RSSThe War Isn’t Over, But Israel Has Lost
Haven’t we been here before?
I. The Last Waltz?
Repeating behaviors that have produced catastrophic failures and expecting a different result is insane; and when a person’s psychotic behavior puts himself and those around him in immediate physical danger, the responsibility of those who claim to be his friends is to restrain him. But even as Waltz With Bashir shows in multiplexes across the world as a grim reminder of the precedent for Israel’s brutal march of folly in Gaza, the U.S. (and the editors of the New York Times and Washington Post) insist that there is a sanity and rationality to sending one of the world’s most powerful armies into a giant refugee camp to rend the flesh and crush the bones of those who stand in its way — whether in defiance or by being unlucky enough to have been born of the wrong tribe and be huddling in the wrong place. By fighting its way to their citadel, they would have us believe, Israel can destroy Hamas and usher in a golden age of peace. Or, to borrow from the casual callousness of Condi Rice during the last such display of futile brutality, we are witnessing, again, the “birth pangs of a new Middle East.” Israel failed in 2006, just as in 2002 and 1982. This time, they tell us, will be different.
And then the horror unfolds, as it always does — the hundreds of civilians accidentally massacred as they cowered in what they were told were places of safety, mocking Israel’s torrent of self congratulation over its restraint and its brilliant intelligence — and the hopelessly out-gunned enemy manages to survive, as he does every time. And by surviving, grows stronger politically. No matter how many are killed, the leaders targeted by Israel’s military are endlessly regenerated in the fertile soil of grievance and resentment born of the circumstances Israel has created. Circumstances it has created, but which it, and its most fervent backers refuse to acknowledge, much less redress.
Arafat is dead and gone. So are Sheikh Yassin, and Rantissi. And Abbas al-Musawi, and Imad Mughniyeh. Israel’s ruthless efficiency at killing the leaders of Palestinian and Lebanese resistance groups is second to none, and yet, no matter who it kills, there are always thousands more, ready to declare, “I am Spartacus”. That’s because those who step up to lead these organizations are acting not out of personal ambition — leadership in Hamas is a death sentence. The endless stream of Palestinians willing to sacrifice themselves in the role, then, is a symptom of the condition of their people. And Israel’s leaders know this. Asked when running for Prime Minister a decade ago what he’d have done if he’d been born Palestinian, Ehud Barak — the man directing the current operation in Gaza — answered bluntly, “I’d have joined a terror organization.”
By the logic of his own instinct on the campaign trail in 1999, Ehud Barak should know that Operation Cast Lead in Gaza cannot succeed, except, perhaps, in reviving his own political prospects. No matter how many leaders, militants and ordinary civilians Israel kills in Gaza, Hamas — or something like it — will survive.
Waltz With Bashir — a movie that had to be made in Israel, I venture, because questioning Israeli militarism would have been deemed “anti-Semitic” in Hollywood — reminds us that, in 1982, Ariel Sharon led an invasion of Lebanon supposedly aimed at stopping attacks on northern Israel, advancing all the way to Beirut in order to crush the PLO. Sure, the PLO was driven out of Beirut and exiled to Tunisia, but the Israelis were forced within six years to begin negotiating with it because of the uprising of the youth of the West Bank and Gaza. Lebanon in 1982 was a brutal and ultimately futile campaign that delivered only the brutal images of the massacres at Sabra and Shatila around which the movie centers.
Since 1982, of course, Israel has laid siege to and bombed nearly every major Palestinian city, killing and imprisoning thousands of Palestinians, blundering into Lebanon again in 2006 and killing another thousand Lebanese, repeatedly bombed Gaza and choked off its economy for much of the past three years, and yet, nothing has changed: They have killed some 700 in Gaza now, and still the rockets come; regardless of the state of its structures, Hamas is politically stronger on the Palestinian street, while those Palestinian leaders who have cooperated with Israel and the U.S. are weaker and more discredited than ever. The Israelis — and their backers in the American political establishment — appear incapable of grasping that which is empirically obvious: Hamas and its ilk grow stronger every time Israel seeks to eliminate them by force.
II. Dangerous Illusions and a War of Choice
“But what choice did Israel have?” say those in its amen corner in the U.S. “No normal society would tolerate rocket fire on its territory. Hamas left it no option.”
Well, actually, as Jimmy Carter explains from first-hand experience, Israel had plenty of alternatives and chose to ignore them, because it remains locked into the failed U.S.-backed policy of trying to overturn the democratic verdict of the 2006 Palestinian election that made Hamas the ruling party of the Palestinian Authority. The primary Israeli-U.S.-European strategy here (tacitly backed by Arab autocrats from Mubarak to Mahmoud Abbas) has been to apply increasingly strict economic sanctions, in the hope that choking off the chances of a decent life for the 1.5 million people of Gaza would somehow force them to reverse their political choice. Collective punishment, in other words. So, even when Hamas observed a cease-fire between June and November, Israel refused to open the border crossings. When the exchange of fire began again on November 5 when Israel raided what it said was a Hamas tunnel, Hamas escalated its rocket fire but made clear that it would restore and extend the cease-fire if Israel agreed to open the border crossings. Israel’s answer, Carter explains, was if Hamas ceased firing, Israel would allow 15% of the normal traffic of goods into Gaza. And it’s any surprise that Hamas was not prepared to settle for just a 15% loosening of the economic stranglehold?
Hamas appeared to believe that creating a crisis would force Israel to agree to new terms. Whether this was a mistaken belief or not actually remains to be seen: If the truce that ends Israel’s Operation Cast Lead leaves Hamas intact and includes the lifting of the siege, it will claim vindication. Even now, Israeli leaders continue to insist, idiotically, that Hamas cannot be allowed to achieve any diplomatic gains as a result of any truce that must, of necessity, require its diplomatic cooperation. Just as in 2006, the Israelis have achieved the exact opposite political result to what they intended: They have made it abundantly obvious, even to the incoming U.S. administration, that the policy of trying to isolate Hamas is spectacularly dysfunctional, and will have to be abandoned as a matter of urgency.
Even as the realization begins to dawn that their adversary, once again, will emerge politically stronger from a military pummeling, the Israelis contemplate one last bloody foray into the heart of Gaza City, hoping that military action can weaken Hamas and force it to surrender to Israel’s terms. Some American policymakers even cling to the fantasy that they can reimpose the regime of the pliant Mahmoud Abbas on Gaza — a pathetic fantasy, to be sure, because close observers of Palestinian politics know that the only thing keeping Abbas in charge of the West Bank, right now, is the presence of the Israeli Defense Force, and it’s willingness to lock up his opponents. Conveniently, for example, Abbas doesn’t have to deal with his own legislature, which is dominated by Hamas, because Israel has locked up most of the legislators. Mahmoud Abbas has allowed himself to be turned into a Palestinian Petain, and even much of the rank and file of his own Fatah party has turned against him. Not even the Israelis believe he could control Gaza without them, and they are not inclined to stay.
If Hamas is not allowed to govern in Gaza, chances are that nobody will govern in Gaza. It will look more like Mogadishu than like the West Bank — a chaotic cauldron run by rival warlords, with Hamas — no longer responsible for governance — the most powerful political-military presence (although al-Qaeda will fancy its chances of setting up shop if the Hamas government is overthrown — Hamas is the greatest bulwark against Bin Laden’s crowd gaining a foothold in Gaza).
III. Palestinian Sovereignty
The other trope being desperately worked by Israel’s cheering section is the idea that this is simply another episode of a regional conflict between Israel and its mortal foe, Iran. Hamas, we are told, by many media outlets that ought to know better, is a “proxy of Iran”. This is simply not the case, and sober regional analysts know it: Hamas is certainly dependent on Iranian cash in Gaza, although those Western and Israeli strategic geniuses who deprived it of all other sources of funding ought not be surprised that Hamas turned for funds to those who would offer them. No doubt it will take whatever military assistance it was offered, too. But Hamas shares neither ideology nor the kind of political relationship with Iran that Hizballah does, in Lebanon. Hamas was the creation of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, originally, and its political decision making is entirely independent of Iran. Syria is more politically influential over Hamas, of course, and Syria is hardly a proxy of Iran despite their alliance — if it was, why would the U.S. be working so hard on a diplomatic strategy to break that alliance? Moreover, the idea of Iran on some sort of path of confrontation with Israel is something of a phantom. Sure, Ahmadinejad loves to warn that Israel will disappear, but he, and his superior, have long made clear that Iran has no intention of attacking Israel. And you’d think that those who insist that Iran’s mullahs exist in order to destroy Israel, even at the cost of their own survival (you know, the argument that the iranians are so ideologically committed to Israel’s destruction that normal deterrence policies won’t restrain them) might want to answer this question: Why has Hizballah refrained from firing its massive arsenal of rockets at Israel as it butchers Palestinians in Gaza? Israel tells us they have the means, and there’s no doubt they have the implacable rage. Could the answer be that this Iranian proxy is being restrained by the pragmatic concern for its own survival and progress in Lebanon? And if so, what does this tell us about Iran? Then again, Iran is not especially relevant to the conflict in Gaza.
Nor was the crisis there created by the militancy of Hamas; instead, it’s the final bloody chapter in the failed Bush Administration-Israeli strategy to overthrow Hamas. The alternative to war, ignored by Israel but patently obvious, is simple: It will have to negotiate with Hamas. (And spare me the “but Hamas doesn’t recognize Israel’s right to exist” argument: No Palestinian leader would, if offered the chance to reverse history, allow Israel to have come into existence, for the simple reason that Israel’s emergence was the Palestinian Nakbah, the catastrophe that dispossessed them and made them refugees. Israel started talking to the PLO long before its charter was revised to allow for recognizing Israel; its leaders realized that Israel could not be militarily defeated. Many in Hamas have come to the same conclusion; Efraim Halevy, the former head of Mossad, argues that Hamas is moving towards acceptance of a Palestinian state in the 1967 borders. The Americans are simply going to have to let go of the idea that they’re going to negotiate with a Palestinian leadership that answers to them, as Mahmoud Abbas does, rather than one that answers to the Palestinian public.)
As Oxford-based Israeli historian Avi Shlaim writes:
Israel likes to portray itself as an island of democracy in a sea of authoritarianism. Yet Israel has never in its entire history done anything to promote democracy on the Arab side and has done a great deal to undermine it. Israel has a long history of secret collaboration with reactionary Arab regimes to suppress Palestinian nationalism. Despite all the handicaps, the Palestinian people succeeded in building the only genuine democracy in the Arab world with the possible exception of Lebanon. In January 2006, free and fair elections for the Legislative Council of the Palestinian Authority brought to power a Hamas-led government. Israel, however, refused to recognise the democratically elected government, claiming that Hamas is purely and simply a terrorist organisation.
America and the EU shamelessly joined Israel in ostracising and demonising the Hamas government and in trying to bring it down by withholding tax revenues and foreign aid. A surreal situation thus developed with a significant part of the international community imposing economic sanctions not against the occupier but against the occupied, not against the oppressor but against the oppressed.
As so often in the tragic history of Palestine, the victims were blamed for their own misfortunes. Israel’s propaganda machine persistently purveyed the notion that the Palestinians are terrorists, that they reject coexistence with the Jewish state, that their nationalism is little more than antisemitism, that Hamas is just a bunch of religious fanatics and that Islam is incompatible with democracy. But the simple truth is that the Palestinian people are a normal people with normal aspirations. They are no better but they are no worse than any other national group. What they aspire to, above all, is a piece of land to call their own on which to live in freedom and dignity.
Like other radical movements, Hamas began to moderate its political programme following its rise to power. From the ideological rejectionism of its charter, it began to move towards pragmatic accommodation of a two-state solution. In March 2007, Hamas and Fatah formed a national unity government that was ready to negotiate a long-term ceasefire with Israel. Israel, however, refused to negotiate with a government that included Hamas.
It continued to play the old game of divide and rule between rival Palestinian factions. In the late 1980s, Israel had supported the nascent Hamas in order to weaken Fatah, the secular nationalist movement led by Yasser Arafat. Now Israel began to encourage the corrupt and pliant Fatah leaders to overthrow their religious political rivals and recapture power. Aggressive American neoconservatives participated in the sinister plot to instigate a Palestinian civil war. Their meddling was a major factor in the collapse of the national unity government and in driving Hamas to seize power in Gaza in June 2007 to pre-empt a Fatah coup.
The war unleashed by Israel on Gaza on 27 December was the culmination of a series of clashes and confrontations with the Hamas government. In a broader sense, however, it is a war between Israel and the Palestinian people, because the people had elected the party to power. The declared aim of the war is to weaken Hamas and to intensify the pressure until its leaders agree to a new ceasefire on Israel’s terms. The undeclared aim is to ensure that the Palestinians in Gaza are seen by the world simply as a humanitarian problem and thus to derail their struggle for independence and statehood.
Shlaim introduces us to the deeper flaw in the “no normal society would tolerate rocket fire” reasoning: Israel, quite simply, is not a normal society. It is a country without fixed legal borders, and the disputes over where those borders should be drawn — the basic conflict not over religion or ideology, but over land and power — is at the very epicenter of the current clash in Gaza, and of Israel’s never-ending series of wars with those around it.
One can only hope, with great fervor, that Barak Obama has heeded the wisdom of his foreign policy tutor Brent Scowcroft, whose observations about the folly of the Bush Administration backing Israel’s 2006 campaign against Hizballah apply as much to today’s offensive in Gaza: “Hezbollah is not the source of the problem,” Scowcroft wrote in the Washington Post. “It is a derivative of the cause, which is the tragic conflict over Palestine that began in 1948. The eastern shore of the Mediterranean is in turmoil from end to end, a repetition of continuing conflicts in one part or another since the abortive attempts of the United Nations to create separate Israeli and Palestinian states in 1948.”
If that were true in Lebanon, it’s even more so in Gaza. To understand everything from why Hamas refuses to recognize the State of Israel; why it fights by means both fair and terribly foul; and why it won Gaza by a landslide in the 2006 election; a good starting point is the demographic composition of the strip — 80% of today’s Gazans are refugee families, who were driven out of homes and off land they owned inside what is now Israel in 1948, and forbidden by one of the founding laws of the State of Israel from ever returning. Is it any surprise then that the basic default position of Palestinian politics has always been to refrain from “recognizing” Israel in the sense of simply abandoning their own claims to homes and land stolen from them by Israel’s very creation. Sure, Israel can say it won the war of 1948, and to the victor the spoils. But what would Ehud Barak do if it had been his father or grandfather who’d been forced off a farm in Ashkelon and now found himself in the hellhole of Gaza? You already know his answer.
And that answer will remain the same (even if Barak would never dream of admitting it any longer) as long as justice and dignity is denied to the community that gave rise to Hamas.
What Operation Cast Lead has revealed in stark and brutal terms, is that Israel’s leadership is incapable of transcending the dysfunctional patterns that lock it into a morbid cycle that precludes Middle East stability. Israel is moving steadily to the right politically — even when the center-left was in power and negotiating with the Palestinians, settlements on occupied land expanded at a steady clip; no Israeli government for the foreseeable future is going to withdraw from the West Bank to the Green Line. So, if the madness is to be stopped, Israel and the Palestinians will have to be told where their borders are, as part of an internationally enforced, fair settlement that gives the parties no choice, and provides the Turkish troops to enforce it. But hey, I’m not holding my breath…
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115 Responses to “The War Isn’t Over, But Israel Has Lost”
EXcellent Mr Karon.
“Weep for Gazans who have no place to run or hide”, still being slaughtered in spite of the UN declared ceasefire.
What Israel REALLY WANTS, is beyond comprehension. Whatever it is, will not be the end result of this undescribable catastrophe.
What Israel wants is not beyond comprehension.
It is quite simple really. Israel is a colonialist settler state. It wants land and it wants it without the native population on it.
The Palestinian and Lebanon people are both in the way of the land Israel wants.
Hey Tony –
As you know I generally disagree with your take on these types of matters but always enjoy reading your posts and getting your perspective on the middle east.
But with this latest post, I found it nearly impossible to read through more than a couple of paragraphs, after you started off with:
“the hundreds of civilians butchered”.
I find that kind of language really offensive and irresponsible. It suggests a certain intention and character of the IDF that dehumanizes the soliders - when in fact the IDF takes more measures to protect civilians in a combat zone that any other military today — often at a cost of higher casualties to their own soldiers.
It also fuels some of the real anti-Israel hate speech that has unfortunately landed in some of your blog post comments — and even some of your regular readers seem horrified by the new tone of the comments here.
Here’s hoping for a more level headed conversation.
happy new yr !
Raanan — you mean I should have said “accidentally butchered” — I agree that the Israelis didn’t intend to kill these large clusters of civilians they killed with a single shell or bomb here and there. But there’s a limit to how much sympathy anyone can have for accidents that happen, and are bound to happen, in the course of a futile “show of strength” that actually strengthens those it is supposedly aimed at.
“Offensive and irresponsible” in my mind is sending tanks, artillery and an air force into giant refugee camp. The soldiers, as Waltz With Bashir tries to show, are dehumanized by those who send them on these crazy missions.
I agree with you about the tone of some of the comments on the site, specifically the antisemtic ones. But it is Israel’s actions, not criticisms of Israel’s actions, that has outraged most of the world.
[...] The war isn’t over, but Israel has lost By Tony Karon, Rootless Cosmopolitan, January 9, 2009 [...]
I was just in North Africa visiting relatives when the current war began. My nephews and nieces whose parents are upper middle class and who are no older than 12 years old (of Tunisian and Algerian heritage) were all wearing the traditional palestinian scarf around their necks and telling me they wanted to go to Palestine to help their brothers and sisters. Israel is only adding fuel to the fire and now taunting well educated and once moderate arabs. The populations of arabs countries are dwarfing that of Israel and is only a matter of time before sheer numbers decide who wins the war. Alekum a salem.
Excellent analysis, Tony. I lived in the Holy Land for two years (mostly in the West Bank, but frequently visiting Israel and occasionally Gaza) and have been focusing professionally on this conflict for the past five years. I couldn’t have said it better myself. Nicely done.
“Offensive and irresponsible” in my mind is sending tanks, artillery and an air force into giant refugee camp.
And what, in your mind, is operating rocket and mortar attacks from mosques, hospitals, and UN schools?
Mr. Karon, First time I heard about you but I must say this is a great article!
Bob Simon talking to Charlie Rose about the Gaza situation.
http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/9900
CNN Confirms Israel Broke Ceasefire First
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KntmpoRXFX4
UN: “Israel knew they were bombing a school”
Video: http://tr.im/3610
@Tony –
“you mean I should have said “accidentally butchered” “.
Nope. Butchering implies brutality or a kind of indiscriminate style of killing. Neither one is accurate here regarding the IDF. I think simply “accidentally killed” would be appropriate. Hamas firing rockets indiscriminately at Israeli cities with the only intention of killing innocent civilians — now that fits the definition of “butchering”. Hamas forcing residents into areas where it’s firing rockets from knowing that it ups the chances of civilian casualties - that’s “butchering”. And Hamas refusing to allow civilians to receive humanitarian aide or medical treatment and using ambulances to move it’s gunmen within the Gaza — that to me is tantamount to “butchering civilians”. And for a reality check - every lost civilian life is a tragedy, but it goes against the principals and morals of the IDF and serves no Israeli interest to kill civilians, and that should be obvious to everyone who follows these events.
In addition, the IDF calls Gaza residents to warn them if fighting is near their homes, it drops leaflets, and won’t bomb sites from the air on overcast days — not because it can’t hit the targets ( it has the GPS coordinates ) but because the Israeli air force cannot confirm if civilians are in the area, and therefor does not want to risk killing innocent civilans.
Does that sound like butchering ?
And why do doctors in Israel perform life saving surgery on Palestinian kids ( at a cost to the Israeli tax payer ) ? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjqm5tzIwIQ ?
The answer is that Israelis care deeply about civilians in Gaza and overwhelmingly ( some polls put it at 65%+ ) want a two-state peace deal. What they don’t want is a neighbor who thinks they can shoot rockets and hold cities hostage and has the ultimate goal of wiping Israel off the map. Even at the height of this conflict when Israelis are attending funerals of fallen soldiers and civilians, if you watch the local media or talk to people in Israel you’ll find vigorous debate about the current situation and a deep sympathy to what the civilians in Gaza are facing. I’m not sure if you’ve ever visited Israel - by I really encourage you to do so soon and get an on-the-ground perspective.
Bottom line, the point of this operation is to go after Hamas, not the civilians in Gaza.
“But there’s a limit to how much sympathy anyone can have for accidents that happen, and are bound to happen, in the course of a futile “show of strength” ”
I think that’s an excellent point. It’s why we should avoid wars and military conflicts at all costs and exhaust all diplomatic options first - because wars are dirty, messy, and not a precision science the way they often gets portrayed by gun cam videos these days. What other country but Israel has from the inception agreed to compromise, dialog, and negotiation — and then when attacked later returned to the negotiation table on a principle of “land for peace” ? And what other country would put up with rocket fire for months on end (years really) and still try and negotiate and find a diplomatic solution while it’s civilians are being killed ( inside the green line no less ) ?
I also obviously don’t agree with all Israeli political positions on how best to negotiate a peace deal, but let’s put it in context of the “three NOs” that the Arab world adopted post ‘67 (NO peace with Israel, NO recognition of Israel, NO negotiations with Israel) all the while when there was a real window of opportunity — 10 years before the first settlement was even started.
“I agree with you about the tone of some of the comments on the site, specifically the antisemtic ones.”
You have the power to curate the conversation here — I think you should exercise that ability to keep the conversation here flowing and at a high-level.
“But it is Israel’s actions, not criticisms of Israel’s actions, that has outraged most of the world.”
Yes and no. The coverage of Israel’s defensive military action is often portrayed with a tone and a language that is inappropriate and often borders on hate speech. By the way, the same “outrage” that the world has right now never seems to apply to Israeli civilians being killed — why is that ? And I’m sorry to say, but when someone as smart and well respected as you adds to the discourse by saying things like “butchered civilians” — it provides a green-light and creates a more conducive environment for those who want to spew hate speech and anti-semitic rhetoric.
“Sure, Ahmadinejad loves to warn that Israel will disappear, but he, and his superior, have long made clear that Iran has no intention of attacking Israel.”
What a strange bit in this entire article. It’s simple false that Ahmadinejad warned that ISRAEL would disappear. He said the Zionist regime would. And he was talking about the political viability of the Zionist ideology.
He repeated the quote (from Khomeiny) a year later, and added, for clarification, “just like the USSR faded from the pages of time.”
So there.
epitaph for a nations zeal
sowed the seeds for the real
new one world order
like from space
no nasty lines
for her figure
to disgrace
no army’s
standing
lying
buried
underground
no opposition needed
and never any found
we all must look
out for each other
that’s what this life’s about
it’s there in the waves cascading
and in the rooftop shout
“By the way, the same “outrage” that the world has right now never seems to apply to Israeli civilians being killed — why is that ?”
I don’t know. Maybe because, until Israel launched the current attack, not a single Israeli civilian got killed. God, I wonder why no one gets outraged when no one dies. That surely is intolerable.
More seriously, I’m wondering exactly on which planet you’re living. Pluto maybe ? The ratio of Palestinian to Israeli deaths is more than 100 to 1. The UN also uses a very special method of counting civilian casualties: there is no such thing as a male civilian. No grandpas, no dads, nothing. If you’re a male civilian in Gaza, you’re automatically a Hamas militant who lobs rockets into Israel. Wonder when you’ll show outrage for THAT.
As for how there’s no outrage for civilian casualties in Israel, I suppose those who don’t do that simply believe that Israel got it coming. I think it can be argued that the Israeli army is so powerful that sneaking up and shooting stuff from afar is the only winning strategy possible. You weren’t expecting Hamas to get into an open field and fight with their shitty weaponry, with grade-A Israeli armaments ? The Qassam rockets, the suicide bombings, that’s the result of decades of subsidies. Hamas and Palestinians would fight fairly, IF THEY HAD A CHANCE by doing that. Give them tanks and F-16s. You’ll see.
On the more general point of how immoral it is to kill civilians, there is already a norm about this. Something everyone signed. It’s called the Geneva Convention, and US and Israel are two of the actors that violate it the most. Ironic that they are also the one who are the most self-righteous.
I suppose each man is furthest to himself. But I’m pretty sure that if you’re bullshitting yourself about purity of arms, you’re only getting that much further from self-observation. Words don’t make stuff come true. Purity is not something to exclaim to strangers like a political slogan. It is the result of a long, humbling, and strenuous journey. Israel uses it like a slogan, and I’m not surprised the reality is far far away from the words.
Raanan — I’ll go with accidentally butchering, actually. The point is, there’s no way to do what Israel is trying to do without causing major civilian casualties. And you’re simply wrong about Israel having exhausted diplomatic options, throughout its history or even now, in teh course of this very conflict in Gaza. (See links to Jimmy Carter account in the story) Israel chose not to go for a new ceasefire (by refusing to reopen the crossings). This was a long-planned operation aimed at taking out Hamas military capability. And that’s in keeping with the “iron wall” tradition of smashing the Palestinians until they accept defeat. The Israelis had a way of stopping rocket fire without doing this — by accepting the idea of a ceasefire that reopened the crossings.
The absurdity is that Israel won’t negotiate with Hamas (or the U.S.) but is forced to anyway. This could all have been avoided with a more mature, rational response not only in November/December, but when Hamas won the election. This operation is the final, bloody chapter of the failed U.S.-Israeli campaign to overturn the results of the 2006 Palestinian election.
Apropos curating the conversation, I’ll try to do better, but have a lot on my plate.
But no amount of media management, which the Israelis have spent so much effort trying to do, can compete with the images that come out of Gaza.
In deference to your concern, though, I’ll change “butchered” to “accidentally massacred”
But Raanan, as quid pro quo, now you have to read to the end!
@littlehorn –
“I think it can be argued that the Israeli army is so powerful that sneaking up and shooting stuff from afar is the only winning strategy possible. You weren’t expecting Hamas to get into an open field and fight with their shitty weaponry, with grade-A Israeli armaments ? The Qassam rockets, the suicide bombings, that’s the result of decades of subsidies. Hamas and Palestinians would fight fairly, IF THEY HAD A CHANCE by doing that. Give them tanks and F-16s. You’ll see.”
I understand asymmetrical warfare, but a Hamas armed with more powerful weapons would simply try and kill many more Israeli civilians.
Israel on the other hand is carrying out defensive measures to protect her citizens, and on the other side trying to minimize civilians casualties in Gaza.
And what about prior wars like ‘48 and ‘67 when all the Arab states were talking about annihilating Israel and outnumbered the Israelis by a huge number — by your logic Israel should have resorted to killing civilians in Syria and Egypt then as a response ?
And as Wafa Sultan points out “we haven’t seen a single Jew blow himself up in a German restaurant” - which according to your logic should havee been the response to WWII: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciOGS6r97oE
@Tony –
“Israel chose not to go for a new ceasefire (by refusing to reopen the crossings).”
Perhaps — and I don’t completely agree with this tactic, however Israel has every right to close it’s border to a hostile neighbor who not only threatens it, but executes terror trikes against it’s citizens.
The problem is Hamas wants to have it both ways. It wants to remain a radical terrorist orginization and a gov’t org that provides services to it’s people. And not only that, it wants to be rewarded by Israel to show it’s people that it “beat down” Israel — that simply can’t happen.
Imagine if after the pull out in 2005 instead of building 1000+ tunnels to smuggle in weapons, Hamas would have actually tried to improve the lives of it’s own people, made peace with Fatah (instead of executing dozens of them) and proved to the world that they were ready to be a responsible orginization.
It wasn’t that long ago in the late 90s when Jordan, Egypt, and the PA setup industrial parks in Gaza and new jobs were being produced and things were at least looking better.
“The Israelis had a way of stopping rocket fire without doing this — by accepting the idea of a ceasefire that reopened the crossings.”
Yes, but politically since nobody pressured Hamas to stop arming itself and shooting rockets ( not to mention kidnapping Gilat Shalit ) - it became very hard for Israel to “reward” Hamas.
“This could all have been avoided with a more mature, rational response not only in November/December, but when Hamas won the election.”
I agree with you that it would have been preferable - but the missing piece was an olive branch from Hamas that never came.
At times like this I really miss Rabin who liked to say that you “negotiate for peace as if there were no terrorism, and you fight terrorism as if there were no peace negotiations”.
“In deference to your concern, though, I’ll change “butchered” to “accidentally massacred” ”
You’ve got a dark sense of humor ! Masscared is the same if not a bit worse.
“But Raanan, as quid pro quo, now you have to read to the end!”
Going to be tough w/ your latest edit.
Perhaps — and I don’t completely agree with this tactic, however Israel has every right to close it’s border to a hostile neighbor who not only threatens it, but executes terror trikes against it’s citizens.
Israel doesn’t have any borders. As a matter of fact, it is the only country in the world without fixed borders. That’s because the land it claims keeps getting larger and larger. Kind of like Nazi Germany.
It is a colonial settler state, and its supporters are racists who want a religiously pure state, unlike modern democracies which are secular.
Raanan,
“Even at the height of this conflict when Israelis are attending funerals of fallen soldiers and civilians, if you watch the local media or talk to people in Israel you’ll find vigorous debate about the current situation and a deep sympathy to what the civilians in Gaza are facing. I’m not sure if you’ve ever visited Israel - by I really encourage you to do so soon and get an on-the-ground perspective.”
So, Ranaan, I see you wish to appropriate me as your propaganda tool. You PERSONALLY don’t care about loss of civilian lives–if you did, you wouldn’t still be defending Israel at this point–but you want to say Israel is moral because Jews like me protest. That’s simply false, considering the high support Israelis still show for the war. There are some moral Jews in Israel, specifically the Jews who agree with me that it is time to end the carnage. (If you change your mind, you can join them–there’s a Peace Now rally in Tel Aviv motzei shabbat.) But you are not moral. You are justifying war crimes.
I am the one that’s commented most about antisemitism on this forum, but I think it will be many months before I attend any event that can be construed as pro-Israel. On the other hand, even if I can not wear a kippah at pro-Palestinian rallies for fear of antisemitic maniacs, I will be there.
The point isn’t to visit Israel. I’ve done that extensively, it’s a nice place, and I genuinely enjoyed my time there. The point is to visit the Palestinians. I’ve found that most Israelis in W Jerusalem are as naive as New York Jews regarding what happens to Palestinians. They simply have no idea.
So I ask you: aside from army patrols, have you ever visited a Palestinian neighborhood? Have you talked to settlers, who are clear on their goals and will brag about their brutal methods? If so, what did you think?
I have to say, I visited Shderot and think the situation is quite bad in the south. The people there, beaten down by years of red alerts have a mixture of fear and resignation in their eyes. But so do Hevron Palestinians–and their situation has always been better than Gaza’s.
Shabbat Shalom
Hamas’ popularity is a function of the brutality of the occupation. If Israel is successful in weakening Hamas, then some other group that is more radical, violent, & uncontrollable will emerge in its place.
@ edwin -
Most Israelis, including myself, hope the ‘67 borders can be finalized. But since Gaza was once part of Egypt, and the West Bank was part of Jordan, it’s not that simple to just got back to ‘67.
@Shlomo –
“but you want to say Israel is moral because Jews like me protest”
Not sure I follow. But in general protesting and dialogue only lead to good things - so the more the better. Do Palestinians get to protest against Hamas in Gaza ?
I just object to using massacre/butchered/etc when those terms assume a certain intention and a certain scale that are not accurate to this situation.
This isn’t Hana in Syria where 40,000 Syrians were killed by Assad and his brother for being “anti Baath”.
“So I ask you: aside from army patrols, have you ever visited a Palestinian neighborhood?”
I have — many years ago though — not safe anymore to visit unfortunately.
“Have you talked to settlers, who are clear on their goals and will brag about their brutal methods? If so, what did you think?”
I think for most of them, they should either pack their bags or decide that they will be living in the future Palestinian state.
For pure logistical reasons if a peace deal included keeping a few settlements right on the edge of Israel and in return giving the Palestinians more land in the south ( so the total sq km was the same ) I’d be in favor of that.
Otherwise if we can ensure security and peace for the citizens of Israel, I don’t see why we can’t go back to the ‘67 borders.
“Kind of like Nazi Germany.”
There’s as time and place for hyperbole, but it isn’t here. Let’s save the Nazi references for when someone is killing civilians by the million.
http://www.sott.net/articles/show/172252-The-Other-Side-of-the-Story-
It looks like slaughter to me, Raanan.
“I find that kind of language really offensive and irresponsible. It suggests a certain intention and character of the IDF that dehumanizes the soliders - when in fact the IDF takes more measures to protect civilians in a combat zone that any other military today — often at a cost of higher casualties to their own soldiers.”
This quote from Ranaan is a deliberate attempt to conceal the crimes of the IDF. They have murdered and wounded nearly four thousand human beings in the last ten days in a savage attack on a civilian population. Amnesty International, The Red Cross, the UN, and millions of concerned human beings deplore these war crimes and the complicity of those who attempt to justify and conceal these crimes behind the shield of anti-semitism, while they stand on the bodies of the dead.
http://www.counterpunch.org/cook01092009.html
Outcry Over Israel’s War Crimes
“Yesterday, Amnesty International also accused Israeli soldiers of using Palestinian civilians as human shields – a charge Israel has repeatedly leveled against Hamas.
Malcolm Smart, a spokesman, said: “Israeli soldiers have entered and taken up positions in a number of Palestinian homes, forcing families to stay in a ground-floor room while they use the rest of their house as a military base and sniper position.”
Raanan says: “For pure logistical reasons if a peace deal included keeping a few settlements right on the edge of Israel and in return giving the Palestinians more land in the south ( so the total sq km was the same ) I’d be in favor of that.”
The area to the south is the Negev Desert. So you want to exchange the prime Palestinian farm land on the Western Border of the West Bank for more desert? Isn’t the desert in the Jordan River Valley enough desert for the Palestinians.
How about handing over the Galilee instead. That is good land.
[...] The war isn’t over, but Israel has lost. [...]
How dare Israel try to defend its civilians and its existence! Those uppity Jews think they deserve a place to live, of all the nerve!
Hamas has as a centerpiece of its charter the complete destruction of Israel. It also contains an approval of terrorism, the intentional targeting of civilians, to achieve that aim. Before Israel forcibly removed all Israelis from Gaza, the justification for targeting Israeli civilians was that it was a resistance to Israel’s occupation. But Israel withdrew completely from Gaza and the response? The citizens of Gaza elected the terror group Hamas and thus gave their approval for attacking Israeli civilians with the aim of destroying Israel.
Israel is not idealistically trying to usher in a magical era of peace with this operation, merely to hinder Hamas’s ability to fire rockets nonstop at Israel’s civilians.
If Hamas were so concerned about the welfare of its citizens, then it would not instigate wars with Israel by attacking Israel’s own civilians. It certainly would not deliberately stage these attacks from within densely-populated areas and use its civilians as human shields.
The central difference between Israel and Hamas’s approach to warfare is that Israel targets terrorists. The terrorist Hamas targets civilians, Israel’s directly, and its own citizens as well by putting them directly in the line of fire.
Most Israelis, including myself, hope the ‘67 borders can be finalized. But since Gaza was once part of Egypt, and the West Bank was part of Jordan, it’s not that simple to just got back to ‘67.
I bet you do. Borders were finalized in 1948 by the United Nations. Egypt and Jordan have nothing to do with it.
You might be interested in Michel Chossudovsky’s essay at Global Research entitled “War and Natural Gas: The Israeli Invasion and Gaza’s Offshore Gas Fields”
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=11680
“The central difference between Israel and Hamas’s approach to warfare is that Israel targets terrorists. The terrorist Hamas targets civilians, Israel’s directly, and its own citizens as well by putting them directly in the line of fire.” by Joe
I remind you sir, the State of Israel was founded by warfare intent on ethnic cleansing of Palestinians by Haganah, Irgun, and Stern Gang terrorists whose public statements made clear ethnic cleansing was their strategy in establishing a Jewish state in Palestine. The descendent’s of members of Zionist terror organizations today appear to continue the policy of maintaining a Jews only state in Palestine by violent ethnic cleansing and seizure of Palestinian land. The world can see the results of the Zionist project in Gaza, which is holding the world hostage, including Jews. I direct you to the links to the following websites, if you are interested in putting aside the lies of the Zionist rulers of Israel and studying their origins and agenda in an objective search for truth in this matter.
http://www.marxists.de/middleast/ironwall/index.htm
http://www.marxists.de/middleast/brenner/index.htm
Raanan, TK, good to see the old .com crew here, even if it’s in the midst of a heated argument.
Raanan, you read on my site what I think about this invasion. I just don’t see the end game: what is the desired result here? It just isn’t realistic to think that despite historic evidence to the contrary, this one particular military strike will make the Palestinian militants lay down their arms and get to the negotiating table. Paradoxically it will likely have the opposite effect: nobody wants to negotiate from a position of weakness, so I’m sure Hamas would prefer to regenerate slowly than to sit down to talks after the bombardment.
I will bring in the Irish yet again, because I think the situation translates pretty well. (I wrote about it a while back: http://patrickstack.com/2007/06/13/the-ireland-middle-east-parallel/) The English spent 800 years trying to extinguish the Irish nationalists with much more brutal methods than the most anti-Arab Israeli could fathom, yet like a weed (at least as the English saw it) the rebellions grew back again and again and again. The only way the English beat it was to accommodate it: they returned to their borders and left the Irish to their own devices. (The exception being the North, and we all see how well that turned out.) That was a humiliating thing for the British Empire to do in the face of IRA tactics that they saw as terrorist in nature, and clearly the British had the military means to crush the Irish rebels in any fair fight, but the alternative was to keep doing the same weed-cutting for another 800 years.
I don’t think Israel will get the stable Palestinian state it needs unless it unilaterally moves toward it, and that will take someone willing to be the guy who “gave in to the terrorists”. That won’t be true, and in the end Israel will be better off for it. (Sharon at least grasped this concept.) Using force, though, is just more time spent in the weeds.
P.S. - B-school is a motherfucker.
The beating Israel is getting in world opinion, unfortunately, will have little impact. Israel will continue to pummel Gaza. In 1982 Israel pummeled a helpless Beirut, killing thousands, and who really remembers or cares? That is the take home lesson for Olmert, Barak and Livni; The world will holler for a while, but after Israel “wins” it wont matter and everyone will forget. Does anyone in the west really care about Sabra and Chatilla now? The Hasbara damage control team will sanitize Gaza in the same way.
Israel isn’t going to back down in the face of “international pressure” if it is only in the form of protests, no matter how large. If no nation in Europe is willing to take practical steps, such as withdrawing an ambassador, downgrading ties, arms embargo, etc. then the Israelis really wont care. And there is no sign any European nation will do that.
Indeed, Israel can’t back down, period. After loosing in Lebanon, they ***HAVE TO*** win here. They will invade Gaza city and other urban areas. They will kill a lot of people to minimize their own casualties. Then, they will find a collaborator to run it. If Abbas isn’t up to the task, they will find someone else. If the collaborators fight with the people in some civil war, so much the better. missiles will still fall on Sderot, but that was never the issue. Sderot will be as forgotten as the Iraqi WMD.
Will this bring Israel security? It remains to be seen, but I can say with confidence that Israel will NEVER accept a true Palestinian state and will certainly never accept a bi-national state. There will allways be a number of individual Israelis who could live with a compromise, but the Israeli nation state never will. Unless the balance of power shifts, meaning a nuclear Iran, a very powerful Hizbollah, economic devastation in the west, a collapse of the Egyptian and Saudi regimes and a multi-polar world, then I see nothing that will change that.
It only gets worse from here.
Dear Mr Karon, would be interesting to read an article written by you (I am not cynical) that describes why the Hamas is losing again and again (not to mention the Palestinian people). Look where there are today, what is wrong with their strategy/ways of operating/decision making so far historically? If the Israelis are so wrong, maybe some creativity on the other side can bring to a solution? thanks, Ruti
I found your article full of cliche
Hear are some of them:
1. The use of force form Israel if is a failure
-The only reason why Hezbollah won’t help the Hamas is the memory of Israeli retaliation in 2006 when he attack Israel.
The suicide boomer when stopped only when Israel used aggressive force against the terrorist in the west bank starting on may 2002.
In the Middle East war starting when the Arabs think that the other side is week - that what happened when Saddam Husein invasion to Iran 1980.
The PLO would never come to negotiate with Israel if he wouldn’t expel from Lebanon and realized he can never beat Israel,
The same happened to Egypt and Syria - the both understand that there no real option to over come Israel and they chose not to step out from the military conflict against Israel
2.If Israel is so vicious, powerful, Brutal, ready to kill innocence civilian -why the Hamas challenge
it?
Would any of the reader would challenge a vicious powerful brutal neighbor of him/ her ?
The answer is like alot of political failure regime the Hamas failed to care for his own people and misjudge the Israeli tolerance and restricted behavior like Nassralla they fall in love with the Iranian military support and illude them self that the can beat Israel - so stupid/ so Arad
Raanan wrote:
“I also obviously don’t agree with all Israeli political positions on how best to negotiate a peace deal, but let’s put it in context of the “three NOs” that the Arab world adopted post ‘67 (NO peace with Israel, NO recognition of Israel, NO negotiations with Israel) all the while when there was a real window of opportunity — 10 years before the first settlement was even started”
We are dealing here with one of the more successful bits of hasbara stuff. One finds it over and over and it is rarely challenged.I take the liberty to repeat here what I have written elasewhere on the matter.:
Thus we have here a picture of Israel holding out publicly the olive branch to obstinate Arab nations and being rudely rebuffed by them.
I have argued before, and will argue again, that this juxtaposition provides a caricature of the situation – a caricature that hasn’t survived the opening up of the relevant archives, except for those who have a vested interest in the myth around it.
The Israeli cabinet did indeed shortly after the war, on the 19th of June 1967, make a decision (with a majority of one vote)of that nature but if it was meant as an ‘offer’ to the Arabs they went about in a very curious way. The decision of that day was taken in the deepest secrecy (even Rabin, not a member of cabinet at the time, did not know about it), was never conveyed to the Arab states and was soon a historical artefact anyway because the Israeli cabinet changed its mind several times and had made its own decision undone well before Khartoum.
Barely a month after that decision was made, and thus well before the Khartoum meeting with “the three noes”, politicians approved plans for building settlements on the Golan Heights. Before that Jerusalem had been ‘unified’ in the teeth of strong opposition from the Americans (the Israelis argued, with a fine feeling for semantic subtleties, that ‘unification’ was not the same as ‘annexation’). Mid August far reaching plans for the settlement of the West Bank had been adopted.
Thus the Israeli historian Avi Shlaim argues that the decision of the 19th of June had become a ‘dead letter’ well before Khartoum. Those who maintain that the Israeli cabinet only reversed its policy after Khartoum have but a scintilla of formal truth on their side in the fact that the precarious decision (taken with a majority of one vote) of 19th June was finally formally buried in October.
I went through the documents in the online archive of the U.S. Department of State, now open to public inspection. I specifically looked at the material from the period between the date of that decision of the 19th of June,that was never turned into an offer to the Arab states, and the beginning of the Khartoum Conference (thus from around the twentieth June 1967 until the end of August of that year). I have skipped the lengthy archivalia on the consultations with the Russians and have only retained the in my view most telling fragments of the rest. The documents follow here below.
They completely confirm the picture Shlaim gave of the situation which is not astonishing because he went through the same documents (plus other archives of course – specifically the Israeli archives that are, as far as I know, not online).
Shlaim is completely right in asserting that there never was an offer to Syria and Egypt for Israel to withdraw to the international boundary. The relevant document is the first one in the series that follows. As one can see Eban was, in relation to the June 19 decision by the Israeli Cabinet, not talking to the Americans about an ‘offer’ at all – he spoke of ‘tentative conclusions’ and the then U.S.Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, referred to Eban’s statements as ‘preliminary thoughts’. It is also completely clear that the Americans were not asked to convey these ‘preliminary thoughts’ to Syria and Egypt. If that had been the case there would have been a memorandum of some sort about it, plus information on the reaction of these two Arab countries. There is nothing at all.
This explains also the following statement by Rusk in his memoirs entitled “As I Saw It”.(This is the statement I quoted a few days ago and that Shai was referring to).
Rusk wrote:
“For twenty years, since the creation of Israel, the United States had tried to persuade the Arabs that they needn’t fear Israeli territorial expansion. Throughout the sixties the Arabs talked continuously about their fear of Israeli expansion. With the full knowledge of successive governments in Israel, we did our utmost to persuade the Arabs that their anxieties were illusory.
“And then following the Six Day War, Israel decided to keep the Golan heights, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and the Sinai, despite the fact that Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol on the first day of the war went on Israeli radio and said that Israel had no territorial ambitions. Later in the summer I reminded Abba Eban of this, and he simply shrugged his shoulders and said, ‘We’ve changed our minds’. With that remark, a contentious and even bitter point with the Americans, he turned the United States into a twenty-year liar.”
I think Eban would have reacted differently if he could have reminded Rusk of a peace offer along the lines of the June 19 decision.
One explanation I have for Eban’s later assertion that such an offer was made is the one he himself offered to Lord Caradon, when this diplomat told him what the international understanding was about Resolution 242. Eban surmised that Caradon’s recollection ‘had dimmed with the passage of time’. This reflection was quite untrue as far as Caradon was concerned but might have accurately revealed the state of Eban’s own mind.
It should also be kept in mind that the Israeli cabinet veered at that time in quite a few different directions (though they all seemed to lead to a hardening of its stance) and Eban’s recollection might not only have dimmed but also have gotten a bit mixed up. The possibility that he himself got caught up in the myth about ‘the olive branch and Khartoum” can also not be excluded.
Whatever the case may be, there was no ‘offer’.
Israeli changeability in that period was partly due to the influence of General Dayan who, according to that other Israeli historian of the war, Oren, had, together with Rabin (who, however, was not a member of cabinet) been turned into a public icon by the war.
Oren wrote:
“ I’m waiting for the phone to ring”, Dayan was widely quoted as saying, implying that Israel would be willing to return territories if the Arabs came forward for talks. But in the Cabinet debate on the June 19 resolution, Dayan argued that there was no use discussing the terms for peace since the Arabs would never accept Israel. He protested the decision, saying, “We cannot withdraw from Sinai and the Golan on the basis of a single vote … “ Six weeks after the end of the Six-Day war, according to the British Embassy’s count, Dayan voiced no less than six different opinions on peace.” (2002, p.315/316).”
And Shlaim wrote in his review of Oren’s book:
“Defence minister Moshe Dayan was a law unto himself. … The resounding military victory over which Dayan presided greatly enhanced his political power at home, and he used this power to impose his muddled and myopic ideas on the wavering cabinet. In the country of the blind, the on-eyed man was king.”
“The three noes of Khartoum” 2
I spoke earlier of the gradual hardening of the Israeli stance pre-Khartoum. Though the Americans didn’t know the specifics of the Israeli cabinet decisions taken at that time they were very well aware of the general drift of these.
So spoke Saunders in his conversation of August 15 with the Israeli ambassador to the USA (see document 418) about his concern ‘that Israel seemed to be digging into its present position more solidly every day … I saw a problem for both of us in the rapidly sharpening image of Israel as the intransigent victor holding onto its spoils”. And from the last document presented here (no. 431) which contains a conversation, held between the Israeli minister and Walt Rostow a few days (29th August) before the Khartoum declaration was issued, it is clear that Israel did not agree with the call in the joint U.S.- Soviet resolution to return to the pre-war boundaries. Israel was not prepared to do so, not “even in exchange for a peace treaty”. It now wanted ‘secure’ boundaries. That could mean almost anything. And in the post Khartoum years the talk of prominent Israeli politicians and military men on that issue was well suited to fuel the Arabs’ worst suspicions and fears.
References to possible boundaries for Israel became more and more inflated and had by 1973, on the eve of the Yom Kippur War, apparently reached a megalomaniac crescendo. So said Abba Eban in a 1976 interview with Shlaim (belatedly published in Israel Studies 2003 Vol.8 No.1):
“The rhetoric of 1973 is almost inconceivable, with Ariel Sharon saying that we could capture everything from Tunis and Iran between Turkey and the Sudan; Dayan saying that, for the next ten years, the issue was not peace, but to draw a new map, because, in the next ten years, there would be neither peace nor war; Itzhak Rabin’s statement in 1973 that Golda had better boundaries than King David and King Solomon had had … So that it is really how opinion passed from sobriety to self-confidence, and from self-confidence to fantasy, reaching a somewhat absurd level in 1973 … ”
What is also apparent from these documents is Hussein’s almost frantic attempts to come, pre-Khartoum, to a negotiated settlement with Israel – even with the tacit understanding of Nasser (who was however not trusted by the Americans). Rusk was very happy with Hussein’s overtures and recommended them emphatically to the Israelis who reacted coolly. Their fist reaction was that there was nothing new in Hussein’s approach.
Uri Avnery has, in commenting on Israel’s reception of the Arab peace plan that has become identified with the name of Prince Abdallah (as if this broadly supported Arab proposal only came from him), delineated the various stages of the usual Israeli reaction to peace overtures: “PHASE A is designed to belittle the offer. “There is nothing new there,” the Political Sources would assert. “It is offered solely for tactical purposes. It is a political gimmick”. If the offer comes from an Arab: “He says it to the international community, but not to his own people”. In short, “It’s not serious.” “
Thus the reaction to Hussein’s pre-Khartoum overtures ran to type. Moreover, the basis for any understanding was taken away with the hasty annexation (eh, ‘unification’) of East Jerusalem and Israel’s far reaching plans for settlements on the West Bank.
The first document offered here concerns Eban’s first post 19th of June conversation with the American Secretary of State, containing the Israeli cabinet’s ‘tentative conclusions ‘ as he called them, that were, by the magic of political spin, post facto transformed into an ‘offer’.
(Wherever I have left out fragments in the following documents I have inserted the usual three dots)
314. Telegram From the Mission to the United Nations to the Department of State/1/
New York, June 22, 1967, 0455Z.
/1/Source: National Archives and Records Administration, RG 59, Central Files 1967-69, POL 27 ARAB-ISR. Secret; Exdis. Repeated to Tel Aviv. Received at 3:27 a.m. Passed to the White House at 3:44 a.m. Secretary Rusk was in New York June 19-June 23 to attend the Special Session of the UN General Assembly.
…
Secretary and Ambassador Goldberg received Israeli FonMin Eban along with Rafael and Harman 7:15 p.m. June 21. Hour’s conversation revolved around two main topics: (A) Situation in Near East and Israeli view re settlement and (B) present parliamentary situation in UNGA. This telegram covers topic (A)./2/
…
Eban stated Israeli inter-ministerial committee had come to some tentative conclusions which he would like to discuss with Secretary but not others.
Egypt-Israel. Israelis wanted peace treaty on basis present international frontiers. This would involve Israeli maritime passage through Straits Tiran and Suez Canal and air passage over straits. In context non-belligerency this would mean Israel would be treated like everyone else. In same context Israel envisaged demilitarization of Sinai, which was natural barrier between two countries. From Egypt, Israel wanted only security, no territory. Israelis felt Egypt might be attracted to this concept.
Important thing that there must be treaty which committed Egyptians. Israeli unwilling accept another understanding on basis of assumptions. This had been major fault of 1957 arrangements which had committed much of world but not Egypt.
Israel-Syria. Israelis would like peace treaty on the basis of the international frontiers with some understanding that Syrian hills overlooking Israeli territory would be demilitarized. Israelis would also like assurances that Syria would not use returned territory for purpose of diversion of Jordan waters away from Israel. Eban noted that Syrians unable divert these waters now because Israeli held essential territory. Eban concluded that Israel was offering both Egypt and Syria complete withdrawal to international frontiers. These terms not ungenerous.
Gaza. Eban noted that Egypt had never claimed Gaza, had not accepted responsibility for occupying it, or for the refugees. The natural thing was for Gaza to be in Israel. Israelis would make every effort on behalf of Gaza population which totaled over 350,000 people. This plus Israel’s present Arab population would bring total Arabs in Israel to about 700,000. Israelis wondered whether some could not be settled elsewhere, e.g. northern part of Sinai, “Central Palestine” or West Bank of Jordan. Israelis would like to maintain status of UNRWA as source of assistance to these people.
West Bank of Jordan.
Eban said Israeli thinking “less crystalized” re West Bank. They were still working on basis two tendencies, two conceptions in GOI. One tendency assumed that the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan would continue and that an agreed settlement on the basis of the demarcation line should be worked out. Another idea was that there should be some kind of association between the West Bank and Israel on the basis of autonomy and economic union.
The difficulty with this latter approach, said Eban, was that it would push Hussein back across the Jordan River. Moreover, there were no international constitutional precedents for such an arrangement.
The Secretary interposed by wondering whether there were not precedents on the basis of letting the people concerned decide. Eban replied that GOI was trying to take soundings on the intelligence level. There were some “serious” Arab leaders on West Bank who felt that their relationship with East Jordan had been artificial and had provided them no security. Others had Hashemite loyalties.
…
Secretary commented that it was helpful to have these preliminary thoughts.
…
Jerusalem. Secretary hoped that Israel would be very careful with regard to Jerusalem as it involved actual or latent passions of an enormous number of people. The matter was very delicate and could be a source of strong anti-Israel feeling in the United States. Eban replied that Israel was trying to put the Christian holy places under Christian control and the Moslem holy places under Moslem control. Eban admitted that Israel had a job to do in projecting publicly its intentions regarding access to holy places.
…
“The three noes of Khartoum” 3
329. Memorandum From Acting Secretary of State Katzenbach to President Johnson/1/
Washington, June 27, 1967.
…
The Israelis tell us they have not yet finally made up their minds on the position they will take with regard to the West Bank generally, and Jerusalem in particular. So far, we have advised them not to take unilateral actions, nor to present the world with a fait accompli.
…
Nicholas deB Katzenbach
. 331. Memorandum of Conversation/1/
Washington, June 28, 1967, 1:30-3:10 p.m.
…
SUBJECT
Prospects for solution of the Middle East Crisis
PARTICIPANTS
President Johnson Secretary McNamara
King Hussein Mr. Walt Rostow
Mr. Nicholas deB. Katzenbach Mr. George Christian
Mr. McGeorge Bundy Ambassador Macomber
Foreign Minister Tuqan Ambassador Shubeilat
General Khammash
Ambassador Burns
…
The King noted that the Arabs were at a major turning point. They could opt for what amounted to a settlement with Israel, to be followed by concentration on economic development; or the Arabs could opt to make no settlement and to re-arm for another round. Hussein favored the first course.
…
338. Telegram From the Embassy in Israel to the Department of State/1/
Tel Aviv, July 2, 1967, 1130Z.
…
/2/Telegram 218573 to Tel Aviv, June 29, instructed Barbour to register U.S. opposition to any unilateral action by Israel to assert de jure control over occupied territories. (Ibid.)
/3/Document 333.
/4/Telegram 3 from Tel Aviv, July 1, reported that before receiving telegrams 218573 and 219964, Barbour had discussed the subject of Jerusalem with the Israeli Minister of Justice and several other officials and had strongly deplored the “precipitate issuance unification ordinance re Jerusalem.” (National Archives and Records Administration, RG 59, Central Files 1967-69, POL 27 ARAB-ISR)
…
3. However, as to Jerusalem, GOI adamant.
…
Barbour (Barbour was the American Ambassador in Israel - A.B.)
360. Telegram From the Department of State to the Mission to the United Nations/1/
Washington, July 13, 1967, 11:06 p.m.
…
6581. Please deliver at once following message from Secretary of State to Foreign Minister Eban reported at Plaza Hotel.
Dear Mr. Minister:
We have today received a most urgent and private message from King Hussein./2/ This message informs us that the King has determined that he is prepared to conclude some sort of arrangement with the Government of Israel. In the meeting in Cairo he apparently informed Nasser of the possibility that he may undertake such an action. The exact steps and the circumstances under which negotiation might be possible are yet to be determined and the timing is, of course, a matter of major importance.
/2/Telegram 4941 from Amman, July 13, reported a conversation between King Hussein and Ambassador Burns in which the King stated he was prepared to make a unilateral settlement with Israel, and that he had discussed this with Nasser, who had said he would raise no objections if Hussein raised this with the Americans. The King said he would like to know what the Israelis would be likely to do vis-à-vis Jordan if he were prepared for a settlement. He said Jordan would have to get back substantially all it lost in the war, including the Jordanian sector of Jerusalem. He also said it was essential that Jordan obtain some arms immediately. (National Archives and Records Administration, Central Files 1967-69, POL 27-14 ARAB-ISR/SANDSTORM)
In our opinion this is a major act of courage on the part of King Hussein and offers the first important breakthrough toward peace in the current period following active hostilities. It is an opportunity in our judgment that must not be lost, offering as it does a chance to embark on a course in the Arab world which could lead to an acceptance of Israel by its neighbors and to steps which could well change the whole course of history in the Middle East.
We wish that time were available for us to consider abstractly and unrelated to immediate problems all of the issues that are involved in this offer. But we believe we have tomorrow in the vote in the United Nations on the Pakistan resolution an opportunity to pave the way for positive steps in the days ahead–an opportunity that must not be lost. With the knowledge of King Hussein’s willingness to risk a very great deal, certainly including his own security, it is imperative, we think, that your government take a step in connection with the consideration of the future of Jerusalem that would be in harmony with the courage shown by the King and which will facilitate negotiations in the days ahead of us. We urge that you attempt to make the broadest kind of gesture possible with respect to the future of Jerusalem. We urge especially that you make a generous offer with respect to the future of Jerusalem that would in effect explicitly interpret as interim the administrative arrangements recently placed in effect with respect to that city. We would also hope that your country could offer more explicitly to enter into international arrangements for a city which would assure that all religions and all faiths have access to the holy places. The offer might include a willingness to discuss with Jordan directly or otherwise the future of the old city based on the concept of universality, possibly pointing to Jordan as the spokesman for the Arab world in view of its location in relation both to Israel and to Jerusalem itself.
Let me add that as you know our own position on Jerusalem has for some years supported its international character, a position to which we still adhere.
The matter is urgent. The events of tomorrow in the General Assembly may have an important bearing on the greatest opportunity we have yet seen to achieve what you and your country have wanted and have suffered through two wars to achieve. I urge your most careful and urgent consideration of this matter. The more moderate and generous the position of Israel tomorrow, the greater the chance that there can be a good result from Hussein’s new readiness.
For Tel Aviv:
To save time and emphasize importance we attached to this message Ambassador should deliver it at once to highest available official with urgent informal suggestion it go at once to Eskhol if Eban has not yet had time to report it.
Rusk
“The three noes of Khartoum” 4
Hussein’s overtures apparently received no publicity in Israel. In a dispatch dating from December 1967 one of the most respected Israeli journalists, Amos Elon, wrote: “As far as such things can be ascertained … no political feelers were put out by the Jordanians, except on one occasion through an unidentified third party; judging from what Prime Minister Eshkol later told an interviewer about this feeler it did not appear to have been serious.” Thus was Avneri’s script followed to the letter.
Further with the archival pieces.
366. Telegram From the Embassy in Israel to the Department of State/1/
…
Tel Aviv, July 14, 1967, 2135Z.
167. State 6581./2/
…
2. Eshkol welcomed overture from Hussein. However, he professed inability to understand our apparent surprise at Hussein’s step. Recalling various recent statements by King which he interpreted to effect King would attempt achieve Arab summit and failing that would feel free to proceed on his own, Prime Minister said move should not have been unexpected. What disturbed Eshkol was tenor of Secretary’s message that Israel should respond with concessions on Jerusalem and specifically indicate a willingness to regard renunciation of city under Israeli control as subject modification. He averred most positively that he had stretched his cabinet like a rubber band on a number of problems which had been considered in last few weeks but that rubber band would break immediately if he authorized Eban to make any statements that measures to reunify city only “interim” and subject further debate. As to GA debate and resolution on Jerusalem he urged that we not support resolution calling for retrogression. His argument was that such U.S. support would be disservice to Hussein who would then be expected to achieve more in negotiation than any Israeli Government could ultimately give.
…
Barbour
367. Memorandum of Conversation/1/
Washington, July 15, 1967, 11 a.m.-12:03 p.m.
…
SUBJECT
Near East Settlement
PARTICIPANTS
Mr. Abba Eban, Foreign Minister of Israel
Ambassador Avraham Harman, Ambassador of Israel
Mr. Emanuel Shimoni, Private Secretary to the Foreign Minister
The Secretary and Under Secretary
M–Mr. Rostow
NEA–Rodger P. Davies, Deputy Assistant Secretary
…
The Secretary said that the Palestinian solution would seem to involve a second-class status for the Arabs and could lead to Palestinian demands to become the 14th Arab state.
…
The Secretary saw real trouble ahead on Jerusalem. There are strong feelings in many places on this issue. The USG had never agreed with either the Israeli or Jordanian positions on Jerusalem, and there had been sharp, adverse reaction to recent Israeli steps in Jerusalem. The question of Jerusalem must be kept open for further discussion and negotiations. The U.S. sought solid international arrangements, and this would not be satisfied by scattered rights over a few holy places.
…
WR
370. Memorandum of Meeting/1/
Washington, July 16, 1967, noon.
. The meeting is also recorded in a July 16 memorandum from Wriggins to Walt Rostow and Bundy, which describes it as a meeting of the “inner circle of the Control Group”–Katzenbach, Eugene Rostow, Battle, Kohler, and Wriggins, plus Walsh and Burns. (Johnson Library, National Security File, Middle East Crisis, Vol. VIII)
…
1. Hussein has informed us of his desire to reach a settlement with Israel. He has staked out a negotiating position of a return to the political lines of June 4, including Jordanian control of the Old City of Jerusalem. He is prepared to accept some border rectification, accompanied by over-flight rights and port facilities in Israel. He wishes us to determine whether this would be in the Israeli ball park. The Israelis, in turn, have informed us that they are ready to talk to the Jordanians although they are uncertain about the seriousness of Hussein.
2. The key to a negotiated settlement is Jerusalem. We need a better assessment of Israel’s flexibility on this subject before giving a definitive reply to Hussein.
385. Memorandum From the President’s Special Consultant (Bundy) to President Johnson/1/
Washington, July 21, 1967.
SUBJECT
The Middle East as we Approach the Weekend
…
The Israelis are now telling us that they are not ready for serious talks (though they can handle opening feelers), and it looks as if it would take a little time to get this thing going in any event.
2. Arthur Goldberg (American UN ambassador A.B.) tells me that the most recent effort to get an agreed resolution on substance has run up against an Arab stone wall. It was a good game to play out, and I think he handled it extremely well in the face of Israeli worries which were both foolish and foolishly expressed.
…
Finally, I should report that there are a number of other signs of hardening Israeli positions up and down the line. Their intemperate reaction to Goldberg’s skillful round with Gromyko, their edginess about the Jordanian negotiations, their increasing interest in solutions that would not return the West Bank to Jordan, and the evidence of political jockeying among their leaders (each tougher than the other) make me think that the time is coming for American words and actions which will have at least a constructive effect in knocking you off the top of the Israeli polls. The trick will be to achieve that result without any parallel impact at home.”
“the three noes of Khartoum” 5
The following number, 398, was archived to put on record a conversation between Walter Rostow, then Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (a post now called National Security Adviser) to President Johnson, and Evron, then the Israeli Ambassador to the USA. However, I have only included an editorial note (in the original printed in blue) going with that memo about a conversation between Lucius Battle, then US Asst. Secretary of State for Near East and South East Asian Affairs and Evron since that has to do with our topic. The actual conversation between Rostow and Evron had mainly to do with technical matters (armament I seem to remember).
398. Memorandum of Conversation/1/
Washington, July 30, 1967.
…
Mr. Ephraim Evron, Minister, Embassy of Israel, called me yesterday [July 30] and asked if he could drop by at my home on his way back from the airport where he was leaving his wife at 10:00 p.m. I agreed.
…
/3/Evron told Battle in a luncheon conversation on July 31 that the Israelis were convinced that “time is on their side and that the longer the Suez Canal is closed and the greater the economic problem in the UAR, the better chance that Nasser will be the first Arab country to come to peace terms with them.” (Memorandum of conversation, July 31; National Archives and Records Administration, RG 59, Central Files 1967-69, POL 27 ARAB-ISR)
…
Walt
Next item is self-elucidatory.
399. Memorandum From the President’s Special Consultant (Bundy) to President Johnson/1/
Washington, July 31, 1967.
…
/SUBJECT
The Middle East at the End of July
The Israeli position appears to be hardening as the Arabs still resist all direct negotiations. The Israelis have great confidence in their short-run political and military superiority. I think the evidence grows that they plan to keep not only all of Jerusalem but the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, too.
…
The following telegram is from the US Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, to Barbour, the US Ambassador to Israel, and refers to a report Rusk had received from Rostow (see above) concerning a conversation between Burns, US Ambassador to Jordan, and the Jordanian King, Hussein.
405. Telegram From the Department of State to the Embassy in Israel/1/
Washington, August 4, 1967, 0001Z.
…
15897. 1. During Evron call August 2, Under Secretary Rostow reported that Ambassador Burns, on basis his recent talks with King Hussein, thought Hussein still wanted settlement and was attempting strengthen his position as preparatory step.
Rostow said our own soundings indicated there was strong feeling about Jerusalem in Moslem world. If formula on Jerusalem could be found which would permit Jordanian-Israeli deal, this could be of crucial importance. It should not be beyond the wit of man to find such formula. Rostow recalled Eban’s statement to Secretary that Israeli stand on Jerusalem represented “negotiating position” and that key consideration for Israel was preservation “unified administration.” This was not excluded by Hussein./2/ (Evron interjected to say “you mean unified Israeli administration.”) Rostow said we would continue to explore Jerusalem question and Israel must not exclude consideration of alternative arrangements.
…
Rusk
The following memorandum refers to a conversation between H.H.Saunders, an Asst.Secretary at the State Dept., and Evron, the Israeli Ambassador to the USA.
418. Memorandum for the Record/1/
Washington, August 15, 1967.
…
SUBJECT
Discussion with Israeli Minister
…
I expressed concern that Israel seemed to be digging into its present position more solidly every day. Each new headline painted a darker image. Without even arguing the merits of letting the dust settle, I saw a problem for both of us in the rapidly sharpening image of Israel as the intransigent victor holding onto its spoils. Evron said it was inevitable that Israel (and we) would have a hard time in the coming UNGA. I suggested that there are two ways of dealing with the inevitable. One is to sit on your hands and accept all its consequences; the other is to see whether you can’t do something to face it with some dignity instead of just sticking your head in the sand and letting the brickbats fly.
…
H.H.S.
The next item is a telegram from the US Ambassador in Israel, Barbour, to the Department of State. The first paragraph is an added editorial note.
425. Telegram From the Embassy in Israel to the Department of State/1/
Tel Aviv, August 21, 1967, 0900Z.
…
524. Ref: State 23385./2/
/2/Telegram 23385 to Tel Aviv, August 18, states that the Department had noted with increasing concern recent statements by Israeli public figures about long-term Israeli policy on the West Bank and other occupied areas and was concerned that they might indicate increasing Israeli determination to occupy permanently the territories currently under military occupation. (Ibid.)
1. We share Dept’s concern at recent spate statements by Israeli political leaders indicating hardening of positions in [garble] permanently expanded Israel. (See also our A-109 and A-113.)/3/ If Arabs continue unready to talk peace and Israeli political scene continues as hotly competitive as it has been–at this juncture both contingencies seem likely–then Israeli opinion, stimulated by politicians staking out ever more advanced frontiers in the occupied territories, must perforce be increasingly conditioned to accept [as] permanent many aspects of the present territorial situation.
…
Barbour
The last item concerns a conversation between Walter Rostow (see above) and the Israeli Ambassador.
431. Memorandum of Conversation/1/
Washington, August 29, 1967.
…
Minister Evron came in, at his request, to make two points on direct instruction from Foreign Minister Eban.
…
2. The UN Resolution
The heart of the Israeli objection to the joint U.S.-Soviet resolution is its implication that Israel must return to the territories occupied on June 4. Even in exchange for a peace treaty Israel is not prepared for a simple return to the June 4 boundaries. What Israel will seek by agreement with the Arabs are “secure” boundaries, in addition to maintaining the unity of the city of Jerusalem. When I noted that we had not accepted the June 4 date in the UN resolution, Evron said the resolution still contained the language: “withdrawal from all occupied territories.” He said that the Israeli Government was quite content with the carefully designed language used by the President with respect to boundaries, most recently in his communication with Tito; but it was essential that the U.S. position in the UN not clash with the President’s formula of “secure and agreed borders.”
…
“The three noes of Khartoum” 6 Postscript
The notion that Israel held on to a land-for-peace formula until ‘the three noes of Khartoum’, with its implied suggestion that in return for peace agreements it was willing to return to the pre 4th of June borders - that, at any case, already gave Israel 26% more of the 1947 territory than it had been allocated by the UN - is a myth. It is one of the many myths about this conflict that have been built up over the years and that are hard to dislodge because of the pervasiveness of pro-Israel apologetics.
If on the 19th of June 1967 the Israeli cabinet showed willingness to return to the pre-war borders, at any case as far as Egypt and Syria were concerned, it is clear that by the end of August and BEFORE KHARTOUM this willingness had disappeared. The talk was then of ‘secure borders’ not the ‘international boundaries’.
It is also clear that the Israeli cabinet reacted negatively to the overtures of Hussein that were received on the basis of the strategy sketched by Avneri viz ‘there is nothing new here’ and ‘this is not serious’. But what really blocked those attempts at peace was Israeli unwillingness to make the annexation of East Jerusalem undone and to give up settlement plans for the West Bank. It was Israel that was not serious about peace with Hussein.
And in the Israeli cabinet even the doves grew gradually more hawkish.
Elon mentions in his dispatch of December 1967 I have referred to earlier (it is included in his book “‘A Blood-Dimmed Tide”) that “even as moderate a man as Foreign Minister Abba Eban said that any peace conference would serve first to negotiate a ‘new map’ of the area. Israel must not withdraw to what he called its former ‘Auschwitz borders’ “ (whatever that may mean).
The intellectual elite, that usually sees critique of the powers that be as one of its main tasks, now shared this hawkish mood, even to the extent that professional hawks became worried. Elon refers to a statement by one senior army officer who said; “They frighten me, these intellectuals and poets …It is strange: if I were intoxicated with victory, that would be bad but natural. But they…?”
Voices of moderation were few and far between but they were there. Elon quotes Professor JL Talmon of the Hebrew University who wrote “The example of other nations fills me with the fear of lurking dangers to the moral texture, mental balance and spiritual values of a master race.” The statement is a bit obscure (’and spiritual values’ should presumably be ‘from the spiritual values’) but nevertheless prophetic…
And what about Khartoum? Was it really a manifestation of complete Arab obstinacy and determination to see Israel wiped off the map? To take one’s cue here from the public broadcasts of the time is to confuse demagogics with diplomacy.
The two Israeli historians who have dealt in the greatest detail with this period, Avi Shlaim and Michael Oren, are too professional to fall into this trap. Michael Oren wrote:
“Western observers would later debate whether Khartoum was a victory for Arab moderation or radicalism. True, it vetoed any interaction with Israel, but it appeared to open doors to third party arbitration and the demilitarization of the occupied territories.”
Oren also said: “For the Israeli’s the ‘three no’s’ of Khartoum effectively closed the door on the June 19 resolution”. A shade of the old myth here. Perhaps there is for Oren a difference between merely closing a door and ‘effectively’ closing it.
Shlaim, who is generally more critical of Israel than Oren, wrote about Khartoum:
“The conference ended with the adoption of the famous three noes of Khartoum: no recognition, no negotiation, and no peace with Israel. On the face of it these declarations showed no sign of readiness for compromise, and this is how Israel interpreted them. In fact, the conference was a victory for the Arab moderates who argued for trying to obtain the withdrawal of Israel’s forces by political rather than military means. Arab spokesmen interpreted the Khartoum declarations to mean no formal peace treaty, but not a rejection of a state of peace; no direct negotiations, but not a refusal to talk through third parties, and no de jure recognition of Israel, but acceptance of its existence as a state.
“President Nasser and King Hussein set the tone at the summit and made it clear subsequently that they were prepared to go much further than ever before toward settlement with Israel.”
This is borne out by Elon who wrote five years ago:
“Peace, at least with Egypt and Jordan, we now know, was a practical possibility from as early as 1970-71 … In 1971, UN mediator Gunnar Jarring addressed partly identical notes to the governments of Israel and Egypt. He asked Egypt whether it was ready to conclude a peace treaty if Israel withdrew from occupied Egyptian territory. And he asked Israel whether it was ready to withdraw if Egypt made peace with it. Egypt’s answer was yes. Israel’s answer was no.”
As someone from the south of Lebanon, i can appreaciate any universal voice expressing sympathy and objeting the injustice. Nevertheless Tony, you are a minority and clearley non of your elected leaders come close.I struggle with the percieved Western Moral Highgrounds.
I hope the justifications given by ms Rice and her colleagues serves as a wake up call for all the so named moderate arab intellectuals (Often called upon by Tom Friedman et al)to understand that human rights, dignity and justice can only be earned hardly (being a lackey of the West gets you no where). So pls away with the concept that the eyeball cant resist a screwdriver or eventually you,ll get us all screwewd.
Shai,
What options would you offer the Palestinians? It may not make sense but occupations and colonisations breeds martyr. The Holocaust survivors were viewed with contempt in Israel because they were many questions to their survival: did they collaborate? Did they accept futility against a stronger power just to get out alive? Did they sell out their Jewishness to save their own hides because the Nazis had all the power? (No, Israelis aren’t Nazis and this is not the Holocaust; the Palestinians have few options and obviously submission is not going to be one of them.)
Masochistic as it is, this plays into the very strategy of Hamas. The deaths are major and taking their toll but ultimately it’s the toll that is taking effect on Israel too on questioning what this can accomplish, who is this going to benefit and what is the purpose of this operation.
Many lives will be lost for liberations.
It’s become obvious that Israel will only have a future after a viable Palestinian state starts to build an economy and is thus able to provide essential services to it’s citizens.
This must include a corridor that links the West Bank and Gaza to the Mediterranean with it’s own sea port. Even the idea of Palestine taking on the shape that existed before the 1967 war, really will prove futile.
All Jewish settlers in this new state must then be given dual citizenship and the right to compensation on their return to Israel.
With the USA having given so many billions in US tax dollars along with so much in military technology since 1973, it could exert real pressure on Jerusalem to accept something close to this solution.
If such a scenario happens in our time, then all in this ‘reborn Palestinian State’ will have to put up with the lawlessness that will exist with so much fire power changing hands from the ‘politicos’ to your local corner thug.
That after all is what has happened in South Africa. Who knows maybe then the reward for this part of the eastern Mediterranean can be to play hosts to a future Football World Cup!
Party on it’s later than you think!
No one is looking for the submission of the Palestineas, I would be happy if they just direct they afford from trying to fight Israel to build there own country.
1. The Palwtieans can never benefit from been the bad boy of the neborhood…If they want to prospect they should and must have good relation with Israel as well as with Jordan and Egypt, No International airport or sea port can make them benefits like been with good relationship with the most advanced country in the region that they so geographically engaged for good and bad.
2. Trying to challenge Israel in the military way is futureless and just causing a harsher retaliation from
Israel each round.
3. Don’t u think that quiet absurd that a small organization like Hamas trying to impose a New order on 3 much larger and stronger countries Israel, Jordan, Egypt?
4. Unfortunately the Hamas is an Iranian marionette that his schedule determine by the will of Iran to export their extreme agenda and to become a regional supperpower
5. form the the above reasons I see to option to Hamas:
a. Adopt more pragmatic agenda
b. Be extinguish as a political and military movement by Israel
6. I sorry, but I didn’t follow your main idea about the Holocust, Nazi…
I will put it in a very non diplomatic way (don’t take it personally
:
I don’t care if u think that I’m not moral. I prefer to survive.
“accidentely butchered”? I don’t thik so-
Eyewitness
Try again!
Eyewitness
or
http://lawrenceofcyberia.blogs.com/news/2009/01/two-eyewitness-reports-from-palestinians-inside-gaza.html
In response to Shai @39
No one is looking for the submission of the Israeli, I would be happy if they just direct they afford from trying to fight Palstinians to build there own country.
1. The Israelis can never benefit from been the bad boy of the neighborhood…If they want to prospect they should and must have good relation with Palstinians as well as with Syria and Iran, No International airport or sea port can make them benefits like been with good relationship with the most advanced countries in the region that they so geographically engaged for good and bad.
2. Trying to challenge Palestinians in the military way is futureless and just causing a harsher retaliation from
Palestinians each round.
3. Don’t u think that quiet absurd that a small country like Israel trying to impose a New order on 3 much larger and stronger countries Syria, Egypt, Iran?
4. Unfortunately the IDF is an U.S. marionette that his schedule determine by the will of U.S. to export their extreme agenda and to become a superpower
5. form the the above reasons I see to option to Israel:
a. Adopt more pragmatic agenda
b. Be extinguish as a political and military movement by Palestinians
Moses Hess was the first National Socialist. Therefore Zionism is fascism and will go the same way, the racist occupation regime will vanish from the pages of time.
In response @b & emil
1. For my fortune Israel don’t put all or much of her effort on fighting Palestineians u can come and visit and see it yourself
2. Good neighbors is preferred (even in a bad neighborhood)
3.Emil, It seem that u well knowledgeable on the Zionist movement History, even more then my, and seem even more then 99.9% of the Israelies.
Im sure that the occupation will finish, but the Gaza experience teaching us that it will take allot of time to the Palestinians to change their state of mind from the “blame the occupation in of of my troubles”
to a normal nation
First, can we agree that all attacks on civilians by either side is WRONG? So getting offended by various adjectival descriptions of the inhumane violence BY EITHER SIDE is plain stupid.
All holocausts are atrocious. That doesn’t stop them from happening though, because there is always some way to “justify” them to some group of people who lend their support. Presently, the world is complicit in the ongoing holocaust of Paelstinians — one that has gone on for DECADES
Second, to the extent that several attacks on civilians and in civilian areas by Israel have been justified by the claim that “terrorists” attacked IDF members, since when is attacking a military target (i.e., a soldier) an act of “terrorism?”
Third, if the year were 1620 instead of 1948-present and ongoing, then the Palestinians would have been long gone or by now relegated by “treaty” to tiny settlements (i.e., reservations). Well, it isn’t 1620 and every action by Israel is known throughout the world, whereas there wasn’t a soul around in 1620 who could convey to the entire world of the slaughter of native Americans.
One of the colonists, Jeffrey Amhurst, a piece of human garbage, is hailed in history books as a “hero” for his couragous and diabolical plan to eliminate the Native Americans by biological warfare.
In fact, white man had lost the military battle with the natives. and the white settlers were prepared to give up and return to England, when Amhurst had the brilliant idea to give “gifts” of blankets infected with smallpox to the natives.
Amhurst’s plan was a ripping success, as we all know. Tragically, the native american population was decimated and the rest is history.
If Israel weren’t hampered by the constant microscope of mass media (which notably they have endeavored unsuccessfully to exclude) there is no doubt that there wouldn’t be any Palestinians in Israel, and the West Bank and Gaza would have been subsumed into that state.
Bottom line is Israel’s agenda is to get rid of by killing or by imposing inhumane conditions, every single Palensinian there is and claim the entire territory for themselves. Only a blind person could fail to see this.
The real question is, is it OK with the world if this happens? And, if so, then why not blatantly authorize a wholesale slaughter of Palestinians and be done with it? And if it’s not OK, then the rest of the world MUST stop Israel. Period.
As far as the preposterous claim that Israel or any state on Earth has the “right to exist” — that is just too laughable to be taken seriously. States are political entities and they exist at the whim of the governed. Often states change via democratic means, sometimes, by violent means. Palestine, for example, disappeared in 1948 by force. Did Palestine have the right to exist? Apparently not.
So why should Israel? It’s absurd.
Even assuming that Israel does have the right to exist, what exactly is “Israel”? You cannot define it by any fixed borders — of course not — Israel isn’t through “expanding” yet. So, does Israel have the “right” to exist within her existing borders? Or, does Israel’s claimed Right to exist also include any territory that Israel may acquire by disappearing the right of other states and territories to exist?
Even assuming borders could be properly designated for purposes of this “right” to exist, what does such a “right” mean?
Does it entitle Israel to do whatever it wants to to defend that “right”?
Does recognition of this “eight” impose any obligation on the part of those doing the “recognizing” to defend Israel should her ?right to exist” be challenged?
Enough of this silly nonsense. It is plainly obvious Israel intends to take over the West Bank and Gaza PERMANENTLY. Sadly, the world has entered a new “Gentlemen’s Agreement” and that is to pretend that Israel is not an occupier and that the Palestinian people are less than human, therefore, their lives are unimportant.
So let’s stop the pretending. Most of the world doesn’t give a damn about the Palestinians, or it would have taken clearly available measures to defend them. They are outmanned, outgunned, outfinanced and outmaneuvered in every way possible.
The USA branch of AIPAC, otherwise known as the Congress, a collection of 535 ignorant dunces who don’t write or read the legislation they pass on behalf of the American people, much less, know anything of world history or anything else, have just, at the command of their AIPAC puppetmasters, thrown their unwavering support behind Israel. The US continues to exercise its veto power at the UN, thereby allowing other countries to continue their lip service charade of “solidarity with the Paelestinians” and nothing will be resolved this time either.
Rinse, repeat.
In summary, until and unless the world perception of Israel changes, nothing else will. First, we must curtail our tendency to view Israel through the lens of “jews were holocaust victims.” No one can deny that the German holocaust of 70 years past was horrible. However jews were not the only victims, in fact first in line were gays and “gypsies.” Moreover, the German holocaust was not the only one to occur. (See discussion of the colonial holocaust of native Americans above). However past victimhood is not an eternal “get out of jail free” card, carte blanc license to do anything and everything. Past victimhood should not be a bar to an objective view and perception of Israel’s conduct toward its neighbors. Moreover, rejecting the notion that past victimhood somehow precludes any critical evaluation of Israel is NOT anti semitism, nor is rendering criticism.
Until one can have a dialogue with and about Israel that is not premised on this misdirected empathy over the past, no honest peace can ever be brokered in the region.
re: 45 getaclue
One of the colonists, Jeffrey Amhurst, a piece of human garbage, is hailed in history books as a “hero” for his couragous and diabolical plan to eliminate the Native Americans by biological warfare.
In fact, white man had lost the military battle with the natives. and the white settlers were prepared to give up and return to England, when Amhurst had the brilliant idea to give “gifts” of blankets infected with smallpox to the natives.
Amhurst’s plan was a ripping success, as we all know. Tragically, the native american population was decimated and the rest is history.
While I broadly agree with the thrust of your argument and the conclusions of your post, I would have to say that your knowledge of Amherst and Pontiac’s Rebellion is terribly distorted. Wikipedia can get you on the right track.
I only say this because I think the analogy is, perhaps, a useful one. Pontiac’s Rebellion was a vicious, bloody conflict which neither side could win. In the end it was diplomacy and politics, with the British substantially modifying some of their high-handed behaviour toward the natives, that ended the conflict.
The Royal Proclamation of 1763 that officially ended the Rebellion in fact created a vast Indian Territory stretching from the Appalachians to the Mississippi, and from Florida to Newfoundland. By (in theory, at least) prohibiting colonial occupation of these Indian lands, the Brits ended the French practise of colonial/native co-habitation and integration. Segregation, not cooperation, became the dominant mode of native/colonialist relations in the pays haut.
The analogy to the 20th C. history of Palestine/Israel is in the emergence, through combat, of two hostile national identities from what had been a communally inhabited, multi-ethnic territory. Gaza’s current resemblance to an Indian reservation under siege is actually quite striking.
Yours,
Canadian Pinko
“I would be happy if they just direct they afford from trying to fight Israel to build there own country.”
Therein lies your problem: how can they effectively “build” their own country when (1) Israel controls their borders (2) controls their taxes (3) their territory (4) their security through the ubiquitous IDF (5) their economy and agriculture (6) their movement from city to city (7) their airspace (8) their sea port (9) what else can I name here to hammer in the fact that they have no sovereignty and have no say in how they can “build” a state under occupation.
Your point 5 (re: Hamas and adopting a reform agenda) has not only happening but continues to happen. Read Helena Cobban and Mark Perry who have dealt extensively with Hamas.
Furthermore, Hamas leader Khaled Meshal made many points for Hamas resistance to continue:
“Meshal: Since 1948, if we want to draw a curve of Israel’s progress, do you think that this curve is still heading up, or maybe is at a plateau, or is heading down? I believe that the curve is now in descent. And today, the military might of Israel is not capable of concluding matters to Israel’s satisfaction. Since 1948, you may notice that Israel has defeated 7 armies. In ’56 they defeated Egypt. In ’67 they defeated 3 countries: Egypt, Syria, and Jordan. In ’73, the war was somewhat equal in both sides between Egypt and Israel, if not for Nixon’s airlift to Israel’s forces at that time, the map of the world would be different. In ’82 Israel defeated the PLO in Beirut.
But since ’82, 26 years ago, Israelis has not won any war. They did not defeat the Palestinian resistance, and they did not defeat the Lebanese resistance. Since that time, Israel has not expanded but has contracted. They have withdrawn from southern Lebanon and from Gaza. These are indicators that the future is not favorable to Israel. Then today Israel, with all its military capabilities – conventional and unconventional – are not enough to guarantee Israel’s security. Today, with all these capabilities, they can’t stop a simple rocket from being launched from Gaza.
Hence the big question is, can military might ensure security? Hence, we may say that when Israel refuse the Arab and the Palestinian offer, a state of Palestine on the border of 1967, Israel is losing a big opportunity. Some years down the road, a new Palestinian generation, new Arab generations, may not accept those conditions, because the balance of power may not be in Israel’s favor.”
Answer for Joshua
1. Is it really matter if Israel won any war since 82? , even if u right it have to be with the shift from wars 2 sides of big conventional army to Not symmetric war between state to semi-guerrilla organizations, Mao said: that if gorilla organization not losing- he’s the winner. In the middle East even is u 3 years in a bunker and still afraid from Israeli retaliation - U still don’t have any problem to announce “Devinne Victory”
2. U said that b/c Israel not expanded but has contracted - the future is not flavor to Israel - Are u advicing me to keep conqueroring land?, Do u understand that u have the same logic of the right wing.
U doing the same mistake that the Hamas & Hezbollah did - infer Israeli tolerance behavior as a weakness, The mistake cost the Palestinians more then 800 death!
About Marshal saying:
U can look at it in a different way:
curve of Arabs willing to fight Israel showing less countries are willing to experience the taste of war against Israel, and in the recent 26 years only non state military organization who don’t realty have to take care for their own people try to challenge Israel in the battle field.
-
now lets take Gaza as example:
3.Controlling the borders: - I guess that It OK that Israel controlling the borders between Israel to Gaza, now why is the border between Egypt to Gaza closed? it appear that even an Arab state don’t want to open it borders to a hornet’s nest of terror.
don’t expect Israel to show more solidarity then Arab country toward Gaza.
4.Control their tax - It was a part of agreement between Israel to the PO
the logic behind it is: Two tax systems means two separate economics, and main loser from this it the Palestinians.
5. Controlling their airspace - we don’t need another 9/11
6. buy the way Gaza is 100% on the 67 borders - was it a guaranty for stating of peaceful time? unfortunately not mainly b/c of people like Mashal.
“1. The Palwtieans can never benefit from been the bad boy of the neborhood…If they want to prospect they should and must have good relation with Israel as well as with Jordan and Egypt, No International airport or sea port can make them benefits like been with good relationship with the most advanced country in the region that they so geographically engaged for good and bad.
2. Trying to challenge Israel in the military way is futureless and just causing a harsher retaliation from
Israel each round.
3. Don’t u think that quiet absurd that a small organization like Hamas trying to impose a New order on 3 much larger and stronger countries Israel, Jordan, Egypt?
4. Unfortunately the Hamas is an Iranian marionette that his schedule determine by the will of Iran to export their extreme agenda and to become a regional supperpower
5. form the the above reasons I see to option to Hamas:
a. Adopt more pragmatic agenda
b. Be extinguish as a political and military movement by Israel”
Shai, you make people sick with these comments.
Tell me, is Israel being the ‘good’ boy of the neighbourhood?
You’re reducing Palestine to a misbehaved little kid who should know better than to offend the big brother, Israel (a totally laughable idea).
Answer to Y:
It probably shocking to u if my thesis ruin the story of David (Hamas) againt Goliath (Israel) those are the reason behind my thesis:
There is a big game of power in the ME Between Sunni to Shiite it a war of influence between Egypt, Saudi-Arabia and other to Iran. Hamas is merely a point in the Arab word and when Hamas being an Iranian proxy in the hart of the ME - he become a really bad boy.
When Husni Mubarak saying “Egypt have a border with Iran” few month ago - he meaning that it his country interest that Israel will crash down the Hamas
Your comment showing that u not from the ME, Your naive is understand.
one of my favorite saying is that
“The Middle East is politics for advancers”
I’m tired of zionists and their ridiculous “anti-Semitism” accusations. Let’s get one thing straight: if your parents, or grandparents, or great grandparents were born in Europe over the past century then you are hardly Semitic; rather, you are European.
If you meet the above definition and you currently call yourself an “Israeli” then you are a squatter and a colon.
Israel is a Frankenstein nation created from the cadavers of European Jews and unleashed onto the living inhabitants of Palestine. It has no legitimacy and therefore no right to exist, despite the numerous times this contrived notion is vomitted into the public space.
The era of stealing land and purging its inhabitants to be replaced by another was dead long before Israel was created. It was the last great colonial project by the savage European race. It will end in ignominy as did the rest of Europes colonial ambitions.
The Palestinians have an inalienable right to resist as ordained unto them by the Creator. Whether it be by rock or by rocket, every death that comes as a result of this resistance to colonization is justified and deserved.
Anyone who expresses sympathy towards the colonizers is equally guilty, and fair game for assualt as far as I’m concerned. Whether you are living on stolen land in Al Khalil (Hebron), a stolen home in Jaffa (Tel Aviv), or a townhome in Brooklyn, from which you spew slander and libel against an innocent population halfway around the world that suffers everytime you open your cesspool of a mouth, you deserve nothing less than to be stripped of all your possessions, stripped naked, and then dragged across gravel until your are stripped of your skin.
Do we have campaigns in favor of supporting cancer? No we do not. We have campaigns to eradicate cancer. Those who advocate for zionism advocate for a cancer of Earth that destroys humanity. As such, they destroy themselves in the process, and like cancer, they don’t realize that when their host body dies, so too do they along with it.
In this case, good riddance to both the cancer (zionism) and the host (USA).
Answer to Abraham:
If someone still can’t see why Israel fighting the Hamas with all its power, they can read your Islamo-Nazi style post.
Shai: Gaza is only a part of the problem. You speak as if because Gaza is on the ‘67 borders that that is the end of the story. The West Bank still looms large even if it’s not part of this latest tragic tale of debauchery.
Second: you attribute a quote to myself stating that that is my view. It was in quotations and I referenced Meshal for the insights of Hamas and why they still believe that they can come out of this on top and why they believe they should resist with violence. I’m not Meshal and I neither endorse nor dismiss this view; my views are of my own but I do quote him at length because of the particular facts that are relevant to the Palestinians who fight. (A) Israel had full control of the region post-67 (B) after that it seems that it is stuck on a battle with its neighbours continuously and even itself as the nation seems split on what exactly to do: pull back or take it by force. And pulling back does not come with strings attached (unfortunately for Israel); give Palestinians not only nominal soveriegnty but a possibility of a viable state. What is on offer (even after the Oslo Accords which there are so many faults) is a West Bank that looks like three small Gazas. Outlook not so good.
Your rebuttal for the tax was altogether missing: it’s Israel’s responsibility to distribute said tax to the PA. It violated the Accords by withholding it.
Egypt-Gaza border is another story too long for here and I’m sure other journalists have reported on why and how Egypt does what it does. But I also enter another quote from an Egyptian offical: “Egypt has one crossing; Israel has six.” Yes, six of them. Not all of them can be opened 24/7. It’s not hard to fix out a solution here. Hamas has hinted towards the ceasefire but Israel does have its own agenda.
PS I don’t infer Israeli “tolerance” as weakness. How silly; it’s barely tolerated anything. It strikes its neighbours many times (even Syria last year and Lebanon too numerous to count.). By military prowess it is rather unmatched in the region but its stability and desire to be accepted for normalisation is fading with every bravado move to destroy non-state powers (which ironically both have major blocs in respective countries and territories). The IDF is doomed to repeat past “failures” even if the casaulties were higher than the last time they danced this dance. It’s just a matter of who is going to be the next “no-partner-for-peace”.
Israel and its defenders stand before us, dripping blood of murdered children claiming self defense.
http://www.sott.net/articles/show/172752-Gideon-Levy-The-time-of-the-righteous
” Aid cannot be offered with bloodstained hands. Compassion cannot sprout from brutality.
Yet there are some who still want it both ways. To kill and destroy indiscriminately and also to come out looking good, with a clean conscience. To go ahead with war crimes without any sense of the heavy guilt that should accompany them. It takes some nerve. Anyone who justifies this war also justifies all its crimes. Anyone who preaches for this war and believes in the justness of the mass killing it is inflicting has no right whatsoever to speak about morality and humaneness. There is no such thing as simultaneously killing and nurturing. This attitude is a faithful representation of the basic, twofold Israeli sentiment that has been with us forever: To commit any wrong, but to feel pure in our own eyes. To kill, demolish, starve, imprison and humiliate - and be right, not to mention righteous. The righteous warmongers will not be able to allow themselves these luxuries.”
Here is the future of Israel.
Last Firday I was out for lunch at a resturant in town. A lady came in holding our local newspaper, which had a front page picture of the dead children in Palestine..with the feature story condemning both Israel and the US congress. The lady held the paper over her head and started screaming…”why is this picture allowed to be published, why aren’t they talking about what Palestine does to Israel!”
There was dead silence in the resturant. Then an older man stood up and said and I quote…”Lady, you and Israel and congress can all go to hell”. Dead silence again. Then someone started clapping and the whole place broke out in applause and the lady stormed out.
Several things amazing about this public incident.I live in a small city of about 60,000 surrounded by two Marine bases.
It’s a historic/resort/retirement kind of town mainly where people are usually pretty polite and laid back.
And our paper is usually very right wing…now they have turned.
Israel is finished in US public opinion. Eventually those in congress who work for Israel will be finished too.
Israel has gotten Main Street USA’s attention and Main Street is replused by it.
One point. The author says Israel has no ‘legally fixed borders’ and that’s the crucial problem. That’s misleading. Legally speaking, Israel’s borders are on the pre-1967 lines. Legally, there is no controversy. Politically, of course, there is a dispute, but legally, there is no question about what Israel’s borders are. The International Court of Justice has unanimously upheld UN 242, meaning the 1967 borders, in a decision about the separation wall (or annexation wall). In the UN, every year there is a vote for Israel to get back to these borders, with only the US, Israel and a few pacific island countries on the ‘no’ side. The problem is not one of what the legal borders are but whether Israel will adhere to international law.
Answer to Shai Mizrachi:
You zionists gave up your right to be accepted in the region when you killed the first Arab to steal his land.
Deal with it.
As for Israel’s “borders”, they don’t exist, as the entire “nation” is an abstract fiction that exists only in the fancied delusions of war criminals. When the war is finally over (and know that it’s been raging for 100 years), the zionists will have been defeated thoroughly, and Palestine will once again belong to its rightful owners. The 10th and final Crusade will have once again been a failure for the West, and herald its global decline.
As I say above, good riddance.
Answer to Abraham:
Your delusions is why the Palestinians are the most unfortunate people on earth.
In Hebrew we saying:
The dogs barking and the convoy keep going… Hav Hav
During my time in Israel in 97 it seemed very apparent to me that 99% of Israelis were taught to hate their fellow Palestinians. They grew up with this sentiment and it seems that it is rooted into their being.
Very sad indeed.
[...] The rest of this excellent post by Tony Karon can be found here. [...]
Shai, my previous answer to you stands.
We have sayings in Arabic as well. The appropriate one for you is “go lay tile on the ocean”.
Why would the Iranians destroy Israel? As ever it’s doing a damn fine job of this by itself.
My hope of much-needed tough love being doled out by the US has evaporated after reading Roger Cohen’s article in the NYT yesterday.
Dennis Ross as the change we need - that’s laughable. As RC points out he has been failing at this game for decades.
Ludicrous too is the fact that the entire new ME team is going to be male and Jewish apart from HRC herself.
In that case, why not send Mbeki the ennabler to Zimbabwe to sort out Mugabe while we’re at it.
Mr Obama, please let’s have some Muslims, Christians, women and Arabic speakers in there. Start over with a team that will have some credibility to the rest of the world.
Melanie:
“…it seemed very apparent to me that 99% of Israelis were taught to hate their fellow Palestinians. They grew up with this sentiment and it seems that it is rooted into their being.”
Not only are they taught to hate, and from an early age, they are militarized from an early age:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CGz6wEBswU
Israel has lost, Israelis and Palestinians has won!
Great Mr. Karon!
Israel has lost; Israelis and Palestinians have won!
Great, Mer. Karon!
[...] via Tony Karon @ The Rootless Cosmopolitan [...]
To #3 Raanan
You must be on drugs. I am glad you are offended.
Tony great as always.
Peace out
Dear Friends,
I am writing to you at the end of a day that was truly thrilling and inspiring. On my flight to Israel , I read the edition of Time Magazine with the picture of the Star of David on the cover. It was more than merely depressing. The magazine strongly implied it believed that Israel would not survive. The article claimed that there was no solution to Israel ’s problems.. Between terrorists like Hamas who try to attack us wherever we are and the fact that there are more than five million Arabs in the land between the Mediterranean and the Jordan , the magazine claimed that Israel cannot survive as a democracy. Today I experienced why the article is wrong.
I began the day in Alon Shvut. Rav Rimon and I joined Gabi Nachmani from Livnot Ulihibanot and we set out to go south to give some love to our soldiers who are fighting so bravely in Gaza . Rav Rimon has invested tens of hours in this project. For the last week he has constantly been on the phone with soldiers to try and determine what they really need. He has heard from many units that they are cold. Israel has historically waged its wars in the summer. The last war in Lebanon was in July. The Six Day War was in June. Even the Yom Kippur War was in October. Israel is not conditioned to a war during winter. The soldiers in Gaza are reporting that they are very cold at night Rav Rimon then found out that pairs of thermal, polartec gloves and undershirts, as well as thermal neck warmers would really make a difference for the soldiers. He found the manufacturer and it turns out that the maker of these products has a son who is serving in Gaza . This man, Aharon Gantz, was so moved by what we wanted to do that he provided the products to us at cost. Our shul sponsored the purchase, and Rav Rimon and I went with Gabi this morning to pick up 1,000 pairs of thermal gloves, (the army typically only buys these gloves for the most elite units), 1,000 pairs of thermal neck warmers, 80 thermal socks, and 80 thermal undershirts. Aharon was most moved by the fact that a shul in New Jersey would subsidize a gift of such utility for soldiers. He said to me, “This is the nice part of our nation. In times of crises we all come together. Nothing can stand in the way of this unity. This strength is what will defeat all our enemies.”
We then headed down to Gaza . Gabi found a way for us to avoid the military police and through back roads we arrived at a base about a kilometer away from Gaza .. When we arrived there we found the officer in charge of logistics and we told him that we had brought gifts for the soldiers - gloves, neck warmers, special cards with chapters of Tehillim on them and packages that the children in our shul packed. He was very happy with the gifts. He told us to follow him and he actually took us to the staging grounds where the soldiers are entering and leaving Gaza , about 400 meters from the fence that Israel has broken through to enter Gaza city. We spent almost 4 hours with the hundreds of soldiers who are entering and leaving Gaza .
As we arrived, a group of thirty soldiers returned from Gaza . They had been inside for 10 consecutive days. That is ten days with no showers or changes of clothing. Ten days dodging mortars and snipers. Ten days conquering territory and avoiding mines. For the tankists it is ten days of not leaving a tank. Imagine what it would be like to spend ten days in a row in a car without the ability to leave it. Now imagine ten days in a tank. These soldiers were dirty with sweat and mud. Many had battle paint on. The officer gathered them and Rav Rimon and I spoke to the troops. The Rav gave them words of encouragement. He pointed out that each of them is engaged in a mitzvah activity protecting the Jewish people from enemies. He pointed out how many miracles our nation is receiving. For example think of the story of the soldier who woke up in the middle of the night in a school and noticed a chord and saved 150 of his friends and so many other stories that we must be thankful for. He then introduced me to the soldiers. He pointed out that I had come from the US in order to convey our community’s love for the troops. I spoke with the soldiers about the great unity that now fills our nation. How in Englewood , New Jersey , in our shul our kids gathered on Shabbat and each child prayed for one soldier. I told the soldiers how we all bless them and pray that Hashem send his angels to protect them and lead them to success. I told the soldiers how God is one and whenever we become one here below we merit feeling the presence of the One above. Finally we hugged each soldier and thanked him for protecting all of us through his service. We then started to hand out all our goodies. The soldiers were ecstatic. They were so thankful for the gloves and the neck warmers. They eagerly took our tehillim cards and chocolates, which now helping to sweeten a very difficult time for thousands who are fighting for our state. Undoubtedly, the favorite gift of all was the packages from our kids. The handwritten cards were the most precious item. Each handwritten letter meant so much. Soldiers told me they treasure those simple displays of caring. As one told me, “The most wonderful thing is the handwritten note. When we see that Jews elsewhere in the world care and are writing to us it warms our hearts.. This gives us the strength and support.” We could not leave. We spent hours with the soldiers talking and davening, learning with them and giving out thousands of thermal items, but we also were receiving a great deal, more than words can ever describe.
We then went to Sderot. In Sderot, two officers came to meet us. These soldiers are with a unit of paratroopers of very young soldiers. They are still in their first year of army service. They never expected to be sent into hostile territory. However, they are deep inside Gaza and this unit of eighty soldiers has already had five wounded members. One of their members, their commander, was wounded by a mine. When the others went in to evacuate him, one of the soldiers was hit with a sniper’s bullet from a hamas terrorist. The bullet penetrated his ceramic bullet proof vest and entered his chest. They thought they had to do a surgery on him in the field because they did not think he would survive long enough to arrive at a hospital. In the end he was airlifted to Tel Hashomer and operated on there. There was a great miracle. While the bullet broke through the vest, it ended up flying through his body and missing his heart and lungs. The bullet left his body and he is recovering nicely. These boys are very young and are having a difficult time. For them we got gloves, neck warmers, socks, and undershirts. Since they still have two years of army service they wil certainly use these gifts well after this war ends. They repeated their invitation to Rav Rimon and me. When the war ends they plan to make a large party of thanks to Hashem. They want us to come and speak at that meal when the warriors will be honored.
We met with other units and we helped them as well.
Finally we loaded the car with fifty pies of pizza and headed back to the front. We arrived at a base of paratroopers and tankists who were returning from Gaza . By now it was dark out. We started to distribute the pizzas to the soldiers; it became a yom tov. There was such joy! Soldiers, who are really just kids, they are nineteen and twenty years old, surrounded us and asked us to sing and dance with them. They all had tehillim they had taken from Breslov chassidim and they wanted to dance and declare that “Yisrael betach bahashem, Israel trust God, ezram umaginam hu, He is their help and protector, anachnu maaminim bney maaminim, we are believers sons of believers, viain lanu al mi lihisha’ain elah al avinu shebashmayim, and we have no one to rely on, we can only rely on our father in heaven.” Rav Rimon then jumped on a van and gave the soldiers a short talk of encouragement. He then introduced me. I turned to the soldiers and told them, “Today was Rav Rimon’s birthday, he did not even realize it but when he did, he said to me, ‘my present was getting to spend an entire day running from group of soldiers to group of soldiers to give them gifts and encouragement!’” When the soldiers heard that they all burst into song. They pulled Rav Rimon into a circle and from their depths of their being they sang together, “Yisrael betach behashem ezram umainam hu anachnu maaminim bney maaminim viain lanu al mi lihisha’ain ela ela al avinu avinu shebashamayim!”
So let Time Magazine claim that Israel has no future. They have not experienced Jewish unity. When Am Yisrael is together, when soldiers are singing and dancing of their faith, we will survive, we certainly will.
@Zev Reichman,
Have you considered the 1000 dead and 5000 wounded and a million traumatized Palestinians are human being whose lives are destroyed by the soldiers you dance and sing with in celebration of your tribal mythology of racial superiority. You stand on the bodies of the dead, Jews and Gentiles, and shout for joy that women and children are dead and wounded by the thousands at the bloody hands of the Zionist gunmen.
I suggest you consider your inhumanity and the suffering of Israel’s victims. The Zionists are attempting to suppress news of their savagery by murdering journalists who report the bombing of mosques, schools, and hospitals.
http://www.sott.net/articles/show/173196-Unprecedented-Gaza-Emergency-Meeting-New-York-City-Jan-14th-2009
“Adam Shapiro spoke of how Israeli soldiers on the ground now carry photographs of the handful of journalists allowed into Gaza — with direct orders to murder them on sight. He made the point that the world must be made aware of the fact that the cause of the conflict is due to one simple fact - the illegal occupation of Palestinian land by the state of Israel and the regular and brutal oppression of the occupied Palestinians by the Israeli military.”
Thanks.
America is also a defeated aggressor in the Gaza slaughter. Defeated by its inability to face up to its real role in the violence and by its lack of courage to refuse complicity.
[...] The War Isn’t Over, But Israel Has Lost [...]
Zev,
Time Magazine has written articles of this type-”Is Israel Doomed?”, “How Can Israel Be Saved From Itself?”, “Is It Too Late For Israel?”- for decades. In that period, Israel has gotten stronger and the Arab side, particularly the Palestinians are regressing. What is the Gaza regime investing the money they are getting from Iran and others in? In their human and physical infrastructure? Or in weapons like the rockets they keep firing indiscriminately into civilian areas?
When Israel expelled the Jews of Gaza in 2005, their hi-tech agriculture facilities were going to be turned over to the Gazans? What did they do with them? They destroyed them. Israeli arranged for large-scale interational aid for Gaza? What did they do with the money? Build terrorist training camps. They allied themselves with the Iranians who couldn’t care less about the welfare of the Palestinians, they are essentially an imperialist power using their money and weapons to gain power and influence throughout the Middle East. They are a destructive influence, which I think explains why the rest of the Arab world is maintaining a somewhat lower profile than expected regarding the current war.
Bob Kay-
You apparently have forgotten the suicide bomber war which killed or wounded thousands of Israelis, and the celebrations in the Palestinian territories each time one happened, and HAMAS fair at the University in Shechem (Nablus) where a display of a bombed out pizza parlor was set up with ketchup sprayed all over the floor and walls, and body parts of mannekins distributed around. And you wonder why the Palestinians don’t have a state? Just read their propanganda.
Hey Zev,
Your story makes a good hollywood flic. Maybe it will be the next season of the TV show 24.
Ah, where is Jack Bauer when you need him.
By the way you have played quite a few viloins in your response.
Keep it coming baby.
There are people out there just enjoy and thrive upon dead human bodies.
In my opinion humanity has stooped down beneath the animales.
Can anyone find a name for it?
Peace out
Zev,
You and the IDF soldiers you describe are the mirror image of your hated adversary: a Hamas resistance fighter.
The lack of self-awareness of Israel-supporters is stunning.
PoA
[...] [...]
Thank you brave Mr Karon.
Can Americans not see that Gaza is a prison for people whose crime was being the wrong religion?
Americans would fight to the death if Israel’s state model were imposed here, with a cross on the flag and your property confiscated.
A zero-sum game of security is a perpetual motion machine of conflict. Injustice-driven conflict.
You “supporters” of Israel are killing both Israel and the United States. We have heard enough from you. You will have to live in equality with the wrong-religion, wrong-race people whose contaminating presence you can never cleanse from your societies, no matter how much blood you spill. For G-d’s sake learn the lesson of the Holocaust.
Zev,
I am happy that you were able to bring comfort to those young men, I truly am. Their task is nothing I would wish on any man, young or old.
My question to you, however, is this: do you want your children or grandchildren to be doing the same thing? Is that what it now means to be an Israeli, what it now means to be a Jew? To dance and to sing in the shadow of war, always war, only war? For surely you know, Israel does not dance alone.
The Palestinians will always be a defining contributor to the Israeli identity, just as Israel will define what it means to be a Palestinian. Like it or not, you are locked together in a terrible embrace.
Perhaps it is time to acknowledge this, and end this destructive madness.
Yours,
Canadian Pinko
Zev wrote:”to give some love to our soldiers who are fighting so bravely in Gaza” .
What has been going on in Gaza has been mistakenly called ‘fighting’ by the media.’Fighting’ is done with an opponent who has some chance to get back at you. What happened in Gaza was wholesale slaughter from the skies or from the safety of armor. This did not require bravery but the willingness to murder.
Ben-David keeps treating us on his special brand of history, unashamed hasbara. He wrote:
“When Israel expelled the Jews of Gaza in 2005, their hi-tech agriculture facilities were going to be turned over to the Gazans? What did they do with them? They destroyed them. Israeli arranged for large-scale interational aid for Gaza? What did they do with the money? Build terrorist training camps.”
Here is a far more respectable and honest Israeli voice, that of the historian Avi Shlaim:
“Four decades of Israeli control did incalculable damage to the economy of the Gaza Strip. With a large population of 1948 refugees crammed into a tiny strip of land, with no infrastructure or natural resources, Gaza’s prospects were never bright. Gaza, however, is not simply a case of economic under-development but a uniquely cruel case of deliberate de-development. To use the Biblical phrase, Israel turned the people of Gaza into the hewers of wood and the drawers of water, into a source of cheap labour and a captive market for Israeli goods. The development of local industry was actively impeded so as to make it impossible for the Palestinians to end their subordination to Israel and to establish the economic underpinnings essential for real political independence.
Gaza is a classic case of colonial exploitation in the post-colonial era. Jewish settlements in occupied territories are immoral, illegal and an insurmountable obstacle to peace. They are at once the instrument of exploitation and the symbol of the hated occupation. In Gaza, the Jewish settlers numbered only 8,000 in 2005 compared with 1.4 million local residents. Yet the settlers controlled 25% of the territory, 40% of the arable land and the lion’s share of the scarce water resources. Cheek by jowl with these foreign intruders, the majority of the local population lived in abject poverty and unimaginable misery. Eighty per cent of them still subsist on less than $2 a day. The living conditions in the strip remain an affront to civilised values, a powerful precipitant to resistance and a fertile breeding ground for political extremism.
In August 2005 a Likud government headed by Ariel Sharon staged a unilateral Israeli pullout from Gaza, withdrawing all 8,000 settlers and destroying the houses and farms they had left behind.” (Guardian 7/1/09)
James Wolfensohn, special envoy for Gaza, recalled with bitterness the dashing of Palestinian hopes there. He had raised a great deal of money inter alia for setting up greenhouse farming:
“I remember seeing the greenhouses with the chairman and looking at the fruits and everything, and there was a joyous atmosphere: ‘Boy, we’re about to get this going and we’re going to have hotels by the beaches and we’re going to have tourism and it’s going to be fantastic, and the Palestinians really know how to be hosts.’ But in the months afterward, first of all Arik [Sharon] became ill and the current prime minister came in, and there was a clear change of view.”
At that time, Wolfensohn recalls, powerful forces in the U.S. administration worked behind his back: They did not believe in the border terminals agreement and wanted to undermine his status as the Quartet’s emissary. The official behind this development, he says, was Elliot Abrams, the neoconservative who was appointed deputy national security adviser in charge of disseminating democracy in the Middle East - “and every aspect of that agreement was abrogated.”
So that whole greenhouse project came to nothing because the terminals at the border were closed and fruit and vegetables were rotting along the wayside.
“The non-implementation of the agreement naturally had serious economic consequences. According to Wolfensohn, the shattering of the great hope of normality, which the Palestinians experienced so deeply when the Israel Defense Forces and the settlers left the Gaza Strip, brought about the rise of Hamas. “Instead of hope, the Palestinians saw that they were put back in prison. And with 50 percent unemployment, you would have conflict. This is not just a Palestinian issue. If you have 50 percent of your people with no work, chances are they will become annoyed. So it’s not, in my opinion, that Palestinians are so terrible; it is that they were in a situation where a modulation of views between one and the other became impossible.”
(from Haaretz)
It pains me to say it, but it looks to me like, despite Tony’s predictions (which I consider ‘optimistic’) the Zionists have won this round.
It was obvious this will end before Obama’s inauguration. AIPAC may be pulling the strings on most US congresscritters, but the Israeli Zionists still don’t wont to force the new POTUS into taking a stance that would compromise him in front of large part of his electorate.
So they announced a unilateral ceasefire. This means they have (in a hurry it seamed) achieved all their real military goals. They were never about the rockets or Hamas, but so obviously about the destruction of all remaining civilian infrastructure and even of stored food, and further compressing the population to even smaller patch of land, making up for what Zionist regime had to give up in their former withdrawal from Gaza.
Now the fighting seams to be over, due to a ‘generous’ ceasefire by Israel, who will in most media be shown as having done the responsible thing. They stopped the war without having to acknowledge Hamas in any way. No deal, no concessions, like an exterminator who determined he inflicted enough damage on the pests for now. Most Israelis’, and certainly hard-line Zionists’ treatment of Palestinians as subhuman nonentities, was very effectively confirmed and reinforced.
The Hamas guys are stumped. they retained their capacities, but cannot afford to use them. If they resume fighting/firing rockets, they will:
- Be again portrayed as the aggressor (even though there are still IDF on their land, you all know how this works in western media) and lose the moral advantage they miraculously have been granted by Israel’s indiscriminate aggression.
- Undermine support amidst their civilian population who in the short term are surely relieved the bombs have stopped falling.
- Make even more certain the Likud victory in coming elections.
If they don’t resume fighting:
- The IDF are pretty much guaranteed to stay where they are.
- Siege will continue (only harder, because whatever infrastructure the Palestinians had was destroyed, and replacements won’t be allowed in. Also I’m pretty sure IDF is stationed outside urban areas, meaning in food producing areas).
- With Hamas unable to get the siege lifted, Gazan Palestinians might come to a conclusion that Fatah collaborators are the only realistic way to go.
This outcome does not surprise me at all. Palestinians in Palestine have been condemned to extermination pretty much since 1948. The Zionist regime cannot afford to copy the ‘final solution’ and get it over with all in one go, they have to do it in installments. But the outcome is a foregone conclusion.
Palestinians have no good options left:
- They can die fighting an uneven, dehumanizing fight, where they can only ever hope to be able to attack soft enemy targets such as a restaurant or a bus full of colonials,( sacrificing themselves in the process), or hopelessly lob next to harmless rockets over the fence.
- They can attempt to escape from Palestine (where to? how few can actually hope to do this?)
- They can yield to the Zionist rule, accepting whatever abuse, expropriation and economic enslavement is inflicted upon them. Jews should know best where that approach eventually ends.
The Zionist regime will be OK with each of these options.
The ‘global public opinion’ doesn’t really have a good option either. We may choose to turn against the Zionist regime, as unlikely as this seemed till recently, but so what? That regime will only see it as a signal to implement their ‘clean break’ and most likely pull off some sort of final solution. So while it may cause some inconvenience to Zionists, it will not save the Palestinians. (To a point, Obama’s silence was perhaps not only an exercise in saving his own ass, but also an attempt to make sure that the scouring of Gaza does end before his inauguration.)
Even worse, since most people find it hard to tell the difference between a Jew and a Zionist, a wave of anti-Semitism would ensue recruiting millions of Jews currently happy to live in the Diaspora to join the Zionists. I would not be surprised if this was part of the plan for the regime.
So us goyim cannot save the Palestinians, or the Jewish conscience, either.
Arab countries, even if they democratize and their public opinion’s demands to oppose Israel and help Palestinians, will not dare to challenge a nuclear power. And if they really start threatening Israel in any meaningful way, they will just trigger the ‘Final Solution”.
Only you can do it, the Jews who post here and read these posts. But not by hitting the keyboard, that’s just mental onanism. The only arguments that seemed to have any effect on the regime so far, even if temporarily, were arguments of force.
I have already posted on this forum some months ago (although I might have been using a different name, I cant remember) voicing my opinion on the futility of this here public forum as far as saving the Palestinians from this holocaust, and Jews from committing it, goes.
Unless Jews like you, Jews -the only people who’s opinion seems to mater in this debacle, use against the regime meaningful arguments that cannot be ignored, and break the public myth of Jewish and Israeli homogeneity subsumed under the banner of Zionism, the above outcomes will be realized. Meeting at the fence, singing songs with the prisoners may make you feel good, but it doesn’t cut it. It doesn’t even make the evening news.
And you guys, the few Jews aware of what’s actually going on and the only people in position to do something meaningful about it, will prove yourselves to be no better than those few ‘Good Zionists’ who post here every now and again, so worried that the Palestinians won’t act responsibly and keep forcing Israel’s hand. This is, as excuse me for quoting that guy, a ‘with us or against us’ moment.
[...] The War Isn’t Over, But Israel Has Lost [...]
Liraz Madmony, a 23-year-old law student from Sderot, addressed the UN Human Rights Council Special Session on Gaza in Geneva on behalf of the European Union of Jewish Students (EUJS) on Monday, Jan. 12, 2009 before the vote by the council that condemned Israel’s military offensive in Gaza and resolved to send a fact-finding mission to investigate alleged Israeli abuses against Palestinians.
Here is the text of her speech.
Thank you, Mr. President.
I come from Sderot, the city in Israel that for eight years has been terrorized, by 10,000 rockets fired against us from Gaza.
As a law student, I learned — and I believe — that all human beings have the right to peace and security.
But when I see today’s resolution, I ask: Why is the United Nations ignoring my suffering? When the terrorists committed these 10,000 violations of international human rights and humanitarian law, why was the UN silent?
Are human rights for some, but not others?
The constant assault on Sderot has destroyed our ability to lead a normal life. The warning before each attack gives us only 15 seconds to run for shelter. Fifteen seconds that will decide, life or death.
Mr. President, who will protect our right to life? My family does not have a bomb shelter, so we run to the most protected room, which is the shower.
There is one attack I will never forget. We heard the siren at seven in the morning. We ran to the shower. The rockets fell next to my house. My little brother, who was 14, went to see if anyone needed help. He found a man whose legs were blown off, and a woman blown to pieces.
My youngest brother is six. The rockets have been falling for eight years. He knows no other reality.
Everyone suffers in Sderot. Fathers and mothers are afraid to go to work, creating poverty. Kids are afraid to go to school. I have missed many of my law classes. My friends are afraid to visit. The streets lie empty.
I dream of the hometown that I remember. When the park near my house was filled with happy families and children playing. When people enjoyed life.
I still dream of peace. It will come when the rulers of Gaza choose humanity over hate, when they stop firing on our children while hiding behind their own.
We refuse to grant victory to the terrorists. We choose to live, staying strong with our faith, family and love of country.
Mr. President, who will protect our most basic human rights? My country is now trying its best, and all who love life and desire peace should pray they succeed.
Thank you, Mr. President
“Unless Jews like you, Jews -the only people who’s opinion seems to mater in this debacle, use against the regime meaningful arguments that cannot be ignored, and break the public myth of Jewish and Israeli homogeneity subsumed under the banner of Zionism,”
Unfortunately, Jews who are too critical of Israel are marginalized same as everyone else. How often do you see a Chomsky, Norman Finklestein, Uri Avniery, etc. on TV here? (You saw plenty of Fuad Ajami, though)
And the fact is, they are hopelessly outnumbered by true Zionists who will be on TV all the time.
The mildest criticism is all you’ll ever hear. Within Israel, the pro peace camp has to rely on arguments of Israel’s long term interests; that Israel needs to offer a square deal to survive. But is that really true? Couldn’t Israel just engage in slow motion ethnic cleansing, as it has been doing? Couldn’t the bought and paid for leaders of Egypt and Jordan be made to go along with it?
Who is going to stop them? It wont be a mass movement or the Israeli/Jewish peace camps. Unless the balance of power changes, nothing else will change.
That means a nuclear Iran, a very heavily armed Hizbullah, a resurgent Russia and China with a decline in U.S. global power, and oil prices back up to 100$ plus. I don’t know if any of that is going to happen, but that is what is needed to pressure Israel into a fair deal.
Ziad, i’m afraid you have missed my point, which was:
The only arguments that seemed to have any effect on the regime so far, even if temporarily, were arguments of force.
and
use against the regime meaningful arguments that cannot be ignored
and
make the evening news.
I have left you the option of pretending not to understand what I mean, or perhaps genuinely not understanding. I thought only those who understand this message without havingit spelled out would be ready to commit to it. Frankly, I thought you might be one of the few who get it. Your posts here are better even than Tony’s, none of his wishfull thinking. But now that you have shown you don’t get it, I will make it plain: only violence amidst Jews will save Palestinians in Palestine from holocaust.
Not sure what you are trying to spell out. If by “violence against Jews” you mean attacks against random people walking about, that wont help anyone. And is evil to boot. I’m not saying that’s what you mean, only that it was poorly phrased.
If, however, you mean being able to cause enough pain to Israel to deter it from terror bombing Gaza or Beirut, then yes. Most will note that Israel did not declare a ‘unilateral ceasefire’ in Lebanon.
But honestly I do not see any “decisive battle” that will save the Palestinians. And none is needed, if current trends hold. A nuclear Iran, more expensive oil and and a stronger Hizbullah. They need win any battle, but only be strong enough to prevent any ethnic cleansing and to raise the price of Western support for Israel. Time, demographics and a gradually shifting western opinion will do the rest.
Shifting opinion btw, is not just a function of watching Gaza burn. When western power elites realize unending support for maximalist Israeli positions are too costly to them, they will gradually aid in this shift.
My original point, was that Jews critical of Israel, while heartening in their ability to rise above the petty tribalism of mankind, are not going to be enough. They are marginalized and do not shape public opinion.
No you didn’t get me again, not ‘violence against Jews’ but ‘violence amidst Jews’. Putting your own blood on the line.
I understand and agree with your assesment about situation shifting against the Zionist regime both in demographic and global-economic terms. But that only means they will be more motivated to ditch their interest in western oppinion, turn openly into a full-blown middle eastern satrapy and go for a final solution while they still have the resources.
I believe that only a clearly visible and violent breaking of the Israeli tribal unity under the Zionist leadership will undermine the Zionist legitimacy sufficiently to prevent a Palestinian holocaust. The Israeli public would see that they never will have peace, and that the violence cannot be contained. That would make it clear to most that Israel is a place you want to leave, not immigrate to.
I don’t think israel would, or should, dissapear completely in such scenario. It is an almost indelible demogrphic reality now, and creating another refugee crisis is the last thing anyone needs. but the impetus for agression and expansion, the will to fight for supremacy, would be taken out of them when it becomes clear that violence is not something you can consign to the ‘other’, the untermenshen, and put behind the fence.
But obviously, I’m not holding my breath, I don’t know of any examples from history where the members of the opressor tribe would join a fight for the opressed in any meaningfull way/numbers, however great their moral outrage. Tribal loyalty and cozy lifestyles afforded by the membership of the privileged tribe always win. (I will gladly accept correction on that point)
In the long run, most Palestinians who don’t manage to leave Palestine are in my opinion as good as dead. The rest are slaves/peons whatever you want to call it. They will join a long list of tribes who ended up that way - nothing is new under the sun.
As a result of the past three weeks of Operation Cast Lead, it is incumbent on every Muslim to aks themselves the following questions:
(1) Why is Allah, praise be upon Him, allowing this “Naqbah” (terrible catastrophe) to happen to us, the only true believers, at the hands of the infidel Jews?
(2) Why is Allah,praise be upon Him, displeased with us.
(3) Can it be possible that somehow we’ve gotten it all wrong?
Curious-
I think you are on to something….we dhimmis are demanding our equal national rights within your Dar Al-Islam. Maybe you are getting the message that it is time to share part of the Middle East with others who are also native to the region.
“… astonishing claims in the House of Parliament. Sir Gerald Kaufman, the veteran Labour MP, yesterday compared the actions of Israeli troops in Gaza to the Nazis who forced his family to flee Poland.
During a Commons debate on the fighting in Gaza, he urged the government to impose an arms embargo on Israel.
Sir Gerald, who was brought up as an orthodox Jew and Zionist, said: “My grandmother was ill in bed when the Nazis came to her home town a German soldier shot her dead in her bed.
“My grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza. …
“The present Israeli government ruthlessly and cynically exploits the continuing guilt from gentiles over the slaughter of Jews in the Holocaust as justification for their murder of Palestinians.”
He said the claim that many of the Palestinian victims were militants “was the reply of the Nazi” and added: “I suppose the Jews fighting for their lives in the Warsaw ghetto could have been dismissed as militants.” “Arie
He accused the Israeli government of seeking “conquest” and added: “They are not simply war criminals, they are fools.”
The following photo essay explores a question whose time has come. Has Zionist Israel revealed its violent ideology of racial superiority by continuing a reign of terror over Palestinians forced into the concentration camp in Gaza? Are we to remain silent while the Zionist Jews perpetrate crimes against humanity while concealed behind a massive propaganda campaign? The perpetrators are war criminals and their crimes are no different than the Nazi crimes they point to as justification for their exemption from international law and common decency. The following photo essay shows the Zionist hypocrisy in the stark terms of human suffering and racial bigotry.
http://www.sott.net/articles/show/173411-Nazi-Treatment-of-Jews-Israeli-Treatment-of-Palestinians
It seems to me that the Jews ought to have a place to call home. I have always thought that choosing Palestine was a bad idea. But why not? That’s where the Jews originate from, is it not?
Sadly, NO ONE in the world has shown love for the Jews - including the USA.
So even if one were to say, “Well, they should make a home in Wyoming,” well, that’s not likely to be well received in Wyoming.
So, here, really, is the problem.
The Jews, in an effort to establish a home, displaced others. But who hasn’t?
It would be great if the Palestinians did not protest, but who wouldn’t?
This is a no-win, endless struggle. It’s NEVER, EVER going to stop. NOTHING will stop it. NOT TIME, NOT SENSES, NOT some alien force from outer space - because each side will claim it as its God.
It’s sad and hopeless.
While the media in the West are lambasting Israel for killing women andchildren, and are saturating their viewers with horrific photos of bloodiedcorpses, Israel as a nation is undergoing an astonishing spiritual awakeningas a result of this conflict. It is a pity that the world is unable to bewitness to the miracles that are occurring here daily. Even the most jadedperson would be amazed at the transformation of the people in this country.After many years of feeling the underdog and fearful of the approbation ofthe outside world, Israel is undergoing an absolute renaissance on apersonal and national level. First and foremost, Israel as a nation has finally decided to throw asidethe fear of being rejected by the nations and embrace its sovereign right todefend it’s citizens from terrorist attacks. What is so astonishing, forthose who know Jews and particularly Israelis, is that a whopping 92% ofJewish Israelis actually AGREE that the war is necessary and just. The adageof 2 Jews, 3 opinions and 4 political parties has vaporized in the face ofthe national crisis we are in. Not only is there agreement among thepopulace, but also the left wing and the right wing of the political spheresagree. Even more amazing is the concordance among the various religiousfactions: Ashkenazi, Sephardic, reform and conservative, Zionists andanti-Zionist Jews are all joining together in prayer and supplication to theAlmighty for salvation, protection and victory over our enemies. There arecalls to prayer everywhere, regardless of denomination or ethnic background,everyone is united in looking towards the God of Israel to keep our soldierssafe and help us win against an evil enemy who has sworn never to stop untilIsrael as a nation is destroyed. The soldiers themselves seem to have a huge spiritual hunger, and areunified in not only asking for prayer but also praying themselves, wearingtzitzit (prayer tassles) into battle and carrying the book of Psalms withthem. The Rabbis are calling the tzitzit “heavenly flak jackets!” Tentsynagogues on the battlefield have no less than 10 sessions every morning,and it is reported that soldiers who20never attended synagogue are nowpraying with tefillim. They have reason to cry out to God, since everyoneis aware of the years of preparation of the bloodthirsty Hamas militants,their desire to kill, maim or kidnap Israeli soldiers is greater than theirdesire to live; they have been financed by Iran and supported by Syria andHezbollah. Yet, we are defeating them, and there are reports daily ofamazing miracles of protection and Divine direction during the battle. The following are jus a few examples: A Hamas map was found, withbooby-traps, landmines and sniper positions clearly spelled out. The IDF wasable to counter each installation due to the information given. A largeplatoon of soldiers not realizing they were resting in a school that wasbooby-trapped, (discovered by a soldier relieving himself in the night),disarmed the bombs with no one hurt. A single soldier successfully foughtoff several Hamas terrorists trying to drag him into a tunnel, and all werecaptured. Hundreds of tunnels, hidden in homes under beds and kitchencabinets, all full of live explosives and ammunition, yet none have explodedwith IDF soldiers inside. While there have been soldiers wounded, there aremiracles there as well. A young man who moved here alone from England lessthan 2 years ago to serve in the army was in an explosion, and thrown intothe air. After being carried off the field by other soldiers and transportedon a tractor to helicopter and then to hospital, the doc tors were utterlystunned when they saw that a piece of shrapnel that went completely throughhis neck, missed the carotid artery, the jugular vein and the spinal cord bymillimeters. After they removed it, he needed only stitches. Anothersoldier was shot through the back but the bullet missed his spinal cord andexited from the front. A young newlywed, in grave condition, inexplicablyturned for the better and will recover to go home to his wife. On the ground level, bombs continue to fall, but here again, miracle aftermiracle is reported even on the local news. One hears the word “nes”(miracle) over and over by the reporters and the bystanders. A bomb headingtoward 4 apartment buildings goes into a sewer pipe and explodesunderground, damaging nothing above ground. An elderly woman caught in anapartment completely demolished by a bomb, walks out with scratches on herankle. The mayor of Beersheva felt he should cancel school one day, and arocket completely destroys an empty kindergarten. The elder housing complexthat was hit in Nahariya had the sleeping quarters destroyed, but everyonehad just gone to breakfast, so no one injured. A man leaves his car with hisyoung daughter, and the car is blown up moments20later after they entered abomb shelter. If they had taken a few more seconds, he and his daughterwould have been burned to a crisp. He was televised saying again and againit was a miracle. Similar stories like these were heard during the second Lebanon war,reported on Israeli radio and television, but no one in the west ever heard;only negative propaganda from the terrorists was reported, whose aim was tomalign Israel and make us look like a nation of bloodthirsty killers. Onehas to grieve over the terrible destruction of the cities in Gaza and thehorrific human tragedy going on there, but the responsibility for thesuffering and death is directly on the doorstep of the Hamas leadership.These deluded people think that their god, Allah, will give them victory,and have entered into a battle with the true God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacobthat they will never win. We are literally living in times like those of thescripture, when the Lord told Elisha all the plans of the enemy, until theybegan to wonder if there was a spy in their ranks. There is hope here, not despair and unity of resolve. Even the parents ofYoni Natanel, killed by friendly fire, were quoted as saying that their sondied “for the sanctification of God’s name”, and forgave and blessed thosewho accidently fired at his unit. There is such heroism and courage here,one wishes that the world could see it, but as one of our journalists said,the media have left their brains at the door of Ben Gurion Airport. They aremany miles away from the actual battle, wear flak jackets and helmets forthe cameras, and then take them off to have cappuccino at the localrestaurant! Fortunately, Israelis are accustomed to being misunderstood and malignedby the outside world. At this point, everyone knows we have a job to do, andwe are becoming more and more aware that there is a greater Power than us ison our side. We are fulfilling our commission to be a “Light to theNations”. Israel learned from the failure of the Lebanon war, and preparedwell to fight the terrorists who clearly said they wanted to destroy us. Therest of the nations have not remembered the threats of Hitler, and how theJewish people were almost wiped out because no one wanted to believe heactually meant what he said. Contrary to those who want to hide their headsin the sands of political correctness, there is a right and a wrong side inthis conflict. It is a battle between darkness and light. Fortunately, wehave a God who was never wishy-washy about defending Israel against herenemies, when His People cried out to Him for help. The outside world ismissing the miracle of a righteous God who hears the prayers of the humble,and defends what is His. If My people, who are called by My Name, will humble themselves and pray andseek My Face, and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heavenand will forgive their sin and will heal their land. 2 Chron 7:14Kiriat Yam, Israel
Speaking of “tropes,” I see all the usual critiques of Israel are solidly, and predictably, in place. Do you ever tire of spouting received ideas, or is thinking through complex moral and political questions too much effort?
I don’t know what the person hoped to achieve who published here this childish rave by Dewa Gewanter, that has appeared on several blogs.
Perhaps he believed it to be an example of what Ledgerley apparently believes is going on in his camp: the “thinking through (of) complex moral and political questions.”
For the rest of us it is just conspicuous folly.
I. DAVID’S MEN
In chapter 21, the story of Achimelekh in Nov was cut off by the account of David’s flight to Akhish the king of Gat; in the previous lecture, we discussed the connection between these two events. The beginning of chapter 22 continues to describe David’s movements, and only in verse 6 do we return to the main story regarding Nov, the city of priests. We will begin with verses 1-5, which describe David’s wanderings after he runs away from the Pelishtim.
Scripture opens with a description of those who joined David’s ranks:
(1) David therefore departed thence, and escaped to the cave of Adullam; and when his brethren and all his father’s house heard it, they went down there to him. (2) And every one that was in distress, and every one that was in debt, and every one that was discontented, gathered themselves unto him, and he became captain over them; and there were with him about four hundred men.
Two groups join with David: members of his family, and people of a low social class. The joining of these two groups to David does not speak well of Shaul. David’s family presumably joined with David out of fear that Shaul would do them harm (see Metzudat David). And the joining to David of members of the lower ranks of society alludes to a difficult social reality, which, according to the continuation of the chapter as we shall see below, Shaul had a part in creating.
On the other hand, this description of the group in which David finds himself during the period of his wanderings serves as an exposition that will help us understand various stories that take place along the way. Special note should be taken of the conduct of these people when David is afforded the opportunity to harm Shaul. In chapter 24, a conversation takes place between David and his men, who try to push him to action:
And the men of David said unto him, “Behold the day in which the Lord has said unto you, ‘Behold, I will deliver your enemy into your hand, and you shall do to him as it shall seem good unto you.’” Then David arose, and cut off the skirt of Saul’s robe privily. And it came to pass afterward, that David’s heart smote him, because he had cut off Saul’s skirt. And he said unto his men, “The Lord forbid it to me, that I should do this thing unto my lord, the Lord’s anointed, to put forth my hand against him, seeing he is the Lord’s anointed.” So David checked his men with these words, and suffered them not to rise against Shaul…. (24:4-7)
There is no doubt that people in such desperate financial straits would tend to blame Shaul for their situation, and therefore they rejoiced over the opportunity that they were given to strike at Shaul. It is not by chance that in our chapter these people are called “discontented” (marei nefesh, lit., bitter of soul). This emotional state is described in other places as well as a possible cause of violent reactions. For example:
And the children of Dan said to him, “Do not raise your voice among us, lest angry fellows (marei nefesh) run upon you, and you lose your life with the lives of your household.” (Shoftim 18:25)
And David was greatly distressed; for the people spoke of stoning him, because the soul of all the people was grieved (mara nefesh), every man for his sons and for his daughters. (I Shmuel 30:6)
To David’s credit, it may be said that he succeeded in gaining control over his men, and they obeyed him and did not harm Shaul. It was not easy leading such people, but in none of the stories of David and his men do we find that his men acted improperly or against David’s orders.[1]
In light of this, we can easily understand the argument put forward by Naval the Carmelite: “And Naval answered David’s servants, and said: ‘Who is David? And who is the son of Yishai? There are many servants nowadays that break away every man from his master’” (25:10). David’s band was likely to stir up scornful reactions, inasmuch as it was comprised of poor and destitute people. Naval’s reaction also testifies to the difficult social reality in the time of Shaul.[2]
It is possible that David first acquired his leadership skills while leading these people. Anyone who can impose his authority on four hundred[3] poor and discontented men, can, when the time comes, serve as the leader of Israel.
II. DAVID AND MOAV
David does not remain for very long in the cave of Adullam (v. 1), and he is forced to wander from place to place, as is detailed in the coming verses:
(3) And David went thence to Mitzpeh of Moav; and he said unto the king of Moav, “Let my father and my mother, I pray you, come forth, and be with you, till I know what God will do for me.” (4) And he brought them before the king of Moav; and they dwelt with him all the while that David was in the stronghold.[4] (5) And the prophet Gad[5] said unto David, “Abide not in the stronghold; depart, and get you into the land of Yehuda.” Then David departed, and came into the forest of Cheret.
Why does David transfer his parents spcifically to Moav? It is possible that David is following the approach that we saw in the previous chapter: using the house of a king who is hostile to the reigning king as a haven for those persecuted by the latter. Moav is mentioned among the nations against whom Shaul fought,[6] and therefore it is only natural that the people of Moav would cooperate with those persecuted by him.
Nevertheless, going specifically to Moav seems to have special significance in light of David’s genealogy – “And Boaz begat Oved, and Oved begat Yishai, and Yishai begat David” (Ruth 4:21-22). David’s great-grandmother Ruth’s Moavite origins would likely help the temporary absorption of Yishai and his wife in Moav.
In any event, the lengthy description of the move to Moav is somewhat surprising. It is reasonable to assume that the move from the cave of Adullam to Mitzpeh Moav was not executed quickly, and it is therefore unclear why Scripture cuts off the account regarding Nov in order to describe this event, which presumably took place at some later date.
Chazal seem to have been aware of this difficulty, and they express their solution to the problem in their explanation of David’s attitude toward the Moavites after ascending to the throne and imposing his authority on the neighboring nations. His attitude toward the Moavites is very strange, especially in light of his positive attitude toward Moav in our chapter:
And he smote Moav, and measured them with a line, making them lie down on the ground; even with two lines measured he to put to death, and with one full line to keep alive. (II Shemuel 8:2)
Why does David adopt such a severe measure specifically against Moav? The plain sense of Scripture does not provide any clear answers, but Chazal proposed an explanation of dramatic significance:
For the king of Moav killed them, and nobody escaped except for one brother of David, who ran away to Nachash king of Amon, and the king of Moav sent after him and he did not agree to turn him over. This is the kindness that Nachash did for David.[7] And therefore he fought against the Moavites. This is what is written: “And he smote Moav, and measured them with a line….” (Bamidbar Rabba 14, 1)
The midrash is apparently based on the fact that David’s parents are not mentioned again after moving to Moav. It is doubtful, however, whether this midrash – and especially the story of the brother who ran away to Nachash the king of Amon – is supported by the plain sense of Scripture. It stands to reason that what Chazal wanted to accomplish here is to give expression to the severity of David’s responsibility for the killing of the priests of Nov, as was discussed at length in the previous lecture. It is difficult to ignore the similarity between what is stated in the midrash, “and nobody escaped except for one brother of David,” and what is stated later in our chapter:
And one of the sons of Achimelekh the son of Achituv, named Evyatar, escaped, and fled after David.
The midrash is alluding here that it was owing to David’s responsibility for the death of all the priests of Nov, except for one, that all of the members of David’s family except for one were put to death by the king of Moav.[8]
III. “WILL HE GIVE EVERY ONE OF YOU”
In verse 6, Scripture returns to the story of Nov, the city of the priests. Scripture describes Shaul’s reaction when he hears that David is moving around in the area with a group of his men:
(6) And Shaul heard that David was discovered, and the men that were with him; now Shaul was sitting in Giv’a, under the tamarisk-tree in Rama, with his spear in his hand,[9] and all his servants were standing about him. (7) And Shaul said unto his servants that stood about him, “Hear now, you Binyaminites; will the son of Yishai[10] give every one of you fields and vineyards, will he make you all captains of thousands and captains of hundreds; (8) that all of you have conspired against me,[11] and there was none that disclosed it to me when my son made a league with the son of Yishai, and there is none of you that is sorry for me,[12] or discloses unto me that my son has stirred up my servant against me, to lie in wait, as at this day?”
Shaul’s words conceal a difficult situation. Shaul turns to his servants with the argument: Do you really think that if David becomes king, he will give your fields and vineyards and appoint you to senior positions? Why did none of you tell me of the pact between my son and David? The implication between the lines is that Shaul himself had indeed given his tribesmen fields and vineyards and appointed them to such positions. These verses bring us back to the prophet Shemuel’s warning (above, chapter 8), when he tried to convince Israel to withdraw their request for a king:
(11) And he said, “This will be the manner of the king that shall reign over you: he will take your sons, and appoint them unto him for his chariots and to be his horsemen; and they shall run before his chariots. (12) And he will appoint them unto him for captains of thousands, and captains of fifties… And he will take your fields, and your vineyards, and your oliveyards, even the best of them, and give them to his servants.”
In order to strengthen the connection between our chapter and chapter 8, we might add what is stated later in v. 17: “And the king said unto the runners (ha-ratzim) that stood about him” – which is reminiscent of “and they shall run (ve-ratzu) before his chariots.” Additionaly, the location of the entire story is “under the tamarisk-tree in Rama,” which alludes to the connection with Shemuel the Ramatite.[13] The chapter is hinting, then, that what Shemuel had warned about actually took place, and a king arose who took people’s fields and vineyards and gave them to his servants.
This point is, of course, relevant to what was stated at the beginning of the chapter: “And every one that was in distress, and every one that was in debt, and every one that was discontented.” It might be suggested that the discontented people symbolize those whose fields had been taken by the king and handed over to his servants and friends. The chapter, as it were, stands two groups up one against the other: those in power and those who are being exploited.
Above all else, Shaul stands up and demands to know: Why did no one inform him of the conspiracy between David and Yonatan? Shaul sees this alliance, one that was based on love that is not dependant on anything else,[14] as an act of conspiracy and treachery and as initiative on the part of Yonatan to set David up as an enemy to Shaul.
(Translated by David Strauss)
——————————————————————————–
[1] A distinction must be made between these discontented people, who were poor and unfortunate, and a similar situation – Yiftach and his men, about whom a negative moral judgment is explicitly expressed: “And idle fellows joined themselves to Yiftach, and went out with him” (Shoftim 11:3).
[2] Especially grave was the situation of “every one that was in debt,” owing to the common practice of taking debtor’s children as slaves (see I Melakhim 4:1; Nechemya 5:1-11).
[3] In the continuation, David’s regiment grows to six hundred men (23:13), but it is still possible to distinguish between two groups – four hundred fighters and two hundred who remain behind guarding the equipment. It is possible that these correspond to the original core and those who joined later. So we find when David goes up to the house of Naval – “And there went up after David about four hundred men; and two hundred abode by the baggage” (25:13); and similarly in the pursuit after the Amalekites – “But David pursued, he and four hundred men; for two hundred stayed behind, who were so faint that they could not go over the brook Besor” (30:10). In that pursuit, the tension between the two groups is clearly evident: “And David came to the two hundred men, who were so faint that they could not follow David, whom also they had made to abide at the brook Besor; and they went forth to meet David, and to meet the people that were with him; and when David came near to the people, he saluted them. Then answered all the wicked men and base fellows, of those that went with David, and said, ‘Because they went not with us, we will not give them aught of the spoil that we have recovered, save to every man his wife and his children, that they may lead them away, and depart’” (ibid. vv. 21-22). But there, too, David’s leadership skills stand out: “Then said David, ‘You shall not do so, my brethren, with that which the Lord has given unto us, who has preserved us, and delivered the troop that came against us into our hand. And who will hearken unto you in this matter? For as is the share of him that goes down to the battle, so shall be the share of him that tarries by the baggage; they shall share alike.’ And it was so from that day forward, that he made it a statute and an ordinance for Israel unto this day” (ibid. vv. 23-25).
[4] It is not clear from the verses whether the stronghold is located near Moav or at a distance. According to R. Yeshaya, the stronghold is the Mitzpeh of Moav mentioned in the previous verse, and he understands that Gad’s admonition of David, “Abide not in the stronghold; depart, and get you into the land of Yehuda,” was meant to distance David from Moav, owing to a concern that were he to remain in Moav, the king of Moav was liable to hand him over to Shaul, who had defeated him in battle (see below). According to the Radak, however, the reference is to a stronghold in Yehuda.
[5] In Divrei Ha-yamim, Gad is referred to several times as a “seer” (I Divrei Ha-yamim 21:9; 29:25, 29). In the book of Shmuel, he is mentioned only one other time - in the story of the census and the purchase of the threshing floor of Aravna the Yevusite, which closes the book (II Shmuel 24). In any event, it is not surprising to find here a “new” prophet, for Shmuel was already old when Israel had asked for a king (above 8:1), and would certainly not have been able to travel to the places where David was hiding.
[6] See above 14:47: “So Shaul took the kingdom over Israel, and fought against all his enemies on every side, against Moav, and against the children of Amon, and against Edom, and against the kings of Tzova, and against the Pelishtim; and wherever he turned himself, he put them to the worse.”
[7] The reference is to the kindness mentioned in II Shmuel 10:2: “I will show kindness to Chanun the son of Nachash, as his father showed kindness to me.”
[8] According to the plain sense of Scripture, we can propose a more moderate explanation: Owing to the fact that through his lack of caution, David brought harm to Achimelekh and his family, he put his own family into danger, to the point that he had to seek the haven of the king of Moav.
[9] In chapter 17 (lecture no. 33), we noted the repeated motif of Shaul and his spear. Here, too, the spear ironically represents Shaul’s difficult mental state: lack of confidence, fear, and despair.
[10] Here and in the next verse, Shaul mockingly refers to David as “the son of Yishai” – as we saw in chapter 20 (see lecture no. 40, note 9) – and by the designation, “my servant.”
[11] Three times in this short passage Shaul repeats the term, kulkhem, “all of you,” thereby expressing his feelings of isolation, that he has not a single loyal supporter.
[12] The meaning seems to be: Nobody is pained and sorrowed by my troubles. But the verse also contains a play on words: “And there was none that disclosed (goleh) it to me when my son made a league with the son of Yishai, and there is none of you that is sorry (choleh) for me, or discloses (ve-goleh) unto me that my son has stirred up my servant against me, to lie in wait, as at this day?” It would appear that the awkwardness of the verse follows from Shaul’s excited state (this phenomenon was already noted in chapter 12, lecture no. 21).
[13] We are, however, dealing with different places, for Shaul resides in Giv’a – his city, Giv’at Shaul, in Binyamin.
[14] This love also demonstrated cracks, as we saw in the previous chapters (see lectures no. 39-40).
I would that the many of the posters consider themselves, as many Jews are doing today. Do you realize that Zionism is an existential threat to Jews and Gentiles? Mankind is divided into war by psychopathic war criminals of Israel. You are becoming a threat to humanity as a whole, please reject the racist ideology of
Zionism and Judaism and assimilate into general mankind where you are welcomed. Gilad Atzmon shows the way.
http://palestinethinktank.com/2009/01/03/gilad-atzmon-living-on-borrowed-time-in-a-stolen-land/
“All that is left to Israelis is to cling to their blindness and escapism to evade their devastating grave fate that has become immanent already. All along their way down, the Israelis will sing their familiar various victim anthems. Being imbued in a self-centred supremacist reality, they will be utterly involved in their own pain yet completely blind to the pain they inflict on others. Uniquely enough, the Israelis are operating as a unified collective when dropping bombs on others, yet, once being slightly hurt, they all manage to become monads of vulnerable innocence. It is this discrepancy between the self-image and the way they are seen by the rest of us which turns the Israeli into a monstrous exterminator. It is this discrepancy that stops Israelis from grasping their own history, it is that discrepancy that stops them from comprehending the repeated numerous attempts to destroy their State. It is that discrepancy that stops Israelis from understanding the meaning of the Shoah so can they prevent the next one. It is this discrepancy that stops Israelis from being part of humanity.”
“You are becoming a threat to humanity as a whole”…Bob Kay, 2009
“Only when this Jewish bacillus infecting the life of peoples has been removed can one hope to establish a co-operation amongst the nations which shall be built up on a lasting understanding.” …Hitler’s Speech in Wilhelmshaven, 1 April, 1939
@Edwin Standing,
I apologize for not making myself clear. Zionism is using Jews to further their racial ideology of a “Jewish” state in Palestine. Israel is founded on ethnic cleansing of Palestine. Zionist Jews have ignited war in South Asia, hence the threat to humanity.
Thousands of men, women, and children trapped in the Gaza concentration camp have been slaughtered in the last 22 days This is a racially motivated war crime, as were Hitler’s crimes against the Jews. I am opposed to war crimes, whether perpetrated by Hitler or by Zionist Jews. I am not opposed to Jews.
Why are 56 Muslim states not a threat to humanity, but a Jewish one is? Does that mean that Judaism is at least 56 fold more evil than Islam?
Happy days - the Israeli movie Waltz with Bashir is raking in the tributes. Having done us proud and won the Golden Globe, it’s now a prime Oscar contender. Already under its belt is the Israel Film Academy’s Ophir. It was singled out as the best animation feature by LA’s film critics and was an unexpected box office hit in its recent theatrical release in America.
This presumably should make us ever-so-joyful. The much-maligned Jewish state, after all, craves honors, even when they effectively dishonor it.
To figure this out we might recall the Hanover-born philosopher Theodor Lessing, who was assassinated by Hitler’s agents in 1933. The man who delved into the warped Jewish psyche and produced the still eminently germane volume entitled Der Judische Selbsthass - Jewish self-hate - deserves attention, especially as Israelis daily disprove his optimistic prognosis.
Born into an assimilationist family, Lessing converted to Christianity, as was the vogue among his contemporary up-and-coming young German-Jewish sophisticates. But then, deeply affected by anti-Semitism and passionately moved by the Zionist ethos of Jewish national revival, he recanted, returned to Judaism, visited pre-independence Israel and theorized that only in its environment of a healthy normal Jewish existence, can Jews stop hating themselves.
That’s how much he knew!
Back then, three years before the Third Reich’s birth (and, as it emerged, three years before his own unnatural death), he took it upon himself to painfully pick at the most intractable of Jewish scabs - the maddening capacity of Jews to loathe themselves or, more precisely, to loathe their fellow Jews. He ascribed this inclination to two millennia of abnormal persecuted existence. He assumed that the normalization, which Zionism took upon itself to achieve, would eradicate the aberration. It was a sound hypothesis, except that perhaps Lessing and Zionism underestimated the profound psychological deformity which 2,000 years of anomaly wrought.
THAT CROSSED my mind when Waltz won the Globe. In concept and execution this peculiar animated hybrid perhaps breaks with convention, but its central thematic core is every bit as predictable, cravenly conformist and run of the mill as nearly all Israeli flicks of the past few decades.
Local filmmakers uniformly revel in portraying Israelis as jaded, essentially unpleasant (if not altogether repulsive), justifiably insecure, rightfully apologetic, malaise-ridden, terminally devoid of vitality, corroded within and/or wretchedly wrecked by self-reproach.
The Arab is revealed as the antithesis to the inherently disagreeable, fatigued, befuddled, farcical, foolish and/or pathetic Israeli. Arabs are devoted patriots, confident in their cause, outspoken in their righteous indignation, vindicated in their umbrage, noble, proud, tough, young, vigorous and deserving of victory.
Some occasional counterfeit cardboard dichotomies are tolerable - freedom of expression and all that rot. However, when simplistic falsehoods become the single premise, then the overbearing presence of pressure by manipulative groupthink must at least be suspected. The utter lack of deviation from this one homogeneous portraiture-style testifies to the imposition of ideological diktats, obviously in the name of democracy and artistic free-will.
Misgivings are further intensified when we realize how many of these one-dimensional productions are subsidized by the Education Ministry’s Israel Film Fund. Portions of our hard-earned incomes go - as taxes collected from you and me - to underwrite either outright slander of the Jewish state or, at best, unsympathetic depictions of a bumbling imbecilic entity.
No government dares reduce officialdom’s largesse to Israel’s self-appointed creative ambassadors, who blithely batter their country’s image at any available film festival abroad. Hand-in-hand with omnipotent media cliques, our artistes vehemently orchestrate intimidating reputation-trashing onslaughts which no higher-up or administration in recent memory could withstand.
And so, willing or not, we bankroll them and, at our expense, they relish in thumbing their avant-garde noses at the “benighted” aggregate of ordinary Israelis who are denied other homegrown cinematic fare, certainly anything Zionist. Since nothing pro-Israeli can win accolades at Cannes or Berlin, the preferences of overseas nabobs must be pandered to in our filmmakers’ quest for fame and fortune. Thus, to bask in the limelight of enlightened foreign approval, Israelis enhance the fraudulent Arab narrative. Pleasing the enemy is the one surefire way to make it in Israeli showbiz.
THIS STATE of affairs, after 60 years of Jewish sovereignty, would have shocked the Zionist in Lessing. Nevertheless, Lessing the scholar would have easily been able to fit the Israeli strain of “the old Jewish disease” into his painstakingly compiled typology of self-hating Jews.
In essence Lessing noted that Jews are unique in their self-deprecation, yet it’s such second-nature that they seldom acknowledge the condition. Non-Jews would never dream of harboring such scorn for themselves.
Excessively moralistic and idiosyncratically contrary, Jewish intellectuals are predisposed to self-blame, even when not remotely guilty of whatever inequity they ascribe to their people. This meshes flawlessly with the historically honed and religiously indoctrinated propensity of non-Jews to scapegoat Jews. But uber-brainy Jewish suck-ups, stopping at nothing to ingratiate themselves, invariably praise those who despise and target them.
They demonstrate an inexhaustible aptitude for understanding visceral antagonism toward themselves and identifying with the antagonists’ rationale. It’s a combination of their contempt for their own kind and their hankering to be accepted by those who abhor them. That, in a nutshell, is the Jew’s predilection for forsaking his own heritage and his longing for another identity.
@Sarah Honig
http://www.sott.net/articles/show/174156-Has-Israel-Committed-Crimes-Against-Humanity-You-Decide
Zionist Israel has usurped Judaism, Jewish, and Jews in a hypocritical and violent project to exterminate Palestine and Palestinians. Perhaps 80% of Jews support Israel and its barbaric actions. These facts alone call for self examination of the basic tenets of Zionism and the “chosen people” mythology of Judaism. Antagonism towards those who identify with and perpetrate the slaughter of children trapped in Gaza is natural for a human being of conscience.
Your eloquent words miss the point entirely. Judaism’s special and separate ideology embedded within Zionism is the source of Jewish angst, and perhaps anti-semitism. You claim to be exempt from common decency and international law because you are Jewish, and wonder why some Jews and many Gentiles notice this hypocrisy.
Your condemnation of critical perspectives and questions will not silence men and women of conscience, whether Jew or Gentile.
We all need to remember Israel is fighting a PR war, blogs like this one has trained people to defend the killings in Gaza. We also need to understand today Jews aren’t the Jews of the old testament, they are the Jews that follow the Tulmud, and evil book written by men for men. Just google Tulmud see how evil it is.
Zealot, a very realistic and clever post, but too naive regarding jewish “conscience”. You may appeal to Santa Claus too.
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True.
The problem is that they know what they are doing.
This will go on until there are no more Palestinians.
It is a war of attrition.
Eventually the jew/nazis will kill or chase them all away and take all their land.
The world will watch and cry and watch tv and drink beer and eat pizza.
when all the Palestinians are gone…
who’s next?
iran?
lebanon?
syria?
??????
Who Wrote this tripe? I’ve never seen worse writing. could not follow it.
Seems to me that in the long run, Israel will morph into a Palestian state with remaining Jews in control of the economy under Arab political rule. Let European countries which caused this horrible situation in the middle east the the US which supported it all along, absorb those who choose to leave Israel. There’ll be no bloodbath of Jews as in the case of South Africa. Jews have lived in Muslim lands for centuries in peace and prosperity, albeit as second class citizens in many cases.
The Jews and their contribution to the world in arts and sciences will flourish in Palestine and elsewhere free of their nationalist/racist and militarist regime. And many Jews living this nightmare outside Israel
will have good reason to feel Jewish
again.
Israel has been a deadbeat. It has never been a friend to the U.S.
Fascists use the weapon of fraud. Nazi use the weapons of force.
I have been worried to death about the fate of the Holyland, always arguing with my friends about defending her at all costs.Then one cousin sent me some alternative documentation about the history not talked about in the US media.I am really in shock that we have been deliberately lied to. Some things I’ve learned;1)the influence that AIPAC/ADL/MOSAAD has inside our government is scary. 2) Israel has NOT been a loyal friend to us; just last year the Israeli foreign minister said that the greatest disaster in US/Israeli relations was when former IDF/MOSAAD operatives were caught red-handed bugging/hacking/tapping the communications of over 200 top secret US corporations and handing their info over to Israeli companies.3)Israel is the main enemy of free speech in the US 4)Israel was founded by a group of terrorists/mafiosi/gangsters( not the Messiah as Prophecy says 5)the worlds most famous terrorist-Abu Nidal- was in fact a MOSAAD agent all along-to make all Palestinians appear to be terrorists. 6) the entire world seems to be aware that the REAL TERRORISTS are the israelis- holding the world hostage with its 200+ nukes- I have been brainwashed my whole life by this vast network of Zionist Media Moguls!Wow!
if hamas and fatah are so tired of being “brutalized” by Israel, why don’t they just defeat Israel??? …oh right they can’t. so if the world outcry to help hamas and fatah is so strong why don’t they help them defeat Israel? hmmmm …. no answer?!? no one is interested in helping the gaza citizens, except to reveal their own hidden anti-semitism..
Israel and supporters are surprised that Egypt conducts war games with the IDF being the advesary.
Israel as attacked Egypt more than once,with “self defence” as justification.With escaping Egypt being the center of Mosiac Law and reviled,makes one wonder if indoctrination of Hebrew tenets might not also be an obstacle to peace.Expansion under cover of war has been Israel’s modus operandi.I believe Israeli policy makers want to force an Exodus of Palestinians from the Gaza Ghetto into Egypt.Egypt keeps it’s Gaza border tightly shut!New report shows Israel targetted Palestinian civillians with drone attacks in recent Gaza 2008 offensive.More sophistacted than the poisining of Palestinain wells by Jewish paramiltary forces in 1948,but serves to sow fear in populace.
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