James Baker was feeling sorry last Sunday for Israel because Israel had no negotiating partner in her search for peace. Speaking to Fareed Zakaria on GPS, Baker pointed out that the Palestinians are now divided. What can Israel do? Hamas now governs in Gaza, the PA rules in the West Bank. Poor Israel. Disappointed again. No chance for peace.
Of course, it never crosses Israel’s mind to lift the siege on Gaza. Even materials needed to rebuild those 22,000 buildings destroyed by Israeli planes and tanks are not allowed in.
Freezing settlement construction and reducing the pain caused by the wall snaking throughout the West Bank would be a step toward a reasonable peace. It might even help if Israel ceased assassinating Palestinian leaders.
I wish Baker could see that it’s not the lack of peace partners, but Israel’s determination to create “facts on the ground,” and its brutal occupation that complicates any step toward peace.
Who in the world could think that Israel is the least bit interested in peace when every day more and more Palestinian land is confiscated, olive trees are uprooted, homes are demolished and young Palestinians are imprisoned? Netanyahu openly declares his opposition to any Palestinian state and Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s Foreign Minister, threatens to wipe Palestine off the map. On assuming office Lieberman announced the Mideast peace process was dead.
Henry Siegman, Director of the U.S./Middle East Project in New York, writes:
It is now widely recognized in most Israeli circles – although denied by Israel’s government – that the settlements have become so widespread and so deeply implanted in the West Bank as to rule out the possibility of their removal (except for a few isolated and sparsely populated ones) by this or any other government unless compelled to do so by international intervention, an eventuality until now considered unlikely.[1]
He adds:
Israel has crossed the threshold from “the only democracy in the Middle East” to the only apartheid regime in the Western world.
Israel does need to negotiate, but Israel’s battle is with itself. Is Yahweh Israel’s God or is the State of Israel Israel’s God? And the Jews of the world need to choose between upholding the high ethical standards of Judaism or forfeiting its moral values in support of the continued brutality of the State.
I wish Zakaria had challenged James Baker’s bias and asked about the suffering of the Palestinians, but I guess in the American media it is not to be.
Thomas Are
February 26, 2010
[1] Henry Siegman, Imposing Middle East Peace, The Nation, January 25, 2010., p.18.
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
My Thanks to Ben
Several weeks ago, my new friend, Ben, who was actually a U.S. Congressman from 1967 to 1975, handed me a book. Ben is a self-described conservative who comes across to me as one who would rather blow up a Muslim nation than talk with it. He is Mr. Military with strong opinions. Upon leaving congress, Ben chaired the Heritage Foundation for six years. So, you can understand my surprise when he handed me THE CLASH OF FUNDAMENTALISMS saying, “This is a great book.” Below is my response.
To my new friend Ben,
You are right about the Book, THE CLASH OF FUNDAMENTALISMS
I immediately had two surprises:
(1) I was surprised that I had not known about or read this book, and
(2) I was surprised that you had known about and read this book.
Just goes to show how easy it is for me to be wrong.
There is so much in this book that I appreciate that I hardly know where to begin. However, here are some gleanings which I wish the American public had a chance to know. In fact, I believe that we need to know if there is to be peace in the Middle East.
In his Introduction to the paperback Edition, Tariq Ali says:
My argument that the most dangerous “fundamentalism” today – the “mother of all fundamentalisms” is American imperialism – has been vindicated over the last eighteen months. (p.xiii).
Of course, this was written in 2002, when 9/11 was still strong in his mind. Looking toward the buildup of our invasion of Iraq, he asked:
Why is the current regime in the United States so determined to wage this war? There are three major considerations. The first is that Iraq, a major oil producer remains outside of the control of the United States. The second is the size of the Iraq’s army – it is now the only force in the region that could threaten Greater Israel. And third, to wean the pro-Zionist Jews away from the Democrats… the Christian fundamentalists of the Republican Party make no secret of their unflinching support for every Israeli atrocity. After all, the Old Testament decrees that the Land of Israel belongs to the Jews. (p. xv)
Responding to Tom Friedman’s comment, “I have no problem with a war for oil,” Ali writes:
In reality, Friedman did not need to stray as far as East Asia to discover a rogue state that is currently far more dangerous than Iraq. There is a perfectly good example of one in the Middle East and not so far from Iraq. This is a country that regularly invades neighboring states, defies UN Security Council Resolutions, occupies territories that it was not legally permitted to steal, treats the inhabitants of these territories as if they were Untermensch and possesses an arsenal of nuclear and chemical weapons. Israel, however, is the great untouchable of American politics. After 11 September, both Congress and the Senate agreed to resolutions giving the Israeli regime a blank cheque approving all its future actions in advance… The result of all this is a tame US media which barely reports the daily suffering of the Palestinians. (p. xvii)
A few pages over, still in the Introduction, he writes:
If the Untied States had been serious in its oft-stated desire to stop the flow of recruits to organizations like al-Quida, it would have concentrated on ending the occupation of Palestine. Ariel Sharon has been supported by Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld in his attempt to obliterate the political identity of the Palestinians … the blank cheque given to Israel by the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives is without precedent in recent history…Sharon does not even try and conceal the fact that his aim is a major ethnic cleansing (“transfer”) of the Palestinians from the West Bank. Gaza will be transformed into a modern equivalent of an Indian reservation. Thus he is pursuing with direct physical force and by making everyday life unbearable for the Palestinians living in the occupied territories.
(p. xxiii)
This was written in 2002, but little has changed. He warns:
We have to move beyond the simplistic argument that “they hate us because they’re jealous of our freedoms and our wealth.” This is simply not the case.
We have to understand the despair, but also the lethal exaltation, that drives people to sacrifice their own lives. If Western politicians remain ignorant of the cause and carry on as before, there will be repetitions. (p.3)
When I have said things similar to this, people have accused me of “Wanting America to be attacked again.” It seems to me, the only Congress person who gets it is Dennis Kucinich.
Ali is right when he says that at the creation of the state of Israel:
Palestinians became the discarded offspring of history. (p. 89) From the moment of its foundation, the Zionist leaders of Israel were determined to depopulate the country.. Palestinians were a non-people. (93). In 1938, Ben-Gurion defended the concept of “compulsory transfer” to the Jewish Agency Executive and argued, “I favour partition of the country because when we become a strong power after the establishment of the state, we will abolish partition and spread throughout all of Palestine. (p. 94).
Describing the Six Day War,
I saw the photographed children who had suffered napalm burns, but this was a stateless people ignored by the Arab world and left to rot. In the West few politicians knew or cared. Riddled with guilt for the Judeocide of the Second World War, they turned a blind eye to Israeli atrocities…At the Civil Hospital in Damascus I saw further evidence of chemical weapons. Several patients had been burnt by napalm. We were told of the disappeared doctors, of how the Israelis had captured five doctors in the medical tent on the front and shot them dead. (p.123)
I remember preaching about the abuse of the Shah. It helps to understand the takeover of our Embassy to read:
Systematic torture and corporal punishment, prohibited in Iran from the early Twenties to the late Sixties, had returned under the shah. His secret police, Savak, became notorious throughout the world, mentioned each year as gross violations of human rights and dignity by Amnesty International. (p. 135)
And it seems that we never stopped bombing Iraq:
In August 1999 the New York Times reported: American warplanes have methodically and with virtually no public discussion been attacking Iraq. In the last eight months, American and British pilots have fired more than 1,100 missiles against 359 targets in Iraq. In October 1999 American officials were telling the Wall Street Journal they would soon run out of targets – “We’re down to the last outhouse.”… Blockade by land and sea has caused still greater suffering… people are denied the basic necessities of existence, its soil is polluted by uranium-tipped warheads. (p. 145)
Ali questions the motive for invading Iraq when there is:
Israel – a state founded on an original process of ethnic cleansing – had long defied UN resolutions mandating a relative equal division of Palestine, repeatedly seized large areas of neighboring territory, and was in occupation not only of the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and the Golan Heights, but a belt of Southern Lebanon at the time. Far from resisting this expansionism, the United States continue to support, equip and fund it. … Washington supervises the reduction of the Palestinians to a few shrivelled bantustans at Israel’s pleasure. … Iraq’s seizure of Kuwait was not in the West’s interest, since it posed the threat that two thirds of the world’s oil reserves would be controlled by a modern Arab state… (p.147)
He sums up his book by quoting Isaac Deutscher:
A rational relationship between Israel and Arabs might have been possibly if Israel had at least attempted to establish it… Israel never even recognized the Arab grievance. From the outset Zionism worked towards the creation of a purely Jewish state and was glad to rid the country of its Arab inhabitants. No Israeli government has ever seriously looked for any opportunity to remove or assuage the grievance. They refused even to consider the fate of the huge mass of refugees unless the Arab states first recognized Israel, unless, that is, the Arabs surrender politically before starting to negotiate. (p. 402)
Ben, this author makes arguments that I have been spouting for twenty five years. Thanks for putting me on to this book. You are right. It is a great book.
Your new friend, TOM
Ben’s response to me was. “I did not mean to imply that I endorsed this book. I just thought you would like it.” The more we talked, the more certain I was that he had not read it. But, I did and I am glad.
Thomas Are
February 17, 2010
To my new friend Ben,
You are right about the Book, THE CLASH OF FUNDAMENTALISMS
I immediately had two surprises:
(1) I was surprised that I had not known about or read this book, and
(2) I was surprised that you had known about and read this book.
Just goes to show how easy it is for me to be wrong.
There is so much in this book that I appreciate that I hardly know where to begin. However, here are some gleanings which I wish the American public had a chance to know. In fact, I believe that we need to know if there is to be peace in the Middle East.
In his Introduction to the paperback Edition, Tariq Ali says:
My argument that the most dangerous “fundamentalism” today – the “mother of all fundamentalisms” is American imperialism – has been vindicated over the last eighteen months. (p.xiii).
Of course, this was written in 2002, when 9/11 was still strong in his mind. Looking toward the buildup of our invasion of Iraq, he asked:
Why is the current regime in the United States so determined to wage this war? There are three major considerations. The first is that Iraq, a major oil producer remains outside of the control of the United States. The second is the size of the Iraq’s army – it is now the only force in the region that could threaten Greater Israel. And third, to wean the pro-Zionist Jews away from the Democrats… the Christian fundamentalists of the Republican Party make no secret of their unflinching support for every Israeli atrocity. After all, the Old Testament decrees that the Land of Israel belongs to the Jews. (p. xv)
Responding to Tom Friedman’s comment, “I have no problem with a war for oil,” Ali writes:
In reality, Friedman did not need to stray as far as East Asia to discover a rogue state that is currently far more dangerous than Iraq. There is a perfectly good example of one in the Middle East and not so far from Iraq. This is a country that regularly invades neighboring states, defies UN Security Council Resolutions, occupies territories that it was not legally permitted to steal, treats the inhabitants of these territories as if they were Untermensch and possesses an arsenal of nuclear and chemical weapons. Israel, however, is the great untouchable of American politics. After 11 September, both Congress and the Senate agreed to resolutions giving the Israeli regime a blank cheque approving all its future actions in advance… The result of all this is a tame US media which barely reports the daily suffering of the Palestinians. (p. xvii)
A few pages over, still in the Introduction, he writes:
If the Untied States had been serious in its oft-stated desire to stop the flow of recruits to organizations like al-Quida, it would have concentrated on ending the occupation of Palestine. Ariel Sharon has been supported by Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld in his attempt to obliterate the political identity of the Palestinians … the blank cheque given to Israel by the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives is without precedent in recent history…Sharon does not even try and conceal the fact that his aim is a major ethnic cleansing (“transfer”) of the Palestinians from the West Bank. Gaza will be transformed into a modern equivalent of an Indian reservation. Thus he is pursuing with direct physical force and by making everyday life unbearable for the Palestinians living in the occupied territories.
(p. xxiii)
This was written in 2002, but little has changed. He warns:
We have to move beyond the simplistic argument that “they hate us because they’re jealous of our freedoms and our wealth.” This is simply not the case.
We have to understand the despair, but also the lethal exaltation, that drives people to sacrifice their own lives. If Western politicians remain ignorant of the cause and carry on as before, there will be repetitions. (p.3)
When I have said things similar to this, people have accused me of “Wanting America to be attacked again.” It seems to me, the only Congress person who gets it is Dennis Kucinich.
Ali is right when he says that at the creation of the state of Israel:
Palestinians became the discarded offspring of history. (p. 89) From the moment of its foundation, the Zionist leaders of Israel were determined to depopulate the country.. Palestinians were a non-people. (93). In 1938, Ben-Gurion defended the concept of “compulsory transfer” to the Jewish Agency Executive and argued, “I favour partition of the country because when we become a strong power after the establishment of the state, we will abolish partition and spread throughout all of Palestine. (p. 94).
Describing the Six Day War,
I saw the photographed children who had suffered napalm burns, but this was a stateless people ignored by the Arab world and left to rot. In the West few politicians knew or cared. Riddled with guilt for the Judeocide of the Second World War, they turned a blind eye to Israeli atrocities…At the Civil Hospital in Damascus I saw further evidence of chemical weapons. Several patients had been burnt by napalm. We were told of the disappeared doctors, of how the Israelis had captured five doctors in the medical tent on the front and shot them dead. (p.123)
I remember preaching about the abuse of the Shah. It helps to understand the takeover of our Embassy to read:
Systematic torture and corporal punishment, prohibited in Iran from the early Twenties to the late Sixties, had returned under the shah. His secret police, Savak, became notorious throughout the world, mentioned each year as gross violations of human rights and dignity by Amnesty International. (p. 135)
And it seems that we never stopped bombing Iraq:
In August 1999 the New York Times reported: American warplanes have methodically and with virtually no public discussion been attacking Iraq. In the last eight months, American and British pilots have fired more than 1,100 missiles against 359 targets in Iraq. In October 1999 American officials were telling the Wall Street Journal they would soon run out of targets – “We’re down to the last outhouse.”… Blockade by land and sea has caused still greater suffering… people are denied the basic necessities of existence, its soil is polluted by uranium-tipped warheads. (p. 145)
Ali questions the motive for invading Iraq when there is:
Israel – a state founded on an original process of ethnic cleansing – had long defied UN resolutions mandating a relative equal division of Palestine, repeatedly seized large areas of neighboring territory, and was in occupation not only of the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and the Golan Heights, but a belt of Southern Lebanon at the time. Far from resisting this expansionism, the United States continue to support, equip and fund it. … Washington supervises the reduction of the Palestinians to a few shrivelled bantustans at Israel’s pleasure. … Iraq’s seizure of Kuwait was not in the West’s interest, since it posed the threat that two thirds of the world’s oil reserves would be controlled by a modern Arab state… (p.147)
He sums up his book by quoting Isaac Deutscher:
A rational relationship between Israel and Arabs might have been possibly if Israel had at least attempted to establish it… Israel never even recognized the Arab grievance. From the outset Zionism worked towards the creation of a purely Jewish state and was glad to rid the country of its Arab inhabitants. No Israeli government has ever seriously looked for any opportunity to remove or assuage the grievance. They refused even to consider the fate of the huge mass of refugees unless the Arab states first recognized Israel, unless, that is, the Arabs surrender politically before starting to negotiate. (p. 402)
Ben, this author makes arguments that I have been spouting for twenty five years. Thanks for putting me on to this book. You are right. It is a great book.
Your new friend, TOM
Ben’s response to me was. “I did not mean to imply that I endorsed this book. I just thought you would like it.” The more we talked, the more certain I was that he had not read it. But, I did and I am glad.
Thomas Are
February 17, 2010
Sunday, January 3, 2010
Response to Barbara's blog
Several people have sent to me the same Web page, entitled, THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN JEWS AND MUSLIMS. Unfortunately, it does not say who wrote it. One person said, “This tells the whole story.” Well, this does not tell the whole story. It does not even scratch the surface of the whole story. Here is the response I promised.
As I have often said, Jews are good people, intelligent and committed to social justice. They led the fight for civil rights during the 1960s. However, many American Jews have a blind spot when it comes to Israel. It is not really their fault. They hear only one side of a conflict in the media and from most of our politicians.
--The Jews are NOT promoting brain washing children in military training camps, teaching them how to blow themselves up and cause maximum deaths of Jews and other non Muslims.
Well, yes they do. If not in schools, their political leaders openly malign Arabs as sub-human. “In 1982, Prime Minister Menachem Begin described the Palestinians, in a speech in the Knesset, as "two legged beasts” Former Israeli Army Chief of Staff Raphael Eitan likened the Palestinians to “drugged cockroaches.” This is not just rhetoric. In July 1981 the Israeli Air Force bombed an apartment building in a residential neighborhood of Beirut killing 300 Palestinian civilians without a single Israeli leader expressing concern about the morality of it.[i] Of course, that was a long time ago. But little has changed. On July 22, 2002 Israeli jets fired a one ton rocket into an apartment in Gaza, killing one Hamas leader and 14 innocent people, half of them children. Last winter, Israel dropped bombs again on Gaza killing more than 1,400, many of them women and children, choosing targets that maximize deaths, such as schools and mosques. Of course, Netanyahu denies this but white phosphorus and the Goldstone investigation prove otherwise. To date, Israel totally controls the borders of Gaza, creating the world’s largest open air prison, where 70% of Gazans subsist on less than a dollar a day and 60% have no daily access to water.[ii]
--The Jews don’t hijack planes, nor kill athletes at the Olympics or blow themselves up in German restaurants. There is NOT one single Jew that has destroyed a church. There is NOT a single Jew that protests by killing.
Well, again, not quite true. According to Clifford Wright, “The first airplane hijacking was committed by Israel. On December 12, 1954 a civilian Syrian airliner was hijacked by Israel shortly after take-off.” Wright goes on, “The first car-bomb was an invention of the Zionist, as was the assassination of United Nations personnel. A Zionist truck-bomb blew up the King David Hotel in Jerusalem killing 88 in 1946.”[iii]
And as I write this, the headlines on today’s London Times online reads, “Settlers attack West Bank mosque and burn holy Muslim books.” (At the same time, other settlers brought new copies of the Koran to the Arab community denouncing the acts of their neighbors.
--the Jews don’t traffic slaves, nor have leaders calling for Jihad and death to all the infidels.
As for not killing in protest, Israel’s policy of killing Palestinians by the thousands is a matter of public record, including the Gazans bombarded to death last winter.
--Perhaps the world’s Muslims should consider investing more in standard education and less in blaming the Jews for all their problems.
This puzzles me. Palestinians have put great emphasis in education in spite of the fact that Israel does all it can to make it difficult for them. I remember visiting a school in Gaza where girls were studying accounting and computer science in spite of the fact that there were no jobs for them when they finished school. I also think of the American volunteers who escort Arab children to school in Hebron to protect them from the violence of Israeli settlers. Crying out, “Please don’t hurt the children,” they were attacked, beaten with chains and clubs and left on the path with broken bones.[iv] They were not armed. It’s hard for a culture to produce Nobel Prize winners when they are routinely driven from their schools by occupiers.
--If the Arabs put down their weapons today, there would be no more violence.
If the Jews put down their weapons today, there would be no more Israel.
--Benjamin Netanyahu
This may fit Dick Chaney’s famous One Percent Doctrine, that is, it may be one percent true. But it is contradicted by the facts on the ground. Unarmed Palestinians are being pushed off of their land to make room for settlers. Their homes are frequently demolished by bulldozers, without giving the occupants time to gather their belongings. Olive trees and farmlands are being ploughed over to make room for the separation wall, deliberately keeping unarmed farmers from their fields, unarmed children from their schools and the unarmed sick from their hospitals. Just last winter, hundreds of unarmed Palestinians were bombed to death by Israel’s massacre into Gaza. It is not the Palestinians, but Israel’s top government officials advocating the “removal” of all Arabs from their homes to make room for greater Israel. Just this week Netanyahu announced plans to build 700 more settlements in Palestinian east Jerusalem.
All of this is to say that it is wrong to paint all Jews as innocent, just as it is wrong to paint all Jews as guilty. The attempt is always false. Jews are probably no better or no worse than the rest of humanity, but right now, the state of Israel is on a self destructive path. If the time comes when there is no more Israel, it will not be because the Arabs pushed them into the sea. It will be because of the moral corruption, arrogance and brutality corroding it from the inside. Look at history. Barbarism has never sustained a state.
[i] Clifford A. Wright, Facts and Fables, The Arab-Israeli Conflict. (Kagan Paul International, London. 1989) p.3.
[ii] Rachelle Marshall, Has Obama Made a Devil’s Bargain with Israel. Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, December 2009.
[iii] Op. cit. Clifford Wright, p. 49.
[iv] Alison Weir, Heroism in the Holy Land: Americans Beaten for Walking Children to School, The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, December 2004, p.13.
As I have often said, Jews are good people, intelligent and committed to social justice. They led the fight for civil rights during the 1960s. However, many American Jews have a blind spot when it comes to Israel. It is not really their fault. They hear only one side of a conflict in the media and from most of our politicians.
--The Jews are NOT promoting brain washing children in military training camps, teaching them how to blow themselves up and cause maximum deaths of Jews and other non Muslims.
Well, yes they do. If not in schools, their political leaders openly malign Arabs as sub-human. “In 1982, Prime Minister Menachem Begin described the Palestinians, in a speech in the Knesset, as "two legged beasts” Former Israeli Army Chief of Staff Raphael Eitan likened the Palestinians to “drugged cockroaches.” This is not just rhetoric. In July 1981 the Israeli Air Force bombed an apartment building in a residential neighborhood of Beirut killing 300 Palestinian civilians without a single Israeli leader expressing concern about the morality of it.[i] Of course, that was a long time ago. But little has changed. On July 22, 2002 Israeli jets fired a one ton rocket into an apartment in Gaza, killing one Hamas leader and 14 innocent people, half of them children. Last winter, Israel dropped bombs again on Gaza killing more than 1,400, many of them women and children, choosing targets that maximize deaths, such as schools and mosques. Of course, Netanyahu denies this but white phosphorus and the Goldstone investigation prove otherwise. To date, Israel totally controls the borders of Gaza, creating the world’s largest open air prison, where 70% of Gazans subsist on less than a dollar a day and 60% have no daily access to water.[ii]
--The Jews don’t hijack planes, nor kill athletes at the Olympics or blow themselves up in German restaurants. There is NOT one single Jew that has destroyed a church. There is NOT a single Jew that protests by killing.
Well, again, not quite true. According to Clifford Wright, “The first airplane hijacking was committed by Israel. On December 12, 1954 a civilian Syrian airliner was hijacked by Israel shortly after take-off.” Wright goes on, “The first car-bomb was an invention of the Zionist, as was the assassination of United Nations personnel. A Zionist truck-bomb blew up the King David Hotel in Jerusalem killing 88 in 1946.”[iii]
And as I write this, the headlines on today’s London Times online reads, “Settlers attack West Bank mosque and burn holy Muslim books.” (At the same time, other settlers brought new copies of the Koran to the Arab community denouncing the acts of their neighbors.
--the Jews don’t traffic slaves, nor have leaders calling for Jihad and death to all the infidels.
As for not killing in protest, Israel’s policy of killing Palestinians by the thousands is a matter of public record, including the Gazans bombarded to death last winter.
--Perhaps the world’s Muslims should consider investing more in standard education and less in blaming the Jews for all their problems.
This puzzles me. Palestinians have put great emphasis in education in spite of the fact that Israel does all it can to make it difficult for them. I remember visiting a school in Gaza where girls were studying accounting and computer science in spite of the fact that there were no jobs for them when they finished school. I also think of the American volunteers who escort Arab children to school in Hebron to protect them from the violence of Israeli settlers. Crying out, “Please don’t hurt the children,” they were attacked, beaten with chains and clubs and left on the path with broken bones.[iv] They were not armed. It’s hard for a culture to produce Nobel Prize winners when they are routinely driven from their schools by occupiers.
--If the Arabs put down their weapons today, there would be no more violence.
If the Jews put down their weapons today, there would be no more Israel.
--Benjamin Netanyahu
This may fit Dick Chaney’s famous One Percent Doctrine, that is, it may be one percent true. But it is contradicted by the facts on the ground. Unarmed Palestinians are being pushed off of their land to make room for settlers. Their homes are frequently demolished by bulldozers, without giving the occupants time to gather their belongings. Olive trees and farmlands are being ploughed over to make room for the separation wall, deliberately keeping unarmed farmers from their fields, unarmed children from their schools and the unarmed sick from their hospitals. Just last winter, hundreds of unarmed Palestinians were bombed to death by Israel’s massacre into Gaza. It is not the Palestinians, but Israel’s top government officials advocating the “removal” of all Arabs from their homes to make room for greater Israel. Just this week Netanyahu announced plans to build 700 more settlements in Palestinian east Jerusalem.
All of this is to say that it is wrong to paint all Jews as innocent, just as it is wrong to paint all Jews as guilty. The attempt is always false. Jews are probably no better or no worse than the rest of humanity, but right now, the state of Israel is on a self destructive path. If the time comes when there is no more Israel, it will not be because the Arabs pushed them into the sea. It will be because of the moral corruption, arrogance and brutality corroding it from the inside. Look at history. Barbarism has never sustained a state.
[i] Clifford A. Wright, Facts and Fables, The Arab-Israeli Conflict. (Kagan Paul International, London. 1989) p.3.
[ii] Rachelle Marshall, Has Obama Made a Devil’s Bargain with Israel. Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, December 2009.
[iii] Op. cit. Clifford Wright, p. 49.
[iv] Alison Weir, Heroism in the Holy Land: Americans Beaten for Walking Children to School, The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, December 2004, p.13.
Saturday, December 12, 2009
We Best Remember
I can’t believe in a God who kills innocent babies, (Exodus 12:29) and who “hardens Pharaoh’s heart” so that he can send more plagues (Exodus 11:10). I don’t believe in a God who chooses one people to bless and others to curse (Genesis 12:3). And having said just that much, there are those who will say, “But, Tom, those accounts are not meant to be taken literally.” I agree, but then why in heaven’s name do we allow our government to support Israel in bombing the hell out of the innocent people of Lebanon and Gaza? Why do we let Israel, with the support of the Christian Right, get away with brutal crimes against the Christians and Muslims of Palestine on the basis that “God gave all that land to the Jews?”
I can’t support a church that takes little snippets of the Bible from here and there to wave a theology that makes God discount the human rights of many of his people just so Jesus can come again to his throne in Jerusalem. I have no respect for preachers who “host” large groups on holy land tours and take great pride in showing where Jesus walked while ignoring what Jesus taught and its relevance to the painful situation imposed upon the people of Bethlehem, Hebron, Qalqiliya, Ramallah and Gaza City, all in the name of God.
I also admit that I am not as offended by sexist language which refers to God as “he” as I ought to be. Yet, I struggle with the Zionists language that makes no distinction between ancient Israel and the modern state. It is hard for me to pray to the “God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob” or sing “O Come, O come Emmanuel and ransom captive Israel.”
I ask myself, if the church will not speak out for justice, who will?
While I am spouting off, I am also disappointed in my political party. On January 9th, this year, the 14th day of the war on Gaza, Nancy Pelosi sponsored a bill “recognizing Israel’s right to defend itself against attacks from Gaza.” This was just a few days after UNICEF estimated that 800,000 Gazans did not have running water and a million were living without electricity.[1] What about the Palestinian’s right to defend themselves against attacks from Israel? Hillary Clinton falls all over herself praising Israel for “slowing” the construction of illegal settlements without one thought to what the confiscation of lands, destruction of homes and uprooting of orchards are doing to the Palestinians whose country Israel illegally occupies. Even Barack Obama makes a speech to the AIPAC pledging undying support for Israel, without a word of concern for justice for the Palestinians.
Some world leader, I don’t remember who, said, “If I kill one or two, it’s called murder. If I kill thousands, it’s just a statistic.” Israel is counting on that. Who remembers statistics? Who remembers that Israel broke the cease fire negotiated with Hamas by invading Gaza during the night of November 4th and killed six Palestinians? (The very night that most Americans and much of the world were watching the U.S. presidential election returns.) And who will remember that Israel started the war against the people of Gaza precisely at the time when children were getting out of school and its first bombs targeted a class of police trainees.
If the world will just keep on looking the other way, Israel will, in the words of Benny Morris finish the job of expulsion begun in 1948. In spite of the fact that Israel banned reporters from Gaza during its assault on 1.5 million defenseless human beings, the word got out.
Peace negotiations have been going on for more than forty years and the unfailing constant has been increased settlements, assassinations of Palestinian leaders, hunger caused by the blockade of food, medical supplies cooking gas, repair parts for water and sanitation systems, and electricity. (In June, 2006, Israel fired nine missiles into the transformers at the Gaza City Power Plant, the only electric power plant in the Occupied territories.)[2]
Every peace proposal leaves Israel in control of “the borders around them, movement between them, the air above them and the water below them.” [3]
David Bromwich, professor at Yale says, “You cannot bomb a people into partnership. You can’t obliterate a people into a just and lasting peace. You cannot drive deep into their consciousness the knowledge that they are a defeated people and when you have finished your education through violence, come to them as moral and political equals with yourself.”[4]
And, who will remember that just two years ago Israel bombed large parts of Lebanon into rubble, leaving tens of thousands homeless.
Well, we best remember. If there is ever to be peace in the Middle East and security in America, we must remember. How long will it take us to connect the dots between our governments unconditional support of Israel and the terrorist reaction of Islamic fundamentalist?
Thomas L. Are
December 12, 2009
[1] Robert Bryce, Gaza Invasion: Powered by the U.S., “Salon”, January 31, 2009.
[2] Robert Bryce, Gaza, Powered by the U.S., “Salon,” January 31, 2009.
[3] John J. Mearshiemer, Professor of Political Science, University of Chicago, Another War, Another Defeat, World News Views, January 17, 2009.
[4] David Bromwich, Professor of Literature at Yale, Self-Deception and the Assault on Gaza, The Huffington Post, January 18, 2009
I can’t support a church that takes little snippets of the Bible from here and there to wave a theology that makes God discount the human rights of many of his people just so Jesus can come again to his throne in Jerusalem. I have no respect for preachers who “host” large groups on holy land tours and take great pride in showing where Jesus walked while ignoring what Jesus taught and its relevance to the painful situation imposed upon the people of Bethlehem, Hebron, Qalqiliya, Ramallah and Gaza City, all in the name of God.
I also admit that I am not as offended by sexist language which refers to God as “he” as I ought to be. Yet, I struggle with the Zionists language that makes no distinction between ancient Israel and the modern state. It is hard for me to pray to the “God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob” or sing “O Come, O come Emmanuel and ransom captive Israel.”
I ask myself, if the church will not speak out for justice, who will?
While I am spouting off, I am also disappointed in my political party. On January 9th, this year, the 14th day of the war on Gaza, Nancy Pelosi sponsored a bill “recognizing Israel’s right to defend itself against attacks from Gaza.” This was just a few days after UNICEF estimated that 800,000 Gazans did not have running water and a million were living without electricity.[1] What about the Palestinian’s right to defend themselves against attacks from Israel? Hillary Clinton falls all over herself praising Israel for “slowing” the construction of illegal settlements without one thought to what the confiscation of lands, destruction of homes and uprooting of orchards are doing to the Palestinians whose country Israel illegally occupies. Even Barack Obama makes a speech to the AIPAC pledging undying support for Israel, without a word of concern for justice for the Palestinians.
Some world leader, I don’t remember who, said, “If I kill one or two, it’s called murder. If I kill thousands, it’s just a statistic.” Israel is counting on that. Who remembers statistics? Who remembers that Israel broke the cease fire negotiated with Hamas by invading Gaza during the night of November 4th and killed six Palestinians? (The very night that most Americans and much of the world were watching the U.S. presidential election returns.) And who will remember that Israel started the war against the people of Gaza precisely at the time when children were getting out of school and its first bombs targeted a class of police trainees.
If the world will just keep on looking the other way, Israel will, in the words of Benny Morris finish the job of expulsion begun in 1948. In spite of the fact that Israel banned reporters from Gaza during its assault on 1.5 million defenseless human beings, the word got out.
Peace negotiations have been going on for more than forty years and the unfailing constant has been increased settlements, assassinations of Palestinian leaders, hunger caused by the blockade of food, medical supplies cooking gas, repair parts for water and sanitation systems, and electricity. (In June, 2006, Israel fired nine missiles into the transformers at the Gaza City Power Plant, the only electric power plant in the Occupied territories.)[2]
Every peace proposal leaves Israel in control of “the borders around them, movement between them, the air above them and the water below them.” [3]
David Bromwich, professor at Yale says, “You cannot bomb a people into partnership. You can’t obliterate a people into a just and lasting peace. You cannot drive deep into their consciousness the knowledge that they are a defeated people and when you have finished your education through violence, come to them as moral and political equals with yourself.”[4]
And, who will remember that just two years ago Israel bombed large parts of Lebanon into rubble, leaving tens of thousands homeless.
Well, we best remember. If there is ever to be peace in the Middle East and security in America, we must remember. How long will it take us to connect the dots between our governments unconditional support of Israel and the terrorist reaction of Islamic fundamentalist?
Thomas L. Are
December 12, 2009
[1] Robert Bryce, Gaza Invasion: Powered by the U.S., “Salon”, January 31, 2009.
[2] Robert Bryce, Gaza, Powered by the U.S., “Salon,” January 31, 2009.
[3] John J. Mearshiemer, Professor of Political Science, University of Chicago, Another War, Another Defeat, World News Views, January 17, 2009.
[4] David Bromwich, Professor of Literature at Yale, Self-Deception and the Assault on Gaza, The Huffington Post, January 18, 2009
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Goldstone Report
Just say it isn’t so, and the truth of Israel’s brutal assault on the unarmed civilians of Gaza is erased… like it never happened.
Judge Richard Goldstone, of South Africa led the United Nations Human Rights Council fact-finding mission to investigate war crimes committed in Gaza last winter by both Israel and Hamas. His credentials include a U.N. investigation into the war crimes in the former Yugoslavia and the genocide in Rwanda. He led an inquiry into the war crimes in Kosovo and had uncovered Nazi war criminals hiding in Argentina. He was an excellent choice and universally respected.
Yet, Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu, in his speech to the United Nations, was visibly angered with Richard Goldstone in spite of the fact that he is Jewish, a member of the board of the Hebrew University and a Zionist. While Goldstone accused Israel and Hamas of war crimes most of the indictment was directed toward Israel. Unable to tolerate the least criticism of anything Israel does, Netanyahu declared the report biased and unjust. Israel, he said, only acted in self-defense. “We warned them to get out, that the bombs were coming.” He was obviously speaking for the American audience. The delegates of the U.N. knew better. There was no place for the Palestinians to go. Israel had sealed the borders, locking in 1.5 million people in one of the most densely populated corners on the globe.
Nevertheless, Netanyahu’s claim of innocence was enough for 344 members of the House of Representatives to vote to kill the Report. And, as always, our State Department condemned the report as being unfair to Israel. Only 37 brave souls were more committed to the facts than to their AIPAC supporters and stood up for a through investigation of last winter’s one sided war against the people of Gaza.
Goldstone defended himself with Bill Moyers, “The only thing they can be afraid of is the truth. And I think this is why they’re attacking the messenger and not the message.” He reported that a “war” waged on an entire population was collective punishment against a people under occupation and that Israel had used its army, navy and air force to blast mosques, hospitals, schools, factories, water plants and sanitation facilities. Goldstone accused Israeli soldiers of shooting unarmed civilians who posed no threat, of shooting people whose hands were shackled behind them, of firing on ambulances and destroying thousands of homes.[1] He explained:
One thing one cannot say about the Israeli Defense Forces is that they make too many mistakes. They’re a very sophisticated army. And if they attack a mosque or attack a factory, and over 200 factories were bombed, there is just no basis to ascribe that to error. That must be intentional.
I don’t accept that the destruction of the food infrastructure is necessary to fight terrorism from Gaza.
I saw the destruction of the only flour-producing factory in Gaza. I saw fields plowed up by Israeli tank bulldozers. I saw chicken farms, for egg production, completely destroyed. Tens of thousands of chickens killed. I met with families who lost their loved ones in homes in which they were seeking shelter from the Israeli ground forces. I had to have the very emotional and difficult interviews with fathers whose little daughters were killed, whose families were killed. One family, over 21 members, killed by Israeli mortars. So, it was a very difficult investigation, which will give me nightmares for the rest of my life.
All in all, Gaza was left devastated: 22,000 buildings bombed, 1400 killed, many of them children, (Israel lost 13 including those who died by “friendly fire), thousands wounded, children traumatized and parents feeling helpless to protect them. Goldstone saw its aftershock. I wonder how many of our representatives who voted to declare his report irresponsible had been there to see anything.
It is amazing how certain we are of the things we know so little about. But, our 344 representatives had AIPAC to guide their vote so there was no need for an investigation. Netanyahu had already declared Israel innocent. Israel using "disproportionate force" and "deliberately targeting civilians"? Please, just say it isn’t so.
Thomas L. Are
November 24, 2009
[1] See Bill Moyers Journal, October 23, 2009.
Judge Richard Goldstone, of South Africa led the United Nations Human Rights Council fact-finding mission to investigate war crimes committed in Gaza last winter by both Israel and Hamas. His credentials include a U.N. investigation into the war crimes in the former Yugoslavia and the genocide in Rwanda. He led an inquiry into the war crimes in Kosovo and had uncovered Nazi war criminals hiding in Argentina. He was an excellent choice and universally respected.
Yet, Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu, in his speech to the United Nations, was visibly angered with Richard Goldstone in spite of the fact that he is Jewish, a member of the board of the Hebrew University and a Zionist. While Goldstone accused Israel and Hamas of war crimes most of the indictment was directed toward Israel. Unable to tolerate the least criticism of anything Israel does, Netanyahu declared the report biased and unjust. Israel, he said, only acted in self-defense. “We warned them to get out, that the bombs were coming.” He was obviously speaking for the American audience. The delegates of the U.N. knew better. There was no place for the Palestinians to go. Israel had sealed the borders, locking in 1.5 million people in one of the most densely populated corners on the globe.
Nevertheless, Netanyahu’s claim of innocence was enough for 344 members of the House of Representatives to vote to kill the Report. And, as always, our State Department condemned the report as being unfair to Israel. Only 37 brave souls were more committed to the facts than to their AIPAC supporters and stood up for a through investigation of last winter’s one sided war against the people of Gaza.
Goldstone defended himself with Bill Moyers, “The only thing they can be afraid of is the truth. And I think this is why they’re attacking the messenger and not the message.” He reported that a “war” waged on an entire population was collective punishment against a people under occupation and that Israel had used its army, navy and air force to blast mosques, hospitals, schools, factories, water plants and sanitation facilities. Goldstone accused Israeli soldiers of shooting unarmed civilians who posed no threat, of shooting people whose hands were shackled behind them, of firing on ambulances and destroying thousands of homes.[1] He explained:
One thing one cannot say about the Israeli Defense Forces is that they make too many mistakes. They’re a very sophisticated army. And if they attack a mosque or attack a factory, and over 200 factories were bombed, there is just no basis to ascribe that to error. That must be intentional.
I don’t accept that the destruction of the food infrastructure is necessary to fight terrorism from Gaza.
I saw the destruction of the only flour-producing factory in Gaza. I saw fields plowed up by Israeli tank bulldozers. I saw chicken farms, for egg production, completely destroyed. Tens of thousands of chickens killed. I met with families who lost their loved ones in homes in which they were seeking shelter from the Israeli ground forces. I had to have the very emotional and difficult interviews with fathers whose little daughters were killed, whose families were killed. One family, over 21 members, killed by Israeli mortars. So, it was a very difficult investigation, which will give me nightmares for the rest of my life.
All in all, Gaza was left devastated: 22,000 buildings bombed, 1400 killed, many of them children, (Israel lost 13 including those who died by “friendly fire), thousands wounded, children traumatized and parents feeling helpless to protect them. Goldstone saw its aftershock. I wonder how many of our representatives who voted to declare his report irresponsible had been there to see anything.
It is amazing how certain we are of the things we know so little about. But, our 344 representatives had AIPAC to guide their vote so there was no need for an investigation. Netanyahu had already declared Israel innocent. Israel using "disproportionate force" and "deliberately targeting civilians"? Please, just say it isn’t so.
Thomas L. Are
November 24, 2009
[1] See Bill Moyers Journal, October 23, 2009.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Jews Rethink Israel
After every conversation concerning Israel/Palestine, the question arises. Is it getting any better? Is there any hope?
Well, not from the prospect of those of us who live in the United States. We have a biased media which, for whatever reason, seldom even acknowledges the real problem of occupation and brutality. We have a gutless government afraid of AIPAC and its powerful lobby, and we hear on television day and night the idiotic and unbiblical views of the Christian Zionist who tell us that Jesus cannot come again until Jerusalem is purged of non-Jews and the temple rebuilt. There are days when it seems as though there is no hope.
However, something is changing that may have a most significant effect on Israel’s imperialism. That is the changing attitude of the American Jew.
For many years, I have tried to pay attention to the American Jewish writers who were seeking to hold Israel to the moral standards of their Jewish faith and theology. My reading was limited to Marc Ellis, Michael Lerner and Noam Chomsky. In spite of their heart felt attachment to biblical Israel and the security of identity, these powerful critics kept calling Israel to accountability. In previous blogs, I have referred to each of them. Typical is Michael Lerner, editor of the leading Jewish magazine, TIKKUN:
Israel’s attempt to regain control of the refugee camps by denying food to hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children, by raiding homes and dragging out their occupants in the middle of the night to stands for hours in the cold, by savagely beating a civilian population and breaking its bones---these activities are deplorable to any civilized human being. That they were done by a Jewish state is both tragic and inexcusable.[1]
This Jewish writer amazed me. Then I read Marc Ellis:
Can Jewish Israelis continue to torture and kill Palestinian youth ad infinitum? Can North American Jews continue to support these horrible acts?[2]
Noam Chomsky was more specific in spelling out Israeli atrocities.[3]
All of these were writing twenty to twenty-five years ago.
These leaders spoke to me but they seemed to make little impact upon their own Jewish community which continued to give Israel a pass on any treatment of its neighbors, no matter how abusive.
Now, suddenly, Ellis, Lerner and Chomsky have company. There are more Jewish writers than I can keep up with, such as:
Joel Kovel, who writes on the very first page of his book, Overcoming Zionism, published in 2007, “I write this book in fury about Israel and the unholy complicity of the United States and its Jewish community that grants it impunity” He goes on to condemn Israel’s theology and practice for its imperialist behavior.
Normal Finkelstein seeking to cut through the myth of ‘Purity of Arms,’ quotes the former director of the Israeli army archives, “In almost every Arab village occupied by us during the War of Independence, acts were committed which are defined as war crimes, such as murder, massacres, and rapes.”[4]
Tanya Reinhart writes, “Israel can continue to imprison the Palestinians, to bombard them from the air, deprive them of the means of substance, steal their land in the West Bank --- and still be hailed as the peacemaker in the Israel-Palestine conflict.”[5]
Ilan Pappe, an Israeli historian writes, “The 1948 War of Independence involved one of the largest forced migrations in modern history. Around a million people were expelled from their homes at gunpoint, civilians were massacred, and hundreds of Palestinian villages destroyed. Denied for almost six decades, had it happened today it could only have been called ‘ethnic cleansing’”.[6]
Last Saturday, I attended a conference in Atlanta and met Mark Braverman, the grandson of a fifth-generation Palestinian Jew who spoke of the “civil war” taking place in the hearts of many Jews, a war between their love for Israel and their recognition of the price paid by Palestinians for Israel’s “right to exist.” Growing up in Pennsylvania, he visited family in Israel for the first time as a teenager and was devastated by what he saw. After holding that pain inside for decades, with courage and scholarship, Braverman writes about Israel’s destruction of Palestine. “A growing number of Jews in Israel and outside the state see this, and for us the effect has been shattering; the shock, horror, and crisis of identity I experienced as a Jew witnessing the crimes being committed in my name are not unique.”[7]
I scratch my head and think, Wow, what is going on?
Then, the latest issue of THE NATION features as its cover story: American Jews Rethink Israel:
This year has seen a dramatic shift in American Jews’ attitudes toward Israel. In January many liberal Jews were shocked by the Gaza war, in which Israel used overwhelming force against a mostly defenseless civilian population unable to flee. Then came the rise to power of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman, whose explicitly anti-Arab platform was at odds with an American Jewish electorate that had just voted 4 to 1 for a minority president. Throw in angry Israeli writings about the “rot in the Diaspora,” and it’s little wonder young American Jews feel increasingly indifferent about a country that has been at the center of Jewish identity for four decades.[8]
All this is new. Several years ago, I was invited to speak about the history of Zionism to a study group in Jacksonville, Florida. I had just begun when suddenly I was interrupted by a loud and dynamic voice. “Politics! This is all your politics and I resent it. I have a Jewish friend and if he were here, you would not be saying these things.”
He may have been right. I may have been intimidated if there were a Jew sitting in the room. However. I would have been wrong to be silent. What Israel was doing then and is still doing now is wrong and we are equally wrong to remain silent while it’s being done.
These authors are brave and they pay a great emotional and personal price for speaking out even when their concerns are for and not against Israel. They need our support.
Also, there are many authorities on Middle East affairs who tell us that unless something is done to curb Israel’s expansionism, Israel may be dragging us into a long disastrous war with the Muslim world that we are not going to win.
By the way, Marc Ellis has just published a new book. Judaism Does Not Equal Israel, which I have not as yet had time to read.
Thomas L. Are
October 27, 2009
[1] Michael Lerner, The Occupation: Immoral and Stupid. Cited in: Rosemary Ruether and Marc Ellis, Beyond Occupation, (Beacon Press, Boston, 1990.) p. 99.
[2] Ibid., p.116.
[3] Check out his, The Fateful Triangle.
[4] Norman Finkelstein, Image and Reality of the Israeli-Palestine Conflict. Second Edition, Verso, 2003,)
p. 110
[5] Tanya Reinhart, The Road Map to Nowhere, (Verso, 2006.) p. 143
[6] Ilan Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. (Oneworld, Oxford, England, 2007.) Jacket blurb.
[7] Mark Braverman, Fatal Embrace, (Synergy Books, 2010) p.25
[8] Adam Horowitz and Philip Weiss, American Jews Rethink Israel: A New Generation, and a New Lobby, Challenge Old Attitudes, The Nation, November 2, 2009. p.13.
Well, not from the prospect of those of us who live in the United States. We have a biased media which, for whatever reason, seldom even acknowledges the real problem of occupation and brutality. We have a gutless government afraid of AIPAC and its powerful lobby, and we hear on television day and night the idiotic and unbiblical views of the Christian Zionist who tell us that Jesus cannot come again until Jerusalem is purged of non-Jews and the temple rebuilt. There are days when it seems as though there is no hope.
However, something is changing that may have a most significant effect on Israel’s imperialism. That is the changing attitude of the American Jew.
For many years, I have tried to pay attention to the American Jewish writers who were seeking to hold Israel to the moral standards of their Jewish faith and theology. My reading was limited to Marc Ellis, Michael Lerner and Noam Chomsky. In spite of their heart felt attachment to biblical Israel and the security of identity, these powerful critics kept calling Israel to accountability. In previous blogs, I have referred to each of them. Typical is Michael Lerner, editor of the leading Jewish magazine, TIKKUN:
Israel’s attempt to regain control of the refugee camps by denying food to hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children, by raiding homes and dragging out their occupants in the middle of the night to stands for hours in the cold, by savagely beating a civilian population and breaking its bones---these activities are deplorable to any civilized human being. That they were done by a Jewish state is both tragic and inexcusable.[1]
This Jewish writer amazed me. Then I read Marc Ellis:
Can Jewish Israelis continue to torture and kill Palestinian youth ad infinitum? Can North American Jews continue to support these horrible acts?[2]
Noam Chomsky was more specific in spelling out Israeli atrocities.[3]
All of these were writing twenty to twenty-five years ago.
These leaders spoke to me but they seemed to make little impact upon their own Jewish community which continued to give Israel a pass on any treatment of its neighbors, no matter how abusive.
Now, suddenly, Ellis, Lerner and Chomsky have company. There are more Jewish writers than I can keep up with, such as:
Joel Kovel, who writes on the very first page of his book, Overcoming Zionism, published in 2007, “I write this book in fury about Israel and the unholy complicity of the United States and its Jewish community that grants it impunity” He goes on to condemn Israel’s theology and practice for its imperialist behavior.
Normal Finkelstein seeking to cut through the myth of ‘Purity of Arms,’ quotes the former director of the Israeli army archives, “In almost every Arab village occupied by us during the War of Independence, acts were committed which are defined as war crimes, such as murder, massacres, and rapes.”[4]
Tanya Reinhart writes, “Israel can continue to imprison the Palestinians, to bombard them from the air, deprive them of the means of substance, steal their land in the West Bank --- and still be hailed as the peacemaker in the Israel-Palestine conflict.”[5]
Ilan Pappe, an Israeli historian writes, “The 1948 War of Independence involved one of the largest forced migrations in modern history. Around a million people were expelled from their homes at gunpoint, civilians were massacred, and hundreds of Palestinian villages destroyed. Denied for almost six decades, had it happened today it could only have been called ‘ethnic cleansing’”.[6]
Last Saturday, I attended a conference in Atlanta and met Mark Braverman, the grandson of a fifth-generation Palestinian Jew who spoke of the “civil war” taking place in the hearts of many Jews, a war between their love for Israel and their recognition of the price paid by Palestinians for Israel’s “right to exist.” Growing up in Pennsylvania, he visited family in Israel for the first time as a teenager and was devastated by what he saw. After holding that pain inside for decades, with courage and scholarship, Braverman writes about Israel’s destruction of Palestine. “A growing number of Jews in Israel and outside the state see this, and for us the effect has been shattering; the shock, horror, and crisis of identity I experienced as a Jew witnessing the crimes being committed in my name are not unique.”[7]
I scratch my head and think, Wow, what is going on?
Then, the latest issue of THE NATION features as its cover story: American Jews Rethink Israel:
This year has seen a dramatic shift in American Jews’ attitudes toward Israel. In January many liberal Jews were shocked by the Gaza war, in which Israel used overwhelming force against a mostly defenseless civilian population unable to flee. Then came the rise to power of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman, whose explicitly anti-Arab platform was at odds with an American Jewish electorate that had just voted 4 to 1 for a minority president. Throw in angry Israeli writings about the “rot in the Diaspora,” and it’s little wonder young American Jews feel increasingly indifferent about a country that has been at the center of Jewish identity for four decades.[8]
All this is new. Several years ago, I was invited to speak about the history of Zionism to a study group in Jacksonville, Florida. I had just begun when suddenly I was interrupted by a loud and dynamic voice. “Politics! This is all your politics and I resent it. I have a Jewish friend and if he were here, you would not be saying these things.”
He may have been right. I may have been intimidated if there were a Jew sitting in the room. However. I would have been wrong to be silent. What Israel was doing then and is still doing now is wrong and we are equally wrong to remain silent while it’s being done.
These authors are brave and they pay a great emotional and personal price for speaking out even when their concerns are for and not against Israel. They need our support.
Also, there are many authorities on Middle East affairs who tell us that unless something is done to curb Israel’s expansionism, Israel may be dragging us into a long disastrous war with the Muslim world that we are not going to win.
By the way, Marc Ellis has just published a new book. Judaism Does Not Equal Israel, which I have not as yet had time to read.
Thomas L. Are
October 27, 2009
[1] Michael Lerner, The Occupation: Immoral and Stupid. Cited in: Rosemary Ruether and Marc Ellis, Beyond Occupation, (Beacon Press, Boston, 1990.) p. 99.
[2] Ibid., p.116.
[3] Check out his, The Fateful Triangle.
[4] Norman Finkelstein, Image and Reality of the Israeli-Palestine Conflict. Second Edition, Verso, 2003,)
p. 110
[5] Tanya Reinhart, The Road Map to Nowhere, (Verso, 2006.) p. 143
[6] Ilan Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. (Oneworld, Oxford, England, 2007.) Jacket blurb.
[7] Mark Braverman, Fatal Embrace, (Synergy Books, 2010) p.25
[8] Adam Horowitz and Philip Weiss, American Jews Rethink Israel: A New Generation, and a New Lobby, Challenge Old Attitudes, The Nation, November 2, 2009. p.13.
Thursday, October 15, 2009
History (Part 4) - The Six Day War
The Question omitted by the media, never addressed by the politicians, and totally distorted by the Christian Right is: Whose land is it? All of these so called “authorities” on the matter of Israel/Palestine often proclaim, “Israel has offered to give land, (mostly small disconnected enclaves like city-states surrounded by Israel’s military), back to the Palestinians in exchange for the recognition of Israel’s right to all the rest of it including control of borders, air space and water. The question remains. When it comes to the West Bank and Gaza, Whose land is it?
The biggest myth concerning the occupied Palestinian territory is the claim that the Six Day War of 1967 was begun by Egypt and poor Israel only defended itself. Those who hold to the opinion that Israel was the victim claim to know more than some of Israel’s most respected leaders. For instance:
Yitzhak Rabin - “I do not believe that Nasser wanted war. The two divisions he sent into Sinai on May 14 would not have been enough to unleash an offensive against Israel. He knew it and we knew it.”[1]
Mattiyahu Peled - Israeli General Staff - To pretend that the Egyptian forces massed on our frontiers were in a position to threaten the existence of Israel constitutes an insult not only to the intelligence of anyone capable of analyzing this sort of situation, but above all an insult to the Israeli Army.”[2]
Mortecai Bentov - Israeli Cabinet - 1972 - “Israel’s “entire story” about the “dangers of extermination” was “invented” of whole cloth and exaggerated after the fact to justify the annexation of new Arab territories.” [3]
Menachem Begin - 1982 - “The Egyptian army concentrated on the Sinai approaches do not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him.” [4]
Moshe Sharett - Former Prime Minister, writing years before '67 exposed the "defence/security" screen - “Israeli political and military leadership never believed in any insuperable Arab dangers to Israel. They sought to maneuver and force Arab states into military confrontations which the Zionist leadership were certain of winning so Israel could carry out the destabilization of Arab regimes and the planned occupation of additional territory.”[5]
Egypt was no threat. The U.N., the U.S., and Israel’s political leaders knew that Nasser had no intention of aggression but Israel had its excuse. Early Monday morning, June 5, 1967, Israeli jets flying low across the Mediterranean to avoid radar detection, turned south and struck the Egyptian air bases from Suez to Cairo. In less than three hours, the Israelis had broken the back of Egypt’s air force. By Wednesday, Israel had taken Jerusalem; then by Thursday, the Egyptians, who had fought a bloody battle in Suez and Gaza, surrendered. Three days later, Israel attacked the Golan Heights. By the end of the week, Israel’s occupation of Arab land was four times the size of Israel before the war. All the territory that had been allotted to the Palestinian Arab State by the 1947 U.N. Partition Plan was now under Israeli control.
During this war, Israel captured East Jerusalem, West Bank, the Golan Heights and Gaza Strip. Immediately the Israeli government and the fundamentalists, from Tel Aviv to Texas, referred to these occupied lands as “Judea and Samaria,” claiming some God endorsement for its actions. God outranks the Geneva Convention, to which Israel is a signatory.[6] At any rate, the results of this war left Israel with 78% of what had previously belonged to the Palestinians.
So, when we hear something like, “Israel, after being attacked by its Arab neighbors, only kept the land it needs to defend itself,” which is exactly what I heard someone say last week, we would do well to remember just whose land are we talking about.
Thomas L. Are
October 16, 2009
[1].Paul Finley, Deliberate Deceptions, Facing the Facts about the U.S., Israeli Relationship, (Lawrence Hill Books, Chicago,. 1993.) p. 36.
[2]. Clifford A. Wright, Facts and Fables: The Arab-Israeli Conflict, (Kegan Paul International, New York, 1989.) p.132.
[3].Paul Finley, Deliberate Deceptions, Facing the Facts about the U.S., Israeli Relationship, (Lawrence Hill Books, Chicago,. 1993.) p. 36.
[4].Norman Finkelstein, Image and Reality of the Israeli – Palestinian Conflict, (Verso, London, 2003) p. 192
[5].Ralph Schoenman, The Hidden History of Zionism, (Veritas Press, Santa Barbara, California, 1988) p.59.
[6] Article 49 (1949) “The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.”
The biggest myth concerning the occupied Palestinian territory is the claim that the Six Day War of 1967 was begun by Egypt and poor Israel only defended itself. Those who hold to the opinion that Israel was the victim claim to know more than some of Israel’s most respected leaders. For instance:
Yitzhak Rabin - “I do not believe that Nasser wanted war. The two divisions he sent into Sinai on May 14 would not have been enough to unleash an offensive against Israel. He knew it and we knew it.”[1]
Mattiyahu Peled - Israeli General Staff - To pretend that the Egyptian forces massed on our frontiers were in a position to threaten the existence of Israel constitutes an insult not only to the intelligence of anyone capable of analyzing this sort of situation, but above all an insult to the Israeli Army.”[2]
Mortecai Bentov - Israeli Cabinet - 1972 - “Israel’s “entire story” about the “dangers of extermination” was “invented” of whole cloth and exaggerated after the fact to justify the annexation of new Arab territories.” [3]
Menachem Begin - 1982 - “The Egyptian army concentrated on the Sinai approaches do not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him.” [4]
Moshe Sharett - Former Prime Minister, writing years before '67 exposed the "defence/security" screen - “Israeli political and military leadership never believed in any insuperable Arab dangers to Israel. They sought to maneuver and force Arab states into military confrontations which the Zionist leadership were certain of winning so Israel could carry out the destabilization of Arab regimes and the planned occupation of additional territory.”[5]
Egypt was no threat. The U.N., the U.S., and Israel’s political leaders knew that Nasser had no intention of aggression but Israel had its excuse. Early Monday morning, June 5, 1967, Israeli jets flying low across the Mediterranean to avoid radar detection, turned south and struck the Egyptian air bases from Suez to Cairo. In less than three hours, the Israelis had broken the back of Egypt’s air force. By Wednesday, Israel had taken Jerusalem; then by Thursday, the Egyptians, who had fought a bloody battle in Suez and Gaza, surrendered. Three days later, Israel attacked the Golan Heights. By the end of the week, Israel’s occupation of Arab land was four times the size of Israel before the war. All the territory that had been allotted to the Palestinian Arab State by the 1947 U.N. Partition Plan was now under Israeli control.
During this war, Israel captured East Jerusalem, West Bank, the Golan Heights and Gaza Strip. Immediately the Israeli government and the fundamentalists, from Tel Aviv to Texas, referred to these occupied lands as “Judea and Samaria,” claiming some God endorsement for its actions. God outranks the Geneva Convention, to which Israel is a signatory.[6] At any rate, the results of this war left Israel with 78% of what had previously belonged to the Palestinians.
So, when we hear something like, “Israel, after being attacked by its Arab neighbors, only kept the land it needs to defend itself,” which is exactly what I heard someone say last week, we would do well to remember just whose land are we talking about.
Thomas L. Are
October 16, 2009
[1].Paul Finley, Deliberate Deceptions, Facing the Facts about the U.S., Israeli Relationship, (Lawrence Hill Books, Chicago,. 1993.) p. 36.
[2]. Clifford A. Wright, Facts and Fables: The Arab-Israeli Conflict, (Kegan Paul International, New York, 1989.) p.132.
[3].Paul Finley, Deliberate Deceptions, Facing the Facts about the U.S., Israeli Relationship, (Lawrence Hill Books, Chicago,. 1993.) p. 36.
[4].Norman Finkelstein, Image and Reality of the Israeli – Palestinian Conflict, (Verso, London, 2003) p. 192
[5].Ralph Schoenman, The Hidden History of Zionism, (Veritas Press, Santa Barbara, California, 1988) p.59.
[6] Article 49 (1949) “The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.”
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