(Mis-)framing the Gaza-Israel conflict

35 thoughts on “(Mis-)framing the Gaza-Israel conflict”

1. Helena, these military operations you allude to, what purpose were they carried out? Are there Israeli operations that are not responses to rocket attacks at all?
   Indeed, Israel’s demands that Hamas renounce violence and recognize Israel are stated such that it would be unreasonable for Hamas to accept them. The demand to renounce violence is absurd when Israel is in a state of war with them: Instead, both should abide by a ceasefire as you describe. And Israel should accept a statement by Hamas that Hamas acknowledges that Israel exists, which I think Hamas is already willing to do. That would be a de facto recognition of Israel that does not imply any forfeiture of the right to return. Israel should also make its own explicit statement that it is committed to establishing a State of Palestine, and even recognize the expulsion of all those refugees as a “Catastrophe” and express regret for how that history turned out. Then Israel and Hamas can move on to negotiations (quietly if people still feel too embarrassed to do it publicly…).

2. I suppose if you live in a gated community in Hertzliya – well out of Qassam range – 18 of your countrymen dead may seem a small price to pay to be rid of administering and policing Gaza.
   But, say, you are a Black jew from Ethiopia living in Sderot who has no option to relocate. If you are lucky you or your neighbor may have a safe room to retreat to or there may be a shelter nearby – altho the warning siren time is quite short. It is easy to dismiss the plight of these people…but just imagine the trauma their kids suffer, not to mention the constant worry each day whether your kids will return from school.
   Which is not to say that Gazans aren’t suffering badly…they surely are…but that doesn’t excuse the suffering in Sderot, which is not a settlement…especially now that Hamas claims to be in control of security in Gaza.

3. Speaking of ‘(Mis-)framing’, yesterday’s NYT characterized the breach of the Gaza wall as a ‘shopping spree’.

4. An exemplary editorial from the Middle East’s Premier newservice: The Daily Star
   http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=17&article_id=88312

5. A few thoughts for consideration …
   What is also left out of the accounts is the fact that the Israeli economy is able to thrive without a Palestinian input – as has been demonstrated since 2000, the Israelis having largely replaced Palestinian labor with guest workers – whereas the palestinian economy goes rapidly south without the Israeli input.
   Once Sharon put in place disengagement Gaza and eventually West Bank have no choice but to turn to Egypt and Jordan respectively in order to become economically viable. This is the course Hamas is pursuing, as Helena’s interviews with Zahhar indicated.
   Hamas, having militarily consolidated its rule over the Gaza strip, is now framing an economic policy independent of the PA. The splitting of Palestine into two statelets for the long term future is virtually assured as Hamas just doesn’t have the power base to defeat the PLO in West Bank and because of the IDF/settler presence there – Hamas would never have been able to take command of Gaza the way it has had Israel not withdrawn completely from Gaza and also from Philadelphi road. Israel will not withdraw from West Bank in the same way.
   Helena as to your suggestions for conflict resolution, surely it is extremely unlikely that any ceasefire would hold for long in the absence of Hamas being prepared to recognise Israel in the same way the PA did and remove the intransigent language from its covenant?

6. As I plug along with my dissertation (well, perhaps an overstatement), I must say I really am enjoying the very _civil_ discourse about these issues-hey…no name calling, nasty adjectives…productive dialogue…hmm…

7. Why should Hamas ‘recognise’ Israel (or more recently, the Jewish State of Israel) when Israel doesn’t recognise them, or even define its borders?
   I recently came across a nice analogy – the Afrikaaner state of South Africa is gone, finished, ended – but the Afrikaaners were neither slaughtered nor ‘pushed into the sea’.
   This was only allowed to happen when the US perceived that its own ‘color problem’ was exacerbated by its support for Afrikaaner South Africa and apartheid, and withdrew that support.
   In the case of Israel, another apartheid state, but of very much more recent origin, the US knows that it cannot withdraw support because of the very obviously different power positions held by Jews and blacks within the US itself.

8. Truesdell said:
   “But, say, you are a Black jew from Ethiopia living in Sderot who has no option to relocate. If you are lucky you or your neighbor may have a safe room to retreat to or there may be a shelter nearby – altho the warning siren time is quite short. It is easy to dismiss the plight of these people…but just imagine the trauma their kids suffer, not to mention the constant worry each day whether your kids will return from school.”
   – Why can’t the Black jew from Ethiopia leave?
   – Because Sderot was set up specifically as a new settlement for Moroccan Jews (Sephardim) . Up until 1951 it was the Gevim-Dorot transit camp. Sderot has fulfilled that role ever since. To Palestinian eyes (especially to those just a few miles away who had been uprooted from their own homes) Sderot is very much a settlement for immigrant foreigners.
   The Black Jews are kept in their place, which is why they have no option to leave.

9. “In the case of Israel,…the US knows that it cannot withdraw support because of the very obviously different power positions held by Jews and blacks within the US itself.”
   Where are Henry Ford, Father Coughlin and George Lincoln Rockwell when you need them?

10. Now that Hamas is no longer the government of the PA and bound to uphold internationally recognised agreements made by the previous PA government then there is no reason why it “should” recognise Israel or not. It is entitled to to make its own choices.
    The observation was merely that it was unlikely a ceasefire would hold for long in the absence of Hamas recognising Israel as ceasefires normally don’t when one side or both are committed to the others destruction.
    Thats why I always find it strange that Helena never calls for mutual recognition between Hamas and Israel as a component of her peace proposals.
    The Afrikaaner analogy is a strange one. Israel was established specifically by the UN as a jewish state and the borders that were drawn up by the UN at the time contained a majority of jewish inhabitants.
    South Africa was never a sovereign state where the majority of inhabitants were Afrikaaner, or even white. The vast majority of inhabitants of South Africa were black, by a majority of 80% to 20%.
    This demographic imbalance was clearly unsustainable over the lon term and was the main reason for the eventual collapse of the Afrikaaner totalitarian state. The state of Israel has no such demographic imbalance, in fact the figures are virtually a mirror image of South Afria: ie a ratio of 80% jewish and others to 20% muslim Palestinians. There is no comparison.

11. bb: how do you come up with the 80% Jewish/20% “muslim Palestinian” figure? For the past 40 years the Jewish government of Israel has ruled over everyone in Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank. When that full population is factored in, it’s a 50-50 proposition at best, with half the population subjected to a brutal regime over which it has no say. Much more akin to apartheid than you want to admit. Perhaps a short drive on the Jews-only roads of the West Bank would clarify things a bit.
    Hamas has made it clear (with offers of 100 year truces, etc) that it could make some arrangement with Israel. If there is one side in this conflict that has in fact, in practice, been dedicated to the displacement and dismemberment of the other, it is Israel. When has Israel stated any willingness to reach an accomodation with Hamas, or with any other representative Palestinian entity? A golden opportunity came when Hamas won the elections in the PA. Israel’s response? Economic blockade, assassinations, generalized tightening of the screws on the Palestinians. And more “settlements,” always more “settlements.”

12. One step at a time. Right now, a situation exists between Gaza and Egypt which needs to be resolved. As I stated in the previous post, it appears that Egyptian regular army units are now reinforcing the border, making efforts at containing the human flood coming out of Gaza. The big question is how aggressively the Palestinians will commit themselves to maintaining the open border, which would seem to offer some form of leverage for Hamas in its potential political negotiations with Egypt.

13. Jim: The occupied territories are not part of the sovereign state of Israel. The question of recognition relates solely to the state of Israel itself, where the demographic balance is 80/20 and which the PLO recognised in 1993/94, Israel in turn recognising the PLO/PLA.

14. “Israel was established specifically by the UN as a jewish state and the borders that were drawn up by the UN at the time contained a majority of jewish inhabitants.” The original UN boundaries of the Jewish state were considerably smaller than the 1967 boundaries and there was a bare majority of Jewish residents. They were gerrymandered that way, because overall the Jewish population was a minority in what became Israel after the 1948 war. Of course it became a majority in 1949 because of the ethnic cleansing that took place.

15. What if South Africa had succeeded in creating a state with an 80/20 White majority, making Blacks citizens of partially-sovereign Bantustans.
    The ANC position at the time was that this was neither acceptable nor substantially different from the Apartheid they were opposing at the time.
    I say the ANC was right. I take it you’re saying the ANC was wrong.

16. “Israel was established specifically by the UN as a jewish state and the borders that were drawn up by the UN at the time contained a majority of jewish inhabitants.”
    Its much more correct to say that Israel was established in contravention of the UN, as it expanded the UN borders starting in early 1948 prior to its independence and intentionally refused to specify its borders when it declared independence in 1948 and in fact STILL refuses to this day to specify its borders.
    The size of the “Jewish State” drawn by the UN Partition Plan was approximately 2/3rd’s of what is now referred to as inside the Green Line (Israel’s pre-1967 borders). The UN’s planned “Jewish State” had, at the time, 500,000 Jews, 400,000 Arabs, and, as classified by the UN, 100,000 Bedouins. The UN Partition Plan also specifically enumerated each individual’s right to remain in their home in either the Jewish or the Arab State, regardless of that individual’s religious convictions. So Israel’s existence was in violation of the UN Partition Plan, both in its enlarged area of control and in its ethnic cleansing of non-Jews from the territory it held. Israel today considers the West Bank not as occupied territory, but rather as “disputed territory” in an attempt to rationalize its confiscation of Palestinian land.
    To HAMAS, to recognize Israel’s “right to exist as a Jewish State” is to give legitimacy to Israel’s original ethnic cleansing as well as any further ethnic cleansing Israel chooses to do. If, after all, Israel had a “right” to ethnically cleanse in 1948 and 1967, why do they not have the same “right” today, in order to maintain a Jewish state?
    For two cogent explanations of the reasoning behind Hamas’s refusal to recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish State, see:
    “The Trap of recognizing Israel” http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article6229.shtml
    “What ‘Israel’s right to exist’ means to Palestinians”
    http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0202/p09s02-coop.html

17. Donald, Zed: Israel, on its present borders and similar demographic as it is today, was admitted to membership of the UN in May 1949.
    Arnold: At what point in history was a prooisal made to the UN that South Africa be accepted by the UN as a state comprising a 80/20 white majority? Let alone adopted by the UN? There is no comparison with Irsael.

18. Zed,
    Thank you for the references, your comment is brilliant.
    This is an excerpt from the second reference.
    There is an enormous difference between “recognizing Israel’s existence” and “recognizing Israel’s right to exist.” From a Palestinian perspective, the difference is in the same league as the difference between asking a Jew to acknowledge that the Holocaust happened and asking him to concede that the Holocaust was morally justified. For Palestinians to acknowledge the occurrence of the Nakba – the expulsion of the great majority of Palestinians from their homeland between 1947 and 1949 – is one thing. For them to publicly concede that it was “right” for the Nakba to have happened would be something else entirely. For the Jewish and Palestinian peoples, the Holocaust and the Nakba, respectively, represent catastrophes and injustices on an unimaginable scale that can neither be forgotten nor forgiven.
    John Whitbek

19. bb
    Israel, on its present borders and similar demographic as it is today, was admitted to membership of the UN in May 1949.
    Your earlier erroneous point was that “Israel was established specifically by the UN…and the borders…drawn up by the UN… contained a majority of jewish inhabitants.” As I pointed out, this is wrong on both counts. Israel as a”Jewish state” merely shares the descriptor “Jewish State” with the UN partition plan Jewish state, but its borders, its demographics and its administration, bear no resemblance to the state defined by the UN, as that state was to be a state of equal rights for all its citizens, with any citizen of Mandatory Palestine being by right a citizen of the new partitioned state in which he or she lived, regardless of religious affiliation. The Jewish state envisioned by the UN partition had roughly an equal number of Jews and Arabs, since there were many more Arabs in all of Palestine than there were Jews, and even in the areas of major Jewish populations there were considerable resident populations of Arabs. ( In the partition Arab State, the balance was roughly 90-10 Arabs.) See the particulars of the Partition Plan here, in resolution 181:
    http://domino.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/a06f2943c226015c85256c40005d359c/7f0af2bd897689b785256c330061d253!OpenDocument
    As to the fact that Israel was admitted to membership in the UN, I’m not sure what you believe that means. The resolution(273), within its language, specifically states :
    Noting furthermore the declaration by the State of Israel that it “unreservedly accepts the obligations of the United Nations Charter and undertakes to honour them from the day when it becomes a Member of the United Nations”,2/
    Recalling its resolutions of 29 November 1947 3/ and 11 December 1948 4/ and taking note of the declarations and explanations made by the representative of the Government of Israel 5/ before the ad hoc Political Committee in respect of the implementation of the said resolutions,
    In other words, Israel promised to abide by UN Resolutions, including Res. 181(Partition Plan) and Res 194(Right of Refugees Return), and specifically promised to work toward the goals of both resolutions at the earliest practical date. Obviously, in Israel’s eyes, that “earliest practical date”, still hasn’t arrived, some 60 years on. Or, in short, it lied its way into the UN.
    BTW, if you think that admission to the UN of itself denotes some kind of international legitimacy of a state’s form of government, I would remind you that the USSR under Stalin was a member of the UN, as was the US, at a time when it practiced legal racial segregation and worse, and as was the then Union of South Africa, which denied the vote to all its blacks.
    This demographic imbalance was clearly unsustainable over the lon term and was the main reason for the eventual collapse of the Afrikaaner totalitarian state. The state of Israel has no such demographic imbalance, in fact the figures are virtually a mirror image of South Afria: ie a ratio of 80% jewish and others to 20% muslim Palestinians. There is no comparison.
    It is not “80% jewish and others” to “20% Muslim Palestinians” It is more like 78% Jewish to 22% Arab Palestinians( who are not all Muslims BTW).
    This of course is a tad bit misleading because Israel counts in its census Israeli Jews who live abroad, and may have no intent of ever returning, and also counts some “Jews” who are clearly not Jewish, particularly a subset (but of course not all) of the Russian immigrants. And as the Arab population grows, the balance will change over time. However, the present demographics within the green line are quite similar to the demographics in the US vis-a-vis whites-blacks, and desegregation came first to the US decades before apartheid died in South Africa, so to say that 80-20 makes Israel sustainable as a Jewish ethnocracy is to fly in the face of history.
    Plus, as Jim rightly pointed out, Israel has ruled over the Palestinians in the occupied territories for over 40 years. It is in effect the ruling government in the territories, and has for that same 40 years been inserting its Jewish population into those territories. The real demographics of Israel’s rule is more like 50-50.
    At what point in history was a prooisal made to the UN that South Africa be accepted by the UN as a state comprising a 80/20 white majority? Let alone adopted by the UN? There is no comparison with Irsael.
    You seem to have the impression that somehow the UN gives some kind of sign-off of approval on the demographic makeup of member states. It does not. Have you not heard of the Bantustans that the Republic of South Africa created while it was a member state of the UN?
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bantustan
    add note: Thanks for the kind words, world peace.

20. Apartheid South Africa was one of 51 founding members of the United Nations. Great Britain joined with dozens of colonies whose inhabitants were denied political rights. Admission to that organization in the 1940s was not an indication of moral acceptability.
    If instead of Apartheid, which denied Blacks the right to vote, South Africa had exiled nearly all of its Black population to partially sovereign Bantustans so that Whites would form an 80/20 majority White state, then that would not be substantially different from the situation of Israel.
    Blacks were offered citizenship in Bantustans that would leave South Africa proper with a White majority. They rightly turned it down.
    It is one thing to refuse to address a comparison that reflects unfavorably on your position. But to claim there is no comparison when obviously a comparison has been drawn reflects poorly.

21. The size of the “Jewish State” drawn by the UN Partition Plan was approximately 2/3rd’s of what is now referred to as inside the Green Line (Israel’s pre-1967 borders). The UN’s planned “Jewish State” had, at the time, 500,000 Jews, 400,000 Arabs, and, as classified by the UN, 100,000 Bedouins.
    And there were also some 750,000 Jews, remnants of European Jewry, who were either in camps or in transit.
    You write as if the 1948 expansion occurred in a vacuum, and as if ethnic cleansing was not something expressly called for by both the Palestinians and the Arab League and practiced, on the ground, whenever and wherever the Palestinian militias and Arab armies succeeded in conquering territory.
    By your logic Israel must not accept Palestinian rights of self determination because this would mean accepting that the ethnic cleansing of Hebron and Gush Etzion were “right”?
    A real, and workable, solution is based on the 1967 borders. What’s more, I think that BB is perfectly correct. History did not begin and end with South Africa, and the comparisons don’t really work here.
    A state can only depend on itself to exist. Another state or people expressing this as a “right” is meaningless. Of course, by the same token, there is no “right” to “viability” – whatever this amorphous term means in relation to a state – a state or people are responsible for ensuring their own viability.

22. Arnold, I believe you are wrong. When was the UN founded? When did South Africa institute apartheid?
    Further, in the case of the Partition, the UN did specify both a “Jewish State” and an “Arab State”.
    Again, it is not that the comparison isn’t favorable; it’s that it isn’t apt.

23. Apparently my second post vanished in the ether, but but there’s no time to recreate it. Oh well.
    JES, you are wrong. The Union of South Africa was one of the founding members of the UN in 1945, and it denied the vote to its blacks. So was the US, at a time when racial segregation and worse was legal here, and so was the USSR under Stalin. So the idea that UN membership is some kind of international endorsement for either a state’s form of government or its demographics is just wrong.

24. If we are to have ethnic-based nation-states, Jews, because of their historic persecution, have the highest claim to a national homeland.
    According to principles of reparation and state succession, the Jewish nation should have been fashioned from the territory of the German state defeated in 1945. Instead the WW2 victors wrote a check that was supposed to be paid by the residents of the British mandated territory. Palestinian Arabs thus became the only people in history whose beef against Jews isn’t imaginary. Nonetheless, for nearly 20 years, the PLO/PA and most mid-East governments have been willing to settle with Israel along the lines of U.N. Security Council Resolution 242. The issue is Israel’s borders. When put to a vote, only the Marshall Islands and the USA support rejectionist, expansionist Israel.

25. And there were also some 750,000 Jews, remnants of European Jewry, who were either in camps or in transit.
    There were more like 200,000 Jews in DP camps at the time, and the majority of them did not choose to go to Israel, according to Israeli writer, Yosef Grodzinsky, despite considerable pressure applied by Zionist emmissaries in the camps. Read “In the Shadow of the Holocaust” by Grodzinsky. I guarantee you it won’t make you proud of Israel for how it treated European Jews in the camps,but its all written from Israeli and Zionist sources.
    Regardless of the numbers, none of them were citizens of Palestine and therefore should not have been given preference over the people who actually lived there. And none of that justifies ethnic cleansing.
    You write as if the 1948 expansion occurred in a vacuum, and as if ethnic cleansing was not something expressly called for by both the Palestinians and the Arab League and practiced, on the ground, whenever and wherever the Palestinian militias and Arab armies succeeded in conquering territory.
    Ethnic cleansing was expressly called for by the Zionists decades ahead of the 1948 War. A search of Palestinian writings during the time indicates that what they were calling for was either tighter limits or an end to Jewish immigration, as they saw it as a threat to their rights (which indeed it did become). That is not equivalent to ethnic cleansing. Ethnic cleansing in deed, rather than merely thought, was first instituted by the Haganah as early as late December of 1947, nearly half a year before Israel declared its independence and the 1948 War began, and by late April over 300,000 Palestinians had been forced from their homes, and refused the right to return. As Israel expanded its borders, there were very few Jewish enclaves that were outside of Israel’s control, so what little “ethnic cleansing” of Jews occurred it involved less than 8,000 people total at most, including those in the Gush Etzion area for one, and also including somewhere around 2500 in East Jerusalem. Neither action was right. However, the lesser and later instance on the part of the Arab armies certainly does not justify the earlier and much more catastrophic expulsion of the Palestinians,which topped out at 750,000. Ethnic cleansing isn’t one of those issues where you can claim that its OK for your side to do it, just because you think the other side would have done it too.
    By your logic Israel must not accept Palestinian rights of self determination because this would mean accepting that the ethnic cleansing of Hebron and Gush Etzion were “right”?
    First off, one historical nitpick. The ethnic cleansing of Hebron was done by Britain in the 30’s because it claimed it could not guarantee their protection in Hebron, so it moved over 400 Jews out of Hebron and prohibited them from returning. Most of the Jews in Hebron survived the 1929 massacre(which was sparked by Jewish-Arab clashes in Jerusalem that caused deaths on both sides) because they were protected by their Arab neighbors.
    Second, if the Palestinians choose to set up an ethnocracy that prohibits all Jews from living in its country, or treats Jews as second class citizens, then Israel certainly is within its rights not to recognize such a Palestinian state’s “right to exist” just as the Palestinians have a right not to recognize Israel’s “right to exist” as a Jewish state that oppresses and discriminates against non-Jews. However, since there are Jews now living freely in Palestine (and I’m not talking about the settlers here, but Jews who chose to live in the Arab towns or villages) who have the same rights under Palestinian governance as other Palestinians, and since the Arab mayor of Hebron, over a decade ago, invited the descendants of the old Jewish families of Hebron to return to live in peace beside their neighbors, I doubt that what the Palestinians are looking for is a chance to do to the Jews what was done to them. If I’m wrong then they will deserve the same condemnation that Israel gets. (Again, the settlers in Hebron and Kiryat Arba are not descendants of those Jewish families, but are rather Jewish supremacists who think their Jewishness entitles them to live like lords over the Arabs rather than as neighbors.)

26. world peace,
    I mentioned this in my disappearing post, but I’ll mention it again. Thanks for the kind words.

27. First, you are correct. The number of holocaust survivors who immigrated to Israel, according to Dalia Ofer, was about 374,000, not as I stated. (By the way, there are also conflicting claims about the number of Palestinians who became refugees as a result of the war.)
    I do want to correct your (unfounded) assumption that is that I was attempting to justify ethnic cleansing. I was not. I was trying to point out that “ethnic cleansing” (a term that only came into use some 50 years later) was shared, to some extent, by both sides between March 1948 and the armistice. And, indeed, the forced movement of populations was not unusual in those times. It happened in India, and tens of thousands of “cultural” Germans were expelled from Eastern Europe following World War II.
    Ethnic cleansing was expressly called for by the Zionists decades ahead of the 1948 War. A search of Palestinian writings during the time indicates that what they were calling for was either tighter limits or an end to Jewish immigration, as they saw it as a threat to their rights (which indeed it did become). That is not equivalent to ethnic cleansing.
    I think that you need to be careful here. Finding a quote, here or there, that might indicate “ethnic cleansing” is different from an organized plan. For example, according to Neville Mandel, Muhammad Tahir al-Husayni clearly advocated terrorizing and expelling all European Jews as early as 1900. That was not just a case of advocating “tighter limits”.
    Also, the relative numbers don’t mean much. All you are saying is that the Palestinian militias, Qauqji’s irregulars and, later, the Arab armies didn’t succeed in doing what they explicitly stated they would do. In other words, you give them credit for being feckless.
    Regardless, the UN clearly called for two states: one Arab and one Jewish, and the League of Nations established a right of Jewish immigration to Palestine. In view of this, Israel clearly has a basis both as an independent state and as a Jewish state.

28. I see my “disappearing post” has made an appearance after all(posted at 10:41p last night). Probably my own fault for including too many links. Thanks, administrator.
    I just wanted to make one correction. I stated in that post that the demographic balance in the UN Partition Plan’s proposed Arab State was 90-10. This is incorrect, the demographic balance was actually 99-1 Arab, with 735,000 Arabs and only 10,000 Jews.

29. Richard – “Israel doesn’t ….even define its borders?”
    Israel’s borders between Jordan and Egypt were defined when those countries recognised Israel and signed peace treaties with it.
    The borders between Israel and Syria and Lebanon have never been defined because neither country has yet been prepared to recognise Israel, thus enabling peace treaties and border definition to be negotiated.
    The defining of the borders between Israel and Palestine, under negotiation as part of the Oslo Accord, have now been resumed following the interruption caused by the 2000 intifada. Mutual recognition between Israel and PLO/PLA was an essential pre requisite to these negotiations
    The border between Syria and Lebanon has never been defined because Syria does not recognise the sovereignity of Lebanon.

30. Zed:
    “You seem to have the impression that somehow the UN gives some kind of sign-off of approval on the demographic makeup of member states. It does not. Have you not heard of the Bantustans that the Republic of South Africa created while it was a member state of the UN?”
    I was not meaning to give that impression. I was merely pointing out there is no comparison between Israel and South Africa because, unlike South Africa and other member countries, Israel was established by the UN. And established specifically as a jewish state with a majority jewish population, just as the Palestinian state would have been established in 1948 with a majority Arab/Muslim majority.
    The creation of the Bantustans is a separate issue entirely as it was undertaken unilaterally by South Africa itself and not by the UN as was the case of Israel and Palestine.

31. It is not “80% jewish and others” to “20% Muslim Palestinians” It is more like 78% Jewish to 22% Arab Palestinians( who are not all Muslims BTW).
    This of course is a tad bit misleading because Israel counts in its census Israeli Jews who live abroad, and may have no intent of ever returning, and also counts some “Jews” who are clearly not Jewish, particularly a subset (but of course not all) of the Russian immigrants. And as the Arab population grows, the balance will change over time. However, the present demographics within the green line are quite similar to the demographics in the US vis-a-vis whites-blacks, and desegregation came first to the US decades before apartheid died in South Africa, so to say that 80-20 makes Israel sustainable as a Jewish ethnocracy is to fly in the face of history.
    To be precise, the Jewish population of Israel is about 76%, the Arab population 20% with the remaining 4% classified as “Other”.
    Israel counts those who live abroad. Really? And who are those counted as “Jews” who are “clearly not Jewish”?
    The Jewish population is around 5.5 million, with a growth rate of 1.7%. The Arab population is about 1.4 million with a growth rate of 2.7%. You do the math and tell us how the balance will change in 50 years. When you’ve done that, you may want to consider that Arab and Jewish Israeli birth rates appear to be converging (do, in no small part to the fact that Israeli Arab women, empowered with higher living standards and more educational opportunities, are increasingly not resigned to having their wombs used as weapons, to paraphrase Abu Amar).
    Yes the demographics within the green line are quite similar to those of whites and blacks in the US – but the status of Arabs within the green line is in no way comparable to that of blacks under the Jim Crow laws, and even less similar to apartheid in South Africa.
    Plus, as Jim rightly pointed out, Israel has ruled over the Palestinians in the occupied territories for over 40 years. It is in effect the ruling government in the territories, and has for that same 40 years been inserting its Jewish population into those territories. The real demographics of Israel’s rule is more like 50-50.
    Interesting. So what you and Jim appear to be saying is that there is no occupation. That the territories are part of Israel, and that it’s really okay to acquire territory by force!
    I don’t think that there’s much of a legal basis to your argument. Could it be that failing to find facts on the ground that match your argument, you make up new facts that, on their face, do?
    

32. First, you are correct. The number of holocaust survivors who immigrated to Israel, according to Dalia Ofer, was about 374,000, not as I stated. (By the way, there are also conflicting claims about the number of Palestinians who became refugees as a result of the war.)
    The conflicting claims on the number of Palestinian refugees ranges from 500,000 to 900,000, with somewhere around 750,000 as the most universally accepted number.
    I do want to correct your (unfounded) assumption that is that I was attempting to justify ethnic cleansing. I was not. I was trying to point out that “ethnic cleansing” (a term that only came into use some 50 years later) was shared, to some extent, by both sides between March 1948 and the armistice.
    You mentioned the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians did not happen in a “vacuum” and yet the only item that you seem to think was important to mention was the limited number of Jews (roughly 1% of the number of Palestinian refugees) who were forced to flee their homes or settlements, as if implying that one wrong washes another. I think my assumption of your intent was sound. You failed to mention Plan Dalet, which explicitly called for the removal of Arab villagers and the destruction of those villages, was implemented by the Haganah well before the Arab armies entered Palestine. Or that the Zionists plans for what they considered at true Jewish state required a forced major change in the demographics of Palestine, or that Ben-Gurion, in publicly “accepting” the Partition Plan, privately admitted that the partition Jewish State was simply the beginning of what would be, through military action, a much larger Jewish State, which would, of course, require more forced removal of Palestinians in order to create and maintain a Jewish majority. A Jewish State that discriminated against its Arab citizens required that ethnic cleansing take place, as the Arabs would not willing acquiese to their disenfranchisement in such a state, and this fact was a much more important factor leading to the Nakba than anything else.
    I think that you need to be careful here. Finding a quote, here or there, that might indicate “ethnic cleansing” is different from an organized plan.
    For the Zionist plans of population “transfer”, which was their term for it, there is much more than a “quote here or there” I’d suggest reading Nur Masalha’s “Expulsion of the Palestinians: The Concept of “Transfer” in Zionist Political Thought, 1882-1948″. It was a continuing theme of major Zionist players and thinkers. Realisticly, transfer was the only way to create a state that favored Jews over Arabs when the Arab population so outnumbered the European Jewish immigrants. You can also look at the restrictions that the Yishuv put on land deeds, banning the resale of any Jewish land to an Arab, or even the use of any Arab labor on Jewish owned land, as well as the so-called “conquest of labor” where Jewish businesses were pressured not to hire any Arabs, and later even the British government was pressured to hire more Jews and less Arabs and to pay its Jews a higher wage. All the Zionist plans to create a separate economy and political structure in opposition to the indigenous Palestinians point toward their desire to have a state free of significant numbers of Arabs. And all these things occurred decades before the “Six Arab armies…ya-da-ya-da-ya-da..
    For example, according to Neville Mandel, Muhammad Tahir al-Husayni clearly advocated terrorizing and expelling all European Jews as early as 1900. That was not just a case of advocating “tighter limits”.
    I find it rather humorous that you warn me about using a quote here or there and then procede to do the same thing to make your point. Assuming your quote is correct, I would make two important points. One, 1900 was three years after the Basel Conference where the Zionist stated their plans for a Jewish State in Palestine, something that clearly would negatively impact the native Palestinians. Number two, and more important I believe, is that by sheer numbers alone, if the Palestinians, in 1880, or 1900, or 1910, or 1920 reallly wanted to ethnically cleanse its recent immigrant Jews they could have easily done so. However, they did not. The few clashes that occurred were mainly over land, cultural misunderstandings, or worry over religious sites. None were a serious effort on the part of any Palestinian to forcibly remove all European Jews from Palestine. Palestinians had decades in which to ethnically cleanse if it was in their thoughts and desires. Israel’s first realistic chance to ethnically cleanse came in the 1948 War and they immediately took it.
    Also, the relative numbers don’t mean much. All you are saying is that the Palestinian militias, Qauqji’s irregulars and, later, the Arab armies didn’t succeed in doing what they explicitly stated they would do. In other words, you give them credit for being feckless.
    I’m not giving the Arab armies “credit” for anything. I’m simply stating that excusing Israeli ethnic cleansing on the grounds that the Arab armies did it to a much lesser extend is moral idiocy. However, its important also to note that the only Arab country with an army worth anything at the time had already agreed not to attack any territory that was designated as part of the Jewish state (and never explicitly stated otherwise either), so the prospect of large numbers of fleeing Jews was quite minimal. Eighty percent of the Israelis who died it the 1948 War died during offensive operations, NOT defending their own territory. The greater threat to Israel was the large numbers of Arab civilians in the territory Israel captured for its own who would not take kindly to being disenfranchised. That’s what led to Israel’s overwhelming compaign of ethnic cleansing. Most recent historians believe that the war lasted much longer than it needed merely to defeat the Arab armies, but that trying to ethnically cleanse large portions of the Galilee and elsewhere slowed Israel’s war effort.
    Regardless, the UN clearly called for two states: one Arab and one Jewish, and the League of Nations established a right of Jewish immigration to Palestine. In view of this, Israel clearly has a basis both as an independent state and as a Jewish state.
    Again, the UN as an arbiter of international “rightness” of government is, as I pointed out above, is laughable considering the number of member countries who have done or are doing despicable things. And please read my post of 10:41p above, or read the UN partition plan to see that what the UN called for and what Israel is, are two distinctly different things. If Israel was in fact modeled after the UN conceived Jewish state there would be no conflict today.

33. Me:Plus, as Jim rightly pointed out, Israel has ruled over the Palestinians in the occupied territories for over 40 years. It is in effect the ruling government in the territories, and has for that same 40 years been inserting its Jewish population into those territories. The real demographics of Israel’s rule is more like 50-50.
    You:Interesting. So what you and Jim appear to be saying is that there is no occupation. That the territories are part of Israel, and that it’s really okay to acquire territory by force!
    I don’t think that there’s much of a legal basis to your argument. Could it be that failing to find facts on the ground that match your argument, you make up new facts that, on their face, do?
    …
    Good grief, if you have to resort to sophistry to respond, why bother? What a sorry excuse for a post! I’m sure you know exactly what I really am saying, but lacking a coherent response you chose speciousness instead. Pointless inanity on your part. I thought you were a better poster than that. I obviously misjudged you.
    I am obviously not saying that there is no occupation, otherwise I wouldn’t have use the term “occupied territories”. And you well know that I’m not condoning it, I’m merely pointing out it is a fact that Israel has ruled over the territories for over 40 years and has been populating it with it own Jewish citizens while stealing Palestinian land for those same 40 years. The populations it controls, in one way or another, are demographically half Arab. If you want to argue with me about that point have at it, but don’t try to mangle what I said in order to feel like you’ve launched some stupid zinger my way.
    You do at least obliquely admit that there is no legal basis for Israel to acquire territory by force. That is a step in the right direction for you. Do you further admit that Israel has in fact done so? Do you know that just because something is illegal doesn’t mean that in reality no one ever commits a crime? From your question its not apparent that you do.
    I have to go so any more responses I make will have to wait for a day or so but if you can’t refrain from pointless sophistry you’re wasting both our time.

34. I think my assumption of your intent was sound.
    You think wrong!
    You should try to read and understand. I mentioned that ethnic cleansing did not take place in a vacuum. I then pointed out that Jews had not only been displaced – that this had occurred in every single case where the militias or Arab armies succeeded in conquering inhabited territory. You had also pointed out that Jews had displaced Palestinian Arabs. So, was there someone else “ethnically cleansed” from Palestine that I am ignoring? Again, the relative numbers have nothing to do with intent. They have to do with success in battle!
    Tokhnit Dalet. Yes, this plan was developed and put in place roughly two months before the invasion of the Arab armies (sans your yada, yada, yada) when Ben Gurion and the high command realized that the Jews had barely been able to hold on to the – if I may use the term – disconnected “Bantustans” – allotted to them under the Partition Plan. Let me point out to you that the war had already started in November, and that the violence in response to the Partition decision was initiated by the Arab side, and supported by an influx of irregulars led by Fawzi al-Qauqji who arrived from Iraq. Jerusalem was already under a siege that rivaled the past few weeks in Gaza.
    Tokhnit Dalet was not a plan for ethnic cleansing. Rather it was a plan for connecting the portions of the Yishuv during war to effect their defense. That was the strategic aim of the plan (it was a military, not a political plan). One of its tactical elements was the expulsion, if necessary, of populations who might pose a threat to the Haganah or to Jewish civilians. I suggest you go to the source and read Uri Millstein, rather than the spin provided by Pappe and others.
    I find it rather humorous that you warn me about using a quote here or there and then procede to do the same thing to make your point.
    Why don’t you read what I wrote again? That was precisely my point. I can tit for tat your quotes. You then make excuses for the statement, cited by Mandel on page 41 of The Arabs and Zionism Before World War I, disregarding the fact that he – and his infamous son – maintained this position over decades.
    However, its important also to note that the only Arab country with an army worth anything at the time had already agreed not to attack any territory that was designated as part of the Jewish state (and never explicitly stated otherwise either), so the prospect of large numbers of fleeing Jews was quite minimal.
    I suggest you go back and count and report back on what the situation was on May 14. How many tanks did the Jews have vs. tanks operated by the Egyptian and Syrian armies? How many artillery pieces? How many fighter aircraft? The whole argument about the Israeli forces being superior in May 1948 is based on pure bunk. The only think that Israel had going for it up until the first ceasefire was a mostly unified central command and the fact that there was nowhere to flee to!
    Egyptian forces managed to cut across all of Palestine, and reached Ramat Rachel on the outskirts of Jerusalem. And, despite the fact that the Arab Legion was under obligation not to attack territory in the Jewish State, they were the ones who either supervised or carried out most of the ethnic cleansing in Gush Etzion, the Jewish Quarter and Ne’ve Yakov.
    The greater threat to Israel was the large numbers of Arab civilians in the territory Israel captured for its own who would not take kindly to being disenfranchised. That’s what led to Israel’s overwhelming compaign of ethnic cleansing. Most recent historians believe that the war lasted much longer than it needed merely to defeat the Arab armies, but that trying to ethnically cleanse large portions of the Galilee and elsewhere slowed Israel’s war effort.
    Yes? Based on what evidence? If everything you say here is true, one must ask a single question: Why then did Israel not “ethnically cleanse” all the Arabs? The answer is: Because ethnically cleansing the Arab population was never a strategic goal of the Yishuv leadership.
    or read the UN partition plan to see that what the UN called for and what Israel is, are two distinctly different things. If Israel was in fact modeled after the UN conceived Jewish state there would be no conflict today.
    I have read the plan. Of course, what you leave out is had the Arabs accepted the plan (even if one is entirely cynical and the Yishuv leadership was only bluffing), things would have been entirely different. But they didn’t. They reacted violently and started a war… well before the nakba, ya-da-ya-da-ya-da..

35. Oh dear. I’ve resorted to pointless sophistry. Oh my!
    Let me try to explain it to you in simpler terms, Zed. You can’t have it both ways. You can’t, when faced with the fact that Israel does not practice apartheid and is, in fact, predominantly Jewish in its demographics (and will be for quite some time to come), then turn around and define Israel as being from the “river to the sea”.
    I have been against the occupation since it began and have advocated an independent Palestinian state for years. I am not about to begin countenancing a “Greater Israel” argument, whether it comes from gush emunim, or from you!

Comments are closed.