#Baram replies to al-Misry

 

IMO opinion, Dr. Amatzia Baram is an Israeli who is more willing than anyone I know to see a just solution for the Palestinian people.  I am proud to have him for a friend.  pl

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"Mr. al-Masri,

So we are back to history. Indeed history is a teacher, albeit only to an extent, and only if you do not distort it.

You accuse me: “you omitted completely the context of the scattered and handpicked events you mentioned”. Well, what you did was precisely that and worse. I do not challenge your view that Egyptians saw Israel as a threat because of 1956. But you distort history by ignoring for the third time in our brief correspondence the fact that you attacked Israel on May 15, 1948. Yes, I know, you considered the Partition to be unjust. This is your narrative. So: if you believe that injustice to Arabs is being done you attack, yes? And you attack with the intention to exterminate every living Jewish soul, yes? Or maybe just to toss us all into the Mediterranean, so if we can swim-we shall be OK, Yes? What was this? Zionist propaganda?  Maybe the Mossad broadcasted it in 1948 from Cairo, as it dropped the poison gas bombs on the Yemenite pro-Imam tribes? Those conniving Jews, you know, are capable of anything, right? You do not try to negotiate, to accept a compromise, you attack and promise total annihilation.  I understand. But when it proves to be a sword that cuts both ways you are cutting it out of your “Narrative”: it is becoming too embarrassing. This is what you did.

Our narrative is that the Partition was a compromise adopted by the UN General Assembly, the second one since 1937, which the Arabs rejected completely. Our narrative is that your invasion scared us to death because you attacked and made scary promises. Paranoia? Maybe, but ignoring the impact of such a birthday for the State of Israel is a distortion of history. So please, don’t lecture me on historical contexts. You are so sensitive to Egyptian concerns over 1956, which I fully recognized, but totally blind to Israeli concerns resulting from the Egyptian aggression only 8 years earlier and continued murder of civilians and threats. But wait: it is possible that your narrative is that in 1948 you sent an army division to Tel Aviv just to go to the beach and taste Israeli ice-cream? Just tell me that this was so, and I shall see the context in new eyes.

All we wanted after that 1948 war was to be left alone. This was Israel before 1967, no W. Bank, no Gaza. But your man did not leave us alone. Do you remember that he was a major, besieged in the Fallujah Pocket not far from my kibbutz, and we allowed him and his soldiers to return to Egypt unharmed? Our army could have finished him off, time and advantage were on our side, but the idea was to avoid further fighting, to keep his pride intact, to pave the way to peace. He didn’t even need to surrender: it was agreed that he withdraws with his weapons. Does it remind you of Kissinger and the 3^rd Army in 1973? Do you make historical connections sometimes?  After he became head of state his Sawt al-‘Arab threatened to destroy us. 1948 led us to believe him. Israel never threatened Egypt with anything. Moshe Sharett made every effort to reach a peace agreement or at least an end to Cairo hate and threats campaign, but of no avail (see the PBS-BBC “The 50 Years War”, Egyptian Nasserist diplomats admitting it). Whether or not Ben Gurion over-reacted when he “jumped the gun” in 1956 is arguable, but have no doubt: 1956 was the result of the 1948 and the 1954-56 aggressions.

You quote Ben Gurion to wit: “Ben-Gurion once said it is normal that Palestinians hate the Israelis, and then (BG) added: We came from far away, kicked them out of their homes and took their land. They do not understand why we did that”. This was not Ben Gurion who said it, and neither was it said in the 1920s, or 1930s or 1940s. This was said by Chief of Staff LTGN. Moshe Dayan, and he said it on the grave of Ro’i Rotenberg, a 24-years old member of a kibbutz inside Israel near the border with Gaza. Ro’i died at the hands of a Palestinian Arab terrorist (called by you Fida’i), paid and sent by Nasser’s intelligence officer in Gaza, Captain Mustafa, across the border in 1955 to kill Jews. Dayan’s speech, while containing one fundamental mistake, was received in Israel with great respect, as it was candid. Dayan’s mistake was that most Palestinian Arabs did understand why the Jews came from a “distant land”, and see below some evidence. Still, there is no doubt that by 1947 they were indeed strongly against it.  But the whole speech referred to the post-1948 era: context, remember? Before 1948 no one “took their land”, and Dayan did not even hint at such a possibility. In December 1947, following the UN Partition Plan, the Arabs attacked the Jews, as they did in August 1937 after the Peel Commission’s Partition suggestion. Indeed, they considered the Partition to be a gross injustice.  In 1947 this triggered a cruel civil war. Until then not one square inch of Arab land was “taken”. Until then land was bought by the JNF under British and League of Nations supervision. Property rights followed the Turkish Ottoman Tabu Deeds system. The British Mandate “stepped into the shoes” of the Ottomans in Palestine, Trans Jordan and Iraq and retained all property rules. The JNF bought land from those who had the title to it since the Ottoman era. Land owners could not be forced to sell. However, due to Zionist land purchases land prices went up 30 fold between the end of the 19^th century and the late 1920s, a unique phenomenon in the Middle East. The temptation to sell lower-quality lands was tremendous and many land owners did. I know it also from first-hand experience. Near my kibbutz there was an Arab village, Idnibbeh, much of which land belonged to the Grand Mufti’s Husseini family. They didn’t have a sufficient number of peasant families to work it all so, despite the Grand Mufti’s threats against anyone who would sell they sold the less fertile-but still cultivable-lands to the JNF. Some of it was allocated to my kibbutz. Individual peasants, too, who owned their land, sold. The main reason: they had land, but it was not sufficient for providing for their families: one needed in most parts of Palestine around 80 dunams but many had only half that. This was because much land belonged to great land owners as a result of Ottoman Tanzimat land laws from the mid-19^th century. One of the League of Nations demands was not to touch ownerships. Due to the very high land prices the result of Zionist purchases, for many peasants who did not have enough land selling what they had  and moving to town, where there was high demand for workers, was an attractive option. If you doubt this information please, see the strongly anti-Zionist historian Charles D. Smith, Palestine and the Arab-Israeli Conflict (NY, St. Martin’s Press), pp. 68-111, especially 83-86.

There were also evictions of tenants. According to Turkish law no compensations were to be paid to tenants. The only change the British introduced was that compensations were enforced in each case of eviction. And yet, there were political tensions involved. This happened, for example, in the valley of Jezrael. The same also happened in Wadi Hawareth, mostly a swamp land that served as a grazing ground for herds. Today one and a half million people are living there. These evictions of tenants caused serious political tensions, and understandably so. When a Muslim evicted a Muslim, this was normal. When a Jew evicted a Muslim, this was a source of inter-community trouble and the compensation made no great difference. This was why the JNF always looked for uncultivated or very sparsely-cultivated lands, which meant lower-quality lands. As a result, only 11% of its budget went to new purchases, the rest going to land reclamation. But no lands were “taken” as had been the case in New Zealand, the Americas or Africa. By far the best study of the land issue in Mandatory Palestine is Kenneth Stein’s The Land Question in Palestine 1917-1939 (University of North Carolina Press, 1984). In and after the 1947/48 war yes, the Palestinian Arab refugees lost their lands to the Israeli state. This is what Moshe Dayan spoke about, and he did not try to hide it, but the context is crucial. Their tragedy and anger are undeniable, but they went to war against us. Still, I believe that they should be compensated for it, as the Jews of Iraq, Syria and yes, Egypt, should be compensated for their large confiscated property.

I believe you that your fear of us was born 1956. Your hate for us, however, was born in 1930. It was the successful doing of al-Hajj Amin al-Husseini in cooperation with the MB. The 1930 Islamic Conference in Jerusalem was when he managed to persuade the MB to support him: not the Arab Palestinian cause, but him and his extremist policies. He had competition from Arab Pal. Moderates, see below, and the support of the MB was very important for him in his quest for personal power and glory. He was a persuasive man. Did you know that beforehand, when the Zionist Hebrew University of Jerusalem was established in 1925, Cairo University’s Ahmad Lutfi al-Sayyid came to Jerusalem to celebrate? Are you aware of what he said there?  He actually supported the 1917 Balfour Declaration-and he was definitely not a lackey of the British. Lutfi al-Sayyis was among the high-profile guests like Lord Balfour and Albert Einstein. But that was before 1930.

You write: “It is simply an attempt to understand why al-Husseini walked towards an alien ideology far away from where he lived. This is also valid in an attempt to understand why some in the Arab world sympathized with Nazi Germany”. This is a big mistake. Sadat, Aziz al-Masri and Abd al-Nasser supported the Nazis to rid Egypt of British rule. They were gullibly thinking that Hitler will give them full independence. Though Sadat could read German, they simply did not read Mein Kampf in the German original: Hitler’s view of the Arabs was almost as dismal as of the Jews, but the Arabic language translations omitted this part. Last time when I bought such a copy in Cairo it was still an “abridged and improved” version along these lines. However, they never spoke to Hitler about slaughtering all the Jews of Palestine. Al-Hajj Amin al-Husseini did. The German documents are available. Please Google “Hajj Amin al-Husseini and Hitler” in Utube and see. I can provide you with the full German document. Your attempt to “understand” such a vile man and his supporters because of the “context” is saddening me.

You write: “Do you want to tell us that the Palestinian resistance to the theft of their land and the loss of their homes and villages is inspired by Nazism? I will not even honor such an assertion with a response”. Well, I shall honor you with a response to this amazing assertion. What you say may be interpreted as legitimizing a call for genocide. Be careful whom you support and how you support them.  Please be patient and read carefully my account of what actually happened and why what you wrote here is in my view totally unacceptable to any civilized person.

In the first place, Hajj Amin al-Husseini escaped to Hitler in 1941. IN 1945 he escaped Germany to Cairo. From there he led the radical camp of the Pal. Arabs to devastation and exile. As shown above, until the 1947-48 War not one square inch of Arab land was “stolen”. All was bought and for a very high price at that, and all was sold by Arab owners. This “stolen” business is an Arab propagandist lie and I am astonished that you swallow it so gullibly. I can direct you to many sources, including very anti-Zionist ones to convince you of that. As for an Arab village that was indeed attacked viciously by its enemies and laid waste before December 1947 I know of one such village. This was the village of Sindiyanah on the Carmel Mountain. It belonged to supporters of the Nashashibi family. In 1937 it was conquered by Hajj Amin al-Husseini’s people and wiped off the map. None of the inhabitants was hurt because they all fled to Zichron Ya’akov, a few miles away, and received shelter.

As for the Grand Mufti: your moral position is dangerous and deeply disturbing in the first place because you present Hajj Amin’s association with Hitler’s extermination of Jews as unavoidable, as you also present his extreme anti-Semitism. After all, you say, this was a bitter national conflict. By 1941, when the Mufti went to Italy and received from Mussolini a promise to kill all Jews of Palestine, then to Hitler where he received a similar promise, you believe that the Jews had already “stolen” his land and destroyed his villages. Now, if you look at the sources I suggested I hope that you will know that they didn’t. Still, I agree that the Grand Mufti felt that profound injustice was done. What you are saying is that since this was how he felt it was OK to work for the total extermination of the Pal. Jews, yes? But it was not OK and not unavoidable, even in a bitter conflict. The Nashashibis and their allies were very different, and see below. Some were arrested by the British, some fled to Lebanon, some to neutral Turkey. Rashid Ali al-Gaylani, the leader of the 1941 pro-Nazi revolt in Iraq in which the Grand Mufti played a central role fled with others to neutral Iran, then Turkey, then Cairo. But the Grand Mufti chose to continue to Rome and Berlin. He also chose to press the Fascists and Nazis to kill all Jews, actually everywhere. Yes, they didn’t need him to tell them to do this, but it was his choice to identify with and push for genocide. Your “understanding” of him due to the “context” shows that you don’t really understand what Sadat and other Egyptian officers actually did and how far they went, and that you did not know what less radical Pal. Arab leaders did. I cannot believe the alternative, namely, that you know and understand it all very well and still support the Grand Mufti and his supporters in their genocidal designs.

Moreover: if we apply your “understanding” of the Grand Mufti’s genocide-oriented actions to the 1948 war, you could likewise “understand” it had the Pal. Jews exterminated all the Pal. Arabs. In 1947-48 the conflict reached its head. The Jewish Palestinians’ very physical existence was in jeopardy. Unlike their Palestinian Arab equivalents, they could not go to Beirut, Damascus, Jenin, Nablus, to save their lives if defeated. They were with their backs to the wall.  Eventually the Jews won the day, but they did not follow the Grand Mufti Hajj Amin al-Husseini’s prescription when he spoke to Mussolini and Hitler: they did not slaughter the Arab/Muslim community of Palestine. Yes, they drove out some 50% of those who left, and I am not even trying to justify this, but many were allowed to stay in Israel, some were allowed to return to Haifa and the Galilee and, in any case, the Jews did not murder the 700,000 or so who left or were driven out. Today Arabs represent some 20% of Israel’s population: where did they come from? No Hajj Amin al-Husseini-style extermination was even remotely contemplated by the Jews. Had the Jews adhered to your approach that a very bitter conflict justifies the extermination of whole national/religious groups there would be no Palestinian-Arab Israeli citizens and no refugee problem today either. The Turks did this to the Armenians in 1915, the Jews did not do it to the Palestinian Arabs in 1948. The Israelis actually acted as I believe the Nashashibis would have acted had the Palestinian Arabs won the war. They would have been harsh but not genocidal. Hajj Amin and his supporters would have been very likely genocidal: at least this was what he agreed upon with Mussolini and Hitler. Anyway: the Jews knew that the Grand Mufti and his supporters killed Arab non-combatants, why shouldn’t they kill Jewish ones?

As for the Nashashibis and other Arabs who were very different from al-Hajj Amin al-Husseini: I agree that Palestinian Arabs eventually objected to the Zionist project. I fully understand that the fact that the Zionists had won the support of Great Britain, France and the League of Nations meant little to many Arabs. Even when Woodrow Wilson and the US Congress saw in Zionism a movement of Jewish self-determination this did not mean a lot to many Arabs. But not all the Arabs saw the Zionist project in the same way, and not all the Palestinian Arabs who objected reacted to it in the same way.

As for Arabs: until 1925 the single most important leader in the Arab world was the Sharif Hussein of Mecca. Until July 1920 his son Faysal was king of Syria. In March 1921 his other son, the Emir ‘Abd Allah, was already based in Trans Jordan. The first two recognized publicly the historical connection between the Jewish people and Palestine, and the legitimacy of Jewish immigration and land purchases in Palestine. In March 1918, when the Great War was still raging and the British still needed badly his support-or so they believed -the Sharif of Mecca wrote in his mouthpiece al-Qiblah in the spirit of the Balfour Declaration: “Palestine is a loved and sacred homeland for its original children”, the Jews. He assured his readers that the Jews will develop the country, and beseeched the Arabs ”to receive them as brothers”. He did not mention statehood, but neither had the Balfour Declaration or the Zionist Organization at the time: only in 1942 did the Zionist Organization declare a state as the goal. Still, in the Weizmann-Faysal agreement of January 1919 relations between the Arab state and the Jewish national home were defined like those between two states. The agreement was driven by a series of political calculations, but this is what politicians do: they reach deals. In his March 3, 1919 public letter to Lewis Frankfurter Faysal promised that Jews and Arabs “will fulfill their national ideal” together. He assured Frankfurter that the educated Arabs “feel the deepest sympathy” for the Zionist intentions and will accord the Jews “a most hearty welcome home”. These assurances of sympathy were not substantiated, and a few years later proved false, but at the time there were no “Palestinian Arabs”: the Arab intellectual/political leadership of what in 1922 became Mandatory Palestine defined themselves as Syrians. While some of them clearly objected to the Weizmann-Faysal agreement, until he was removed by the French they still saw in Faysal their king.

Since 1923/24 the Arab Palestinian leadership separated itself from Syria. But by then there were two important trends in the Palestinian Arab national movement, not just one. One was indeed led by the Husseini family. They were radical, uncompromising and always adhered to the principle of “everything or nothing”. Eventually it was nothing. The other trend was still against the Zionist project, but they were ready for a compromise that the Arabs could live with. This trend was led by the strong Nashashibi family in coalition with others, and see below. But they always lost to the Husseinis. On the Zionist side you had the Labor Zionists under Ben Gurion and the General Zionists under Weizmann. They were looking for a compromise, and they always had more support than the Revisionist Zionists who wanted to ignore Arab objection. Within Labor Zionism you had a strong trend, to which my parents belonged, people who were thinking along the lines of a bi-national state, similar to Canada and Belgium. So you had an imbalance: the majority of the Pal. Jews (the “Yishuv”) looked for a compromise solution. The majority of the Pal. Arabs looked for a confrontation. They rejected totally any compromise & recognition of some Jewish aspirations. They were like a laser beam, ignoring real-politics considerations. As a result they missed golden opportunities to drastically limit Zionist gains to miniscule proportions. Yes, it is very painful to accept an arrangement that one strongly believes is unjust, but in political life a leader and a community must be able to make such compromises. It is imperative to stick to the most important and give up the important. Hajj Amin and his followers were unable to do this. The Zionists, for their part, also believed that the whole of Palestine was their ancestral homeland, but they were ready for compromises that were painful to them.

Palestinian Arab pragmatists and lost opportunities: When the British came up with the Peel Commission’s Partition Plan in July 1937, the Jewish majority accepted it as a matter of principle but wanted to discuss further the precise allocation: just 25% of Mandatory Palestine was too little as they saw it. But they accepted. The Arab side was split: the Husseinis said “No”, the Nashashibis said “Yes”. In 1937-1939 The Husseini camp murdered at least 1,000 men and women from the Nashashibi camp. The same exact division occurred on both sides in 1947.  This is important, because today you have a similar, though not identical split on both sides again. On the Israeli side the majority is conflicted: as a matter of principle more than 60% believe that the W. Bank should be left to the Arabs. However, due mainly to security considerations it is oscillating between withdrawal from the W. Bank and staying there until a safe solution is found. The Gaza precedent is not encouraging, so something else needs to be devised. The democratic system will still enable Israel to move to the “withdrawal” side, as happened under Rabin, Peres, Barak, the “new Sharon” and Ulmert. On the Palestinian side you have a far more rigid gulf: Fath vs. Hamas. Hamas are the direct heirs of al-Hajj Amin al-Husseini: “All or Nothing”. Much depends on how they will fare. In the meantime these wonderful guys are beheading Fath officials and throwing others, tied up, from four-story buildings. I can send you their video footage.

You write that the partition “was a selloff of part of an Arab country to blond, blue eyed immigrants who claim that their God promised them the land four thousand years ago, and that they were there some thousands of years ago. If you were a simple Palestinian peasant facing someone who claims that your land was actually his, according to a book that is written in a strange language which he carries under his arm, what would you have done?”  This sounds convincing, but is a completely false account, typical of an Egyptian intellectual who has never set his foot in the place at the time and probably hasn’t seen, let alone spoken to many Jews. Have you ever been to Mandatory Palestine?  Have you ever interviewed a Palestinian Arab peasant there? In the first place, you demonstrate your lack of touch with reality when you describe Jews the way the Nazis described Arians. Most Jews are Semitic-looking, like Arabs, some a touch lighter, some not. They don’t look like Hitler’s description of the Supreme Teutonic Being, the “Blond Beast”. Secondly: you sound propagandist when you talk of Jewish insistence that God promised the land to them. For your information, some 90% of the Jewish immigrants to Palestine between 1882 and 1947 were secular. Most of them were actually agnostics. Ben Gurion was. They saw in Palestine-the-Land-of-Israel their ancestral homeland, and did not care much whether or not God made a promise the Abraham in 1800 BC. Much more importantly:  I agree with you that the simple peasant didn’t understand what exactly Zionism was. After all, the anti-Zionist movement was carried by dignitaries – effendis many of whom sold land to Jews – and intellectuals. Peasants were the last to join Hajj Amin al-Husseini’s war. They joined him in large numbers only as late as 1929 when he managed at long-last to convey to them the notion that the Jews want to destroy al-Aqsa and re-build on al-Haram al-Sharif King Solomon’s Temple. This became his battle cry. However, for it “to work”, this battle cry depended on the peasants’ cognition who King Solomon-Sulayman was. And they knew exactly who King Suleiman was. Even the least educated peasant knew well who the Jews were. Al-Yahud, or Banu-Isra’il are often mentioned in the Qur’an and the Hadith.

You are warning me: “If we are not propagandists, and I wish we are not, we will be able then to agree or at least have a meaningful discussion. Otherwise, it will be a waste of time”.  I hope that you will not consider a few brief quotations from your Qur’an to prove my point to be Zionist propaganda. After all the Qur’an is written in classical Arabic, not “in a strange language”, and a great many Muslims, including illiterate people, are learning much or all of it by heart. I met a few people who proudly defined themselves as “Hafez”. I have never met a Jewish “Hafez”. Indeed, I think that Muslims study the Qur’an more than Jews study the Bible, and I respect that. They study it in primary schools or in the kuttab. Even illiterate peasants listened to their village mosque imam and Khatib.  So Muslims know their Qur’an reasonably well.

In the Qur’an the “Children of Israel” are mentioned sometimes in a positive context, while “Jews” are always portrayed in a very negative light. Still, both are mentioned often. For example: Surat al-Ma’idah, Aayah 51: “O You who Believe! Take not the Jews and the Christians for friends … He among you who takes them for friends is (one) of them”. Or Surat al-Baqarah, Aayahs 40-41: “O Children of Israel! Remember my favour wherewith I favoured you and fulfill your (part of the) covenant, I shall fulfill my (part of the) covenant and fear me, and believe in that which I reveal … and be not first to disbelieve…”.  Or mentioning King David and King Solomon in a very positive fashion as powerful, wise and just prophets, for example Surat al-Anbiyaa, Aayah 21, and much more.   Even more interestingly, in Surat Bani Isra’il, Aayah 104 the Qur’an says: “And we said unto the Children of Israel after him (after Pharaoh): Dwell in the Land; but when the promise of the Hereafter comes to pass, we shall bring you as a crowd gathered out of various nations”.  Whether or not this was what the Qur’an meant, according to most medieval interpretations the last words refer to Isaiah’s Prophecy of the Gathering of the Exiles. Isaiah, too, is seen by Islam as a prophet. In fact, there is another Surah, al-Shu’araa, dedicated mostly to Moses, the Children of Israel, the confrontation with Pharaoh and the Exodus. Yet in another one, “Joseph” or “Yusif”, the Qur’an tells Joseph’s story in detail, including when he says: “And I have followed the religion of my fathers, Abraham, and Isaac and Jacob” (Aayah 38).  In Surat Mariam, Aayah 58, the Qur’an says: “These are they unto whom Allah showed favour among the prophets, of the seed of Adam …and of the seed of Abraham and Israel (min dhurriyyat Ibrahim wa isra’il). Indeed, Abraham the Patriarch is playing a major role in the Qur’anic story. All these stories, called Isra’iliyyat, were well known even to illiterate people. Both Arabs and Jews knew about a vague blood relation between them through Abraham, Ishmael and Isaac. It didn’t mean very much, but the awareness was there. My father, who was the director of the kibbutz iron workshop, used to tell me that, when they came from the neighboring villages to fix broken iron parts of their wooden plows the Arab peasants asked him for a “special price” for “cousins” (“ihna abnaa ‘amm”). They were saying it jokingly, of course, and laughing, and so was he, but he liked this Jewish-Arab joke so much that he rarely charged them at all. They came from villages a mile, two or three away, in sun and rain, and the work took usually a mere few minutes. Good neighborliness was far more important than a few pennies, and some of them were also good friends. Unlike your theory, Mr. al-Masri, Muslims knew of some historical connection between Jews & Arabs, as well as between Jews and the land of Palestine, or Jerusalem. This did not necessarily make them more sympathetic to the Zionist project, but they knew. In 1928-29 Hajj Amin managed to present Jewish presence in Palestine as a religious war. The result was that in no time the lines became clearly drawn, and the Hebron (al-Khalil) Muslims massacred the Hebron Jews even though there was not one Zionist among them. Jewish traditional, purely religious and non-Zionist presence in Hebron was probably 1000 years old if not much more.

You write: “Nasser later kicked him (al-Hajj Amin al-Husseini) out of Egypt and ordered that he never put his foot in the country again”. Very important and relevant. We knew he was kicked out, we didn’t know why. As I understand from you, the political estrangement between the Grand Mufti and Nasser was not over the approach to Israel. Rather, it was because by 1954 Nasser was at daggers drawn with the MB, and the Mufti was in bed with the MB, as Hamas are today. So from an Israeli point of view little changed. Despite the efforts of the Israeli PM Sharett 1953-1954 Nasser did not even agree to stop the calls for the destruction of Israel, let alone to stop sending the Fida’iyyin into israel. I agree with you that the context is important, and the context here is simple: the Mufti is gone, but the uncompromising propaganda promising the destruction of Israel, as well as the Fida’iyyun are still coming from Cairo.  No Egyptian said that all the Jews will be slaughtered, but the elimination of the Jewish state seemed to the Israelis to imply the same. In fact, as late as June 1967 Ahmad Shuqayri, Nasser’s appointee as head of the PLO, promised to “drive the Jews into the sea”. This is what we heard from Cairo. No Mufti, true, but serious threats. This is the Israeli context.

About Eisenhower now. This is a more nuanced case but still you did not answer my main question. You accuse me of misunderstanding Nasser’s behavior after 1956. As you graciously compliment me: “This again reflects your inability to understand history in a way that is divorced from your emotions and perspective. The way you put it sounds almost as if you are saying that Nasser either was crazy or he was a vicious character or he was not polite enough or well raised enough to express his gratitude to the American president by going to Moscow”. And you add: “This is not how you should understand history”. After all your profound blunders that you exposed in our exchanges and your inability to go beyond your “narrative” and beyond your blind admiration for Nasser, I am not surprised any more. Yes, Eisenhower refused to sell Nasser weapons. Why? The US felt that he had enough for self-defense. And though you will not agree, I think that he did. When in May-June 1948 Israel received weapons from Czechoslovakia – old WWII Czech and Nazi hardware – it was at war, and on the brink of defeat and annihilation. However, context again, Mr. “Context”: in 1954, when Dulles declined to provide weapons to Nasser, no one was threatening Egypt. The Israeli PM was trying desperately to reach some agreement.  Nasser refused. Who threatened you, then? Libya? The Sudan? The Sinai Badu? Who was promising to eliminate Egypt? In 1954 the British army left the Suez zone. They, too, were no longer a threat. The Israeli Feb. 1955 raid on the Egyptian military camp in Gaza was upsetting to Nasser, I admit that, but it was a reaction to Egyptian-sponsored Fida’iyyin attacks against Israeli civilians. Nasser could stop those attacks as he did later, between 1957 and 1967, but he didn’t. The Americans were worried that more weapons would only encourage Nasser to go for some adventures. So he turned to the Soviets. Judged by the context the Israeli and Egyptian cases are wide apart.

But I still cannot understand: even if I accept your rationalization for Nasser’s turn to the Soviets, after Eisenhower saved him in 1956, why turn in 1957 and later against the pro-Western Arab regimes? Nasser could be a Soviet client and still refrain from plots against other regimes, couldn’t he? The Soviets would have sold him weapons anyway because he was such a prize in himself. They would have also financed the High Dam anyway for the same reason. In fact, so far I saw no evidence that they applied pressure that forced him to seek Nasserist revolutions in Jordan, Saudi and Lebanon. So why did he pay Eisenhower’s favor with extreme anti-US activities all over the Middle East? He could have remained close to the USSR, weapons and all, and yet mind his own business in Egypt. But he did not. I suspect why: he wasn’t crazy at all, and neither was Saddam. But both were hugely ambitious, seeking Arab leadership, the elusive Holy Grail of ME dictators, and both failed, but not before they devastated their countries.

I am grateful for the information on the American report regarding the recommended Land Reform. Very interesting and instructive. Nasser was not all bad, which explains much of his popularity. He definitely meant well in his Land Reform. As I wrote before, Qassem, too, meant well in 1958. But unfortunately they both made similar mistakes and the reform failed to improve the lot of most peasants in any significant way. That is a great pity because it undermined stability and pushed both of them to go for some adventures: Qassem’s threats against Kuwait were largely motivated by his economic failures.

The bottom line: You write: “Just leave the west Bank and accept the establishment of a demilitarized Palestinian state”. I agree. In fact more than 60% of Israeli Jews agree with you. I am afraid you did not notice it, but the PM of Israel, head of a hawkish coalition, accepted the principle of a two state solution and his coalition did not disintegrate. What does it mean? It means that most Israelis feel the same, and the radical parties know that if they leave the coalition because of it they will find themselves in the political desert. Now even hawks reluctantly admit that the WB is full of people who don’t want us. So I’d like to say goodbye to them and the sooner the better. A Palestinian de-militarized state is indeed the solution. But some additional purely security arrangements are crucial, especially when we see what Hamas is doing in the liberated or “liberated” Gaza. When we leave the WB both side must make sure that the new situation will be more peaceful, not more dangerous than the present one. Also: because politically no political force in Israel can evacuate 350,000 people from the settlements, the biggest ones will have to stay, and on the basis of a 1:1 the Palestinian state will get territorial compensation in pre-1967 Israel. As far as we know the PA already agreed to this principle. The devil – or God – is in the details.

But you did not mention the refugees. If the Arab world does not absorb them as Israel did 50-60 years ago with the Jewish refugees who fled from the Arab lands we will have done nothing. Many can also settle in the new Palestinian state and others may be accepted by the rest of the world. Expecting Israel to accept the Right of Return is unrealistic, and the Arab League proposal recognizes this fact. You also did not mention the holy sites. For both issues I think that the plan of Pres. Clinton, the Geneva Plan and the Ayalon-Nusseibah plan are good options. They are all very similar. But for all this to happen you need now to persuade Abu Mazen to go back to the negotiation table. And you need to convince your new Egypt that they cannot strengthen Hamas. A stronger Hamas means the demise of Abu Mazen and Fayad and the end of all hope. When there are negotiations we shall see what Netanyahu is ready for. Only negotiations can expose his real position.

Settlements: not important because all the building is being done inside the parameter of the existing ones. Had I been a Pal. Arab, under these circumstances I’d say to Obama: as long as they keep to the existing settlements’ limits let the fools build more. Anything they build in the small settlements will be ours anyway, and anything they build in the big ones will serve to absorb the Jewish refugees from the small ones. Indeed, Abu Mazen had never asked Obama to demand a complete stop. This was Obama’s idea, coming from inexperience and it wracked the negotiations because Abu Mazen could not demand less than what America wanted to give him. Now we are stuck.

To what extent will a final Is.-Pal. arrangement help the democratic movement in Egypt? I think it will to some extent, as it may deny the MB and other radicals a propaganda ploy. And yet, in Egypt you have a job to do in the next few months, and the Arab-Is. conflict is at least 70 years old and optimistically-speaking will still take a few more years to resolve. So the time-tables are disjointed.  Worse still: when the conflict is hopefully resolved, very likely many radical Arabs will still say that the compromise solution (pre-June 1967 borders with 5% mutual territory exchange) is a sellout and treason. I think Hamas and the Eg. MB will say that. They will demand, as always, everything. This means that your suggestion, while acceptable to most Israelis, cannot have the immediate nor the total impact that you need, and you need an immediate impact. I wish you success.

Amatzia Baram

Comments

[eakens]

I suppose it is better to talk each other to death than it is to use a gun.

[Jonathan House]

What is happening now - i.e. in the last few months makes me pessimistic. One development worthy of emphasis are recent laws passed by the Knesset - important both in themselves and as a symptom.

In a brief article in Haaretz yesterday (4/4) Daniel Blatman, a professor and Holocaust researcher and head of the Institute for Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, wrote about the significance of these laws in an article entitled:
Heading toward an Israeli apartheid state

The link is:
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/heading-toward-an-israeli-apartheid-state-1.353942

As it is less than 900 works, perhaps it is brief enough to reproduce in full:

Heading toward an Israeli apartheid state

It has been 60 years since the apartheid state was established in South Africa. In March 1951, a few years after the racist National Party came to power, racial segregation was anchored in law. As was common in other countries that adopted racist laws in the 20th century, those in South Africa were accompanied by "laundered" explanations.
Hitler declared after the Nuremberg Race Laws were passed in 1935 that they would create a suitable basis for a separate but worthy existence for Jews in Germany alongside German society. The race laws in South Africa established that people of different colors cannot exist when mixed with each other - only in separate, protected spaces.

The tsunami of racist laws passed by the Knesset in recent months is also being explained by reasoned and worthy arguments: the right of small communities to preserve their own character (the Acceptance Committees Law ); the state's right to prevent hostile use of the funds it allocates to education and culture (the Nakba Law ); and the right to deny citizenship to persons convicted of espionage or treason (the Citizenship Law ). But I believe that as in other historical instances, the aim of this legislation is the gradual establishment of an apartheid state in Israel, and the future separation on a racial basis of Jews and non-Jews.

An apartheid state is not created in the blink of an eye. What was created in Germany in 1935 was the outcome of a long and sometimes violent debate, which had been ongoing since the middle of the 19th century, about the place of Jews in modern Germany and Europe. Indeed, the desire to isolate and distance the Jews from society - legally and socially - was part of the belief system of anti-Semites in Europe for decades before Hitler came into power.

In this respect the Nazi regime, along with other regimes that passed racial separation laws (among them those in Romania, Hungary, Italy and Vichy France in 1940 ), only anchored in legislation a reality that had already been enthusiastically received by the populace. Of course, when such laws were enacted, the regimes involved did not support or imagine that at the end of the road, a "final solution" was waiting in its Nazi format. However, once the seeds were sown, no one was able to figure out what fruit they would bear.

The historical background of the Israeli apartheid state-in-the-making that is emerging before our eyes should be sought in 1967. It is part of a process that has been going on for about 44 years: What started as rule over another people has gradually ripened - especially since the latter part of the 1970s - into a colonialism that is nurturing a regime of oppression and discrimination with regard to the Palestinian population. It is robbing that population of its land and of its basic civil rights, and is encouraging a minority group (the settlers ) to develop a crude, violent attitude toward the Arabs in the territories. This was exactly the reality that, after many years, led to the establishment of the apartheid state in South Africa.

In her book "The Origins of Totalitarianism," Hannah Arendt draws a sharp picture of the process of the development of the society of racial segregation in South Africa, from the start of the Dutch Boer colonialist settlement there. Assumption of racial superiority - the subordination of the black population - was the only way the "whites" could adjust to life in the midst of that race. The nurturance of feelings of racial supremacy, to which were added the belief in cultural superiority and the justification for economic exploitation - these are what, in a decades-long process, gave rise to the need to anchor this situation in proper legislation.

Thus, the dehumanization of the blacks, who at the start of the colonization period were perceived as no more than enhanced work animals, led to the establishment of a regime of racial separation 60 years ago in South Africa, which for decades left tens of millions of black people mired in a situation of harsh poverty, exploitation and atrophy.

It is not hard to identify this sort of worldview developing - with respect to Arabs - among widening circles of settlers in the territories and among their supporters within the (pre-Six Day War ) Green Line. It also has quite a number of supporters in the Knesset, even if they will not admit this outright.

Israeli racism, whose natural "hothouse" is the colonialist project in the territories, has long since spilled over into Israeli society and has been legitimized in the series of laws recently passed in the Knesset. Only people who avoid looking at the broad historical context of such a process are still able to believe it is possible to stop the emergence of an Israeli apartheid state without getting rid of the colonialist-racist grip on the territories.

Jonathan

[Charles I]

Wow, that's a lot to digest. thanks to both of you for this dialogue.

W/r/t "Settlements: not important because all the building is being done inside the parameter of the existing ones. . . Indeed, Abu Mazen had never asked Obama to demand a complete stop"

What, it doesn't matter to the rest of the victims so long as you keep the rape to the same hole? Anywhere else, so long as you only cum a little, carry on.

You claim Hamas and the MB will claim sell out. From their own lands.

What of the settlers to be evicted if "most Israeli's" were capable of electing a government that would withdraw, make peace - two state peace, not some Netanyahuesque sovereignty-challenged "grant" of living room?

What would they claim? After they finish shooting and salting and burning?

[Cal]

I accept the good Col's endorsement of you as having a conscience about the Palestine situation.

But I have hard time with your defenses. Also resorting to religious quotes in support of the Jews throws me off--seems too standard
mythical God-Allah 'said so.' And also some of your descriptions of the Zionist behavior in their early years in Palestine don't jive with the official British reports by the people who where there on the ground at the time.

But a few sincere more specific questions:

"Even when Woodrow Wilson and the US Congress saw in Zionism a movement of Jewish self-determination."

--Shlomo Sand in 'The Invention of the Jewish People' made the undeniable point that there are no Jewish 'people", as in a 'distinct people', that they are 'religion' not a people.
So what case do you make for a religious group claiming 'self determination? Would it be Jewish victimhood?
Would you claim that Christians, presecuted themselves in ancient times have a right to 'self determination' to the extent of establishing a "Christian nation'?
I'd like to know exactly what your thinking is on 'the rights' of the Jews and they came to have those rights.

And

'Expecting Israel to accept the Right of Return is unrealistic,"---
vr-----
"The first two recognized publicly the historical connection between the Jewish people and Palestine."

--You are saying that Jews after the passage of thousand of years have some kind of right to return to and own and rule a land they long ago left..but that Palestines have no such right even though their claim is more current?
How do you explain that difference?

"you sound propagandist when you talk of Jewish insistence that God promised the land to them. For your information, some 90% of the Jewish immigrants to Palestine between 1882 and 1947 were secular. Most of them were actually agnostics."

--al Misry doesn't sound any more propagandist than your own defense.
You yourself are using religious quotes to justify the Jews or your own position. And you also are using selective quotes from selected people for your case. Most of the zionist argument I see are and religion and victimhood and Jewish exceptionalism while the Palestine claim is more based on the fact that the zionist did take over much of their land.

I guess bottom line I am interested to know how you think a religion morphed into a "People" as most religions don't think of themselves as a 'distinict people" seperate from other people simply because of their religion.
I think it is all the variety and mixture of reasons..the mixing of religion,peoplehood...which seem convoluted to most people... as some sort of special group who actually had no nation except for a short period centuries ago now claiming a right to a nation of 'distinct people' and the right to displace another people.
There is too much in the zionist narrative and argument that is illogical and hypocritical for most objective people.

When someone like myself who has no dog in this Israeli/ Arab hunt looks at this situation I can't find any justification for zionism today. It seems to be an extension of primitive and ancient tribalism mixed with a centuries old victimhood culture, spread by creation of zionism in the 1800s and sealed by the holocaust.

Even the idea that a tiny sliver of land in a region where you are resented, because you had to take others land to settle there, is some kind of 'safe haven" for Jews in the event of a out break of raging anti semitism or another Hitler is bizarre....there would no place less safe. You would be the proverbial sitting ducks.

Most of all Israel has resulted in nothing but creating another Jewish Problem turmoil for the Jews, the ME and the world.

I think the Israel problem should be settled by a committee of international law experts...not by Jewish claims or Arab claims.

But I don't think the zionist or Israel would accept that because it would likely result in Israel returning to their original partition by the UN and giving up all, not some but all of the confiscated Palestine land and the right of return and/or compensation to Palestine refugees just as the world has compensated the Jews.

However you tell me if I am wrong--would you abide by the original UN partition and international law?

[William R. Cumming]

Jonathan House! The original area occupied in the 1600's by the Boers was largely vacant of human settlement.

But hey the buffalo lands in US going back to that occupancy so perhaps all of this history is just too short. Actually water and demographics are the issue for the entirety of the ME and Maghreb. Notice how seldom a graphic with the river systems in that part of the world is shown. Well let's take Libya? A $33 billion dollar drain has been created to provide water to all of the Libyan coastal cities. When that is tapped out before end of this century that country will be largely unihabitable to human kind. Perhaps that is the real history. And to allow nation-states to be mapped on the demise of the Ottoman Empire by France and Great Britain demonstrates the artificial nature of this geographic area. My guess is that these populations will all be hoping to emigrate before their history plays out much further.

What fascinates me is the total failure of the ME and Maghreb to understand that the sands of time will not be kind to any of them. Ever wonder why countries with trees tend to be richer per capita? Is there a relationship?

[William R. Cumming]

Have all those Christian relics (often bones) been looked at from standpoint of DNA? Hey who were these guys exactly? Who are the Jews? The Egyptians? etc.etc.
How many Crusaders married the locals or took them to bed? Now that racial purity can be studied scientifically perhaps world piece might be helped by a large scale trace of the ME and its peoples. After all the Han Chinese are busily hiding all those redheaded mummies in the Altai so they can claim based on racial history! This comment provided by an American Mongrel!

[Matthew]

I stopped reading at this quote: "Before 1948 no one “took their land”, and Dayan did not even hint at such a possibility."

And Zionists wonder why they are disliked? It's called lying.

[someone]

Let the dialogue continue. It has value.
Matthew stopped reading because...any excuse, huh?
LOL

[LeaNder]

Prof. Baram, I shouldn't comment on this, since it leaves me with very mixed feelings.

What I found helpful was your hint that Hitler wasn't really very fond of Semites generally, and Arabs to him were just another type of non-Aryan sub-humans too. ...

But what does this mean concerning the Mufti? It's not my least intention to defend him, but could he have been a tool for the Nazis too? After all they were the future masters for the next thousand years to come. Not the same kind tool as the Zionists themselves, but a tool nevertheless? Remember the Zionists offered the Nazis to "clean" the "body of the German people" (Nazi term: Volkskörper Volk=people; Körper=body) of Jews and found their support. But from 1936 on the Nazis had a problem, and some actually started to fear the creation of a Jewish state, as you may imagine. Some wanted to stop the Haavara agreement and Jewish immigration at that time, but it was continued for some time nevertheless.

Do you think the Nazis told the Mufti that they actually had supported the Zionists earlier? To the point of occasionally blocking transit refugees to get as much of their own Jews out. ... For whatever it's worth: Around the same time Haganah after the revolt sent his member Feivel Polkes to convince the Nazis that the Arabs were not worth of German support?,page 124. I am not judging this. And yes, this and other short encounters surely were minor incidents. But how influential the Mufti was in Berlin, besides of use for propaganda? Then and now? At least the image with Hitler surely is and was used that way.

I will read the book by Kennneth Stein you suggest, although I will also read the late Baruch Kimmerling's perspective on the issue: Zionism and Territory: The Socioterritorial Dimensions of Zionist Politics, on the land issue.

But, I do not think that it helps much to reiterate the facts we know all too well, like the good versus the bad Palestinians (Nashashibi - Husseini), since for the Palestinians on the ground in the end it didn't make a difference which of both tribes controlled you. As I have to admit, I am getting very, very tired of the Jewish success-story versus the mistakes committed on the Arab side, which started with the UN partition plan. By now it's almost like a running gag. Only it isn't funny any more. The Arab's never miss an opportunity, to miss an opportunity. I can't hear it any more in any of it's variations.

Concerning ungratefulness: From an Israeli perspective the UN is considered as the antisemitic hothouse. Would that count as the ungratefulness on the side of the Israelis too?

Finally, I have to admit, I am really pessimistic about a solution to the Israel/Palestine dilemma. No matter if one state or two, both feel very unlikely to ever happen. Just as whatever is offered in the two state solution cannot be called a state at all: no control of air-space, no allowance to defend it's citizen, but control them as Israel did before, ...

[euclidcreek]

"This land is nobodys land. People are fighting over their burial land." John Lee Hooker.

[Fred]

Dr. Baram:
"Property rights followed the Turkish Ottoman Tabu Deeds system. The British Mandate “stepped into the shoes” of the Ottomans in Palestine, Trans Jordan and Iraq and retained all property rules. "

Thank you for this clarification, which is something I have always wondered about.

[Marcus]

I think we'll all discover shortly nobody is important, special, or chosen. You either work for balance, and justice, or you work toward your on destruction.

[swerv21]

Dr. Baram:

Thanks, this is informative as always. I'm quite enjoying this conversation, although I agree with some of the commenters in that it does tread on some very very well worn ground.

I will only add this minor point. You mentioned the myth of the 'teutonic monster'- the strange and ironic phenomenon of the image of the Israeli as an aryan like invader in a land of brown people.

I can attest to this- as a child growing up in Lebanon and the Gulf in the seventies/eighties, I remember this very vividly. Israel was portrayed as a highly technological, very alien society that was very mechanized and (for some reason) very blonde. I suppose it was an easy way to control the narrative by suggesting the Jews as a fundamentally different group of people.

Ofcourse, none of the children in those areas had ever seen a Jew- so they could have been purple for all we knew.

What is interesting, and even more ironic, is that the Alawite villages around latakia are often noted for how "German"- that is, fair haired, they look. This not really fair haired in the scandinavian sense, but more light brown- much like people in chechneya and turkey. Both my parents are Alawite- and my mother says that her mother always talked about how they came from a cold place, near the caucausus area.

In any event, a few years later we moved to Athens, and there I finally did have some Jewish and Israeli classmates. I was very surprised to find that they didn't look Aryan at all- but actually had the same mild coloring of some of my other Syrian family members.

Cousins indeed.

[Bruno]

Dr. Baram/Yusuf al Masry:

"Our narrative is that the Partition was a compromise adopted by the UN General Assembly [...] which the Arabs rejected completely."

Compromise: To arrive at a settlement by making concessions. was it a compromise after all?

Let's face it Dr. , the CREATION [isn't that the word commonly used by historians for that fateful 1948 event?] of Israel was a "compromise" imposed by the fittest on the weakest of that time. Yes indeed, “All [you] wanted after that 1948 war was to be left alone” But so did the Palestinian Dr.

That many Arabs made terrible strategic and spiritual moves that cost them dearly is part of the natural process of human evolution. That many Arabs hate Jews, is also part of the natural process of human evolution. Jews did and many still do hate Germans. Throughout history Jews made also their share of bad strategic moves and alliances. It just happens that overall they are today coming on top.

If the goal is to find a true acceptable compromise by both peoples, to point at each other’s past mistakes and terrible decisions, to try to oppose each other’s irreconcilable narratives is really fruitless. I honestly doubt that your argumentation and detailed description of the historical context of many political events will change Yusuf’s perspective, as accurate and enlightening they might be.

The creation of the state of Israel was a grave injustice upon the Palestinian people. It is a historical fact. It was anything but self-determination for them.

Arabs and Muslims at large need to realize and come to term today with the fact that Jews are now there in bigger number than 1948. And expulsion as suggested by some is and will not be a solution.
But on the other hand Jews need to understand that the status of victor they enjoy today is not eternal and comes with tremendous responsibilities: treating the defeated with dignity and respect is one of them. This is definitely not happening. Some will argue that it is hard to do so while the vanquished is still trying to get at your throat. And considering the very personal exchange between you both, maybe there is already too much resentment on both sides to achieve that. But the reaction of some young Palestinians against both Hamas and the PLO, as well as many in the Israeli society leaves me hopeful.

This very academic exchange and conversation between two learned respectable persons is nothing new. As evidenced by some comments on here. This has so far never brought peace to the ME.

This conflict will only end when there will be on both sides people truly and genuinely interested in living with dignity in a just peace. History shows that in the past the Arab side lacked those interlocutors. Today with the Palestinian Papers leaked and Israeli turning down the Saudi proposal, it seems that Jews are more bent on bribing our US Congress to promote their belligerent agenda than busy looking for a just peace.

America, the only third party with enough leverage to force peace on both sides is too busy with the next election and AIPAC monies to concern itself with the long term cost of such short-sightedness.
There is however since 9/11 a growing reluctance by the American people to get involved abroad if they don’t feel that US interests are directly at stake ie: Libya. Israel does not represent to the American people a direct interest to protect anymore the way it did in the 60’s or 70’s. And Tel-Aviv would be the first one to lose from a new found American isolationism. Could 9/11 have been the game changer that al Qaeda had hoped for?

Dear Dr. Baram, as much as you wish good luck to the others with their Hamas and MB, I would like to wish you good luck with all those in power today in Tel Aviv and the US Congress who “demand […] everything” to quote you.

As far as I’m concerned I’ve learned tremendously from both of you. And I thank you both for that.

[Yusuf Al-Misry]

Thank you Bruno..and I am sorry.
The future has to be demilitarized Palestinian state in the West Bank. Israel should turn into a force for development and construction for a change as I previously wrote. If it does, it will be gradually accepted. You cannot refuse a badly needed hand when you are busy building. If you are not, you will have the luxury of picking your enemies based on religion or whatever. And believe me, this area of the world needs all the helping hands there is. But it is high time to give the Palestinians their national rights, dignity and future. It just hurts deep in the heart to see all this suffering and denial of their own history under any excuse. Then it will be our common challenges,us and the Israelis-development, defeating hatred based on religion and extremism based on ideology. This will remain idealist until the moment when we share in building. There is nothing that can put the two sides together regardless of their religion more than a common goal that touches the lives of ordinary people here and their and make it better for them and for generations to come. It is not military force or expansion and threats. All this has been tried and gave us the painful current situation. It just takes a deep conviction that people, Israelis and Arabs, are equal human beings and they deserve to live better.

[Moshe Sharon]

When we examine the truth, the IDF targets only combatants and when non-combatants get killed it is because the Hamas fighters put them in harm's way by firing rockets from residential neighborhoods and schoolyards. They know that the Israelis will bomb the rocket launchers and Arab civilians die. It's what the Hamas murderers want. We Jews sanctify life while the Arab Jihadists sanctify death. Therefore, there can be no compromise. However, time is not on our side. We are losing the propaganda war because there are too many media outlets with anti-Jewish bias and the more they repeat the same lie, the more the court of public opinion accepts it as truth. Therefore, Israel needs to deliver a swift decisive blow with boots on the ground in Gaza to route out the Hamas terrorists and destroy their weapons.

[Nancy K]

Moshe Sharon, I don't think your idea sounds too great. As Andre the giant said in Princess Bride, "My way doesn't seem too sportsman like does it". Bombing a lot of civilians penned up in prison encirculed by walls does not seem very sportsman like either. As for sanctifying life, I don't think the IDF or Hamas is going to win any points. As far as the propaganda war goes, you sure aren't going to win it by killing civilians.
But I'm not so sure Israel cares about that. Having said that I agree Hamas is a terrorist organization. But one groups freedom fighter is another groups terrorist, and there is going to be no winning in an eye or an eye mentality on both sides.

[Jonathan House]

Moshe,

You offer no evidence, no links, nada.

One definitive assessment is the Goldstone Report which is easily accessible. The notion that Judge Goldstone has changed his mind about the essential charges in the report by the group he chaired, indeed the notion that he has changed his mind about 99% of the detailed factual account, is false.

In his recent interview with the AP he said:

"As appears from the Washington Post article, information subsequent to publication of the report did meet with the view that one correction should be made with regard to intentionality on the part of Israel," the judge said. "Further information as a result of domestic investigations could lead to further reconsideration, but as presently advised I have no reason to believe any part of the report needs to be reconsidered at this time."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110406/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_israel_un_report_5

Jerry Haber (nom de plume of Charles Manekin, an orthodox Jewish studies and philosophy professor, who divides his time between Israel and the US) responds to the interview over at the Magnes Zionist http://www.jeremiahhaber.com/2011/04/judge-goldstone-to-associated-press.html :

To sum up how things stand now:

Judge Goldstone stands behind a report that found Israel guilty of war crimes. After two years he has not changed his mind on that charge.

Judge Goldstone stands behind a report that found Israel guilty of intentionally targeting civilian infrastructure. After two years he has not changed his mind on that charge.

Judge Goldstone stands behind a report that called upon Israel to launch a public judicial inquiry. Two years later he still makes that call.

Judge Goldstone is less inclined to believe, based on IDF investigations, that Israel was guilty of the crime against humanity of intentionally targeting civilians as a matter of policy, based on the evidence presented in the report. He is willing to consider the alternatives that faulty intelligence plus bad judgment was responsible for the al-Samouni family bombing, and that this deliberate attack may indeed be a war crime, should the commanding officer be found to have been negligent.

Judge Goldstone has not expressed regret, apology, nor has he recanted the report. On the contrary he has "no reason to believe that any part of the report need be reconsidered at this time."

He wrote an op-ed with a conciliatory tone. He now has an invitation to visit Israel. Let's hope he comes.

[LeaNder]

Jonathan, it feels Charles doesn't like it too much that we spread the connection. At least I have the impression, he doesn't want to make the connection that easy. Personally I would use what you put in brackets only in private correspondences. As he says if he writes on his blog he puts on a different hat. On the net I would refer to Jerry Haber or The Magnus Zionist. Although admittedly he isn't quite persistent. ...

But what do you think about fool Danny Danon Trying to create a little PR for his next candidacy for Likud leadership? I seriously doubt that a US judge (or whoever does in the US) can accept such a lawsuit. But then, if one does, there will be extensive media coverage of both the Goldstone's letter and the Goldstone report,. Not because of antisemitic tendencies of the media but simply because it would be news. Even more if Dershowitz is among the Jewish American attorneys he enlisted.