SOLVING THE ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN DIVIDE WITHOUT CHANGING ANYONE'S NARRATIVE MINDS
Seasoned peace campaigners Rob Malley and Hussein Agha argue in a recent New York Times oped that the two state solution is doomed because each side's narrative stands in the way. You can read their argument and decide for yourself. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/11/opinion/11malley.html?_r=1
But Lara Friedman, the Americans for Peace Now lobbyist, makes an excellent counterargument on the APN Website.
As Friedman writes: "So Netanyahu grudgingly accepts the two-state solution, but demands that the Palestinians recognize Israel's right to exist "as the Jewish state " (as opposed to simply recognizing Israel or Israel's right to exist) - a demand that no Palestinian leader will accept. And so Hamas accepts, in some manner, the two-state formula, but demands the full Palestinian right of return - a demand that no Israeli leader will accept.
"Those who argue that the resort to such arguments means that peace is not possible without first resolving these "dueling discourses" - reconciling the views of Israeli and Jewish hardliners, who argue that peace can only come when Palestinians embrace the Jewish narrative justifying Israel's existence, and Palestinian and Arab hardliners, who argue that peace is possible only if Jews and Israelis embrace the Arab narrative rejecting Israel's right to exist - are wrong.
"The effort to shift the debate to the most intractable, existential elements of the conflict - the competing narratives over Israel's creation and right to exist - is evidence not that the two-state solution is unreachable or impracticable, but that opponents of the two-state solution are petrified that it may be imminent."
nice try. but no cigar.
"solving" mean many things. It can mean peace. Or it can means creating a stable arrangement. The division of Europe between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R "solved" the various problems of resistance in many countries. It did mean that Greece had to be a bloodied pro-US dictatorship and Hungry a pro-soviet one. But it was certainly stable. So was the reconstruction regime after the Civil War in the U.S. stable, even if blacks were still disenfranchised in fact. The Apartheid regime in South Africa "solved" race relations for a good 30 years.
There is an argument to be made that Palestine can be divided and a dictatorship of U.S. lackeys can imposed on Palestinians, and that arrangement can be stable for a while, maybe even a good few decades. There are after all, many places in the worlds ruled by stable dictatorships of U.S. lackeys: Egypt, Honduras, etc. Why not Palestine?
It will take some twisting of Israeli hands, removing some settlements, etc. and a lot of beating down on Palestinians, either getting Hamas to accept the deal or destroying it. But one can argue that it is doable.
But will the division of Palestine bring peace? No, because the shape and borders of the Palestinian state are not the problem.
As Magnes Zionist explains :
August 14, 2009 5:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
I dunno, evil, this strikes me as pretty wise in terms of understanding the parties and the historical moment. It is not the "totally just" solution, but it's far better than what exists now.
Seems to me that getting Israelis to accept a one-state solution will take a lot of beating. Notice that she doesn't call it anything more than a modus vivendi. I'm sure a lot of both peoples would like that now.
From the APN article: "The two-state solution was never about reconciling these largely irreconcilable existential narratives. The two-state solution is about finding a modus vivendi. It is a formula that, if negotiated and implemented in good faith, satisfies neither side entirely, but fulfils the aspirations of both sides to the greatest extent possible.
"It is a formula to allow Israelis and Palestinians - as people, not walking ideologues or ethicists - to begin to live normal lives and to subsequently, hopefully, build normal and friendly relations.
Mutual understanding and reconciliation of the conflicting existential narratives of Israelis and Palestinians will hopefully be built, gradually, upon the two-state foundation - a foundation of respect, dignity and an equitable power relation between two sovereign states - not the other way around."
August 17, 2009 9:30 AM | Reply | Permalink
I think you are missing the point if you see the article as a specific endorsement of the "one state solution." It is not. It is pointing out that we're looking at the wrong problem.
Partition is a sensible way to cut a deal halfway between two parties that want a deal but can't agree on the terms and are afraid of each other. Cut the difference, bang some heads, provide enforcement guarantees. Its all good but it solves the wrong problem.
Palestinians want self-determination. They have a historic right to the whole land, but lets assume that most of them agree to accept 22% of the land. This is what Hamas is offering. That is a reasonable assumption.
But that isn't the problem. The problem is that Israel is a colonial state. That isn't just about the past. The whole cultural fabric, the whole legal and administrative structure of the state is geared for colonization. This expresses itself of course in racist opinions, but that the least of it. Politicians, public officials, judges, scholars, generals, bureaucrats, all see their mission as facilitating colonization. They differ on the degree, and a few occasionally cast a doubt about the wisdom of it, but when push comes to shove they all fall in line.
Israel does not want a deal. Three quarters of Jewish Israelis support holding on to the Jordan Valley in any agreement. Only 5% are willing to return to the 1967 border! This is the general mood. The army is pushing for war every few years, on any pretext, because peace would endanger its position as the most important institution in Israel, and 95% of the public supports going to war. Always! Ethnic cleansing is advancing house by house in East Jerusalem now. But the whole state is committed to "Judaizing the Negev, Judaizing the Galilee", which are plans for ethnic cleansing and pushing the Palestinian minority in Israel into reservations. A lot of people are unhappy with the settlements but but the settlements continue to grow, because this is the logic of the state. Just as a lot of Americans are unhappy with healthcare and it doesn't help them, because reform goes against the grain of the logic of the system.
That is why Israel is negotiation the way it does. It doesn't offer half a slice as a way of building trust and moving to three quarters. It offers half, gives a quarter, and then finds an excuse to take back an eighth; rinse and repeat. There is a template for this behavior in the history of the U.S. treaties with the native tribes. This is the modus operandi. We've seen it with Oslo, with the Road Map, every step of the way. Trying to solve it with negotiations its like negotiating with a drug addict about leaving half the crack in the cupboard.
There can be no agreement of any form, 2,1, seven states, until Israel goes into a 12 steps detox program from colonialism, and that won't happen without a strong intervention from the outside world, an intervention that the U.S. could help. But the precondition for an intervention is getting the public first, and officials second, out of their denial of the fact that Israel has a colonization problem.
Now I personally believe that once Israel gets detoxed, a one state would be a lot more appealing then two. But let's assume I am wrong and majorities in both people would still prefer partition. I won't be standing in the way.
But to push for "confidence building measures" and to rely on good will with Israel now is only going to make things worse. Like Oslo did.
August 17, 2009 10:58 AM | Reply | Permalink
As is usually the case in these discussions, we're talking past each other. Either you believe in the existence of Israel or you don't. If you don't, it's not a question of devising an equitable plan for partition and compensation/resettlement of refugees. Israel itself, its very existence, is the problem. That seems to be your view, evildoer (and despite the frequent protestations that the dispute is about Israel's policies, seems to be the view of many of the frequent commentators around here), and I'm obviously not going to convince you otherwise just as you have failed to convince me. We could cite chapter and verse from various historians - yes, I've read Morris and Pappe and others - but we'd just be reinforcing Malley/Agha's point about conflicting narratives.
To respond to some of your comments here.
I agree. But I think you are missing the point as well. Unless Malley has completely changed his opinions in the course of a few months (see the quote downthread), he recognizes and supports Israel's right to exist as a democracy with a Jewish character and majority. I don't think the piece can be fairly read as abandoning support for partition or endorsing a one-state formula.
What Malley and Agha are also saying is that true peace will only be achieved when the two sides begin to reconcile their diametrically opposed narratives. You, on the other hand, insist upon the victory of one narrative - that of Israel as an illegitimate, racist, colonial state - to the total exclusion of the other. In this respect, you are aligned with the most irredentist Arab and Palestinian leaders who have waged a 60-year war to turn the clock back to 1947. The result: thousands of dead on both sides, the perpetuation of the miserable conditions of the refugees and a stalemate that defies resolution.
Palestinians want much more than self-determination, that is clear. If that was their aim, they could have had it many years ago.
Oh really? How so? By what right? Are you suggesting that the Jews who emigrated to Palestine had no right to settle there - even when their settlement, as in the vast majority of cases, did not directly uproot anyone? Doesn't this conflict with what seems to be your theories about natural rights, racism, etc.?
You lose credibility here. That's not what Hamas is offering or ever has. Recently, they have said that if the PA negotiates such a deal and the majority of Palestinians support it, they will go along. As you must know, they officially have always called for the destruction of Israel as a religious imperative.
I disagree. But don't take my word for it. Israel withdrew from the settlements in Gaza and has offered to dismantle all the settlements in the West Bank with the exception of those near the Green Line.
Maybe you should look at the polling numbers. http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/nycdefender/2009/04/poll-shows-most-israelis-and-p.php Among other things, only 17% of Israelis declared that "greater Israel" was essential to any peace deal. 78% accept two state solution. Take a look at the info on borders - around 50% of Israelis favor a return to the 67 with adjustments through land exchanges.
The army did not kidnap and kill Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid (Lebanon) or fire rockets into Israeli cities (Gaza). Oh, I forgot, those were just "pretexts."
You never did explain how it is that the Arab residents of the Galilee overwhelmingly oppose becoming part of the Palestinian state, preferring to remain part of Israel, where you claim they are being driven into reservations.
I'd say Israel has offered quite a bit more than you're willing to acknowledge. Unless, of course, you believe that Israel should put itself on the table. I'm afraid that's not going to happen.
August 17, 2009 4:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
What does it mean to have a Jewish state in Palestine?
There seems to be no problem (for anyone really) defining a Muslim state in Palestine, or anywhere else for that matter.
(That would appear to be Hamas' goal.)
Why should there be a problem defining a Jewish state?
August 14, 2009 5:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
Tintin hits the nail on the head.
The problem defining the Jewish state persists because the Arab world (along with a sizable portion of the TPM commentariat) does not accept the existence of a Jewish state in the Middle East.
Yet, without a hint of irony, the same folks who talk about the end of Israel will gladly hold forth on the Israelis' irrational paranoia.
August 14, 2009 6:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
you should separate your lips from the kool-aid dispenser tintin.
A minority of Palestinian identify Hamas as their political home, (as opposed to voting for them in an elections), a fraction of the latter want a Muslim state (as opposed to seeing Hamas as 'the lesser evil'), and imposing a Muslim state is the goal of only one faction within the Hamas leadership (as opposed to those who, like Hizbullah, support one in principle but reject imposing it on non-believers. So the 'factual' premise of your comment seems 95% bigotry.
Take some $900 and visit Palestine. You know, the stories about the local spirit of hospitality are quite true. you may learn something.
Now, there is no comparison to "the Jewish state," which is not a state that celebrates Shaboth but a state in which Jews (defined by ethnicity, not by faith) monopolize wealth and power, and keep the native people in reservations, a proposition supported by about 96% of Israeli Jews currently.
If a Jewish state in Palestine means what most Israeli Jews understand it to mean: power in Jewish hands only and disempowerment and dispossession for the native people, than how many states is irrelevant. There could be various practical arrangement concocted that will keep the lid on Palestinians for a while, but only a "final solution" will end the conflict. The rise of the far right in Israel reflects this truth: that "death to the Arabs" is the only long term Zionist slogan that is honest. That is what a Jewish state means.
August 14, 2009 7:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
So, evildoer, you seem to favor the abolition of Israel. Worse yet, you equate Zionism with Nazism (the "final solution" of "death to the Arabs" being its ultimate, unvarnished destination). Your ideas are so repellent as to hardly merit a response. Such discussions typically go nowhere. Still, I'll waste a few minutes here.
Substitute the word "Arab" for "Muslim" in Tintin's comment. Is that better for you? Of course, no one has a problem defining Palestine or any of the other 25 Arab countries - many, if not most, of which discriminate officially in a manner that makes Israel's treatment of its Arab minority seem positively utopian - as Arab.
But since you do take on the subject of what you claim - without any support whatsoever - is the dearth of Palestinian support for a Muslim state, why don't we look at some actual facts. Try this poll (http://onevoicemovement.org/programs/documents/OneVoiceIrwinReport.pdf). You will notice that in response to the final status question, 59% of Palestinians deemed an Islamic Waqf from the Jordan River to the Sea as "essential," and an additional 12% as "desirable." So the 'factual' premise of your comment is 95% BS.
Take your own advice and visit Israel proper. You will find the people are not the jack-booted thugs of your fevered imagination. You will also find that while the Arab minority there is certainly (and unacceptably) discriminated against, they also enjoy a level of material comfort and political expression that find few parallels in the Arab world. Maybe you should visit the villages in the north whose residents have overwhelmingly rejected any agreement that would transfer their nationality to a nascent Palestinian state. Are these the "reservations" of which you speak? And where is the source for your ridiculous claim that 96% of Israeli Jews support a policy of keeping the native population on reservations?
Contrary to your outlandish assertions equating Zionism with a movement to exterminate Arabs, most Israeli Jews understand a Jewish state in Palestine to mean a democratic nation for the Jewish people in its ancient homeland, in which minorities enjoy political and religious freedom, one within secure borders and at peace with its neighbors. At least that's what most Israeli Jews are striving for.
Last I heard, there are more than 300 million Arabs living in some 25 Arab nations. Apparently, there is no place for Israel, with its 5 million Jews and 1.2 million Arabs.
Finally, you should consider that the irredentist viewpoint you express does not promise an end to the conflict, but rather a perpetuation of the suffering among the Palestinians whose cause you profess to champion.
August 14, 2009 10:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
I am in favor of social and political orders based on equal rights and justice for all. I understand that interferes with your preference for social orders based on plunder and exclusion according to racialized identities. My bad!
Oh my God, I'm a sinner! Forgive me! But I don't "equate" anything with anything. I am telling you the direction in which Israel is going, which everybody with head not lodged in the posterior sees plainly, and I also offer my explanation as to why that process is taking place.
Nice paralipsis. You are free not to respond.
Your generosity is humbling. Thank you! If only Israeli politicians were like you!
No, it is not. For a number of reasons. There is a Jewish state in Palestine. There is no Muslim state. Raising the question of "the Muslim state" in response to the questions about the meaning of the Jewish state is a form of scare talk of the order of the "Death panels," that furthermore appeals to common prejudice against Muslims. The opposite of "a Jewish state" is not a Muslim state. Both because 'Jewish' in Israel is not a religion but a constructed identity that can include even Orthodox Russians, but not Palestinians, and because the opposite of a state based on racial privilege is a state not built on one, not a state build on another racial privilege. There are people in the U.S. who saw in Obama's election the sign of an anti-white government. This is the same logic, except that in relation to the US it is considered loony.
First who is "no one"? There are many people, I am one of them, who have a problem even with defining France as a French country and Belgium as a Belgian country. I consider Americans who call other people "unamerican" bigots, so I have a problem with any un-reflective equation between a political order and a cultural/national/religious identity. But the issues of racism in France and Belgium is of a different order of magnitude. These countries do not have a legal status of "frenchmen" separate from "French citizens." And unlike them, Israel is the result of colonial dispossession of the native Arab people, a dispossession that is still enshrined in law. And unlike the U.S., that native people is still a demographic majority in the region, and only a genocide will change that. You wish it will go away but it won't go away. And that is the root of the problem. Therefore "Arab" Palestine and "Jewish" Palestine are not equal opposites. They are both problematic, but the problem is of a different order. Marocco and Syria are Arab countries in the same way that France is French. That can be problematic, but no way in the same way that Israel is Jewish.
I'm glad that you look for positive role models in your life. Do you also congratulate yourself daily of being less of a jerk that Howard Stern?
This answer is a theoretical question about an ideal state. Are you surprised that many Palestinians want the land returned to them? A waqf would be a system of landownership that is the reverse of the system that exists at the moment, in which most land between the river and the see is held by the Jewish Agency and similar bodies for the benefit of the Jewish people in perpetuity. So there is strong support Palestinian support expressed in polls to reversing the power relations. Shocking! I'm really amazed that you found such shocking evidence to the obvious. You know very well that the expression "Muslim state," evokes the image of the Islamic Republic of Iran or Saudi Arabia, something very different, for which, kin another poll, about 1.4% of respondents in Gaza and 3.1% in the West Bank express spontaneous support.
I lived 20 years in Israel. I visit regularly. Well, a lot of people are jack booted. More than in most other places. And thugishness is a strong element of the popular culture. I know the culture I grew in very well, and having been around I also have the tools to compare it. But I did not say that a majority of Isralis are jack booted thugs. That is YOUR fevered imagination. I said that a majority supports holding on to the material privileges that depend on racial discrimination.So you say that discrimination is unacceptable and then remind us why we should accept it, because others have it worse. Nice! I think I have an innovative solution to the conflict. The US should pass a constitutional amendment that limits the right of Jews in the US to the rights of Arabs in Israel. That will bring peace to the Middle East.
Yes they are. And maybe you should visit them because I did. And unlike you I know how the land around each of these villages has been taken away in order to destroy their urban development, disrupt their lives and induce them to leave. What are you saying, that refusing to be ethnically cleansed is evidence of the goodness of Israel? Do you want to try this logic with any group in the U.S.?
That is the level of the Israeli support for the massacre in Gaza. It is also about the level of Jewish support for Zionist parties. So that's an educated guess.
Contrary to your lack of grasp of basic rules of logic there is no contradiction between exterminating Arabs and a democratic nation for the Jewish people. Indeed, my argument is that only the first will enable the second. Because you seem to imply the opposite, I will add that, of course, most Israelis do not support exterminating the Arabs, and a large minority is even against further ethnic cleansing. My point is not that this is what Israelis want but that this is the unavoidable historical path that what they want leads to.
A democracy for Jews in which minorities enjoy freedom is like a sea in which bees can swim. Try this in the US, a democracy for whites in which minorities enjoy freedom. Any takers?
There is no place for a state built on racial discrimination, in which the native people are penned in reservations, anywhere in this world. That's both a moral statement and a practical statement. What was possible in the seventeenth century is not possible today, not only wrong, but impossible. And the only way to make it possible it to undo the moral progress of humanity over the last centuries.
That is hilarious. Are you suggesting that Palestinians are not accepting the fate Israel has for them because of what I write on TPM?
No, you are not that stupid. You are saying that Palestinians would be better off if all the moral edifice of international law, or the struggle against racism worldwide, of global decolonization, all the historical achievements, including for example the election of a black man of African descent to the presidency of the superpower, all this moral-historical progress that gives them hope and is the basis of their demands, would be undone.
I disagree, but I understand why apologists for apartheid would want to see these achievements reversed.
August 15, 2009 7:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
I am in favor of social and political orders based on equal rights and justice for all. I understand that interferes with your preference for social orders based on plunder and exclusion according to racialized identities. My bad!
Oh my God, I'm a sinner! Forgive me! But I don't "equate" anything with anything. I am telling you the direction in which Israel is going, which everybody with head not lodged in the posterior sees plainly, and I also offer my explanation as to why that process is taking place.
Nice paralipsis. You are free not to respond.
Your generosity is humbling. Thank you! If only Israeli politicians were like you!
No, it is not. For a number of reasons. There is a Jewish state in Palestine. There is no Muslim state. Raising the question of "the Muslim state" in response to the questions about the meaning of the Jewish state is a form of scare talk of the order of the "Death panels," that furthermore appeals to common prejudice against Muslims. The opposite of "a Jewish state" is not a Muslim state. Both because 'Jewish' in Israel is not a religion but a constructed identity that can include even Orthodox Russians, but not Palestinians, and because the opposite of a state based on racial privilege is a state not built on one, not a state build on another racial privilege. There are people in the U.S. who saw in Obama's election the sign of an anti-white government. This is the same logic, except that in relation to the US it is considered loony.
First who is "no one"? There are many people, I am one of them, who have a problem even with defining France as a French country and Belgium as a Belgian country. I consider Americans who call other people "unamerican" bigots, so I have a problem with any un-reflective equation between a political order and a cultural/national/religious identity. But the issues of racism in France and Belgium is of a different order of magnitude. These countries do not have a legal status of "frenchmen" separate from "French citizens." And unlike them, Israel is the result of colonial dispossession of the native Arab people, a dispossession that is still enshrined in law. And unlike the U.S., that native people is still a demographic majority in the region, and only a genocide will change that. You wish it will go away but it won't go away. And that is the root of the problem. Therefore "Arab" Palestine and "Jewish" Palestine are not equal opposites. They are both problematic, but the problem is of a different order. Marocco and Syria are Arab countries in the same way that France is French. That can be problematic, but no way in the same way that Israel is Jewish.
I'm glad that you look for positive role models in your life. Do you also congratulate yourself daily of being less of a jerk that Howard Stern?
This answer is a theoretical question about an ideal state. Are you surprised that many Palestinians want the land returned to them? A waqf would be a system of landownership that is the reverse of the system that exists at the moment, in which most land between the river and the see is held by the Jewish Agency and similar bodies for the benefit of the Jewish people in perpetuity. So there is strong support Palestinian support expressed in polls to reversing the power relations. Shocking! I'm really amazed that you found such shocking evidence to the obvious. You know very well that the expression "Muslim state," evokes the image of the Islamic Republic of Iran or Saudi Arabia, something very different, for which, kin another poll, about 1.4% of respondents in Gaza and 3.1% in the West Bank express spontaneous support.
I lived 20 years in Israel. I visit regularly. Well, a lot of people are jack booted. More than in most other places. And thugishness is a strong element of the popular culture. I know the culture I grew in very well, and having been around I also have the tools to compare it. But I did not say that a majority of Isralis are jack booted thugs. That is YOUR fevered imagination. I said that a majority supports holding on to the material privileges that depend on racial discrimination.So you say that discrimination is unacceptable and then remind us why we should accept it, because others have it worse. Nice! I think I have an innovative solution to the conflict. The US should pass a constitutional amendment that limits the right of Jews in the US to the rights of Arabs in Israel. That will bring peace to the Middle East.
Yes they are. And maybe you should visit them because I did. And unlike you I know how the land around each of these villages has been taken away in order to destroy their urban development, disrupt their lives and induce them to leave. What are you saying, that refusing to be ethnically cleansed is evidence of the goodness of Israel? Do you want to try this logic with any group in the U.S.?
That is the level of the Israeli support for the massacre in Gaza. It is also about the level of Jewish support for Zionist parties. So that's an educated guess.
Contrary to your lack of grasp of basic rules of logic there is no contradiction between exterminating Arabs and a democratic nation for the Jewish people. Indeed, my argument is that only the first will enable the second. Because you seem to imply the opposite, I will add that, of course, most Israelis do not support exterminating the Arabs, and a large minority is even against further ethnic cleansing. My point is not that this is what Israelis want but that this is the unavoidable historical path that what they want leads to.
A democracy for Jews in which minorities enjoy freedom is like a sea in which bees can swim. Try this in the US, a democracy for whites in which minorities enjoy freedom. Any takers?
There is no place for a state built on racial discrimination, in which the native people are penned in reservations, anywhere in this world. That's both a moral statement and a practical statement. What was possible in the seventeenth century is not possible today, not only wrong, but impossible. And the only way to make it possible it to undo the moral progress of humanity over the last centuries.
That is hilarious. Are you suggesting that Palestinians are not accepting the fate Israel has for them because of what I write on TPM?
No, you are not that stupid. You are saying that Palestinians would be better off if all the moral edifice of international law, or the struggle against racism worldwide, of global decolonization, all the historical achievements, including for example the election of a black man of African descent to the presidency of the superpower, all this moral-historical progress that gives them hope and is the basis of their demands, would be undone.
I disagree, but I understand why apologists for apartheid would want to see these achievements reversed.
August 15, 2009 7:49 AM | Reply | Permalink
Good thoughts. I'll try to respond.
August 15, 2009 11:21 AM | Reply | Permalink
To summarize: The Jewish nation stands in the way of human progress. Sounds familiar. In the 19th and early 20th Century, when the world was divided into nation states and ethnic identity prized, the stateless Jews were seen as an irritant for their failure to conform. Now, it is the Jewish state that stands in the way of the post-nationalist dream - as you put it, "social and political orders based on equal rights and justice for all." Not surprisingly, among all the nations in the world, it is the Jewish national movement that is held up as the impediment to righteousness and justice. A familiar argument cloaked in new clothes. That Israel alone in a region that as much as any other openly discriminates along ethnic and religious lines and whose enemies proudly preach its destruction for ethnic and religious reasons is singled out for special opprobrium is doubly ironic. Your "post-racial" "anti-colonial" narrative, unfortunately, falls back on some ancient and familiar racist themes.
We could go back and forth over the points you raised, but then we would just be proving Malley-Agha's point.
In a nutshell, I in Israel's right to exist. It is not perfect and I do not hesitate to criticize its policies. But that's not what this debate is about. It would be a nice thing, really, to live in a world where this wasn't necessary. But that's reality. If Israel were to cease to exist tomorrow, I hardly think the state that would replace it would honor the principles of political and social justice that exist in your fantasies. Based on the track record of its enemies and taking them at their word, I'm not willing to take that chance.
So, in the real world, Israel is not going away. The Palestinian Arab refugees and their descendants who either fled or were driven out in a war Israel did not initiate and who have lingered in camps for the past 60 years ever since will not return. (I wonder if you are as exorcised about the disgraceful treatment of Palestinian refugees, say, in the multi-culti paradise of Lebanon where they are treated far worse than Arabs in Israel and probably the West Bank?) The only workable solution is two states with resettlement and compensation for those who were displaced. Successive Israeli governments seem to have recognized that basic fact (in the case of the present government, not so much). Until the Palestinians and their leaders come to accept it as well, the cycle of bloodshed seems likely to continue.
August 15, 2009 2:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
You cites talking points very well. "when confronted with evidence, cry antisemitism." Unfortunately, it is your straw arguments, no more. I never said "the Jewish National" movement is alone "the impediment to human progress." There are impediment to human progress aplenty in every place in the world. Certainly, to take one example, the U.S. love affair with bombing people is a greater impediment to human progress that Jewish nationalism. So what? You are like someone who argue that we shouldn't wear security belts because drunken driving is also causing accidents. A complete non sequitor. The state of Israel in its current institutional form is indeed a force against human progress. It is obviously a force against human progress inside Israel. It is also allied with the most reactionary elements in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia, Mubarak, the Lebanese fascists, etc. So it is an impediment for progress across the region. Israel also has a history of finding friends in the worst sewers globally. It was Itzhak Rabin who toasted a Nazi collaborator and South African Apartheid Minister for "the ideals shared by Israel and South Africa: the hopes for justice and peaceful coexistence". Tells you something about what Israel means by two states. But certainly Israel is not the only or even the greatest impediment, only the one that I have a particular responsibility to confront.
That is really nice. I am sure that during the heydays of the Atlantic slave trade they were those who urged slave owners to treat their slaves nicely. But there is no nice way of being treated as a second rate human being. And Israel, even with a million nice people like you admonishing it to treat the natives better, is not going to overcome this impossibility.
Defending the indefensible by appealing to the unknowable?
I can't predict the future. The partisans who fought the Nazis in the forests of Europe couldn't be sure that the regimes that would replace the occupation would be better. Indeed, in many places they were murdered by the very regimes that the Allied put in place at the end of the war. Do you think that is an argument against them? Israel can be transformed into something better. Whether it will, that depends on many factors.
You mean, the track record of its friends? Because in the Middle East, antisemitism is the mark of Israel's allies. Anouar Saddat was an admirer of Hitler. Mahmoud Abbas wrote his doctoral thesis "examining" the veracity of the holocaust. Pierre Jummayel brought to Lebanon the legacy of the Hitler Jugend. Antisemitic conspiracies are circulated by clerics associated with Mubarak in Egypt and the House of Saud, both of which collaborate with Israel. Opposing apartheid in Israel does not mean supporting "israel's enemies" for the simple reason that all the worst regimes in the Middle East are Israel's best friends. The police states of Egypt and Jordan are being paid $2 billion a year by the U.S. for their trouble. They need to fall together.
Yes I Am. But unlike you, I don't use one moral indignity to justify another.
That is about as true as Clinton's "I didn't have sex with that woman". No Israeli government has ever agreed, (or will ever agree) to two independent states. What successive Israeli governments agreed to is calling three gerrymandered, demilitarized Bantustans with no economy and no controlling of any natural resource, even the airwaves, not to mention water, "a Palestinian state." The reason they don't agree to anything more is in the Agha and Malley op-ed, because a free, independent Palestinian state is incompatible with a Jewish colonial state, so a two state solution could work, but only after Israel is replaced by a democratic state.
August 15, 2009 4:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
Evildoer writes: "But certainly Israel is not the only or even the greatest impediment, only the one that I have a particular responsibility to confront."
Why do you feel you have a particular responsibility to confront this?
August 15, 2009 6:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
Because I am Jewish and hold an Israeli passport.
August 15, 2009 6:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
I can see how, as an Israeli, you must feel a special responsibility to solve the problems of your country. I think that's appropriate.
Were at one time a fervent Zionist?
August 15, 2009 10:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
Nope.
August 16, 2009 4:04 AM | Reply | Permalink
AG,
I can't add much to your masterful dismemberment of evildoer's "argument" (and was there ever anyone with a more apt screen name than evildoer?). But it is worth exploring for just a moment the canard that Israel is an "ethnic" state and that ethnicity, not religion, is the prime force behind Israel and Zionism.
Leaving aside the question of why an state that identifies with its population's ethnicity is any less legitimate than a state that identifies with their religion, anyone who knows anything at all about Israel and Judaism knows that the "Jewish people" are not a single ethnicity in any case. For starters, there is the split between Ashkenazi and Sephardi, who are usually described in ethnic terms. Then within Ashkenazi Jews you have those from Eastern Europe and those from Western Europe. Among Sephardis you have Greek and Turkish Jews, Jews from North Africa, Jews from Yemen and finally Iraqi and Iranian Jews. Getting more exotic, there are the Ethiopian Falashas, the Indian Bene Israel and even a handful of Chinese Jews. Would a state founded on ethnic grounds alone have spent the huge sums needed to evacuate the Ethiopian Falasha Jews to Israel?
When you consider the diversity of the Israeli population, it is hard not to come to the conclusion that the only thing that makes them Jewish is their identification with the Jewish religion (even though a majority of the population is totally secular).
Those who argue that Israel is a state of ethnic chauvinists do so for one reason and one reason only - to associate Israel with racism. After all, we can all agree that racism is wrong, can't we?
Not enough effort goes into drawing the crucial distinction between nationalism, which can be a force for good (although it can also get perverted into evil, to be sure) and racism, which is unambiguously evil. Nationalism is the positive promotion of a people's unique characteristics, whether it be history, culture, religion or anything else and advocating for those characteristics to be woven into the fabric of the state. It isn't intrinsically racist, although, as I said, it can certainly spill over into racism.
The point of Israel is that it is a state with Jewish characteristics. The law is based partially on Jewish religious law. The state holidays are Jewish holidays. The state takes responsiblity for Jews outside Israel. That is perfectly compatible with the notion that all citizens can be treated fairly and that the state should not discriminate in the civil rights of all its people.
August 15, 2009 7:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thank you. Those are very good points.
August 15, 2009 2:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
You are a living proof the "ethnicity" has become a PC term for talking about race with unacknowledged racist assumptions. Do you think ethnic groups are elements of a logical classification system like the divisions in the animal kingdom?
Ashkenazi and Sepharadi are described in the mainstream in Israel with the Hebrew word "ada," which is not "ethnicity", because the implication of the term is that it is a subcategory. The origin of the word is something more like a community. However, before the Nazis discredited the term, European Jewish writers often referred to these groups as consisting different "races." The same Jewish writers described however Jews as also a distinct "race," although often a "mixed race." They also described Jews as a nation, and the words 'nation' and 'race' were often interchangeable in Europe before WW-II. Confusing? Let me add to it. While Jews of non European origins have been racialized with the term 'ada' (which replaced the discredit term, race) (ada' is almost never applied to the dominant Ashkenazi group--they are just Israeli), non-Jews were racialized as 'bnei-mi'utim' (members of minorities, which include Palestinians, Arabs, Bedouins, Druze, etc.). Are Druze a religion or an ethnicity? What is the difference between 'ada' and 'mi'ut'?
Let me help you.
Race, ethnicity, nationality, and even often religious affiliation and culture, as well as the special untraslatable terms that each situation creates, are unstable, shifting and overlapping categories, not elements of a logical system of classification, but elements of shifting social differentiation and often discrimination that is shaped historically. Most of these terms, nationality, race and ethnicity, emerged together in the eighteenth century in Europe, and their meaning were often elaborated in relation to questions of domination and colonization, both in the colonies and inside Europe. So there is no such thing as "ethnicity." like "race," it is a term that is constructed differently in different contexts and elaborated on the basis of contests over exclusion and inclusion.
Jewishness is defined in Israeli law as a nationality. Not a religion and not an "ethnicity". Are you clear on the difference? is Irishness an ethnicity or a nationality? Just checking. What about Israeliness? Israeli law does not recognize an Israeli nationality. What is it then?
So you can be totally secular but "identify" with a religion. Using incoherent concept makes you say incoherent things. And BTW, does the diversity of hispanics, Mexican, Braxzilians,Salvodorians, Aymara, etc, means that "hispanic" is not an ethnic category? What is it then
Being Jewish in Israel means first of all a series of preferential and sometimes exclusive access to resources: education, municipal services, governmental funds, real estate ownership, good jobs, etc. The official legal criteria for inclusion is slightly hybrid: For a tiny minority, is is based on conversion. for almost everybody is it based on descent. Is descent a religious category? Ethnic category? Racial category?
Associating Israel with, or dissociating it from, racism requires examining and measuring racism, not playing silly games with defnitions.
Here's an example:
500% difference in access to education! Is it racism? Or do you want to play definition games?
Hope it helps clarify your confusion.Let me help you:
The UN definition of racial discrimination says it is
August 15, 2009 6:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
You are the classic example of someone who is obviously intelligent, but is not wise.
None of the basic facts you cite about the overlapping definitions of race, ethnicity and nationality are in dispute. The point of my previous post was to point out that by most people's definition of ethnicity or race (i.e. the "stock" one comes from) Israeli Jews cannot be considered a single race. And those who imply such a thing do so for one purpose only, which is to tar Israel and Zionism with the brush of racism.
You yourself even imply this when you state that in Israel Jewishness is defined as a nationality. If it's a nationality, then how is that any different from the way any other country defines itself as being the home of a certain "nation".
But the fact that discrimination exists in Israel is also not in dispute. Nor is the fact that discrimination exists everywhere in the world. What burns my britches is the idea that Israel is uniquely guilty, either in degree or in kind, when it comes to this.
What you seem to want is a country without any sort of identity or character whatsoever, where the state is some sort of bland, colorless blank slate. Not gonna happen, any time soon.
Here's a piece of free advice: If it's discrimination against Israeli Arabs that bothers you, join one of the many organizations that advocate for them. You have my full support. Just stop questioning the legitimacy of the entire Zionist enterprise in the process.
August 16, 2009 3:33 AM | Reply | Permalink
The point that you don't get, still, is that the question of whether Israel is "a single race" based on "racial diversity" is a racist question. And the question of the racism of Israel has nothing to do with analysis of the race of Israelis. The history of racism in the U.S. does not depend on white people having been "a single race" or not, does it? Nor does it depends on African-Americans being a single race, only on the way race was conceptualized in both law and culture to enable slavery.
That is your pure uninformed imagination, or more accurately speaking, your projection. Perhaps you want to give some examples? The only folks I know of who discuss whether Jews are a single race or not are antisemites or Zionists or both. This discussion is completely irrelevant to the question of the racism of the state of Israel. Nobody who opposes racism would make such an argument as you suggests.
First, what matters in discussion institutionalized racism is whether the state racializes its population and how, not the exact terms that are being used. In every such case, you will find concepts that are considered legitimate applied to the victims. The Nuremberg laws defined Jews according to established legal definitions of German nationality.
Second, unlike any other state I am aware of, the state of Israel does not recognize its own citizenship as a nationality. There is by law no Israeli nationality. The nation is separate from the citizenry. Israel defines itself as the home of people who never set foot in it and not the home of people who lived there for as long as memory goes. Is that "like any other state?"
Third, Israel is a colonial state that has displaced the native people and defined their home as the home of another nation. The colonization is not history, but continuous, as the whole legal and administrative system, as well as the culture, is geared towards removing the indigenous people from the land.
Fourth, for 60 years Israel rules over 2.5 million indigenous people whom it considers aliens in their own homes. Many of these people are held in conditions similar to slavery. You can discuss "two states" for another generation, but right now, and for the last 60 years, there is a single Israeli state with two legal systems and two different categories of people, with rights, and without rights, and the relation between them is a fundamental aspect of the Israeli state and its institution.
Analysing racism deals with three categories of racism: racist attitudes, institutional racial discrimination, and institutionalized racism:
- a. racist attitudes: Israeli Jewish society is characterized with a comparatively very high incidence of overt racist attitudes.
- b. institutional racism: Israel is rife with institutional racism, but unlike other states that define themselves as liberal democracies, institutional racism is not recognized as a problem and no serious effort is done to combat it.
- c. institutionalized racism: Israeli law and administrative practices institutionalize racism, by legally and administratively selecting groups for discrimination and actively and purposefully discriminating against them.
A and b are common in many states, including the U.S., but the reason that Israel has more, much more, of these two problems is C. which is very much not "like other states that define themselves as the home of their nation."Again, what burns your britches is that you are in denial. Israel is different, both in degree and in kind, from the countries you compare it with. You can't wish the facts away. Whether Israel is different is a matter of fact, to be decided by observation, not to be decided in advance based on what seems fair to you. Given that there are volumes upon volumes of such factual analysis, you obviously choose to be ignorant.
I'll settle for importing the constitutional civil rights of the U.S. Are they too bland for you? If you are looking for a little more oomph in your life than U.S. constitutional law permits you should certainly consider Israel.
August 16, 2009 5:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
Some thoughts and questions...
Evil writes: "A minority of Palestinian identify Hamas as their political home, (as opposed to voting for them in an elections), a fraction of the latter want a Muslim state (as opposed to seeing Hamas as 'the lesser evil'), and imposing a Muslim state is the goal of only one faction within the Hamas leadership (as opposed to those who, like Hizbullah, support one in principle but reject imposing it on non-believers. So the 'factual' premise of your comment seems 95% bigotry."
Tintin: Actually, calling my questions "95% bigotry" is a serious stretch, but no matter. So, is it your assessment that Hamas, in the main, is looking for a secularly governed state in which Jews, Muslims, and Christians live side by side under one democratic government?
Evil: Take some $900 and visit Palestine. You know, the stories about the local spirit of hospitality are quite true. you may learn something.
Tintin: Someday.
Evil: Now, there is no comparison to "the Jewish state," which is not a state that celebrates Shaboth but a state in which Jews (defined by ethnicity, not by faith) monopolize wealth and power, and keep the native people in reservations, a proposition supported by about 96% of Israeli Jews currently.
Tintin: This strikes me as a mishmash of points which are a little hard to untangle. In your later comments, you call into question the use of the word "ethnicity" but here find no problem using it and I guess you know what you mean by it. I'd have to say that the word "native" is equally fraught. If you're born in Israel, you're "native" to Israeli. You're not native to Poland, are you? White South Africans are native to South Africa. White Americans are native to America. Of course, in another sense, it's obvious what you mean, but then the argument becomes about time in a place and the only real dispute becomes "how time before I'm no longer a greenhorn?" The answer has always been: "You're son isn't a greenhorn." Throughout history, people have moved and displaced other people, sometimes gradually, sometimes violently. But if we're going to throw a bunch of words into the dustbin of history, then "native people" has got to end up there. ESPECIALLY if we're going to adopt the rights of man as a universal yardstick for legitimacy. Then, wherever I go, I can become a citizen and am equally "native" to the country, region, what have you.
Evil: If a Jewish state in Palestine means what most Israeli Jews understand it to mean: power in Jewish hands only and disempowerment and dispossession for the native people, than how many states is irrelevant. There could be various practical arrangement concocted that will keep the lid on Palestinians for a while, but only a "final solution" will end the conflict. The rise of the far right in Israel reflects this truth: that "death to the Arabs" is the only long term Zionist slogan that is honest. That is what a Jewish state means.
Tintin: Well...if your goal is to "intensify the contradictions" in the old Marxist sense, then it might please you to posit "death to the Arabs" as the only long-term Zionist slogan that is honest. But this argument or formulation, used by a number of "isms," involves a lot of death and destruction to innocent people, much more, I think, than the original "intolerable" situation, as a means of breaking through to the other side. You know, things can't get better until they get very much worse and the people get fed up and ready for real change.
But this doesn't mean that this IS the only honest Zionist slogan. Why should it be? Isms can evolve, and that includes Zionism. What was appropriate or felt necessary at one time can change if people see that it's inappropriate or unnecessary now. That argument can be made and can be persuasive. The future is hard to foresee.
August 17, 2009 9:58 AM | Reply | Permalink
RE: "Why should there be a problem defining a Jewish state?" - Tintin
SEE: "Jerusalem seculars accuse Mayor of selling out to Haredim", By Nir Hasson, 07/30/09
Secular residents of the Jerusalem neighborhood Kiryat Yovel harshly criticized Mayor Nir Barkat yesterday for "selling them out" in allowing ultra-Orthodox groups to open a synagogue in an abandoned building there. They said Barkat was trying to ingratiate himself with his ultra-Orthodox coalition partners...
...City council representatives from Likud and Yisrael Beiteinu joined ultra-Orthodox members in backing the move.
"The mayor betrayed us," said Yuval Avraham, a leader of the secular community. "The only thing he was supposed to provide after the election was maintaining the character of the neighborhood, and he didn't do that."
Avraham said the mayor acceded to the wishes of the ultra-Orthodox in exchange for their tacit acquiescence in opening a parking garage on the Sabbath...
ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1103954.html
August 15, 2009 3:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
RE:"Why should there be a problem defining a Jewish state?" -Tintin
FROM HAARETZ: (excerpt) "Haredi mob swarms Mayor Barkat's car in Jerusalem, By Jonathan Lis, 08/10/09
Dozens of Haredis swarmed Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat's car Sunday with someone hurling a stone at the vehicle. Barkat was spirited away safely by police but damage was caused to his car.
Barkat was exiting a meeting in the Atzeret Israel neighborhood when he approached his car and found a crowd of Haredis surrounding the vehicle. Barkat entered the car, but the men prevented him from driving. At this point, according to Barkat's spokesperson, someone tore the windshield wipers off the car.
An unknown member of the mob then threw a rock at the car. Police were summoned to the scene and managed to get Barkat away unharmed.
Last Saturday, police arrested 15 ultra-Orthodox Jews during clashes that erupted after Haredim broke into a parking lot in Jerusalem, in the latest protest against the opening of the site on Shabbat. The demonstration was among the most violent seen in the capital in recent weeks...
ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1106290.html
August 15, 2009 7:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
RE:"Why should there be a problem defining a Jewish state?" -Tintin
FROM HAARETZ: "Haredim held as parking dispute turns violent", By Nir Hasson and Jonathan Lis, 08/03/09
Jerusalem police arrested 15 ultra-Orthodox men yesterday evening for blocking the entrance to the Karta parking garage that the city insists on operating on Saturday. One policeman was taken to hospital after being kicked in the stomach.
The demonstrators succeeded in blocking Yitzhak Kariv street, which leads to the garage, for over an hour, causing major traffic disruptions. The protesters cursed the police, calling them "Nazis" and demanded they "go back to Germany." The ultra-Orthodox men called an Ethiopian policeman "bitter chocolate" and "nigger" and told him to "go back to Ethiopia" or to go back to the cowshed." Police sources said the demonstrators also threw eggs at the officers...
...Secular Jerusalemites gathered in the area, cheering the police and taunting the protesters. At one point a fight erupted between the two sides, and police had to break things up...
ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1104510.html
August 15, 2009 7:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
RE: "Why should there be a problem defining a Jewish state?" - Tintin
ALSO SEE: "8 Haredim arrested in protest over Jerusalem parking lot", By Jonathan Lis,08/15/09
(EXCERPT) At least eight ultra-Orthodox men were arrested Saturday for blocking the entrance to Jerusalem's Karta parking lot, in the latest Haredi protest against it operating on Shabbat.
Police dispersed hundreds of Haredi demonstrators who tried to block the street leading to the parking lot.
Protests against the opening of the parking lot, which began in June, have continued in recent weeks...
...Two weeks ago, 15 ultra-Orthodox men were arrested and one policeman injured in particularly violent protests that were broken up only by use of heavy force by the police, which brought in mounted policemen to push the protesters back from the road.
The controversy began in June, when the Jerusalem municipality decided to open the parking lot to accommodate visitors to the Old City.
SOURCE - http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1107662.html
August 15, 2009 3:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
RE: "8 Haredim arrested in protest over Jerusalem parking lot"
Haaretz Talkback for the above-referenced article
Title: parking lot
Name: matthew sparks
City: jerusalem State:
the opening of the parking lot on shabbat was necessitated to accommodate the scofflaws[israeli tourists etc]who parked illegally and thus created a danger.the cars should have been towed away with a severe fine.tourists in rental cars do not pay parking tickets. the issue is not danger,it is business; making money on shabbat. jerusalem is supposed to be the holy city;we are selling our holiness for money.in the parsha`re`eh` god gives us choice;and we have chosen to forsake him,to defile the holy city. shame on us!!
SOURCE - http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/objects/pages/ResponseDetails.jhtml?resNo=5145455&itemno=1107662&cont=2
August 15, 2009 6:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
RE: "Why should there be a problem defining a Jewish state?" - Tintin
AND SEE "Rabbis Ban Marriage for Israeli "Untouchables", by Jonothan Cook, from Tel Aviv, 08/06/09
350,000 Immigrants Classed as "Without Religion"
(EXCERPT)Tel Aviv - Two immigrants from the former Soviet Union staged a very public wedding in the streets of central Tel Aviv this week to highlight the plight of hundreds of thousands of Jews barred from lawfully marrying in Israel.
Nico Tarosyan and Olga Samosvatov chose to tie the knot in a special ceremony on Tuesday -- watched by family, friends and curious passers-by -- after Orthodox rabbis had denied them the right to wed.
The rabbinate says that Mr Tarosyan cannot prove he is Jewish according to its strict standards and therefore should not marry Ms Samosvatov, who is considered a proper Jew.
Mr Tarosyan, aged 34, who moved to Israel from Moscow in 1995, called his treatment by the rabbis “humiliating”.
“In Russia we were hated because we were Jews and here in Israel we are discriminated against as Russians,” he said...
ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://www.counterpunch.org/cook08062009.html
August 15, 2009 3:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Native-born children of foreign workers pose dilemma for Israel", By Dina Kraft 08/12/09
(excerpt) TEL AVIV (JTA) – The round-faced boy given the unusual first name of Rabbi by his Filipino parents was born 11 years ago in Israel and has never known another home. He speaks only Hebrew and has never traveled to the Philippines, but along with some 1,100 other children of foreign workers without work permits in Israel, the boy faces possible deportation along with his family.
"I feel Israeli in my heart and in my soul," said the boy, Rabbi Eliazar Cruz. His parents initially came to Israel legally, as caretakers for elderly clients, but overstayed their visas. "The Land of Israel is my land,” Rabbi said. “But these days I stay mostly at home, inside. I don't want to be caught outside and asked by the police where my parents are and deported."
In late July, a government order to deport the children and their families as part of a larger expulsion of migrants was delayed for three months ......Still, the question of government policy on the issue of the Israeli-born children of foreign workers, most of whose parents entered the country legally but stayed after their work permits expired, remains unresolved. Like other countries in the industrial world, Israel faces the dilemma of how to deal with the families created on its soil by the foreign workers it invites in. But Israel, which has no immigration policy for non-Jews, finds itself in uncharted territory...
ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://jta.org/news/article/2009/08/12/1007210/israeli-born-children-of-foreign-workers-pose-dilemma-for-jewish-state
August 15, 2009 4:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
RE: "Why should there be a problem defining a Jewish state?" - Tintin
FROM YNET NEWS - "Rabbi Aviner: Women must not wear pants even when alone", 05/02/08
***One of Religious Zionism's most prominent leaders defines trousers as a 'self-prohibition,' says women 'must dress modestly also when alone and in the dark'***
(EXCERPT) Women must not wear pants even when they are home alone, Rabbi Shlomi Aviner has ruled.
Aviner, Beit El's rabbi and one of Religious Zionism's most prominent leaders, was asked in a cellular Q&A session published in the "Small World" bulletin, "When a girl goes to relieve herself at night, is she allowed to say the 'Asher Yatzar' ('he who formed') prayer while wearing a short-sleeved shirt and trousers?"
The rabbi replied that it is permitted to say the prayer in such a case, but added that "in general, a woman must always wear modest clothes even when she is alone and in the dark, because the Holy one blessed be he is everywhere. And yes, trousers are a self-prohibition even when a woman is alone.".......
ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://www.ynet.co.il/english/articles/0,7340,L-3538781,00.html
August 15, 2009 4:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
RE: "Why should there be a problem defining a Jewish state?" - Tintin
FROM YNET NEWS: "Jerusalem: Orthodox riot in protest of chastity squad arrest", by Neta Sela 08/26/08
***Haredim burn garbage cans, block streets in protest of arrest of community member suspected of torching store that sells MP4 player. 'Safeguarding Torah considered a crime in this country of Sodom and Gomorrha,' they say***
(EXCERPT) Ultra-Orthodox Jews rioted in Jerusalem on Monday in protest of the recent arrest of Shmuel Weisfish, a member of the haredi community's chastity squad who was allegedly involved in the torching of a store selling MP4 players in violation of a ruling of the Orthodox Court of Justice. Demonstrators set garbage cans on fire on Shmuel Hanavi, Dvora Hanevia, Hanevi'im and Shivtei Yisrael streets in the capital....
...... Haredim recently distributed pashkevilim (informative ads or posters often plastered in the Jerusalem's religious neighborhoods) against stores selling MP4 devices, saying "a terrible plague is upon us, claiming victims every day… these sinful devices were banned by all the great rabbis, but are still common in the haredi world… their devilish distributors want nothing more than to drive the people of Israel to sin through movies and other abominations......
ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3587654,00.html
August 15, 2009 4:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
RE: "Why should there be a problem defining a Jewish state?" - Tintin
ALSO SEE: "The First Word: A day in Jerusalem" , By YEHUDAH MIRSKY, 05/07/09
(EXCERPT) Nobody who has lived in Jerusalem in recent years needs any educating about the sword from without. A week ago Thursday I discovered the terror within. It coils through Jerusalem's streets, and us...
...As I came out of the plaza, right across the street from city hall, I saw four men jump, stomp and kick the daylights out of several others (Lord knows why) and run off. I called for the police and waited for them to arrive as people ran out of the surrounding pubs to help the crushed victims, whose blood ran down the sidewalk...
...After the police left, some young haredim came up to me, hungry for details: Did you see fists? Did you see a knife? I told them how earlier in the day their comrades had nearly done the same to me. "There was action at the demo? We missed it?"...
...When I finally got home, at about 2:30 in the morning, my wife was, luckily for me, awake. I told her something that I had been thinking and scared to say for a long while: that the Jerusalem of my dreams, the Jerusalem where heaven and earth kiss, the Jerusalem of my father's childhood, is finally dead.
[The writer lives in Jerusalem. He is currently writing a biography of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Hacohen Kook.]
ENTIRE COMMENTARY - http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1239710892040&pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull
August 15, 2009 4:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
RE: "Why should there be a problem defining a Jewish state?" - Tintin
FROM "THE INDEPENDENT"(U.K.): "Jews protect Palestinians in harvest of hate", By Donald Macintyre in Awarta, West Bank - 10/10/08
***Israelis cross religious divide to shelter olive farmers from settlers' attacks***
(EXCERPT) In the shade of the trees where they have been picking olives all morning, in this wadi, south-east of Nablus, a Palestinian farmer, Jamal Otman Koarik, and two of his daughters share a lunch of home-baked bread, zatar, oil, courgettes and salad with three visitors. It's a bucolic scene that could have happened any time in the past century. But what makes it notable in 2008 is that the guests who have been helping Mr Koarik pick the olives are Israeli Jews: a rabbi, an anthropologist and a youth worker, Hellela Siew.
Born in Tel Aviv, Ms Siew served in the army, took a university degree, then a teacher's diploma. Thirty-six years ago, she took the tough decision to emigrate to London, telling her parents: "I won't come back until there's peace." Ms Siew, who is now 64, remains an Israeli citizen but now lives with her British husband in Hebden Bridge. She has kept to her word, except that each autumn she comes back to stay in her hometown with her relatives and spends each day of the two-month harvest season picking olives on Palestinian farmland in the West Bank......
.....Last year, she was in a group in the South Hebron Hills confronted by settlers who fired shots from a pistol and an M16 assault rifle, despite the presence of the army and police. "Then one of the soldiers said, 'Look, one of them is coming down with a jug of water for you'. The settler emptied the jug over me. It was full of human sh^t."......
ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/jews-protect-palestinians-in-harvest-of-hate-956706.html
August 15, 2009 6:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
RE: "Why should there be a problem defining a Jewish state?" - Tintin
ALSO SEE: "5 Haredi men beat woman who refused to move to back of bus" - By Jonathan Lis, "Haaretz", 10/21/07
(EXCERPT) Five assailants believed to be Ultra-Orthodox Jews assaulted a woman and an Israel Defense Forces soldier Sunday for sitting next to each other on a bus bound for Beit Shemesh, near Jerusalem.
The incident began when the five men asked the religious woman to move to the back of the bus to prevent males and females from sitting together in public. When she refused, they beat her and the male soldier who sat next to her.
Police forces that arrived at the scene to arrest the men were attacked by dozens of ultra-Orthodox men who punctured the tires of their vehicles, allowing the assailants to escape....
ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/915215.html
August 15, 2009 5:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
RE: "Why should there be a problem defining a Jewish state?" - Tintin
FROM YNET NEWS: "Jerusalem Police against chastity squad", by Neta Sela, 08/22/08
***Meah Shearim residents agitated following wave of arrests of 'modesty guard' activists. In one of demonstrations held every evening, youngsters flip over police car in capital. 'The chastity squad activists are doing what the police should be doing,' senior community member says***
(EXCERPT) The ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of Meah Shearim in Jerusalem was shaken up last week following the arrest of three residents suspected of being active in the haredi community's chastity squad.
Demonstrations in protest of the arrest were held in the neighborhood's Shabbat Square every evening in the past week, and on Thursday, protestors clashed with police forces and even flipped over a police car on Yoel Street.
The first person arrested three weeks ago was Elhanan Buzaglo, who was indicted of attacking a woman suspected of improper ties with married men in the capital's Maalot Dafna neighborhood. According to the indictment, Buzaglo received $2,000 in return for his involvement in the attack...
ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3586142,00.html
August 15, 2009 5:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
RE: "Why should there be a problem defining a Jewish state?" - Tintin
FROM YNET NEWS: "Modesty patrol suspected of spilling acid on teenage girl", by Neta Sela, 06/05/08
***Religious tensions at boiling point in Beitar Illite as 14-year-old girl attacked by member of town's 'modesty guard'***
(EXCERPT) A 14-year-old girl from Beitar Illite was taken to the Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital in Jerusalem after an unknown person spilled acid on her face, legs and stomach, causing light burn wounds. The act has been attributed to a representative of the so-called 'modesty guard' in this town where religious and secular residents are increasingly at bitter odds....
...According to the paramedic the focus of the threats has largely been the victim's 18-year-old sister and some suspect the attacker mistook the younger girl's identity for that of her older sister's...
...An ultra-Orthodox teen from Beitar Illite who is in contact with the girl’s family spoke with her sister who described the incident. According to the boy, the attacker stopped the girl and first asked her for directions. Then, after confirming her surname, he spilled a bottle of acid on her....
ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://www.ynet.co.il/english/articles/0,7340,L-3552461,00.html
August 15, 2009 5:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
ALSO SEE: "Israeli MP blames gays for earthquakes", ABC News (Australia), 02/21/08
(EXCERPT) A Jewish ultra-Orthodox MP yesterday blamed homosexuals for a recent earthquake that struck Israel and the region.
Shas MP Shlomo Benizri, speaking at a parliamentary committee on the country's preparedness for quakes, lashed out at homosexuality, considered an abomination under Jewish law and in its religious text, the Gemara.
"We are looking for earthly solutions, how to prevent them," Mr Benizri said.
"I have another way to prevent earthquakes. The Gemara says that one of the reasons earthquakes happen, which the Knesset (parliament) legitimises, is homosexuality."
"God says you shake your genitals where you are not supposed to and I will shake my world in order to wake you up."...
ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/02/21/2168674.htm
August 15, 2009 5:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
RE: "Israeli MP blames gays for earthquakes"
SEE ALSO: "Gunman kills 2 at Tel Aviv club for gay youths", By Rami Amichai, 08/01/09
[excerpt] TEL AVIV, Aug 1 (Reuters) - A gunman sprayed automatic fire at an Israeli club for gay teenagers on Saturday, killing two people and wounding at least eight, police and witnesses said...
...Citing witnesses, Israeli television said a black-clad, masked gunman stormed into the Tel Aviv Gay and Lesbian Association building and opened fire in a basement room where teenage homosexuals were holding a weekly support group.
...Most of the casualties were minors, the police spokesman said, adding that the assailant was believed to have used an automatic weapon such as an M-16 rifle...
ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSL1447731
August 15, 2009 6:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well, Dick, you certainly like to post, but I don't see how you've responded to my question...only what you THINK my question was.
I understand there's conflict between secular Jews and religious Jews and their respective establishments over "who's a Jew."
But I don't see how that bears on the question of whether a Jewish state is possible in ME.
You'll find equally bloody...if not more bloody...quarrels as to who's a Muslim, what a Muslim should do...in Muslim countries.
And yet no one questions the possibility...or even the advisability...of having Muslim states in the ME.
Sure, folks like evildoer will say things like, "I'm against that, too!" but there's never an uproar about it.
In fact, during the post-election Iranian uprising, progressive voices on this blog at least seemed to be walking on eggshells, as if a comment in support of the protesters in the bowels of TPM might endanger the lives of Teheranis!
August 15, 2009 6:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
"And yet no one questions the possibility...or even the advisability...of having Muslim states in the ME.
Sure, folks like evildoer will say things like, "I'm against that, too!" but there's never an uproar about it."
Actually, it's generally accepted in the West that Muslim states in the Mideast are politically backward. There's no uproar because we're not constantly told that Egypt is a wonderful place with a great political system threatened by religious fanaticism and so there's not that much to fight about as far as factual issues are concerned. There are some people who claimed that if we just invaded one of these places and gave them a decent government, things would change, and there was a certain degree of uproar about that, because a real policy issue was at stake, but since that didn't work out too well (not that I believe good intentions played much of a role in our Iraq policy, except to sell it to some gullible mainstream liberal pundits), people don't get in an uproar because nobody is pretending these crappy governments are worthy of admiration and should be treated by Congress with the sort of reverence that they habitually give to Israel. Anyway, the uproar about Israel is mostly in blog comment sections, as far as I can tell, though that could change if Obama decides to do something serious about the settlement issue.
August 16, 2009 12:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hi Don, thanks for your comment. Here's what I think, and I admit I'm into subjective territory here...
Don writes: Actually, it's generally accepted in the West that Muslim states in the Mideast are politically backward. There's no uproar because we're not constantly told that Egypt is a wonderful place with a great political system threatened by religious fanaticism and so there's not that much to fight about as far as factual issues are concerned.
Tintin: Yes, but I think it goes further. I mean you don't want to end up saying that progressives are silent because they're willing to accept Egypt as a "politically backward" place, do you?Que sera sera? I mean you COULD see the uproar as progressives saying, in effect, that Israel can reform itself if given enough incentive, whereas these backwaters are...
Progressives have largely thrown up their hands at the problem of what to "do about" these regimes. Every action is seen as "meddling by an outside party," which only strengthens the repressive forces, works against progressive forces inside by making them look like tools of Westerners, etc.
So, for example, you had what to me was the bizarre response of many here at tpm (who count themselves among Israel's most vocal critics) during the aftermath of the Iranian election. Folks arguing that the election was probably on the up and up. Folks not wanting to criticize the crackdown (even in the bowels of this blog) for fear it would endanger the protesters. Folks asking "what does it even mean to support the protesters?" Folks making fun of the green armbands.
Also, in the wake of the Iraq debacle, you have progressives grafting on a heavy branch of realism. So not infrequently you hear, "How is support for Israel in our national self-interest? It doesn't have oil?" As if oil were the summum bonum of our foreign policy. Now, I understand YOU may not be saying this, but still it's something I've read here and at a TWN quite a lot.
And then you have the fact that these are large, ancient countries with a lot of cultural and political inertia working in their favor. They have, for the most part, clearly defined borders, and their origins go way back in the sands of time, if not politically than culturally and ethnically. Israel, by contrast, is small; everyone remembers when it was founded; its borders are still in dispute; and no one can even agree on who or what a Jew is, least of all the Jews.
No one, however, seems to wonder what an Iranian is, or what a Saudi Arabian is, or what an Egyptian is. These countries and ethnicities are deemed to have come into being gradually, through the shifting sands of time and people and thus would appear to be natural. Israel, by contrast, is viewed as a product almost solely of human will and is built on a house of outmoded intellectual constructs--in short, it's a phony country. So who really needs it?
So all of this is grist for the debate mill.
And then, of course, you have the genuine anti-Semites who have lots of cover here because they can hide amongst all the genuine criticisms of Israel. For better or worse, you don't have a 2,000 year old tradition of people hating Arabs and Iranians because they killed their lord or have banded together as bankers to take over the world. I mean some criticisms that I've read on this board and TWN are just bizarre, e.g., Zionists want to take over the world.
Then, there is this notion that Jews should be better morally than "everyone else." This is a tricky notion because it is one that Jews themselves often hold. Sometimes they make the claim that they ARE morally superior to everyone else. For example, no one batted an eye when white North Carolinians or Mississipians didn't rise up and start marching with MLK and repent of their 400-year-old sins against African Americans. And no one expected them to. It was expected that most/many of them wanted to keep the status quo or were afraid of changing it. This is true of the Arab countries, too: No one expects them to do better, even if they want them to. Maybe they will some day.
But right here on this blog, you will hear folks saying, "Where are the progressive Jews on the IP conflict? Where are the moral equivalents of the Abby Hoffmans and Jerry Rubins? leading massive protests?" Well, in fact, there are lot of Jews who've raised their voices and many more are doing so. The Jewish "establishment" is not, but the Jewish establishment wasn't all that anti-Vietnam war either. Just as a small example, I was reading Uri Avnery way back in the early 1970s.
Then you have the argument that the US has a responsibility for what Israel does. And, to some degree, I think they're right. I do think the U.S. should use its influence and financial leverage to prod Israel in the right direction. But the fact of the matter is the U.S. supports these others regimes almost as much, and maybe even more, and no one really cares or worries that the U.S. isn't acting in its own self-interest. Nor does anyone go around looking for dual citizens manipulating the other 97% of the population.
One offshoot of this argument is that "people are tired of fighting Israel's wars" and, "one of these days, Israel is going to drag the U.S. into the big one." My question is, which wars are they talking about? Seems to me the U.S. support Iraq in the I-I war for our own purposes. We entered the Gulf War for our own purposes. We stationed our troops in SA for our own purposes. We deposed Mossadegh in Iran for our own purposes. And those purposes are largely oil--the one thing the critics often say is a genuine and proper self-interest of the United States. So, if only we'd stick to our true self-interest we'd...be right where we are today (assuming we weren't able to do it in any more enlightened a way than we have).
(And then there was the Balkans which, like 'em or hate 'em, was our attempt to help some Muslims.)
Don writes: People don't get in an uproar because nobody is pretending these crappy governments are worthy of admiration and should be treated by Congress with the sort of reverence that they habitually give to Israel."
Tintin writes: I see your point here, as above. I think cutting off aid would end the debate. We'd then get to see if it cured the situation, or improved it. But short of that, I think the U.S. should use the fine art of hardball diplomacy to see if it helped the Israeli public move in a better direction. For what it's worth, I do think Obama should talk plainly to the Israeli public. It's really more in Israel's interests than in the U.S. to resolve the conflict in an "equitable" way.
Sorry for the rambling, I'm suffering from a series of maladies...
August 16, 2009 10:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
RE: "Israeli MP blames gays for earthquakes"
FROM YNET: "2 killed in Tel Aviv shooting", by Avi Cohen, 08/02/09
*** GLBT activist says shooting that killed 2, wounded 10 at gay community meeting place in central Tel Aviv was 'deliberate act against gay community' ***
Israel News (excerpt) A shooting incident occurred at a meeting place for the GLBT community in Tel Aviv late Saturday evening, and paramedics have reported two people dead. At least ten people have been wounded, six of them seriously.
The incident took place at a time during which teenagers belonging to the GLBT community were holding a meeting. At around 10:40 pm shots were heard at the meeting place in central Tel Aviv. A man dressed in black was spotted by eyewitnesses fleeing the scene, and he was later spotted again on a nearby street.
One eyewitness to the shooting said, "The place looked like a slaughterhouse." Another witness said the shooter had worn a mask. Civilians were warned to stay away from the area.
Eyal Amit, a member of the GLBT organization, told Ynet that many of the teens who met at the clubhouse had not yet informed their loved ones of their sexual orientation. "It's a very sensitive situation. What we know is that in order to get here one must come here especially. This was not some random shooting," he said.
Yaniv Weizmann, an activist for the GLBT community, told Ynet that "according to the assessments, this was a planned and deliberate act against the gay community"...
ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3755400,00.html
August 15, 2009 6:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
Jo-Ann: Having read and re-read Malley-Agha's piece, I would not be so quick to conclude as have others (including Jeffrey Goldberg) that they are ready to consign the two-state solution to the scrapheap.
Malley-Agha's main contribution, as I see it, is a recognition that the devil is not in the details, but in the mindset of the protagonists and a partition agreement, while essential, will not of itself end the conflict. For Jewish Israelis, their struggle is for recognition of their right to self-determination in their spiritual homeland. For the Palestinian Arabs, it is for recognition of their dispossession, recompense and return of the refugees. The two-stae solution has foundered not over the details of land swaps, water rights, etc., or whether this or that proposal was sufficiently generous. The fundamental disagreements remain rooted in the conflict of 1948.
(In my view, this debunks the contention of some that if Israel would only make this or that adjustment, or take some action that they have heretofore resisted, peace would magically break out.)
Where Malley-Agha frustrate is in their failure to provide any suggestions at all for reconciling the competing narratives - hence their maddeningly vague conclusion that the conflict is over the definition of Israel. True, but how can we put this information to use?
That said, the two-state solution is still the best way for each side to achieve at least some of their national aspirations, separate the warring parties and provide the space for reconciliation to begin. Malley-Agha seem to recognize this, as their June 2009 article from the NY Review of Books makes clear:
http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=6104&l=1
August 14, 2009 5:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah, I read the piece via Magnes Zionist, and I found the end strangely disappointing. Just as I was expecting them to come forth with a "new way" (as Jerry had foreshadowed), or a new way by going back to the original dispute, they sign off.
Maybe they'll write Part II...
August 14, 2009 5:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's the new york times for crissake! They were probably pinching themselves to see that the world still exists after the edition went to press. The NYT is not the place to look for anything fresh.
As the saying goes, first they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. And then they attack you and want to burn you. And then they publish a trial balloon in the NYT that suggests tongue-in-cheek that you might, just might, have a point.
It's progress.
August 16, 2009 8:18 AM | Reply | Permalink
Sure. But we're talking about the content of the article, not the FACT OF the article. I don't have any real quarrel with you; it's just that I expected/hoped for something more at the end. But I don't have a quarrel with progress.
August 16, 2009 2:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
There is no plausible alternative to two states.
If Israel gives citizenship to the Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza, Jews will barely be a majority and West Bank and Gaza residents will have the freedom to travel throughout Israel without passing through any security checkpoints. Neither of those is going to happen. Forced 'removal' of Arabs from the West Bank and Gaza isn't going to happen either. And the wall and travel restrictions for Palestinians creates a de facto two states as it is.
But Israel can't pull out and leave a power vacuum in Palestine, so we need to address that and how to make sure Palestine isn't a threat to Israel.
August 15, 2009 1:01 AM | Reply | Permalink
This discussion is apparently centered around a false premise. Likud and Netanyahu have not the slightest intention of co-operating or allowing the establishment of an autonomous Palestinian state. The manifest of the ultra right-wing Likud party expressly requires movement towards a 'Greater Israel' from Eilat to the Syrian border by the expedient of 'transferring' all Muslims and Christians out of Israel/ Palestine to neighboring countries such as Jordan and Egypt.
Meanwhile little Ehud Barack struts and frets his hour upon the stage. This Barack is quite a warmonger. He wants to attack Lebanon unless he is allowed to determine the composition of the Lebanese parliament. He threatens to attack Iran unless they immediately stop copying Israel in an attempt to build nuclear weapons. Israel has already between 200 and 500 warheads, enough to wipe out the whole of the Gulf and beyond. And he tells Syria that unless they run their country the way he, Barack, wants, they will be targeted by the IAF. Quite a threatening posture for one small politician, who apparently wants to rule the Middle East.
August 15, 2009 5:43 AM | Reply | Permalink
Quite a threatening posture for one small politician, who apparently wants to rule the Middle East.
when he was 17 years old, barak was 5' 4" tall. he is now 57 years old. due to age he must have lost at least one inch in height. The average height of an israeli man is 5'9". he is most always looking up to others. barak has a short man syndrome and needs to compensate by showing how big he is by stomping over the middle east. someone please buy him some platform shoes and give him some Boniva.
August 15, 2009 3:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
The Palestinians for some time now have been too busy fighting each other for any one to seriously worry about whether an autonomous Palestinian state would be created: who would you hand it to?
August 15, 2009 6:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
RE: "...the views of Israeli and Jewish hardliners, who argue that peace can only come when Palestinians embrace the Jewish narrative..."
THE WORDS OF NETANYAHU'S FATHER: "...The Bible finds no worse image than this of the man from the desert. And why? Because he has no respect for any law. Because in the desert he can do as he pleases. The tendency towards conflict is in the essence of the Arab. He is an enemy by essence. His personality won’t allow him any compromise or agreement. It doesn’t matter what kind of resistance he will meet, what price he will pay. His existence is one of perpetuate war..."
"...The two states solution doesn’t exist. There are no two people here. There is a Jewish people and an Arab population...there is no Palestinian people, so you don’t create a state for an imaginary nation...they only call themselves a people in order to fight the Jews..." - Benzion Netanyahu, 2009 interview
SOURCE OF NETANYAHU'S FATHER'S WORDS(translated from the Hebrew language publication into English) - http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/2009/04/04/bibis-fathers-answer-to-the-arab-problem-hang-em-in-the-town-square/
August 15, 2009 7:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
RE: "...the views of Israeli and Jewish hardliners, who argue that peace can only come when Palestinians embrace the Jewish narrative..."
SEE ALSO: "Netanyahu Sr. Lets the Cat Out of the Bag", by Tony Karon, 07/11/09
(EXCERPT) When a top sportsman wants to express opinions that might get him into trouble with his employers, his father often pops up in the media to reveal what his son is really thinking. In the same way, while Benjamin Netanyahu would risk incurring Washington’s wrath if he were to admit the cynicism behind his apparent embrace of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, his father has no such qualms.
On Israeli TV last week, the 100-year-old historian and stalwart of the Israeli right, Ben-Zion Netanyahu, was blunt when asked whether his son now supports the creation of a Palestinian state: “He does not support it. He supports such conditions that they [the Palestinians] will never accept it. That’s what I heard from him. I didn’t propose these conditions, he did. They will never accept these conditions. Not one of them.”...
ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://tonykaron.com/2009/07/11/netanyahus-dad-lets-the-cat-out-of-the-bag/
August 15, 2009 7:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
RE: "...the views of Israeli and Jewish hardliners, who argue that peace can only come when Palestinians embrace the Jewish narrative..."
MY COMMEMT: According to a comment (#4-Ira G) posted to the above-excerpted Tony Karon article, there was also an Israeli newscast which was filmed shortly before the last Israeli election. The interview is with both Binyamin Netanyahu and his father. In the interview Binyamin Netanyahu (now the Prime Minister) unambiguously states his "narrative".
(excerpt)
> Binyamin Netanyahu: I think that anyone who has eyes in his head understands that today any settlement that will be evacuated will be grabbed by the bitter enemies of the State of Israel.
> Question: So you can say that the Likud [Netanyahu’s party] will not evacuate settlements during its term of office?
> Netanyahu: Yes.
> Question: Will not evacuate?
> Netanyahu: Indeed.
The above-excerpted newscast interview is on YouTube in Hebrew with the quote beginning at approximately 3:50 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-y1xUfxCUc
August 15, 2009 8:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
RE: "...the views of Israeli and Jewish hardliners, who argue that peace can only come when Palestinians embrace the Jewish narrative..."
ALSO SEE: "One wall, two very different views - life on either side of the great divide", by Rory McCarthy, 07/07/08
(EXCERPT) Six years ago, when Stan and Joyce Freedman retired they left their home in Edgware, north London, took Israeli citizenship and bought a plot of land on a hilltop in a small but popular sun-drenched Israeli community where their daughter already had a house. They built a three-bedroom home...
"There was nothing here when we first came to this street," said Mr Freedman... Now their street is full of houses and families. "It's a wonderful life and the neighbours are fantastic," he said...
...The town they chose to live in is Alfe Menashe, a fast-growing community of about 7,000 Jewish Israelis who make up what is in fact a settlement, built about two miles into the occupied West Bank, east of the large Palestinian city of Qalqilya...
...There is another element to Alfe Menashe's success. On all sides of the settlement, save for a narrow strip that leads into Israel, there is the 50-metre wide West Bank barrier. Israel says it is intended to keep out suicide bombers and prevent terrorist attacks. But the barrier also crosses into the West Bank and surrounds many settlements such as Alfe Menashe, even though all settlements on occupied Palestinian land are widely regarded as illegal under international law. The barrier unilaterally takes at least 9.5% of the West Bank on to the "Israeli" side...
...Originally the barrier route did not encircle Alfe Menashe but followed the Green Line, the 1949 armistice line between Israel and the Arab armies, and excluded most settlements. But Alfe Menashe's mayor, Hisdai Eliezer, worked hard to change the route, even bringing the then prime minister, Ariel Sharon, to the settlement to hear the case for himself. The result was not only that Alfe Menashe was brought on the "Israeli" side, but along with it land for the settlement to expand. However, it also brought in five nearby Palestinian villages that were cut off in a closed area. Those villages' 1,200 residents now require short-term "permanent resident cards" to live in their own homes. This has severely disrupted their access to health and educational facilities and created a situation where friends and families require special permits to visit...
...There are now more than 450,000 settlers living in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and construction of settler homes continues apace, despite the peace talks with the Palestinians and Israel's commitments under the American-led road map to freeze all settlement activity. The majority of settlers have come in the years since the 1993 Oslo accords, the supposedly groundbreaking deal that was to lead to an independent Palestinian state....
ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jul/07/israelandthepalestinians.middleeast1
August 16, 2009 11:43 AM | Reply | Permalink
RE: "...the views of Israeli and Jewish hardliners, who argue that peace can only come when Palestinians embrace the Jewish narrative..."
SEE: 'It's like living at the end of the world', by Toni O'Loughlin, 07/09/08
***Dirty, dilapidated and desperate, al-Ram is typical of the Palestinian towns cut off by the barrier on Jerusalem's eastern outskirts***
(EXCERPT) Sufian Odeh used to be able to see his cousin's house across the street from his apartment window - until Israel built a wall of concrete down the middle of their neighborhood two years ago. Standing eight metres high and just 13 metres from his building, it overshadows Sufian's second-floor apartment like the wall of a prison, darkening this once thriving Palestinian district...
...His neighbours fled long ago, as the West Bank barrier crept down the main street of al-Ram, dividing families, separating children from schools and patients from clinics, and severing the road back to Jerusalem. Stranded outside Jerusalem by the barrier, al-Ram has become a virtual ghost town. Palestinian customers who came to Al-Ram from Jerusalem's centre in search of cheaper prices have disappeared, as have one-third of its 1,800 businesses. Vast numbers of its 62,000 residents, unable to sell their homes, have gone. The abandoned shops, with their "for sale" signs, deserted streets and overgrown gardens are typical of the Palestinian towns cut off by the barrier on Jerusalem's eastern outskirts...
ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jul/09/israelandthepalestinians
August 16, 2009 2:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
DIckerson3870: Get a life. Please.
August 16, 2009 5:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
RE: "Why should there be a problem defining a Jewish state?"
SEE: "Citing ‘Amalek,’ Goldberg/Netanyahu would seem to prescribe genocide for Iran", by Philip Weiss, 05/18/09
(EXCERPT) Were you disturbed by the news that Donald Rumsfeld used biblical quotations in headlines of war reports to President Bush so as to command the commander-in-chief's shallow attention? It's so easy to bash Bush. Zionists do this stuff too. The smartest response I've seen to Jeffrey Goldberg's piece in the Times on Netanyahu's biblical thought process re Iran comes from Daniel Luban, who points out that in invoking Amalek, the villains of Deuteronomy in the Old Testament, Netanyahyu/Goldberg are citing a controversial section of the bible in which God orders genocide against a people. Luban:
Goldberg clearly does not wish to rattle his right-thinking liberal New York Times audience, so he conveniently omits all this from his account of Amalek. However, if Netanyahu’s advisors are right to say that Bibi sees Iran as the new Amalek, this is a fact with profoundly disturbing implications. After all, the biblically ordained way to deal with the Amalekites is not through “smart but tough” diplomacy, “crippling” sanctions, or even precise and targeted military strikes. Rather, it is through root-and-branch extermination — that is, wiping Iran off the map. Goldberg writes that “[i]f Iran’s nuclear program is, metaphorically, Amalek’s arsenal, then an Israeli prime minister is bound by Jewish history to seek its destruction, regardless of what his allies think.” This is not quite accurate. If we take God’s command and the Amalek analogy literally, then an Israeli prime minister would be bound not to seek “its [the Amalekite arsenal’s] destruction,” but rather “their [the Amalekites’] destruction.”
ENTIRE POST - http://mondoweiss.net/2009/05/citing-amalek-goldbergnetanyahu-would-seem-to-prescribe-genocide-for-iran.html
ALSO SEE: "BUSH HAD GOG AND MAGOG, BIBI HAS AMALEK", by Richard Silverstein, 05/25/09
LINK - http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/2009/05/17/jeffrey-goldberg-willing-tool-of-israels-perception-management-campaign-leading-to-iran-war/
August 18, 2009 12:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
Friedman is on a sensible track. The conflict is fundamentally hardline extremists (Israeli AND Arab) versus most of the rest of the world including most (whether they acknowledge it or not) Israelis and Arabs. The middle needs to unite to liberate itself from the lunatic fringes.
August 16, 2009 6:50 PM | Reply | Permalink