Cognitive dissonance on Middle East groundhog day

Tarka the Rotter

Melanie... spot on!

Lindsay

We can all agree that the treatment of the Palestinians is wrong. The neighbouring states should not make their persecution by Israel a pretext to persecute them in turn. Clearly an interim solution would be for the neighbouring states to show themselves more civilised than Israel. A full and final solution of course would require Israel to negotiate a peace settlement that allows the Palestinians a viable state.

Benny Morris would love to agree with Efraim Karsh's political conclusions, but as a distinguished historian he cannot bring himself to wink at the travesty of history Karsh requires to get him to his conclusions.

Gábor Fränkl

Just let mer mention only 1 remark: as I am observin the events on the ground - and the personalities - I am convinced that Erekat is actually more, substantially more radical than his chief Mahmoud Abbas. And more scheming, lying, and deceiving, too. Oh yes, and a BIGGER actor as well. Remember him on CNN wrt Jenin?

JOHN ROOSEVELT

Oh God..I'm sure I can hear them. Hold on. let me put my ear to te ground..I hear them. I do!! It's harold, lyndsay..yes, I see them,gurumphing over the desert sands, frothing, panting, gurgling for Mel's scalp...

Oh my God...HELPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP!

JOHN ROOSEVELT

Worth posting this, I think:

""Two states, living side by side in peace and security." This, in the words of President Barack Obama, is the solution to the century-long conflict between Jews and Palestinian Arabs in the Middle East. Washington is fully and determinedly on board. So are the Europeans. The UN and the "international community" vociferously agree. Successive governments of the state of Israel have shown their support for the idea. So far, there is—just as there has always been—only one holdout.

The story begins a long time ago. In April 1920, the newly formed League of Nations appointed Britain as the mandatory power in Palestine. The British were committed, via the Balfour Declaration, to facilitating the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine. But they were repeatedly confronted with violent Arab opposition, which they just as repeatedly tried to appease. As early as March 1921, they severed the vast and sparsely populated territory east of the Jordan River ("Transjordan") from the prospective Jewish national home and made Abdullah, the emir of Mecca, its effective ruler. In 1922 and 1930, two British White Papers limited Jewish immigration to Palestine and imposed harsh restrictions on land sales to Jews.

But the violence mounted, and in July 1937 it reaped its greatest reward when a British commission of inquiry, headed by Lord Peel, recommended repudiating the terms of the mandate altogether. In its stead, the commission now proposed a two-state solution: the partitioning of Palestine into an Arab state, united with Transjordan, that would occupy some 85 percent of the mandate territory west of the Jordan river, and a Jewish state in the remainder. "Half a loaf is better than no bread," the commission wrote in its report, hoping that "on reflection both parties will come to realize that the drawbacks of partition are outweighed by its advantages."

But partition did not happen. While the Zionist leadership gave the plan its halfhearted support, Arab governments and the Palestinian Arab leadership (with the sole exception of Abdullah, who viewed partition as a steppingstone to the vast Arab empire he was striving to create) dismissed it out of hand.

The same thing happened in November 1947 when, in the face of the imminent expiration of the British mandate, the UN General Assembly voted to partition Palestine. Rejecting the plan altogether, the Arab nations attempted to gain the whole by destroying the state of Israel at birth. This time, however, Arab violence backfired. In the ensuing war, not only did Israel confirm its sovereign independence and assert control over somewhat wider territories than those assigned to it by the UN, but the Palestinian Arab community was profoundly shattered, with about half of its members fleeing to other parts of Palestine and to neighboring Arab states.

But the results hardly won the Arabs over to the merits of the two-state solution. Rather, the Arab states continued to manipulate the Palestinian cause to their own several ends. Neither Egypt nor Jordan permitted Palestinian self-determination in the parts of Palestine they had occupied during the 1948 war. Jordan annexed the West Bank in April 1950, while Egypt kept the Gaza Strip under oppressive military rule. No new Palestinian leadership was allowed to emerge. Only after the conquest of these territories by Israel during the June 1967 Six-Day war, and the passage five months later of UN Security Council Resolution 242, would their political future become a question of the first order.

At the time, though, nobody envisaged a return to the two-state solution. To the contrary: Palestinian nationhood was rejected by the entire international community, including the western democracies, the Soviet Union (then the foremost supporter of radical Arabism), and the Arab world itself (as late as 1974, Syrian President Hafez al-Assad openly referred to Palestine as "a basic part of southern Syria"). Instead, under Resolutions 242's "land for peace" terms, it was assumed that any territories evacuated by Israel would be returned to their pre-1967 Arab occupiers: Gaza to Egypt, and the West Bank to Jordan. The resolution did not even mention the Palestinians by name, affirming instead the necessity "for achieving a just settlement of the refugee problem"—a clause that applied not just to Arabs but to the hundreds of thousands of Jews expelled from Arab states following the 1948 war.

What, then, about the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), established in 1964 at the initiative of Egypt's President Gamal Abdel Nasser? Through a sustained terror campaign in the late 1960s and early 1970s, most notably including the massacre of eleven Israeli athletes at the September 1972 Munich Olympics, the PLO would gradually establish itself as a key international player. In October 1974 it was designated by the Arab League as the "sole legitimate representative" of the Palestinian people, and in the following month PLO Chairman Yasir Arafat became the first non-state leader ever to address the UN General Assembly. Soon afterward, the UN granted observer status to the PLO despite that organization's open commitment to the destruction of Israel, a UN member state; within a few years, it was allowed to open offices in most west European capitals.

The PLO's ascendance, coupled with Jordan's renunciation of its claim to the West Bank, led to a reinterpretation of Resolution 242 as in fact implying a two-state solution: namely, Israel and a Palestinian state governed by the PLO in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Conveniently ignored was one glaring fact: the PLO rejected any such solution. In June 1974, the organization adopted a "phased strategy," according to whose terms it would seize whatever territory Israel was prepared or compelled to cede and use it as a springboard for further territorial gains until achieving, in its phrase, the "complete liberation of Palestine."

It is true that, in November 1988, more than two decades after the passage of 242, the PLO made a pretense of accepting the resolution; but this was little more than a ploy to open a dialogue with Washington. Shortly after that move, Salah Khalaf, Arafat's second-in-command (better known by his nom de guerre of Abu Iyad), declared: "The establishment of a Palestinian state on any part of Palestine is but a step toward the whole of Palestine." Two years later, following the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait (which the PLO endorsed), he reiterated the point at a public rally in Amman, pledging "to liberate Palestine inch by inch from the [Mediterranean] sea to the [Jordan] river."

Despite all this, Israel's Labor government, which had backed the "land for peace" formula in the immediate wake of the 1967 war, decided to enter into its own peace negotiations with the PLO. In 1993 it signed the "Oslo Accords" providing for Palestinian self-rule in the entire West Bank and Gaza Strip for a transitional period not to exceed five years, during which time Israel and the Palestinians would negotiate a permanent settlement. Although the Oslo accords were not based explicitly on a two-state solution, they signaled an implicit Israeli readiness to acquiesce in the establishment of a Palestinian state.

But once again the PLO had other plans. In its judgment, the Oslo "peace process" offered a path not to a two-state but to a one-state solution. Arafat admitted as much five days before signing the accords in Washington when he told an Israeli journalist that "In the future, Israel and Palestine will be one united state in which Israelis and Palestinians will live together"—that is, Israel would cease to exist. And even as he shook Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's hand on the White House lawn, Arafat was assuring the Palestinians in a pre-recorded Arabic-language message that the agreement was merely an implementation of the PLO's phased strategy.

The next ten years offered a recapitulation, over and over again, of the same story. In addressing Israeli or Western audiences, Arafat would laud the "peace" he had signed with "my partner Yitzhak Rabin." To his Palestinian constituents, he depicted the accords as transient arrangements required by the needs of the moment, made constant allusion to the "phased strategy," and repeatedly insisted on the "right of return," a euphemism for Israel's destruction through demographic subversion.

And that was the least of it. Further discrediting the idea of "two states living side by side in peace and security," Arafat's Palestinian Authority (PA) launched a sustained campaign of racial hatred and political incitement. Israelis, and Jews more generally, were portrayed as the source of all evil and responsible for every problem, real or imagined, in the West Bank and Gaza. Palestinians were indoctrinated in the illegitimacy of the state of Israel and the lack of any Jewish connection to the land, supplemented with tales of Israeli plots to corrupt and ruin them.

Nor did it stop there. Embracing violence as the defining characteristic of his rule, Arafat set out to build an extensive terrorist infrastructure in the territories—in flagrant violation of the accords and in total defiance of the overriding official reason for his presence there: namely, to lay the groundwork for Palestinian independence. Israeli concessions had no effect, or worse. In 1997, Jerusalem gave the PA full control over virtually the entire Arab population of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, as well as some 40 percent of the land, as a prelude to final-status negotiations. But Israel's civilian casualties only mounted. At the American-convened peace summit in Camp David (July 2000), Ehud Barak offered Arafat a complete end to the Israeli presence, ceding virtually the entire territory of the West Bank and Gaza Strip to the nascent Palestinian state and making breathtaking concessions with respect to Jerusalem. Arafat's response was war, at a level of local violence unmatched in scope and intensity since the attempt to abort the creation of a Jewish state in 1948.

Although it had become abundantly evident by then that the PLO had no interest whatsoever in statehood, the international community responded by condemning Israel's defensive measures against the Palestinian intifada and urging it to accelerate the "peace process." It also maintained the massive influx of international aid to the Palestinian Authority, making the Palestinians the largest recipients of foreign aid per-capita in the world—though most of the funds were promptly siphoned off to the personal bank accounts of Arafat and his cronies and/or channeled to terror operations. Even after Arafat's death in late 2004 and the landslide victory of the militant Islamist group Hamas in Palestinian parliamentary elections twelve months later, Western governments insistently maintained the façade of a "peace process," now embracing Mahmoud Abbas and his defeated Fatah as the epitome of moderation.

But is there in fact a fundamental distinction between Hamas and Fatah when it comes to a two-state solution? Neither faction formally accepts Israel's right to exist; both are formally committed to its eventual destruction. Moreover, for all the admittedly sharp differences between Arafat and his successor Abbas both in personality and in political style, the two are warp and woof of the same dogmatic PLO fabric.

In a televised speech on May 15, 2005, Abbas described the establishment of Israel as an unprecedented historic injustice and vowed his unwavering resolve never to accept it. Two-and-a-half years later, at a U.S.-sponsored peace conference in Annapolis, he rejected Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's proposal of a Palestinian Arab state in 97 percent of the West Bank and the entire Gaza Strip, and categorically dismissed the request to recognize Israel as a Jewish state alongside the would-be Palestinian state, insisting instead on full implementation of the "right of return."

In June 2009, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu broke with longstanding Likud precept by publicly accepting a two-state solution and agreeing to the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state, provided the Palestinian leadership responded in kind and recognized Israel's Jewish nature. The Arab world exploded in rage. Egyptian President Husni Mubarak, whose country had been at peace with the Jewish state for 30 years, deplored Netanyahu's statement as "scuppering the possibilities for peace." Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat warned that Netanyahu "will have to wait 1,000 years before he finds one Palestinian who will go along with him."

At Fatah's sixth general congress, convened in Bethlehem in August last year, the delegates reaffirmed their longstanding commitment to "armed struggle" as "a strategy, not a tactic . . . . This struggle will not stop until the Zionist entity is eliminated and Palestine is liberated." More recently, even as Abbas has publicly mouthed the Obama formula for "two states living side by side in peace and security," he pointedly insists on preconditions impossible for Israel to accept.

The Peel Commission had the principle right. While a two-state solution "offers neither party all it wants, it offers each what it wants most, namely, freedom and security." It is a great historical irony that this "half-a-loaf" solution should have been repeatedly advanced as a response by others—Europeans, Americans, Israelis—to the actions of its most implacable opponents, who have then repeatedly proceeded to repudiate it in word and deed. On the Palestinian side, not a single leader has ever evinced any true liking for the idea or acted in a way signifying an unqualified embrace of it. The same is true, with the partial exceptions of Egypt and Jordan, for the larger Arab world.

Nearly two decades and thousands of deaths after the launch of the "peace process," one might hope that Western policy makers would at last begin to take the measure of what the Palestinian leadership tells its own people and wider Arab audiences. For the lesson of history remains: so long as things on the Arab side are permitted, or encouraged, to remain as they are, there will be no two-state solution, and therefore no solution at all.

Drakken

This so called peace process is a farce, if anybody thinks the palis are going to give the Israelis peace I have a bridge in MN I would love to sell you. The only peace there will be is when Israel finially has had enough and says to the so called world community up yours and defeats these savages once and for all time.

James M

Oh dear Drakken! "Savages"? A tad politically incorrect surely. Perhaps we should just call them "Amorites".

Okey

Given "Palestinian" Arab thirst for Jewish blood and for genocide, Israel has been astonishingly restrained in its relations with those Arabs, even benevolent and benificent.
Thousands of "Palestinian" Arabs and their children owe their good health and even their lives to the Israeli doctors, other medical staff and Israeli taxpayers who have funded these services.
Without Israeli input, the "Palestinian" Arab economy would be non-existent.
Without Israeli surveillance and police work, the incidence of "Palestinian" "honour" murders of young Arab women would be far higher than it is.
And I have mentioned only a fraction of the benefits which Israel has brought to the Arabs of The Land of Israel.

Those posters, however, who believe that to murder Jews, to prevent Jews from defending themselves, to deprive Jews of their legal national rights, to pervert justice in order to achieve the above, that these are all human rights, will not like my post.
Too bad.

JOHN ROOSEVELT

Lyndsay knows that the arab and moslem notion of a Palestinian state is predicated on the Law of Return for a definition of Palestinian refugees which will mean the end of an Israeli state.

She also knows - and will never address this question - that if this Law of Return is not agreed to in advance by Israel, there will be nothing - as far as the Arab and moslem line goes - to negotiate for and therefore they will not negotiate.

She also knows that if Abbas does negotiate on terms which countence the recogniton of Israel without these terms being met in advance, he's a dead man.

It is the sublimeness of the circularity of the Lyndsay prescription which informs the Arab and moslem propaganda. It is this which enables them to maintain conflict whilst making inroads into Israel's international support base. That suits them just fine.

Unfortunately for the Lyndsay's of this world, many who count are too used to the paucity of their strategms and nothing that will transpire as a result will be much less than that which they claim to want to resolve.

It's a shameful manifestation of the corruption of the human condition.

Derek Pasquill

Pariah state?

More likely proto-exterminated state.

Harold

JOHN ROOSEVELT
July 20th, 2010 9:43pm
JOHN ROOSEVELT
July 20th, 2010 10:09pm

I could return the compliment.

What is the source of this political fiction?

elixelx

Lindsay: Benny Morris would love to agree with Efraim Karsh's political conclusions, but as a distinguished historian he cannot bring himself to wink at the travesty of history Karsh requires to get him to his conclusions."

1)IF WHAT YOU STATE IS TRUE, was this the pre-conversion Morris, or the one who has recently recanted his youthful belligerence toward the State of Israel?
2)How would YOU know what the new Benny Morris "would love to" do?
3)You can agree with yourself about the treament of Pals being "wrong". We do emphatically NOT "all agree"! I disagree! I am sure there are many millions more like me!
4)Stop with the canard that the Arab States persecute Pals BECAUSE Israel persecutes them! That is really bigoted! Unless of course you really believe that every Evil has only come into the world BECAUSE of the creation of the State of Israel!
5)Never EVER, Lindsay, use the words "Final Solution" in posts about the future of the State of Israel, lest you specifically wish to wound, hurt, annoy, kill all dialogue!

JOHN ROOSEVELT

Lyndsay wrote: "The neighbouring states should not make their persecution by Israel a pretext to persecute them in turn."

She never misses a chance to pillory Israel, does she? Ah, the art of the propagandist!

..but, Lyndsay, the Arbs and moslems have always had a penchant for murdering each other and never seem o hold themselves or each other accountable. It's either Islam which helps 'em veil it; or Pan Arabism...or hatred of the Jew..but murder it is and murder year in year out.

Address that openly and honestly or will you get get sacked from your day job by doing so??!

Mjolnir de Jersiaise

Lindsay says: "A full and final solution of course would require Israel to negotiate a peace settlement that allows the Palestinians a viable state." With this Freudian slip, Lindsay reveals the true nature of the Liberal-Left and Islamic alliance. If the Palis are given a state alongside Israel, and the 'right of return' is implemented, that would indeed be a huge step toward their long-hoped-for Final Solution...

Carl

Ha Ha! Drakken of the Deadly force rides again.

Margaret Muller-Johansson

I like this guy.

Mrs. S.

Lindsay, the fact that you think that other Arab sates persecute the Palestinians says all you ever need to know about them.

Augustus

JOHN ROOSEVELT, 20/7, 10.09pm -

You say it all. Well done!

Yes, the existence of a seperate Palestinian identity serves only tactical puposes. The founding of a Palestinian state is a new tool in the continuing battle against Israel.

Not my words, but those of Zuheir Muhsin, the late military head of the PLO, and a member of its executive council; speaking to the Dutch daily, Trouw, in March 1977.

So much for the mythology. So much for the emotional ties. So much for legalities, devoid entirely of moral meaning. So much for the claims of age-old Arab Palestinian 'rights' contradicted by history.

Linda Smith

Harold asks John Roosevelt: "What is the source of this political fiction?

I ask Harold: What are your reasons for alleging that the quotation is "political fiction"?

Lindsay

elixelx
July 21st, 2010 9:25am
Could I start with what is most important - I apologise for any offense. I've been a student of the Holocaust for many years now so I ought to be sufficiently aware of what the term means not to have been so crass as to use it here. I hope the context makes clear I simply meant a settlement of the Israel/Palestine conflict. I would note - just in passing and not in any way as exoneration - that Melanie Phillips and several of those who support her here have used the term "final solution" more than once to accuse others of seeking or supporting genocide. To repeat, I was carelessly crass and not malicious. I apologise.

On your other points:

I picked up the reference to Benny Morris from a previous thread. He has written a review of Efraim Karsh's latest book.

How do I know what Benny Morris would love to agree with? - because he has made his opinions very clear in books, articles, on television.

The main difference pre and post conversion is that post he regrets that Hagana didn't finish the job in 1948 and advocates completing it now.

Melanie Phillips was, I believe, holding up the Arab states' treatment of the Palestinians as reprehensible. I agree with her. You apparently don't. I would say that their similar treatement by Israel is reprehensible. You I take it don't agree.

Your fourth point is, as far as I can see, a misreading of what I said that leads you into flights of righteous rhetoric that are not appropriate.

Neil Turner

Christian perspective.....

I'm currently reading the book of Exodus. Abbas isn't on his own - Pharoah didn't "get it" either.

In the face of God's judgement, Pharoah refused to "let My people go" and hardened his heart. In the face of this attitude, God hardened Pharoah's heart still further

I suspect that the God of Israel sees the attitude of Abbas and has hardened his heart.

The God of Israel will continue to shape events in the Middle East, and nothing takes him by surprise

The Bible still remains the only book to explain the why's and wherefore's concerning Israel

Mailman

Sadly, Palestinians server a greater purporse for the arab world...to forment hatred of Israel.

Because if Palestinians received equal rights in the Arab world then they would have nothing to use to continue to foster hatred of Israel.

Secondly, one of the major tragedies of our time is that the "human rights" industry is so committed to its hatred of Israel that it has failed to recognise REAL human rights abuses not only around the world BUT within the middle east.

If Amnesty and pretty much every other lefty human rights group actually did its job it wouldnt be focused on Israel but the Arab countries that surround Israel.

It is a tragedy and a farce that 60 years after the legal creation of Isreal that we still have Palestinian refugess while there isnt a single Jewish refugee within Israel.

Mailman

Miranda Rose Smith

Dear Linseed Oil:

The neighbouring states should not make their persecution by Israel a pretext to persecute them in turn.

Just exactly how is Israel persecuting the "Palestinians?" By shooting back when the "Palestinians" shoot at them? The Arab states were determined to wipe the Jewish state off the map in 1948, before there was a "Palestinian" refugee problem. The now-so-called "Palestinian" refugee problem-people were honest then, they called it the ARAB refugee problem-started in 1948, when five Arab states attacked Israel, forcing Israel to expel SOME Arabs. Other Arabs left voluntarily, thinking that Israel would be defeated in a week and they could come back and loot Jewish property. The Arab states were determined to wipe the Jewish state off the map in 1967, when all of the so-called "occupied territories were in Arab hands.

Clearly an interim solution would be for the neighbouring states to show themselves more civilised than Israel.

How can they do that?

A full and final solution of course would require Israel to negotiate a peace settlement that allows the Palestinians a viable state.

The Israelis, unlike the Jordanians or the Lebanese, are fully prepared to give the "Palestinians" a SECOND autonomous homeland, besides the one the British gave them in 1921-ever hear of Jordan-or the one the U.N. voted to give them in 1947, the one the Arab states wouldn't accept because it left a few square feet of Middle Eastern land inhabited by Jews.

JOHN ROOSEVELT

Harold
July 21st, 2010 9:24am

JOHN ROOSEVELT
July 20th, 2010 9:43pm
JOHN ROOSEVELT
July 20th, 2010 10:09pm
I could return the compliment.

What is the source of this political fiction?"

The source??? The Source, harold??? You don't know it? Fiction?

I made it up, of course.....just like the Professor of Middle Eastern and Mediterranean Studies at King's College, University of London did..

Silly billy, Harold!

Drakken

Well Carl the differance between me and you is that you believe in tooth faires, rainbows and unicorns. I see the world for what it is. I just love how you peacenik do-gooders will go willingly to to the slaughter.
To James, the time has come to call things for what they are, I am not nor will ever be PC.

JOHN ROOSEVELT

Lyndsay,just so you understand me: we have to try to heal the Palestinians. Maybe over the years the establishment of a Palestinian state will help in the healing process. But in the meantime, until the medicine is found, they have to be contained so that they will not succeed in murdering us.

Something like a cage has to be built for them. I know that sounds terrible. It is really cruel. But there is no choice. There is a wild animal there that has to be locked up in one way or another.

We are the greater victims in the course of history and we are also the greater potential victim. Even though we are oppressing the Palestinians, we are the weaker side here. We are a small minority in a large sea of hostile Arabs who want to eliminate us. So it's possible than when their desire is realized, everyone will understand what I am saying to you now. Everyone will understand we are the true victims. But by then it will be too late.

There was no Zionist 'plan' or blanket policy of evicting the Arab population, or of 'ethnic cleansing'.

The demonisation of Israel is largely based on lies—much as the demonisation of the Jews during the past 2,000 years has been based on lies. And there is a connection between the two.

My turning point began after 2000. I wasn't a great optimist even before that. I always doubted the intentions of the Palestinians. The events of Camp David and what followed in their wake turned the doubt into certainty. When the Palestinians rejected the proposal of [prime minister Ehud] Barak in July 2000 and the Clinton proposal in December 2000, I understood that they are unwilling to accept the two-state solution. They want it all. Lod and Acre and Jaffa.

The Israelis/Jews are the greater victims in the course of history and we are also the greater potential victim. Even though we are oppressing the Palestinians, we are the weaker side here. We are a small minority in a large sea of hostile Arabs who want to eliminate us. So it's possible than when their desire is realized, everyone will understand what I am saying to you now. Everyone will understand we are the true victims. But by then it will be too late.

..and as for Iran, who is the biggest guaranto of the moslem "spoiler" politics and, under no circumstances will permit peace, I say this: Iran’s leaders would do well to rethink their gamble and suspend their nuclear program. Bar this, the best they could hope for is that Israel’s conventional air assault will destroy their nuclear facilities. To be sure, this would mean thousands of Iranian casualties and international humiliation. But the alternative is an Iran turned into a nuclear wasteland.

ab

Lindsay, you sanctimonious Tartuffian hypocrite: If only other Arab states treated Arabs from “Palestine” the way Israel does. Unfortunately, you and the likes of you are blinded by poisonous hatred of Israel to let facts interfere with your pretentions. That you are not ashamed of making utterances such as “The neighbouring [Arab] states should not make their persecution by Israel a pretext to persecute them in turn” is a proof positive of your wilful blindness – or, to be more charitable – wilful obtuseness, as you just may not be capable of understanding the obvious. It may well be that the majority of people and member states of the UN might either agree with you or cynically advance the same view in the service of their political goals, but that does not make what you say right, let alone true.

Lindsay

JOHN ROOSEVELT
July 21st, 2010 8:14am
"Lyndsay knows that the arab and moslem notion of a Palestinian state is predicated on the Law of Return for a definition of Palestinian refugees which will mean the end of an Israeli state.

"She also knows - and will never address this question - that if this Law of Return is not agreed to in advance by Israel, there will be nothing - as far as the Arab and moslem line goes - to negotiate for and therefore they will not negotiate.

"It is the sublimeness of the circularity of the Lyndsay prescription which informs the Arab and moslem propaganda."

At Taba, for example, the Israelis and the Palestinians each produced a position paper on refugees, as on the other points of contention. They then sat down to negotiate a compromise between their positions. Both sides reported substantial progress.

Falsehoods such as those repeated by John Roosevelt, either out of ignorance or with malice aforethought, are harmful, wither accidentally or deliberately, to the prospects of peace.

Harold

John Roosevelt,

"My turning point began after 2000. I wasn't a great optimist even before that. I always doubted the intentions of the Palestinians. The events of Camp David and what followed in their wake turned the doubt into certainty. When the Palestinians rejected the proposal of [prime minister Ehud] Barak in July 2000 and the Clinton proposal in December 2000, I understood that they are unwilling to accept the two-state solution. They want it all."

It is strange, sad, unnerving that you should base your whole attitude to peace between Israel and the Palestinians on a mistake. Camp David and after is simply not as you misunderstand it. This has been pointed out to you. Yet you insist on persevering in error, and in not trying to find out what actually happened. Another illustration of the need to study history.

Lindsay

ab
July 21st, 2010 4:56pm
I'm aware your contribution doesn't require any answer - but I have to ask just out of curiosity whether you've seen or read Moliere's play at all?

Linda Smith

Has Harold ever considered that it is he who "misunderstands" facts that don't fit his own anti-Zionist schema?

Augustus

Lindsay - Re your sanctimonious comment to ab. Have you never heard of figures of speech? Tartuffe is used as a metaphor for religious hypocrisy. Clever cloggs!

JOHN ROOSEVELT

Harold wrote: "

John Roosevelt,

"My turning point began after 2000. I wasn't a great optimist even before that. I always doubted the intentions of the Palestinians. The events of Camp David and what followed in their wake turned the doubt into certainty. When the Palestinians rejected the proposal of [prime minister Ehud] Barak in July 2000 and the Clinton proposal in December 2000, I understood that they are unwilling to accept the two-state solution. They want it all."

It is strange, sad, unnerving that you should base your whole attitude to peace between Israel and the Palestinians on a mistake. Camp David and after is simply not as you misunderstand it. This has been pointed out to you. Yet you insist on persevering in error, and in not trying to find out what actually happened. Another illustration of the need to study history."

I guess you're right Harold....

...except my post exclusively comprised the words - verbatim -of Benny Morris.

Funny old world, innit?

Drakken

Well if it isn't Harold, the resident Quisling who sides with the enemy of Western civilization. Sorry buddy history has time and again proved you wrong, dead wrong. I guess Darwin is about to get another award winner.

JOHN ROOSEVELT

Harold
July 21st, 2010 6:43pm

John Roosevelt,

"My turning point began after 2000. I wasn't a great optimist even before that. I always doubted the intentions of the Palestinians. The events of Camp David and what followed in their wake turned the doubt into certainty. When the Palestinians rejected the proposal of [prime minister Ehud] Barak in July 2000 and the Clinton proposal in December 2000, I understood that they are unwilling to accept the two-state solution. They want it all."

It is strange, sad, unnerving that you should base your whole attitude to peace between Israel and the Palestinians on a mistake. Camp David and after is simply not as you misunderstand it. This has been pointed out to you. Yet you insist on persevering in error, and in not trying to find out what actually happened. Another illustration of the need to study history."

Oh, Harold... We do indeed need to study history...but do realise, please, that the words in my post (those that you have made a comment on above) are actually those of Benny Morris!!!

You go figure...

Harold

"Has Harold ever considered that it is he who "misunderstands" facts that don't fit his own anti-Zionist schema?"

Itis not my opinions we are talking about here. It is the testimony of the minister who did much of the negotiation, advisers on the negotiating team, Shin Bet, Military Intelligence, and the Office of the Prime Minister of Israel.

Harold

JOHN ROOSEVELT
July 21st, 2010 11:49pm
JOHN ROOSEVELT
July 22nd, 2010 7:25am

An excellent riposte, I have to confess. You won that round.

Nevertheless, I will repeat what my only ally here (apparently) said: "Benny Morris would love to agree with Efraim Karsh's political conclusions, but as a distinguished historian he cannot bring himself to wink at the travesty of history Karsh requires to get him to his conclusions."

My only amendment would be that Benny Morris is a distinguished historian who has increasingly allowed his political opinions get in the way of his scholarship. (Even his latest book, however, his history of 1948, despite much political and tendentious stuff, includes much excellent scholarship as well.)

JOHN ROOSEVELT

Yeah, right, harold...Whatever...:)

Harold

JOHN ROOSEVELT
July 22nd, 2010 10:54am
I'm an old fogey. I always thought adolescents, my children included, meant to convey a simple lack of interest or possibly mildly dismissive contempt when they slouched out with a "whatever". There was never any intellectual content. It was never much above an unobliging grunt. You have shown me a whole further layer of meaning. In your case, it has an intellectual, or rather and anti-intellectual content. It means that you have, by your own admission, based your whole understanding of our subject on your interpretation of one set of events, but in a not-for-the-squeamish dereliction of intellectual hygiene, you are supremely uninterested in finding out the truth about this key set of events. You are content to base yourself wholly on propaganda, even although on this occasion the testimony of the players is already available to show your interpretation to be false. "Whatever". It sums up your attitude to trying to discover the truth.

JOHN ROOSEVELT

Yes, harold..you are a pontificating old fogey, indeed.

Even the Jewish intellectuals you refer to in order to give your dreary, unrelenting hatred of israel and the Jews some gravitas think you are insidiously dotty..

Israel has been created as a result of the worst historic injustice the world has ever known. The Jews are racists and have a religious passion for murdering other races. You want a final solution but you want Israel and the Jews to implement it for you.

You a disgaceful ninny who lives in la la land.

I have told you , as has Avneri and Morris, what needs to be done for peace. You wont get what you want...so stop the naying.

Andrew

JOHN ROOSEVELT
July 22nd, 2010 9:16pm
Curious, very curious. Morris thinks the solution is to complete the ethnic cleansing of 1948 and retain the settlements on the West Bank. Avneri that the solution is the pre-1967 borders and compensation. Mr. Roosevelt thinks they are both right. Says as much for his intellectual calibre as his foolish insults.

JOHN ROOSEVELT

Andrew: "
Andrew
July 23rd, 2010 9:25am

JOHN ROOSEVELT
July 22nd, 2010 9:16pm
Curious, very curious. Morris thinks the solution is to complete the ethnic cleansing of 1948 and retain the settlements on the West Bank."

Silly billy, Andrew. Not good enough..

"Avneri that the solution is the pre-1967 borders and compensation."

Well, that really was a lamentable attempt to manipulate. You ARe a one, Andrew!

"Mr. Roosevelt thinks they are both right."

Where's the cotradiction, precisely, in what I HAVE said (as opposed to your invention of what I have said)? Have the courage to respond...it will help you in any meaningful future negotiations. "

Says as much for his intellectual calibre as his foolish insults."

Which is how much? Alot, I'd say...

Harold

Andrew,

You don't get it, do you?

Morris and Avnery both think (reasonably enough) that a unitary state or a binational state are non-starters. Morris thinks there is no solution, because the Arabs are a lower life-form - sorry, have been persistently, and bafflingly, rejectionsist since Zionsim first began to encroach on their lives. However, if Morris were to believe a solution possible, it would be some form of two-state solution. Now. Here we come to the nub of it. Avnery advocates a two-state solution as well. You see, you see? Morris - two-state solution; Avnery - two-state solution. No contradiction!

...I know. But this is the best you can expect from John Roosevelt.

JOHN ROOSEVELT

harold wrote: "You don't get it, do you?

Morris and Avnery both think (reasonably enough) that a unitary state or a binational state are non-starters. Morris thinks there is no solution, because the Arabs are a lower life-form - sorry, have been persistently, and bafflingly, rejectionsist since Zionsim first began to encroach on their lives. However, if Morris were to believe a solution possible, it would be some form of two-state solution. Now. Here we come to the nub of it. Avnery advocates a two-state solution as well. You see, you see? Morris - two-state solution; Avnery - two-state solution. No contradiction!

...I know. But this is the best you can expect from John Roosevelt."

Wow...you make it sound like a dirty solution, at best, dear harold, if not your famous "final" one..and you also make it sound that you now think Morris no longer your intellectual patron saint. Oh dear, hope it wasn't me who trurned you off him so...

What do you advocate? We all thought it was a two state solution based on 242, but insistent on the implementation of the Law of Return..which, in effect, is a unistate "solution" ..which is an Armageddon solution, as we know.

Tell us what you reckon will hold, as a solution ie. what iran will countenance. You actually have never done that. You keep getting distracted by your hatred of Israel and the historic injustice meted out on the poor arabs and moslems by the Jews.

Please, Harold...WE truly cannot wait till you grace us with your the true potential of your insights and moral guidance.

JOHN ROOSEVELT

Harold: and, oh, I forgot..you still haven't responded to the brilliant Linda!

Linda Smith

Yawn, yawn... why does Harol waste his time pontificating about a 2-state solution when the "Palestinians" make it perfectly clear that their sole ambition is to eradicate Israel.

Go to http://www.palwatch.org/pages/allmaps.aspx?doc_id=2624 and see numerous examples of PA maps, flags, ads, schoolbooks etc. all erasing Israel.

For example:

"PA TV features embroidered map of "Palestine" that erases Israel
During a feature on the Palestinian heritage in the weekly morning news program "Palestine This Morning," PA TV chose to focus on an embroidered map erasing Israel.
Palestinian TV (Fatah)
June 2, 2010"

I can't see the point in harping on about Israelis wanting a 2-state solution when the "Palestinians" are clearly only interested in annihilating Israel.

Harold

Andrew,

I hadn't expected right on cue confirmation in such a gratifyingly foolish form of what I warned you of: JOHN ROOSEVELT July 23rd, 2010 6:10pm.

(First, a little private, and admittedly petty, chortle: it appears Benny Morris was my patron saint; and it appears I didn't reply to the "brilliant Linda" - despite answering in detail and at too great length.)

Two state solutions.

Uri Avnery: The occupation will end...The Green Line will be the border...All Israeli settlers will leave and the settlements will be turned over to returning refugees...The border will be open...Jerusalem will be the capital of both states (West for Israel, East for Palestine)...Israel will recognise IN PRINCIPLE the right of return of the Palestinian refugees - in practice a compromise between return for some and compensation for others...The water resources will be controlled jointly...A security pact will ensure the security of both...

Benny Morris: A two state solution is impossible because there are too many Palestinians to fit into the occupied territories (especially if the threat of war requires Israel to expel all its Palestinian citizens as well) and because the Palestinians will never agree to it - to be blunt, they are a lower life-form who do not understand the Jew's nobility of spirit (the contrast between Arab and Jew is our Benny's, not mine). A solution that is possible (in some parallel universe) but not going to happen, is for Jordan plus the occupied territories to become a Palestinian state. Benny knows this will never happen, so he feels free to mention it (without touching on the practicalities of swapping territory to retain the settlements) - to mention it makes him look less destructive, jingoistic and downright bigotted/border-line racist.

In the words of the inimitable JR: "Where's the cotradiction, precisely"?

Martin Paice

Is it the case that the UK Land Registry holds title deeds to property in parts of what is now Israel registering ownership to 'Palestinian' owners?
What would happen if a legal claim was made on that bais (adverse possion, tresspass etc)?
Obviously the transfer of mandate from UK to UN under persistant terroristic attack has relevance here, but what is the legal position?
Opinions?

JOHN ROOSEVELT

Martin Paice
July 23rd, 2010 10:10pm

Is it the case that the UK Land Registry holds title deeds to property in parts of what is now Israel registering ownership to 'Palestinian' owners?
What would happen if a legal claim was made on that bais (adverse possion, tresspass etc)?
Obviously the transfer of mandate from UK to UN under persistant terroristic attack has relevance here, but what is the legal position?
Opinions?"

Why dont you try it? Would be interesting...At the very least it would let us all evaluate the truth and create some unemployment amongst the "terrorist"propagandists.

The Jews should do the same with their claims on Arab countries for property expropriated whilst the UN was under "persistant terrorist attack"(?).

But then the Argies might do the same in the Falklands...the Germans in Poland..the ..

Martin Paice

@Roosevelt
No, the argies will not be doing it in the Falklands. No, the Germans won't be doing it Poland and no, Jews won't be doing it in Arab countries.
Because none of them have UK title deeds and the situations are in no way similar.

Harold

All has been made clear:

Johnnie's a Benny wannabee!

JOHN ROOSEVELT

Martin Paice
July 24th, 2010 9:42am

@Roosevelt
No, the argies will not be doing it in the Falklands. No, the Germans won't be doing it Poland and no, Jews won't be doing it in Arab countries.
Because none of them have UK title deeds and the situations are in no way similar."

Well, gotta concede re the nationality of the title deed, for sure..Anyway, a very brilliant point you have made.

I bet Harold wishes he had thought of that!

JOHN ROOSEVELT

Harold wrote: "
Harold
July 24th, 2010 10:05am

All has been made clear:

Johnnie's a Benny wannabee!"

With the saliva spouting, Harold,you mistook BENNY's views for mine..so, clearly, YOU are no longer a "Benny wannabee".

Harold

JOHN ROOSEVELT

" clearly, YOU are no longer a "Benny wannabee"."

- Obtuse? Or slow?

The blessed Benny never was my patron saint. To be clear, he is a distinguished historian who even at the height of his powers allowed his political prejudices to interfere with his historical conclusions. In recent years he has combined scholarship (parts of "1948") with yellow press thuggery ("One state, Two State"). It explains a lot about your contributions that you seek to channel the spirit of this thug.

I fear I must have missed your explanation of how Morris and Avnery are consistent with each other. Could you repeat it for me. Thank you.

JOHN ROOSEVELT

It's the the Harold soft shoe shuffle...again and again.

Are the number of assertions you claim that I have made - with complete cynical disregard for what I have really said - - inversely proportionate to your seemingly congenital incapacity to tell us how you think a genuine peace can be achieved that anyone who counts will buy into?

Your raison d'etre is to garner as much support as you can for the total and utter vilification of Israel and the Jews, as if you have a unique mission to save them from the hell of injustice and redeem those you feel are victims of history to a degree never witnessed in the history of mankind. Your "final solution" is nothing but one of unrelenting condemnation of the Jews and the pushing for them ultimately to commit national suicide out of a sense of new found "justice" revealed to them from your fictional Mount of noxious prejudice masquerading as some intoxicating brew of hybrid liberal drivel.

Get a grip, batman.

Drakken

Harold , I'll make you a wager. How much are you willing to bet that there will be no two-state solution? Untill the little savages are willing to recognize and work with Israel for their peoples future, it is nothing more than a pipe dream and wishful thinking.

Harold

John Roosevelt

"I have told you , as has Avneri and Morris, what needs to be done for peace."

"Where's the cotradiction, precisely"...

No, your explanation passed me by again. How is what Benny Morris says consistent with what Uri Avnery says? And which of them do you agree with? As I have made clear many times, of the two, Uri Avnery seems to me infinitely preferable.

JOHN ROOSEVELT

Harold: "Uri Avnery seems to me infinitely preferable."

Then work, with courage, for the Peace he craves. You will not contribute to the debate re a genuine peace simply by trying to score points re who, historically, has committed the worst sins.

In war, there can be no man free from sin, Harold. To achieve peace, you have to change the culture of the combatants. Nothing you say helps in that regard at all.

I confuse you, Lindsay, Andrew, Richard, because you all sound the same. It's always the same all pathetic jibes at the Jews for their "premeditated, collective, persecution" of the Arab and moslem world. You all immerse yourselves in the company of the worst kind of propagandists. You cannot, thereby, help but be tarred with the kind of brush that has made The Protocols remain at the top of the the Arab and Moslem world's Best Seller List for generations...and those who, despite this appalling fact - protest that they are not anti semites and do not want to see the demise of the state of Israel ("where did I say I wanted to destroy Israel", you protest).

You seem to thrive on the Propagandist's digest of the specious nuances: "But how can arabs be anti semites??They are semites themselves..booboom!" Or, "How can I be anti semitic??Some of best friends are Jewish?" Or "How can I support - even by default - stoning of women?? I was stoned, myself, the other day..haha!!"

..and to what end? Your principal "achievement", and that of so many like you, has been the creation of a particular language of anti Israel rhetoric which has managed to coopt some key ideas for the Enlightement and colour a fundamentally different ideology - which actually underpins a murderous conflict - with it. The harnessing of Left liberal Western support for the radical moslem cause whilst, at the same time, Western kids are dying in the fight against the same radical Islam - has got you so puffed up with a sense of victory that you have lost sight of the fact that some have not lost sight of the profound deceit that lies at the heart of your passion.

But the Jews are a formidable foe...and the self interest of the Western powers too often seems to be a fact of life that just gets in the way of all this - all your unbridled excitement that you are "winning" the argument. Just when it looks like the Flotilla flotsam have scored that brilliant victory...well, life just gets in the way and you are forced to loo up the skies and wonder if your God is looking after you so well, after all...

Your conviction that you monolpolise the moral high ground and that you, therefore, can do whatever you like (anything goes against the infidel, right?) will not help even an Avneri achieve his aims. To do so, you will have change the tune. You have to take a different approach - one that eschews the specious and, ultimately, short-lived "victories" of the liar.

You need to start trying to contribute to the development of a different mindset of ALL parties concerned..and this will take tremendous dedication... since you, amongst others, have already helped cement one that is the very antithesis of one that is actually necessary.

You need to help build a culture of mutual trust. You need to help build a culture of compromise. You need to help build a culture of understanding that peace is possible and desirable. You need to highlight that "freedom", "self-determination", "democracy" are not the epithets which apply to Islamic fundamentalist states. Moral equivalence and the obfuscation of the horrors of regimes which eschew any of the freedoms that you seem to want to give the impression you champion, is simply a recipe for not taking anything you say seriously. You condemn Israel unceasingly - most commonly in its foreign policy - without any focus whatsoever on the modus operandi endemic to the internal governance practices of Islamic regimes - like the ninny insistence, of so many on the liberal/ Left - screaming, for example, that everything the US did was as bad or worse than the excesses of Stalinism because one could attach to it the epithet of "imperialist"; or Pol Pot and his genocidal regime was ALL the fault of the US which was responsible for its creation..or Saddam should have been left alone because the US partied with him when he was bent on war with Iran etc, etc...

I don't want to live under the sway of the Ayatollahs - the Fedallahs of this world or any other of yours and/or Hezbollah's "mentors". You want to apologise for these guys.. singing Fedallah's praises - in your cut and paste approach to historical analysis - his praises because you detest the US and Israel more? Then, fine..but there are many people who would even die rather than live under the hammer of an Islamic regime.

Live and let live is all fine, but it has its limits...

You have to make choices - all be they imperfect ones very often. You can choose the Arabs and moslems who conflate freedom and justice with religious fascism, Harold, and dream that your uncritical support of them will grant you a privileged perch on high. I dont and nor do at least 6 million Israelis...and, when push comes to shove, many, many millions more...

I choose Israel, though I desire to live in peace with my neighbors.... if they choose likewise. Finding the road to compromise will not be easy for either side, but peace will never be achieved without it.

Harold

John Roosevelt

"I have told you , as has Avneri and Morris, what needs to be done for peace."

"Where's the cotradiction, precisely"...

No, your explanation passed me by again. How is what Benny Morris says consistent with what Uri Avnery says? And which of them do you agree with? As I have made clear many times, of the two, Uri Avnery seems to me infinitely preferable.

- No, sorry, I found a lot about stuff I have never said and inferences about my opinions that are unwarranted, but I still missed the explanation of how it is possible honestly to be for Benny Morris and at the same time for Uri Avnery. Maybe it simply isn't possible.

MairT

Melanie........100% correct

JOHN ROOSEVELT

Harold, I am not sure what you think the differences are between Avneri and Morris but I have outlined what I think is the only way to peace.

More importantly, I dont think Iran will accept any peace deal and neither will its proxies - Hamas and Hezbollah.

If 242 was genuinely accepted by the arab and moslem parties which will ensure the peace holds, there would be a much more proactive attempt, now, to bring this about. It has not happened and I cannot see it happening any time soon.

Harold

JOHN ROOSEVELT
John Roosevelt,
July 25th, 2010 10:28pm
"Harold, I am not sure what you think the differences are between Avneri and Morris"

This would beggar belief,even if I hadn't summarised their positions. You truly believe that their positions are equivalent, don't you.

Your one argument against negotiating a two-state solution seems to be that Palestinians are Arabs and Arabs are a lower life-form (as argued by Benny Morris); and that Iran is so fixated on the destruction of the Zionist regime (or whatever it is they call the state of Israel) that it will risk its own interests, indeed court its own destruction (for which there is no evidence whatsoever).

This argument is impervious to reason, and so reasonable discussion is not possible.

JOHN ROOSEVELT

Harold: "
Harold
July 26th, 2010 8:37pm

JOHN ROOSEVELT
John Roosevelt,
July 25th, 2010 10:28pm
"Harold, I am not sure what you think the differences are between Avneri and Morris"

This would beggar belief,even if I hadn't summarised their positions. You truly believe that their positions are equivalent, don't you.

Your one argument against negotiating a two-state solution seems to be that Palestinians are Arabs and Arabs are a lower life-form (as argued by Benny Morris); and that Iran is so fixated on the destruction of the Zionist regime (or whatever it is they call the state of Israel) that it will risk its own interests, indeed court its own destruction (for which there is no evidence whatsoever).

This argument is impervious to reason, and so reasonable discussion is not possible."

What is it with you, Harold? You think if bleat a lie or contrivance loud and often enough it will become a felicitous substitute for the truth? Shame on you!

I have not even begun to compare Morris and Avneri, let alone maintain there is no difference between them. Is this what you infer from my stating I have no idea what YOU think the difference is? You are ninny...

And your crassness in this regard is only surpassed by your shamelessness in accusing me of not wanting to negotiate a two state solution. Holy sh*t! The propagandist knows no shame. You redefine the phrase" atack is the best form of defence".

No Harold. I long for a two state solution...I desperately hope the Palestinians will not fudge direct negotiations..I am just vry pessimistic that enough people who count will allow it to happen, is all..That the Arabs and moslems probably dont want it doesn not mean I think them a lowerife form (how can that be? Some of my best friends are..).

As for Iran and there being no evidence for their anti Zionist convictions and desire to destroy Israel whatsoever...Mmmm..perhaps you're right. Hold, on..Just calling Mossad now to break the good news...

Ninny...

Linda Smith

Harold writes to John Roosevelt "your one argument against negotiating a two-state solution seems to be that Palestinians are Arabs...."

Why don't you pack it in? The "Palestinians" don't want a two-state solution,

Harold

JOHN ROOSEVELT
July 26th, 2010 10:11pm

You refer us to Avnery as authoritative. You refer us to Morris as authoritative. The question is simple. Given that their positions are so very different, how can you refer us to both.

You sould love a two-state solution in much the same way as has served Israel well while it annexes more and more territory. Israel would love peace but has no partner in negotiation: false but expedient.

"As for Iran and there being no evidence for their anti Zionist convictions and desire to destroy Israel whatsoever." It must be clear even to you that this is nothing like what was said. So what is the point? You merely demonstrate the truth of my last comment.

JOHN ROOSEVELT

Harold: "

JOHN ROOSEVELT
July 26th, 2010 10:11pm

You refer us to Avnery as authoritative. You refer us to Morris as authoritative."

No I dont.

"The question is simple. Given that their positions are so very different, how can you refer us to both."

I haven't..at least not in the way you assert I have. A complete red herring - the hallmark of the propagandist's flip flop.

"You sould love a two-state solution in much the same way as has served Israel well while it annexes more and more territory."

What an audacious lie. Hogwash, harold. Shame on you. Nothing I have EVER said has supported "annexations" of any kind. It seems that you can only summon up courage to lie, harold. Wash your mouth out!!!

"Israel would love peace but has no partner in negotiation: false but expedient."

What Israel does, in your book, and what I have said in this thread, may well be different. My point is that you would do well to take cognizance of what Israel does and not merely use it to vilify this state and send negotiations backwards - unless that is you aim..which seems very much that it is.

YOu will either have to compromise with Israel that has its own interests at heart or not. The choice is simple. So far you have suffered nabka after nabka through this strategy of self-righteous rejectionism. Bloody balmy, if you ask me.

Only puerile propagandists like you use your jaundiced perceptions of reality to propagate the malaise which you keep bleating you're victimised by. You have a shocking history of it! "We tried to exterminate you Jews 'cause you stole our land! We experienced a catastrophe, as a result, but it's all your fault...and you are smart and strong and we are weak an stupid..so YOU have to be magnanimous and let us succeed now!!". It makes an 3 month old baby seem sophisticated! Wake up Harold! Change your tune. Try to be realistic.

"As for Iran and there being no evidence for their anti Zionist convictions and desire to destroy Israel whatsoever." It must be clear even to you that this is nothing like what was said."

???? Said by you? Sorry? Waht was said by you, then?

"So what is the point? You merely demonstrate the truth of my last comment."

What is the point of what?

Harold

John Roosevelt,
"You refer us to Avnery as authoritative. You refer us to Morris as authoritative."

No I dont.

"The question is simple. Given that their positions are so very different, how can you refer us to both."

I haven't..at least not in the way you assert I have."

"???? Said by you? Sorry? Waht was said by you, then?"

"What is the point of what?"

So, after all that, we have learned only that you are not very good at rational debate. You can't recall what you have said. You cannot follow what is said to you. But never mind - you have strong convictions and nothing is going to persuade you to revise them.

JOHN ROOSEVELT

Harold: "So, after all that, we have learned only that you are not very good at rational debate. You can't recall what you have said."

..and clearly, you are hopelessly incapable of quoting what you have claimed I have said..

"You cannot follow what is said to you."

Really? You are conspicuous in your incapacity to let us know precisely how.

"But never mind - you have strong convictions and nothing is going to persuade you to revise them."

Well, certainly none of your drivel will persuade me to change them...

and, btw, respond to the brilliant Linda!!!!!

JOHN ROOSEVELT

Here's one for Harold and his (no doubt) intellectual hero - the odious Norman Finkelstein:

" A couple of Israelis land at Heathrow and line up at the Immigration counter. The official asks: "Nationality?" - "Israeli."

"Occupation?" - "Oh no, we're only here for a holiday."

Booboom!

David, Thailand

The Palestinians have neither the will nor the ability to govern themselves, beyond becoming yet another backward Arab/Muslim nation.

If truth is relevant to any discussion, their leaders are in it for power and the money they can steal from the international community, and the people are despised as counterproductive by the entire Arab world. Who better to know than their own! The only thing they own to keep them in bondage and fuel their hate is the collected ramblings of a dusty dysfunctional warlord.

Still, I believe Islam will ultimately prevail, not because it offers anything that could possibly contribute to progress, but because the most advanced civilisation in world history has supplanted common sense with political correctness. It is this that enables our spineless and hopelessly out of touch leaders to declare as strength and rest the free world's future on the weaknesses of democratic nicety.

Jill

Lindsay, don't you DARE speak for me or anyone else!
You may think the treatment of the "palestinian arabs" is wrong.
i happen to think that israel is a model of toleration, restraint and genrosity - free medical care, work, electricity, universities etc, not one of which does it have to provide for people who are NOT citizens of the State.

as for Benny Moriis, your attempt to read his mind is off. He has himself re assessed what he wrote as a young historian.
And hello? "travesty"? - from what you write about Israel your knowledge of the area nd history is laughable. Don't double the amount of ridicule you attract by attempting to adopt a sophisticated tone when Ephraim Karsh's erudition puts on a pair of rubber gloves and wipes the floor with the mouldy rag that is yours.

You're an ignoramus - own it, and try to learn.

JOHN ROOSEVELT

Harold: and, for the record, I agree 100% with BENNY MORRIS's conclusions re the prospects for peace, whist I respect Avneri's optimism re the possibility of achieving peace.

They both agree totally on the impossibility of there being any chance of a uni state solution; and this informs each of their approaches to a settlement of the refugee problem.

You ot see the regugee aspect of 242 as your gateway to a unistate solution. If you don't, it's a releief. Certainly the Finkelsteins of this world seem to. I call them the "backdoor" bigots.

There are a few thinkers who explicitly believe theat a uni state sloution is the only workable one - on botht eh israeli and non Israeli side. I admire their honesty and , in most cases, the thought that accompanies it. However, I do not share their conviction that this is possible.

I dont really care what you think any more, Harold. I dont care what Lyndsay thinks. You are both so intoxicated with your own self righteousness and certainty that the Jews are imperialist murderers, that no amount of death and destruction your sanctimonious, duplicitous claptrap trap helps cause seems to be of any concern to you.

One think that does concern me, however, is that your voice is as high and weird sounding as that of Assoc.Prof Finkelstein. That should certainly concern the UN if he gets to speak there (oi vey).

JOHN ROOSEVELT

Dear Harold and Lyndsay:

"A specter is haunting the prospective Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations—the specter of the Nakba. The literal meaning of the Arabic word is “disaster”; but in its current, expansive usage, it connotes a historical catastrophe inflicted on an innocent and blameless people (in this case, the Palestinians) by an overpowering outside force (international Zionism). The Nakba is the heart of the Palestinians’ backward-looking national narrative, which depicts the creation of the State of Israel in 1948 as the original sin that dispossessed the land’s native people. Every year, on the anniversary of Israel’s independence, more and more Palestinians (including Arab citizens of Israel) commemorate the Nakba with pageants that express longing for a lost paradise. Every year, the legend grows of the crimes committed against the Palestinians in 1948, crimes now routinely equated with the Holocaust. Echoing the Nakba narrative is an international coalition of leftists that celebrates the Palestinians as the quintessential Other, the last victims of Western racism and colonialism.

There is only one just compensation for the long history of suffering, say the Palestinians and their allies: turning the clock back to 1948. This would entail ending the “Zionist hegemony” and replacing it with a single, secular, democratic state shared by Arabs and Jews. All Palestinian refugees—not just those still alive of the hundreds of thousands who fled in 1948, but their millions of descendants as well—would be allowed to return to Jaffa, Haifa, the Galilee, and all the villages that Palestinian Arabs once occupied.

Such a step would mean suicide for Israel as a Jewish state, which is why Israel would never countenance it. At the very least, then, the Nakba narrative precludes Middle East peace. But it’s also, as it happens, a myth—a radical distortion of history.

If words have any meaning, it is certainly accurate to describe the outcome of the 1948 war as a catastrophe for the Palestinians. Between 600,000 and 700,000 men, women, and children—even more, depending on who is telling the story—left their homes. Palestinian civil society disintegrated. At the war’s end, the refugees dispersed to the Jordanian-occupied West Bank, the Egyptian-occupied Gaza Strip, and neighboring Arab countries. Many lived in tents, eking out a bare subsistence, and were then denied the right to return to their homes by the new State of Israel.

During the 1948 war and for many years afterward, the Western world—including the international Left—expressed hardly any moral outrage about the Palestinian refugees. This had nothing to do with Western racism or colonialism and much to do with recent history. The fighting in Palestine had broken out only two years after the end of the costliest military conflict ever, in which the victors exacted a terrible price on the losers. By that, I don’t mean the Nazi officials and their “willing executioners,” who received less punishment than they deserved, but the 11 million ethnic Germans living in Central and Eastern Europe—civilians all—who were expelled from their homes and force-marched to Germany by the Red Army, with help from the Czech and Polish governments and with the approval of Roosevelt and Churchill. Historians estimate that 2 million died on the way. Around the same time, the Indian subcontinent was divided into two new countries, India and Pakistan; millions of Hindus and Muslims moved from one to the other, and hundreds of thousands died in related violence. Against this background, the West was not likely to be troubled by the exodus of a little more than half a million Palestinians after a war launched by their own leaders.

In the 1940s, moreover, most of the international Left actually championed the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine. It was widely noted that the new state would be led by self-proclaimed socialists. Statehood for the Jews was supported by the Soviet Union and by the Truman administration’s most progressive elements. The Palestinians were also compromised by the fact that their leader in 1948, Grand Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini, had been a Nazi collaborator during the war.

In fact, I. F. Stone, the most revered left-wing journalist of the day, was one of the most influential American advocates for the Zionist cause. I have in my possession a book by Stone called This Is Israel, distributed by Boni and Gaer, a major commercial publisher at the time. The book, based on Stone’s reporting during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, has become a collector’s item by virtue of the fact that Stone’s fans want to forget that it ever existed. Of the four adoring biographies of the great muckraker published in the last decade, only one even mentions that Stone wrote This Is Israel—and then shrugs off its significance in a few paragraphs.

It’s obvious why the book would be embarrassing to today’s leftist critics of Israel and Zionism. It opens with a foreword by Bartley Crum, the prominent American lawyer, businessman, and publisher of PM, the most widely read progressive newspaper of the 1940s. Crum evokes “the miracles [that the Israelis] have performed in peace and war. . . . They have built beautiful modern cities, such as Tel Aviv and Haifa on the edge of the wilderness. . . . They have set up a government which is a model of democracy.” His friend and star correspondent, Izzy Stone, has “set down what he knows and what he has seen, simply, truthfully and eloquently.” We Americans, Crum concludes, “can, through this book, warm ourselves in the glory of a free people who made a two thousand year dream come true in their own free land.”

Accompanied by famed war photographer Robert Capa’s iconic images of male and female Israeli soldiers, Stone’s text reads like a heroic epic. He writes of newborn Israel as a “tiny bridgehead” of 650,000 up against 30 million Arabs and 300 million Muslims and argues that Israel’s “precarious borders,” created by the United Nations’ November 1947 partition resolution, are almost indefensible. “Arab leaders made no secret of their intentions,” Stone writes, and then quotes the head of the Arab League, Abdul Rahman Azzam: “This war will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongol massacres and the Crusades.”

Palestinian leaders reminded Stone of the fascists he had fought with his pen since the Spanish Civil War. He ticks off the names of several Nazi collaborators prominent among the Arab military units that poured into Palestine after passage of the UN’s resolution. In addition to the grand mufti, they included the head of the Arab Liberation Army, Fawzi el-Kaukji, who took part in the fascist revolt against the British in Iraq in 1940 and then escaped to Berlin, where he recruited Balkan Muslims for the Wehrmacht. Another Palestinian military commander, Sheik Hassan Bey Salameh, was a “former staff officer under Rommel,” Stone writes. “Salameh had last appeared in Palestine in 1944 when he was dropped as a Reichswehr major for sabotage duties.” For good measure, Stone adds, “German Nazis, Polish reactionaries, Yugoslav Chetniks, and Bosnian Moslems flocked [into Palestine] for the war against the Jews.”

And how does Stone explain the war’s surprising outcome and the sudden exodus of the Palestinian Arabs? “Ill-armed, outnumbered, however desperate their circumstances, the Jews stood fast.” The Palestinians, by contrast, began to run away almost as soon as the fighting began. “First the wealthiest families went,” Stone recounts. “While the Arab guerrillas were moving in, the Arab civilian population was moving out.” Stone blames the grand mufti for giving explicit orders to the Palestinians to abandon Haifa, which had the largest Arab community of any city assigned to the Jewish state under the UN’s partition plan.

What is most revealing about the book is the issue that Stone does not write about: the fate of the refugees after their exodus. Stone undoubtedly shared the conventional wisdom at the time: that wars inevitably produced refugees and that the problem was best handled by resettlement in the countries to which those refugees moved. Stone surely expected that the Arab countries to which the Palestinian refugees had moved would eventually absorb them as full citizens. That outcome wouldn’t be perfect justice, but it would limit Palestinian suffering and open the doors to a reasonable and permanent settlement of the conflict. Stone also knew that Israel was in the process of absorbing an almost equal number of impoverished Jewish refugees from the Arab countries, most of whom had been forced out of their homes and lost all their property in places where they had lived for hundreds of years.

Stone could never have foreseen that for the next 62 years, the Palestinians would remain in those terrible refugee camps—not just in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip but in Lebanon, Syria, and present-day Jordan as well. Nor could Stone have imagined that not one Arab country would move to absorb the refugees and offer them citizenship, or that the Palestinians’ leaders would insist on keeping the refugees locked up in the camps for the purpose of dramatizing their Nakba narrative.

Stone’s reporting on the 1948 war has turned out to be a pretty decent “first rough draft of history,” to quote publisher Philip Graham’s definition of journalism. But that’s a judgment that Stone himself discarded, as the Left gradually abandoned Israel over the next 30 years and accepted the Palestinians’ portrayal of their nakba as the Nakba—a capitalized instance of world-historical evil.

In Stone’s later writing about the Arab-Israeli conflict, he was at pains to forget what he had said in This Is Israel. Moving in lockstep with the Left, he had turned into a scathing critic of Israel by 1967, castigating the Zionists for “moral myopia” and lack of compassion in The New York Review of Books. His turnabout was so complete that by 1979, the West’s foremost champion of the Palestinians, Edward Said, paid homage to Stone and to Noam Chomsky as two of the few Jewish intellectuals who had “tried to see what Zionism did to the Palestinians not just once in 1948, but over the years.” The Columbia University scholar obviously didn’t know about, or didn’t want to know about, This Is Israel.

Revisionist historiography also appeared to nullify Stone’s earlier journalism. Starting in the mid-1980s, a group of self-styled “new historians” in Israel began debunking (or to use their favorite term, “deconstructing”) the official “Zionist narrative” about the 1948 war and the foundation of the state. The most influential of the revisionist historians was Benny Morris, whose 1987 book The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem became an international sensation. Using a trove of documents in the Israeli state archives, Morris showed that not all the Palestinian refugees fled their homes in panic or were ordered out by their leaders. For example, during fierce battles between Israeli and Arab forces around the strategic towns of Lydda and Ramla, the Israelis expelled thousands of Arab residents and put them on the road to the West Bank. Morris also presented documented cases of atrocities by some Israeli soldiers and revealed that David Ben-Gurion and other Zionist leaders had discussed the feasibility of “transferring” Arabs out of the areas assigned to the Jewish state by the UN.

Yet unlike most of his left-wing revisionist colleagues, Morris asserted that the Palestinian calamity and the refugee problem were “born of war, not by design.” Morris was—and is—a committed Zionist of the Left. He believed that his work as a truth-telling historian might have a healing effect, encouraging Palestinian intellectuals to own up to their own side’s mistakes and crimes. The process might lead to some reconciliation, perhaps even to peace. But Morris was shocked when Palestinian leaders launched the second intifada, with its campaign of suicide bombings, just as President Clinton offered them a generous two-state solution at Camp David. Morris was also dismayed to discover that his scholarship on the 1948 war was being used by Palestinian activists and Western leftist academics to build up the Nakba myth. In a 2008 letter to the Irish Times, he wrote:

Israel-haters are fond of citing—and more often, mis-citing—my work in support of their arguments. Let me offer some corrections. . . . In defiance of the will of the international community, as embodied in the UN General Assembly Resolution of November 29th, 1947, [the Palestinians] launched hostilities against the Jewish community in Palestine in the hope of aborting the emergence of the Jewish state and perhaps destroying that community. But they lost; and one of the results was the displacement of 700,000 of them from their homes. . . . On the local level, in dozens of localities around Palestine, Arab leaders advised or ordered the evacuation of women and children or whole communities. . . .

Most of Palestine’s 700,000 “refugees” fled their homes because of the flail of war (and in the expectation that they would shortly return to their homes on the backs of victorious Arab invaders). But it is also true that there were several dozen sites, including Lydda and Ramla, from which Arab communities were expelled by Jewish troops.

The displacement of the 700,000 Arabs who became “refugees”—and I put the term in inverted commas, as two-thirds of them were displaced from one part of Palestine to another and not from their country (which is the usual definition of a refugee)—was not a “racist crime” . . . but the result of a national conflict and a war, with religious overtones, from the Muslim perspective, launched by the Arabs themselves.

Coming from the dean of Israeli revisionist historians, this was a significant rejection of the Nakba narrative and, incidentally, an endorsement of Stone’s forgotten book.

Earlier this year, another pathbreaking work of historical scholarship appeared that, if facts mattered at all in this debate, would put the final nail in the coffin of the Nakba myth. The book is Palestine Betrayed, by Efraim Karsh, head of the Middle East program at King’s College London. Karsh has delved deeper into the British and Israeli archives—and some Arab ones—than any previous historian of the period. He deftly uses this new material to seal the case that the Nakba was, to a large extent, brought on by the Palestinians’ own leaders.

For example, using detailed notes kept by key players in Haifa, Karsh provides a poignant description of an April 1948 meeting attended by Haifa’s Arab officials, officers of the nascent Israeli military, Mayor Shabtai Levy, and Major General Hugh Stockwell, the British military commander of Haifa. Levy, in tears, begged the Arab notables, some of whom were his personal friends, to tell their people to stay in their homes and promised that no harm would befall them. The Zionists desperately wanted the Arabs of Haifa to stay put in order to show that their new state would treat its minorities well. However, exactly as Stone reported in This Is Israel, the Arab leaders told Levy that they had been ordered out and even threatened by the Arab Higher Committee, chaired by the grand mufti from his exile in Cairo. Karsh quotes the hardly pro-Zionist Stockwell as telling the Arab leaders, “You have made a foolish decision.”

In describing the battle for Jaffa, the Arab city adjoining Tel Aviv, Karsh uses British military archives to show that the Israelis again promised the Arabs that they could stay if they laid down their arms. But the mufti’s orders again forbade it. In retrospect, it is clear that the mufti wanted the Arabs of Haifa and Jaffa to leave because he feared not that they would be in danger but that their remaining would provide greater legitimacy to the fledgling Jewish state.

Unfortunately, no amount of documentation and evidence about what really happened in 1948 will puncture the Nakba narrative. The tale of dispossession has been institutionalized now, an essential part of the Palestinians’ armament for what they see as the long struggle ahead. It has become the moral basis for their insistence on the refugees’ right to return to Israel, which in turn leads them to reject one reasonable two-state peace plan after another. In the meantime, the more radical Palestinians continue to insist that the only balm for the Nakba is the complete undoing of the historical crime of Zionism—either eliminating Israel or submerging it into a secular democratic state called Palestine. (The proposal is hard to take seriously from adherents of a religion and a culture that abjure secularism and allow little democracy.)

Nor will the facts about 1948 impress the European and American leftists who are part of the international Nakba coalition. The Nakba narrative of Zionism as a movement of white colonial oppressors victimizing innocent Palestinians is strengthened by radical modes of thought now dominant in the Western academy. Postmodernists and postcolonialists have adapted Henry Ford’s adage that “history is bunk” to their own political purposes. According to the radical professors, there is no factual or empirical history that we can trust—only competing “narratives.” For example, there is the dominant establishment narrative of American history, and then there is the counter-narrative, written by professors like the late Howard Zinn, which speaks for neglected and forgotten Americans. Just so, the Palestinian counter-narrative of the Nakba can now replace the old, discredited Zionist narrative, regardless of actual historical facts. And thanks to what the French writer Pascal Bruckner has called the Western intelligentsia’s new “tyranny of guilt”—a self-effacement that forbids critical inquiry into the historical narratives of those national movements granted the sanctified status of “oppressed”—the Nakba narrative cannot even be challenged.

This makes for a significant subculture in the West devoted to the delegitimization of Israel and the Zionist idea. To leftists, for whom Israel is now permanently on trial, Stone’s 1948 love song to Zionism has conveniently been disappeared, just as Trotsky was once disappeared by the Soviet Union and its Western supporters (of whom, let us not forget, Stone was one). Thus Tony Judt can write in The New York Review of Books—the same prestigious journal in which Stone began publishing his reconsiderations of Zionism—that Israel is, after all, just an “anachronism” and a historical blunder.

Several years ago, I briefly visited the largest refugee camp in the West Bank: Balata, inside the city of Nablus. Many of the camp’s approximately 20,000 residents are the children, grandchildren, and even great-grandchildren of the Arab citizens of Jaffa who fled their homes in early 1948.

For half a century, the United Nations has administered Balata as a quasi-apartheid welfare ghetto. The Palestinian Authority does not consider the residents of Balata citizens of Palestine; they do not vote on municipal issues, and they receive no PA funding for roads or sanitation. The refugee children—though after 60 years, calling young children “refugees” is absurd—go to separate schools run by UNRWA, the UN’s refugee-relief agency. The “refugees” are crammed into an area of approximately one square kilometer, and municipal officials prohibit them from building outside the camp’s official boundaries, making living conditions ever more cramped as the camp’s population grows. In a building called the Jaffa Cultural Center—financed by the UN, which means our tax dollars—Balata’s young people are undoubtedly nurtured on the myth that someday soon they will return in triumph to their ancestors’ homes by the Mediterranean Sea.

In Balata, history has come full circle. During the 1948 war, Palestinian leaders like Haj Amin al-Husseini insisted that the Arab citizens of Haifa and Jaffa had to leave, lest they help legitimize the Jewish state. Now, the descendants of those citizens are locked up in places like Balata and prohibited from resettling in the Palestinian-administered West Bank—again, lest they help legitimize the Jewish state, this time by removing the Palestinians’ chief complaint. Yet there is a certain perverse logic at work here. For if Israel and the Palestinians ever managed to hammer out the draft of a peace treaty, Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, would have to go to Balata and explain to its residents that their leaders have been lying to them for 60 years and that they are not going back to Jaffa. Which, to state the obvious again, is one of the main reasons that there has been no peace treaty".