The New Jewish Bi-Nationalism
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A growing number of Jews are rediscovering the bi-national solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Mark LeVine reports.
One of the things that has made Judaism unique among world religions is that from the start Jews have considered themselves members not just of the same faith, but of the same nation. But unlike Islam, in which the "ummah" comprises a world-wide community not grounded in any specific territory, the people of Israel--'Am Yisrael'--have always been tied to a specific territory, the Land of Israel.
It is natural, then, that while the pioneers of Zionism were mostly secular Jews, the Zionist movement - and subsequently Israeli identity - has always had a strongly religious core, which became increasingly powerful after the conquest of Israel's biblical heartland in the West Bank in 1967.
The combination of religion, nationalism and territory within Jewish peoplehood has made it very difficult for both Israelis and Diaspora Jews to accept that Palestinians could have an equal claim to the Land of Israel. To do so would call into question the fundamental basis of Jewish religious and national identity.
From the beginnings of Zionist colonization in Palestine, however, there have been Jews who felt that the movement's maximalist territorial-nationalist aims were both unrealizable and immoral. Already in 1889 the great Hebrew writer Ahad Ha'am sent a scathing dispatch to the Russian Hebrew-language newspaper Ha Melitz, documenting the mistreatment of Palestinian Arabs by Zionist immigrants. And in the 1920s, as the conflict over land between Jews and Palestinian Arabs was reaching crisis proportions, a group of prominent Jewish leaders, including Martin Buber, Gershom Sholem and Judah Magnes created the Brit Shalom (Covenant of Peace) organization, which advocated a bi-national solution to the worsening intercommunal conflict.
Not surprisingly, few Palestinians were willing to accept Brit Shalom's call for equal rights to Palestine when Jews still constituted a small minority of the country's population. And few Zionist leaders were willing to consider giving up their dreams of an exclusively Jewish state, particularly when their benefactor, Great Britain, held the mandate to prepare the country for independence. Sharing the land became ever less likely in the wake of the Holocaust and 1948 war.
In the wake of the establishment of Israel, and a generation later the conquest of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the idea of bi-nationalism fell into the intellectual and political wilderness. The few Jews who advocated it were castigated as dangerous dreamers, self-hating Jews, or worse. The Oslo peace process , which was clearly--if not officially--premised on a two state solution, seemed to relegate the binational idea to the proverbial dustbin of history.
But as the last decade has shown, Oslo was a fatally flawed process. Palestinians share the blame for its collapse, but its failure was most deeply rooted in the inability of most Israelis, even the politicians behind the peace process, to pay the economic and territorial price for real Palestinian self-determination: a truly independent state, free of Jewish settlements, with full economic sovereignty and control of its resources. And so the years of the peace process saw the number of settlers double, while land expropriations, the expansion of bypass roads, and the destruction of Palestinian homes all continued at an alarming rate - during the very period Palestinians were supposed to be moving towards independence.
By the fall of 2000, all that was needed was the right spark--provided by Ariel Sharon's provocative visit to the al-Aqsa mosque--to set off a new intifadah. Six years later, the idea of a viable Palestinian state being established in the foreseeable future is hard to imagine.
The current impasse in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, coupled with the intensification of the West Bank occupation and increasing militarization of Israeli-Jewish identity has led a small but growing number of Jews to rediscover the bi-national option as a morally, politically and historically viable solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Such a vision sees Jews and Palestinian Arabs living throughout the Land of Israel/Palestine in peace, and with equal political and civil rights.
One of the more recent advocates of bi-nationalism is NYU Professor and internationally renown historian Tony Judt, a British-born Jew who lost much of his family in the Holocaust. In the last month Judt has had two talks canceled after phone calls from Jewish leaders, including one at the Polish Consulate in New York City. This is on top of frequent and often strident attacks against him because of his advocacy of bi-nationalism and periodic criticism of Israeli policies.
The attacks on Judt are not exceptional. Most every Jewish scholar or activist I know who has criticized Israeli policy has met with similarly virulent attacks by the organized Jewish community (non-Jewish scholars naturally fair even worse). Anti-Israel, self-hating Jew, Holocaust denier, terrorist apologist--these are just a few of the epithets hurled at anyone who challenges right wing Jewish orthodoxy concerning Israel. Visiting Israeli scholars routinely face similar accusations for expressing views that are the daily fare of Israeli opinion pages and news programs.
I believe these intense clashes within the Jewish community over the future of Israel reveal the emergence of a new bi-nationalism; one related but not identical to Jewish territorial bi-nationalism. It reflects a deepening rift within Judaism, as Jews move farther apart from each other over the issue of Israel, and through it, what it means to be a Jew in the era of globalization.
One half of the Jewish nation (sadly, the smaller half) imagines Judaism as a religion of peace and tolerance, one that fulfills the biblical commandment to be a light unto the nations by returning to the front lines of world-wide struggles for justice, democracy, sustainable development and healing the environment. The other half of the Jewish people is following the path of the Jewish founders of neo-Conservatism in the United States. Similar to their counterparts in the Christian and Muslim worlds, they see humanity as divided by a clash of civilizations and a zero-sum competition for power, territory and resources, in which compromise, never mind true coexistence with the Other, is impossible. In such an amoral world, their vision of Judaism celebrates achieving maximal Jewish political and economic power as a supreme good, whether in Israel/Palestine or the United States.
The two bi-nationalisms are in fact intimately related. As it becomes evident that a two-state solution is no longer possible, the Jewish community will divide even more sharply over the future of Israel, and through it, of Judaism as a religious values system. Many will support even harsher repression against Palestinians, which in the context of looming demographic parity between Jews and Palestinians will evolve either towards a Jewish-dominated apartheid state in historical Palestine, or towards the forced transfer of most of the country's Palestinian population so that, similar to 1948, only a small and manageable Palestinian community remains. (Indeed, Israeli scholars have been warning of "creeping" annexation, transfer and apartheid in the Occupied Territories since before the collapse of the peace process.)
Other Jews will simply choose to reimagine Jewish and Israeli identity in a manner that embraces Palestinians as equal partners in the country's future, with Jews able to live freely in the heartland of biblical Israel while Palestinians are free to return to the more than two thirds of Palestine from which they have been exiled since 1948. Viewing themselves as "pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian," they conceive of Jewish and Israeli security as unattainable absent a secure life for Palestinians in their homeland.
Of course, Palestinians, and the Muslim ummah more broadly, face a similar choice between peaceful coexistence and permanent war with Jews and the West at large. The divisions within their communities on these fundamental questions are becoming starker by the day.
Few proponents of a bi-national solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict claim that it is an ideal solution. But given the failure of the two-state discourse and the unpalatability of most conceivable alternative solutions, it certainly deserves a hearing. At the very least, those who advocate it don't deserve to be accused by Jewish leaders of offering "offensive caricatures" of Israel (as ADL head Abraham Foxman accused Judt of doing), of being Holocaust deniers, or of supporting terrorists and even the "genocide" of our people.
That kind of language will only sharpen the divisions within the global Jewish community, weakening solidarity at the same time that it violates the self-critical spirit of Judaism's prophetic heritage. Such a development will do more harm to Israel and Judaism than Hamas, Hezbollah and al-Qa'eda could ever hope to do.
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JEWISH BINATIONAlism
Posted by
salvon
at
October 20, 2006 14:06
If there will be no jewish state, why to go to PAlestine at all?
I prefer to be a jew in the US rather than in an arab country, I love everybody. The problem? They don't love me.
I believe is totally naive to think that the two people could live happily in one state.
And if another Holocaust would take place, maybe the Arab prime minister of the binational state would refuse entrance of any more "zionists".
Please explain to me what is the reason for even think on a binational state, other than "fitting " with all the other members of the world left, for whom "Palestine is the new Cuba"? It does not solve any of the needs of the jewish people.
It just make a jewish leftist feel that he can be accepted by the rest of the left.
I prefer to be a jew in the US rather than in an arab country, I love everybody. The problem? They don't love me.
I believe is totally naive to think that the two people could live happily in one state.
And if another Holocaust would take place, maybe the Arab prime minister of the binational state would refuse entrance of any more "zionists".
Please explain to me what is the reason for even think on a binational state, other than "fitting " with all the other members of the world left, for whom "Palestine is the new Cuba"? It does not solve any of the needs of the jewish people.
It just make a jewish leftist feel that he can be accepted by the rest of the left.
bi-nationalism LeVine article
Posted by
bardofbyte
at
October 21, 2006 07:23
Israel
Look, Israel
exists and it is a total impracticality to refuse to accept that, but do some of you really have to LIE like you do?
Palestinians who are Israeli citizens do not have equal rights as Israelis with Israeli Jews. The original Zionist writings indicate that the Palestinians will be allowed to stay to work for Jews in menial jobs, and that seems to be the reality, does it not?
Second, there are hundreds of thousands of Israelis "settled" in Palestinian Land, and the people who lived there up to 1967 are refugees in their own land, and they are evicted by quasi legal Israeli courts, and you also bulldoze down houses with people inside, killing them.
Apparently, those who dispise the religios state believe that Israel is an exception -- that a religious state or an ethnic state, is allowed in the case of the Jews but not for anyone else.
Or is Israel a refugee camp (Jewish refugees from German genocide or fear of genocide)??
Some US leaders have called Israel the United States' "unsinkable battleship in the middle east".
The European elite has long used the Jews -- under the rule of the Catholic Church, since Christianity did not allow loaning money at interest, the Jews were allowed to do this in Europe -- and then if the nobility needed money, they could always expel or dispossess the Jews or unleash a pogrom and just take their money -- it was a lovely little arrangement.
I mean, ever wonder why the only folks who were not CHristian in all of Europe were the Jews?
Israel is no different -- the Jews are still being used by the elite of the West.
Lie????
It’s no lie that the Arabs who remained in Israel were afforded citizenship rights
and vote in Israeli elections.
It’s no lie that the Arabs who left their land in 1949 did so to get out of the
way of the massacre of Jews that believed was going to happen,(It’s what Mohammad Amin al-Husayni, the grand mufti, former SS officer, in the Balkans,
and was highly regarded by Yasser Arafat, was urging. )
found themselves stateless in Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, and Egypt. That statelessness
was the result of their Arab brethren and not Israel.
Yes it’s true that there’s discrimination against moslems in Israel.
They openly seek the destruction of Israel and vote for Knesset members who
support Israel’s enemies. If someone in an Arab country expresses support
for Israel they’d be shot. The wonder is the restraint Israel has shown such restraint
against people who form a fifth column. Any other country, including the United States
would round them up and sent them to internment camps or expel them.
Get your facts straight. Right now I don’t have time to correct all the misinformation.
But your entire view is just half truths or out and out lies. Perhaps later I’ll continue
my reply.
"Interesting how Lebanese weapons are for terror but Israel's vastly greater weapons stores are for ... what? Fun?"
No for self defense against an enemy that has made no secret of its desire to destroy the Jewish people In 1947, in 1967, in 1973. In 1982 invaded Lebanon after
repeated terrorist attacks and assassination attempts. Only the 1956 Suez invasion,
might have been avoided. Yes Israel has advanced weapons and so do the Arab powers.
During the Cold War the Arabs received huge supplies of advance weapons from the Soviet
Union. With the fire power Israel has now it can easily annihilate Gaza in a few days. But it hasn't.
Any other nation suffering from the attacks of
these terrorist thugs would have obliterated them.
Oh, and an urban militia is supposed to fire its weapons from ... where? Are they supposed to go on holiday to fire back at the Israelis?
The thugs positioned themselves in civilian areas and fired rockets. If the Hezobollah murders gave a damn about their own people they wouldn't have used them as human shields. They deliberately picked the center of villages. They could have launched them away from such sites. The south of Lebanon is not a sprawling city, they didn't have to pick civilian centers.
It was Hezbolah that started the hostilities in Lebanon. And if it didn't act with restraint it could have destroyed every village in Southern Lebanon. The hezbollah thugs showed no such restraint.
Nuclear weapons?? I'm not aware that Israel has ever used any or threatened to use any.
Hizb'Allah's missles were indiscriminate. They have very crude weapons, and a tiny militia -- it's all they can do to face the American-financed Israeli war machine.
Oh come on. They're being heavily supplied and trained by Iran.
How is it that in 1947 when the Arabs were far better equipped, and had professional armies that outnumbered the Jews, they were still unable to win.?
the answer is hinted at by the fact that many arab soldies had to chained
to their positions to prevent them from running away.
No land was "stolen" from the Arabs. Before 1947 all lands were purchased by the jews mostly from absentees landlords. Many arabs did not own the land
they worked on, they were sharecroppers. It was the Arabs who refused the U.N. partition plan in 1947 not the jews. They started the war and Israel finished it. The arabs who did own land and fled and lost it. But f the Arabs had accepted
the partition plan there would have been no dispossession.
"And we dropped two atom bombs on the Japanese because we didn't want them to take our Pacific empire away from us. And the Zionists barred more than half of the Arabs living in Palestine from returning to their homes -- they stole their land. So, your point is ... ?"
What is your point???
What does the atomic bomb on Japan have to do with the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem,
personal friend of Heinrich Himmler, organizer of the Waffen SS in Bosnia,
exterminator of Serbs, gypsies and jews, and chief instigator of the war against Israel????
My point is that there could have been peace way back in 1949, if the arab
countries recognized Israel and integrated their displaced persons, there would
have been peace. The Palestinians lived in refugee camps from !949 to 1967,
under wretched conditions imposed on them by their fellow Arabs No one complained that they were in occupied lands. In 1947 there was no concept
Palestinian nationhood. That idea was fostered as vehicle for destroying Israel.
idly all those times? In 1967 Israel attacked first after the staits of Tirana (carrying less than 5% of Israeli seaborne commerce)were closed by Egypt. Egypt did this in response to several IDF attacks against Jordan and Syria. In one of them the entire Jordanian city of Samu was destroyed and its population displaced. Some were killed over 100 wounded. Israeli statistics report exactly one death from terrorism for a period longer than one year that proceeded this incident. In 1956 the IDF attempted to seize the Suez canal and would have succeeded until the US & USSR convinced them otherwise. The fact is that the Arabs have never attacked without a certain amount of provocation. The most recent events in Lebanon bear this out. Israel has held nearly 10,000 Palestinians without charges or a trial for decades. This is kidnapping and is a valid cassus belli for anyone.
“The fact is that the Arabs have never attacked without a certain amount of provocation...”
What nonsense!!! Absolute bullshit. Since the Arabs first rejected the partition plan in 1947
there has been nothing but a series of Arab attacks on Israel, and like Iago in Othello
the Arabs then blame Israel for the very wrongs they commit.
Certainly Israel didn’t sit idly by, and a good thing it did.
For years the Arabs have threatened the existence of Israel, and not
the other way around.
But I’ll confine myself to rebutting your half truths.
In 1967 not only did Egypt illegally blockade the straits but it also expelled U.N. observers from the Sinai. Egypt then planned to remilitarize the Sinai
The U.N. did nothing. Tiran was the only port leading to the Arabian sea. The Syrians
were shelling Israel from the Golan heights. There were endless border incidents
most of them started by Syria. That great bastion of liberty and democracy, the Soviet Union, supplied the Arabs with advanced weapons. Just before the June war broke out, Nassser proclaimed the following,
“Our basic objective will be the destruction of Israel. The Arab people want to fight.”
And a few days later,
“The armies of Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon are poised on the borders of Israel ... to face the challenge, while standing behind us are the armies of Iraq, Algeria, Kuwait, Sudan and the whole Arab nation.”
In the West Bank Jordanian tanks were massed. Israel asked Joran to remain neutral
and withdraw the tanks, but Hussein refused. An attack could easily cut Israel in two.
Israel quite wisely launched a preemptive attack. I could go on and on.
The arabs have shown no hesitation in targeting Israeli civilians, even children.
What do you expect Israel to do, nothing?? Of course it’s going
to round up terrorist suspects. Look at the genocides that Arabs commit
against their own kind. The Palestinians in addition to murdering Israeli children,
murder each other with the same zeal.
1. "over 80%" of the border skirmishes with Syria. As far as the partition plan was concerned why would the Palestinians accept a deal that gave 54% of the best land to lees than one third of the population? Especially as their stated intention was to disenfranchise indigenous people and stretch their borders to Amman. Ben Gurion, Weizmann and numerous others said this often, see David Lienthal (no gentile). The fact is Zionists knew how to work and lobby the new international organization that you claim to loathe. A substantial proportion of delegates and functionaries of the newborne UN were Jewish (which is not to say Zionist) that far outweighed their representative numbers in world population.
What proves how gullible you are is the part about UN observers. The IDF kept a permanent force on its side of the Sinai and refused to ever allow UN observers, a policy it maintains to this day. The Egyptians weren't so recalcitrant (look it up). But, of course, Israel has nothing to hide. Somehow the slightest military drill in an Arab Levantine country is an international outrage to be blared on about ad infinitum. And you've never even heard of the "Lavon" affair, hell you'd never heard of Tirana until you read my post. Googling almost makes you appear adequate.
First of all don’t make reckless ad hominem arguments. I’ve been to Israel three times
and to Egypt once. I was Israel when a bomb went off on a bus killing civilians, four of whom were children. No, I’m not gullible. The partition plan was designed to affect as little dislocation as possible.The lands mirrored where the greatest population densities were. The actual plan encompasses
most of the pre 1947 Israel borders. The Arab’s did not own the land the Jew’s had possession of.
Before 1947 I know of no Arabs evicted from their land by Jews, that occurred after they
rejected the plan and started the war, a war in which atrocities were committed on both sides.
The fact is there was no Palestinian identity in 1947. There was nothing to distinguish the
Arabs in Trans Jordan or Gaza from the Arab world in general. Nasser set up some kind sham Palestinian authority in Gaza which he later revoked. The whole Palestinian issue would have been resolved if Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon would have done what the countries of Europe did
and Israel did with thousands of refugees in forced to flee from Arab lands, integrate them
into society instead of making them stateless and confining them to refugee camps
Yes, I know all about the Lavon affair. When I was in Israel, it was discussed on an Israel
news program. It may surprise you to know Israel has freedom of speech and airs its
dirty laundry. They even discussed the Jonathan Pollard affair. Since I don’t speak Hebrew,
only read it a bit, it was translated to me by a man who later confessed that he also did
some corporate spying in the U.S. I probably know more about Israeli dirty tricks than you do. Israelis not a nation of saints, neither is any other nation. But if you want to compare its human rights record against the Arabs, well there’s no comparison. If the talking heads on Israeli tv talked as frankly in any Arab country they’d be dead heads on a pike.
Yes early Zionist thinkers spoke of an expansive Israel. And if you read parts of the Talmud
there are even worse ideas,.But these are ideas batted around by many people,
and don’t represent a uniform ideology. None of this dogma was put into practice.
The bottom lime is that Ben Gurion and the rest of Jewish leadership was willing to
forgo this expansionist dream in 1947. They were even cede the Wailing Wall to Jordan.
I’ll note here that until 1967 Jews were denied access to it, but they now permit Moslem
access to the Dome of the Rock.
You are very selective in your sources. You cite early Zionist leaders but fail to mention Mohammad Amin al-Husayni the grand Mufti of Jerusalem, and one of the chief agitators
against Israel. His record is one of deeds, horrible deeds, and not just talk.
Bottom line, just look at Arab actions among themselves, the assassination attempts,
the coups, the persecutions of their own people, before you blame Israel for the
Middle East mess.
It’s true that the roadmap to peace has led us to the middle of nowhere, but that doesn’t
mean we should extend the road from nowhere to the edge of a cliff. Levine’s suggestion
of bi-nationalism, whatever that entails, will do just that. Volumes could be written
on what is wrong with the idea, but for the sake brevity I’ll just cover a few points.
I know of no Palestinians who have even mentioned this bi-national idea. Their spectrum
of thought runs from the most rabid, kill the jews and reclaim the land to an appearance of accepting Israel’s right to exist. But even the alleged right to exist is really Israel’s right to exit, for the alleged acceptance is actually a stopgap strategy for the eventual elimination of Israel
as a Jewish state. Any discussion with the “moderates” will eventually reveal
that they want “the right of return.” Granting any such right would be the death knell
of the Jewish state. It would once again make the Jews strangers in a strange land, a
minority whose fate hinges on the sufferance of a Moslem majority. Jews as
barely tolerated guests in their own homeland.
Essentially the Arabs believe that Israel can be destroyed the same way the Crusader
kingdoms were eliminated, that is through temporary treaties until the time is ripe
to destroy the “infidel state.” Levine somehow puts the onus on the early Jewish settlers
for causing the Arab attitudes to harden. It was quite the opposite. The pograms were
started by the Arabs, not the Jews. But a full discussion is beyond the scope of this letter.
“Ahad Ha'am sent a scathing dispatch to the Russian Hebrew-language newspaper Ha Melitz, documenting the mistreatment of Palestinian Arabs by Zionist immigrants.” How so? In the Ottoman empire how would it have been possible for a small number of Jews to mistreat a Moslem majority? It is the Arab belief that the entire Middle East is an Islamic state that is the core animus behind this decades old conflict. If the Arabs accepted Israel as a Jewish state after 1949 there would have been no conflict today.
To quote trite adage, “It takes two to Tango.” Without the Arabs as dancing partners the Jews are merely jerking around the dance floor.
Look, Israel
exists and it is a total impracticality to refuse to accept that, but do some of you really have to LIE like you do?
Palestinians who are Israeli citizens do not have equal rights as Israelis with Israeli Jews. The original Zionist writings indicate that the Palestinians will be allowed to stay to work for Jews in menial jobs, and that seems to be the reality, does it not?
Second, there are hundreds of thousands of Israelis "settled" in Palestinian Land, and the people who lived there up to 1967 are refugees in their own land, and they are evicted by quasi legal Israeli courts, and you also bulldoze down houses with people inside, killing them.
Apparently, those who dispise the religios state believe that Israel is an exception -- that a religious state or an ethnic state, is allowed in the case of the Jews but not for anyone else.
Or is Israel a refugee camp (Jewish refugees from German genocide or fear of genocide)??
Some US leaders have called Israel the United States' "unsinkable battleship in the middle east".
The European elite has long used the Jews -- under the rule of the Catholic Church, since Christianity did not allow loaning money at interest, the Jews were allowed to do this in Europe -- and then if the nobility needed money, they could always expel or dispossess the Jews or unleash a pogrom and just take their money -- it was a lovely little arrangement.
I mean, ever wonder why the only folks who were not CHristian in all of Europe were the Jews?
Israel is no different -- the Jews are still being used by the elite of the West.
Lie????
It’s no lie that the Arabs who remained in Israel were afforded citizenship rights
and vote in Israeli elections.
It’s no lie that the Arabs who left their land in 1949 did so to get out of the
way of the massacre of Jews that believed was going to happen,(It’s what Mohammad Amin al-Husayni, the grand mufti, former SS officer, in the Balkans,
and was highly regarded by Yasser Arafat, was urging. )
found themselves stateless in Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, and Egypt. That statelessness
was the result of their Arab brethren and not Israel.
Yes it’s true that there’s discrimination against moslems in Israel.
They openly seek the destruction of Israel and vote for Knesset members who
support Israel’s enemies. If someone in an Arab country expresses support
for Israel they’d be shot. The wonder is the restraint Israel has shown such restraint
against people who form a fifth column. Any other country, including the United States
would round them up and sent them to internment camps or expel them.
Get your facts straight. Right now I don’t have time to correct all the misinformation.
But your entire view is just half truths or out and out lies. Perhaps later I’ll continue
my reply.
"Interesting how Lebanese weapons are for terror but Israel's vastly greater weapons stores are for ... what? Fun?"
No for self defense against an enemy that has made no secret of its desire to destroy the Jewish people In 1947, in 1967, in 1973. In 1982 invaded Lebanon after
repeated terrorist attacks and assassination attempts. Only the 1956 Suez invasion,
might have been avoided. Yes Israel has advanced weapons and so do the Arab powers.
During the Cold War the Arabs received huge supplies of advance weapons from the Soviet
Union. With the fire power Israel has now it can easily annihilate Gaza in a few days. But it hasn't.
Any other nation suffering from the attacks of
these terrorist thugs would have obliterated them.
Oh, and an urban militia is supposed to fire its weapons from ... where? Are they supposed to go on holiday to fire back at the Israelis?
The thugs positioned themselves in civilian areas and fired rockets. If the Hezobollah murders gave a damn about their own people they wouldn't have used them as human shields. They deliberately picked the center of villages. They could have launched them away from such sites. The south of Lebanon is not a sprawling city, they didn't have to pick civilian centers.
It was Hezbolah that started the hostilities in Lebanon. And if it didn't act with restraint it could have destroyed every village in Southern Lebanon. The hezbollah thugs showed no such restraint.
Nuclear weapons?? I'm not aware that Israel has ever used any or threatened to use any.
Hizb'Allah's missles were indiscriminate. They have very crude weapons, and a tiny militia -- it's all they can do to face the American-financed Israeli war machine.
Oh come on. They're being heavily supplied and trained by Iran.
How is it that in 1947 when the Arabs were far better equipped, and had professional armies that outnumbered the Jews, they were still unable to win.?
the answer is hinted at by the fact that many arab soldies had to chained
to their positions to prevent them from running away.
No land was "stolen" from the Arabs. Before 1947 all lands were purchased by the jews mostly from absentees landlords. Many arabs did not own the land
they worked on, they were sharecroppers. It was the Arabs who refused the U.N. partition plan in 1947 not the jews. They started the war and Israel finished it. The arabs who did own land and fled and lost it. But f the Arabs had accepted
the partition plan there would have been no dispossession.
"And we dropped two atom bombs on the Japanese because we didn't want them to take our Pacific empire away from us. And the Zionists barred more than half of the Arabs living in Palestine from returning to their homes -- they stole their land. So, your point is ... ?"
What is your point???
What does the atomic bomb on Japan have to do with the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem,
personal friend of Heinrich Himmler, organizer of the Waffen SS in Bosnia,
exterminator of Serbs, gypsies and jews, and chief instigator of the war against Israel????
My point is that there could have been peace way back in 1949, if the arab
countries recognized Israel and integrated their displaced persons, there would
have been peace. The Palestinians lived in refugee camps from !949 to 1967,
under wretched conditions imposed on them by their fellow Arabs No one complained that they were in occupied lands. In 1947 there was no concept
Palestinian nationhood. That idea was fostered as vehicle for destroying Israel.
idly all those times? In 1967 Israel attacked first after the staits of Tirana (carrying less than 5% of Israeli seaborne commerce)were closed by Egypt. Egypt did this in response to several IDF attacks against Jordan and Syria. In one of them the entire Jordanian city of Samu was destroyed and its population displaced. Some were killed over 100 wounded. Israeli statistics report exactly one death from terrorism for a period longer than one year that proceeded this incident. In 1956 the IDF attempted to seize the Suez canal and would have succeeded until the US & USSR convinced them otherwise. The fact is that the Arabs have never attacked without a certain amount of provocation. The most recent events in Lebanon bear this out. Israel has held nearly 10,000 Palestinians without charges or a trial for decades. This is kidnapping and is a valid cassus belli for anyone.
“The fact is that the Arabs have never attacked without a certain amount of provocation...”
What nonsense!!! Absolute bullshit. Since the Arabs first rejected the partition plan in 1947
there has been nothing but a series of Arab attacks on Israel, and like Iago in Othello
the Arabs then blame Israel for the very wrongs they commit.
Certainly Israel didn’t sit idly by, and a good thing it did.
For years the Arabs have threatened the existence of Israel, and not
the other way around.
But I’ll confine myself to rebutting your half truths.
In 1967 not only did Egypt illegally blockade the straits but it also expelled U.N. observers from the Sinai. Egypt then planned to remilitarize the Sinai
The U.N. did nothing. Tiran was the only port leading to the Arabian sea. The Syrians
were shelling Israel from the Golan heights. There were endless border incidents
most of them started by Syria. That great bastion of liberty and democracy, the Soviet Union, supplied the Arabs with advanced weapons. Just before the June war broke out, Nassser proclaimed the following,
“Our basic objective will be the destruction of Israel. The Arab people want to fight.”
And a few days later,
“The armies of Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon are poised on the borders of Israel ... to face the challenge, while standing behind us are the armies of Iraq, Algeria, Kuwait, Sudan and the whole Arab nation.”
In the West Bank Jordanian tanks were massed. Israel asked Joran to remain neutral
and withdraw the tanks, but Hussein refused. An attack could easily cut Israel in two.
Israel quite wisely launched a preemptive attack. I could go on and on.
The arabs have shown no hesitation in targeting Israeli civilians, even children.
What do you expect Israel to do, nothing?? Of course it’s going
to round up terrorist suspects. Look at the genocides that Arabs commit
against their own kind. The Palestinians in addition to murdering Israeli children,
murder each other with the same zeal.
1. "over 80%" of the border skirmishes with Syria. As far as the partition plan was concerned why would the Palestinians accept a deal that gave 54% of the best land to lees than one third of the population? Especially as their stated intention was to disenfranchise indigenous people and stretch their borders to Amman. Ben Gurion, Weizmann and numerous others said this often, see David Lienthal (no gentile). The fact is Zionists knew how to work and lobby the new international organization that you claim to loathe. A substantial proportion of delegates and functionaries of the newborne UN were Jewish (which is not to say Zionist) that far outweighed their representative numbers in world population.
What proves how gullible you are is the part about UN observers. The IDF kept a permanent force on its side of the Sinai and refused to ever allow UN observers, a policy it maintains to this day. The Egyptians weren't so recalcitrant (look it up). But, of course, Israel has nothing to hide. Somehow the slightest military drill in an Arab Levantine country is an international outrage to be blared on about ad infinitum. And you've never even heard of the "Lavon" affair, hell you'd never heard of Tirana until you read my post. Googling almost makes you appear adequate.
First of all don’t make reckless ad hominem arguments. I’ve been to Israel three times
and to Egypt once. I was Israel when a bomb went off on a bus killing civilians, four of whom were children. No, I’m not gullible. The partition plan was designed to affect as little dislocation as possible.The lands mirrored where the greatest population densities were. The actual plan encompasses
most of the pre 1947 Israel borders. The Arab’s did not own the land the Jew’s had possession of.
Before 1947 I know of no Arabs evicted from their land by Jews, that occurred after they
rejected the plan and started the war, a war in which atrocities were committed on both sides.
The fact is there was no Palestinian identity in 1947. There was nothing to distinguish the
Arabs in Trans Jordan or Gaza from the Arab world in general. Nasser set up some kind sham Palestinian authority in Gaza which he later revoked. The whole Palestinian issue would have been resolved if Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon would have done what the countries of Europe did
and Israel did with thousands of refugees in forced to flee from Arab lands, integrate them
into society instead of making them stateless and confining them to refugee camps
Yes, I know all about the Lavon affair. When I was in Israel, it was discussed on an Israel
news program. It may surprise you to know Israel has freedom of speech and airs its
dirty laundry. They even discussed the Jonathan Pollard affair. Since I don’t speak Hebrew,
only read it a bit, it was translated to me by a man who later confessed that he also did
some corporate spying in the U.S. I probably know more about Israeli dirty tricks than you do. Israelis not a nation of saints, neither is any other nation. But if you want to compare its human rights record against the Arabs, well there’s no comparison. If the talking heads on Israeli tv talked as frankly in any Arab country they’d be dead heads on a pike.
Yes early Zionist thinkers spoke of an expansive Israel. And if you read parts of the Talmud
there are even worse ideas,.But these are ideas batted around by many people,
and don’t represent a uniform ideology. None of this dogma was put into practice.
The bottom lime is that Ben Gurion and the rest of Jewish leadership was willing to
forgo this expansionist dream in 1947. They were even cede the Wailing Wall to Jordan.
I’ll note here that until 1967 Jews were denied access to it, but they now permit Moslem
access to the Dome of the Rock.
You are very selective in your sources. You cite early Zionist leaders but fail to mention Mohammad Amin al-Husayni the grand Mufti of Jerusalem, and one of the chief agitators
against Israel. His record is one of deeds, horrible deeds, and not just talk.
Bottom line, just look at Arab actions among themselves, the assassination attempts,
the coups, the persecutions of their own people, before you blame Israel for the
Middle East mess.
It’s true that the roadmap to peace has led us to the middle of nowhere, but that doesn’t
mean we should extend the road from nowhere to the edge of a cliff. Levine’s suggestion
of bi-nationalism, whatever that entails, will do just that. Volumes could be written
on what is wrong with the idea, but for the sake brevity I’ll just cover a few points.
I know of no Palestinians who have even mentioned this bi-national idea. Their spectrum
of thought runs from the most rabid, kill the jews and reclaim the land to an appearance of accepting Israel’s right to exist. But even the alleged right to exist is really Israel’s right to exit, for the alleged acceptance is actually a stopgap strategy for the eventual elimination of Israel
as a Jewish state. Any discussion with the “moderates” will eventually reveal
that they want “the right of return.” Granting any such right would be the death knell
of the Jewish state. It would once again make the Jews strangers in a strange land, a
minority whose fate hinges on the sufferance of a Moslem majority. Jews as
barely tolerated guests in their own homeland.
Essentially the Arabs believe that Israel can be destroyed the same way the Crusader
kingdoms were eliminated, that is through temporary treaties until the time is ripe
to destroy the “infidel state.” Levine somehow puts the onus on the early Jewish settlers
for causing the Arab attitudes to harden. It was quite the opposite. The pograms were
started by the Arabs, not the Jews. But a full discussion is beyond the scope of this letter.
“Ahad Ha'am sent a scathing dispatch to the Russian Hebrew-language newspaper Ha Melitz, documenting the mistreatment of Palestinian Arabs by Zionist immigrants.” How so? In the Ottoman empire how would it have been possible for a small number of Jews to mistreat a Moslem majority? It is the Arab belief that the entire Middle East is an Islamic state that is the core animus behind this decades old conflict. If the Arabs accepted Israel as a Jewish state after 1949 there would have been no conflict today.
To quote trite adage, “It takes two to Tango.” Without the Arabs as dancing partners the Jews are merely jerking around the dance floor.
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