Land Grabs in Jerusalem
Ethan Bronner and Isabel Kershner have an interesting report in The New York Times:
Israel is quietly carrying out a $100 million, multiyear development plan in some of the most significant religious and national heritage sites just outside the walled Old City here as part of an effort to strengthen the status of Jerusalem as its capital.
The plan, parts of which have been outsourced to a private group that is simultaneously buying up Palestinian property for Jewish settlement in East Jerusalem, has drawn almost no public or international scrutiny. However, certain elements related to it — the threatened destruction of unauthorized Palestinian housing in the redevelopment areas, for example — have brought widespread condemnation.
In Israel’s presentation of itself to the United States, it typically portrays itself as desperately seeking a peaceful accommodation with the Palestinians, and full of regret that internal political developments on the Palestinian side make it impossible to strike a deal. These sorts of actions, however, are the actions of a government that actually welcomes such adverse political developments on the Palestinian side because they alleviate pressure on Israel to reach a peaceful accommodation with the Palestinians. Absent such pressure, these continued efforts at land grabs can continue apace.
Meanwhile, to be clear the issue is not the right of a Jewish state to have a capital located in Jerusalem. The issue is that state’s efforts to monopolize Jerusalem rather than allow a portion of it to become an independent Palestinian city. Needless to say, all this is incredibly short-sighted. A Jewish state that controls a larger portion of Jerusalem at the price of condemning itself to long-run collapse is not worth very much. Israel’s self-presentation as a peace-seeking state is something it would do well to turn into reality.
100 Responses to “Land Grabs in Jerusalem”
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May 10th, 2009 at 11:37 am
You might want to look into how that Hyatt (owned by the family of Obama’s campaign finance head, Penny Pritzker) got built.
May 10th, 2009 at 11:38 am
Matt is surrendering to the liberal fringe extremist view. Welcome to the dark side, young Yglesias.
May 10th, 2009 at 11:55 am
Yglesias may (or may not) be a smart guy. But as I’ve pointed out before he’d make a lousy lawyer. His idea of negotiating appears to be to announce your bottom line beforehand as well as surrendering all levers or chips beyond that. A lawyer who negotiated for Yglesias on this basis would be liable to sanction for failure to carry out his responsibilities to his client.
This doesn’t prove that Israel prefers to “[control] a larger portion of Jerusalem at the price of condemning itself to long-run collapse…” It prefers to be in the strongest possible position regarding Jerusalem for all contingincies, whether (as I imagine we both hope) serious negotiations commence, or, less happily, they don’t. That isn’t a moral catastrophe. It’s a Captain Renault moment out of Casablanca.
May 10th, 2009 at 12:01 pm
Needless to say, all this is incredibly short-sighted.
Interestingly, Israel has engaged in this ’short sighted’ policy for quite a long time.
May 10th, 2009 at 12:03 pm
Oh, it’s Larry Eichmann-Birnbaum again. Hey Larry, I got an idea for you. Maybe the Israelis should just start exterminating Palestinians – that will certainly help their negotiating position.
Die in a fire, moral monster.
May 10th, 2009 at 12:05 pm
For the two states to exist they both need reasonable private property rights and they will have very co-mingled economic transactions, a sort of common market. If we look at the maturity of both states, and their immediate past, one would suspect that the Palestine state is more unable to support free exchange of private property.
May 10th, 2009 at 12:08 pm
Re Larry Birnbaum
Mr. Yglesias labors under the delusion that the way to arrive at a peace settlement with the Fraudistanians is to be nice to them. Unfortunately, the Fraudistinians don’t understand nice. They consider nice to be weakness. The Fraudistinians must be shown strength which may eventually convince them to stop their terrorist and revanchist activities and come to the negotiating table with something less then a demand that the Government of Israel agree to go out of business.
May 10th, 2009 at 12:09 pm
Re vor
Mr. vor is a goatfucking piece of filth who would fuck his mother if he knew who she was.
May 10th, 2009 at 12:18 pm
SLC,
But since he doesn’t know, he made do with your mother instead.
Seriously, are you even capable of respectable debate?
May 10th, 2009 at 12:21 pm
How insane are you?! A possibly hostile entity, a polity with independence in your most holy city?
May 10th, 2009 at 12:21 pm
Israel has what it claims it wants on the West Bank–a regime that recognizes Israel, excludes Hamas, collaborates obsequiously, and helps maintain a low rate of violence against Israelis. Yet rather than negotiating peace with the PA, it continues to whine about Hamas, come up with bullshit preconditions like “recognition as a Jewish state” and take more land. (Interestingly, Israel isn’t taking land in the Gaza strip. Perhaps all Israel understands is violence?) Since it’s not moving any closer to final status negotiations with the PA, we can conclude that Israel isn’t interested in “peace” with the Palestinians.
May 10th, 2009 at 12:22 pm
Meta-comment about Israeli-Palestinian discussions
Someone at thinkprogress ought to check the ip numbers of the combatants here. I suspect that “sock puppets” are in play.
May 10th, 2009 at 12:23 pm
The only reason I even read the comments on Matt’s I/P posts is to see how long it takes the usual flamers to show up. Twenty-six minutes this time–do you guys do anything other than sit around waiting for opportunities to write this crap?
May 10th, 2009 at 12:24 pm
Re SS
Apparently, Mr. SS considers that someone who calls for someone to die in a fire to be conducting a respectable debate.
May 10th, 2009 at 12:26 pm
@Jeff Davis- There’s an opportunity to make a funny joke about “IP numbers” here, but I’m not coming up with any winners.
May 10th, 2009 at 12:28 pm
Re William Burns
Mr. Burns would command more respect if he were not a supporter of the Palestinian demand that the Government of Israel agree to go out of business.
Re James Gary
No.
May 10th, 2009 at 12:28 pm
We can also conclude that refusal to repudiate a long discredited anti-Semitic text and the refusal to recognize an entity that has de facto power on whether they receive sovereignty also indicates that the PLA and Hamas aren’t interested in “peace” with Israel. Then there’s the whole firing rockets in another nation’s territory thing.
May 10th, 2009 at 12:31 pm
I await the day that Matt sees the error of his ways, moves back to wherever his ancestors came from, and yields his property to whoever the descendents of the pre-1492 inhabitants are.
Oh, wait – land grabs were ok then, because CNN cameras weren’t there at the time…
May 10th, 2009 at 12:37 pm
SLC,
While I admire your tough-mindedness and your courageous willingness to defy the politically correct idiocies of our time, I must disagree with you here. Israel must make concessions to the Palestinians if she is ever to achieve a two state solution. If you want a Jewish State- and you have every right to- then the Palestinians must have a right to their state as well. You don’t have to like it, and you’re free to call them Fraudestinians, but unfortunately we have to deal with lots of things we don’t like.
May 10th, 2009 at 12:44 pm
Larry Birnbaum, even bad lawyers know that successful negotiations require good faith on both sides. In this case, land grabs demonstrate bad faith. So successful negotiations become less likely and long-run collapse seems more likely.
On the other hand, an admission from Hamas that they would accept a long-term, two-state solution would be to announce their bottom line beforehand. They’re maintaining all their “levers and chips”, including some crude rockets and ploys for public sympathy. So I guess they would make good lawyers?
May 10th, 2009 at 12:51 pm
‰e duckhawk
On the other hand, an admission from Hamas that they would accept a long-term, two-state solution would be to announce their bottom line beforehand.
The mistake that Mr. duckhawk is making is in assuming that the Hamas declarations that they will never accept anything less then the Government of Israel agreeing to go out of business is just a negotiating ploy, an opening bid as it were. Unfortunately, he is seriously in error. This is not their opening bid, it is their nonnegotiable demand.
May 10th, 2009 at 1:01 pm
The reality is, when Egypt accepted the existence of Israel, it got the Sinai back. That example is sitting there for the Palestinians to ponder, if they actually cared. Based on all of their statements and actions though, they don’t; they still believe that they can achieve their maximal position of eradicating Israel and having it all. Until they no longer believe that, all the negotiations are is a useless kabuki dance.
Ultimately, one of the two sides (or both) has to lose hope in their maximal positions being achievable. That’s unlikely to happen through negotiations alone; I strongly suspect that it will take a full scale war to pound that idea into their skulls. Which is not to say that I’m hoping for that war; it will be profoundly destabilizing for everyone. I’m just pessimistic.
May 10th, 2009 at 1:05 pm
This is what happens when a western system of land title gets dropped on a region where property rights are mainly customary. (As Hernando da Soto — the modern one — notes, the advantage of title is that it can be used to secure loans.
This isn’t simply a modern version of “do you have a flag?”, regardless of what Robertson claims. Instead, it’s a revisionist attempt not only to strip away the historic identity of Jerusalem’s Old City, but to frame it as a short period of squatting on Jewish land, or to pretend that it never existed in the first place.
One of the seamier bits of the acquisitions here is that it’s often done under false fronts, with little disclosure and anonymous investors, and in the case of St John’s Hospice, with secret money from the Israeli government.
As the piece notes, it’s also often done in the name of archaeology, which actually annoys Israel’s serious archaologists. Say you’re looking for Solomonic remains? Dig up everything from the past 3000 years — doesn’t matter if you don’t find a thing! You can just put down a bunch of condos for settlers wanting to create another bit of Jersey on the Levant.
May 10th, 2009 at 1:05 pm
Re SLC
I can’t read minds, so what you say about Hamas is possible. But my point in (20) was that the land grabs are poor policy if their ultimate goal is successful negotiations. So are Hamas’ demands. Larry’s “lawyer” metaphors aren’t helpful here.
May 10th, 2009 at 1:11 pm
duckhawk, (i) you’re right that negotiations require good faith. I don’t agree that land grabs represent bad faith. They do make things harder for the Palestinians, which is to say they impose a cost on them for maintaining the status quo. I’d be very unhappy about that if I were a Palestinian. But it doesn’t seem to me to be bad faith. (ii) If Hamas wishes to renege on the previous Palestinian commitments that the end result of negotiations is a two-state resolution — which they have in fact done — then it isn’t clear what there is to negotiate about. I suppose in that case Israel could renege on its commitment that the end result of negotiations is intended to be a two state resolution — and you’ll notice that the Netanyahu government is now hedging about this — and then they could negotiate a new framework for negotiation in which both sides recognize (again) that the goal of the negotiations is a two-state resolution. That isn’t good lawyering since it will merely recapitulate ground already gone over. Or maybe they won’t reach that agreement, in which case there won’t be any further negotiations at all.
I actually agree with Hector and disagree with SLC (although I understand his sentiments). Whatever the history that brought us to this state, the Palestinians should be called by the name the call themselves, and their rights to national self-determination within secure and recognized boundaries, consistent with Israel’s, must be respected.
James Gary, it seems at least as productive as waiting around to time comments. Unless maybe you bet on it with people or something.
vor calls me Eichmann, which in his mind isn’t hate speech at all, apparently — or maybe he just doesn’t care whether it is or isn’t, since he also enjoins me to “die in fire” as a “moral monster,” which seems pretty hateful to me, and considers my position equivalent to exterminating entire civilian populations. That’s how some people get their rocks off I guess.
May 10th, 2009 at 1:22 pm
Regarding James Robertson and his fashionable if moronic cynicism.
“I await the day that Matt sees the error of his ways, moves back to wherever his ancestors came from, and yields his property to whoever the descendents of the pre-1492 inhabitants are. Oh, wait – land grabs were ok then, because CNN cameras weren’t there at the time…”
I’m sure that Mr. Robertson will be quite okay with hooligans throwing him out of his house, after all, might makes right. Mr. Robertson is correct when he points out that historically, pretty much ever taking of land was a matter of theft. The establishment of the United States, and the European colonization of the Americas was more of same.
But of course, the discussion is childish. Mr. Robertson’s actual moral position is ‘my guys R gooder & those guys R bad.”
He doesn’t really believe in this, he’s just being irrationally partisan, and rather selectively oblivious of the history he purports to quote.
“The reality is, when Egypt accepted the existence of Israel, it got the Sinai back. That example is sitting there for the Palestinians to ponder, if they actually cared. Based on all of their statements and actions though, they don’t; they still believe that they can achieve their maximal position of eradicating Israel and having it all. Until they no longer believe that, all the negotiations are is a useless kabuki dance.”
Just today, Israel has ruled out returning captured territory to Syria in exchange for peace. It seems that this is no longer on the table for the Syrians to ponder. I have no idea why Mr. Robertson would see this as being on the table for the Palestinians.
Mr. Robertson also ignores Israel bad faith in terms of settlements and land grabs in this Kabuki dance.
“Ultimately, one of the two sides (or both) has to lose hope in their maximal positions being achievable. That’s unlikely to happen through negotiations alone; I strongly suspect that it will take a full scale war to pound that idea into their skulls. Which is not to say that I’m hoping for that war; it will be profoundly destabilizing for everyone. I’m just pessimistic.”
Triumph of the Will, eh? Mr. Robertson should write a book. He could call it ‘My Struggle’ and fill it with all sorts of racialist nonsense and semi-mystical tripe about will and determination and pounding ideas into recalcitrant skulls, and of course the purifying and clarifying power of war. Honestly, it’s been sixty years now, and this nonsense persistently refuses to go away.
Mr. Robertson has some notion that Israel can solve its problems with total war upon the Palestinians, who lack army, air force, territory, logistics or many of the prerequisites of a state. He envisions a solution in apocalyptic blather. Sorry, its not on.
The reality is that war is merely demographics played faster. The truth of Israel is that it is in demographic decline and economically unsustainable. The Palestinian population continues to grow, and frankly, is not afforded any other options.
As always, I’m so impressed by the civility, deep insight, and sincere desire for a solution expressed by such parties as SLC, Larry Birnbaum, Vor and others.
May 10th, 2009 at 1:26 pm
So thievery doesn’t indicate bad faith.
So then, you’re just a fucking idiot. this aint a court of law, the peace table isn’t the place to pull this kind of shit.
May 10th, 2009 at 1:33 pm
Larry Birnbaum writes:
(i) you’re right that negotiations require good faith. I don’t agree that land grabs represent bad faith.
That argument is sufficiently preposterous that Mr. Birmbaum would be obliged to actually make his case, or be considered to be arguing in bad faith.
They do make things harder for the Palestinians, which is to say they impose a cost on them for maintaining the status quo. I’d be very unhappy about that if I were a Palestinian. But it doesn’t seem to me to be bad faith.
As I understand his argument, it is not bad faith to negotiate with Palestinians while at the same time undermining the viability of the underlying subject of negotiatons. I’m sorry, but this isn’t about anything else but bad faith. This is Sopranos negotiation. This is extortion as a negotiating tactic. I don’t think that you could apply this tactic to any other situation and Mr. Birnbaum would uphold it.
I’d have to say that Mr. Birnbaum, consciously or not, is being utterly disingenuous here.
(ii) If Hamas wishes to renege on the previous Palestinian commitments that the end result of negotiations is a two-state resolution — which they have in fact done — then it isn’t clear what there is to negotiate about.
Well, Israel is not negotiating with Hamas. But Hamas is not in control of the West Bank, and yet, Israel consistently undermines Abbas who they claim to negotiate with.
Again, I find Mr. Birnbaum’s gratuitious diversion to Hamas to be more symptomatic of evasion and dishonest debating tactics than any form of intellectual integrity.
In the end, Mr. Birnbaum seems to be a slightly more refined version of SLC, but not appreciably more coherent.
May 10th, 2009 at 1:38 pm
I think a more sensible negotiating strategy is that Israel hasn’t forced the Palestinians enough. If Israel were more brazen about not extending the dignities of statehood to the terrorist government supported by the Palestinians, then Israel’s current position would be seen as the natural equilibrium, rather than the current push towards a diplomatic acquiescence of the barbarism of Hamas and its suicide bombers. They should tender a clear message in the same type of language Hamas’ and its ilk employ: using big guns, and sticks.
To effectively negotiate, one needs to provide a prize backed by some threat; Hamas rightly understand the current Israeli policies of containment as weak and toothless. Thus, they are tempted into this kabuki dance of slyly offering nothing tangible, because they realize there is little cost to defecting until the next round while gaining significant concessions.
May 10th, 2009 at 1:41 pm
I actually agree with Hector and disagree with SLC (although I understand his sentiments).
This is the problem: an Israel that talks like Larry Birnbaum but “understands” SLC is basically an Israel that’s engaged in ethnic cleansing under the auspices of survival, but hasn’t the stones to admit it.
Admittedly, SLC is neither Jewish nor a friend of Israel, and is just a crazy old man with a fetish for dead Arab porn, but he’s really just the unvarnished face of the land-grab bingo billionaires, crazy Christians and frontier nutjobs that represent the expansionist doctrine.
May 10th, 2009 at 1:45 pm
The Palestinian population is actually growing, which is serious people don’t take leftists like Pseudonymous in NC at their word when they claim “ethnic cleansing”.
May 10th, 2009 at 1:47 pm
Does it bother anyone that the notion of “Palestinians” as a separate national group from Jordanians, Egyptians and Syrians (which is what they are) was coined in the late 1960s?
Kind of like “Freedom Fries” or “Islamo-fascism.”
Calling them “Palestinians” would be like calling Texans “Texistinians” and implying the people of Texas deserve their own country because they’re not Americans.
I support the two state solution, and I support creating a Palestinian nation, but lets not kid ourselves. “Palestine” is a fictional nationality made up mostly of Jordanians and Egyptians that neither Jordan nor Egypt want to let relocate into their countries.
May 10th, 2009 at 1:53 pm
Re Den Valdron
Well, Israel is not negotiating with Hamas. But Hamas is not in control of the West Bank, and yet, Israel consistently undermines Abbas who they claim to negotiate with.
The only reason that the Hamas terrorists are not in control of the West Bank is because Israel, the US, and the EU are propping up the Abbas government. Remove that prop and Hamas takes over tomorrow.
The reality is that war is merely demographics played faster. The truth of Israel is that it is in demographic decline and economically unsustainable.
The State of Israel will be around long after Mr. Valdron has shuffled off this mortal coil. The fact is that the economic growth rate of the Israeli economy has been one of the fastest in the world over the last 20 years.
May 10th, 2009 at 1:55 pm
Palestinian Arabs, Armenian Christians, Bedouins and other ethnic groups have been forcibly removed from where they used to live, which is why serious people read Billare’s comments and immediately apprehend that he is a fucking moron.
May 10th, 2009 at 1:59 pm
And if Israel judges these groups to valid security threats, what then, poopyhead?
May 10th, 2009 at 2:02 pm
Mr. Billare states, in a somewhat more polite way, what I have been saying on this blog for months. The current policy of the Government of Israel of weakness isn’t working, hasn’t worked in the past and won’t work in the future. What is required is an application of Hama Rules which worked well for Hafaz Assad in convincing the terrorists in the City of Hama of the error of their ways. The recent Gaza operation is an example of weakness. 1300 Hamas terrorists had their tickets canceled in 3 weeks. Dictator Assad exterminated that many in the first 1/2 hour of his Hama operation.
May 10th, 2009 at 2:06 pm
“Palestine” is a fictional nationality made up mostly of Jordanians and Egyptians that neither Jordan nor Egypt want to let relocate into their countries.
That is absolutely not true. The Egyptian bit is embarassingly wrong headed.
May 10th, 2009 at 2:08 pm
SLC, I have repeatedly asked you to explain on basis you believe that Hamas’s stated position that it will never recognize Israel is deeply held and nonnegotiable but Likud’s stated position that it will never recognize a Palestinian state is merely a negotiating ploy. Since you have yet to respond, I have to assume that you have no reasonable basis for this belief.
May 10th, 2009 at 2:13 pm
Re SLC
Dear me, you’re tedious.
Resume your preferred hobby of fucking dead pigs: Billare is clearly willing to be slaughtered for the cause.
May 10th, 2009 at 2:18 pm
Also, I love the way SLC treats the Syrian military’s actions in Hama not as a horrific atrocity but as a baseline for acceptable behavior. As long as Israel doesn’t go beyond that, they’re OK. Of course, an Israeli nuclear first strike on Iran, which he has repeatedly advocated, would result in many orders of magnitude more deaths than Syria in Hama.
May 10th, 2009 at 2:23 pm
I wonder which topic, that I doubtlessly completely disagree with Pseudo on, would drive him to use the words “Dirty Sanchez” or “coprophilia” in a sentence. Guess I’ll have to work harder to find out?
May 10th, 2009 at 2:27 pm
“Does it bother anyone that the notion of “Palestinians” as a separate national group from Jordanians, Egyptians and Syrians (which is what they are) was coined in the late 1960s?”
Actually, the term ‘Palestinian’ dates back to just before Word War I. The first time the Palestinians demanded independence was in 1921. The demand was issued by the Syrian-Palestinian Congress. The term Syria- Palestine comes from the Roman ‘Syria Palaestina’, which is obviously a very old term. The term ‘Israeli’ dates back to 1948, when name ‘Israel’ was chosen as the name of the new country after other names were rejected. Prior to 1948, the Zionists called the land ‘Palestine.’ What bothers me is the attempt to erase the Palestinians from the pages of history.
May 10th, 2009 at 2:45 pm
Most nationalist and independence movements are quite recent — the last century or so. I don’t see why Palestinian Arabs are mere Arabs and Egyptians and Jordanians and Fakestinian, but Western Jews who launched a late 19th century nationalist movement are to be seen as so vastly different given a few decades’ precedence.
May 10th, 2009 at 3:24 pm
pseudonymous, if I’d ever heard you utter a word of criticism for the incredibly vile invective that is often heaped on Israel or its proponents, I might take the tiny grain of truth in the comment you make about my quote more seriously. There’s more than enough verbal provocation to go around. None of it anything other than acting out. The only interesting question is, what is being acted out.
May 10th, 2009 at 3:33 pm
@ fostert
Obviously the land was called “Palestine.” But the people who lived there were called either Arabs or Jews.
“Palestinians” — a term that came into vogue to create a sense of national persecution in the mid 1960s, was an attempt to create an indigenous nationality out of the Arab populace (made up of numerous other Nationalities) living in Israel.
I understand the desire, and all nationalities begin as fictional constructs at the beginning, so it’s not unusual.
It’s just important to note when and where it began. “Palestinians” as a nation, reached critical mass, as a concept, about 40 years ago.
May 10th, 2009 at 3:36 pm
For #13 James Gary who wrote:
The following GIYUS propaganda tool may already be known to you, but just in case…
Defending the indefensible.
May 10th, 2009 at 3:50 pm
Re Chris D
The actions of the Syrian Army in the City of Hama in 1982 were certainly brutal but they were also effective. The Islamic terrorists that were setting off bombs in Damascus and other Syrian cities have ceased and desisted from those activities since that time, having been taught a lesson they will never forget. However, before point fingers at Israel and Syria, we should note that the US actions in Iraq have killed at least 10 times as many people as who were killed in Hama and 150 times as many as were killed in the Gaza Strip during the December 2008 action.
Re larry Birnbaum
Mr. Pseudonymous in nc is a perfect example of white trash, which is mostly what populates the Eastern US south of the Occaquan.
May 10th, 2009 at 3:51 pm
Zionism is a disgrace.
May 10th, 2009 at 3:58 pm
““Palestinians” — a term that came into vogue to create a sense of national persecution in the mid 1960s, was an attempt to create an indigenous nationality out of the Arab populace (made up of numerous other Nationalities) living in Israel.”
Except that they were calling themselves ‘Palestinians’ in the 1920’s, before there was a country called ‘Israel.’ And they were demanding independence from England, not Israel, which did not yet exist. As for the “nationalities” of the Palestinians, well, they were subjects of the Ottoman Empire when they first started using the term ‘Palestinian.’ And then they were subjects of the British Commonwealth. They were relatively homogeneous, unlike the Zionists, who came from all over the globe to settle in Palestine. The ‘Israeli’ identity is the one that is truly a fabrication. That doesn’t make it any less real, of course. It is truly amazing that such a diverse group of Jewish settlers could ever come together and form a new identity with such success.
May 10th, 2009 at 4:00 pm
Re fostert
They were relatively homogeneous, unlike the Zionists, who came from all over the globe to settle in Palestine.
Just like the folks who populated the United States of America!
May 10th, 2009 at 4:08 pm
Does it bother anyone that the notion of “Palestinians” as a separate national group from Jordanians, Egyptians and Syrians (which is what they are) was coined in the late 1960s?
You seem puzzled at the fact that indigenous national identity has coalesced in the face of foreign colonialism, when that has been the pattern throughout the world over the last 400 years.
May 10th, 2009 at 4:22 pm
Wow ugly thread today. Back on the small point at hand, it’s not even worth trying to spin this issue. It’s not complicated, more land grabs by the ethnicity with the power from the natives without the power to stop it. It’s illegal and immoral, but it’s hardly unique. In fact it’s depressingly common. For those who see Israel as an apartheid state, this is confirmation. For those who see Israel criticized when other far more brutal crimes than land appropriations are taking place all over the world, ditto. But really what’s actually happening in East Jerusalem isn’t disputed, despite all the vitriol.
May 10th, 2009 at 4:28 pm
Re abb1
Mr. abb1 is a piece of filth.
May 10th, 2009 at 4:37 pm
It’s just important to note when and where it began. “Palestinians” as a nation, reached critical mass, as a concept, about 40 years ago.
Even if this were true, it would hardly disadvantage “Palestinians” relative to “Israelis.”
This is actually one of the most disgustingly dishonest features of right-wing Zionist rhetoric. It’s nothing more than a revival of the “land without people” lie: oh, a land without people for a people without land, how nice, how perfect for the Jews!
This notion that the Arabs of historic Palestine had no real attachment or relation to the land of their ancestors, as long as they didn’t call themselves “Palestinians” is just pathetic. Only people whose hearts and minds have been completely corroded by evil think like this.
May 10th, 2009 at 4:42 pm
pseudonymous, if I’d ever heard you utter a word of criticism for the incredibly vile invective that is often heaped on Israel or its proponents, I might take the tiny grain of truth in the comment you make about my quote more seriously
Well, that’s nice of you. Let the fact that I neither acknowledge, cite or engage with the drive-by antisemites speak for itself. Am I meant to clean up after every “Zionism is racism” troll?
I do know that you’re very good at sugar-coating arguments that differ little from those which give SLC a micro-erection. If Israel and certain false friends of Israel want to buy up the land beneath the feet of non-Jews, they ought to do it openly; if they prefer to seize it, they should do that openly. All your talk about ‘negotiating points’ here and previously is really just a euphemistic rationalization for the latest laying out of ‘facts on the ground’.
re SLC
SLC is a perfect example of a demented old Russian pig-buggerer who spends his detumescent moments tediously shouting ‘Hama Rules!’ at phantoms in his head.
May 10th, 2009 at 4:49 pm
@54, there is no such thing as “right-wing Zionism” and therefore no “right-wing Zionist rhetoric”; like there’s no “right-wing Nazism”. Modern Zionism is what it is – militant racist movement; it has no wings.
Sure, they employ all kinds of rhetoric, for every sort of audience, but it’s not as if they had meaningful internal differences; Zionism is Zionism.
May 10th, 2009 at 5:03 pm
abb1, I simply disagree. As far as I’m concerned a Zionist is someone who supports the right of Jews to a national state. A right-wing Zionist is someone who thinks Palestinians have no such right and ought to disappear.
May 10th, 2009 at 5:25 pm
Demanding that a state is controlled by an ethnic group for the benefit of that ethnic group is racist, it’s that simple.
‘Jews’ are an ethnic group.
‘Palestinians’ are the population of the area called Palestine. It includes ethnic Jews who lived there before Zionists came from Europe and fucked it up.
May 10th, 2009 at 5:33 pm
Re: It includes ethnic Jews who lived there before Zionists came from Europe and fucked it up.
By ‘fucked it up’ you mean turned it into a thriving modern state with olive groves, citrus farms, industrial factories, roads and hospitals? As opposed to the quintessentially f*cked up ghetto-statelet that is Gaza (which would probably be even more f*cked up if it wasn’t for the relatively educated Christian minority, who of course the Jihadist yahoo-barbarians are trying their best to drive out).
May 10th, 2009 at 5:35 pm
As I’ve said before: go ahead, drive out the Jews. If you succeed in drving out the Jews and forcing them to relocate the Jewish State to Somalia or Kazakhstan, in fifty years Jewish Somalia will be a thriving, First World power. And the state that they left behind will be ever bit as much of a f*cked up hellhole as Gaza is now.
May 10th, 2009 at 5:51 pm
Jews plant olive groves there? Hmm, sorry, that’s not what I read in the newspapers.
Also, it’s no more thriving than Nazi Germany was thriving in, say, 1939. Some thriving while others starving behind the barbed wire. And which one you are is determined by a piece of paper issued by a government agency, based on who your parents are.
May 10th, 2009 at 5:59 pm
No… but you do engage with SLC despite putting him in the same rhetorical basket. I have some sympathy for him not because of his stated views but because I have a feeling he can’t deal with all the hatred he sees. Perhaps that sounds like special pleading. However I know for a fact that it’s sometimes difficult to cope with. You glide over it… not his stuff though.
In any case the point is that Israel aims to strengthen its position for negotiations… or in case they don’t succeed. Either scenario requires changing the actual state of the world. Real bargaining chips have to be… real. Not Potemkin settlements. Real settlements. Real facts on the ground. I don’t believe I’m sugar coating it. I don’t imagine there’s anything that will make this go down smoother for the Palestinians. They hate it. They are right to hate it. The question is what should they do about it. My answer is this: If they want a deal, they should make a deal sooner rather than later. It will be a better deal for them.
Yglesias isn’t sure the Israelis want a deal. I think what remains questionable is whether the Palestinians do.
May 10th, 2009 at 6:09 pm
Mr. Birnbaum,
If Israeli land grabs are justified as “bargaining chips” would a resumption of suicide bombings be an effective “bargaining chip” for the Palestinians? Cause what the PA’s doing now sure ain’t working.
May 10th, 2009 at 6:17 pm
Re abb1
Arabs in Israel live behind barbed wire? Apparently Mr. abb1 has never visited there. He would find that Arabs in Israel live better and have more freedoms then Arabs in most of the Arab World. As I have stated previously, this is not a pat on the back for Israel, it’s a sad commentary on the Arab World.
Re pseudonymous in nc
It is true that my family is originally from Russia (actually Ukraine) but we’ve been here (USA) for over 100 years.
Re Hector
In addition, it should be pointed out that Mr. abb1s’ hero, Hitler, drove out dozens of Jewish scientists who were largely responsible for the US and Britain beating Germany to the nuclear bomb. Talk about shooting oneself in the foot!
May 10th, 2009 at 8:39 pm
As I’ve said, Mr. Birnbaum is not materially different in kind from SLC. He’s merely a slightly more sophisticated version of same.
I would say that they are both men who have had the benefits of civilization and are remarkably willing to express selective contempt for same.
May 10th, 2009 at 10:11 pm
Only liberals would accuse Israel of a “land-grab” on their own sovereign territory.
This is straight up anti-semitism. Do not dance around it, or try and be shrill. No other country is subject to this harassment. I know you will get defensive about this. “Too many accusations of anti-semitism!” you will say. I am calling you out. This is the real thing.
The far-left hides and condones anti-semitism, and it is quite foul. Do you think your wonderful Arab friends support your values? They would have you all in chains if they had it their way. But keep on believing otherwise, and continue to be a laughing stock.
I share many liberal values. But I am constantly disgusted by the behavior of self-proclaimed liberals on this issue.
May 10th, 2009 at 10:47 pm
You spent of time thinking about this. Clearly.
Here’s the Israeli Jewish mostly academic-led organization criticizing the trend which is the subject matter of the post.
But, by all means, start calling people anti-semites and saying there’s no denying it before you have the slightest clue what you’re talking about.
May 10th, 2009 at 10:57 pm
Matt, what part of “fucking Zionists are lying sacks of shit” don’t you get – yet?
May 10th, 2009 at 10:59 pm
Um, is a Jewish state having a right/non right to have Jerusalem as its capital not an issue? The answer is clearly that it does not.
May 10th, 2009 at 11:01 pm
Transposed to words. That should be “Is the answer clearly that it does not?”
May 10th, 2009 at 11:11 pm
That’s not what is under discussion here. Israel of course can choose to have Jerusalem as its capital. And it can buy up private property as is being discussed.
The discussion, where it relates to contentious issues regarding Israel & the Palestinians, concerns what will happen to the Arab areas of Jerusalem, often referred to as East Jerusalem (see the map in the linked article), which is how the article cited and the Israeli organization mentioned above are contextualizing the buying up of properties outside the old city.
May 11th, 2009 at 2:01 am
Seems like everyone glossed over the ‘unauthorized’ part.
But of course, without knowing the circumstances of what constitutes ‘authorization’ (Camp David accords? Olso accords? Annapolis accords? Knesset say so?) it’s a moot point.
May 11th, 2009 at 6:54 am
El Cid, I don’t think it’s legitimate for Israel itself to buy up private property, in territory whose legal status is contested, for the purpose of essentially annexing it.
May 11th, 2009 at 9:15 am
I wasn’t advocating for it, mainly I was trying to clarify what was under discussion after someone began accusing the “far left” of anti-semitism for noticing an Israeli controversy.
May 11th, 2009 at 10:26 am
This is what happens when a western system of land title gets dropped on a region where property rights are mainly customary. (As Hernando da Soto — the modern one — notes, the advantage of title is that it can be used to secure loans.
This isn’t simply a modern version of “do you have a flag?”, regardless of what Robertson claims. Instead, it’s a revisionist attempt not only to strip away the historic identity of Jerusalem’s Old City,
Hunh?
Land title was a very old concept in the ME. Doesn’t anybody read the Bible?
And it’s revisionist history to claim that the Old City of Jerusalem was Jewish before anything else? Well, I guess we should return Jerusalem to the Jebusites to be fair then …
May 11th, 2009 at 11:07 am
Demanding that a state is controlled by an ethnic group for the benefit of that ethnic group is racist, it’s that simple.
What’s that? Truth in an Israel-Palestine thread? Impossible.
Nobody would tolerate such an arrangement in any First World state, regardless of which ethnic group was the top dog. Israel doesn’t have a Fourteenth Amendment or anything like it because essentially none of its governing institutions could survive the application thereof. (Let alone the First, of course.) What does that say about the legitimacy of Israel as a government?
The only person to even attempt to address this point was Hector @60, by way of claiming that the Jews really are a superior race and those dirty Arabs should be thankful someone is demonstrating civilization for them on the other side of the barricades. Thanks, but no thanks.
May 11th, 2009 at 12:37 pm
@64: In addition, it should be pointed out that Mr. abb1s’ hero, Hitler, drove out dozens of Jewish scientists who were largely responsible for the US and Britain beating Germany to the nuclear bomb. Talk about shooting oneself in the foot!
Ah yes, here’s another curious phenomenon you may observe in conversations with Zionists. They criticize Hitler and the Nazis for their tactical mistakes (like expelling and killing Jews), but they really don’t have anything against the Nazi ideology as such. And why would they? In their (sick) minds Hitler did what he had to do for the ethnic Germans – fair enough, he just happened to be a bad manager.
May 11th, 2009 at 12:56 pm
Re Chris
I’m not sure what the relevance of the 14th amendment to the US Constitution is to this thread but Great Britain doesn’t have a 14th amendment either because it doesn’t have a written constitution.
Re abb1
1. Would Mr. abb1 care to inform us as to which Zionists have advocated an Eichmann solution for the Palestinians, other then the Kach party which has been banned in Israel?
2. Mr. abb1 seems to think that the only negative attitude that Jewish Zionists have about Hitler is that he lost the war. Considering that most of them had their entire families wiped out in the Holocaust, I find that to be a rather outrageous accusation.
May 11th, 2009 at 1:13 pm
In a sick sense, abb1 raises an interesting point. How, e.g., does the Zionist definition of who is a Jew and what Judaism is differ from Hitler’s definition?
In re. to SLC’s first response to abb1’s point — here is an example of where the anti-Zionist left looses all sense of perspective in a way that seems to indicate an underlying anti-Semitism (why else the irrational loss of perspective?).
Is “ethnic cleansing” bad? Yes. Is it always bad? Is it something we need to make sure never happens again? Well, it depends on what you mean by ethnic cleansing. If you mean mass deportations in order to establish a greater peace, ethnic cleansing was considered a minor evil necessary to prevent another Holocaust: the ethnic cleansing of large portions of the world in order to establish peaceful national boundaries was considered par for the course in the late 1940s. Indeed, many Jews were kicked out of the Arab world — except that “exchange of populations” was not accepted by both sides. Why should Israel be punished/condemned for merely completing a task which pretty much every other nation has been allowed to complete without censure?
The anti-Zionist left would have us believe that the Palestinians are acting in good faith (which they are not) while Israel is not acting in good faith (which indeed they are not, but then … why should they have any faith — since when did Israel get handed anything on a silver platter?). But no matter what Israel does (again then why should Israel act in good faith), the terror attacks don’t stop. The anti-Zionist left would have us believe that the Palestinians shouldn’t have to stop the terror attacks as a precondition for peace (so why should Israel have to stop the land grabs?) as we should understand that, having their land stolen, etc., they have every right to try and get it back by any means necessary etc. And yet, there is no empathy or excusing of Jewish behavior considering that the so-called civilized world (including all those peace-loving peace-niks) did nothing to stop centuries of demonization of Jews leading to the whole-sale slaughter of half the world’s Jewish population?
There is ethnic cleansing and ethnic cleansing. Being kicked off your land is an evil. But sometimes it is a necessary evil. The creation of Israel is kind of just a really bad, racially targeted version of immanent domain, ain’t it? we can argue day and night what whether Israel should have been created, whether Zionism is a good ideology, etc. But to conflate so-called ethnic cleansing involving people being driven off their lands (in the context of an era in which such occurrences were deemed necessary to prevent further ethnic cleansing) with the whole-sale slaughter of half a population really indicates a sick lack of perspective on the part of the so-called liberal opposition to Zionism.
May 11th, 2009 at 1:34 pm
which Zionists have advocated an Eichmann solution for the Palestinians
Until 1942 Eichmann was the boss of the Office for Jewish Emigration, agency in charge of expelling Jews from Germany and Austria, forcing them to emigrate. That was the Eichmann’s solution until 1942, and he cooperated with Zionists to achieve it.
So, I think it would be fair to say that every Zionist advocates an Eichmann solution, everyone of them, all of them.
Mr. abb1 seems to think that the only negative attitude that Jewish Zionists have about Hitler is that he lost the war. Considering that most of them had their entire families wiped out in the Holocaust, I find that to be a rather outrageous accusation.
It’s not an accusation, it’s an observation; you can have any attitude you want, I don’t care.
But yeah, it is ironic that Zionists have this attitude and nevertheless they are relatively popular among the Jews, isn’t it? You’d think the Holocaust experience should thoroughly disabuse people of any notion of ethnic exclusivity, wouldn’t you? Well, obviously it didn’t. Too many idiots in this world, I’m sorry to say.
May 11th, 2009 at 2:25 pm
Re DAS
Of course, it should be noted that Mr. abb1 doesn’t complain about the ethnic cleansing of Jews from Arab countries 1/2 million from Iraq alone). Nor does he complain about the ethnic cleansing of ethnic Germans from the Sudetenland after 1945 (that one exceeded the ethnic cleansing of Arabs from what is now Israel by a factor of 3).
Re abb1
Mr. abb1 is rather misinformed. Jews were not kicked out of Germany and Austria to be expelled somewhere else. They were sent to concentration camps. In fact, after the early nineteen thirties, it was illegal for Jews to leave Germany (case in point, physicist Lise Meitner had to be snuck out of Germany in 1938 by her boss, Otto Hahn).
Mr. Eichmann was in charge of arranging the transportation to those camps.
May 11th, 2009 at 2:42 pm
Actually, until 1939 German Jews where encouraged and sometimes forced to live Germany, and (off the top of my head) about 70+% of them did leave. Well, some of them were expelled to Poland, and most of those were probably killed later, but that’s a different story. Expulsion – by hook or by crook – of the ethnically undesirable is a solution Zionists definitely do support, all of them.
But you’re right: locking ethnically undesirable in concentration camps (like the Gaza strip) and then indiscriminately killing them (like in the Gaza strip recently) is another method practiced by both Nazis and Zionists. And this solution has been extremely popular among Zionists as well. From the press reports it appears that probably all 100% of those voting for Zionist parties approved and their only regret is that not enough of ethnically undesirable have been killed.
So, there you are, buddy.
May 11th, 2009 at 2:44 pm
Re: You’d think the Holocaust experience should thoroughly disabuse people of any notion of ethnic exclusivity, wouldn’t you?
What? That’s retarded. What the Holocaust should disabuse of is the notion that the Jews will be safe anywhere in the world if they don’t have a Jewish State, a Jewish homeland for the Jewish people, giving preference to the Jewish religion. Of course, Mr. Abb1 dislikes this notion as he thinks all people should be the same kind of soft, deracinated cosmopolitan p*ssies that he is. And if it takes another genocide to get there, than so be it.
May 11th, 2009 at 3:13 pm
Do Zionist support expulsions in some way shape or form, if only by arguing that it is their right to live in a state that is only de facto possible via such expulsions?
You betcha!
But just about everyone lives in a state that could only have come into existence in its current form via expulsions. Where do you live abb1? In the USA where you live on land stolen from Native Americans? In Europe which has been peaceful for the past few years because it “solved the German problem” via mass expulsions of ethnic Germans? In the Arab world which expelled its Jews in the late 1940s?
So why pick on Jewish nationalism? Left wing anti-Zionists may pay lip-service to “being against all nationalisms” (even as they support the creation of a new nation-state in place of Israel — a Palestinian state), but when push comes to shove, it’s only when we Jews do whatever it is that irks left wing anti-Zionists that they start to complain (*). One wonders what is behind these particular priorities?
* the argument is that the US doesn’t support other nationalisms in the same way it supports Zionism … but come-on, the US does plenty of bad things and supports plenty of unsavory nationalist movements — so why the special focus on Zionism if your particular bug-a-boo is nationalism? Hmmmm ….
May 11th, 2009 at 3:37 pm
What the Holocaust should disabuse of is the notion that the Jews will be safe anywhere in the world if they don’t have a Jewish State, a Jewish homeland for the Jewish people, giving preference to the Jewish religion.
Yes Hector, this sort of logic is what I perceive as retarded. And it is, it sure is. Hitler’s thousand-year reich is a good indication of how your idea is likely to end.
In the USA where you live on land stolen from Native Americans?
Yes DAS, I understand that it’s a tragedy for you and your ilk that this sort of behavior is not accepted by civilized people anymore. I won’t say that I feel your pain, though. Sorry.
May 11th, 2009 at 3:58 pm
I am fascinated by DAS arguments that there can be ‘good ethnic cleansing.’
I eagerly wait for his compelling argument on behalf of ‘good child molesting’, ‘good famines’, and ‘positive gonorrhea.’
May 11th, 2009 at 4:08 pm
Re abb1
I would suggest that Mr. abb1 read up on physicist Lise Meitner, who was not allowed to leave Germany and had to be snuck out of the country, aided by her boss, Otto Hahn, in 1938. Try, “The Making of the Atomic Bomb,” by Richard Rhodes for starters.
I also notice that Mr. abb1 continues to fail to comment on the ethnic cleansing of Jews from Arab countries after 1949, as I stated previously, better then 1/2 million from Iraq.
May 11th, 2009 at 4:11 pm
Re Den Valdron
I’m sure that Mr. Valdron and Mr. abb1 think that the ethnic cleansing of Jews from Arab countries was an example of good ethnic cleansing.
May 11th, 2009 at 4:12 pm
Re: I am fascinated by DAS arguments that there can be ‘good ethnic cleansing.’
I understand that hippy-dippy multiculturalists like you are not very knowledgeable about either history or political morality, but there certainly are examples of good ethnic cleaning. The classic example would be the expulsion of the German barbarians from Soviet-occupied Kaliningrad in 1945. Given that the bastards had just committed the greatest genocide in human history, sending them as refugees to Germany was just about the nicest thing the Russians could be expected to do. They were lucky they weren’t deported to Kazakhstan and had to spend the rest of their lives trying to grow handfuls of barley in the desert.
Do you agree with the expulsion of ethnic Germans from Kaliningrad? If not, you’ve just proven that soft-headed, can’t-we-all-get-along Rodney King multiculturalism has just crossed the line into being objectively pro-Nazi. Congratulations.
May 11th, 2009 at 4:33 pm
Um, SLC, why should I care about a story of some individual when I know history of the period, and know it pretty well? Maybe you should go read a non-Zionist book or something.
I also notice that Mr. abb1 continues to fail to comment on the ethnic cleansing of Jews from Arab countries after 1949, as I stated previously, better then 1/2 million from Iraq.
Jews from Arab countries have consistently denied the attempts to portray them as victims. They say that they emigrated from Arab countries acting on their free will. Why should I listen to you and not them?
But in fact it’s true that many Jews had to leave Iraq; however to this day they attribute it to Mossad orchestrating a terror campaign against them. Read Naeim Giladi.
May 11th, 2009 at 5:01 pm
Re abb1
Boy, Mr abb1 would do his hero, Josef Goebbels proud with his claim that Jews were forced out of Iraq by the Mossad. A perfect example of the big lie. Mr. abb1 obviously feels that if he repeats it loudly enough and ofter enough, people will come to believe it. Mr. abb1, you are a lying goat fucker and are cordially invited to go fuck yourself.
May 11th, 2009 at 5:06 pm
But it’s not Mr abb1’s claim, it’s a claim of the Iraqi Jews. Maybe Josef Goebbels would be proud of them?
Nah, don’t think so. He would definitely be proud of Mossad, though.
May 12th, 2009 at 6:57 am
Jews from Arab countries have consistently denied the attempts to portray them as victims. They say that they emigrated from Arab countries acting on their free will. Why should I listen to you and not them? – abb1
But the fact remains (pace some paranoia about Mossad being behind it — paranoia probably rooted in the very real and disgusting anti-Arab prejudice among many Israelis, acutely felt by Mizrachi Jews leading to the latter developing some very paranoid ideas about what we Ashkenazim did) that Jews felt they had to flee Arab lands and (contra Zionist claims about Israel being oh-so-nice to Arabs) many Palestinian Arabs (pace the discussion above, the term Palestinian used to refer to both Arabs and Jews in the Levant … including Zionists!) felt they had to leave Israel. Nu? That Palestinians regret fleeing while Mizrachi Jews are happy about their decision says more about Israel’s treatment of Jews and the Arab world’s treatment of Arabs than it does about things the other way around. If Israel were such a bad place, why would Palestinians want to go back?
Germany’s a very good place, and not too many Jews have gone back …
BTW — the tragedy for my “ilk” is not that civilization doesn’t accept uncivilized behavior. It’s that civilization turned a blind eye to the worst inhumanities — toward Native Americans, Australian Aborigines, Jews, Gypsies — and then, once one of those groups got a state of our own and, to make this state viable, there were some mass population transfers (no different than other transfers occuring at the time) — what happened? civilization was up in arms about the population transfers (and only then after said population was allowed to fester in refugee camps by the hostile neighbors of the nation in question — to the point where terrorism was breed and the nation in question was attacked repeatedly).
As a liberal, I am happy with civilization changing its norms to be more just. But I find the timing awfully convenient — don’t you? Let the so-called civilized world trample the rights of Jews, et al. But as soon as we Jews get a state, suddenly civilization changes its mind?
As the Church-Lady would say “well, isn’t that convenient”.
May 12th, 2009 at 7:04 am
Actually, until 1939 German Jews where encouraged and sometimes forced to live Germany, and (off the top of my head) about 70+% of them did leave – abb1
Thank you for repeating a Zionist argument. If Israel would have existed, those Jews would have found a home in Israel, and would not have been killed.
Of course, paranoid anti-Zionists then try to make up stories about the Elders of Zion conspiring against their own people to make sure that Jews couldn’t find refuge.
I’ve always discounted the “we need Israel as a land of refuge” argument — simply because, Baruch Hashem, there are so many Jews in the world, in spite of them trying to murder us all, that it would take a miracle possible only in the time of Moshiach to fit all of us in the land of Israel, should Hashem forbid, another Holocaust happen.
But that even anti-Zionists effectively accept this argument and just accuse some shadowy conspiracy (Jews conspiratorial? that isn’t an anti-Semitic stereotype … no way!) of trying to make sure Jews died to give the world a reason for Israel to exist I think says maybe I should change my mind about the truth of this argument?
May 12th, 2009 at 10:19 am
he thinks all people should be the same kind of soft, deracinated cosmopolitan – Hector
Before Israel existed, “conservative” elements of society denounced us Jews as soft, deracinated cosmopolitans seeking to destroy Western, Christian civilization via Capitalism and Marxism.
Nu? The Zionists said the way to make sure Jews are like everyone else, so we don’t piss off conservative elements so much (while actually advancing the cause of socialism via setting up a socialist utopia) is for us to become rooted in our ancestral homeland of Israel and be a nation like any other nation (and here is where I fundamentally disagree with Zionism: we Jews are not supposed to be like everyone else!).
Of course, now that we have roots and are no longer deracinated, in spite of Zionism being socialist in its origins, the left has decided to hate on us for not being deracinated cosmopolitans (is that a drink or something?).
It seems we Jews can’t win. No matter what we do we are hated. So is it any wonder that some Jews say “well, if the world is gonna hate us anyway, we might as well screw over everyone else and do what benefits us”? I’m not saying that attitude is right, but for the left, even as it is willing to sympathize with the worst anti-Israeli terrorism, not to even want to see where this attitude comes from whilst it condemns it, indicates a blind-spot of prejudice that itself is by definition (prejudice against Jewish interests) anti-Semitic.
Notice that this thread’s hoopla involves a discussion of Zionist interests buying Jewish historical sites! When we Jews are “rootless cosmopolitans” the left is silent as the right condemns us. OTOH, when we Jews try to recover our roots, the left, so silent when we are condemned to death as rootless cosmopolitans, suddenly decides we are tantamount to Nazis. And the left then wonders why we turn toward the right and embrace beliefs that are indeed so hard in their reactionary direction as to indeed have the flavor of Nazism?
If the left wishes to condemn Zionism, they look long and hard at what caused Zionism in the first place: no matter what we Jews do, we get hated for it … so why shouldn’t we just “go home”. And if someone else is squatting in your home, what would abb1 do about it?
May 12th, 2009 at 10:29 am
Read Naeim Giladi. – abb1
Naeim Giladi is akin to Bar Khamsa. Of course, Israeli racism is indeed to blame here — if Israel did embrace all Jews as equals (as Israel was supposed to do), he wouldn’t have been so upset about Israel as to spread lies about it.
But are we really supposed to believe that Mossad was behind Iraqi Jews being made so uncomfortable in Iraq that they fled and now are so much happier they have no regrets about fleeing? Giladi’s evidence is that Zionists were convicted in Iraqi courts for bombing attacks that led to a wave of anti-Semitism that all but drove Jews out of Iraq (the motivation evidently was to make sure Jews were so uncomfortable in Iraq they would have to move to Israel — because, as we know, Zionism is all a colonialist plot to steal land from Palestinian Arabs, so Zionists have done everything they could to make sure there are as many Jews as possible to steal land from Arabs? ).
By Giladi’s logic, the conviction of Dreyfuss in France (which helped spark Zionism in the first place) indicated the presence of a Zionist plot to destroy French national security. And convictions of African-Americans of rape in the Jim Crow era South indicated a wide-spread plot by African-American men to destroy the virtue of White Womenhood.
This is the best argument the left-wing anti-Zionists have?
Look, I am a Jew who is philosophically and religiously opposed to Zionism. I also think the Palestinians got a raw deal. And Zionist preening about “Israel being so good” makes me a bit sick — if Israel is so much on the side of right, how come it can’t seem to do anything in good faith to make real steps toward peace. Anti-Zionists should have me at hello.
But they don’t. The strength of leftist thought is its ability to see things from all sides — to win over enemies with empathy (c.f. the Talmud on this). But leftists are so interested in condemning Zionism and maintaining hoary anti-Semitic tropes under the guise of “anti-Zionism”, they drive even non-Zionist liberals like me into the pro-Zionist camp on these sorts of boards.
As my dad says “you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar”. Why anti-Zionists are so eager to use vinegar betrays their real thinking, doesn’t it?
May 12th, 2009 at 12:36 pm
if Israel did embrace all Jews as equals (as Israel was supposed to do), he wouldn’t have been so upset about Israel as to spread lies about it.
First of all these are not lies. The Lavon Affair, a very similar operation they tried to execute in Egypt just a few years later, was proven without a doubt and admitted by the government. Same MO.
So, you want to embrace all Jews, huh. Why? What’s so special about Jews that you love them so much? I really don’t understand. All my grandparents were Jewish, so perhaps you would like to embrace me as well? No, not so much? Come, kiss my ass.
You are a senile old fool, DAS. You don’t make an iota of sense.
You passion is utterly irrational, because a Jew is no different from any other person, only in your sick head they are special. And this is how I know that you are exactly the same as the Nazis.
May 12th, 2009 at 1:25 pm
a Jew is no different from any other person- abb1
A Zionist would argue that by your very argument you should be a Zionist too — if we Jews are no different than French people or English people, etc., then we Jews should, like the French, English, et al., have a state too.
May 12th, 2009 at 3:21 pm
Every Jew has a country, it’s the country where he or she is a citizen.
Except, of course, for the Israeli Jews: they live in a racist Zionist entity that billions of people hate and wish to destroy. And eventually they will.
May 15th, 2009 at 11:27 am
[...] a domestic price to be paid for any serious effort to push for a solution. This is similar to how Israel’s land grabs in-and-around Jerusalem are at odds with the Israeli government’s public presentation of itself as interested in [...]