Zionist/Anti-Semitic Axis
Benny Morris, professor of history at Israel’s Ben-Gurion University, states of Herzl’s attitude towards anti-Semitism:
Herzl regarded Zionism’s triumph as inevitable, not only because life in Europe was ever more untenable for Jews, but also because it was in Europe’s interests to rid the Jews and be relieved of anti-Semitism: The European political establishment would eventually be persuaded to promote Zionism. Herzl recognized that anti-Semitism would be HARNESSED to his own–Zionist-purposes.[4]
Herzl’s most fervent supporters were anti-Semites. Both Zionists and anti-Semites concur that the Jews as an inassimilable minority which needs to be removed from Gentile society. Hence, Zionists have historically aligned themselves with anti-Semites ranging from those in Czarist Russia to those in Nazi Germany.
Where the supposed latent anti-Semitism of Gentiles fails to manifest dramatically, and at times when Jews are in the process of assimilating into Gentile society (as they were in pre-Hitler Germany), Zionists provoke, encourage, and even directly create anti-Semitic movements and incidents.
In the wake of the ‘Dreyfus Affair” Herzl used the opportunity as an opening for his separatism, writing his Zionist manifesto, Der Judenstaat, in 1895. Anti-Semites welcomed The Jewish State from the start. Of his publishers, Herzl noted in his Diary: “Was at the printing office and talked with the managers … both are presumably anti-Semites. They greeted me with genuine cordiality. They liked my pamphlet.”[5]
Jacob Klatzkin, leading Zionist ideologue, editor of the official Zionist organ Die Welt, and co-editor of the Encyclopaedia Judaica, speaking of Russian anti-Semitism and the “Pale of Settlement,” stated:
The contribution of our enemies is in the continuance of Jewry in eastern Europe. One ought to appreciate the national service which the Pale of Settlement performed for us … we ought to be thankful to our oppressors that they closed the gates of assimilation to us and took care that our people were concentrated and not dispersed. Instead of establishing societies for defence against the anti-Semites who want to reduce our rights, we should establish societies for defence against our friends who desire to defend our rights.[6]
The same attitude by Zionists carries through to the present-day, as demonstrated by Jay Lefkowitz, who became US Deputy Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy: “Deep down, I believe that a little anti-Semitism is a good thing for the Jews – reminds us who we are.”[7]
Herzl & Drumont
Herzl formed an early alliance with France’s leading anti-Semite, Eduard Drumont, who had been the head of the anti-Dreyfus agitation. Drumont had written the influential anti-Semitic book La France Juive (1886) and was editor of La Libre Parole. Herzl wrote of Drumont: “But I owe to Drumont a great deal of the present freedom of my concepts, because he is an artist.”[8] Herzl persuaded Drumont to review his manifesto in La Libre Parole, which he did favorably on January 15 1897, Herzl writing of this: [Drumont] “praises the Zionists of Herzl’s persuasion for not seeing in us fanatics … but citizens who exercise the right of self-defence.”[9] Writing of his experiences in Paris, Herzl stated:
In Paris … I achieved a freer attitude towards anti-Semitism, which I now began to understand historically and to pardon. Above all I recognize the emptiness and futility of trying to “combat” anti-Semitism.[10]
In his Austrian homeland it was among the anti-Semites that Herzl also found the most immediate support. Herzl’s biographer Desmond Stewart, writes: “… Already in 1896 Austrian anti-Semites were finding ammunition in Herzl’s arguments, as would the followers of Drumont …”[11]
Max Nordau, Herzl’s deputy, expressed the affinity between the Zionists and Drumont in an interview with Raphael Marchant, correspondent for Drumon’ts La Libre Parole, stating that Zionism, “is not a question of religion, but exclusively of race, and there is no one with whom I am in greater agreement on this position than M Drumont.”[12]
Herzl & Von Plehve
In Russia, also, support among anti-Semites was effusive. Herzl’s chief ally was the Russian Interior Minister Von Plehve, whom Herzl met in August 1903. Just four months previously Von Plehve had been organizing pogroms at Kishinev. As Herzl was explaining his Zionist project, Von Plehve interrupted, according to Herzl’s own account: “You don’t have to justify the movement to me. ‘Vous prêchez un converti’ (You are preaching to a convert).”[13]
As in Nazi Germany from 1933, Zionism was given favorable governmental recognition in Czarist Russia. Von Plehve wrote a letter pledging “moral and material assistance”, which became “Herzl’s most cherished asset.”[14]
Due to Herzl’s efforts in Russia, “there was no prohibition on Zionist activities and an official permit was even given for the holding of the second conference of Russian Zionists at Minsk (September 1902).”[15]
Zionists & Nazi Germany
Without Hitlerism, Zionism might not have succeeded beyond being a fringe movement. Germany was the most unlikely source for Zionist support among German Jews. Such was the assimilation of German Jewry and its full identification with the German nation that Herzl’s original aim of having the First Zionist Congress held there had to be changed to Switzerland due to the opposition of German Jews.
Prior to Hitler, Zionism represented a minor faction within German Jewry. Whilst some Jews were conspicuous in their leadership of Marxism, communism and various anti-national movements, there was a more significant movement of German nationalism among Jews who regarded themselves as “Germans of Jewish descent.”
If some Jews had been involved in revolutionary movements designed to undermine the war effort, many more gave a disproportionate sacrifice fighting for Germany during World War I. 100,000 Jews had fought for the Kaiser, of whom 10,000 were volunteers. A massive 35,000 Jews were decorated. The prominent businessman and statesman Walther Rathenau, German Foreign Minister after World War I expressed the prevalent sentiment:
I am a German of Jewish stock. My nation is the German nation, my fatherland is the German fatherland, and my faith is the German faith, which transcends the various confessions.
After World War I, these German-Jewish veterans formed the nucleus of a nationalist movement that was not only anti-Communist but also anti-Zionist. The League of National German Jews, formed in 1921, declared:
Our way is not the way of the Zionists… of people who clearly hesitate between Germany and Jewry… of internationalist fanatics… We reject a Jewish united front, the only united front we care for is a German one…
On Oct. 18th the former Chief Rabbi of Israel, Rabbi Yosef stated that non-Jews were created like donkeys to serve the Jews and they can be killed with impunity. A nice Hitleresque view of a Jewish “master race”. It is pro-semitism but anti-everyone but us. The Rabbi’s party is part of the coalition government and no one in government complained about his comments so one can only concur that they agree. If Iran’s Aytollah made these comments about Muslims it would have received world wide coverage but it hasn’t received any coverage in the US. The poor Palestinians have to deal with this level of racism.
“The raison d’etre for the establishment of the modern Zionist movement is that anti-Semitism…”
Incorrect. Anti-Semitism is just one factor. There was a secular cultural component, a religious component and a socialist component. The above three (distinct in ideals though somewhat convergent in practice) have little if anything to do with anti-Semitism.
“Zionist dogma”
Incorrect. Zionism consists of several ideologies, some of which are mutually exclusive. There is no Zionist dogma. There are however, several Zionist dogmas.
“Herzl used the “Affair” as justification for his separatism ideology”
Incorrect. Herzl was originally a radical assimilationist whose early writings approaches self-hatred. The Dreyfus Affair influenced him to change his mind.
“Zionists from the beginning welcomed anti-Semitism”
Please provide evidence. As I noted above, the motivations for Zionism were religious and cultural. (Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, considered anti-Semitism as the least ideal motivation for Zionism. In this context he wrote, “One does not make a blessing over calamities”.) Please survey the biographies of Zionist leaders and thinkers. Of course they were affected by anti-Semitic incidents- but their main motivation came from elsewhere.
“its leaders promote anti-Semitism throughout the world”
Please provide one example.
You have not provided any evidence for any of your claims. It’s like saying America was created by exploiting despotism and poverty- and then cite that most immigrants arrived to escape despotism and poverty as proof. What you have shown (which everybody knows) is that anti-Semitism did play a role in the formation of Zionist thought, and the creation of the State of Israel. What you haven’t shown is that it was the only motivating force.
Ephraim, I suggest you actually read the article.
Tom Segev’s book is deeply flawed. Please read “Ben-Gurion and the Holocaust” by Shabtai Teveth. It is poor scholarship to read a single book and ignore the responses.
Ephraim
You ask me to provide evidence for what I contend. Would you care to actually read the article, which presumably you have not done? “Poor scholarship to read a ‘single book.’ ” I would have thought the references provided are those from more than a ‘single book’?
You are conflating my two comments. To review:
1) “Please provide evidence… Please survey the biographies of Zionist leaders and thinkers.”
You have not done so. You have cut & pasted a few comments from Herzl and a single quotation from Klatzkin. That’s it- that’s all the evidence you’ve gathered from the early years of Zionist thought. More than a dozen major thinkers and you’ve (implicitly) claim to summarize them all! There were many many such figures and you’ve ignored them all.
For example:
Isaac Jacob Reines
Asher Ginsberg
Nathan Birnbaum
Abraham Isaac Kook
Eliezer Ben-Yehudah
Meir Bar-Ilan
Ber Borochov
Max Nordau
Max Bodenheimer
Chaim Arlosoroff
Moses Hess
Berl Katznelson
…and many others.
You make sweeping claims about the origins of Zionism all based on a few scattered quotations.
2) I made another comments on your heavy reliance on Tom Segev (notes 19-26.) You write, “I would have thought the references provided are those from more than a ‘single book’?” Wrong. The references you provided for your claims on Ben-Gurion and the Holocaust were indeed from a single book.
So… Quoting the father of the Zionist movement on the origins of Zionism does not constitute evidence on that movement’s aims and means?
“father of the Zionist movement”
1) No such thing. Like I’ve written above, there were many many fathers of the Zionist movement. (Herzl himself arrived on the scene later than many of the figures I referred to in my previous comment.) There was no single “father of the Zionist movement”. You’ve started with an incorrect assumption. (It’s like calling “George Washington” the father of the United States. Nothing wrong with that honorable title, but it shouldn’t imply that he was the exclusive founder of the nation.)
“Quoting the”
2) You have not done so. You haven’t “quoted”, you’ve “selectively quoted”. You have not provided a broad summary of his ideas- rather you’ve latched onto one single particular idea. Certainly, anti-Semitism was a factor. But you have failed to show it was an exclusive or even primary motivation. (It may have been a catalyst, which is something different entirely.)
1) “Binyamin Ze’ev Herzl: Father of Zionism”: http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/History/Modern%20History/Centenary%20of%20Zionism/Binyamin%20Ze-ev%20Herzl-%20Father%20of%20Zionism
“Known for: Father of modern political Zionism”: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodor_Herzl
“Theodor Hertzel (the father of zionism)”: http://www.nkusa.org/Historical_Documents/Herzl_quotes.cfm
“Theodor Herzl: Founding Father of Zionism”: http://www.vision.org/visionmedia/article.aspx?id=5834
“Theodor Herzl: Father of Zionism”: http://www.gojerusalem.com/article_564/Theodor-Herzl-Father-of-Zionism
Google “father of Zionism” for yourself and see what else you can come up with, wise ass.
2) I didn’t write the article. Again, the words of Herzl about Zionism’s aims and means are evidence of Zionism’s aims and means. No need to reply to your strawman about “exclusive or even primary motivation”. The author argued neither, and this totally misses the point.
Jeremy,
“wise ass”
That’s called an ad hominem. Don’t reduce this to semantics. You’ve provided evidence for the title “father”. It’s not relevant . The fact is that Herzl was one of many figures who created the Zionist movement. In fact, Herzl was a rather late figure on the Zionist scene. The movement is not defined by him alone. No is his ideology defined by a few quotations of a highly rhetorical nature.
“No need to reply to your strawman about “exclusive or even primary motivation”. The author argued neither, and this totally misses the point.”
The author began his article with the phrase, “The raison d’etre for the establishment of the modern Zionist movement…”. He certainly does argue this point.
Calling you a “wise ass” wasn’t an ad hominem, because it wasn’t an argument. You can remove that remark from my comments, and the argument remains just the same.
Herzl being given the title “Father of Zionism” all over the internet, including on the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs website, is not evidence that he has been given the title “Father of Zionism”?
I misunderstood what you were saying the author said. I withdraw my strawman remark. Yes, the author writes: “The raison d’etre for the establishment of the modern Zionist movement is that anti-Semitism is a pervasive and untreatable condition among Gentiles.” That hardly seems controversial. The author provides plenty of facts to demonstrate that point. Simply denying facts is not the same as actually refuting an argument.
“Herzl being given the title “Father of Zionism” all over the internet, including on the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs website, is not evidence that he has been given the title “Father of Zionism”?”
You didn’t read my comment! I wrote: “Don’t reduce this to semantics. You’ve provided evidence for the title “father”. It’s not relevant .”
And why is it not relevant? Because he didn’t defined the movement, nor did he found it, nor is he representative of it. Nobody is. Zionism is in fact several movements with several agendas. If the author had critiqued a particular stream of Zionist thought, that would be another issue. But he hasn’t done so.
“The author provides plenty of facts”
The author has not provided a single fact at all (insofar as proving his claims). Again, the author claims that the anti-Semitism issue is the “raison d’etre”. Yet none of his references imply this; they imply that at most that the anti-Semitism issue was important. They do not imply it was of prime importance.
The author further states that “Herzl used the “Affair” as justification for his separatism ideology”. This is an anachronism. Herzl did not originally believe in this so called “separatism ideology”. He was an assimilationist- and a radical one. The “Affair” helped changed his mind.
How convenient that quotations from the “Father of Zionism” about Zionisms aims and means should be totally irrelevant. What an argument.
The author has provided plenty of facts to support his thesis.
Ephraim is correct. Herzl’s main contribution was to gather everyone in Basel but he was only one link in the founding of Zionism. Moses Hess, Chaim Weitzman and others actually contributed as much or more that Herzl.
But that’s beside the point.
Sorry, but this is a non sensical article coming from a biased perspective. For example,
“Organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League of B’Nai B’rith exist mainly for the purpose of exaggerating the extent of anti-Semitism in order to keep Jews under the Zionist heel and keep the coffers for Israeli causes filled.”
Is it the official policies of the two organizations to exaggerate the extent of anti – Semitism or is the author’s viewpoint? Assuming the latter, where is the neutrality in his writing? I know of no members of either organization who would agree with his statement. It is a blatant attempt to ascribe something that doesn’t really exist. Believe me, there is enough anti-Semitism floating around the world that Jews do not have to exaggerate.
What this author and others who write about Jews, Zionism and Israel don’t seem to understand is that Jewish people are often self contradictory. One will say one thing and another something entirely different. Jews fight amongst themselves but instead of using weapons, they use words.
Given the above, it is not hard to find quotes from Jews that support this view or that view, even when it seems to go against overall Jewish sentiment. I’d say that too much “weight” is given to a Jewish person’s statement when it is to be used as a negative.
The author is guilty of all sorts of generalizations to make his case. It is a case that many who hate Jews amongst your readers will enjoy, so congrats. In the big picture it is poorly done, but hey, anti Zionists as well as anti-Semites need a continual flow of negative literature to keep their flames alive. And so here it is, another happy meal.
Hey Barry,
If you can spare about 90 minutes out of your hectic, hasbara-spreading day, I suggest you check out Israeli filmmaker Yoav Shamir’s documentary “Defamation” for some insight into how the ADL, for example, exploits the charge of “anti-Semitism” and how, as Phil Weiss has written, “the consecration of anti-Semitism [is] the central mode of Jewish identity and the raison-d’etre of Jewish nationalism–it sustains Israel.”
(It should come as no surprise that the ADL itself was disappointed with the film. Also, I should point out that I do not necessarily agree with every conclusion the film seems to draw, I simply think that – in this context – it provides a useful examination of what groups like the ADL, groups which you feel the need to defend, are actually like.)
You can watch the entire film online on plenty of sites. Here’s a link I found (I don’t personally endorse the website itself as I have never heard of it nor browsed around):
http://wideeyecinema.com/?p=7208
Or, I believe you can download the film using this link:
http://www.archive.org/download/Hashmatsa/TSDEF.DivX.mp4
Cheers.
I second this suggestion.
These days there are all too many Jewish made films, Jewish written books and articles that paint mainstream Judaism in the worst light. That doesn’t make them correct although they may contain a grain of truth here and there. I occasionally read a true idiot writer in the Jerusalem Post named Derfner, a Jew is more against Jews and Israel than many of her enemies. Again, most rationale Jews don’t believe him to be right but he sure makes a good quote for outsiders who like to quote a Jew, as if that carries a greater weight, to prove that even Jews don’t like this policy or that one.
As I stated earlier, Jews do not need falsely created fear of anti-Semitism to rally around Israel because the real thing is just around the corner. As well meaning and fair as you and Hammond like to pretend, you don’t and most likely will never quite get it.
The Jewish people have been thrown out of a country at least 81 times over the past two centuries, victims of an unbelievable genocide, portrayed as murderers, exploiters, money grubbers and every other conceivable crime known to mankind. No other people in this world have seen such a sustained and frequent hatred just because of who they are.
And I’m supposed to worry that some Israeli film maker supposedly accuses a US organization of falsely using anti-Semitism to it’s advantage?
Here’s a clue for you. Because something appears in a movie does not mean it is so.
Barry, just to be clear, are you trying to suggest – or assume or insist – that “mainstream Judaism” and “rational Jews” are synonymous with “Zionism” and “Zionists”?
Are you suggesting that only “mainstream” and “rational” Jews agree with you and that to disagree with the omniscient Barry Lubotta is the essence of “fringe” thought and an “irrational” worldview?
I wonder what kind of mainstream and rational thought process it takes to constantly ignore human suffering and oppression when the victims are not Jews (oh right, I forgot how much Jews care about Darfur and Burma, but always seem to forget about a little place called Palestine). Is blindly denying ethnic cleansing and apartheid mainstream and rational? Is bombing refugee camps, forcing women to give birth at checkpoints, refusing to allow travel permits to cancer patients who need treatment to live, demonstrating nothing but pure contempt and resentment toward international law and human rights, and constantly justifying everything the Israeli government and military does in the name of Jewish security also mainstream and rational?
That Jews around the world – though overwhelmingly in Europe – have historically suffered great injustices and persecution is beyond doubt. That justice and reparations for European atrocities and intolerance come in the form of the removal and subjugation of Palestinians, who bear absolutely no responsibility for past Jewish suffering, is not only unconscionable and appalling, but also completely anathema to the lessons supposedly learned from the horrors of the holocaust.
Are you really going to continue arguing that Jews can forever be justified in claiming eternal victimhood and deserve special treatment – deference, carte blanche, and impunity – from the entire world, while insisting that a political entity can be both “Jewish” and “democratic” (even though the full implementation of one would wholly negate the other) and that Palestinians be forced to accept anything less than full and equal rights in a land where their families have lived for generations upon generations?
I feel as if you are expecting everyone who reads your comments to assume that Jews and Arabs can not live together as equals (and I’m sure you blame Arabs, as a people incapable of tolerance, co-existence, and egalitarian values, for this) and that if Jews in Israel relinquish their militarily-enforced ethnocratic form of government, they will immediately revert to a subservient second-class citizen status, and will duly be taken advantage of, harassed, oppressed, persecuted, and threatened (if not worse) by their new Arab overlords.
This is pure hokum, Barry, and you should be embarrassed for promoting it.
First of all, no one who advocates real democracy (not of the racial, ethnic, religious, or cultural kind), human rights, and social justice is arguing for Jewish Israelis to be subservient to anyone. The Jews of Israel/Palestine will simply be as equal as the Palestinians of Israel/Palestine under the framework of a democratic constitution and within internationally-recognized borders (of which Israel currently has neither). No one is suggesting that Arabs have any powers over Jews, whereas you keep insisting that it is necessary and right for Jews to have certain powers over Palestinian Arabs. This is a very strange and morally untenable stance for you to take and hold on to.
Furthermore, if you feel that Jews – in today’s world, not the Europe of the Middle Ages or the 1930’s – cannot possibly be treated fairly and politically represented when treated as equals in a society, what are your thoughts about the current situation in the United States? I mean, Jews account for a little over 1% of the American population, yet 12% of US Senators are Jewish and about 7% of House Representatives are Jewish. Would you argue that Jews are underrepresented and politically repressed by the constitutional republic and representative democracy form of government in which there is the rule of the majority coupled with minority rights protected by law?
As such, are you trying to suggest that – by granting all Palestinians the same rights as their Jewish Israeli counterparts (such as full rights to return to their ancestral homes or receive suitable compensation, the right to live anywhere they wish, the right to buy land and build a home anywhere they wish, the right to the same public educational system as Jewish Israeli, the right to travel in and out of the country as freely as Jewish Israelis, the right not to be denied employment due to their ethnic or religious background, the right of all people of that country to be legally classified as citizens of that country, rather than by religion, etc…) – Jews in Israel would somehow “lose” something in the bargain, rather than gaining equality, security, peace, justice, and the acceptance of the world community after over six decades of desperately trying to prove their own legitimacy by relying on heavy artillery and denying international law?
You kept trying to claim on various comment forums on this website that people who advocate equal rights for all people (that includes Jews, Muslims, Christians, atheists, vegans, skeet-shooters, flight attendants, and everyone else) “will never quite get it.”
It’s quite clear, Barry, that it is you who doesn’t quite “get it.” You stand on the side of exceptionalism, false victimization, hysterical fearmongering, and aggressive survivalism in a wolrd that has long abandoned those concepts as morally or politically legitimate.
You say that you’re sick of “facts” and would rather live your life based on “wisdom.” What kind of wisdom do you subscribe to when justifying the bulldozing of homes and olive orchards, the sonic booms meant to terrorize sleeping children, the blockading of 1.5 million suffering human being, the execution of unarmed peace activists in international waters, the forced displacement of over 750,000 people from their ancestral homeland, the “Us and Them” mentality that has too long kept people fighting against one another? Where do you find the wisdom in segregated roads and communities, in walls and watchtowers, in curfews and checkpoints, in white phosphorus and Apache helicopters, in colonial settlement and collective punishment?
You say you’re tired of “evidence,” fine. What does your gut really tell you about how people should be treated – especially by another group of people who have witnessed firsthand the unspeakable tragedy of inequality, persecution, bigotry, and hatred – and do you honestly believe that Palestinians are being treated fairly and humanely, both inside and outside Israel?
Has Jewish history truly taught you to stand on the side of the politically powerful, of the militarily mighty, of the nuclear-armed, of the ideologically committed, while justifying their every move? Or, rather, should you really be standing on the side of resistance, of equality, of justice?
Obviously, this is something you have to decide on your own. I, for one, sincerely hope you choose wisely.
Nima, it seems you’ve hit the nail on the head, and summed this up artfully, logically, and with the wisdom which comes from empathy for all sides, and especially, for the innocent who suffer from the Leviathan that is the government of Israel
Nima, there are so many inaccuracies in your letter above I don’t know where to begin, and so I won’t. I will say this. If Palestinians and other Arabs were not so intent on trying to kill all Jews, including civilians, women and babies, then none of the things you dislike would be happening. There would be no wall, no checkpoints, no loud jets and so forth. Israelis would be more than happy to not have anything to do with their neighbours if they were just left in peace.
Whether or not you like it, Israel is a legitimate country in this world. You and your friends would like to take the legitimacy away but if for a moment we can accept the reality that Israel is real, then why should it have to put up with all sorts of crazy behaviour like the firing of 8,000 missiles in Sderot amongst many other murderous actions? In fact, you cannot argue that what the Arabs have been doing for years has any merit whatsoever IF you accept the Israel has the right to live in peace.
So what I take from your letter is the same old argument that Israel should not even exist. In fact, this entire website is geared to that belief when it comes to the mideast.
As for my own beliefs I side every time with the truth. I am not overly concerned with “resistance, equality and justice” as you frame them because your definitions come from a biased and poisoned mind.
Rereading your letter I see so many lies and distortions of events that I see no value in debating with you. You are of one mind and you would not be able to see the truth if it was staring you down. In fact, I would say you are ignorant – not necessarily an ignorant person – but certainly ignorant of reality. You write well, but so what? If there’s one point I wish to make it’s that clever people, and those who speak and write well do not necessarily have any more acquaintance with truth, reality and wisdom than those who do not. History is strewn with self important people who thought they had a strangle hold on factual truths’s when in reality they did not.
I could challenge each and every point that you’ve already accepted as the correct and I am confident that in the end my argument would be so much closer to the truth than yours. But what’s the point? You don’t have an open mind and you don’t wish to know the truth. Anyone who can lie as easily as you do – I’m sure it’s not intentional, it’s that ignorance thing – is not willing to be shown they have followed the wrong path.
I am a compassionate person, believe it or not, and have never wished ill on anyone or any entity. But I will not stand by and listen to the drivel you talk about over and over because I’ve been listening to this type of stuff for years. Anti Israel and anti-Semitsm are close cousins. Jews can smell the latter – we have a lot of experience with it. We know the atrocities done to Jews over the centuries and we know it’s never been for a truthful reason – it’s always been made up for this reason or that. We are too small in number to really have had much effect despite those who think we run the world. Your arguments, which as I’ve said, would never stand up, not a single one, are more of the same libel against the Jewish people, but this time you can claim it’s just against Israel.
Well go blow your nose, is all I can say.
Barry, it’s hilarious that you assert Nima has made a great many errors, yet don’t even attempt to point out a single one, instead feeling it necessary to create a strawman argument. Most instructive.
Best part of Barry’s hilarious and inane reply:
“I am a compassionate person, believe it or not…”
I don’t believe it, Barry, and neither would anyone else who has read what you’ve written. Your own words speak for themselves. That you would accuse someone else – let alone someone who advocates for equal rights – of having a “poisoned mind” so perfectly demonstrates your startling lack of self-awareness and righteous myopia that no amount of my pointing out your bigotry, ignorance of facts (including any sense of what international law actually is, states, or demands), and your complete, unflinching obedience to Zionist propaganda (I use that term in its most literal sense, not as an rhetorical flourish).
Your sense of history is so incorrect that I must try and quickly correct you on just a few things, namely the things you keep repeating as your core argument for Jewish control over Palestine (just having to write that phrase proves how outlandish your position is):
You are obsessed, apparently, with the San Remo resolution of 1920 and point to that documentation as the “proof” needed to claim that control was somehow granted (clearly unbeknownst to Palestinians and obviously without their own input) to “Jews” over the land of Palestine and all its native inhabitants.
Let’s review the document you love so much, shall we?
Here are the relevant portions:
“To accept the terms of the Mandates Article…with reference to Palestine, on the understanding that there was inserted in the process-verbal an undertaking by the Mandatory Power that this would not involve the surrender of the rights hitherto enjoyed by the non-Jewish communities in Palestine…”
And:
“The Mandatory will be responsible for putting into effect the declaration originally made on November 8, 1917, by the British Government, and adopted by the other Allied Powers, in favour of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”
Ok, as I have mentioned already on a different comment thread: “national rights” and a “national home” are two different things.
Also, as I’ve explained: nor does this document guarantee (let alone authorize or encourage) political dominance or governmental control of Jewish inhabitants (or immigrants) over the native Palestinian population. Not only that, but those concepts were (and have since been) absolutely rejected by the British government itself – whose Mandate it was – in the 1920′s and 1930′s, the Permanent Mandates Commission of the League of Nations in 1930 and by the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine in 1947.
Your arguments (when you chose to try and make them) are utterly without merit. You claim that my responses to you are full of lies yet fail to point out any inaccuracies whatsoever. You accuse me of not having “an open mind” and claim that I “don’t wish to know the truth,” continuing that “Anyone who can lie as easily as you do – I’m sure it’s not intentional, it’s that ignorance thing – is not willing to be shown they have followed the wrong path.”
These, sir, are serious accusations. Yet you expect them to be accepted at face value and without any supporting evidence. That’s shameless, dishonest and cowardly.
Do you truly expect me to read your offensive comments and think to myself, “y’know, this Barry Lubotta guy has some really compelling points regarding the deficiency of the Arab mind, about Jewish ethnocratic rule, about justifications for ethnic cleansing, colonization, and apartheid”?
No, Barry, your perspective is not compelling, nor are the non-existent facts you don’t use to back them up. You expect open-mindedness in the face of your bigotry and contempt for international law and human rights? Sorry, you won’t get it. I don’t think anyone should be open-minded about land theft or a two-tiered legal system or institutionalized discrimination or a forty-plus year occupation or an illegal blockade. These are war crimes, crimes against humanity, and atrocities of the highest order. I am not open-minded about these things, nor should you be.
It’s safe to say you have confirmed my previous assumption that you are not only open to these horrors if they benefit one group of people while destroying another, but you actively justify them, encourage them, and defend them. You should be ashamed of yourself.
But I know you’re not.
Nima, I could go over each and every point you make and show you why you are wrong, but it’s going to take a lot of work to get you to see reality as it is.
Just one of the things you mention is “forcing women to give birth at checkpoints” which I must admit I don’t know anything about. Assuming it’s true, did the children live? Are you not aware that Israel gives incredible medical help to all the Arabs in the area when even their own people won’t?
As I said, I don’t know much about births at checkpoints and the circumstances therein, but speaking of Palestinian women giving birth, perhaps you should take a loot at this advertisement placed on Gaza television to give you an idea of who better takes care of women in the area.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUZ8zs66auU
Let’s not forget that checkpoints were created and exist simply because without them Palesinian terrorists have and would again infest Israel with the sole goal of killing men, women and children. So let’s not cry about something that was created by those who now complain.
Barry, I welcome you to explain how forcing Palestinian women to give birth at checkpoints because they are denied access to hospitals can be reconciled with your remark that “Israel gives incredible medical help to all the Arabs in the area”.
It’s once again instructive that you insist somebody is “wrong” but again refuse to point out even a single error to demonstrate so. This is becoming a habit, eh, Barry?
Barry, you have a lot to say about a documentary you haven’t watched.
Sorry, I forgot to include this article from Nov. 7 which is a more serious and authentic look at the issue Shamir tried to examine.
http://www.nationalpost.com/news/Harper+says+Canada+will+stand+Israel/3794912/story.html
This is in response to Jeremy’s comment:
“The argument that 750,000 Arabs left “willingly” is not an intellectually serious one. One can turn to Israeli scholars like Benny Morris or Ilan Pappe for refutation of this propaganda. They fled either out of fear of more massacres such as at Deir Yassin or because they were forced out by the Zionist forces.”
Jeremy, you are wrong as you often are only this time I’ll supply a few passages to back up my case instead of asserting that you and your kind are just intellectually dishonest. Each paragraph below stands on it’s own – they are not continuous. This should give you and your readers an alternative viewpoint to the incorrect ones you hold.
Of particular interest is a comment by scholar Bennie Morris who was one of your references supporting YOUR claim. Please read his thoughts as expressed below. (not immediately below, a little further down).
_____________________________________________________
Palestinians were, and to a great extent remain, a society with fundamental weaknesses that have nothing to do with Zionist aspirations or actions.
Indeed, the Arab narrative, which speaks of perpetual residence in Palestine for 1,300 years, does not stand up to scrutiny. For 250 years the population remained almost static – rising from 205,000 Muslims, Christians, and Jews in 1554 to only 275,000 in 1800. Other historic documents from 1830 onward demonstrate that an increase in Arab immigration was registered with the influx of the first Zionist settlers in 1880, yet the population still ebbed and flowed. Arabs fled during the 1936-1939 Revolt, mainly due to fratricide directed against Palestinian Arab moderates.
“By April 1948, a month before Israel’s declaration of independence, and at a time when the Arabs appeared to be winning the war, some 100,000 Palestinians, mostly from the main urban centers of Jaffa, Haifa, and Jerusalem, and from villages in the coastal plain, had gone. Within another month those numbers had nearly doubled; and by early June, according to an internal Hagana report, some 390,000 Palestinians had left. By the time the war was over in 1949, the number of refugees had risen to between 550,000 and 600,000.”
In January 1948, Hussein Khalidi, Secretary of the Arab Higher Committee (AHC) – a coalition of six political factions established at the start of the Arab Revolt in 1936 and the Palestinians’ only representative framework – complained to the Mufti:
“Forty days after the declaration of a jihad, and I am shattered…. Everyone has left me. Six [AHC members] are in Cairo, two are in Damascus – I won’t be able to hold on much longer…. Everyone is leaving. Everyone who has a check or some money – off he goes to Egypt, to Lebanon, to Damascus.”
“When riots broke out, middle-class Palestinians sent their families to neighboring countries and joined them after the situation further deteriorated. Others moved from the vicinity of the front lines to less exposed areas in the interior of the Arab sector. Non-Palestinian Arabs returned to Syria, Lebanon and Egypt to avoid the hardships of war. First-generation rootless emigrants from the countryside to urban centers returned to their villages. Thousands of Palestinian government employees – doctors, nurses, civil servants, lawyers, clerks, etc. – became redundant and departed as the mandatory administration disintegrated. This set a model and created an atmosphere of desertion that rapidly expanded to wider circles. Between half to two-thirds of the inhabitants in cities such as Haifa or Jaffa had abandoned their homes before the Jews stormed these towns in late April 1948. Dependence on towns that had fallen, the quandaries of maintaining agricultural routine and rumors of atrocities exacerbated mass flight from the countryside. Many hamlets that the Haganah occupied were empty.”
Although both sides committed atrocities and engaged in bloody reprisals, the Palestinians have turned the Jewish ones into a pillar to support their charge that Palestinians were innocents terrorized into fleeing by the Jews.
One Cairo newspaper, Akhbr El-Yom,18 for instance, quoted the Mufti of Jerusalem on the first day of the invasion appealing to the Arabs of Palestine to leave the country for “the Arab armies were about to enter and fight in their stead….” In other cases, Arabs issued threatening warnings that those who stayed would be viewed as “renegades.”19 And in fact, in two major cities with large Arab populations – Haifa and Jaffa – Arab authorities organized the exodus, ordering Arab residents to leave.
Even historian26 Benny Morris recently revised his evaluation of the Palestinians and the core of their refugee problem. Taking the Palestinians to task in a 2003 article in the New Republic, Morris writes that “… the collapse of Palestinian society in 1948 – the Naqba or catastrophe in Arabic – took place under the hammer blows of the war of their own making,” yet Palestinians habitually prefer to blame someone else:
More to the point, Professor Morris writes that “after a serious re-examination of [his] own political assumptions,” he has come to the conclusion that the heart of the conflict is the inability of Palestinian Arabs to accept that Jews have ties and rights in the Land of Israel, and that Israel is a legitimate entity:
“I have come away from my examination of the history of the conflict with a sense of the instinctive rejectionism that runs like a dark thread through Palestinian history – a rejection, to the point of absurdity, of the history of the Jewish link to the Land of Israel; a rejection of the legitimacy of Jewish claims to Palestine; a rejection of the right of the Jewish state to exist. And, worse, this rejectionism has over the decades been leavened by a healthy dose of antisemitism, a perception of the Jew as God’s and humanity’s unchosen.”
Although a majority of Arabs fled of their own accord, it is also true that Jewish troops forced many residents of Arab villages out of their communities or banished them to Arab-held areas. Yet those cases must be viewed in context. They were the results of a ‘change in the rules’ of the war that Palestinians caused by imploring five Arab armies to invade the country.
On September 6, 1948, the Beirut Daily Telegraph quoted Emil Ghory, Secretary of the Arab Higher Command, as saying:
“… the Arabs did not want to submit to a truce. They preferred to abandon their homes.”
I have now watched Defamation and gave you an honest reply somewhere on these pages.
In summary, it is indeed an embarrassment to the ADL. It was also a set up by a left wing film maker trying to make a point that he already held. I’m guessing that he presented himself in a much more neutral way to the ADL.
Jeremy, you had this to say somewhere on this page.
“The argument that 750,000 Arabs left “willingly” is not an intellectually serious one. One can turn to Israeli scholars like Benny Morris or Ilan Pappe for refutation of this propaganda. They fled either out of fear of more massacres such as at Deir Yassin or because they were forced out by the Zionist forces.”
You are reading the wrong sources Jeremy – time for you to get on board with truth and honesty.
You stated it was a foregone conclusion that Arabs were forced from their land, not just a few, but the entire lot. You quote Israeli historian Bennie Morris to buttress your claim.
I have selected a few counter claims shown below which lay bare the absurdity of your conclusions. Note that there is a comment by the same Bennis Morris which refutes what you have alluded to.
At the root of your dislike for Israel is the idea that land was stolen from the Arabs in the area. If you were proved incorrect, would you be willing to look at your entire hypothesis as being false? No, I didn’t think so but it was worth a try.
Fact is, you and your cohorts have been living in a vacuum not rooted in reality. You rely on the absolute worst authors who have a bone to pick with Israel and subscribe to their distorted information.
The very same self defeating I am a victim attitude which has characterized Palestinian Arabs for years seems to have infected your thinking.
ARABS LEFT THEIR HOMES WILLINGLY
Palestinians were, and to a great extent remain, a society with fundamental weaknesses that have nothing to do with Zionist aspirations or actions.
Indeed, the Arab narrative, which speaks of perpetual residence in Palestine for 1,300 years, does not stand up to scrutiny. For 250 years the population remained almost static – rising from 205,000 Muslims, Christians, and Jews in 1554 to only 275,000 in 1800. Other historic documents from 1830 onward demonstrate that an increase in Arab immigration was registered with the influx of the first Zionist settlers in 1880, yet the population still ebbed and flowed. Arabs fled during the 1936-1939 Revolt, mainly due to fratricide directed against Palestinian Arab moderates.
“By April 1948, a month before Israel’s declaration of independence, and at a time when the Arabs appeared to be winning the war, some 100,000 Palestinians, mostly from the main urban centers of Jaffa, Haifa, and Jerusalem, and from villages in the coastal plain, had gone. Within another month those numbers had nearly doubled; and by early June, according to an internal Hagana report, some 390,000 Palestinians had left. By the time the war was over in 1949, the number of refugees had risen to between 550,000 and 600,000.”
In January 1948, Hussein Khalidi, Secretary of the Arab Higher Committee (AHC) – a coalition of six political factions established at the start of the Arab Revolt in 1936 and the Palestinians’ only representative framework – complained to the Mufti:
“Forty days after the declaration of a jihad, and I am shattered…. Everyone has left me. Six [AHC members] are in Cairo, two are in Damascus – I won’t be able to hold on much longer…. Everyone is leaving. Everyone who has a check or some money – off he goes to Egypt, to Lebanon, to Damascus.”
“When riots broke out, middle-class Palestinians sent their families to neighboring countries and joined them after the situation further deteriorated. Others moved from the vicinity of the front lines to less exposed areas in the interior of the Arab sector. Non-Palestinian Arabs returned to Syria, Lebanon and Egypt to avoid the hardships of war. First-generation rootless emigrants from the countryside to urban centers returned to their villages. Thousands of Palestinian government employees – doctors, nurses, civil servants, lawyers, clerks, etc. – became redundant and departed as the mandatory administration disintegrated. This set a model and created an atmosphere of desertion that rapidly expanded to wider circles. Between half to two-thirds of the inhabitants in cities such as Haifa or Jaffa had abandoned their homes before the Jews stormed these towns in late April 1948. Dependence on towns that had fallen, the quandaries of maintaining agricultural routine and rumors of atrocities exacerbated mass flight from the countryside. Many hamlets that the Haganah occupied were empty.”
Although both sides committed atrocities and engaged in bloody reprisals, the Palestinians have turned the Jewish ones into a pillar to support their charge that Palestinians were innocents terrorized into fleeing by the Jews.
One Cairo newspaper, Akhbr El-Yom,18 for instance, quoted the Mufti of Jerusalem on the first day of the invasion appealing to the Arabs of Palestine to leave the country for “the Arab armies were about to enter and fight in their stead….” In other cases, Arabs issued threatening warnings that those who stayed would be viewed as “renegades.”19 And in fact, in two major cities with large Arab populations – Haifa and Jaffa – Arab authorities organized the exodus, ordering Arab residents to leave.
Even historian26 Benny Morris recently revised his evaluation of the Palestinians and the core of their refugee problem. Taking the Palestinians to task in a 2003 article in the New Republic, Morris writes that “… the collapse of Palestinian society in 1948 – the Naqba or catastrophe in Arabic – took place under the hammer blows of the war of their own making,” yet Palestinians habitually prefer to blame someone else:
More to the point, Professor Morris writes that “after a serious re-examination of [his] own political assumptions,” he has come to the conclusion that the heart of the conflict is the inability of Palestinian Arabs to accept that Jews have ties and rights in the Land of Israel, and that Israel is a legitimate entity:
“I have come away from my examination of the history of the conflict with a sense of the instinctive rejectionism that runs like a dark thread through Palestinian history – a rejection, to the point of absurdity, of the history of the Jewish link to the Land of Israel; a rejection of the legitimacy of Jewish claims to Palestine; a rejection of the right of the Jewish state to exist. And, worse, this rejectionism has over the decades been leavened by a healthy dose of antisemitism, a perception of the Jew as God’s and humanity’s unchosen.”
Although a majority of Arabs fled of their own accord, it is also true that Jewish troops forced many residents of Arab villages out of their communities or banished them to Arab-held areas. Yet those cases must be viewed in context. They were the results of a ‘change in the rules’ of the war that Palestinians caused by imploring five Arab armies to invade the country.
On September 6, 1948, the Beirut Daily Telegraph quoted Emil Ghory, Secretary of the Arab Higher Command, as saying:
“… the Arabs did not want to submit to a truce. They preferred to abandon their homes.”
“We came to this country which was already populated by Arabs, and we are establishing a Hebrew, that is a Jewish state here. In considerable areas of the country we bought the lands from the Arabs. Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you, because these geography books no longer exist; not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either. Nahalal arose in the place of Mahalul, Gevat—in the place of Jibta, Sarid—in the place of Haneifs and Kefar Yehoshua—in the place of Tell Shaman. There is not one place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population.” — Israel Minister of Defense Moshe Dayan, 1969.
The British Haycraft Commission of Inquiry report of 1921 noted that in Zionist propaganda, “in discussing the question of Jewish immigration, describes Palestine as a ‘deserted, derelict land.’ This description hardly tallies with the fact that the density of the present population of Palestine, according to Zionist figures, is something like 75 to the square mile.”
Shlomo Ben-Ami, discussing Benny Morris’ book, notes the “often violent expulsion of 700,000 Arabs as Jewish soldiers conquered villages and towns throughout Palestine…. The atrocities and evictions suffered by Arab communities took place sometimes in the storm of battle, sometimes as the Yishuv’s forces sought to secure roads linking Jewish settlements, and frequently in response to explicit orders from generals on the battlefield. Morris shows that the Zionists committed more massacres than the Arabs, deliberately killed far more civilians and prisoners of war, and committed more acts of rape…. In an update to his earlier study on the subject, Morris found that far more Palestinians were expelled on explicit orders from commanders in the field than fled for fear of military attacks. This is not surprising given that the idea of population transfers had a long and solid pedigree in Zionist thought. The evictions of 1948 stemmed from an ideological predisposition in the Jewish community and a cultural and political environment that made military commanders feel comfortable initiating or encouraging the mass eviction of Arabs. Zionist leaders differed on many issues, but they generally agreed, as Morris points out, on the benefits of ‘transfer’ — a euphemism for ‘expulsion'”” — Ben-Ami’s own euphemism for “ethnic cleansing”. Continuing: “In October of that year, on the eve of Operation Hiram, which led to the expulsion of many of the Arabs of the northern Galilee region, Ben-Gurion declared, ‘The Arabs of the Land of Israel have only one function left to them — to run away.’ And they did; panic-stricken, they fled in the face of massacres in Ein Zeitun and Eilabun, just as they had done in the wake of an earlier massacre in Deir Yassin. Operational orders, such as the instruction from Moshe Carmel, the Israeli commander of the northern front, ‘to attack in order to conquer, to kill among the men, to destroy and burn the villages,’ were carved into the collective memory of the Palestinians, spawning hatred and resentment for generations.”
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/63585/shlomo-ben-ami/a-war-to-start-all-wars?page=show
This is regards to Jeremy’s reply to me on Nov. 11 in which he had to say.
The ignorance of the argument that nine innocent people weren’t killed on the Mavi Marmara speaks for itself. More here: http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2010/07/20/the-illegality-of-israels-naval-blockade-of-gaza/
Yes, there is incredible amounts of ignorance here Jeremy but sorry to say it’s on your part, as so often it is. Israeli commandos indeed killed 11 Turks on board the flotilla ship but to call them innocent is speaking ill of the word innocent.
You always ask for proof so here’s what I have to offer. If those guys on board the ship look innocent to you, then I guess you though Bonnie and Clyde were just a nice normal fun loving couple.
___________________________________________________
http://vimeo.com/12555636
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jV6DVk04HkM&feature=player_embedded
And let’s take this one step further. The purported purpose of the ship was to bring goods to the impoverished Gaza. A lie unto itself.
Any suffering of the people in Gaza is because Hamas wants it that way while they live in mansions and enjoy privileges.
_____________________________________________________
/Users/barrylubotta/Desktop/GAZA AFFAMEE.pdf
The prison that is Gaza. Part of the daily convoy into Gaza: http://www.takeapen.org/Takeapen/UploadFiles/pgallery/1321877963.jpg
A 1 minute tour of the prison :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1a6faeIZG4
For you, an educated person for the most part, to claim that Israel wantonly massacred 11 people is a lie. The need for self defence was obvious. Case closed one more time.
Like I said, the ignorance of the argument that nine innocent people weren’t killed on the Mavi Marmara speaks for itself. More here: http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2010/07/20/the-illegality-of-israels-naval-blockade-of-gaza/
The ignorance of the argument that Hamas is responsible for the humanitarian crisis in Gaza resulting from Israel’s siege also speaks for itself.
“The Mission has come to the firm conclusion that a humanitarian crisis existed on
the 31 May 2010 in Gaza. The preponderance of evidence from impeccable sources is far
too overwhelming to come to a contrary opinion. Any denial that this is so cannot be
supported on any rational grounds. One of the consequences flowing from this is that for
this reason alone the blockade is unlawful and cannot be sustained in law. This is so
regardless of the grounds on which it is sought to justify the legality of the blockade.
“Certain results flow from this conclusion. Principally, the action of the IDF in
intercepting the Mavi Marmara in the circumstances and for the reasons given on the high
sea was clearly unlawful. Specifically, the action cannot be justified in the circumstances
even under Article 51 of the United Nations Charter.
“Israel seeks to justify the blockade on security grounds. The State of Israel is entitled
to peace and security like any other. The firing of rockets and other munitions of war into
Israeli territory from Gaza constitutes serious violations of international and international
humanitarian law. But action in response which constitutes collective punishment of the
civilian population in Gaza is not lawful in the present or any circumstances.
“The conduct of the Israeli military and other personnel towards the flotilla
passengers was not only disproportionate to the occasion but demonstrated levels of totally
unnecessary and incredible violence. It betrayed an unacceptable level of brutality. Such
conduct cannot be justified or condoned on security or any other grounds. It constituted
grave violations of human rights law and international humanitarian law.
“The Mission considers that several violations and offences have been committed. It
is not satisfied that, in the time available, it can say that it has been able to compile a
comprehensive list of all offences. However, there is clear evidence to support prosecutions
of the following crimes within the terms of article 147 of the Fourth Geneva Convention:
• wilful killing;
• torture or inhuman treatment;
• wilfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health. ”
— Conclusions from the United Nations “Report of the international fact-finding mission to investigate violations of international law, including international humanitarian law, resulting from the Israeli attacks on the flotilla of ships carrying humanitarian assistance.”
Geez, I never know where, when I hit the REPLY button my comments will show up SO, this is directed to Jeremy questions as to why I didn’t contradict any of Nima’s comments.
The answer is simply that I do not have the time to go through each one his/her points, revisit all the research I’ve previously studied and start all over again. And even if I did it’s doubtful I would change her mind.
Here’s the bigger picture. There is only ONE truth to any given subject – dig deep enough and you will end up with the truth but along the way there seem to be several.
Nima’s opinions are over there and mine are over here – we are diametrically opposed. In each case neither of us were there for the events Nima brings up so we have to rely on news and propaganda.
There is no doubt Nima’s side is winning the propaganda war which is a distinctly separate issue from the truth.
I’ll argue briefly, three points from Nima’s reply.
Forced displacement of 750,000 people from their ancestral homes?
Give me a break. There have been countless stories, including those from Arab leaders and writers of the time, that suggest many if not most of the people left their homes willingly on the say so of Arabs. They were told to leave and that once the Jews were finished off, they would return. It just didn’t play out that way and now they want their sandbox back.
And if it’s justice Nima was concerned about, why no mention of the 850,000 Jews who were forced to leave Arab countries at the time with none of their possessions and their land confiscated? Article 242, whether Jeremy likes to hear it or not, deals with the claims of ALL the refugees, including the Jewish ones.
None of this is to say that no Arabs lost their homes for other reasons, but Nima’s assertions do not jibe with what I’ve learned over many years.
And here’s one more. The flotilla incident this past summer. Nine innocent lives lost? You’ve got to be kidding. If you’ve really studied this event then there is no other conclusion one can come to than it was a premeditated attempt to cause mayhem and murder on the part of those on the final flotilla ship.
We can argue about the reason for the blockade another time and yes, there was a foolish Israeli who stole some computers from the boat. He should have been and was jailed for his actions. Here’s a Turkish paper’s view on what happened.
http://www.middleeastwarpeace.info/2010/06/20/turkish-newsphotos-support-israeli-version-of-flotilla-events/
And I can supply the Israeli view as well, which documents beyond any reasonable doubt that the Israeli version is the truth and the other versions are lies. Still, it’s pretty hard to argue against a UN that has 50 Muslim countries and but one Jewish country.
Remember, there were no incidents on the five other boats but only on the last one which was staffed with some pretty rough fellows looking for a fight and martyrdom. The proof is in a variety of videos I’d be happy to offer up assuming i have the time an inclination to do this event over one more time.
And finally, when Nima mentions: “That justice and reparations for European atrocities and intolerance come in the form of the removal and subjugation of Palestinians”
I have to inform you Nima that the legal rights of the Jews to inhabit the land we call Israel were granted in 1920 and not after WW2. It was just a matter of time until a Jewish state was to be officially created but the statement of claim by the Jews was made in Paris in 1919. And here’s a shocker. It was non Jews who declared the legal rights for a Jewish nation IN THEIR ANCESTRAL HOMELAND.
So why blame the Jews? Blame Italy, England, France, Japan and even the US. This is where the rights stem from which form the basis for the legality of Israel today. The creation of Israel was just the icing on the cake.
OK, see why I don’t wish to debate every point? We have two positions.I am confident in mine and don’t expect to change any minds so why bother with the confrontations?
The argument that 750,000 Arabs left “willingly” is not an intellectually serious one. One can turn to Israeli scholars like Benny Morris or Ilan Pappe for refutation of this propaganda. They fled either out of fear of more massacres such as at Deir Yassin or because they were forced out by the Zionist forces.
The ignorance of the argument that nine innocent people weren’t killed on the Mavi Marmara speaks for itself. More here: http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2010/07/20/the-illegality-of-israels-naval-blockade-of-gaza/
The argument that “legal rights of the Jews to inhabit the land we call Israel were granted in 1920”, perhaps you could explain that one for us. Looking forward to it.
OK, I finally got around to watching the entire film as suggested, and I will agree that it makes the ADL look awfully bad and that it makes light of anti-Semitism in general. I can see how anyone watching this film would harbour the feelings that those on this site do. I cringed in embarrassment all the way through.
At the same time, I think it’s a malicious piece of moviemaking despite some of its critical acclaim.
The film maker, Yoav Shamir makes like he’s a naive fellow from Israel trying to learn something about a subject he knows nothing about.
The truth is that he’s an extremely sophisticated person who was trying to make a point he already subscribes too. It was his good fortune to run into a bunch of foolish people who almost give his thinking credibility.
Shamir is an admitted left winger who has a point of view he wants to make known. Had a right winger made a similar movie with the same pre intentions, they would have been off the mark as well.
Bringing jackass Norman Finklestein (the hero of the left and anti Israel adherents) was the coup de gras for me. No one in his right mind would interview Finklestein for anything – he is a nut case.
It is well known amongst us Jews that children of Holocaust survivors are often badly messed up and that many have become self hating Jews. Normal was not a word often applied to kids of survivors. This could apply to Foxman as well though I don’t know enough about him. At least he uses his experience to try and do something of value though in this movie, he certainly does not come off as some sort of hero.
Any film maker who shoots enough footage can selectively make a film that supports his views – none of that means the movie being made is correct or truthful.
So yes, I would agree that Foxman and the ADL don’t come off looking too good in this film. I just don’t agree that this film comes close to honesty about anti-Semitism. Shamir claims he doesn’t know the term because he lives in Israel, but that is a lie. There have been, yes, it’s true, anti-Semitic occurrences in Israel and if I know about them, then surely he does as well.
“Defamation” by it’s title alone has a point to make. What it is not is a serious look at anti-Semitism, nor an educated one. It’s a look with a wink of an eye, sort of disbelieving smile.
I am not the final word on anti-Semitism but here is what I do know. It is like a virus, sometimes doing no harm only to erupt into possibly the worst repeatable malady the world has ever encountered. It has been around for at least two thousand years resulting in Jews being expelled from countries at least 81 times as well as countless pogroms and murders of Jews for no apparent reason. All it takes is a poisoned mind to take a foothold. The Elder of The Protocols of Zion is a known forgery, but it has led to untold misery and death. Hitler read it and it no doubt had a place in forming his sick mind.
It’s not just that six million Jews perished in WW2, it’s that this was 1/3 of an entire race. That when the Germans complained of using too many bullets in machine gunning thousand of Jews they came up with a Final Solution that would be cheaper and somehow in their sick minds, less offensive to themselves.
There were 84 people killed in Argentina fifteen years ago, an attack propagated by Iran and Hezzbullah. Speaking of which, Hezz and Hamas call for the deaths of Jews worldwide, not just of Israelis. Is this not the sort of anti-Semitism a serious movie would look at?
When I was 19 (I’m 62 now) I started to learn about WW2 and the Holocaust. I went to my father and asked him why my generation, which didn’t seem to have too many cares in the world, would not expect in our lifetime to go through a period of anti-Semitism given that almost every generation previous had experience serious Jew hating at one time or another. Whether it was the Pogroms of Russia in the early 1900’s, the signs in America that read “no Jews allowed” or the separate drinking fountains for Blacks and Jews throughout the south, anti-Semitism was always lurking. Two years ago a synagogue was firebombed in Montreal. Last year a Jew was kidnapped in France and tortured to death over a three week span. All this and much more during a period most Jews would say is at a low point for anti-Semitism in our lives.
There was anti-Semitism long before the creation of Israel and it would be here long after if ever there was no more Israel. In the meantime the one place in the world that a Jew can defend himself gives a whole lot of people ammunition to express their anti-Semitism in a way that to some appears legitimate. The same lies and hatred from the past are there but now closet anti-Semites have a forum to express their hate and not be castigated for it. I don’t doubt for a moment that some who frequent this site fit that bill and if not this site, then others similar to it.
In closing I will say again, I watched the movie, found it embarrassing and pretty close to a setup on the part of left wing movie maker Yoav Shamir. I don’t know the entire story behind the making of the film but I’m sure the people didn’t know the preconceptions of the fellow behind the lens. He seemed to find easy targets as well but that’s a different matter.
None of which excuses some of the comments made on behalf of the ADL. They don’t come off looking great but I’d like to know more before I fall victim to what is in essence, a propaganda film disguising itself as serious movie making. As it is, Defamation plays right into the hands of a whole new generation of anti-Semites.
Yes, how “convenient” that the filmmaker just so happened to run into a bunch of foolish people, like Abe Foxman, the head of the ADL, in the course of making his film.
I’d like for you to explain your comment that Norman Finkelstein “is a nut case”, please.
That will no doubt prove equally entertaining. Thanks, Barry. Always a pleasure.
Jeremy, re: Norman Finklestein. Every anti Israel academic is a hero to your side while a nut case to mine.
It is an unfortunate truth that many children of surviving Holocaust victims did not go on to lead normal and happy lives. There is an entire generation of very messed up Jewish kids who grew up in homes with parents who had the gross misfortune to go through the Holocaust.
Norman Finklestein is one of them. Never mind that he comes across as a feminine retard (excuse me but that’s how I see him), he has consistently taken a position that puts him at odds with DePaul, Israel and everything else he comes into contact with.
He has no insights or truths that resonate with educated people. He has made a career out of his outlandish comments thanks to people like yourself. I don’t know if this man could ever find a job if he hadn’t hit upon something that has brought him notoriety and possibly some wealth. I saw him speak on uTube last week and he seemed like he belonged in a special ed class for slow learners.
Full disclosure. I have not read his works nor do I intend to. His outlandish reputation precedes him and that’s enough for me.
This justification for bad-mouthing Norman Finkelstein is so absurd, it’s barely worth the reply. Barely.
Besides your outrageously offensive personal attacks on his character (“feminine retard,” “belonged in a special ed class for slow learners”? Are you serious?), your own words betray your ignorance.
Finkelstein is a very highly regarded scholar (no, obviously not in your circle of propagandists like Howard Grief and Eli Hertz, whom you rip off wholesale without attribution, who regard Finkelstein as such a threat because he directly undermines all of your absurd and baseless claims) who has long been the victim of Zionist witch hunts led primarily by Alan Dershowitz. The reason why is not because Finkelstein’s research or writing is flawed – it’s because it is devastatingly accurate. He has effectively dismantled Dershowitz’s own writing and propaganda piece by piece, exposing Dershowitz as a world-class plagiarist and liar (see: “Beyond Chutzpah” in particular), which is why professional hasbarists like Dershowitz have devoted considerable time to destroying Finkelstein’s career.
It’s unsurprising to anyone who has been reading your comments that you have not and will not read Finkelstein’s writing, even though you obviously should.
This makes your attack, not only uninformed, but absurd, as it is based solely upon the opinions of the very people he academically and morally eviscerates.
“Anti-Israel” has nothing to do with it. Try “anti-violations of international law”. As for your criticisms of Finkelstein, they consist of ad hominem and personal attacks (“feminine retard”, etc), and not a single criticism with regard to any point of fact or logic he’s said or written about. Which speaks for itself.
Nima, I have no desire to read Finklestein anymore than I would pick up a book written by Jeremy or yourself. In short doses I can handle the nonsense but to spend a dime on Norman would violate any sense of self worth.
You are correct however, that I have take some material from Eli Hertz (not Howard Grief, knowingly) and not attributed credit. Not that in any way I was claiming to have done the research myself, I just did not think it relevant. Yes, he is a great resource but not the only one.
I know Eli Hertz and have mentioned that at some point I would be using some of his material in a confrontation with crazies on the web.
As for your admiration for Finklestein, I’ll stand by my thoughts that history will not judge him well.
Ah…Lubotta and Hertz – a dinner date for the ages.
As per your belief in the judgment of history, I will just say this:
History will not judge kindly those who righteously defend ethnic cleansing. History will not judge kindly those who justify apartheid, ethnocentrism, colonization, and collective punishment. History will not judge kindly those who unsuccessfully attempt to bend international law to suit their own sense of religious superiority, bigoted tribalism, and messianic zealotry. History will not judge kindly those who repeat countless excuses, false equivalences, and outright lies to somehow argue for the legitimacy of displacing indigenous people, stealing land, massacring men, women, and children, humiliating the elderly, murdering peace and justice activists and pray at the alter of Zionist supremacy, aggression and militarism.
Your contempt for legality, morality, and humanity knows no bounds. You openly admit – and seem to revel in – your belief that one group of people should be allowed to control, oppress, and dominate another group of people. Whatever privileges Jews in your mind is right; whatever views Jews as equal to anyone else and vice versa is wrong. Your own ideology condemns itself to irrelevancy and absurdity.
As the saying goes:
“After the Allies overran Germany you couldn’t find anybody who supported Nazism. It’s the same thing in South Africa. You can’t find anyone who supported apartheid.”
It will surely follow that once equality, full human rights, and much needed social justice comes to Israel/Palestine – when all people, regardless of religion, race, or ethnicity are treated as equals under the law – we will once again struggle to find anyone who supported the discriminatory nature and explicitly racist policies of Zionism. Luckily, thanks to your myriad comments on this website, at least we’ll know where you stood.
Nima, you write so well about how history will judge this and that. You can talk about ethnic cleansing and apartheid as much as you like but you are not talking about Israel. You are following the normal puppetry of all anti Israel organizations but you are 100% incorrect. You can talk it up all day long but you are locked into a misguided sense of victimhood that does not recognize reality. You would do well working at the UN – that’s a place that you would have no trouble fitting into.
I have no feeling of religious superiority nor have I stated anything to that effect. I respect all religions and do not feel we are superior. Of course, our people have succeeded at achievement rather disproportionately to our numbers, but that is only because we study hard, work hard and by and large honestly, and give something back to the world.
I will remind you that when the Supreme Allied Powers in 1920 decided to give the Jewish people legal rights to a land, they demanded that we would respect the civil and religious rights of others and Israel has done just that. At the same time, other countries were supposed to respect Jewish political rights and they have certainly not done this. Take a look at every Arab country that has kicked it’s Jews out and confiscated all their property – all 800,000 or so of them.
Only an absolute denier of history would not agree that Israel has allowed other religions to practice their beliefs in the State of Israel. Compare that to any Arab country which does not even allow a Jew to cross it’s borders. Certainly when Jordan has military control of Jordan it burned Jewish synagogues and used gravestones as markers in latrines. Since Israel has retaken a city which historically and legally belongs only to the Jewish people, it has allowed all groups to practice their religion.
That others don’t have full political rights in Israel is fully in keeping with the rights granted the Jewish people in San Remo in 1920.
So all your nonsense about how israel mistreats it’s inhabitants makes no sense. This is why in a survey Arabs living in Israel have stated clearly that they would rather live there than an Arab country. The truth is that Israel’s neighbours treat their own people horrifically.
There are only two real reasons why Arab nations are so up in arms about israel and carry dupes like yourself along with the hate.
1) Using Israel as a way to keep their populations focusing on and hating someone other than the dictators who run those countries. It’s a convenient way to stay in power and keep the masses in ignorance.
2) Land that was once under Islamic control, according to the Koran, is supposedly alway under Islamic control. The idea that infidels control that small piece of land is rather offensive to Muslims.
Those are the two main reasons of the hatred against Israel. In the book “Son of Hamas” the author states this to be the case and of course, this is nothing new.
He describes how everything else is an irritant but not the sources of all the hate.
So all that you write makes no sense to me based on what I know and have learned. I respect your brain and your ability to write, but you still don’t seem to be able to look at things honestly. Until you do, this hate that comes through in your writing will consume you.
Are you so locked into your narrative that you won’t even look at the possibility you are incorrect? I’ve read what you and Jeremy write and look for grains of truth within. Not many so far. Not if you are looking for the truth Nima.
As for the UN, you cannot blame any supporter of Israel for having grave doubts about this organization. With 50 Muslim nations there is no chance of anything ever going Israel’s way. What comes out of that group has nothing to do with truth and honestly, it comes out of a Muslim majority of nations. So please spare me all the UN things you spout – if you don’t realize they are 100% biased then there’s not much hope here.
Barry, for all your words, it essentially just boils down to a denial of the facts. There’s not a single point of fact or logic either Nima or myself have made that you’ve actually disputed or pointed out to be in error, and a summary dismissal of the facts is not the same as a refutation of them.
Oh Barry, why must you keep repeating the same lies over and over again? Does it get tedious? It sure gets tedious reading them.
The San Remo resolution, as I have mentioned numerous times already, at no point recognizes any semblance of what you keep describing as “giv[ing] the Jewish people legal rights to a land.” You are literally making that up.
The resolution itself is a mere 501 words, 379 of which are in English. It’s not hard to read and understand. Nowhere in this resolution are “Jews” granted any sort of exclusive control (or any control, for that matter) over the land of Palestine or over the Palestinian people. It’s a simple document that you seem to be obsessed with – perhaps you should read it a few times so you can actually grasp its meaning.
When you write, “That others don’t have full political rights in Israel is fully in keeping with the rights granted the Jewish people in San Remo in 1920,” you are – to put it gently – lying your ass off. The statement regarding the “establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people” makes absolutely no mention of Jewish authority over other people, nor does it presume, infer, or allow discrimination against non-Jewish people in that area. It’s actually astonishing that you have attempted to justify Israeli discrimination against its non-Jewish residents by referring to an early 20th century document drawn up by victorious, colonial European powers that says no such thing.
As I have also pointed out a number of times by now – though it never seems to matter to you – any misunderstandings about the interpretation of the Balfourian declarative phrases used in the San Remo resolution were subsequently put to rest, not only by the British government itself (whose Declaration and Mandate it was), but also by more authoritative international bodies such as the Permanent Mandates Commission of the League of Nations in 1930 and by the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine in 1947.
Please remove San Remo from your hasbara bank. It doesn’t support your bogus claims. Quite the contrary.
Furthermore, your insistence that Jerusalem “historically and legally belongs to the Jewish people” literally makes no sense on both counts. Unfortunately for you, though good for reality-based arguments, your mythological history and legal analysis is dead wrong.
Historically, Jerusalem was founded around 3000 BCE by a Semitic people who were the common ancestors of Palestinians, Lebanese, many Syrians and Jordanians. At the time, Judaism was not a religion, in the monotheistic sense or with any of the major accompanying dogma, doctrine, or scripture, so your claim is just silly. Ancient Jews were descended from Canaanites – that is, from the same common ancestors as Palestinians.
Beyond that, ancient Jewish control over the city most likely lasted for less than 200 years. Earlier, the Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, and Macedonians had ruled Jerusalem for centuries. Romans, Byzantines, Iranians, and Arabs controlled the city afterward. Do we base your ridiculous claim on who founded Jerusalem or who ruled it the longest? In neither case do Jews come out on top.
Oh right, you’re a religious zealot, I forgot. So you must think the bible says so! Gotcha. Sorry to burst your Torah, but the bible is neither the word of god nor a land deed. It’s a piece of exclusivist scripture written by the very beneficiaries of the claims and powers they granted themselves, with very little basis in factual historical context. Ok, enough with fantasyland.
Legally, of course, East Jerusalem is occupied territory. Israel has absolutely no legal authority over it. Zero, none. Considering the legal precedent, present explicitly in international law, that territory acquired by war is inadmissible and the status of which cannot be changed by conquering it or occupying it, you are once again completely incorrect in your assessment of anything.
Really, Barry, it’s time you stopped trafficking in falsehoods. It’s unbecoming.
Your incessant Arab-bashing and Islamophobia is boring, so I won’t really address that. It’s really shameful. Please note that, as I am neither an Arab nor a Muslim, I am offended by your bigotry on a moral and humanitarian level, not a personal or tribal one. Your self-righteousness is nauseating.
Also, the fact that you point to the scribblings of Mosab Hassan Yousef as evidence of anything makes you look like a complete jackass. Yousef, who now calls himself “Joseph” after his conversion to Christianity is attempting to make a career for himself as a professional Islam-basher, Zionist neophyte, and toast of the racist, warmongering right-wing. Quoting a Shin Bet informer doesn’t make your case, it undermines it.
Your claim that I am locked into a false narrative is quite humorous coming from a dedicated propagandist intent on bending the real tents of international law to suit his messianic beliefs. Where I advocate equality, you justify discrimination. Where I call for human rights, you call for collective punishment and then blame the victims. Your own denial of history – real history that includes Zionist militias, massacres, forced expulsion, rape, property and water theft and the wholesale violent rejection of the right to self-determination of an indigenous people in their own homeland – is a reflection of your blatant disregard for and disinterest in truth and justice (as you have previously, openly admitted to).
You have no dignity, nor do you have shame. Your senility and bigotry is plain for all to see. I’d feel sorry for you if you didn’t disgust me so much.
Nima, I believe you have pegged me incorrectly. I am really none of the things you say, I’m not an Arab basher nor a religious zealot. I not a propagandist nor someone who wants to twist international law. Senile, perhaps the onset of, but still pretty with it. I am not full of myself and the picture you try and paint is one that anyone who knows me firsthand would never recognize.
I am someone who has taken an interest in the mideast question. Although I am not as technically knowledgable as yourself or Jeffery, I have an integrity that I’m not certain either of you possess. I have been honest with myself and others my entire life, have a good reputation and always believe in and try to speak the truth.
If I discovered I was wrong in my beliefs, I’d like to think I would own up and change my thinking. The fact is, I’ve learned from some brilliant people who would hold up very well to yourself and Jeffrey. These are great scholars, international lawyers and the like. They are very successful at what they do. They are also honest and in no way would twist the truth to serve any agenda. Some are Jewish, others not.
Therefore, until I learn otherwise, I’ll stick with those who have studied this question for longer than either of you. What amazes me is this. Two sets of people studying the same subject and being 180 degrees apart. Someone is not correct here and someone is. I guess in due course we will find out the truth, but why in the world would I abandon what I have learned just because the two of you say something different? I’m not impressed with your supporting “evidence” as much of it is subject to interpretation despite what you say.
Perhaps I am wrong, perhaps not. I am not nearly as adamant as either of you. The thing is, while I respect the two of you, I don’t trust you. I look at the articles and the points of view and I find such a deep hatred of Israel that I can’t help but think there is some anti-Semitism lurking. There are other world situations that require real disgust and in depth reporting, but I don’t see them being analyzed with one percent of the
vile you reserve for Israel.
I’m confident that any normal person would find something wrong with the narrative and attitude presented on these pages. I’ll reserve judgment until I learn more, but at this time I”m staying on the side I’ve chosen. You guys have some nice traits, but I don’t buy what you are selling.
Barry, I’ve no interest in your unsubstantiated opinions. Let me know if you’d like to actually discuss the facts.
This is in response to Jeremy’s request that I address the facts with regards to Nima’s latest post and leave my opinions at home.
So I contacted a friend and will mention that what’s written below was mostly written by him – he just happens to know the facts better than I.
What amazes me is that Nima, who is becoming more and more agitated, is highly regarded as a writer. Neither my friend nor myself saw any evidence that he has a firm grasp on and even a mediocre understanding of the truth about the Mid-East.
Nima’s comments are italicized. The responses are not.
_________________________________________________________
1. “Nowhere in this resolution are “Jews” granted any sort of exclusive control (or any control, for that matter) over the land of Palestine or over the Palestinian people.”
THE San Remo Resolution integrated the Balfour Declaration (Jewish homeland in Palestine as an expression of British policy) with Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations (to create a Mandate for Palestine). By doing so, the Supreme Council of the Allied Powers made the Balfour Declaration an act of international law, since the Covenant of the League was included in the Treaty of Versailles; they obligated Britain (the selected Mandatory power) to “put into force” the Balfour Declaration; and they selected, as in any Mandate, the beneficiary, in this case the Jewish people as the sole beneficiary in Palestine in terms of “collective national rights.”
These principles were then codified in detail in the 28 articles of the Mandate for Palestine where the national prominence of the Jewish people is clearly stated, and this document was eventually approved by the 52 members of the League of Nations.
The Supreme Council had full judicial authority to do so, in the same was as they had the authority of remodeling the map of Europe (Hungary, Poland, future Yugoslavia, etc.) and the rest of the Middle East (Iraq, Syria, Lebanon). Why, then, should he dismiss the decisions of the Supreme Council in Palestine alone, while not questioning the validity of their other decisions around Europe and the Middle East? Isn’t it a selective particularism fuelled only by anti-Israel/Jewish ferment?
What Nima should understand is that “Palestine” became a legal entity only in 1920, for the sole purpose of reconstituting the Jewish National Home there, and this “Home” was clearly understood to mean a future “State” when Jewish immigration will have reached a certain level, as it was expressly encouraged in the Mandate (Art. 6), and repeatedly stated by Lloyd George, Balfour, and President Wilson.
So, when you speak of “Palestine and the Palestinian people”, as if there were such a thing prior to 1920, you are simply regurgitating the necessary Arab propaganda, without which the whole charade of “Palestianism” would crumble in no time! Contrary to all legitimate “peoples”, the myths and symbols of the “Palestinians” are founded solely on de-legitimizing another real people and their recognized national aspirations. Therefore, it would be interesting to ask you Nima what are the specific attributes of the “Palestinian people” that differentiate them from the surrounding Arabs. No specificity = no people = no legitimate national aspirations.
2. “The statement regarding the ‘establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people’ makes absolutely no mention of Jewish authority over other people, nor does it presume, infer, or allow discrimination against non-Jewish people in that area.”
The Mandate clearly distinguishes between “Jewish national rights” and “civil and religious rights” for non-Jews. The national rights mean title of sovereignty by Jews to the land, while the non-Jews will enjoy all other rights, as they do to this day in democratic Israel.
3. “As I have also pointed out a number of times by now – though it never seems to matter to you – any misunderstandings about the interpretation of the Balfourian declarative phrases used in the San Remo resolution were subsequently put to rest, not only by the British government itself (whose Declaration and Mandate it was), but also by more authoritative international bodies such as the Permanent Mandates Commission of the League of Nations in 1930 and by the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine in 1947.”
THERE is no such thing as “Balfourian declarative phrases.” The letter and the spirit of the Balfour Declaration were included in the Preamble of the Mandate, and Article 2 of the Mandate made the preamble fully operative. The provisions of the Mandate could only be altered by a decision of the Council of the League, which it never did. When the League ceased to exist in 1946, Article 80 of the UN Charter safeguarded those Jewish rights. The Mandate expired in 1948 but the rights it conferred to the Jewish people remain valid to this day, as for any acquired rights even when the treaty that recognized them expired. This is clearly stated in Article 70 of the Vienna Convention on the Law on Treaties, adopted in 1969.
The Permanent Mandates Commission (PMC) never “put to rest” the provisions of the Mandate. Actually, the PMC opposed the British White Paper of 1939 (MacDonald White Paper) which sought to destroy the Jewish rights in Palestine, for the sake of appeasing the Arabs on the eve of WWII, and which was strongly criticized by the former British PM Lloyd George, when he declared that the White Paper was “an act of national perfidy which will bring dishonour to the British name.”
As for the UN Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP), and the resulting UN “Partition” Resolution 181 of November, 1947, Nima clearly has no understanding of the mechanism of the UN. Resolution 181 was a General Assembly resolution and was not binding: it was a recommendation aimed at splitting Palestine into an Arab state and a Jewish state. First, the UNGA had no authority in curtailing the rights of the Jewish people, especially when the Mandate was still in effect and Article 80 of the UN Charter would prevent it from doing so. Second, UNGA Resolution 181 was rejected by all the Arab states, while the Zionists accepted it under the duress of the post-Holocaust period. It is then preposterous for the Arabs now to go back to that resolution and claim an Arab state in Palestine, carved out of present-day Israel.
However, Resolution 181 has the merit of officially mentioning the “Jewish State”, a notion that was widely accepted by everyone untainted by anti-Jewish bias, as the inevitable, lawful outcome of the San Remo Resolution and the ensuing Mandate. It has also the merit of properly referring to Judea and Samaria, and not hiding these real, historic names with the present misnomer that is the “West Bank”. And finally, there is no mention whatsoever in Resolution 181 of the “Palestinian people”: one would imagine that if such people existed, it would, at the very least, be mentioned by name in an official UN document. But it is nowhere to be found!
As for UNSCOP – which was charged to investigate the situation on the ground prior to reporting to the UN General Assembly – it recognized in their report that “to the Arabs of Palestine, killing of Jews now transcends all other considerations.” That was in the fall of 1947. Not much has changed ever since.
4. “Legally, of course, East Jerusalem is occupied territory. Israel has absolutely no legal authority over it. Zero, none. Considering the legal precedent, present explicitly in international law, that territory acquired by war is inadmissible and the status of which cannot be changed by conquering it or occupying it, you are once again completely incorrect in your assessment of anything.”
“OCCUPIED from whom?”… “Who was the previous lawful sovereign?”
And the case of Jerusalem (together with the “West Bank”) is a prime example. Who has legal authority over Jerusalem? Does, in your view, an armistice line (the “Green Line”) have the validity of a recognized international border?, etc…
On the issue of “inadmissibility”, it is true that military conquest does not confer title in international law. But all international jurists worth their name make a distinction between wars of aggression and wars of self-defense. This is what Sir Elihu Lauterpacht (professor of International Law at Cambridge) had to say about it:
“Territorial change cannot properly take place as a result of the unlawful use of force. But to omit the word ‘unlawful’ is to change the substantive content of the rule and to turn an important safeguard of legal principle into an aggressor’s charter. For if force can never be used to effect lawful territorial change, then, if territory has once changed hands as a result of the unlawful use of force, the illegitimacy of the position thus established is sterilized by the prohibition upon the use of force to restore the lawful sovereign. This cannot be regarded as reasonable or correct.”
And this is precisely what occurred in East Jerusalem and the “West Bank”: this territory was acquired by Transjordan (before it became “Jordan”) in 1949 as a result of an unlawful use of force against the newly formed State of Israel, contrary to the Art.2(4) of the UN Charter, and in an act of naked aggression. Trying to restore now any kind of Arab sovereignty to a territory which was never sovereign, and which was grabbed unlawfully, not only defies the law but flies in the face of common sense too.
This nonsense of “inadmissibility of acquiring territory by force” was also included in the preamble of UNSC Resolution 242, at the insistence of the Arabs and the Soviet Bloc in 1967. But it was clear to everyone with a clear mind that there was no such “inadmissibility”, since the body of the Resolution never names Israel as the aggressor. Otherwise, not only Israel would be named the aggressor and called to withdraw immediately, but the resolution would have been passed under Chapter VII of the Charter, as was the case in the Iraqi aggression against Kuwait in 1990, thus making the immediate withdrawal absolutely binding.
5. “Your own denial of history – real history that includes Zionist militias, massacres, forced expulsion, rape, property and water theft and the wholesale violent rejection of the right to self-determination of an indigenous people in their own homeland – is a reflection of your blatant disregard for and disinterest in truth and justice.”
If there is anything that demonstrates the rabid animosity of a propagandist, this is it! And this convinces me that there is no point in dealing with this foolish person. God knows that the British were unsympathetic to the Zionists during the Mandate, but at least they had the decency of recognizing in the three major Commissions of Inquiry (Haycraft-1921, Shaw-1930, Peel-1937) that the Arabs have always been the primary aggressors, the instigators of violence and the murderers. And after the Mandate, nothing had changed, with all those glorified terrorists and suicide bombers.
As to the “right of self-determination [of the] indigenous people” this is precisely what the San Remo Resolution has achieved, when the Supreme Council recognized that the Jews were the indigenous people to Palestine – no matter how dispersed the majority of them were – with rights of self-determination, as advocated by President Wilson in his “Fourteen Points.”
If the so-called “Palestinians” were the indigenous people, they surely had ample time to self-determine themselves. Why didn’t they do so? Here is one simple fact that demolishes the notion of “indigenous Palestinians.” During the Mandate period, the Syrian governor Tawfik Bey el-Hurani recognized that in a few months in 1934 some 30,000 Syrians moved (illegally) into Palestine. Now, take that number, and compound it at 2.2% p.a. (to be even on the low side of Arab demographics) to 2010, and you will find over 150,000 “Palestinian” people, exceeding the population of Nablus, their largest city. And this, just “in a few months” in 1934. Then, you understand why the official definition of a Palestinian, as given by UNRWA to determine their “refugee status”, was so twisted: UNRWA designated as “Palestinian” anyone who was living in Palestine from June, 1946, to May, 1948, that is just in the last two years of the Mandate. Because, if they had set those dates back to 1926, or even 1936, there would be only a small fraction of the 10 million “Palestinians” around the world now! And we should talk of the “self-determination” of this fictitious people?
Finally Nima, in law there are the phrases lex lata and lex ferenda. They mean the ‘law as it is’ and ‘the law as it should be’ or how we would like it to be. The bottom line is that according to scholars that I follow and trust, the decisions at San Remo that were the genesis of Israel and the Jewish people’s title are res judacata and lex lata. It is law that has been decided and is what it is.
Barry, it’s quite hilarious that you charge Nima with not having knowledge or understandign about the Middle East when you yourself admit that you find it necessary to get other people to write your own replies for you.
That said, in reply to your points:
1) This whole argument is easily debunked simply by pointing to the fact that the ICJ has observed that the establishment of a mandate under the League of Nations did not entail any transfer of territory or sovereignty.
2) Ditto.
3) Ditto.
4) Ditto. Moreover, as the ICJ has noted, all of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, is “occupied Palestinian territory” under international law.
5. Ditto. Also, a denial of facts is not the same as a refutation of facts. That Israel was founded via an act of land theft and ethnic cleansing is not a matter for debate. It’s completely uncontroversial.
Oh Barry, this is all so adorable. Thanks for asking your pal Eli Hertz to do your heavy lifting for you. His (or whatever other hack you got to write this nonsense for you) entire argument and so-called supporting evidence is all bogus.
Clearly, he has not read everything that has transpired in our now-weeks long correspondence, because if he had he certainly would not have wasted his time trying to explain to me that UNGR 181 isn’t legally binding. No shit.
What he does do, however, is retread the same ground I’ve covered extensively already regarding your beloved San Remo resolution. Rather than repeat myself all over again, I will merely say this:
The second most compelling evidence that your (his) argument is totally erroneous is that the term “Jewish national rights” appear absolutely NOWHERE in any of the aforementioned documents. NOWHERE. N-O-W-H-E-R-E. Not in Balfour, not in San Remo, not in the LoN Charter, not in the Mandate. Nowhere. To use that phrase as proof of anything when it can’t even be found is not only dishonest, it’s embarrassing.
What the Mandate, for example, does affirm however is that the “civil and religious rights of all the inhabitants of Palestine, irrespective of race and religion” would be safeguarded and that the establish judicial system would “assure to foreigners, as well as to natives, a complete guarantee of their rights.” These facts contradict your (his) claim that Jews were granted special rights and sovereignty over the indigenous population of Palestine. To put it simply, you (he) must be either illiterate or exceedingly stupid to not understand this.
The rest of your (his) silly post is so full of racism, entitlement, smug superiority and exceptionalism that, in truth, I don’t even need to respond because the concepts condemn themselves. (The statement “the Arabs have always been the primary aggressors, the instigators of violence and the murderers” pretty much says it all.) That, and I’ve already addressed most of it – maybe you should have briefed your ghost writer a bit more thoroughly first. Whoops.
I will address this, though:
“No specificity = no people = no legitimate national aspirations.”
Wow. This is so ridiculous, I will choose to pretend you were joking and ask you this: Are Americans a specific people? Can Egyptians have legitimate national aspirations, or are they just random Arabs along with Jordanians and Kuwaitis? Do Iranians have national aspirations even though only 65% of the population is “Persian”? What about Swedes with black or brown skin – do they not have the same national goals or sense of community as white Swedes?
You (he) ask “what are the specific attributes of the ‘Palestinian people’ that differentiate them from the surrounding Arabs,” without realizing that the definition is GEOGRAPHY. The people have ancestral roots in Palestine. That’s what makes them Palestinian. It’s what differentiates Lebanese from Syrian and Egyptian from Algerian and Lybian. The list could easily go on. Pretty simple, really. Your attempt to delegitimize the struggle for equality is, quite frankly, appalling and ineffective.
Ok, enough of this, we’re just going in circles here. I’ve already addressed the points your friend tries frantically to make and you have decided to stick with what you think is right – which is that one group of people should have authority over another group of people. We differ on this.
The best part of all of this is that your smug self-satisfaction won’t change the fact that you and your silly friend are terrified of the future, most notably a future that includes equal rights for Jewish, Christian, Muslim, atheist, etc. residents of Israel/Palestine. And your fear of that day proves the absurdity – and inherent ugliness – of your untenable position. Knowing how scared you and your ghost writer are of what will come keeps me warm at night.
Overall, the grade I give your tedious reply: F, on the ground that (a) you cheated – plagiarism doesn’t pay, (b) your submission contains nothing factual nor anything of substance, and (c) you’re an ethnic supremacist who can’t even speak for himself.
Jeremy, glad to tickle your funnybone. However, you once again miss the point entirely with your primary argument and all the dittos that follow.
The very principle of the Mandates resulting from the San Remo Resolutions was precisely to transfer sovereignty from previous colonizers to those people whom the Supreme Council of Allied Powers deem fit, as clearly stated in Article 22 of the Covenant of the League, which was entrenched in the Treaty of Versailles and thus became international law.
This transfer of sovereignty was deemed so important to safeguard the rights of the concerned populations who acquired sovereignty, that it was no less than “a sacred trust of civilization.” So, read the Covenant first.
If such transfers of territory and sovereignty were not permissible, then Iraq, Syria, Lebanon would not have their present borders and would still be under Turkish sovereignty. And the map of Europe would not be as we know it today. So, tell me then, when exactly did the ICJ “observe” that these Arab countries should not be under Arab sovereignty? It would be rather interesting to know.
Regarding point 2, I suppose you refer to the ICJ decision #131 on July 9, 2004. The ICJ did not make a “legal decision”; it was only required to offer a “legal opinion”. Second, this so-called “advisory opinion” was in response to an appalling question issued by the UN General Assembly Resolution ES-10/14 of December 8, 2003, which was framed as follows:
“What are the legal consequences arising from the construction of the wall being built by Israel, the occupying Power in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including in and around East Jerusalem…”
Talk about a leading totally biased question.
Most democratic nations of the world were against this distorted opinion while most tyrannies supported it, so now we know which corner you and your cohorts reside in.
The White House, for example, brushed aside the ruling by the International Court of Justice on the West Bank separation fence saying it didn’t think it was the right forum for addressing the issue. “We do not believe that that’s the appropriate forum to resolve what is a political issue”.
And most important, an advisory opinion has no standing under International Law so why are you still using it to support your ill conceived rationale?
Let me spend more time on this important issue so that next time you area able to write in terms that actually make sense.
The idea that decisions of the ICJ have binding legal force and trump the decisions made prior to and at the San Remo Conference, which resulted in formal agreements, mandates, treaties etc., is patently false.
Decisions made by the International Court of Justice are considered to be of persuasive value, which means that while these decisions can be consulted they have no binding force in international law.
Prior to, during and after the Paris Peace Conference, several forms of formal agreement (e.g. Treaty of Versailles, San Remo decisions, Mandate for Palestine, Treaty of Sevres and Lausanne, etc…) relating to the territory and inhabitants of Palestine transpired which carry the binding force of international law. The ICJ has no authority to overturn those. So why on earth do you keep mentioning the IJC advisory opinion as if it really meant something?
It gets boring, but once again you regurgitate “as the ICJ has noted, all of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, is occupied Palestinian territory under international law”.
So once again I’ll note that this has nothing to do with International Law and if you can show me where it does, I’d be pleased to learn something new.
But let’s take this one step further. East Jerusalem may be occupied but it’s really occupied Jewish territory because all of Jerusalem belong to the Jewish people under International Law, relating right back to the San Remo Resolutions, as I’ve pointed out.
Speaking of occupation, why do you and everyone these days assume this has such a negative connotation?
Occupation in itself is not illegal – it’s what happens when someone takes over a territory. It’s actually a transition towards the final status of a disputed territory, which apparently Jerusalem is. So call Israel occupiers all you like, I’d like you to show me where this goes against International Law.
Jeremy and Nami, your arguments are quickly fading into dust where they belong. I see little sense in your reasoning. You keep quoting a source – the ICJ – as the pillar of support underlying your demented thinking. I wonder, Jeremey and Nami, how would you like to go to court one day and have some lawyer argue against you using something bogus, something that has no real standing under the law? This is the tact that you take time and again. Shame on you.
Finally, #5 in your manifesto. “Ditto. Also, a denial of facts is not the same as a refutation of facts. That Israel was founded via an act of land theft and ethnic cleansing is not a matter for debate. It’s completely uncontroversial.”
Thinking does not get more absurd than this. It’s the distorted type of statement that can only come from yourself or Nami and it has very little bearing on reality. I’ve already proved in previous responses that your statement is wrong but you folks are in denial. Don’t worry, sooner or later you’ll be able to differentiate fantasy from reality.
No, Barry, as the ICJ has pointed out, the establishment of a mandate under the League of Nations did not involve any transfer of territory or sovereignty. Barry, repeating a lie over and over again does not make it true.
As for the ICJ advisory opinion, the ICJ is perfectly competent to judge matters of international law. A great deal more competent than you, I dare say. All of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, is, under international law, “occupied Palestinian territory”.
Inasmuch as it’s inconvenient for you, I can understand why you are now resorting to the argument that “this has nothing to do with international law”, even while you yourself rely upon international treaties (e.g. Covenant of the League of Nations, Treaty of Versailles, etc.) for your argument. Which is it, Barry? You can’t have it both ways.
“No, Barry, as the ICJ has pointed out, the establishment of a mandate under the League of Nations did not involve any transfer of territory or sovereignty. Barry, repeating a lie over and over again does not make it true.”
So let me ask again, can you point out where the ICJ said that and how that opinion trumps international law as created by the League of Nations? And if what you say is correct, how does that measure up with the creation of Syria, Lebanon and Iraq?
“As for the ICJ advisory opinion, the ICJ is perfectly competent to judge matters of international law. A great deal more competent than you, I dare say. All of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, is, under international law, “occupied Palestinian territory”.”
I’m sure the IJC understand law better than myself, but I sincerely doubt their integrity as compared to mine. And I’m not alone in having a low opinion of the IJC.
“Inasmuch as it’s inconvenient for you, I can understand why you are now resorting to the argument that “this has nothing to do with international law”, even while you yourself rely upon international treaties (e.g. Covenant of the League of Nations, Treaty of Versailles, etc.) for your argument. Which is it, Barry? You can’t have it both ways.”
Very simple. What I have relied on is in fact International Law. What you rely on is advisory legal opinions. There IS a difference.
Sure, Barry. The ICJ said that in its advisory opinion on the status of South West Africa in 1950: http://www.icj-cij.org/docket/files/10/1891.pdf. As for your question of “how that opinion trumps international law as created by the League of Nations”, I might as well ask you: Do you still beat your wife? The premise of your question is false, and you’re using the petitio principii (begging the question) fallacy. As the ICJ pointed out, the establishment of a mandate under the League of Nations did not involve any transfer of territory or sovereignty. Period. End of discussion.
I’m glad you agree the ICJ is more competent to judge matters of international law and how it applies better than you. Fascinating that despite that admission, you claim to have based your position on “International Law” while suggesting the ICJ has not.
Always a pleasure, Barry.
Barry,
After all our correspondence back and forth you’ve forgotten what my name is? Nami? Are you serious? You’ve been writing my name for weeks now in your various inane comments, why the sudden memory lapse? Is it just dyslexia? Does that mean I should now assume that every time you’ve argued that Jewish immigrants from Europe were granted self-determination in Palestine instead of the native population and long-established communities already living there, you really meant the inverse?
Or, perhaps you are having your friends write replies for you again. Tsk tsk.
Your selective and totally misguided reading of early 20th century treaties and international agreements is stunning. Your evocation of Article 22 of the League of Nations Covenant as proof that the victorious powers of WWI somehow bestowed sovereignty upon Zionist Jews in Palestine is actually counter-productive to your bogus, ethnocratic and discriminatory agenda; the evidence you cite is completely fabricated.
The “sacred trust of civilisation” you refer to has nothing to do with granting sovereignty to Jews in Palestine. Quite the contrary. As the Article clearly states, the “principal consideration” of the Mandatory power in Palestine is the “well-being and development” and eventual autonomy and self-determination of the inhabitants of the land – not of Jewish immigrants from Europe. To pretend as you do that the Covenant grants sovereignty to Jews, over the Arab inhabitants, in Palestine is to wholly invent something out of the ether. I urge you to read Article 22 again and try and explain how, in any conceivable way, your conclusions make sense. Wait, I’ll save you some time: they don’t.
Additionally, your claim that “all of Jerusalem belong to the Jewish people under International Law, relating right back to the San Remo Resolutions” is another complete lie, totally unsupported by facts. This is bizarre thing to even suggest as every single official piece of documentation from that time and decades later that refer to Jerusalem, consistently affirm either shared or international control, and never even come close to granting any sort of Jewish authority.
Nice try, but you’re a liar.
I have repeatedly addressed your ridiculous claims regarding the San Remo resolution, demonstrating time and time that the resolution has nothing to do with the authorization of Jewish sovereignty over Palestine and its indigenous inhabitants. You have repeated been unwilling, unable, or incapable of refuting anything I have written. Your ghost writer friend also failed in this regard.
Furthermore, your suggestion that once a concept is enshrined in international law it may never be overruled or overturned is surreal and ungrounded in anything resembling reality. You have repeatedly dismissed and expressed contempt for the numerous White Papers produced by the British Government regarding the Balfour Declaration – and thereby the subsequent implications of that Declaration in later documentation such as the San Remo resolution, League of Nations Covenant, and British Mandate – claiming that they do not constitute an authoritative elucidation of the Balfour Declaration itself. You are wrong. White Papers are indeed authoritative (as opposed to their advisory counterparts, “Green Papers”) and serve explicitly to determine official policy and interpretation. White Papers are as official as the policies, or documentation, to which they refer. That’s the point of them. In the future, please be aware of this.
Even so, absolutely nothing in the Balfour Declaration, San Remo resolution, or any of the later covenants, treaties, or mandates grant exclusive sovereignty to Jews over one inch of Palestine, so the White Papers and subsequent authoritative interpretations are merely reaffirming what is already apparent.
Lastly, for the record, I have not referred to the ICJ in any of my myriad responses to your silly, bigoted claims. You claimed that I have. Again, you’re mistaken.
Barry, you have consistently maintained that you are citing international law to make your case, and have been repeatedly corrected on your misunderstanding of the very documents to which you refer. Do you think other people can’t read? Have you even read the documents you cite as evidence? It’s all very strange, indeed.
Then, as soon as your “legal” arguments are debunked and thoroughly destroyed using tangible facts and real evidence, you hide behind gutter racism and absurd propaganda to claim that Arabs are inherently violent and have an unquenchable hatred of Jews and therefore, based on the land deed of the bible, Jews should have control of Palestine. You abandon the “legal” realm for the racist and righteous. Not a good strategy.
Your arguments – legalistic, religious, historic – all fall flat again and again. Yet you keep repeating them. As Albert Einstein reportedly said, the definition of insanity is “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” I fear for you in this regard.
But to say I care would be an gross overstatement.
But Barry Lubotta is not biased, seems to be a basic assumption of this criticism. The quote is a conclusion of the author’s based on the evidence. Perhaps you could address the evidence, if you want to challenge the conclusion.
Jeremy, you’re pretty good on evidence as long as it supports your premise but I’m waiting for you to show a hint of wisdom.
The great leaders of the world were not always up on their facts or evidence but they had a knack of consolidating that which they did know to generally come up with the right move. Wisdom will always trump dry factual data because data and evidence can be twisted and massaged.
Anyone can learn and then spin more “factual evidence” than the next fellow, but when that person’s view is already colored by bias it renders the evidence next to useless in interpretation. That’s why I get tired of doing the evidence and factual thing with you all day long. I don’t have enough hours to know all the minutiae of every event but I believe I know enough, have reasonably good judgment and can use my common sense to see the truth in most situations. I trust that I was not put on this earth to live my life subject to every fact that ever existed, any more than I should take care of my health according only to the results of clinical studies.
Barry, you didn’t explain in what way I “lack wisdom”. I invite you again to do so.
Dear Jeremy,
Thank you for the invite to rain on your parade and tell you why I believe you lack wisdom. I kind of doubt that you make this offer to many readers, so forgive me for feeling smug but I am honored.
One might ask if this was a “wise” move on your part but I do admire your openness to being critiqued by someone you’ve never met.
As a newcomer to your website it was never my plan to criticize you personally – it must be annoying that I did. Over time however, just a few days in fact, I began to feel that some of your writings tread a dangerous path and someone had to point this out. That’s not to say I don’t value your scholarship and willingness to use references to supposedly back your premises. What seemed to be missing, for me anyway, was the wisdom one might expect from a self professed “expert”.
The first giveaway was that no matter how well reasoned any of your readers argued against your “facts”, they were presented as wrong, while you assured readers you were right. Some of these people were pretty darn smart Jeremy, M.R. comes to mind, and I marveled at how you were always certain they were 100% incorrect and you were 100% in the know.
Yes, something bothered me. Would someone blessed with real wisdom be so dogmatic and sure they were always correct? Several contributors contradicted your arguments with “facts” that I and a good many others believe to be true. Indeed there was plenty of wisdom appearing all over your site, it just wasn’t emanating from you.
The reader should know that Jeremy and I previous jousted about Israel, article 242 and the Mideast in general, and we both continue to feel we are correct. My knowledge is not as extensive as some but I possess a pretty decent understanding of the Middle East based on years of study. That in itself doesn’t make me wise and the humility I express may be fake or otherwise. I just like to think not pretending to know everything gives me a touch of humility, which is possibly the first step to wisdom.
After a while it can get real boring trying to argue “points” with Jeremy. It’s like playing tennis against a wall – I can hit some great shots but I can never win because ultimately the wall has the final say. That doesn’t mean the wall is a better tennis player however.
UN Article 242, which we sparred about recently, is a one page document that took six months by a host of nations to agree upon and vote into existence. To this day the world argues about it but Jeremy is certain he knows what it really means. Never mind that some of the writers of 242 have written books to describe their part and how it came about, these things happened after the fact and therefore mean little to Jeremy’s interpretation. Gotta tell you, I don’t see your position as befitting wisdom unless it’s been recently merged with arrogance.
Perhaps it is your overview of the Mideast that bothers me most. If I understand it correctly, you feel that the Jewish people should never have been given title to a land of their own because there were a majority of others living there at the time. What you feel is that a Palestinian state should have been created with Jews allowed to reside within, albeit with their rights preserved. Is this correct or have I misstated?
This view does not take into account that Jews lived in this area for more than a fifteen hundred years until they were forced to flee two thousand years ago and that numbers of them have continued to live off the land during the past two millenia. That the ancestors of those who formed the majority in the 20th century took control of the land by violence. That there never existed a legal country in the area before Israel. And that the countries who had defeated the Ottoman Empire had the legal right to dispose of the land as they saw fit, according to International Law at the time, also creating Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Jordan in the process.
Sure, prior to the legal creation of a Jewish homeland there were fleeting periods that Jews lived amongst Muslims without excessive violence being committed against them, but they always had to be seen as lower caste people in order to avoid a violent fate. One practice was that Jews, when walking next to Muslims, had to walk in the gutter (which was countersunk lower than street level) so as to never appear taller than their privileged hosts. Is that the society that you foresaw?
So when the planet’s great leaders and victors after the great war decided, in and around 1920, that the world had a Jewish problem, it was a good thing. They realized that the world had the problem, and not the Jewish people who were always being murdered or expelled for no other reason than they were Jewish. As such, they recognized the Jewish peoples rights to “reconstitute” their historical homeland. And as we all know, when orange juice is reconstituted it is because it was, wait for it, originally orange juice.
There was a man who was wise during this era, Winston Churchill, and in 1920 he very much supported a national homeland for the Jewish people. He did, you don’t, and now we’re left wondering who is the wiser of the two?
Your idea of wisdom leads you to want revisit that whole situation, revising history along the way. Surely that is not how wise people view things. My dad was wise and he never tried to revise history so I assume that anyone who does is missing something or another.
Perhaps one day your accumulated knowledge will result in you being called a wise man. Perhaps one day you will see things as the world’s greatest leaders have seen them. Not that they were perfect or always made correct decisions, but they were the best we had and did as well as their knowledge and perceptions allowed them to.
Jeremy, it would be so great if you one day joined the ranks of the wise. For now however, everything you or your site is involved with when it comes to Israel has a slant. I’m not saying you are biased against Israel but you are certainly slanted. I rarely read you castigating anything about the Arabs in the area. In fact, you seem to excuse every malicious event they precipitate because you feel they have been so wronged. Then again, they too always see themselves as victims and as such have the perfect excuse not to grow up as a people. Mmmmn, I may see some connection there.
Perhaps the one gift I can offer you is to give a positive example of wisdom so that you may learn what it takes to possess this great trait.
http://www.nationalpost.com/news/Harper%20says%20Canada%20will%20stand%20Israel/3794912/story.html
I’m really hoping you one day reek of wisdom Jeremy, and the moment you do I’ll shout it from the highest building. My talents are modest and have only brought me fleeting moments of admiring wisdom from a distance, but the gift that the man in the sky (no, not Superman) most assuredly bestowed on me is that I can recognize it when it’s there to be seen in others.
Barry, the fact that in all your sermon about my “lack” of “wisdom” you didn’t point to even a single error in fact or logic on my part pretty much says it all.
Re: not pointing out a single error.
That’s because there was not a single error but a whole set of them.
Barry, if there is “a whole set” of errors, it should be the simplest thing for you to point out at least one of them. Don’t keep me in suspense, buddy.
So Jeremy, I twice read the ICJ advisory on South Africa. I saw nothing that would relate to your premise about the mideast. If there is an explicit comment that you think relates, please convey exactly that to me. I am not an international lawyer but as to your comment ” as the ICJ has pointed out, the establishment of a mandate under the League of Nations did not involve any transfer of territory or sovereignty.” I did not see anything that legally would relate to Israel. And of course there is nothing legally binding on the League of Nations granting the Jewish people rights in what became israel.
The one comment that caught my eye was ” “Done in English and French, the English text being authoritative, at the Peace Palace, The Hague, this eleventh day of July, one thousand nine hundred and fifty, in two copies, one of which will be placed in the archives of the Court and the other transmitted to the Secretary-General of the United Nations.”
You and I argued over whether English was the authoritative language of the UN and probably by extension the ICJ. This was in 1950. Was this changed after that? I honestly don’t know. You seem to think it was so how about being specific if and when it was changed to English and French, as you maintained.
As to you Nima, the name change was accidental. Nima, Nami, whatever. If I was doing it purposely I would have written Amin, as in Idi, someone who you remind me of in terms that you both have a vitriolic hatred for Israel. And by the way, that would have been the true inverse of your name.
As to your personal attacks on me, getting more and more vile. No big deal, I expect something along that line from you. To sum you up ….
You have that particular arrogance of someone who has accomplished little in his life.
Beyond that, you are completely wrong in your thought process. I have been in touch with renowned international legal experts and they come to a very different conclusion that you have. Do you have a background in International Law? Argue all you want, your interpretation of events and treaties is wrong because you want them to be wrong. You’ll never get it right, and that’s ok. The extent of your hatred and your ever diminishing ability to see the truth of just about any subject has rendered you incapable of making an honest and sensible judgment. Live with it, that’s just who you are. Maybe you’re a nice fellow in spite of this, but that’s of little consequence. You pass yourself off as an expert and so far all I’ve witnessed is a bloated furball.
It matters little if you throw out this “fact” or that “fact”. You get your conclusions wrong each and every time. And it matters even less that you call me names without have ever met me. I don’t need your blessing or affirmation. Your poor judgment in so many other areas is continued in this one – that’s who you are, someone with poor judgment.
If you read the document twice, you could hardly have missed, and if you’d simply hit ‘Control F’ and searched for the word “transfer” or other key word from what I told you, you would have immediately found where it states that the creation of a Mandate under the League of Nations does “not involve any cession of territory or transfer of sovereignty” to the Mandatory power. The specific case is South Africa, but this applies to any Mandate, including the Palestine Mandate. You can keep repeating that the League of Nations “granted” Palestine to the Jews, but repeating a lie over and over doesn’t make it true.
I find it rather hilarious, though, that in your reply to Nima you appeal to “renowned international legal experts”; there is no more renowned body of international legal experts than the ICJ, which, again, has pointed out that the creation of a Mandate under the League of Nations did not involve any cession of territory or transfer of sovereignty, as well as that all of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, is under international law “Occupied Palestinian Territory”. Your hypocrisy is overwhelming, Barry.
Rabby, Barry, Bibi, whatever –
Thank you for not addressing or arguing one single point I have made so far in my responses to your repeated nonsense. You claim that my conclusions on the meaning of international laws, events and treaties are “wrong,” yet you provide no explanation or evidence for this contention. I have not once drawn a conclusion from thin air, yet referred to actual laws and actual treaties and proven again and again how what you say is untrue and how your writing (and the writing of your ghost writer pal) demonstrates a startling lack of, not only fundamental understanding of the texts you cite, but also of basic humanity, wherein the rights of native populations should not be abrogated by another group of people.
These issues are not up for mere “interpretation.” You have written in the past about “truth,” well, here it is:
Your entire argument hinges on the claim that “Jewish people,” simply by virtue of self-identifying as Jewish, from all over the world – be it Argentina, Canada, Italy, Russia, Australia, South Africa, or the United States – have internationally enshrined rights within historic Palestine (a portion of which is now called Israel) that the people whose families have lived in that very place for generations – hundreds upon hundreds, if not thousands, of years – and who were born there themselves do not have those same rights.
As such, you have attempted to twist international law and history to justify this appalling claim. Not only is this intellectually dishonest, it is morally repugnant.
You realize, of course, that you have been arguing against equality, right? Do you remain content with this position? For you, does ethnicity trump ethics? If so, how does your position differ from those who advocate white supremacy or anti-Semitism? Is it because the people whose lives have been destroyed by Zionism are Arab, and therefore their rights are somehow less important than those of Jews? If this is not your position, you should review your previous submissions to this conversation and figure out a better way to argue for the ethnocratic and discriminatory virtues of Zionism in the future.
It’s continually hilarious to witness your pent-up rage at being so ill-equipped to argue your abhorrent claims, especially when it becomes too much for you to contain and explodes into your writing. High comedy, indeed. Thanks for that.
You claim that I have attacked you personally; I haven’t. Calling you a “liar” for instance is not a personal attack, as it relates directly to our discussion and is the direct and incontrovertible conclusion to be drawn from our lengthy interaction thus far. You have knowingly and repeatedly made claims that had previously been proven wrong and not based in fact throughout our correspondence. Doing this makes you a liar, for the clear-cut reason that you keep lying.
If anything, my vitriolic hatred is not for Israel, it is for lying liars like you.
Calling me a “bloated furball,” however, is precisely the kind of personal attack you condemn me for. Ironic, to say the least. Whether or not I am a “bloated furball” (which, incidentally is the name of both a tasty cocktail and a disturbing sex act) is a judgment I will leave to those who know me – and you, do not qualify.
Remember, a mere three weeks ago, when you described me as “clever” and stated that I “write well”? I thought we were friends, then, Larry, what happened? Did I pop too many of your San Remo balloons by actually reading the resolution itself and copying its text here for all to see, thereby exposing your egregious falsehoods? Did that mean I wasn’t clever anymore and that my writing became sub-par for your taste?
Furthermore, I was unaware that citing international law and calling out sexagenarian ethnic cleansing apologists like yourself for being bigoted and ignorant of relevant information makes someone arrogant. Perhaps, “better educated.” Or “much more informed.” Or “having a far superior moral compass and basic reading comprehension skills.” Or “able to write for himself without getting an equally unimpressive friend to do it for him.” Maybe those things, Barlow, but not arrogant.
As for my life’s accomplishments, even if my total and utter decimation of your feeble attempts to justify settler-colonialism, ethnic cleansing, and the denial of self-determination, international law and human rights and my exposure of you as a repellent caricature of equivocation and apologia, one who is satisfied with legal discrimination and dehumanization if it benefits his preferred group of people, is my one and only achievement, I will surely consider my time on this earth a staggering success.
I’m sorry “facts” are so inconsequential to you, though it is mighty kind of you to admit it. The conclusions drawn by us are distinct, indeed. You credit yours with validity and wisdom; you deride mine as wrong and misguided. My conclusions are based on the very inconsequential facts you ignore or dismiss, while yours rely on some fantastical notions of biblical or historic entitlement (with a dash of unsubstantiated support of European colonial powers).
Your considerations do not treat all people – ALL PEOPLE – as equals, either morally or legally. Your disdain for human rights condemns your judgments without even cursory inspection. Nevertheless, I have spent the past few weeks responding to your myriad false claims one by one. Your lack of humanity, wisdom, truth, understanding, morality, common decency, let alone your deliberate and constant misrepresentation of legal documentation, is revealed in every word you type (or have someone else type for you).
Again, this is not a personal attack. These conclusions are once again drawn directly from your own statements (and those made on your behalf by someone else).
You are correct about one thing, though. You state that you don’t need my blessing or affirmation. You’re right, you don’t. You’ve long been embarrassing yourself without it.
Kudos.
تمام شد
“Zionists from the beginning welcomed anti-Semitism as a means of undermining what Zionists believed was the sense of false security of Jews in western, liberal societies, and as the means by which Jews would be kept in a permanent state of neurosis. Organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League of B’Nai B’rith…”
Actually the ADL was founded in 1913 in response to the Leo Frank lynching. The Zionist movement had already been in existence for decades. Also note, that the B’nai B’rith had a neutral position on Zionism. You also have not provided any documentation for this particular assertion. (It is true, that the ADL is fortunately not as needed as it was 100 years ago. It is also true, that the Frank case is one of the very few of its kind in U.S. history. But all this has nothing to do with, in your words, “Zionists from the beginning”. )
You begin your reply “Actually…” as though what follows somehow showed that something the author said was incorrect. Actually, you haven’t done so.
You should watch “Defamation”.
My comment was very simple. The author made a claim about “Zionists from the beginning”. That would be the nineteenth century, and perhaps the beginning of the twentieth century. He juxtaposes that with the ADL. The problem is that the ADL was not yet founded and so could have not have had anything to do with “Zionists from the beginning”. The ADL was neutral on Zionism and could hardly be considered a part of the Zionist movement- and thus the ADL could not have anything to do with “Zionists from the beginning”.
(Does the film “Defamation” deal with the founding and early years of the ADL? Does it claim that the ADL was a Zionist organization?)
The author did not suggest the ADL has been around since the beginning of Zionism.
It appeared in the same paragraph. The paragraph begins “Zionists from the beginning”. The very next sentence, within the same paragraph mentions the ADL. He writes that the ADL exists “mainly for the purpose …to keep Jews under the Zionist heel.” (A nonsense claim, since the B’nai B’rith was non-Zionist.) It’s the standard style to keep the same concept within a paragraph. It’s also common to mention a concept in general is the first sentence, and then use the following sentences to expand/illustrate/explain it. Of course he suggested it! Are you saying the author just threw in a non-sequitor?
The paragraph does not suggest the ADL has been around since the beginning of Zionism.
“However, it is unlikely that Dreyfus was the real cause of Herzl’s own separatism. If Dreyfus became a cause celebre for French anti-Semites, so it was also for the multitudes of Frenchmen who came to the defense of the Jews, and Dreyfus was ultimately pardoned.”
There are a couple of obvious errors here:
1) There was a debate amongst observers of the Dreyfus Affair. Some considered the successful organization of Frenchmen (Zola and the rest) in defense of a lone Jew as evidence that France was progressing. (Even religious Zionists would note how the world was changing and that Jewish rights were being respected.) But that was their opinion and Herzl a different opinion. In the above paragraph, the author goes further than claiming Herzl was wrong-he concludes, that since there were those who disagreed with Herzl’s opinion, it must be that Herzl didn’t actually believe in his own opinion.
2) The anachronism. The author refers to the exoneration of Dreyfus as to why it was “unlikely” that the Affair was “the real cause of Herzl’s own separatism”. The problem is that Dreyfus was exonerated in 1906. Herzl died in 1904.
The reactions of the two zealots of zion are based on nothing but straw man arguments with a load of quips and qibbles thrown in to add feathers to baseless assertions. For example, what is one supposed to make of the last comment by Effy in regard to the Dreyfus affair and the death of Herzl? To be charitable, perhaps English is not his primary language. Re-read and try to comprehend.
KR,
Explain:
1) Why you chose the ADL to followup your assertions that “Zionists from the beginning welcomed anti-Semitism”
2) Why you ignored the dozens of Zionist thinkers, especially those before Herzl when you assert that “The raison d’etre for the establishment of the modern Zionist movement…”
3) Why you do not address those who responded to Tom Segev’s controversial claims- which make up the entire substance of your claims concerning Ben Gurion.
4) Why you assert that “Herzl’s separatism” was not caused by the Dreyfus Affair, since others had a different reaction to the Affair. (And that different reaction could never have been possible for Herzl since he was already dead!)
These are not quibbles. They are substantial critiques that devastate your thesis. You and Jeremy have not provided substantial responses, but have resorted to name calling: “wise ass”, “Effy” and “zealot”- and irrelevancies as “English is not his primary language” .
All you’ve shown is that there is a relationship between Zionism and anti-Semitism. We all knew that- it’s pretty much tautological. (Tautologies like this exist elsewhere: America & despotism, crime and security companies, cancer and oncology, etc..) You’ve also shown that Herzl may have thought (optimistically) that he could co-opt anti-Semites to defeat anti-Semitism. He was right to some degree, some anti-Semites did express some interest in Zionism as a way to get Jews to emigrate. But ultimately, Herzl was proven wrong in this regard. But that’s just one stream within many that make up Zionism. Yet instead of mentioning this, you claim that it’s the “raison d’etre” to the exclusion of the cultural and religious ideals of various founding Zionists.
Mr Ephraim
1. The ADL is mentioned early on quite obviously because its own purpose in being is to combat anti-semitism, or perhaps better said exaggerate the extent of anti-Semitism to keep the Jewish people herded into the fold. Why such sensitivity from you whenever the ADL is mentioned?
2. I have not ignored “other zionist thinkers”. I have cited a selection, Herzl being the most singificant for the tracing of the beginnigs of the relationship between Zionism and anti-Semites. Excuse me while I write a 500 page book on the subject, and endeavour to scrutinize the whole lot… I’ll have it posted up on FPJ tomorrow.
3. The same relationship is exmained by Lenni Brenner in Zionism in the Age of the Dictators. No dubt, Brenner is no good as an historian either. Nobody critical of zionism would be, so what are we left with?: historians and commentators who adhere to the party-line; or should that be the ADL line?
4. You again resort to the straw-man nonsense about Herzl’s death and the Dreyfus Affair. The point is that a multitude of the French supported Dreyfus during the lifetime of Herzl. Does this need explaining ad infinitum? what can’t you get? In regard to Herzl’s pre-Dreyfus rejection of assimilation:
“Herzl first encountered the anti-Semitism that would shape his life and the fate of the Jews in the twentieth century while studying at the University of Vienna (1882). Later, during his stay in Paris as a journalist, he was brought face-to-face with the problem. At the time, he regarded the Jewish problem as a social issue and wrote a drama, The Ghetto (1894), in which assimilation and conversion are rejected as solutions. ”
Jewish Virtual Library, http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/Herzl.html
My assertion that the Dreyfus affair was not the cause of Herzl’s separatism is hardly a unique view. For example, Jacques Kornberg, “Theodor Herzl: From Assimilation to Zionism” (Indiana Uni. Press, 1993) contends that Herzl’s view had been shaped by Austrian anti-Semitism since at least 1892.
Asking whether English is your first language is not an “irrelevancy;” I am merely trying to understand why you have basic comprehension problems.
“All you’ve shown is that there is a relationship between Zionism and anti-Semitism.”
Much of the article is about the covert operations involving Zionists and anti-Semites, such as the weird relationship with the Canadian Nazi party and the National Renaissance Party for example. Many Jews have spoken up against the manner the Jewish people are being herded into the Zionist fold by the manipulation of anti-Semitism; but I suppose the whole lot would be denigrated as “self-hating Jews”. The material on Herzl et al provides the historical context.
1) “I have cited a selection”
You haven’t. You cited one person amongst the founders of Zionist thought. (Or “Zionist thoughts” since there was no true consensus amongst those various figures.)
“Excuse me while I write a 500 page book on the subject”
Did I ever demand you write a complete survey on the question? Had you included another page or two summarizing the thoughts of three or four other Zionist figures your thesis would have been destroyed. That’s a far cry from 500 pages.
2) “I have cited a selection, Herzl being the most singificant (sic) for the tracing of the beginnigs (sic) of the relationship between Zionism and anti-Semites.”
So you’re saying you’ve cited Herzl because he’s most significant for the Zionism/anti-Semitism relationship? And that had he not written on that relationship you wouldn’t cite him? So if he had advocated Zionism purely as a religious or culture movement you would have ignored him?
In other words, you’ve “cited those selections” that “prove” your thesis, and ignored the others.
3) “In regard to Herzl’s pre-Dreyfus rejection of assimilation:
“…. At the time, he regarded the Jewish problem as a social issue and wrote a drama, The Ghetto (1894), in which assimilation and conversion are rejected as solutions.”
The Ghetto was written in the fall of 1894, just as the Affair was getting underway. If Herzl had any notions at the time that his early assimilationist agenda may be wrong, those notions would be reinforced due to the trial. The causes for Herzl’s conversion may have been many, but the Affair certainly was one of the major ones. But you attempted to proved that the Affair was irrelevant by a quotation from someone who had a different interpretation of the event. Herzl understood the Affair to mean that assimilation couldn’t prevent anti-Semitism. His assimilationist opponents pointed to the support that Dreyfus received. Fine- so you’ve got a debate. But the debate itself doesn’t prove your assertion that Herzl was not truly affected by the Affair. No doubt Herzl was aware of the defenders of Dreyfus. He was also aware of his accusers. Why is so difficult to believe that Herzl was swayed by the latter rather than the former?
Excellent piece, even though it lacks ‘wisdom’.
@ Nima – all I can say is wow, too bad your summation also lacks wisdom.
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