Does the BBC view Israel's existence as a legitimate 'grievance'?

Bernard

I take it that does the BBC view Israel's existence as a grievance is a legitimate rethorical question? Meantime, stop accepting the Arab narrative and refering to Nakba. It's Independence Day to the only democracy in the ME.

M.Fishburn

Unsurprisingly the BBC misreported the deliberate incursions over Israel's borders. However, as Melanie points out, the standard of journalism was well below its usual level. Jeremy Bowen just cooked up a quick comment basically, with little or no insight. SKY unfortunately used a superficial report from their Dominic Waghorn who is also a known paliphile.

Did anyone see film footage - shown on Israel public TV - of the Druze Arabs in Madj al Shams on the Syrian border trying to persuade the invading Syrians to go back to where they came from????

graham matthews

You write as someone surprised by the miss-information pedalled in the media – surely not, I have always regarded you as being ‘in-tune’.

First let’s get back to the main agenda of the middle-east the drawing of lines on maps – borders.
The British were the draughtsmen and women – drawn in an age when the Empire or what was left of the Empire, puffed-up the chests and swollen heads of the rulers. Remember the sixties – I was too young to really swing with them, but I do remember the outrages expressed by the U.N. and others of the expansion of borders at the time.

All debate regards the middle-east must address the fundamental question – in whose interests and by what right were lines put onto maps and when armed force imposed their own expansion, as happened in the sixties, why has the wrong not been corrected?

Graham Matthews
Gower

tiki

Stupid me, I always thought that 'journalists are there to report the FACTS, not to ventilate their own personal opinion, or to change the opinion of others.
It seems that this 'fact hasn't reached Mr. Bowen, his bosses and many of his colleagues.
Free speech & freedom of the press is a 'very, very valuable asset, but 'plotting, scheming and blurring facts is not a part of the 'job discription for a journalist.
Instead of complaining, suit them for libel! It's about time, the've crossed their tenability date and start to smell.

Tom UK

this is the most blatent peace of isreail propaganda iv heard.
they were protesters , protesting for the right of return after being forced from there land over 60 years ago

aelle

In the hostilities that ensued following Israel's unilateral declaration of an Independent Jewish State of Israel in an undefined area of Palestine, in the vacuum created by British withdrawal in the face of repeated acts of terrorism by Zionist militia, about three quarters of a million Arab Palestinians - Muslim and Christian alike - were expelled or fled their homes and the vast majority were barred by the new democratic State of Israel from the right of return to the areas where they , their families and their ancestors had lived in peace for centuries.

Over sixty years later these people still have no fully recognised state and are still being shot dead whenever they have the temerity to protest - somehow I fail to see the recent events as a military assault and an existential threat to the nuclear-armed State of Israel.

The Nakba is not regarded as a catastrophe because of what did not happen to the Jews - as Ms Phillips well knows - but because of what did happen to the Arabs of Palestine.

Perhaps if greater efforts had been made over the past sixty years to recognise the legitimate grievances and aspirations of these displaced people instead of leaving them to fester in squalid conditions, subject to disproportionate military repression, there might have been a more ' civilised ' response from a people who had done nothing to justify their land being taken from them.

If that had happened in England - as the Nazis envisioned - I would have regarded it as a catastrophe - and I would, I hope, have resisted and protested.

mark

I heard John Humphreys' interview with a palestinian representative then with someone form the Israeli government.

He challenged both of them, to the extent that the palestinian ended up sounding a total arse, unable to explain how peaceful demonstrators roll up with baseball bats and try and break accross the border whereas the Israeli was able to refute the counterpoints Humphreys made about a disproportionate response calmly and logically. So BBC interviews both parties, challenges both parties and I'm able to form a view based on each sides capacity to put forward a rational and well argued viewpoint. In this instance 1-0 to Israel.

Okey

But it's been an open secret for many years that the BBC is an Arab organ.

Victory

The truth

Victory

http://www.facebook.com/pages/ISRAEL-FACTS-AND-TRUTH/189604471081701

Here are the facts - for those who want to know

Rivkah Entin

The BBC should stop misrepresenting facts about Israel. The masses deserve accurate and truthful reporting of this dynamic event. Supporting a stateless people and continuing to buy into and report their lies is a direct affront to Israel. Please strive to maintain your repution as a reliable source of information to your public viewers and listeners.

Paul

@Tom UK
As long as the 1 million Jews expelled forcibly from Arab countries can also return. But that wont happen.

Celato

Melanie:

The most likely reason the updated Jerusalem Post story stopped referring to an eye-witness's claim that the driver shouted "Allahu Akba" and "Death to Jews" was that it lacked all credibility.

Even the Ynet report struggles to maintain the "terror attack" narrative (despite valiant efforts to do so and retention of the phrase in its headline).

1. According to Ynet, initial police findings suggest that the "attack" (!!) was "not premeditated and that [the driver] was not tasked to perform it by any individual or organization".

2. The driver apparently told police one of his tyres had blown and he lost control of the truck. (Never mind that, Ynet still prefers to describe the incident as a "rampage" and an "attack".)

3. The driver, we learn, has "no known criminal record and had never been involved in any events of a criminal or nationalistic nature". (Oh dear, Ynet, story unravelling at every turn, isn't it...)

4. Even the eye-witness doesn't seem 100% sure what the driver shouted: "A young man came off the truck ... and yelled WHAT SOUNDED LIKE 'Allahu Akba'". (My capitals, and NB, no mention of "Death to Jews" in this account.)

So what's left in this tragedy to "connect" it to Nabka? Ah, yes - the one thing everyone seems pretty sure about is that a group of people in the street were chanting "Death to the Arabs".

2.

Zeilig

Israel will always trade land for real peace with a legitimate government. Until the Palestinians realise this simple fact, I wish them and their accolytes a happy nakba day, and may they enjoy many more.

raymond d

Yes,i listened to some Bowen piece this morning on five . I complained to the BBC about some earlier Bowen piece for the same station. But to no avail. Bowen goes on and on , a clear message from the BBC that it cares nothing for impartiality when it comes to Israel.

RCE

The BBC works on the Orwellian premise that whatever Bowen says is true, just by the fact that he says it.

Like the propagandist he is, he sees this as the green light to spout anything he wants, because, after all, if he says it, it must be true. The circle is complete.

Anyone with half a brain, however, knows that the man is a liar.

L Knight

The Palestinians protesting the Nakba were not so much aggrieved at the founding of the State of Israel, so much as at the mass expropriation of Palestinians that went with it. Indeed, if Israel applied the same standards of land restitution to the Palestinians as Jewish lobby groups demand in respect of Nazi expropriations, the State of Israel would de facto cease to exist. The reason protestors stormed the border is because they wanted to assert their right of return. Many were bearing keys to properties stole from their families.

As for the idea that Syria, amidst a violent crackdown on its own popular uprising, is capable of organising tens of thousands of protestors at the Israeli border - might not a simpler explanation be that people went there out of their own volition and sense of historic grievance.

As will become ever clearer over the coming months, Israel's root problem is not a security one, but a legitimacy one. Until Israel recognises the rights of Palestinians, and makes good for historical grievances, its existance will remain illegitimate in the eyes of the Arab people (regardless of what Arab rulers may say), and it will never enjoy true security.

Shaun Harbord

"Once again -- can anyone explain why the British licence-fee payer is having to subsidise this atrocious misreporting?" Probably for the same reasons that as a licence fee payer I am happy for you to appear on the Moral Maze - a diversity of opinion and perspective is essential, even though I think what you say is nonsense..

N"L from Israel

@Celato:
Yes, A tyre had blown and the driver kept driving on full speed for 2000 meters slamming cars and people till it hit a bus (which was not on it's way). As the song says:"You believe in this, you believe in anything"
This is a plain area, just need to break and stop
which will take 200-300 meters at most-if the driver wants to stop. Blown tyre does not cripple
the breaks.
Add to this the recorded call to the police, made by a young woman asking for help,
in which you can hear -in real time- shouting on the driver
and then her crying when he hits her on her head with the post of a smashed traffic light-and you can understand that your claims do not hold water.
The fact that this is his first terror attack
and he has no previous record does not mean anything, we had many such cases before.

Andre

Aelle
Local Arabs did indeed flee – but the violence they were feeing was that caused buy the invasion of Israel the morning of independence by five other fully mechanised Arab armies. The idea was to go back once the war was over and the Jews had been pushed back into the sea. Trouble is they, the Arabs, lost and have gone on losing.
It is incorrect to say Palestinians had lived their for centuries in the area. So called Palestinians immigrated from more populous regions nearby attracted by the Jewish economic engine that got going in the nineteenth century. This land was pretty much empty then, the deserts brown and farm areas like Yizreel just so much swamp. They also have a fully fledged recognised state. Palestinians living in Jordan are offered Jordanian citizenship. Israel as you well know pulled out of Gaza. Israel needs secure frontiers to exist. What Hamas and Fatah protest is the actual right of Israel to exist. Hard, I am sure you will agree, to feel sympathy for political movements that want to finish of what Hitler began.
Israel has been more than ready to reach a peace deal with the Arabs – its has peace treaties with Jordan and Egypt and had one with Lebanon before the Christian majority government was ousted and the new Muslim one tore it up. However the local Arabs thwarted peace at every turn. Israel has given up land for peace – Sinai, Taba, Gaza and what thanks does she get? Even so Israel continues to treat Arabs wounded in the fighting. Why? Because Israel is a western, caring, democracy; a free society where the colour of a man’s skin or his religion does not matter whether on the hospital bed or on the street outside. Israel simply wants peace and survival as a Jewish state. Not much to ask for in your original homeland.

Gershon

@aelle May 16th, 2011 12:36pm

"In the hostilities that ensued following Israel's unilateral declaration of an Independent Jewish State of Israel in an undefined area of Palestine, in the vacuum created by British withdrawal in the face of repeated acts of terrorism by Zionist militia, about three quarters of a million Arab Palestinians - Muslim and Christian alike - were expelled or fled their homes and the vast majority were barred by the new democratic State of Israel from the right of return to the areas where they , their families and their ancestors had lived in peace for centuries."

I suggest that you learn some history before you comment. In 1948, the vast majority of the Arab population of Palestine had been there no more than 75 years.

O-Dog

Mel, a modicum of sympathy to the plight of the homeless refugees and the stateless Pals is the minimum requirement from Israel's supporters if there is to be any hope of peace. Denial that the Pal people suffered dispossession in the creation of Israel is frankly untrue and unhelpful.

Steve Mann

Let the BBC produce the Michael Balen report -After all they commissioned it- the tax payer paid for it- Its meant to show that the BBC is impartial regarding ME reporting! So what do you think?

Celato

N"L from Israel:

You seem to have a lot of very precise details about the Tel Aviv incident. Perhaps you were there? Or maybe you're a forensic expert of some sort?

Either way, I suggest you have a word with the police handling the case - because it was THEY who cast doubt on the "terror attack" theory. (Presumably officers at the scene didn't understand the dynamics of burst-tyre-braking-distance, or failed to interview witnesses properly, etc, which is truly disgraceful.)

Anyway... until you put the cops straight on this, I still think the most responsible course for journalists to take is not to rush to judgements of their own but wait for all the facts to be known and evidence sifted. That way, they (and consequently their audiences) don't run the risk of defaming an innocent man in the worst possible way.

Neil Craig

I was unsurprised that the BBC would put this as second item on their "news" and the far greater number being killed by Syria daily, nowhere. Looks like organising this worked for Syria. I thought you might mention it Melanie.

The answer to your question is that nobody should pay for it. The BBC Charter requires them to show balance and since they have broken this on many many issues have lost their rights under it.

Moreover the Human Rights Act, in reserving the right of freedom of speech means that nobody whose views do not get proportionate or factual coverage (ie anybody who supports Israel, UKIP, the BNP, doubts we are experiencing catastrophic warming, that the EU is wonderful, that windmills aren't, that the state should be less than 50% of the economy, that we are not destroying the environment or that the answer to evety question isn't more rules and bureaucrats) has no legal obligation to pay for this propaganda.

Derek BLADES

@ Gershon

Aelle wrote "about three quarters of a million Arab Palestinians - Muslim and Christian alike - were expelled or fled their homes and the vast majority were barred by the new democratic State of Israel from the right of return …." Aelle here identifies the nub of the issue.

I am currently working in Ethiopia but when I return to my home in Paris I will be more than a little miffed if I find that the French government has confiscated my property. If we can put ourselves into the shoes of the evicted Palestinians and their children we will understand what this dispute is about - land.

I respect your knowledge of the last century’s history of the Middle East but, frankly, it is ancient history in the worst sense. Israel's existence does not depend on opposing guesses about what Balfour, Clemenceau, Sevres, San Remo, and the League of Nations may or may not have said or meant to say.

Israel's existence requires acceptance of the fact that it is regarded as a pariah nation in the Middle East and, increasingly, in Europe and America.

Time to negotiate. But seriously - and not hypocritical play-acting by Netanyahu. That, incidentally, is the mesaage that David Cameron tried to get across to Netanyahu on his last visit to London. Obama and Clinton likewise. They also understand what is at issue here.

Freedomlover

What BBC/Bowen does NOT want us to know - PA/PLO/Fata/Abbas/Fayyad had no trouble unititing with the openly genocidal Hamas because it is steathily genocidal. SEE Palestinian Media Watch web site for what passes as "mainstream" Team PA/Abbas curriculum and Political/media rhetoric. It is NO different that this Hamas statement below:

http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=386651

Hamas: Recognizin​g Israel jeopardize​s our right to destroy Israel later

Published yesterday (updated) 11/05/2011 18:54

BETHLEHEM (Ma'an) -- Hamas will accept a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders, but will maintain its refusal to recognize Israel, party leader Mahmoud Az-Zahhar said Wednesday.

Speaking with Ma'an radio, the official said that Hamas was ready to recognize a Palestinian state "on any part of Palestine," for the first time publicly steering away from prior Hamas demands that the modern Palestinian state must be established "from the [Jordan] river to the [Mediterranean] sea."

Az-Zahhar also said, however, that a formal recognition of Israel would "cancel the right of the next generations to liberate the lands."

The Hamas leader said that recognizing Israel would jeopardize the right of return for Palestinian refugees who have been exiled from the land since 1948 when Israel was recognized by the United Nations.

If only Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza are considered citizens of a Palestinian state, he continued, "what will be the fate of the five million Palestinians in the diaspora?"

At the same time, the Hamas leader confirmed the decision reached with Fatah to maintain the truce with Israel, calling the move "part of the resistance, not a cancellation," and noting that "truce is not peace."

Freedomlover

One of the biggest of the "big lies" told about Israel is "Jews stole the land". Since no one reading this blog want to be a "big liar", here is the truth:

History, archeology, comparative religion tells us clearly that Israel has been the home of the Jewish people, and Jerusalem her capitol for 3000 years, beginning 2000 years BEFORE the advent of Islam. Jerusalem has never, EVER been the capitol of ANY Arab/Islamic/Palestinian entity.

In 1922, after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, decades BEFORE the Holocaust, the world decided, based on historical and archeological evidence, that the entire Jewish homeland is to be returned to the Jewish people after 2000 years of illegal rule by others.

Why no peace today? The supremacist ideology of the Palestinians as manifested in their (all factions) founding documents, political and media rhetoric and curriculum. Only when the Palestinians abandon jihadism for ecuminism, will there be a safe and permanent peace.

One short book (100 pages) to recommend to all: "History Upside Down, the Roots of Palestinian Fascism and the Myth of Israeli Aggression", by David Meir-Levi.

This will wake up all to the extent of BBC/Bowen distortions, deceptions and dissembling (lying) in its "reporting" - sadly, with our license fee support.

Matt

Of course "Celato" knows far more about an incident that occurred in a city 2,000 miles away than someone who actually lives there!

The rudeness and bloody-minded arrogance of some people that post here is mind boggling.

Bowen's dumbed down reports from Israel only tell a fraction of the story, always, and they always favour Israel's enemies' narrative.

Anne K

The Daily Telegraph was hardly better than the BBC. I was very shocked, though perhaps I shouldn't be, because lately their reporting on Israel has become very anti-Israel. Their report on yesterday's riots was headlined "Israel attacks Palestinian border protests" giving no context at all.

HarleyDavidson

Over here in North America this is normally referred to as swarming. Which is taken from large groups of teenagers ganging up and swarming either people on the street or businesses. Usually resulting in violence and stolen property.

This was SWARMING by the Arabs. Of course we must forget the 700
Syrian civilians murdered by the Syrian thug dictatorship. Naturally, the joy of living under Hamas rule in Gaza and the truly brilliant civilization in Lebanon under Hezbollah. Who wouldn't want to live in that paradise?

Then you gotta admire Ahmadinejad and his cronies. Where do you find the time between hunting for witches, the 12th Imam, destroying Israel, and building nukes?

Now, let me get this straight - the BBC, the Brit truth and brilliance channel, has a meltdown for 12 death swarming Arabs and 700 dead Syrians, and the rest of the Middle East going up in flames? And you guys actually pay for this?

Lol!

Matt

@O-Dog

"Mel, a modicum of sympathy to the plight of the homeless refugees and the stateless Pals is the minimum requirement from Israel's supporters if there is to be any hope of peace. Denial that the Pal people suffered dispossession in the creation of Israel is frankly untrue and unhelpful."

Considering that most of those people were made refugees after five Arab nations tried to invade Israel, whose responsibility do you think that is? In Israel those refugees have semi-autonomous status and comparative freedom of movement. Do you know what conditions are like for the ones that live in Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Jordan? Have you ever bothered to look into it? I doubt it. Oh and you could check out Kuwait too - oh wait, no Palestinians there, they were all forcibly kicked out of the country in the 90s after they supported Saddam's forces following the invasion.

The conditions in which those people live is disgusting. They have been deliberately kept in squalor for sixty years to maintain a political grievance against Israel.

As it happens I DO feel sorry for them. But there are a lot of peoples around the world more deserving of sympathy (and don't get heard because they don't go around blowing up school buses etc) and unlike you I don't blame Israel for their plight but the Arab nations that started this whole mess and continue to exploit their situation. It's disgusting. What's more disgusting is that people in the UK continue to make excuses for them and BLAME THE JEWS.

ahad ha'amoratsim

TomUK, your recitals are about as accurate as your orthography.

A. Libertarian

All I 'learned' from the BBC television news coverage yesterday was that the 'demonstations' were 'somehow in reaction' to Israeli independence day celebrations. It didnt ring true with me at the time of watching - and now I know why.

aelle

Gershon

Just for your information Joan Peters is not a credible academic historian.

Of course some of the Palestinian Arab population had relatively recently migrated into the region, attracted, amongst other things, by the work opportunities created by the British Mandate authorities who were developing the infrastructure of a 20th century society.

Some, on the other hand, had centuries of family tradition behind them. There is independent genetic research to support this fact. Go look it up - interestingly the conclusion is that Palestinian Arabs and Palestinian Jews are genetically remarkably similar.

But whether these people had lived in Palestine for 75 years or 750 years is not frankly the issue.

Either way they did not deserve to see their villages and homes occupied or destroyed by people,
" the vast majority of whom " were Eastern European immigrants who had been in Palestine considerably less than 75 years.

You might also consider that courtesy and respect is a two way street.

Daniel

@Andre

Thanx and spot on!

pounce

Aelle wrote:
"In the hostilities that ensued following Israel's unilateral declaration of an Independent Jewish State of Israel in an undefined area of Palestine, in the vacuum created by British withdrawal in the face of repeated acts of terrorism by Zionist militia, about three quarters of a million Arab Palestinians - Muslim and Christian alike - were expelled or fled their homes and the vast majority were barred by the new democratic State of Israel from the right of return to the areas where they , their families and their ancestors had lived in peace for centuries."

You left out how an equal (If not bigger) number of jews were kicked out of their countries by..Muslims.

If you are going to play the victimcard it helps to quote bothsides of the story.

aelle

For a real life view of what it means to be an Arab in Israel might I suggest viewing a video clip on the website +972 where Ami Kaufman shows and comments on the response by the deputy commander of the Galilee District Police to a female Arab lawyer aking him why people were being arrested.

Watch it and be proud, if you can.

John

Where is Moshe Dyan when we need him!

aelle

I attempted earlier without success to observe that after Deir Yassin and the expulsion of a substantial part of the Arab population of what is now Israel it was entirely predictable that innocent minority Jewish populations in neighbouring Arab countries would be exposed to similar treatment.

It is a process known as cause and effect.

Happily the displaced Jews had a Jewish State in which they could find sanctuary and rebuild their lives.

No such Palestinian State existed - or exists today - where the Arabs of that region could take refuge.

That is why there has been no peace and security for 60 years.

C.Gee

O-Dog:

“Mel, a modicum of sympathy to the plight of the homeless refugees and the stateless Pals is the minimum requirement from Israel's supporters if there is to be any hope of peace.”

And how would Mr. Plight like to pay for the modicum? By land or by peace? Or would you like to open a hope account? You will receive complimentary tea and gift wrapping, and a discount on your next modicum sympathy purchases. We will deliver free for bulk orders. Thank-you, Mr. Plight. Glad to have been of help. Happy Nakba.

Celato

Matt:

I know absolutely nothing about the Tel Aviv incident - and neither do you, or Melanie Phillips, or N"L from Israel. (If he/she had actually been present at the scene I'm sure he/she would have said so loud and clear.)

We only know what we've been TOLD happened - and at this moment, it's that the Israeli police say they have no evidence to suggest it was a "terror attack".

Why do you choose to disbelieve the police? Is this because you don't trust them? Or is it because every Israeli death caused by an Arab is a propaganda gift which you just can't bear to turn down?

Stewie

Lets just remember Arab collaboration with the Nazis, their anti semitic actions post WWII, the war the Arabs launched against Israel in 1948. They have abrogated any rights in this matter.
The jews are fighting for survival. The lands of the Arab peoples are more than large enough to accommodate all of them and they have the petrodollars to make all the peoples secure.

JOHN ROOSEVELT

Do the Isreal bashers here seriously think the palestinians - Hamas and the rest of the Jihadis in their midst included, will even accept a state of israel if the even 6million so-called Palestinian refugees are allowed to return to the homes they all hold the keys to?

Are they havin' a laugh?

The bottom line is a simple one: the Palestinian leadership and the overwhelming majority of Arabs and Muslims not only want israel gone but also all Jews in the Middle East.

The twaddlemeisters can win all the propaganda hands they want, it wont alter the fact that the fundamental truth that this is a zero sum conflict is a recipe not only for future war, but a likely nuclear confrontation.

Frankly, I hope fervently that israel has a nuclear arsenal second to none and that if the Islamist maniacs, underpinned by the lib-left increasingly poisoned by their clear death wish, genuinely threaten its existence, they take the whole lot with 'em with a grand "yeehaa!", and we can then see who cavorts with virgins or angels and who rots in hell.

Emet

Gershon
May 16th, 2011 4:00pm

Try this http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1986/jan/16/mrs-peterss-palestine/
In a review of "From Time Immemorial", by Joan Peters, and a reply to a reader's letter, Yehoshua Porath deals with the "No Palestinians in Palestine" issue. There were 400,000 Arabs in Palestine in 1850. Porath cites the work of Professor A. Rupin. "We do have plausible estimates of the population in Palestine in the very thorough analysis by A. Ruppin of the economy and society of Syria and Palestine on the eve of World War I (Syrien Als Wirtschaftsgebiet, Berlin, 1917 and 1920). Professor Ruppin was an outstanding demographer and sociologist and the head of the Palestine Office of the World Zionist Organization in Palestine. No one could accuse him of superficial work or of anti-Zionist bias. His figure for the population of all Palestine (the three districts of Acre, Nablus, and Jerusalem) is 689,275, as against 425,802 in the 1893 Ottoman census, the number presented in Karpat’s article. Ruppin and all other Jewish sources I am aware of agree that the number of Jews living in Palestine just before World War I was between 80,000 and 85,000.2 That makes the number of non-Jews living in Palestine a little more 600,000, as against the Ottoman census figure of about 415,000." http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1986/mar/27/mrs-peterss-palestine-an-exchange/?page=2

There was internal migration from inland to coastals areas to take advantage of economic activity generated by the British, but no immigration, according to Porath.

Iqbal H

aelle

Just for your information (I'm quoting you) your views and conclusions are no more credible than those of Joan Peters. Much less so, in fact.

sleeping dolls

aelle; thank you for the link.

A senior police officer who acts like a thug, and hits a female lawyer for asking questions.

Does this kind of thing happen often in Israel? Will the officer be held to account for his actions?

This is certainly a rather different image of Zionism than that presented in those nice posters we saw a little while ago.

jon

' The trigger for this attempted invasion, which appears to have been organised by Syria and Iran, was ‘Nakba day’ '

it's the ways she tell's them that has us laughing

Augustus

This is typical of the BBC giving the distinct impression of moral equivalence with what's happening elsewhere in the Middle East: That just as Syria and Libya attack peaceful protesters, so does Israel.
Which, no doubt, is exactly the impression
Assad was hoping for. No matter that thousands of Syrians were crossing a hostile border en masse in a violent protest
permitted, if not organized, by the Syrian government, tearing down fences and hurling rocks. These so-called protesters weren't
Palestinians living in the Palestinian territories or East Jerusalem, or the Golan Heights, they were Syrians, even if they were waving Palestinian flags. The people storming the electric fence, the sabotaging of it, the mass crossing of it, the masses throwing stones at the IMF, were not mere protesters rallying against an exodus of Arabs out of Israel sixty-odd years ago, they were a mass group of youths exploited by the old brotherhood. Remember: 'Allah is our objective, the Prophet is our leader, the Koran is our law, jihad is our way, and dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope. Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar!'

Adam B.

sleeping dolls
You should know aelle has called north London "occupied territory".

Comfortable with that?

J D Bryan

This is getting very scary. Lovers of freedom must stand up for Israel and by extension the west.

J D Bryan

Tom UK, your dismissal of Israel‘s case; the only liberal democracy in the region can only help those forces in this region who reject liberal democracy. Yet, I assume you support liberal democracy. That is endorse: freedom of expression, free and fair elections, respect for human rights, etc.(though imperfect in practice).

Specifically, if your lament is the failure of the Palestinians getting their own state, obviously a just cause, nonetheless, by denouncing, or blaming Israel you give succour to those who hate Israel (and us, including you, as lovers of liberal democracy) who also wish for a Palestinian state but a fascist type, like the Hamas regime in Gaza.

A further consideration. Hitler wanted Germany free from the constraints of Versailles, hardly a terrible cause, but who today would thus support Hitler, the racist who also hated liberal democracy even more than communism?

Would you?

Melanie's work is always intellectual. By no stretch of the imagination can she be described as a propagandist - cynically putting a case with no regard for truth.

Nadav Jacoby

The BBC biased reporting on Israel is well known.

Question is different - How can we, the British public who technically funds the BBC, force them to change direction.
Surely if we fund them we must have a say, we need to start demanding and threat with legal action.

Mind you also, if we manage to force the BBC to report accurately from now on, some of the western media as a whole will have to change direction.

Emet

Gershon

I should have noted Porath's point that Arabs were increasing in number because of improvements in their conditions of life, not immigration.

Okey

LKnight, here is a small detail that might have escaped your attention: a few days before the Arab riots on the Golan Heights, a senior member of the Syrian ruling junta declared that if stability were not restored in Syria (i.e., if the Syrian protesters against the Assad regime did not cave in to their tyrant,) there would be no stability for Israel either. The US government had belatedly begun to voice objections to the Syrian junta's crackdown.
The US dreads any violent confrontations between the Arab world and Israel since it believes that they jeopardise America's oil interests.
So what better leverage on the USA to cease its criticism of the Syrian massacres than to demonstrate that Syria is capable of further destabilising the Middle East.
As for your version of history regarding the Arab refugees, it's pure (actually, impure) fiction, fiction, fiction.

Read J.B. Schechtman, 'The Origins of the Arab Refugee Problem,' or Ron Gabbay's book with similar title. They are chock full of contemporaneous candid admissions by Arabs from all over the region, from all social and educational strata, that it was THEIR OWN "leaders" who led them into their .

The dominant culture in the Arab world regarding Israel is that the Jews, being an inferior race,("the offspring of pigs and monkeys" in their parlance), must never be allowed to constitute a majority in any polity where Muslims also reside.
Israel needs "an iron wall" to resist this racist ideology and its violent physical manifestations.
And the Jewish People need "an antidote wall" of truth to resist the mendacious venom of the jihadist-leftist alliance.

Jerry

aelle wrote, "Either way they did not deserve to see their villages and homes occupied or destroyed by people"

It is the Muslim Ummah (nation) that is responsible for the miserable fate of the Palestinian refugees. There is no example one can cite of a functioning Arab nation that has permitted the normalization of the lives of the refugees from Palestine. Libya, Kuwait, and Iraq have all expelled their Palestinian guests even if they had lived there for more than 30 years. The measure of the Arabs and Egyptians is their use of their fellow Muslims as eternal victims of Israel to justify their eternal enmity toward the Jews and Israel. Anyone who justifies the "right of return" seeks the dissolution of Israel - no different from the goal of the Nazis of the 1930s.

Here is a link to an article from the Elder of Ziyon blog that will summarize the treatment of the Palestinians at the hands of their brethren. I hope you have the personal strength to read something that opposes your affectionately held views.

http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2011/05/arab-apartheid-ben-dror-yemini-must.html

C.Gee

“I attempted earlier without success to observe that after Deir Yassin and the expulsion of a substantial part of the Arab population of what is now Israel it was entirely predictable that innocent minority Jewish populations in neighbouring Arab countries would be exposed to similar treatment... It is a process known as cause and effect.”

Aelle, this truly is ignorant rubbish. As the record of the Arab nations’ treatment of Jews in the years preceding the War of Independence is easily obtainable, I will assume that this is the story you have chosen to believe (why?) and to proselytise. It must give you a moral frisson.

“Happily the displaced Jews had a Jewish State in which they could find sanctuary and rebuild their lives.”

“Happily”? But those Arabs were trying, predictably, to destroy that sanctuary. That is why their Arab brethren were displaced from Palestine. Cause and effect. The Arab countries had never wanted a “sanctuary” for the Jews. In order to thwart the Homeland for Jews - decades before the war of independence - they passed laws forbidding Jews to emigrate. (This did not stop them from exercising their sovereign rights to carry out pogroms against their captive Jewish population.) And only a few years before the war of independence, the Mufti was colluding with Hitler to bring nazi extermination to the Jews of Palestine. The protectors of the Arabs (the British), did not allow sanctuary in the Homeland for European Jews at the time they needed it most. Cause and effect. Had not the Jews declared and fought for their state there would have been no Jewish sanctuary for Arab Jews as there had been none for European Jews. Cause and effect.

“No such Palestinian State existed - or exists today - where the Arabs of that region could take refuge.”

But there were many Arab states. And there was a Palestinian State: Jordan - which attacked Israel “on behalf” of the Arabs in the region. Upon taking the West Bank (with British help), and exerting sovereignty over the people, Jordan did not create a “sanctuary” for his people on that side of the Jordan, although they were identical to the Arabs of Transjordan in language and culture, over whom he ruled (thanks to Britain). No citizenship. Squalor. Discrimination. Poverty. Plight. Cause and effect.

The Arabs nations acted then, and now, with inhumanity towards each other, Arab refugees, Jews and their own populations. That is why there has been no peace and security for 60 years. Cause and effect.

Penny

Aelle

"For a real life view of what it means to be an Arab in Israel..."

You speak as if you are a ‘real life’ authority on the matter – might I ask if you have actually visited Israel and talked to a cross-section of Arab society in order to find out what life is like for them?

Might I also suggest you examine what appears to be blind prejudice insofar as you castigate one nation whilst failing to notice that your own back garden could do with some maintenance?

If you examine Israel honestly and without bias you will find that there are Israeli Arabs in all walks of life. Some are doctors, teachers, actors, journalists and singers - indeed, Mira Awad represented Israel in the 2009 Eurovision song contest and Khaled Abu Toameh is a highly respected journalist both in Israel and beyond.

If you cared to take an honest look you would find that some Arabs occupy some very important positions - like those of Supreme Court judge, MP... and President of Israel.

Of course, you'll find the ordinary guys like my friend Ibrahim who owns a shop in Jerusalem. Or Ali, who takes tourists to Petra. Or yet another Ali who owns a taxi. You’ll find excellent Arab restaurants in Israel – and you'll find the odd McDonald's exclusively managed by Israeli Arabs. In short, Arabs occupy varied positions in all walks of life. The same is true of the UK's minority groups.

Do you find poverty amongst Israeli Arabs? For sure. Do you find Israeli Arabs that hate the state of Israel? Yes. Do you find prejudice against Israeli Arabs? Again, yes. But you find these things here in the UK, too.

We have people living in doorways and eating out of bins. We have both inner cities and relatively rural areas where there is deprivation and people living below the poverty line. We have people evicted from their homes. In all the above examples some will be from minority groups. Oh, and as a one-time local councillor I can assure you that our planning laws can and do bulldoze illegal buildings. The difference is that for some unknown reason, Jeremy Bowen seems completely disinterested in these cases! Unlike Israel, instances of perfectly legal eviction or bulldozing in the UK fail to make our national news programs. I know….it’s a mystery!

We have had unhappy times in which the police have been accused of brutality, corruption and even manslaughter. If you remember the Stephen Lawrence case, the inquiry headed by Sir William MacPherson concluded that the Met police were, at the time, "institutionally racist”. 'Stop and Search’ strategies have often upset minority groups who believe they are unfairly targeted.

Does all this mean that Britain is uniquely evil, intolerant and hateful towards its minority groups? That is self-evidently not the case. Britain is a fair and decent society that tries hard to accommodate all who live here. But, like every Western democracy it has had its share of problems. And, to be fair, it has its share of people who accuse it of evils and prejudice that either exist only in their minds, have sometimes been invented, exaggerated or have arisen because some feel upset by British foreign policy.

We have anti-racist laws not because we're free of prejudice but because every society has problems with racism and prejudice.

Let's not forget that we have members of our own society - members of a minority group - that hate us. Some of whom would, and indeed have, gone so far as to blow us up. I believe the police are currently watching some 2,000 potential terrorists who would do likewise if they got the chance.

A visit to YouTube would confirm that members of our own British minority groups have protested against us in London. They’ve carried placards bearing slogans such as “Bomb, bomb UK, UK you will pay” whilst chanting these words over a megaphone. We have to live with the embarrassing fact that not only do we have this problem on our own shores but we have allowed it to grow and exported it elsewhere. But again, do these people represent every member of that minority group? Do their actions and beliefs mean that Britain is evil and oppressive because some individuals behave like this? I would say not. I trust you will agree with me here and also when I say that if Israelis were claiming that Anjem Choudary is representative of all British muslims we'd have cause to be quite upset. If they supported his views and actions we'd be even more upset. And if you do agree with me on these points then you cannot possibly maintain that the problem of hatred towards ones country by a small number of its minorities is unique to Israel. Nor does it mean that this hatred is completely justified. I trust you would have no issue with anyone who believes that it is unfair to take the most extreme example of a minority group and claim his/her views are standard.

Another small point: There are people who become very shrill about Israeli checkpoints but who submit without question to much greater invasions of privacy such as full body scans and various restrictions/searches at airports. The objectives are the same – to prevent death by terrorist activity.

Given your concern for Israeli Arabs I'd be interested to know what you are doing about our own, home-grown issues? You are very quick to condemn Israel, but I wonder, how do you support, say, the homeless or our Travelling community who, let’s face it, experience great prejudice. They are pretty much always thrown out of towns as soon as they arrive and, as a recent TV program outlined, their struggle to find venues willing to host their wedding receptions is indicative of blatant prejudice. Another recent program featured a Traveller whose home of some years was about to be bulldozed. And no, Jeremy Bowen did not take up her cause.

Look, Israel is not a copy of the old USSR - people can leave. There are two Palestinian territories a mere bus ride away from any point within Israel which would surely provide a haven for those so dreadfully oppressed by the evil Israelis. Except there doesn't appear to be that many willing to go and live under the rule of the PA or the Hamas does there? The Israeli Arab population is not fleeing in droves.

Judge Israel if you will – but don’t be so quick to condemn when we have issues here in the UK. We are not a bad country because of them. Every Western democracy has its good points and its bad points, and most share very similar problems. But we need to stop with the hypocrisy, finger-wagging and lofty positions. We just look foolish and bigoted.

TrueToo

aelle

May 16th, 2011 7:21pm,

You are a wishful thinker, picking bits and pieces out of history to suit your prejudices and then imagining you have built a case, which is in fact a house of cards built with profound ignorance.

Cause and effect? You evidently know nothing of the treatment by Arabs of Jews in Arab countries, independent of anything happening in Palestine and way before Deir Yassin, not "after" it as you suppose.

You think these Arab countries were fully justified in oppressing their Jewish citizens to the extent that they were eventually forced to flee with only the shirts on their backs? If so, you must regard the Arabs as one nation, reacting to perceived injustices by the Jews on a part of that nation in Palestine.

And this is where your house of cards comes tumbling down: if they are in fact one nation, they should have absorbed the refugees from Palestine not treated them like dirt and shoved them into camps to rely for eternity on UN aid, simply so that they could be a thorn in Israel's side.

Geraldine

With regard to the incident in Tel Aviv with the Arab truck driver, it is problematic to assert that an event was a terrorist attack if no one takes responsibility and the perpetrator denies it. The problem is very complex because there is the matter of extensive damage to property and who is responsible for paying. If it was a terrorist attack the state pays. If not, I guess it's insurance companies. Also there is the question of whether the young man that died will be defined as a victim of terrorism, a status which entails certain rights in this country. These are legal questions and they are the reason no one is rushing to call it a terrorist act before a thorough investigation has been conducted.

That said, I happened to speak to a police officer who was at the scene and who unofficially and totally off the record told me his personal opinion that this was indeed a terrorist attack.

Penny

TrueToo

I would say the following quote from Zuheir Mohsen, Military head of the PLO is a 'from the horses mouth'-type quote which illustrates even the Palestinian belief in one nation:

""The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct Palestinian people to oppose Zionism.

"For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa, while as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan."

Zuheir Mohsen
in the Dutch Newspaper 'Trouw'
March 1977

Geraldine

L Knight: "Indeed, if Israel applied the same standards of land restitution to the Palestinians as Jewish lobby groups demand in respect of Nazi expropriations, the State of Israel would de facto cease to exist."

Untrue. The Israeli treasury has a sizable fund holding monetary compensation for property owners who lost their property in 1948. When a peaceful resolution to the conflict will be arrived at, these property owners or their heirs will be compensated.

Many of the Palestinians brandishing keys in the protests are in fact descendants of property-less serfs in the feudal pre-1948 Arab society. Most of the privately owned land belonged to absentee-landlords who often threw their tenants out at whim or on selling the land.

Stephen Rothbart

Penny, brilliant reposte. And unanswerable.

Derek Blades won't have read it though as he likes all comments to be "bite-sized," which is a pity.

As for his smug remarks about how the French won't have taken his home when he returns from Ethiopia, well just two points. And, Derek, very short.

The Ethiopians expelled their Jews and dispossessed them from their homes in the 1980's and 90's and Israel had to rescue them. Or rather, did not have to, but did anyway.

Many Jews living in your lovely France, not so many years before the foundation of Israel, has their homes and lives stolen from them by the French government of that time. I am not sure what reparations the French made to their survivors if and when they returned, or if they went to other lands including Israel.

I am sure you know.

So if you are going to to sit on your cosy sofa of French contentment and complacency of French and Ethiopian life, just remember the circumstances on which it was built.

Do you live near Drancy station by any chance? Go visit and remember what the French government did there.

Not the same country anymore, you will say. No, nor is Israel, so stop comparing it with France, which I believe was "occupying" parts of Northern Africa long after the foundation of Israel.

Guy

A lot has been written on this thread about the "right of return" for Palestinians. I'd like to ask if anyone know why we don't hear about the "right of return" for any of the following population groups:

Greeks and Armenians expelled from Asia Minor in the 1920s

Germans expelled from East Prussia, Silesia and the Sudetenland just after WW2

Poles moved from the Lvow region by Stalin just after WW2

Greeks expelled from Northern Cyprus by Turkey

Georgians expelled from Abkahzia and South Ossetia in the early 1990s and 2008

I'd be very grateful to hear why we only hear about the Palestinians on this issue. Thanks!

raymond d

Blades. You seem to say history does not matter. All that matters is now. Surely this is wrong. Those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it. It is because their is so much historical ignorance and misinformation regarding Israel, that is the cause of much of the problem

Steve

The Arabs that were displaced, were displaced as a result of war that was launched by Arab nations AFTER Israel declared Independence. If the Arab states had not declared war, things might be very different today.

I love the UK

Tom UK...... You wont find many friends of the UK on this blog and they don't like our national broadcaster much either. Comments like "BBC is an Arab organ" say's it all really.

TrueToo

Penny

May 17th, 2011 10:21am

Thanks for that. Yes I know that quote. Quite revealing of Arab intentions there. Nothing unites the Arabs like the prospect of the downfall of Israel.

Grumpy true Zionist

'i am currently working in Ethiopia but when I return to my home in Paris I will be more than a little miffed if I find that the French government has confiscated my property. If we can put ourselves into the shoes of the evicted Palestinians and their children we will understand what this dispute is about - land.'

hope like hell, your little 'home in paris' was not in fact confiscated from a Jewish family, circa '39-'45, and that any talk of confiscation in terms of the french (or vichy in those days) is irrelevant

in terms of evictions, not only in europe, but throughout the arab countries, we the Jews, trump these newcomers, the palistinians, hands down

would'nt you say, derek old fruit

Herzen

There is a standard response which seems to allow people here to think the Palestinians got what they deserved: the Arab states invaded Israel.

This ignores geography and chronology. The clearing of villages took place during the intial stages of civil war before the Arab states intervened as well as after. And the clearing of villages did not always have a military purpose only, as a detailed inventory of villages cleared will show. Had the cleansing been military only, the peasants could have been allowed back to their villages as required by law instead of being shot at. Is it not also the case that the Arab states, when they came to the defense of the Palestinians concentrated their efforts on territory not assigned to Israel in the proposed partition?

Grumpy true Zionist

pleeze you gotta read;

nakbacide - by Daniel Greenfield on the Sultan Knish weblog

it'll bring tears to the eyes of some!!

Herzen

Surely it takes an understanding of the history of discrimination, and reference to aggregate economic indicators of wealth and welfare, to judge whether "Arab" "Palestinian" Israelis are systematically at a disadvantage, and not "Why, one of my best friends" type anecdotes. Nor does the presence of disadvantaged minorities in other countries allow Israel to avoid considering whether it has disadvantaged minorities in its midst, and, if it does, what the causes are and whether they are specific to the regime and can be changed.

zakisbak

"Israel's existence requires acceptance of the fact that it is regarded as a pariah nation in the Middle East and, increasingly, in Europe and America."-
Yes,odd isn't it?The region's one democracy is regarded by some as a pariah while the regions' many totalitarian dictatorships are completely ignored.
Just as Israel's border incident has been closely scrutinized while Turkey's murder of many Kurdish border protestors has been all but ignored.

Arabs of the entire region have been killing Jews long before Israel existed - Hebron,Iraq,Yemen....the reason is simple - racism.

aelle - you forgot to mention the Jerusalem road ambulance convoy massacre - odd,as you're apparently so keen on the principle of cause and effect.

Jonathan Levy

Emet May 16th, 2011 9:28pm
I wonder - do the population figures you quote for "all of Palestine" also include what is now the state of Jordan? At the date you quoted, Jordan had not been dissevered from mandatorial Palestine. If so, those numbers might need to be reduced by about one-half, no?

aelle May 16th, 2011 7:21pm
"I attempted earlier without success to observe that after Deir Yassin and the expulsion of a substantial part of the Arab population of what is now Israel it was entirely predictable that innocent minority Jewish populations in neighbouring Arab countries would be exposed to similar treatment.

It is a process known as cause and effect."

Strange how this process of Cause and Effect only explains bad things that happen to Jews, and not bad things which happen to Arabs.

Arabs reject the 1947 partition plan and declare war, and suffer a grevious defeat? Not Cause and Effect, the Jews were stole their land.

Arabs mobilize their forces against Israel in 1967, suffer another defeat and lose more territory? No, not Cause and Effect, just more Zionist aggression.

Arabs start a wave of suicide bombers, so Israel builds a separation fence? Not Cause and Effect.

Arabs launch kassam rockets at Israel and Israel responds with Operation Cast Lead? Nope, not Cause and Effect.

A very one-sided concept, I must say, this "Cause and Effect".

Penny

Stephen (Rothbart)

Thank you. I'm afraid my post was a tad wordy. I seem to arrive late to Mel's parties (often when I've been awake for 23hrs or more!) and, when I'm tired I struggle to be concise!

Must try to join in the debate at a reasonable hour!

Thanks for taking the time to plough through it!

Stephen Rothbart

"I love the UK" is right to warn Steve about the BBC being an Arab organ as far-fetched, even though it is working financially with the Qatar Foundation to host talks and discussions on the "Doha Debates," and BBC World News has a preponderance of Middle Eastern or Islamic advertising that pays for its operations, and it keeps on Bowen as a reporter on Middle Eastern affairs even after chastising him for his biased reporting when they found that "he should have done more to make clear that there were other views on the matter," something he would never do, but still keeps his job.

But that does not make it an Arab organ. It's more to do with the culture of the BBC itself, its recruitment policies and the PC attitude that has been already testified to from some of the people that have worked there.

In short if you want to get on in the BBC, better be pro-man made Climate Change and pro-Palestinian.

That's acceptable for a private company but not one owned by the taxpayers.

aelle

@zakisbak

In pursuing my ' cause and effect ' argument, which seems to have provoked several parodies, I did indeed make reference to the Hadassah Military Convoy massacre which took place only days after the deplorable events at Deir Yassin.

And, yes, it seems to me incontrovertible that such events, and later tragedies such as Kfar Etzion are all illustrations of cause and effect, or the escalating spiral of inter community hatred and violence that had its origins in the semi-colonial ambitions of the British and French in the wake of their defeat of the Ottoman Empire.

Sadly for the continuity of argument, and not for the first time, my post would not appear to have escaped the attentions of the ever vigilant moderators.

Hopefully, this reply will fare better.

I do not wish to appear churlish by failing to respond to your point - whatever it was.

Eliezer

Melanie you are spot on regarding the Jerusalem Post report.
It has been the policy of the Post to be liberal minded to such an extent as to manipulate reports it publishes, as has been done in this case. It fuels the flames of the anti Israel journalists who rely upon it for accurate unbiased reporting.
David Horowitz agenda is not for Israel but for himself alone. It's time to bring back the days of an editor who supported the Jewish state openly and clearly and ensured the news and comment columns were in line with nationalist thinking and not the wooly thinking of the liberal minded who would be prepared to even sacrifice the state.

Tilly

Penny -

You made a lot of excellent points in your post of May 17th, 7.42am, not least of which was the importance of not making assumptions about an entire population based on the utterances/actions of certain stridently vocal or violent individuals.

You then completely undermined your position at 10.21am by offering a highly controversial statement by Zuheir Mohsen to "illustrate" a supposed Palestinian belief that there is no distinct Palestinian identity!

Not only was Mohsen's statement made more than 30 years ago, it even then brought him into sharp conflict with the PLO outside the (pro-Syrian, Baathist) faction to which he belonged - and God alone knows what those Arabs who'd been displaced from their land thought of it...

It's a great shame you didn't give as much thought to this as you did to your initial post which (for once from the Zionist camp) gave genuine food for thought rather than a lazy recitation of unpersuasive propaganda.

aelle

@ Mr Levy

What I have, with conspicuous lack of originality, referred to as ' cause and effect ' is of course by no means one-sided.

Rather, it occurs to me, the principle is politically equivalent to Newton's laws of motion viz:

1. Bodies remain at rest or in a state of constant velocity - unless acted upon by an external,unbalanced force - sounds like the Palestine of the Ottoman Empire - not much velocity, fair amount of rest and sipping of mint tea.

2.Bodies accelerate in proportion to the force applied to them - enter the British Mandate.

3. Action and reaction between two bodies are equal, opposite and simultaneous - and, in the political world, it would seem, interminable.

The situation in the Middle East increasingly resembles one of those executive desk top toys of the past where a succession of metal balls swing into each other interminably with the worst impact being felt by those at the extremes - in this case the settlers in the West Bank and the Islamists in Gaza.

It will take political courage to stop this momentum - previous leaders on both sides have lost their lives to extremism - and what is needed above all is a willingness to put an end to the blame game, and work towards a solution that can one day - and it may be some time off - create peace and a chance of a decent life for all the inhabitants of Israel and Palestine.

Penny

Grumpy,

Derek has previously said - and advised others who share his views - to ignore my posts. I feel it only fair to return the compliment.

However, reading yours I noticed Derek's insistance that this conflict is over land. How interesting, then, to come across this very recent quote (May 11th) by Hamas MP and cleric, Yunis al-Astal; he of 'Palestine will conquer the Zionists and then turn to Constantinople, Rome, Europe and yes, even the Americas' fame:

"The [Jews] are brought in droves to Palestine so that the Palestinians – and the Islamic nation behind them – will have the honour of annihilating the evil of this gang.’

‘In just a few years, all the Zionists and the settlers will realize that their arrival in Palestine was for the purpose of the great massacre, by means of which Allah wants to relieve humanity of their evil.’

Sounds to me like Yunis sees this as a religious war to which the wider 'Islamic Nation' is invited. 'Massacre' being the unambigious goal.

Regardless of how often and how clearly people like Al-Astal state their intentions and their wider goals once Israel is done and dealt with, their Western supporters still insist that what they are really, really trying to say is 'land' or 'peace deal'.

http://justjournalism.com/the-wire/hamas-in-gaza-%e2%80%98all-the-lethal-bacteria-are-far-less-dangerous-than-the-jews%e2%80%99/

Stephen Rothbart

Penny yours are much shorter than mine, and probably more coherent.

Mr. Blades contributions tend to be short and off the point, and he has accused windbags like me of being too long.

Which is a shame when it comes to your first piece especially.

Like many contributors here we all, whether from the pro or anti Zionist point of view, tend to use only the facts that fit our cause, while you dealt with many of the "warts and all" things about imperfect societies we all have, but for which, it seems, Israel is scapegoated, especially by institutions like the BBC.

But we have all decided to contribute our words and arguments in what I hope to be a spirited spirit of trying to learn from each other even as we disagree.

I know I can never convince people like Derek Blades of my own point of view, and that is OK. But the main thing is to try to stay civil and not personalize the strongly held view whatever it is, and this more than the non-sequiter contributions he makes, is what I find hard to take.

Your points were dispassionate, correct and impossible to contradict, mosty becasue they were not elitest.

Jonathan Levy

aelle
May 17th, 2011 1:11pm

How fortunate that the unpleasant need to respond to criticism can be avoided by dubbing it 'Parody'.

However, since you have provided two more examples of this 'Cause and Effect', we can see if they continue the pattern of only applying to one side of the conflict.

Let's see -
The Hadassah convoy massacre - happened to Jews.
Kfar Etzion 'tragedy' - again, happened to Jews.

It's almost as if Arab actions are some sort of Law of Nature, or Physical Force which cannot be stopped, and to which no moral agency can be ascribed. Certainly, there is no room for blame or condemnation, any more than the Earth could be blamed for a falling apple.

And yet Jews, miraculously, can and are blamed for their actions. A remarkable distinction, don't you think?

Let me ask you a question, aelle - is there any injury done by Jews to Arabs which you would consider an 'effect' of a 'cause', thereby granting the Jews immunity from criticism for that action? And if not, why do you extend this privilege to Arabs?

Jonathan Levy

aelle
May 17th, 2011 1:47pm

I see you have kindly responded to me directly - my previous comment was published before I saw this reply, and therefore did not take it into account.

Emet

Jonathan Levy
May 17th, 2011 12:36pm

The figure for 1893, over 600,000, is from the three districts Nablus, Acre and Jerusalem. I don't know how Porath comes to the 1850 figure.

aelle

Penny

Your response to me on May 17 - 7.42 merits reply - not least for its even-handed and reasonable tone -
I have once at some length attempted to make one, but, I suspect the moderators rightly judged it might send people to sleep, so you will at present judge me discourteous for not replying.

I hope the censors will let this pass this time.

You make numerous points about the shortcomings of our British society, with which it is impossible to take issue.

You have also very sweetly disarmed my earlier reflections on your prolixity, which have happily been denied the oxygen of exposure to even the rather limited audience on this site.

I would stress that the points raised here are intended to relate to the original features posted by our chief authoress.

If, as is often the case, Ms Phillips writes in criticism of the British media coverage of events in Israel, it would be perverse to respond by addressing fundamentally unrelated issues - however valid they might be.

In this case, Ms Phillips hackles have risen at some pretty unexceptionable coverage on the BBC of recent events at the border between Syria and the teritory occupied by Israel since 1967. The same story was covered yesterday by Haaretz under the headline " The Arab Revolution is Knocking at Israel's Door ", which is pretty much the line that Jeremy Bowen is castigated for employing. I do, of course, realise that there are those who regard Mr Bowen as having what the police refer to as "previous" when it comes to the perilous minefield of reporting on the Levant.

However, I am always wary of the knee-jerk response to the
' give a dog a bad name ' syndrome.

Elsewhere another poster has somewhat disingenuously asked why on this site we read so little of the displaced populations of Northern Cyprus and I know not where else. Once again the simple answer is that those are not the issues Ms Phillips chooses to address. It might also be fair to observe that few of them have the same potential to impact critically on the future of our Western societies and civilisation.

The implicit criticism is the perennial argument-stopper - an allegation of antisemitism.

Surely it must be possible and legitimate for non-Jews and non-Arabs to pass constructive and well-intentioned comment on matters that are so close to our collective security in today's global village.

If, in venturing to do that, we encounter the hostility of a number of the usual suspects, I suspect the likes of Mr Blades, Celato, Herzen et al will survive.

It should be said that reasoned argument such as comes from yourself and the estimable Mr Rothbart is far more likely to win hearts and perhaps eventually even minds.

Grumpy true Zionist

yes Penny you are correct
ishmael haniya (capo di tutti capo) of the murderous gang of thugs known as hamas, has specifically called for the 'new' palistinian alliance (fatah/hamas) to unite in a war of islam, against Israel

as stated in that earlier post (not published - maybe a bit off topic then) we are in a war for the survival of civilization
just hope there are enough of us left to defend this

Penny

Tilly

Thank you for your comment.

I think, however, that you have jumped the gun a little. If you return to that particular post, and perhaps a few that preceded it, you will see that in my very short comment I have clearly mentioned 'one nation' and was not referring to 'identity'

As I am sure you know, 'one nation' refers to Pan-Arabism or Arab Nationalism, a force that began in Iraq, was evident during the war years and made an impact with the rise of Nasser.

Pan-Arabism is a subject very close to my heart because my husband's family was one of those expelled from Egypt. Having such first-hand, personal knowledge of events that lead to their expulsion, it is quite difficult for me to refrain from passing comment when I hear someone refer to that period and its refugees as a matter of 'cause and effect'.

I am of the opinion that this particular concept has not died and indeed, many statements issued by Yunis al-Astal and others seem to confirm my view. It may not be the original Arab nationalism, but there is a definite drive towards unification. The only question is who becomes the 'strong horse' and leads the others.

For the record, Tilly, I have sympathy with the Palestinian people. I believe they have been lead by corrupt leaders and badly let down and used by their Arab brothers.

I prefer to see 'people' as opposed to 'causes'. For that reason, yes, I view the leaders with contempt and cannot understand why anyone would support their methods of brain-washing and indoctrinating their people from the cradle to the grave.

They have wrecked the lives of generations of people who might have otherwise found peace. Most other refugees have managed to re-build wrecked lives. The Palestinian people could and should have done the same.

I find it difficult to agree with supporters of the Palestinians because I tend to think they are wholly *cause* driven, with little thought given to the real people they claim to support. I find it utterly heartbreaking to see year-old babies dressed in military gear with mock suicide belts strapped around their tiny waists. I find it utterly shocking that young girls when asked if they would prefer peace or to die shahida, their answer is 'martyrdom - because it is beautiful'. This is inhuman and ugly and if it happened to any of our children we'd be rioting in the streets and crying 'child abuse'. Yet it's fine for Palestinain babies - apparently. Well, not in my book.

I haven't read many of your posts, Tilly - I am no longer a regular on Melanie's blog - so I don't know how you view this conflict. I take the view that if those who genuinely seek the best for both sides stopped pushing the Palestinians towards 'cause resolution' and focused a little more on their welfare, their psychological health and their need to begin living full and worthwhile lives, they might stand a chance.

As it is, I'm afraid I seldom read comments which demonstrate that pro-Palestinian folk have truly stopped to consider that these are real people. Instead, I feel that for some at least, they are still that weapon that Moheir spoke of in 1977. Constantly urged on to fight on until the aims of others have been achieved. Constantly urged to hate and blame everyone except those who have lead them into years of abuse.

My heart goes out to them.

N"l from Israel

@Celato.
So, to follow your logic,There is no evidence that suggested that these 2 plains hitting the twin towers at sep 11 2001 were involved in a terror attack. Surely you waited to the police statement before jumping to a premature conclusion-it might have been just a coincident.

And... The chief of the israeli police said yesterday that all signs indicate the incident was a terror attack and not a traffic accident,
But you do not have to believe this, as I am not sure these news were broadcast in your area.

Truthtriumphs

aelle
May 17th, 2011 1:47pm
@ Mr Levy

"What I have, with conspicuous lack of originality, referred to as ' cause and effect ' is of course by no means one-sided.
Rather, it occurs to me, the principle is politically equivalent to Newton's laws of motion viz.."

Your grasp of the application of the laws of physics is as tenuous as is your understanding of the reality that obtains with regard to the relationship of the Arab world, and the rest of humanity.

A much better analogy would be the principle of the "survival of the fittest", which, although not exactly according with the meaning intended to describe Darwins' theory of evolution, very well explains the phenomenal success of Islam in expanding its territory and converting non-Muslims.

It began in AD 627, with the Battle of the Ditch, when Muhammed's coalition force of Quraish attacked the last of the large Jewish tribes of Medina, the Banu Qurayza, for refusing to embrace Islam, having exiled the other two tribes. After a 25 days siege, the Jews surrendered unconditionally. In the end, all 600-700 males of the tribe were killed by beheading (except pre-pubescent boys), and the women and children sold into slavery.

Nothing much has changed.
Just look at an atlas to see Islam's conquest of vast areas of the globe, and it's ruthless suppression of the weak.
It is ongoing today, and will continue until the end of time, unless resisted.

The essence of the problem is that there is no room in Islam for the other.

Truthtriumphs

et@ May16th.
"There was internal migration from inland to coastals areas to take advantage of economic activity generated by the British, but no immigration, according to Porath".
What utter balderdash!
You've put the same post up before...the same referemce to Porath, who bases his claims on one Rupin.
That seem to be your only source.
There are many, many references in official British government archives to the inpouring of Arabs from neighbouring countries to Palestine, as well as documented evidence as to the dishonest non-recording of the illegal entry of Arabs into Palestine, in contrast to the numbers of Jews entering.
Interesting that the UN gave a status to Palestinian "refugees" denied to every other refugee group in the world, in that to qualify for that status, any Arab resident in Palestine who had been there for just two years, whether passing through, or for temporary work, could register as a refugee.
Your explanation is at odds with that, as, according to Porath/Rupin, that category of refugee did not exist.
Why do you think that Churchill felt compelled to say, in 1939, that....."so far from being persecuted, the Arabs have crowded into the country and multiplied till their population has increased more than even all world Jewry could lift up the Jewish population". ?
The reason is that he had a wealth of evidence to prove it, such as the documented evidence of the Permanent Mandates Commission, which noted in its minutes an interview with the govenor of the Hauran district of Syria, his statement that in a few months in 1934 alone, some 36,000 Huaranese had entered Palestine, and settled there.
It also spoke of the "free admission of Trans Jordanians into Palestine", as well as addressing the inlux from other neighbouring Arab countries.
Interesting that the British Govenor of the Sinai from 1922 to 1936, wrote that:--
"This illegal immigration was not only going on from the Sinai, but also from Trans Jordan and Syria, and it is very difficult to make a case out for the misery of the Arabs, if at the same time their compatriots from adjoining states could not be kept from going in to share that misery."
The Hope Simpson Report of 1930, even though it was shamelessly biased against the Jews in its report, nevertheless admitted that there was an "uncontrolled influx of illegal Arab immigrants from Egypt, Trans Jordan and Syria", adding that "The Chief Immigration Officer has brought to notice that illicit immigration through Syria and across the Northern frontier of Palestine is material".
The report also talks about the case of the pseudo traveller, who comes in with permission for a limited time, and continues in Palestine after the terms of his permission has expired, a method that was an "injustice to the Jews".
And all that doesn't even address the sparseness of the population in Palestine in the 19th. century, so well documented by British, American and Dutch explorers, as well as by British officials.
"The country is to a considerable degree empty of inhabitants..." James Finn, British Consul, 1857.
"The road leading from Gaza to the North was only a summer track.....no orange groves, orchards or vineyards, until ine reached the Jewish village of Yavneh". Palestine Royal Commission, 1913.

Freda Leschziner

Long ago I stopped listening to Jeremy Bowen. His anti israeli reporting is very subtle and can milead a lot of listeners who do not know much about the Israeli palestinian conflict. He is not the only one. Shame on the BBC and shame on channel 4. It seems oil, money and numbers are dictating public opinion, media and politicians

Stephen Rothbart

aelle, the irresponsible reporting by the world's Press about Israel is no longer just a matter of opinion that has, to use your phrase, no Cause and Effect.

It does. And where Israel and world Jewry are concerned, it can mean a matter of life or death, so it has to be taken seriously.

This excert is from a piece by Guy Milliere writing in the Hudson New York blog: "If sacrificing Israel allowed non-Muslim Europeans to see Muslim anger disappear, they would be willing to make the sacrifice immediately. If, in order to accept the sacrifice with a clear conscience, non-Muslim Europeans have to caricature Israel ignobly, they will -- and do. Anti-Israel cartoons fill European newspapers from London to Spain, and even receive awards. The Israeli army is often compared in European media to the Nazi army. The comparison is fully playing its role: if the Jews are Nazis today, it means that the Europeans did the world a favor in killing six million of them, and that the Europeans are not really guilty.

If Israel can be portrayed as a Nazi state, its destruction is acceptable, maybe even legitimate, maybe even desirable. The fact that Mein Kampf is a bestseller in the Palestinian territories and in most countries of the Muslim world is totally left out, just like the fact that many Jews living in Israel are survivors of the Holocaust committed in Europe sixty five years ago.

A survey conducted last year for the Friederich Ebert Foundation, a German think tank linked to Germany's Social Democratic Party, was eloquent. To the question: 'Do you think that Jews abuse their status as victims of Nazism ?' positive responses reached proportions hardly imaginable: 72.2% in Poland, 48% in Germany, 40.2% in Italy, 32.3% in France. Another question, 'Do you understand why people do not like Jews', generated results that must be faced. Number of positive responses: 55.2% in Poland, 48.9% in Germany, 40.2% in Italy. The question was not asked in France. In several polls conducted in Europe over the last decade, Israel was identified as the most dangerous country for world peace, tied with Iran.

The question, 'Do you think that Israel is conducting a war of extermination against the Palestinians', was asked. Positive responses : 63% in Poland, 47.7% in Germany."

So nearly half of the German population thinks that Israel is conducting a war of extermination against Palestinians. Evidence? None.

British subjects were not asked, but where could this myth have come from?

Lazy incompetent reporting and biased presentations by the news media, combined with an already latent and not so latent anti-Semitism among the Social Democratic regimes ruling Europe.

Lazy or biased journalism by people such as Bowen has a consequence.

Derek Blades and I have our differences, but I don't think even he truly believes the Israelis are carry out a policy of exterminating the Palestinians.

Yet almost 1 out of every 2 Germans do.

Propaganda that demonizes Jews has worked well before for those with evil on their minds. But back then the BBC was a force for good.

Steve

Penny,

Beautifully put. I don't think anyone need say any more.

Penny

Hi Allele
Thank you for your comments. I’m going to divide this into two posts because I’m tired and I know I get a bit wordy when I’m lacking sleep!! Apologies in advance if I drone on.

I hear what you say but it is unclear to me how long you have been visiting this blog. For this reason I can only tell you that I am an admirer of Ms Phillips for several reasons. Firstly, even though she may appear to be wide of the mark at the time, later – and in some cases years later – she has been proven right.

Secondly – she doesn’t sit on any fences. She is forthright, direct and, believe it or not, socks it to Israel just as she socks it to us here. I respect that. In these days of spin and correctness, it is rare to find someone who says exactly what she means!

Now to address your comments about the type of responses you may get on this blog. As I have already said I was a regular but am less so now. I always read Melanie’s articles and she does attract new readers all the time. However, for me – and perhaps for other old hands, too - the repetition of facts, dates, issues, battles, history, personal experiences – and so on, can become tedious. Not least because some of us are contributors on other blogs. And – more especially - when you realise that the person you are addressing has no interest in your side of the debate but is merely using sophistry.

In more cases than I care to remember the responses are such that you realise the contributor is not remotely concerned about the Palestinian people. They are plain and simple anti-zionists or even anti-semites, hiding behind a pretence of caring for the Palestinians. It is no wonder, then, that sometimes it is extremely difficult not to snap back, to be cynical or even sound mocking or facetious.

I have already stated my position re the Palestinian people in my response to Tilly. I feel that some of their supporters have perhaps become desensitised to violence; that it sometimes seems as if we view the very real, everyday lives of both sides almost as figures in a computer game. That perhaps we have lost sight of the real people and instead have become overly-focused on a cause into which we have dragged something that may not really belong there but is somehow representative of ourselves.

Perhaps that 'something' is a product of our society that now confuses right and wrong with a perception of weak and strong. I don’t ask for that view to be accepted – but I believe it is a valid point nonetheless.

What I have to say next is not flannel , dished out merely because I am supportive of Israel,
( having lived and worked there I feel I can speak with confidence) but for the most part I find those who support Israel have no ill-intent as far as the Palestinian people are concerned. Their leaders – yes, but not the people.

We know that for Israel to find peace, the Palestinian issue must be resolved. We have seen enough, however, to remain cynical as to their leaders true intent.

It is my view that there are *some* members of the pro-Palestinian movement who appear to actively encourage more warfare. They excuse the education and indoctrination of young children, they seem to see suicide bombing as ‘understandable’, many are notable by their absence on blogs when, for example, a Palestinian slits the throat of a three month old baby and does likewise to her two little brothers. They cannot bring themselves to condemn this type of action. Indeed, there are some who even then, can justify it. The family were ‘settlers’ – as if a home which may one day have to be given back to the Palestinians is sufficient reason to murder children whilst they sleep.

It is never the fault of the Palestinians – only ever Israel’s. This argument is just ridiculous. Everyone has a choice and surely, the more these actions are justified, the harder it will be to achieve peace?

There are some who support those who take part in dangerous *missions* – such as the Mavi Mamara incident and, to a lesser extent, Viva Palestina. But this support is delivered from the comfort of their armchair, two thousand miles away from the real people on the ship or convoy who will reap the end result. And when they do, these pro-Palestinian folk who have cheered them on take no responsibility and instead put all the blame onto Israel.

Again, if you are never made to feel responsible for your actions, you will be less inclined to seek peace or lead a life that doesn’t have Israel and violence as its core reason for being.

(Part II coming up. If you can bear it!!)

Eugene

The BBC has got a sweet deal: to charge the taxpayers for brainwashing them.

Drakken

Aelle,
I am surprised by your concern for Western Civilization, in case it has escaped your notice, Israel is a western civilized country. Your blatant siding with islamists and anti western views make a mockery of the Saxon King you take your name from, for no Saxon would ever side with a islamist.
As for the BBc, if they side with anti-civilization I dare say declare them a propaghanda arm of the islamists and therebye enemy combantants and call it a day, it sure would make them think twice.

steven L

GB, the land of the Arab money and BBC must get a lot of it.
Who forgot that a famous business school (LSB) got millions from Gaddafi family?
The English people have been put to sleep by the British Orientalists. They will one day wake-up with a major migraine, potentially fatal.

JOHN ROOSEVELT

Aelle: "I attempted earlier without success to observe that after Deir Yassin and the expulsion of a substantial part of the Arab population of what is now Israel it was entirely predictable that innocent minority Jewish populations in neighbouring Arab countries would be exposed to similar treatment.

It is a process known as cause and effect.

Happily the displaced Jews had a Jewish State in which they could find sanctuary and rebuild their lives.

No such Palestinian State existed - or exists today - where the Arabs of that region could take refuge.

That is why there has been no peace and security for 60 years."

Well, there you have it! If only someone had told us before...

+- 800,000 Jews (not israelis) kicked out of Arab lands is to be dismissed as a mere "cause and effect" thing, which would never have happened if there had been no "cause", the "cause" being the expulsion of the Arabs during the war of '48. Is Aelle suggesting that if Israel had won the war but there had been no expulsions, no jews would have been expelled from Arab states? What a duplicitous load of hooey, Aelle.

The Nakba is not about expulsions. It's not about refugees. It's about the execrable pan Arab failure to commit genocide against the Jews.

Real civilised bunch who can call the failure to commit genocide a "catastrophe"..

The reason why there has been no peace is that these peoples - Israelis and Arabs are too different. The cultures way too far apart..and never the twin will meet..nor should it.

Obama, at last, is getting a glimpse of the reality I am talking about...It may just sink in, eventually, as the hell it really is freezes over the jolly old Spring everyone now loves to rant about.

Remember Mel Brooks's little ditti: "Springtime for Hitler..."

Stop moaning and groaning and the awful din of your twaddle. Just keep fighting...You deserve no better.

Louis Berk

On reading the initial article at the BBC News Online site on the afternoon of Sunday 15th May I immediately submitted a complaint to the BBC via the web site.

The article contained the line "Israeli seized the Golan from Syria in 1967."

Apart from the typo I objected to the implication in the sentence that Israel had unilaterally taken this territory. In fact, as we know, the Golan was 'seized' or more accurately overrun as part of the response to an unprovoked attack by Syria against Israel during the 1967 "Six Day War."

I'm not saying my complaint was looked at but surprisingly for the BBC within an hour or so the line had been changed to "Israel seized the strategic territory from Syria in the closing stages of the 1967 Six-Day War." This is not ideal but a far better explanation of fact than the original sentence. Perhaps for once an editor decided that the flagrant misrepresentation of historical fact had gone a bit too far?

We live in hope but I also believe it is very important that we promptly complain to the BBC each time there is evidence of misrepresentation of fact (e.g. bias).

Truthtriumphs

Celato. may 16 5.13.pm.

"Anyway... until you put the cops straight on this, I still think the most responsible course for journalists to take is not to rush to judgements of their own but wait for all the facts to be known and evidence sifted. That way, they (and consequently their audiences) don't run the risk of defaming an innocent man in the worst possible way".

Ah, Celato-- all sweetness and reasonableness, all of a sudden---happy to give the Arab terrorist the benefit of the doubt.
Pity, then, that you are less than even-handed when it comes to allegations against supposed Israeli acts of terror, which "invariably run the risk of defaming an innocent country in the worst possible way", before there is even time to assess the truth of the allegations.

Rick

Emet
There have been several attempts to reason with Truthtriumphs on this question. He refuses to consult any authorities on the subject. He will not even consult Prof. Rupin. He appears to gather his information and quotes from Palestinefacts or some such conduit of the MFA.

One of his quotes is worth remarking on, however, because it shows you what you are up against - his Churchill quote. He has used it before:

"Why do you think that Churchill felt compelled to say, in 1939, that....."so far from being persecuted, the Arabs have crowded into the country and multiplied till their population has increased more than even all world Jewry could lift up the Jewish population"?

Now, pause and savour the Churchillian rhetoric.

At the outset of the Mandate, there were 700k "Arabs" and 60k Jews in Palestine.

At the end of the Mandate, there were 1.4m "Arabs" and 600k Jews.

Churchill tells us that Arab immigration into Palestine caused the population to increase "more than even all world Jewry could lift up the Jewish population".

The population of "Arabs" in Palestine rose by 700k.

What was the Jewish population of the world? (Hint: there were 11m in Europe.)

The absurdity has been pointed out before to Truthtriumphs. Yet, as with his other absurdities, he STILL repeats it.

And he has never yet explained why the fact of "Arab" immigration into Palestine should vitiate the Palestinians' right to determine their own government.

...In fact, he has never got much beyond repeating his little repetoire of quotes.

Leave him to it.

I love the UK

"The BBC has got a sweet deal: to charge the taxpayers for brainwashing them".

I have a great deal of sympathy for people who want to live in peace. I believe it is a fundamental human right. The comment above is not the BBC I know. Living here in Scotland I am glad this is not my war.

Okey

To "I love the UK": it doesn't make sense to confuse criticism of certain phenomena in the UK with dislike of the country.
The BBC's coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict is a huge embarrassment to the UK because it is so glaringly incompetent or deliberately skewed in the Arabs' favour.
Do we have to approve of each and every abuse that is perpetrated in the UK?
Would you have taken offence if posters here had attacked Sir Oswald Moseley and his British Fascists?
Would you have taken offence if posters had attacked the post-World War 2 British Labor Government because of its orders to MI 6 to blow up ships carrying Jewish Holocaust survivors trying to get to The Land of Israel, as the British historian, Keith Jeffery, has just revealed in his book, "MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service 1909-1949", having been given access to MI6 archives.
The BBC's coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict is a manifestation of the same kind of mentality and drive that moved a British Labor government to order the killing of Jews just because their attempts to reach Israel didn't suit perceived British economic interests. Britain guards its economic interests by any means, foul or fair because it has the power to do so without regard for morality; but Zionists are entitled to criticise it.
In effect, therefore, the BBC is an Arab organ.

Truthtriumphs

aelle
May 16th, 2011 7:21pm

"I attempted earlier without success to observe that after Deir Yassin and the expulsion of a substantial part of the Arab population of what is now Israel it was entirely predictable that innocent minority Jewish populations in neighbouring Arab countries would be exposed to similar treatment".

Just to correct your crass theory about "cause and effect" with regard to the I/P conflict, here are a few incidents of brutality against Jews by Arabs throughout history, which pre date the re-establishment of Israel.

The Muslim pogroms in Cordoba and Granada, in the latter in which 4,000 Jews were massacred.
In Fez, Morocco, the pogroms of 1033, 1276, 1465.
The Algerian pogroms of 1934.
The Farhud in Baghdad in 1941.
There were thousands more in every Arab country throughout history, too numerous to mention, as well as the dhimmi status of Jews in Arab lands, which meant their permanent discriminatory status.

The real cause of Arab resentment towards the Jews is simply that they are Jews.
They are instilled with a hatred of them as soon as they are able to understand.

In the case of people such as yourself, I am minded to repeat Chaim Weizmann's observation:--

"The real opponents of Zionism can never be placated by any diplomatic formula: their objection to the Jews is that the Jews exist, and in this particular case, that they exist in Palestine".
And in your case that they exist both in Palestine and the Hampstead Garden Suburb.

NB. The Deir Yassin event was not what it seemed to be.
There is very good evidence, that it was exaggerated out of all proportion, that the Arabs were the instigators, true to form, that it was hyped for its propaganda value, and that the supposed atrocities committed by the Jews, never happened.

david elder

Blades strikes again. The dispute is all about land ... If the Arab nations of the region had accepted UN partition in 1948 the Palestinians would have had their half. Of course, those nations wanted ALL the land. Including the Palestinian part. They failed with Israel but succeeded with the Palestinian part. Blades should take up his concerns with them before expecting meaningful negotiations involving Israel.

Matt (three pints later)

@Melanie

Incidentally I read a report on the Times website following the Fogel massacre claiming that at the funeral people were also chanting "Death to arabs".
This struck me as highly unlikely and left me with a similar question - what does this mean?

And why does my iPhone insist on capitalizing the word "arabs"? Fight the machine!

I would also like to say a huge THANK YOU to Melanie and all of the posters here who explain Israel's point of view. We Brits are not entirely asleep. We are stilll trying to convince ourselves that the Authorities know what they're doing. We are of course mistaken. Please keep banging the drum.

Truthtriumphs

Rick. May 17th.

"And he has never yet explained why the fact of "Arab" immigration into Palestine should vitiate the Palestinians' right to determine their own government.

...In fact, he has never got much beyond repeating his little repetoire of quotes".

Interesting... so you admit that there was Arab immigration into Palestine.
I contested Emet's absurd notion that there was no Arab immigration...that was the point of my post.
Now that you admit the truth, do tell us which of my quotes is untrue, and what's your evidence.
I just have to laugh at the idea that a loser sitting at a keyboard thinks he is right, and Churchill, The Mandates Commission, British government records, are wrong.
A bit like a man in a lunatic asylum who thinks he is sane, and everyone else is mad.

And no, my source is not "Palestine facts".
Unlike you, I read widely on the subject, and unlike Emet, who seems to have read only one book.

Sarah Jane.

L Knight
May 16th, 2011 3:22pm

"The Palestinians protesting the Nakba were not so much aggrieved at the founding of the State of Israel, so much as at the mass expropriation of Palestinians that went with it. Indeed, if Israel applied the same standards of land restitution to the Palestinians as Jewish lobby groups demand in respect of Nazi expropriations, the State of Israel would de facto cease to exist. The reason protestors stormed the border is because they wanted to assert their right of return. Many were bearing keys to properties stole from their families".

I find your comments with regard to restitution of the victims of the Nazis deeply offensive, as well as mendacious.
Six million dead Jews could not claim restitution....they were dead.
Neither were their property and assets returned to their surviving relatives, if there were any, in most cases.
The Swiss banks lied about Jewish assets in their dormant bank accounts, until the whistle was blown by a disgusted bank night worker for UBS, Christoph Meili in Switzerland, in 1997, who realised that papers relating to the Holocaust victims were being shredded.
When he publicised this, he and his family received death threats, and fled Switzerland for the USA.
The German Reichsbank and UBS were implicated, and UBS was exposed for having appropriated Berlin property deeds for Jewish property stolen by the Nazis and deposited in their accounts.
Only a fraction of Jewish wealth stolen from them in WW11 has been returned, never mind compensation for the murder of the six million which can never compensate their loss, and the loss of future generations.

My mother's extended Hungarian family of over 100 people were wiped out, including her parents and sister in 1945.
Her family lived in Hungary for over 500 years, but she never received a penny compensation for the loss of her family, nor their home, land and other assets.
Is she not entitled to the key to her former home?
You make no mention of the 800,000 plus Jews from Arab lands, who were brutally evicted from their homes, in lands they had lived in for some 2,000 years.
Their property was confiscated, and they left with just the shirts on their backs. They have, to date, received nothing in compenstion for the theft of their assets.
They don't whinge about their "nakba", and demand the keys back to their former homes.

The Arabs who lost their homes in 1948 did so because their leaders attacked the nascent state of Israel with 5 armies, with the intention of driving the Jews into the sea.
They lost, and with it,real estate.
It's what happens when you launch a war of aggression, and lose, just as the Sudetenland Germans did, the Japanese Kurile islanders did,and many others throughout history.

Truthtriumphs

Drek BLADES
May 16th, 2011 5:27pm

"Israel's existence requires acceptance of the fact that it is regarded as a pariah nation in the Middle East and, increasingly, in Europe and America".

Only by people who do not embrace the values of the Judeo-Christian heritage.
Of course the Arab countries regard Israel as a pariah, for not allowing barbaric punishments, such as public beheadings and amputations, as they do.
For having due judicial process, as we know it, for not having forced marriages, executions for gays and for the sin of adultery, whether proven or not.
For not allowing forced marriages, honour killings, and for allowing freedom of worship for all the religions. For the concept of free elections in a democracy, and for the crime of allowing freedom of speech, without fear of persecution or incarceration.
In fact, for being everything that the Arab tyrannies are not.

The people in "Europe and America, who increasingly sympathise with the idea of Israel as a pariah state" are actually few in number, but they are people such as yourself who are infected with the virus of pure, old-fashioned anti-semitism, wrapped in the PC cloak of anti-zionism.

Truthtriumphs

aelle
May 16th, 2011 6:46pm
Gershon

"Just for your information Joan Peters is not a credible academic historian".

According to whom?

Truthtriumphs

Penny.

"In more cases than I care to remember the responses are such that you realise the contributor is not remotely concerned about the Palestinian people. They are plain and simple anti-zionists or even anti-semites, hiding behind a pretence of caring for the Palestinians. It is no wonder, then, that sometimes it is extremely difficult not to snap back, to be cynical or even sound mocking or facetious".

That, in a nutshell, describes the reality.
On this blog, they include--

Blades, Herzen, aelle, Rick, Celato, Tilly, sleeping dolls and Edwards, amongst others.
Just so that you know, as you are an "occasional visitor".

Emet

Truthtriumphs

In "Truth from Eretz Yisrael", Ahad Ha'am writes:"From abroad, we are accustomed to believe that Eretz Israel is presently almost totally desolate, an uncultivated desert, and that anyone wishing to buy land there can come and buy all he wants. But in truth it is not so. In the entire land, it is hard to find tillable land that is not already tilled; only sandy fields or stony hills, suitable at best for planting trees or vines and, even that after considerable work and expense in clearing and preparing them- only these remain unworked". Ahad Ha'am travelled Palestine in 1891.

Try Bayard Taylor's, "In the land of the Saracens" (there is a copy at the Gutenburg Project). He describes the rich agricultural land he sees in mid-nineteenth century Palestine.

Years ago I read a paper in The Journal of Palestinian Studies about the export of wheat from Palestine in the nineteenth century.

Palestine apparently had a burgeoning agricultural production that could sustain a growing population from the middle of the nineteenth century.

It seems Mark Twain completely failed to notice 20,000 Arabs while he was in Nablus.

Derek BLADES

I was nudged by Stephen Rothbart into reading Penny's comment. I am not sure I got the right one but the overly long post that I read was about how good life is for many Arabs in Israel and ending with this gem:

"Look, Israel is not a copy of the old USSR - people can leave. ... The Israeli Arab population is not fleeing in droves."

Of course not. They have their homes and families in Israel. Why on earth would they want to join other refugees in Gaza or the West Bank?

The problem Penny is not that Arabs cannot LEAVE Israel, but rather that those who fled a war-zone in 1948 are not allowed to ENTER Israel.

I am not sure who or what you were replying to in this post but it does not cast much light on the real issue at hand - how can Israel and the Palestinians reach a fair compromise over territory. Your picture of Arab life in Israel may well be accurate. But what lesson are we supposed to draw from it?

AY

..wheat export from Palestine..

Where soil is everywhere as hard as rock, mixed with stones, not enough water, too much sun, and no draught animals - because no hay, it is impossible to feed and sustain them.

For whom this "Emet" is designed? for frequent BBC users?

Jonathan Levy

Emet May 17th, 2011 2:56pm

Did the district of Acre in 1893 include the cities of Tyre and Sidon, now within the borders of Lebanon?

aelle May 17th, 2011 1:47pm

"... ' cause and effect ' is of course by no means one-sided."

It is quite gratifying to learn that you do not explicitly avow a one-sided position. Still, it grates upon the ear that you are so quick to come up with concrete examples for one side, but only general statements for the other side, on a principle which is, as you say, two-sided.

Perhaps you would be so kind as to provide a few examples? As you recall, we are speaking of examples of injuries done by Jews to Arabs which are only the 'effect' of previous Arab actions (their 'causes'), and therefore are not subject to moral censure.

If you cannot provide such examples, it may suggest that there is a gap between the principles you avow and your beliefs in practice.

Personally, I think that excusing an action as an 'effect of a cause' is a slipperly slope to walk, because it tends to blindly accept the excuses of the perpetrator, that he had no choice but to act as he did. For example, in the case of the expulsion of Jews from Arab countries, it disguises the role of pride and shame as a motive. The Arabs got rid of the Jews because they felt humiliated by their defeats and took revenge on the nearest proxies, even though they had no share in their defeat. Contrast this with the behavior of Americans after 9/11, and you'll see that the Arabs did have another option.

It is a bitter irony that the same Arabs who today bend over backwards to distinguish between Jews and Zionists in order to escape accusations of antisemitism, took no trouble to make that distinction sixty years ago while helping themselves to their neighbors' property.

Gershon

aelle
May 16th, 2011 6:46pm

"Gershon

Just for your information Joan Peters is not a credible academic historian."

I never mentioned Joan Peters or any other historian.

"You might also consider that courtesy and respect is a two way street."

Does your courtesy and respect include not putting words in other people's mouths?

JOHN ROOSEVELT

Herzen: do you think the aim of the Arabs, after Resolution 181 was passed, was to ethnically cleanse the Jews from Palestine? Do you think the aim of the Arab Armies which declared war on Israel in May '48 was to destroy it and ethnically cleanse the Jews from Palestine?

Or perhaps you feel the aim was merely to prevent a jewish state from being formed -even one designated by the UN along side a Palestinian one (yes, the Jews got all the juicy bits, we know), only, and form a Palestinian state granting all its peoples - including Jews - full democratic rights - something lik the in state the Spring-like Palestinians epsouse these days?

Herzen wont answer this one, folks, nor will any of the Jew bashers here. They just can't square the answer with the rest of their twaddle.

Okey

Emet: at the end of World War 1 the victorious powers assembled at the Paris Peace Conference.
Here, among other matters, the disposition of the former Ottoman and Habsburg imperial territories was determined. The various stakeholders put forward their claims, including the Zionist Jewish stakeholders and the Arab stakeholders.
Thus the Czech Nation and the Hungarian Nation, Polish Nation and so on, retrieved their national self-determination within their renascent historic homelands.
As for the Arab Nation, it was to receive 99.9% of the former very sparsely inhabited Ottoman territories in which to establish its unitary state.
At that time there had never been a separate "Palestinian" nation.
There had been no political or even administrative entity called "Palestine" in the Ottoman Empire. In fact the recognised leader/representative of the Arab Nation, the Emir Faisal, declared in his letter to Felix Frankfurter, a leading Zionist, that the Arab Nation and Jewish Nation were kindred folk, and that the Arabs welcomed the prospect of the Zionist enterprise because it would benefit both nations.
Then, however, two crucial factors began to pervert the course of what would have been an amicable evolution:
1. British and French imperial machinations which involved (a)dishonouring undertakings that had been given to the Arab Nation and the Jewish Nation.
(b) fragmenting the Arab nation into separate political entities such as the newly created state of Syria, the newly-created state of Iraq et al.
The French imperialists were the junior partner in all this imperial scheming, hence the creation of the State of Lebanon.

Britain had had a long history of applying the Roman doctrine of "divide et impera."
2. Later on, the espousal by the Arab nationalist movement
of Nazi ideology and practices,notably by the British-appointed Haj Amin al-Husseini, whom Hitler appointed as his adviser on Jewish affairs, and who urged Hitler (as if that was necessary) to exterminate the Jews. The Arab Nazi adherents were to cause Britain a lot of trouble in the 1930's and during World War2.

True, a small number of Arabs, as well as a small number of Jews, lived in the minuscule, sparsely inhabited,largely barren territory where the proposed renascent Jewish Nation-State was to evolve. Here on this pocket handkerchief territory the Jews were to be a majority, the Arabs a minority, with all their civil and religious rights protected, but no separate sovereignty. The populous, but minority Kurds in Turkey, Syria and Iraq remained stateless and under the tyrannical rule of Arab dicators to this day. The same applies to other minorities such as the Berbers, the Assyrians et al within the Arab states.
Reasonable people then, as now, can appreciate the overwhelmong merits of the Zionist case that argues that it is equitable for the Arab nation to exercise self-determination in Arab-majority states that encompass almost the entire Middle East and North Africa, while the Jewish Nation exercises its self-determination in a tiny fraction of the region.

Oh for an Arab leader of the stature and wisdom of the Emir Faisal.

JOHN ROOSEVELT

Rick: "And he has never yet explained why the fact of "Arab" immigration into Palestine should vitiate the Palestinians' right to determine their own government."

But it hasn't. The Palestinians - as their propagandists are so apt to boast about, have determined their own Government - Hamas.

Democracy reigns..and I can feel those Spring blossoms a falling...

Mike Woodman

In answer to the title of this article, I think the answer is "yes".

pete

one thing is patently clear, you have to swim through all the dross, all the "guardianista" to get the snippets, of geniune sanity in interviews/reporting, ie two relevant voices, genuinely put on the spot together without the BBC "sideshow"

all you need to hear, in two concise interviews...that say it all

bbcs Radio4 Today programme 16/05.11 (actually 1hr 30 mins in) on iplayer
http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9487000/9487047.stm

plus an excellent snippet on bbc 5live breakfast,16/05/11(actually 2hrs 4 mins in)again on iplayer , a rep from fatah, and spokesman for israel.
the usual tirade against the existence of the state of israel, palestinian land etc etc

followed by a statement of situational fact backed by tv evidence from regev
then suddenly a change of tack.
fatah rep, realising he looked a total bigot, "of course we recongnise the state of israel",(this gentleman may of course now be out of a job :-)
and is answered clearly with,
"then why have you aligned yourself with a terrorist organisation dedicated to its obliteration..sooner than working with us?"

i think thats called checkmate
before an answer could emerge

in typically typically wonderful bbc fashion,
"we ll have to leave it there"

ooo some things never change :-)

I love the UK

Okey....I did say it wasn't my war, I also wish you can all live in peace, but the BBC is not an "Arab organ" for me it informs and entertains. Clearly the BBC is not on the Zionist side I don't think it is realistic to think it will ever be. This is a pro right-wing, pro Israeli blog perhaps my views are not really welcome here. Have a nice day my right-wing chums.

Rick

Emet
May 18th, 2011 3:58am
Trust me on this one. He is beyond reasoning with and will not look at evidence.

Matt

@pete

Thanks very much for those links, very informative!

Okey

To "I love the UK": You are pushing an open door. Zionists do not expect the BBC to be pro-Zionist; they expect it to be what its charter mandates, namely, impartial. The Zionist case is so compelling that we do not fear impartial coverage. You have implicitly admitted that the BBC does not do that.
As for your bandying about of the terms, "left-wing" and "right wing", a few points:

1. on what grounds do you imply that "left wing" is righteous and moral, while "right wing" is not?
2. the British Labor government of Attlee was "left wing"; that was the government that ordered MI6 to blow up ships carrying Jewish survivors of the Holocaust.
3. Richard Crossman,(among others), one of Attlee's colleagues,was a leading "leftwinger" and an ardent Zionist.
4. The President of the General Assembly of the UN at the time of the resolution that recommended the re-establishment of the Jewish nation-state in part of The Land of Israel, was Dr H.V.Evatt, an eminent jurist and very "left wing."

As far as the BBC's coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict is concerned, the BBC is not giving you information, but pro-Arab propaganda. Is that what you really want?

Why are you adopting such an aggrieved attitude to this site? After all, it has given you ample opportunities to express your views.

Stephen Rothbart

Derek, you ask "- how can Israel and the Palestinians reach a fair compromise over territory. Your picture of Arab life in Israel may well be accurate. But what lesson are we supposed to draw from it?"

Yes at last to the point.

It does not matter what happened 60 years ago, now. It's what is happening, now.

Well, the Fatah West Bank leadership, having rejected two deals from Ehud Barak and then from Olmert for a division of Jersualem and many concessions that even now are considered by some in Israel as way too generous, declined on both occasions to accept them.

Arafat was acknowledged, even by the Clinton administration as being someone who was never
sincere in making a deal with Israel, and now Abbas has signed a deal with the Holocaust denying, Israel and Jew hating Hamas leadership, so we know for sure he is not someone to do business with.

Five million Palestinian arabs exercising their Right of Return would create a loigistical nightmare. Where would they live? In their old home that has probably been knocked down and replaced by an apartment block? Oh sure, those pesky Jews are so used to being kicked out of their homes and left with nothing, it's OK to do it again, they have a lot of practice.

So what is "fair" in your mind, Derek?

Go back to 1967 borders, when Hamas want them to go back to AD 7th Century borders?

The problem with all the people that call for a fair solution for the Palestinians, is that they have no answers. They just have questions.

The questions are usually based around what right did the Jews have to come to this region in the first place.

And whatever answer you give, "none" or "every," it does not solve the problem of what to do - now.

Because the Palestinians are ruled by leaders who will not recognize Israel.

When you decide to acccept that point of view, which is self-evident in their words, actions and deeds, come back and tell us what is a "fair" solution to both sides.

Penny will be able to defend her point better than me, but in case you have not noticed, Syrians, Libyans, Egyptians have had no problem leaving their homes if it is oppressive for them to stay, so your remark is not really relevant.

You live in France and I in Central Europe, but Israeli Arabs are happy to stay in a Jewish State, so people move around. Perhaps it's not just losing their homes that make the Israeli Arab stay but because they can get jobs there, say what they like publicly without fear, and are not taught a daily diet of venemous propaganda by their leaders and their schools that all Jews are dogs and monkies that should be killed.

I don't know, Derek, why else would they stay? You have all the answers.

Another Joshua

The news item may have had to be changed because not all of the evidence of what was said was reliable and the JP did not consider it right to perpetuate something that may in the end be not right.The incident itself of course is horrific and it cannot not be coincidental that it should have happened on that day. That there are very few incidents like this is also indicative that most Arabs do not condone this. The quiet streets in Tel Aviv would also be indicative of fear. The atmosphere is therefore uneasy.

Matt

@ "I love the UK":

I am an average British WASP who lives in the London area. For what it's worth, I love the BBC and consider it one of the world's best broadcasters, if not the best. It's certainly an institution to be very proud of. Their documentaries are usually superb (but I am concerned that they have started to "dumb down" the content, Horizon being a good example) and some of their entertainment shows are brilliant.

But for anyone with more than a background knowledge of the (ongoing) Arab-Israel war, it is very clear that they favour the Arab "narrative" as the basis for their analysis and much of their reporting. This is to be expected, since that view is sadly held by many people with university educations in this country who have little detailed knowledge of the history or the current reality but love to have an opinion on the subject.

Just try going to a north London dinner party and bring up the topic and see the kind of views that get expressed. It's an interesting experiment. I can guarantee that someone will accuse Israelis of racism, treating Arabs as second class citizens etc. You'll probably hear all the usual tropes - land theft, apartheid, etc. I can also guarantee that few if any of their friends will challenge them on this (I always do, by the way, and it often proves highly controversial).

The reason for this is that the simplistic perception of the situation is one of rich whites oppressing poor brown people, and it is not considered to be PC to disagree with this point of view. But people must, because it's entirely wrong, and dangerous, and often the people that express these views don't care for Jews much.

Unfortunately the BBC's world-view reflects one which permeates much of the establishment in this country these days. The BBC is just the tip of the iceberg. What is distressing for me is that these people are in the process of committing national suicide. If the powers that be try to appease revolutionary Islamism by failing to stand up for Israel, what exactly will they stand up for? You? Ha!

But a note of optimism: There are many, many people in the UK who are acutely aware of the real situation and there is an enormous amount of support and sympathy for Israel and the Jewish people. The establishment's world-view does not reflect the British peoples' world-view. Things will change, and I am confident that we will stand up for Israel when the time comes.

Herzen

Stephen Rothbart
May 18th, 2011 11:06am
The PLO signed Oslo, more fool them. The deals offered by Barak would have allowed the Palestinians a confederation of ghettoes. Clinton belatedly recognized that no Palestinian could sign such a deal, and produced his "principles" or "parameters", or whatever the jargon was. The Israelis and Palestinians negotiated on the basis of these principles at Taba. Both sides said the negotiations made good progress. Barak called a halt. On later negotiations, the Palestine Papers appear to have disappeared down a memory hole. Look at them again to see what concessions the PA were offering.

Surely it is reasonable to stay in your homeland, even as a second class citizen in someone else's state, rather than volunteer to live in a ghetto on the West Bank or in the Lebanon. I don't think anyone disputes that life is better for Palestinians living in Israel than the West Bank, Gaza, or Lebanon. And, of course, those lucky enough to get out are much better off living in the US or Europe.

Jerry

aelle wrote, "It will take political courage to stop this momentum"

"Political Courage" when applied to the Israelis means a withdrawal from land gained in defensive wars. Israel tried that in Lebanon and in Gaza. Both withdrawals led to war and to emplacement of implacable enemies of Israel. Iran does not even share a border with Israel, but insists upon its demise. What's with you people who keep demanding a smaller Israel as a mark of Israeli courage! Let us see you write of the specifics you demand from the Palestinians.

If the UN tries to give the Palestinians a state without an "end of conflict" agreement, it is a recipe for war of a magnitude you'd wish could have been avoided in spite of your animus toward Israel.

Stephen Rothbart

Herzen, and there you have it.

What you just said explains all narrative of anti-Israeli rhetoric.

You say "Surely it is reasonable to stay in your homeland, even as a second class citizen in someone else's state, rather than volunteer to live in a ghetto on the West Bank or in the Lebanon."

Someone else's state? No, they are living in Israel, which is their state. The Israeli Arab is living in their own state.

No one is asking them to move to another and while Jewish and Arab Israelis do leave for other countries, like I did and Derek Blades did from the UK, we did it to suit ourselves, not because we were forced.

This kind of Jewish "imperialism" that you have referred to is now explained by your illustration and does much to perhaps explain why you feel the way you do about Israel.

The point is, as I have said before, Israel is a nation of about 6.5 million people, of which 4.5 million are Jews some formerly Palestinian Jews (sabras), and 1.5 million are Arabs, formerly Palestinian Arabs and 500,000 others (Christians etc.).

Israel is not an apartheid State as so many would like to believe. And for the 45% of Germans and 65% of Poles that believe Israel is trying to exterminate the Palestinian Arabs, well, they are more stupid than ignorant for holding such views given that around 23% of Israel is Arab.

You are not stupid by any stretch of the imagination, but if you really think that Israel's Arabs are living in someone else's state, then that is unexpected coming from you.

I will tell you which Muslim community is living in someone else's State. The Turkish population of Germany.

So the 45% of Germans need to learn the difference. With respect, so should you.

I love the UK

"Why are you adopting such an aggrieved attitude to this site? After all, it has given you ample opportunities to express your views."

I am an outsider regarding this conflict and I'm honestly to the left of probably all of you on this blog. I appreciate the opportunity to give my view on this blog and I bear no ill will to the Jewish or Palestinian people, its a tragedy when anyone is killed in this conflict. What is clear the Zionist position is not making Israel safe and it is not working, my bet there will be a deceleration of a Palestinian state maybe this year. I agree with Mel when she says you have lost the Media and International opinion war.

To the Matt asking about attending dinner parties in north London my bet is they are far more sophisticated than the haggis munching, beer swirling "dinner parties" I attend in central Scotland LOL!

aelle

Penny

re your part I of 17/5 - 6.16pm

I was first won over to Mel's side by a piece that appeared in the Sunday Times just days after 9/11. I for once e-mailed her to say her words should be compulsory reading for every politician. I was surprised to get a very appreciative reply.

Since then I have watched her well-documented journey across the political spectrum. I can't say I always agree with her apocalyptic stance on social, personal and political issues, but she continues, I agree, to be outspoken, provocative and very much sui generis in the media world.

Of course I don't have the same stake in the make up of the Middle East as those who live there, but it was the English who first disturbed the hornet's nest a century ago - I have seen Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Nazareth - worked in Israel and Egypt, and want to see a stable - and as far as feasible -peaceful resolution over time to the problems that beset the area.

For the record, I am not anti anything - except perhaps violence and injustice - and I am not on anyone's side .

I understand the legitimate concerns of the Israeli population which has set itself up at the heart of a region which is largely inimical to it.

The West needs to continue to demonstrate its support for Israel - to force Arab States to abandon the notion that violence has any possible chance to threaten the existence of the reality which is the 21st century State of Israel.

Of course there are militant Islamic elements preaching Jihad against Israel, the US, the UK, the West in general.
We have to combat that threat, but just as important, we have to have a strategy to progressively undermine its appeal. The Islamists flourish in the resentment generated by stateless peoples nurturing hatred and a sense of grievance.
It is no solution to oppose them with an iron wall and ever escalating levels of terrorism and reprisal, and continuing erosion of the territories left available to the dispossessed.

As you know, that last doesn't go down too well with the surviving disciples of Jabotinsky who proliferate on this site.

By the way, and on an altogether more positive note, I watched on the More4 TV channel last night a wonderful Israeli made documentary called Dolphin Boy in which a deeply traumatised Arab Israeli teenager is slowly nursed back to normality by an Israeli psychiatrist using the mysteriously therapeutic qualities of the dolphins in Eilat. It is a marvellous and uplifting story - and beats the hell out of watching on +972/Youtube the tragic spectacle of the weekly encounters between the villagers of Nabi Saleh and the bullies of the IDF.

Please try to watch the film - it encapsulates everything you have said about the inherent decency of the attitude of ordinary Israelis towards the Arabs of the region - just as the Youtube pictures show how political decisions and pressures threaten to undermine that decency.

Thank you for part I - I await Part II with pleasure - which is more than I get from a nummber of other posts directed at me of late.

Still, as Mr Dylan once observed, ' you can't please all the people, all the time. '

Tilly

Penny -

I was amused - but hardly surprised - to see my name listed for your guidance to "anti-zionists or even anti-semites, hiding behind a pretence of caring for the Palestinians" by Truthtriumphs (May 18th, 12.26am).

The quality of your correspondence so far leads me to believe you are quite capable of making your own mind up on this, but since TT has chosen to intervene I'll use him/her to illustrate why I think your generalised perception might be somewhat askew.

In another thread, I was accused by TT of failing to express "normal ... feelings of revulsion" at the Fogel murders and in my reply I cited just such an expression from me. What I pointed out (among other things) was that any comments by TT's opponents which didn't "fit" his/her preconceived notions of them were comprehensively filtered out; I also acknowledged that I might be guilty of similar blinkering, though after a diligent search it remained the case that any hint of compassion towards Palestinians was markedly absent from TT's posts.

While there may, indeed, be some bloggers (in both camps, I'd stress) who have lost all sight of the human dimensions to the Middle East tragedy, I'd suggest to you that the vast majority of "anti-Semitism" allegations (and similar barracking) levelled against those criticising Israel are quite unfounded if one looks at their texts from a determinedly neutral stance. (I've certainly modified my opinion of one or two staunch Zionists since questioning my own degree of attention to "misfitting" matters of detail!)

Insults are, I think, perfectly appropriate in response to correspondents who are blatantly and irredeemably bigoted, but to tar all opponents with the same indiscriminate brush is merely a destructive point-scoring exercise which achieves nothing but alienation and entrenchment.

Augustus

Of course the question is a legitimate one. The scandal alone of calling into question a living nation's existence ought to shame all the prevaricators and defamers, whether they be professors in universities, media distorters, 'peace activists' who justify terror, morally deformed intellectuals, self-deceiving unconfessed or even confessed
haters, or merely the herd of the easily misled. And our very own Derek Blades please note: Former centre-left Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered the PA the whole of Gaza, as near as damnit the whole of the West Bank (including most of East Jerusalem), and in response Arafat stormed out of the talks and launched a terror war
against the Israeli people in which thousands of Israeli Jews (mainly women and children) were murdered, maimed, terrorized,
widowed, and orphaned.

aelle

Gershon May 18 2011 7.37a.m.

" I never mentioned Joan Peters or any other historian. "

Quite correct.

What you did say on May 16 4.00
p.m. was the following :

" I suggest that you learn some history before you comment. In 1948 the vast majority of the Arab population of Palestine had been there no more than 75 years. "

Now I freely confess that I am not an academic historian - my Oxford degree was in Modern Languages - but I have come to expect that those who make very specific assertions should provide their source.

Since the most widely recognised source of unreliable information about the Arab population of Palestine is Joan Peters I am indeed guilty of assuming that your mistaken and dogmatic assertion was taken from her discredited and tendentious book ' From Time Immemorial ' 1984.

Since I was clearly mistaken perhaps you could tell me where in fact you picked up your notion.

Unless of course you were simply observing that ' the vast majority ' of Arabs - or indeed anybody else - at any given moment in time has a tendency to be less than 75 years old.

Truthtriumphs

aelle.

"Since the most widely recognised source of unreliable information about the Arab population of Palestine is Joan Peters I am indeed guilty of assuming that your mistaken and dogmatic assertion was taken from her discredited and tendentious book ' From Time Immemorial ' 1984."

On what do you base this assertion?

Herzen

Stephen Rothbart
May 18th, 2011 1:44pm
Their state was Palestine.

You are right, of course, that they, and their brethren expelled in the civil war i.e. the refugees who legally should have been alowed to return, became citizens of the successor state (assuming it was legally constituted, which is another matter).

Israel continued to dump Palestinians across the border at every opportunity. Sharon had his staff draw up a plan to deport them all in the event of war. (Luckily, he never got his chance before it was considered too provocative to contemplate.)

In the meantime, Israel imposed martial law on these citizens of their own country until 1966.

Thereafter, it lifted martial law, but continued the discrimination. One hint: look and see how many rights and benefits accrue only to those who have served in the military. Or how many accrue via non-government organizations. The discrimination is not always blatant, but all the more effective for that.

You say no-one is asking them to move. Benny Morris advocates what Egypt is rightly criticised for after 1956. He says in the event of war Israel's Arabs should be expelled (this from their own country remember - where they are citizens like anyone else). Avigdor Lieberman would just like rid of them, war or no war (that's his version of a two-state settlement).

You like to assure your interlocutor that you don't think they are stupid, but...

Perhaps you should read up on the sixty year history of deliberate discrimination; and on the economic data that show the Israeli Arabs to be third class citizens. There are a lucky few who make it in Israel (a sign of what Israel could yet become?). The lucky few are not representative of the many.

So, yes, it is their state. Israeli policy has always been such as to indicate that officialdom is of one mind with our Benny - if only Ben Gurion had finished the job, then it would not be their state, and things would be so much simpler all round.

Israel may yet become a state of all its citizens.

Herzen

Augustus
"Former centre-left Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered the PA the whole of Gaza, as near as damnit the whole of the West Bank (including most of East Jerusalem), and in response Arafat stormed out of the talks and launched a terror war
against the Israeli people in which thousands of Israeli Jews (mainly women and children) were murdered, maimed, terrorized,
widowed, and orphaned."

I'm pretty sure you were around in previous threads where it was pointed out that this is not accurate, at least according to Israeli sources other than the propaganda served up for public consumption. The Offer was anything but Generous. Serious progress was made at Taba. Ehud Barak walked away from the Taba talks. The protests that began the intifada were, according to sources in Israeli security, not organized by Fatah, but spontaneous (recall that Israel used live fire on unarmed protestors, which might have had something to do with the escalation of the initial protest). The one thing you appear to have got right is that Israeli Jews were killed and maimed in atrocities for which there can be no defence. I suspect you subscribe to the official line that all Palestinian men, women, and children killed and maimed were either terrorists or human shields used by terrorists and that Israel used carefully targetted proportionate force.

Herzen

Stephen Rothbart,

P.S.
I had forgotten that you think the indices of health and wealth show, not that Arab Israelis have been systematically discriminated against, but that they are lazy and in thrall to a religion of death.

I will not attempt to address this (I fear C. Gee would call me a Marxist, which wouldn't do.)

Penny

Hi Derek

Yes, it was an overly-long post but then, no one is obliged to read it, are they?

By virtue of your questions – which are valid and deserving of an answer – this might also be wordy. So, to read it or skip over it? The choice is yours. Just don’t complain at a later date!

You ask why I didn’t address the issue of a) Arab *entry* into Israel and ways in which the two sides might reach peaceful co-existence. Well, to put it simply, I was responding to Aelle, who was not actually asking those questions.

But, as you have asked now, I will do you the courtesy of replying specifically to both.

You are an intelligent man, Derek, so I would suggest you already know that Arabs can and do enter Israel. But I suspect you are referring not Arabs per se, but to West Bank Palestinians.

The answer is still the same – they do enter on a daily basis. Many work in Israel or they may come in as students or to receive medical care or to express themselves freely and without fear if they are gay and wishing to socialise with members of the Israeli gay community.

Perhaps you are asking why Palestinians who do not fall into the categories mentioned above may not simply swan in and swan out without restriction. That is another issue which I will gladly address in full - along with the related ‘right of return’ and ‘one-state solution’ issues - in another post. If you are of a mind to read my take on this, of course. It is too much to put into one post.

For now I will just say that the consequence of concessions made by Israel is rather forming a pattern; Israeli concession = intifada or rocket attacks. As we’re currently talking about West Bank I’ll confine this to intifada – and there’s nothing like series of terrorist attacks to concentrate the mind on deterrents and to also make for lack of trust and anticipation of yet more terror.

The last intifada resulted in waves of bombing across Israel. In effect, Israel experienced fortnightly (on average) episodes such as we experienced in the 7/7 London underground bombing.

Oh, I grant that the degree of carnage varied in terms of numbers of dead and injured, but the fear of sending your children to school, going shopping, getting on a bus – all those small but necessary daily tasks – was very real.

I suspect if it was happening in your neck of the woods, Derek, you, like the citizens of Israel, would demand that your government did something.

If, on the other hand, you - or anyone else come to that – are of a view that most people believe intifada action is a fair and reasonable situation to be in, and that ordinary people are quite happy with the prospect of being blown to bits whilst enjoying a pizza, travelling to work, meeting their children from school or visiting an elderly parent in a rest home, then I would suggest that such people are mentally ill.

If issues of mental instability to not apply (and of course, they do not) then you must concede that your reaction to an intifada and subsequent demands on your government would be no different to that of any citizen of Israel.

A government is obliged to look after its citizens, if Israel did not and continued to allow suicide bomber after suicide bomber onto the streets of its cities then for sure, there would be some call from the UN demanding Israel conforms to one international law or another, and/ or be obliged to answer some accusation of its abuse of human rights.

It sucks to be Israel because the calls tend to work in reverse – it cannot do right for doing wrong.

I kind of understand why, when the question of ‘what would *you* do?’ has been put to Clegg (amongst others,) he ducks it or says something along the lines of, “It’s not for me to say”. I suspect it’s a question no politician has ever fully answered nor wants to, because they darned well know that if the UK was in the same position, they would have to implement some very serious measures.( Indeed, at airports most countries have, even though it was America who had the tragic, direct experience of air-related terrorism).

British citizens would rightly demand and expect protection. And, if they knew with absolute certainty that all suicide bombers were living in one specific city in the UK, they would likely demand some form of tangible separation and security systems between themselves and the bombers.

So – if you are still with me, Derek , a final note on what will bring about a peaceful co-existence? If I knew for sure then I would surely get an invite from Obama in tomorrow's post. As it is, I can only give an opinion.

In my mind huge strides could be made if aid to the Palestinians was dependant on the eradication and normalisation of the material it teaches in its educational establishments and on its TV.

You simply cannot obtain peace simply by signing a treaty. These people are raised to hate jews – and christians, atheists , Americans and Brits for that matter. (If you wish, I will gladly provide references to speeches made following 7/7 which clearly demonstrate the Palestianian attitude to the UK).

You cannot expect peace if you teach children that jews drink their blood; that jews are vermin; that jews sneak hormone-laden chewing gum into Palestinian areas in order to induce immoral behaviour in girls - and other such nonsense that we thought had expired along with Nazi Germany.

You cannot dish out propaganda against jews and the West on a daily basis or teach young minds that to die as a martyr is the greatest way to honour Allah or to avoid the adhab al-qabr (torments of the grave).

You cannot teach The Protocols of the Elders of Zion as a history lesson or show the region minus Israel during Geography classes. You cannot bring children up playing in streets named after suicide bombers and where their photos are to Palestinian teenagers as rock stars and footballers are to ours.

And, as mentioned in other posts, you cannot put guns into childrens hands and mock suicide belts around their waist, teach them to recite jihadist poetry which declares a wish to march into Jerusalem and blow oneself up, thereby glorifying martyrdom - and then expect them to fully reject that martyrdom out of hand.

Nor can you shriek at Israel for not wanting to admit Palestinians en masse into their midst.

If you think we are any different to Israel in this respect, I would remind you of the British expose of the Saudi curriculum being taught in the UK. I don’t recall one person who watched that and did not see it as a grave cause for concern. And that curriculum was not as bad as the one taught in Palestinian and other Arab lands.

This indoctrination is wrecking lives on both sides and chances of peaceful co-existence are clearly compromised by it. Furthermore, any right-minded individual would see it as child abuse. They certainly would if such education was being inflicted on their children!

If it is not right for our children, why is it then OK for Palestinian children?

This harm caused by this educational program and Palestinian childrens’ TV has been recognised, as evidenced in a petition started by an MEP who was concerned about young lives and about our taxes funding terrorism. It has been recognised by Hilary Clinton and many other politicians, but not enough is being done about it.

I have personally written to MEP’s about it because, as I said, I’d be joining in the riots on our streets if British children were submitted to this form of vile indoctrination.

Penny

Aelle - part II disppeared into the ether!

I will give it another go later on tonight!

I'll keep this short in the hope that it, too, doesn't go astray.

aelle

Truthtriumphs

For a definitive review of Ms Peters' book ' From Time Immemorial ' 1984 I would refer you to The New York Review of Books of Jan 16 1986.

Yehoshua Porath of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem refers to Ms Peters' " highly tendentious use - or neglect - of the available source material." He writes too of her
" misunderstanding of basic historical processes and failure to appreciate the central importance of ( Arab ) natural population increase as compared to migratory movements."

In conclusion he has the following to say : " Everyone familiar with the writings of the extreme nationalists of Zeev Jabotinsky's Revisionist Party ( the forerunner of the Herut Party ) would immediately recognise the tired and discredited arguments in Ms Peters' book. I had mistakenly thought them long forgotten. It is a pity they have been given new life."

Hardly a ringing endorsement, wouldn't you say?

Even Daniel Pipes concedes " Ms Peters is not a historian."

Norman Finkelstein referred to the book as " a monumental hoax ".

And if those two are singing from the same song sheet......

Stephen Rothbart

No Herzen, I do no think that Israeli Arabs are "lazy and in thrall to a religion of death."

They could not exist in a state like Israel if they were. They would be pressurising the local authorities to ban the Star of David as it offended them, like many Muslims in the UK do, and get some idiot to agree.

The ones that are ruled by Hamas/Hezbollah/Iran, well that is another question. Although "lazy" is not a word I would use to describe them, shall we say not driven to hard work?

Well there we go again. They did not live in a Palestinian State. Can we ever get over this concept that there was a State called Palestine in 1948?

Probably not.

You know, during WW2, my father's friend was a German Jew who came to Britain to escape the Nazis.

As Britain was at war with Germany, the British government collected all the Germans they could find and interred them on the Isle of Man.

Nazi sympathisers and Jews, all herded together in one island. He understood, but it was not a nice life for some years.

Israel was at war with Arab armies and many of the Arabs that left their homes were no different from the Sudetan Germans, who were evicted from their homes, forever, after chosing the wrong side.

Did all Sudetan Germans support Hitler? No. Did they all get evicted? Yes.

Did all the Palestinian arabs that left Israel choose to leave and fight? No. Some were indeed forced out, and some were not.

Did the Jews in Jerusalem get forced out? Yes. Did the Jordanians let them back in? No.

However, the arabs that stayed and chose not to fight became Israeli Arabs. If the intention of the State of Israel was an arabischefrei zone, you might say they it did a poor job.

So let's take your claim that Arabs are third class citizens.

There are, as Penny pointed out, different levels of acceptance in Israel.

Like in every society, there are stratas of social structures.

Somali and Ethiopian Jews are looked down on by many "whiter" Jews, just like you have in English society, French society and...well Europe, America and everywhere - really.

European Jews look down on the Russians and the settlers from the US. It's a melting pot of races and cultures, and sad to say racism exists even in Israel.

Do Arabs play for the national teams in sport? Yes. Are they in the Knesset? Yes.

How many Arab states will even play Israel in a sporting contest? How many Jews are in government positions in the states surrounding Israel?

For that matter, how many Christians?

It keeps coming back to the one point.

Israel is a country like any other. It has a parliament, it has a border, a currency, a passport, an opposition free to dissent from its policies.

It has racists, thieves, minorities, discrimination.

So in that regard it is no different from practically any other country on this planet.

It does differ from many others though, for one reason.

It has been in a state of siege since its inception.

It has mandatory military service for its sons and daughters, who have all seen action or have friends who have, and some of whom have died.

Many of the people living in Israel today were born there, and have no other home.

Remember the racist taunt of some English yob, telling a Pakistani to go back to where he belongs? And the man, who was born in England, says "I am already here."

How many of the 5 million Palestinian Arabs of the 600,000 that were "evicted" or left, have actually lived in what is now Israel?

And why should they have to go to Gaza or Lebanon?

Why can't they go to Jordan, or the Gulf States, or other moderate Arab countries? Because they are discrminated against in every Arab state in which they live.

It's not Israel that is
racist.

It's mankind.

Treat Israel like any other country in the world, and most of us on this blog would shut up.

But the world does not choose to. It continues to persecute a small nation for being no different than everyone else, and lot better than most.

So let me repeat a statistic that may give you pause.

Despite the fact that very few Jews live in Spain, 75% of Spanish people do not like Jews.

It would be hard for most Spaniards to even find a Jew living near them. Does not stop them for hating Jews.

Probaly never met one in their lives. No matter.

Am I paranoid? Actually - no. The Holocaust came about because Jews thought it could never happen in a civilized world. They kept quiet, kept their heads down. When propaganda depicted them the way it is beginning to do so again, they remained silent.

Well, I for one, and many of those on this blog, are not going to remain silent this time.

If we see the BBC becoming an Arab propaganda tool in their attempt to demonize Israel, some of are going to shout out about it.

C.Gee

“The PLO signed Oslo, more fool them. The deals offered by Barak would have allowed the Palestinians a confederation of ghettoes...Surely it is reasonable to stay in your homeland, even as a second class citizen in someone else's state, rather than volunteer to live in a ghetto on the West Bank or in the Lebanon.”

It is time you explained why you use the poisonous term “ghetto”, and what you mean by it. I believe that you use the term to reference Jewish ghettos, the quarters where Jews were forced to live, just as “concentration camp” is used by others to describe Gaza, in order to expropriate Jewish history for distribution to the Palestinians. The sole legitimate representatives of the Palestinians have insisted, with a few, hastily contradicted, statements to the contrary concerning Jerusalem suburbs, on a Jew-free land. To achieve this, the borders of their state are necessarily winding. Gerrymandered jurisdictions are common in the world. There is no reason why a state may not thrive within such borders. But the pretense that longer transportation routes or tracts of land interrupted by Jewish state borders or Jewish housing or Jewish businesses would make economic progress unviable does not bear economic scrutiny. It is another pretext - or an updated pretext - for refusing a peace treaty.

It is time, too, that you started to work into your argument the implication of the declaration of the State of Palestine. Why the 1967 borders? Do those borders prevent “ghettos”? Will the Palestinians “defend” them? (Or expect international forces to do so?). The declaration takes the borders off the negotiating table, and into armed conflict. Resolution 242 is dead. Oslo is dead. In the recent op-ed by Abbas, he made it clear that the right of return is all that is left to “negotiate”. This confirms my view that the peace process was never going to result in a peace treaty, no matter what borders and land swaps were offered: the Palestinians cannot accept borders in a treaty with Israel because that would mean the de jure acceptance of Israel. The declaration of statehood finesses a treaty. And it is clear that “ghetto” living is something they are prepared to suffer while they continue their effort - through the UN and by resistance - to clear Jews from their state (which is not foreclosed from extended from river to sea.)

Please cite any Palestinian Papers which point to an actual offer of or acceptance by the Palestinian negotiators to the Israelis at the table, not merely a post-talk statement that such had been their position. And please refer to actual documents, not Guardian spin. Any history of the negotiations will reveal the excuses for not accepting peace. The Palestinians allowed some “final issue” negotiations to get almost to signing point, but would then balk, holding up the right of return as the sticking point. Or, they would say that they were prepared to modify the right of return to be limited to “Palestine” (with compensation for the other refugees ) but that the amount and quality of the land being offered was unacceptable - particularly where they would have to go out of their way to avoid Jews.

With respect to your understanding of “homeland”, and your concept of “confederation”: How many square miles around your property, village and town, constitute your “homeland”? According to the reading of Arab sovereign rights, the “homeland” of the Arab-speaking residents of any part of the “occupied territories” extends across Israel and Jordan, and, logically, the rest of (formerly Ottoman) Arabia. So, indeed, taking a “confederation” view of this vast homeland, it would be reasonable for an Arab to stay in the autonomous part of his “homeland” that is well-administered by non-Arab speakers, rather than in a district administered by Arab fascists who have turned their jurisdictions into ghettos and prisons (and particularly nasty ones for Arabs coming from “Palestine”), jurisdictions where first-class citizenship is a privilege accorded to the ruling elite. Why would you take away this choice from him, by supporting an Arab administration which intends to oust the non-Arab one, and replace liberal with fascist rule?

And no, it is no use pretending that Fatah or Hamas will offer democratic governance or are themselves a democratic governement. That wish will not father the deed. The idea that, but for Israel, Palestine would be a liberal, democratic, secular, economically thriving Arab Switzerland is a delusion.

Palestinian self-determination rights rest upon antisemitism. Why was it “natural” for the Arabs to object to the peaceful immigration of Jews to join the existing population of Jews in Palestine? In fact, the ordinary Arabs did not object to the Jews, but were told to do so by their leaders. The intelligentsia the world over - including Zionists - simply assumed that it was understandable that the Arabs should be hostile to Zionism. After all, much of the world was hostile to Jews. It was part of the “racist” thinking of the time. On the other hand, when it came to arranging for governance over regions inhabited by Arab speakers, it was not seen as “natural” that they should object to foreign tribes or sects being imposed upon them, and if they did object that was the business of the new sovereign to deal with them as he saw fit. But when it came to Arabs living in a Jewish National Homeland, the Jewishness of the foreign sovereign validated Arab insurrection. So not only are the Arabs entitled to their racism, their claims to self-determination and independent governance are entirely based upon it. Viewed geo-politically, the Palestinian Arab state is the political realization of nazism, the Middle Eastern heir to the Third Reich.

Oslo validated der kampf of the Arab nazis. The Israelis signed it, more fool them. Perhaps now that it is dead, it will at last be buried, upon its gravestone the words: “Here lie side by side two states in peace and security.”

Herzen

Penny
May 18th, 2011 6:40pm
One small comment on another long but reasonable post: The intifada was not a response to a concession from Israel. It was a response to yet another demonstration that Israel would offer only discrete enclaves with sovereignty reduced essentially to the PA policing the Palestinians on Israel's behalf. The intifada started as a spontaneous protest, met by Israel with disproportionate force (firing live ammo at unarmed protestors - I can dig out the data on how many million rounds were fired in teh first weeks). The intifada was hellish for Israelis. It was also hellish for Palestinians. And negotiations in Taba were making progress when Ehud Barak called them off.

Okey

To "I love the UK": if you posted your particular definition of "left" and "right", it would help me understand your position.

It seems that nowadays the default "leftist" position is that "the left" must support entities that are racist, oppressive, belligerent, exploitative, mendacious, obscurantist, reactionary.
Or is it only where Jews are involved that "the left" does this?
Call me paranoid if you like. I prefer to call it realism based on evidence.

Penny

Hi Tilly

As you know I'm not a regular here so I come - at the moment (!) with no prior knowledge of many of the current posters.

Your comments about genuine criticism versus anti-semitism is so important. I want to give it some real consideration here, so I give fair warning.....*wordy* strikes again! I'm tired, too. Which makes it worse!

Of course criticism of Israel is valid and of course it does not instantly equate to anti-semitism.

That said, for criticism to be valid it must also be sensible, logical and related to facts rather than fiction or selectively researched information (I hestitate to call some of this information 'facts!) or even wishful thinking. Both sides must be willing to concede that the other may have a point.

As I don't have an pre-conceptions about you, I truly have no idea how you see or write about Israel. I'm afraid I don't have the time to go back and look at your posts to know. So, I can only tell you how I determine the difference between valid criticsm and anti-semitism.

Feel free to discuss it with me if you want. I hope we can keep our posts amicable.

Criticism which includes the words 'apartheid' or 'nazi' is, in my view, not issuing forth from the keyboard of someone I would, without hestitation, say is free from prejudice.

In my mind, these tend to be either semi-hysterical or calculated-to-offend statements. Although they can be just second-hand views that the person has not personally researched. I see no point in engaging with the former, though. Experience tells me that sometimes there is eau-de-JewHatred in the air!

People who reply only to thrust and parry or mock - I don't know. Perhaps they support the Palestinians or perhaps they just do on, say, this site and nowhere else. Perhaps they rather enjoy a good old argument! That's alright. U tend not to respond to them, though.

From the Israeli supporters side, I would refer you to my comment to Aelle. It is sometimes absolute frustration and weariness that sparks an angry reaction.

People who will not listen to reason regarding Israel's security leave me uncertain. I can only ask myself why they believe the Jewish state should maintain free borders with people who have quite openly stated their intention to kill. It's quite hard not to see traces of anti-semitism here, Tilly.

To my mind, it is akin to not merely stating but *demanding* that the UK take no action on terrorists operating within its borders. Where's the difference?

Why do some people seem to want terrorists to roam free only in Israel?

The double-standards issue is one I take on a case-by-case basis. Sometimes people just haven't stopped to think that the UK has exactly the same issue or carries out the self-same action as the one the person is accusing Israel of. Or, they haven't stopped to ask themselves what they would expect of the government if the UK was confronted with a similar situation - whatever that situation might be. Again, not anti-semitic.

Sometimes people don't stop to think about how supporters of Israel feel about the hysteria, demonstrations and debates that arise if Israel takes even the smallest action, when those who profess humanitarian concerns are ambivalent about say, Darfur, the recent murders of Christians in Egypt and Iraq or, more currently, the death toll rising in Syria. To name but a few. Believe me, it probably has little effect in Israel but it can be truly intimidating for Jewish people in the UK or worse still in Netherlands where some were chanting "Jews,Jews back to the gas". Or "the ovens" - which I believe was heard in the USA.

If people were to rise up and march against other conflicts when they occur, if they were to hoist solidarity placards for other causes it would be so much easier not to see anti-semtism. But they don't.

What is one to think when young people declare themselves to be 'All Hamas/Hizbollah'now? In other words, sympathetic to a terrorist groups whose aim is to kill Jews.

And it is only Israel that causes institutions to hold meetings and decide to boycott something-or-other. No matter what vile treatment others around the world may be experiencing at the hands of despots, the only one that matters is Israel. It smacks of something, Tilly.

Singled out for special treatment in this way, supporters of Israel - be they Jewish or otherwise - are bound to have doubts regarding the question of genuine criticism or anti-semitism.

It is difficult to understand why people insist that the Palestinians are *desperate* or in some way suffering lack and accuse Israel of being the cause. The Palestinians receive billions in aid - far more per capita than any other comparable situation. Given this fact, and given the number of years that the aid has flowed in, why is their situation still classed as *desperate* by some? Where do those billions go?

And what is *desperate*? Do desperate people have Olympic swimming pools and shopping malls? Do desperate people take over a fully-functioning geographical region, complete with those million-dollar greenhouses that would have boosted the economy, and blow them up?

There are many more genuinely desperate causes, Tilly. And they suffer because of the spotlight being permanently trained on a people who get so much attention, and who, in truth, seem unwilling to help themselves.

These questions need to be juxtaposed against the accusations that Israel is responsible for every negative situation experienced by the Palestinians.

When Israel takes military action, the blogosphere goes crazy. I'll be honest, Tilly, some of the things I read lead me to believe that *some* - and by that I do mean a minority of people - are actually quite excited by it. They seem to want Israel to mis-fire and hit a school so that they have a real cause to express anger.

Of course, in the example of a shell hitting a school - which I believe Israel stood accused of during Operation Cast Lead, there is sometimes a whitewashing of Palestinian complicity. By that I mean two things: firstly, if you or I were to find our areas of residence had become part of a war zone, would we send our children to school? Absolutely not! And we'd probably be seen as child abusers if we did.

No such consideration was given to Palestinian children in this example.

No condemnation of the Hamas for not protecting its children was forthcoming either. How is it possible, then, to maintain that only Israel caused the causualties?

That, to me, is part blindness - the accuser didn't stop to ask why children were in school or why the Hamas should stock rockets and armaments in public buildings. But sometimes, even when presented with this argument, the accuser continues to put all the blame on one side.

Secondly, there is a refusal to believe that the Hamas actively tries to maximise casualties in order to gain Western support. Regardless of the evidence.

They are fully aware of the value we place on life. We are less aware of the value they place on death.

Similarly, we refuse to take both Hamas and Fatah at their word. As I've said before, Tilly, this is benign arrogance on our part. We seem to believe that our Western values, mindset and logic can be extrapolated across the globe. Thus, when situation 'x' occurs, and if we apply the logical solution 'y', then the most beneficial outcome 'z', is bound to occur.

However, not every culture does share our values. Thus when the Hamas state in their charter that their intention is to drive the Jews into the sea and turn Israel into an Islamic state, because it seems pretty incomprehensible to us, we think they're blowing hot air around and don't mean it. Of course they mean it.
And Israel has to take that
seriously.

I don't see anti-semitism in those who reject this particular view of mine, but I do sometimes see someone who believes that Western values can trump all, and that once the Hamas see the benefit of them, they will come round. They won't. Their goals are clear and re-stated time and time again.

This isn't an extensive list but I am getting wordy!

So, to conclude, Israel is an open society with a free Press and it cannot hide its actions. The speed at which the media seize on the tiniest thing they do means that those who support Israel are, for the most part, the ones having to answer to critics.

But, Tilly, if we do want the best outcome for both Israelis and Palestinians, we must do the same to the other side in this conflict. We will not resolve anything if the Palestinians are continually presented as helpless victims who long for peace but are mercilessly repressed by the evil Israelis.

Their actions must be open to the same type of harsh criticism as Israel.

Augustus

Herzen - Whatever you may say about Ehud Barak's offer at Camp David (which you say was not generous, when everyone know it was magnanimous), the fact is it received a violent response, as did Sharon's unilateral
withdrawal from Gaza in 2005. Again, for the umpteenth time one has to say, these events prove time and time again that the issue is not about bits of land of a tiny state that one can hardly see on a world map, but about the existence of Israel,
and the very existence of the five million or so Jews that live there. The answer to who is out to destroy whom is undeniable.

aelle

Penny

You really need to stop seeing antisemitic attitudes here and rabid Jew killers there.

Sure there are a few of both sorts out there in this imperfect world - and everybody needs to be aware of them and take care - there are thieves, robbers, killers, rapists out there in the world too - thats why we take care, why we have police and laws, and still occasionally terrible things happen.
But the vast majority of the human race, given a chance and a choice, regardless of colour, race or creed, wants to live , love, laugh and pass on those joys to their children.

Try to see Dolphin Boy - I think you'ld like it.

R Davies

Surely Melanie this outbreak of violence had nothing to do with the the Occupation or other Palestinian grievances. It was a wonderful piece of theatrical circus to distract us all from the killing, maiming and torture in Syria. Did you not find it strange that in a state where the army is controlling all free expression that there was the spontaneous outpouring of Palestinian anguish.
Mr. Bowen one can forgive, he's a deluded fool. Was this not the man who stood in the heart of Hebron where the 1929 massacre occurred, and uttered a series of silly epithets, totally ignorant of the historic context.

Penny

Aelle

"You really need to stop seeing antisemitic attitudes here and rabid Jew killers there."

Well, that's an odd way to interpret what I wrote! And, with respect, it does have more than a smidgeon of patronisation about it!

If you'd added the word 'darling' just once I would have had to have thumped the nearest hard surface.

Fortunately, you didn't so I've been saved the bruise.

Might it be the case, Aelle, that it is you who are not necessarily informed about this matter?

Not seeing something in your immediate environment does not mean it doesn't exist beyond your own personal bubble.

I don't see homophobia anywhere, nor do I see racism in any way, shape or form - but then that's down to my personal and environmental location. I don't patronise those who recognise it and experience it simply because it's not in my own face.

Research it, Aelle. You may be rather surprised. Not only by what you find, but by the wholly grounded, sensible non-Jewish authors who write about it.

One MP, serving on a government committee set up to look into the rise in anti-semitism in the UK, described what the committee discovered as 'sickening'. So much so that he wrote a book.

Hold on, though....! Do you think he's imagining things and must swiftly remove himself to the nearest TV to watch a nice, relaxing video about dolphins?!!!

Truthtriumphs

Emet
May 18th, 2011 3:58am
Truthtriumphs

"In the entire land, it is hard to find tillable land that is not already tilled; only sandy fields or stony hills, suitable at best for planting trees or vines and, even that after considerable work and expense in clearing and preparing them- only these remain unworked". Ahad Ha'am travelled Palestine in 1891".

Your quotations, offered as they are, are unscientific, and easy to demolish.
For example, when the author said "It is hard to find tillable land that is not already tilled", he gave no indication as to the proportion of the whole area that the tillable land comprised.
It may have been just 1% of the whole, and the above statement would still be correct.
He obviously hadn't travelled widely to have come to that view, because the Negev desert (comprising 2/3 present day Israel) is infertile, the Judean wilderness was, and still is in parts, infertile, and the Hula area in the North was a mosquito-infested swamp, only relatively recently drained and made fertile by the Jews in the 1950s, or thereabouts.
Even today, some of the hills not far from Jerusalem are barren and uncultivated.

In any case, you are conflating two separate arguments,
the first being that the land was sparsely inhabited, which you deny, and the second that there was no inward migration of Arabs from neighbouring states, such as Syria and Egypt, to the Holy land.

In the first case, I have supplied many authoratative references to testify to the sparse population density.
Ahad Ha'am travelled in the land in 1891, but there is no indication as to the extent of his travels.
As to the figure of 20,000 Arabs in Nablus, you seem to put a lot of faith in the veracity of the Ottoman figures. What is your source?

In the second case, you categorically deny that there was any inward migration from neighbouring Arab countries into Palestine.
There are far too many authoratitive government records which conclusively demonstrate the falsity of your statement.
Winston Churchill would never have made the remark that he did without concrete evidence to back it up.
He was the PM of England, the outstanding PM of the last century, and as such would have been privy to the best intelligence , don't you think?

Most damning, you still cannot find an answer to the reason why the UN accorded refugee status to Palestinian Arabs who had been in the country for only two years... if, as you say, they were indigenous, this provision would have been superfluous.
Why was this privilege uniquely granted to the Palestinians and to no other refugees on earth?
The reason, of course, was to inflate the numbers, and the best tactic was to include the relatively recent Arab immigrants.

You obviously have an agenda, so you go searching for quotes to "prove" your own bias.

Truthtriumphs

aelle
May 18th, 2011 6:51pm
Truthtriumphs

"For a definitive review of Ms Peters' book ' From Time Immemorial ' 1984 I would refer you to The New York Review of Books of Jan 16 1986.
Yehoshua Porath of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem refers to Ms Peters' " highly tendentious use - or neglect - of the available source material." He writes too of her
" misunderstanding of basic historical processes and failure to appreciate the central importance of ( Arab ) natural population increase as compared to migratory movements."

He would say that, wouldn't, as that forms the core thesis of his book, an idea which does not hold water, and proven nonsense.
It's Emet's recurrent source for this myth.

Then...
"Even Daniel Pipes concedes " Ms Peters is not a historian."

Here's the relevant passage of the review....

"The author is not a historian or someone practiced in writing on politics, and she tends to let her passions carry her away. As a result, the book suffers from chaotic presentation and an excess of partisanship, faults which seriously mar its impact. But they do not diminish the importance of the facts presented. Despite its drawbacks. From Time Immemorial contains a wealth of information, which is well worth the effort to uncover."

Not quite the meaning that you ascribed to Pipes' review, is it?

Then...
"Norman Finkelstein referred to the book as " a monumental hoax "."

You've really destroyed any remaining credibility you might have had....Finkelstein
is mad, bad and dangerous...and everyone knows it.
He it was who obscenely said that "the Jews have created a holocaust industry to aid Jewish social, economic and political movements".
Is that your view?

It amuses me how you fell into the elephant's ordure, thinking that because it is the prevailing orthodoxy amongst the Israel-hating left to ridicule Peters' book, we all blindly follow the mode du jour without question.

Unlike you, I have had a rigorous scientific training, and understand the importance of taking nothing for granted, and questioning everything.
And please, in future, desist from the trickery of using partial quotations.
It's dishonest.

DavidSI

A quick word of thanks to C.Gee and Penny for some good posts. I enjoyed reading them.

AY

Land belongs to those who succeeded to conquer and hold it, use for protection and flourishing, and as a base for superior way of life.

Hopefully Israelis do what is expected - store aviation fuel, ammo and spare parts, check mobilization orders, prepare bomb shelters, gather intelligence and make sure nobody sleeps on watch-duty.

Those who will challenge the right of Israeli citizens to live on their land in safety and without fear, who will start wars - will meet IDF's skills, resolve, and technical capabilities.

drewlewis

Yes, I too am immensely grateful to Penny and C Gee (as well as to yourself, Melanie) for the strength and lucidity of their arguments, their insistence on historical fact not ideological fiction, and their generosity in responding so patiently to the wilful ignorance and prejudice of some contributors to these comments.

I love the UK (especially Scotland)

Okey... Maybe you can help me here. I realize left or right is just a label, anyhow here goes I am pacifist and Republican I believe in social justice, I'm pro-choice for women, non racist and I am totally free from religion and I use the tag I love the UK not because of her past but I rather like the direction this country is travelling. That last statement should strike fear into those of the Tory, UKIP persuasion. This coalition can't last, Nick Clegg is less popular than Hitler. The Tory party couldn't win a majority against Gordon Brown the futures red especially if your lucky enough to live in Scotland. Oh and I really don't hate Jewish people nor am I any of those other labels you describe.

Herzen

Augustus
May 18th, 2011 9:58pm
Israeli officials wrote a brief for whoever came to power after the election in 2001, "The Status of the Diplomatic Process with the Palestinians." It gives the detail of the Generous Offer.

We have discussed the withdrawal of Gaza before. You have been referred to the remarks of Dov Weisglas for one set of reasons for Israel's withdrawal.

Truthtriumphs

Herzen
May 18th, 2011 9:37pm
Penny
May 18th, 2011 6:40pm

"The intifada was not a response to a concession from Israel. It was a response to yet another demonstration that Israel would offer only discrete enclaves with sovereignty reduced essentially to the PA policing the Palestinians on Israel's behalf. The intifada started as a spontaneous protest, met by Israel with disproportionate force".

No, Herzen, wrong again.
It is now accepted by all, except people like you, that it was pre-planned...the Palestinian leadership openly admitted it, indeed, boasted about it.
It must be very frustrating for you when the Palestinians themselves undermine the narrative you so carefully construct for them.

Emmad el-Faluji, Palestinian Minister of Communications reveals the real strategy behind the Palestinan violence. He explains that the Intifadeh was not a spontaneous response to Ariel Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount. Rather, it was a pre-planned, coordinated attack against Israel to stall the peace process.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qb5fIP-MfAc

Is there no limit to the depths you sink to, to vilify Israel?

Matt

I just wanted to echo the sentiments expressed by others above, I'm extremely grateful to Penny, TruthTriumphs, Augustus, C Gee, Stephen Rothbart and others for some fantastic, erudite and informative posts. I really admire your patience.

TrueToo

Louis Berk

May 17th, 2011 8:00pm,

you wrote:

"On reading the initial article at the BBC News Online site on the afternoon of Sunday 15th May I immediately submitted a complaint to the BBC via the web site.

The article contained the line "Israeli seized the Golan from Syria in 1967."

Apart from the typo I objected to the implication in the sentence that Israel had unilaterally taken this territory. In fact, as we know, the Golan was 'seized' or more accurately overrun as part of the response to an unprovoked attack by Syria against Israel during the 1967 "Six Day War."

I'm not saying my complaint was looked at but surprisingly for the BBC within an hour or so the line had been changed to "Israel seized the strategic territory from Syria in the closing stages of the 1967 Six-Day War." This is not ideal but a far better explanation of fact than the original sentence. Perhaps for once an editor decided that the flagrant misrepresentation of historical fact had gone a bit too far?

We live in hope but I also believe it is very important that we promptly complain to the BBC each time there is evidence of misrepresentation of fact (e.g. bias)."

Good for you. Could be that a number of people complained. The BBC "Complaints" website is designed to sweep individual complaints under the carpet. A lot of noise has to be made before they even consider the issue raised.

The BBC Middle East crew "reporting" on the Israeli-Arab conflict is implacably anti-Israel. But the example you complained about is extreme, even for the BBC, as it continues with its conscious, but usually disguised, efforts to demonise the Jewish state and portray the Arab side of the conflict as angelic.

Rick

Truthtriumphs lectures someone who dared to give him references critical of one of his pet sources:

"Unlike you, I have had a rigorous scientific training, and understand the importance of taking nothing for granted, and questioning everything."

Thank you, Truthtriumphs, for this gift of mirth. (Only those who have followed your discreditable progress through the thickets of history and scholarship will be able to enjoy your sermon to the full.)

Stewie

@I love the UK... sorry to burst your little red bubble but England is a conservative nation. There would never be socialism here without Scotland. Mr fishy face is on track to put that problem down.
I'm a highland Scot living in Yorkshire because I detest the lowlands socialism.

TrueToo

Eliezer
May 17th, 2011 1:13pm,

You wrote:

"Melanie you are spot on regarding the Jerusalem Post report.
It has been the policy of the Post to be liberal minded to such an extent as to manipulate reports it publishes, as has been done in this case. It fuels the flames of the anti Israel journalists who rely upon it for accurate unbiased reporting.
David Horowitz agenda is not for Israel but for himself alone. It's time to bring back the days of an editor who supported the Jewish state openly and clearly and ensured the news and comment columns were in line with nationalist thinking and not the wooly thinking of the liberal minded who would be prepared to even sacrifice the state."

If you had written the same comment about Haaretz I would agree with you. But though the Jerusalem Post has arguably moved slightly towards the left over the years, It's heart is still in the right place, pun intended,

I can't believe JPost editor David Horowitz would have had anything to do with a distortion of a report to intentionally put Israel in a bad light. Could be that the initial JPost story was discredited by a reliable source and the amended version based on a reliable source.

Nobody should doubt David horowitz's credentials as a staunch supporter of Israel. Have a look at him blasting CNN's biased reporting to a newsreader's face when he was editor of the Jerusalem Report. You can find it on YouTube. Search for "David Horowitz puts CNN newsreader in his place." It'll be two minutes of viewing well spent.

aelle

Truthtriumphs May 19 2.10a.m.

Matthew Kalman refers to Professor Yehoshua Porath of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem as :
" perhaps the leading non-Palestinian authority on Palestinian history, "

Truthharrumphs dismisses Porath's diligent academic work as " proven nonsense ".

For Truthharrumphs Norman Finkelstein is " mad, bad and dangerous, and everyone knows it ". Personally I find Finkelstein controversial yes, but more ironic than Byronic. And in answer to your question,I have the utmost sympathy for the credo he cites as inherited from his holocaust surviving mother : " we are all holocaust victims ".

As for Daniel Pipes position on the thesis advanced by Ms Peters he pointedly refrains from declaring the issue proven, although clearly he would so like it to be true.

For a British view of the credentials of Ms Peters book the London Review of Books of 7 Feb 1985 carried a far from complimentary review by the late Conservative politician Ian Gilmour and his son David.

So much for the conspiracy of the " Israel-hating Left ".

All this because I questioned the unsubstantiated and highly questionable assertion by one Gershon that " in 1948 the vast majority of the Arab population of Palestine had been there no more than 75 years ".

It seems to me Truthharrumphs that your vaunted intellectual rigour and questioning mind stop well short of anything that might just challenge your prejudiced beliefs.

As Oliver Cromwell wrote to the General Assembly of the Kirk of Scotland in 1650 :

" I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken. "

TrueToo

Stephen Rothbart
May 18th, 2011 8:00pm,

Thanks for that exceptional post. Many will find it extremely hard to swallow, but the truth often is.

"If we see the BBC becoming an Arab propaganda tool in their attempt to demonize Israel, some of are going to shout out about it."

I do frequently, on blogs and in direct complaints to those BBC journalists guilty of pro-Arab propaganda. On occasion, they have even responded - but always, of course, to deny responsibility and to deny bias.

Arthur

the article is a ray of light in the darkness of british media

I love the UK

Stewie Oh don't be so hostile I'm only enjoying a bit of fun I do hope you like Yorkshire. Hope this cheers you up......http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0Hf_zwJpm0

JOHN ROOSEVELT

DavidSI
"May 19th, 2011 2:27am
A quick word of thanks to C.Gee and Penny for some good posts. I enjoyed reading them."

I would also like to thank - again - Herzen, Aelle, Blades Celato et all for goading Penny and C. Gee into continuing to grace this blog with their contributions.

Bless you all!

JOHN ROOSEVELT

Aelle: " I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ' that you seem "more moronic than Byronic".

You carry the baton well for the twaddlemeisters...

Roll on Penny, C.Gee, Stephen Rothbart, Truthtriumphs, Augustus...

Penny

Hi Herzen

Yes, please. Data - and sources of data - would be welcome.

I will reply more fully to your comment later today/tonight.

Herzen

C. Gee

“Enclave” applies simply to territory surrounded by the territory of other sovereign entities. And "enclave" implies no coercion. The Palestinians are confined and their movements controlled by a state that has occupied the territory illegally and confines them to make room for illegal settlers. They are confined as part of a land grab and partly for ideological reasons – they are “Arabs” where the settlers, because they are Jews, want as much land and as few “Arabs” as possible. “Open prison” implies some legality in the confinement. "Ghettoes", as you say, were where Jews were forced to live; these where Palestinians are forced to stay to keep them from land taken by Israel.

Now, here is a curious argument. Israel occupies land by force. Israel builds on land occupied by force and settles its people on it. They are told to leave. They complain loudly about the bad people demanding a Jew-free country. Like squatters indignant at eviction or thieves demanding to keep their spoils. We should also consider how big a problem this is in practice before allowing it to stymie peace. How many of the settlers want to stay put in a Palestinian state?

That economic development would not be “viable” you say “does not stand up to economic scrutiny”. Now that sounds grand and authoritative. What are the conditions you think “viable” and what do you mean by the word? Does Israel retain the prime agricultural land and control of the water? etc. etc. Certainly an economic union, as proposed by the British officials studying partition in the 1940s, would be viable. A “Mediterranean Singapore” or “Abu Dhabi” as procalimed in 2005 I take it was purely cynical. You have not yet enlightened us on your “economic scrutiny”. Are you referring to some particular analysis by economists, or is it all your own work?

Why the 1967 borders? That is easy. The Palestinians, through the PLO, renounced their legal claim on the land taken by force in 1947-8. The Palestinians have renounced any claim on 78% of Palestine and propose to establish a Palestinian state on the remainder. They accept 242, which allows for adjustment to borders.

The Palestine Papers. As you would say, my copy is just beyond reach, so go look for yourself. They have been published in book form, available in book shops and on-line.

You appear exercised by the term “homeland” applied to people who have lived for generations in parts of Palestine that are now Israel. I do not know why you are so exercised. You appear similarly exercised by the term “confederation” applied to the West Bank ghettoes if the PA should ever be prevailed upon to accept them as a “state”. Again, I do not know why. Your comments make it if anything less obvious.

It is natural for peasants to resent in-comers who take land they have worked for generations. It is natural for anyone to resent in-comers announcing their intention to form a majority and establish a state for that majority (leaving the status of the minority very unclear). You yourself have expressed concern at the prospect of Muslim immigrants taking over Britain or other European countries. It ought not to be such a leap of the imagination to understand why Palestinian Arabs should resent Zionists.

“Palestinian self-determination rights rest upon antisemitism”. This is historically ignorant sloganising. Self-determination was the right of the inhabitants of Palestine - Jewish, Christian, and Muslim. That a Palestinian state now may require Israeli settlers to give up land illegally acquired is not anti-semitism. That anti-semitism is rife among Arabs generally and Palestinians is not a reason to refuse to negotiate. Peace between Israel and the Palestinians is more likely to reduce anti-semitism than increase it.

You repeat your curious argument that Britain imposed all sorts of unsavoury regimes after WW1 in pursuit of its imperial interests, much as the US has since WW2, so the only reason the Palestinians could have for objecting to the Zionists, or for others sympathising, is anti-semitism.

You then descend by steps obscure to the rational mind to the conclusion that a Palestinian state would be the heir to the Third Reich. At which point, your audience smiles reassuringly, quickly makes its apologies, and leaves.

Herzen

Truthtriumphs
May 19th, 2011 10:38am
Read General Amos Malka, head of Israeli Military Intelligence at the time, and Colonel Ephraim Lavie, respectively the superior and the subordinate of Amos Gilad who fed the politicians with the "intelligence" that Arafat was behind the intifada. (Malka: the available intelligence showed Arafat ready to compromise, just not on the terms on offer, and forced to ride the unexpected outpouring of Palestinians public anger after the failure of Camp David. Lavie: the intifada "began from below, as a result of rage that had accumulated toward Israel, Arafat and the PA. Arafat hitch-hiked on it for the sake of his personal needs." - Does that provide you with a glimmering of why Fatah men would want to sound as if it was all their idea?) Also, Mati Steinberg, chief advisor on Palestinian affairs in the Shin Bet ("Under conditions of an asymmetric confrontation, one in which Israel is many times stronger than the Palestinians, we have decisive influence on the course of events. Hence, a mistaken assessment by the stronger side creates reality. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy... Whoever upholds such a position (like Gilad's) has concluded that there is no possibility of attaining an agreement with the Palestinians. This approach dictates just one choice to the Palestinians: either surrender to Israel's dictates, or rise up against the dictates at all costs...The Palestinian public has come to feel that it has nothing to lose. That is the background to the emergence of a culture of suicide bombers.")

aelle

JOHN ROOSEVELT May 19 1.27pm

I think the jury is still out on the psychological significance of capital letters, but I suspect it's somewhere up there with coloured inks and multiple exclamation marks as an indicator of psychic disturbance.

If not, your expression of a
'fervent hope' that Israel's 'nuclear arsenal' be employed against 'Islamist maniacs' and the 'lib-left' to bring about the annihilation of all concerned is hardly an indicator of robust mental or moral health.

Chillingly you envisage Armageddon accompanied by a
' grand Yeehaa! (sic) '.

' Yeehaw! ' is,I gather, an expression favoured by rednecks who have been described as having ' a glorious absence of sophistication '.

Sums you up to a T,MR ROOSEVELT.

Tilly

Penny -

Hard to know where to begin after such a wide-ranging post - effort much appreciated! - so I'll take one observation of yours which raised an eyebrow (along with a smile) and see where it leads...

Palestinians, you said, were "continually presented as helpless victims who long for peace but are mercilessly repressed by the evil Israelis".

Now here's what I see through the mirror of these blogs:

Israelis continually presented as helpless victims who long for peace but are mercilessly oppressed by: (a) evil Arabs/Muslims in general, (b) morally-depraved Palestinians in particular, (c) a wicked, Marxist-dominated media, (d) treacherous and/or cowardly allies, and (d) rampant and omnipresent anti-Semitism.

I think what offends me most is that those of us who don't see Israel in this heavily exaggerated "victimhood" light are given so little credit for intelligence. In a forum where easy access to a wide variety of information/opinion is taken as read and very high levels of education are also often apparent, we are nonetheless treated like stubborn infants in a (dare I say it...) Hamas brainwashing class who won't recite the approved propagandist liturgy and ergo must be hectored or shamed into submission.

There are, I acknowledge, one or two in the Zionist camp who are both free-thinking and savvy enough not to infantilise their opponents (and perhaps one or two on my side of the fence who parrot transparent and fruitless propaganda) but in the main a horribly crude and inept form of "hasbara" predominates.

This, in my opinion, does more damage to Israel's image (not to mention its credibility as a moral agent) than any amount of "biased" reporting by the BBC or "lefty" editorialising by the Guardian - and for one simple reason.

Hasbara (as most widely practised) is AGGRESSIVE. It brooks no argument, makes no concessions, takes no prisoners. And what lies at the heart of this relentlessly aggressive message? Why, that Israel is a tragic, pacific, beleaguered victim without a friend in the world!

Sure, Israel is vulnerable, but it is also a thriving and immensely powerful state, with a great deal of diplomatic and military clout. To paint it otherwise immediately invites comparisons...

Israel constantly bedeviled by rocket attacks = Gaza cruelly pounded by air-strikes; anti-Semitic thuggery on the increase = Islamophobic thuggery on a much greater scale; Palestinians extol terrorists = Israeli terrorists went on to become prime ministers ... and so forth for ever!

Perceptions of victimhood certainly matter in a battle for hearts and minds, but on this score Palestinians win hands-down every time. (No amount of railing about "moral equivalence" can compete with visible evidence of poverty, displacement and death-tolls.) So what's Israel to do to redress the balance?

From a purely propagandist view, I'd say drop the "victim" narrative altogether. Focus on everything that makes Israel look successful, freedom-loving, democratic, accountable, compassionate, etc, and invite the world make its own comparisons with neighbouring states on these scores; but here comes the hard part ...

"Looking" good only works in an information-rich world (awash with leaks) if matched by deeds. Any virtue deemed worthy of trumpeting through hasbara should be regarded as a virtue full-stop - and that, in Israel's case, would mean making some pretty fundamental changes on a number of fronts.

If I have the health and strength tomorrow, I'll give some examples, but once again, thanks for a thought-provoking - and refreshingly civil! - dialogue.

Thomas

Truthtriumphs
I see you stand by your Churchill quote. Could you go through the arithmetic for us.

And could you tell us what you think follows from the fact there were only 3/4 million people living in Palestine in the early 20th century and from the fact that there was immigration from Arab states as well as Europe during the mandate.

Steve

Tilly

So "anti-Semitic thuggery on the increase = Islamophobic thuggery on a much greater scale" does it?

The sheer stupidity of that statement alone demonstrates that you are nowhere close to being the kind of "free-thinking and savvy" contributor that you think you are.

For your information the word 'Phobia' means "A persistent, abnormal, and irrational fear of a specific thing or situation that compels one to avoid it, despite the awareness and reassurance that it is not dangerous".

There is nothing remotely "phobic" about concerns with an ideology which daily demonstrates that it gives succour and support to mass-murderers. Perhaps you could enlighten me; just how is my life in London threatened on a daily base by Zionists? Somehow I can't see it myself but it must be there because, by your logic, either anti-semetism is a justified response to a threat or 7/7 and all the other failed UK terror plots simply didn't happen.

Steve

aelle

And what exactly does the complete absence of a capital letter accompanied by a ridiculously pedantic grammar attack say about your psyche?

famabra

There is a very good article by
Daniel Greenfield which puts Nakba day in perspective: Please call up and read -
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/36556

Derek BLADES

@ Steve

To quote your own quote, Islamaphobia is a "persistent, abnormal, and irrational fear" of Islam.

From your earlier comments I see that you have many abnormal and irrational views on life. Get out sometime and meet some actual Moslems. You might get over your personal phobia.

And if you choose to reply, put the vodka bottle back in the fridge.

Stephen Rothbart

Herzen, as you well know, there was a persistent push by the British upper classes and their allies to find a way of appeasing Hitler, long before and even long after war was declared.

Churchill himself was well aware that the loss of France was a blow and that if the bulk of the BEF was left in France, Britian would have to sue for peace.

Fortunately for the world, that did not happen and the Nazis were defeated. Eventually.

The appeasement movement was not necessarily evil, and much of it was born out of the belief that if a peace was made with Hitler, Britain would be left alone. The Empire retained, etc.

History showed that Hitler never honoured anything or ever kept his word. Just ask the Russians, Poles, Czechs and the few honourable Austrians that were opposed to Anschluss.

So Churchill and his cohorts, who understood this very well, prepared for war and the appeasers, in the end, made fools of themselves.

There are many here who seem to have the same kind of blind trust in the Arab mentality that Chamberlain had in Hitler's.

Excpet that the possible excuse for Chamberlain was that Hitler had only been in power for a few years and his pure evil was not yet in evidence.

For Israel, well, they have seen decades of deadly behaviour from the Arab populations living around them. Cease fires broken, unprovoked rocket attacks and the kind of venemous anti-Semitism erupting out of the mouths of the people you seem to think are ripe for accommodation with the Jews.

Penny has already documented, in very restrained tones, the kind of things the Palestinians are taught in schools, so in case you have forgotten, just go back and read them again.

As in any society where there is allowed a variance in views, there is a Liberal elite of Israelis, who take the Chamberlain view of dealing with their enemies, and there are others who take the Churchillian view that dealing with the kinds of people that seem to run Hamas and Fatah is a one way ticket to the end of Israel.

Because of the kinds of leaders we have in the world, Israel has to be seen to be cooperating, and indeed, unlike their enemies, Israel largely has been cooperating in seeking some kind of accord. So they make some efforts but probably mainly half hearted becasue they know in their hearts that whatever they offer will fail.

And for sure, some people in Israeli circles are trying hard to find a way to thwart a peace with the Palestinians just as some British government tried to stop Britain going to war. That's what a democracy is like, people with different views acting in different ways. A bit like wartime Britain or the current Coalition.

As I have said before, there is ample evidence to show the many ways the Palestinians talk out of both sides of their mouths, saying one thing to the gullible Infidel, and something else entirely to their own people.

Sadly the evidence over the decades has been that it is what they have been saying to their people that has been what they have been actually doing.

No one in the Western powers of NATO wants to make peace or even talk with al Qaeda.

Yet they expect Israel to do the equivalent and make a deal with Hamas.

It's really insulting. Who do they think they are. "Don't do as I do, do as I tell you" just about sums up their attitude.

Finally, just how do you get to the point that Israel hems in the Palestinians?

The West Bank has borders Jordan, and Gaza has a border with Egypt.

Who is keeping them in "prison."

Conversely, Israel aslo has borders with those States too, nd Syria and Lebanon.

Can you imagine getting in your car and driving from Israel to say... Turkey if you were an Israeli? What chance of surviving an approach to even the border?

The only way out for Israelis is by air or by ship.

If the neighboring Arab states were really as lovley as you make them out to be (when they are not shooting each other), then why can't Palestinians wander through their countries, take a plane from Damascus, Amman, Beruit or Cairo?

Well, of course some do, but the fact is it's not just the Israelis who do not like or trust Palestinians or discriminate against them.

Did you see the spiteful comments that some of the Syrians made against the Palestinian leadership when Assad, your partner for peace with Israel right now, was busy mowing down his people with his tanks?

It was more revealing about what the Arabs feel about the sponging and whining of Palestinian aspirations than anything you would ever see coming out of Israel.

Always it's Israel that has to make concessions, never anyone else.

If that is the best you can come up with as a solution for solving the problem, then I am afraid you are in for a long wait.

Truthtriumphs

Thomas
May 19th, 2011 3:50pm
Truthtriumphs

"I see you stand by your Churchill quote. Could you go through the arithmetic for us.
And could you tell us what you think follows from the fact there were only 3/4 million people living in Palestine in the early 20th century and from the fact that there was immigration from Arab states as well as Europe during the mandate".

Are you saying that Churchill did not say what he said?
Are you saying that when he said it (1939), he was not of sound mind?
If you are not saying that, there is an obvious explanation.
Ever heard of poetic licence?
I thought not.
He was clearly using hyperbole to vividly bring home the outrageous injustice of the Arabs pouring into the remaining 21% of Palestine allocated for the world's only sovereign Jewish state.
He made the remark based on accurate information from the Foreign office, and intelligence sources.

Are you not embarrassed to so publicly display your own stupidity?

Tilly

Steve -

I'm well aware of what "phobia" means and agree that "Islamophobia" is frequently a misleading term. Unfortunately, in common usage it has come to signify an irrational fear OR HATRED of Muslims - so in the absence of any more accurate word we're stuck with it. (If you know of one with a parallel meaning to "anti-Semitism" or "racism", I'd be glad to hear it.)

That said, your post does illustrate for me the inherent weakness (and even bigotry) underlying trashy hasbara. Rather than acknowledging - or even contesting - that Muslims are subjected to more thuggery than Jews, your immediate response is that "they" are dangerous (unlike Zionists); that any fear or hatred of "them" is therefore rational; ergo, violent attacks on Muslims can never be viewed in the same way that anti-Semitic attacks can. Put another way: If Mr Cohen is beaten up in his corner shop it's entirely mindless and hateful, while if Mr Khan is beaten up in his shop ... well ... "his lot" bombed the London tube trains, so it's perfectly understandable that Mr Khan is targeted by local skinheads.

Well it's NOT understandable, Steve. It's exactly the same sort of twisted logic a fanatical Islamist preacher would turn on its head and use to justify thuggery against Jews - "Mr Cohen's lot killed Palestinians in Operation Cast Lead" - and it deserves precisely the same level of exposure as a fraud.

Steve

Blades,

There is actually at least one other person posting as "Steve" so you actually have absolutely no idea what I have posted on this or any other site, let alone any conceivable idea of what I might think about any given subject.

It is you who mentioned 'Moslems' bizarrely using a variant spelling of the word which you presumably think proves something or other. I merely suggested that suspicion or fear of Islam is actually a logical position and not, in fact, a phobia at all. I'm pretty certain that no sane and rational person could possibly disagree with that semtiment.

Your views, on the contrary, are clear for all to see on this site, and it is clear that you are an unpleasant character who thinks he is infallible and has a habit of making nasty little comments about anybody that has the audacity to hold opinions that differ from yours. Perhaps you should try the Vodka. It couldn't make you any more unpleasant.

Amanda

Roll on Penny, C.Gee, Stephen Rothbart, Truthtriumphs, Augustus...

Truthtriumphs

Rick
May 19th, 2011 10:48am

"Truthtriumphs lectures someone who dared to give him references critical of one of his pet sources:
Thank you, Truthtriumphs, for this gift of mirth. (Only those who have followed your discreditable progress through the thickets of history and scholarship will be able to enjoy your sermon to the full.)"

True to form, Rick, no content, just invective.
You simply cannot engage in the argument, so resort to your usual insults.

Augustus

Herzen - In an interview Dov Weisglass gave to Ha'aretz Magazine in 2004 regarding the evacuation proposal of the Gaza settlements
he said in reply as to whether the plan would be implemented because, Israel being a democratic country and not a dictatorship
it still was not certain whether the plan would be blocked: "If Sharon's disengagement
is torpedoed, politically it will be the cause for everlasting regret. Our achievements will be lost. The international community will lose patience with us. It will take the same attitude towards us as it does towards Arafat. We will quickly find ourselves up against a Palestinian state that uses terror against us, and up against a world that is becoming increasingly hostile. We will find ourselves
in a tragedy."

Well, he might just as well have said, 'whether the plan is torpedoed or not
etc.' because the withdrawal simply led to
more terrorist attacks into Israel from Gaza
and South Lebanon, leading to Israel's eventual retaliation, and then, naturally,
more of the usual anti-Israel blood hysteria. From 1920 onwards the Jews have been attacked in the land of Israel because they were Jews. Because the Arabs did not want the Jews in 'Palestine', hence the cleverly fashioned distinction between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. While people have been emigrating and changing demographics throughout human history, there has never been a case where a group migrated back to a land it had lost for longer than living memory. Indeed very few nations have lasted over two thousand years
as the Jews have. Can it then be wrong to deny this nation a place of it's own? At most you can measure the morality of a nation's behaviour, not its existence.

The bloody Arab pogrom against the Jews in the Old City of Jerusalem in 1920 which started the war against the Jews' presence in the land of Israel has continued for over
90 years. During the Mandate period many of the key decisions were made by the Jews and Arabs themselves. The Jews made settlement a
central element of their efforts, The Arabs chose violent rejection of the Jewish presence and sovereignty as their hallmark.
And while the British recorded fastidiously
the statistics of Jewish immigration, they did not count the masses of Arabs crossing into the Palestine Mandate, whilst the hundreds of thousands of Jews clamouring to get into Palestine from mainland Europe were blocked from doing so, and were mostly dead by 1945. The numbers who succumbed to Palestinian Arab violence and British appeasement probably run to hundreds of thousands, even a small fraction of which exceeds all of the Palestinian lives in the conflict with Zionism. The question is, will the Arabs ever give up the dream of controlling all the land of Israel leading to the entire land being emptied of Jews, as most of mainland Europe was in WW2? Well, the short answer is they will never drive the Jews out, but it might help if they were not encouraged in their genocidal dreams by far-left bigots, revisionist academics, political NGOs, biased media, and other hotbeds of anti-Israel propaganda designed to set up Israel and her people for
destruction yet again.

Penny

Hi Tilly

Thank you for your reply.

I found one of your earlier points very interesting. Do you think it might be a mistake to see this particular conflict through the mirror of blogs alone? In other words, are some responding to an individual commenting on a blog, or are they responding to the underlying issue?

Well, there certainly are characters who seem to find great pleasure in posting only in order to provoke or denigrate the other!

Another very interesting point you make is how you see this conflict in terms of ‘victimhood’. I think you’ve hit on something there.

If I know anything about Israelis, that’s not really where they’re coming from and I doubt very much that they would want to be seen as victims. Those I know just seem to want to be held to account in the same way any other country is. They don’t want special treatment. Just a bit of balance and fairness.

For example, they don’t understand why, if their courts carry out a perfectly legal eviction, but the person being evicted is Arab, the case makes British headlines and they have to get a representative to state their case to Jeremy Paxman.

I do wish we wouldn’t do this, Tilly. We look like utter fools. We evict people every day of the week, with the assistance of bailiffs. A 19yr old girl I know was evicted with her baby two days before Christmas. There was no Jeremy Paxman to stand in her corner and not even the local rag picked up on her story.

Quite apart from the ridiculousness of it all, we seem to care more about an Arab we do not know who has been legally evicted by due process – and sometimes his judge is an Arab himself - than we do about our own, vulnerable citizens.

We complain to the Police the moment Travellers park up and the bailiffs are frequently involved in moving them on. We bulldoze their homes. But do you find Israeli newspapers screaming at us? Do we have to account for our actions on their national TV? Of course not. That’s why we are in danger of losing our dignity and our British sense of fairness where this whole Israel issue is concerned.

If you look at what obsession does to the ordinary person, it is not difficult to see where it might lead us. And this is one of my concerns – as you may have read in an earlier post.

There’s barely a day that goes by that we do not have Israel in our Press somewhere. The Guardian is so obsessed it sometimes has several articles a day online. But if you pick up an Israeli paper, they do not reciprocate in kind.

But they could so easily – because we, ourselves, are not perfect. The world is small and so they know our domestic issues just as well as we do.

I don’t know if you’ve been to Israel, Tilly, but their young people do not have the drinking culture issues that ours do. You don’t find gangs of kids on the streets nor do you find drunken teenagers. Of course, I haven’t visited every Israeli city and I can’t speak for Tel Aviv which attracts many foreign tourists, but in general, you’d have to go on a long search to find the same problems we’ve got here with our youth.

They don’t have much by way of anti-social behaviour and they set great store by education.

In terms of anti-social behaviour, I suspect they have far less of it because their young people actually have an outside threat and have to do military service, whereas our lads seem to need a threat or to invent one in order to find and prove their masculine worth (at least – that’s my current pet theory! I make no claim to its validity!)

Supposing Israel sent reporters to the UK and into our cities on a Friday and Saturday night to find the very, very worst cases of drunken and loutish behaviour? Young women showing their underwear, vomiting into gutters and police vans all about? I'm speaking of the very worse cases here - but when we report from Israel, that is exactly what we do so they would have every justification to do it back.

Supposing then they splashed the evidence all over the internet and their newspapers? With exaggerated reporting running alongside?

They would have every right to retaliate, like for like, for what we do – but they don’t.

Supposing they made their whole agenda around our youth culture, or mistakes that our police have made? Our evictions, our Travellers, our prisoners – and so on.

Supposing they sent reporters to hang around outside our inner city schools - the very, very worst that they could find to falsely and unfairly depict a 'typical British teenager'? Again, they would have every right because this is what we do to them. Practically every darned day of the week.

We are making fools of ourselves and losing our dignity – apparently in support of a people we do not know and who don’t have a free Press – which makes it harder for us to really know them - and who are officially recognised as being lead by terrorists.

Anyway, Tilly – I have to dash right now as I have work-related issues to attend to. I will try and continue responding to your posts as I enjoy our exchanges and you are giving me some food for thought yourself!

In the meantime, if you get a moment, hike over to a site called CiF Watch. It is an online monitoring of the Guardian’s ‘Comment is Free’ site. The Guardian is utterly obsessed with Israel , churning out sometimes several articles in one day on its online site. CiF Watch monitors it for truth, exaggeration and misrepresentation.

Another, very academic site is Robin Shepherd’s blog. Robin is a very serious-minded man. In part, his concerns lie in what we are doing to our country with our obsessive behaviour regarding Israel.

I realise I have come at this from one angle – the Israeli angle – but I felt it was important to demonstrate why ‘victim’ is perhaps not the way any of us should be looking at this. We should be taken a much wider and more even-handed approach to both sides. And to ourselves and how our behaviour vis a vis Israel is affecting us as a nation.

Hopefully, you will agree!

Steve

Tilly,

You claim to know the meaning of 'phobia' and then demonstrate that you know no such thing. When exactly did the addition of word 'phobia' to the name of a religious or ethnic group come to mean 'one who violently attacks that ethnic group'? Phobias are things people are afraid of not things that they attack with impunity. I made no reference to assault of any kind on anyone. That was entirely of your invention. Is this what you do Tilly? Put words into peoples’ mouths? Lie about what is said in a desperate bid to score cheap points?

Meanwhile anti-semetism is exactly what it sounds like it is; an irrational hatred of of semites (usually Jews) which is often used as an excuse to assault Jews and has been for thousands of years. If you cannot see the difference then you should probably give up posting in places like this, you are a basket case.

I repeat, feelings of unease and suspicion of an ideology that, on a daily basis, encourages, excuses and supports mass murder is, in my opinion, perfectly rational. It seems that I have to spell out in black & white however, that this categorically does not mean that I thus think it excusable to randomly target people suspected of supporting mass murder with no evidence.

Guess what Tilly, I think Catholic priests fiddling with boys and the church covering this activity up is unacceptable but also do not advocate, encourage nor excuse random attacks on priests.

Do you get it Tilly?

Truthtriumphs

aelle
May 19th, 2011 11:41am
Truthtriumphs May 19 2.10a.m.

"Matthew Kalman refers to Professor Yehoshua Porath of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem as :
" perhaps the leading non-Palestinian authority on Palestinian history,
Truthharrumphs dismisses Porath's diligent academic work as " proven nonsense "".

Mathew Kalman is just another journalist out of many.
Porath is a just a historian with whom you happen to agree.
In fact, his conclusions are at odds with all the documented evidence.

"For Truthharrumphs Norman Finkelstein is " mad, bad and dangerous, and everyone knows it ". Personally I find Finkelstein controversial yes, but more ironic than Byronic. And in answer to your question,I have the utmost sympathy for the credo he cites as inherited from his holocaust surviving mother : " we are all holocaust victims ".

So you are in sympathy with someone for whom Israel, the Jewish state that provided sanctuary for the few pathetic survivors of the Holocaust, is, amongst other things, a "satanic and vandal state" and who openly expresses sympathy with the ideology of Hamas and Hezbollah....organisations who openly wish for Jewish genocide.
That's nice.
The university of de Paul refused Finkelstien tenure...it obviously has a sense of decency that you so conspicuously lack. (oh, but of course, it was all Dershowitz's fault!)

"As for Daniel Pipes position on the thesis advanced by Ms Peters he pointedly refrains from declaring the issue proven, although clearly he would so like it to be true"

That's your warped interpretation.

"For a British view of the credentials of Ms Peters book the London Review of Books of 7 Feb 1985 carried a far from complimentary review by the late Conservative politician Ian Gilmour and his son."

Ian Gilmour...the unlamented arch anti-semite and anti-Zionist...whenever he could, he used parliament to defame the Jewish state....for him, the world's number one problem.

"All this because I questioned the unsubstantiated and highly questionable assertion by one Gershon that " in 1948 the vast majority of the Arab population of Palestine had been there no more than 75 years ".

Very well substantiated by numerous official records of the inward, illegal migration of Arabs.

"It seems to me Truthharrumphs that your vaunted intellectual rigour and questioning mind stop well short of anything that might just challenge your prejudiced beliefs"

It takes one to know one, does it not, as you've reminded us on more than one occasion of your "Oxford first in modern languages"?
Modesty not your strong point, then?

As you are so clever, perhaps you would like to posit the reason why the UN accorded refugee status to those Palestinians who had been in the country for just two years, a status accorded uniquely to the Palestinians....a bit odd, don't you think, if they had been there for generations?
We all know the answer, so I'm really anticipating your ingenious copout, although I have the feeling it may be awhile coming.

Meanwhile, I had a look at the plaudits for Peters' book.... rather more impressive than the rag-bag collection of her detractors.

Just a word in conclusion, and I'm sure my feelings will resonate with others on this blog....
I don't mind that Jews are are not your cup of tea and I don't mind that you find their presence in your "nice area of North london" a tad unwelcome, turning it into "occupied territory", as they do, but what really disgusts me is the phoney window dressing of the pretentious anti-semite that you truly are, posing as someone who cares about racism, when your true agenda is to use this space to indulge your bigotry and intolerance.

Derek BLADES

Penny

From a brief scan of your posts, they seem mostly to concern life in Israel and aim to show that Israeli Jews get on fine with Israeli Arabs and that life in Israel is no more nor less civilised and well-mannered than it is in Britain.

Personally I have never doubted that. The relatively few Israeli Jews I know personally are decent normal human beings as are the Palestinians of my acquaintance.

That is not and never was the issue as far as I am concerned. The issue is Netanyahu's support of Israeli land theft in the West Bank, his refusal to engage in serious peace talks and earlier Israeli government’s callous use of force in Lebanon and Gaza. It would be informative to hear your views on these matters rather than heart-warming tales about the ubiquitous Ali.

barnie

I noticed radio 4 this morning referred to the West Bank as disputed - more peddling of the Israeli line - that land is occupied not disputed

Thomas

Truthtriumphs
May 19th, 2011 7:13pm
Ah, it was hyperbole! How many of your other killer quotes are hyperbole? Mark Twain?

You say Churchill had reliable iformation from his officials. I am relieved that you are wiling to work with official figures for once. The figures those officials worked from were: approx. 700k Muslims in Palestine at the end of the First World War and approximately 1.4m at the end of the Second World War. It does not take a particularly high rate of births relative to deaths to get from one to the other. Can you tell me the unhyperbolical figures for immigration versus population growth.

You also fortuitously missed the question: And could you tell us what you think follows from the fact there were only 3/4 million people living in Palestine in the early 20th century and from the fact that there was immigration from Arab states as well as Europe during the mandate.

I look forward to answers from you without the theatrical indignation.

Matt

"I noticed radio 4 this morning referred to the West Bank as disputed - more peddling of the Israeli line - that land is occupied not disputed"

Great - now if only they'd start referring to it by it's proper name (Judea and Samaria) instead of the name invented by King Hussein of Jordan in 1950!

Tilly

Steve -

If you can't be bothered to read my posts carefully, then at least read your own.

You say you made "no reference to assault of any kind on anyone" in riposting to the parallel I drew between anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. Yet you quoted me verbatim - with commendable accuracy - as an introduction to your tirade: the precise phrases I used were "anti-Semitic thuggery" and "Islamophobic thuggery".

No doubt your pocket dictionary can enlighten you as to the definition of "thuggery", but just in case it is limited to the specific behaviour of 19th century Hindu stranglers, in modern usage it means "violent or ruffianly ASSAULT".

Incidentally, my dictionary (Chambers - a Marxist tome of sinister dimensions) defines an Islamophobe as "a person who fears or hates Islam and its followers", so need to feel you're being accused of irrationality any more ... is there?

Well, perhaps, actually there is, but I'd hate to get you all worked up again, for despite your (gratifying) assurance that you don't condone physical violence you sure do enjoy dishing it out verbally.

I do hope this

Stephen Rothbart

Derek,while you wait for Penny to address your post, let me make some observations:

You say,"The issue is Netanyahu's support of Israeli land theft in the West Bank, his refusal to engage in serious peace talks and earlier Israeli government’s callous use of force in Lebanon and Gaza."

This sounds like you are asking to Penny to respond to a question along the lines of that old chestnut of "when did you stop beating your wife?"

Netanyahu has done much to open opportunities in the West Bank for Palestinians to come and go and to encourage their business development. In Gaza, he saw how Hamas reacted to the removal of all Israeli settlers, and has taken the entirely logical view that "once bitten twice shy."

You then go on to ask that "It would be informative to hear your views on these matters rather than heart-warming tales about the ubiquitous Ali."

Well here are some views of mine to ask you to ask your Palestinian friends.

1. Will Hamas recognize Israel's right to exist as a Jewish State on any negotiated border agreement?

2. Will Hamas and Fatah stop teaching in their schools that Jews are pigs and monkies and that they should be killed wherever they can be found?

3. Will Palestinians renounce the dressing of their babies and schoolchildren as suicide bombers and stop naming their public squares and sports facilities after people that blew up or machine gunned women and children?

4. Will Palestinans allow free access to Jewish sites in a divided Jerusalem?

5. Will Jews be allowed to live, in safety, in Palestinian territory?

6. Since Gaza is not occupied or disputed territory, will Hamas agree to stop sending rockets into Israeli cities?

I am sure that if the Palestinian leadership gave a YES to most or all of the above, and still Netanyahu's government refused to sit down and make peace, his government would be voted out in an instant.

As I have said before, the Settler movement in Israel is not that popular, but given the track record of Palestinian leadership in the West bank and Gaza, no Prime Minister in Israel would be prepared to repeat the mistakes of Gaza without something changing in the attitude of Hamas and Fatah.

Sadly, I think the answers from the new joint government of Hamas/Fatah on any of the above 4 questions wil be a "no."

So, tell me, Derek, what is your solution, apart from your usual mantra of "it's all Israel's fault?"

Truthtriumphs

Steve
May 20th, 2011 12:57am
Tilly,

"You claim to know the meaning of 'phobia' and then demonstrate that you know no such thing."

Thank you for pointing this out so eloquently.
It always infuriates me when politicians and the chatterati employ this term.
Phobia always meant an irrational fear....your fear and mine is entirely rational, and for good reason.
The word has been shamelessly hijacked by the Muslim lobby to create a phenomenon that competes with the very real one of anti-semitism.

Truthtriumphs

Tilly
May 18th, 2011 3:31pm
Penny -

"I was amused - but hardly surprised - to see my name listed for your guidance to "anti-zionists or even anti-semites, hiding behind a pretence of caring for the Palestinians" by Truthtriumphs (May 18th, 12.26am).

In another thread, I was accused by TT of failing to express "normal ... feelings of revulsion" at the Fogel murders and in my reply I cited just such an expression from me. What I pointed out (among other things) was that any comments by TT's opponents which didn't "fit" his/her preconceived notions of them were comprehensively filtered out; I also acknowledged that I might be guilty of similar blinkering, though after a diligent search it remained the case that any hint of compassion towards Palestinians was markedly absent from TT's posts."

First, Penny, let me thank you for your excellent posts.
I should warn you that behind Tilly's chatty style is malign intent, vis a vis Israel.

Following the horrific Fogel murders, Melanie put up several posts.
I'm sorry to say that Tilly, amongst others, lost no time in trawling the internet to find examples of Israeli behaviour which justified or "understood" this atrocity. Not one word of regret from her was forthcoming.
She then came up with one Rabbi Shapira, a West Bank rabbi and not a household name, who wrote a book, allegedly claiming that it was permitted to murder gentiles under certain circumstances, supposedly using Jewish texts as source material, no matter that the rabbi in question has been apprehended by Israeli authorities for his behaviour.
Any well informed person will agree that there is simply no comparison between the Palestinian leadership's sanctioned and encouraged terrorism against Israeli, Jewish citizens, lauded by naming public squares after the perpetrators etc, and the utmost restraint and decency of the Jewish victims' families and communities.
In fact, I marvel at the commendable moral behaviour of the overwhelming majority of West Bank Israelis, under severe and continuing provocation and violence from their Palestinian neighbours.

Tilly is right that I have expressed no compassion for the Palestinians.
Generally, compassion is reserved for the victims of violent crime, rather than the perpetrators, unless, of course, you are a fashionable leftie or antisemite, far removed from the crimes.
It's akin to the man who murders his parents and then asks for sympathy because he is an orphan.
My sympathy and compassion are reserved for the millions of hapless unfortunates around the world, such as the Darfurians, and the Nigerians caught up in a brutal civil war, and the many other victims whom we never hear about, because it isn't fashionable.
They are not the recipients of disproportionate and obscene amounts of foreign aid over decades,(spent on arms and embezzled in Swiss bank accounts) as are the Palestinians, who receive vastly more aid per capita, than any other group.
I cannot feel compassion for Gazans, whose leaders march in paramilitary uniform, like the Nazis whose behaviour they model themselves upon, and who were voted in democratically, as we are so often told. People who were left valuable infrastructure with which to build up their futures state, and who then trashed it within days of the unconditional withdrawal of the Israelis from every centimetre of territory.
Tilly's compassion seems to be reserved solely for the Palestinians, or is it rather that they are a convenient stick with which she can beat Israel.... a country whose existence troubles her?
Yet for Tilly, my "moral compass is hopelessly skewed".

I just know that Jews, together with most others on the planet, do not make a habit of targeting innocent civilians and murdering them in the most horrific ways, because they "have no hope".
Were there any holocaust survivors who blew people up in bus queues, pizza parlours, dicos etc?
No, and who had less "hope" than they did?
We are all born with free will, and the Palestinians had/have the opportunities to make a fantastic future fro themselves.
The Jews from Arab lands, who were so brutally evicted peniless, didn't fester in contrived "refugee camps", but picked themselves up and started again.
Nor did they receive one penny's worth of aid from the UN etc.

On another matter, I'm very glad that you made the point that peace in the first instance is predicated on the Palestinians removing the incitement to hate the Jews, in their text books, media, mosques etc.
I make that point all the time.
I think the Israeli government should refuse any and all negotiotions until that poisonous incitement is dealt with.
If the Western governments had any decency, they would address the problem instead of treating the Israelis as the guilty party, and forcing "concessions" upon them.

Truthtriumphs

Thomas
May 20th, 2011 9:43am

"And could you tell us what you think follows from the fact there were only 3/4 million people living in Palestine in the early 20th century and from the fact that there was immigration from Arab states as well as Europe during the mandate."

At last, you agree with me that there was inward immigration from the Arab states, just as there was Jewish immigration.
End of argument and problem solved!

JOHN ROOSEVELT

Aelle: You really shouldn't rely on what (I know) is standard fare amongst the Israel bashers: deliberate misinterpretation of what those who think you're a twaddlemeister say and/or misquoting them. Mel’s blog deserves better. Surely YOU deserve better (though many may question that)?

Try to sober up. Right now you seem intoxicated with your own self-righteousness and you seem not to be able to smell the stench of your quintessential intelectual deceit. Are you sure you're not Harold (oh, how we miss him so)? Maybe not. But you anti-Zionists do seem to share some very obvious characteristics. For instance, both of you seem to inhabit the same closet. Come out, come out, wherever you are!

I asked Herzen this but, predictably he jumped back into his closet and avoided an answer. Perhaps you will find the courage somewhere to stay in the fresh air just long enough to give us a response. They are simple enough questions:

Do you think the aim of the Arabs, after Resolution 181 was passed, was to ethnically cleanse the Jews from Palestine?

Do you think the aim of the Arab Armies which declared war on Israel in May '48 was to destroy it and ethnically cleanse the Jews from Palestine?

I’m very curious to know your answers.

Perhaps you feel the Arabs’ aim was merely to prevent a Jewish state from being formed - even one designated by the UN along side a Palestinian one (yes, the Jews got all the juicy bits, we know), only, and form – instead - a Palestinian state granting all its peoples - including Jews - full democratic rights - something like that which the Spring-like Palestinians "enjoy"" these days in Gaza, for example? They are the epitome of those democratic values you no doubt feel Israel steadfastly refuses to share – are they not?

Aelle, you think Israel's claims to a state
are weak, at best. You seem to think Israel and the Jews have never intended anything - in Palestine - but the continued furtherance of an ideology of imperialism and ethnic dominance and exploitation. Proof of this, for you, it seems, is its continued defiance of your interpretation of International Law. In other words, you seem to think that Israel has unique position in Palestine - one of unique moral turpitude. If only Israel had other motives, you seem to believe, then all would be well. They are not interested in peace; only war and the murder and exploitation of Arabs.

Hamas and the jihadis in general take this further. They believe the Jews (not just Israelis or, to be even more refined in one’s distinctions, the Israeli Government) have as their singular goal the destruction of Islam and world dominance.

Even if you were right, it is hard to understand how your view - if maintained to the degree it is - can ever lead to Peace. After all, in effect, you are thereby, at best, giving support to those - like Hamas etc - who vow to fight on till Israel is destroyed and all JEWS (oops, Jews) are murdered (nice).

If I vow to destroy you, how can I - in the same breath – in all seriousness demand and expect that you sit down and make peace with me? How would you reasonable expect me to trust your intentions? Nevertheless, this is the view of the Palestinian leaderships and most anti Zionists who continually imply that they have their finger on the pulse when it comes to prescriptions re how to achieve peace.

No, there cannot be Peace in these circumstances -whatever your view is on the correct legal interpretation of Declarations and Treaties since WW1 etc..

I therefore wonder why you insist on trying to convince everyone that Israel has no right to exist. I wonder why, therefore, you are at pains to single out Israel for purported transgressions of International Law etc. I wonder why you fail completely to analyze similar transgressions by Arab and muslim actors in the region whose mainstay are these accusations against the JEWISH state. To what end? Do you think this how to build bridges to peace?

I suggest, Aelle, you try and find sufficient intellectual honesty also to look at the transgressions on the side of the Arabs - however much you may sympathize with them. I suggest you try and shed light on the context in which this conflict has arisen and is maintained, in ALL its salient detail. Stop being in denial about the culture of Jew-hatred that has become the lifeblood of Arab and muslim culture - especially over the last 100 years - and has fast become the same of the Western Left - Israel or no Israel. Look hard at the unequivocal Crimes Against Humanity of almost too many Arab and muslim actors in the region to count. If you do so, but thensimply dismiss them all in the name of you loony catch-concept of "cause and effect", what happens to the International Law you wish Israel to uphold? What becomes of any rationality on which peace that can hold necessarily has to be based..?

You can argue till you're blue in the face that Israel is bad and should not exist – at least in Palestine. You may even think all Jews are bad. If this is but a tawdry part of your (like that of those you seem to support) war by other means, well...let there be war. If, however, it is an attempt to move the peace process forward, it can only end in dismal failure and should do so.

Thomas

Truthtriumphs
May 20th, 2011 2:44pm
You appear to be labouring under the misapprehension that I have denied that there was immigration (mostly temporary). Indeed, you appear unable to remember what was said to you even a day or two ago.

You also appear to be labouring under the misapprehension that the fact of limited immigration answers any of the questions put to you. I will remind you of a couple.

You say Churchill had reliable information from his officials. I am relieved that you are willing to work with official figures for once. The figures those officials worked from were: approximately 700k Muslims in Palestine at the end of the First World War and approximately 1.4m at the end of the Second World War. It does not take a particularly high rate of births relative to deaths to get from one to the other. Can you tell me the unhyperbolical figures for immigration versus population growth?

Could you tell us what you think follows from the fact that there were only 3/4 million people living in Palestine in the early 20th century and from the fact that there was immigration from Arab states as well as Europe during the mandate?

Please apply your scientifically trained intellect and respect for historical sources to answering these questions rather than evading them.

Stewie

@I love the UK
Is that you propositioning me!

Tilly

Penny -

Blogs certainly are an unreliable mirror through which to view the Israel-Palestinian conflict! Quite apart from anything else, participants are interested in the topic to an unusual - even obsessional - degree and so can't be said to reflect a "norm".

To pooh-pooh their importance is, however, equally a mistake - and particularly when they are led by highly influential writers/campaigners like Melanie Phillips.

I don't know how far Melanie's articles and their accompanying responses are lapped up as a "barometer" of Zionist opinion by politicians and other movers-and-shakers, but I can take an educated guess on one thing: among her most avid readers are the devotees of pro-Palestinian and Islamist websites.

Just as Spectator bloggers urge one another on an almost daily basis to visit sites in which Jews are vilified or terrorists applauded, so those in the Palestinian camp are cross-referred to Melanie's blogs in an effort to keep blood boiling or to underscore the "error" of making conciliatory noises about Israel.

And what they will find invariably "confirms" for them that Zionists are implacable Arab-haters who have no interest in peace (and a lot more unpleasant things besides).

Both camps, in other words, feed greedily off each other for propaganda material, each citing the other as a "true mirror" through which ALL Palestinians/ALL Israelis should be judged.

This might not matter if the resulting images were confined to the relatively few die-hards directly taking part. But (as you correctly, I think, perceive) they do filter through to wider audiences. And the question is, how?

My suggestion is that it's (partly at least) through a campaigning zeal which extends well beyond the internet's confines - demands for political and media attention issued directly and constantly to the relevant institutions. Petitions, letters, emails, - all these and more are readily mobilised among doggedly blogging footsoldiers.

And what do they require when and if the attention of these institutions is secured? Articulation, naturally, of what they've been saying in their blogs... only this time on a stage where propagandizing can as easily misfire as hit the mark; where "gatekeepers" to airtime/political hearing can as easily be alienated as recruited; where control over the agenda can easily so easily slip away...

Your impression clearly is that Israel is constantly being dealt an unfair hand by the media. Mine, I'm afraid, is that she just doesn't know how to play her cards right in a very complex and dirty propaganda game.

As promised, I WILL give you some concrete examples - but another time now as this way too lengthy already...

Cheers,
Tilly

Every day, cross-references is made

Stephen Rothbart

Thomas. Assuming you are right about the statistics of how many Arabs there were in Palestine at the end of WW2, of which even the Palestinians claim 600,000 or so were "displaced," how does your great triumph move the Peace process forward?

I mean, what possible relevance has it to finding a solution to how a small state of 4,500,000 Jews, 1,500,000 Arabs and which is roughly the size of Wales is expected to absorb 5 million Arab refugees, most of whom are self-professed anti-Semitic Holocaust deniers?

If you can answer that in any way that is at all logical, reasonable and relevant to this century, I will be impressed.

Otherwise, I am afraid your reference to post war Palestine is tumbleweed, blowing in the wind and about as useful.

Penny

Hi Derek

I sense that you are a direct person, so I will also be direct.

I could be flattered that you say you want my view, however, I don’t believe you.

You don’t want my view, Derek. As an on-off visitor to Ms Phillips blog for over two years I have you marked down as one of the few who doesn’t want anyone’s views in any way, shape or form. That’s not why you come here.

I could oblige and spend 30mins banging out a reply about Gaza, Lebanon and Netanyahu, but it is now the case that even the most casual of visitors to Ms Phillips blog could wholly predict your response - so what is the point if I already know the exact format, tone and gist of it?

As Stephen has observed, your responses are always a rather Orwellian-style 'Four legs good, two legs bad' mantra. There's nothing new or challenging to be explored.

I gave it one shot yesterday and replied to your questions, and nothing about that format has changed, Derek.

I'm sorry, but I find your particular style rather tedious and repetitive and replying to it is an utter waste of my time.

We have previously ignored the others posts. It is probably best if we continue to do so.

Derek BLADES

@ Stephen Rothbart

Your latest post was less fart than usual so I will reply. My answers are in brackets.

1. Will Hamas recognize Israel's right to exist as a Jewish State on any negotiated border agreement? (That is a matter for negotiation. Why should Hamas give up its opening negotiating position? Have you ever negotiated anything?)

2. Will Hamas and Fatah stop teaching in their schools that Jews are pigs and monkies and that they should be killed wherever they can be found? (If that indeed happens, I would expect it to decline in the aftermath of a genuine and just peace agreement under which Arabs and Jews meet on equal terms and not as serfs and masters.)

3. Will Palestinians renounce the dressing of their babies and schoolchildren as suicide bombers and stop naming their public squares and sports facilities after people that blew up or machine gunned women and children? (How many Palestinians do that? Palestinians are like you and me Stephen. They are not an alien race.)

4. Will Palestinians allow free access to Jewish sites in a divided Jerusalem? (That is again a matter for negotiation and will obviously depend on the agreement eventually reached regarding the status of Jerusalem.)

5. Will Jews be allowed to live, in safety, in Palestinian territory? (Why not? If they obey Palestinian jurisdiction, stop shooting, tear-gassing and otherwise maltreating their Arab neighbours. A question for you Stephen: Will the same courtesy be extended to Palestinian Arabs so they can live in Israel?)

6. Since Gaza is not occupied or disputed territory, will Hamas agree to stop sending rockets into Israeli cities? (Is Hamas sending them? If so, that would be a matter for negotiation.)

Please get back to me if you have any further question.

Truthtriumphs

Thomas
May 20th, 2011 3:51pm
Truthtriumphs.

" Can you tell me the unhyperbolical figures for immigration versus population growth?
Could you tell us what you think follows from the fact that there were only 3/4 million people living in Palestine in the early 20th century and from the fact that there was immigration from Arab states as well as Europe during the mandate?"

No-one knows the answer to that, not even a luminary like yourself.
The reason is that whilst the British were meticulous in keeping records of Jewish immigration, and breaking the terms of their mandatory obligations in ruthlessly restricting it, they turned a blind eye to illegal Arab immigration, and sadly for you, this has been acknowledged in some quarters.
I suggest, again, that you turn your limited attention span to the problem or enigma (for you, not me) of why the UN uniquely accorded refugee status to Palestinians who were only in the country 2 years.
If they were all or mostly indigenous, what would have the motive been?
Secondly, enlighten us to why you think Churchill made the remark he did....and he certainly did...I've checked various sources?
He was not mad or delusional, so what would have the purpose been for the grotesque lie that you maintain it was?

JOHN ROOSEVELT

Derek Blades: perhaps Israel should hold a referendum. The question to be voted on should be:

"The Jews have a sacred duty to exterminate all Muslims".

If the majority of israelis vote "Yes", if anyone objects, perhaps Israe should respond::

" It's matter of negotiation"

You are an innovator and and a scholar, Derek. I only hope someone is paying your for these pearls...

Steve

Tilly,

As you apparently agree that it was you that raised the issue of violence I cannot see what you hope to gain by your absurd nit-picking. You seem to have trouble understanding people that don't think like you which is strange from somebody with such an extreme sense of self-righteous certainty.

My Oxford paperback dictionary published in 1988 has no entry for the word Islamophobia. It is, as you well know, a word recently invented by people that think like you in order to attempt to shame and cow people like me into silence. You find this necessary because you and your fellow paranoids believe that any expression of unease about the religion of peace must be motivated by something nasty and not, say a reaction to the murder of innocent people, the burning of books, the issuing of death threats to writers and cartoonists, the beheading of journalists etc.

My original point was that likening Islamohobia (arguably a rational response to very current events) with anti-semetism (unarguably an irrational hatred) is immoral and stupid. No amount of hysterical moralizing will change that and it neatly sums up the twisted irrationality of your whole one-sided view of this affair.

If you could be bothered to read anything into my posts you have realised that it is the one-sided narratives from white Europeans that really get my goat. I expect Arabs and Israelis to view this from their own perspective and expect more circumspection from armchair critics. I've yet to see a single hint from you Blades, Herzen etc. that you have any interest whatsoever in the plight of Jews that have been murdered, evicetd and left penniless in the region in the past 90 years. Clearly none of you is as 'nice' as you think you are.

Augustus

Derek Blades - So there you have it. You are
a commenter scorned. You've lost your credibility, and yet, no doubt, will still march on in your mission to blame the Israeli government (any Israeli government),
and blame it for all the ills in the ME.
You told us no end of times that the discontent and bitterness we saw in the Arab and Muslim street in the ME was due to one, and only one thing, the lack of resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian issue.
But as we saw in Egypt earlier in the year,
it wasn't the fact that there isn't a Palestinian state that triggered such a powerful and emotional outburst, but the fact that the Egyptian people actually have less rights than the Palestinians, and can't even afford to feed their own families. Then there is the old chestnut that it is Israel's lack of resolve which is the primary reason for hatred and discontent, terror and rocket attacks. Well,
Israel is a sliver of a country set in the middle of a gigantic boiling Arab world of
hundreds of millions of Muslims. It has to deal with Hezbollah taking over Lebanon,
Syria another hostile dictatorship, and the
corrupt and ruthless terrorist movement Hamas in the Gaza Strip. But it doesn't really matter to you that Mahmoud Abbas was the one refusing new peace negotiations for over a year, or that the Palestinian leadership includes terrorists that couldn't care a jot about peace, and that Abbas knows he would never be able to restrain them if, God forbid, a peace agreement would be reached. Those facts don't play a role when you decide on your thesis, which is a modern politically correct way to sell lies. It's the same centuries old theme dressed up to 'prove' that Israel is indifferent to peace. It's racism. Why do you think Netanyahu and other Israelis have to say that they want peace whenever they respond to questions or
make speeches? Because it's the truth. Because if Israel didn't care about peace why would every Prime Minister for over a decade tempt the Palestinians with peace offers that were continuously refused? And why does the other side continue to educate on hatred, violence, suicide bombings, and all that is negative and abhorrent, as a life goal?

Thomas

Truthtriumphs
May 20th, 2011 6:47pm
Odder and odderer!

Offensive, yet uninformative!

Let us recap. There were 700k Muslims at the end of WW1 and 1.4m at the end of WW2. This increase could easily be accounted for by the usual births versus deaths. But we know there was some immigration. We do not know how much. Not that much, or else much of it transitory. Yet you felt confident in using Churchill's "hyperbole" to convey the scale of the immigration. To remind you, he said that the millions of Jews in the world would not be enough to counter the immigration of Arabs into Palestine. Why did you think Churchill's "hyperbole" appropriate to give a just impression to your readers of the scale of the immigration, if, as you say, you do not know what the scale was, and haven't done the rudimentary sums that I have?

Now, focus.

What do you think follows from the fact that there were only 700k Muslims in Palestine at the end of WW1?

What do you think follows from the fact that a small number of the 700k added to the Muslim population by the end of WW2 were immigrants?

What is it you think follows?

And, by the way, after residency of at least two years, an immigrants, Muslim or Jewish, could apply for Palestinian citizenship, according to the citizenship laws brought in by Britain as required by the League of Nations in its Mandate.

Thomas

Stephen Rothbart
May 20th, 2011 5:38pm

There is a curious reflex here.

Whenever a Zionist (anyone who supports the project from Herzl to the present) refers to historical events and makes bold (false) assertions about them, the rest of the commentariat take it in their stride. It confirms their prejudices. It is fair comment.

Whenever anyone points out that the assertions are not correct, we get the sort of response you have just given me: it is all history now, not relevant, all of purely theoretical interest, why bring it up now, what has it got to do with making peace now etc.

Zionists use history in their propaganda. As long as they do, it is reasonable to study the history, to see if they are using it or abusing it.

Truthtriumphs went through his usual repetoire. I pointed out, as have others, to no effect, that his usual repetoire is highly suspect.

The Palestinians, the Arab states, the Muslim states, the rest of the world, except the US and Israel, have all accepted the principle that peace be agreed on terms set out in 242. If you read the Palestine Papers, you will find that the PA has made concessions that go far beyond 242. Remember that Israel is one of the five strongest military powers in the world and adjunct or client of the only superpower. To say that it would be taking a serious risk in negotiating with the Palestinians is the sort of absurdity it gets away with only because it is adjunct or client of the only superpower and ally of the superpower's obedient servants in the EU and Nato, who between them determine the narrative heard in the forums that matter, and are willing to allow Israel to annexe as much as it wants of the occupied territories before it magnanimously agrees to "peace".

Stephen Rothbart

Derek, your response to my question "1. Will Hamas recognize Israel's right to exist as a Jewish State on any negotiated border agreement? (That is a matter for negotiation. Why should Hamas give up its opening negotiating position? Have you ever negotiated anything?)" is breathtaking in its crassness.

You ask if I have ever negotiated something.

Well I guess as someone in the real estate business for over 45 years, the answer is...yes, once or twice.

But what I have found, during those moments of negotiation, that whenever I have started a negotiation, say about the sale of a building, the opposite party has never asked me if the building I am dealing with actually exists. Because in the real world as opposed to the academic world, Derek, if something does not exist, there is no point negotiating for or with it.

So, if Hamas is going to use even the recognition of Israel as a sovereign Jewish State as a starting point on which to negotiate its borders, then I guess Israel would be wasting its time showing up to start such negotiations.

As for the rest of your comments to my questions, you did not as usual, give any answers.

You are like Horatio Nelson holding his telescope to his blind eye and saying " I see no ships."

You see no harm at all in Hamas and Fatah behavior.

Their renouncing their barbaric behaviour, not just to Israelis but to their own people is just a negotiating point. Dressing their kids up as suicide bombers will all go away, because they are just poor misunderstood people, who would be really, really lovely, if only someone would give them a break, or in this case, their country.

There are none so blind as those that will not see, and Derek, in matters of the Israeli/Palestinian problem, you are the blindest of them all.

Sad to say, Penny's summing up of you was correct.

And at least with Herzen, Tilly and aelle, we can argue without the sneery asides that are always a part of your contributions.

Penny

Hi TruthTriumphs

As you know I’m an on-off visitor to Mel’s blog so I can’t really comment about the people who may have been posting here for months – or even years. I’d like to take up your point about moral compasses, though, because it is an interesting one.

The themes I see all over the internet tend to make me think that many of those supporting the Palestinian people haven’t really thought beyond what might happen if Israel agrees to their demands.

I think they should because then they might see that some of the measures implemented by Israel are beneficial to both sides and that the more violent, recessive and damaging of the two positions may actually be theirs.

Israel has the experience of having been attacked by its neighbours in 1948, 1967 and 1973. War means bloodshed, strife, unrest, economic difficulties and sorrow – on both sides. What Israel learned is that their then-indefensible borders had actually enabled some of those wars.

Therefore, its position of not retreating to them in order to placate the Palestinian leaders is a position designed to prevent war. What some people seem unable to take on board is that such prevention saves bloodshed, social and economic unrest on BOTH sides.

The PA – particularly now they have joined with Hamas – is intractable in their position to a Jewish state. Indeed, Hamas is against the very idea of a Jew existing anywhere at all. Thus, the temptation to violence is ever-present and who wants to see another war?

This is the reality and it should be taken on board and weighed up against the ideological stances over who owns a few miles of hillside.

When one side will not accept the other’s right to exist, borders that save the lives of both seem to me to be the humane choice.

Ditto the separation barrier. If that came down BOTH sides suffer. Before the barrier came into existence hundreds died and hundreds were injured. Indoctrinated hatred and religious beliefs along with thoughts of being a hero, motivated and enabled young Palestinian men to die by blowing themselves up.

Now that this is less easy perhaps their thoughts are channelled into more productive, realistic lives. Maybe they are discovering that being a hero is possible in other fields of endeavour. In fact, perhaps this re-channelling of energies is one reason why their economy has risen so much in the last few years. Suicide bombing as a career opportunity sucks.

In the UK we raid the homes of suspected terrorists and those who have already done the deed. The natural outcome of that is police questioning the suspect(s) and their families, followed by court proceedings and possibly time served in prison. To say nothing of the family’s stress, worry, unhappiness and possibly loss of income. I point this out so that it is realised that we do this – not only Israel.

The barrier seems to me to have saved lives, re-channelled energies and prevented arrests, family grief and perhaps loss of income. The worst that happens now is wounded pride and the inability - sometimes - for Palestinians employed in Israel to get to work on time.

There are 22 similar barriers around the world. But of course, we only focus on one. Egypt’s above and below ground barriers around their side of Gaza might come down – it depends on who governs Egypt. But I don’t recall anyone being upset by Egypt keeping Gazans out or otherwise closing their borders to them.

Finally – Right of Return. This is not international law. It is simply a law that one country – Israel – implemented for pretty obvious reasons. Because it is not international law it doesn’t exist for any other refugee anywhere and if precedents are set then we could have wider demands and unrest all over the globe.

Supposing the jews expelled from Arab lands had the RoR and even a quarter of them decide to return? That’s almost a quarter of a million, entering into muslim states claiming their old homes, businesses and assets. Let’s say Pakistanis decide to return to India or southern Cypriots to northern Cyprus – and so on. There would be more unrest in the world than there is at present. And where does it end? How many generations will it cover?

The Palestinians have already had a completely unique right granted to no other – inherited refugee status. Financially speaking, we do not contribute to Israeli RoR, but all of us have contributed, via our taxes, to Palestinian refugees - for decades. They will also get compensation for their losses. Which, again, is quite a unique outcome.

Taking all these things into account, I feel that balance and justice have already been served.

If RoR came about, how many Palestinians might return to Israel, over what time period and how will that affect the economy? Along with questions of militancy, there are very practical questions that need to be asked.

And how many of us realise that it has the potential to affect our own economy?

Palestinian society is rife with inter-militant groups and there are bound to be many whose sole motivation to return to Israel wouldn’t be to live in peace but who would go with ambitions of domination. They won’t just be fighting the Jews but fighting each other for supremacy.

This already happens in Gaza and the PA, so it is a very real risk.

The Israeli Arabs and Druze would both be in very difficult positions. Living in peace now, they would inevitably be caught up and probably accused of divided loyalties, making for more militancy. So what some pro-Palestinian people believe should happen in terms of RoR, has the potential to turn the area into one of unrest, bloodshed and economic decline – for all, not just the Israelis.

Some months ago I contacted an MEP about another matter entirely. Our conversation led on to the deligitimisation of Israel. I was really surprised to learn that knocks on Israel’s economy have wider implications for us.

Thus, this RoR, with its potential for mass re-settlement, conflict and the economic difficulties that would be bound to ensue, may well affect our own economy.

Furthermore, those who support boycotts now perhaps aren’t aware that the chips in their computers, their mobile phones, messaging services, search engines and so on, were developed in Israel. They may not realise that perhaps the medical technology and medicines being used to treat them or their loved ones was developed in Israel. A couple of young Israelis have invented a car part which could halve our need for oil (I’m not very mechanically minded so I can’t put it any better than that!)

Israel is very innovative and most of us use something that they have either invented or developed. Economic upheaval would surely impact on that….and, in turn, us.

Finally, when I see kids donning keffiyah scarves and holding up banners declaring themselves to be “All Hamas/Hizbollah” now, I have to wonder if they have any real idea what both groups have at the heart of their constitutions.

Both are homophobic, anti-semitic, misogynistic and genocidal – to name but four prejudices. They are also aligned with Iran, a country not best known for its human rights and who are seeking to develop nuclear capability. In terms of moral compasses, I hope these young people examine theirs from time to time.

And here’s a thought; in their pursuit of terrorist chic, I wonder if we can expect banners which declare them to be “All Taliban Now” or even “All ETA”!! One dreads to think where this fashion might lead!

Anyway TT – enough from me. I’ve banged on as usual. But I thought I’d outline my thoughts on moral compasses and the little known net result of Israel-bashing. In doing so, I am not pointing any fingers at anyone because, being that on-off visitor here, I honestly do not know what those who contribute on Mel’s blog think or write about. It’s just my position having listened to other supporters of the Palestinians elsewhere.

If they do project beyond their current criticisms of Israel’s security measures, yet still believe them to be wrong then I would submit that their care for the Palestinian people is a little suspect.

john bruce

Mel,

We all know you view the BBC as an antisemitic organisation actively seeking the destruction of Israel.

Simple question.

Why do you keep working for it?

wonderer

@john bruce
May 22nd, 2011 9:53am
"We all know you view the BBC as an antisemitic organisation actively seeking the destruction of Israel."
Melanie may well be right if she thinks that's how the BBC operates in practice, but we all know it is funded by licence payers' money and obligated by its charter to operate impartially. She is under no obligation to allow shills for the Palestinians to act as if they owned the public broadcasting service.

In any case, no one objected to Michael Foot writing for the Tory Beaverbrook press.

Herzen

C. GEE wrote,

"To achieve this (a state for the Palestinians allegedly required to be "free of Jews"), the borders of their state are necessarily winding. Gerrymandered jurisdictions are common in the world. There is no reason why a state may not thrive within such borders."

He was trying to be scathing about the Palestinians.

UNSCOP famously had to rely on gerrymandering in an attempt to allow the Zionists more of the country than the rest of the Palestinians, and a Jewish majority as well.

Of course, UNSCOP envisaged an economic union between the "Jewish" state and the "Arab" state. They thought only such a union would thrive, not the two gerrymandered states on their own.

And UNSCOP failed, even with all the gerrymandering, to produce a "Jewish" state with a Jewish majority - when the Bedouin were not overlooked, Jews were a minority in the proposed "Jewish" state.

And of course the Zionists themselves did not think what they were allocated by UNSCOP sufficient for their state to thrive. They were intent on taking more and accepted partition only as the first step. (Their notions of viability clearly differed from C. Gee's.)

And the Zionists intended to take drastic measures to ensure a Jewish majority in the territory they deemed necessary for their state to thrive - and put their intentions into action.

So to get a state they considered likely to thrive they relied on gerrymandering by UNSCOP, military conquest, and ethnic cleansing.

And C. Gee has the cheek to be contemptuous of the Palestinians when they ask for the whole of the 22% Israel didn't manage to conquer in 1948 (and didn't manage to conquer only because Jordan stopped it).

Of course no further gerrymandering would be required if Israel stopped settling land illegally acquired, and indeed returned land illegally acquired.

(All this about "Jew free" is a poisonous little rhetorical trick to make Israel appear the victim (Israel!) if required to return what does not belong to it. A tawdry attempt to associate the insistence by the international community that Israel return territory illegally acquired with Nazism - very much C. Gee's style.)

Augustus

Herzen - I had to scroll some way back to find C.Gee's post. But as you're so driven by the indigenous Arabs of former Palestine,
refusing quite obviously, like so many others, to see that the patently successful
and legitimate creation of the state of Israel was not what caused all the refugee and other problems, but that they were overwhelmingly caused by the Arab's world's
violent rejection of that state, do you not
see that continuing to embrace the narrative of 'nakba', 'victimization', and 'ethnic cleansing' serves no other purpose than to fuel that Palestinian violence? Furthermore, on a historical note,
I wonder if UNSCOP, deliberating on a 10-year treaty of economic union under a partition plan had any idea at the time to what extent they were dealing with such implacable and unappeasable jihadis.

C.Gee

“You repeat your curious argument that Britain imposed all sorts of unsavoury regimes after WW1 in pursuit of its imperial interests, much as the US has since WW2, so the only reason the Palestinians could have for objecting to the Zionists, or for others sympathising, is anti-semitism.”

You are almost there. My argument is a little more curious than that: I am saying that the only reason why the Arabs of Palestine were humored (all the way to receiving “inalienable” national rights under international law) in their objections to the Zionists, and why they have western liberal sympathizers, is anti-semitism. I refer you to the history of mandatory and post mandatory Iraq with particular attention to the ethnic and tribal uprisings and their brutal suppressions and the sectarian conflicts. Needless to say, the “uncertainty” of minorities as to their citizenship “status” would be a strange way of characterizing their frame of mind, though resentment at foreign government was part of it. The resentment at foreigners, though understandable , was not the basis for the British to revise their policy of imposing the contemptible Faisal upon the inhabitants of Mesopotamia. No national self-determination rights were accorded to, say, the Assyrians, Kurds, Shi’a tribes (referred to as “Persians” by the British) requiring the partition of Faisal’s Iraq.

“It ought not to be such a leap of the imagination to understand why Palestinian Arabs should resent Zionists.”

So close, so very close. My point: it takes no leap of the imagination at all for you and many others to “understand” Arab resentment of Jews, just as takes no imagination for the Arabs to resent Jews in the first place. It does take the criminalizing of Jews as a collective, but that is not so much an act of the imagination as it is a cultural reflex. Falsely criminalizing Jews is the distinguishing feature of political antisemitism. In this case, the false accusations are theft of land and plots of what? Colonial exploitation?

Which brings us to your reassuring smiles, quick apologies and departure upon my stating that an Arab Palestine is the ideological heir to nazi Germany. For whose benefit are these theatrics being performed? If you think that my insistence on naming the poisonous mix of ideologies (Marxism / Nazism /Anti-semitism/Islam) that is perverting the historical, legal and political discourse, not to mention killing real people, is a sign of my paranoia or simple-mindedness, and it is too embarrassing to be seen to be debating with a madman - then by all means leave the theatre. It takes no leap of the imagination for me to understand you.

wonderer

@Augustus
May 22nd, 2011 5:31pm

UNSCOP probably had a fair idea of what the jihadis were like but were prepared to take a calculated risk. After all and at the risk of giving you a feeling of deja recently lu, in a comment to Herzen as it happens, UNSCOP's first monthly report in 1948 quotes Sir Alexander Cadogan, Britain’s representative, as follows:-

“The Government of Palestine fear that strife in Palestine will be greatly intensified when the Mandate is terminated, and that the international status of the United Nations Commission will mean little or nothing to the Arabs in Palestine, to whom the killing of Jews now transcends all other considerations.”

And UNSCOP would have known that the Arabs' leader was Hitler's associate, Haj Amin al Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem.

I must say Abbas's alleged stance of not allowing a single Jew to live in the proposed Palestinian state goes some way beyond what would seem to be reasonably necessary for protection of territory. A fortiori his stipulation that no Jew be allowed to serve in any international peace-keeping forces there.

C.Gee

(All this about "Jew free" is a poisonous little rhetorical trick to make Israel appear the victim (Israel!) if required to return what does not belong to it. A tawdry attempt to associate the insistence by the international community that Israel return territory illegally acquired with Nazism - very much C. Gee's style.)

Not departed yet, I see. Not embarrassed, then, to be seen to talk to a nazi-spotter?

1. Israel is not, and does not wish to appear as the “victim” of the Arabs. It is, and insists that it be recognized as, acting in self-defense in war. Victimology is a perverse and ugly thing. A horrible confluence of Christian and Marxist dogma; political decadence.

2. It is the Palestinian Arabs who wish to appear the victim, in a ghastly sentimentalizing of their defeat in war by borrowing tropes from the Holocaust, which their founding father, the Mufti, wholeheartedly supported and wished to import to Palestine to finish off the Jews there.

3.“Jew-free” is an actual policy goal of the Arabs, as it was of many parts of Europe historically. It is not a rhetorical trick. Its racist nature cannot be disguised by calling that policy “Palestinian Arab self-determination”, which is a rhetorical trick, but one which has become widely accepted as a reality.

4. “...insistence by the international community that Israel return territory illegally acquired with Nazism”. This perfectly illustrates the ideology of antisemitism: the false criminalization of Jews as a collective to provide a legal pretext for their punishment. “Nazism” is one of the twentieth century ideologies of which an essential component was antisemitism. Pan-Arabism, Baathism, Muslim Brotherhood Islamism sponsoring Hamas, the soviet socialism sponsoring the PLO, are also such ideologies (all Arabized versions of the European dogmas). An intellectual history of the thinking of the “international community” would be a worthwhile undertaking for you.

5. You should disabuse yourself of the notion that when antisemitism is pointed out, that it is whining for sympathy or special treatment for Jews, or is an attempt to silence the accuser. (That is what “Islamophobia” seeks to do.) Pointing out Jew-hate has never done much for the Jews. Pointing out antisemitism is not an insult - it is a diagnosis. If the patient denies the diagnosis by complaining of Jewish quackery, the diagnosis is correct. Yes, Jew-hatred is dangerous as an irrational bigotry. But it is lethal as the political ideology of antisemitism, in which the hatred is legitimized (the “Jewish question”) for the purpose of punishment of Jews (the “final solution”, pogroms, property confiscation, exile, conversion or death). Ideological antisemitism is “impersonal” - and recognizing it in someone (who could be Jewish) is also impersonal. You are an ideological antisemite. I say that without rancor. How ironic that the Nuremberg trials were to lead to the "international community" criminalizing the Jewish state’s self-defense, in an ominous parallel to the German community criminalizing of Jews by the Nuremberg Laws.

Truthtriumphs

Thomas.

I have spent a fair amount of time reading around population figures re.immigration and natural population increase in Palestine, and what I found was that it certainly wasn't as cut and dried as you would have us believe.
To pretend otherwise is simply dishonest.
The following is reproduced from one of the impartial websites I found.....yes, they do exist.
"Uncertainties in the data - Debates about the population of Palestine flourish because of the lack of good information and confusion over the meaning of census figures, and the will of partisans to distort history. Census figures of the Ottoman Empire were unreliable. Foreign residents were not counted, and illegal residents did their best to evade the census, as did people wishing to evade military services and taxes. The population figures of the British mandate were more reliable, but there was no published census taken after 1931. Mandatory figures for the period after 1931 are based on hospital and immigration records and extrapolation, it seems. Nomadic Bedouin were not counted or undercounted in both Ottoman and British censuses. Those who became settled in Palestine would then add to population figures. In studying the population of Palestine between 1800 and 1948, we must keep in mind that there was only one agreed-upon reliable census in all that time, which took place in 1931. The British census of 1922 was taken in less than settled conditions, and may have undercounted the population. The Ottoman figures certainly undercounted. The census data of 1922 and 1931 and the estimates based on these censuses have also been challenged but they appear to be internally consistent. That is, in the main, the number of people reported by the British mandate in 1922 and 1931 is consistent with the rates of natural increase that they reported. The numbers given in the 1945 survey are about 100,000 or more below what would be expected based on the number of refugees and remaining population in 1948. Uncertainties in infant mortality and underreporting of births would not account for all of this discrepancy. It could be due to illegal immigration or in part to settling of nomadic Bedouins in the Palestinian Arab population.

It is certain that there was at least some illegal Palestinian-Arab immigration, as noted in British mandatory reports. Immigration from Transjordan was not illegal, and was not recorded as immigration at all until 1938. Beginning in the 1920s when they built Haifa port, and especially during and just prior to World War II, the British recruited Arab workers from the Houran in Syria and elsewhere. Arabs also came to Palestine before the war, attracted by higher wages.
Population of Mandatory Palestine
There were only two censuses taken in Mandatory Palestine, in 1922 and in 1931. All other figures for population of mandatory Palestine are based on reported births and deaths and immigration. The Anglo-American survey of 1945 provides valuable additional data for population in that year, but it too is probably incomplete. Zionists point out that data after 1931 do not reflect illegal immigration of Arabs, as well as Jews, while pro-Palestinians believe that the census omitted many Bedouin and understates the Palestinian birthrate. Justin McCarthy asserts that the census of 1922 was done carelessly, and other Palestinian sources challenge the data from 1931. Unfortunately, there is no way to "correct" the values of a census that was done carelessly and there is no reason to assume a consistent bias in one or another direction. The 1922 and 1931 censuses have arbitrary estimates of the number of Bedouin in the Negev. The numbers were not based on actual census questionnaires. Moreover, these Bedouin were not sedentary. They moved between the Sinai, the Negev and what is now Transjordan. There is no way to know what percentage of this subpopulation could be said to be permanent residents of the Negev".

But again I ask you the 2 questions you are so reluctant to answer...
1)Why did Churchill make the remark he made, using hyperbole to bring home the reality of the huge numbers of Arabs immigrating....and, btw, they tended to settle in areas already populated by Jews, and
2)Why did the UN uniquely have a special category of refugee
for "Palestinians" who had been in Palestine for only 2 years.
If the reason was not to bump up the numbers for political purposes, what else was it?

Truthtriumphs

Herzen.

"Of course no further gerrymandering would be required if Israel stopped settling land illegally acquired, and indeed returned land illegally acquired".

Q.Was the West bank legally or illegally acquired by Trans-Jordan in 1948?

A.Illegally, and illegally annexed in 1950, an act recognised by Great Britain and Pakistan alone amongst the nations....and that recognition minus Jerusalem.
Previous to that it was "owned" by the Ottoman Empire, by conquest.
If you don't know that, start learning history, and if you do, stop lying about it.

Truthtriumphs

To C.GEE.

Your posts are in a class of their own....you should have your own blog.

Well done and thank you.

Truthtriumphs

Penny.

Your post was admirable...I admire your patience with the hate-fest lobby here, and I agree with every word you wrote.

If I were asked to produce just one article out of the myriad out there, which crystallises perfectly the I/P problem, it would have to be the one by Judea Pearl, a great humanitarian, academic and father of the unfortunate Daniel Pearl, so cruelly butchered in Pakistan by Islamists,(ring-leader educated at our very own LSE) for the crime of being a Jew.

Here is the link:--

http://www.danielpearl.org/news_and_press/articles/dialogue_of_deaf.html

It was Churchill who famously said “From intense complexities, intense simplicities emerge”.

The problem is Islam itself, and even if Israel were reduced to the size of the Tel Aviv bus station, it would still be too much.
Islam will never cede territory, no matter how small, hence the reality that it has spread to vast areas of the globe…by force.
And that is Israel's intractable problem!

Truthtriumphs

john bruce
May 22nd, 2011 9:53am
Mel,

"We all know you view the BBC as an antisemitic organisation actively seeking the destruction of Israel.
Simple question.
Why do you keep working for it?"

Why shouldn't the hundreds of thousands of us, perhaps more than a million, who pay the licence fee also have a modicum of representation?
What a daft question!

JOHN ROOSEVELT

"Truthtriumphs
May 22nd, 2011 10:20pm
To C.GEE.

Your posts are in a class of their own....you should have your own blog.

Well done and thank you."

In fact, C. Gee, in my view your posts make going to heaven redundant ;)! Complete bliss...

Thomas

Truthtriumphs
May 22nd, 2011 10:06pm
Thank you for quoting from a web-site listing some of the complexities that should make you hesitate to persist with your caricatures. Curiously, the quotes you have chosen say repeatedly that the numbers are probably under-estimates of the population, and that the boradbrush figures give a reasonable picture i.e. roughly 700k at the end of WW1 and roughly 1.4m at the end of WW2.

- which leaves us still with the questions you are reluctant to address:

What do you think follows from the fact that the Muslim population of Palestine was 700k at the end of WW1?

What do you think follows from the fact that some of the 700k population growth was through immigration?

You repeatedly raise the question of Muslim population and immigration as if they in some way further the argument for Zionist immigration and a Zionist state.

On Churchill: Your quote from the unbiassed website makes it clear that Churchill did not have any justification from the statistics provided by his officials for the grotesque "hyperbole". As I have pointed out, the figures suggest that the immigration contributed only a small part of the permanent increase in population. Churchill may well have wished to draw attention to Arab immigration, perhaps to justify Jewish immigration to any who objected despite Britain's obligation to permit it. He no doubt got the attention he sought, but at the cost of credibility.

Immigrants resident in Palestine for two years, Arab or Jewish, thereby met one of the conditions for Palestinian citizenship - if so, your question is answered.

Herzen

Truthtriumphs
May 22nd, 2011 10:17pm
I am bemused that you think to distract attention from the illegal actions of Israel by pointing at the illegal actions of Jordan. Israel and Jordan both acquired territory by conquest in 1948. Israel acquired more in 1967.

At least Jordan has renounced its (illegal) claim on the West Bank.

Truthtriumphs

Thomas
May 23rd, 2011 10:56am
Truthtriumphs

May 22nd, 2011 10:06pm
"Thank you for quoting from a web-site listing some of the complexities that should make you hesitate to persist with your caricatures
which leaves us still with the questions you are reluctant to address:
What do you think follows from the fact that the Muslim population of Palestine was 700k at the end of WW1?
What do you think follows from the fact that some of the 700k population growth was through immigration?"

Your questions are ridiculous.
If you remember, the argument was about Arab immigration, which Emet denied, based on Porath's book.
Now you admit that there was indeed Arab inward migration.
Perhaps the "caricatures" are all yours...the product of certainty based on arrogance, despite any evidence put to you.

"You repeatedly raise the question of Muslim population and immigration as if they in some way further the argument for Zionist immigration and a Zionist state."

I have no problem with the legallity of the Jewish state. You do.
You and others like you base that on the so-called indigenous condition of the Palestinian Arabs.
I don't know how you come to the figures you do for 1948, when the last official census was in 1931.

"We must keep in mind that there was only one agreed-upon reliable census in all that time, which took place in 1931."

"Immigrants resident in Palestine for two years, Arab or Jewish, thereby met one of the conditions for Palestinian citizenship - if so, your question is answered."

Trickery on your part...that has nothing to do with the question of refugee status given to people in the country for just two years, a condition for refugee status uniquely accorded to the Palestinians, in a cynical move to bump up their numbers.

As to Churchill's "credibility", he was the acknowledged outstanding PM of the last century....his foresight made possible the freedom we enjoy today, and gave you the freedom to write the drivel that you do.
If I were you, I'd rather worry about your own credibility.

Thomas

Truthtriumphs
May 23rd, 2011 2:42pm
You repeatedly make much of the assertion that Palestine was sparsely inhabited in the 19th and early 20th century. By the end of WW1, this sparse population included roughly 700k Muslims and 60k Jews (some recent immigrants, some immigrants within the previous 100-150 years, a few the descendants of the ancient Jews).

What is it you think follows from this that supports the Zionist claim for a state in Palestine? You repeat it so often that you must think something follows. You repeat it as if in refutation of the arguments of critics of Zionism.

Similarly, you frequently refer to the mass immigration of Arabs during the Mandate.

What is it you think follows that supports the Zionist claim to a state in Palestine?

I am surprised that you decline to answer what should be straightforward questions for you.

Churchill's two greatest claims to gratitude are jumping on board the Liberal reforms of 1906 contrary to his lifelong prejudices, and defying Hitler in 1940 despite Britain's bankruptcy.

You will find the rest of his record open to differing views.

However, this is irrelevant to the matter in hand. You say he relied on information provided by his officials. You have also confirmed that the information his officials were able to provide was imprecise and broadly consistent with the figures I have given you. On the basis of this information, his "hyperbole" was grossly misleading if intended to convey an impression of the magnitude of the immigration.

Truthtriumphs

Herzen
May 23rd, 2011 2:15pm
Truthtriumphs
May 22nd, 2011 10:17pm

"I am bemused that you think to distract attention from the illegal actions of Israel by pointing at the illegal actions of Jordan. Israel and Jordan both acquired territory by conquest in 1948. Israel acquired more in 1967."

C.Gee has dealt with you far better than I ever could.
I refer you to his many ripostes, which, frankly demolished all your fanciful theories, and have exposed you for the utter fraud that you are.

Herzen

Truthtriumphs
May 23rd, 2011 5:19pm

Really?

That's the best you can do?

aem

I saw C. Gee's contributions praised as better than heaven (which suggests a certain poverty of imagination on someone's part). I read his contributions. By some bizarre perversion of logic he persuades himself that he can infer from any criticism of Israel that the critic is an anti-semite, Marxist, Nazi (sic). This is what Israel's best defenders have to resort to? Oh, dear.

Another Joshua

@aem
I think you missed the point. Anti-semitism is the diagnosis of a condition, not an accusation. It is evident from the fact of persistent irrationality when it comes to Israel goes a stage beyond criticism. and is driven ideologically to a point of irrationality that gives rise to antisemitism.It is also not confined to non-Jews but also to Jews who exhibit such tendencies.Indeed many such Jews pride themselves of the fact that they are supra-Jews, to be more qualified to debate in such a manner.
C.Gee's comment makes a lot of sense.It is not intended to make the accuser feel guilty: it is that the accuser finds himself/herself in an uncomfortable position because the person who accuses, as opposed to criticises cannot find in words anything he or she has said that might acknowledge the right for Jews to have a home and therefore the thought processes are not balanced and are irrational.

Stephen Rothbart

Herzen, your scholarly approach to the issues of the Middle East are well researched, informative, and selective.

As I have said before, we can all find events and declarations to support our points of view if we look long and hard enough.

Unfortunately, your facts and figures, and indeed the Zionist facts and figures, do nothing to bring forward a solution to the Arab/Israeli problem.

The problem is that your are, as are many in the West, looking at the solution through the prism of a 400 year old drive for civilization based around the rules of justice, Habeus Corpus, Code Napoleon etc. Where the ideas that leaders, used to working in "smoke filled" boardrooms that constitute UN and EU discussions, where alliances are forged and compromises made (so that no one really gets what they want, but can live with the outcome), is their life experience.

This drives their thought process to the point where a supposedly intelligent man like William Hague can honestly believe that if you team up a quasi-terrorist organisation like Fatah with a self-declared terrorist organisation like Hamas, you provide Israel with a true partner for Peace because now they all speak with one voice! Do people like him ever listen to themselves?

The fact that that "voice" is one that is hostile to the very existence of the Jewish State is completely lost on a man who main interaction with life is steering committees, party conferences, Cabinet meetings, and briefings with his secretaries and advisors. Reality on the ways the Middle East mentality works is completely lost on him.

And others like him. And, dare I say it, on people like you.

The reality is that with the Middle East in turmoil for reasons that have nothing to do with Israel, this is the worst time for leaders of the West to be forcing Israel into making Peace.

Only when things settle down and Israel and the West can see what the political landscape looks like, can any serious negotiation take place.

If Egypt is run, as looks more and more likely, by the Muslim Brotherhood, of which Hamas is an off-shoot, then dealing with Hamas/Fatah will be far different then than if Egypt becomes the Social Democratic version of the Czech Republic or Poland we all hope for.

Only a naif like Obama and Cameron would think otherwise, and sadly they do.

The fact is that you have 5 million Arabs demanding their right of return to a land now occupied by 4,5 million Jews and 1,5 million Israeli Arabs who have lived a far different life than their co-religionists, and do not want their lives turned upside down by an influx of jobless Arabs.

Trying to impose a Peace between, on one hand, a mixed bunch of highly religious and tribal people who have been taught anti-Semitism and Zionism by their leaders and by their schools, with a people whose entire life experience is the opposite, liberal,largely tolerant, largely secular, is impossible.

So how do you solve the problem?

Not with a courtroom mentality for sure. Your fine words and the countering arguments of Truthtriumphs and C Gee etc. are great for historical narrative and learning, and I have learned of things that I did not know from all sides.

But these arguments lead nowhere. A history lesson is not life.

We Jews feel victimized by the bias of the Obamas and the Hagues and Camerons of this world as they weight their remarks to favour Arab sensitivities, along with the BBC and many other news outlets, like CNN, because we sense in it again the anti-Semitic propaganda that has led so often to the massacres of our race.

Conversely, Israelis don't feel like victims. They are tougher.

They understand the ways of the Middle East.

Strength is everything. The more the Israelis work out that there is no one on their side and that Palestinians are being given a free pass to all their atrocities and unrealistic demands, the more Israel will, and does, turn away from diplomacy as a solution.

Peace in the Middle East between Arabs and Jews will only come when both parties are ready to make it, not when ignorant men try to force it.

I would say the Palestinians are a generation away from the kind of maturity and common sense that woud make them a partner for Peace. If ever.

Israel was formerly a partner for Peace, but has grown weary of watching a petulant and deadly campaign of victimhood become the default position of Palestinian aspirations, and is no longer a true partner for Peace. This is of course entirely my opinion.

But it is for the Palestinians to regain that trust, not for Israel to make yet another "brave" concession to a people too hatefully immature to grasp the gesture.

If that sounds like I am accusing the Palestinians of behaving like spoiled children, it is because that is exactly how I see it.

And they are indulged by the kind of leadership in the West that I described above, and the endless attempts by scholarly debates to argue their cause and justify their atrocious behaviour.

Only when the world starts to tell them that recognition of Israel as a Jewish State is a pre-requisite of international acceptance, the Right of Return is impossible and all attacks on Jewish targets must be stopped or support from the UN and the EU will be withdrawn, can the groundwork be laid for reconciliation.

No amount of historical statistics can be substitute for that.

aem

Another Joshua
May 24th, 2011 10:39am
C. Gee's foul slurs are warranted by nothing his opponents have said. It is a disgraceful attempt to poison rational debate about the conflict and how to resolve it. It is an attempt to bully opponents into accepting whatever Israel wants to do or risk being labeled as disgraceful and hateful bigots. I suspect he has intelligence sufficient to desist from this practice but he makes no effort to question his own prejudices.

Another Joshua

@aem

"C. Gee's foul slurs are warranted by nothing his opponents have said. It is a disgraceful attempt to poison rational debate about the conflict and how to resolve it. It is an attempt to bully opponents into accepting whatever Israel wants to do or risk being labeled as disgraceful and hateful bigots."

I think, having followed the rather long correspondence between C.Gee and Herzen, I can see that it exhibits a great deal of patience and clarity of thought and does not deserve for him to be labelled in this way. It is quite possible for people to not be antisemitic and yet still engage in antisemitic discourse.This is an issue in itself and a cause for discussion. My concerns, for what they are worth is the fact that positions in discussion are adopted from unrealistic premises to support another argument that will ultimately result in a victory of words,and not really deal with true concerns or reality. C Gee in March engaged in a fruitless effort to establish at least 2 equal rights for self-determination, applying legal and philosophical means to arrive at a point with Herzen, who was denying Jewish rights. When it came to the crunch, herzen slipped away to attempt to make yet the "bigger" point.

What is this about? I ask myself and so does C. Gee. In this context I understand how it comes to the point, that if Jews are given no say in the determination of their future then one can only conclude that discussion is not what this is all about.

aem

Another Joshua
May 24th, 2011 5:26pm
I too followed the self-same discussions.

Your characterisation of C. Gee's contribution is not borne out by what he said. He refused to recognise any right to self-determination attaching to any of the inhabitants of Palestine other than those engaged in the Zionist project of establishing a Zionist homeland/state.

Your willingness to suggest that Herzen may not be an anti-semite but nevertheless engages in anti-semitic discourse is wholly unwarranted by anthing he has said and is (I hope) unworthy of you.

(I agree that C. Gee is capable for a certain period of countering what his opponent says, although not of clarifying his high-falutin' notions (such as what criteria apply in identifying a "Nation" with an innate right to self-determination, or what bestows on the Zionists the sacred right to misinterpret the Balfour Declaration and the meaning attaching to it in its inclusion in the Mandate) - but he invariably fails to maintain the facade - the yellow press slurs invariably seep out. And then my strictures certainly do apply.)

Another Joshua

@aem
"engages in anti-semitic discourse"
I take the EUMC'working definition as a starting point and select the part to do with Israel:

"Examples of the ways in which antisemitism manifests itself with regard to the State of Israel taking into account the overall context could include:

Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.

Applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.

Using the symbols and images associated with classic antisemitism (e.g., claims of Jews killing Jesus or blood libel) to characterize Israel or Israelis.

Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.

Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel.

However, criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic."

I would say that some of the comments attempting to deny nationhood of Jews falls quite squarely into this category.The preoccupation over the point also places it within another part of the definition -applying double standards and so on.

It's this definition given that defines whether some of this theoritical discourse moves away from legitimate non-antisemitic discussion to something else.
C.Gee as far as I can see has personal doubts about whether a Palestinian State can actually come into play in the game of nations. Based on both history and present reality, it does not seem likely with the present incumbants.

aem

Another Joshua
May 25th, 2011 11:29am
" @aem
"engages in anti-semitic discourse"
I take the EUMC'working definition as a starting point and select the part to do with Israel..."

Your starting-point is remarkably close to your intended finishing point.

Am I to accept EUMC as authoritative?

That there is a "Jewish people" such as can claim a "right to self-determination" in the sense of acquiring a sovereign state in Palestine against the wishes of the inhabitants is precisely what has to be demonstrated, not assumed.

No-one here has required Israel to meet standards more stringent than those that apply to others. Indeed, Herzen et al. have been explicit in saying that Israel's behaviour is a relatively minor example of what the US does as a matter of course. Herzen et al. as I understand them are requiring that Israel observe the international law it has subscribed to and insists should apply to others e.g. Iran.

No-one here has employed anything remotely like the classic libels of modern or medieval European anti-semitism (although Israel's supporters here have with nauseating frequency alleged that they have).

Herzen et al. have indeed used a parallel between Jewish ghettoes and ghettoes for the Palestinians. One of them justified the parallel in detail. It is apt. It has nothing to do with anti-semitism, but with discrimination, segregation, and confinement on ethnic grounds. Herzen et al. as far as I have seen do not make repeated comparisons between Israel and the Nazis. Israel's defenders here make frequent comparisons between Israel's opponents and the Nazis. Facile historical comparisons are usually more misleading than enlightening.

No-one here has held Jews responsible for Israel. Indeed, those most likely here to confuse "Jews" with "Zionists" are the Zionists.

The criticism of Israel here is such as applies to any state pursuing similarly illegal policies. Do you require that every response to a defence of Israel's actions here come with a codicil listing India in Kashmir, China in Tibet, Sri Lanka and the Tamils, the various Sudanese authorities and groups against each other, also the Congolese, the Turkish treatment of Kurds, the Syrian treatment of Kurds, the Iranian...the US in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Pakistan, in Central America...) Surely, in a debate about Israel, this would soon become unwieldy to no purpose.

There are no grounds for charging Herzen et al. with anti-semitism. It is cheap. It is nasty. It is intended to preempt rational discussion. They produce arguments and evidence. The proper response is counter-argument and evidence. It may even be that their arguments are thereby refuted, which they will never be by smears.

Another Joshua

@aem

1.“Your starting-point is remarkably close to your intended finishing point.”
No. It’s a starting point. The list is not exhaustive and depending on context could include those matters stated, and others
2. “That there is a "Jewish people" such as can claim a "right to self-determination" in the sense of acquiring a sovereign state in Palestine against the wishes of the inhabitants is precisely what has to be demonstrated, not assumed.”
To deny them a claim, to deny that it has still to been proven, Combined, does I think fit neatly within the working definition. No one here is talking about “against the wishes” of inhabitants. I may live in France and not like the French. No one here would question that the French need to prove to have a claim to France. Double standard?
3. “No-one here has required Israel to meet standards more stringent than those that apply to others. Indeed, Herzen et al. have been explicit in saying that Israel's behaviour is a relatively minor example of what the US does as a matter of course. Herzen et al. as I understand them are requiring that Israel observe the international law it has subscribed to and insists should apply to others e.g. Iran.”
Context, is very much part of the issue here. Israel has been at war with surrounding countries that deny its existence and would want its removed. Whatever Israel does it is under considerable scrutiny with accusations leveled against it that are often wholly unjustified. Herzen et al presenting a fig leaf of decency by accepting others may be worse does not cover the excessive disapprobation that they clearly reserve for Israel.
4.” No-one here has employed anything remotely like the classic libels of modern or medieval European anti-semitism (although Israel's supporters here have with nauseating frequency alleged that they have).”
I disagree. A great deal can be gleaned from these comments to show that the pathology of anti-semitism informs anti-zionists world view of Jews. In the case of the Swedish journalist justifying a false account given by Palestinian Arabs accusing Israelis of using Palestinians for their organ donor business and Baroness Tonge regarding her comments regarding Israel’s aid to the people of Haiti, show how close “classic” anti Semitism is at work.
5.” Herzen et al. have indeed used a parallel between Jewish ghettoes and ghettoes for the Palestinians. One of them justified the parallel in detail. It is apt. It has nothing to do with anti-semitism, but with discrimination, segregation, and confinement on ethnic grounds. Herzen et al. as far as I have seen do not make repeated comparisons between Israel and the Nazis. Israel's defenders here make frequent comparisons between Israel's opponents and the Nazis. Facile historical comparisons are usually more misleading than enlightening.”
If “Herzen et al” have done it once, it’s enough to know. If one really cannot tell the difference between the Warsaw Ghetto say and Gaza, the difference between a death camp and Gaza then obviously something is terribly wrong with “Herzen et al’s ” education. If the can tell the difference, then under the working definition, it is anti-Semitism.
6.” No-one here has held Jews responsible for Israel. Indeed, those most likely here to confuse "Jews" with "Zionists" are the Zionists.”
Ahem. I have some news for you. The majority of Jews are Zionists. I accept some are not. There are many non-Jews who are Zionists as well. Israel is a Jewish State. There’s no confusion.
7.” The criticism of Israel here is such as applies to any state pursuing similarly illegal policies. Do you require that every response to a defence of Israel's actions here come with a codicil listing India in Kashmir, China in Tibet, Sri Lanka and the Tamils, the various Sudanese authorities and groups against each other, also the Congolese, the Turkish treatment of Kurds, the Syrian treatment of Kurds, the Iranian...the US in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Pakistan, in Central America...) Surely, in a debate about Israel, this would soon become unwieldy to no purpose”.
Nothing similar about it. Oh and if only “ any criticism” of one of the listed countries would come with a codicil listing Israel instead of the other way round, but it never does, does it?
8.” There are no grounds for charging Herzen et al. with anti-semitism. It is cheap. It is nasty. It is intended to preempt rational discussion. They produce arguments and evidence. The proper response is counter-argument and evidence. It may even be that their arguments are thereby refuted, which they will never be by smears.”
The boot is on the other foot. If you can produce a better working definition of anti-semitism please feel free to try. If not, most decent people in the interest of fairness would prefer to retain some definition and for those tempted to cross the line, to be aware of where criticism starts and offensiveness begins.

aem

Another Joshua
May 26th, 2011 11:25am
We are not going to agree. Perhaps we should leave it at that. However, your comments are so wide of the mark, I will try again.

This definition is tendentious. One has to be careful to criticise Israel just a little, otherwise one is an anti-semite. So, if Israel does something bad, do not criticise, because the criticism would be more than just a little, and therefore anti-semitic.

Your retort to the second point nicely illustrates the uses to which your definition can be put.

You do indeed assume what has to be demonstrated, if it is the history of Zionism we are talking about. If it is the rights of Israeli citizens now, then that is something else again. Of course the citizens of Israel have the right to self-determination. This says nothing about how we got here.

"No one here is talking about “against the wishes” of inhabitants". I am surprised to be told that the people of Palestine supported Zionism.

Context is indeed important. On this blog, in response to unquestioning support for whatever Israel chooses to do, it is indeed perfectly justifiable to criticise Israel more than Sri Lanka (and Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt and Iran, all of whom subscribe to a peace deal Israel rejects). Israel is criticised for failing to meet common standards that apply to all.

I said that no-one here has used the classic slurs of European anti-semitism. Nor has anyone had any call to, since anti-semitism is irrelevant to what they say. You have not managed, as far as I can tell, to provide an example that proves me wrong.

Nothing you have said shows why it is inappropriate to use the term "ghetto" to apply to Israel's confinement of Palestinians because they are "Arabs". I am not sure that "concentration camp" is apt. The British used concentration camps in Africa as a counter-insurgency tactic, much like the "protected" villages in Vietnam. The Germans used them in West Africa, I do not recall whether they had determined on slaughter before they set them up. The Nazis used them as labour camps with death camps attached. Israel uses Gaza as a demographic warehouse (with careful calibration of calories). "Ghetto" I think apt in conveying the coercion in the ethnic segregation. "Concentration camp" does have the ring of cheap rhetoric. I have not seen Herzen et al. use it, but no doubt you have noticed others who have.

On "Jews" and "Zionists", you confuse me. Your definition of anti-semitism says that anti-semites blame Jews for what Israel does. I say "Jews" and "Zionists" are two distinct but overlapping terms. You say most Jews are Zionists and support Israel. (Is your point simply that the citizens of a state and its foreign supporters should not be held responsible for the actions of that state?)

As an aside, in its early days, so I have read, Zionism was a minority creed among Jews. However, if by "Zionist" you now mean "Supporter of the state of Israel" (as distinct from "supporter of the state of Israel's treatment of the Palestinians"), it is not surprising that most Jews are Zionists. Indeed, most people who have given the matter any thought are Zionists in this sense - Israel is a state and Israelis are citizens of that state. I can't think of anyone here who has said anything that can reasonably be interpreted as considering doing away with any state.

The criticism of Israel is precisely the same as of others - it disregards international law and oppresses other people. Israel certainly gets more attention in Europe and the US. One reason is certainly that the Palestinians have become a trendy cause for those who like to think of themselves as "progressives" (just as Israel was in its early days). Another reason is that the area is crucial to Western interests, so conflict there attracts greater attention. When one of those in conflict is our close ally, you get the usual phenomenon - those supportive of Western hegemony (or whatever jargon you wish to use) devote considerable effort to supporting Israel, and those who consider themselves "progressive" to supporting the Palestinians (because they are oppressed and because they are oppressed by the Western hegemon). Then, ironically, there is plain racism - conflicts elsewhere are of little interest, they don't affect us. The Palestinians would meet with similar indifference were they not victims of the US and its chief ally in an area crucial to Western grand strategy.

Israel is part of the West. It is in effect a member of Nato and of the EU. This lets it get away with outrageous behaviour. The criticism of the weak against it counts for little beside the support of the powerful.

In conclusion, I said that Herzen et al. provide arguments and evidence against Israel's behaviour towards the Palestinians. I said that the proper response is stronger counter-arguments and evidence, not insults. Your retort is to call this anti-semitism!

JOHN ROOSEVELT

aem:"Another Joshua
May 24th, 2011 10:39am
C. Gee's foul slurs are warranted by nothing his opponents have said. It is a disgraceful attempt to poison rational debate about the conflict and how to resolve it. It is an attempt to bully opponents into accepting whatever Israel wants to do or risk being labeled as disgraceful and hateful bigots. I suspect he has intelligence sufficient to desist from this practice but he makes no effort to question his own prejudices."

aem, but you ARE a disgraceful and hateful bigot and , even if C.Gee has manifested the restrain and politesse of a great leader of men, I - one put on this earth only to serve great men - can not claim such diplomacy and self -restraint.

You are not interested in a genuine peace with Israel. You are only interested in contributing to the war by other means - the perpetuation of a narrative that can serve the jihadi mission eventually to reverse the arab and muslim nakba and finish what Hitler started.

C, Gee has demolished yours and Herzen's best forays into the land of disputation. It has been wonderful to watch.

...but do come back for more...My lonely nights would not be the same without reading C. Gee.

aem

Dear Moderator,
Can I ask again, politey: am I to be allowed to reply?

Another Joshua
May 26th, 2011 11:25am
We are not going to agree. Perhaps we should leave it at that. However, your comments are so wide of the mark, I will try again.

This definition is tendentious. One has to be careful to criticise Israel just a little, otherwise one is an anti-semite. So, if Israel does something bad, do not criticise, because the criticism would be more than just a little, and therefore anti-semitic.

Your retort to the second point nicely illustrates the uses to which your definition can be put.

You do indeed assume what has to be demonstrated, if it is the history of Zionism we are talking about. If it is the rights of Israeli citizens now, then that is something else again. Of course the citizens of Israel have the right to self-determination. This says nothing about how we got here.

"No one here is talking about “against the wishes” of inhabitants". I am surprised to be told that the people of Palestine supported Zionism.

Context is indeed important. On this blog, in response to unquestioning support for whatever Israel chooses to do, it is indeed perfectly justifiable to criticise Israel more than Sri Lanka (and Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt and Iran, all of whom subscribe to a peace deal Israel rejects). Israel is criticised for failing to meet common standards that apply to all.

I said that no-one here has used the classic slurs of European anti-semitism. Nor has anyone had any call to, since anti-semitism is irrelevant to what they say. You have not managed, as far as I can tell, to provide an example that proves me wrong.

Nothing you have said shows why it is inappropriate to use the term "ghetto" to apply to Israel's confinement of Palestinians because they are "Arabs". I am not sure that "concentration camp" is apt. The British used concentration camps in Africa as a counter-insurgency tactic, much like the "protected" villages in Vietnam. The Germans used them in East Africa, I do not recall whether they had determined on slaughter before they set them up. The Nazis used them as labour camps with death camps attached. Israel uses Gaza as a demographic warehouse (with careful calibration of calories). "Ghetto" I think apt in conveying the coercion in the ethnic segregation. "Concentration camp" does have the ring of cheap rhetoric. I have not seen Herzen et al. use it, but no doubt you have noticed others who have.

On "Jews" and "Zionists", you confuse me. Your definition of anti-semitism says that anti-semites blame Jews for what Israel does. I say "Jews" and "Zionists" are two distinct but overlapping terms. You say most Jews are Zionists and support Israel. (Is your point simply that the citizens of a state and its foreign supporters should not be held responsible for the actions of that state?)

As an aside, in its early days, so I have read, Zionism was a minority creed among Jews. However, if by "Zionist" you now mean "Supporter of the state of Israel" (as distinct from "supporter of the state of Israel's treatment of the Palestinians"), it is not surprising that most Jews are Zionists. Indeed, most people who have given the matter any thought are Zionists in this sense - Israel is a state and Israelis are citizens of that state. I can't think of anyone here who has said anything that can reasonably be interpreted as considering doing away with any state.

The criticism of Israel is precisely the same as of others - it disregards international law and oppresses other people. Israel certainly gets more attention in Europe and the US. One reason is certainly that the Palestinians have become a trendy cause for those who like to think of themselves as "progressives" (just as Israel was in its early days). Another reason is that the area is crucial to Western interests, so conflict there attracts greater attention. When one of those in conflict is our close ally, you get the usual phenomenon - those supportive of Western hegemony (or whatever jargon you wish to use) devote considerable effort to supporting Israel, and those who consider themselves "progressive" to supporting the Palestinians (because they are oppressed and because they are oppressed by the Western hegemon). Then, ironically, there is plain racism - conflicts elsewhere are of little interest, they don't affect us. The Palestinians would meet with similar indifference were they not victims of the US and its chief ally in an area crucial to Western grand strategy.

Israel is part of the West. It is in effect a member of Nato and of the EU. This lets it get away with outrageous behaviour. The criticism of the weak against it counts for little beside the support of the powerful.

In conclusion, I said that Herzen et al. provide arguments and evidence against Israel's behaviour towards the Palestinians. I said that the proper response is stronger counter-arguments and evidence, not insults. Your retort is to call this anti-semitism!

JOHN ROOSEVELT

aem: "The criticism of Israel is precisely the same as of others - it disregards international law and oppresses other people."

Your criticism of Israel is by no means "precisely the same of others". This is "precisely" the point.

You dont criticise others - especially the "others" influencing the Middle East dispute in key ways.

You use terms to describe Israel,as if you are making a point or you are making some distinction. If you emphasised that those whom you accuse Israel of "oppressing" etc are (and always have been) - on every score - infinitely worse - your case would be different and you may sound somewhat less bigoted.

Your Oxford education seems to have made you a specialist in very little except the sin of omission. You should be telling the world - over and over again - that despite the horrors of the history of conflict between Jew and Mulsim/Arab, the Jew - compared with every single muslim and arab state and non state actor in the region, has done wonders in the Middle East and, relatively - at the very least - is a beacon of the values which you purport to uphold and berate Israel for not adhering to.

As a result of your very "un Oxford" lack of intellectual honesty, you also manage to contribute not only to the apologising for crimes far worse than anything you may wish to pin on the dreaded Jew, but also you contribute to the West's inadvertent, if not deliberate, push for the continuation of war in the region and the cementing of the status of Palestinians as the cannon fodder of the Middle East.

Aem, you should do a comparative analysis of israeli society and every other arab and muslim society in the region. We can then see if your Oxford education education can combine with you attitude to the Jew, generating views which are somewhat more balanced.

You may have studied languages, aem, but the singular result of your vaunted education seems only to be that you babble in tongues...Not quite what your dons would have hoped for, I'm sure.

Another Joshua

@aem

1. “So, if Israel does something bad, do not criticise, because the criticism would be more than just a little, and therefore anti-semitic.”
The definition says: “criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as anti-Semitic”

I can amplify by saying this. An anti-Semite is someone who dislikes Jews more than is necessary.

2.” You do indeed assume what has to be demonstrated, if it is the history of Zionism we are talking about. If it is the rights of Israeli citizens now, then that is something else again. Of course the citizens of Israel have the right to self-determination. This says nothing about how we got here.
This is one of those statements which carry internal inconsistencies. It says:

“Israel exists and Jews have the right to retain the right to self –determination, but prove to me (aem) you are a nation to be entitled to it in the first place” Thinking this one out , what it really says is that since one cannot prove it (to the nth degree) , Jews are not entitled to self-determination, then or now.

Under the Definition, that could be classed as anti-Semitic.

3. “Nothing you have said shows why it is inappropriate to use the term "ghetto" to apply to Israel's confinement of Palestinians because they are "Arabs". I am not sure that "concentration camp" is apt. The British used concentration camps in Africa as a counter-insurgency tactic, much like the "protected" villages in Vietnam.”

The definition clearly states where offence can be caused. People who know about concentration camps from first or second-hand experience (most of European Jewry), what the ghettos of Europe were, would long to have lived and SURVIVED in conditions like Gaza – even with thugs like Hamas in charge. The way you write places you in an age group of 20-25, with a capacity to reason like a 12 year old (and no disrespect intended to 12 year olds, many of whom could reason better than this!).If you indeed went to Oxford, your ability to apply logic is shameful. And that goes to others who apply logic in this way. Shameful.

aem

Another Joshua
May 27th, 2011 3:37pm
It would appear that righteous indignation weakens the intellect.

"An anti-Semite is someone who dislikes Jews more than is necessary."

Since there is no reason at all to dislike Jews as Jews, what are you on about? And, again, we seem to have the confusion between "Jews" and "Zionists" and "the state of Israel".

"“Israel exists and Jews have the right to retain the right to self –determination..." Likewise.

You seem to confuse ghettoes, concentration camps, and death camps for maximum indignation.

I said that talk of "concentration camps" seems to me cheap rhetoric, which Herzen had not employed. I said that the use of the term "ghetto" seemed apt, as explained by "Thomas". I looked in vain for where I said that the ghettoes Israel keeps the Palestinians in are as bad as the ghettoes the Nazis kept the Jews in (although I don't know about ghettoes in Renaissance Italy). The calorie count in Gaza is infinitely more humane than in the ghettoes of Poland even at the outset when the Nazis considered them temporary holding-pens before transfer East. As you say, anyone trapped in the ghettoes of Poland would have longed for conditions like those in the ghettoes of the occupied territories - which are nonetheless ghettoes, for the reasons given by "Thomas". Israel pens people up because of their ethnic origin, and requires us to use only polite terms to avoid causing offence?

aem

P.S.
What is it with Oxford?

aem

P.P.S.

"People who know about concentration camps from first or second-hand experience (most of European Jewry), what the ghettos of Europe were..."

- including my relatives, so don't try that one on me.