The latest dollop of liberal Zionist claptrap in that media repository of liberal Zionist claptrap, the Guardian, is a little homily by a certain Simon Baron-Cohen, director of Cambridge University's Autism Research Centre, author of Zero Degrees of Empathy, and yes, brother of Sacha. It is based on the following premise:
"Empathy is all about imagining other minds, appreciating that different people have different perspectives, and responding to their thoughts and feelings with an appropriate emotion. After a career studying autism and the nature of empathy, I see empathy as one of our most valuable natural resources. It has particular promise as an approach to conflict resolution... We can see this if we look at the Israel-Palestine conflict, where both communities have different views of the same historic period, both claim the same piece of land and both have valid emotional reactions to the conflict that must be acknowledged." (22/1/19)
Now one might reasonably expect that anyone who is serious about the need to "imagine other minds" and "appreciate different perspectives" as a means to resolving conflict would draw on considered accounts of same by both parties. But this is not what Baron-Cohen does. He only cites Israeli views, specifically those of novelist Amoz Oz and journalist Ari Shavit, author of My Promised Land: The Triumph & Tragedy of Israel.
No Palestinian voice gets a look in - unless one excepts what "one Palestinian friend said to me: 'It's hard to empathise with someone when you are looking up the barrel of their gun'." (Indeed!)
Baron-Cohen's way out of this dilemma - "Israelis should take the initiative, because they are the stronger party" - is pure ivory tower, and flies in the face of the logic of colonialism which rules out equality between coloniser and colonised. I've dealt with this issue before in my 16/11/19 post Dialogue of the Colonizer and the Colonized (just click on the colonialism label below) where I highlighted the words of a Palestinian prisoner, Ta'er Hamad, who had been approached by the mother of one of his Israeli victims: "I cannot hold a dialogue with someone who insists on equating the occupation with its victims."
The problem with reading this kind of liberal Zionist claptrap - and the Guardian is full of it - is that it wastes the reader's time, time better spent understanding, and calling out, the worse-than-apartheid reality of the colonial-settler Zionist project (projectile?) in Palestine.
To home in on just one of Baron-Cohen's fairy tales, aka the "Israeli perspective":
"If you ask Jewish Israelis why their families came to Palestine before 1948, they'll likely refer to two major waves of antisemitism. The first included the horrific pogroms of eastern Europe in the 1880s and 90s. In the second wave in the 1930s and 40s, two out of every three European Jews were killed by the Nazis... the Jews were drowning, looking for a piece of wood they could cling on to. Palestine, which for two millennia they had thought of as their ancient homeland, was that piece of wood."
The problem here is the colossal conceit that the Zionist movement was primarily a rescue mission. The reality, of course, is that it was a colonial settler movement from its inception. One only has to read the Basel Program, which emerged from the First Zionist Congress of 1897 to see this. As for the aforementioned Tsarist pogroms of the 1880s and 90s, only a minority of Russian Jews ever headed for Palestine, and most of them were not political Zionists. Many more emigrated to Western Europe, or the United States, while others joined Russian revolutionary currents.
As for "the second wave," Western Europe and the United States were again the preferred destination for European Jews impacted by the Nazi era.
Yosef Grodzinzky's 2004 book In the Shadow of the Holocaust: The Struggle Between Jews & Zionists in the Aftermath of World War II is well worth a read on this matter:
"Post-Holocaust Displaced Persons, who lived in miserable conditions, became a human reserve of great migration potential, hence a prime target for the Zionists, who planned to transfer the entire DP population to Palestine. On the face of it, this task was easy: Mostly Holocaust survivors, the DPs were supposedly convinced by now that a Jewish state was the only viable solution. All it should have taken was thus immigration permits - as Palestine was still in British hands - and a sufficient number of boats that would ship the DPs to the safe haven. This, indeed, has been the official line. It has been said that with few exceptions, the shadow of the Holocaust made almost all the DPs want to go to Palestine; as immigration quotas were extremely limited while the British were in control, only few could enter; yet on May 15th 1948, the British left and with them went the quotas. An independent Jewish state was declared, and its doors were immediately opened; previously unable to immigrate to Palestine, the rest of the DPs now rushed to make 'aliyah (immigration) to Israel, and became proud citizens of the Jewish state. This is what I learned in school.
"Yet the documentary record I found in archives helped me discover two numerical discrepancies which call for an explanation. a. Polls taken in the camps at different times indicate that the vast majority of Jewish DPs (80-96.8 percent) stated their intention to immigrate to Palestine. If not to Palestine, they said, they would rather go back to the crematoria of the death camps. Yet, of the hundreds of thousands, only 40 percent (at most) actually went to Palestine/Israel, despite the fact that other migration routes were more difficult to follow at any point in time. b. A voluntary draft drive in the camps for the Israel Defense Force (IDF), then in formation, drew only 700 volunteers in the spring of 1948 (0.3 percent of the 250,000 Jewish camp dwellers then)... The failed attempt to mobilize volunteers led the Zionists to enact forced conscription of DPs in Germany and Austria to the IDF. Just months later, the headcount of camp draftees who fulfilled their 'national duty' went up eleven fold to 7,800...
"What happened? Why did so many say they wanted to go to Palestine, when only a minority actually did so? What justified forced conscription of survivors to fight for a cause they did not necessarily support, in a land they had never seen, and whose language they did not speak? How was a non-sovereign body able to force conscripts on German and Austrian soil to embark on boats that took them to the battlefield in Palestine?
"To forecast, the Zionists successfully took control of the Jewish DP camps early on, which later enabled them to enforce a draft... Zionist planners and organizers followed a clear line of reasoning: To them, a Jew not wanting to go to Palestine adversely affected the struggle for the establishment of an independent state in two ways. First, it was a net loss to the effort to populate Palestine... Secondly, reluctance to make 'aliyah weakened the Zionist pressure to open the gates of Palestine for unlimited Jewish immigration. As the suffering of the DPs was used as a bargaining chip in the struggle against immigration quotas imposed by the British, who controlled Palestine until the state was established, a Jew immigrating to the West was one less suffering Jew knocking on Palestine's doors. The migration of Jews to places other than Palestine was thus discouraged, sometimes even blocked by force. Attempts to evacuate child survivors to England and France immediately after Liberation in 1945 were thus thwarted, on Ben-Gurion's explicit instructions." (pp 9-12)
So much for Baron-Cohen's "drowning" Jews, just itching to reach Palestine after "two millennia" of longing. Boilerplate Zionist dogma, of course. But, where the issue of Palestine/Israel is concerned, Zionist dogma, framing, bias, and embroidery, in one form or another, is invariably what you get at the Guardian.
Showing posts with label Ari Shavit. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ari Shavit. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 23, 2019
Sunday, January 10, 2016
Blogging the Zionist Bookshelf
First the good news. A new (2013) and youthful (1982) federal Labor MP (Gellibrand), Tim Watts, not only reads books but blogs about them on a website called Blogging the Bookshelf. In fact, all the books he's read from 2013 -2015. He's even got a handy rating system for you: BUY, BORROW, TOSS
But how does Tim choose the books he reads? Does he just walk into a bookshop (or St Vinnies?) and pick them up at random? Does he just read books others have passed on to him or recommended? Does he gravitate towards some subjects rather than others?
He doesn't say. His lists seem pretty much random. Some clarity here would be welcome.
Now for the bad news. Of all the books Tim could have read to gain some idea - which after all is the point of reading books, right? - about WTF is going on in Palestine/Israel he's chosen Start-Up Nation by Dan Senor & Saul Singer* and My Promised Land by Ari Shavit.
The first is about how enforcing an occupation produces budding entrepreneurs. Tim gives it a BORROW rating.
So if I were to write a book suggesting that maybe Australia should introduce conscription and invade, occupy and police PNG because this will turn us into a start-up nation, Tim would rate it BORROW as opposed to TOSS?
The second is about how wonderful Israelis are, and how they created "something unique and quite endearing" in a tough (Arab) neighborhood. Tim gives it a BUY rating.
So if I were to write a self-congratulatory book called My Promised Land about how wonderful Australians are, and how we created 'something unique and quite endearing' in a tough (Aboriginal) neighborhood, Tim would rate it BUY as opposed to TOSS?
Can we detect a pattern here then? An unfortunate predilection for Zionist potboilers?
Why so? Well, this is the Labor Party, and if you want to get ahead there...
And, significantly, he's been rambammed - 2014:
"Watts said he was impressed by the objectivity of the Rambam program, which he said exposed him to a diverse range of views and the space to develop his own views on Israel without intrusion or interference." (See my 9/6/14 post Israeli-Occupied Labor.)
LOLOLOLOL
But I'm curious: where did these two books come from? Michael Danby? AIJAC? Israel's Foreign Ministry?
And I'm also curious as to how a bloke who's declared in parliament that "multiculturalism is important to me" can give the thumbs-up to sales brochures for an ethnocratic, apartheid state.
[*See my 23/4/10 post Creative Destruction.]
PS: Check out his reading list for 2001: Wall-to-wall Leon Uris, including EXODUS. So that's when the Ziobug first bit. It's like the herpes virus, once it's in your system it's there forever!
But how does Tim choose the books he reads? Does he just walk into a bookshop (or St Vinnies?) and pick them up at random? Does he just read books others have passed on to him or recommended? Does he gravitate towards some subjects rather than others?
He doesn't say. His lists seem pretty much random. Some clarity here would be welcome.
Now for the bad news. Of all the books Tim could have read to gain some idea - which after all is the point of reading books, right? - about WTF is going on in Palestine/Israel he's chosen Start-Up Nation by Dan Senor & Saul Singer* and My Promised Land by Ari Shavit.
The first is about how enforcing an occupation produces budding entrepreneurs. Tim gives it a BORROW rating.
So if I were to write a book suggesting that maybe Australia should introduce conscription and invade, occupy and police PNG because this will turn us into a start-up nation, Tim would rate it BORROW as opposed to TOSS?
The second is about how wonderful Israelis are, and how they created "something unique and quite endearing" in a tough (Arab) neighborhood. Tim gives it a BUY rating.
So if I were to write a self-congratulatory book called My Promised Land about how wonderful Australians are, and how we created 'something unique and quite endearing' in a tough (Aboriginal) neighborhood, Tim would rate it BUY as opposed to TOSS?
Can we detect a pattern here then? An unfortunate predilection for Zionist potboilers?
Why so? Well, this is the Labor Party, and if you want to get ahead there...
And, significantly, he's been rambammed - 2014:
"Watts said he was impressed by the objectivity of the Rambam program, which he said exposed him to a diverse range of views and the space to develop his own views on Israel without intrusion or interference." (See my 9/6/14 post Israeli-Occupied Labor.)
LOLOLOLOL
But I'm curious: where did these two books come from? Michael Danby? AIJAC? Israel's Foreign Ministry?
And I'm also curious as to how a bloke who's declared in parliament that "multiculturalism is important to me" can give the thumbs-up to sales brochures for an ethnocratic, apartheid state.
[*See my 23/4/10 post Creative Destruction.]
PS: Check out his reading list for 2001: Wall-to-wall Leon Uris, including EXODUS. So that's when the Ziobug first bit. It's like the herpes virus, once it's in your system it's there forever!
Friday, November 14, 2014
30 US Neocons Screw 13 Million+ Arabs for Israel
"Warning that the world was growing numb to the worsening crisis in Syria and Iraq, in which at least 13.6 million people had been displaced from their homes, the United Nations appealed to western countries to open their borders and make good on donation pledges." (As 13.6m people displaced, UN appeals to West for help, Ruth Pollard, Sydney Morning Herald,13/11/14)
"In the course of the past year [2002-03], a new belief has emerged in [Washington]: the belief in war against Iraq. That ardent faith was disseminated by a small group of 25 or 30 neoconservatives, almost all of them Jewish, almost all of them intellectuals (a partial list: Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, William Kristol, Eliot Abrams, Charles Krauthammer), people who are mutual friends and cultivate one another and are convinced that political ideas are a major driving force of history. They believe that the right political idea entails a fusion of morality and force, human rights and grit. The philosophical underpinnings of the Washington neoconservatives are the writings of Machiavelli, Hobbes and Edmund Burke. They also admire Winston Churchill and the policy pursued by Ronald Reagan. They tend to read reality in terms of the failure of the 1930s (Munich) versus the success of the 1980s (the fall of the Berlin Wall)." (White man's burden, Ari Shavit, Haaretz, 3/4/03)
"What characterizes neoconservatives is not only their ideology... but also their personal interconnectedness in terms of organizations, publications, schooling, and even blood. Of crucial importance... is how the neocons, over the years, identified closely with the interests of Israel, and how their Middle East agenda paralleled that of the Israeli Likudnik right. In fact, much of the neocon approach to the Middle East can be seen to have originated in Likudnik thinking. And the Israeli government of Ariel Sharon worked in tandem with the neocons in supporting both the war on Iraq and later militant policies toward Iran and Syria. The overarching goal of both the neocons and the Likudniks was to create an improved strategic environment for Israel... to weaken and fragment Israel's Middle East adversaries and concomitantly increase Israel's relative strength, both externally and internally." (The Transparent Cabal: The Neoconservative Agenda, War in the Middle East, & the National Interest of Israel, Stephen J Sniegoski, 2008,pp 4-5)
"In the course of the past year [2002-03], a new belief has emerged in [Washington]: the belief in war against Iraq. That ardent faith was disseminated by a small group of 25 or 30 neoconservatives, almost all of them Jewish, almost all of them intellectuals (a partial list: Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, William Kristol, Eliot Abrams, Charles Krauthammer), people who are mutual friends and cultivate one another and are convinced that political ideas are a major driving force of history. They believe that the right political idea entails a fusion of morality and force, human rights and grit. The philosophical underpinnings of the Washington neoconservatives are the writings of Machiavelli, Hobbes and Edmund Burke. They also admire Winston Churchill and the policy pursued by Ronald Reagan. They tend to read reality in terms of the failure of the 1930s (Munich) versus the success of the 1980s (the fall of the Berlin Wall)." (White man's burden, Ari Shavit, Haaretz, 3/4/03)
"What characterizes neoconservatives is not only their ideology... but also their personal interconnectedness in terms of organizations, publications, schooling, and even blood. Of crucial importance... is how the neocons, over the years, identified closely with the interests of Israel, and how their Middle East agenda paralleled that of the Israeli Likudnik right. In fact, much of the neocon approach to the Middle East can be seen to have originated in Likudnik thinking. And the Israeli government of Ariel Sharon worked in tandem with the neocons in supporting both the war on Iraq and later militant policies toward Iran and Syria. The overarching goal of both the neocons and the Likudniks was to create an improved strategic environment for Israel... to weaken and fragment Israel's Middle East adversaries and concomitantly increase Israel's relative strength, both externally and internally." (The Transparent Cabal: The Neoconservative Agenda, War in the Middle East, & the National Interest of Israel, Stephen J Sniegoski, 2008,pp 4-5)
Thursday, May 29, 2014
Howling Nonsense Meets Gushing Vacuity 3
Geraldine Doogue:
Well, look, I so want to believe you. I want to derive some hope from it but, you know, just recently John Kerry the Secretary of State who'd been championing these peace talks, he actually came out - he subsequently apologised - but he did say if Israel doesn't reach a deal on an independent Palestine it risks becoming an apartheid state... Do you fear that?
It's been an apartheid state since its inception.
Ari Shavit:
Look, I don't accept any of the South African comparisons...
I thought not.
... but I've opposed the occupation throughout my adult life. I always thought settlements were a bad idea...
No kidding! But what did you do about it?
... so without getting into names and definitions, I think that the need to deal with occupation and to end settlement activity is essential and I'm saying it as a very proud and committed Israeli.
Geraldine:
So even Sharon who started that whole movement said, We can't occupy this place forever.
Ari:
Obviously, obviously, so again I think this is part of the tragedy but also I see the problem is that at the moment because we do have extreme right-wing forces in Israel, because there is so much Palestinian extremism, which makes so many people in Israel suspicious and afraid about moving forward because we tried peace 3 or 4 times and each time it ended up with turmoil and violence and did not lead to where we wanted it to...
Damn it, if only the occupied and the colonised would put more effort into reassuring their occupiers and colonisers.
Because of all that there is a kind of apathy that serves the darker forces on both sides. I actually believe, as I told you, that definitely there is a reasonable, benign Israeli majority that does not express itself politically right now - I hope there is a Palestinian one as well - and its challenge to Secretary [of State] Kerry and other leaders of the international community is to come up with an idea that is realistic.
Oh, I see: apathy rules in Israel, so it's the Yanks and their mates who have to pull their fingers out and fix things. Right.
Hey, you want a realistic idea, Ari?
Here it is. It's called BDS:
Boycott all Israeli products, institutions, and cultural ambassadors;
Divest from all corporations and businesses that aid and abet Israeli apartheid;
Sanction Israel until the occupation is ended, equality between Jewish and non-Jewish Israelis is won, and Palestine's refugees are finally allowed to return to their homes and lands in Israel.
You cannot end this conflict in Israel in one year, in one month, with one piece of paper. You have to create two state dynamics. You have to have Israel gradually, cautiously ending the occupation. It cannot be done overnight. You have to help the Palestinians build their own state, again in a long process, and you need to bring the Arab neighbours, the moderate Arab neighbours, as parties to this process, and you need the international community to stop promoting ideas that are totally detached from the reality on the ground. I think that if we'll adopt this kind of pragmatic, realistic approach we will move in the right direction because right now things are not very promising and the collapse of Kerry's initiative is something that troubles me very much and I hope we'll soon have this new kind of peace concept that will replace the old one because the intellectual vacuum, the conceptual vacuum is a very dangerous one right now.
And your solution is?
Geraldine:
You know, interestingly, Danny Danon, the increasingly powerful chairman of the Likud, Netanyahu's own party, and Israel's deputy defence minister, has actually been very concerned about Netanyahu being possibly, according to the reports in the Guardian, preparing to do some sort of deal, and they've stopped Netanyahu from making a lot of decisions on his own. They're more and more sitting on his shoulder. Do you think Netanyahu is the sort of man who could break out and astonish us all, like Begin did?
Games people play:
"Until this week, the question posed by 'neutral observers' about Binyamin Netanyahu was whether he was going to follow the examples of Menachem Begin and Ariel Sharon. Would he transform himself into a peacemaker like Begin and Sharon by uprooting settlements and relinquishing occupied territory, or would he be an immovable object like Shamir, aiming only to keep things 'quiet' so he could build more settlements and close the door on Palestinian statehood? After the start of this week, though, would-be neutral observers are no longer asking this question, at least not with a straight face..."
All except Geraldine! The preceding lines were written in 2010 by Jerusalem Post columnist Larry Derfner.* Enough said.
Geraldine may be smitten, but I'm giving Shavit my Talking Under Wet Cement award for 2014:
Ari:
Well, we have this hope for a long time. I must say that Netanyahu did some things though ideologically surprising, they never turned into a change on the ground. I think there is some potential there, but I'll share with you a secret about my country. I think that by and large Israelis, Israeli society is quite remarkable. I think it's a rich, smart, vibrant, promising society. I think there is a lot of good in us. Our politics is totally dysfunctional. Israel is experiencing an ongoing - I know you have some political crises - political crisis...
Geraldine:
Small challenges by comparison hahaha...
Ari:
... Israel has been going through for decades. It did not have the kind of worthy leadership and worthy political system that will represent the people as they really, will be true to their amazing achievements, what I call the man-made miracle Israel really is. So my hope, and I'm not getting to Netanyahu or different people, my hope is that at long last we will free ourselves of this situation. The forces, the strong, promising forces in Israeli society will have a leadership worthy to this remarkable people and then we can move forward, but again it has to do with the international community as well. People in the West... who want peace as I do, as we all do, have to think in a fresh way because trying to impose concepts, whether it was democracy under Bush or an ideal peace tomorrow under others on the Middle East that is rough, brutal, violent and dangerous. That does not lead us anywhere so we have to look at the region as it is with all its brutality and yet with a humble and modest hope that there is there. So we have to look for new ways in order to try to end occupation, to bring about a reasonable peace, and for my own people to guarantee the future of the Jewish democratic state because I think when you look at the story of my people you see this really remarkable people, the story of a people that almost were extinguished and saved themselves and created something quite unique and quite endearing that needs protection both from the roughness of the region and from our own flaws and faults and we must let the triumph triumph over the tragedy.
Geraldine:
Well, look, that eloquence, maybe you've got to enter parliament...
[*Rattling the cage: any more doubts about Bibi? 13/10/10)
Well, look, I so want to believe you. I want to derive some hope from it but, you know, just recently John Kerry the Secretary of State who'd been championing these peace talks, he actually came out - he subsequently apologised - but he did say if Israel doesn't reach a deal on an independent Palestine it risks becoming an apartheid state... Do you fear that?
It's been an apartheid state since its inception.
Ari Shavit:
Look, I don't accept any of the South African comparisons...
I thought not.
... but I've opposed the occupation throughout my adult life. I always thought settlements were a bad idea...
No kidding! But what did you do about it?
... so without getting into names and definitions, I think that the need to deal with occupation and to end settlement activity is essential and I'm saying it as a very proud and committed Israeli.
Geraldine:
So even Sharon who started that whole movement said, We can't occupy this place forever.
Ari:
Obviously, obviously, so again I think this is part of the tragedy but also I see the problem is that at the moment because we do have extreme right-wing forces in Israel, because there is so much Palestinian extremism, which makes so many people in Israel suspicious and afraid about moving forward because we tried peace 3 or 4 times and each time it ended up with turmoil and violence and did not lead to where we wanted it to...
Damn it, if only the occupied and the colonised would put more effort into reassuring their occupiers and colonisers.
Because of all that there is a kind of apathy that serves the darker forces on both sides. I actually believe, as I told you, that definitely there is a reasonable, benign Israeli majority that does not express itself politically right now - I hope there is a Palestinian one as well - and its challenge to Secretary [of State] Kerry and other leaders of the international community is to come up with an idea that is realistic.
Oh, I see: apathy rules in Israel, so it's the Yanks and their mates who have to pull their fingers out and fix things. Right.
Hey, you want a realistic idea, Ari?
Here it is. It's called BDS:
Boycott all Israeli products, institutions, and cultural ambassadors;
Divest from all corporations and businesses that aid and abet Israeli apartheid;
Sanction Israel until the occupation is ended, equality between Jewish and non-Jewish Israelis is won, and Palestine's refugees are finally allowed to return to their homes and lands in Israel.
You cannot end this conflict in Israel in one year, in one month, with one piece of paper. You have to create two state dynamics. You have to have Israel gradually, cautiously ending the occupation. It cannot be done overnight. You have to help the Palestinians build their own state, again in a long process, and you need to bring the Arab neighbours, the moderate Arab neighbours, as parties to this process, and you need the international community to stop promoting ideas that are totally detached from the reality on the ground. I think that if we'll adopt this kind of pragmatic, realistic approach we will move in the right direction because right now things are not very promising and the collapse of Kerry's initiative is something that troubles me very much and I hope we'll soon have this new kind of peace concept that will replace the old one because the intellectual vacuum, the conceptual vacuum is a very dangerous one right now.
And your solution is?
Geraldine:
You know, interestingly, Danny Danon, the increasingly powerful chairman of the Likud, Netanyahu's own party, and Israel's deputy defence minister, has actually been very concerned about Netanyahu being possibly, according to the reports in the Guardian, preparing to do some sort of deal, and they've stopped Netanyahu from making a lot of decisions on his own. They're more and more sitting on his shoulder. Do you think Netanyahu is the sort of man who could break out and astonish us all, like Begin did?
Games people play:
"Until this week, the question posed by 'neutral observers' about Binyamin Netanyahu was whether he was going to follow the examples of Menachem Begin and Ariel Sharon. Would he transform himself into a peacemaker like Begin and Sharon by uprooting settlements and relinquishing occupied territory, or would he be an immovable object like Shamir, aiming only to keep things 'quiet' so he could build more settlements and close the door on Palestinian statehood? After the start of this week, though, would-be neutral observers are no longer asking this question, at least not with a straight face..."
All except Geraldine! The preceding lines were written in 2010 by Jerusalem Post columnist Larry Derfner.* Enough said.
Geraldine may be smitten, but I'm giving Shavit my Talking Under Wet Cement award for 2014:
Ari:
Well, we have this hope for a long time. I must say that Netanyahu did some things though ideologically surprising, they never turned into a change on the ground. I think there is some potential there, but I'll share with you a secret about my country. I think that by and large Israelis, Israeli society is quite remarkable. I think it's a rich, smart, vibrant, promising society. I think there is a lot of good in us. Our politics is totally dysfunctional. Israel is experiencing an ongoing - I know you have some political crises - political crisis...
Geraldine:
Small challenges by comparison hahaha...
Ari:
... Israel has been going through for decades. It did not have the kind of worthy leadership and worthy political system that will represent the people as they really, will be true to their amazing achievements, what I call the man-made miracle Israel really is. So my hope, and I'm not getting to Netanyahu or different people, my hope is that at long last we will free ourselves of this situation. The forces, the strong, promising forces in Israeli society will have a leadership worthy to this remarkable people and then we can move forward, but again it has to do with the international community as well. People in the West... who want peace as I do, as we all do, have to think in a fresh way because trying to impose concepts, whether it was democracy under Bush or an ideal peace tomorrow under others on the Middle East that is rough, brutal, violent and dangerous. That does not lead us anywhere so we have to look at the region as it is with all its brutality and yet with a humble and modest hope that there is there. So we have to look for new ways in order to try to end occupation, to bring about a reasonable peace, and for my own people to guarantee the future of the Jewish democratic state because I think when you look at the story of my people you see this really remarkable people, the story of a people that almost were extinguished and saved themselves and created something quite unique and quite endearing that needs protection both from the roughness of the region and from our own flaws and faults and we must let the triumph triumph over the tragedy.
Geraldine:
Well, look, that eloquence, maybe you've got to enter parliament...
[*Rattling the cage: any more doubts about Bibi? 13/10/10)
Tuesday, May 27, 2014
Howling Nonsense Meets Gushing Vacuity 2
Geraldine Doogue:
Well, you also talk about the fact that for a lot of those who came... they didn't see the people who were already there.
So let me get this straight: they could see the coming Holocaust, but not the Palestininian Arabs right in front of their eyes? Right. Please explain then, if you can, the 1891 testimony of at least one such Zionist settler with a conscience, name of Ahad Ha-Am:
"They treat the Arabs with hostility and cruelty, deprive them of their rights, offend them without cause, and even boast of these things." (See my 18/6/08 post Avnery's Apology: A Critique for the full quote)
Ari Shavit:
The subtitle of my book is The Triumph & Tragedy of Israel. The triumph is the result of what I describe. It's a remarkable human endeavour of a poor, lonely people saving itself.
Here we go again...
The tragedy is really the tragedy of the conflict, and in my own case, I describe the arrival of my own great grandfather. He, like others, would not see the others who were living in the land, the Palestinians. Now, as I make the point in the book, they were not conquistadors. There wasn't a political entity called Palestine at the time. There was no Palestinian republic, no Palestinian kingdom, and yet there were half a million Palestinians in the land at the time...
Not conquistadors, Ari? No, not initially, at any rate. They didn't need to be. They had British conquistadors to keep the natives in check, while the Jewish colons learnt the ropes. And then, when the British conquistadors had grown tired of the dirty work, the colons took up conquistadoring, first against the British, then against the natives. Every colonist is a conquistador of sorts, Ari. And just as great gramps Herbert didn't 'see' the natives, you, the ex-paratrooper, don't 'see' what you really are.
Now I know you're probably not big on Vladimir Jabotinsky, but at least he was more honest than you:
"Any native people... views their country as their national home, of which they will always be the complete masters. They will not voluntarily allow, not only a new master, but even a new partner. And so it is for the Arabs... They look upon Palestine with the same instinctive love and true fervour that any Aztec looked upon his Mexico or any Sioux looked upon his prairie." (See my 12/6/08 post Pemulwuy in Palestine for the full quote)
... and because of their desperate need to build a national home for the Jews, and because of their yearning for the glorious biblical past, they overlooked the fact that there were others living in the land, and that set in motion this horrible hundred year war that is still going on. So you have the complexity, the beauty, I would say the heroism, the morality, and the need, and the blindness which led them to this inevitable and ongoing, deep and tragic conflict.
Sorry, Ari, however you like to dress up the Zionist project in Palestine, it was all, from the very beginning, just another grubby colonial land grab. Hey, but at least you've managed to fool dopey Geraldine!
Geraldine:
Indeed, and... um... I must say I was conscious on my recent trip of the vitality of Israel and lots of people write about this. You describe it as a miracle, and you feel it, the greenery, the gardens, the cultural life, the opinions, the openness, and of course the Arabs look on at this, and what is your sense? I got a very mixed sense about how the Arabs... I thought some Arabs desperately wanted to be part of it to be honest, which you don't hear that said much...
Part of Israel? But of course, Israel is occupied Palestinian land. Always was, always will be - Palestinian land. As Moshe Dayan once said in a moment of candour, describing the massive post-Nakba theft of Palestinian land:
"Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages... There is not one single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population." (See my 1/9/12 post Only 'Sort Of'? for the details.)
... and the others, of course, as one man said to me in Bethlehem, this older man who looked for all the world like somebody from Scotland but he was actually - hahaha - a Palestinian with Crusader blood in him - ha! - a redhead, freckled man, he said, We have to lose all hope, we have to abandon all hope we Palestinians, it's a terrible phrase actually, but you know, how do you reconcile these two facts. They're both true.
OK, you want a classic example of folie a deux? Here it is:
Ari:
... the Holy Land, and this conflict, are much more complex than many people realise so I think that what you have on the one hand is that there are many Palestinians who, and I have empathy to them - my book tells the story of my people from my point of view, but its full of empathy to the other - and I see the Palestinians all the time and I'm aware of their tragedy, of their suffering. I think there are two states of mind. On the one hand, there are these grievances, the hostility, the bitterness, and all that side of it that we hear so much about. On the other hand, there is a side that we don't hear that much about. Israel, for all its faults, and I'm very critical of government policies on many issues, Israel is, if you look at the Middle East, an oasis of liberty and prosperity and freedom. What you have in Israel, sadly, sadly, you do not have hundreds and probably thousands of miles around, and therefore I think many Palestinians and Arabs are ambivalent because on the other hand, for good reasons from their point of view, they have resentment. On the other hand they want to join the the party in some ways and those who live within Israel again, while politically...
Geraldine:
Well, they think they've got the jackpot. I met them hahaha...
So Palestinians in Israel have hit the jackpot! Just as well they managed to dodge the Great Ethnic Cleansing of 1948. Otherwise they wouldn't have been able to experience the thrill of living under the Israeli jackboot a full 19 years before their fellow Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza won the jackpot/jackboot in 1967.
Ari:
... So while politically they've got a lot of criticism, as I say, especially when there is this terrible tragedy happening - it's worse than a tragedy happening, it's a catastrophe - the human catastrophe happening in Syria with the world looking at this helpless as hundreds are killed daily, then I think many Arabs and Palestinians living in Israel, with all their criticism, they realise that life under the Zionists in Nazareth is somewhat better than life under the Arab nationalists in Damascus. Now this is not something that most of them say aloud. You don't hear it publicly...
No, Ari, what they were really saying was Thank God for Ben Dunkelman, otherwise we wouldn't be here now. Never heard of him? I thought not. He was the Canadian Jew who commanded the Haganah's Seventh Brigade, which took control of Nazareth in 1948. Here's what he had to say about the immediate aftermath:
"Two days after the second truce came into effect, the Seventh Brigade was ordered to withdraw from Nazareth. Avraham Yaffe, who had commanded the 13th battalion in the assault on the city, now reported to me with orders from Moshe Carmel to take over from me as its military governor. I complied with the order, but only after Avraham had given me his word that he would do nothing to harm or displace the Arab population. My demand may sound strange, but I had good reason to feel concerned on this subject. Only a few hours previously, Haim Laskov had come to me with astounding orders: Nazareth's civilian population was to be evacuated! I was shocked and horrified. I told him I would do nothing of the sort - in view of our promises to safeguard the city's people, such a move would be both superfluous and harmful. I reminded him that scarcely a day earlier, he and I, as representatives of the Israeli army, had signed the surrender document, in which we solemnly pledged to do nothing to harm the city or the population. When Haim saw that I refused to obey the order, he left. A scarce twelve hours later, Avraham Yaffe came to tell me that his battalion was relieving my brigade; I felt sure that this order had been given because of my defiance of the evacuation order. But although I was withdrawn from Nazareth, it seems that my disobedience did have some effect. It seems to have given the high command time for second thoughts, which led them to the conclusion that it would, indeed, be wrong to expel the inhabitants of Nazareth. To the best of my knowledge, there was never any more talk of the evacuation plan, and the city's Arab citizens have lived there ever since." (Truth Whereby Nations Live, Peretz Kidron, in Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship & the Palestinian Question, Ed. by Edward Said & Christopher Hitchens, 1988, p 87)
... but actually people are aware of it, and this is where some of my cautious, conditional optimism comes from, because while I do not see us right now signing a grand peace deal that will end the conflict the way American Secretary of State Kerry just tried, I do think there is a kind of grass roots pragmatism on both sides that has some hope in it of some coexistence. People do want to move on with their lives. As I like to say when I'm in this great country of yours, at the end of the day, speaking about my fellow Israelis, most Israelis want Israel to be like Australia. They don't want it to be some sort of religious entity or extremist national [state], that's the vision of a tiny minority. Most people would like to have a good life, a vibrant democracy, a kind of sunny, vibrant hedonistic society celebrating life. That's the real vision and the real wish of most people, so if you give them a realistic, pragmatic peace concept, something to solve the issues not in complete, just and permanent way but something that is real, they'll go for it and if we and the international community will come up with that kind of new thinking I think that you'll be surprised to find that most Israelis, and hopefully most Palestinians, will be more pragmatic than what we see right now.
Er, Ari, about that realistic, pragmatic peace concept... to solve the issues NOT in a complete, just and permanent way that you're on about, didn't you say that great gramps Herbert and the rest had brought a fierce belief in justice with them to Palestine?
To be continued...
Well, you also talk about the fact that for a lot of those who came... they didn't see the people who were already there.
So let me get this straight: they could see the coming Holocaust, but not the Palestininian Arabs right in front of their eyes? Right. Please explain then, if you can, the 1891 testimony of at least one such Zionist settler with a conscience, name of Ahad Ha-Am:
"They treat the Arabs with hostility and cruelty, deprive them of their rights, offend them without cause, and even boast of these things." (See my 18/6/08 post Avnery's Apology: A Critique for the full quote)
Ari Shavit:
The subtitle of my book is The Triumph & Tragedy of Israel. The triumph is the result of what I describe. It's a remarkable human endeavour of a poor, lonely people saving itself.
Here we go again...
The tragedy is really the tragedy of the conflict, and in my own case, I describe the arrival of my own great grandfather. He, like others, would not see the others who were living in the land, the Palestinians. Now, as I make the point in the book, they were not conquistadors. There wasn't a political entity called Palestine at the time. There was no Palestinian republic, no Palestinian kingdom, and yet there were half a million Palestinians in the land at the time...
Not conquistadors, Ari? No, not initially, at any rate. They didn't need to be. They had British conquistadors to keep the natives in check, while the Jewish colons learnt the ropes. And then, when the British conquistadors had grown tired of the dirty work, the colons took up conquistadoring, first against the British, then against the natives. Every colonist is a conquistador of sorts, Ari. And just as great gramps Herbert didn't 'see' the natives, you, the ex-paratrooper, don't 'see' what you really are.
Now I know you're probably not big on Vladimir Jabotinsky, but at least he was more honest than you:
"Any native people... views their country as their national home, of which they will always be the complete masters. They will not voluntarily allow, not only a new master, but even a new partner. And so it is for the Arabs... They look upon Palestine with the same instinctive love and true fervour that any Aztec looked upon his Mexico or any Sioux looked upon his prairie." (See my 12/6/08 post Pemulwuy in Palestine for the full quote)
... and because of their desperate need to build a national home for the Jews, and because of their yearning for the glorious biblical past, they overlooked the fact that there were others living in the land, and that set in motion this horrible hundred year war that is still going on. So you have the complexity, the beauty, I would say the heroism, the morality, and the need, and the blindness which led them to this inevitable and ongoing, deep and tragic conflict.
Sorry, Ari, however you like to dress up the Zionist project in Palestine, it was all, from the very beginning, just another grubby colonial land grab. Hey, but at least you've managed to fool dopey Geraldine!
Geraldine:
Indeed, and... um... I must say I was conscious on my recent trip of the vitality of Israel and lots of people write about this. You describe it as a miracle, and you feel it, the greenery, the gardens, the cultural life, the opinions, the openness, and of course the Arabs look on at this, and what is your sense? I got a very mixed sense about how the Arabs... I thought some Arabs desperately wanted to be part of it to be honest, which you don't hear that said much...
Part of Israel? But of course, Israel is occupied Palestinian land. Always was, always will be - Palestinian land. As Moshe Dayan once said in a moment of candour, describing the massive post-Nakba theft of Palestinian land:
"Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages... There is not one single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population." (See my 1/9/12 post Only 'Sort Of'? for the details.)
... and the others, of course, as one man said to me in Bethlehem, this older man who looked for all the world like somebody from Scotland but he was actually - hahaha - a Palestinian with Crusader blood in him - ha! - a redhead, freckled man, he said, We have to lose all hope, we have to abandon all hope we Palestinians, it's a terrible phrase actually, but you know, how do you reconcile these two facts. They're both true.
OK, you want a classic example of folie a deux? Here it is:
Ari:
... the Holy Land, and this conflict, are much more complex than many people realise so I think that what you have on the one hand is that there are many Palestinians who, and I have empathy to them - my book tells the story of my people from my point of view, but its full of empathy to the other - and I see the Palestinians all the time and I'm aware of their tragedy, of their suffering. I think there are two states of mind. On the one hand, there are these grievances, the hostility, the bitterness, and all that side of it that we hear so much about. On the other hand, there is a side that we don't hear that much about. Israel, for all its faults, and I'm very critical of government policies on many issues, Israel is, if you look at the Middle East, an oasis of liberty and prosperity and freedom. What you have in Israel, sadly, sadly, you do not have hundreds and probably thousands of miles around, and therefore I think many Palestinians and Arabs are ambivalent because on the other hand, for good reasons from their point of view, they have resentment. On the other hand they want to join the the party in some ways and those who live within Israel again, while politically...
Geraldine:
Well, they think they've got the jackpot. I met them hahaha...
So Palestinians in Israel have hit the jackpot! Just as well they managed to dodge the Great Ethnic Cleansing of 1948. Otherwise they wouldn't have been able to experience the thrill of living under the Israeli jackboot a full 19 years before their fellow Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza won the jackpot/jackboot in 1967.
Ari:
... So while politically they've got a lot of criticism, as I say, especially when there is this terrible tragedy happening - it's worse than a tragedy happening, it's a catastrophe - the human catastrophe happening in Syria with the world looking at this helpless as hundreds are killed daily, then I think many Arabs and Palestinians living in Israel, with all their criticism, they realise that life under the Zionists in Nazareth is somewhat better than life under the Arab nationalists in Damascus. Now this is not something that most of them say aloud. You don't hear it publicly...
No, Ari, what they were really saying was Thank God for Ben Dunkelman, otherwise we wouldn't be here now. Never heard of him? I thought not. He was the Canadian Jew who commanded the Haganah's Seventh Brigade, which took control of Nazareth in 1948. Here's what he had to say about the immediate aftermath:
"Two days after the second truce came into effect, the Seventh Brigade was ordered to withdraw from Nazareth. Avraham Yaffe, who had commanded the 13th battalion in the assault on the city, now reported to me with orders from Moshe Carmel to take over from me as its military governor. I complied with the order, but only after Avraham had given me his word that he would do nothing to harm or displace the Arab population. My demand may sound strange, but I had good reason to feel concerned on this subject. Only a few hours previously, Haim Laskov had come to me with astounding orders: Nazareth's civilian population was to be evacuated! I was shocked and horrified. I told him I would do nothing of the sort - in view of our promises to safeguard the city's people, such a move would be both superfluous and harmful. I reminded him that scarcely a day earlier, he and I, as representatives of the Israeli army, had signed the surrender document, in which we solemnly pledged to do nothing to harm the city or the population. When Haim saw that I refused to obey the order, he left. A scarce twelve hours later, Avraham Yaffe came to tell me that his battalion was relieving my brigade; I felt sure that this order had been given because of my defiance of the evacuation order. But although I was withdrawn from Nazareth, it seems that my disobedience did have some effect. It seems to have given the high command time for second thoughts, which led them to the conclusion that it would, indeed, be wrong to expel the inhabitants of Nazareth. To the best of my knowledge, there was never any more talk of the evacuation plan, and the city's Arab citizens have lived there ever since." (Truth Whereby Nations Live, Peretz Kidron, in Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship & the Palestinian Question, Ed. by Edward Said & Christopher Hitchens, 1988, p 87)
... but actually people are aware of it, and this is where some of my cautious, conditional optimism comes from, because while I do not see us right now signing a grand peace deal that will end the conflict the way American Secretary of State Kerry just tried, I do think there is a kind of grass roots pragmatism on both sides that has some hope in it of some coexistence. People do want to move on with their lives. As I like to say when I'm in this great country of yours, at the end of the day, speaking about my fellow Israelis, most Israelis want Israel to be like Australia. They don't want it to be some sort of religious entity or extremist national [state], that's the vision of a tiny minority. Most people would like to have a good life, a vibrant democracy, a kind of sunny, vibrant hedonistic society celebrating life. That's the real vision and the real wish of most people, so if you give them a realistic, pragmatic peace concept, something to solve the issues not in complete, just and permanent way but something that is real, they'll go for it and if we and the international community will come up with that kind of new thinking I think that you'll be surprised to find that most Israelis, and hopefully most Palestinians, will be more pragmatic than what we see right now.
Er, Ari, about that realistic, pragmatic peace concept... to solve the issues NOT in a complete, just and permanent way that you're on about, didn't you say that great gramps Herbert and the rest had brought a fierce belief in justice with them to Palestine?
To be continued...
Monday, May 26, 2014
Howling Nonsense Meets Gushing Vacuity 1
It's in the stars. These two were made for each other.
Ari Shavit meets Geraldine Doogue on Saturday Extra, Radio National, 24/5/14:
Geraldine:
You may remember a few weeks ago I was in Israel and I have to say that the trip really opened my eyes to a lot of the complexities and nuances of that country and its relationships with neighbouring Palestine...
Eyes opened, eh?
Where Palestine/Israel is concerned, those whose eyes are open see bullies lording it over their victims. Doogue, on the other hand, sees only complexities and nuances.
Where Palestine/Israel is concerned, those whose eyes are open see an occupier and an occupied. Doogue, on the other hand, sees only neighbours.
... and I was also made aware of the extraordinary level of public conversations within Israel about the nature of itself and where it's heading...
Here we go again: two Jews, three opinions.
... so it's with great pleasure that I welcome to Saturday Extra Ari Shavit... He's a very well-respected Israeli journalist and columnist with the Haaretz newspaper and he's in Sydney for the Writers' Festival, discussing his book, 'My Promised Land: The Triumph & Tragedy of Israel', which has been attracting a great deal of attention and debate.
Yeah... especially from the ABC.
I must say that I do feel that you write both about the hybrid and expansive history of the Israeli state...
The hybrid history of Israel? A Jewish state is hybrid?
Expansive? Surely she means 'expanding'?
... and your own family history and I'm going to try and tease this out, and about this identity crisis which I detected while I was there... You write a lot about your great grandfather who went to the Holy Land from Britain in 1897. Now what vision did he have for Israel?
Oh yes, Herbert Bentwich.
Ari:
Well, I think that what drove him there, like the early founders of Zionism, was the sense that Europe is becoming very dangerous to Jews and that some radical action must be taken in order to save them from the wrath and rage of Europe. So before they had the real dream or plan of what they're building they had a necessity because the feeling that after a millennium of ongoing persecution of Jews something actually new and vicious was about to happen so that you don't quite know there'll be a holocaust, but they expected some catastrophe for the Jews, especially of eastern Europe. So Israel was actually a life-saving project. It was the idea that we must do something radical in order to save the Jews from this new kind of hate and...
Oh, so great gramps, while happily lawyering away in England, inexplicably feels a Holocaust coming on, and so high-tails it to... Palestine?
C'mon Ari, you're laying it on a bit thick here, aren't you? I think perhaps great gramps' son, grand uncle Norman Bentwich, although also off with the Zionist pixies, would have more of handle on this business than you. After all, Herb was his old man.
Now Norman, in his 1934 book, Palestine, alludes to "the recrudescence... in Russia of medieval barbarism." That is, the anti-Jewish pogroms which saw some two-and-a-half-million Jews leave Russia, mainly for the US, between 1880 and 1914. Some, he notes - those bitten by the Zionist bug - went to Palestine, seeing it not so much as your touted "life-saving project" but as an exercise in Jewish empowerment. To quote him:
"Zionism was, in its deeper aspect, a struggle for self expression, for making the Jew master of his destiny, an attempt to give the Jewish genius and aspirations the outlet which circumstances had denied them for some two thousand years... Palestine was to be the spiritual centre, as well as the National Home of the Jewish people, the local habitation where the Jewish spirit, warped by perpetual conflict with its environment, could freely expand. Most Jews would not, and could not, come to Palestine and live there. They would remain citizens in their own countries. But the renaissance in Palestine would have a profound meaning for them. It would revive and give a fresh meaning to their Judaism, and bring back the religion into contact with life, rouse the self-respect of the Jew and quicken his inward life... The Jew would renew contact with nature and the historic landscape of his people and would be inspired to fresh creativeness by the land and the spirits of his past... At the Conference of Paris, which followed the World War, representatives of the Jews, admitted as spokesmen of a nationality, asked that their claim to return to their historic home might be granted, in order that they should make Palestine again a fruitful land and a centre of civilization and that 'the Jews should take an honourable place in the new community of nations'." (pp 70-72)
You might want to read that again, Ari, OK?
... following that... Israel is quite remarkable because the one problem these Zionists had was was that they were too late, that they'd save some Jews but were too late to save millions of others who perished 40 or 50 years after they launched their daring project.
Ari... Ari... enough already, OK? You're making it up as you go along. Touch base with grand uncle Norman, OK?
Then came gradually the vision...
Ah, the vision thing: mine, all mine!
... and, I think, they definitely wanted to create a utopian, just entity that will be a unique political entity. They had a kind of biblical romanticism. On the one hand they wanted to bring back the beauty of the ancient land of Israel, on the other they had different social justice ideas.
Bullshit! They built Tel Aviv FFS. C'mon, Ari, cut the crap...
Most of them, like my own great grandfather, were socialists, so their dream was a socialist paradise... Others had more liberal ideas like my great grandfather...
Will the real great gramps please stand up? Listen up, Ari: the real Jewish socialists of the time stuck around in Europe and tried to make it a better place - for everyone. Zionists are fundamentally nationalists, in it for the tribe. I suggest you read my 1/10/09 post Jewish Exceptionalism.
... and in this sense they tried to combine something that was just and would save our people while trying to create something that will be unique and especially just, and that of course ran into a harsh reality in the land.
Good God, man, I thought you'd never get there.
To be continued...
Ari Shavit meets Geraldine Doogue on Saturday Extra, Radio National, 24/5/14:
Geraldine:
You may remember a few weeks ago I was in Israel and I have to say that the trip really opened my eyes to a lot of the complexities and nuances of that country and its relationships with neighbouring Palestine...
Eyes opened, eh?
Where Palestine/Israel is concerned, those whose eyes are open see bullies lording it over their victims. Doogue, on the other hand, sees only complexities and nuances.
Where Palestine/Israel is concerned, those whose eyes are open see an occupier and an occupied. Doogue, on the other hand, sees only neighbours.
... and I was also made aware of the extraordinary level of public conversations within Israel about the nature of itself and where it's heading...
Here we go again: two Jews, three opinions.
... so it's with great pleasure that I welcome to Saturday Extra Ari Shavit... He's a very well-respected Israeli journalist and columnist with the Haaretz newspaper and he's in Sydney for the Writers' Festival, discussing his book, 'My Promised Land: The Triumph & Tragedy of Israel', which has been attracting a great deal of attention and debate.
Yeah... especially from the ABC.
I must say that I do feel that you write both about the hybrid and expansive history of the Israeli state...
The hybrid history of Israel? A Jewish state is hybrid?
Expansive? Surely she means 'expanding'?
... and your own family history and I'm going to try and tease this out, and about this identity crisis which I detected while I was there... You write a lot about your great grandfather who went to the Holy Land from Britain in 1897. Now what vision did he have for Israel?
Oh yes, Herbert Bentwich.
Ari:
Well, I think that what drove him there, like the early founders of Zionism, was the sense that Europe is becoming very dangerous to Jews and that some radical action must be taken in order to save them from the wrath and rage of Europe. So before they had the real dream or plan of what they're building they had a necessity because the feeling that after a millennium of ongoing persecution of Jews something actually new and vicious was about to happen so that you don't quite know there'll be a holocaust, but they expected some catastrophe for the Jews, especially of eastern Europe. So Israel was actually a life-saving project. It was the idea that we must do something radical in order to save the Jews from this new kind of hate and...
Oh, so great gramps, while happily lawyering away in England, inexplicably feels a Holocaust coming on, and so high-tails it to... Palestine?
C'mon Ari, you're laying it on a bit thick here, aren't you? I think perhaps great gramps' son, grand uncle Norman Bentwich, although also off with the Zionist pixies, would have more of handle on this business than you. After all, Herb was his old man.
Now Norman, in his 1934 book, Palestine, alludes to "the recrudescence... in Russia of medieval barbarism." That is, the anti-Jewish pogroms which saw some two-and-a-half-million Jews leave Russia, mainly for the US, between 1880 and 1914. Some, he notes - those bitten by the Zionist bug - went to Palestine, seeing it not so much as your touted "life-saving project" but as an exercise in Jewish empowerment. To quote him:
"Zionism was, in its deeper aspect, a struggle for self expression, for making the Jew master of his destiny, an attempt to give the Jewish genius and aspirations the outlet which circumstances had denied them for some two thousand years... Palestine was to be the spiritual centre, as well as the National Home of the Jewish people, the local habitation where the Jewish spirit, warped by perpetual conflict with its environment, could freely expand. Most Jews would not, and could not, come to Palestine and live there. They would remain citizens in their own countries. But the renaissance in Palestine would have a profound meaning for them. It would revive and give a fresh meaning to their Judaism, and bring back the religion into contact with life, rouse the self-respect of the Jew and quicken his inward life... The Jew would renew contact with nature and the historic landscape of his people and would be inspired to fresh creativeness by the land and the spirits of his past... At the Conference of Paris, which followed the World War, representatives of the Jews, admitted as spokesmen of a nationality, asked that their claim to return to their historic home might be granted, in order that they should make Palestine again a fruitful land and a centre of civilization and that 'the Jews should take an honourable place in the new community of nations'." (pp 70-72)
You might want to read that again, Ari, OK?
... following that... Israel is quite remarkable because the one problem these Zionists had was was that they were too late, that they'd save some Jews but were too late to save millions of others who perished 40 or 50 years after they launched their daring project.
Ari... Ari... enough already, OK? You're making it up as you go along. Touch base with grand uncle Norman, OK?
Then came gradually the vision...
Ah, the vision thing: mine, all mine!
... and, I think, they definitely wanted to create a utopian, just entity that will be a unique political entity. They had a kind of biblical romanticism. On the one hand they wanted to bring back the beauty of the ancient land of Israel, on the other they had different social justice ideas.
Bullshit! They built Tel Aviv FFS. C'mon, Ari, cut the crap...
Most of them, like my own great grandfather, were socialists, so their dream was a socialist paradise... Others had more liberal ideas like my great grandfather...
Will the real great gramps please stand up? Listen up, Ari: the real Jewish socialists of the time stuck around in Europe and tried to make it a better place - for everyone. Zionists are fundamentally nationalists, in it for the tribe. I suggest you read my 1/10/09 post Jewish Exceptionalism.
... and in this sense they tried to combine something that was just and would save our people while trying to create something that will be unique and especially just, and that of course ran into a harsh reality in the land.
Good God, man, I thought you'd never get there.
To be continued...
Saturday, April 5, 2014
On 'Liberal Zionists' & Bad Teddy Bears
It looks like one of the speakers at next month's Sydney Writers Festival will be Israel's Ari Shavit, author of My Promised Land, and part subject of my 17/3/14 post Hello, Geoffrey?
Shavit has been described as a 'liberal Zionist', that is, one who opposes (how?) the occupation of the Palestinian territories but baulks at the implementation of UN Resolution 194, which calls for the return of Palestinian refugees ethnically cleansed by Zionist forces in 1948, because it would transform Israel's current Jewish majority into a minority, effectively paving the way for a binational, one-state solution to the Palestine/Israel problem.
What follows is as good an account of the psychology of the 'liberal Zionist' as I've seen in a while. It comes from the comment thread to M.J. Rosenberg's conundrum, by Lawrence Davidson (mondoweiss.net, 3/4/14):
"MJ Rosenberg and Shavit and other 'liberal Zionists' are not likely to give up their fears - roughly, I guess, either fear of another holocaust somewhere outside Israel if Israel does not remain Jewish-dominated or fear that the loss of such an Israel would be in-and-of-itself another holocaust.
"These fears make them proof against the ethical demands that normal people recognize - including most normal Jews These fears also seem to cloud their thinking, preventing them from thinking any thought that would unseat the fears. They don't see this, they cannot, for their fears are like the Teddy Bears that little kids seem to carry with them wherever they go.
"Don't get me wrong - I love little kids and think they are ever so cute, including their Teddy Bear need. I remember turning around after driving the first hour of a four-hour trip to go home to get my 3-year-old son's special blanket that we'd somehow left at home. Those blankets and Teddy Bears are really important for mental health. Everyone's.
"But MJR and Shavit are getting a bit old for dragging their particular dirty, bedraggled Teddy Bear around with them for very much longer.
"I think they will grow old and die clutching that horrible, destructive Teddy Bear, unless, perhaps, their children or grandchildren turn their backs on Israel (or on Zionism, not the same thing) and do so in a way which might teach their elders that the damage done by Zionism-in-practice was far worse than any benefit gained by it. After all, losing your kids due to crimes you approved of (and perhaps participated in) would be a heavy price to pay. Worse than losing a Teddy Bear." (pabelmont)
Shavit has been described as a 'liberal Zionist', that is, one who opposes (how?) the occupation of the Palestinian territories but baulks at the implementation of UN Resolution 194, which calls for the return of Palestinian refugees ethnically cleansed by Zionist forces in 1948, because it would transform Israel's current Jewish majority into a minority, effectively paving the way for a binational, one-state solution to the Palestine/Israel problem.
What follows is as good an account of the psychology of the 'liberal Zionist' as I've seen in a while. It comes from the comment thread to M.J. Rosenberg's conundrum, by Lawrence Davidson (mondoweiss.net, 3/4/14):
"MJ Rosenberg and Shavit and other 'liberal Zionists' are not likely to give up their fears - roughly, I guess, either fear of another holocaust somewhere outside Israel if Israel does not remain Jewish-dominated or fear that the loss of such an Israel would be in-and-of-itself another holocaust.
"These fears make them proof against the ethical demands that normal people recognize - including most normal Jews These fears also seem to cloud their thinking, preventing them from thinking any thought that would unseat the fears. They don't see this, they cannot, for their fears are like the Teddy Bears that little kids seem to carry with them wherever they go.
"Don't get me wrong - I love little kids and think they are ever so cute, including their Teddy Bear need. I remember turning around after driving the first hour of a four-hour trip to go home to get my 3-year-old son's special blanket that we'd somehow left at home. Those blankets and Teddy Bears are really important for mental health. Everyone's.
"But MJR and Shavit are getting a bit old for dragging their particular dirty, bedraggled Teddy Bear around with them for very much longer.
"I think they will grow old and die clutching that horrible, destructive Teddy Bear, unless, perhaps, their children or grandchildren turn their backs on Israel (or on Zionism, not the same thing) and do so in a way which might teach their elders that the damage done by Zionism-in-practice was far worse than any benefit gained by it. After all, losing your kids due to crimes you approved of (and perhaps participated in) would be a heavy price to pay. Worse than losing a Teddy Bear." (pabelmont)
Monday, March 17, 2014
Hello, Geoffrey?
Geoffrey Wheatcroft is a British journalist and writer, whose books include something called The Controversy of Zion.
His Spectator review of a) Ari Shavit's My Promised Land: The Triumph & Tragedy of Israel, and b) Shlomo Avineri's Herzl: Theodor Herzl & The Foundation of the Jewish State, were republished in the Weekend Australian Review. (Needless to say, while absolute gems on the Middle East conflict, such as Max Blumenthal's Goliath (and so many others) are routinely ignored by Murdoch/Fairfax reviewers, these two Zionist confections are getting the kind of attention they don't deserve.)
Wheatcroft's review, as you'd expect, is nothing if not uncritical. Here are some of the itches I just couldn't help scratching after reading it. I'll begin with his comments on Shavit's book:
"Shavit's father and uncle were closely connected with the building of an Israeli nuclear bomb at Dimona. Shavit meets one of their colleagues, the anonymous head engineer of the Dimona project, whose father was killed by an Arab gunman in 1943, and who worked on the great secret project as a form of recompense." (Duality of a Zionist state,15/3/14)
Hello, Geoffrey?
So dreamy little Shimon (or Menachem or Yitzhak or Ariel or whatever) Toogoodtobetruestein, who used to ask such questions as 'Daddy, what lies behind the stars?' and 'Mummy, why do other boys pull wings off flies? It's sooo cruel', and who was wont to lie in bed at night talking to the moon through his bedroom window, was sooo mugged by reality in 1943 that he decided to be a nuclear engineer when he grew up just so he could blow up every Arab within cooee of Israel's ever-expanding borders?
Hello, Geoffrey?
About that mysterious "Arab gunman" of 1943. Seriously now, the only gunmen running around Palestine in 1943 were members of the Haganah, Irgun and Stern Gangs.
"Towards the end of My Promised Land Shavit muses that, 'if Herbert Bentwich [Shavit's British great-grandfather] had not been overcome by an obsessive yearning for Zion' the family would have remained in England. 'I like to think I could have been a literature don at Oxford or a producer at the BBC. My life would be much more relaxed and far safer than my Israeli life. My children's future would not be under a cloud. But would I have had a richer inner life?'"
Hello, Geoffrey?
Millions of Palestinians in exile, millions more under Israeli occupation, and a smaller number hanging on as third-class citizens in a 'Jewish' state, just so Shavit can lead "a richer inner life"! And Joe Hockey reckons we've got a sense of entitlement?
Now for Avineri:
"But [Herzl] was an irenic moderate, who pursued the remote ideal of a bi-national state shared by Arabs and Jews..." and a "romantic [who] imagined that the Arabs would welcome the Zionists with open arms."
Hello, Geoffrey?
Is this "irenic moderate" the same Herzl who wrote of Palestine's indigenous majority Arab population in his diary in 1895: "We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying employment for it in our country"?*
Hello, Geoffrey?
Is this "romantic" the same Herzl who, on his one and only trip to Palestine in 1898, dismissed its scenery as "Arab-blighted"**?
Geoffrey?
[*See my 4/1/13 post What would Herzl Do?; **The Middle East: Temple of Janus, Desmond Stewart, 1972, p 161]
His Spectator review of a) Ari Shavit's My Promised Land: The Triumph & Tragedy of Israel, and b) Shlomo Avineri's Herzl: Theodor Herzl & The Foundation of the Jewish State, were republished in the Weekend Australian Review. (Needless to say, while absolute gems on the Middle East conflict, such as Max Blumenthal's Goliath (and so many others) are routinely ignored by Murdoch/Fairfax reviewers, these two Zionist confections are getting the kind of attention they don't deserve.)
Wheatcroft's review, as you'd expect, is nothing if not uncritical. Here are some of the itches I just couldn't help scratching after reading it. I'll begin with his comments on Shavit's book:
"Shavit's father and uncle were closely connected with the building of an Israeli nuclear bomb at Dimona. Shavit meets one of their colleagues, the anonymous head engineer of the Dimona project, whose father was killed by an Arab gunman in 1943, and who worked on the great secret project as a form of recompense." (Duality of a Zionist state,15/3/14)
Hello, Geoffrey?
So dreamy little Shimon (or Menachem or Yitzhak or Ariel or whatever) Toogoodtobetruestein, who used to ask such questions as 'Daddy, what lies behind the stars?' and 'Mummy, why do other boys pull wings off flies? It's sooo cruel', and who was wont to lie in bed at night talking to the moon through his bedroom window, was sooo mugged by reality in 1943 that he decided to be a nuclear engineer when he grew up just so he could blow up every Arab within cooee of Israel's ever-expanding borders?
Hello, Geoffrey?
About that mysterious "Arab gunman" of 1943. Seriously now, the only gunmen running around Palestine in 1943 were members of the Haganah, Irgun and Stern Gangs.
"Towards the end of My Promised Land Shavit muses that, 'if Herbert Bentwich [Shavit's British great-grandfather] had not been overcome by an obsessive yearning for Zion' the family would have remained in England. 'I like to think I could have been a literature don at Oxford or a producer at the BBC. My life would be much more relaxed and far safer than my Israeli life. My children's future would not be under a cloud. But would I have had a richer inner life?'"
Hello, Geoffrey?
Millions of Palestinians in exile, millions more under Israeli occupation, and a smaller number hanging on as third-class citizens in a 'Jewish' state, just so Shavit can lead "a richer inner life"! And Joe Hockey reckons we've got a sense of entitlement?
Now for Avineri:
"But [Herzl] was an irenic moderate, who pursued the remote ideal of a bi-national state shared by Arabs and Jews..." and a "romantic [who] imagined that the Arabs would welcome the Zionists with open arms."
Hello, Geoffrey?
Is this "irenic moderate" the same Herzl who wrote of Palestine's indigenous majority Arab population in his diary in 1895: "We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying employment for it in our country"?*
Hello, Geoffrey?
Is this "romantic" the same Herzl who, on his one and only trip to Palestine in 1898, dismissed its scenery as "Arab-blighted"**?
Geoffrey?
[*See my 4/1/13 post What would Herzl Do?; **The Middle East: Temple of Janus, Desmond Stewart, 1972, p 161]
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