Michael Oren, author of "Power, Faith, and Fantasy:America in the Middle East:1776 to the Present" and an officer in the IDF also advocates Israel risking isolation. While he has said Israel should have attacked Syrian military targets during the Lebanon War of last summer he is a strong advocate of an Israeli Syrian peace deal. He believes that the Bush Administration derailed the peace negotiations that had been going on in private. His view is that a peace deal would be worth Israel isolating itself from the United States.

Just an aside if you read Dershowitz' book you would note that he fully advocates a two state solution. He says he does not even have a particular deal whether Taba or Geneva, for example, as one he particularly supports. He just rejects the cravenness of some in supporting the Palestinian claims at all costs and the dishonesty of people like Carter. What increasingly is clear that it is the apologists for the Palestinians who smear their opponents with mistakements of fact.
Daniel A. Greenbaum

Would someone tell me why Zionism is not racism?
Why do russians have more right to land in israel than the people who were born there? Josh Marshall has said it's because the "the world owes the jews" for the holocaust. There's an argument at least, if not one I agree with. Can someone at least match that?

Is it way past time to talk just about the Israeli//Palestinian conflict?
I am reading such comments as this January 25 article on Belfast Telegraph (online)
************
The Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, dramatically raised the stakes in the international showdown with Iran last night, with a clear warning that his country was prepared to use military force to prevent Tehran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
and
Israeli military officials warned this week that Israel – acting alone or in coordination with the US – could launch preemptive military strikes against Iran before the end of this year.
****************************
I do not have much experience providing a link, but i will give it a try:
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/world-news/article2184251.ece

In addition, there are numerous articles in US publications suggesting that Bush/Cheney may lead us into war with Iran.

Is Israel dictating US foreign policy? Is that just an excuse because it is what Bush/Cheney want anyway for their own reasons and involving Israel is just an excuse?

I do not know the answers to these questions. But in my opinion, the fact that this talk about attacking Iran is around sounds very life-threateningly dangerous to the United States well being as a country (not to mention Israel) and as a planet.

A mystery to me how this double posting occurred. Sorry.

Yeah it appears that the drumbeat for attacks on Iran have been getting louder. With the current tumultous state of Isreal domestic politics, I wouldnt put it past them to make such a grave mistake.

Such recklesness on Isreals/U.S. part illustrates the serious problem that we have of having our foreign policy so entrenched with Isreals. When Isreal makes such reckless decisions, we will be left to clean it up,and justly will take most of the blame.

But why do I have a "right of return." Do the descendants of the puritans have a similar right regarding england? How about all of the other immigrant groups in this country, and others. People were thrown out of their homes to make way for people some of whose ancestors lived there 2000 years ago. How can this be just?

It's a fact on the ground there's no dispute. But no one makes moral claims in polite company about the right of american expansion, or in this country about the British Empire. And you're on record saying that arab democracies would not be in Israel's best interests, and that israel need to work with the palestinians "whether we like them or not." I've quoted that one before, but this time from memory, so I'm sorry if it's not perfect. So no, I don't trust you to know the difference between fairness and self-interest.

I'll ask the same question to the person who rated my comment above a '1.'

Robert Satloff, who runs the Washington Institute of Near East Policy, is so concerned that he advised Israel to look for alliances with Sunni Arab states like Saudi Arabia while predictably (and incredibly) adding that he doesn’t “buy that Israel needs to make peace with the Palestinians” to form that alliance!

Yes, it seems rather implausible doesn't it? But we are apparently already seeing the beginnings of a propaganda campaign aimed at forging the conditions for such an alliance. Perhaps some Saudi strategists are thinking "why assume the costs and diplomatic risks of developing our own nuclear program, when we might be able to fit ourselves some day under an Israeli nuclear umbrella by making common cause with them against the Iranians and Hizbollah?" And some Israelis might see the attractions of cultivating a stable supply of oil, and immeasurably improving their diplomatic and security position in the region by offering a security arrangement to the Saudis and other Sunni states. The Israelis are still clearly the most formidable military power in the region, and have some attractive wares to sell in that department.

Both the Saudis and the Israelis must be concerned about their continued reliability of the US, which has traditionally guaranteed the security of each. Perhaps we are at the beginning of a historic regional shift similar to what occurred in the 20th century when the United States took over much of the role of the declining British empire. The US and Saudis have had a long term security-for-oil deal. But the Saudis may detect that the US public is tiring of its commitments to that violence prone region, and may be inclined to start shopping for another vendor of security. Israelis may detect the same decline in longterm US support, and may be preparing to sieze an opportunity in the not too distant future.

Of course, one can only forge an alliance between antagonists by raising the spectre of a common enemy. Recently we have seen a huge upsurge in anti-Shia and anti-Iranian propaganda across the region, some of it being driven by punditry in the United States and Israel, and including all the usual paranoid conspiracy theories about dark Shia plots to take over the Middle East. This propaganda effort seems to be coming out of some parts of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt and Turkey as well. Some people seem very interested in manufacturing a regional Sunni-Shia Cold War, with the Israelis climbing on board the Sunni side, at least to some degree.

Obviously, a strong relationship between Israel and Saudi Arabia, especially in light of the ongoing Palestinian problem, would seem unthinkable given the hostility of much of the Saudi and broader Arab public to Israel. So any thoughts along those lines must be based on the notion that a lot of Sunni Arabs can be induced to fear and hate Shia Muslims even more than they fear and hate Isralis.

Ultimately this is a dreadfully short-sighted and dangerous propaganda movement, and should be resisted. And I hope Americans have a clearer idea about where US interests lie. The US would not at all be served by a regional Cold War in the Middle East, with the constant threats of violence, disruption of oil supplies, great power wrangling for influence, and periodic US military deployments that would entail - and even the threat of an eventual nuclear exchange. The US benefits from nuclear nonproliferation, and a stable, peaceful and multipolar balance of power in the region.

And falling into the trap of hot and heavy anti-Iran and anti-Shia activism will ultimately empower the Salafist groups on the Sunni side - the very groups that are responsible for almost all of the terrorism against the US and western interests in recent years (including a good part of the attacks on US soldiers in Iraq.) Despite recent efforts to get Americans to believe otherwise, neither Hizbollah or Iranian agents have been bombing US embassies, crashing planes into US skyscrapers, or bombing European trains in recent years.

The US should be beginning to tilt just gently away from some of its traditional allies in the region, and tilting gently toward Iran - not with an aim toward abandoning the old allies entirely in favor of new ones, but with an eye toward forging a new balance of power in the region, with the potential for solid but non-exclusive US relations with all of its major players. One has the possibility to use the Iraq crisis as an opportunity to begin forging such a relationship, and get us out of Iraq in the process. The US has developed decent relations with Sciri, and good relations with the Kurds, both of which give us a path toward opening up relations with Iran. In addition, the US and the Iranians share a common interest in stabilizing Iraq and securing the Gulf.

I encourage Americans to sift through the large masses of anti-Iranian hype, distotion and lies that have been foisted upon us in the past few years, with an accelerating pace over the past few months, separate the bits of truth from the abundance of dross, and make a rational calculation of US interests on that basis. These distortions are being promulagated by parties that do not have the interest of the American people at heart, and also by hardline elements in the administration and Congress who might think they have our well-being at heart, but whose calculation of the American interest is no better now than it was in 2002 and 2003.

So, you are Jewish. You would never even listen to Carter regarding any issue and he is one of the worst Presidents ever (notwithstanding the fact that he brokered the deal that brought peace between Israel and Egypt, and later Jordan).

Moreover, no one ever criticizes Israel around you, so you don't buy the whole idea of this blog.

Gee, I think you just helped prove Mr. Rosenberg's thesis!

Those who believe they are helping Israel by shouting down any and all opposition to counterproductive Israeli policies are not helping Israel at all. They are simply building resentment within the body politic of the one nation in the world which Israel needs to survive.

The problem is, there is nothing special about Israel-- it's simply a landmass associated with the letters "ISRAEL."

Just like some people get emotional about a particular sports team, some go overboard with countries too.

IMO, Nietizche's observation-- that power itself causes resentment, will be the reason why countries like the USA and Israel will be a pain in the ass until they figure out how to transcend imperialism and nationalism-- i.e., not surving on racism, military and poverty.

Christ threw the money changers out of the temple; Christ let people know the true character of the pharisees--- not much has changed in 2000 years!

The issue may be the other way around. In the Financial Times(from the Friday 26, 2007 edition of the paper) Philip Stephens writes a column entited "The Middle East adjusts to Ameria's diminishing power." He ends his column with this observation "It is easier though, to be pessimistic than optimistic. Just as the US has lost much of its leverage so Mr. Olmert lacks the political capital to take risks. Weakness, American and Israeli, is not a propitious foundation for peace."

Stephens' view is that the only winner from the weakness of the U.S. is Iran. Specifically in regard to Israel and Iran. "The perception of Iran's nuclear ambitios as an imminent and potentially catastrophic threat, though runs beyond the Israeli right. So, I suspect does the worry that a weakened US and an indifferent world will alck the resolve to confront Tehran. The thought left hanging in almost every conversation is that if Washington baulks at the task Israel will send its own bombers to attakc Iran's nuclear installations."

One one ray of hope Stephens sees is that the rise of Iran has frighten the Sunni Arab world as much as it has Israel. They are trying to move closer to Israel expecting Israel to protect them from Iran.

Daniel A. Greenbaum

The occupation didn't end when Arafat came back, and its going on to this moment.

Unfortunately, in 1991 Arafat was brought back and instilled in the Palestinians the ideas of martyrdom and of killing Jews.

I rated this "marginal" since you're making this into a regigious issue. While that might be part of it, I'm sure you believe in security for Israel and the Palestinians need security too.

I have no idea what Arafat did or didn't do but, surely, leaders may ask their countryman to defend the homeland.

Thank you, Cutta2k4. Much appreciated. mj

Seth, the law of return applies to you because of the Holocaust. In the wake of the murder of one-third of the Jews in the world, the new State of Israel decided that, as a matter of policy, every Jew worldwide should be able to come to Israel (or flee to Israel) if necessary.

I cherish the Law of Return. And I look forward to the day soon when a Palestinian state will be established in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem to which every Palestinian will be able to return to by right.

Don't worry about the LOR applying to you. No one will ever be forced to utilize it although, under sertain conditions, I have no doubt you would.

My politically active Jewish friends get quite agitated whenever I dismiss the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a common "land war." They hate it. I tell them I like Israel because it's a fairly liberal democracy and I respect the effort Israel has made over the years to minimize civilian deaths in its war with the Palestinians. I also respect and support Israel's right to existence as much as I do for any nation-state created in the aftermath of the World Wars. And I don't think Palestinian suicide bombings are in any way justified. Yet at the end of the day, I acknowledge that Israel's alliance with the US is military/strategic alliance, not some existential Judeo-Christian union.

For saying this, I have been called an anti-semite. Which is puzzling, since I hold all of the world's great religions in equal distain.

The main problem my Jewish friends seem to have is that I refuse to listen to their historical/existential arguments about the world owing something to the Jewish people or how Jews have some special right to the land over Palestinians. "Land is land," I say, "and you guys are fighting over it. Your holy books don't matter. Even the Holocaust doesn't matter, insofar as it has little to do with an existential right to a piece of land. Land is land!" They hate it.

They really don't like it when I say: "Look, Americans killed millions of Indians to get America. Land can be an ugly business." The whole Indian reservation analogy...never popular. But hey, isn't that what's going on here? The strong not giving land back to the weak, just because it would be the nice thing to do? It's really quite a messy moral conundrum.

Of course, I am just as much of a pain in the ass to my friends who support the Palestinian cause. I am not overly concerned with their historical arguments or holy books either. Anyone with half a brain can see that the conflict can last another year or another 100 years and it will always end the same way - with a compromise over land. When the land deal gets done, the war will end. Whose side am I on? Hey, that's easy. Whoever is making the most reasonable offer of compromise. Since it's just another land war, however, I don't follow closely enough to track which offer is better at any particular time...

Not really sure what my point is. Just sharing, since today is a slow afternoon...

Edit: I've been reading through the comments on this and MJ's other Israel-related post. I'm working on a formula for figuring out who is a credible voice in this debate. One conclusion: you are not a credible commentor if you fail to acknowledge that the actions of your side are in some way immoral. It just seems to me that the one defining characteristics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is that both sides hold morally untenable positions, albeit for different reasons. If a commentor starts by acknowledging the moral failings of his or her own side, I will listen to them. If they claim blanket moral superiority, however, I know they are full of it or blinded by their passion.

No comment. Everything I know about Israelis came from Batya Gur's novels.

Then give them back their land, or share it.

No, but Palestinian progress and well-being did.

If this sample of Americans is at all representative, non-Jewish Americans feel very inhibited about talking about Israel out of fear that any criticism will be labeled "anti-Semitism."

Gee, MJ: ever wonder why this might be? Might it have something to do with the existence of a large, sophisticated and well-financed PR effort (call it, maybe, something like "the Israel Lobby"?) to promulgate this very attitude in the US government, press and (kinda as an afterthought) the public?

Naaah, no such thing, I guess... just another anti-Jewish canard....

You must think the Arabs are children. For decades Arab leaders have used Israel to get their people to ignore their own failings. How upsetting it must be for a small non-Muslim country to succeed militarily and economically while Arab nation after Arab nation have failed.

Through most of the period of Israel's existence the Shah controlled Iran. Once the Mullahs took over the Saudis and the Iranians have been in serious and deadly conflict. It is one reason why the Saudis poured billions into Afghanistan. The Saudis have a very sophisticated and well funded intelligence service. Jordan and Israel have been doing business for decades. They know that the Shiia have been their "enemies" for about 1500 years. An Iran with nuclear weapons is a far greater danger to the Sunni Arabs than Israel will ever be. This does not take convincing just living in the real Middle East.

The growing violence in Lebanon and in Gaza both have Iranian involvement. Iranians have also been stoking the violence in Iraq. They are hardly a begign power but a would be hegemon. If that progresses watch for a growing conflict between Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The notion that the Arabs and Israelis do not know as well as some Americans who want to wish away real dangers or wish to just surrender is intriguing.

Daniel A. Greenbaum

.> and land in the Western territories
> could have been sold to compensate the
> [slave] owners

Too bad about those Indians tribes, eh?

sPh

More nonsense. How exactly are Arabs more "homogeneous" than Jews? Are you claiming something racial/genetic? Linguistic? What?

In fact, there Jews and Arabs in the Levant are closely related, genetically-speaking.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2000/05/000509003653.htm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/742430.stm

And the Spanish genetics Professor Antonio Arnaiz-Villena who concluded that was accused of .... wait for it....Anti-Semitism! You guessed it!

Not only that, the editors of the journal where his paper was published gave into pressures (from predictable sources) and asked libraries to physically tear out the offending article from the scientific journal! Yes, saying that Jews and Arabs are genetically related leads to book-burning, and they say that Zionism isn't racist LOL!!

Elsevier Science, which publishes Human Immunology, sent a letter to subscribers last month withdrawing an article published in the September issue of the journal. The letter asked readers "to either ignore the article in question ... or, preferably, to physically remove the relevant pages."

On, incidentally, if a bunch of guys from Brooklyn and Poland can claim a right to "self-determination" why are Palestinians to be denied their own "self-determination"?

Did you read what I wrote? That is precisely my point.

The reason why Italians have a "Right of Return" is that the birthrate for native Italians is so low that the nation is becomming depopulated of Italians. It is an effort to fight the declining population.

Mr. Rosenberg says:

This phenomenon can be seen almost every day in "Letters to the Editors" columns.

It can also be seen here at the café. If one looks at the number of comments response to posts and tabulates them I suspect that the statistics will be incontrovertible.  Also it strikes me there are very different patterns to responses.  In cases where the original post doesn't involve the Mideast, the majority of posts respond to the original article.  In cases where they original post does involve the Mideast, respondents are much more likely to address each other and address each other in terms which encourage escalation of the rhetoric. 

The organization of TPMCafe allows one to scan and verify this phenominon...each response gets narrower and narrower.  I vaguely remember seeing one exchange where the last response was perhaps 1" wide, if that...making me wonder what the hypothetical limit actually was.  I don't know what this means, exactly, except that it does encourage me to think about when and where to get into the fray, and to recognize in myself that I don't always have to get the last word in.  

aMike

p.s.  Enjoyed the original commentary, Mr. R.

Open minded non-Jews who want to criticize Israel should read Israeli newspapers. Israel is as self-critical society as they come and honest criticism can only help. Non-Jews should be advised that honest criticism, as opposed to name calling or racial comparisons (Zionism is racism, Carter's apartheid, etc.), is encouraged. Surely, Israelis don't shy away from even the most nasty, but not racist, criticism.

sigh. don't you think that most Israeli papers are read -- and discussed -- mostly by Jews? Who else is interested?

Of course they can be self-critical. And even many of the non-jews residing in Israel, who might read and respond through letters to the editor, are evangelical Christians. They are busy praying for Zionism to work as the fulfillment of the Messianic prophecies so the Second Coming can go forward they can all go to heaven and all un-redeemed ("saved") Jews can go burn hell.

The point is that it is well nigh impossible for American non-jews
to be critical of Israel no matter how open minded they are, and no matter what they read.

MJ: can you be more specific about where you differ with Carter's thesis?

I just finished a few nights ago and I think he hits the nail right on the head.

The difference, of course, is that the "returning" Germans weren't handed the lands and properties of Palestinians who were either killed or shoved into refugee camps.

Since I enjoyed every one of Gur's books immensely (even though her latest one, published posthumously, had a stinker of a plot), I was sure someone here would tell me that Gur's depiction of Israeli life is cartoonish and that her books were written to be sold to naive and uninformed Gentiles.

Whatever the Arab leaders have done, the UNDENIABLE FACT is that Israel was built on ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.

Period.

Ummm...indeed, there are many failures in Arab countries. The post to which you were responding, however, was about Iran, which is not Arab but (mostly) Persian.

While Iran is no liberal paradise, in many respects, there is more room for dissent and creativity than in several Arab countries, especially Saudi Arabia.

So, is your point about Muslims or Arabs?

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

One trend that concerns me is the tendency to take the political short-cut to justifying the right of Israeli self-determination by recourse to right wing Christian evangalists who are hankering for apocolypse so they can get on up to heaven.

I far prefer that it be grounded on an old-fashioned Wilsonian right of self-determination. That, of course, implies the same for the Palestinians ... but that's a good thing too.

You are absolutely right to make that point. In the terms of the times, that would have been considered a solution, but it only reveals another problem. Although I agree with your point, I doubt that humanitarian concern for the Native Americans is what kept the Western land from being used to compensate the slave owners. American racism is broad and deep.

And in any case, in Jamaica, the only instance I happen to have read about where the slave owners were compensated, the amount of money given was only enough to cover the debts that the planters owed. In other words, the only interests that were really guaranteed were those of the financiers who had invested in slavery. This illustrates that the money trail behind slavery goes beyond the slave owners. (Everyone who invested money with the financiers who loaned money to the planters was also profiting from slavery.) Even ending slavery does not necessarily change the underlying economic power structure, nor does ending slavery necessarily validate the moral scruples of those who profited from it and kept their profits.

You cannot have slavery on a large scale without slavery being in a partnership with the broader industrial and economic structure. This might help to explain the endless compromises that were made in dealing with American slavery.

Here is a review from the National Park Service of a book, The Meaning of Slavery in the North, that might be of interest to you on the subject of the money trail behind slavery in the United States.
http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/hisnps/NPSBooks/slavery.htm

Douglas Harper's web site, Slavery in the North (www.slavenorth.com) has further background information on the money trail behind slavery, and other topics. He is the one who suggested using the land in the West to compensate the slave owners.

Since I am not an historian, I cannot independently verify any of the information contained in these sources. To the best of my knowledge, however, these are all reputable scholarly sources.

Although the Gilded Age _does_ seem to be coming back in many respects, the last time I checked it is not 1880 any more.

sPh

right! I agree with you! That's why I push for a one-state solution because the concept of "Israel" is much bigger than an ongoing property fight...

as I wrote the other day, the idea of Israel as a "Zoo for the Jews" came to my mind since, unfortunately, a discussion of Israel revolves around semetism and the fact that Israel is a "protected habitat" for them.

if you love something, set it free!

If you think this is silly, read The Little Prince.

It's a funny and popular story about people living on their own little planets...

Howard,

I took it that Daniel was in effect agreeing with my analysis, despite an initial show of disagreeing. He thinks that there is some sort of effort by Sunni Arab powers and Israelis to make common cause against Iran in particular, and Shia Muslims in general - although he suggests that this is just an extension of a certain level of cooperation that has been going on for some time, some of it covert and at the intelligence agency level.

My own view is that Great Shia Hegemonic Threat is one of the most ridiculously exagerated and overhyped "crises" since ... well since the Great Iraqi WMD threat. But Daniel thinks Israel and Sunni Arab powers are right to make common cause against Iran, Hizbollah and other Shia groups because the Sunni and Shia have been enemies - or at least "enemies" - for centuries, and because Iran and it's Mad Mullahs are more dangerous to Saudi Arabia than is Israel. Whether this is true or false is hard to say for sure. And if it is true, I suspect the more serious threat to Saudi Arabia from Iran is economic rather than military. But it is clear that whatever the reality of the threat, the Israelis have a strong interest in encouraging the notion that the Iranian threat to Saudi Arabia and other Sunni powers is serious.

As for the US - I don't see why we have a particular interest in choosing sides in a Saudi and Iranian power competition. Our aim should be balance, and as a result we should be drawing closer to Iran at this point, not further away. But this strategically intelligent move by the US is something that Israelis and Saudis both have an interest in discouraging.

When Daniel says I must think Arabs are babies, I take it he means that I am assuming that these leaders don't understand their own interests. Why would they hype the Iran/Shia threat if Iran was not really that threatening after all? But Daniel's own first paragraph carries the answer to this question. Just as these leaders have long exploited Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in order to distract their subjects from their own problems, and focus them on an external enemy, they have the same motive now for exagerating and exploiting the spectre of a Shia threat. And there is a deep supply of popular conspiracy theories about Shia plots upon which they may draw to stimulate the desired nightmares.

But why contemplate a switch from the Israeli bogeyman to the Iranian bogeyman? Isn't one external enemy enough to keep their populations in thrall? Well as I suggested, maybe the Saudis have concluded that long after the US has tired of the Middle East and departed from it, the Israelis will still be there, and with their very large arsenal of nuclear weapons will be the dominant military power. And maybe the Saudis have concluded that they need to start shopping for another security umbrella in Tel Aviv as insurance against a rainy day, and out of worry about the holes that are developing in the leaky American umbrella.

Israel has a further incentive in pursuing this course: the prospect of a future Arab bailout on their Palestinian problem. If they are able to improve their relations with Sunni states, those states may begin to take steps in the not too distant future toward the resettlement of the Palestinians "in the lands of their Arab kinsmen", and thus help to accomplish the dream of Israeli and pro-Israel hawks everywhere.

Neverthess, by Walt and Mearshimer's standard, for example, MJ is very much a part of The Israel Lobby by his position in the Israel Policy Forum.  Unfortunately, many here among us presume that pro-Israel organizations are an insidious monolith.

Oww!

Excuse me. "Young wife"

The world would be an interesting place, to say the least, if, because of a holocaust - and there have been many horrors inflicted on people other than Jews through the millenia - other ethnicities cited a "law of return" as their legimate claim to some piece of real estate. The chaos that would ensue would probably result in the World Court (does that still exist?) deciding that the law of return was null and void.

Genocide? No. The Jews were the victims of genocide. The world population of Jews dropped from 17 million in 1939 to 11 million in 1945. Six million innocent civilians were eradicated.

The Palestinians experienced dispossession. They were forced from their homes (and/or fled) and ended up in nearby countries or refugee camps. Most stayed in Palestine.

The Palestinian population has increased dramatically since 1948. There was no genocide.

The 6,000,000 Jews of Europe would have given everything they had to only face expulsion from their homes, rather than see their children gassed.

That is genocide. Your charge that Israel engaged in genocide (a charge no Palestinian has made) is obscene.

I think your first paragraph's reference to genocide is flat sick.

What the Israelis are doing is similar to what Andy Jackson did to the Cherokees. Wrong as hell, but not genocide.

There is a solution to the Israeli/ Palestine problem. It will require hard work and lowered expectations on both sides. I still believe it is possible for both sides to learn to live together. That will only happen when both sides find it in their best interests. It is hard for those of us in the US listening to the rhetoric of the supporters of Israel to think Israel believes peace is in their interests.

Your second paragraph brings up a topic lots of less angry Americans have been wondering about for a long time. In a world with an inquiring media the loyality of each of the neo-cons would be subject to legitimate examination. After all Americans are being asked to die in the middle east. So far my guess is they are being asked to die to advance the unannounced interests of the Saudis, the Israelis and/or Exxon-Mobil, but so far the big winner coming out of American involvment in Iraq has been Iran. Oh, Osama been forgotten is still out there recruiting, so he is a big winner as well.

In the future I would suggest not calling Israel genocidal. It isn't. The current government, tied as it seems to be to the expansions of illegal settlements, seems to endorse ethnic cleansing, but they aren't killing people in death or refugee camps.

Ron Byers

OK. Let's assume he means Sunni-Shi'a.

In so many areas of foreign policy, many people seem to need to make things binary. The first assumption here is that Arab and Persian Shi'a (I'm not even going to touch other parts of the world) are tightly coupled by their theology, with other cultural factors rendered irrelevant.

Just as a start, the idea of federation and council runs through Persian languages. While loya jirga is specifically Pashtun, it is recognizable in Dari and Farsi. Contrast a thousand years or so of grand councils with the Arab (perhaps more Bedouin) "myself against my brother, my brother and I against the family, the family against the clan, the clan against the tribe, the tribe against the world."

Another factor not to be ignored is nationalism, which takes many forms. Ba'ath nationalism could be argued to go beyond the Syrian and Iraqi borders into a pan-Arab movement. The United Arab Republic was another example where alliances were not strictly religious.

Of the Muslim countries of the region, which could be an economic and technological threat to Israel, Iraq and Iran stand out. While the Saudis have money, they don't have the mass of engineering and other talent in those countries, which is still much smaller than Israel's talent pool.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

The 6,000,000 Jews of Europe would have given everything they had to only face expulsion from their homes, rather than see their children gassed.

Although I's sure you didn't intend it to be interpreted this way M.J., this is the the sort of comment that leads people to worry that Jewish supporters of Israel are of the opinion that anything Jews do to Palestinians is justified, because it will never be as bad as what happened to Jews.

I agree that it is inappropriate to describe the dispossession and subsequent oppression of the Palestinians as genocide. I like the term Baruch Kimmerling oncecoined to descibe Israel's policy toward the Palestinians - "politicide". There has been a systematic attempt over many years to thwart the Palestinian effort to constitute a unified, functioning political community. Where leaders have emerged, they have been attacked and destroyed. Where coordinated parties and organizations and movements have formed, they have been divided and turned against themselves. Where people have gathered together and gathered force in one area, they have been physically separated and cordoned, and their land has been taken and colonized. Where healthy economies have taken root and grown, they have been despoiled and wrecked.

Most of the actual people live and go on, but their potential to form a thriving and successful community, with the power to achieve their dreams, is slowly killed.

They convince the world that genocide is a big deal and really bad.

I don't think the world took much convincing. Genocide is a big deal and really bad, isn't it?

phelicity noticed this phrase of M.J. Rosenberg's:

...long before there were Arabs

the complete passage being:

Jews have been connected to Palestine for thousands of years (long before there were Arabs), and even after the fall of the last pre-1948 Jewish state have had a continuous presence there.

These statements gave me pause as well. As phelicity notes, some of the ancestors of today's Palestinians have also lived in Palestine for thousands of years, and although there was indeed a continuous presence of Jews in the region, from after the destruction of the Temple in the first century C.E., until the first decades of the 20th century, their numbers represented only a small percentage of the non-Jewish majority population.

Long before any one thought of himself as a Palestinian, Jews lived in and indentified with that land.

Who is it who decides the criteria that we must use to determine whose claims have greater merit? Why is it relevant what words are used by Palestinians themselves or others to define them if they also lived in the land, and identified with the land, and had ancestors who had lived there for generations? The related claim is often made that the Jews have considered themselves a "nation" for 2,000 years (as opposed to the Palestinians, whose national aspirations are more recent) and therefore Jewish claims to the landcarry more weight. (I do realize that MJ didn't say that; though his claim here appears to be a variant.) But the earlier "nation" of the Jews was entirely based on religious claims, and not a "nation" in the modern sense at all. Both Jewish and Palestinian national aspirations appear to have arisen at around the same time - toward the end of the 19th century.

So the statements were surprising because M.J. appears to be such a courageously honest and straight-shooting commentator on the conflict, and I found those particular statements to be in contrary to my understanding of the facts. I'd be interested in hearing the thoughts behind the statements, but I'm inclined to give him a pass, as his overall message, of which this article is a good example, offers a sensible, refreshing and valuable contribution to the debate.

Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them. --Paul Valery

No, the salient point is that the "returning" Italians won't be murdering a palestinian family and flattening their village in order to create a "settlement" there.

Its a fact. Zionism grew out of the same 19th century "Blood and Soil Nationalism" ("Blut und Boden") that gave rise to Nazism.

Jews aren't the only victims of genocide - not even during the Holocaust. Stop trying to monopolize victim status.

And the Palestinians aren't responsible for the Holocaust anyway, so its irrelevant to the actions of Israel - and using the Holocaust to justify Israeli expansionism and Zionist terrorism (which predated the holocaust anyway) is an obscenity and anyone who invokes the Holocaust as a justification for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians should be ashamed of themselves as they're no better than Holocaust deniers.

In fact Chairman of Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Memorial Council, has compared what Israel is doing to the Palestinians with anti-semitism that created the holocaust:

It is unthinkable that the memory of Auschwitz should serve as a pretext to ignore the fact that living here among us are Jews that behave toward Palestinians exactly the way that German, Hungarian, Polish and other anti-Semites behaved toward Jews.

Genocide means systematically killing off on a mass scale an national, racial or ethnic group. You can kill them off with "Removals" (the Cheorkee) or "Transfers (The Palestinians) to "reservations" (the Cherokees) or "refugee camps" (Palestinians) and then subject them to daily terror and torture and malnourishment etc, or give them all a Zyklon gas bath - but either way, its still genocide.

Nonsense. What israel is doing to the palestinians is the very definition of Genocide and has been following the usual patterns.

We've already seen Israelis dehumanize the Palestinians, by denying that they exist (Golda) or comparing them to "two-legged beasts (Begin) or "insects and rodents" (Sharon) or "swarming like ants", "lice" and "cancer"

http://www.counterpunch.org/dasgupta07292006.html

http://www.palestinemonitor.org/nueva_web/infos_materials/in_focus/in_focus12.htm

Genocide means systematically killing off on a mass scale an national, racial or ethnic group. You can kill them off with "Removals" (the Cheorkee) or "Transfers (The Palestinians) to "reservations" (the Cherokees) or "refugee camps" (Palestinians) and then subject them to daily terror and torture and malnourishment etc, or give them all a Zyklon gas bath - but either way, its still genocide.

I apologize. My statement was not clear. I didn't intend to imply that Israel had practiced genocide. What I meant to say was that the only possible solution to the Israeli-Palestinian "problem" would require genocide. That is why the whole situation is like a sick joke. When genocide is ruled out the problem becomes unsolvable, but problem solving Americans will keep wading in to take another swing at the tarbaby.

Just because you say its not genocide isn't enough. I gave you the definition of genocide.

Acts of genocide include: "Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part"
(See the Convention on the Prevention and
Punishment of Genocide)

Seeking to destroy the Palestinians as a people is genocide. You don't have to kill every single one nor do you have to kill them "in large numbers" - it is enough to seek to kill them off as a people. ANd that is PRECISELY what the Israelis are doing. And that's also why the Israelis hate to use the term "Palestinian" and prefer to call them by the generic "Arab".

And yes there is malnourishment in the Occupied Territories *See

http://www.christianaid.org.uk/news/media/pressrel/020307p.htm

and this has increased significantly since the "Civilized" countries of the EU and US have decided to make the Palestinian civilians suffer by imposing sanctions on them for having the audacity to freely elect a Hamas govt.

The fact that some of the victims managed to survive doesn't mean there wasn't a genocide.

Acts of genocide include: "Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part"
(See the Convention on the Prevention and
Punishment of Genocide)

Seeking to destroy the Palestinians as a people is genocide. You don't have to kill every single one nor do you have to kill them "in large numbers" - it is enough to seek to kill them off as a people. ANd that is PRECISELY what the Israelis are doing

I agree that Israel is not genocidal, and I never actually said that it was, but my statement was poorly worded. My intended point was that the only solution to the Israeli-Palestinian problem would require genocide, not that genocide had occurred. It is a sick joke that human nature has played on the founders of Israel. I don't share your optomistic view that hard work will solve the problem. Personally I don't much care if it ever is solved. I just don't want the US involved in it.

I agree that the big winner in Iraq is Iran, but I think that is covered under the principle of unintended consequences. About what you would expect when a moron is running the dogs. Who the troops are being asked to die for is a rhetorical device that just sidesteps the question of the Neocons role.

All very logical, so long as you accept that the United States is committing genocide in Iraq, which I do not believe it is.

America's crimes in both Iraq and Vietnam far outweigh anything Israel has ever done. And yet no one suggests dismantling this country.

650,000 Iraqi dead. We chose to destroy Iraq. Chose it for the sport. Attacked a nation that did nothing to us and essentially destroyed it.

Nothing Israel has ever done matches the genocide we the US inflicted in the Philippines at the turn of the last century, a war of extermination probably not 1% of American even knows took place. 4,000 American soldiers died in a war that killed a million Filipinos and we don't even teach it in our schools.

This double standard applied to Israel is nuts. It's worse than a double standard. Israel has been fighting for its life. Not always, but often enough.

If Israel behaved the way we do, there would not be a single Palestinian alive anywhere. Hell, where are the Indians. The last people on earth to be so self-righteous should be us, the Americans, and yet we continue to feel so damn good about ourselves.

Israel's peace movement puts ours to shame. The Israeli lawyers who defend Palestinians are unmatched by the absolute nothing we do about Gitmo. It's Supreme Court is more courageous. Its Left actually exists.

I can take this shit from EU citizens, but from Americans. Please. We have no standing to throw reckless accusations around at anybody.

Yes, plenty of Israelis are racist scum. And plenty of their leaders are ethnic cleansers or would-be ethnic cleansers.

But look who's pointing fingers!

Thank God, I've got the big demonstration to go to on the mall tomorrow to do some penance. Lot of good it will do.

PS

The whole thing is so pathetic.
It's like pro-life people and pro-choice people discuss safest way of doing abortions,
or people who pro and ani-capital panishment people discuss
best way of execution methods.

You have people for whom, the bottom line, Jewish state of Israel has to be destroyed, and other people for whom the bottom line, Israel should not be destroyed.

Obviously, nobody care about Palestinians.
People who want to destroy Israel want to use Palestinians as a weapon to destroy Israel.

I was inclined to agree with you and M.J. (and in many ways I still do), until I decided to google for a definition to the word, "genocide." I found this on the Human Rights Watch site (http://www.hrweb.org/legal/genocide.html):

Convention on the
Prevention and Punishment
of the Crime of Genocide


Adopted by Resolution 260 (III) A of the United Nations General Assembly on 9 December 1948.

Article 1
The Contracting Parties confirm that genocide, whether committed in time of peace or in time of war, is a crime under international law which they undertake to prevent and to punish.

Article 2
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

* (a) Killing members of the group;
* (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
* (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
* (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
* (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

As you can see, the Occupation would certainly meet the criteria listed under item C.

I can understand the objection. The Holocaust so eclipses the Occupation in terms of scale and...well, outright horror, that to equate the two does seem on one level to be grossly in error. Yet to deny the UN definition is to deny the insidiousness of the slow, grinding removal of hope for the future of a people that the Occupation represents. It is perhaps more a semantic issue, but perhaps some consideration of the UN definition by Israel and it's supporters is in order.

Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them. --Paul Valery

MJ,

Your criticism and charge of a double standard would make sense if the people who are making these criticisms of Israel were giving the US a free pass on its actions in Iraq. But in fact that is not true. Most of the people who have criticized Israel in strong terms here have in other places leveled equally strong charges against the US, have called GW Bush a war criminal, have cited the same 650,000 figure you cite, have deplored in bitter and angry terms the US war in Iraq, and have railed against Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, the White House's defense of torture, its flouting of international law and its violations of civil rights and human dignity. Many have also from time to time characterized the US treatment of Native Americans as genocide. They have consistently decried US imperialism and militarism. So I don't know where you get off suggesting that the critics of Israel are self-righteous American jingos with a dpouble standard.

At some level your argument seems to be that any of us who are Americans are by our citizenship implicated in heinous crimes, and so none of us have the right to criticize Israel or any other country. If you start applying that restriction to yourself I will take it more seriously. But I know you can't mean it.

And your implication that there are not many brave lawyers out there working hard to do something about Gitmo, despite the massive bureaucratic wall that has been set up to block these efforts, is erroneous and deeply unfair to the many people who are doing that work and trying to break down that wall. Israel has no monopoly on brave and committed pursuers of legal justice. Nor has it any monopoly on peace activists. I would note that despite the high levels of antiwar activism in both countries, those antiwar movements have both been singularly unsuccessful in preventing their countries wars or ending them expeditiously.

It is simply not an answer to the charge "Israel has done X" to say "the United States has done worse than X." It's a non-sequitor.

This "excuse" is offensive.  Carter is not mistaken.

Overlooking another matter... Bush has done to the US what Gorbachev did to the USSR; he has destroyed it as an superpower.  This thought might be seeping into a few minds here and there, but the reality will be stark if we try to do anything to Iran.

The point is this.  Israel, through its starkly apartheid policies that all the world has pressed it to drop, except the US, has depended entirely at being linked at the hip to the power of the only superbully around.   How will they reform, NOW or very soon, when they find that they have no bully to protect them?

the new State of Israel decided that, as a matter of policy, every Jew worldwide should be able to come to Israel (or flee to Israel) if necessary.

I cherish the Law of Return. And I look forward to the day soon when a Palestinian state will be established in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem to which every Palestinian will be able to return to by right.

Did the inhabitants of Deir Yassin decide that Jewish "right of return" policy? No they were murdered for their land. In your idyllic Palestine will the ghosts of Deir Yassin be able to return to their homes? Will living Palestinians be able to return to their homes? Of course not, Jews now live in their homes. The "right of return" applies only to "God's Chosen People" (humans), Aarabs and troglodytes need not apply.

Sorry to debunk you - yet again - "BradtheDad"

1- "He said Arab COUNTRIES are more homogeneous than Israel is. Of this there
can be no doubt"

Oh yes there is. How do you define "homogeneity"? or an "Arab country"? Is Egypt an Arab Country? Morocco? Yemen? France? In fact, how do you define "Arab"? What makes you think Israel is any more heterogeneous - racially? Religiously? There are lots of Arab Christians - how many Jewish Christians are there?

2- Oh, I see, so its OK for a paper to be magically deleted because it "impugns Judaism". Funny, see, in the academic world, if you disagree with the conclusions of a paper which is published in a peer reviewed respectable journal such as Human Immunology, then other scientists present their own papers and write letters to the editor. If you disagree with a scientific paper, then you do your own research and present another paper. Or, if there has been fraud or an error, the journal publishes a retraction. BUT You CERTAINLY DON'T DEMAND THAT LIBRARIANS TEAR OUT ARTICLES that you don't like...unless of course you're afraid of science trumping your RACIST ideology. That, you see, is the true scandal - not that a respected scientist's conclusions supposedly "impugn Jews".

"Again, I must emphasize that the Israel-Palestine situation, with threats of destruction, is not unique in world affairs".

It is unique, Just see hom many people would comment to blogs about Iraq, Healh Care crisis, global warming, Darfur, Cuba, National defecit vs. a blog about Israel. There is no way that all of them are less important then whatever happens in a tiny strip of land, called Israel.

There has to be a reason, and the reason is unique.
Care to guess?

"and then subject them to daily terror and torture and malnourishment etc, or give them all a Zyklon gas bath - but either way, its still genocide."

So, what ?
Germany commited genocide, it was not destroyed,
so why do you want to destroy Israel.
Why it's important for you?

Good to bring forward the UN convention, although I do not agree with your reading. This doesn't make me less horrified and sadened by the long demonstrated indifference for the Palestinian fate in much of the world. Discussing people's ingrown use of words do not contribute to the problem's solution, but rather to watering down the consensus against genocide.

One also ought to remember that the international political realities influenced, and influence, the wording of such documents. In this case most famously to exclude Soviet atrocities.

It is not necessary to use the Third Reich's industrialized killing of them considered harmful for the state as the measure against which one weights all other genocides. You could for instance compare with Bosnia or with the ongoing (non-US) atrocities in what was once Iraq. One can also consider the current controversy over whether the organized mass killings of Armenians culminating in 1915 was a genocide or not.

/Tuomas