East Jerusalem: Sharing our house with settlers
Category Archives: Zionism
Why the Jewish state now?
Raef Zreik writes:
During its peace negotiations with Egypt and Jordan, Israel did not ask for recognition for itself as a Jewish state, and such recognition does not appear in the peace treaties with either state. With regard to negotiations with the PLO for the final status of the Palestinian territories, the demand for recognition of Israel as a Jewish state or as a state of the Jewish people (which are different concepts) was not on the table at the 1991 Madrid conference, during the Oslo talks of 1992–93, or even at the failed Camp David summit of July 2000, or the subsequent negotiations at Taba in early 2001. This demand was put forward for the first time in a negotiation context at the 2007 Annapolis conference by the Olmert government in its last days in office. The current Israeli government, by contrast, has made recognition of the Jewishness of the state one of its principal negotiating demands, on occasion even presenting it as a precondition for the negotiations themselves.
Nor has the growing emphasis on the demand been restricted to the negotiating sphere. Projects aimed at affirming the Jewishness of the state through legislation have increased in recent years: amendments to the citizenship law require persons seeking Israeli citizenship to swear allegiance to a Jewish and democratic Israel and limit family unification between Israeli Palestinians and their spouses from the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Proposals for a population swap in the context of a final settlement are becoming increasingly legitimate in the public discourse, while amendments to other legislation include restricting Palestinian citizens’ commemoration of the Nakba and de facto restrictions on the right of Palestinian citizens to purchase homes in (Jewish) communal settlements.
So what is happening here? At the level of Israeli domestic politics, and with regard to the now-stalled negotiations with Palestinians, one could say that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been keen to divert attention from divisive issues in Israeli society, such as settlements and Jerusalem, to nondivisive issues such as the Jewish state. Netanyahu knows well that negotiations may fail, but he would prefer that they fail by being dashed against the rock of the Jewish state, which enjoys absolute majority Jewish support, than because of the absence of a settlement freeze, which would have led to claims that had there been one, there might have been progress in the negotiations and possibly even a peace agreement. According to this line of reasoning, Netanyahu’s demands for the recognition of the Jewishness of the state is a tactical, even a partisan maneuver—his way of torpedoing the negotiations over an issue that is not controversial in Israeli society so as to consolidate his position not only as the leader of the Israeli Right but also as the leader of Israeli society as a whole.
In my opinion, however, the above analysis does not fully explain the stridency of the Israeli discourse on the subject of the Jewish state. This essay is an attempt to offer a more penetrating analysis, one that examines the discourse on the Jewish state to reveal the internal dynamics and horizons of its evolution.
Democrats launch major pro-Obama pushback among Jews
President Obama is a stalwart friend of Israel.
That’s the message some top Democratic Jewish figures are promoting to push back against the notion that Obama is out of step with the pro-Israel and Jewish communities.
Within the next two weeks, two figures associated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee — past AIPAC president Amy Friedkin and board member Howard Green — will be among the hosts for a major fundraising event for the president, charging $25,000 per couple. The target of 40 couples — bringing in $1 million — is close to being met, insiders say. Notably, the organizers have received a nod from the AIPAC board’s inner circle to solicit donations.
Last week, top Jewish Democrats, including Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Democratic National Committee chairwoman Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), blitzed the media with Op-Eds denying any split with the president in the wake of his call last month to base Palestinian-Israeli negotiations on 1967 lines with mutually agreed land swaps.
And the White House has taken the unusual step of posting a lengthy defense of Obama’s Israel record on its website.
Miko Peled: The General’s Son
Miko Peled is a peace activist who dares to say in public what others still choose to deny. Born in Jerusalem in 1961 into a well known Zionist family, his grandfather, Dr. Avraham Katsnelson was a Zionist leader and signer of the Israeli Declaration of Independence. His Father, Matti Peled, was a young officer in the war of 1948 and a general in the war of 1967 when Israel conquered the West Bank, Gaza, Golan Heights and Sinai. Miko’s unlikely opinions reflect his father’s legacy. General Peled was a war hero turned peacemaker.
Miko grew up in Jerusalem, a multi-ethnic city, but had to leave Israel before he made his first Palestinian friend, the result of his participation in a dialogue group in California. He was 39.On September 4, 1997 the beloved Smadar, 13, the daughter of Miko’s sister Nurit and her husband Rami Elhanan was killed in a suicide attack.Peled insists that Israel/Palestine is one state—the separation wall notwithstanding, massive investment in infrastructure, towns and highways that bisect and connect settlements on the West Bank, have destroyed the possibility for a viable Palestinian state. The result, Peled says is that Israelis and Palestinians are governed by the same government but live under different sets of laws.
At the heart of Peled’s conclusion lies the realization that Israelis and Palestinians can live in peace as equals in their shared homeland.
Miko Peled‘s book, The General’s Son, is due out later this year from Just World Books. (H/t Pulse)
The untold story of the deal that shocked the Middle East
Robert Fisk reports:
Secret meetings between Palestinian intermediaries, Egyptian intelligence officials, the Turkish foreign minister, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal – the latter requiring a covert journey to Damascus with a detour round the rebellious city of Deraa – brought about the Palestinian unity which has so disturbed both Israelis and the American government. Fatah and Hamas ended four years of conflict in May with an agreement that is crucial to the Paslestinian demand for a state.
A series of detailed letters, accepted by all sides, of which The Independent has copies, show just how complex the negotiations were; Hamas also sought – and received – the support of Syrian President Bachar al-Assad, the country’s vice president Farouk al-Sharaa and its foreign minister, Walid Moallem. Among the results was an agreement by Meshaal to end Hamas rocket attacks on Israel from Gaza – since resistance would be the right only of the state – and agreement that a future Palestinian state be based on Israel’s 1967 borders.
“Without the goodwill of all sides, the help of the Egyptians and the acceptance of the Syrians – and the desire of the Palestinians to unite after the start of the Arab Spring, we could not have done this,” one of the principal intermediaries, 75-year old Munib Masri, told me. It was Masri who helped to set up a ‘Palestinian Forum’ of independents after the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority and Hamas originally split after Hamas won an extraordinary election victory in 2006. “I thought the divisions that had opened up could be a catastrophe and we went for four years back and forth between the various parties,” Masri said. “Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas) asked me several times to mediate. We opened meetings in the West Bank. We had people from Gaza. Everyone participated. We had a lot of capability.”
Meanwhile, the Associated Press reports:
Arsonists torched a West Bank mosque early Tuesday and scrawled Hebrew graffiti on one of its walls.
The Palestinian mayor of el-Mughayer village said a tire was set ablaze inside the mosque in an apparent attempt to burn down the building.
No one claimed responsibility for the act, but suspicion fell upon Jewish settlers, both because they have carried out similar acts in the past and because the graffiti read, “Price tag, Aley Ayin.”
“Price tag” is a settler practice of attacking Palestinians in revenge for Israeli government operations against settlers. Aley Ayin is a small, unauthorized settler outpost that was evacuated by security forces last week.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned the act, calling it “a heinous act of provocation.”
Noting Netanyahu’s comment, U.N. Mideast envoy Robert Serry said in a statement, “The actions of Israeli extremists are highly provocative and threatening.” He called on Israel to “ensure the accountability of those responsible and protect the human rights of Palestinians and their property.”
J Street: Netanyahu refuses to meet delegation
Ynet reports:
Despite enjoying a hearty welcome at the US Congress recently, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has refused to meet with a delagation of representatives organized by J Street, the liberal Jewish lobby said Sunday.
Congressmen cheered Netanyahu on enthusiastically 50 times during his speech, 29 of those being standing ovations. However when five of those same Congress members planned a visit Israel, requesting a meeting with the prime minster or any other official representative of the state, not a single one complied.
The delegation, composed of Democratic Congress members, was set to arrive in Israel on Monday. The trip was initiated by J Street, considered a controversial group known for its fierce criticism of Israel, particularly over the issue of West Bank settlements.
The organizers attempted to arrange meetings with Netanyahu ahead of time, however they were turned down due to alleged schedule conflicts.
Organizers claim this is an excuse, stating that the actual reason is due to Netanyahu’s government policy, which bans meetings with US legislators brought here by J Street.
The delegation includes five representatives: Steve Cohen from Tennessee, Betty McCollum from Minnesota, John Yarmuth from Kentucky, and Sam Farr and Lynn Woolsey from California. Two of them are Jewish.
Can equality exist in the Jewish state?
Kieron Monks writes:
In 2005, following the arrest of several high profile Arab politicians and lobbyists living in Israel, the Shin Bet security agency made a statement justifying their actions: “The security service will thwart the activity of any group or individual seeking to harm the Jewish and democratic character of the State of Israel, even if such activity is sanctioned by the law.”
The statement highlighted a fundamental tension between democratic freedom in Israel, and the need to maintain its Jewish character. Thwarting harm to that character has been extrapolated to require controls on Israel’s Arab minority in many departments of society, from education to the right of dissent. The need to ensure Jewish demographic and institutional domination has prompted a raft of controversial policies and practises.
The confilct is most revealing at the level of political representation. Israel can point to the presence of 11 Arab Knesset members out of 120 as evidence of its civil rights credentials. Proportionally this is a reasonably fair reflection of a minority that accounts for 18 per cent of Israel’s population; given that the Arab community habitually votes in lower numbers.
In practise, the mandate to represent Arab concerns dictates that they work against – rather than with – the rest of parliament. Knesset Member Haneen Zouabi of the Balad party is open about her role being fundamentally oppositional. “I was elected to speak for those who voted for me, not to reinforce the Zionist consensus,” she says. “My role is to represent injustice and to make it more visible.” Zouabi has long argued against the legitimacy of a Jewish state for allowing “institutionalised discrimination”, instead favouring “a bi-national state not based on ethnicity”.
She has suffered for her beliefs. After participating in the 2010 Gaza flotilla, aimed at breaking the Israeli siege, a seven to one majority voted to strip her of parliamentary privileges. Likud Knesset Member Danny Danon called for her to be tried for treason, and there were attempts to disqualify her party from elections. The hostility was so great that Zouabi was forced to travel with an armed escort. A year later she remains a pariah in parliament, branded a traitor and a terrorist-sympathiser.
The Israeli public is shielded from the realities of West Bank life
Gershom Gorenberg writes:
The settlement’s security man did not like us. He did not like the cameraman with his bulky gear, or the two documentary film producers who’d brought Dror Etkes and me to the outpost of Derekh Ha’avot south of Bethlehem, and he certainly didn’t like Etkes, an Israeli activist known for expertise on land ownership and for his legal challenges to West Bank settlement. The security coordinator wore civvies but bounced a bit on the balls of his feet in the spring-coiled posture of junior combat officers, or recently discharged officers.
“You can’t film in the neighborhood,” he told us. Neighborhood is a euphemism for an outpost, a mini-setttlement ostensibly established in defiance of the Israeli government but actually enjoying state support. Derekh Ha’avot — the name means “Forefathers’ Road” — is next to the veteran settlement of Elazar but outside its municipal boundaries. The security man worked for Elazar. Filming would be “a security risk. I don’t know a lot about security, but I know a little,” he sneered, meaning, I know a whole lot.
That security argument, I can say with very little risk, was a bluff. Derekh Ha’avot, home to three dozen families, stands on privately owned Palestinian land, as military authorities confirmed in an October 2007 letter to another activist, Hagit Ofran (in Hebrew). But last year, in a ploy to evade a Supreme Court order to demolish the outpost, the Defense Ministry announced it was reexamining the land’s status to see whether it was actually state property.
The man facing us at the outpost who wanted nothing filmed was making his small contribution to keeping the occupation’s realities out of the sight of the majority of the Israeli public. For that, he deserves thanks from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Comfortable public ignorance of West Bank realities is essential to the Netanyahu’s domestic efforts to paint a fictional picture of the West Bank and of Israel’s deteriorating diplomatic situation.
Europe is becoming a safe haven for Israelis
Gideon Levy writes:
The numbers are climbing rapidly and the phenomenon is intriguing: Many Israelis are longing for a second passport. If Shimon Peres (now president ) once promised “a car for every worker,” a second passport is now becoming the object of desire. If our forefathers dreamt of an Israeli passport, there are those among us who are now dreaming of a foreign passport.
A Bar-Ilan University study published in the journal Eretz Acheret has found that roughly 100,000 Israelis already hold a German passport. Over the past decade, the trend has strengthened and some 7,000 more Israelis join them every year. To these should be added the thousands of Israelis who hold foreign passports, mostly European countries. The excuses are strange and diverse, but at the base of them all are unease and anxiety, both personal and national. The foreign passport has become an insurance policy against a rainy day. It turns out there are more and more Israelis who are thinking that day may eventually come.
In recent years the Israeli passport has become useful and effective. It opens the gates of most countries of the world, except for parts of the Arab and Muslim world. It is hard to believe that those applying for a second passport are doing so in order to vacation in Tehran, tour Benghazi or take in the sights of San’a. The alibi that a European passport makes entering the United States easier cannot fully explain the phenomenon, which has no equivalent in other developed countries.
It should not be condemned, though. It reflects a mood, a natural and understandable consequence of the real and imagined fears that have been sown here. When Avrum Burg boasted of his French passport several years ago, a public outcry arose, but in vain. Presumably some of those who cried out did so because they do not have the option, like he does, of obtaining an additional passport for themselves. The others may have since crowded onto the line at one embassy or another.
Israel’s foundation myths
Joseph Dana writes:
On May 15, five days after Israel’s Independence Day, Palestinians rallied around the Nakba—the Arabic word for catastrophe, used to mark the displacement of as many as 750,000 Palestinians in 1948. It was a bid to reiterate their opposition to Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and control of the Gaza Strip. For the first time in years, every Israeli newspaper carried the word “Nakba” on its front page, albeit not in reference to the historical event but to demonstrations that consumed the West Bank and Israel’s border towns. The episode highlighted an important truth: Sooner or later, Israel will be forced to incorporate the Palestinian Nakba narrative into the larger Israeli societal discourse. There can be a Zionist narrative of 1948 that includes the tragic and violent Palestinian experience of displacement—but it must be predicated on the acceptance of the Nakba in Israeli society.
My first experience with the history of the Nakba came as a young Jewish Studies student at the University of Maryland. One graduate seminar I attended was led by Benny Morris, the prominent Israeli historian responsible for revolutionizing his country’s historiography pertaining to the founding period. The subject of the seminar was 1948, and the course material—army reports from the field, personal letters, radio transcripts—came directly from Morris’ influential first book, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, published in 1988.
Early on in the seminar, I asked Morris, a short man with a fiery personality, if it was difficult to be a post-Zionist—an adherent of a movement that strives to replace Israel’s Zionist identity with a liberal cosmopolitan one—in Israel. He responded, almost snapping at me, that he was not a post-Zionist and never had been. As I would see in the seminar, Morris had exposed one of Israel’s darkest chapters without abandoning a strong allegiance to Zionism.
Most American Jews have starry-eyed view of Israel, poll finds
American Jews strongly believe in Israel’s commitmitment to peace, and largely think the Palestinian leadership and people are opposed to it, according to a new poll.
Eighty-four percent of respondents in the survey released last week said the Israeli government is committed to a lasting peace, compared to just 20 percent who said the same about the Palestinian Authority. More than half think the Palestinian people are opposed to peace with Israel.
Sponsored by the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, the poll sampled more than 1,000 American Jews several days before President Obama called for the 1967 borders to be used as the basis for negotiations for a future Palestinian state.
More than 75 percent of those polled said the biggest obstacle to peace in the region is the Palestinians’ “culture of hatred” and promotion of anti-Israel sentiment.
Seventy-eight percent said it was essential for the Palestinian Authority to recognize Israel as a Jewish state and 62 percent did not believe that Israelis would be free from Palestinian terror attacks even if a Palestinian state were created in the West Bank and Gaza.
‘AIPAC activists beat me’
Only a few months after Rae Abileah was among a group of young Jewish activists who found themselves the target of Jewish mob violence, she was attacked again yesterday, this time while exercising her right to free speech inside the US Congress.
Ynet reports:
Rae Abileah, a woman of Israeli descent who interrupted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech before the US Congress Tuesday, claims she was beaten by AIPAC activists.
“I yelled ‘Stop the occupation’ and immediately they jumped on me,” she told Ynet.
Abileah, a 28-year old Jewish daughter of an Israeli, is a member of Code Pink, a pacifist organization. She told Ynet that she had disrupted another speech by Netanyahu at the Jewish Federations General Assembly in New Orleans in November.
“We are a young generation of Jews who don’t intend to sit by in silence and allow prime ministers who commit crimes against humanity speak,” she said. “As far as we’re concerned he can speak at the International Criminal Court in the Hague.”
Abileah says she used a card procured by a friend to sneak into the House of Representatives. “When Netanyahu began to speak about Israel and democracy a got up to speak against its anti-democratic operations,” she said.
“I yelled, ‘Stop the occupation, stop Israeli war crimes’ and I called out for equal rights for Palestinians.”
Netanyahu’s Congress
Benjamin Netanyahu being caressed in Congress this morning by Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid
Josh Ruebner writes:
Gliding down the aisle of the House of Representatives like a popular president about to deliver the State of the Union address, escorted by a phalanx of dozens of ebullient Members of Congress, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu entered a joint meeting of Congress today to a round of hearty handshakes and a thunderous standing ovation.
In a post-speech press conference, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid gushed that Netanyahu delivered an “all-star” address, and Netanyahu proclaimed it a “great day” for Israel. And, in the self-contained world that is Capitol Hill, who could blame them for believing it to be so?
For in a world in which Israel finds itself as isolated as ever by a growing and successful Palestinian civil society-led international movement of boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) against its apartheid policies; in which Palestinians are taking matters into their own hands diplomatically and pushing to have the United Nations admit the State of Palestine as a full member of the organization this fall; and in which even the President of the United States appears disgruntled by Israel’s intransigent ongoing colonization of Palestinian land, at least on Capitol Hill, Netanyahu can still play the ace up his sleeve to aplomb and then chum around like the king of the castle.
There on Capitol Hill, Netanyahu still has friends like Senator Chuck Schumer, who told a Jewish radio program that “One of my roles, very important in the United States Senate, is to be a shomer [guard]—to be a or the shomer Yisrael [guard of Israel]. And I will continue to be that with every bone in my body.” With friends like these wrapped around his little finger, no wonder Netanyahu’s forcible denunciations of international law were met with such rapturous approbation by Members of Congress who applauded his rejectionism dozens of times.
Justin Elliot lists the lines of Netanyahu’s speech that won 29 standing ovations.
Dennis Ross: Netanyahu’s man in the White House
The New York Times reports:
Mr. Ross is the most senior member of a coterie of American diplomats who have advised presidents stretching back to Ronald Reagan. Unlike many of his colleagues, Mr. Ross has thrived in Republican and Democratic administrations.
“Dennis is viewed as the éminence grise, a sort of Rasputin who casts a spell over secretaries of state and presidents,” said Aaron David Miller, a Middle East expert who has worked with him over several administrations and says he is an admirer. “But in the end, it’s the president who makes the ultimate decisions.”
Denis R. McDonough, the deputy national security adviser, said: “Dennis brings to the discussion a recognition of the vital importance of peace to the parties, but also to the United States. He’s in many ways dedicated much of his professional life to getting there.”
Mr. Ross initially began his tenure in the Obama administration as a senior Iran policy maker at the State Department. But in the summer of 2009, just a few months into his job at State, Mr. Ross moved to the White House, where he kept his Iran portfolio and eventually assumed a broader role that has allowed him to take part in developing Mr. Obama’s response to the upheavals in the Arab world.
His move came as the White House and Mr. Netanyahu were in a standoff over settlement construction. Over time, administration officials say, Mr. Ross took more of a role over Arab-Israeli policy. In September 2009, Mr. Obama abandoned his insistence on a settlement freeze in the face of Israeli recalcitrance.
“If Dennis Ross was in the inner circle in the early days, this administration would not have made that colossal settlements error,” Mr. Foxman said. “He would have said, ‘Don’t go there.’ ”
Once at the White House, Mr. Ross became invaluable, administration officials said, because of his close relationship not only with Mr. Netanyahu, but with the Israeli prime minister’s top peace negotiator, Yitzhak Molcho.
Mr. Ross demonstrated his growing influence last October, when the administration was pressing Mr. Netanyahu to agree to a three-month extension of his moratorium on settlement construction. Mr. Netanyahu balked.
So Mr. Ross devised a generous package of incentives for Israel that included 20 American fighter jets, other security guarantees, and an American pledge to oppose United Nations resolutions on Palestinian statehood. Many Middle East analysts expressed surprise that the administration would offer so much to Israel in return for a one-time, 90-day extension of a freeze.
Obama makes peace with AIPAC
If there’s one way of registering that President Obama could be saying something of significance while he’s addressing AIPAC, it’s during those passages when he gets no applause.
This morning he got plenty of applause when he assured the pro-Israel lobby that a negotiated border between Israel and a Palestinian state will not end up being the 1967 border.
But when he outlined the degree to which the regional and wider international environment has changed and implicitly acknowledged that Israel and the US are out of step with these changes, the audience was silent.
[A] new generation of Arabs is reshaping the region. A just and lasting peace can no longer be forged with one or two Arab leaders. Going forward, millions of Arab citizens have to see that peace is possible for that peace to be sustained.
And just as the context has changed in the Middle East, so too has it been changing in the international community over the last several years. There’s a reason why the Palestinians are pursuing their interests at the United Nations. They recognize that there is an impatience with the peace process, or the absence of one, not just in the Arab World — in Latin America, in Asia, and in Europe. And that impatience is growing, and it’s already manifesting itself in capitals around the world.
Before Obama arrived at the Washington DC convention center where AIPAC is assembled, AIPAC supporters gathered outside were heard yelling through a bullhorn: “Kill Obama.” I’ve seen no reports of anyone getting arrested for trying to incite the assassination of the president.
Ron Kampeas summed up the mood in this way: “When Obama is in the room, AIPAC is supportive. When he is out of the room, skeptical.”
Earlier, Reuters reported:
Some prominent Jewish Americans are rethinking their support for President Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election bid after he effectively called on Israel to give back territory it has occupied since 1967 to Palestinians.
The backlash after Obama’s keynote speech on the Middle East has Democratic Party operatives scrambling to mollify the Jewish community as the president prepares to seek a second term in the White House.
Obama on Thursday called for any new Palestinian state to respect the borders as they were in 1967, prompting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to tell him bluntly that his vision of how to achieve Middle East peace was unrealistic.
“He has in effect sought to reduce Israel’s negotiation power and I condemn him for that,” former New York Mayor Ed Koch told Reuters.
Koch said he might not campaign or vote for Obama if Republicans nominate a pro-Israel candidate who offers an alternative to recent austere budgetary measures backed by Republicans in Congress.
Koch donated $2,300 to Obama’s campaign in 2008, according to filings with the Federal Election Commission.
“I believed that then-Senator Obama would be as good as John McCain based on his statements at the time and based on his support of Israel. It turns out I was wrong,” he said.
Despite the stormy reaction to Obama’s remarks, some commentators noted talk of the 1967 borders was nothing new.
“This has been the basic idea for at least 12 years. This is what Bill Clinton, Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat were talking about at Camp David, and later, at Taba,” Jeffrey Goldberg wrote on The Atlantic website.
“This is what George W. Bush was talking about with Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert. So what’s the huge deal here?”
Exit polls from the 2008 election showed 78 percent of Jewish voters chose Obama over his Republican rival Senator McCain.
“I have spoken to a lot of people in the last couple of days — former supporters — who are very upset and feel alienated,” billionaire real estate developer and publisher Mortimer Zuckerman said.
“He’ll get less political support, fewer activists for his campaign, and I am sure that will extend to financial support as well.”
The borders of Auschwitz
David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, had he not died before 1967, would surely have been disappointed to hear it said that he and fellow Zionists who fought to create a Jewish state had such meager success that in its first two decades of existence, Israel was barely an improvement on Auschwitz.
It’s hard to know who should be more offended by that assessment: the victims of the Holocaust or Israel’s founders?
In his response to President Obama’s suggestion that Israel should — with mutually agreed land swaps with Palestinians — retreat to its 1967 borders, Benjamin Netanyahu says that such a move would place Israel behind “indefensible” borders.
Netanyahu is alluding to a phrase now employed by many on the right that he himself once invoked: “the borders of Auschwitz.”
In the New York Times, Robert Mackey and Elizabeth Harris explain:
That resonant phrase, which suggests that Israelis would face genocide should they withdraw fully from the land they have occupied since the end of the 1967 war, is based on a mangled version of a remark made by the Israeli diplomat Abba Eban in 1969. According to Haaretz, Mr. Eban told the German newsweekly Der Spiegel in that year: “We have openly said that the map will never again be the same as on June 4, 1967. For us, this is a matter of security and of principles. The June map is for us equivalent to insecurity and danger. I do not exaggerate when I say that it has for us something of a memory of Auschwitz.”
Israeli leaders have frequently used some version of this phrase to invoke the existential dread of the Holocaust when pressed to withdraw from the occupied territories as part of a peace agreement.
In 2002, Ariel Sharon told William Safire that a proposed Saudi peace plan was unacceptable because, “Israel cannot return to the ‘67 borders. Abba Eban long ago called them ‘Auschwitz borders’; Israel would not be able to exist.”
A decade earlier, when another Israeli leader, Yitzhak Shamir, expressed his outrage when the administration of President George H. W. Bush called for a freeze on Jewish settlements in the occupied territories — in exchange for $10 billion in American loan guarantees — The Times reported that a senior official in the prime minister’s office, a young Benjamin Netanyahu, complained that Israel was being asked to accept, “the borders of Auschwitz.”
Writing about the use and abuse of this phrase in 2007, the Haaretz columnist Bradley Burston observed that the right-wing Israeli politicians who had frequently invoked Mr. Eban to support their refusal to cede territory were less likely to mention another of his famous maxims: “Israel’s birth is intrinsically and intimately linked with the idea of sharing territory and sovereignty.”
For many Israelis the words “Arabs” and “peace” can’t be combined
Mark Perry writes:
We have before us the example of George Orwell, the eccentric British author of 1984, whose real name was Eric Blair. What’s interesting about Orwell (or, perhaps, simply predictable) is that he adopted his pen name to save his respectable parents the disgrace of having to admit that their son didn’t work for a living, but was (oh, the humiliation) . . . a writer. And the irony: this same Orwell spent years toiling over a story whose theme is that it’s possible to erase the past by a simple act of denial. Thus, Winston Smith (“1984″‘s main character) is told in a torture chamber of the “Ministry of Love” that his belief that his country, “Oceania” was, at one time, not at war with Eastasia is a delusion: “Oceania is at war with Eastasia,” he is told. “Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.”
Orwell would tell us that those who read “1984” and put it aside in relief (“thank God we don’t live in a world like that”), miss the point. The past is altered continuously, even perniciously–and now (some 63 years after the book’s publication) no more constantly than when it comes to the Middle East. “Mubarak is a moderate,” “we have always supported democracy in Egypt” and “the Arabs aren’t interested in peace” are perhaps not as insidious as “Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia,” but they’re damned close. The beauty of these phrases (as Winston Smith learned) is that if you utter them often enough, they actually become true. Hence, we described former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak as a moderate so often that we actually came to believe it–and were taken by surprise when we discovered the Egyptian people didn’t agree. So? So now we’re worried that the current revolution will deny the Egyptian people their fundamental rights. Unlike with Mubarak–who was chock full of them.
Human beings are good at this kind of thing, as it turns out, because adopting these phrases (“we have always supported democracy in Egypt”) helps us evade responsibility for the state of the world. Then too, it’s easier to follow the script than to utter the truth–“Mubarak is a tyrant, but what the hell, we supported him anyway,” “we’ve never given a fig for democracy in Egypt” and (finally) “it’s not the Arabs who aren’t interested in peace, but Israel.” It’s this last phrase that seems most pertinent now, when the-take-it-or-leave-it 2002 Arab Peace Initiative is being discussed (again), as a possible resolution of the Arab-Israel (and, hence, the Palestinian-Israeli) conflict.
How Jewish supremacists created Israel
During an era in which Israel is used to getting a free ride in the Israel-friendly American press, it’s worth recalling that it wasn’t always like this.
Clifton Daniel went on to become the New York Times‘ managing editor, but back in 1947 he was the paper’s Middle East correspondent and reported from Jerusalem on the Zionists’ rise to power — an ascent that was assured because Western Jews shared the same form of superiority that other Western colonialists exercised in asserting control over the rest of the Middle East, his informants told this reporter.
If Zionists and their allies these days are tireless in declaring that Israel is the historic homeland of the Jewish people, the Jews who actually created Israel were in no doubt that they are engaged in an enterprise of colonization. Jewish settlers, outnumbered by the indigenous population, would only be able to take control of Palestine through a program of Jewish domination. They intended to assert power through persuasion if possible, but by force if necessary.
PALESTINE JEWS MINIMIZE ARABS
Sure of Superiority, Settlers Feel They Can Win Natives by Reason or Force
By Clifton Daniel
Special to THE NEW YORK TIMESJERUSALEM, March 19 — Palestine’s Zionists are generally confident that relations with their Arab neighbors can be satisfactorily adjusted once the country’s political status has been settled.
If not confident, they rarely allow themselves to be troubled by the problem, being usually preoccupied with issues they consider more urgent. That attitude, which has been manifested in numerous conversations that I have had in the past three weeks with everyday citizens of all degrees, has developed in spite of the fact that the presence of the Arab majority is fundamentally the largest obstacle to the achievement of Zionism’s national aims.
It is an attitude shared by almost everyone, no matter which of the many proposed political solutions he may advocate. A non-party professional man of Rehovoth summarized it when he said: “Give use time, give us peace and give us a policy.”
Surprised at Mention
Talking to Jews in ordinary walks of life — not Zionist leaders — one gets the impression that relations with the Arabs are not among there major concerns. Some were even surprised that in the present circumstances the subject should be discussed.
Their unconcern seems to be the product of several factors. First of all, they feel, although not boastfully, that as a people they are superior to the Arabs in skill and education. “Look at an Arab village and a Jewish settlement side by side,” one of them remarked recently. “There is a difference of 200 or 300 years.”
Another man stated the difference even more bluntly when he described the Western Jew as bearing the same relation to the Oriental Arab as the white man to the native in a colonial system. Some of the chauvinistic youth carry this feeling of superiority so far as to despise the Arab as an inferior.
Whatever the degree of their superiority complex, however, the Jews are certainly confident of their ability to bring the Arabs to terms — by persuasion if possible, by might if necessary. The program of the largest terrorist group, the Irgun Zvai Leumi, is to evacuate the British forces from Palestine and declare a Zionist state west of the Jordan, and “we will take care of the Arabs.”
Some of this confidence may be whistling in the dark. In any case the usual emphasis is not on might but persuasion. There appears to be a sincere belief among Zionists that their settlement in Palestine has conferred large and tangible benefits on the indigenous population. Everyone can cite an example from their own experience.
“I would be deceiving you if I told you that we are consciously thinking about improving the condition of the Arabs all the time,” one man told me. “Naturally we devote our first and best efforts to our own people coming from Europe. We help the Arabs incidentally — largely by example. As a result of our example they are freeing themselves from feudalism.”
Sure Arabs Are Grateful
The Zionists are convinced that the Arabs are grateful for the improvements introduced by Jews and would so express themselves if not incited by the politicians to make a show of hostility.
Wherever Arabs are left to their own inclinations, Zionists frequently tell you, they show themselves friendly. They make a ceremony of welcoming new Jewish settlements, often bringing coffee and food on the first day. They sit side by side with Jews in public markets, work in Jewish enterprises, buy from Jewish stores in spite of the Arabs’ anti-Zionist boycott, and deal with Jewish banks. Their inherent willingness to get along with Jews is the primary article of the Zionists’ faith.
Nevertheless, Arab-Jewish relations are admitted by Zionists to be almost entirely commercial. The relationship is usually one of buyer and seller, employer and employee. The cultural gulf, Zionists say, is such that social relationships are virtually impossible. Simple country Arabs sometimes invite their Jewish neighbors to their traditional festivities but the invitations are admittedly seldom returned.
Look for Common Interests
“Wherever there are common interests relations are good,” one Zionist observed. A young skilled workman who had joined his Arab colleagues in a strike against the Iraq Petroleum Company in Haifa explained his cooperation by saying: “We have common interests.”
There is a belief that areas of common interest would be enlarged if the political irritant could be removed from Arab-Jewish relations.
A leader of the diamond industry in Tel Aviv contended that substantially enlarging the Jewish community in Palestine was the only way of coming to a settlement with the Arabs. His theory was that the Arabs would either ignore or try to crush a numerically inferior community and that immigration was the only means of bettering the Zionists’ bargaining position.
Neither he nor virtually any other Zionist with whom I talked would consider being subject to the Arab majority in Palestine. They wish to feel secure in their culture, religion and economy and to be free to develop a Zionist national home in their own way without restrictions.
Some Jews in Palestine have already attained that feeling of freedom from the restrictive presence of Arabs. In Nevah Ilan the Arab problem did not seem to exist for the young, husky French settlers, mostly veterans of the resistance.
Nevah Ilan, established four months ago, is almost literally up in the clouds, and the Arabs are far below. Eager, enthusiastic and optimistic, the settlers are absorbed in the task of restoring life to a barren but beautiful hill. Almost their only contact with their neighbors has been one visit by an Arab, who showed great interest in their plans and methods.
Tel Aviv Self-Contained
The all-Jewish metropolis of Tel Aviv is self-contained and separated from the rest of the country. The average resident has no daily contact with the majority element of the country — a fact that is probably true of most Jews in Palestine.
Tel Aviv residents do not worry about the Arab problem, a young journalist there said. They do not consider it insurmountable.
“Perhaps we do not have enough contact with the Arabs,” a business man mused somewhat self-reproachingly.
(Thanks to Yousef Munayyer at The Jerusalem Fund for featuring this New York Times article in this post.)