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Israel: a walk on the dark side

by Sirocco Sun Jul 23rd, 2006 at 12:38:03 PM EST

In a previous post I described Israel as a strange but impressive modern hybrid of Athens and Sparta. The latter side of the Janus face being currently on full display, we might as well familiarize ourselves with its features. Forgotten history is written in its wrinkles.

From my blog. Graphic photo at the end of post.


This recent Telegraph report is a good place to start (emphasis added):

In the midst of its campaign against Hizbollah and Hamas "terrorists", Israel has been accused by Britain of feting Jewish "terrorists" whose bomb attack killed 28 Britons 60 years ago today.

The accusation, which reopens the debate about the use of politically-inspired violence in the region, follows the unveiling of a plaque commemorating the attack on the King David hotel in Jerusalem on July 22, 1946, by the Irgun Jewish "resistance" to British mandate rule in Palestine. The 28 Britons were among 91 people killed.

This week, former Irgun fighters and current Right-wing politicians unveiled the plaque at the hotel, which read: "The hotel housed the Mandate Secretariat as well as the Army Headquarters. On July 22, 1946, Irgun fighters at the order of the Hebrew Resistance Movement planted explosives in the basement. Warning phone calls had been made urging the hotel's occupants to leave immediately. For reasons known only to the British, the hotel was not evacuated and after 25 minutes the bombs exploded, and to the Irgun's regret and dismay 91 persons were killed."

But Israel's celebration of its "freedom fighters" remains highly controversial at a time when it continues to pound Palestinian "terrorists".

Tzipi Livni, Israel's foreign minister, has found herself deeply embroiled in the debate - her father, Eitan, was Irgun's chief operations officer.

Simon Macdonald, the British ambassador to Israel, and consul general John Jenkins, wrote to the mayor of Jerusalem protesting at the plaque. "We don't think it's right for an act of terrorism to be commemorated," their letter read.

The embassy said: "There is no credible evidence that any warning reached the British authorities." The plaque has subsequently been amended, dropping the implication that Britain ignored any warnings.

Interesting. Besides terrorist bombing of hotels, what else was the Irgun gang (and its off-shoot the Stern gang) about? Let us dig a little deeper into the history, shall we? Links and emphasis added:

The plain fact is that one wing of Zionism - the socalled "revisionist" wing - founded itself on the notion that the Palestinian people would have to be driven out of the land of both Palestine and Transjordan (today's state of Jordan) and that, if they weren't willing to go, they would have to be subjugated as a permanent minority within a Zionist state, or forced to leave by any means necessary.

Revisionism's founder, Vladimir Jabotinsky, laid down the basis of the argument in the 1920s. To clear Palestine of Arabs he wanted a Jewish army, and he founded a series of Zionist youth militias across Europe - groups which leftwing Zionists charged had more in common with farright militias than with the Zionist project. Jabotinsky made some efforts to discipline his more effusive followers (though he never expelled those such as Abba Achimeir, who suggested that Hitler's "renewal" of the German people was something Zionists could follow by example), but by the 1940s they had blossomed into the Irgun and the Lehi. These gangs terrorised Palestinians after World WarII, rolling bombs into Arab markets and massacring people in villages such as Deir Yassin.

The strategy was ethnic cleansing, pure and simple, and it worked - it turned nearly a million Palestinians into refugees. The Irgun hoped they would simply keep on going into wider Arabia. The Arab world, which was well aware of the strategy, has had other ideas:

Jabotinsky's follower, Menachem Begin, became prime minister in 1977 and accelerated phase two of the plan - land theft in the West Bank and the creation of Jewish settlements, to ensure that Palestinians became a powerless minority within expanded borders. Because this was an ongoing military campaign, Begin made a former general his minister of housing - Ariel Sharon.

Begin was a dedicated terrorist well into the 1950s. It has recently been revealed that he attempted to assassinate West Germany's chancellor Konrad Adenauer in 1952 over disagreement on how the German compensation for the Holocaust should be paid.

The proud tradition of terrorist PMs would continue. Yitzhak Shamir was also a member the Irgun, and after the split, of the Stern gang.

Let's see if this history does not also involve some other individuals we know (emphasis added):

Ehud Olmert was born in 1945 in a training camp for members of the militant Jewish underground known as the Irgun, and grew up in Binyamina, a small town north of Tel Aviv. The Olmerts were a family steeped in the politics of the right-wing revisionist Zionist movement of Ze'ev Jabotinsky, and they lived in the largely Irgun neighborhood of Nahalat Jabotinsky. His father, Mordechai, was one of the founders of the Irgun. When it was disbanded, he served as a member of the Knesset for Herut, the party named for the Hebrew word for "freedom," founded by Irgun leader, Menachem Begin.

Such is the "freedom" now unleashed on Lebanon. It has a face of its own:

Display:
poor child.
by manon (m@gmail.com) on Sun Jul 23rd, 2006 at 12:18:36 PM EST
those are the only words I can think of.
by manon (m@gmail.com) on Sun Jul 23rd, 2006 at 12:25:29 PM EST
[ Parent ]
You say
It has recently been revealed that he attempted to assassinate West Germany's chancellor Konrad Adenauer in 1952 over disagreement on how the German compensation for the Holocaust should be paid.
and reference the Guardian article  This statement says this as though it were fact.  But the Guardian article shows it is disputed.  First the bombmaker himself has said there was no intent to assasinate Adenauer:
Although the plot was "dilettantish", the bomb sent to Adenauer was "extremely sophisticated", Sietz said: "Sudit was an expert bomb maker. The bomb proved impossible to defuse."

Excerpts from Mr Sudit's privately printed memoir, including his own version of events written after Begin's death in 1992 - which were passed to the Israeli daily paper Haaretz, reveal that Begin knew of the plans to assassinate Adenauer and that he had even initiated meetings to promote the operation.

But Mr Sudit told Haaretz this week: "The intent was not to hit Adenauer but to rouse the international media. It was clear to all of us there was no chance the package would reach Adenauer."

Begin's camp says the story is not true, according to the Guardian article.  

This week Begin's personal secretary, Yehiel Kadishai, and Herzl Makov, the director of the Menachem Begin Heritage Centre, in Jerusalem, told Haaretz that they knew nothing of the assassination attempt, which at the time had been played down by both Israel and Germany........ His own family had perished in the Holocaust. In 1978 the Polish born leader he received the Nobel Peace prize for his peace negotiations with Egypt's president at the time, Anwar Sadat.
It's certainly fine if you believe one version of events, and choose to argue the accuracy of that version.  IMO, presenting your version as fact, and not even mentioning the facts are disputed is not intellectually honest.  And it's certainly not "Let us dig a little deeper into the history, shall we?".
by wchurchill on Sun Jul 23rd, 2006 at 01:38:24 PM EST
but there is no disputing that Begin was involved with the King David Hotel incident, so it's not like they are destroying his reputation or anything.
by manon (m@gmail.com) on Sun Jul 23rd, 2006 at 01:43:51 PM EST
[ Parent ]
  1. It is of little significance that they didn't believe the bomb will reach Adenauer. They clearly believed it will reach someone, and thus lead to that rousing the international media. Which it did: one man was murdered. Do you think this murder is a lewsser crime than had Adenauer been killed?

  2. If we are at getting precise, "they knew nothing of the assassination attempt" is not the same as "it is not true".

  3. You are effectively claiming Mr. Sudit is a liar, something Begin's partisans awoided (see point 2). Do you dare to make this accusation explicit?

Thanks for playing.

*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.
by DoDo on Sun Jul 23rd, 2006 at 02:12:58 PM EST
[ Parent ]
The way I see it, even if one chooses to believe Sudit on this point, if you send an indefusible bomb to a head of gov't, then you are at least prepared for the eventuality that it may reach him and kill him, even if you know the probability is slight. It's a bit like trying to snipe him off from a distant rooftop, knowing you are most likely to hit his security detail, which is also fine for your purposes. Morally it doesn't make much of a difference even if one stipulates that killing the head of gov't is somewhat worse.

And of course, as you note, this:

This week Begin's personal secretary, Yehiel Kadishai, and Herzl Makov, the director of the Menachem Begin Heritage Centre, in Jerusalem, told Haaretz that they knew nothing of the assassination attempt, which at the time had been played down by both Israel and Germany.

...does not make the story 'disputed', so there is no substance to wchurchill's charge of int'l dishonesty.


The world's northernmost desert wind.

by Sirocco (sirocco2005ATgmail.com) on Sun Jul 23rd, 2006 at 02:40:14 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Good post, but I will comment this from the quoted article:

The plain fact is that one wing of Zionism - the socalled "revisionist" wing - founded itself on the notion that the Palestinian people would have to be driven out of the land of both Palestine and Transjordan (today's state of Jordan) and that, if they weren't willing to go, they would have to be subjugated as a permanent minority within a Zionist state, or forced to leave by any means necessary.

Actually, driving out Palestinians by any means necessary was implicitely part of all wings of Zionism, even the Socialist one (as I documented recently with quotes). But the Socialists were more hypocritical about it in public. A good example is just the massacre at Deir Yassin, which Haganah denounced publicly, but in truth they knew of it before, their local commander approved it, and a Haganah unit even took part in it in a supporting role. But the King David Hotel bombing is another example -- Haganah was informed beforehand and gave approval, in fact cooperation was so intimate that that Haganah could request delays to the action pending on the political situation. (BTW, note that the dead in the King David Hotel were mostly non-British, the largest number of them Arabs.)

*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.

by DoDo on Sun Jul 23rd, 2006 at 02:02:22 PM EST
Not knowing enough about it, I won't take a stand on this either way, but you may well be right. (The last point is certainly right.)

The world's northernmost desert wind.
by Sirocco (sirocco2005ATgmail.com) on Sun Jul 23rd, 2006 at 02:44:15 PM EST
[ Parent ]
The linked Wiki articles have the evidence.

*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.
by DoDo on Sun Jul 23rd, 2006 at 02:48:32 PM EST
[ Parent ]
It seems to me that you are describing a very dark period in history, and choosing only one part to highlight in these comments on " Israel: a walk on the dark side".  You say "Forgotten history is written in its wrinkles."  You choose just one wrinkle that you call dark, in a face that is full of fissures of darkness--and you choose a wrinkle that is more of the result of the evil and hatred shown on the rest of the face.

IMHO, you leave out a great deal of context when you focus on the events you have chosen.  You don't put your comments in the context of the Jewish people experiencing one of the worst events in human history.  The systematic murder of 7 million Jews, in an attempt to wipe out the race, IMO, is required context for the events surrounding the establishment of the state of Israel.  These are people fleeing from extermination,,grieving from the lost of loved ones who were tortured and murdered.  Many, such as Begin, lost their entire families.  If you want to talk about dark, how about the darkness in German history of those years--a history with which they still noblely struggle.  How about the struggles within France even today, in looking back on the French role in their treatment of their Jewish citizens.  Other countries within central Europe,,,,,,etc.  Continental Europe has enormous responsibility for the current state of affairs in the middle east.

Yes, there is darkness in the wrinkle you highlight.  But these were people with few choices, and the need for safety, the need for an opportunity to live their lives, and be able to protect themselves.  I wish it was a period of history which we did not have,,and that the repurcussions of that history were not with us today.  But they are with us, aren't they?  And IMO the countries of Europe could be doing a lot more today to work us, the world that is, out of a situation that they in large part created.

by wchurchill on Sun Jul 23rd, 2006 at 03:31:21 PM EST
I thought it was 6 million 1ews killed in the Holocaust.

And, don't complain about France.  They were the major supplier for Israel's nuclear weapons.

What you're doing is called rationalising.  It's to give a reason for doing something unacceptable.  Hezbollah does the same thing when they explain what they do.  They believe their reasons are just as valid as yours.  

by manon (m@gmail.com) on Sun Jul 23rd, 2006 at 03:38:50 PM EST
[ Parent ]
You don't put your comments in the context of the Jewish people experiencing one of the worst events in human history.

Zionism, the revisionist wing of Zionism, and even Zionist terrorism in Palestina started well before the Holocaust. While the Palestinian Arabs weren't party to the Holocaust. Sorry, but it is you who is missing context and clinging to simplistic explanations.

*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.

by DoDo on Sun Jul 23rd, 2006 at 03:47:04 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Zionism, the revisionist wing of Zionism, and even Zionist terrorism in Palestina started well before the Holocaust. While the Palestinian Arabs weren't party to the Holocaust. Sorry, but it is you who is missing context and clinging to simplistic explanations.

True.  But Zionism began in response to the growth of a new, more virulent form of antisemitism in the late nineteenth century, one which rejected the presence of Jews completely. The feeling among the early Zionists was that there was no way that Jews could exist in Europe, and that they needed their own state. Jewish terrorism began started in the thirties as things were getting quite grim in Europe.  So you are also 'missing context and clinging to simplistic explanations'.

by MarekNYC on Sun Jul 23rd, 2006 at 04:02:47 PM EST
[ Parent ]
I haven't made any negative or positive claims regarding earlier European roots of Zionism or revisionist Zionism or Zionist terrorism, so your final accusation is unwarranted.

By the way, just the other day, I watched a long TV film and a following documentary about the Dreyfuss Affair. One spooky detail I was reminded of was that while Dreyfuss's case served as inspiration for Theodore Hertzl (which the film portrayed), Dreyfuss himself remained a steadfast believer in his Frenchness and in the Army (first even believing it was his superiors who effected his release).

*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.

by DoDo on Sun Jul 23rd, 2006 at 04:11:28 PM EST
[ Parent ]
I haven't made any negative or positive claims regarding earlier European roots of Zionism or revisionist Zionism or Zionist terrorism, so your final accusation is unwarranted.

You have been continually making strongly negative observations about Zionism without any context whatsoever. You seem to view Zionism as no different from standard issue European  colonialism. But there is a huge difference between someone who commits a horrible crime against an innocent under the reasonable belief that it is the only way to save their own lives, and someone who commits a similar crime just for profit and the hell of it.

by MarekNYC on Sun Jul 23rd, 2006 at 04:33:59 PM EST
[ Parent ]
As of 2006, the belief is no longer reasonable.

Nothing is 'mere'. — Richard P. Feynman
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Sun Jul 23rd, 2006 at 04:36:07 PM EST
[ Parent ]
As of 2006, the belief is no longer reasonable.

I think I've made it clear what I think of Israel's actions in Lebanon, but Dodo was not speaking of the present but rather the pre WWII period.

by MarekNYC on Sun Jul 23rd, 2006 at 04:39:16 PM EST
[ Parent ]
You seem to view Zionism as no different from standard issue European  colonialism.

I think you confuse me with someone else on EuroTrib.

*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.

by DoDo on Sun Jul 23rd, 2006 at 04:48:59 PM EST
[ Parent ]
In a little more detail.

I didn't realise you think I'm missing context in our on-going debates on Zionism, rather than this sub-thread. However, your line about standard-issue European imperialism implies the view you ascribe to me is more informed by one standard hard-left critique of Zionism and my political self-identification than what I write or touch on.

But before I get there, some other points. First, I don't think that the history of anti-semitism and the 19th-century rise of modern European anti-semitism and their role in the birth of Zionism is a context unknown to, or known in a (positively) spun version, by the readers of ET. (On another blog, I even posted an erroneous version of what inspired Theodore Herzl, linking to a blood-libel case in Hungary.) Because of the previous, I also don't see much reason behind demands to spell these out on ET (except maybe to "name") -- in contrast, I do think that sentimental illusions about the history of Israel and Zionism before it are all too common even here. Second, what may appear as significant mitigating or explanatory context to you may not be one for me.

As to characterising Zionism, you know that nationalism is significant  for me. I see Zionism as a fusion of European ideas of nationalism with European ideas of colonialism (from French to Anglo-Saxon), which is based on the European ideas of cultural or racial superiority, born as one response to the emergence of other European nationalisms whose genetic version brought forth the modern anti-semitism.

*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.

by DoDo on Mon Jul 24th, 2006 at 04:53:23 AM EST
[ Parent ]
I had to cut the above short, continued:

In European ideas of nationalism, I include not only ideas of community, territory and homogenity, but also victimhood myths [myth in the community-building, country-ars-poetica sense rather than true/false sense], the search for traditions and history to lean on.

A fourth defining pillar of Zionism I see is what wchurchill would have made more sense referring to when 'missing context' for Zionist terrorism, the inevitable and inevitably escalating armed conflict with Palestinian Arabs (e.g. for Irgun the Great Arab Revolt).

*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.

by DoDo on Mon Jul 24th, 2006 at 05:18:57 AM EST
[ Parent ]
I see Zionism as a fusion of European ideas of nationalism with European ideas of colonialism (from French to Anglo-Saxon), which is based on the European ideas of cultural or racial superiority, born as one response to the emergence of other European nationalisms whose genetic version brought forth the modern anti-semitism.

I largely agree with that (though I'm not sure what you mean by 'genetic version'). But the context of the emergence of Zionism makes me see it as more the equivalent of one nation of, say, Native Americans fleeing Europeans and taking over the land of another Native American nation. Incidentally a good account of the emergence of Herzl's Zionism placed in the context of Habsburg Vienna and the death of Austro-German liberalism can be found in Carl Schorske's 'Politics in  a New Key: An Austrian Trio' in Fin de Siecle Vienna: Politics and Culture

by MarekNYC on Mon Jul 24th, 2006 at 02:17:21 PM EST
[ Parent ]
I'm not sure what you mean by 'genetic version'

I meant to distinguish a 'cultural version' where you are supposed part of a nation if you speak a certain language, follow a certain set of traditions and customs, and live in a certain area; and a 'genetic version' where common ancestry and having or not having this or that supposed physical features counts. The first version would accept assimilated Jews but may persecute those sticking to traditions, the second will view suspiciously and persecute even assimilated Jews.

But the context of the emergence of Zionism makes me see it as more the equivalent of one nation of, say, Native Americans fleeing Europeans and taking over the land of another Native American nation.

Well, Jews weren't dwelling in a single area and those who fled didn't collectively fled to Israel, which makes it difficult for me to see an equation. On the other hand, surely Zionism probably would have fizzled out without the big Russian anti-semitic campaign (the pogroms and the secret service drafting the Protocol of the Elders of Zion).

*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.

by DoDo on Tue Jul 25th, 2006 at 03:22:54 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Well, then Marek, you too are clinging to simplistic explanations because I am sure that the people who made the Jews feel excluded had reasons of their own for behaving the way they did.  And the people who made the people who made the Jews feel excluded probably had a good reason as well to do what they did.

That's also what you get with rationalizations.

by manon (m@gmail.com) on Sun Jul 23rd, 2006 at 04:13:51 PM EST
[ Parent ]
To force the point, I repost an extract from Wikipedia Colman posted earlier -- as it happens, as a comment to another diary of yours:

April 12, 1938 - 2 Arabs and 2 British policemen were killed by a bomb in a train in Haifa.

April 17, 1938 - An Arab was killed by a bomb detonated in a cafe in Haifa

May 17, 1938 - An Arab policeman was killed in an attack on a bus in the Jerusalem-Hebron road.

May 24, 1938 - 3 Arabs were shot and killed in Haifa.

June 23, 1938 - 2 Arabs were killed near Tel-Aviv.

June 26, 1938 - 7 Arabs were killed by a bomb in Jaffa.

June 27, 1938 - An Arab was killed in the yard of a hospital in Haifa.

July 5, 1938 - 7 Arabs were killed in several shooting attacks in Tel-Aviv.

On the same day, 3 Arabs were killed by a bomb detonated in a bus in Jerusalem.

On the same day, an Arab was killed in another attack in Jerusalem.

July 6 1938 - 18 Arabs and 5 Jews were killed by two simultaneous bombs in the Arab Melon market in Haifa.

July 8, 1938 - 4 Arabs were killed by a bomb in Jerusalem.

July 16, 1938 - 10 Arabs were killed by a bomb at a marketplace in Jerusalem.

July 25, 1938 - 39 Arabs were killed by a bomb at a marketplace in Haifa.

August 26, 1938 - 24 Arabs were killed by a bomb at a marketplace in Jaffa. (From Wikipedia)



*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.
by DoDo on Sun Jul 23rd, 2006 at 04:04:40 PM EST
[ Parent ]
yes I'm sure we're all aware that Zionism began long before WWII.  But the population of the state grew rapidly as the Jews fled from the holocaust in Europe, and continued after the war.  It was created initially due to anti-Semitism,,,,but likely with no thought of just how virile and ugly that anti-Semitism was to be.  And no, this is your flaw on this one,
it is you who is missing context and clinging to simplistic explanations.
 Surely you must recognize the impact of the Holocaust on Israel.
by wchurchill on Sun Jul 23rd, 2006 at 04:17:15 PM EST
[ Parent ]
yes I'm sure we're all aware that Zionism began long before WWII.

Nice evasions. What about the Zionist programme to expel Palestinians, revisionist Zionism, and Zionist terrorism?

*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.

by DoDo on Sun Jul 23rd, 2006 at 04:21:33 PM EST
[ Parent ]
I don't argue with the Zionist position before WWII.  Perhaps you will acknowledge that it was due to building anti-Semitism.

But put that aside for a moment, and address the reality of the Holocaust.  Just what would you expect the Jews to have done?--the survivors that is.  Where were they to go?  What were they to do?  

by wchurchill on Sun Jul 23rd, 2006 at 04:33:22 PM EST
[ Parent ]
well, first of all, claiming a place that your ancestors left  2000 years and has occupants who have  lived there for those 2000 years, is a really bad start.

the Jews were offered land in Australia and in  Canada but refused.  

had they taken it, they would have thrived and would have been sure that they wouldn't have this type of problem to begin with.

by manon (m@gmail.com) on Sun Jul 23rd, 2006 at 04:42:51 PM EST
[ Parent ]
the Jews were offered land in Australia and in  Canada but refused.  
not familiar with this, and found nothing with a search, nor on wikipedia.  perhaps you could provide a reference.
by wchurchill on Sun Jul 23rd, 2006 at 05:03:30 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Not a reference to the offer, but to the refusal:
Jewish Virtual Library: The Uganda Proposal
Theodor Herzl sought support from the great powers for the creation of a Jewish homeland. He turned to Great Britain, and met with Joseph Chamberlain, the British colonial secretary and others. The British agreed, in principle, to Jewish settlement in East Africa "on conditions which will enable members to observe their national customs."

...

Zangwill became the movement's undisputed leader. After the rejection of the Uganda scheme on the grounds of impracticability by the British, Zangwill turned his attention to settlement in Canada and Australia. But opposition from local residents led him to abandon the scheme. Expeditions were sent to Mesopotamia (Iraq), Cyrenaica (Libya) and Angola but little came of these expeditions.

A project that had some concrete success was the Galveston scheme which contemplated the settlement of Jews in the American Southwest, in particular in Texas. The project received the assistance of Jacob Schiff, the American Jewish banker, and some 9,300 Jews arrived in that area between 1907-1914, through the Emigration Bureau of the Territorialist organization.

Also:Territorialism
Other territorialist attempts, meant as counterweights to Zionism, were undertaken in the Soviet Union between the two world wars. The first was in the southern Ukraine and the northern Crimea, where four non­contiguous "national districts" (raiony) were established in the early 1920s and obliterated when the Nazis invaded. The second was in Birobidjan, where a "Jewish Autonomous Region" was proclaimed in 1934. This venture also failed, leaving a small Jewish minority in the region. In 1935, in response to the Nazi accession to power in Germany, Isaac Nachman Steinberg established the Freeland League in the United States. This organization attempted, unsuccessfully, to pursue Jewish autonomy by obtaining a large piece of territory in sparsely populated areas in Ecuador, Australia, or Surinam.


Nothing is 'mere'. — Richard P. Feynman
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Sun Jul 23rd, 2006 at 05:11:27 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Ignore the first line, I thought I was going to end up quoting a different document from the JWL.

Nothing is 'mere'. — Richard P. Feynman
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Sun Jul 23rd, 2006 at 05:12:32 PM EST
[ Parent ]
if I interpret this correctly, a number of alternatives were evaluated, but for one reason or another just didn't work.  and that the deal quoted above re: austalia and canada, was rejected by local residents.
Zangwill turned his attention to settlement in Canada and Australia. But opposition from local residents led him to abandon the scheme.
by wchurchill on Sun Jul 23rd, 2006 at 05:34:50 PM EST
[ Parent ]
According to the Zionists, "one reason or another" boils down to religion. Only in Palestine the Jews had the drive to succeed by any means necessary, out of religious zeal.
JVL: Could the Zionists Have Chosen Another Country Besides Palestine? by Mitchell Bard
Simultaneously, a wave of Jews immigrated to Palestine from Yemen, Morocco, Iraq and Turkey. These Jews were unaware of Theodor Herzl's  political Zionism or of European pogroms. They were motivated by the centuries-old dream of the "Return to Zion" and a fear of intolerance. Upon hearing that the gates of Palestine were open, they braved the hardships of travel and went to the "Land of Israel."

The Zionist ideal of a return to Israel has profound religious roots. Many Jewish prayers speak of Jerusalem, Zion and the Land of Israel. The injunction not to forget Jerusalem, the site of the Temple, is a major tenet of Judaism. The Hebrew language, the Torah, laws in the Talmud, the Jewish calendar and Jewish holidays and festivals such as Shavuot all originated in Israel and revolve around its seasons and conditions. Jews pray toward Jerusalem and recite the words "next year in Jerusalem" every Passover. Jewish religion, culture and history make clear that it is only in the land of Israel that the Jewish commonwealth can be built.



Nothing is 'mere'. — Richard P. Feynman
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Sun Jul 23rd, 2006 at 05:37:46 PM EST
[ Parent ]
It also bears noting that Herzl's initial preference was for southern Uganda (Buganda-land), but this was rejected by the Zionist World Congress on religious grounds. Herzl was forced to pledge commitment to the Palestine project.

The world's northernmost desert wind.
by Sirocco (sirocco2005ATgmail.com) on Sun Jul 23rd, 2006 at 05:43:32 PM EST
[ Parent ]
My understanding is that Uganda was proposed by Joseph Chamberlain in 1903. At that time Britain had no control over Palestine. His proposal was turned down because the entire basis of Zionism was a return to the historical land of Israel. At that point Jews looking for a better place to live were relatively able to immigrate to the US, Canada and Australia. They didn't have any particular need of separate colonies there. It is of course the Jews who got to those countries before immigration was restricted that escaped the holocaust and have generally prospered.
by Richard Lyon (rllyon@gmail.com) on Sun Jul 23rd, 2006 at 06:52:17 PM EST
[ Parent ]
My understanding is that Uganda was proposed by Joseph Chamberlain in 1903. At that time Britain had no control over Palestine. His proposal was turned down because the entire basis of Zionism was a return to the historical land of Israel.

Quite so, but Herzl supported the idea.

The world's northernmost desert wind.

by Sirocco (sirocco2005ATgmail.com) on Sun Jul 23rd, 2006 at 07:23:22 PM EST
[ Parent ]
yes, I had always heard that any other place other than Palestine was out of the question.  
by manon (m@gmail.com) on Sun Jul 23rd, 2006 at 05:46:53 PM EST
[ Parent ]
but you also heard that they turned down an offer in Canada and Australia.  maybe a little urban legend here?
by wchurchill on Sun Jul 23rd, 2006 at 05:55:26 PM EST
[ Parent ]
From the JVL upthread: Jewish religion, culture and history make clear that it is only in the land of Israel that the Jewish commonwealth can be built.

Now, a Zionist source claims the Canadian and Australian options foundered because of hostility from local populations... I'd like to have independent confirmation.

Nothing is 'mere'. — Richard P. Feynman

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Mon Jul 24th, 2006 at 01:24:01 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Haven't heard of this one but my impression was that various ideas were floated about a place for a Jewish state, most prominently Uganda or a piece of S. America, but no actual full blown offers. But I'm not sure why you seem to think that it would have been morally preferable for the Jews to take over someone else's land in Australia or Canada (or Africa or S. America) rather than where they did.
by MarekNYC on Sun Jul 23rd, 2006 at 05:11:13 PM EST
[ Parent ]
that was the point - it was uninhabited land
by manon (m@gmail.com) on Sun Jul 23rd, 2006 at 05:17:09 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Either you're applying to the Australian aboriginals and the Inuit the "land without a people" meme, or you expect the Jews to want to settle in the middle of the Australian outback, or on the Canadian arctic plains?

Nothing is 'mere'. — Richard P. Feynman
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Sun Jul 23rd, 2006 at 05:21:29 PM EST
[ Parent ]
nope.  if you've ever been to either country, you would know that there are thousands of square miles of uninhabited land that belongs to the "Crown".  very nice land too.  that's why these countries are so open to immigration.
by manon (m@gmail.com) on Sun Jul 23rd, 2006 at 05:25:34 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Nope. The early Zionists very well realised that the land they want would NOT be uninhabited. Considerations that the locals should feel they profit from the immigrants' presence and that some re-settlement of them so that there is a Jewish majority precede the final decision for Palestine.

*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.
by DoDo on Mon Jul 24th, 2006 at 03:38:58 AM EST
[ Parent ]
well, first of all, claiming a place that your ancestors left  2000 years and has occupants who have  lived there for those 2000 years, is a really bad start.

Add to those while the Sephardim and Mizrahim are almost certainly descended from person who lived in Israel, the origins of the greatest antagonists for a "Jewish" state, the Ashkenazi, have disputed orgins, and may be descended from the Khazars, a Turkic people who lived in the Ukraine in 9th and 10th centuries.

Regardless, if this 2,000 year old claim is valid, do the descendents of Muslims expelled from Spain have a right to conquer and live in Andalucia (Al-Andalus.)  Do Mexicans have the right to retake lands ceded in 1848 in the treaty of Guadelupe Hidalgo?  Do the descendents of the Canannites have the right to expel Israeli Jews from "their" land?

And I'll give my consent to any government that does not deny a man a living wage-Billy Bragg

by ManfromMiddletown (manfrommiddletown at lycos dot com) on Sun Jul 23rd, 2006 at 07:39:09 PM EST
[ Parent ]
But put that aside for a moment

You keep putting it aside all the time, and I have to put it back again and again. Why do you want the Holocaust to explain a string of terror attacks that started before the Holocaust? And by the way, why do you want to make all Holocaust-surviving Jews complicit in Irgun's philosophy? (For your information, not all Holocaust survivors were even Zionists, while revisionists were a minority among them.)

*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.

by DoDo on Sun Jul 23rd, 2006 at 04:48:01 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Why do you want the Holocaust to explain a string of terror attacks that started before the Holocaust?
I'm not defending that.  The Holocaust clearly changed things for the Jews, and I'm empathetic with how they reacted after that horrific time.  

and of course not all Holocaust survivors were Zionists,,,,,they were people trying to recover, and find someway to live their lives.  What would you have had them do?

by wchurchill on Sun Jul 23rd, 2006 at 05:11:31 PM EST
[ Parent ]
So you can be empathetic to terrorism as a result of collective trauma.

Nothing is 'mere'. — Richard P. Feynman
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Sun Jul 23rd, 2006 at 05:14:35 PM EST
[ Parent ]
I'll just stick to what I said, rather than the words you would choose for me.  millions of jews murdered, in some cases all of your family wiped out--collective trauma?   I'll stick with what I said
by wchurchill on Sun Jul 23rd, 2006 at 05:53:29 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Don't forget Hitler was as keen on exterminating Slavs and gypsies as Jews.

There was massive displacement of Poles, Czechs and others during WWII, and their contribution to slave labour and concentration camp statistics is far from negligible.

And yet - none of them used this as an excuse for terrorism after the war. For the most part they integrated successfully into communities in the UK, Canada and the US.

Don't forget too that there have been many examples of tribes or nations reinventing themselves after a move to new territory.

Why is the Middle Eastern types (and it doesn't seem to be exclusively a Jewish problem) who believe that that godforsaken stretch of near desert on the edge of the Mediterranean is the most?

What you don't understand is that there are always choices and options. The creation of Israel was a choice, not a necessity, and certainly not an inevitable outcome of the Holocaust.

Levelling Beirut and using banned phosphorus weapons on civilians is also a choice. Or do you think the Holocaust explains that as well?

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Sun Jul 23rd, 2006 at 06:37:13 PM EST
[ Parent ]
most -> most important piece of ground on the planet.
by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Sun Jul 23rd, 2006 at 06:38:46 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Don't forget Hitler was as keen on exterminating Slavs and gypsies as Jews.

Slavs?  Ummm... no. Extreme brutality, gratuitous slaughter, mass slavery - but not extermination. He might have gotten around to it eventually but it never actually happened. And Czechs are a really poor example - as Nazi occupations go that one was pretty mild - comparable to France rather than the stuff that occurred in occupied Poland and USSR.

The Roma got the same treatment as the Jews but he wasn't equally into the idea. One was a centerpiece of Nazi ideology the other a throw in. Not that it made any difference to the Roma.

And yet - none of them used this as an excuse for terrorism after the war. For the most part they integrated successfully into communities in the UK, Canada and the US.

I haven't heard of any terrorism by Jews in US or Canada or the UK either, like the local Slav communities they lobbied and integrated. But at home it was a different story. The Poles and their neighbours indulged in plenty of atrocities against each other while the Germans who had the bad luck to find themselves within what became the Communist Bloc were brutally ethnically cleansed and the Red Army killed, looted and raped everyone in their path, but particularly Germans.

What you don't understand is that there are always choices and options. The creation of Israel was a choice, not a necessity, and certainly not an inevitable outcome of the Holocaust.

Yup, but an understandable choice under the circumstances.

by MarekNYC on Sun Jul 23rd, 2006 at 08:35:19 PM EST
[ Parent ]
There were even instances of this

(A Polish commenter at my blog pointed out that "according to polish Institute of National Memory (IPN) there is no evidence that Solomon Morel - or any close memmber of his family - was in KL Auschwitz. there are strong (i think) suggestions that he was in Stalin's soviet Russia in 1943-45.")

The world's northernmost desert wind.

by Sirocco (sirocco2005ATgmail.com) on Sun Jul 23rd, 2006 at 08:47:49 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Extreme brutality, gratuitous slaughter, mass slavery - but not extermination.

The only difference was that Poles around - say - Oswiecim were considered useful as labour while Jews were fast-tracked for extermination.

From a humanitarian viewpoint, the distinction is subtle - being a slave was not a healthy long-lived occupation - and 400,000 slave labourers passed through Oswiecim alone. The total number in Nazi territories was well into millions.

Once the war was over the plan was always to ethnically cleanse Poland and settle it with Germans. This would have required the extermination of the original inhabitants.

Certainly if Poland had been looking for a justification for violence, it could easily have found one.

I haven't heard of any terrorism by Jews in US or Canada or the UK either, like the local Slav communities they lobbied and integrated.

How is this relevant? The point is the Poles could easily have created a terrorist organisation after Yalta to try to liberate Eastern Europe. It's true the Soviets were tough bastards, but so were the Nazis, and the Polish resistance wasn't shy about taking them on.

One reason this didn't happen is because after Yalta the US and UK saw it as strategically inappropriate.

Aside from all the nonsense about homelands, this is as much about geopolitical strategy as anything else.  

Yup, but an understandable choice under the circumstances.

No more understandable than some of the alternatives, surely?

The point is you can't - at all - use the Holocaust to justify the creation of Israel. As a talking point it carries no weight when alternatives were available that would have guaranteed peace and very possibly prosperity elsewhere.

Just from a common sense point of view, the idea that a tribe has a claim on land that it came from two millennia ago is irrational at best and unique in history. I can't think of any other culture that uses events from Roman and pre-Roman times to justify political strategy today. It makes as much sense as the UK demanding reparations from Scandinavia for the Viking landings, or from Italy for the Roman conquest.

To be fair the UK has to take some of the blame here, because its diplomatic ineptness before and after WWII helped create today's Middle East.

But the Israeli narrative of a brave homeland surrounded by enemies is straight out the Old Testament, and should really have been put out to grass by now. Using it to justify atrocities isn't going to convince anyone who isn't convinced already.

Militarily it's naive. And diplomatically, the best way to deal with enemies is to avoid creating more of them in the first place.  

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Sun Jul 23rd, 2006 at 09:27:39 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Just from a common sense point of view, the idea that a tribe has a claim on land that it came from two millennia ago is irrational at best and unique in history. I can't think of any other culture that uses events from Roman and pre-Roman times to justify political strategy today. It makes as much sense as the UK demanding reparations from Scandinavia for the Viking landings, or from Italy for the Roman conquest.

Throw in the religion stuff, and the claim is comparable to Greece claiming the Turkish Mediterranean coast on the basis of The Illiad.

The world's northernmost desert wind.

by Sirocco (sirocco2005ATgmail.com) on Sun Jul 23rd, 2006 at 09:38:18 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Not really the same. But the question I have is what you think follows from this analysis. Accepting for argument sake that the Israeli claim to Israel is invalid, what do you propose? Should the Yemeni Jews go back to their dhmini lives in Yemen, under Muslim religious control, forbidden to own land or ride a donkey? Should the Ashkenazi Jews wander back into the EU and get their ancestral homes back?
by citizen k (sansracine yahoo.fr) on Mon Jul 24th, 2006 at 05:36:12 PM EST
[ Parent ]
How is this relevant? The point is the Poles could easily have created a terrorist organisation after Yalta to try to liberate Eastern Europe. It's true the Soviets were tough bastards, but so were the Nazis, and the Polish resistance wasn't shy about taking them on.

One reason this didn't happen is because after Yalta the US and UK saw it as strategically inappropriate.

 There were three resistance organizations operating in Poland during WWII - the Communist AL, the fascist NSZ, and the AK which covered the spectrum from semi-fascist right wingers to very left wing socialists, constituted the vast majority of the resistance, and was the official resistance legitimized by the government in exile. For obvious reasons the AL was not into fighting the new order. The AK decided armed struggle had absolutely no chance of success with the West having accepted Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, and that therefore it would be wrong to add more death to all that had happened. The NSZ decided to fight on with a mix of guerilla and terrorist tactics. They were joined by some AK veterans, particularly after it became clear that the Communists were imprisoning and killing AK leaders anyways. However, even though most Poles hated their new rulers, they agreed with the AK leadership's decision.

Just from a common sense point of view, the idea that a tribe has a claim on land that it came from two millennia ago is irrational at best and unique in history.  

You clearly aren't too familiar with modern Polish history, unless you think that referring to the 1400's rather than the 100's makes all the difference.

The point is you can't - at all - use the Holocaust to justify the creation of Israel. As a talking point it carries no weight when alternatives were available that would have guaranteed peace and very possibly prosperity elsewhere.

Like what? Neither Britain nor the US nor the USSR had been particularly interested in the fate of the Jews before and during WWII. The non-Jewish populations of German occupied Europe had been mostly indifferent to what was going on.  The alternatives weren't particularly good from the perspective of the immediate post WWII period - create a state where you can rely on yourself for self-defense but be surrounded by enemies, or rely on people who hadn't defended you but were promising that next time they would.  The Holocaust may not justify the creation of Israel, but the rise of antisemitism and what that ideology culminated in certainly explains a lot.

But the Israeli narrative of a brave homeland surrounded by enemies is straight out the Old Testament, and should really have been put out to grass by now. Using it to justify atrocities isn't going to convince anyone who isn't convinced already.

Who said anything about justifying atrocities?

by MarekNYC on Sun Jul 23rd, 2006 at 10:23:19 PM EST
[ Parent ]
I'm not defending that.

So what are you defending? Have you completely forgotten what ignited your initial comment?

find someway to live their lives.  What would you have had them do?

So you think the way to live their lives is to go to another country and join a group there who killed the locals since before the Holocaust?

Don't you think that, say, getting land from Germany would have been more just pay for the Holocaust?

*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.

by DoDo on Mon Jul 24th, 2006 at 05:02:23 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Nice evasions. What about the Islamist programme to expel Jews, Islamic Jihadism, and Arab terrorism? They were going on like gangbusters at the same time!
by messy on Mon Jul 24th, 2006 at 09:17:24 AM EST
[ Parent ]
I hopw you meant "vile and ugly" not "virile and ugly". As for this:
Surely you must recognize the impact of the Holocaust on Israel.
since when, and for how long, is being a victim of genocide a moral blank check?

Nothing is 'mere'. — Richard P. Feynman
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Sun Jul 23rd, 2006 at 04:23:50 PM EST
[ Parent ]
I meant viral.

We are discussing the establishment of the state of Israel after the Holocaust.  I'm arguing that the tenor of this article, "Israel: a walk on the dark side", needs to be put in a much broader context of the real dark side of that period--a people fleeing from the Holocaust and trying to re-establish their lives.  To me, it's very understandable how and why the state of Israel was established.  And it seems impossible to discuss it outside of that broader context.

I don't know where you're coming from with this statement--

since when, and for how long, is being a victim of genocide a moral blank check?
 
by wchurchill on Sun Jul 23rd, 2006 at 04:49:08 PM EST
[ Parent ]
We are discussing the establishment of the state of Israel after the Holocaust.

No. You keep narrowing it down to that.

*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.

by DoDo on Sun Jul 23rd, 2006 at 04:52:21 PM EST
[ Parent ]
You meant viral? And what did you mean by that?

Nothing is 'mere'. — Richard P. Feynman
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Sun Jul 23rd, 2006 at 05:02:56 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Quote:
since when, and for how long, is being a victim of genocide a moral blank check?
---
Ah finaly someone is talking...Good point Migeru

Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind...Albert Einstein
by vbo on Mon Jul 24th, 2006 at 05:46:12 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Surely you must recognize the impact of the Holocaust on Israel.

In 1923, well before the Holocaust was more than a nasty, obsessive fantasy in the minds of rightwing euroneandercons of their day, the regrettable Jabotinsky wrote

Any native people view their country as their national home, of which they will be complete masters. They will never voluntarily allow a new master. So it is for the Arabs. Compromisers among us try to convince us that the Arabs are some kind of fools who can be tricked with hidden formulations of our basic goals. I flatly refuse to accept this view of the Palestinian Arabs.

They have the precise psychology that we have. They look upon Palestine with the same instinctive love and true fervor that any Aztec looked upon his Mexico or any Sioux upon his prairie. Each people will struggle against colonizers until the last spark of hope that they can avoid the dangers of conquest and colonization is extinguished. The Palestinians will struggle in this way until there is hardly a spark of hope.

It matters not what kind of words we use to explain our colonization. Colonization has its own integral and inescapable meaning understood by every Jew and by every Arab. Colonization has only one goal. This is in the nature of things. To change that nature is impossible. It has been necessary to carry on colonization against the will of the Palestinian Arabs and the same condition exists now.

Even an agreement with non-Palestinians represents the same kind of fantasy. In order for Arab nationalists of Baghdad and Mecca and Damascus to agree to pay so serious a price they would have to refuse to maintain the Arab character of Palestine.

We cannot give any compensation for Palestine, neither to the Palestinians nor to other Arabs. Therefore, a voluntary agreement is inconceivable. All colonization, even the most restricted, must continue in defiance of the will of the native population. Therefore, it can continue and develop only under the shield of force which comprises an Iron Wall through which the local population can never break through. This is our Arab policy. To formulate it any other way would be hypocrisy.

footnote  [emphasis mine]

It doesn't seem like much of a coincidence that Chaim Weizman (a prominent architect of the Balfour Declaration) was a friend of Gen. Smuts (architect of the S African Apartheid system), or that Israel maintained a strategic alliance with S Africa for many decades.  As Weizman said, "with regard to the Arab question - the British told us that there are several hundred thousand Negroes there but this is a matter of no consequence."   That sounds like the British of that era -- and that sounds like Weizman too.

Pop quiz:  who said

It is impossible for a man to become assimilated with people whose blood is different from his own. In order to become assimilated, he must change his body, he must become one of them, in blood. There can be no assimilation. We shall never allow such things as mixed marriage because the preservation of national integrity is impossible except by means of racial purity and for that purpose we shall have this territory where our people will constitute the racially pure inhabitants.

Yup, it was Jabotinsky again -- prechannelling Dr Strangelove.  (AFAIK Israel still prohibits mixed marriage or 'miscegenation';  the supreme court of the State of California recognised such laws as unconstitutional in 1948, but as late as 1967 there were still US states with antimiscegenation statutes).  He was also an admirer of Mussolini (go figure).

And insanely enough -- much as the Sharon government used to seize on every antisemitic incident in the international press to urge more Jews to seek refuge in Israel, but even more mindbendingly ironically -- hardline Zionists at the time even saw the Holocaust as a recruitment opportunity for Israel.  Ben Gurion notoriously said in 1938, "If I knew that it would be possible to save all the children in Germany by bringing them over to England, and only half of them by transporting them to Eretz Israel, then I opt for the second alternative."  ("We think the price is worth it," in other words?)

As late as 1943, while the Jews of Europe were being exterminated in the millions, the U.S. Congress proposed to set up a commission to "study" the problem -- with some notion that a rescue operation might result. Rabbi Stephen Wise -- at that time the principal American spokesperson for Zionism -- came to Washington to testify against the rescue bill because it would divert attention from the colonization of Palestine. (cf Sheonman, Ralph, "The Hidden History of Zionism").

Nothing new here -- in every political movement there are Schadenfreudians who pray for conditions to get worse and worse so that, in the last ditch, their pet strategy or theory will finally be seen as the proper and only solution.  Sheonman documents that -- insanely as it seems from our post facto POV -- not only did the Zionist Federation of Germany send a resolution of support to the Nazi Party in 1933, "the World Zionist Organization Congress in 1933 defeated a resolution calling for action against Hitler by a vote of 240 to 43."

iirc at least one of the German Left parties did something equally foolish, refusing to make common political cause with anti-Hitler liberals -- perhaps hoping that the fascist crackdown would awaken the masses and spur on the Revolution?  (it certainly did awaken the masses, but not in the way they might have hoped).  so forget any notion that this kind of face-spiting political strategy has anything to do with Jewishness.  a lot more to do with human nature and vanguardism.

But the sordid backroom deals and devil's bargains made by early Zionists, and their explicitly racist dream of a Boer state, predate as well as overlapping with the Holocaust.  The notion of a racially exclusive Jewish state established by force, and the displacement or conquest of the Palestinians, was already complete in the minds of the Zionist hardliners, being planned and realised, before the Nazi extermination programme began;  and some of them were opportunist and cynical (or zealous and fanatical) enough to see that programme as a PR opportunity rather than a desperate emergency.  

The Holocaust had a tremendous impact on Israel;  but if it had not been for the fanaticism of some influential Zionists, it might have had a lesser impact on European Jewry.  Maybe not much could have been achieved by the American "rescue program" impulse -- maybe only a few thousands or tens of thousands could have been rescued.  Probably the Nazi party would have stormed to power anyway, even without the (surely minor) support of the ZFG.  But the story of Israel and the Holocaust is not as simple as Cause (Holocaust), Effect (Israel), End of Story.

Tom Hayden looks back on his journey from being a reliable supporter of Israel to a critic...

The argument that all nation states were founded in blood and theft, that most of the western powers have a sordid and sadistic colonial episode in their past, etc. -- and therefore no criticism should or can be levelled at Israeli policy in the OT -- are not, imho, valid arguments against intervening in a re-run of the same old movie.  If we were to accept this argument we would have to say that there is no point, nor any obligation, to intervene in any crime being committed at any time, because so many successful crimes have been committed in the past.  Why should I intervene to help this person being mugged on the street, when so many other muggings have taken place on so many other streets?  Answer:  because for this one, on this street, I am present as a witness.

The difference between theory and practise in practise ...

by DeAnander (de_at_daclarke_dot_org) on Mon Jul 24th, 2006 at 01:40:11 AM EST
[ Parent ]
It doesn't seem like much of a coincidence that Chaim Weizman (a prominent architect of the Balfour Declaration) was a friend of Gen. Smuts

Who in addition to his ugly domestic polices was a leading supporter of strong international institutions and international law to prevent conflict; a key figure in the movement for a non-punitive peace after WWI and for international understanding. Life isn't always black and white (no pun intended)

(AFAIK Israel still prohibits mixed marriage or 'miscegenation';  the supreme court of the State of California recognised such laws as unconstitutional in 1948, but as late as 1967 there were still US states with antimiscegenation statutes).

There is no civil marriage in Israel, that means no religiously mixed marriages since neither the Jewish nor the Muslim religious authorities will permit them. If you're a mixed couple either one partner has to convert or both have to hop on a plane to get a civil marriage abroad. Foreign civil marriage certificates are is recognized in Israel.

In 1923, well before the Holocaust was more than a nasty, obsessive fantasy in the minds of rightwing euroneandercons of their day

And you think that it just came out of nowhere? I've read mainstream right wing  political writing from that period in Germany and Poland. I've read about those views in other European countries. No, they weren't talking about extermination. They were talking about Jews as a grave threat and either a major source of everything that was bad (the moderates) or the major source (the hardliners) and the need to do something about it.

You include a lot of quotes from Jabotinsky, but I wonder how much you've read of his writings. He was strikingly honest for a European of his time about what colonialism meant, and not particularly racist. Instead he felt that the only hope of survival for Jews was a state of their own - for him the Jews were in the same position in Europe as the targets of European colonialism were abroad. He also was contemptuous of liberal democracy and sympathetic to fascism. Not particularly nice.  

irc at least one of the German Left parties did something equally foolish, refusing to make common political cause with anti-Hitler liberals -- perhaps hoping that the fascist crackdown would awaken the masses and spur on the Revolution?

Yes, rather poor analysis on the part of the Comintern. Then again the Comintern weren't much better than the fascists - nicer dreams but in practice just as intent on mass murder, which they were carrying out on a grand scale at that moment.

The argument that all nation states were founded in blood and theft, that most of the western powers have a sordid and sadistic colonial episode in their past, etc. -- and therefore no criticism should or can be levelled at Israeli policy in the OT -- are not, imho, valid arguments against intervening in a re-run of the same old movie.

No they're not valid arguments. The problem is that some people seem to think that not only does it not excuse current crimes, but that it somehow puts Israel's right to exist as a state in question. A lot like the American right seems to think about Muslim states, think of it as the left wing mirror image of neo-conservatism. The fact that Hamas, Fatah, Hezbollah, or the Iranian theocrats are rather unpleasant doesn't mean that the Palestinians, Lebanese, and Iranians have no right to exist in their own state. Same goes in reverse for Israel.  

by MarekNYC on Mon Jul 24th, 2006 at 02:51:58 AM EST
[ Parent ]
but Iran has belonged to the Iranians as far back as 3,000 years ago.

that's the problem I have with Israel - you don't just take land that belongs to someone else and say that it belongs to you.  If the Israelis really wanted peace and their own state, they would have built their country elsewhere.

.

by manon (m@gmail.com) on Mon Jul 24th, 2006 at 05:30:02 AM EST
[ Parent ]
that's the problem I have with Israel - you don't just take land that belongs to someone else and say that it belongs to you.  If the Israelis really wanted peace and their own state, they would have built their country elsewhere.

...and the people at that elsewhere would object to it violently as well.

What people like Manon don't understand is that "Palestine" is one of the two poles that the Jewish religon revolves around (the other, of course, being God)

The Mishnah, which is the core of both Talmuds, is mostly about how temple practices should go once the "Palestine" has been regained. That was written back in the Second century CE.

Yeah, the Kenya idea was put to a vote, but it failed almost unanimously. So what? The Soviet Union didn't want a Jewish state anywhere in Northern Eurasia. Poland was activly expelling what remained of it's post-holocaust Jewish population [a book on the subject called "fear" just came out, check the NY Times book review from a week ago]

Where would you have had the Jews go? The US had quotas, the Aussies had quotas, The Soviet bloc didn't want them...where?

by messy on Mon Jul 24th, 2006 at 09:15:03 AM EST
[ Parent ]
but Iran has belonged to the Iranians as far back as 3,000 years ago.

that's the problem I have with Israel - you don't just take land that belongs to someone else and say that it belongs to you.  If the Israelis really wanted peace and their own state, they would have built their country elsewhere.

But Israel was established where it was. We aren't in 1918 or even 1947. At this point your argument is no different from the Israeli hard right one that if the Palestinians want a state they can just leave the West Bank and go establish one elsewhere.  

by MarekNYC on Mon Jul 24th, 2006 at 05:24:54 PM EST
[ Parent ]
no, because Israelis keep annexing new land first of all, and secondly, they mistreat the people in the Gaza strip and the West Bank, and thirdly, they won't give that land back.  And, they are using all of the West Bank's water, etc. etc etc.
by manon (m@gmail.com) on Mon Jul 24th, 2006 at 06:16:26 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Well I guess we have a counterpart to 'messy' here.
by MarekNYC on Mon Jul 24th, 2006 at 06:23:48 PM EST
[ Parent ]
just because you are losing the argument is no reason to insult me.

Is anything I said inaccurate? Messy thinks that by yelling "anti-semite" she/he can get you to stop criticizing Israel.  I haven't called anyone names or treated them as racists.  I just referenced a few current events

by manon (m@gmail.com) on Mon Jul 24th, 2006 at 06:35:26 PM EST
[ Parent ]
From Tom Hayden's long article:

...that summer I made the mistake of my political career. The Israel Defense Forces invaded Lebanon, and Benny Navon wanted Jane and me to be supportive. It happened that I had visited the contested border in the past, witnessed the shelling of civilian Israeli homes, and interviewed Israeli and Lebanese zealots--crazies, I thought, who were preaching preventive war. I opposed cross-border rocket attacks and naively favored a demilitarized zone.

Ever curious, and aware of my district's politics, I decided we should go to the Middle East--but only as long as the Israeli "incursion," as it was delicately called, was limited to the 10-kilometer space near the Lebanese border, as a cushion against rocket fire. Benny Navon assured me that the "incursion" was limited, and would be followed by negotiations and a solution. I also made clear our opposition to the use of any fragmentation bombs in the area, and my ultimate political identification with what Israeli Peace Now would say.

There followed a descent into moral ambiguity and realpolitick that still haunts me today. When we arrived at the Israeli-Lebanon border, the game plan promised by Benny Navon had changed utterly. Instead of a localized border conflict, Israel was invading and occupying all of Lebanon--with us in tow. Its purpose was to destroy militarily the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) haven in Lebanon. This had been Gen. Ariel Sharon's secret plan all along, and I never will know with certainty whether Benny Navon had been deceived along with everyone else.

...One might argue, and many Americans today might agree, that Hezbollah and Hamas started this round of war with their provocative kidnappings of Israeli soldiers. Lost in the headlines, however, is the fact that the Israelis have 9,000 Palestinian prisoners, and have negotiated prisoner swaps before. Others will blame the Islamists for incessant rocket attacks on Israel. But the roots of this virulent spiral of vengeance lie in the permanent occupation of Palestinian territories by the overconfident Israelis. As it did in 1982, Israel now admits that the war is not about prisoner exchanges or cease-fires; it is about eradicating Hezbollah and Hamas altogether, if necessary by an escalation against Syria or even Iran. It should be clear by now that the present Israeli government will never accept an independent Palestinian state, but rather harbors a colonial ambition to decide which Palestinian leaders are acceptable.

In 1982, Israel said the same thing about eliminating PLO sanctuaries in Lebanon. It was after that 1982 Israeli invasion that Hezbollah was born. I remember Israeli national security experts even taking credit for fostering Hamas and Islamic fundamentalism as safe, reclusive alternatives to Palestinian secular nationalism. I remember watching Israeli soldiers blow up Palestinian houses and carry out collective punishment because, they told me matter-of-factly, punishment is the only language that Arabs understand. Israelis are inflicting collective punishment on Lebanese civilians for the same reason today.



*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.
by DoDo on Mon Jul 24th, 2006 at 05:46:41 AM EST
[ Parent ]
I remember seeing a picture of the Mufti of Jeruselem hugging Adolph Hitler. I remember reading about the expulsion of the Jews from Hebron in the 1920s. I remember that the great revolt of the 1930s was sparked at Jews being allowed to have chairs to sit down at the western wall..

I remember reading Mark Twain. He wrote how the Palestinians treated the Jews in the 19th century...far worse than Blacks were in apartheid south africa.

I remember how the Jews were expelled from Russia, were second class citizens in Poland...how the blood libels in Syria, the Pogroms in Baghdad....

I remember how President Jefferson sent the Marines to the shores of Tripoli because the "Algerian" ambassidor told tham that it was okay in his culture to capture american ships and enslave the crews because we americans were non muslims.

I fail to have any sympathy for those who think that the above things were somehow okay.

by messy on Sun Jul 23rd, 2006 at 07:42:58 PM EST
[ Parent ]
messy,
from this post and previous ones, especially the one about Israel being the land of untouchables or something I get the impression that you seriously believe that the world is out to get you. And if so, I have sympathy for you, because it must be hell to go through the world believing that.

These things that you bring up seam really unrelated to me, but if they represent were you draw the line I would like to use them to ask you a question. Do you think the July 22, 1946, attack on the King David hotel in Jerusalem was "somehow okay"?

Sweden's finest (and perhaps only) collaborative, leftist e-newspaper Synapze.se

by A swedish kind of death on Sun Jul 23rd, 2006 at 10:40:24 PM EST
[ Parent ]
 War is never okay, but it's sometimes necessary. There was a war going on between the Arabs and Jews at the time and British were neutral on the side of the Arabs.

The fact that the British thought the Irgun was lying about the bomb and refused to evacuate the building is entirely the British's fault.

As to the charge of "paranoia" I'm a student of history. I've actually BEEN to the middle east and have seen the rampant and pervasive anti-Semitism that the various Islamic governments have and still do spew out in the government controlled media and educational system.

I remember 1967. I've read UN security council resolutions 249, 250, and 251, which attacked Israel for doing something EVERYONE ELSE in the WORLD would be praised for doing. I remember the debate on the "Zionism is racism" resolution, which basically declared the UN to be anti-Semitic itself.

I remember, during the 1990-91 gulf war, how the US army was forced to ban Jewish Sabbath services because the Saudi government objected to this "criminal" activity.

Is the world out to get ME? Probably not. I live in New York City and it's very good here. I also made lots of money back in the day and am now in what is called "early retirement" It's nice.

by messy on Mon Jul 24th, 2006 at 09:36:48 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Tens of thousands of terrified Tories fled the US at the end of the Revolutionary war, and those were the lucky ones.

The purpose of a State is to organize violence. States are created by successful demonstration of their ability to organize violence. As soon as the State is established, we call its violence "war" and "law enforcement" instead of "terror" and "insurrection".

Do you know what happened in France after WWII? Do you compare the exercise of terror in Palestine 1948 to that in Algeria in the 1950s?

The sad fact is that the dream of the Zionists was a state like any other and they got one, bloody hands and all.

by citizen k (sansracine yahoo.fr) on Sun Jul 23rd, 2006 at 07:33:39 PM EST
If you genuinely think none of this matters, I shan't try to persuade you. However, changing the subject:

Do you know what happened in France after WWII? Do you compare the exercise of terror in Palestine 1948 to that in Algeria in the 1950s?

...isn't exceeedingly interesting either. The respective answers are 'yes' and 'no, it's you who are bringing that up'.

The world's northernmost desert wind.

by Sirocco (sirocco2005ATgmail.com) on Sun Jul 23rd, 2006 at 07:55:54 PM EST
[ Parent ]
It's interesting on a historical level, but I don't understand what follows from these sort of observations. Perhaps I'm just too cynical, but is it surprising that Israel was founded in a welter of violent deeds, that its leaders have double standards about violence, that "officials" and partisans of all sides are liars?

How do you think that the British soldiers killed at the King David Hotel got to be in Palestine? The were not invited in peacefully by the Turks who were also there under the same color of law.

by citizen k (sansracine yahoo.fr) on Sun Jul 23rd, 2006 at 08:10:23 PM EST
[ Parent ]
is it surprising that Israel was founded in a welter of violent deeds, that its leaders have double standards about violence, that "officials" and partisans of all sides are liars?

Not to you, obviously. To a majority in the US and big minorities in Europe, for whom Israel is and has always been a beacon of civilization beleagered by barbarians, the answer would be yes.

The world's northernmost desert wind.

by Sirocco (sirocco2005ATgmail.com) on Sun Jul 23rd, 2006 at 08:23:31 PM EST
[ Parent ]
How do you think that the British soldiers killed at the King David Hotel got to be in Palestine?

WHat about the majority of those killed in the King David Hotel, who were neither soldiers nor British?

*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.

by DoDo on Mon Jul 24th, 2006 at 03:55:43 AM EST
[ Parent ]
on the dark side of Israeli and Israel apologist mentality, check out the talkbacks on this article in YNET News on Jan Egeland's remarks in Beirut. Sickening.

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3280130,00.html

The world's northernmost desert wind.

by Sirocco (sirocco2005ATgmail.com) on Sun Jul 23rd, 2006 at 07:40:23 PM EST
Where is NATO now to save 500000-700000 refugees?
Israel should pay reparation for what they have done in Lebanon and Palestine...after the Hague prosecutions of course...
Looks like we have few realities and of course different points of view in EU (not to mention USA at all) on these things...Sickening really.
This (NATO to act against Israel or God forbid USA, haha)  we can expect probably at the same time when we are about to see Clinton and other EU leaders of the time at Hague and reparations to Serbia for devastation of Serbian infrastructure and killing and pollution with DU and who knows what else of civilian population during bombardment. Namely - NEVER...I am not even going to mention Bushco and Iraq.
We will learn to live with it. Those killed and sick somehow can't...


Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind...Albert Einstein
by vbo on Mon Jul 24th, 2006 at 07:49:08 AM EST
[ Parent ]
It's pretty mind-bending when you think about it that the last time there was a refugee disaster / ethnic cleansing on anything like this scale, NATO was already at war with Serbia to the tune of over 30,000 combat sorties. Now the party responsible is also receiving US bombs -- but in the form of rushed supplies.

The world's northernmost desert wind.
by Sirocco (sirocco2005ATgmail.com) on Mon Jul 24th, 2006 at 07:57:54 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Heads should be exploding at Foreign ministries across Europe these days.

Nothing is 'mere'. — Richard P. Feynman
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Mon Jul 24th, 2006 at 08:00:26 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Or maybe not, despite Israel protestations to the contrary I think we might see a reenactment of the 1982 Lebanon war.

So it's just deja vu, or business as usual.

Nothing is 'mere'. — Richard P. Feynman
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Mon Jul 24th, 2006 at 08:10:59 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Eh nothing ever happened on Earth without USA bombs...
Ah yes NATO is coming later in this picture. To "keep peace" in Lebanon (and wider) and build military bases...


Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind...Albert Einstein
by vbo on Mon Jul 24th, 2006 at 08:12:57 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Quote from MOA :
If there were forces from Nato countries there, the notion of them operating under the US dominated Nato chain of command would be unacceptable for the Lebanese. As well one would imagine that even the 'new' Nato clients er sorry 'members' wouldn't be lining up for a gig that could result in them becoming US controlled cannon-fodder in a warzone with no US forces at risk.
----
You should read it all
http://www.moonofalabama.org/2006/07/the_spirit_of_t.html#comment-20107379

Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind...Albert Einstein
by vbo on Mon Jul 24th, 2006 at 08:42:10 AM EST
[ Parent ]
The Olmerts were a family steeped in the politics of the right-wing revisionist Zionist movement of Ze'ev Jabotinsky,

It doesn't seems to have made it to the next generation. Max Sawicky that the front page of Israel's largest newspaper had a photo of his daughter at a demo in Tel Aviv carrying a sign 'Stop murdering civilians'.  From what I've read elsewhere Olmert's wife is also very left wing. Netanyahu, from another old time Revisionist family, also has lots of relatives who are on the left, including a nephew who spent considerable time in prison for refusing to serve in the Territories a couple years ago.

by MarekNYC on Sun Jul 23rd, 2006 at 09:04:28 PM EST
To me this reads as a pointless argument. If the Israelis are at fault, what should be done to resolve the problem? If the Palestinians are at fault, what should be done to resolve the problem. Pointing fingers and dredging up pre-WW-2 history will not help, it seems to me...
by asdf on Sun Jul 23rd, 2006 at 10:15:03 PM EST
..one must first understand the past

I fully understand that policy can only deal with moving the present into the future but, here, as in N.Ireland, the past stands tall behind the motivations of all sides.

It is worth being reminded, as a necessary corrective, of the behaviours of all parties in this situation. Certainly, the western media are full of reminders of how beastly Palestinians are and have been for generation upon generation.

You are correct to point out that this doesn't move us forward towards a solution. Sadly, all of the fulminations on websites and the acres of newsprint have absolutely no impact, all we can do is tell our tales of what was and what might be. But the ending is not in our hands, not the UK's nor even, for once, in the those of the US. It is in their's, Israel, the Palestinian's, the Lebanese and the Syrians. And their's alone.

And meanwhile, this has been a useful tale for those of us uselessly wringing our hands on the sidelines.

keep to the Fen Causeway

by Helen (lareinagal at yahoo dot co dot uk) on Mon Jul 24th, 2006 at 10:06:19 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Britain's planting a Zionist colony in Palistine was one of their many acts of imperialism. Some of them took and others didn't. The European colonists essentially supplanted the aboriginal populations in North America and Australia with a great deal of help from imported European diseases. They weren't able to supplant the indigenous population in Africa and Asia and eventually had to turn control over to them.

Israel is a very particular case in the post colonial world. It is a European transplant that would not be able to survive if it were left entirely to its own devices. Its existence depends on the support of the US. After almost 60 years of unresolved conflict it is inconceivable that they are going to coexist in peaceful cooperation with their neighbors. It is a problem with no reasonable solution.

by Richard Lyon (rllyon@gmail.com) on Sun Jul 23rd, 2006 at 10:32:02 PM EST
Sometimes I feel that the American, Australian, and European critics of Israel are put off by the weak effort at genocide made by the Zionists. "Now chaps, if that's what you call a slaughter, perhaps you don't deserve a nation at all. You don't see any Tasmanians asking for their land back, do you?"
by citizen k (sansracine yahoo.fr) on Sun Jul 23rd, 2006 at 10:41:30 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Small pox, etc. did the lion's share in Tasmania. The problem with that approach in the ME would be comming up with germs that selectively infect TERRRIST.
by Richard Lyon (rllyon@gmail.com) on Sun Jul 23rd, 2006 at 10:52:08 PM EST
[ Parent ]
I dunno, I think that shooting people and offering hunting bounties, and then having them finished off by missionaries was pretty effective too.
by citizen k (sansracine yahoo.fr) on Sun Jul 23rd, 2006 at 11:57:09 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Sometimes I feel that your unrelented cynism leads you astray.

If complaining about atrocities now are negated by our ancestors atrocities noone has any clean hands. So I guess we should leave it at that, and content that noone should trown the first stone just wait for the eavenly kingdom to manifest here on earth?

Or we chose not to believe in that crap and start working from where we are, that is right here and right now, and try to stop (weak as such attempts might be) atrocities in the order they occur, from now on.

Sweden's finest (and perhaps only) collaborative, leftist e-newspaper Synapze.se

by A swedish kind of death on Sun Jul 23rd, 2006 at 10:52:21 PM EST
[ Parent ]
I'm against the atrocities now and I think they should be stopped. But I think that unrealistic and/or overly-emotional or frankly duplicitous critiques don't lead anywhere positive. People can jump up and down and yell about Israel's violation of international laws that are laws for the weak and suggestions for the strong and Israel's need to trust itself to worthless UN assurances without doing anything more than making themselves feel good and exacerbating the existing layers of propaganda and distrust. One of the many reasons that the Israeli government and military are in the hands of Bush league morons is that the peace movement in Israel has been damaged by the valid perception that outside critics mean harm and are lying or being fooled - the exact same mechanism has solidified the hold of extremists in Iran.

I would desperately like to see some way forward that would save Palestinians and Lebanese from this nightmare. I don't believe that sanctimonious lectures that ignore the ugly realities of how power works in this planet will get them there.

by citizen k (sansracine yahoo.fr) on Sun Jul 23rd, 2006 at 11:50:02 PM EST
[ Parent ]
I don't believe that sanctimonious lectures that ignore the ugly realities of how power works in this planet will get them there.

Not impossible that I may have posted something that fits that description at some point or other. But this post isn't it.

The world's northernmost desert wind.

by Sirocco (sirocco2005ATgmail.com) on Mon Jul 24th, 2006 at 07:28:44 AM EST
[ Parent ]
It's hard to discuss this topic because most of us have a whole set of trigger points. I'm not objecting to your post, but if you look at the comments here or on Booman or in any of the "lefty" sites you see the many of them reflect a narrative that  Israel is a uniquely lawless state, a racist European imposition on a previously peaceful Eden,  taking advantage of the guilt ridden nature of the tender hearted Europeans and depending on the Jews conspiratorial control of USA. That is a racist narrative (not the least because it disappears the Mizrahi Israelis).
by citizen k (sansracine yahoo.fr) on Mon Jul 24th, 2006 at 09:56:57 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Could you point to the comments from this diary (or make a selection from them) which rely on one--or more--of your narrative points:

a) that Israel is a uniquely lawless state
b) that Israel is a racist European imposition on a previously peaceful Eden
c) that Israel takes advantage of the guilt-ridden nature of the tender-hearted Europeans
d) that c) (or Israel, or both) depend(s) on the Jews' conspiratorial control of the USA

I'm not sure what--or who--you are objecting to in this post or its comments.

Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.

by rg (leopold dot lepster at google mail dot com) on Mon Jul 24th, 2006 at 10:34:58 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Okay, let's talk about international law. Most of the so-called "international law" being broken by Israel are racist UN GA resolutions that apply to Israel and Israel ALONE. That's not international law.

There have been rulings by international courts that have no jurisdiction over Israel, and that Israel wasn't even represented at because of this lack of juridiction. That is not international law either.

Resolutions 242 and 338 require Israeli withdrawl AFTER a negotiated settlement of SOME of the land. There was no territorial despute with Lebanon, Egypt and Jordan GOT their land back, and the Palestinians and Syria didn't negotiate in good faith.

by messy on Mon Jul 24th, 2006 at 09:55:47 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Not racist: they apply to a state, not an ethnic group.
by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Mon Jul 24th, 2006 at 10:01:47 AM EST
[ Parent ]
yeah, racist because the objections to Israel are due to it's ethnic makeup.
by messy on Mon Jul 24th, 2006 at 03:41:58 PM EST
[ Parent ]
you're just playing the victim
by manon (m@gmail.com) on Mon Jul 24th, 2006 at 03:56:02 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Prove it.
by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Mon Jul 24th, 2006 at 04:16:41 PM EST
[ Parent ]
read UN security council resolutions 249, 250 and 251.
by messy on Mon Jul 24th, 2006 at 09:59:40 PM EST
[ Parent ]
That's a prima facie trollish comment, so I'm not sure why Migeru feels it merits a 4.

The world's northernmost desert wind.
by Sirocco (sirocco2005ATgmail.com) on Mon Jul 24th, 2006 at 08:47:38 AM EST
[ Parent ]
I'm not interested in discussing ratings.

Nothing is 'mere'. — Richard P. Feynman
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Mon Jul 24th, 2006 at 08:50:14 AM EST
[ Parent ]
If it's a european transplant, then how do you explain the fact that the majority of Jews in Israel are Arabs?
by messy on Mon Jul 24th, 2006 at 09:42:11 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Define "Arab"?

Nothing is 'mere'. — Richard P. Feynman
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Mon Jul 24th, 2006 at 09:48:13 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Someone who, or who's recent ancestors comes from a country that has an islamic government and has Arabic as it's official primary language.

Tunisia, for example is an Arab country.

by messy on Mon Jul 24th, 2006 at 09:59:52 AM EST
[ Parent ]
So you're saying the Mizrahim outnumber the Ashkenazim and the Sephardim?

Nothing is 'mere'. — Richard P. Feynman
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Mon Jul 24th, 2006 at 10:04:22 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Well, you have to remember that most of the sephardim fled to Ottoman Turkey after the Trastamara regime kicked them out of Spain, and many of them wound up in what is now Syria and Palestine. That was before the ethnic cleansing there (Palestine) during the late 17th and early 18th centuries.

"True" Jewish Arabs, i.e., Yeminis, Iraqis and the like (we can also ad Iran, which is not actually "Arab" in the linguistic sense, but surely is in the cultural one.) were kicked out of their home countries and went to Israel, and in fact there were more of them than Palestinians period back in 1950.

The Sephardim and Mizrahim hate the arabs more than the Askenazis, because of what the Arabs did to THEM personally.

by messy on Mon Jul 24th, 2006 at 03:38:01 PM EST
[ Parent ]
You have not answered my question. Point me to statistics showing that the Ashkenazi are not a majority.

Nothing is 'mere'. — Richard P. Feynman
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Mon Jul 24th, 2006 at 04:36:19 PM EST
[ Parent ]


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