I am constantly struggling with the history of Israel, and trying to reconcile my love for Israel and the Jewish people, with various contrasting views of the history of the period. In various writings and printed letters to editors and online messages I have been inconsistent about it, reflecting my internal struggle. Here is the best I can do– a passionate and unimpeded and anti-antisemitic case for Israel.
Every educated and enlightened Westerner in a position of political power from 1900 to 1945 thought migration into Third World lands (that phrase didn’t even exist), which were largely colonial lands, was all right, and they approved thepetitions of the Jewish Westerners who sought it — in the League of Nations British Mandate Balfour clause and in UN partition.
The Western overseers did not have to approve it, and they did.
The Western overseers who approved it were largely themselves anti-Semitic and sat at the top of the heap of 2,000 years of Western persecution of the Jews whose petitions they approved. Like it or not, that’s what happened.
Western overseers wouldn’t approve such a petition today, and would have no colonial power to do so, but they did back then, and thought it was morally all right back then, and the Jews were suffering under the heel of both Western governments and anti-Semitic pogrom-animated mobs. Then the biggest European anti-Semitic pogrom of all occurred in the last 12 years of the period 1900-1945, 1933-1945, when 3/4 of European Jews (1/3 of the Jews in the world) were wiped out.
The European and UN masters of the world, including of the British Mandate, then approved partition. And by that time, due to the prior 50 years, Palestine did have a huge Jewish population. Like it or not, it did, and the Western powers approved it, and they didn’t have to, but they did.
And unlike the Jewish petitioners, the Western powers did either for reasons of anti-Semitism or patronizing sympathy, and combined with the colonial mentality of might makes right and they could do whatever they wanted. At least the Jewish petitioners did it only to escape 2,000 years of European persecution by the European overseer class of peers of these same overseers, persecution they had tolerated for 2,000 years and which had worsened in Russia and Eastern Europe in the late 1800’s and would soon culminate in the Holocaust. And the petitioners work saved thousands of Jews from the Holocaust.
To blame the Jewish petitioners and not the European overseers who gave the authorization is a gross double-standard, especially since the powerless Jews just wanted out of a European hell-hole, and the European overseers had all the power, did all the persecuting of the Jews, and were the ones who approved it in their capacity as the colonial masters of the world.
So, again, the Western world colonialized the outer world as well as persecuted its Jewish inner world, and approved the Jewish plea for an escape. And it’s the Jews who get blamed.
Swell. How convenient, that after 400 years of European colonialism since Columbus, and 2000 years farther back if one includes Europe from the Roman Empire to the Crusades and only then on forward to Columbus, it is the Jews who are now put in the position by the world as sticking out like a sore thumb as the one, the one and only people, accused of colonialism.
How convenient. How traditional and habitual.
It is the Western overlords with their colonial philosophy and their colonial power to implement that philosophy, who approved and provided for this escape hatch from their own persecutions that were about to turn into their own outright ovens. And now does the Arab world blame Europe?
No. Does Europe blame Europe? Either for the persecutions or for their colonial philosophy and overlordship of the world that approved of and created all the conditions for this plan? Oh, no. Everyone blames the Jews, only the Jews.
In this “mother of double-standards,” the blame doesn’t go to Europe for the persecutions that gave rise to the plan of mere escape, the colonial philosophy that permitted approval of the plan as moral and feasible, and the colonial raw power that forcibly executed the plan: no, the blame goes to the Jews being persecuted for buying into the pervasive and inescapable colonial philosophy of their own colonial overlords and world masters. The Jews get blamed for accepting the philosophy spoon-fed them and everyone else in Europe by Europeans at least since the time of Columbus, and for using the same philosophy everyone else accepted, except in their case not to conquer per se, but merely to escape persecution, and who still required the stamp of approval and the raw colonial overlordship of the European world masters to happen; Europe doesn’t get blamed for the philosophy, the world overlordship, the persecution forcing the Jews to use the European Overlord’s Philosophy that they accepted in the same way everyone else in Europe did and still used only as a desperate escape-hatch (the even further proof of the desperation for escape arising in the Holocaust); no, the Jews get blamed for Europe’s philosophy, the Jews get blamed for accepting Europe’s philosophy, the Jews get blamed for Europe making them desperate to ask if they could use Europe’s philosophy for the purpose of an escape-hatch from Europe just before their actual near-obliteration by Europe.
The Arabs blame them, they are little and more vulnerable than Europe. Europe blames them. Western anti-Colonialists blame them. Blamers, blame yourselves, not the Jews; blame your society and history and power, not the petitions and weakness and desperations and impending Europe-caused implosions of the European Jews.
And since Jews since the Prophets have been among the most morally self-critical and self-examining of peoples, a large portion of them blame themselves, blame Israel, and also re-enact a classic situation of victims blaming themselves; this case where victims blame themselves, combined with the exceptional moral scruples defining Jewish culture for millennia, have produced the situation where so many Jews are concerned about what has happened, so many Jews are critical and self-critical. They are NOT self-hating Jews. They are Jews being their BEST selves, but mistakenly misattributing the blame to themselves when the blame goes to Europe and the West.
The Jews caught in the vortex of the philosophy and reality of European internal persecution of them and equally of external overlordship of the world, were pawns in this vortex; chronology shows them superficially as “actors”, when they were pawns, pawns powerless and petitioning seeking an escape-hatch based on the European overlordship philosophy immersing them even as persecuted victims and pawns and seeking not to overrule but just to escape (Jewish scruples at work), whereas the infrastructure was European colonial philosophy and power, European approval of their subject Jews’ petition and execution of that power to get rid of them and consistent with how Europe executed that power for Europe’s own colonial greed and colonial entitlement to colonial domination — rather than to escape persecution –for their own naked raw lustful domineering (rather than the Jewish weak and escapist) interests all over the world.
The Jewish Zionist actors were just the “superstructure” and passive, powerless, petitionary pawns; the vortex and ideology of European universal outward domination and inner persecution of its Jews was the infrastructure, substructure, and at the heart of its morally wrong colonialism everywhere, including the morally wrong but uniquely exculpatory Jewish effort to make use of it to escape, and even then the European same old nakedly dominational philosophy and power of approval and enforcement of the Jews’ weak and desperate petitions in the face of the same European criminality both as directed inward to Jews and outward to the rest of the world. And the Jews get blamed.
How convenient. How nice. How millennially entrenched.
Zionism was in many ways wrong, at least by today’s standards, though not by those of that time. It was Europe that was both actively persecutory of its Jews and actively colonialist to everyone and everywhere, including in Europe’s own Zionism. And so it is Europe that bears the responsibility, including the responsibility for the security and defense of Israel whose Jews they had both killed and run out; the Jews’ plight is, as it were, the bed Europe laid for them.
It is Europe that must face and come to terms and accounts with the Palestinian Arabs and Arab world on this; it is Europe that must compensate and clear the moral and political and financial decks with the Palestinian Arabs and Arab world on this. The last things it may do is be indifferent, and, even worse, co-blame along with the Palestinians’ and Arabs’ blaming, the Jews.
It was Europe that was both actively persecutory of its Jews and actively colonialist to everyone and everywhere including in its Zionism; and so it is Europe that bears the responsibility, including the responsibility for the security and defense of Israel whose Jews they had both killed and run out, and whose bed it is Europe that had made for them. It is Europe that must face and come to terms and accounts with the Palestinian Arabs and Arab world on this; it is Europe that must compensate and clear the moral and political and financial decks with the Palestinian Arabs and Arab world on this. The last things it may do is be indifferent, and, even worse, to blame, along with the Palestinian and Arab blame of, the Jews.
The Palestinians and other Arabs have some excuse.
It is Europe that has no excuse and should be in abject shame, first, for standing aside, and second and far worse, for casting its stones as well at its own vomited-out Jews.
Now let us be more specific and explicit about some things. In the years 1492-1949 (1949, by which time Europe had killed 3/4 of its Jews who had stayed there, and had left Palestine and India, and around the time the British Commonwealth of Nations was replacing the Empire) but when Europe still assumed and maintained its ideological and real overlordship of the world, some of the Jews who had escaped with their lives, mainly from the 1888s to 1948-9, had been approved to escape with their lives beneath Europe’s authorizing ideological and colonial overlording auspices to Palestine.
First.
Therefore this migration was like every other migration and as legitimate as every other migration made during those years– to North and South America, to India, and everywhere else. (The only difference being that the Jewish was one of the only ones made not for personal economic reasons or economic aggrandizement on behalf of Europe, but for political escape, of which the stakes were nearly and soon to become life-or-death in Europe’s clutches.
Second.
By the end of these 450 years, and specifically the last 75 when the Jewish escape under Europe’s thumb took place (under Europe’s thumb in both senses of under its ideological and colonial authorization like all other European peoples’ 450 years of migrations, and under its thumb about to crush them like a bug), the migration (like all the migrations, while this one was, as well, a migratory escape), the Palestinian population was incontestably 45% Jewish and 55% Arab, unless the Jews are to be singled out for blame among all European peoples for that period of 450 years under the most egregious of conceivable double standards).
Third.
For those 450 years, and actually on to around 1962 when almost the last African colonial enclaves had received their independence, or for about exactly 500 years, Europe had carved up, frequently into arbitrary and artificial constructs, most of the nations of the world under its 500 years of colonial dominion, these carvings and artificial constructs were often made with little or no regard to the peoples living within and overlapping them, including most of the artificial constructs that became the independent nations and UN members of Africa. No one questions the legitimacy or boundaries or territorial integrity of these nations today.
Fourth.
Some of these European constructs took the form they did with some actual ethnic and religious logic behind them, rather than the more frequent European disregard and heedlessness of them, including European partitions of peoples who seemed not to be able to get along, including between India and Pakistan. No one questions Europe’s partition of India and Pakistan, and no one questions it even though Europe gave it to the Pakistanis who wanted it and not the Indians, because the Pakistanis did not want to be a permanent minority under permanent Indian hegemony and rule. No one questions this European partition or the Pakistani reasons for wanting it– at most, perhaps, the specifics of its boundaries in Kashmir.
Fifth.
Only when Europe gave it to the Jews of Palestine who wanted it do people object throw stones at the Jews. And no one throws stones at the World Overlords of Europe for doing it, and the World Overlords of Europe join it at throwing stones at the Jews. No stones at the artificially constructed countries and peoples of Africa, and not the Hindu and Muslim peoples of India and Pakistan, but stones hurled only at the Jews. And only after Europe had exterminated three quarters of those of its own Jews who had stayed.
Sixth.
And again the World Overlords of Europe didn’t have to give it to the Jewish population of Palestine, didn’t have to do it, but they did do it. And again, still, everyone, including Europe itself, after having done it, doesn’t throw stones at anybody else, including its own other peoples living all over the world, but throws stones at the Jews, and only at the Jews. The one migratory people who out-migrated during Europe’s 500 years of world overlordship, to avoid persecution and ultimately extermination by Europe itself. But it is only the Jews who, struggling after near-total extermination and then struggling again without a moment’s breather or pause or rest to survive the hostility in the partition that Europe gave, and even though the whole European Overlorded World was transformed into nation-state outcomes based on much more artificial constructs and partitions than in Palestine, it is only the Jews who receive — and continue to — the pummelings of stones from their former European Overlordship Masters and Mass Murderers. Nothing is more disgraceful. If war is the continuation of politics by other means, one wonders how much of an exaggeration it can be (some, to be sure, but how much?) to call Europe’s perpetual hail-storm of stones against the Jews its continuation of its own holocaust against the Jews by other means.
Seventh.
The European -overlorded and -ruled Jewish migratory population of Palestine became partitioned from the Palestinian population of Palestine not even by the European Overlords but by the new and post-overlord United Nations. It is the United Nations, concerning whose power and authority the Arab states were members and signatories, not to mention Europe’s that as an international institution voted to make this particular partition. In a world filled with manifestly less democratically done, and manifestly more heedless, arbitrarily colonially drawn and European-made new national constructions and partitions. But only the Jews get pummeled with the stones thrown at them, with Europe standing near the head of the line of the stone throwers.
Eighth.
It is claimed there was arm-twisting to obtain the UN vote for partition.
In the first place this only shows that it was done by inevitably imperfect democracy, rather than by completely authoritarian arbitrary fiat as was the case over most of the rest of the world’s peoples including European peoples
that have some been exempted from these stonings. Just the escaped survived Jews.
In the second place, just because the U.S. may have bent countries into the UN vote doesn’t delegitimize it, since how many laws in democratic countries like the US or Britain or Israel itself would have to be delegitimized and taken off the books just because it were shown that wheeling and dealing and “politics” and pressures were involved–80% of the standing laws ? No one can arbitrarily delegitimize legislation this way, or decide what laws are valid or invalid this way, or life in the democratic world would be a madhouse.
And again and in sum on this, how many states began and gained their populations and boundaries in pre-Constitutional and European Colonial Overlordship situations, much more arbitrarily than the UN General Assembly vote? One can’t just pick on and single out Israel this way, into which more of the world’s democratic enlightened planning and self-conscious sense of fairness went than in the formation of most states of the world.
And it isn’t Israel’s fault that the Arabs and Arab Palestinians rejected the self-conscious democratically voted-on decision for formation and legitimization by the world community as represented in the world’s universally internationally recognized international legislative body.
Ninth.
The Jews are a legitimate migrant population in Palestine, made during the almost Half-Millennium of European World Hegemony, the approximately 470 years, 1492-1962. Or are the Jews alone and by themselves going to be singled out for delegitimization? More than in most cases of the Colonial and Post-Colonial carving up and constructing and partitioning of the world into nations, artificial constructs never questioned by anybody, this one, again, was done by the UN, to which, again, the Arab countries were sworn and solemn signatories.
But the Arab countries mocked the UN and attacked the UN partition and state of Israel, Israel created in a way manifestly less contrived and often absurd than a host of new nation-states on the earth– attacked the UN decision they were sworn to uphold, and attacked the UN member, a UN member which, like all, the UN was sworn to defend against attack. And more than ever since the UN itself had created that member.
The UN intervened to defend partitioned Korea when the North attacked the South. Did the UN intervene to defend Israel, which it had itself created, and whose decision for creation its Arab members were deliberately flouting, and to the extent of waging war? Of course not.
Such defense of members from attack was the main raison d’etre for the UN’s existence, and it even created Israel itself, and both the United States and the Soviet Union helped vote it in, but the UN did nothing. Europe authorized this among the multitudinous migrations of its peoples over the face of the earth for half a Millennium, but it did not defend this population that the UN had afterward partitioned and from which it had developed a state in this time which was more than ever before or since one of worldwide nation-state building, and so the new Israelis had to do it themselves, and against a people hundreds of times more numerous than themselves on land hundreds of times vaster then theirs.
Tenth.
About the refugees. Another basic fact. Did the Arab nations attack to restore the refugees? No. There were no refugees. The Palestinian Arabs lived where they had been living until then. It was the attack on Israel by 17 nations and an army dozens of times larger and with a potential to become thousands of times larger, that created the refugees, and whether they fled on Arab orders carrying nothing with them because with the expectation that in a few days they would return, or because they left because the population of Palestinian Jews, forming the new UN created state of Israel, felt, after decades of hostility from them and with their kinship to the 17 Arab nations hundreds of times larger in population and land mass attacking them from all sides in violation of UN law and the UN’s reason for being, and on their own with no defense from the UN, this traumatized and panicked people induced or outright hurried them out as a potential and literal fifth attacking army column in their very midst, a traumatized and panicked people felt a potential knife right in its heart and microscopic-sized heartland, so, in the fog of conflict and genocidal attacks, they were moved — a few miles – and no more than a few miles — out.
This would ordinarily be little or no cause for concern, or even occasion a ripple of notice, in a world upheaved by turmoil and convulsion on a scale many times vaster all over the world, from those occasioned by World War II, to the construction and reconstruction and deconstruction and partition of new nation-states all over the earth at that time, such as Pakistan and India.
Israel attacked on all sides by potential forces thousands of times larger, and the UN that had made its population into a state doing nothing in its defense, and in the panic also of 3/4 of its European people and 1/3 of its people worldwide having just been exterminated, in this trauma and panic and facing another catastrophe and facing it alone, it removed the overtly hostile same people as were its attackers just a few miles away from where they were.
And the world, and UN that created Israel, that did nothing to defend it against the all-out and all-sides and massively larger than it attack on it, now decides to go haywire about the removal of people a few miles away. Never mind recent and continuing convulsions all over the world.
This time it was the Jews, albeit it they were the ones whose very national existence had been attacked, were the ones who did it. This time the Jews did it. What’s new? Europe, Overlord of the World for 500 years and recent exterminator of 3/4 of its Jews, and the world as a whole, goes into a fury.
You see, the Jews did it. The Jews did it. This time it was the Jews who did it.
Who of all peoples had never hurt a fly for at least 2000 years, and had been persecuted for 2000 years and even hounded out of Europe in migration by the European World Overlords just before and during which time they had been almost exterminated there in the millions.
This most harmless of peoples on the face of the earth, a population living there, hurting no one, incurring decades of hostility, the UN making a logical ethnic partition during the post-Colonial age of nation-construction, then not defending it from a national existential catastrophe — it would be like not the defeat of France, but the delegitimatization, de-countrification of France, and possibly, to these traumatized people and perhaps in reality, a physical existential catastrophe by a people thousands of times larger, in other words a possible continuation of their physical extermination even if not “only” their political de-legitimization (again, imagine if France or Britain in defeat were threatened with de-legitimization as a actual country), and so they moved a few people a few miles.
After France and England and Russia were threatened with defeat –but neither national nor physical existential defeat — by Nazi Germany, they moved millions of Germans hundreds of miles. But they’re the Overlords. They are numerous, powerful, and can do what they want.
But these were the few and weak and almost-obliterated Jews.
The UN creates them, does not defend them from all-out onslaught, the Jews remove the people belong to those of the onslaught out of harm’s way — the Jews’ and their own harm’s way, just a very few miles, and the French and
British and Russian overlords and UN and rest of the world absolutely “go ballistic.”
Who are these Jews? After all, this time it was the small and weak and habitually persecuted Jews who were the ones who did it. Europe says: outrageous of those uppity and upstart Jews.
Eleventh.
As for the letter of the law, the Jews were even within the letter of the law in removing people from battle conditions. They were also within the letter of the law in letting them come back in only when they are prepared to live in peace and amity and respect with the country the UN created and to which they would return. Israel was even within the law on both counts. Not that the Europeans were in forcibly displacing Germans and forcibly rearranging populations all over Europe after World War II to protect themselves, with no right of return, no international laws observed or even pretended to be observed.
But these were the weak and powerless and hated and almost-exterminated Jews.
So Europe says: They should be forced to observe the absolute letter of international law to the most infinitesimal degree, even though their political existence was at stake and even possibly and so soon after Europe had murdered millions of them, their physical existence possibly again at stake, and even though they had faced all-out attack by UN members hundreds of times larger in defiance of the UN that itself created them and who were sworn to their defense but did not come, just as the Arabs had been sworn as UN signatories not to attack.
These actual foundations of the law and foundations of ethics and decency, threatening a population’s political and possibly (and so soon again) physical survival were being savaged by both the indifferent UN and the all-out attacking Arab UN members on all sides. Never mind that the Jews could face destruction again. At least political–as well as the UN’s partition’s destruction– and probably physical. But the panicked Jews moved people a few miles away.
Europe says: An outrage; they must observe the absolute and literal and technical letter of the law. (Which they very well may even have.) And the UN allows and Arabs attack the very foundations of decency as well as of the law, and as the European Overlords rearrange at their will the populations of Europe, with millions dying in the process.
But the Overlords are not Jews. The Jews must be watched, and they must obey scrupulously. And even then the Jews did obey international humanitarian law, even when they were at risk of their lives, to its very letter.
It shouldn’t even matter, this traumatized people facing life or death again, removing some people a few miles, after all the other European and world’s continuing convulsions and displacements and disruptions. But they did obey the law. They had a “legal” right to remove the people who were the
same people as the attackers on all sides a few miles out of battle lines.
And that’s even assuming the people didn’t leave on purpose on Arab orders and plan to come straight back behind victorious Arab armies. And if they fled or were removed, they had a right to come back, even though the Germans don’t have the right to go back to the Czech Republic or Poland or Hungary, if only they will respect the new state that the UN created.
The Jews were all-out attacked by the Arabs from all sides, and this people vowed continued and perpetual war against the population of Jews because of the state which the UN created. All-out against the partition and the Jews, which the UN had given — and which it didn’t have to, but did –, just as Muslim Pakistan received partition from Hindu India. So there was never a chance they would acknowledge and respect and be reliably loyal to the new state, though, also in accordance with the letter of international law, they could not return until they did.
And recall on top of this that the all-out attack on all sides against the UN decision to partition into two states two conflictual ethnic groups, but without displacing anyone, notwithstanding all small (and large) displacements that were taking place in Europe and the world without an outcry from anyone, this all-out attack was not to restore the displaced refugees, this all-out and illegal attack against the UN decision for partition is what created the refugees being removed just a few miles in the first place.
And who mainly and above all– could just as well have stayed where they were and not moved an inch, stayed in the new state; and as some did; this was the substance of the two UN decisions, but both were rejected, and all-out war against Israel (and against the UN, which pretended not to notice either the rejection of the UN or all-out war against both a UN-created state and its actual civilian population) was preferred and undertaken, and which is what created the refugees, that is, people who moved — or were removed — a few miles.
And who couldn’t go back because of the Pan Arab world’s, of which they were a part, vow to destroy the new state– and its people, again its civilian population. So the frightened, bullied, threatened, just almost-obliterated and Jews had every reason.
And in the time of displacements and convulsions and of the worldwide plethora of artificial constructs involved in nation-building across the newly post-Colonial world.
Except the Jews needed to be examined with a microscope to monitor whether they were violating microscopic legal technicalities– whether they were or not, and perhaps they were, and perhaps they weren’t – but just in case.
While the Arabs ripped up the UN decision on partition and the UN charter on non-attacking, mortally endangering the fledgling state as well as its population, creating a displacement of Arabs where there had been none and
never would have been and not a single Arab would have ever had to move an inch, an Arab Nation that continued to attack Israel both with terrorism and armies again and again, and in 1967 explicitly threatening a Mongol-invasion-type second extermination, a second Shoah.
These basic transgressions against the foundations of UN law and basic fiber of decency and morality are ignored by Europe and the world. Whether Israel adheres to microscopic nuances is strenuously monitored and Israel weathers furious criticism from Europe. And the demagogic dictatorships of the Arab world against the UN-created only democracy in the Middle East.
These are the migrant Jews escaped from the ovens either by several decades or for just few minutes.
Europe says: Continue to watch them closely. They’ve never harmed a fly in 2,000 years. They’ve sometimes overreacted in 60 years of unceasing and illegal brutal terrorist and regular army attack, affronts against the most basic standards of international law and central human morality, from without and within. They are the escaped harmless weak persecuted almost-exterminated Jews.
Europe says: They are the ones to be watched closely. Watch them with care, and criticize them with fury, and especially let us in Europe do it, we in Europe who persecuted them for centuries, almost killed them all, and let a few escape as we overlorded the world. Watch them with a microscope. Watch with indifference or amusement or solidarity those who tear off limbs and mangle to pieces their women and children on their buses and in their cafes and playgrounds.
My (similar) Middle East blogs are at:
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/middleeast/ and
http://middleeastpeacenotes.blogspot.com/
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