(This is the post that Mezvinsky was answering)
The proposals that Israel should be admitted to NATO, discussed by Clifford Kiracofe in a post not long ago, provide yet another illustration of the inability of so many of that country's most committed supporters, both in United States and elsewhere in the West, to grasp the suicidal nature of the course they have encouraged it to follow.
At a time when the waves of unrest sweeping the Arab world are calling fundamentally into question the ability of the United States to persuade governments in crucial countries – above all Egypt – to act in ways which Israel wants, support for that country in some of the traditionally most loyal allies of the US has been collapsing. Certainly, the Israeli government's presentation of its policies towards the Palestinians – and also Lebanon and Iran – as the unavoidable defensive responses of a beleaguered outpost of Western civilisation, confronted by that civilisation's implacable Arab and Muslim enemies, retains powerful traction, particularly among neoconservatives, in Europe as in the United States.
So in Britain for example a prominent neoconservative, Michael Gove – Education Secretary in the current Tory/Liberal Democrat coalition government – has argued in his influential polemic on the Islamist threat to Western civilisation, Celsius 7/7, that Israel must be defended all costs because it 'is an integral part of the West, a vessel for its values, an example of its virtues and is hated not for what it does but what it is'.
But neoconservatives like Gove – who in 2008 described the invasion of Iraq as ‘a proper British foreign policy success’ – are not being entirely successful in persuading their own peoples. While the events of the past decade have encouraged a wave of Islamophobia in Europe, as in the United States, this has signally failed to produce an increased sense of solidarity with Israel among the population at large. The annual poll of perceptions of the global role of different countries done for the BBC World Service, published earlier this month, showed a marginal improvement in Israel's worldwide rating, which still however left Iran, Pakistan, and North Korea as the only countries surveyed ranked as having a more negative influence. Among the generally very negative views of the country in Europe, a particularly dramatic change was the increase in negative ratings in the UK from 50% to 66% – with only 14% now giving the country a positive rating.
Interestingly, this brought British perceptions almost precisely into line with those in Germany, where there was a slight improvement in how Israel was regarded, with negative ratings falling from 68% to 65%, and positive rising from 13% to 15%. So among those peoples who have traditionally been the closest allies of the United States, and who have a long history of supporting Israel, the country's standing has collapsed. There is clearly a major gap between European and American perceptions -- although negative ratings of Israel in the US were also reported as rising, from 31% to 41%, leaving them just short of positive ratings, at 43%.
Alliance with neoconservatives has in fact been a poisoned chalice for Israel. The last thing that country needs is friends like Michael Gove, who encourage Israelis to believe that attitudes to them have nothing whatsoever to do with actions of theirs which others may find objectionable, and are purely to do with their virtues. The belief that one represents a state of achieved perfection, and that any hostility on the part of others can only be understood either in terms of their moral turpitude or one's failure adequately to explain one's virtues, is dangerous enough for the United States and Britain, who have the benefit of relatively secure geographic locations. The Israelis, who do not, simply cannot afford to duck out of the endeavour – which is commonly liable to be less than entirely pleasurable – of confronting how one is actually seen by others, in order to understand how they have responded to what one has done in the past, and calculate how they might respond to what one might do in the future.
The last thing I would want to do is to replace one kind of nonsense by another, and suggest that if the Israelis were prepared to confront how they were seen by others, all their apprehensions would be revealed as the delusional products of Holocaust trauma. Whatever they did, the hostility of the Arab and Muslim peoples among whom they live would confront them with intractable problems. But the propensity to assume that hostility is practically invariably a matter of essentially motiveless anti-Semitism – with Hitler's aspiration to destroy Jews simply because they were Jews as the central point of reference – does Israel and its external supporters no favours. In relation to Arabs and Muslim peoples, it is suicidal.
If one sees these as imbued with some kind of ineradicable desire to eliminate Jews, the idea that a state in the Middle East could ever represent a 'safe haven' for actual or potential victims of anti-Semitism, which has been central to Zionism, has to be a mistake. Confronted by such implacable malevolence, even the most determined resistance, under the wisest leadership, could hardly be expected to do more than delay the inevitable end. Granted the premise, logic points inescapably to the conclusion that the whole Zionist enterprise was hopeless from the start. And sensible Jews able to see which way the wind is blowing, and in a position to find a comfortable refuge in safer places, will be prone to do so.
In relation to declining support in the West, Israel and its external supporters commonly talk about delegitimation, as though this decline reflected the malign efforts of people implacably hostile to the very idea of a Jewish state. But in relation to my own country, Britain, this is delusional. The decline of support for Israel simply does not reflect cunning propaganda from Palestinian advocates – whose efforts, taken in themselves, resonate among rather limited sections of the population. It is the actions and words of successive Israeli governments and their supporters in this country and in the United States which have shifted sympathy away from the country.
One element in this remarkably successful effort at shooting oneself in the foot is a failure on the part of the Israeli government to grasp the premises on which on which support for the country has commonly been based – and in particular, the crucial role of the assumption that a two-state solution was feasible. As long as I can remember, it has been taken for granted among most people here concerned with these issues that there existed a division of Palestine such that, with patient encouragement from outside, sooner or later it would come to seem preferable to the leaderships on both sides to any other option available to them. And crucially, it was also assumed that the difficulties they could be expected to face in taking their peoples along with them, in the face of the obvious ability of 'rejectionists' on both sides to stand in the way of and disrupt any likely agreement, could be overcome.
A pyrrhic victory.
If there was to be such a division, it has been clear ever since 1967 that it involved the Palestinians acknowledging that 78% of historical Palestine contained within the the borders prior to the Six Day War was irrevocably lost, in return for Israeli withdrawal from the remaining 22% -- with minor border adjustments. The successful defiance by Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu of the timid attempts by the Obama Administration to persuade it to observe some minimal restraints on the ongoing process of settlement of the West Bank – a pyrrhic victory if there ever was one -- have in the minds of many on both sides of the Atlantic finally put paid to belief such a division is ever going to happen.
Coming together with the revelations in the 'Palestine Papers'in January about the extraordinary lengths to which Palestinian leaders were prepared to go to accommodate Netanyahu's predecessors, the conclusion is increasingly being drawn that there is no Israeli 'partner for peace'. And indeed, people have increasingly been asking themselves whether they have been deluding themselves, and failing to recognise that the continuation of the settlement of the West Bank throughout the period since the 1993 Oslo Accords meant that the whole 'peace process' has been misconceived.
In Britain, this scepticism has been moving into the journalistic mainstream. At the time of Obama's attempts to resuscitate the 'peace process' last August, the international affairs editor of the Financial Times, David Gardner, published an article entitled 'A poisoned process holds little hope.' Having pointed to the 'relentless and strategic Israeli colonisation of occupied Palestinian land' as the fundamental problem vitiating the 'peace process', and he went on to remark:
It is essential to remember that the biggest single increase of Jewish settlers on Arab land – a 50 per cent rise – took place in 1992-96 under the governments of peace-makersYitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres at the high-water mark of the Oslo peace accords. Many Israelis will point to the perfidy of the late Yassir Arafat, who wanted to talk peace but keep the option of armed resistance dangerously in play. But what killed Oslo was the occupation. The second intifada which erupted a decade ago was essentially the Oslo war.
The most remarkable transformation, however, has been at the Daily Telegraph – which in the days of Lord Conrad Black used to be a central neoconservative stronghold, and where the neoconservative presence remained extremely strong even after his departure. It has certainly very far from vanished, but last September Peter Oborne, who back in 2009 took a leaf out of John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt's book and co-authored a notable pamphlet on Britain's own Israeli lobby, moved to the paper as chief political commentator.
What provoked the pamphlet was a speech given by the Tory leader David Cameron to an organisation called the Conservative Friends of Israel not long after the attack on Gaza, in which Cameron went out of his way to praise Israel because it 'strives to protect innocent life'. When Oborne remarked to some Tory MPs that it was difficult to reconcile this with the 'numerous reports of human rights abuses in Gaza', he recalls, they 'looked at me as if I was distressingly naive, drawing my attention to the very large number of Tory donors in the audience.' However, the problem the British Israeli lobby is finding increasingly difficult to handle is that the actions of successive Israeli governments are producing revulsion and disillusion – and also disgust at the pusillanimity of our own political leaders,and their willingness to cave in to the combination of financial inducements and emotional blackmail deployed by Israel's sympathisers.
The ‘fulcrum moment’.
In article in the Telegraph at the end of last year about the deep splits in the governing coalition about policy towards Israel, Oborne remarked that the 'fulcrum moment' in making a close alliance with Israel 'which once seemed so natural' appear 'anachronistic and embarrassing' was the Israeli invasion of Lebanon back in 2006. And as with the David Gardner article, that by Oborne brings out the immense impact on perceptions of the continued building of settlements, as a result of which, he writes, 'the Middle East peace process is dead, and the prospect of an independent Palestinian state has vanished.'
And this is indeed the crux of the matter. An Israel which can be expected to find a modus vivendi with the Arab and Muslim worlds it inhabits has a reasonable chance of retaining both elite and mass support in Britain. But the actions of an Israel which promises to remain indefinitely in a state of embattled conflict with those worlds will divide opinion. Moreover, at the heart of the division are issues which have nothing whatsoever to do with attitudes towards Jews, and which in fact divide Jews just as much as they do the general population.
Introducing Conservative Friends of Israel back in 2007, the organisation's Political Director, Robert Halfon, opened by explaining that‘with over 2,000 members and registered supporters alongside 80 percent of the Conservative MPs, Conservative Friends of Israel has become the largest affiliated group in the Party.’ And he went on to say that anyone who signs up as a new member gets a free copy of ‘Michael Gove’s book about extreme Islamism ‘Celsius 7/7’.
Given that Michael Gove's book rehashes a whole range of neoconservative themes – prominent among them the familiar claim that Islamists are motivated by a deep hatred of freedom – Halfon could hardly have found a better way of persuading opponents of neoconservatism, that the CFI is a catastrophic influence on British politics. This claim, clearly, provides a useful propaganda tool for those wanting to suggest that enemies of Israel poses a mortal threat to people in Britain or the United States. As the owner of this blog, and also other commentators here, have reiterated time and again, such ideological simplicities obscure the diversity of political movements in the Arab and Muslim worlds, as well as the crucial fact that rather few of these pose any kind of fundamental threat to the United States, as also to Britain.
What is also obscured is the crucial fact that jihadists are motivated by concrete grievances, and also can exploit such grievances in recruiting support. Against this background, Gove’s continued rosy view of the military intervention in Iraq, which certainly caused widespread Muslim antagonism and also succeeded in replacing a defanged Sunni tyrant with Islamist Shia close to the clerical regime in Tehran – a real potential threat to Israel – is palpably delusional. Moreover, against this background an Israel which is not capable of attaining a modus vivendi with Arabs and Muslims, but tries to salvage its position by the kind of indiscriminate violence practised in Lebanon in 2006 and Gaza in 2009, and by definitively turning its back on the two-state solution, is not a strategic asset, but a major strategic liability. Jihadist terrorism is not an existential threat to Britain, any more than to the United States. The implications of a full-scale ‘clash of civilisations’, which the words and actions of Israel and its American and British supporters encourage, couldvery well be.
The one-state solution.
The logic of this view was spelt out in the address given by Ambassador Chas Freeman in Oslo last September, in which he suggested that the stranglehold of the Israeli lobby on US policy-making made it imperative for Europeans and Arabs to get together to put the kind of real pressure on Israel to which it has never been subjected throughout the Oslo process. The crucial question which he left open was whether this pressure should be directed to a kind of last minute attempt to salvage the two-state solution, or whether this should be regarded as vanished beyond hope of recovery, and the pressure should be directed to a one-state solution.
What makes the position of the CFI and other elements in the British Jewish lobby particularly absurd is precisely such pressure, which they will determinedly resist, is the only way in which Israel could conceivably be prevented from committing suicide. Absent the two-state solution, as the former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert remarked in 2007, Israel becomes an apartheid state, which will lead inexorably to the collapse of its power base among American Jews, and the one-state solution. This would certainly spell the end of Zionism. Whether Jews could coexist successfully with what is likely to be a majority Palestinian community in a binational state is an open question -- I must admit my own inclination is to be pessimistic.
It is clear that emerging splits among American Jews are a crucial element in how the policy of the United States towards the Middle East will evolve in coming years. The same holds true in Britain. And it is here that one of the most important effects of Netanyahu's defiance of Obama is liable to be felt. As in the United States, most British Jews have believed in the two-state solution. There is certainly a wide spectrum of attitudes among those who have placed their hopes in the possibility of a settlement with the Palestinians. But I think it is fair to say that a bedrock element is an identification with the fate of fellow Jews which memories of the Holocaust make if traumatic to abandon without a sense of guilt and betrayal. In a world where hopes of settlement with the Palestinians have disappeared, however, the tension between identification with Israel and the liberal values shared by very many Jews in Britain as in the United States is going to become unmanageable.
It really has become difficult to find rational grounds for optimism that the trends of the past few years can be reversed. An Israel where Avigdor Lieberman can be Foreign Minister is not going to turn back into the Israel where Abba Eban was Foreign Minister. And often repeated mantras, such as the notion that it is precisely leaders of the right, like Netanyahu, who can make fundamental compromises and carry their followers with them, look threadbare: after his defiance of Obama, the notion of him as a Nixon going to China,or a de Gaulle surrendering Algeria, looks fatuous.
Meanwhile, although still largely beneath the surface, the question of 'dual loyalty' is rearing its head. In the wake of the Holocaust, it came to be accepted as natural that British Jews should feel loyalty to Israel as well as to Britain. Indeed loyalty to Israel has commonly coexisted with a very deep sense of loyalty to Britain -- and there has been an immense Jewish contribution, much of it from refugees from disasters of twentieth-century European history, to British life. But vanishing prospects for a two-state solution raise the question of whether loyalty to Israel and loyalty to Britain remain compatible. For neoconservatives, be they Jewish or Gentile, they obviously are in harmony. But most British Jews are not neoconservatives, any more than are most American Jews. In Britain, as in the United States, issues which bitterly divided the Jewish community in Britain back in 1917, when the Balfour Declaration paved the way for the creation of Israel, and was eagerly championed by leading Jewish liberal politician, Herbert Samuel, and vitriolically attacked by another, his cousin Edwin Montagu, are again becoming inescapable.
What seems likely is that the stranglehold which the Israeli lobby has secured on the political process in the United States, together with his alliance with neoconservatives in that country and elsewhere, has blinded Netanyahu – and indeed many other Israeli leaders and supporters – to the suicidal nature of recent Israeli policy, and indeed of the whole attempt to colonise the West Bank. The extent to which Netanyahu simply has not grasped the implications of his actions was made amply evident in the extraordinary phone call he made to the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, to express his disappointment after Germany supported last month's UN resolution declaring Israeli settlements in Palestinian territories to be illegal and a 'major obstacle to the achievement of a just, lasting and comprehensive peace'. The resolution, which was sponsored by at least 130 countries, this was supported by all members of the Security Council, apart from the United States, which vetoed it. His complaint provoked a furious response from Merkel, according to Haaretz, who complained that Netanyahu had not 'made a single step to advance peace.'
Even with Germans, the assumption that one can rely on Gentile guilt over the Holocaust to inhibit criticism of Israel cuts less and less ice. One comes back again to the automatic assumption that opposition to what Israel does reflects hatred of Jews – related to which is the assumption that accusations or imputations of anti-Semitism are both an appropriate and effective means of stifling such opposition. In fact, as the balance of opinion about Israel shifts, such accusations not only progressively lose traction, but become counter-productive. The use of the post-war taboo on anti-Semitism, which arises out of the Holocaust, to stifle criticism of Israeli policy tends to create a particularly toxic form of resentment, which comes when people are prevented from expressing thoughts and feelings they regard as perfectly legitimate – while enabling those creating resentment to blind themselves to the fact they are creating it. It also is visibly tending to weaken the taboo, which is much to be regretted.
That there are sinister undertones to some of the opposition to Israeli policy – and certainly among some pro-Palestinian activists – is clear. A revival of anti-Semitism, as also the current upsurge in Islamophobia, is something to which men and women of goodwill should be implacably opposed. But anti-Semitism is certainly not the prime driver of the ongoing shift of opinion in Britain as elsewhere against Israel, and until Israelis and their supporters abroad grasp that fact, they will continue to act in ways which are leading inexorably to the end of the Zionist experiment, and indeed may already have put paid to hopes for its survival.
What an excellent article.
Thank you.
Do you foresee any successful mass movement on the part of the Palestinians to replace the corrupt and Israeli-serving PA? Any successful effort to overcome the PA-Hamas split with a united political entity serving the Palestinians' interests?
Posted by: steve | 24 March 2011 at 09:58 AM
As usual, David Habakkuk presents a comprehensive and penetrating review of the subject. His conclusions are solidly based on the evidence he presents.
However, the practical issue remains: to what extent do the shifts in public opinion in the US and Britain weaken the hold of the pro-Israel lobbies which essentially control the policy on this matter in both countries? I see no signs of that, nor does David Habakkuk present any evidence in that behalf. So long as these lobbies control government policies, it is likely that the present “suicidal” attitudes and efforts of both Israel and its supporters will continue.
Posted by: FB Ali | 24 March 2011 at 10:27 AM
The problem with polling is that "donor opinion" is vastly more important than "popular opinion" in both the USA and UK. We delude ourselves into thinking that if Israel's polling numbers keep sliding, that will produce a change in policy. Not unless it affects campaign donations...
Posted by: Matthew | 24 March 2011 at 10:56 AM
An important post worth much study IMO! My question is simple in the asking but not in answering.
To what extent are the motivations now and in the past and importantly in the future driven by the need to protect Judiasm as a religion from actual threats (e.g.another holocaust) and other threats, real or imagined?
Is that what the theocracy known as Israel is all about in its formation and operations and polity?
On the record I have a number of friends rejected from Israeli citizenship because their mothers were not practicing Jews or non-practicing Jews!
And I am certainly the last to comment on church and state relationships anywhere or anyplace. I do live in Virginia which prior to
Tom Jefferson had an established state religion.
Nonconformists not welcome here long ago and perhaps even today!
Posted by: William R. Cumming | 24 March 2011 at 11:13 AM
It appears that the freedom-hating Islamists have natural friends in authoritarian China. Which is to our loss: the real price of Islamophobia is loss of empire.
Till now, we have had the luxury of supporting Israel's excesses (which is always conflated with supporting Israel's survival.) What happens when we can't?
Posted by: Byron Raum | 24 March 2011 at 11:22 AM
The use of the post-war taboo on anti-Semitism, which arises out of the Holocaust, to stifle criticism of Israeli policy tends to create a particularly toxic form of resentment, which comes when people are prevented from expressing thoughts and feelings they regard as perfectly legitimate – while enabling those creating resentment to blind themselves to the fact they are creating it.
I like this a lot, all of it actually.
But the above is what it is all about in a nutshell. The problem is that it dilutes antisemitism and yes it makes very, very angry.
You have one side that dictates the rules with continuously more vague definitions of antisemitism.
I give you two of "my friend" Richard Witty on Mondoweiss. They seem both based on the European "Working definition of Antisemitism" linked in the Jews sans frontiers above:
Richard Witty May 12, 2010 at 3:32 pm
again and again, I am noble and you may well be antisemites:
Richard Witty March 21, 2011 at 2:56 pm
I challenged his use of race, so his extensive use of race, blood and living space has no disappeared, see e.g. here:Entry 24: Who is a Jew? Who is not a Jew?
Posted by: LeaNder | 24 March 2011 at 11:26 AM
Steve,
Palestinian politics is not a matter on which I have expertise, but I am inclined to be rather more charitable to the PA than some. I think that they bought into a central assumption underlying the whole Oslo process. It was obvious that the attempt to hold on to the 1967 territorial gains would lead naturally to Jews becoming a minority in the Greater Israel thus created. It seemed natural to conclude that the Israeli leadership, precisely because they were Zionists, would want to avoid this. Accordingly, it also seemed natural to conclude that the route to a settlement was through gestures of reassurance by the Palestinians so as to convince the Israelis that they were genuinely reconciled to Israel within its 1967 borders. This logic, although it seemed plausible enough, always sat uneasily with the continuation of the settlement process under Rabin and Peres. It was effectively tested to destruction in the negotiations of which we caught such fascinating glimpses in the 'Palestine Papers'.
A key point about this logic is that it suggested that the Palestinians did not need to develop any of the forms of pressure which movements against foreign occupiers have characteristically used. It is now evident that forms of pressure need to be created -- the question is what and how.
F B Ali, Matthew.
It is important to distinguish between short run and long run changes. The position of the Israeli lobby in Britain reminds me of that of the trade union movement some decades ago. That union power was a problem was evident in the late Sixties. That it was having crippling effects on the economy, and perverting the democratic process, was made amply clear when the National Union of Mineworkers destroyed the Heath government in 1974. Under the Wilson and Callaghan governments in 1974-9, union power appeared to be at its zenith. But by that time the foundations of that power had been hollowed out - precisely because those who exercised it had overreached themselves with the same kind of arrogance,sense of entitlement, and disregard for the interests of their fellow countrymen now displayed by the American and British Israeli lobbies. When challenged by Thatcher, the power of the unions simply collapsed.
Today it is the Israeli lobbies in the United States and Britain -- together with a financial sector running amok -- who are making effective government impossible and perverting the democratic process. The former will certainly go the way of the British union movement. But it will take time.
Certainly, it is hard to see the stranglehold of the Israeli lobbies disappearing before they have finally put paid to such chances of survival as the Zionist enterprise still has.
Posted by: David Habakkuk | 24 March 2011 at 01:18 PM
Mr. Habakkuk: excellent piece. It always seems to me that thinking of the US-Israel relationship as the dysfunctional one between an enabling individual and an addict makes a lot of sense. In this analysis Israel is the addict, the US is the enabler, and the neo-Cons are the pushers. I think what you've written captures the essence of this type of dysfunctional relationship.
Posted by: Adam L. Silverman | 24 March 2011 at 01:38 PM
The questions of who is a jew and what is antisemitism, and who is responsible for the care and protection of the State of Israel seem to take up an awful lot of space on SST and in the media. Don't look now, but the United States is falling apart and the abject state of Detroit (for example) doesn't rate a mention. Maybe we can all move to a settlement in the occupied territories, where we could carry automatic weapons, get subsidized housing and free healthcare.
Posted by: euclidcreek | 24 March 2011 at 02:27 PM
Richard Witty of course sanctions and idealizes Orthodox rabbis " building a fence around Torah" on Mondoweiss. IOW he sanctions racism of the Jewish variety as elaborated there. In past eras when Judaism proselityzed widely,it was not racist. As practised by the Zionist rabbinate is it racist to the core.
And of course Witty ignores the subjective social construct aspect which of course demystifies the whole thing. Specifically, Judaism used to define Jewish identity patrilineally. When the rabbinical consensus decided to switch, it constructed a system in which a multitude, perhaps most modern Jews would not be Jews by the original patrilineal mythical construct.
Yet the Wittys of the world are permitted to idealize a certain kind of racism in the way no other American ethnicities are,and particularly if the consequential oppression of the Other was ongoing.
Posted by: Ken Hoop | 24 March 2011 at 02:37 PM
euclidcreek
this blog is about my interests. I can do nothing about detroit. I don't have subsidized housing any longer, but I have been known to carry a gun. pl
Posted by: Patrick Lang | 24 March 2011 at 03:54 PM
david habakkuk,
i always admire your thinking. coupled with clifford's link to the paper which shows the neurotic need of zionists to control public discourse, limit reservoirs of knowledge and freedom for only them to propagandize, proves their goal is totalitarian control of us gov and people. there is light in that more people are becoming aware and good people like phil weiss are working to educate the jewish community from within.
the zionists are so neurotic they don't trust anyone who tries to show them there is a higher ground. evidenced by the fact they try to marginalize critics of injustice like the col.--who, if they opened their hearts would realize are good friends.
the sound of one hand typing.
Posted by: optimax | 24 March 2011 at 03:58 PM
euclidcreek,
Few have cared about Detroit since '68 or so, though Mayor Bing seems to be doing a good job given the daunting tasks ahead of him. The city is far better for his hard work, at 70+ he sure didn't need the job (and unlike Bloomberg didn't need to spend $100 million to get it); last time I looked there's no riots or National Guard on the streets (a lack of salt trucks on those same streets last snowstorm did get someone fired, so there's progress!). I'll be sure to take another look Saturday when I meet my Canadian friends at the Joe to see the Leafs lose one more time, but that's another story.
Posted by: Fred | 24 March 2011 at 09:31 PM
March 24, 1933, the day that the London Daily Express displayed the banner headline: "Judea Declares War on Germany." "Jews of All the World Unite."
http://www.wintersonnenwende.com/scriptorium/english/archives/articles/jdecwar.html
Posted by: Fiorangela | 24 March 2011 at 09:41 PM
this is intersthing subj but you know a palestine can not have in it even one jewish this is not for something leaders can have debates so at the same time it is important for us to return to our homes where they are this is anyplace so this is one state called palestine that is it no one ever believes 2 states bec this was only for this time not for much time
Posted by: Eyad | 24 March 2011 at 09:50 PM
the last form i was given today before minor surgery on the elbow was a valuntary one with a single question, was i hispanic or not? that makes 2 groups of white people that got themselves designed a constitutionaly affirmed minority. both are mucking their way to power.
Posted by: optimax | 24 March 2011 at 11:43 PM
I have been curious about the Jews and Zionism ever since I took a dislike to Israel about 11 years ago. And after 11 years of trying to find the very first instance of anti semitism and persecution and 'the causes' all the way back to creation I basically decided that Jews were a tribe that decided being victims was a handy tool for beseeching various Kings and Queens throughout history for special protection in return for their services to whatever rule....services that usually made the Jews very unpopular with the common masses. Needless to say history has many victims and persecuted enthic and religious groups but the Jews, unlike most other victims, made it their speciality.
Then the zionist of the 1800's turned it into a full blown cult. And it's been the longest running con game in the universe ever since.
If you've ever tried to have a sane and logical conversation with a zionist, with all their religious mysticism and 'people-hood" and victim hood and their inferiority complex posing as superiority...forget it..you can't get through to that kind of primitive mentality.
Jackqline Rose, a zionist (lite) herself, wrote a book 'The Question of Zion' in which she thoerized that zionism attracted mentally mal adjusted individuals. I am sure she would include the Christian zionist too although she didn't mention them specifically.
Best book written that busts all the myths Jews created around themselves/ Israel/Zionism:
"The Invention of the Jewish People" by Shlomo Sand
http://www.amazon.com/Invention-Jewish-People-Shlomo-Sand/dp/1844674223
If you are a bible believer you will hate it because science and real history destroys the whole Jewish narrative about Jews as "unique people" with a right/claim to 'self determination" in Israel.
Posted by: Cal | 25 March 2011 at 01:05 AM
Then the zionist of the 1800's turned it into a full blown cult. And it's been the longest running con game in the universe ever since.
Cal, maybe 11 years aren't enough to understand?
If you are really interested in the historical context of the roots of Herzl's Zionism, political Zionism, I'd suggest you read the book by Marcel Stoelzler: The Nation, the State and the Jews. Liberalism and the Antisemitism Dispute in Bismarck's Germany
You cannot understand 19th century Zionism without understanding the impact of 19th nationalism with it's developing foundation myth, especially the questions of who belongs and who doesn't. The "late nation" (die späte Nation) Germany is a good place to study, if you are really trying to understand.
The 19th century gave Zionism it's special nationalist bend, which doesn't mean there were only political or nationalist Zionists, many were cultural Zionists too.
Posted by: LeaNder | 25 March 2011 at 08:57 AM
Fiorangela, yes, there was a Jewish boycott of Nazi Germany, justifiably so, and yes the Nazis cooperated with the Zionists. And yes again, German Jews thought it would endanger them even more, and Zionists supported the Nazis in this respect: Argued against it.
But if you look closer the Nazis didn't believe "the Jews" would be able to create a state. As they felt that such a state would endanger their vision of the future 1.000 years German rule with it's World Capital Germania
If the article you linked to states something similar, then please excuse my comment, I tend to overreact on half-truth on the issue. I have no time to read it now, but have read quite a bit about the topic already.
Posted by: LeaNder | 25 March 2011 at 09:30 AM
Fiorangela and LeaNder! There is no doubt in my mind that the Arabs would have suffered the fate of the Jews if the NAZI Reich had reached its zenith. And of course anti-semitism was a core belief for the NAZIs!
Posted by: William R. Cumming | 25 March 2011 at 10:07 AM
Col.
FYI:
Eyad has gone through the filter !
English is garbled :-)
Posted by: The beaver | 25 March 2011 at 11:38 AM
LeaNder,
An even better and much shorter thing to read to understand Zionism's historical context is historian (and Jewish) Gabriel Kolko's 2007 article: Israel: Mythologizing a 20th Century Accident
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/kolko.php?articleid=11058
It started in Austria, not Germany, after all.
Posted by: MRW | 25 March 2011 at 11:50 AM
LeaNder...
Well, 11 years of more research than even Jews or more specifically zionist do on themselves, judging by the wildly inaccurate statements they make that conflict with real history, is long enough to determine that they keep repeating the same pattern over and over...pre and post zionism.
And yes, I am familiar with the line of thought that claims zionism arose due to 19th century nationalism.
But I don't really agree.
The seeds of zionism, the seperateness, the uniqueness, were in the Jewish culture since at least the 1400's which was as far back as I could go and be able to count on the material as objective and factual. It just took a manic depressive like Herzl to start turning Judaism into a nationalistic 'peoplehood' movement.
Sweeping nationalism was the table they spread their map on but the culture zionism sprung from was already there.
Maybe you could call nationalism the 'launching pad' for modern zionism or maybe not-- but I think we would all agree that the holocaust was the launching pad for Israel.
And IMO it was a huge mistake for the Jews and everyone else...certainly for the US.
Posted by: Cal | 25 March 2011 at 12:43 PM
LeaNder,
You said..."Fiorangela, yes, there was a Jewish boycott of Nazi Germany, justifiably so,"
The Jewish congress didn't just call for Jews to boycott Germany, they called for --- "America to boycott German goods".
And therein lies the problem...without going into whether or not we should have.
And I don't have to explain it because the Jewish idea that they have the right to dictate and manipulate the policy of countries in which they are a small minority and for strictly their own people or tribal benefit continues to this day to the detriment of the majority as we all see. This is the attitude that gave rise to some of the old canards about the Jews.
I also doubt that the Nazis thought at the time that a small Jewish colony in Palestine would be a threat to the German Empire, but if you can provide me something on why Germany feared that I will be glad to read it.
Can the Jews build a viable state? The CIA Country Congressional report of 2006 says Israel is still not a self sustaining State and relies on foreign aid to meet it's obligations.
It is not even in question that without US support, influence and strong arming in the ME in Israel's favor Israel would long since have ceased to exist.
After 60 years, judging by their current state, it's looking like the Jews or Israelis actually are not capable of governing themselves or anyone else.
What have the 'World Jews" accomplished in Israel on their own except funneling trillions of other countries dollars into making the desert bloom, corroding the US own national interest and now creating religious fascist state and untold trouble for everyone associated with them and around them?
I am one who does not think, because of long observation, that the Zionist mentality will change. I could be pleasantly surprised, but I doubt it.
I would suggest that those interested in 'real' history and facts concerning Israel, recorded by people on the ground, start here:
http://www.archiveeditions.co.uk/titledetails.asp?tid=124
These ten volumes draw together documents found in the British National Archives to trace the origins and development of the Zionist movement in the 19th and 20th centuries, with specific reference to the idea, and eventually the goal, of establishing a Jewish homeland.
Then to understand all the ‘activities’ of the Jews in the US start with the Truman Presidential Library, just put Israel in the search function. Then go on to the Carter Presidential Library and read the oral history of John Gunther Dean, a German Jew and US Amb to Lebanon for Zionist attitudes in Germany and for Israeli activities in the ME. Then in Eisenhower’s Presidential Library you can find a copy of the letter he sent to Israel’s PM telling him that US policy decisions on the ME would be made , quote...“as if there was not a single Jew in the US” ...the occasion of this letter was a implied ‘threat’ by Israel’s PM to Eisenhower that Israel would control the US Jews in the next US election against Eisenhower if he didn’t agree to Israel’s demands.
And then if you have time go to Thomas.gov to monitor the trade bills, exemptions, resolutions and the hundreds of other 'giveaways' churned out by congress for Israel.
Also you can now check out earmarks by congressperps like Ackerman who inserted millions worth of earmarks for Israeli hospitals and medical facilities while Americans were standing in line at free health clinics not provided by tax dollars but by altruistic medical professionals on their own dime and also see that most of his earmark spending of our tax dollars went to strictly Jewish projects.
http://www.house.gov/list/press/ny05_ackerman/PR_032609.html
And this one on Ackerman’s earmarks list just boggles the mind:
“Ysrael A. Seinuk, P.C. Consulting Engineers (Manhattan, NY) – Increase the company’s workforce – $2,300,000 – Funding would be used to hire additional staff so they can better serve their government clients.”
See if you find a government client in the company listed profile or projects..but you can find a Jewish Heritage Center they are working on as well as believe it or not Trump Towers.
So Ackerman gives 2.3 million to a billion dollar private company so they can hire more people? What do you suppose they used the money for?
http://www.yaseinuk.com/yas_profile.cfm
We all can read the rants/opinions about Israel and their lobby and the competing hasbara spin but there ‘s nothing like going to the horses mouth to confirm the facts for yourself.
If Israel disappeared tomorrow or if better yet, it’s friends in our government did, if might upset the Jews but it would be good for America and Americans and others.
Posted by: Cal | 25 March 2011 at 03:13 PM
Last spring, the Israeli ambassador in Washington (who happens to be a dual U.S. and Israeli citizen) Michael Oren made an emergency visit back to the Israeli Foreign Ministry, where he warned all the top Israeli diplomats that he sees a "techtonic shift" in the official U.S. institutional attitude towards Israel. Among the tell-tale signs that Oren correctly identified: The widespread popularity of the Walt-Mearsheim book about the Israel Lobby, which remained on the non-fiction best seller lists for a long time. Neither professor was fired by Harvard or the University of Chicago, respectively, and their academic credentials were, in fact, enhanced by their effort to reveal the inner workings of the Israel Lobby and their tangled web with the Israeli government.
More recently, Anthony Cordesman, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, had penned an essay daring to ask, following the Gaza flotilla attack, whether Israel had become a strategic liability for the United States. Cordesman's implied answer was a resounding "yes."
All of this is to say that, while the Israeli Lobby and Israeli government can squeeze an American president and congress still, in the near term, the influence of the Israel Lobby is diminishing significantly, and their ability to push around U.S. institutions, from the Pentagon to the intelligence community to the diplomatic corps is waning rapidly.
Note that during the period of the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions, top Israeli diplomats could not, I am told, even get their American counterparts on the phone. Whether or not he retracted his remarks under pressure, Gen. David Petraeus did tell a Senate committe that the U.S.-Israeli relationship is jeopardizing the safety of American troops throughout the Islamic world. He was CENTCOM commander at the time, so he ought to know.
The era of tolerance for bigoted theocracies is coming to an end, and that will bite both Israel and Saudi Arabia (and Iran) in the ass at some point very soon. There are offsetting factors, like oil geopolitics that will mitigate against most American officials saying what they really think about the Saudis, but the tolerance is diminishing rapidly.
The Cold War ended 20 years ago, and Israeli's role as an adjunct to NATO (why else did Israel build an arsenal of 200-plus nuclear warheads with delivery sytems to match)? Certainly not to use against the Palestinians, Syria, Iraq, or even Iran. The scale of the Israeli nuclear arsenal was part of our Cold War second strike capability, even as Israel was playing both ends against the middle,as the Jonathan Pollard case illustrated most clearly.
Bottom line: Israel is no longer what it was under the Cold War alignments. It is just a country that is engaging in suicidal self-isolating policies for ideological and theological reasons. The whole thing smacks of Shakespearian tragedy. When a society is incapable of changing their axioms, when those axioms are leading to their eventual self-destruction, that is tragic. The Rabin assassination was just the clearest indication of how wedded the Israeli rightwing and religious extremists are to their delusions. When Rabin dared to step towards a change, he was assassinated. I don't know what would have come of Oslo had Rabin lived, but I do know that his assassination led to the political apparatus that either planned or celebrated his assassination being put in perpetual power in Tel Aviv.
Posted by: Harper | 25 March 2011 at 03:22 PM