Empathising with Israel

ID

Israel isn't all Jews, it doesn't speak for them, they don't all think it does. Some do, some don't. But suggesting that the German industrial slaughter of European Jewry gives carte blanche for Israel today to do what it wants to the Palestinians *she's* currently denying statehood to is nonsense. And as just about everyone else in the world can see that, perhaps the basic empathy you need try might also be revealing?

Publius

Have you noticed how the spokesmen and apologists for Hamas consistently fail to define what they mean by "occupation"? Which land is "occupied" and which may Israel keep? They will not say.

I suspect this reticence is deliberate. They regard all the territory of Israel as "occupied". They want it all.

dmatr

@ID: "But suggesting that the German industrial slaughter of European Jewry gives carte blanche for Israel today to do what it wants..."

Just as well then that neither this post, nor Mr Finkelstein's column, make this suggestion, isn't it?

Gino

The Israelie aren't denying statehood to the Palestinians. It's Hamas that says Israel has no right to statehood, which is why the peace talks always go nowhere.

Nicholas

"*she's* currently denying statehood to is nonsense."

Denying statehood? That is arrant nonsense. It is Palestinian terror which is denying statehood.

"And as just about everyone else in the world can see that"

Don't confuse the impression given by a Leftist controlled media with what everybody really thinks.

No ID cards thank you.

Austin Barry

The Hamas apologists also never mention its charter which states:

"Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it."

"The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Moslem generations until Judgement Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up. "

"There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors."

Even allowing for Islamist hyperbole there's not much room for negotiation is there?

Austin Barry

Mark Steyn made a good point in the National Review yesterday:

"I notice in the pictures of demonstrations in western cities many of the protestors appear to be Muslim. There is a crude arithmetic logic about European antipathy to the Zionist Entity: For your average finger-in-the-windy politician, there is simply no electoral upside in being pro-Israel, and quite a lot of potential downside. If you think Europe is soft on Israel's "right to exist" now, just wait another ten years."

King Prawn

ID, can you please explain why when Yasser Arafat was offered over 90% of what he demanded to sign up for a lasting peace with Israel he failed to do it?

I tell you why because he, along with a sizeable majority of the Arabs, will not be happy until they enact there own holocaust on the Jewish people.

If Isreal had lost the Six Day War in the 1970s do you have any doubt that the Arabs will have slaughtered them!

Until the Palestinians guarantee that they are prepared to live side-by-side with the Israelis then Israel has no choice to defend itself and the Palestinians have no choice but to accept the conditions they live in.

Chris

Israel is not denying statehood to the Palestinians, ID. Gaza is Palestinian territory. Not one Israeli lives there, and you may recall that many were forced to leave by the Israeli Army at gunpoint so that the Pals could destroy the business plant and infrastructure left behind for them. That Hamas chooses to make Gaza a cesspit because anti-semitism is more important to it than the welfare of those it opresses is not Israel's responsibility.

'But suggesting that the German industrial slaughter of European Jewry gives carte blanche for Israel today to do what it wants to the Palestinians *she's* currently denying statehood to is nonsense.' Indeed. It's also a straw man set up by you, not what Forsyth or Finkelstein are arguing. You don't want us to show empathy with the Palestinians; you want us to make excuses for them.

Augustus

The statement: "Israel isn't all Jews" could imply that Israeli Jews are acting like modern Nazis, and that the Palestinians in Gaza are suffering as the European Jews suffered under Hitler. Which would also imply that Gaza should be compared to a concentration camp. But he who makes comparisons should also be prepared to prove them. If Gaza is a concentration camp, what does that say about Auschwitz? Were things there like they are in Gaza? The life expectancy of the Jews in Nazi camps were not comparable to life expectancy of Palestinians in Gaza. If you implicitly compare Auschwitz to Gaza, you are almost implying that the Holocaust wasn't as bad as it was made out to be. A few hundred deaths, or possibly a few thousand? That happens every week in Darfur. A new breed of post-modern Holocaust deniers? Soon people will be shouting for Jewish journalists to be banned. A 'berufsverbot'. Now where has that happened before?

JONNY

'The Israelie aren't denying statehood to the Palestinians.'

Even if they are doing everything they can to block it, Gino.
But when you get down to brass tacks you'll find that they are progressively sequestering (some would say 'stealing') all the choicest bits of Palestinian land.
Hopefully they might not find Obabama so helpful in that as bent sheriff Bush.

Verity

Jonny - you forgot to add Cheyney, quagmire, Halliburton. Ah, the bracing smell of freshly cooked clichés first thing in the morning.

JONNY

Ah, the bracing smell of freshly cooked clichés first thing in the morning.

Thanks a mill Verity.
Such praise from the Cliche Queen is a pearl beyond price.
(And I haven't even sequestered your patio yet)

THX1138

I thought Danny wrote I fine & moving Op Ed & I do empathise strongly with Israel, I just wish they wouldn't kill so many children.

I heard an Israeli Government spokesman on Newsnight last night say that the UN school was a legitimate target irrespective of civilians hiding there because Hamas had fired mortars close by or from within the school. I have to ask would the IDF have fired at those same Hamas fighters if they had known for instance that IDF prisoners were being held hostage in the school? I think the answer to that is no & so the life of IDF soldier is held in higher regard by Israel than a Gazan child. I hope I'm wrong but I fear I'm right.

From the ever thoughtful Haim Watzman.

"That all lives are equal is a fundamental principle of law in Western societies, and rightly so. A government cannot be just if it values the life of some citizens over the lives of others without due cause. "

http://www.jewcy.com/post/tough_love_moral_choices_gaza_war

The question is, is the cause big enough?

salieri

Augustus:
I'm far from sure that such a false comparison between Israel and Nazi Germany was being implied by ID's post but it WAS expressly advanced on Radio 4 last week by that well-known intellectual and giant of international diplomacy, K. Livingstone. His opinion was that "Gaza is a ghetto for the Palestinians in the way that Warsaw was a ghetto for the Jews." Was he challenged on this repellent and incredible idiocy? Was he hell.

Frank P

This is the neatest short essay I have seen during the recent upheaval in Gaza:

http://www.patriotpost.us/opinion/charles-krauthammer/2009/01/02/israels-dilemma.html

h/t "EC" on Melanie's blog.

Minnie Ovens

I note that Mary Riddell is again wringing her hands in The Telegraph today.
I also noted Paxman's bombastic and blimpish bullying of the Israeli spokesman the other night.
It is now far more convenient for Hamas to provoke a short term war by acts of aggression as it knows it will always come out on top in the PR games.
Just put mortar team among civilians or possibly among school children and it is a PR victory!
Do people really believe that Israel purposely would shell a school without cause?
Paxman, Clegg and Riddell do but then what do you expect from them. To think it through properly before making a judgment? Ha!

Manny Goldstein

The 'splendid piece' is not correct! The Palestinians DID recognise the state of Israel and agreed that it should exist in peace on September 9th 1993. The full text can be fond on the U.S. State department website here;

http://www.state.gov/p/nea/rls/22579.htm