The left's sleep of reason

Richard

This is interesting, and I know very little about Israeli politics, but there is a large and obvious question. The basic purpose of a Social Democratic or Left of Centre party is to attempt to mitigate inequalities of wealth and power, and the injustices that arise from those inequalities. Unless one regards all such inequalities as right and natural, and all opulence as justly merited, one has to accept that there is a legitimate role for such a party, even if one disagrees with it on many particulars.

Melanie and Robin Shepherd seem to be suggesting that the Israeli people will now be deprived of such a party. The only options will be parties that regard inequalities of wealth uncritically. Is this really to be desired, and will the population accept this in the long term?

The argument is that it is the question of multiculturalism, in specific relation to the Palestinians, that has torn Labour apart in Israel. This may well be so. But Israel is a special case, in that it is a country permanently at war, exposed to constant threats to its existence. Foreign policy may well override all other politics in such circumstances. But that is not true in Europe. Questions around multiculturalism are important in Europe, but not such as to displace other fundamental questions of justice. If anything, the current bankers' crisis with its consequences for public services makes those questions all the more urgent. Don't expect the Social Democratic Left to decline here, on the Israeli model. For the sake of a domestic liberal-democratic politics viable for the long term in Israel, hope that the Left doesn't decline there either. If the secular, liberal, social democratic Left disappears there, something frightening may eventually emerge in its place.

Thom.

"Barak’s peace offers, brokered by Bill Clinton in 2000 and 2001, were flatly rejected by the ‘moderate’ Palestinian leadership in favour of violence and rejectionism"

This may be the version assiduously peddled by Israel and its American helpers, like Dennis Ross. However, it does not conform to the known facts, as reported by the chief Israeli negotiator, Israeli officials advising Barak, and Israeli civil servants briefing Olmert when he came to office. Barak's "offer" was such as he knew no Palestinian representative could accept (as Clinton belatedly recognised in his revised proposals). The negotiations failed only when Barak felt unable to take them further with a general election looming. Israeli security chiefs confirm that the violent protests were not orchestrated, but reflected popular frustration, (and goaded by Sharon, against police advice) to which Israel responded with unwarranted and lethal force (check the reports on the amount of ammunition used in the first few days of the intifada).

Planet Reality is certainly a place where governments tell lies for propaganda purposes. It is also, unfortunately, a place where journalists willingly perpetuate these lies.

James Morrison

"The vision of the left is based on ideology which denies reality, truth and reason."

Genius! All the big problems we face in the world today, summed up in one sentence...

Nachman

@Thom
Unfortunately you are unable to produce any of the "the known facts, as reported by the chief Israeli negotiator, Israeli officials advising Barak, and Israeli civil servants briefing Olmert when he came to office" simply because they do not exist in the way you say they do. Barak tested Arafat by offering more than any Israeli leader before or since in an attempt to bring peace to the region. Arafat declined even to present any counter-proposals not because what Barak offered was not enough because nothing ever will be enough short of the destruction of Israel but because acceptance would have meant the acceptance of a Jewish State in the Middle East something which no Arab can countenance and which would have led to his early demise. I have no doubt that should the current unrest in Amman lead to the fall of King Abdullah the first act of any new regime will be to abrogate the peace treaty with Israel.The reality is that there will never be peace unless and until the Arabs unconditionally accept the existence of a free and independent Jewish State all the rest is negotiation - as things stand that day is a long way off if ever.

elixelx

@Richard
"The only options will be parties that regard inequalities of wealth uncritically. Is this really to be desired, and will the population accept this in the long term?"
Only if the population has been force fed the Christian bromide, the Communist baloney, the Socialist pabulum that "PERSONAL WEALTH IS NOXIOUS, UNFAIR, BANEFUL TO A HEALTHY SOCIETY"! for so long, and so inar
Here in Israel we don't suffer from that kind of envy, let alone turn it a divisive issue in National Politics. Here, when a guy makes it big we all want to make like him, NOT make him like us!
Please do google "Netanyahu, salary". You will soon see that there is no secrecy between the PM and the People.
Here we serve society by making and spreading money, not receiving welfare and then complaining about how the rich are getting richer off our toil!
Given that EVERYTHING here is more expensive than in the States, and about as expensive as London or Paris--minimum wage is $7, gas is $8 and more, milk is $5 a gallon, I could go on-- how do you whiny westerners square away the fact that the PM of Israel's TAKE-HOME PAY is just TWICE AS MUCH as the poverty level in the West.
We here do NOT suffer from pay-packet envy!

John.

However did this absurd multiculturalism first get established? We, the indigenous British have a large proportion of ancestors who arrived here between 15 and 12 thousand years ago. Slowly and painstakingly we have built up a society with its own traditions, customs and religion. If it is anyone's country it's ours. If newcomers to this very long-established society are unwilling to become assimilated why ever should they be accepted here and given citizenship? Do you think they would be given citizenship in say Korea or Bangla-Desh under such circumstances? Of course not. Never in Korea of course as they, like China and Japan don't give any foreigners citizenship. Rather wisely I would say.

Reuven

I have never voted for Israel's Labour party, as much as I wanted to side with their social and political dream. The dream has finally been seen for what it truly is - a nightmare, and people are belatedly waking up. Europe will hopefully also see the light, if it is not already too late.

James

Great post Melanie, thanks

elixelx

@Thom:"Planet Reality is certainly a place where governments tell lies for propaganda purposes. It is also, unfortunately, a place where journalists willingly perpetuate these lies."
I'm assuming that by "governments who lie" you here mean the Palestinians and the Americans; and by "journalists who perpetuate" you mean The NYT and Al Ahram!
Or are you being just a bit too subtle or too obtuse to tell us WHICH government and which journalists you really mean...because even on YOUR Planet Reality, the American and Palestinian governments and journalists are far far more likely to lie and disseminate lies than are Ehud Barak and Melanie Phillips.
Shaming without naming is a cowardly act, buddy! Don't do it again!
BTW Kol Ha-Kavod for inventing a Godfather-like twist: That Barak made Arafat an offer that he couldn't...ACCEPT?! And that Clinton and his whole array of bright boys didn't spot the sleight of hand until after Arafat and his idiots did!

Richard

Elixelx clearly has no sympathy with the socialist and social democratic traditions at all, and takes the view that the personal drive for material wealth never has any harmful effects on anything, and never needs regulation or restraint. I'm not sure that the point here is to argue with this position - it's rather to reflect on the possible demise of the social democratic Left, as an institutionalised political force that is part of the democratic balance, in Israel and possibly elsewhere.

Israel has had, since its foundation, a strong social democratic tradition. The argument here seems to be that the gradual effect of the state of war has been to wear that tradition down and destroy it. If so, this is something that has been done to Israel; its citizens have lost a tradition and a set of political options. War has diminished the field of political and ethical possibility.

Most people here are unsympathetic to that tradition, but do they really want a monolithic political landscape? An elementary account of the political stability that Britain and other Western democracies have enjoyed over the last sixty years includes the idea of checks and balances. When the free market is allowed to go too far, a social democratic party comes in to restrain it; when statism goes too far, a free-market party corrects the balance. There is an alternation that restrains both parties from an excess that might endanger stability. This view recognises that both Left and Right have defects and vices to go with their virtues.

This is what, according to the argument here, Israel is at risk of losing. Do people really want Western Europe to lose it? What outlet would there be then for feelings of injustice?

john

It is clear that the access of Marine Le Pen to the leadership of the French Front National is to be going to a real game-changer in Europe. She is going to be far more potent than a Sarah Palin, move more minds than a Geert Wilders. Unfortunately, the Left has left itself bereft of arguments, utterly despising the electorate and wrapping itself in a cloak of sainthood and sanctimony which a huge swathe of the population no longer believes attaches to the Left. Nik Cohn warned us years ago but the Left would not listen, did not want to listen and so abandoned the middle ground. We are going to learn at our cost what that betrayal has truly meant.

JOHN ROOSEVELT

The Arab and Moslem Middle East is - to put it simply - divided between the the radical islamic leaderships who don not want peace with a viable Israel, and the conservative regimes who may want to keep Israel "alive" as a bulwark against regimes - like Iran - but still, cannot be seen to support too strongly a peace deal that will not spell the demise of Israel.

Bottom line: Israel is finally waking up to its reality, as ROBIN SHEPHERD ( an extraordinarily wise analyst of the conflict) has said.

If I was a Palestinian leader, I would be worried...VERY worried.
The more Islamic radicalism defines the "peace" agenda of the arabs, the more Israel is in danger of radicalising...and a radical Jew??Oi, I voodent vish that even on mine vorst enemies!!!

Derek BLADES

Barak made an offer he knew the Palestinians would have to refuse. It would have condemned Palestine to permanent colonial status. Barak has now resigned in order to keep his place in the coalition government, his sizeable ministerial salary and the trrappings of power. This disgraceful little man has done a Ramsay MacDonald for which the usual reward is political oblivion.

Thankfully bereft of this traitor, the Labour Party now has the chance to regain the reputation for honesty, fairness and realism it enjoyed under Gold Meir.

John Richardson

M. Philips' article is pure MSM.

She reminds me of that New Labour Minister who said a few years ago; 'the whole country [had once] accepted multiculturalism'.

All rubbish.

The People never accepted a multicultural society. They never asked for it. They have never lived in one. These societies do not exist, never for long.
Instead social/cultural/racial/religiousBalkanisation occur.

No-one outside the MSM has ever been confused about these obvious realities. Ask any granny from Wigan.

Outside the MSM there is a fascinating discussion to be had about; where the 'multicultural' virus came from?
Who inflicted it on our innocent People?
Why & to what end?

The rest is an essentially incestuous intellectual...er...job.

Nothing wrong with that, but not much use really.

david elder

Blades at 6.17 pm displays his skills as a mind reader. Barak 'really' didn't want his peace offer accepted. If so, he would have looked pretty silly if it was accepted, wouldn't he?

Okey

Derek Blades, there you go again, "guessing" and "gathering", with not a single hard fig leaf to cover your embarrassment.

JOHN ROOSEVELT

Derek Blades: "Barak made an offer he knew the Palestinians would have to refuse. It would have condemned Palestine to permanent colonial status"

What wouldn't condemn the Palestinians to permanent colonial staus in theirs, radical Islam and dear Derek's book?

Mmm..Give ya 3 guesses!!!

What a twaddlemeister...

Ruth Sobol

The split within the Israeli Labour Party was caused by the very bad relationships between the various factions of the party and in particular the split between Ehud Barak, until now Labour Party leader and Minister of Defence, and many other prominent members who wanted to see more opposition to the policies of the current government.

I have always supported the Israeli Labour Party and also voted for them in the last election. I feel betrayed by Barak's behaviour and his acceptance of every move made by the Likud and Right-wing parties which make up this terrible government. Labour has always pushed for a peace settlement but blindly follows the extreme right with their stupid "in the face" decisions which managed to annoy not only our closest ally, the USA, but many people within Israel. There was also little or no reference to social problems, helping to improve the situation of the Israeli Arab minorities and other traditional interests of the Labour Party.

My husband and I feel as if our country has been stolen from us by a gang of politicians whose sole interest is improving their own careers. Obviously this isn't unique to Israel but the difference is that WE cannot afford to have such a government, alientating ourselves from the few friends we have left. It isn't a question of security - we all understand the need to secure a settlement which guarantees that - but the self-interest of a group of people who have betrayed the very inheritance we received from the founders of our country. We are all absolutely sickened by them.

J D Bryan

Yet again Melanie has hit the nail (or the Left) on the head. The Left have historically undermined the development of modern western civilisation. If it was not for the Left-wing creation of the Communist bloc the present globalised world that has benefited so many nations and peoples, not least the BRIC nations, might have enjoyed nearly a century of development, from 1917 rather than just two decades, since 1989, thus by now become capitalist liberal democracies. “Fully paid up” members of the west, like western Europe, North America, Japan, etc.

Moreover, versions of their collectivist ideology, socialism/communism and fascism, is attractive to, thus adopted by, those jealous or resentful of the west in the non and anti-western world thereby developed a partnership in attacking thus undermining the west. Partners like Mugabe, Castro, Chavez et al, Bin Laden, Hamas et al, etc.

Though, since the fall of Communist bloc they have become more moderate, nonetheless, still represents a threat. Though, depending on ideological earnestness, as per the Hard Left and Soft Left, plus have some great thinker, say, George Orwell and Christopher Hitchings, etc. Nevertheless, the problem is Left-wing ideology is based on a misunderstanding of society. Essentially a myth, thus cannot secure, rather undermines, an affluent, progressive, secure future. Thus the Hard Left denounce, while the Soft Left aim to wish away the evolutionary nature of human progress thus civilisation, that is, reject capitalism. In this way, misunderstand capitalism, as a pejorative Left wing assigned label: that claims capitalists' get rich at the expense of the poor. Yet, what Hayek functionally described the extended order of human co-operation or what Popper described the Open Society is the free society. As opposed to the Closed Society: predicated on collectivism, primitive tribalism or socialist/communist and fascist societies. Societies that must come about in the absence of capitalism - take your pick.

In this way, the Left refuse to accept human societal development, that progress, must necessarily be patchy thus at any given time or place there will seemingly be “winners” and “losers. They believe that through politics, even more so if democratic, they can change the laws of economics, or the reality of the scarcity of resources. Assume they can somehow liberate humanity through preventing any “losers“. Yet, in fact implying capitalism is a zero-sum game, thus constantly aim to penalise the “winners”. Yet, not realizing the logical outcome, would essentially become a self fulfilling prophecy. The reduction of the general wealth would ensure less largesse, if any, to redistribute at a given time or place to their ideological favoured societal “losers”. That is, even undermine the welfare, that liberals (classical or modern economic liberals) themselves may well advocate - like the author.

Aside from their immoral judgemental assumption, who should have what, by controlling or re-planning society for their assumed good ends seriously risks undermining capitalism. Yes, the free society. That is, the very order that has improved the conditions of humanity as never before experienced. When they “remind” everyone of the ills of the “capitalist” world they ideologically “forget” that prior to this order throughout human history the vast majority of the masses, perhaps 95%+?, lived in abject poverty and repression as we understand today. Plus, where a genuine winning minority did keep a losing majority down, furthermore, so minimal the generation of wealth that only the few privileged could ever enjoy.

However, their ultimate confusion is that their very moral and materialist benchmark is the product of the west, capitalism of which they misunderstand thus foolishly reject. I quote Hayek:

“..an anti-capitalist ethic continues to develop on the basis of errors by people who condemn the wealth generating institutions to which they owe their existence. Pretending to be lovers of freedom, they condemn several [private] property, contract, competition, advertising, profit and even money itself. Imagining that their reason can tell them how to arrange human efforts to serve their innate wishes better, they themselves pose a grave threat to civilization” (F A Hayek, p119, The Fatal Conceit [1988]).

Augustus

Thom - Why do you so eagerly dismiss accounts by Dennis Ross,
Clinton's special envoy to the Middle East, who was present at the Arafat-Clinton White House meeting on Jan 2nd, 2001? He has said that Arafat rejected
'every single one of the ideas'
presented by Clinton, "even Israeli sovereignty over the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem's Old City. And the 'Palestinians would have had a West Bank that was contiguous. Those who say that they were cantons is completely untrue. At Taba the
Palestinians even produced a map
conceding 2 per cent of the West
Bank. But on the refugees they stuck to their guns, insisting on Israeli acceptance of 'the right of return' and on Jerusalem, that they have sole sovereignty over the Temple Mount."

Obviously, to Arafat, even with
such a concessionary eager prime minister as Barak to negotiate with, this was just another stage in the conflict.
Part of a broader process to isolate Israel at any cost, and
continue to present it as an illegitimate rebellious state.

Adam B.

Blades - Arafat, during the negotiations with Barak in 2000, declared that Jerusalem had no Jewish connections, that the Jews had invented their religious and cultural connection to the Temple Mount, that there never was a Jewish Temple and consequently the Western Wall, the holiest site in Judaism, was a sham.

As Dennis Ross, a witness of the outburst said, this was not the mindset of a man looking to make peace - by utterly denying in a deranged manner the other side's religion and culture.

And even if Arafat wasn't happy with what was on offer, (and it is worth bearing in mind that the Palestinian rabs have been offered a state of their own on several occasions dating back to the 1930's), was the answer to launch the second terror intifada, sending in hundreds of suicide bombers into Israeli buses and shops?

Herzen

We appear to have stumbled into the annual convention of the faux naive (pardon my French).

"I'm assuming that by "governments who lie" you here mean the Palestinians and the Americans etc. etc."

Governments lie. It's what they do. All governments.

America is Israel's accomplice in the "peace process".
Any lying it does in relation to the "peace process" is on Israel's behalf.

"Blades at 6.17 pm displays his skills as a mind reader. Barak 'really' didn't want his peace offer accepted. If so, he would have looked pretty silly if it was accepted, wouldn't he?
etc. etc."

Barak had a plan B drawn up before he went into the negotiations. It looked very like the unilateral desengagement he and Sharon proceeded to implement, which Sharon's chief advisor told us was intended to freeze the "peace process" and ensure there was no political settlement possible with the Palestinians, who would be confined in cantons or ghettoes, and with luck forgotten about.

Gershon

So Derek Blades wants a return to the realism of Gold (sic) Meir. Based on the following statements of hers, so would I:

"There is no such thing as a Palestinian people... It is not as if we came and threw them out and took their country. They didn't exist."
-- Golda Meir, statement to The Sunday Times, 15 June, 1969.

"How can we return the occupied territories? There is nobody to return them to."
-- Golda Meir, March 8, 1969.

"Any one who speaks in favor of bringing the Arab refugees back must also say how he expects to take the responsibility for it, if he is interested in the state of Israel. It is better that things are stated clearly and plainly: We shall not let this happen."
-- Golda Meir, 1961, in a speech to the Knesset, reported in Ner, October 1961

"This country exists as the fulfillment of a promise made by God Himself. It would be ridiculous to ask it to account for its legitimacy."
-- Golda Meir, Le Monde, 15 October 1971

Exit Derek Blades stage left, closing the door behind him!

Yonatan Dvir

The Israeli right wing is actually quite far from planet reality.
Right wingers in israel tend to ignore the arabs completely, and the prospect of an appartheide state in the occupied territories seems totally reasonable for them.

JOHN ROOSEVELT

Derek Blades, Herzen et al:

Are you implying, somehow, that Arafat, Abbas, Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran...all the jihadi groups under the ideological sway of men like Qaradawi or Al Hassan Banna - do not constitute an impediment to "peace"....or is there , perhaps, a whole digest of notions of "peace", many of which are mutually exclusive - yours differing from those you accuse of being such an imediment?

Let's face it, neither you, nor those whose ideologies you so obviously echo, would countenance a peace that doesn't mean - at least as soon as possible - the eradication of Israel.

Let's face it, neither you, nore those whose ideologies you so obviously echo, would countenance a peace that doesn't mean - at least as soon as possible - the eradication of Jews in the Middle East, if not the wider world.

Let's face it, neither you, nore those whose ideologies you so obviously echo, would countenance a peace that means the explicit eschewing of stoning of women or the chopping of hands and the possible evisceration of homosexuals.

Let's face it, neither you, nore those whose ideologies you so obviously echo, would countenance a peace that means an explicit denunciation of the glorification of suicide bombing and the deliberate killing of Jewish women and children - all Jews being considered guilty for the creation of or maintenance of the state of Israel.

Let's face it, neither you, nore those whose ideologies you so obviously echo, would countenance a peace that means the explicit denunciation of the nazification of Islam which has been a singular and continuous development in the evolution of that great religion since Hitler grabbed the imagination Islamic clerics and "thinkers" like Husseini and Al Banna.

So, why bother hanging your multitude of petards on the whether or not you have more accurate access to private conversations in the Oval Office or Camp David etc? Is it not the paradigm redundancy in the context your wider ambition and world view?

None of you have ever come out and made the kind of denunciations which would even begin a process of trusting that your purported values are anything but viciously self-contradictory - like the anti racists who would allow racism in its name; the humanitarians who would allow the deliberate murdering of children and women in its name; the ones who apparently seek equal rights for all and freedom from imperialism who would allow totalitarianism and dictatorship in its name; the democrats who would hail a democratically elected fascist elite in its name. the ones who hold up International Law as a crucial litmus test for how things out to be, but when they contraven it themselves resort to some undefined "divine" Law as their true guid, relegating International Law to the bin that contains nothing but the detritus of the halcyon days of the imperialism you seem to so deplore.

I denounce you and those like you; and until the world wakes up to the mewling fear of the intelligentsia in the West, for one, and its consequent failure to stop allowing core liberal and enlightenment values to be neutered by the intellectual and moral cowardice, and which allows obscurantism and fascism in the name of those values - we should expect countries like Israel to err in favor of a little impeding of your "peace"....and I hail THEM for it.

Mr Sponge

"The vision of the left is based on ideology which denies reality, truth and reason."

What a great line.

It so aptly describes EVERYTHING about left wing thinking.

The great divide between left and right IS that right thinkers live in the real world and are the "doers" whereas left "thinkers" live in a fantasy world and are divorced from reality.

This applies as much to the welfare system, support for single mums/family breakdown, mass immigration and multiculturalism right through to the Arab/muslim question.

Obviously smoking dope at university DOES change ones perception of reality.

JOHN ROOSEVELT

Yonaton Dvir: "Right wingers in israel tend to ignore the arabs completely, and the prospect of an appartheide state in the occupied territories seems totally reasonable for them."

Well, one wonders how the Palestinian arabs view Jews in their midst - from the right or left wing? Equal rights for all, perhaps? Not racist at all? Not preclusivist in any way, perhaps?

What is this accusatory blather about the so-called Israeli "Right" about, really?

It's like a criticism of a vet for putting down a rotwieler killing an infant - or is it, something else? If so, what? Surely a criticism of it for behaving without love for the Palestinian arabs is totally spurious in the circumstances?

I am not advocating anything but an understanding of what people WILL do in these situations. Bloody obvious... and stupid to expect much less of Israel. In fact, I am aghast the Right in Israel isn't far more virulent in the circumstances in which the Jews have found themselves since they were murdered wholesale by Arabs since '47. It's remarkable, whether your Left or Right, Salafi reformist or some Al Qaeda, Qtubist missionary...

Richard

John Roosevelt,

I can see the force of a lot of what you are saying, but do the 'core liberal and enlightenment values' you wish to defend include the social democratic tradition, which derives substantially from Enlightenment thinking? You rightly draw attention to the contradictions and double standards involved in Leftist sympathy for Islamism, but this implies that you want to retrieve the Left from those double standards and restore it to consistency with its principles. Is that so? In that case, you do see a legitimate role for the social democratic Left; that's why you regret its descent into double standards.

John Thomas

elixelx, whenever has Christianity taught that "PERSONAL WEALTH IS NOXIOUS, UNFAIR, BANEFUL TO A HEALTHY SOCIETY"? - oh, well, maybe a few (now discredited) "Christian" Marxists in the '60s, but that's hardly justification for your claim (the Communist and Socialist bit I wouldn't argue with; they are usually totally against personal wealth (unless it's their own, of course)).

Derek BLADES

JOHN ROOSEVELT's post of 19 January, adressed to "Derek Blades, Herzen et al", indicates industrial strenth paranoia. The monstrous anti-semite he is imagining bears not the slightest resemblance to me nor, I am sure, to Herzen or even to poor old al.

I see you drafted that stuff at 9:16 this morning. You obviously had a hard night. Seriously old chap, you should consider getting profesional help.

raymond

I suppose that I was a lefty, given that from 1976-1997 , I was a labour voter. But, once I had grasped just what the likes of Harriet Harman intended for our nation, I stopped that habit. Trouble is, who to vote for ? Whilst the Tories have many fine people like Ian Duncan smith etc, the ruling echelons of the party is as left as Harman herself ! Social conservatives are the great disenfranchised of the modern era !

JOHN ROOSEVELT

Richard:"but this implies that you want to retrieve the Left from those double standards and restore it to consistency with its principles. Is that so? In that case, you do see a legitimate role for the social democratic Left; that's why you regret its descent into double standards."

I see a role for social democratic values whether they have been coopted by the Right or Left or
Center...

I also agree 100% with ROBIN SHEPHERD's critique of Levy's Haaretz misdirected lament for the demise of Israel's Labour party.

If we are to avoid a rise of reactionary forces in Israel - something I would strongly warn the Arabs against fomenting - we should begin to rekindle some courage in our apparent Enlightenment values - our "liberalism" - and not be scared to combat Islamism as steadfastly as possible - if, for no other reason, than a radicalised Jewish nation would likely cause them more grief than they have ever dreamed of and certainly more than they will ever stand a chance of cpmbatting effectively. The so-called palestinian cause will be mired in quicksand, as a result, for scores of years to come.

Thom.

Augustus
January 18th, 2011 11:06pm
I would say Dennis Ross is not a credible witness. His bias is no secret. The same could be said, of course, about someone I think more credible, namely Shlomo Ben Ami, the Israeli chief negotiator. But then his account is supported by a great deal of evidence from Israeli officials, official documents and journalists.

Israel put a spin on events, with the help of the US. The Palestinians put a spin on events. Their attempt at spin was not successful in the mainstream media of the West. Israel's was. If the intention is to try to understand what is going on, and not simply to support one's own side regardless, it is necessary to try to see beyond the spin and not simply accept it without question.

Thom.

Adam B.
January 18th, 2011 11:14pm
So you've decided it's safe to re-emerge after yet another of your prudent retreats into silence. You've certainly got a brass neck.

Which is all very grand. But we in Britain are no longer Great - and have problems of our own which demand attention prior to those MP refers to. We cannot afford such luxuries, denial of our situation is not realistic.

Augustus

Thom - Thank you for your response. I don't think generally, however, that it's very difficult to see what's been going on in the ME. The truth of the matter is that the Arabs with their continual hostility towards Israel have forced it to defend itself in a number of wars, and to show that
those hostilities still remain.
This realization by some Arabs led to peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan, and even started peace negotiations with the Palestinians in the 1990s.
It is a great pity that Jewish
national self-determination should have proved only achieveable by force and violent means. And it is also natural that an Israeli finds the death of an Arab less terrible than the death of one of their own. One always mourns
more over the death of one's own, every nation, every culture
does that, and Israelis are no different. After the shelling of Beit Hanoun in 2006 they apologized for the 19 dead, but obviously 19 dead in Sderot would have been considered worse. That's only hard reality.

The overriding question is, what does one do to save oneself
when the only remedy is to use
violence? How many people are you allowed to kill in order to keep a country? That question is never asked in relation to other countries. Germany was responsible for the deaths of 20 million in WW2 (including their own), and nobody ever questioned their right to exist.
But the Americans would never have allowed a Nazi party to take part in the elections of 1949. There are many countries with more deaths on their conscience than Israel. There are many countries which have treated their enemies less sympathetically than Israel has.
How many Chinese are ashamed of
what their country does? How many Turks demonstrate in favour of a free Kurdistan? They even find it difficult to admit to a century-old genocide
perpetrated under a regime whose
members are long under the ground. The question also arises
as to why some Jews seem to want
their state to be so perfect, more perfect that any other state, a model state for every other state? And why do they demand, even if they don't live there, from their Jewish brethren in Israel that their state is villified by us westerners, and even boycotted,
if it doesn't follow the very highest principles and ideals?
Where does the hatred for Israel by these Jews come from?
There is no rational explanation
to villify Israel time and time again, and to condone everything
its enemies do. This goes beyond
mere criticisms of settlements,
or too much force, it is more to do with zeitgeist, a sort of
political spirit of the times which has its roots in the persecution of Jews throughout history.

logdon

Here's the most honest primer yet.

'Is Peace Possible in the Middle East?
Forget it. It's not going to happen.
January 17, 2011 - by David Solway

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/is-peace-possible-in-the-middle-east/?singlepage=true

'Surely, it has become obvious by this time, after sixty-plus years of tractionless discussions and bloody confrontations, that the current negotiating paradigm of Israeli concessions for Palestinian recalcitrance, that is, land for no peace and a raft of further demands, is simply not working, nor is it going to work. Why the Israeli leadership ever embarked on so fruitless a project is beyond rational explanation. In matters of life and death, unanchored hope is no substitute for hard-headed assaying and a grounding in history. For peace to have even an unhouseled ghost of a chance, several correlative concessions on the part of the Palestinians would be absolutely mandatory. For example:

* The Palestinians would have to agree that a Palestinian state would be no more Judenrein than Israel would be, let’s say, Muslimrein; there are one and half million Arabs resident in Israel, most of whom will not surrender their Israeli citizenship. Why then should 300,000 Jews living in Judea and Samaria be evicted from their homes?

* The Palestinians would have to realize that their insistence on the “right of return” to Israel of seven million so-called “refugees” is a complete nonstarter, and must be dropped from their negotiating position. Israel is not about to commit demographic suicide.

* They will be required to recognize Israel as a Jewish state.'

That's the upshot and the fact is that the Arabs will never accept those terms.

The whole thing is Left wing theatre and the likes of Hillary Clinton and Catherine Ashton, ham actors posing and posturing their self serving hollow semantics on a global stage.

blue_&_white_avenger

Nachman, Ruth Sobol & Logdon, well said.
I tend to disagree with Shepherd's & Melanie's intrepretation of this split. For me, the Israel Labour party is long past its sell-date & even more than the others, its listed-politicians are merely hacks who covet their jobs, salaries etc. far more than the honour of serving, good of the country etc.
But Barak as a politician is a disaster; he achieved much as a soldier & he should have stuck to the Army. His announced retreat from Lebanon caused the panic rout which empowered Hizbollah & thence Hamas. His principal role recently as defence minister has been to knock down houses, mainly Jewish-owned houses in a move to prove his credentials amongst the party faithful. He's also deliberately with-held building permits, which should anyway, not be the perogative of the defence ministry.
It's a great pity for Israel that he didn't just resign rather having pretensions as a leader - & comparing himself to Ben-Gurion !!!!

Israelinurse

Richard; besides the reasons which Robin Shepherd cited in his excellent piece for the demise of the Israeli Left over the past decade or so, there are additional factors. One of these factors is that the Labour party failed to sufficiently focus on social issues in the traditional manner to which I gather you refer.
Some here say that rather than the voters abandoning the party, the party abandoned the voters long ago.
However, there is a social welfare system in Israel which actually includes some features which could be considered better than that in the UK. For instance, minimum wage earners do not pay income tax and there even exists negative tax, which could be said to be similar to the UK tax credits, but far less complicated and without the off-putting paperwork.
Welfare systems such as unemployment benefit and disability benefits also exist, but they are significantly better regulated than in the UK.
Whilst health care is not free, it is accessible to all and of a much higher standard than that in the UK, particularly in the field of preventative medicine.

Thom.

Augustus

"It is a great pity that Jewish
national self-determination should have proved only achieveable by force and violent means."

It is a great shame the US of A could only fulfil its Manifest Destiny by...

It is a great shame China could only free Tibet from Medieval oppression by...

etc.

Unless you can come up with a reason why the Zionists had a right to establish a state in "Palestine", a reason that doesn't rely on alleged divine intervention or ancient history, how does your statement about Israel's regrettable violence differ?

Herzen

Gershon
January 19th, 2011 3:46am
I take it you intend to show that Meir was as much a political thug as the rest of them.

logdon
January 19th, 2011 6:01pm
This is a parody, isn't it, a satire on the casuistical contortions Israel has to go through to appear at least to itself as the victim in all this?

Richard

Israelinurse,

Thank you; this does not surprise me. Without knowing much detail, I always assumed that Israel's social democratic tradition would have produced robust institutions of social justice, and you confirm this to be the case. In what Melanie is saying, it's hard to discern whether there is any trace of regret at what she sees as the decline of this political tradition, or at least of the party most identified with it. Perhaps not. It seems tragic to me, though, if true. Why did Labour abandon its social justice mission in the way you describe?

Augustus

Thom - You ask for 'a reason why
the Zionists had a right to establish a state in Palestine'.

I would have thought that that was pretty obvious: International recognition. And Israel's regrettable violence is different because the Palestinian Arabs' tragedy is the result of a self-inflicted
catastrophe.

Okey

Thom, the genesis of the process by which the State of Israel was established was an act of international law, namely the 1922 League of Nations Council binding resolution to establish a Jewish state in "Palestine."
In 1947, this act was reaffirmed and reinforced by the UN General Assembly recommendation to establish "a Jewish state" (sic) in part of "Palestine."

The violence which followed was initiated by the Arab "Palestinians", and was followed by the invasion of Israel by 6 Arab regular armies.

The Jews of Israel, though in dire straits, managed to repel the Arab aggressors (so designated by the UN).
For the next half century and more the Arab side continuously violated international law by maintaining a state of aggressive war against a member of the UN. Just as the UN had declined to intervene against the "Palestinian" and other Arab aggression of 1947-49, so did it fail in the succeeding eras, leaving it to the Jewish defenders of Israel to do this.

Do you have any more questions?

Al Redwood

Gideon Levi represents the pasty, demented remains of the Left of Tel Aviv. The same element that looked to Mother Russia for inspiration as the United Labor Front (4 fractured parties known as Labor) going back to the 60's, they were the first to split from Labor starting the Peace Now, Meretz and other such partially funded by EU bakshish NGO's, working efusivley against the interests of israel, inflitrating the Labor Party, under Yitzhak Rabin, with the pasty Dr. Beilin, the former" editor" of the Davar daily (voice of the Israeli Unions, RIP, rag) who became a 'foreign minister", now acting as a disappointed Lefty, all drove the country into a bad deal with the PLO, ushering the return of domestic terrorism, by inviting Arafat and his clan of assassins into the territories. Supporting this move was Gideon Levi and the entire editorial board of Haaretz, whose original publisher Mr. Shocken, ran away and retired in N.Y (RIP), this element is falling apart as we are reading the news, and Haaretz is losing readers by the day, much like the N Y Times, dishing daily lies that fit to print. I speak with some personal experience because in the 70's they stole and never apologized some of my original work.

Gary

@derek blades:
"Barak made an offer he knew the Palestinians would have to refuse"
are you serious? barak's offer was the most generous offer Israel has EVER made in return for piece. the fact it was viewed too extreme by the rest if the population (the Jewish i mean), doesn't change the fact that it was dismissed at a whim by the so called "palestinians".
you, obviously receive your information from only one source, the left.

Derek Pasquill

The goodthinkful left is, and has always been, the enemy of genuine progress as measured in the incremental improvement of living standards.

Thom.

Augustus
January 20th, 2011 1:09am
On the Zionists right to a state, do you refer to the UN General Assembly resolution?

And on the Palestinian Arabs bringing it upon themselves, are you saying it was Palestinian Arabs fired the first shots in the civil strife in 1947, so they got what they deserved?

Thom.

Gary,

"you, obviously receive your information from only one source, the left."

The information is contained in an Israeli government document, a briefing for Olmert before Annapolis, that found its way into Ha'aretz. You may think Ha'aretz a leftie, traitorous whatever (or you may not), but the document, I believe, has not been disowned by the government

SB

Thom criticises Melanie etc for for believing Dennis Ross because of his "bias" but the same could equally be said for his sources.

Augustus

Thom - What I am saying is that the defeat and exile of the Palestinian Arabs was brought upon themselves by their refusal to come to peaceful terms after their defeat in 1948. A conflict which created as many Jewish refugees from Arab countries as the Nakba which their own leaders had brought upon themselves. Was the UN Partition Plan not designed for both religious communities to live side by side
in peace and prosperity? If you had been an Arab leader at the time would you not have wanted to take advantage of the opportunities, not only which the existing Jewish immigrants had afforded you, but also what the international community was
proposing to establish? If not,
why not?

JOHN ROOSEVELT

Thom: " are you saying it was Palestinian Arabs fired the first shots in the civil strife in 1947, so they got what they deserved?"

Are you saying the Jews, on acceptance of the Partition Plan, decided to go on a murdering spree of Arabs and, so, persecuted the poor Arabs?

Gershon

@Herzen
January 19th, 2011 10:45pm

You obviously have a problem with comprehension - or were you just trying to be amusing/sarcastic? If the latter; you failed.

Thom.

SB
January 20th, 2011 11:28am
Your point is fair: I made it myself. However, in addition to Shlomo Ben Ami, the sources I relied on include Barak's advisor on the question of Jerusalem, the head of israeli military intelligence, and, on the question of Sharon's walk-about, the Jerusalem police chief. I also relied on a document drawn up by Israeli civil servants to brief Olmert on what Israel had been about at Camp David. Given the record of such as Dennis Ross and Martin Indyk, I think my sources more likely to give something like the true story.

Thom.

Did the Zionists expect the Palestinian Arabs to resist the dismemberment of their homeland? Yes (some of their leading figures said that in their place they would do the same). Did the Zionists accept (very reluctantly) the proposal for partition, but only (and avowedly) as a first step towards the bare minimum they had told UNSCOP they would require? Yes. Did the Zionists plan for Palestinian Arab resistance? Yes. Did they put their plans into action? Yes. Did their plans include not just defense, but offense, and what can only be called an attempt at ethnic cleansing? Yes. Were the plans successfully implemented (as the Zionist leaders were privately confident they would)? Yes. Have the Zionists been in official Denial about precisely how they acquired their state ever since? Yes.

Herzen

Gershon
January 20th, 2011 3:59pm
You chose such truly boneheaded statements by Meir that I thought it best to check whether you were serious.

C.Gee

"This is a parody, isn't it, a satire on the casuistical contortions Israel has to go through to appear at least to itself as the victim in all this?"

Israel does not wish or need to appear to itself or anyone else as the victim. Israel is not corrupted by the perversion of equating victimhood with moral superiority. Palestinianists, proselytizing the myth that Israel got away with the horrible crime of its birth because of the holocaust, are always a-contorting of themselves trying to locate the Palestinians as Jews: they are concentration camp inmates, mass-murdered, forced into ghettoes, exiled, starved, enslaved, they long for Jerusalem, they are spat upon and despised, besieged and occupation-resisting like Jews in Warsaw and - if anyone points out Arab aggression, not to mention anti-semitism - outrageously and bizarrely blood-libeled. Now, that is casuistry. That is parody. Funny thing, though, Europe feels more sympathy for the neo-Jews than it ever did for the real things, and is now very happy to collude in the Jews-are-Nazis and Palestinians-are-Jews narrative, as it absolves them of guilt: the Jews are as nationalistic as Germany was, and so in anticipation of their criminality actually got what they deserved.

Herzen

C.Gee
January 20th, 2011 6:15pm
This is parody, isn't it...?

C.Gee

"Unless you can come up with a reason why the Zionists had a right to establish a state in "Palestine", a reason that doesn't rely on alleged divine intervention or ancient history, how does your statement about Israel's regrettable violence differ?"

No need to come up with a reason that fits your criterion of a reason (who appointed you as judge of what is an acceptable reason?) - or any reason at all. The state of Israel exists.

The morality of a state - war or domestic policy - has nothing to do with its “right” to have been established. Who confers this so-called right? Other states. They may establish a state by ceding sovereignty to it, openly acquiescing in its self-assertion, or forbearing to topple it.

If the Arabs believe the Palestinians are a nation which pre-existed modern Israel, then they must reclaim it all or in part for their state by toppling Israel, or they must accept what Israel cedes to them, or they may unilaterally declare themselves a state and hope that Israel acquiesces.

The Palestinians themselves are (at least a faction of the West Bank leadership is) contemplating the last option, and actually working to establish a working infrastructure for a state. Depending on whether they continue to “resist” Israel’s occupation (of Israel) and insist upon the return to Israel of millions of refugees, or whether by accepting borders of their state they also accept Israel, Israel either will not or will acquiesce. If it does: voila! - two-states, living side-by-side in peace, with negotiations finessed. If it does not: the war and those peace negotiations will continue as usual.

Is it not time for the Palestinianists here to be honest about what they want for Palestinian Arabs?

If you want a state, then support the unilateral declaration of Palestine: either as the first step of a “stages” strategy to reclaim the whole Mandate territory for Arabs, or as acceptance of a two-state solution. This is the way for fulfillment of that right to “self-determination” which has been the cornerstone of Arab claims to a state. It will be very interesting to see what self is determined by the Palestinians. I can hear already the cries that Palestine is too crowded, the land too poor, the borders too wiggly, and the foreign aid too stingy for the people to make a “viable” state.

If you want a good life for the Palestinians, then support Sari Nusseibeh who proposes in his new book that the Palestinians should accept second class (non-voting) status under Israeli sovereignty - compare with the legal alien residents living in the US, for example - but enjoy equal protection under the laws of democratic Israel. Peace, opportunity, prosperity, education, health... Individual self-determination rather than collective self-determination (which, after all, has not proved to be too glorious for the Arab nations created after WW1 or any of them).

If what you want is justice for Palestinians: a state in place of Israel, without the interim acceptance of a state in the West Bank (and Gaza); the Jews sent back to Europe or Brooklyn or wherever (Iran? Iraq? Egypt?); the redressing of the great wrong done unto the Arabs living within those Mandate boundaries, then say so. This is the Hamas position. Given your view of Israel as a criminal enterprise, I cannot see how a two-state solution could ever be just for the Palestinians. Why should the Palestinians accept bantustans when it is their country? And please say how this is to be done, and what policies you advocate for the nations of the world to bring this about. Let us see how these methods comport with the humanitarianism, compassion, simple decency, fair-mindedness and respect for international law that you project in your comments.

Augustus

Thom - Your wording is clearly anti-Zionist, and it appears, clearly anti-Jewish National Home. It is common knowledge that the formation of Jewish self-defense organizations only
happened after Arab nationalists
opposed to the Balfour declaration instigated riots and pogroms against Jews in Jerusalem, Hebron, Jaffa, and Haifa. People like Hajj Amin el
Husseini were determined to show the British that Palestine as a Jewish National Home would be ungovernable.

C.Gee

Herzen:

"C.Gee
January 20th, 2011 6:15pm
This is parody, isn't it...?"

Is that self-parody? Careful you don't choke on that foot of yours.

Adam B.

Thom writes:

"Did the Zionists expect the Palestinian Arabs to resist the dismemberment of their homeland?"

It was not their homeland, and never had been. Such cries of it being a homeland fall flat when one considers that when Jordan marched into Judea and Samaria and East Jerusalem (ethnically cleansing the Jews as they went), and Egypt grabbed Gaza in 1948, for the next 19 years there were no calls for a Palestinian Arab "homeland".

Why was that Thom?

Derek BLADES

Derek Pasquill tells us that "The goodthinkful (sic) left is, and has always been, the enemy of genuine progress as measured in the incremental improvement of living standards."

But in Scandanavia the "goodthinkful left" have consistently delivered substantial increments in living standards over many years. In the United States, democratic administrations from Franklin Roosevelt to Bill Clinton have done at least as well as Republicans. And governments that think of themselves as extreme leftists are achieving "incremental improvement of living standards" in Vietnam and China far in excess of anything dreamed of by right-wing governments in Europe or America.

Please move into the real world Mr Pasquill. We know how you lost your job with the foreign office. The mystery is how you got it in the first place.

JOHN ROOSEVELT

I am sorry. I have to reveal, here, my sense of longing....

When will Hezen - or one of the other Palestiniastas respond - point-by-point - to the venerable C Gee?

...or perhaps, they think, that he has not revealed his sources and therefore have invalidated his rather merciless anihaltion of their twaddle? Sorry..no..it is the moderator who...

Thom.

C.Gee
January 20th, 2011 8:31pm
First of all, I took Augustus to be saying that regrettably the Zionists had to kill to establish the state they wanted. He appeared to imply that there was some over-riding principle, "self-determination" that required the Zionists to act as they did, and not just that they wanted the land and had to kill to get it (alas and alack).

I agree when you say, "The morality of a state - war or domestic policy - has nothing to do with its “right” to have been established."

I also agree when you say, "Who confers this so-called right? Other states. They may establish a state by ceding sovereignty to it, openly acquiescing in its self-assertion, or forbearing to topple it."

This is not the whole story. Most of the time, these states agree to observe rules in deciding how they act. It reduces conflict. It is not a free-for-all. There are constraints. The constraints are not strong, and the powerful disregard them when they think their interests require it. Nevertheless, they exist and there is a presumption that they should be observed and that sanctions should be applied if they are not. One such rule is that states should no longer be allowed to acquire territory by military conquest.

The Zionists have been adept, as a minority political movement, as a community in Palestine, and as a state, in persuading the Great Powers that their interests are served by furthering the interests of the Zionists, even in defiance of the established rules. So, for example, the Zionists declared their independence unilaterally and acquired much of their territory by military conquest. The US and the Soviet Union recognised Israel and did not require it to give up the conquered land. Representatives of the Palestinian Arabs (the PLO) have formally acquiesced. Israel has got away with acquiring territory by military conquest. That is the way the world works.

Israel is now busy repeating this exercise in illegality with the territory acquired by conquest in 1967, gradually expropriating more and more. It is likely to get away with it. It has persuaded the US that it is an asset.

You seem comfortable with this, presumably because you are confident that the US will not reconsider or because you think Israel's military sufficiently strong for all eventualities. But would you be so comfortable with your argument for simply accepting real politik if there were a risk that either of these proved untrue? Or is it not an argument, simply a statement of the current position?

Your list of options for the Palestinians does include what is available, given Israel's position (and the huge mismatch in power means there is no pressure on Israel to change).

What seems to me the most likely outcome is some form of what Israel has been working towards at least since Oslo. It is a form of divide and rule, the variant perfected by the British Empire, where a local "elite" is persuaded to police the natives. The additional consideration here is that Israel wants to ensure that it never has more Palestinian Arabs under its jurisdiction than Jewish Israelis. The Palestinians are divided politically and geographically. Gaza Israel feels it can claim to be a separate entity not under its occupation, so its inhabitants it feels it can claim are no responsibility of its. Gaza will be under siege and repeatedly pulverised until Hamas accepts the role Fatah has in the West Bank. The West Bank is divided into cantons each easily sealed off. And Fatah does the police work for Israel, in return for "prosperity" for a few. As Barak and Sharon have said, they can call this a state if they want. Israel certainly wants to offload these cantons, or ghettoes, or bantustans (as you called them), so that it can claim to be no longer responsible for these Palestinians either. Then the only Arabs to threaten the permanent majority required to be able to call Israel a Jewish democracy will be Israel's Arab citizens (hence the Lieberman two state solution, which leaves them outside Israel).

Palestinian politicians have been a disastrous failure, but the main reason for the abject condition of the Palestinians now is Israel's ambition to have everything worth having.

You listed various things the Palestinians could try. I take it your contempt and sarcasm indicate that you know they are not realistic options.

You say they could proclaim their sovereign state in the ghettoes allowed them by Israel. You then say (sneer) "I can hear already the cries that Palestine is too crowded, the land too poor, the borders too wiggly, and the foreign aid too stingy for the people to make a “viable” state." I am not sure whether you are claiming the economic knowledge to be able to assert that the ghettoes would in fact form a perfectly viable economy to support the population. (The British, when the looked at the idea of partition in the 1930s and 40s, concluded that even what was to be offered the Palestinian Arabs then was not viable on its own - perhaps why the partition plan rested on economic union.)

The notion of second class, non-voting status under Israeli sovereignty is, in essence, occupation. Israel's Arab citizens are indeed much better off, although the indices of welfare and wealth used by such as the IMF, OECD and UN show them to be disadvantaged systematically relative to Jewish Israelis. Nevertheless, it would be rational to choose second class citizenship rather than imprisonment in the West Bank ghettoes. However, this is not what would be on offer. Israel has separated its economy from the Palestinians. It has no need for their labour. To call them second class non-voting citizens would not change this. It would not bring them prosperity. And how does it give them "individual self-determination"? In any event, Israel would not offer any such thing. It wants to have no responsibility for the people who live in what was Palestine.

Your final suggestion, I think is intended to show how absurd are the implications of supporting better treatment of Palestinians – it leads to absurdities. And yet, I have not come across anyone here who tries to deny that the state of Israel exists. I have not come across anyone who thinks Israelis should be sent off to other countries. (Hezballah refuse to recognise the "Zionist entity" or whatever their term is. Hamas likewise. But even Hezballah has said it will accept the decision of the Palestinians. And Hamas has repeatedly offered to talk on the basis of the Green Line.) But, to repeat, no-one here has said anything other than that Israel is a state like any other.

There was a time, in the 1070s, 80s, and 90s, when a two-state solution based on the Green Line was possible. The Palestinians accepted it. The Arab states likewise. All at the UN - except Israel and the US.

Israel's piecemeal annexation of the West Bank has made it impossible.

A one-state solution also seems a non-starter.

The likely outcome is that Israel will have what it wants, the Palestinians will live an impoverished life in ghettoes, and Israel, however great its preponderance of power, will continue to feel surrounded and threatened.

Israel's supporters on this blog talk as if this is somehow the moral outcome and that anyone who protests or resists is a threat to civilisation.

I do not think it moral. I think it how the world works. I think the Zionists have been ruthless in expelling and side-lining Palestinian Arabs. I do not think it is how it had to be. I do not know now how it can be changed. Only Israel can change it, and Israel has no wish to. Only the US can influence Israel, and the US has no wish to. There are something like six million Israelis, and a similar number of Palestinian Arabs whose parents, grandparents and great-grand-parents etc. lived in Palestine/Israel. It is not obvious that Israel has any greater claim on the land, except, as we both agree, that it is in possession and has the military might and the allies to keep it, and to ignore the plight of those it has displaced.

Thom.

Adam B.,

I think a homeland is the land which is your home. It is sometimes used to refer to where you and previous generations of your family were born, perhaps even where your people live. I don't think it necessarily has to have any political meaning. I suppose we should consult a dictionary.

As a footnote, I think I can help you with your confusion over what you accused Lindsay of back in the Pallywood thread.

I would not have followed this up had it not been for the comedy of your efforts to evade Drew. There's a lesson in damage limitation there.

You accused Lindsay of claiming only one soldier was injured and then back-tracking and admitting that seven had been injured. From the very beginning, she said seven were wounded, one of whom stabbed... (she itemised each of the seven). Now, somewhere in the middle of your discussion with her, you questioned her assertion that only one soldier had been STABBED. So what I think is that you got confused between one INJURED and one STABBED. She said seven were injured. She did not say only one was injured. She did say that only one was stabbed.

A small mistake, but made something more serious by your refusal to apologise. So you can retrieve some self-respect here and now with a belated apology, explaining how your misunderstanding arose.

On a related topic, I believe there is a simple way to boost your credibility. Lindsay listed the seven soldiers and their injuries, citing the MFA, hospital bulletins, interviews with the victims. When you said she was wrong, she admitted it was perfectly possible, and asked you for the sources that allowed you to correct her. After much coaxing, you came up with the Wall Street Journal. I'm sure that on reflection you see that the mismatch is rather comical. If you have good sources, it would be helpful to provide them. If you don't, then avoid telling others that they are simply mistaken.

That's all fair enough, isn't it?

Adam B.

Thom

Why were there no calles for a "Palestinian" homeland when Egypt ruled Gaza and Jordan occupied the West Bank and the Old City of Jerusalem?

Adam B.

Thom makes several baseless claims about the re-establishment of the Jewish state. He says:

“Did the Zionists accept (very reluctantly) the proposal for partition, but only (and avowedly) as a first step towards the bare minimum they had told UNSCOP they would require? Yes. “

The fact is that Israel accepted the plan, whilst the Arabs rejected it. The Arabs did not reject it because the Jews may have been reluctant - they rejected it in principle. And as for a “first step”, the implication here is that the Jews would have taken more land, even if the Arabs had accepted the plan. There is no basis for such an accusation.

He goes on:

“Did the Zionists plan for Palestinian Arab resistance? Yes. “

Well, if you call an invasion by five Arab armies, whose sole intent was the destruction of the newborn, and legally established, Jewish state, and the ethnic cleansing of all Jews from any conquered Arab gains, “resistance”, then yes, you’re right Thom.

He goes further:

“Did their plans include not just defense, but offense, and what can only be called an attempt at ethnic cleansing? Yes. “

How can any war be fought completely defensively? It involves attacking the enemy. The difference between the Jewish and Arab side, of course, is that hundreds of thousands of Arabs remained in territory under Jewish control, whilst not one Jew was left in any of the areas in Arab control. Who was better at ethnic cleansing then Thom?

“Have the Zionists been in official Denial about precisely how they acquired their state ever since? Yes.”

Have Israel haters been in denial about all the above?

Yes.

JOHN ROOSEVELT

Thoma: "I do not know now how it can be changed. Only Israel can change it, and Israel has no wish to."

You dont know how it can be changed but ONLY Israel can change it??

Sorry, just reaching for my head scratcher...

I cant wait for Mr Gee to respond...

C.Gee

Thom:

“I do not know now how it can be changed. Only Israel can change it, and Israel has no wish to. Only the US can influence Israel, and the US has no wish to.”

I challenged you to offer political strategies for the Palestinians that would realize Palestinian interests, even extremist Palestinian interests ( an end to Israel). You ducked. Instead, you indulged in more Naqba denunciation and hand-wringing, appealed to some mythical rules placing moral constraints upon states - even suggesting that there is a rule which mandates that states “should no longer be allowed [when was the cut off date?] to acquire territory by military conquest” - but despaired of enforcement against the bully-boys Israel and the US, and then shrugged off the whole mess which you dump on Israel’s doorstep. I was hoping for a robust alternative to the Palestinians’ self-defeating posture: an absurd combination of beggary and extortion. Even a choice for one or the other would make possible debate and negotiation. Without a coherent set of political strategies from the Palestinians, how can Israel be persuaded that the status quo - impasse: futile jaw-jaw and low-grade war-war - is not the least costly option?

That statement of yours encapsulates what Israel is up against: a complete absence in the Palestinian leaders and their Arab instigators of political vision, ambition, belief or competence. How does one negotiate a political settlement with people who appear to have no inkling of politics or of a functioning polity. (This is hardly surprising, as the PA are thugs from a criminal gang brought back from exile by stupid leftist Israeli politicians deluded into some behaviorist fallacy: treat a thug like a statesman, and he will sign a treaty. The PA knows nothing of statecraft, nor of constitutional governance nor of civil administration. Government is by bribery, intimidation, incitement, repression, and murder.)

This absence of political competence in the Arab (including Palestinian) bosses, this void of understanding of civil society, is not the result of Israel’s founding, existence or policies. It is this void that underlies the poverty, repression and economic stagnation of the Arabs (including the Palestinians), not Israel. It is this void that has swallowed up Palestinians’ enterprise, creativity, ambition to modernize and progress, and any incentive to build a state. Any state-building, administrative institutions or physical infrastructure, has been suppressed (until recently) by the bosses as improvement in living conditions would be a treason and dishonor to Naqba suffering, revenge for which is their raison d’etre. It is not difficult to see why the Palestinian economy is not “viable”. (I have never understood what can be meant by a “viable” state, when somehow the presence of Jews vitiates it.) The bosses’ political incapacity makes it impossible for them to lay down their arms, sue for peace or to accept offers of a state. War substitutes for politics.

Both the Palestinians and the western Palestinianists want Naqba suffering to be evident more than they want a state to be real. I can understand the Naqba culture - though it is contemptible - being fostered by the gang bosses, as it validates their tyranny. But I am at a loss as to why it should be defended and promoted by western self-styled humanitarians and avatars of justice. The Palestinians are, after all, living in misery (most intensely in some neighboring Arab states) and martyring themselves for the cause of misery. I can only put it down to an irrational loathing of Israel, and that the satisfaction of being able to justify that loathing by pointing to Israel’s murderous criminality, is worth the sacrifice of Palestinian lives.

So, Thom, whenever I see compassion for Palestinians being used as a moral fig-leaf for the demonization of Israel, I reach for a leaf-blower. I do not believe you give a damn for Arabs, but you sure as hell hate Israel.

One further point:

“The Zionists have been adept, as a minority political movement, as a community in Palestine, and as a state, in persuading the Great Powers that their interests are served by furthering the interests of the Zionists, even in defiance of the established rules.”

Let me expose your sub-text: Jewish nationalists were clever at manipulating governments of certain nations to promote Jewish interests, even when this was wrong and against the true interests of those nations.

Do you recognize this meme and its provenance?

Thom.

C Gee

You appear to be in ignorance of what Israel is about, or to be all too willing to accept its self-serving gloss. The information that would cure you of your ignorance is in the public domain, both as regards the history of the last hundred years, and current policy.

Israel's favoured strategy is indeed to spin out the “peace process” until its annexation of occupied territories is complete.

You are contemptuous of the Palestinian leaders, but for the wrong reason. The US and Israel (with Britain) have groomed the Palestinian leaders in the West Bank to play the traditional role of a local elite in the US imperium, as in the British before. They are dressed in a little authority and allowed to enrich themselves, and in return all they need do is oppress their people. In the West Bank, the US has employed the expertise it has acquired over decades of training local stooges to torture and kill to set up “police” forces under its ultimate control. Their function is to protect Israel from the Palestinians. For the Palestinian leaders, the “peace process” is simply to provide a fig leaf of respectability for their abject surrender. Israel feels itself strong enough to deny them even this. The state they will be allowed to proclaim will comprise the ghettoes, and no more.

Popular resistance by the Palestinian people has failed. Their leaders have betrayed them. (Your contempt for these leaders is surely ungrateful: they are doing the work assigned to them, the work of thugs and gangsters.)

You tell me loftily that you challenged me to present credible strategies the Palestinians could adopt. What I am telling you is that I think there are no strategies that would do them any good.

You then assert the grandiose theory that the fault is all with the Arabs and their innate or cultural inferiority to civilised races. Your theory quickly slides into a morass of non sequiturs as, I suspect, your bigotry gets the better of you. You end with the grotesque conclusion that the six million Palestinians prefer to hug their misery to them as a badge of martyrdom and that anyone who sympathises with their plight is anti-Semitic, as is anyone who does not accept the Zionist project.

I looked for anything worthy of comment in this diatribe. I looked in vain.

As a footnote, I am surprised that you think it a myth that the acquisition of territory by military conquest is contrary to international law - but then you think interntional law to be nothing but "mythical rules".

Herzen

As the man said, hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue.

And propaganda is the tribute states pay to truth. They do what they think in their interests. They feel they have to be seen to do what is right.

It is odd to see those here who support Israel mouthing its propaganda as if it were truth and wickedness not to believe.

Even Mr. Roosevelt's admired C. Gee, who thinks himself intellectually superior in some way, parrots what denial requires.

This is not honest, but partisan.

Thom.

C. Gee
You try to choke off debate by insinuating I am an anti-Semite. Not all Jews are Zionists: not all Zionists are Jews. Your illicit and surreptitious equation of the two is unworthy of anyone seeking an honest exchange of views. It is perfectly respectable to say that the Zionists were adept in playing on the British during and after World War One, and on the Americans thereafter. Part of their success, it appears, was down to the anti-Semitism of those they lobbied, who feared an influx of immigrants from Eastern Europe and who exaggerated the power of Jews in high places. It is not obvious that it proved to be in Britain's interest to support the Zionists - it gave them trouble in a region of great strategic importance to the empire, trouble that was especially alarming in the 1930s when the intifada coincided with the rise of the Nazis and the increased threat they posed to Britain's trade routes and communications. It is not so clear that support of Israel has been harmful US interests. There are those in the US military and security establishment who say that it has. But there are also those who disagree, who for whatever reason currently form a majority. This is a legitimate subject for historical study and discussion. Your repeated resort to the allegation of anti-Semitism is a tawdry intellectually dishonest little trick.

C.Gee

Thom:

Never mind that you looked in vain in my diatribe for anything worthy of comment: your response to it provides the mother-lode! :

1. I am an ignorant bigot, unwilling to research the public domain to disabuse myself of my prejudice.

2. Israel spins out the peace process as a (very) devious, one might say Rube Goldbergesque, means to annex the occupied territories. I particularly like this idea. So, rather than send back the troops and declare sovereignty, Israel sits down in bad faith to negotiate land for peace while parking settlements on the land. That way it can be sure the Palestinian bosses will have to refuse to negotiate because land “needed” for Palestine is being stolen. But it is even better than that. According to you - and your researches in the public domain - the bosses are the stooges of the US and Israel. They collude with Israel, so the refusal to negotiate while settlements expand is part of the choreographed charade, together with Israel’s moratoria on settlement expansion and removal of settlements. A neat stalling mechanism. Sometimes Israel will make good will gestures - releasing killers from jail - to keep up the appearance that the bosses are negotiating hard and worth keeping on as bosses. The bosses are told to put them back on the job, in the interests of keeping Israel’s security as a negotiating issue. And sometimes Israel will pretend to make generous offers of a state, because the bosses need to be seen to have a political horizon for their people. But the bosses know what to do: refuse - on the pre-agreed grounds that Israel would not concede the right of return, or that the generous offer was not so generous, and it wasn’t really on the table anyway. So, one way or another, each side is seen to be fully involved in the peace process. By turns, each side looks good-faithy, or bad-faithy, and the peace process sham can be spun out for the benefit of Israel and the bosses. And while the sham continues, while Israel steals the land, it can also oppress the Palestinians through the bosses, just to keep Palestinian suffering an issue for negotiation. No hope of popular resistance. Sure, occasionally the bosses will organize spontaneous stone-throwing or self-detonation by F-11s - but, like putting murderers back to work, that too is part of the plot to keep Israel’s security as a negotiating issue. What is so disheartening, is that, despite Thom’s and others’ exposing this sham, it continues year after year. But what to do? Nothing to do. Israel is so powerful and so blood-thirsty, and has the US in thrall. (We’ve seen the illustrations: Israel represented as vampire with dripping fangs, grasping the globe with claw-like hands.)

3. There are no strategies that will do the Palestinians any good. Not a change of leadership? Booting out those Israeli-stooge bosses? Not finding true representatives of the Palestinians? Not stopping the sham of a peace process? Not replacing “land for peace” with “state for peace”? Not recognition of the Jewish state? Not the Arab states ending the state of war? Not dropping the right of return? No, no, certainly not. It is all hopeless. Israel and the US are too powerful and blood-thirsty. And although Thom’s international law would permit other nations to sanction and bomb Israel, arrest its leaders, send its population back home, return the refugees and create a UN protectorate pending Palestinian statehood, this is not being done because...? Israel has the US in thrall. That’s realism.

4. My claim that the bosses show a failure of political thinking - as do you, see 3. above - is actually a “grandiose theory that the fault is all with the Arabs and their innate or cultural inferiority to the civilised races”. Inspired interpretation, as inspired as 2.

5. My claim that the bosses prefer to leave visible the Naqba suffering leads to an (unstated) conclusion that 6 million (magic number!) Palestinians prefer to live in misery and as martyrs. Whereas you know that the bosses are just keeping the oppression and misery going on behalf of Israel. See 2.

6. My suspicion that western Palestinianists who support the bosses’ Naqba promotion do so because they are more interested in having a reason to hate Israel than in helping Palestinians out of misery, is actually a way of saying that anyone who sympathizes with their plight is anti-Semitic as is anyone who does not “accept the Zionist project [Israel]”. Another interpretive inspiration. It only awaits some evidence - collected from the public domain - of people who express sympathy with the plight of the Palestinians, present policies - even take action - to alleviate their misery, yet who do not at the same time call, implicitly or explicitly for the voluntary, or otherwise, dismantling of Israel, and do not blood-libel Zionists, and then see if I regard them as anti-Semitic. There are, of course, many such people: most Israelis, their governments, the US, US Jews, a few Brits. I do not regard them as anti-Semitic, but you might be among those who think Israel is harming the Jews (as well as the Palestinians) and so being pro-Israel is being anti-Semitic.

Thank you. We can leave it at that.

C.Gee

Honest Thom:

I “try to choke off debate by insinuating that [you] are an anti-Semite”? You crack the joke? I have debated with you at considerable length.
And I have never known even direct accusations - let alone insinuations - of anti- Semitism to choke off debate, ever. The accusation of anti-Semitism is not as hurtful as it once was, you know, not since the Zionists have shown themselves to be genocidal racists.
You accused me of being an anti-Arab bigot. I cannot see why two bigots cannot seek “an honest exchange of views”.
Sometimes people are not aware that they are anti-Semites: they need to be shown how their habits of thought reflect the anti-Jew concoctions. I regard it as my duty to point out these concoctions whenever I come across use of them, because one never knows how well educated people are, or whether they have searched in the public domain for information that will dispel the gloss they put on Jews/Zionists/Israel. But in my experience the response is pretty much what you deliver: Jews really do conspire, make trouble, manipulate, poison wells, drink blood, kill innocents...so it is not anti-Semitism to say so.
( Ironically enough, in the current prosecutions of persons for “hate speech” against Muslims, the truth of the speech is not a defense.)

As for support of Israel being in the national interest or not of the US - or Britain - foreign policy changes, perceptions of interest change. I am prepared to concede that the British promise of a Jewish National Home was soon regretted and that oil nations have the wherewithal to extort respect. It is not out of the question, though, that governments, in forming their policy with respect to Israel, are not swayed by anti-Semitic factions.

The repeated resort of anti-Semites to the accusation that the allegation is a tawdry intellectually dishonest trick is itself an even tawdrier intellectually dishonest trick - and does not deflect the allegation.

Thom.

C Gee

You have pointed out some errors on my part, and persisted in some of your own. You like to leave with a dismissive and lofty “Thank you. We can leave it at that.” or some such, but, since you came back to confirm that I am an anti-Semite, I will take it that it is worth my while commenting on what you have said.

Your first point still regrettably seems to be true. You are very well versed in the propaganda of one side, and better able than most here to bring out the substance in it. Yet you remain wilfully ignorant or wilfully silent about anything that does not conform to it.

Your second point makes an awful meal of the fact that the PA does the bidding of the US. Since Oslo, it has been Israel's premiss that occupation is too expensive and that the demographic time bomb requires it to have as few Palestinians within its jurisdiction as possible. To “send back the troops and declare sovereignty” would only work if Israel could finish the ethnic cleansing of 1947/8. Even in the good old days, it was felt that some emergency such as war would be required as pretext or cover (see the plans drawn up in the 1950s for mass expulsion). Today it would be risky. The preferred solution has been to split up the Palestinian population and confine them in enclaves or cantons or ghettoes, encourage them to police themselves (as I have described and as Rabin proposed), and carry on building “facts on the ground”. This does require a delicate balance, on occasion. Israel does not want the PA to collapse. It is the PA's job finally to accept the state Israel is willing to offer (“sometimes Israel will pretend to make generous offers of a state” - you have your moments of high comedy). Even the most repressive regimes fear popular uprising. If the “generous” offer is too derisory, the PA risks collapse, and Israel will be left again with clear responsibility for the population of the occupied territories, with no pretext for shuffling it off. As for the public domain, Rabin's strategy is a matter of record, Barak's strategy is documented in detail, Dov Weisglas explained what Sharon and Olmert were about, and Livni has provided a recap on how “facts on the ground” work. This is a small, a very small, sample from the documentation you playfully ignore.

Your third point starts badly and gets worse. “Change of leadership”. It is not so easy to oust the “stooge bosses”. The US has made clear that any change would cause it to withdraw all funding. The PA and the people depend on foreign aid. Elect anyone the US disapproves of and the siege will be tightened. “Stop the sham peace process.” Likewise. The people would simply be left in their ghettoes. Give up their claim on their land and accept a state instead. Likewise. The “state” on offer is the ghettoes, perhaps with a rise in living standards for a few. “Recognise the Jewish state.” What is at stake here? Are they not just to recognise Israel, which they do, but also make a public avowal of support for Zionism? Are they required to say that they accept that it was okay to expel them to ensure a Jewish majority, so that Israel could call itself a “democracy”, ethnic, religious, whatever, but still a “democracy”? Why? (- And yet it turns out that the “stooge bosses” have offered to do just that, assuming the documents prove genuine). “Arab states end the state of war”. The Arab states have made perfectly credible proposals to establish normal diplomatic relations. They require more than the ghettoes. “Drop the right of return”. I would have thought that only the refugees can do that, not the PA which, as I understand it, does not represent them (although technically it doesn't represent anyone). In practice of course, the stooge bosses can – indeed it appears they have (again, if the documents prove genuine).

You then descend to comments that dent your credibility. “Thom’s international law would permit other nations to sanction and bomb Israel, arrest its leaders, send its population back home, return the refugees and create a UN protectorate pending Palestinian statehood...” This is not warranted by anything I have said. It is complete fabrication.

Your fourth point is correct. I misread one sentence out of context. I was mistaken. You do not express any prejudice against Arabs in general. You do not express the opinion that they are innately or culturally inferior. I apologise.

Your fifth point is wrong: “Both the Palestinians and the western Palestinianists want Naqba suffering to be evident more than they want a state to be real. I can understand the Naqba culture - though it is contemptible - being fostered by the gang bosses, as it validates their tyranny...” The bosses may foster it, but they foster what the people feel, according to you.

Your sixth point, as I understand it, is that there are two sorts who sympathise with the Palestinians and their plight. There are those Naqba junkies who really simply hate Israel and use the Palestinians to get at Israel. Am I wrong that you frequently equate such hatred of Israel with anti-Semitism? But what I missed was the other sort of sympathiser. I have some excuse in that you did not mention them. These sympathisers are the people of Israel and their government, the US government and US Jewry, and some in Britain. These clearly are not anti-Semitic. And their tears of sympathy are not all of the crocodile variety. I'm sure many Israelis want Palestinians to live peaceful prosperous lives and think that regrettably it is entirely their own fault that they do not, and that regrettably Israel will have to persist with its policies (which inflict the suffering they sympathise with, although admittedly the suffering is carefully calibrated) until they see reason and accept...their ghettoes.

You sign off, and then return to the fray.

You are right to say that “choke off” is not apt. You attempt to win the argument by assigning shameful motives. If I criticise Israel, it is anti-Semitism, so the criticism requires no serious consideration, it is contemptible.

Again, you smuggle in the equation of Zionists with Jews.

You say the accusation is not as hurtful as it once was. What is less hurtful than exasperating or simply tasteless and irresponsible is its use as a way to deflect or defuse criticism of Israel.

You are right to tell me off for also descending to name-calling. Nothing you said here warranted it. And previous remarks on Arabs and Islam are not to be taken into consideration.

You say some are unconscious anti-Semites and it is your duty to provide the therapy that uncovers the hidden evil. Maybe so. But then you make the illegitimate move of saying the unconscious evil is “ the gloss they put on Jews/Zionists/Israel”. This is to use the charge of anti-Semitism for political ends. “Jews really do conspire, make trouble, manipulate, poison wells, drink blood, kill innocents...” There are those who think this. There are those who equate Israel with the Jews (and not just Zionists but anti-Semites too). This is good reason to be on guard. It is not good reason to charge everyone simply on the grounds that they criticise Israel's treatment of the Palestinians.

Your comments on the history of relations between Zionists and the British and American governments seems to me to blur different periods.

Those in British politics who furthered the Zionist did so for a variety of reasons. Some were genuine protestant Zionists. Some were Jewish Zionists. Some thought Zionism offered a way to divert immigrants from Eastern Europe. Some thought a strong Zionist state would provide an effective police force for Suez. The Zionists were adept at using this to their own ends. There is nothing controversial in this. And the Zionists were then a very small minority within the Jewish community. It is possible to criticise their project without the slightest trace of anti-Semitism.

Britain gave conflicting undertakings to the Zionists and to the local population of what it called Palestine. There was unsurprisingly some zig-zagging in its administration. On the whole, it facilitated the establishment of a flourishing Zionist community with what looked like a proto-government. The intifada of the 1930s it brutally suppressed (as it would any uprising in its colonies), but the intifada confirmed that its administration of the Mandate had endangered its strategic position instead of strengthening it, not just in Suez, but in the increasingly important oil fields, where it had to work hard to maintain pliant regimes. When Britain made a clumsy attempt to redress the balance between the Zionists and the Palestinians, the Zionists ended up taking up arms against it. So I think it is fair to say that the Zionists were adept at getting what they wanted from the British after the War and during the Mandate (although it was not always easy, by any means), but had to resort to other means when Britain saw its strategic interests requiring a different policy. None of this has any anti-Semitic overtones or undertones. A similarly mixed story could be told of Zionist relations with the US, again with nothing anti-Semitic about it.

You finish with, “The repeated resort of anti-Semites to the accusation that the allegation is a tawdry intellectually dishonest trick is itself an even tawdrier intellectually dishonest trick - and does not deflect the allegation.” If an anti-Semite were to use the accusation, it no doubt would be tawdry. But this is not at all to the point. You are not debating with an anti-Semite.