The Arab peace initiative: Should it be amended? – Ha’aretz, March 29, 2007
Posted by middleeast on 29th March 2007
|
||||
 |
||||
|
||||
|
|||||||
|
|||||||
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Archive for March, 2007
Should Israel Negotiate with the New Palestinian Coalition Government?, Ha’aretz, March 22, 2007
Posted by middleeast on 23rd March 2007
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
Ha’aretz Daily
Tel Aviv, IsraelThu., March 22, 2007 Nisan 3, 5767
Israel Time: 14:36 (EST+7)
Of course Israel should negotiate. Not only is a reader right that “we should not wait for Palestinians to become Zionists to agree to talk with them,” and Rabin right that people have to negotiate and make peace with their enemies, not with their friends; but also, if Israel negotiated with groups regarded by Palestinians as sell-outs, or even Quislings, the agreement would assuredly fail. Only by negotiations with strong Palestinian nationalists can any agreement ever succeed.
That doesn’t mean that Israel should negotiate in the middle of a rash of Hamas-caused suicide bombings. We should always be morally unambiguous, even during conflicts and even during negotiations with a group that is our enemy, and such actions are always unambiguously abominable. But that doesn’t mean that Israel shouldn’t negotiate with a group with whom it as a war; most wars do not end with unconditional surrender (World War II is unique and a misleading example for almost all other wars), but with negotiations between the opposing sides in the middle of those wars.
The United States not only negotiated with but even formed an alliance with Joseph Stalin and his Soviet Gulag during World War II as a trade-off for a different moral good, fighting Hitler. During the Cold War, the U.S. negotiated constantly with the Soviet Union and Leonid Brezhnev and their ongoing Gulag, and made “detente” with Brezhnev despite the Berlin Wall, innocent civilians shot to death who crossed it, psychiatric torture hospitals, etc. Just as Reagan negotiated with Yuri Andropov, the KGB predecessor of Gorbachev.
It’s a moral trade-off – as many unavoidably are in the messinesses of life – but usually the larger morality of future peace and cessation of suffering gets served. And not to negotiate only serves the larger immorality of the protraction of conflict and suffering.
James Adler
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Outlines of a Left-Wing Case for Israel
Posted by middleeast on 17th March 2007
I am constantly struggling with the history of Israel, and trying to reconcile my love for Israel and the Jewish people, with various constrasting views of the history of the period. (And in the personal struggle I sometimes become too critical of Israel, and then regret it, especially in a piece in the Somerville Journal last November (and a subsequent response to a critic in that paper).
So in various writings and printed letters to editors and online messages I have been inconsistent about it, reflecting my internal struggle, especially about the possibility (and certainly claims by some) that there was a displacement of Palestinians in 1948-49 and subsequent unjust “refusal of return.”
In this struggle and the process of learning more, and the inconsistencies deriving from them, I sometimes retain old habits of being too critical of Israel.
I grew seriously interested in the period at the Barak Offer and a near-miss for peace, the start of the Second Intifada and 9/11. I began as an “anti-Zionist.” I thought simply: We hadn’t lived there for centuries and then took over. Now I realize it is much more complex, and, as I now often put it, Israel, while it has done wrong things (such as the occupation and setttlements)–”has a strong case.”
And I love the Jewish people anyway. And have come to love this state of Israel.
And now, as I see it, what is this “left-wing” case for Israel?
Here is at least part of an outline of it.
Jews migrated in the period, 1490s-1940s, of worldwide migration, the same migratory period that led to the Western Hemisphere nations (North and South) and Australia and New Zealand. They came near the tail-end and so have had more problems. But 1900 was the high point of world migration. By period standards, they did no different than what European migrants did in the Americas and North Americans to the western half of the continent.
Moreover, they did not use war or slaughter or extermination or conquest, but the mechanism of peaceful land purchases and international organizations. And not to persecute but to escape persecution; and not go leave home but to go home. Their land purchase covenants (only to resell to Jews) is questionable in this period, but again was normative by period standards. American real estate zoning codes operated just the same way, and no one suggests that the permanent effects that they have had be rolled back.
The Balfour incorporation into the Palestine League of Nations Mandate was, again, wrong by today’s standards, but not by those of the period– the same period that created Australia and North and South America. Nationalism, the urge to statehood, was also part of the period, the period influenced by the German philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder as much as Theodlor Herzl, of the historical and moral priority of languages and nations.
For the Jews it was especially urged on by persecutions — millennia of pogroms culminating in the Holocaust, motives not driving most world nationalisms. And if the Arab world has a bone to pick, it is with the international community — the League of Nations in the 1920s and the United Nations in the 1940s, and not with the Jews, who alone could have done nothing, and only did by the mechanism of international organizations–again, the peaceful way not of conquest and slaughter but purchases and international law.
The Jews were a tiny minority, and 3/4 in Europe were exterminated; they could do nothing; it is Europe and America, the main carriers of international organizations and law in the earlier period, that authorized and enabled both the drives to migration and to nationhood, and all done peacefully.
So it is with The League and the UN, not Jews or Israel, with whom anyone who has problems with what happened, should take their problems.
The terror and violence came from elsewhere, and against international law: against the League of Nations Palestinian Mandate, and against the United Nations 1947 partition recommendation and 1948 admission of half of the place they partitioned into the United Nations as a country. All done peacefully.
As for the refugees and naqba, if it had not been for the pan-Arab and Palestinian multi-national and indigenous assault on the Jews in 1948-9, in violation of international law of the UN partition and with a declared aim of genocide, in even further violation of international law, there would not have been a single Palestinian refugee. And if the violence and civil war started before the partition date, it was mainly the Arabs against the Jews, and against international law (the League of Nations Mandate), and mainly taking the form of terrorism and massacre, such as in Hebron.
Any violent Jewish responses were sporadic and organizationally marginal, with only a couple of major episodes (Deir Yassin, King David Hotel), whereas the Jews were constantly threatened en masse and the constant victims of slaughter and terror and torture and massacre. This only accelerated the Jewish sense of the need for partition and statehood, again taken up through international law (the United Nations partition and admission to the UN of Israel). If international law had been followed, there would have been no Palestinian Arab refugees.
And if the Jews were threatened and constant victims of violence in Palestine, consider that 1/3 of them around the world, and three fourths in Europe were in the process of systematic slaughter, fueling their fears to an incomparable magnitude. Considering how violent their neighbors were, consider how extreme and panicky the Americans, or the Germans, or the British, or the Arabs would have been and behaved if one third or three fourths them had just been systematically slaughtered.
But even as if was, and nobody being perfect in an imperfect world, the Jews almost entirely acted with entire peaceableness– peaceful methods of purchases, no proactive aggression, and the mechanisms of international organizations and international law.
Even the 1967 war was preceded and conducted with a promise of genocide, this to a people who had only recently suffered a near-extermination (again, imagine how the Arabs would have felt if they had just suffered a near-extermination), so that the occupation, at first, was wholly understandable and defensive. And it was not an occupation of Palestinian land but, at the time, an occupation of captured Jordanian and Egyptian land, by two nations who had threatened genocide on Israel or attacked or both — and if they had won would have accomplished a genocide.
The only mistake I can see is the settlements. But even the settlements were largely done because of the experience of the 1948 war, when the (then) outlying kibbutzim and Jewish settlements helped thwart the Arab attacks and were decisive in winning the war — which simply meant staving off genocide. Whereas if the Arabs and Palestinians had obeyed internatinal law, not a single one would have ever left their home or farm anywhere in Israel.
So that the post 1967 settlements were considered, first, settling Jordanian and Egyptian land, not Palestinian land, and, even more, were (wrongly, as it turns out) were considered defensive bastions against further Jordanian and Egyptian prospective genocidal attacks, just as the 1948 outlying settlements had been, only 19 years before. And only 23 years after the Holocaust.
This is the Jewish case. And it is not racism but cold fear of genocide, by a people who would not have touched the hair on a single Arab head of any and all who had remained.
Even the settlements were only stupid, not aggressive– or displacing– or violent.
And not only would there have been not a single Palestinian Arab refugee without the constant violence and massacre and threat of violence and massacre, against the Jews, in violation of international human rights and done for political ends (against the League of Nations and the UN) in violation of international law, but afterward, without the further wars and threats, there would be today no occupation, no settlements, and, since the settlements happened, no by-pass roads, no checkpoints, no border or access impediments, no security barrier, no nothing.
And, to repeat endlessly, there would have been no Palestinian refugees in the first place. And anyone with a bone to pick, has to pick it with the international community who created the Mandate and the Partition, not with the Jews.
This is an outline of at least a good deal of what I have come to understand about the case for Israel– and that Israel does indeed have a solid case, one based not on myth and extravagant and exaggerated claims, but liberal, modern, solid, empirical, and verifiable sociopolitical facts of the modern world.
(Also on these matters see my “peace notes” blog http://middleeastpeacenotes.blogspot.com/ )
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Israel and the Indians
Posted by middleeast on 1st March 2007
from Harvard Square Commentary
February 5, 2007
James Adler
Over and over we hear it, either magisterially, or sarcastically, all over Israeli online newspapers and blogs and sites on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: Israel is not doing anything other than what the Europeans did to the Indians.
Bradley Burston, an admirable and respected columnist and editor at the Israeli daily Ha’aretz, whom a couple weeks ago we saw writing against any move of Israel’s capital from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, writes this week, in his magisterial vein, about Israel’s most severe critics, in his piece, “When Jihad says ‘Kiss, make up, and kill the Jews’” [http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/819042.html]:
“Let the comments fly in, from bottomlessly self-congratulatory supporters of Palestinian statehood in Australia, New Zealand, Berkeley, from all those places where white people like yourselves exterminated indigenous populations with impunity. And stole the land on which your condo was built.”
Whew !
Now let’s hear from some public “talkbackers” about Burston’s column, some of the public’s defender’s of Burston’s point and replies to an Australian talkbacker who is a critic of Israel (and a critic of Bradley’s accusation). But a warning–Caveat emptor! These are not for the thin-skinned; they are not, to say the least of it, polite.
“As to Australia – the model for apartheid – give it back and go home you Brit.”
And another: “In the 1870`s Jews began to move there in an attempt to build their own country. Like the west of the US, like Australia and like Europe for centuries different people ended up competing for the same land.”
And another: “What do you want 8th generation Australians to do about what our ancestors did over 220 years ago? To start, you can use genocidal history to temper your self righteousness. (Fat chance). Could you please tell me how many generations need to pass before genocide becomes acceptable? Sounds like Bradley touched a raw nerve.”
And another: “Rightee Hoooo, so what you are saying is that if Israel too can fight on for 220 years and hold on to the land then they too will be off the hook like you guys? You are the epitome of hypocrisy yourself!”
“Do you live on the property of the Massachuset or any of the Algonquian branch of the Algonquian-Wakashan tribe? I guess the wars and pestilence finished them off like all the other native peoples of North America by deliberate and premeditated terror tactics.” I suggest not to let that bother you. At least, you can always throw stones at someone else and feel good about yourself. Especially with a name like apartheid. Makes you feel high and mighty-No?”
Whew again!
Needless to say, there is a whole lot to say on this. And it seems to me to be a complicated issue. Here is only a little–more later.
I sent this pseudonymously to the same Ha’aretz page:
Many peoples have committed past crimes by modern human rights standards, and all they can do is redress them.
No one suggests European-Americans – or, for that matter, America’s kaleidoscopic variety of all the world’s peoples — including Jewish Americans – leave. Similarly no one suggests South African Afrikaners or Israeli Jews leave- or give up their homes or communities.
No one suggests that anyone give up anything.
But notably all Western Hemisphere countries — some of which are as much as 90% mixed heritage Euro-Indians, and thus through many of them much intermarriage –, South Africa, Australia, etc., have redressed their past crimes and abandoned, in both their legislation and in their social psyches, their demographic obsessions. They maintain no barrier or restriction in movement anywhere in their lands or societies, and maintain no legal inequality in status or rights between aboriginals and anyone else in any way.
Native Americans, as individuals, families, or larger groupings are within the law in moving and living anywhere in America from San Francisco to Long Island. The only exception, among claimants to Western and Democratic rank, is Israel. Among countries that claim democratic western rank, only Israel refuses to redress its past offenses, in either in its formal legislation or in its social psyche to abandon both its demographic laws and obsessions.
Among countries that claim democratic western ranking, by the 1960s those who had not abandoned these had dwindled to only the southern states of the United States, South Africa, and Israel. Then it was only South Africa and Israel. Now it is only Israel.
It is the only nation left doing this which claims democratic western rank. This is why it holds the western world’s attention – as South Africa and the U.S. South also held its attention before they abandoned those demographic fixations.
However, all these considerations do imply that there is truth in the Indian analogy. Israel was envisioned in the same 1490s-1940s period that the Americas (north and south) and Australia and New Zealand and South Africa immigration came about. It has had more trouble because it came at the tail-end of the period. If most Zionist immigration had taken place soon after 1700 or 1800 rather than soon after 1900, it probably would have gone much more easily. The moral sensibilities of human societies do change. And so although Israel began within the 1490s-1940s period of worldwide settler immigration, it did so by such a close shave – got in so closely “under the wire” — that it has had many more problems.
Of course, that the migration took place, from the perspective of the European and Eurocentric historical time-line, late in the game, should not and need not be a concern of, and certainly is not the fault of, the Palestinians.
In any event it does seem to sensible to suggest that Palestinian and Arab violence have, from the beginning, had a major role in the Yishuv’s and Israel’s responses. Without such repeated onsets of violence and terror against innocents from the beginning, there would arguably today be no security fence, no checkpoints, no by-pass roads, no border or access impediments, and — mainly — there would not even have been any displaced Palestinian refugees in the first place in 1948-49.
And Israel hasn’t had a moment’s respite, a moment’s peace, to try to live out a demographics free life– in short, to try to abandon its demographic obsessions. I realize that the constant neighboring threats and violence constantly throws demographics back into their lives. That’s what makes it such a complicated conflict, and now mainly an ethnic conflict. In sum, Israel also has a case.
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Dr. King’s Birthday and the Jewish View of the Middle Eastern Conflict
Posted by middleeast on 1st March 2007
from Harvard Square Commentary, www.harvardsquarecommentary.org
February 26, 2007
This past week’s birthday celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King may be as good a time as any to make some surmises on what may be a close connection between King’s message of nonviolence and the probable view of an important Israeli and Diaspora Jewish view of the Middle Eastern conflict.
King’s view was that the end does not justify the means. That we try to love those whom we seek to change. And that deliberate violence against innocent people is as hurtful and awful as any perceived injustices it may seek to ameliorate. And so that means and ends are not necessarily even that different from one another.
In King’s own era, most liberals understood this.
But today some of us seem to think that certain things — “social conditions” — are more real and important than whatever may be used to try to change them. But I believe for most Jews that this is not true. Violence is as real and important as anything else. It is itself an actual and immoral “social condition.” Jews, above most people, after millennia of pogroms and mob attacks and at last the Holocaust, are especially sensitive to being targeted by this–equally–real and important social condition.
In fact, most of the past century of this conflict could even be seen as the history of the Jews’ response to violence. It seems to me that the left needs to understand this.
For most Israeli Jews, I would think, violence isn’t a “symptom” of some “deeper social reality.” Instead that there is itself no deeper and immoral and more real a social reality than violence.
And this may even be where the left most acutely misunderstands the conflict– and least from the viewpoint of most Jews. For Jews, at or near the core of the conflict is the violence itself.
After all, from this point of view, there would, today, exist practically nothing for liberals like as ourselves (or even Palestinians or other Arabs) to criticize — no security fence, checkpoints, by-pass roads, border or access impediments, or — mainly — even any displaced Palestinian refugees in the first place — if it were not for the repeated pattern of the onset of threats of violence and actual violence against the innocents.
For some people and in some circumstances this may be considered an affectation. But for the Jews, and after the millennia of pogroms and mob violence and at last the Shoah against them — it should by no means be considered an affectation.
This may get at the heart of the psychology of the conflict from the vantage of many of us on the Israeli “side” of it. It may be why this view, and the view of us who have other ways of looking at it, including many of onlookers on the left, go past each other without any encounter or communication, like the proverbial pair of ships passing each other in the night.
And it is this matter of nonviolence that is at the core of King’s legacy– the idea that a pattern of violence which targets innocents is itself as profound an injustice, as much an actual and evil social condition as that of any other injustice.
It is not to say Israel and its progenitors haven’t made grave and unethical errors — as they have — to say, nevertheless, that this Jewish perspective ought to give to those people who only criticize Israel, but never the other side, something lengthy and important and serious to contemplate.
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
“Whose Problem is Iran?”
Posted by middleeast on 1st March 2007
www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ArticleNews.jhtml?itemNo=830320&contrassID=13&subContrassID=1&sbSubContrassID=0
|
|||||||||
|
|||||||||
|
|||||||||
|
|
||
|
|
||
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »