The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict and Balance
Fred Moolton decries one-sidedness and calls for balance.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is approximately a century old. What does it mean to view this conflict objectively? What constitutes a balanced perspective on what is happening in the land of which Great Britain took paternal charge under the Palestine Mandate, and which now contains the state of Israel and its ever-expanding colonies?
One may choose to focus on the many battles in this war, and on the conduct of the different sides and parties in the battles. On both sides, we have seen many clear violations of norms regarding the acceptable use of force and legitimate behavior in the conduct of war, norms on which both international legal canons and the moral traditions of most nations would concur. We all know how to evoke the litanies of atrocious acts that have occurred by the hands of both Israelis and Palestinians, and their various sponsors, over the long decades of the conflict.
But what must not be missed in these rehearsals of the many wrongs pertaining to the battles comprising the conflict over Palestine is the broad nature of the conflict itself, the whole of which the battles are parts, and which is by no means a tale of tragic and counterbalanced moral parity. When we step back several lengths from the up-close contemplation of the morally gnarled and ambiguous instances, and contemplate in broad generality the sweep of the entire conflict, we see a smooth and unambiguous progress of blatant, aggressive dispossession.
On one side you have a people who are taking the land upon which others have long lived, plied their livelihoods and made their homes; on the other side you have the people who are fighting, with increasing desperation and little prospect of ultimate success, to prevent that land and those possessions from being taken from them. This is not ambiguous: it is manifest criminality confronted with manifest resistance to criminality. We see across the century a long violent tidal movement that has scoured homes, farms, villages, and people from the land, and even abraded away the centuries-old names of places, and deposited in the place of what once existed an invading people and their works, and a new language with new names. The movement is not some subtle and natural effect of gradual migrations and political evolution. The conquest is forceful. It has been carried out deliberately by it perpetrators and suffered unwillingly and with resistance by its victims.
The movement to take this land was begun long ago, by 19th-century European nationalists living in distant European cantons, most of whom had never once stepped foot upon the land in question, yet who dreamt strange, chauvinistic fantasies of redeeming the land of their dreamscape from its presumed captivity. The dreamers were utterly neglectful and often contemptuous of the real inhabitants of the real land. Their dream was given unfortunate life by European imperial powers whose habituated, racist arrogance made them feel entirely at liberty to promise and deliver land which did not belong to them to other people to whom the land also didn't belong. From the beginning the project was concocted of a mixture of bigoted presumption and mercenary reasons of state, sprinkled with daubs of irrational religious legends and fanaticism, or with metaphysically dreamy secular political doctrines that were the superstitious descendants of the older religious doctrines.
Eventually the barbarity of the Nazi holocaust, and the worthy instinct among the people of the western powers to atone for their collective guilt in that holocaust, gave to the project of conquest and colonialism in Palestine the radiant allure of a noble cause. But it is barely necessary now to point out how morally dubious and comically unsatisfactory were the means taken for the atonement. For one person to make amends for his crimes against a second person by awarding damages out of the property of a third person is transparently perverse.
This chauvinistic movement of conquest has been spectacularly successful, although it required the mid-century handoff from one western imperial power to another, and the conquest continues to this day, dunam by dunam, with each new Israeli settler domicile erected on the West Bank and with each act of military intimidation, subjugation and humiliation. The conquest has been accomplished predominantly through the use of sheer force, with the occasional and timely diplomatic intervention of those same western imperial powers. At each stage in the conflict, the colonial settlers now known as Israelis have worked energetically, through governments of the left and the right, in peace and in war, to fill the foreground of debate with extensive and diversionary talk: with endless excuses, rationalizations, importunings, complaints, sophistries, fulminations, menaces, pulings and bellyaches, while in the background they worked incessantly to press, push, kick, bomb and shoot the Palestinian Arabs off the lands still coveted by Israelis. The bad faith has been rank and impenetrable. It is hard to summon any more patience for this behavior, or to care any longer about how criticism will be received by Israelis. Anyone who has paid attention to the conflict for any length of time is already quite aware of the fact that Israelis will certainly and always continue to regard both the claim that they are the aggressors in the long war, and the disposition to deliver more criticism to the aggressors than to those aggressed against, as evidence of gross unfairness. So, alas, responding intelligently to the conflict cannot depend on being overly-concerned to frame messages that are appealing to Israelis.
There have been unjust, aggressive and brutal movements all over the world during the past century, some substantially more brutal than the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and yes, Americans manage to ignore most of them. But Americans can't ignore this conflict because they are deeply implicated in it. Unlike almost all of those other wars of aggression, America contains many people today who send money, resources and people to Israel to fuel the conflict and drive the ongoing aggressive seizure of land Some Americans agitate incessantly on behalf of the aggressive party in the conflict, and have very successfully enlisted the American government as an ally in the conquest, to the extent that neither Americans nor others around the world can any longer tell where American action ends and Israeli action begins. As a result, the security of all Americans has been put at extreme hazard. There are many conceivable and plausible contingencies that, should they occur, might easily spark the expansion of the conflict beyond Israel and Palestine. Such an expansion would likely draw the United States into a major war in a vital region, and draw in others as well. There is a depressing sense of inevitability hanging over America's obsessive and confused march toward the edge of the precipice. Many Americans will lose their lives though a fatally misguided alliance and sentimental attachment to a rogue, expansionist state, the bastard offspring of racist colonialism of the past and the vestigial organ of racist colonialism in the present.
Were those who condemned slavery "unbalanced" because they didn't condemn with equal vigor the atrocities of Nat Turner?
Were those who condemned South African apartheid "unbalanced" because they did not sufficiently respect the national aspirations of the Afrikaaners?
Are those who report the negative effects of global warming unbalanced because they fail to give equal time to the opponents of global warming?
When one position is right and one wrong, trying to present the two as deserving equal respect isn't balance, it's mendacity.
July 5, 2009 10:02 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks, Dan. As usual, very informative.
One quibble: I am sensitive about your saying that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is nearly a century old. Why? Because Israel was born the same year I was and I am 61 years old. To SOME that might seem like almost a century, but to me it seems closer to half a century! Please! I feel old enough already!
July 5, 2009 10:08 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah, I think Dan is equating aggressive Zionism with Israel. While that equation is not universally true, it has enough truth in enough cases to carry some water.
July 5, 2009 1:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
It was "born" in period of violence and scheming that accelerated in the 1930s and it's not a pretty picture.
July 5, 2009 6:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
Right! But I am not an effing one hundred years old! A CENTURY?!!! Give me a break!
And for the record, I think it is almost impossible to get into the Isreali/Palestinian conflict and find any kind of agreement. It is like the abortion/right to life argument: no room for respect on opposite sides.
July 5, 2009 7:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
You're right, but that's not nearly enough. Americans have been *highly* irresponsible about these issues. It's so complicated is not an answer so don't let yourself off the hook based on that.
When they explained this to me in college, I couldn't even believe how simple it was (same with Ireland); there's nothing to understand.
Step up.
July 5, 2009 7:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
Dan - Your commentary illustrates the type of analysis I hoped for in my earlier posting, which you alluded to - i.e., an acknowledgment of grievances on both sides before arguing in favor of one. I appreciate that effort.
That said, I believe you have seriously misread both past and recent history. The Jewish settlers in the region acquired their land through purchase, not conquest (unlike the ancient Israeli tribes or the later Arab conquerors). The early twentieth century was punctuated by violations on both sides, but the small Jewish community was more often the victim than the aggressor, including the victim of unprovoked massacres. It's simply incorrect to claim, therefore, that the Jewish presence in this very tiny arid region within a vast Arab territory is the result of a takeover.
You are closer to correct in terms of more recent history, but still lacking in a balanced perspective as I see it. The Israeli aggressions of recent years are not reasonably seen as a reflection of a unified Israeli perception that they should possess all the land. Rather, it represents the preeminence of an Israeli extremist movement exemplified by the radical settlers. Why the preeminence? Undoubtedly, in part because of bad judgment and bad choices by the Israeli electorate, but also because the more moderate Israeli public has been weakened by the implacable hatred of militant movements such as Hamas that are dedicated to Israel's annihilation. When you believe someone is trying to kill you, you generally don't choose your leaders for fairness or kindness, but for toughness.
It would be pointless to embark on an exercise of finger pointing to prove which side "started it". To end it requires exactly the opposite - a willingness to put a halt to accusations, including, Dan, those you recited above, even as I accept your sincerity.
As long as Israel is dominated by the aggrandizement bloc you appropriately condemn, and as long as Hamas and much of the Arab world calls for the destruction of Israel, peace will elude us, the suffering will continue, Israelis will suffer, and Palestinians will suffer even more. Those with a voice in the matter have a choice - continue the accusations and the suffering, or end both. I know which choice I wish to make.
July 5, 2009 11:43 AM | Reply | Permalink
The Arab nations got together and proposed the recognition of Israel and an accord of peace if Israel returned to its pre-1967 borders. Israel refused. Because of water. All of the effort that went into reclaiming the holy land without the forethought that olive groves and Lebanese cedars require more water than is readily available. Settlements are universally located on water wells. Israel is sytematically depriving Palestinians of water. You are playing a dangerous word game by ascribing extremist tendencies to settlers while letting the Israeli government off the hook. The settlement program is done under the approval and aegis of the Israeli government, and the program is dedicated to taking water by force from the indigenous population.
Your even-handedness masks an apologism for apartheid. You want the Palestinians to abandon Hamas while the Likud wing is allowed to exist "democratically" (without Palestinian vote) in Israel. You conveniently blame Palestinian violence for driving the occupiers crazy, yet neglect to mention the essential occupation and apartheid that fuels rebellion. That is akin to viewing the Irish troubles strictly from the British perspective and transforming Michael Collins into Yasser Arafat.
Ultimately, I am in favor of a one state solution where Palestinians and Israelis vote for one government that oversees their needs and interests. Any other solution is cantonment.
July 5, 2009 12:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
I continue to hope that at least a few commenters will recognize the counterproductive nature of an exclusive focus on Israeli transgressions. Anyone who wishes the misfortunes of the Palestinians to end must understand that the only plausible route toward that goal requires an end to the seige mentality in Israel that reinforces the extremists at the expense of moderates who covet peace rather than land. Fortunately, President Obama has wisely adopted a policy, epitomized in his Cairo address, that acknowledges the grievances of both sides in a non-accusatory manner, while pushing the Netanyahu government to freeze settlements as a step toward an eventual resolution.
Unlike you, I doubt a one-state solution is feasible, but I agree that a viable and just two-state solution requires equitable access to water by both Israel and the Palestinians. That will probably require not only outside mediation added to the negotiations, but perhaps also outside technical and economic aid, but at least it appears to be doable.
July 5, 2009 12:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
Israelis will always suffer from a siege mentality, Fred. That seems to come with the territory of being Israeli. We are long past the time when any realistic and experienced observer can believe that if the only the world could find a way of talking juuuuussssst right to Israel, Israel could be induced to reverse on its own accord its long and steady course of conquest. That is simply not born out by the history of the birth and growth of Israel, which is a history of continued expansion. It's impossible to believe any longer that expansion is not somehow entwined in the DNA of Israeli political culture, or that Israel can be induced to stop expanding other than by threat of negative consequences.
The only realistic approach at this point is to try to obtain a clear and unified international statement that the colonies in the occupied territories are illegal, and then to compel Israeli withdrawal from those territories under the threat of sanctions. The international community should lay out a prescriptive and clearly delineated framework for the final resolution, establish benchmarks for a phased achievement of that resolution, and attach firm sanctions for failures by either party to meet the benchmarks on schedule. Israelis can later work out for themselves how to resolve their psychic conflicts over siege mentalities and whatnot, just as some Palestinian die-hards will have to work out for themselves how to achieve resignation over the fact that they will never recover what they lost in the Nakhba.
The international approach in the past has been characterized by too much division, and way too much talk, wishful thinking and "peace-processism". The international strategy in 2009 should not be to try to get either Israelis or Palestinians to "see the light" or "do the right thing". Instead the aim should be to establish a clear set of expectations for international law and order, and compel both parties to live under those expectations. What is needed is a unified show of international resolve and toughness. The Israelis are the last people we need to hear from at this point. We have heard enough. They are the rogue state drivers of a conflict that chronically threatens global security, and must be brought under the rule of international law, even if they are brought under it kicking and screaming about how everyone is against them, and how unfair it all is.
July 5, 2009 1:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
The UN is rather unwilling to effectively chastise its first big mistake. Technically that's because of veto power of the USA. Psychologically, no parent likes to discipline the child, in part because it reflects on the parent that disciplining might be called for.
July 5, 2009 2:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
That said, I believe you have seriously misread both past and recent history. The Jewish settlers in the region acquired their land through purchase, not conquest (unlike the ancient Israeli tribes or the later Arab conquerors).
This is simply not true, Fred. The amount of Jewish-owned land in Palestine prior to the events of 1947 and 1948 was under 7% of the total. Following that war, the new state of Israel held 78% of Palestine. The additional lands were acquired through military conquest, with the covering assist of diplomatic intervention. During the 1948 war, the Nakhba, Palestinians were driven from their homes, towns and villages all over Palestine, and their land was simply annexed by Israel. It wasn't purchased.
You may choose to view the colonization of the West Bank as the result of an "extremist movement". But almost all of the settlements on the West Bank, with the exception of a tiny fragment that the Israelis refer to as "outposts", were explicitly authorized by the Israeli government, governments that systematically violated both international and Israelis law. It hasn't mattered whether Labor, Kadima or the Likud has been in charge of that government.
July 5, 2009 12:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
Dan, I believe we're talking past each other. As I interpreted your original post, you suggested that the Jewish presence was the result of a takeover, and I pointed out that the first Jewish settlers arrived by purchasing land - mainly from Arab landlords, some of whom lived outside the region. The subsequent relations between the populations were characterized by periodic conflicts, most often in the nature of Arab pogroms against the Jewish presence, incited by local religious authorities, and culminating in massacres that killed many of the Jews. The consequence was a growing sense within the Jewish community of a need for effective protection.
The creation of Israel in 1948 by the UN triggered a massive Arab assault designed to destroy the new state. That war, and subsequent ones, tended overall to increase Israeli land holdings and reduce the territory available to the Palestinians. My own view embodies some moral ambiguity; in one sense, a nation under attack by would-be annihilators has a right to retain territory it acquired from the conflict, particularly so as to discourage further aggression against it. On the other hand (and more compelling in my view), retaining that occupied land inflicts intolerable hardships on its innocent inhabitants, and is ultimately an untenable measure in the long run.
I expect you agree. Most moderate Israelis also agree, which is the basis for the land-for-peace concept. Unfortunately, the extremists have dominated recently, and are represented by the Israeli government, in part, as I suggested, because moderate Israelis have a difficult time selling peace to the electorate in the face of a continued dedication to the destruction of Israel by Hamas and others.
Demonizing Israel is doomed to fail as a strategy for bringing peace and prosperity to the Palestinians. Encouraging moderate elements on both sides offers at least a glimmer of hope. What troubles me about some of the comments in these forums is the eagerness of many to perpetuate the demonization. What encourages me about the Obama approach is his recognition that an accusatory attitude won't work.
I mentioned above that water remains a difficult issue in the conflict. I would interested in views here as to how equitable water access might be negotiated in a manner that brings both sides closer to an agreement on other issues as well.
July 5, 2009 1:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
Fred, can you use hindsight to imagine how the water issues from decades ago might have been better dealt with then (as if you were a political mover back then) without the baggage which has accumulated since then?
Also, it's disingenuous to pretend that the creation of Israel as a nation state was not an assault in the first place. That is, you're talking backwards about 1948. If you seek equity, as your words proclaim, sugar-coating the situation from one side seems as problematic as demonizing the other.
July 5, 2009 1:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Also, it's disingenuous to pretend that the creation of Israel as a nation state was not an assault in the first place."
But Jews had bought a small fraction of what the U.N. gave to the Jews at the great expense of the natives.
In the spirit of coddling Fred's feelings, and the folklore he grew up with, can't we just focus on that fraction of land that was bought, and then skip ahead to the counter-attack by the natives?
That way we can pretend Israel was always just acting defensively against aggression. And isn't that the entire history of the Jews, after all? Perfect victims in an anti-Semitic world?
July 5, 2009 2:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
As far as I know, the UN took away no-one's home and forced no-one to move. It gave to the new state of Israel authority over what had previously belonged to England, and before that to Turkey.
The dispossession was the result of the war initiated by the Arab side.
More to the point, perhaps, is that the extent of territory transferred from England to Israel by the UN was tiny - a miniscule fraction of the total area inhabited by Arab residents who had previously lived under British and Ottoman rule. The notion that somehow an entire peoples had been dispossessed is one of the enduring myths surrounding this conflict. The dispossession came later, and was at least a partly self-inflicted wound occasioned by an unwillingness to accept Israel's right to exist. The best way to understand the size of the area in question is to look at a map.
Even so, I still see this as a distraction, because it invites us to engage in a contest to prove that all the trouble was initiated by whatever side we dislike most. The fact remains that in recent years, innocent Israelis have suffered, and innocent Palestinians have suffered more, and to end that requires the sides to make peace rather than rehash grievances.
July 5, 2009 2:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
Palestine was a League of Nations mandate over which England was the mandatory authority. It never "belonged" to England. Regrettably, the British government succeeded in having the implementation of the misguided Balfour Declaration written into the mandate, which is the fatally tragic step that has spawned a century of conflict.
July 5, 2009 3:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
Just for the record, the Balfour Declaration was protested by Christian organizations as well, not just Muslim.
It's hardly surprising that the Jews are paranoid about Antisemitism -- it's been with them at least 2000 years consistently!
July 5, 2009 3:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well it appears we agree, Fred, that very few present-day Israelis live on land that was actually purchased by Jewish immigrants. Most of the land was either bestowed upon Israel by external actors, or taken by force.
Yes, I know that the Israeli drive to expand is reinforced in part by the felt need to establish a wider zone of security in response to the perception of threat. Israelis have always felt that way and probably always will, in part due to their ancestors' own traumatic history and in part because there will always be some Palestinian Arabs who are anxious to try to recover what was taken from them by other Israelis. Israelis seem to respond to their omnipresent feelings of being threatened with a constant urge to agress and take. That's why I don't think we are likely to see progress based on soothing or eliminating the aggressive insecurities that are endemic to the Israeli outlook, and essential to the national mythology.
People have been saying the same things forever about the need for non-accusatory diplomatic happy talk in order to engage moderate elements in Israel. But I don't think there is any remaining basis for relying on these supposed moderates to move the process forward. The people who most need to be engaged are not the Israelis - or Palestinians for that matter - but everyone else in the international community, including crucially the American citizens who are part of that community. And to that end we need to advance a clearer, more blunt and less euphemism-ridden account of the conflict, shorn of the usual Israeli apologetics, and keenly attuned to the threat to American security posed by the prolongation of the conflict and US attachment to the Israeli side in the conflict. Refusing to label conquest as conquest or colonies as colonies because we are worried about hurting the feelings of Israeli moderates is the kind of thing Obama always complains about: attempting to do again the things that have already been proven not to work.
July 5, 2009 2:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
Not to be snide, Dan, but that statement is the kind scientists refer to as "stating the facts without telling the truth." What was bestowed on Israel was authority over land previously held under the British mandate and before that by the Ottoman Empire. It was not taken from Arabs and given to Israel. To personalize it, the UN didn't take away someone's farm and give it to someone else.
I don't doubt that the transfer of authority to the new state created injustices in isolated instances, but not in the main. This has always been a conflict as much between competing legitimate rights as between competing wrongs. A one-sided view sees one's own rights and the other's wrongs. That view, however forcefully articulated, serves to exacerbate rather than solve the problem - the more forceful, the greater the exacerbation.
July 5, 2009 3:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't doubt that the transfer of authority to the new state created injustices in isolated instances, but not in the main.
Well, here our debate must end, Fred. The creation of the state of Israel was the occasion of a brutal and far-reaching campaign of ethnic cleansing, the Nakhba, extending far beyond a few isolated instances. I had thought this is something that most historians, including Israeli historians, now understood. If this is not your understanding then I am afraid our perceptions of the conflict are so radically divergent that it is unlikely that further discussion could bring them closer. I am now disposed to see your concerns about "one-sidedness" and "unhelpful accusations" as not just misguided, but somewhat bizarre.
And assuming you represent the "moderate" voices of which you speak, I am more convinced than ever that it is futile to wait around for Israeli moderates to move the ball forward, and that the international community must adopt more coercive measures for dealing with the problem.
July 5, 2009 4:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
That's not true, Dan. Without debating the nature of the dispossession of Palestinians during those events, it was not the creation of the state of Israel that brought it about, but the military attack on Israel by the Arab states. I expect most historians would agree on that, even if they disagree on exactly what happened.
July 5, 2009 9:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think you misunderstood Fred's post. I doubt very much he was talking about commenters like you. Keep in mind he is relatively new to the site and is not used to skipping over the comments of the "agitprop and amen" gang. He sees a lot of thoughtful commenting here on other topics and then he sees something different on IP threads.
July 5, 2009 1:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't know who Fred was talking about AA, but personalities weren't really my concern. My point is that he was advancing a conception of balance in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that was in my view quite unbalanced; and that attitudes he explicitly describes as unbalanced are in fact closer to achieving a balanced and objective view than are his own.
To summarize my position more simply, and to echo Purple State, the Israelis are the aggressors in a long war of conquest, and to regard both conquerors and conquered as equivalent is not balance. And to refuse to identify conquest as conquest because one doesn't want to point fingers of blame is not to seek balance, but to engage in obfuscation that damages the prospects for moving forward with a clear view of the challenges.
The Zionist movement from very early on became an inherently aggressive movement to redeem Palestine from the people who lived there, and to use a combination of political pressure, diplomatic pressure, economic pressure and sheer force to remove the inhabitants of Palestine from their land and replace them with settlers from afar whose immigration to Palestine was opposed by the majority of its inhabitants.
July 5, 2009 2:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hey AA, did you notice that MJ just deleted another post? He's done that several times in the past.
July 5, 2009 11:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
If you act quick and know some keywords you might still be able to get it off google's cache, hah.
Was it one with comments?
I must admit that with him that it's not always been that he's disgusted with the responses, sometimes it seems to have been pretty innocuous, like he's got the fast submit finger flaw that many of us do, and he finds a post doesn't look good to him after publication and has second thoughts about what he said. But one time he was going to delete something with comments and said so, and others spoke up and said please don't as there are a couple of really fine comments, and he surprised me and left it stand.
July 5, 2009 11:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, my impression is that he usually deletes posts because he is embarrassed by something he himself has said.
The post seems to be unavailable via Google.
July 5, 2009 11:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
I personally find the recent medieval-era siege and the destruction of Gaza and its inhabitants as savage as the pacification of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, if not more. At least the Nazis called-off bombing raids as they were deemed too controversial. It would have been like shooting fish in a barrel, which Gaza WAS.
July 5, 2009 1:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't mean to pick on you, Qwerty, but your intemperate remarks epitomize the type of accusatory stance that makes things worse rather than better. I'm not unsympathetic to the notion that you feel strongly about the suffering of Palestinian civilians in Gaza. There's more than enough suffering in the sad history of this struggle to go around, and anyone who empathizes with one side or another will have no trouble finding something to be indignant about.
What I perceive as a problem is the instinct to express outrage on one hand, and the desire to solve a problem on the other. Many people rationalize this away by convincing themselves that the two are compatible, but they're not. That's the unfortunate reality. If you want to help any of the sufferers, it will be essential to help the two sides reach agreement rather than force them by angry rhetoric to retreat into separate, self-righteous isolations.
I haven't yet despaired of seeing that here, but I am still waiting.
July 5, 2009 1:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
Fred, nothing but facts in my post. The Nazis did deem aerial bombardment of the Warsaw Ghetto too barbaric, and called off the planes. It's there in recorded history.
And please...the Palestinians couldn't "bomb" Israel, they fired inaccurate rockets killing 13 Israelis in 8 years, from 2001-2008, during that same period, Israel killed with various means a whopping 100 Palestinians for every Israeli killed.
http://faithfulprogressive.blogspot.com/2008/12/how-many-israelis-have-been-killed-by.html
Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East:
FACTSHEET: QASSAM ROCKET ATTACKS FROM GAZA
Since 2001, Palestinian militants have been launching small rockets – typically referred to as “Qassam Rockets” – from Gaza toward nearby Israeli population centers, notably Sderot and Ashkelon. Israel often tries to justify its violence in Gaza as an attempt to stop the rash of rocket attacks. Sadly, the reporting of such attacks, Palestinian and Israeli, does little to illuminate the context to such attacks.
As of April 27, 2008, a total of 13 Israelis have been killed by Qassam rockets since the attacks started in 2001.1 As indicated in the graphs at the right, for every Israeli killed by Qassam rockets, Israel has killed about 100 Palestinians through various means.
July 5, 2009 3:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think when one witnesses what amounts to daylight slaughter of a cornered people with no means of escape from weeks and weeks of bombing raids following an 18 month long siege and complete encirclement one tends to FEEL A LITTLE SOMETHING approaching anger.
July 5, 2009 3:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
It is impossible at this juncture to talk about "even-handedness" as what we are witnessing amount to crimes against humanity. The Palestinians in Gaza have no means whatsoever to defend themselves. The result is the death of over a thousand of mostly civilians, over half of whom are women and children, civilians who have been weakened by over a year of siege where essential fuel and food were denied, all killed in a cold-blooded aerial slaughter.
There is no reprisal or even mild condemnation at this atrocity at the level of international politics. There is no fair and balanced system of justice in existence, only one heavily rigged in favor of Israel.
The Palestinians paid for this system with their lives. The rest of us could only rant impotently on their behalf on sites like these, but even then, this is too much for some.
July 5, 2009 1:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
Please see my earlier comment on your similar statement above.
July 5, 2009 2:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
"it will be essential to help the two sides reach agreement rather than force them by angry rhetoric to retreat into separate, self-righteous isolations."
Fred, some times self-righteous isolation is better than death by white phosphorous or lack of food and medical supplies.
You know damn well the more fanatical of the settler movement isn't going to be talked into pulling out of the illegally occupied land they feel god gave to them.
You already know they will use violence and terrorism against the Israeli government if they are told to leave their illegal settlements in any peace agreement.
You already know that a large percentage of Jews outside the Settler movement would rather avoid an Israeli civil war, and would rather rationalize away the situation than confront the Settlers with physical removal leading to civil war.
You also know how Israelis voted in this last election, and the democratic mandate Bibi and Lieberman have to act like the racist bullies they are.
Or did you not know this until now?
July 5, 2009 2:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
Also, every single person here knows that some actions taken by Palestinian individuals were wrong and indefensible, like bombing innocent women and children.
Do you really need every single person to say this explicitly to believe it?
Laying the bulk of the blame on Israel, and pointing out that it is not an equal blame conflict, doesn't mean anybody here holds every Palestinian beyond criticism.
July 5, 2009 2:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks, Bill, for stating that you don't hold every Palestinian beyond criticism. That acknowledgment by others will be helpful in softening the intransigence felt by besieged Israelis.
I agree with you that the bulk of the blame lies with Israelis for recent offenses, although I don't agree in regard to the entire century of conflict. My more important concern, however, is to avoid blame allocation that can be used by either side to avoid its resonsibility to move toward peace.
For reasons you've cited above, I'm less optimistic than I once was about the prospect for overcoming settler extremism in the interest of a viable land-for-peace solution. The extremists on both side are now so well entrenched that dislodging them has become dangerous and costly. I can only hope that international pressure will help restore the power of moderates, but it must be pressure that is wise as well as forceful in its application. That requires the ability to refrain from unhelpful denunciations. It requires the wisdom to offer incentives to both sides to proceed toward peace as well as disincentives for them to remain intransigent. It means that both sides must give up something that they still cling to; it won't work for either side to say, "We've sacrificed enough already, now it's someone else's turn". That simply won't work.
The real tragedy is that those further sacrifices could ensure a truly prosperous existence for all parties, but it won't happen until each acknowledges legitimate claims by the other. For Israel, it is simply the right to exist, and for the Palestinians, a viable state. Not to belabor the point, but it also means equitable sharing of scarce resources, including water.
I'll feel more reassured when we start discussing these and other specifics of an achievable resolution rather than obsessing about who did what to whom.
July 5, 2009 3:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
Fred, what you're proposing, whether you realize it or not, is the status quo.
In this status quo (while you hope for moderates to gain power some day), Israel doesn't need to do, and won't do, anything it doesn't damn well feel like doing.
They are militarily, economically, and diplomatically superior to the peasants under their thumb, and they have no current incentive to do anything other than whatever they want, which increasingly is to take and stake claim to an ever increasing amount of land and resources.
What Israel needs are new, compulsory incentives, because more of the same will lead nowhere good, and will invite shifting definitions among Israelis as to what a "viable Palestinian state" even means.
July 5, 2009 3:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
No people under occupation and "ethnic cleansing" out of their lands will succumb without putting up a minimum of retaliation. No one.
July 5, 2009 3:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
If one better wants to understand the issues with the Israeli-Palestinian situation, may I suggest the following?
Every non-Native American person living in the United States is on land taken from others. It doesn't matter if your ancestors did their bit in doing the taking, or if your ancestors came here after the taking was done.
Should we simply give the land back to the Natives? Should we allow them a nation-within-a-nation status (as we currently do with the reservations)? Are we providing the Natives with a quality living on the reservations?
In many respects, the Israelis could learn a thing or two from our treatment of the Natives which was unapologetic and brutal. And we had exactly zero claim to the area, unlike the Israelis.
The only difference, of course, is that we have more effectively muted the response of the Natives over the course of history so we Americans can feel comfortable with the outcome.
We set a rather poor example, however, for telling other peoples what the "reasonable" solutions should be.
I propose no answers to the questions I pose one way or another. I merely suggest rethinking the Middle East answers in this other, more uncomfortable light which hits closer to home.
July 5, 2009 3:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
Do you propose genocide as a solution??? Because this is what led to the "success" of American settlers.
July 5, 2009 3:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
You are missing my point. There are plenty of Natives for us to return the land to -- if we so desired.
I find much of the conflict discussions to have a cool-academic point of view (both sides) without getting at the real issues of what may be blocking any real progress.
July 5, 2009 3:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
clearthinker, I think with the perspective of history, it is universally recognized that the atrocities of genocide, ethnic cleansing, slavery, naked, unprovoked aggression, etc, are condemned and judged to be crimes against humanity by the covenants, treaties and conventions enacted in more recent times, i.e., post WWII, and legal entities have been set up to pronounce judgment. That debate is moot. What's more perplexing is how we are shifting the goalposts when it is "us" and our allies, not the Russians or Germans, who are violating these covenants.
July 5, 2009 4:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
No one was discussing the "moot debate" you bring up. Your points following that comment was what I was after.
The fact is that whatever "solution" exists that likes to be expounded in the middle east, could equally apply here in America. Such a solution should therefore has a rather inconvenient litmus test for value.
July 5, 2009 5:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
"I agree with you that the bulk of the blame lies with Israelis for recent offenses, although I don't agree in regard to the entire century of conflict."
Fred, I don't know if you're living in Israel or in America, but the history you get taught in either country is closer to folklore than facts.
Please read these quotes from Ben Gurion, all from well before the Holocaust:
"From the beginning, Zionists advocated a "Jewish State" not just in Palestine, but also in Jordan, southern Lebanon, and the Golan Heights as well.
In 1918 Ben-Gurion described the future "Jewish state's" frontiers in details as follows:
"to the north, the Litani river [in southern Lebanon], to the northeast, the Wadi 'Owja, twenty miles south of Damascus; the southern border will be mobile and pushed into Sinai at least up to Wadi al-'Arish; and to the east, the Syrian Desert, including the furthest edge of Transjordan"
"A few months before the peace conference convened at Versailles in 1919 and after WWI ended, Ben-Gurion envisioned future Jewish and Palestinian Arab relations as follows:
"Everybody sees the problem in the relations between the Jews and the [Palestinian] Arabs. But not everybody sees that there's no solution to it. There is no solution! . . . There's a national question here. We want the country to be ours. The Arabs want the country to be theirs."
"During the tour which the Peel Commission did in Palestine in 1937, Ben Gurion told the commission that the Bible was the Jewish people's "Mandate."
"On July 12, 1937, David Ben-Gurion wrote in his diary explaining the benefits of the compulsory population transfer:
"The compulsory transfer of the [Palestinian] Arabs from the valleys of the proposed Jewish state could give us something which we never had, even when we stood on our own during the days of the first and second Temples. . . We are given an opportunity which we never dared to dream of in our wildest imaginings. This is MORE than a state, government and sovereignty----this is national consolidation in a free homeland.""
""On the same subject, David Ben-Gurion wrote in 1937:
"With compulsory transfer we [would] have a vast area [for settlement] .... I support compulsory transfer. I don't see anything immoral in it.""
July 5, 2009 3:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
http://www.palestineremembered.com/Acre/Famous-Zionist-Quotes/Story638.html
July 5, 2009 3:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
The early offenses, including horrific massacres, were perpetrated primarily by the Arab side. They deserve an enormous share of the blame for those early years - a reality unknown to those only aware of recent events, where Israelis have earned most of the blame. What individual Zionists may have desired won't change the responsibility of the Arab sides for its actions. That type of rationalizing - an effort to excuse what one party did by citing what another party said - is exactly what is not needed when we wish to move beyond mutual recriminations to an attempt at mutual understanding and benefit.
July 5, 2009 4:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Ben-Gurion was told on February 7, 1948 that "Jews have no land in the Jerusalem corridor", he arrogantly replied:
"The war will GIVE us the land. The concept of 'ours' and 'not ours' are ONLY CONCEPTS for peacetime, and during war they lose all their meaning.""
"When Ezra Danin, a Cabinet member, proposed installing a puppet Palestinian Government in the Triangle area (northwest of the occupied West Bank), Ben-Gurion had impatiently declared on October 21, 1948 that Palestinians in Israel were good for one thing, running away. He said:
"The Arabs of the land of Israel [ Palestinians] have only one function left to them -- to run away.""
July 5, 2009 4:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
Bill - I think you've gone off the deep end. See my earlier reply. Your prejudice does not appear obvious to you, and probably not to others who have already decided on similar views, but I doubt that objective observers will see these discussions as well served when selective quotations are offered as a principal source of evidence, in contrast to a detailed description of the history of events.
July 5, 2009 4:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ben-Gurion was just "one Zionist." Good to know, Fred.
"The early offenses, including horrific massacres, were perpetrated primarily by the Arab side. They deserve an enormous share of the blame for those early years"
Fred - I think you've gone off the deep end. Your prejudice does not appear obvious to you, and probably not to others who have already decided on similar views, but I doubt that objective observers will see these discussions as well served when vague, unsupported generalities are offered as a principal source of evidence, in contrast to specific quotes from the first Prime Minister of Israel, which were spoken/written by him long before the Holocaust.
July 5, 2009 5:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well, I could have made my point better if I hadn't insulted you, but yes, Arab atrocities dominated the early years, and quotations from Ben-Gurion or others don't balance that out.
My larger point continues to be that mutual recriminations about the past, with its horrors on both sides, impede rather than advance a just peace that we probably all agree is desirable.
July 5, 2009 5:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ben-Gurion was just "one Zionist." Good to know, Fred.
"The early offenses, including horrific massacres, were perpetrated primarily by the Arab side. They deserve an enormous share of the blame for those early years"
Fred - I think you've gone off the deep end. Your prejudice does not appear obvious to you, and probably not to others who have already decided on similar views, but I doubt that objective observers will see these discussions as well served when vague, unsupported generalities are offered as a principal source of evidence, in contrast to specific quotes from the first Prime Minister of Israel, which were spoken/written by him long before the Holocaust.
July 6, 2009 12:31 AM | Reply | Permalink
Dan, I don't usually comment on the I/P conflict, but I felt that I should thank you for providing a sane, reasoned discussion. I learned a lot.
Thanks.
July 5, 2009 4:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
I agree with others that this discussion has been worthwhile, even in the face of substantial disagreements.
We each bring a history of personal experience and perspective to bear on the views we express, and to deny that is to imply an objectivity beyond any of us. To share my perspective as a means of informing the discussion, let me describe how I came to discover TPM. While browsing, I encountered a TPM piece by MJ Rosenberg urging President Obama to persist in pressuring the Netanyahu government to freeze settlements. My eyes lit up.
For some years, I had writhed in frustration at the unwillingness of American presidents to force the issue with Israeli governments in thrall to the extremist mentality of the settlers. Each year, the settlements grew, and the hope of easily dislodging the settlers dwindled. Finally, I thought, we have a president willing to force the issue. I continue to believe that. I was further encouraged by Obama’s marvelous Cairo speech. He managed an extraordinary feat - appealing to Arab moderates, acknowledging Palestinian suffering, reiterating America’s unshakable commitment to the existence of Israel, and doing it all in such a non-accusatory manner that the only actors in the Middle East who became truly enraged in public were the Al Qaeda leadership, who felt a need to engage in almost hysterical denunciations of the Obama visit. At last, I thought, we may begin to move toward an equitable peace, with its inevitable compromises - a peace that promises a better life for long-suffering Palestinians and long-threatened Israelis.
Then I began to read the relentless Israel bashing on TPM, and my reaction was - YOU’RE NOT HELPING!
It was certainly in part a visceral reaction to the unfairness of the one-sided denunciations, given the long history of atrocities that featured the Arab side early on and the Israeli side more recently, but it was also a reaction born of the conviction that the Obama approach needs all the help it can get - particularly from the liberal side of the American equation. In my view, his approach can only succeed if neither party in the conflict sees itself exempt from accountability in the eyes of our current Administration. If either side thinks, “We needn’t worry, Obama is with us and against them”, that side will be encouraged to resist the necessary compromises. I therefore believe it is vitally necessary for the President to enjoy support for his conciliatory approach from those sympathetic to him in general. Specifically, he can’t be forceful in opposing Likud if he fears he will be condemned for later taking a firm stance against Hamas.
That’s an exaggeration in the sense that what we say here will probably have little impact, but in the larger context of political realities, any reflexive tendency by Obama supporters to demand a one-sided approach when he needs support for a two-sided one undermines his efforts. What the right wing of American politics advocates is not inconsequential, but our President knows he can’t afford to alienate those who most care about his success. If we are among those who care, I think we must be as open as he is to the aspirations and grievances of both sides. To do that is to properly accord higher priority to where we’re going than where others have been.
July 5, 2009 5:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
I live in the southwest, in indian country. Native americans are largely second-class citizens, until very recently they could be assaulted and even murdered with little or no consequence. Civil rights groups have been trying to help, but it's a hard slog. As recently as a decade ago, the school children in our county were taught frontier history through the old lens of "blood-thirsty savages" murdering "settlers." Navajo and ute children were taught this about their ancestors in their classrooms! Imagine that.
My husband and i adopted a black/aztec son and a ute daughter, so we have experienced racial bigotry up close, and know how the narrative people grow up with determines much about their beliefs about native americans and blacks. But also their feelings about minorities tends to determine which version of history they can accomodate and internalize.
Every few yers, there is a rash of letters in the local paper, and once in awhile i write on the subject, and try to give a capsule account of what is of course called "revisionist history." It is history not written by the victors, but historians who have tried to tell more fully what actually occurred; for many native people, the stories of their ancestors are as fresh as they were a hundred and fifty years ago.
When i try to provide alternate history, try as i might, i am sure i do not write without bias. But as even-handed as i try to be, i do not spend much time on native barbarism; yes, plenty of evidence exists that some natives fought back hard eventually. I do imagine that i would have been one of them had my tribe been killed or relocated and starved and betrayed by countless broken treaties.
Angry writers of letters disputing my or other's alternate history have shown me two things over the years:
They are immoveable in their convictions that their beliefs are correct, and they attack me personally, which i think says a lot about their biases determining their chosen narratives. There is a level of hatred and animosity that gets all tangled up in their explanation of "the facts."
The best conflict communication aims to get under a person's defenses, but sometimes that seems impossible. Sometimes our mental/religious armoring is just too well-constructed. I was watching an old star trek the other day, and a verbal exchange hit me hard, it speaks to so many iconoclastic motivations:
Sybok (spock's half-brother) to a lone slave desert dweller on nimbus III: "Surely you are not going to shoot me just to defend your field of empty holes?"
The slave: "...They're all i've got."
It was such a metaphor for how easily we have to cling to some organizing princple, some self-definition. In a similar way, i have long wondered if people revile gay people because that's what their church teaches, or do they join a particular church because they despise homosexuality?
History and the truth and the facts are all pretty hard to determine, but challenging our biases are important.
"Chase after the truth like all hell and you'll free yourself, even though you'll never touch its coattails."
July 5, 2009 6:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
Great comment and perspective
Thanks, and I am sorry
July 5, 2009 6:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
Oopsie, i don't know why you are sorry, bwakfat.
p.s. what does bwakfat mean?
July 5, 2009 6:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
I forgot to mention that the current spate of letters-to-the-local paper i got involved in was started with very cranky letters refuting a comment a local ute leader made about native american "holocaust" and "genocide" at an event when the lt. governor came to their reservation. I did not see the original quotes, but the reaction was pretty major. on the lines of "you can't compare native wars with The Holocaust" (i'm sure the ute meant the word with a small "h." and "at least the indians had weapons" and lots of mention of different indian against white atrocities, etc. ad nauseum. Most americans cannot agree that this was a stolen land. The utes, for instance, used to roam and call home the entire rocky mountains, now they are consigned to three different desert reservations.
July 5, 2009 7:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
This guy has now got Josh's ear, BTW, on his blog. Good grief! I already appealed to Josh there.
This is bullying. He's asking us ever-so-gently and with such kind understanding to shut the hell up. He's giving guilt. It's manipulation.
Don't put up with it. He's asking us to suspend free speech. He's willing to talk about it/bully in his saccharine, needling way, as long or longer than any of us are. Don't get sucked in.
Is it even only one guy? How could we know?
July 5, 2009 7:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
Please expain; which guy has josh's ear, and where on josh's blog is he asking folks to stfu? Or am i totally misreading your post?
July 5, 2009 9:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
Josh is not asking *anyone* to STFU. Neither is this guy,
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/fredmoolten/2009/07/israel-bashing-on-tpm.php
He's just gently, sweetly, caringly, kindly, asking that we shut our fucking mouthes. And it's full of kindness and mutual understanding and good fellowship.
July 5, 2009 9:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
Not to be obtuse, but i must be. Is "this guy" fred, josh, or dan k?
July 5, 2009 10:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
"this guy" is Fred.
July 6, 2009 12:30 AM | Reply | Permalink