, peace and political stability either now or in the future, or that it creates a historical anachronism. Your mileage may vary.
People, especially Jonathan, I have missed you. Why have you forsaken this thread? Is my argument too strong? Or is it a social faux pas to entertain any such argument in your circles, even for the purpose of opposing it?
I wasn’t going to say anything about this comment, but on second thought I feel I have to. You and I have been discussing things here for a while, and I find it insulting that you’d accuse me of running away from an argument or being inhibited by “my circles” (whatever they are). I don’t carry water for anyone, and I say what I mean.
Also, I don’t appreciate being roped into continuing a conversation through accusations of intellectual cowardice. There are many reasons I might decide to break off a discussion: there might be matters at home or work that must take priority, I might simply believe that it has reached the point of diminishing returns (which happens sometimes in our conversations, given that my empirical world-view and your theoretical one sometimes lead us to talk past each other). No doubt you have also ended conversations for similar reasons. I would never presume to second-guess your motives for breaking off a conversation, although if I felt it still had possibilities, I might ask you if you were interested in continuing. I’d appreciate similar consideration from you in the future.
Jonathan,
I beg your pardon for my clumsy post that insulted you. It was not my intention to do more than urge you and Inkan to continue the thread. It was Inkan who picked me out for using Marx, not you. It was you who made the thread interesting. I apologise for not making this distinction in that post.
Thank you for your other long post. You have exposed an apparent contradiction which I may or may not be able to resolve. Let me try, briefly.
The legacy of the ancient humanists, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and Hegel’s philosophy include a vision of human history as one, and this was the conjuncture in which the young Dr Marx and his autodidactic friend Frederick Engels found themselves, and built upon. For most practical purposes the single vision of humanity stands up today, and yet in some ways it is challenged.
The difference is not a matter of rules or dogma on one side and a better set of rules on the other. It is a matter of the organic versus the eclectic, or in Marxian terms, the concrete versus the abstract. I have usually thought that “the exception proves the rule” and “as a rule” are colloquial means of indicating a general historical direction and the corresponding error of being mechanical in its application.
So as before with Inkan, I will not defend a dogma. I do defend the humanist philosophical basis of all discourse, including this one, which should be rational and intentional in my view. We recognise ourselves as Subjects and dispute the content and direction of our future collective subjective intention.
This is the spirit of the early bourgeois (e.g. Voltairean, Napoleonic) philosophers, but it is characteristic of bourgeois development that it never eradicates all its contradictions. Hence the residues that hang around it, like the British Monarchy, US Thanksgiving, Iranian mullocracy. These do not at first affect bourgeois development very strongly. On the contrary, they throw it into contrast, and so confirm the universal bourgeois trend.
All this exists today but in addition there is the over-riding phenomenon of bourgeois Imperialism, which is obliged by circumstances to challenge bourgeois the humanist vision of development. It becomes once more irrational, elevates the eclectic over the organic, and claims priority for the particular over the general. It returns to the bourgeois democracies and plays up the residual anomalies, using them as a convenient expedient.
This post-modernist ideology is inconsistent. Its purpose is fraudulent, in fact. It exists to provide apparent justification for any arbitrary action or process and to deny any common basis of human thought. Its rules are many and elaborate but they are eclectic. It is amoral and moves towards fascism – the arbitrary use of power in support of the rule of the bourgeoisie – and the abandonment of bourgeois rationalism and bourgeois democracy. The consequence is war made by imperialist bourgeois upon individual bourgeois states, as with Iraq, and we South Africans must fear the same danger.
Whether Israel is the product of these circumstances or simply coincidental to them is a different question, and probably not a useful one. What seems clear to me, though, is that the question of Israel cannot be removed from the general crisis of imperialist versus national bourgeois, eclectic versus organic, post-modern versus humanist, irrational versus rational. The singularity of Israel must not be held against the general, but rather made part of it, as in my favourite quote from the Manifesto: “the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all”.
Dominic, I just wanted to thank you for the apology. I didn’t think you intended an insult and I’m glad to hear that this wasn’t your meaning. I guess I owe you an apology as well, for jumping to conclusions about what you meant!
Your arguments are thought provoking as always and I’ll respond substantively when I get the chance to think them through, probably tomorrow morning.
There’s a good article at http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery/1123967824 .